Richard Rudish Lithograph

RED CEDAR REVIEW

Phil Frank Lithograph
Phil Frank Lithograph



RCR-2

A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS 
PUBLISHED BY STUDENTS OF 
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS/ VOLUME Two : NUMBER ONE / Spring 1964

RCR / FICTION

5 The Bent Grass / RICHARD SLATER

17 While the West Wind Sleeps / ALDEN SMITH

21 In Silence / ROBERT NIEMI

37 ThePartners/ROBERTF.MORGAN

54 The Ward / NICHOLAS H. BRADLEY

65 Black Cherries / JAMES CASH

RCR / ESSAYS

29 Jean Vigo—A Tribute / DOUG LACKEY

49 Womb of Darkness / RON GERVAIS

RCR / POETRY

15 Two Poems / JAMES CLAIRE

Fugal Experiment for Two Readers

Poem for Mystics

20 On Two Paintings of Van Gogh / JOHN THOMPSON

27 Noble Friend / JUDY SMITH

34 Two Poems / RON ENGLISH

Atlas

The Satyr

48 Orison from a Dry Well / suSAN DRAKE

48 SonnetI/JAMESLOCKWOOD

50 Three Poems / JOHN PEASE

I Have Wept and Moaned in My Sleep

To Robin Lost

None So Lovely

53 Expiration/MELVYNBUCHOLTZ

63 Nickey/JAMESHARKNESS


GERALD BRAY PHOTOGRAPH

THE BENT GRASS 
by Richard Slater

This is a story about Ed and Fred, who went over to the river on a summer 
day. They started out from Ed's house about 10 o'clock in the morning, to try 
for a fox first, and then eat bread and butter sandwiches in the shade by the 
river. After that, they were going to build a tree fort in Art Lynch's woods, and 
then go to the 6 o'clock show at the Lyric theater in town, when it would only 
cost twelve cents to get in.

But they went swimming at Nepessing lake instead, where Ed met the city 
girl and learned about things before he went home to supper.

They came through the thorn-apple trees on the hill above the Farmer's 
Creek swamp, cocking their rifles and stopping, because a fox might run out of 
the dry swale at the bottom of the hill, and if he did, he would head for the 
big patch of poison sumac in the “Home” dump across the river. The “Home” 
was the County Poor Farm, but nothing ever happened there, just some guys 
walked from the main house to the barn and back sometimes.

They stood in the wind and long timothy grass, being ready, watching behind 
each other. Once in the snow of late winter they came up like that and a fox 
did go out, and nobody hit him. Johnny Carson came along that day, and 
another Fred, Fred Carpenter, and they all carried guns. They all tried to 
spread out so they could shoot, but it was too late, the fox got away, bullets 
kicking up snow above him, behind, in front and under him.

But today nothing happened. There was just the swamp and the swale of 
old saw-grass that cut like a rusty razor, and standing stalks of golden-rod. They 
waded through the golden-rod, crackling it chest-high and trampling it underfoot. 
Beyond the swamp were the woods, though Ed always thought of it as 
forest. Fred did too, but not as much. They both always said woods, though.

5 / RCR


They just stood there for a minute, looking at the woods ahead, across the 
field of winter wheat coming up green and fat from the black earth with the 
little specks and pieces of horse manure mixed in it. They looked for the things 
that didn't fit with trees and grass and sky, because anything like that was an 
animal or a man or something a man touched and made different. They didn't 
pay much attention to old tractors left out or things like that, they looked for 
sharp points and light or dark spots and movement. Ed knew the points might 
be fox ears in the alfalfa, hunting mice and watching out. The spots could be 
anything from a hawk, in the sky or still-sitting the top of a dead oak, to a 
dog or man walking under the first branches line of a woodlot. And movement 
was always easy to see quick; the hunting animals depended on it as much as 
smell and hearing.

After a minute, because nothing happened this time, Ed gave a grunt, the 
way Indians did in books. He told Fred they'd go over to Nepessing lake where 
everybody from town went swimming during summer vacation, except the 
men grown-ups, who mostly sat under the slow wooden fans in the Nepessing 
Lake Hotel that was really a tavern where the owner stayed upstairs and glasses 
clinked. Fred said good, maybe they could catch a couple of bullfrogs and use 
them. Ed started off, swinging around the end of the wheatfield to keep from 
leaving tracks, thinking how Fred like to catch frogs and blow them up like 
skin balloons with a thin hollow stem of sweet-myrtle grass, tossing them back to 
be good floating targets, because even blown up with air the frogs kicked the 
water, but couldn't dive, and didn't get far.

Ed thought about the women, too, the ones who came down on the dock 
to be near the cool lake air. He wanted to get under the dock in the warm sandy 
water and look up through the cracks, watching the girls and women from the 
barred shadows and being quiet. He couldn't stop thinking about it, but it 
wouldn't do any good to tell Fred. Fred was always so easy and open about all 
that, even though he was only thirteen and three years younger than Ed. 
Maybe having so manysisters helped, but Ed thought a man ought to keep 
some things to himself, and he couldn't understand how Fred could be so easy 
about it.

They crossed the stone dam in Farmer's Creek at the top of noon, and it was 
hot out in the sun where the red oaks stood back from the water. The brown 
water came out of the swamp, went over the stones, collected itself and 
wandered on. Ed went across first, taking three stones at a time, and on the 
other side listened for crow or jay calls before whistling bobwhite to Fred in the 
red willows. Fred came out and started across, eating his bread and butter sandwich, 
but Ed didn't wait. He began swinging his legs faster when the forest 
opened up under the red oaks. He felt easier once he got inside the woods, 
because nobody could see him there unless he wanted them to. The mosquitoes 
and deer flies were bad in the summer, and Fred always wanted him to slow 

rcR / 6


down,but it was still better there than anyplace else. Mosquitoes and flies didn't 
bother in the winter, but sometimes, crossing pastures in snow against the wind, 
he got hungry enough to eat teasel reeds, and so cold his fingers stayed in the 
curved shape around the gunstock, tears starting in his eyes, making him look 
away from Fred. In the spring the skin ice in the dirt furrows covered clear 
water that turned yellow when they stepped and slipped in, crossing a field for 
a short-cut to the maple sugar grove on the Davis farm. When there wasn't 
enough sap in the clean gallon cans where you could see your face in the 
bottom, they shot chickadees and roasted the toughlittle bits, looking for bone 
splinters between bites and pretending it was good.

They came out of the woods on the north-west corner of Young's lake, keeping 
their rifles pointed ahead in the staghorn sumac on the edge of the forest. 
The sun made the clover greener, the heat waves swelled up and the leaves on 
the sumac were still. The leaves on the top moved and shook only when the two 
boys bumped the thick stems underneath. A cheeping sound tainted the air, 
and Ed heard a green-bottle fly go past in a hurry, looking for something dead 
to lay white eggs in. The cheeping came from a shed with one side almost hidden 
in the sumac. Some of the clusters of seeds were higher than the roof. The 
board walls went everyway but right, hot in the sun, with nick marks and birddroppings 
on a windowsill where there was no window.

Ed looked in, feeling off-balance with his arms outside the window, until 
he saw grass and string hanging over a joist up in one corner. He smelled hot 
tarpaper and backed up with a grunt, blinking. He told Fred to go behind the 
shed and watch the crawl space under the floor. Ed looked around the doorframe, 
whistled sharp like a woodchuck, and leaped in, stamping the floor 
boards. He stopped and coughed, listening. A knot on the wall looked ready 
to pop. Sometimes a skunk or possum came out from under the floor, especially 
in the winter. Fred came in, letting his hammer down to half-cock.

Ed pulled the nest down, getting some chaff in his face and on the floor 
boards. Fred wanted to hang the babystarling so they could shoot it, making 
it leap and turn and swing roundin the air, but Ed wanted to do it a new way, 
like some Indians did it to a sheriff in a story. Fred found the hollow beech 
stump behind the shed, and said “How's this?” Ed looked at the sky. The 
sun was gone behind some big lake clouds, and he didn't want Fred to get wet. 
The shed would be alright, in case. :

They tied the babystarling's legs with strings from the nest on one edge of the 
stump, held up the head and put a noose around the neck and tied it to the 
other edge so the bird hung in the strings. When it fluttered, it didn't choke, but 
when it got tired, the noose choked it while it tried to rest, making it flutter 
again. The Indians in the story hunkered down in a circle to watch, calling 
and making faces to the white man sheriff and each other, squeezing their 
throats and laughing. Ed watched the starling's belly with the little crooked 

7 / RCR


veins, and wanted it to be right now, but because of Fred he kept still and held 
the gun close, moving his hand over the curve of the butt. Fred poked the bird 
to make it flutter some more, but it wouldn’t. The soft wide beak with the 
yellow rims opened and shut, showing the tongue like the center of a Jack-in- 
the-Pulpit. Ed picked up a cracked two-by-four with three ten-penny nails 
curving from one end like the front claws of a homed owl and pushed down on 
the baby starling, poping the strings and twisting the square edges and the 
nails into punk wood at the bottom, grinding the bird into the rottenness.

The edge of cloud came across the shed roof and down the wall, and Ed 
felt air stroke the sweat in the hair above the back of his pants. He grunted 
and said, “It’s about three,” looking at Fred’s shoelace for mud. He walked 
past the shed into the clover, heading west toward Nepessing lake. Fred caught 
up and dropped back again, using the new path behind Ed.

At the new fence around the beach they went in with their guns open for 
safety. Some kids looked up from the edge of the water, and Ed hoped nobody 
would laugh like they did in town. The kids watched, turning to watch Ed 
and Fred go around the comer of the beach house and into the door to pay 
for changing clothes. The man behind the key counter started to say something, 
but Ed worked the action twice to show the empty magazine as he walked up 
and stopped at the counter and laid the gun on its side. The man looked away 
from Ed, dropped one of the keys on his way back from the wall board, picked 
it up with a fingernail under the side, and slid the keys across the counter, putting 
both hands flat on the counter. Ed looked at the gold ring on one finger, then 
across at the man’s face. Fred put two dimes on the counter, pushing them across 
with two fingers beside the hand with the ring.

Ed got into the cubicle and started to undress, except for his pants. Once 
he got in he’d stay under so everybody would forget about the pants. He put 
his spare shells in one of his shoes and stuffed his socks on top. The dirt on the 
bottom of the socks showed up like a dirty sheep he saw once at Mirror lake, 
south from town. He flexed the muscles in his arms and stomach. They 
bulged, and relaxed, warm and hard, then softer. Fred stopped taking off a 
shoe, to watch, so Ed rolled up his pants legs and went outside. The lake wind 
made their sides draw up under the arms, and the boards on the dock were hot, 
hurting the soft part of their feet.

They jumped in knee-deep, wading out to the raft where it came up to their 
shoulder blades. The water felt like a soft rubber band being rolled up the 
body. They lay on the raft until it got too hot. Ed’s stomach itched from lying 
on the wet planks, so he rolled off and let himself sink until the water got cool 
near the bottom, then stood up and waded to the dock. He climbed up, feeling 
heavy, and lay down while Fred splashed beside the dock.

A tall girl, about seventeen, wearing tight white shorts and a white tee shirt, 

RCR / 8


came down the dock. Ed got up halfway to let her go around. Her black hair, 
thick and soft, bounced on her back as she walked to the end of the dock. Ed 
remembered a crow feather he carried in his hair once, nodding and bouncing 
and shiny in the sun. She stood at the end of the dock with her rounded bottom 
pushed sidewise and back at Ed. He saw a little bare skin showing white under 
the shorts where they stretched across. One bare heel raised up, paler underneath. 
She talked with a boy in a boat who smiled up, squinting in the light, holding 
the oars level with gunwales. The oars dripped, making rings inside rings. 
The boy said something louder and laughed, looking once at Ed. His nose was 
straight and his hair was black like the girl’s, only it was cut short. The girl looked 
around and back again and laughed once. The hair nodded, and Ed make a 
smile on purpose. The boards of the dock felt hard on his chest.

The black hairs on the thick part of his wrist scraped together when he 
moved his chin to get up, and the air felt like the wind quit. The sun hitting 
the water near the end of the dock hurt his eyes, making him want to sneeze at 
first when the girl turned and the boy in the boat went away, rowing out to 
show how fast he could turn the boat by holding one oar in the water and pulling 
three or four times on the other oar, making the boat spin, leaving flat water 
heaving behind and making ridges of it on the other side of the boat, like scraping 
the top of a big green jello.

The girl said, “Look how sunburnt it’s got my arm.” Ed rubbed his big toe 
across a knot in one of the cracked pine boards of the dock. It hurt once, so 
he knew there was a splinter in the ball of the toe. “See how it’s hot from the 
sun,” she said. His hands felt big, looking at her arm. He pulled up his overall 
pants by hooking two fingers in the side belt loops. Back on the dock it was 
getting dry where he had been lying down, the water soaked into the pine 
cracks at the edges of the wet spot. “Feel how hot it is,” she said. Ed felt his 
tongue run along the bottom of his upper lip, and he touched her arm near the 
elbow, moved his hand away and rubbed his fingers once. He made a loose 
fist and rubbed his right ear with the first knuckle, leaned back and moved one 
foot to keep his balance on the dock when a Chris-Craft came by and curved 
away. The pennant went back and forth on the stem of the Chris-Craft like a 
garter snake crawling across a lawn. “I don’t like swimming when it’s hot,” she 
said. “I’m going in after dark, though. The water will feel good on my sunburn 
after it’s dark.”

The boy in the boat pulled in, hitting the edge of the dock with the cutwater 
of the bow beside Ed’s foot. The boy stepped over the painted wooden seats, 
knocking a cracked leather cushion into the bottom of the boat, and jumped 
over the gunwale, going in to the tops of his thighs, reaching up and making 
a pushing grab on the round part of the girl’s short. She squealed like a girl 
in a play, holding her hair with her hands flat on the sides of her head. The 
drops of water from the splashing lifted up above the dock as high as the sun, 

9 / RCR


like glass aggies Ed kept in his dresser drawer except when he wanted to show 
them to some new kid in school. The boy scraped his thighs getting up on the 
dock, and his toes spread apart when he grabbed the girl from behind, around 
the waist, holding on by lifting her off the boards. Her thighs and knees moved 
like pedalling a bike in the air, and she laughed, reaching back and tickling the 
boy at the bottom edge of his trunks, because her arms were held tight against 
the tee shirt above the elbows. Her feet came close to Ed’s face, so he moved 
back, feeling the splinter again. The boy choked and swallowed, sliding the 
girl down, rubbing his right elbow with his left hand, cupping the fingers around 
the bone. “See?” he said.

Ed jumped with his feet together, digging his toes into the sand on the 
bottom, rubbing the splinter in his toe into the sand. The girl stood on the dock 
above Ed and said, “I gotta go in now. We’ll be eatin’ pretty soon.” Ed looked 
at her knees and then up at her face. A white spot under her tee shirt was red 
at the edges where the boy’s arm made a mark. “I can go swimming after,” 
she said. Ed turned his hand in the water, making a whirlpool on the surface, 
pulling a clip of grass from one of the lawns into the whirl, but instead of 
going under, it stuck on his finger. “It’s about up to my neck out there,” he 
said, turning his head toward the raft. “I guess I’ll go out once more.” He waded 
out to the raft. A pike about a foot long went out from under the oil drums of 
the raft, going away with only its tail moving, fluttering a little and coasting, and 
fluttering again. It was not afraid, and it headed toward the outlet of the lake, 
where the lily pads were thick and the swamp began. Ed rolled onto the top of 
the raft and stood up. Fred was down the shore, lifting a part of a rowboat in the 
wild onions growing out into the lake beyond the floats of the beach markers. 
Fred let go of the boat when the stern board came off in his hands, and started 
toward the raft. Ed looked back at the dock, but the girl was walking across a 
lawn in front of a log summer cabin, so he waited until Fred came up and they 
went to put their clothes on before he said, “It’s a good time for frogs, about 
now.”

The gun felt heavy, and the muzzle caught once on a thornbush, making 
him pull on the stock. Ed felt the trigger go back under his right finger, but 
the hammer was all the way down, and it didn’t go off. He looked back at Fred, 
held the gun in the crook of his left elbow, and went around the thorns, following 
a rabbit path between the bushes in the long grass, going downhill toward the 
cat-tails and lily pads at the outlet. The sounds of the kids at the beach were 
getting faint, and Ed thought about how the buckskin men walked without noise 
by watching the earth in front, memorizing ten or twenty feet at a time, so they 
could look around while they walked and not miss a shot at a deer, remembering 
when to lift a foot over a root or set it down beyond a stick, carrying two pairs 
of moccasins, wearing one pair with another pair stuffed in the front of their 
pants, to keep them dry and warm. Ed tried to make moccasins sometimes, 

RCR / 10


but the needle always broke and he got it in his thumb, or else the string was 
too big and wouldn’t go through the needle. He asked Ma about the needle 
because she did the sewing when they lived on the farm, and she wanted to 
know what he was up to. When she saw the pieces of moccasin and the Indian 
book, she made him give her the needle before he broke it, because it was her 
last good darning needle, and if he said aw please Ma, she would pat and 
smooth his hair and hold him with the flabby upper arms around his head, 
pulling him against the old pink cotton farm dress and he wanted to get away 
and he didn’t want to get away, because he like the smell down by her belly and 
he didn’t like the smell, but she let him go a little after she told him he was too 
nice to grow up and be a thing and drink beer. So he went to Sunday school at the 
Presbyterian church, and before they went he put on the socks that were on the 
old brass bed-post, the one with the knob on top that came off and he put strings 
and Christmas orange peels down in and mostly forgot about them, and they 
were probably still there, and then he beat the socks over the brass tubing of the 
bedstead to make them soft, because in the night the sweat and dirt dried them 
stiff. In Sunday school he worked on a Mother’s Oats box and a piece of inner 
tube, making holes around the edge of rubber cut in a circle, trying it for fit 
on the open box top until he finished an Indian drum, but they told the kids to 
hush and make sure the lacings on the drum were tight. Nobody danced like 
Indians, or wanted him to show how to throw knives, so he left the drum on 
the table in the basement play room of the church when his Ma and Pa got 
out and said it was time to go home and eat.

The thornbushes were bigger on the south side of the hill, out of sight of 
the beach. The bushes ended close to the poison sumac at the beginning of the 
swamp where the lake outlet spread out and cat-tails grew like tan spears, all 
rusty at the bottom of a pit. The rabbit path went under the branches of three 
thornbushes blocking the path, pushing against each other to get more sun. 
Ed bent down and crawled through, bending his knees to stay on his feet, 
shuffling his feet together like making a path in new snow for playing fox and 
geese, holding the gun off the ground in his left hand, keeping his balance by 
helping with his right. He felt a thorn stick into his palm, like a copperhead 
with one fang and no noise. He dropped the gun and pulled on the base of the 
thorn, and it came out, sticking at first, making him try twice before it came 
out, leaving a hole white at the edges until he squeezed it with his left thumb 
and finger. Where the thorn joined the twig, a ring of wood made a ridge and 
the thorn came out of the middle of the ring, rising curved like the horn on the 
rhinoceros in the pictures of animals in the Bible Ma filled with pieces of 
people’s hair and flowers from graves, upstairs in the hot closet under the eaves, 
and she kept the clothes of Bob, who died when he was five, of scarlet fever. 
The wooden box she kept the clothes in had a raised part in the lid, and after 
Bob died, but before the funeral, Ma stayed in the closet and wouldn’t come 

11 / RCR


out all day, not even to fix supper, and Pa painted the box sky blue and got 
drunk at the American Legion. |

Ed sucked on the thorn hole, spitting and watching the spit until he saw 
some red in it, letting it drool so the red stripe in the spit hung down,getting 
longer. Fred hankered down under the branches, squatting and looking at the 
hand, tilting his head over like a dog, his eyes showing brighter in the dark 
under the bushes. “There's a walnut tree up by the road,” he said. “Ma uses 
it on cuts, she says it's good on cuts.” Ed looked at the button on Fred's overall 
jacket. The button hung down by two threads, showing the underside worn 
smooth and pale. He sucked on the hand and said, “Your hammer's cocked, you 
better let up on it.” Fred held the hammer back with his thumb, worked the 
trigger and let up the hammer to half-cock. Ed grunted and crawled out the 
other side of the bushes, starting uphill toward the dirt road and the walnuttree. 
Fred came around the bushes and caught up, then dropped back to follow.

_ At the edge of the road a beer can winked out of the quack grass above the 
ditch. Ed kicked it out into the road, jumped the ditch and came down on the 
can, flattening it in the middle. They walked on the gravel crown in the middle 
of the road, kicking stones up the grade. The walnut tree stood beside the 
road at the top, across the ditch. Seedlings grew around the tree, leaning out 
toward the sun. On the ditch side were short cuttings, clipped off by the road 
commission with brush hooks in the winter, the way rabbits cut blackberry 
stems above the snow line. Fred picked up two rocks and Ed saw the meadowlark 
thirty yards down the road, taking a dust bath for lice, flipping the dust of 
the road in puffs on its back, fanning its wings and shaking, to work the dust 
into the head feathers.

Ed stubbed a rock out of the gravel and reached down, twisting the stone 
with his fingers so the pins of light moved around on the rock until it came loose, 
leaving chunks of sand dropping back into the hole. He held the rock behind 
him, leaning back and holding the gun in the other hand, spreading his feet on 
the gravel, telling himself now, before Fred, because Fred might hit it, and Fred 
wouldn't care. The arm with the rock came up and went around under the gun, 
and the rock rose up above the box elders along the road. The meadow-lark 
stopped shaking, holding its wings out flat on the dust, the way kids make 
angel's wings in the snow. Fred stood with his arms down, holding a stone in 
each hand, watching the rock starting down above the meadowlark. It 
dropped like a hawk with folded wings, and Ed moved his mouth and throat 
the way he read in study hall, without any sound, and in his head he was shouting 
No. The rock was a foot away from the bird when it hit, making the dust 
come up around it. Fred said, “You got 'em,” but the meadow-lark flew up and 
went over the box elders, coasting down into the long grass toward the swamp 
holding its wings out like a balsa glider from the dime store.

Ed jumped the ditch, going down the hill where the lark went, toward the 

RCR / 12


dead elms and the cat-tails out in the swamp. Redwinged blackbirds flew up 
and turned together, showing their black bellies, then the red-orange with the 
white margin at the base of the wings as they rolled in the air, chirping to each 
other. The feeling in his stomach was still there. It started when the girl talked 
to him, with the thing in her eyes so strong she was ashamed, but showed it to 
him anyway and made lumps of hot gravel in his throat and stomach, but he 
didn’t want it like that, the way older guys in school talked about it, like Bud 
Hickmott and David Graham in gym class with the gray book when the coach 
was at a meeting, reading looking and smirking together, and Dave clutching 
himself, the hair on his thighs shining warm gold in the sun rays coming down 
into the gym from the high windows above the bleacher seats.

He wanted the swimming in the dark, out beyond the night lights where it 
was chest deep but still sandy on the bottom and not many weeds. Girls always 
screamed when they felt water weeds on their legs. Talking in the dark, telling 
about the woods and things, she might like it, and not laugh about fox- 
tracking with no dog, how the fox was smart in jumping straight up and 
sidewise over a rail fence, landing on the other side with his feet in the old trail 
of another fox, mixing up the tracks so it took half an hour of circling in rings 
to find which way he went. If she saw the snow and the tracks, the red-tailed 
hawks and the water in swamps that bubbled up when he fell through the muck 
roof, because he told it right, she might not laugh. Sometimes the sound of a 
hawk came down, like blowing on a willow whistle, and below, looking up, the 
hawk was in the edge of the sun, hunting mice from the sky and whistling to 
another hawk.

Ed stepped on a saw-grass hummock, shaking the hummock and earth 
around the sumac bushes. He looked at the swamp, listening for the first bullfrogs 
beside the channels of flat water. The dead elms turned orange in the 
sun on the west side, showing their dead side black. The scum on the main 
channel lifted up and down, heaving from something going past underneath. 
The redwings were gone down the shore, looking for horse droppings in the 
lake roads, where kids rode farm horses after work. Kids like Fred laughed sometimes 
when Ed told about hawks, they said they saw a bird in the sky, and when 
he said what else did they see, they said a bird, maybe a chicken hawk, that 
watcha mean?, looking at him and then away at the ground, grinning and looking 
at the mound of oak leaves they made with one foot, and Ed grunted, taking 
a shot at the hawk, his guts hot about the grinning. His mother always tacked 
on a when are you going to grow up, so he hardly ever told her any more about 
things he saw and did in the woods. Pa didn’t laugh, because he was drunk 
except when he took Ed deer hunting, and it was alright then, but he kept a 
bottle of apricot brandy hidden in the hole of the garage wall. Ed saw it one 
day while throwing his knife at the asbestos insulation on the inside wall. He 
made a good throw, by the handle with the edge up, the knife turning once in 

13 / RCR


the air, going in to the hilt where Ed filed it pointed so it looked better, the 
filed hilt making a hole shaped like a falling drain-drop, the handle going half-way 
into the asbestos and the pointed steel splitting a pine board of the wall.

The insulation covered the bottom half of the wall, and looking down in the 
space, working the knife out of the board, Ed saw the bottle beside the blade, 
the brandy moved back and forth in short motions, like holding a bottle by the 
neck, holding it up to the light and swinging it to see if there were any specks 
in it. Ed drank some of it, but it burned like the alcohol Dr. Best used on his 
neck when he lance the boil after the scarlet fever, so he didn't throw at the 
wall again.

It was better to go hunting, or catch frogs like Fred did, though the deer 
flies bothered when he used both hands to hold the frog and blow it up, making a 
pucker around the stem of sweet-myrtle grass and blowing air like a horse 
making droppings in the road.

Fred said, “I gotta get home, Ma will lick me if I get home late again.” Ed 
wiped his right shoe on the saw-grass hummock, leaving muck on the edges of the 
grass, filling the saw-teeth with it and getting pieces of grass on the bottom of 
the shoe, and he knew he wouldn't go back to see the girl, because she would 
probably laugh like everybody else, even the teachers in school laughed. If he 
went with Fred to get something to eat, Fred's mother might tell them to stay 
outdoors until suppertime, and the only way to get in when she called Fred was 
saying he wanted to use the bathroom, and then if he tried to sit down at the 
table she'd ask him if he didn't think he ought to go home because his Ma 
worried when he came back in the dark.

Looking out over the swamp at the fireflies going on and off, he saw the 
girl and the hawk, Ma and the bottle, his father and the swamp. He heard people 
laughing, making his guts hot. Fred started walking along the edge of the swamp, 
heading for the road. Ed said, “Whistle bob-white at my house,” grunted, and 
started across the swamp, away from the lake, stepping carefully on the shaking 
earth. His rifle was couched easily in his elbow, the fringes on his buckskins 
shook as his moccasined feet brushed lightly through the saw-grass, making no 
sound and leaving no mark where they passed, except for a little bent grass that 
pointed toward the forest.

When he got home, the night light was on by the icebox, and Ma was still 
up. She had on the old pink bathrobe that looked like her farm dress, only 
that wore out a long time ago. “Where you been all this time?” she said. “I 
got your supperin the stove, it's eleven o'clock.” He started to untie the leather 
laces of his shoes, bending down by the door on newspapers. “No place,” he 
said. “Just around.” He got one shoe and started working on the other. He'd 
be damned if he'd ask her for a fork to work the knot loose, but he knew it 
wouldn't make any difference, except to himself. That was something to keep 
hold of, for later, when he was in bed, feeling the covers heavy on his legs 
before he went to sleep.

rcR / 14


Two Poems / james claire

FUGAL EXPERIMENT FOR TWO READERS

The sanguine statue leaped from the pond 
The stone

and shrugged its mossy shoulders in a 
statue leaped from the pond and

confusion almost camel.

shrugged its massive shoulder in a confusion

He skipped down the worn steps, 
most careless. He skipped down the

slipped, a tarnished limb rattled down the 
worn steps, slipped, a stiff limb 
terrace; whereupon the statue gave up hope and 
rattled down and down whereupon the statue 
slid, rock on stone, down the harsh steps. 
gave up hope and slid down the harsh

A fine Greek head buffeted 
steps, rock on stone. A

down the soggy gutter a distance, and stopped; 
firm Greek head bounced down the 
a little lame gardener found it a nuisance 
gutter a little and stopped; a lame

and wonderingly threw it away. 
little gardener found it.

15 / RCR


POEM FOR MYSTICS

the grass bums 
when it sprays its blood 
and the sand sharks eat young trees 
to the tune of the melody of the damned 
when the grass flames spit blood, 
the white walls of this modest estate 
turn green and show their veins. 
above, the dome is white and 
a pterodactyl sits on the dome tip 
singing a sweet song of sensuality; 
the blades are bleeding to death 
and the palor is shouted with it 
and a naked woman rides the dome 
seducing the obsolete bird 
unto her chamber.

on the third floor

a man made by some large company in the east 
appears in a round window 
and flails his cane at the woman 
who lights a match: 
the cane disappears.

the man disappears. 
the grass dies.

the pterodactyl flies. 
the dome cracks. 
and the woman explodes 
and all is left, none 
except some low bushes 
where a man stands 
in sensual solitude 
and a philosopher cuts his veins 
with a blade of grass 
and so dies 
quietly too

RCR / 16


WHILE THE WEST WIND SLEEPS 
by Alden Smith

This is the Prologue to a novel in progress by Alden Smith.

... THE TUNNEL OF LIGHT before his eyes jittered along the ribbon of 
asphalt and bored into the darkness drenching the moulded heave of hills 
and moon-soaked bulge of fields of the New England countryside, and the 
luminous dividing line swayed back and forth within the tunnel as his foot 
reached the floor of the little red Triumph: the squeal of the brakes pierced 
the roar of the wind as he banked a curve and a farmhouse shot by, dimly 
outlined in the light of the summer-soft moon; and then came a swamp, puffballs 
of mist haunting its shimmering surface .. .

The wheel melted sticky and soft in his hands; he gazed wildly at both; 
they were the claws of an animal, trapped and afraid. He tore at the throat 
of his shirt, drying first one then the other on the damp cotton, and returned 
them to the wheel; then the line drifted up and away from the road, vibrating 
like the string of a guitar in the ‘tunnel of light. He twisted his head from side 
to side in amazement as the stern barbed-wire fences zig-zagged closer and closer, 
enmeshing him in their glittering tangle; he felt giddy and gay in spite of their 
threat, thought evaporated in darkness and he felt free and alone with his ton 
of screaming metal, violently tip-toeing along the mad road of death with his 
mouth open wide and the words pouring out...

Eros at the throttle, he screamed, and Thanatos at the wheel! It just didn't 
make sense, and yet what did it matter? He felt part of a pattern, reflection, 
or dream; and the pulsating glow of the instrument panel frenzied his fever. But 
then a chill swept up his spine; his eyes widened as they returned to the road 
and the pattern suddenly, irrevocably reversed itself — no longer was hetearing

17 / RCR


along the humming,twisting asphalt slab at night and alone, but the chunky hills 
and swooping valleys and glaring billboards and shimmering signs swept at 
him, a whirlwind of neon and the tangle of telephone wires ‘threatening to 
strangle him in their web of despair as he lay helplessly crouched before them in 
the cool bucket seat. His breath came in gasps, which alone frightened him, 
and then he felt his foot fastened to the floor, beyond his control, and the 
speedometer woundclock-wise in a terrifying circle of death and despair...

What the hell are you doing? cried a voice in his ear. He mopped off his 
forehead in a frenzy of tears, which suddenly showered upon him from the 
midst of nowhere; the voice re-echoed in his ear as he spun his head quickly, 
with an angry grimace attempting to frighten away the tears, but the seat beside 
him lay empty and cold, a glistening layer of dew on the upholstery in the 
ever-harshening light of the dying summer moon...

Then that moon found his eyes, wan and pulsating, discreetly dousing his 
vision of horror; then a moment of peace, and the sky opened up: Oh God, 
Della Mae, was that you screaming at me from the dark? A flickering movie 
paraded before him, shadowy, silent, and vague — or was it the party? Multicolored 
pin-points of light pricked his face like angry gnats and drafted away: 
the shadowy road became carpeting, its velvety blackness a plush gray fading 
white; or was it the sheets and the bedspread — Oh Christ, what a night. The 
road slashed up a hill and off into the star-sprinkled sky, splitting it into wings 
which encircled him like the leaning walls of a vault or the womb, and his 
breath became shorter and shorter . . . He fought for a glimpse of the 
instrument panel with its blinking windows and trembling dots, the key to his 
sanity; the clock ticking away, approaching four-thirty, its hands hovering in the 
engulfing darkness. The speedometer's jitter alone caught-his eye, as it spun 
past one hundred and headed for ten... .

He shot past a diner, the dim neon glow of its signs and the few scattered 
trucks before it a meaningless jumble of light on polished steel, before him the 
moon and the face of that girl... Oh why are you there? A pale haze on the 
horizon, the sluggishly awakening city of Elfyn Park, its red shimmer like her 
lips in the night, the soft and moist surface at the shore of the lake of beyond... 
Get away! The hills rushing past, huddling quiet and still, a tingling reminder 
of breasts in the past... |

And then from the mirror a flash of red light nipped his eyes; then another, 
another — his heart ceased abruptly, and then burst with each flash; the 
whisper of a siren coiling about in his ears, swelling louder and louder: a muscle 
twitched in his ‘neck as he twisted his head around at the crest of a rise to see 
over the luggage rack a tiny triangle, three pinpoints of light, two white and one 
flashing-red, leap over the rise and slowly loom larger until he could see the 
glittering chromium snout hover above the tapering, mica-flecked road .. .

rcR / 18

SyLv1A BUTLER CHARCOAL AND TEMPERA


Something clogged in his throat, a word or a cry, and his eyes widened once 
more as he whipped his head back and his stomach froze solid: at the end of 
the tittering tunnel of light swayed four more tiny pinpricks of brilliant red 
light — Good Christ, it's a truck— but his body had stiffened; he clung to the 
wheel, his hands rigid but trembling; the wheel wouldn't turn and his eyes 
blurred with tears...

Oh Jesus, oh God! cried the voice in his ear, and he suddenly felt as if he 
were standing acrest the grass-splintered hill on his right, his arms outstretched 
and his head thrown back in a gesture of supplication while his feet grew dampin 
the dew-studded grass and the stammer of crickets rode the delicate wind which 
tousled his hair; he felt as if one tiny part of himself watched the rest of himself 
in the little red bug screaming angrily off down the road between patrol car and 
truck, their three puddles of light slowly converging and the whine of their 
engines shrieking his own disjointed thoughts in the face of false dawn as it 
bathed that part of himself atop the hill in its dewy-soft azure while stars 
twinkled out...

And the three little puddles of light went skipping away, past swampland 
and hill, diner and tavern—moths, hypnotically drawn towards the flame of 
false dawn — while silently weeping, alone and afraid, that part of the boy on top 
of the hill cried aloud, giving thanks to the moon .. .

Figure without caption.

POEM ON TWO PAINTINGS OF VAN GOGH:

“The Painter on the Road to Tarascon” and “Wheat Fields with Crows.

by John Thompson

In the shattered fire of the dawn

The charred blue noon

Already whispers;

Dark gods point

From the awakening cobblestones

And the still white palm of the com; 
Unknown birds rustle in the palette.

The flesh is cast down on the road,

A black shadow,

But sailing, blacker

And more swift than the sun;

The pack is full of stars.

The sun knows but cannot

Escape the blue stride full of eyes,

Voracious, intent

On their starry burden, 
Their bright death.

The day blooms into storm;

The skies give up their dead 
From flashing shreds of shroud;

The earth in fear unleashes

Its atrocious abundance:

The fruit is a glittering beak,

The com a clamor of wings —

Dark harvest!

Through the blue distances, 
Over the drunken fields, 
Sail the sun-devouring birds: 
The hand becomes a twisted cypress leaf, 
The heart in mid-stride 
Welcomes the gentle claw.

RCR / 20


IN SILENCE 
by Robert Niemi

On the front porches along Phineas Street, women sat fanning themselves 
while their men sat in undershirts drinking beer and listening to the baseball 
game. Except for the children playing along the sidewalks, no one talked. 
Even they didn't speak in normal tones. They screamed and whimpered. The 
larger ones pounded the smaller ones on their arms and backs; the smaller ones 
kicked back at their antagonizers. Nearly every minute for the last three hours, 
one of the children held his arm out in front of him and turned his palm toward 
the sky. For three hours the air became more and more oppressing. The August 
sky grew darker until now, at four o'clock, it was nearly dark enough to turn 
the street lights on. But still the rain didn't come.

Beside the dirty red brick house on the comer, a trailer hooked to a car 
and half full of furniture sat, uncovered. The young man and womanloading 
the trailer ran between it and a four room upperflat. In his haste to finish 
loading the railer and trunk of the car, the young man tried to carry too much. 
Sometimes he dropped the same thing two or three times. Cursing loudly he 
would pick it up again and hurry to the trailer before he lost his grip. His 
pants clung to him and were saturated with sweat from the knees to the crotch. 
Even his leather belt was wet. Whenever one of his hands was free, he scratched 
his bare stomach and chest. His fingernails made furrows in the dirt and sweat, 
and left a network of red lines. His nose was red and swollen from rubbing. Once 
as he came out of the door with his arms full, she bumped into him. Two books 
which he had balanced on top of a box slid to the ground. |

“For Christ's sake, watch where you're going, will ya?”

“I'm sorry. I didn't see you.” After that if she heard him coming down the 
stairway, she waited until he was outside before she went in. She didn't bump 
into him again.

Finally he came into the living room, looked around and saw nothing except 
a rack of records and the basket where the two half-grown cats were supposed 
to sleep. “How much more have you got?” he asked.

“Mostly what's there in the living room, my clothes and thebed,” she 
answered from the kitchen. “But you'll have to wait until I get everything folded 
and in boxes before you take the bed, because everything's onit.”

21 / RCR


As he walked toward the bedroom, balls of dust and cat hair rolled away and 
left a trail behind him. Drops of sweat fell from his chin and made small spots 
of mud when he stopped in the bedroom doorway. In the bedroom a bare light 
bulb hung over the bed. Like the pink walls, the window was smudged and 
streaked. The pane rattled as a truck went up the street. The window frame 
was rough and cracked like the face of an old man who died long ago and 
only waited to stop breathing. She wasn’t in the bedroom. “What are you 
doing?” he asked.

“Sorting out some of the stuff in the cupboards,” she answered from the 
kitchen.

“Well, let’s have at these clothes so I can take the bed apart.”

“Okey, as soon as I finish here and throw in the stuff from the bathroom.”

“Look,” he said walking toward the kitchen, “you’re holding things up. Fold 
the clothes now. You’ll be lucky if it doesn’t start raining on the way out 
there. If you had to wait this long so that you’d have the pleasure of moving 
in a storm, at least you could have got a cover for the trailer.”

“Boy is your nose red,” she said.

“It isn’t my fault. That cat hair is driving me mad. It makes my nose itch 
and sticks in the sweat. Christ, I itch all over. Why you keep those things, I’ll 
never know. Sometimes I think I’d rather sleep in the alley than sleep in your 
beautiful pink room with the cat hair all over and the smell of that stinking 
sandbox blasting in from out here.”

“I’ve never begged you to stay.”

“And I’ve stayed plenty of times when I didn’t want to.”

She looked down at her feet.

“I’m sorry, Baby,” he said slowly. “Look, if you’ll tell me where the screw 
drivers are, I’ll take the record rack apart and you can finish here and in the 
bathroom.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I already put them in the back seat of the car.”

He walked back in his own path toward the stairway.

Because she ate in the hospital cafeteria and seldom cooked in her apartment, 
the kitchen equipment only partially filled the large cardboard box. She picked 
it up and carried it to the bathroom. Pressing it against the wall, she pushed 
the bathroom door open slowly. Neither of the kittens tried to get out. When the 
door was open far enough to get through, she saw them playing on the floor 
with the cap to her hair spray. She set the box down on the wash basin, closed 
the door, and stood watching the kittens chase the cap back and forth. “You 
boys can’t help it if you shed hair, can you? You go right ahead. After all, he’s 
just a visitor; you live here with me all the time.”

She picked up a magazine from the edge of the bathtub and put in in the 
wastebasket. In the picture on the back a mother, lying on a lawn, watched her 
baby pull at the grass. The young woman retrieved the magazine and put it in 

RCR / 22


the cardboard box. Then hearing him come back upstairs, she hurried to pack 
the things from the medicine cabinet. When she finished, she carried the box 
out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut with her foot. She walked past him 
and left the box at the top of the stairs.

“Are these all the records you have?” he asked.

“No wait. I think there’s some in the bedroom.”

When she left, he took the rug out of the cats’ basket, dusted a spot on the 
floor, and sat down. After looking at the record rack and deciding where to begin, 
he turned around to get the Philips screwdriver. One of the cats laid on its 
stomach, rolling the yellow plastic handle between its paws. When the young 
man took the screwdriver, the cat pounced after it and scratched into the back 
of his hand. He grabbed it in the middle of the back and threw it across the 
room against the wall. It hit broadside, bounced off the wall and dropped to 
the floor already streaking toward the kitchen.

“What did you do that for?” she asked coming into the room as it ran past 
her.

“The damned thing scratched me. I told you not to let those cats out of the 
bathroom.”

“They’re not cats; they’re only kittens. And just because he scratched you 
doesn’t mean you have to do that. They scratch me sometimes, too.”

“Yeh, but you’re just a little crazy. You don’t like this place but you make 
it worse by keeping those things. You worry about feeding them and they 
cost you the money you claim you’re trying to save. By the looks of your 
hands and legs they think you’re a tree trunk. Do you get a thrill from being 
scratched by a cat?”

“I guess that’s it. Maybe I just look human, but I’m really a cat.”

He didn’t answer. She leaned back against the wall. First she looked at the 
ceiling directly over her head, then into the far comer of the room. He started 
disassembling the record rack.

“You don’t like me at all any more, do you?” she said.

He started to look at her but instead looked back to what he was doing. 
“It’s not that. It’s just this place,” he said without looking up. “Since you 
moved here nothing’s the same. I’d almost rather you’d stayed at home. I used 
to lay in bed at night and think about how it would be staying with you. I 
used to think about sitting in a great big chair with wide arms, in front of a 
fireplace. You’d be sitting on one of the arms and I’d be smoking a dollar 
cigar. We’d be drinking some very good wine and listening to jazz albums 
on a stereo. Then you moved here. Everything’s changed. When we come 
here at night I hate to turn the lights on. It used to be like we were kids. 
We used to joke about everything and tease each other. Now it seems like 
that was twenty years ago. You never even smile anymore.”

23 / RCR


“Oh, it's not just this place. It's the hospital and all those people with cancer.” 
“Those people are nothing to you.'

“I know but it's just being around them every day. Every day I go there 
I hope nobody will die on my shift. Sometimes when they know they can't 
do anything they give experimental drugs. We call it rat poison. It makes 
their hair fall out. Sometimes their teeth crumble. You don't know what it's 
like until you're around there five days a week and then come back here at 
night.”

“Why the hell don't you get off that floor, then?”

“I've started to apply for a transfer three or four times, but somebody has 
to take care of them. They're all so nice and they can't help it.”

“You're a real hero, aren't you. Go in and fold up your clothes, Florence 
Nightingale.”

“You'll never understand. It'll always be dollar cae for you, won'tit?”

“Yeh, dollar cigars. Dollar cigars and good wine.”

She went back into the bedroom. He kept working on the record rack. When 
he finished, he laid the pieces on top of the cardboard box and carried it 
downstairs. Along Phineas Street the men and women remained on their 
porches, although it was dinner time and the baseball game was over. Only 
occasionally now did one of the men lift a bottle to his lips. The women said 
nothing to the children who shouted around a caramel corn wagon, and then 
began eating quietly. No one went inside for dinner.

After he decided that the cardboard box and the bed would not both fit 
in the trailer, he set the box inside the trunk and went back into the house. 
Upstairs he picked up the stack of records and started to take them outside, 
but instead put them down again and went into the bedroom.

“Did you find any more records, Baby?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well, there's not much more. Pretty soon you'll be out of here for good.”

“Yes.”

“Tll take the records down.” He stood watching her fold the clothes and 
then left.

After the clothes were all stacked in boxes, she pulled the bedspread from 
the bed. He returned and picked up one end to help her fold it. When she 
shook the bedspread, he dropped his end on the floor. He sneezed and rubbed 
his nose. Bending over to pick it up, he sneezed again.

“This thing's covered with cat hair,' he said.

“That's why I shook it. I forgot. Ill take it in the other room to shake it.”

“Will you be able to fold it by yourself?” he asked.

“Yes, I'll manager.”

“Okay, Ill fold the sheets. There won't be anything on them.”

RCR / 24


He begun to sweat heavily again as he dragged the bulky double mattress 
and box springs off the bed and leaned them against the wall. Moving them 
about in the small room blew some of the cat hair from the floor into the air. 
The hair stuck in the sweat. He tried to brush it off his face and neck. Finally 
he gave up and started taking the bedstead apart while she carried the boxes 
of clothes downstairs.

“Whereare you putting the boxes?” he asked as she came in for the third one.

“In the trailer.”

“Can't you see that there won't be room for the bed?”

“T thought there would be.”

“Well, there won't. Put them in the back seat.”

“All right, I'll move them,” she said lifting the box.

One of the sideboards wouldn't unhook from the headboard. He tipped 
the headboard on its side and kicked at the sideboard until it came out. When 
the boxes of clothes were moved and the bedstead packed in the trailer, they 
started to carry the springs downstairs.

“You're twisting it out of my hands,” she said as they walked through the 
living room. 7

He adjusted his grip.

“You're doing it again,” she said halfway down the stairway.

“Look, why don't you just set it down. Ill take it myself.”

After he got it into the trailer, he ran back upstairs to get the mattress. 
It flopped loosely in his hands. He dropped it twice on the stairway and 
wrestled it through the front door. When it wouldn't slide easily into the 
trailer he tried to force it, and ripped it along the edge. Finally it was in. 
He began violently rubbing his nose. He waved his arms around his head, 
trying to drive away the cat hair like a swarm of bees. She stood on the porch 
and watched.

“Is there anything left?” he asked.

“Just the basket and the two kittens.”

“Why don't you get them, then? What are you just standing there for?”

She came down with the basket. He took it from her and put it in the 
trunk. “Don't you have to clean or something?”he asked.

“No, the landlord said not to. He sold it to someone who's going to tear 
it down.”

“Then where are you going to put those damned cats?”

“We can put them in the back seat.”

“Yeh, you can put them in the back seat but I'm going to leave the window 
open for air and if any more of that cat hair blows on me, so help me, I'll 
throw them out on the' pavement.”

“Where do you want to put them, then?”

25 / RCR


“Put them in the trunk. They’ll be all right.”

When she brought them down, he took one from her.

“Push it back as far in the corner as you can,” he said. “Then get your 
hands out of there.” He slammed the trunk door but it didn’t close. He raised 
it halfway and slammed it again. Again it did not catch. When he raised it 
to find the obstruction, one of the cats fell out, danced on its hind legs, and 
collapsed to the ground. Its sides heaved and its back legs began to twitch.

“Oh, my God, look what we’ve done,” she said.

It started to jump like a fish on the bottom of a boat. The jumps slowed 
down but then quickened again.

“Do something,” she said. “Do something to put him out of his misery.”

“Maybe he’s just got a broken leg or something,” he said.

“Oh Honey, look at the blood coming out of his mouth and nose. It’s not 
just his leg.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. Put his head under a wheel. Anything.”

“Ah c’mon, I couldn’t do that.” He looked at it and pushed his foot against 
its throat. When it struggled for air he took his foot away.

“Please don’t let him suffer. Do something.”

He looked down at it again. It raked one of its front legs on the ground 
and began turning in a circle on its side. An older man walked toward them 
on the sidewalk.

“If you won’t do something, I’m going to ask him,” she said.

“No, don’t do that. You don’t even know him.”

She walked to the sidewalk, stopped him and spoke slowly and quietly. The 
younger man could not hear what she was saying. Soon the older man nodded 
to her. He picked up a piece of concrete broken from the sidewalk and walked 
over to the cat. He stood as far away as he could, bent over and hit it on the 
head. The cat stopped breathing. He poked at it with his foot. It did not 
move. He found some newspaper, wrapped the cat and laid it in a rubbish 
can near the rear of the house.

“Thank you,” she said as he walked past her.

He nodded and walked on down the street.

“I’m going up to see if we left anything,” she said.

The rain started. The men and women on Phineas Street stood up and 
looked at it. They talked to each other briefly and then followed their children 
inside.

Although the rain soaked everything in the trailer, he drove and said nothing. 
She held the other kitten in her lap.

RCR / 26


NOBLE FRIEND

BY JUDITH SMITH

Noble Friend;

But 
Four-pawed, 
Purring at my side: 
Ambition

Does puzzle me 
To ponder 
Circuits beyond the 
now, 
in dreams of systematized 
imagery.

Perversions of 
planned sensitivity 
shame 
each passion freely met; 
and clearly built 
this decade 
on the value of the next.

Too curious creature, 
my bastard cat;

did some despot 
amused, 
make the lesser you 
more perfect 
than 
the greater me?

27 / RCR


Figure without caption.
Laura Nash Ink Drawing / Ink and Wash

rcr / 28


JEAN VIGO —A TRIBUTE

by Doug Lackey

What candles may be held to speed them all? 
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes 
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girl's brows shall be their pall; 
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds .. .

Wilfred Owen — Anthem for Doomed Youth.

It is thirty years since the death of Jean Vigo, yet his two films still startle, 
confuse, and excite. This is so because they are great poetry — each as deeply 
felt and purely inspired as any work the cinema has produced, before or since. 
For Vigo was a free spirit, a completely fearless and utterly honest artist, and 
therefore of necessity a rebel, in conflict with his society and with the formulas 
of his own artistic form. His death at twenty-nine of tuberculosis was tragic 
in the great promise it caused to be unfulfilled, in the revolt it caused to cease. 
I wish to chart the course of that total, personal rebellion, its creations and its 
quick end. In this I shall make liberal use of James Agee's brilliant reviews of 
Vigo, written in 1947, eight years before he too was to die, leaving an equal share 
of empty promise. For Vigo and Agee were alike in their absolute commitments 
to liberty, and the wild but costly intensity that is liberty's reward, and liberty's 
price. Both their lives were continual attempted suicides that in the end succeeded, 
and what they both created is as much challenge as art.

Vigo was the son of a Basque revolutionist, executed for anarchy by the 
Clemenceau government during World War I. He learned to walk, he later 
remarked, in the prison where his father “was suicided.” He spent his childhood 
in sordid provincial boarding schools, an experience recorded in his first 
feature film. Beginning his career as a photographer in Nice, he became an 
assistant movie cameraman and organized a film society. In 1932 his first film, 
the bitterly sardonic documentary “A Propos de Nice” appeared, and was 
shown in a few theaters. The next year his most famous film, “Zero de Conduite,” 
caused a nearriot at a press screening in Paris, and was not allowed release by 
the French government until sixteen years later. The next year the general 
release of “L'Atalante” brought Vigo to the front ranks of French directors, but 
he died within months of the first showing. All of his films, it was later reported, 
were completed under the most adverse financial and physical circumstances.

29 / RCR


The last available first-hand comment on Vigo is Vladmir Ponzer's from the 
summer of 1934: “He looked even younger than he was—an adolescent with 
a pointed face, about to die from tuberculosis.”

“Zero de Conduite” (Zero for Conduct) describes a rebellion among boys 
in a French boarding school. About it Agee said, :

It is one of the most visually eloquent and adventurous movies I have 
seen ... The spirit of this film, its fierceness and gaiety, the total 
absence of well-constructed “constructive” diagnosis and prescription, 
the enormous liberating force of its quasi-nihilism, its humor, directness, 
kindliness, criminality, and guile, form for me as satisfying a 
revolutionary expression as I know.

It is obvious that “Zero” makes its appeal to a certain type of person, and 
it has baffled some audiences and critics for decades. Vigo made this film 
from the inside out, through the eyes of the children (his own eyes, still a 
child's) and those in the audience who could never or cannot now see in the 
way of the child lose the point entirely. They become disturbed by the unpredictable 
mixing of camera styles and the even less predictable activity within 
those styles — failing to see that Vigo always hits the right style in the right 
place, and that the action's spontaneity springs from the youth that creates it. 
Vigo has ranged the full measure of these children's minds, and his cinematic 
mixing of their conscious, unconscious, and half-mad imaginative states stands 
equal in psychological insight to any work in film.

Vigo's children are united only by their intense beauty, for they are as 
shy and sensitive, quick and graceful, as isolated antelope — each one removed 
from the next by his own magic gaiety. They are obviously untypical, the objects 
of long search and selection. Yet they are as real as they are unusual — only 
Truffaut has filmed children as convincing as these. The masters of the school 
are seen through their bright eyes — the “good” teacher is an acrobatic Chaplin 
who demonstrates handstands, the “bad” teacher a bloated, half-perverted tyrant, 
the vice-principal a slinking villain in a slouch hat, the headmaster a dangerous, 
bearded, high-voiced midget. These fierce children never study —they are 
awake and playing, and always in revolt.

“Zeros theme (there is not plot per se) reveals itself in episodic fashion, 
and each incident is wonderful and worthy of analysis in itself — the opening 
magic mysteriousness of the two boys in the train compartment, the dancing 
subversion sequence in the dormitory, the paralytic arithmetic class, the riot 
and procession in the dormitory that night — a slow-motion surrealistic sequence 
that is a symphony of flying feathers and joyous children carrying a teacher 
tied to his bed, which, Agee wrote, “combines Catholic and primordial rituals 
and an image of millennial, triumphal joy that has only been equalled, to my 
knowledge, by newsreel shots of the liberation of Paris.”

The opening scene epitomizes Vigo's art: the first shot is through a train 

RCR / 30 


window (the music plays a heavy blues-tempo train rhythm). A boy sits alone, 
and an oboe passage cuts across the slowing bass rhythm. Another boy enters, 
quickly, lightly. His companion brightens; the music picks up in speed. Isolated 
from the world by the smoke against the window, the boys lose themselves in 
dreams. We see the legs of a traveller, and the upper half of the body on 
another bench. The boys’ faces light with mischief, and long flute tunes ripple 
out as toys appear from inexhaustible pockets — a flute, played in the nose, by 
one, balloons blown up by the other, a bunch of quills, and finally, cigars a yard 
long. The music changes to strong bass slurs, and the boys smoke — magnificently, 
regally. The compartment fills with smoke. The sleeper falls with a heavy 
thud — “he is dead!” one boy cries. With the ballons following, they both 
leave the stopped train. The last shot shows a no-smoking sign and an ordinary 
train compartment. The entire sequence is alive, inspired, and unpredictable, and 
it is just the first three of forty similar minutes.

To understand “Zero” in its entirety one must agree not to understand — 
these are feelings too fierce for thought. One must share with Vigo and Agee 
their hatred of authority and their genuine delight in the unexpected, in free 
movement, in the creative burst that explodes the stock response. One must 
learn to love anarchy, and its fleet joys.

The cry arose in France that Vigo was preaching nihilism, Peter-Panism, that 
he was shirking his social responsibilities, asking questions without suggesting 
solutions. Where do the children go after they march up the school roof at the 
close? the French asked. Since Vigo chose to end his film at that point the 
question is artistically invalid. But in the light of Vigo’s life one sees the answer 
— they die, after making films like “Zero de Conduite.” Vigo and Agee would 
both rather be honest with themselves than responsible to a dishonest society, 
and in this they abandon the hypocrisy that brings safety.

Vigo was already dying when he made “L’Atalante” in 1934. Forced on him, 
the script was trite: Juliette marries Jean, and comes from the farm to live with 
him on the barge he captains. She longs for Paris; he merely guides the barge 
slowly along the Seine. The bride runs away towards an affair, and is brought 
back by Jean’s aging mate, Pere Jules. Vigo side-stepped banality by handling 
the script as a series of episodes, each one of which contains more life than the 
story as a whole.

While naturalistic shots cropped up as exceptions in “Zero,” the barge and 
its claustrophobic atmosphere are handled with an almost oppressive realism. 
Documentarist John Grierson said, “I could find my way around that barge blind 
drunk on a wet night,” and Roger Manville hails the treatment as a precursor to 
the neo-realistic “Bicycle Thief” of de Sica.

Despite this greater emphasis on setting, the characters are again intensely 
realized — Jean, with his jealousy and morbidness, Juliette with her peasant 
fascinations and longings, and her suitor on the shore, and finally Pere Jules,

31 / RCR


for Agee a “twentieth century Caliban,” covered with tattoos, collecting relics of 
his world travels, a relic himself. The film's best scene occurs when old Jules 
shows Juliette the treasures of his cramped cabin, the alarm clock, the music box, 
the photograph of himself with two native girls, and a vast array of dusty bric a 
brac,a collection that suddenly becomes sinister upon the accidental revelation of 
a dead friend's hands, preserved in a jar of alcohol. Jules has presented a 
catalogue of his fancies, and of his instincts, for these possessions own him as 
much as he owns them. His action are comic in their spontaneity, tragic in 
their animality. In any case, Jules is unforgettable.

In following the inner monologues of his characters, Vigo once again mixes 
subjective and objective, surrealistic fantasy and realistic naturalism, not with the 
exuberance of “Zero” but with a sense of desperation and loss. He tries almost 
too hard to surmount the restrictions of the script and the emotional limitations 
of his characters, and at times the film breaks unexpectedly into an insane lyricism 
— such as when the separated lovers dream of searching for each other as 
swimmers underwater in an endless sea. These moments of freedom seem almost 
forced upon the film, and the dreams of the characters for the most part remain 
locked within the barge. In “Zero” Vigo showed angels; in “L'Atalante” the 
angels have fallen, and Vigo seems unable to restore their liberty. He died soon 
after, perhaps from a similar loss of innocence.

Vigo owed much to Chaplin in his creation of character, and much to Rene 
Clair in his formal technique. But despite these debts and his general inexperience, 
he stands fully on his own creative merits — the equal of Dovzhenko 
in visual imagery, of Coteau in surrealistic fantasy, of Fellino in the exploration 
of the subconscious, and of Bunuel in presenting a supremely personal vision of 
life. Three decades distant, his promise can still be seen, despite scratched and 
damaged prints, and inadequate sound. The modern audience cannot view them 
without a full sense of their tragedy — that very lack of compromise that makes 
them so honest, so intense, so true to life, led straight to the destruction of their 
creator. As Agee wrote, for Vigo and those like him: “The goal is the same, 
life itself — the price is the same, life itself.”

rcR / 32

John Scott LITHOGRAPH


Two Poems / RON ENGLISH

ATLAS

Remember Atlas, you 
and the untold tale of his fall

Savageswill tell you

God made him bend his neck and 
strain three lifetimes

under the thumping rock 
sick and birthing

Time and the mothers of God 
said enough and no more 
It was time He fell:

Shiver of thigh cords 
and the ripping back 
his mouth gone stone 
wide and down turned.

The leg buckles already gone 
reeling and swaying 
he slides to a crash of impossible statuary 
the failure of his blood blooming in the crush.

Hero

his soul rises 
Helix in the flat air

RememberAtlas, you

The world is on the sea wrack of his flesh 
The ruin of his bones.

RcR / 34


THE SATYR

With low curses

he endures his limbo

Black faced, with shaggy loins 
he languishes, cursing those that robbed 
and relegated him

to this faery of quaint and fearful beasts:

So the gods war, and the heroes.

Pure greek, he wonders at his mortal countrymen 
those who undid him:

Italial colonials and meddlesome Ionians 
trafficking with perfumed and wet lipped orientals 
trading off the clear shades of Greece 
for a bright mist of Idealism;

and worse, Orpheus with his sweet 
lulling mysteries of immortality.

Satyr!

(See. Already, at his name he starts)

You shall rise, ruttish emblem, 
take life in the bare moment

And Orpheus that charmed you, gave new life 
and cheapened it with promise of another 
shall find his songs new charged, 
himself amazed that swooned you: 
So the gods war, and the heroes.

35 / RCR


JoHN LEWANDOWSKI CHARCOAL DRAWING

THE PARTNERS 
by Robert F. Morgan

I

He stood thirty feet tall in the night sand, his muscles rippling with arms 
and his eye stalks waving at half mast.

But let me start at the beginning. You probably wonder what I'm doing on 
Jones Beach at four in the morning. Well, he did too. He said:

“Little man, what are you doing on Jones Beach at four in the morning?”

“Looking for dinosaur eggs,” I answered truthfully.

“That's exactly why I'm here!” he said in surprise. And he uncoiled for a 
little talk. Sitting he was only ten feet tall and I didn't have to shout to be heard.

“Tell me,” he said, “just what led you to look for dinosaur eggs in this of all 
places?” |

“Well,” I said, “my father goes all over the world looking for things like that 
for his museum. So far he's looked in the Gobi Desert in Asia and the Sahara 
Desert in Africa.”

“Good places,” remarked the whateverhewas.

“Yes, I guess so. The way I see it you have to find some place where sand 
is and just dig. And I bet nobody has tried Jones Beach yet. So here I am.” 
And having explained myself I sat back hoping to hear what made the whateverhewas 
come here for the very same thing.

“Good thinking. As a matter of fact there is a dinosaur egg only a few 
yards away but it is buried very deep. I have a green ochka box here that 
locates such things. The only trouble is I can't see it in this light. I lost my 
flashlight and my eyes are too weak to see in anything less than bright sun.”

I took my flashlight out.

“Tll loan you mine,” he said. “But I really don't see why you need it. 
The moon is very bright tonight. I was worried I would be caught before I 
snuck back to bed with the egg.”

“Tm afraid that isn't much help. My flashlight was as big as a truck. The 
eyes just aren't what they used to be.” And he sighed, shifting the sand for miles.

“TIL tell you what,” I said. “You give me your green ochka box and Il read 
it for you!”

“Of course. What a really generous idea!” He beamed a happy cinnamon 
odor.

37 / RCR


“Here's the box. Now when it lightens up little, you're over the spot.

Watch carefully.”

I walked in wider and wider circles until suddenly the box became faint 
greenish yellow.

“We're over one now!” I yelled.

“Just one thing,” he said.

“What's that?” I said.

He uncoiled and sat down again.

“I forgot a shovel.”

“Oh. So did I.” And I sat down as well. I never thought it would be THAT 
deep in the sand.

“It was my first dinosaur egg too,” he said very sadly.

“Where are you from?” I asked. I thought that if we talked about something 
else maybe after a while something helpful would turn up.

“I'm from a place where the sky is green,” he said. “Weall live in big bowls 
balanced on the top of needle thin rocks. There is one family to a bowl and 
each bowl has only one rock to balance on. Miles below there is a black 
choppy ocean that is very deep. Everybody in the family bowl has to stand 
or sit just right or the bowl will fall.”

“What happens if it fallsP” I said.

“Why, we all drown!” he said in surprise.

I guess I should have known that.

“It must be pretty hard on you to live like that.”

“Oh no. You get used to working together if you have enough time. We 
live for thousands of years. That's the trouble. If you live too long and you 
forget that you might not be alive some day, well, you get too sure of yourself. 
You waste time on worthless things. Why, when we used to live on land a 
long time ago, we had wars and jails and sales tax just like you have here. 
Now, though, every time the house bowl shakes people think about the water 
below. Pretty soon we learn to get along with each other.”

“But you still should be afraid of falling. I'm sure would be,” I said. And 
I would.

“Well, that's the price you pay for security. Anyhow, since we mightfall 
any time, we all have a pretty good life. Parties every day and everybody 
loves everybody else, frequently, and is just in all things. After all, any day 
might be the last.”

“What made you come here?” I asked.

“I thought I might get a dinosaur egg to weigh down the center of our 
bowl,” he explained.

“That's a nice thought.”

Just then a deep crusty voice cut into the conversation.

“I suppose you two will be here all night,” it said.

RcR / 38


“Yes, we will,” I said as I looked around (but I didn't see anything). “That 
is, until we get the dinosaur egg below us.”

“I might as well join you then,” said the voice and a big red crab backed 
into our circle.

“I couldn't help overhearing you and I said to myself: ‘Self, you sure could 
use a dinosaur egg to bring home to the missus'. And self said back to me: 
‘Right!' So here I am and I'll dig for your egg.” With that he started shoveling 
the sand back with his claws.

After a few minutes I decided we had better introduce each other.

“T think I had better introduce us to the crab,” I said to the whateverhewas. 
“After all, we're partners.”

“Introduce?” said the whateverhewas. “Why I don't have a name.”

“You don't?!” I was very surprised.

“But how do they know you at home?” I said.

“Why, I'm the one that isn't there right now.”

“But what about when you get back?”

“Then I'll be the one that just got back.”

“And don't ask me for names, little man...” said the crab, yelling up 
from clouds of billowing sand. “That's where friendship ends. Give somebody 
your name and the next thing they'll be chalking it on your shell and throwing 
you into a pot. No names for me, thanks.”

I decided I had better not introduce anybody.

“Where do you come from?” I asked the crab, for the night was getting on 
and I was growing tired waiting for the egg.

“From a home of my own making, that's for sure,” he said. “And let me tell 
you, it's the tightest, solidest, thickest, most unmoveable home I can build. Us 
giant crabs live very short lives, sometimes only a couple months, but we spend 
all the time we can making a safe thick home.”

“Whatever for if you won't be around to use it?” said the whateverhewas.

“Mykids will. And they'll spend their lives building a stronger home for 
their kids. Like that.”

“That doesn't leave you much time to enjoy life, does it?” said the whateverhewas.


“Dutyfirst,” said the crab.

Just then the egg popped out. It was almost as big as I was. We all stood 
around happily looking at it and humming. Then, slowly, my two partners 
drooped their eye stalks.

“What's the matter?” I said.

“So this is what it comes to,” said the crab.

“Three partners and one egg,” explained the whateverhewas.

“Oh,” I said.

“Intelligent kid, isn't he?” said the crab.

39 / RCR


There was more silence.

“I was going to use it to balance our bowl,” said the whateverhewas. “But 
I suppose it would just hurt the whole idea of the thing anyhow. No sense 
feeling TOO safe.”

“I was going to take it home and surprise my father,” I said. “But I suppose 
it really might not be such a good idea. After all, he's getting paid a lot of 
money every year to do things that nobody else can do. What would he 
think if his own little boy came back with a dinosaur egg? Why, maybe I 
would have to go to the Gobi Desert and the Sahara Desert instead of him 
and he would just lie around the house all day with mother and a refrigerator 
full of ice cream.”

“I really forget just why I wanted the egg,” said the crab. “I was so busy 
digging I lost track.”

So we did the only thing that you can do to share one egg. We built a 
little fire right there in the sand and before the sun was up, the giant crab and 
I were eating scrambled eggs. The whateverhewas left with the shell which 
he said he would chew on his way back.

“What was his hurry?” said the crab, smacking his egg against the roof of 
his mouth.

“He said he didn't want to run into anytourists,” I answered.

“Can't blame him,” said the crab.

II

Boy was I dumb last year. I mean if I knew then what I know now ... 
Why, I stood right on this beach and cooked a dinosaur egg, right over there 
it was or was it here, well anyhow the ashes are gone now. But as I said I am 
much older now, a whole year, and I have changed quite a bit.

“You haven't changed a bit,” said a strangely familiar voice. It was very 
deep and I was very surprised.

“Who's there?” I said.

A giant red crab backed out of the ocean and sat down next to me.

“Oh! It's you!” I said and I couldn't think of anything else to say so I 
didn't. Say anything else that is.

We sat in silence.

Finally the crab said: “Aren't we supposed to be digging?”

“Yes, but first I have to find a place to dig. This is the first time I've had 
a chance to come back here since last year. My father always takes his vacation 
in June, you see.”

The crab grunted. It sounded hollow.

“Don't you think I've changed a little?” I asked.

“No. You are just like great-grandpa said you would be.”

RCR / 40


“Great-grandpa?”

“You know. My grandfather's father.”

“But where is he?”

“Wegiant crabs live only a few months you know.”

“Oh.”

“But he thought you might come back again.”

“Well, then, what is your name?” |

“He told me you'd ask that. See, you haven't changed, have you?”

Just then a steam whistle went off behind us and we rolled over four times 
before it stopped.

“Oh, I'm sorry! I should have known better than to laugh so close but 
I'm so very glad to see you two again!” All these words bounced around us and 
when I looked up and over my shoulder there stood the whateverhewas.

He sat downfora little talk.

“You look taller this year,” I said.

“Thirty-twofeet, give or take an inch,” he said.

“How are the folks at home, your mother and father I mean,” I said.

“Well balanced, thank you,” he answered.

“Now we can get to work,” said the crab.

“I never thought I'd see you two here again,” said the whateverhewas.

“Well, this is the great grandson of the crab that was here last year,” I 
explained.

“It's tradition now,” said the crab. “My great grandson will be here next 
year for the same thing.”

“Tradition?” said the whateverhewas. “But this is only the second time.” 
“Four generations already,” proudly answered the crab.

I tried to look impressed but the whateverhewas turned his back on us and 
stirred circles in the blue-black water with his eye stalks.

“Do you have the ochka box yet?” I asked, changing the subject.

He did. Soon I was walking in circles once more through the sand of Jones 
Beach. When I got to the fourth circle, just by a little sand castle somebody 
had left for the incoming tide to eat, it was here that the box became faint 
greenish yellow.

“Here it is!” I yelled.

The whateverhewas beamed an encouraging odor of vanilla and the crab 
dug right in.

It always seemed such a long wait for the crab to dig. I decided to pass 
time by talking to the whateverhewas.

“It certainly is a bright moon tonight,” I said.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know it bothered you. My eyes are so weak I 
nevernoticedit.”

The whateverhewas reached up into the air and pulled on a blue brass chain 

41 / RcR


I hadn't noticed before. The moon went out like a light bulb.

“Oh, no!” I said in the sudden darkness. “I didn't mean I didn't like it.”

He pulled the chain and the moon came on again.

“I was just making conversation,” I said.

“Say what you mean, then,” grumbled the crab between two clawfuls of sand.

I was quiet for awhile.

At last the crab grunted, twice in a row, three times in fact and, with a 
popping noise like a cork coming out of a bottle, a big white egg shot out of 
the hole in the sand.

It rolled to my feet and stopped. It was so big I couldn't put my arms all 
the way around it. The three of us stood there and whistled happily. I had 
my hands in my pockets, I always do that when I'm happy, the whateverhewas 
had his pockets in his hands, and the crab, it didn't have either pockets or hands 
so it rubbed its claws together.

“Let's cook our dinosaur egg,” said the whateverhewas as he took a frying 
pan out of a polka dotted yellow bag.

“Tll get some wood,” volunteered the crab.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let's not cook it.

They both stopped and looked at me very surprised. I could tell they were 
surprised by the way their eye stalks stood on end.

“Why?” they said.

“Breaking tradition just when it gets going!” accused the crab.

“But listen!” I said. My voice squeaked little. “This is a DINO-SAUR 
egg. They are very rare and my father hunts for them all the time. He looks 
for other things too like old vases and pieces of wood and things but I don't 
know anything about that. And I got to thinking. What if we hatched the 
egg? Why, we would have a real dinosaur!”

“As if I had time to hatch eggs!” said the crab.

“It's a nice idea,” said the whateverhewas, “but if we did, there would 
be too many dinosaurs around.”

“But he would be the only one!” I said.

“That's too many,” said the crab.

“This egg has a right to be hatched just like you and I were, though,” 
said the whateverhewas.

“That's right,” I agreed.

“And by eating scrambled eggs, we're really eating the poor defenseless 
dinosaur,” went on the whateverhewas.

“It's not the same thing!” boomed the crab. “It's not the same thingatall!”

“Let's put it to a vote” I said.

I am smarter than last year, you can see it now.

My side won. It was two to one for hatching or one hundred and four 
to two if you counted hands and claws.

RcR / 42


“Tll take the first shift,” I said, climbing on top of the egg.

There was a noise like paper being crumpled into a ball. At first I thought 
it was the crab. He was rolling over and over in the white sand, I guess because 
he was mad at losing the vote. Then there was a big CRACK andI fell into 
the egg. Which had split.

“Do you think I was too heavy?” I said.

“What do you think?” rumbled the crab. I think he was laughing. The 
whateverhewas fished me out and we looked inside the egg.

“Powder!” I cried. There was only a thick yellow powder inside.

“It's a truism all right,” sighed the whateverhewas. “Powered eggs last for 
years and years. A little insurance to tranquilize a worried mama's fears.”

“That's right!” said the crab. “This is an eating egg, not a hatching egg.”

I agreed and the whateverhewas added half a shell of sea water and poured 
the batch onto the frying pan.

Soon it was done. The sea water gave it a nice salty taste.

“TIl see you next year,” boomed the whateverhewas from three miles away. 
He was standing and I had thought he was still sitting next to me because standing 
three miles away he looked as big as when he was sitting next to me.

“There's still some shell left,” I yelled but I guess he didn't hear me. He 
waved and walked out of sight.

“Have some more scrambled egg?” I said, turning to the crab. He nodded 
yes four times, one after the other. But when I went over to the frying pan I 
noticed he had already finished it all.

III

It is harder to eat the egg this year. I mean the important thing is what 
I have to tell them. Not the food.

“Hope this beach never runs out of eggs,” remarked the whateverhewas. 
He gathered up the last of the shell and stood to go.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Take me with you.”

“What??!”

“Tm running away,” I explained.

“Oh. I hear most little boys do that. Hmm.”

“What about your father?” asked the eighth generation crab in stern tones.

“Why, he runs away too. Whenever he wants to he flies off to anywhere 
in the world. Mother can, too, but she has to be back in time to make dinner. 
I figure it's my turn now.”

_“Why not go with the crab?” suggested the whateverhewas.

“Well, no offense, but I'd just as soon not live with a friend for just a bit 
and have him die on me. I mean a couple — go very fast and... I 
hope I haven't hurt your feelings.”

43 / RCR


The crab snorted.

“I'd like to see YOU live under water. Bet you wouldn't last three minutes,” 
he said.

I never thought about that.

“You are right” I agreed.

“I just don't know,” said the whateverhewas. He sat down and started 
munching dejectedly on his pieces of shell.

“You sure are sadder this year than ever before,” I told him.

“I. am pretty moody,” he admitted.

“Not me!” proudly croaked the crab as he wolfed the last of the fried egg.

“It's funny,” I said to the whateverhewas. “You come back here every year 
and you're still the same person but you are never the same shape or size or 
mood. You are always changing.”

“For the better?” asked the whateverhewas.

“Perhaps,” I answered so as not to hurt his feelings. “But the crab is always 
here for the first time, always a different descendent, and yet he never seems 
to change.”

“Consistent, huh?” added the crab.

“Perhaps,” I answered because he had one coming, too.

“Well, I'll tell you what is the matter, little man,” said the whateverhewas. 
“This time I was going to run away myself. I had thought to come home 
with you.”

I was surprised and even amazed.

“Tired of tip-toeing around a bowl?” sneered the crab.

The whateverhewas laughed good-naturedly in the crab's direction and the 
force shot it out to sea. At least I think it was meant good-naturedly.

“Next year, then ...” crab called gruffly across the black moonlit waters. 
Then it sank from sight.

I decided to cheer up the whateverhewas.

“Tll tell you what,” I said. “You come home with me this year and I'll 
go back with you next year.”

“What a really generous idea!” he exclaimed. And he stood and beamed 
a whirling odor of evergreen.

“Won't mother be surprised?” I said. The whateverhewas nodded a half 
dozen eye stalks in agreement as we set out across the damp night sand.

IV

“Do you know, little man, every time you sneeze, it's in threes. Ashoo! 
Ashoo! Ashoo! Three times.”

The whateverhewas wound three eyestalks around each other to show exactly 
what he meant.

RcR / 44


“Too much dampnight sand,” I explained. “My mother used to say I would 
catch cold if I went out without my jacket and sure enough I have had this 
cold all year. That is how long I have been without a jacket. That is how 
long I have been without mother, too. I will tell you about that in a minute.”

“I am getting homesick,” remarked the whateverhewas. “I hope the crab 
comes soon.”

I nodded yes and shivered.

I am not so anxious to go with my two partners to the home bowl of the 
whateverhewas. I mean a green sky and those long thin needles holding up 
the homes. But it is getting cold here and the air is slipping away.

Last year, the night the whateverhewas was coming home with me for dinner ~

. it was still very black out and by the time we got to my block, the sun 
had not even started to slide up into the sky. But suddenly . . . whoosh!!! ... 
a big flash and the sun was all over our sky! It was too close, I guess, because 
the ground and everything started on fire. It was SO hot, why, if the whateverhewas 
hadn't hopped ten miles up with me hanging on, I wouldn't be here now.

- Because when we came down nobody else was around. No houses orcrickets 
or street lamps. As far as I could see it looked like a big gray beach only the 
sand was loose and you could sink into it.

Everytime I asked the whateverhewas where everybody had gone, he just 
said: “Ashes. In the ashes.” I was very confused.

For two days we walked around the beach of ashes looking for mother — 
or somebody anyhow. The ochka box found us pieces of bread and peanut 
butter jars when we were hungry. When we got back to Jones Beach, the 
whateverhewas left for a few hours to jump around the world by himself. 
When he came back his eye stalks were all wet with a green film that dripped 
all over. I think he was crying but he won't admit it.

“It was a cobalt bomb,” he said. “Nothing left but ashes, the sea, and us.”

By this I think he meant that the sun had lost its balance for a minute. 
It tripped, fell on the world, shook its rays in surprise, and jumped back to 
where it belonged. Doggone sun. I cried little bit too.

But it turned out that the whateverhewas was wrong (wrong about everything 
on land being burned up I mean) after we moved down to the part of 
the beach where the dinosaur eggs were.

They weren't eggs anymore.

So we have been camping here for a year, playing with the little dinosaurs, 
and me sneezing more and more, and we are waiting for our partner to come.

We will all of us live with the whateverhewas.

“Just like a bad penny! You two always turn up!” scraped a rusty voice near 
our campfire. |

It was the crab. Twelve generations removed from the first crab, but it 
was the crab all right. |

45 / RCR


We yelled and bounced around him until the sand and the ashes covered him

entirely.

Then something really surprising happened. The crab dug himself out 
while we stood there and held our breath and waited for him to yell and grump. 
The crab laughed instead.

The whateverhewas dropped open his mouths in surprise.

“Are you our partner?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” nodded the crab as it scratched the ash from its bottom good- 
naturedly. |

“Well, this time you've changed!” insisted the whateverhewas.

“Had to!” said the crab. “Last year a big something shook and shook our 
house until it fell apart. Grandpa was born under an open tide. My pa and 
me built a pretty good place, pre-fab, but you never know when that might 
go too. So I been spending my minutes making crabs and influencing friends. 
Friendships don't break as easy as houses.”

“You are easier to get along with” I agreed.

“That's because I'm such a sweet crab.”

“You haven't changed that much,” grumbled the whateverhewas thoughtfully.

I sneezed three times again: “Ashoo! Ashoo! Ashoo!”

The crab didn't notice. He was looking at our green playmates.

“So the eggs finally hatched, huh?” he said.

The answer was right down the beach from us so we didn't say anything.

“Well, let's go,” said the whateverhewas, holding out a muscle to the crab 
and another one to me.

“Go where?”said the crab.

“We're going home with him,” I explained.

“Guess again. Us crabs have a lot of work to do now. A whole sea bottom 
to rebuild. I can't take off the time. Besides, I know the old story about the 
‘crab that came to dinner... ”

"Butt ..."

“No. I'm sorry. Next year my great grandson can split a fresh egg with 
you, or maybe a dinosaur steak. Come back then. Laterrrr... ”

Without even bothering to scrape the rest of the gray mess off his back, 
the crab hauled ash for the sea as fast as he could go. He scooted between the 
legs of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and spiralled out of sight into a wave.

Well, now it is time to leave. I grabbed on to three rippling arms and let 
them pull me on top of a muscle. The whateverhewas let out a long home-sick 
sigh, tumbling reptiles for miles, and we started off.

I wonder what it will be like living under a green sky over black choppy 
water in a bowl home balanced on just one mile-long needle-thin rock. I will 
have to be very careful and watch every step, I can see that now.

“Ashoo! Ashoo! Ashoo!”

RcR / 46

Eva Burkouskis LITHOGRAPH


Figure without caption.

SONNET I

BY JAMES D. Lockwood.

Some feel they see between the sea and sky 
A rule drawn deep with water or with air, 
Which proves no sea birds swim norfishes fly 
Norat this line the teeth and talons tear.

I saw those fresh and shiny scales that fall 
From heaven, white and screeching in the heat, 
And darkening oceans in their mid-daylull

Float soft white feathers red with bits of meat.

Is it a night to trap the sound of seas

In glassy pools of only crystal tone;

Or dream the song of painful prophesies, 
When I but live one limp long life alone?

Within a dark and silent shell of mirrors, 
I sit and grow a hardness round my years.

ORISON FROM A DRY WELL

BY SUSAN DRAKE

Woe to men who leave and we remain 
hungry for months, harrowed by tides 
and some windy pianos;

Who might set her fingers in a spire 
and under rapture celebrate her soul 
to a harmony of joints?

Here the host will come to rest 
and where we sleep below the sun 
abstract our ancient hungry fugue 
upon the final pipes, a race within an instrument. 
Are babies present born 
the last recital in a tent of hides?

Ring morning on an iron pin

grey pigs and pilgrims 
for in this central isle

we, agential animals, real angels, 
roosting in a house of rocks, 
we are engendered lunar tools 
to chalk a doom.

RcR / 48


WOMB OF DARKNESS 
by Ron Gervais

An imaginative Conrad critic who has immersed himself deeper in the 
destructive element than I, recently provided us with the blindingly illuminating 
insight that the passanger hold of the immigrant ship in “Amy Foster” is a 
womb symbol, and that Yanko, after a perfectly frightful gestation, is cast out 
through a Caesarean breach caused when his mother is rammed amidships. 
But I've found that the womb formula is (excuse the double-entendre) more 
fertile when applied to other stories, such as “Heart of Darkness.”

“Nature herself,” we are told by Marlow, the tale's narrator, “had tried 
to ward off intruders” from the mouth of the river; or perhaps I should say, 
from the maidenhead of the river. For the meaning is clear—the African 
continent presents itself as a langorous and sensual but still unravished woman, 
against whom civilized men are impotent. Even the gallant French man-of-war 
firing its guns (its “six-inch” guns, it should be noted) into her body fails to 
arouse her.

After a reference to the female cycle — “It was upward of thirty days,” he 
growls, “before the river was entered” — Marlow begins his own phallic penetration 
into the womb of darkness, reflected in the steady beat of the streamboat's 
paddles and the persistent chug-chug-chug of its engines.

But as he thrusts the dilapidated vessel of his manhood brutally up the virgin 
river, “butting against shoals, trying the find the channel,” Marlow becomes 
over-eager for consummation with the darkness.

“The steampipes started leaking,” he tells us quiveringly.

He regains control of himself only to realize with horror that he has pursued 
the dark female elements of the wilderness to hide from himself his real 
desires toward Kurtz, director of the Inner Station. And the passionately 
anguished Marlow, like an ordinary high school boy, tells us ashamedly, “With 
one hand felt for the line of the steam whistle and jerked hurriedly.”

But as “the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with 
its terrible tail” in a display of virility runs swiftly back down to the sea, 
Marlow shrugs off his conquest, and indeed even speaks light of it, as it 
becomes apparent that he did not really love the womb of darkness.

“The affair,' he assures us with a worldly wink, “had come off as well as 
could be wished.”

49 / RCR


Three Poems / John pease

TO ROBIN LOST IN WHAT IS PERHAPS

ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPERY’S DESERT

I have stood

alone

in grey and windswept places, 
spuming verdure,

and there the pure and foudroyant

Robin

brushed my being.

That place

wherein I wandered

was not dear to her.

It reked of unrelenting mortal stench

too gross 
for that fair soul.

I felt the dampness 
of her tear 
upon my tortured heart

and knew

that she was lost 
where I was born.

RCR / 50


NONE SO LONELY

I have seen you tempt me 
with your 
sensual 
moonlike 
mouth.

There were none so lovely.

And yet more slender have I been 
than 
your slimmest reeds.

I see you tempt me 
with your 
silent 
silklike 
legs.

There were none so lovely. 
And still I am more slender 
than 
your slimmest reeds.

I HAVE WEPT AND MOANED IN MY SLEEP 
I walked for an eternity 
eternities ago

along the edge of a world 
and I was blind 
and naked 
in the sun.

One time upon a turning 
of my course 
a host and various people 
appeared before me 
and surrounded me.

I closed my eyes 
with trembling hands 
and fell down 
in the dryness 
hot 
and wept and moaned 
for my lost blindness. 
They came and covered 
me 
with ritual.

51 / RCR


Skip Davis Seriograph

EXPIRATION

by Melvyn Bucholtz

Open

The door admits you —

One slip of its double turning tongue, 
But such a small thing given

and like poking at or kissing 
As minnows scoop food bits 
Hands are on my shoulder

faces together 
Occupying sunlight’s spot — 
Warmth not your own, neither 
Anyone else’s 
Holding me, more

than mere interest

As you open the window

admitting me — one slip

In its simple meaning,

think

maybe or not?

Such a thing taken.

53 / RCR


THE WARD 
by Nicholas H. Bradley

The doors banged open at the far end of the ward and John Henson, like 
the other patients, looked up as the two orderlies wheeled the old man on the 
stretcher toward his end of the huge room. All that was showing from beneath 
the sheet they had hastily thrown over him was the old man’s ashen face; content 
with seeing this, the others turned back to whatever had occupied them 
before the old man had entered. John watched the orderlies wheel the old 
man toward the bed between himself and Franklin, place the stretcher parallel 
to it, and drag him off onto the bed. The taller of the two, resting with one 
hand on the now empty stretcher, pulled a hankerchief from his back pocket 
and wiped his forehead.

“Guess that’s it, Charlie,” he said. His voice sounded too high for someone 
of his size and height. “Hey, take this downstairs, willya?” He looked at 
Franklin, saw he was asleep, and looked at John. “Looks like you boys got 
another guest. How’s your leg feelin’?”

John Henson, who had gone skiing with some friends from college right 
after the first snow-storm in the late fall, had a broken leg, the first broken 
bone he had ever had. He glanced at the old man and then to the orderly.

“What’s he got?” he asked, nodding to the old man.

“I don’ know; they say he was hit by a car. Guy was goin’ about fifty. 
I don’t know how this ol’ guy ever came through it. Pretty tore up, I guess. 
Poor bastard, prob’ly loaded.” The orderly shook his head slowly.

John nodded and looked down at the book he held in his lap.

“Looks like Franklin over there’s asleep. No cards today, huh?” the orderly

added.

John glanced quickly at the Negro. “I guess not.” Again he looked down 
at his book, and, this time, began to leaf through it as if in search of something; 
and the orderly, seeing his chance for conversation long gone by, looked quizzically 
at John and began to walk out.

RCR / 54


“Well, I got to be goin'. See ya round.” He walked off as if he had something 
important to do. |

“O.K. We'll see you.”

John looked up as the orderly walked out and wondered at himself for being 
so curt with him, but decided it was because he was hungry, and left it at that, 
returning to his book.

The light of the pale afternoon sun sifted through the window and crept 
along the floor, up and along his bed, striking his arm and then his leg, making 
him feel hot and sticky inside of the heavy flannel pajamas. John threw his 
book down with an irritable sigh, unable to concentrate because of the heat 
of the sun and the ceaseless boredom. Lone, dust-filled shafts of sunlight fell 
through the windows throughout the ward, like the rays of the sun that pierce 
the ceiling of a dense forest and mottle the dark floor beneath.

It had been in the late afternoon, too, when he had first arrived at the 
ward, and the uneasiness he had felt then came back to him now. He had felt 
as if he were entering a vacuum somehow set apart from the rest of the world, 
the doors of which would lock shut after he had entered. It was a long, narrow 
room, lined with at least ten beds along each of the long walls. It smelt like a 
cathedral or tomb, the smells of past meals, of decaying flowers, of sickness and 
medication, of floor wax and cleansing powders, the smells of people come and 
gone, all seeming to linger, though there were windows open. And as he had 
looked about him, he noticed that the floor, each wall, each piece of glass and 
metal had been cleansed and polished and reflected the dim light of the afternoon 
sun filtering through the windows. Only the grey and sunless people lying 
in their beds with arms and legs hanging bizarrely from wires and weights 
looked dull amid the brightness of the room. They, like the beds and tables, 
looked permanent and stationary. Even the bright flowers looked artificial, 
and John could remember having almost held his breath as he had entered.

John came out of his thoughts and looked over at the old man, studying 
him, trying to fix him in his mind — all old men seemed to look alike. His thin, 
steel-grey hair was roughly cut and dull; his eyes, now closed in a drugged 
sleep, were dark shadows; and his cheeks, which were lined with age and 
covered with a grey stubble, were sunken into his mouth. John couldn't tell 
anything about him except that he looked old and tired. He turned away and 
peered down the other end of the ward as he heard the dinner cart approaching.

He grabbed hold of his cast and swung himself around to sit on the edge of 
the bed, and was now looking directly at the old man and Franklin. He pulled 
the table to him and waited for dinner, drumming his fingers lightly. Nurses' 
aides scurried back and forth across the ward distributing trays and, with a 
swish, his was on the table and he began eating. He ate ravenously and rapidly, 
bolting his food, but soon his stomach filled and he could eat no more. He 
denounced himself and looked up at the others to see if any were watching 

55 / RCR


him. Very slowly he lit a cigarette and looked at the old man, but he was 
still sleeping. Beyond, Franklin was yet on his first course, eating very deliberately, 
every once in a while glancing at the television that mumbled 
quietly by the foot of his bed. Franklin had been in a car accident and had a 
cast completely surrounding his chest, left arm and neck. He was unable to 
move or bend his head without moving his whole body. John guessed him 
to be about forty. Though he was a tall, thick man, the skin on his face had 
begun to loosen and become slack, his teeth had begun to yellow slightly, and 
his hands, which were huge hands, were sinewy and scarred; the skin on the 
knuckles had been scraped many times, for it was flakey. In contrast to the 
whiteness of the cast, Franklin's skin looked very dark, the color of bittersweet 
chocolate. He was a very quiet man, and this, plus his size and the fact 
that his head always faced straight in front of him and never down, gave 
Franklin a stately mien. He noticed John looking at him.

“Com'on over if you wanna watch some T.V. Good war pitcher on.”

John almost jumped when the Negro spoke to him. He had been thinking, 
not really seeing anything he stared at, and when Franklin spoke to him, he 
found himself staring directly at him. He grabbed his crutches and walked 
over to Franklin's bed, sitting on the edge of it. They both sat in silence, 
watching the television, but soon the silence became oppressive for John.

“When are you going home?” he asked, turning his head as if to look at 
Franklin, while keeping his eyes on the television.

“Well, I hope in three or fowa days.”

John shifted his position somewhat so that he could look at Franklin. His 
nose was wide and flat and his nostrils seemed to be in a constant struggle to 
pull the nose more together whenever he breathed in. John noticed also the 
thin, dark lines that branched out from the corners of his eyes toward his 
temples and the pencil-line mustache which ran along the very edge of his 
thick upper lip and contorted when he spoke. He hadn't, somehow, noticed 
these things before, even though they had played cards together for the past 
couple of afternoons.

“Do you live near here?” John asked.

“Oh, ‘bout twen'y mile. But I gotta fin' a way home. My car's a wreck an' 
I'm damn' if I'm goin' to take the bus!” He looked very adamant for a moment, 
and then smiled slightly at John.

“Isn't there anyone who could come get you, a friend or somebody?”

Franklin chuckled ironically. “I useta think I had frien's, but tha's when 
I had me a flashy car an' they didn't. They'd call up an' say: ‘Hey Leon, I 
got a couple a girls, le's go for a ride. Man, can you beat that? An' me, I'm 
married with kids!” He sighed and chuckled again. “Yeah, they was frien's alright 
jus' as long as I had that car, but now 'at I don' have it no more, I doubt if 
I'll ever hear from 'em again. I ain't got frien's, I got associates, good-time 

non / 56


associates! Bastards.” He glanced down at his hands, which he was rubbing 
together, and then stopped. He looked up at John and smiled good-naturedly. 
"Well, it don’ matter. My wife will borra my brother's car and come get me.”

John didn’t know how he should reply to this, so he just shook his head 
and looked down. Franklin confused him— it gave him a certain pride to 
talk to the Negro, especially since Franklin talked to no one else in the ward, 
but John wondered why Franklin had chosen him out of all the others in the 
ward to talk to. From the very first, from the day after John’s operation when 
Franklin had asked him if he wanted to play some gin, Franklin had treated him 
as a friend. This struck John as odd. Now, being at a loss for words, he stared 
down at the other end of the ward. Nurses’ aides had come into the ward and 
were whisking the dinner trays away, followed by a nurse who walked with a 
determined step toward the old man’s bedside. She stood over him and shook 
him awake.

"Mr. Grimes, wake up. Wake up, Mr. Grimes.”

The old man lifted his head off the pillow for a moment and then sank back.

“Come on, Mr. Grimes, wake up. I have to talk to you.” She spoke in a 
sweet, condescending voice, and smiled fleetingly at John and Franklin. The old 
man lifted his head again, then lay back, seemingly trying to focus on the nurse 
who hovered above him, staring at her with blinking eyes. He rubbed his two 
fists in his eyes.

"Could I have some water?” he asked. The words came out in a whispered 
croak.

"Not for another hour or so. You’ll get sick.” The nurse nodded as if to affirm 
her statement, and then looked down at the papers she held in her hands.

"Your name is Joseph Grimes, right?” she asked.

"Yes,” the old man said.

"Now, Mr. Grimes, since you were unconscious when you entered, I’ll have 
to get some personal information from you now. How old are you, Mr. Grimes?”

"63,” he said softly. The nurse had now placed her papers on his bed and 
was leaning over them, recording the information.

"And where were you born?” she asked.

"Right here in town.” His eyes were still heavy with sleep and he closed 
them.

The nurse straightened up and arranged her papers. "Just a few more questions, 
Mr. Grimes, and then you can go back to sleep. Where do you work?”

"Uh . . . I’m retired.”

"And you have insurance?” She looked and smiled at him, bending over her 
papers.

"No,” he said. His eyes were wide open now.

"I see; and where do you live at present, Mr. Grimes?”

The old man faltered, his face had colored, and it looked as if he were 

57 / RCR 


going to shout, but, instead, he said very quietly: “22 South Jackson.” He looked 
directly at the nurse as he spoke, almost defiantly. John looked from the old 
man and the nurse to Franklin, who stared straight ahead of him, looking like a 
statue carved in ivory and ebony, not looking at anything, but there seemed to 
be traces of a smile playing about the comers of his lips.

The nurse thanked the old man and began to leave, but almost immediately, 
she turned and came back. “I almost forgot. Your clothes are downstairs. I have 
the card for them somewhere.” She fumbled in her pockets for a moment, and 
then produced the stub of a card. “Oh, yes, here it is. Just present this to one of 
the orderlies when you are set to leave, O.K.?”

He took the card absent-mindedly and lay back in bed.

Televisions and radios begin blaring in the late morning, throwing out noise 
and pictures to fill the ear and eye until they can take no more, until the noise 
and flickering picture become overbearing, until even those who listen and 
watch for want of anything better to do must snap them off. At times, a bent 
old woman pushes her cart through the ward, peddling magazines.

The days move slowly, filled with incessant boredom. The passing of time is 
marked by the meals— after lunch, there is only half the day remaining and 
you try to find as many things to occupy the time as you can.

In the mornings, John would sit up in bed and read, occasionally putting 
his book aside to doze fitfully. He would read and doze until lunch; in the afternoons, 
he and Franklin would play cards. The old man, who had gained enough 
strength now to sit up in bed, asked to be dealt in on the game, and the two 
players, tired of gin, were glad to have a third man, for now they could play 
poker. The old man said he knew the game well. Franklin and John got chairs 
and arranged themselves on either side of the old man, and out of one bathrobe 
pocket, Franklin brought two books of paper matches advertising Hunt’s 
tomato products, and from the other, a pack of dog-eared Bicycle cards. He 
tore the the matches out of the books and gave them to John to divide up, and 
then he shuffled the cards as best he could. After the cards were spread out 
in a fan across the bed, each one picked one to see who would deal, and it fell 
to the old man. He pulled all the cards together into a pile with a blue-veined 
hand and shuffled them a few times.

“O.K., boys, what shall it be,” he said in his rough voice. He sounded like 
a croupier at a gambling hall, and he beamed with pleasure at John and Franklin.

“Your pleasure, sir,” Franklin said, making as much of a bow as he could and 
smiling— he put on his glasses. Having thought for a moment, the old man then 
said: “All right, we’ll start with five card draw, Jacks or better to open.” At first, 
he dealt slowly and clumsily, but then seemed to get the rhythm. Franklin 
rubbed his hands together, smiled at John and winked.

At first, all three played the game intently and there was little talk except 

RCR / 58


between hands. But as the game wore on and the paper matches began to wilt, 
the cards became more rounded at the edges, and the players began to tire of the 
game, the conversation became more animated.

“You go to the University, young fella?” the old man asked.

“Mm-hum,” John said, studying his cards just dealt to him.

“Thought so. I saw you reading.” The old man nodded, proud of himself 
because he had guessed right.

There was silence as the three arranged their hands. Then they bet and 
asked for cards.

“Give me two please.”

“TIl take three.”

“And the dealer takes three,” Franklin said.

Again silence.

“Til go in for four,” John said. The old man moaned at this.

“Tll go that and up you two,” Franklin said. |

“I'm out,” said the old man, laying his hand on the table. “You're too rich 
for me.”

“O.K.,” John said, “I'll pay two to see you.”

“Read'em and weep,” Franklin said as he and John spread their cards 
on the table. John grunted as he looked from his two pair to Franklin's full 
house. Franklin swept in the match-sticks with his huge hands. Having collected 
them all into a pile, he looked for the match-books from which they had 
come, found one, pulled out a cigarette and lit it with one of his newly-won 
matches. “Look here,” he said, “I can afford to blow my money.” He blew the 
match out, chuckling to himself and looking around at the -others, and then, 
cigarette in mouth, took in all the cards. The old man looked to John.

“What've you got left, son, one, two years?” he asked. John nodded and 
told him one.

“That's nice,” the old man said, “you stick to it. It's something not all of 
us got.” John looked up quickly at the old man to see if in some way he were 
kidding or being sarcastic, but the old man sat smiling sweetly at him, nodding.

Franklin watched both of them, and then, having decided to start again, called 
the game. “O.K., boys, five card, a pair to bet. Ante in.” John dealt for him.

After the first afternoon, the time the old man spent playing cards lessened— 
most of the time he slept. It was obvious that he was losing his strength, but 
whenever asked whether he wanted anything or if he had any pain, he would 
always answer with a gentle no or a shake of the head. Franklin and John would 
always understand when the old man asked if he could leave the game early, and, 
after he had each day, Franklin insisted that he and John play some gin, usually 
until the old man was asleep. Then one morning, a crisp, cool morning, the 
kind which only autumn can produce, the old man refused to awaken. A 
nurse came to his bedside and found him in a coma and rushed out of the ward.

59 / RCR


Within moments, other nurses arrived with an oxygen tent and pulled the 
curtain to that usually hung at the head of the bed, but now completely surrounded 
the bed, separating the old man from his friends and his friends from 
each other. Doctors began arriving, and, for a while, there was a steady stream 
of doctors and nurses through the curtains. And then they all disappeared in 
a flock and the curtains around the bed hung still, moving slightly whenever a 
nurse swished by. John felt very alone.

“Hey, Mr. Grimes, are you O.K.?” he whispered. Silence. He lay back, 
fighting off his curiosity and strange fear and sadness that had awakened and 
driven through his body.

Late in the afternoon, the two orderlies who ta brought the old man into 
the ward appeared with a stretcher and pulled it through the curtains. John 
looked hard at the curtains and listened intently; he could hear them in there 
moving the old man onto the stretcher. Within moments, they reappeared.

“What's wrong with . ~~ John began.

“Nothin'.. We're just movin' him to another room.” The orderlies moved 
him quickly through the ward and, as before, all the others watched as they 
wheeled him by, away toward the doors which were held open for them, and 
swung shut behind them. John watched them leave and continued to watch the 
doors as they swung slightly. Franklin slept.

The afternoon wore on slowly for John, but eventually the visitors began 
drifting away and the younggirls in their starchy yellow uniforms filed into the 
ward, hurrying from bed to bed, laden with trays. A Negro girl brought John his 
tray and went over and shook Franklin awake. She brought him his tray, setting it 
down noisily on the table to startle him out of a doze he had fallen back into. 
He pulled himself sleepily up in bed, and looked down at his food, then across 
the room, and then at the empty bed beside him which had been remade and 
straightened during the afternoon, and then at John.

“He's dead,” John said softly, almost questioningly.

Franklin rubbed his eyes. “Yes, boy, he is.”

John shook his head in awe and sorrow. “Couldn't they ... do you realize 
he's been sitting here dying and no one did anything for him? Nobody .. . 
there was nobody to come visit him and now who's going to...”

Franklin cut him sort. “Shut up, boy, please!” John stopped and looked 
suddenly at the Negro. He was looking at John out the corner of his eyes, his 
face straight ahead, a pained expression contorting his whole face and then 
disappearing. Franklin dropped his gaze to his food and began eating slowly. 
The two ate in silence, but John looked up from time to time to see if Franklin 
was looking at him, but he never was.

John pushed the table from him and lay back, watching the girl come and 
take his tray way, appraising her. He lit a cigarette and quickly snubbed it out 
and lay back thinking.

RCR / 60


He must have dozed off. The ward was dark and quiet except for the murmur 
of a television at the other end of the room. John looked around and saw that 
most of the other patients were asleep, and then he noticed Franklin— he was lying 
in bed, smoking a cigarette. In the unearthly blue light from the television, 
Franklin lay staring at the ceiling, watching the smoke spiral lazily upwards.

“I'm sorry, boy,” the Negro said softly. “I thought you knew.” The sound 
of the voice in the darkness surprised John and he turned on his side to look 
at Franklin, noticing that the light from the television made pale, luminescent 
splotches on Franklin's cheeks.

“I don't...” John began, but Franklin paid no attention.

“Sometimes I think ev'rybody gotta know, gotta feel what I feel, but they 
don't an' I'm sorry.”

He stopped and lit another cigarette with the glowing butt of the one he 
held in his hand. “The ol' man was prob'ly happier here 'an any place he'd 
been in a long time, can y'unnerstand that? B'cause he did have frien's, you an' 
me were his frien's. We played cards with'm.” His voice trailed off, and John, 
who had remained still, moved slightly. He began to say something, but decided 
not to. Franklin had begun to say something very quietly. “. . . same 
as bein' black as bein' old. There jus' ain' no one.”

Franklin paused, then began more loudly. “We all broke and bandaged up 
an' we ain' none of us but half-men. We don' go struttin' arun' in here b'cause 
most of us can' get on but with someone helpin' us; an' we don' worry ‘bout 
nothin' ‘cept we all in the same way.” He stopped, and then almost in a 
whisper: “I's the way it is, you'll see; you're young . . . all these others... 
Lon'ly, jus' goddam lon'ly. Tha's what I know.” He lay staring for a while, 
and then put the cigarette out and turned on his side, away from John. It 
was very quiet in the ward. John lay staring across the empty bed beside him to 
Franklin. He felt suspended, waiting for something to happen. And then he 
felt the silence the voice had left weighing with tremendous pressure on him, 
and he felt chained to his bed, immobile, straining, straining to free himself and 
run.

61 / RCR


Michael Lewis Pencil Drawing

NICKY

by James Harkness

At last I heard a voice upon the slope

Cry to the summit, “is there any hope?”

To which an answer peal'd from that high land 
But in a tongue no man could understand;

And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn

God made himself an awful rose of dawn

Tennyson

I see a boy at a sparkling lake

Feeling of when up up through the supplementing when of him 
Will spring the crying now,

The sap of spring again this year

When senses rendered from his senses will render sense anew,

For at this never-ending end of the path he wends from redness,

He is becoming the mother, the father of a redness,

Red again.

Ground of Earth,

If he were a drowned man

He’d hail to the blackberry green of you,

From nine fathoms down, he’d touch your hand,

He’d hail to your solitary red,

His silver, solid world upon the land.

63 / RCR


Richard Rudish CHARCOAL DRAWING
Richard Rudish CHARCOAL DRAWING


RcR / 64


BLACK CHERRIES 
by James Cash

This is a portion of chapter one of a novel in progress by James Cash.

... Wild wind night: once. Oh, but not over land where resistance could 
be found. Over sea—a fine partner for such an evil dance. So fine, with 
long reaching fingers, groping in passion for something to tear. And finding the 
small boat, and groping, and tearing. Waves, like great black tentacles, reaching 
up to drag the boat down. And the boat that had seemed so large to the 
young girl, became so small in the wild wind night.

She could not hear her own screams. Constantly she was pulled one way then 
another, but her fingers held tight the railing bar until suddenly the floor came 
up and hit her on the shoulder and side of the face. The floor would not stay 
still, and the girl could not rise. She was thrown across to the other side, 
skidding, the water in her mouth, choking in her throat. She was thrown against 
her father who lay sprawled, struggling to rise, his face starched, his eyes 
screaming: dear Jesus good Jesus in God's holy righteous name. She wanted to 
look for Evelyn, but she was helpless to look anywhere but where the movement 
commanded. And there was nothing to see but the movement: blurred and 
fast like a twisting whirling carnival ride gone out of control. And then her 
hands found the ankle, and when she looked up into the rain that pecked at 
her eyes, she saw the tight strong legs of Evelyn, locked at the knees, Evelyn's 
arms extended and her hands gripping the wheel, Evelyn's hair savage in 
the wind. Such a long moment in her mind. The movement and sounds ceased, 
and the portrait of Evelyn was there to be held forever, and to be flourished 
upon, and to be molded into something even more valiant. A long, long moment 
in her mind before Evelyn was thrown to the floor and the grip on the ankle 
was broken. Again the movement and sound —and then the young girl was 
again at the railing bar, clinging to it, and looking over the railing at the 
rocks marching toward the boat: giant molars, eating their way into the sea.

5 / RCR


There were gray shadows across the foot of the bed, trembling shadows of 
the tree branch that leaned across the window and across the wash of the 
moon. The wind came through the window, spreading the white curtains and 
blowing soft and cool over the girl's feet. Her awakening was natural and did 
not cause her to start. It was the way of her dreams: she slid from them and 
never leaped.

The tone of the room was black and white, with broad overlapping patches of 
gray, with sharp angles and sudden movements of pitch. The girl sat up onto the 
edge of the bed, the bedsprings scraping suddenly, and she looked out the window 
down into the yard. The brightness of the curtains changed to gray as clouds 
made gentler the focus of the moon. The wind that brought the clouds trembled 
the leaves, and the sound was a heavy sigh. All things outside seemed to be 
restless with anticipation. It was a soft approach to storm.

With the varying shadowsand vague light, and with the result of midsummer 
sun, the girl was almost negroid. Long and thick black hair, free of the daytime 
ribbons, fell over her shoulders and over her arms. Her profile to the light was 
a long narrow face, the nose very straight, the lips thick: a reflection of neoprimitive 
sculpture. There was little trace of the Anglo-Saxon, though it ran 
deeper and thicker than the Spanish. And her eyes were like black cherries.

She looked down into the yard and she was very still. She became aware 
of the endless songs of crickets, the shrill vibrating calls from the tree toads, 
the brushing of the trees. And away — not so very far — away beyond the long 
fairground field and the outlines of trees, the waves of the great lake made 
a sound strong and restless. Very suddenly she turned from the window and 
rose from the bed. On the dresser, in a hazed stream of moonlight, the photograph 
faced her. It was the quiet face of Evelyn, the explicit face: the nose 
and the eyes and the lips clearly formed, not blended into the cheeks and the 
forehead. The smile was gay, the eyes dark and wide like the eyes of the girl. 
It was the quiet face of Evelyn before she was eaten by the rocks.

The girl stepped close to the photograph, but then moved past it to the door. 
There was silence — even the leaves came to rest. Carefully she turned the 
knob, silently opening the door and moving into the hall. At the end of the 
hall, a naked bulb formed descending stairs. Then quickly and quietly on the 
stairs: a pause with each step, skipping the shouting second step, stepping carefully 
over the noisy eighth step. And she was into a room that was without the 
moonlight, crossing the room with her hands low and before her: the chair 
there, the fuzzy arm of another here. The fur of the rug turned to cold 
skin of linoleum as she entered another room; then it was but a short distance to 
the kitchen where she could walk swiftly, unhampered by furniture. She unlocked 
the back screen door, opened it wide; and she remembered too late the 
garbage can that stood in the path of its swing. Then the stones bit the bottoms 
of her feet, and the leaves of the ground were damp and soft. The wind came up, 

rcR / 66


pressing the gown to her, whispering the leaves of the trees all around. She 
looked up once to the moon and to the flexible branches that whipped across 
it; and then she was out of the shadow of the house, into the open yard. She ran 
very hard, extending her legs, feeling the wind lift away her hair and beat 
inside her ears. She lift the gown as she ran, held it above her knees so the wind 
blew across her legs; and then she walked in the tall damp grass that began 
near the fence, holding the crumpled excess of gown in one hand, one finger of 
the other hand lightly touching the top log of the fence as she moved toward the 
great bam ahead. The smell of the grass was fresh; the fence was rough and hard.

The bam rose like a broad vertical shadow, like a strong black shoulder in 
the sky. She remembered a bam back in the place she thought of as home — 
remembered how it was the head of a giant who was buried to his neck in the 
ground. The bam door was the mouth, and whenever she was swallowed, she 
climbed to the hayloft and jumped out the giant’s brains into the wagon below. 
But this bam ahead was a very old giant, his face beaten and scarred by gone 
winter winds; and he was not the healthy noble giant of Scotland.

When at last she reached the large wooden door, she was very careful 
lifting the rusted old latch. The latch was damp and flaky in her hands, the rust 
having formed and peeled away and formed again. She dragged the door open 
only enough to squeeze through, closed the door, turned to the thick blackness 
that was. She remained very still for just a moment, one hand touching the 
door. There was the sound of the wind and a slapping sound of something 
blown by the wind. There was nothing else. She moved slowly, feeling her 
way along the wall until she found the ladder that led up to the loft. The steps of 
the ladder dug creases into the bottoms of her feet as she climbed. She couldn’t 
tell how high the ladder went. The wind came harsher. There was no sound 
from the lake anymore. And then there was the musky smell that clogged her 
nose: dried stiff strands of dead golden brains. The hay was but a thin layer 
deep — thin enough to feel the boards of the floor as she crawled across to the 
loft door. She opened the door wide, and the milk-colored moon spilled silver 
over the faded yellow and burnt-brown hay.

The girl lay down on her back, onto the mattress that pricked through the 
gown; and she looked out at the moon, round and hazed and underglowed. 
The blackness of the clouds became silver and blue around the moon, thick and 
heavy, shined like steel. There was the tale Evelyn told about the princess who 
was crazed and then turned to a witch by the beams of a full moon. And that 
was long ago. The long brown hand of Evelyn that caressed in the night, and 
the softness of the voice that sang the bright and valiant and songs of sorrow 
of the Scots. And once again came the image of the small boat thrown about 
in the storm.

Quickly the girl sat up, her eyes darting to the side of darkness. She was still 
and tense for a moment, her tongue pressed against her upper front teeth.

67 / RCR


Then slowly she reached across the thin layer of hay, rose, and lifted the gown 
over her head. When she lay down again, the hay stuck her body all over. 
The doll looked at her with one eye and at the hay with the other. She lay on 
her back and held the doll in the curve of her breast. Her eyes watched the 
ceiling.

“Cassandra’s your mum,” she whispered.

The old woman sat alone in the dark of the room, alone at the window, 
slumped in the chair, and she rolled a seashell over and over in tiny fingers 
that were dry and very white. Softly she hummed a song from an old country, 
her dry caked voice finding only some of the notes. The hands moved mechanically, 
rolling the shell; and her eyes stroked the shadows of the yard. Her 
wandering mind was offguard, and when the cough began, it was too late to 
tighten the stomach to suppress it. The old woman’s mouth was thrown wide 
and the cough escaped into her dry fist. Feeling down beside the chair, she found 
the can, then, raising it to her mouth, she let the wetness slide off her tongue. 
She set the can back onto the floor; her eyes stared down into the yard.

A movement at the bam. The loft door, closing at last. Soon the barn door 
opened and Cassandra ran with her head down across the yard and back into 
the house. The tip of the old woman’s tongue touched the roof of her mouth 
for just a moment. Her eyes returned to the shadows. She hummed and rolled 
the shell.

All was very still below the window. Very much like the small barnyard 
of her youth. She lay on the bed as a young woman and looked across the yard 
many nights, watching the gray turn to black and the animals disappear to 
their beds. There was a lovely peace with those moments. And then, when it 
was still and black, the body tired and the mind began to scream. And when it 
was still and black, and when it was black and everything was gone, the mind 
screamed itself to sleep.

Suddenly there was a sound: a creak from a step. The old woman held the 
shell still for a moment as Cassandra passed by the door; then she rolled it 
again in her fingers. It was one of the larger shells, the size and shape of her 
palm. The large shells were her own. When she walked the sand by the sea 
with the artist Francisco, she gathered the large shells while Francisco gathered 
those so small. And when they set the shells aside, and when she lay in Francisco’s 
arms on the sand — his long arms, but strong from the work with the 
chisel — the sun fell upon them and baked her shoulders and arms into the 
brown of Francisco. Physically she was transformed to the southern race, and 
for this gift she loved the sun.

But now the arms were so white, and the skin loose and dry, and she could 
not believe this body she lived in was her own. She could only keep it covered 

RCR / 68 


and hope that moments like this, the contrast of Cassandra, would not come so 
often. It was bad for the mind to go back like this, back to the Mediterranean 
where the decay first began; and it was bad to have grown so attached to the 
shells that she could not destroy them. The shells remained young, their 
colors still bright, and it was all the more mockery.

So long ago. So long that it did not even happen. As she hold the shell, she 
could not remember Francisco’s young face. How bitter. All that was clear 
was the gray face he wore just before death. How very bitter.

Rising from the chair, she moved with small slow steps to the bed. The 
shells were in a shoebox on the bed, and, very softly, the tips of the old woman’s 
fingers felt across their surfaces. Smooth like glass. Then she placed the top 
onto the box, and carefully crossed the darkness of the room, small steps, the 
bottoms of her feet never leaving the floor. She was in the hall, and her impatience 
would not help her to move faster. Then, opening the door at the 
end, she looked upon Cassandra in the bed, the girl covered by a quilt to her 
neck, lying on her side with her back to the old woman. The moon gave 
light across the bed, and the long black of Cassandra’s hair was spread over 
the quilt. Cassandra’s shoulders shook; her face was pressed against the pillow.

The old woman went to the bed and sat down beside the girl. Her bony 
fingers gripped the shaking shoulders, and she leaned carefully down and placed 
her cheek on the quilt that covered Cassandra’s arm. They remained very still 
for several minutes, then Cassandra rolled over and touched the side of the 
old woman’s head. The old woman raised her head and looked into the dark 
puffed eyes. She looked at Cassandra’s lips, and she wet her own, her cough 
returned and she turned her face and tried to crush it inside, but it came forth 
again and ripped the inside of her throat. When it was gone, she swallowed the 
wet on her tongue. Cassandra patted her shoulder gently, her eyes trying to 
find the eyes of the old woman. Then the dry fingers reached for Cassandra’s 
hair, and the girl sat slowly up and turned her back. The fingers divided the 
hair into two halves, divided again into three sections. The old woman braided 
softly, slowly; and Cassandra sat very straight, her head erect.

“Are you the better for it?” the old woman said. Her voice was deep in her 
throat.

“Yes.”

“Then it is nothing to cry about.”

“I didn’t mean to cry.”

“The sun washes away all bad nights.”

“If there was no sun, there’d be nothing to wash away. We do what we 
want in the night.”

“And cry for it.”

Th old woman took a long silent while on the first braid and did not draw 
it too close to the girl’s had. Then she began the second braid, and the fingers 

69 / RCR


did not always do well. The fingers ached, and they fumbled with the strands.

The wind brushed a branch of the tree across the window, covering the 
moon for a moment. Cassandra watched the branch that was a whip in the 
wind. Her back was tired from sitting straight.

“Anna.”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever do that?”

“Run naked?”

“Yes.

“Many times when my body was like yours. But never alone.”

Cassandra smiled. She felt that the braids were not tight enough to hold.

“What caused it?” she said.

“Manythings. For you it was thinking of your mother.”

“Yes.”

“It is understandable that you ran.”

“She was holding the wheel of the boat. And Father was praying on his 
knees.”

“Will it be with you the night?” Anna said.

“It's gone now.” } |

“Be grateful you have a way to rid yourself of it. Loneliness is very evil.”

Anna's fingers cramped suddenly and she dropped the braid. She rubbed the 
fingers, and Cassandra turned and took them in her hands. The fingers were 
small and cold in Cassandra's hands, and she rubbed them carefully. Anna's 
head was down, her eyes watching the dark hands massage her fingers. Then 
Cassandra ran her hands up Anna's thin arms. She drew the old womanclose, 
her breasts pressing against Anna's hard chest.

“I love you, Anna.'

Cassandra kissed the old woman's mouth. Anna drew back when she 
remembered the cough. She pushed lightly on Cassandra's shoulders, and the 
girl lay down. Anna pulled the blanket up to Cassandra's arms.

“You are like a kitten with your affection,” she said.

“Better than being like a cat,” Cassandra said.

“Tm not so sure.”

The old woman rose and crossed the room. Gently, she opened the door 
and went slowly to her own room. She took the box of shells from the bed and 
set them in the chair by the window. Then she climbed beneath the covers.

In the dark, she looked down at her blanket covered body, frail and bony. 
Once the breasts rose so full and wonderful so that she could see only the tips 
of her toes in bed. Once the hips were round. Her periods had been long and 
painful, beginning early with the headaches and nausea; and her body had 
ached to have a child. But now the firmness was gone, and she was too numb 
to ache for anything. Her mind did not scream as it did in her youth. It only 

RCR / 70


waited, with sadness, with curiosity. And even her eyes would not cry in the 
sadness. She lay still and waited for sleep to crawl into her legs and arms. 
It was the only relief. She had allowed herself to live too long.

The wind rose outside, pushing more clouds to cover the moon; and soon the 
first drops of the rain sang against the window. Cassandra sat up onto the edge 
of the bed and looked out through the branches to the ghosts of lawn chairs and 
tarpon covered boat in the side yard. She rose from the bed and knelt down 
before the window, the wooden floor hard against her knees. Now she could 
see the slender white steeple of the church in the next lot; and now she raised the 
screenless window carefully, and the rain was not yet strong enough to spray her.

Cassandra propped her elbows on the ledge; she cupped her chin in her 
hands. She thought about the beach, how it would be in a few minutes, how 
it would be to swim in the warm lakewater with the rain shooting diagonally 
down and the lightning slicing like a jagged blade through the blue-black 
mountains of thundercloud. She had no fear of the storm. There would never 
be a storm like the one that took Evelyn. Instead, it was exciting. She was 
not lonely anymore.

The raindrops were silent, and they fell on Cassandra's arms and were 
barely damp. They seemed to evaporate as they landed, and they filmed 
her arms like steam when it is cooled. Then the first roll of thunder came from a 
short distance away, and it was a small roll like the clearing of a great throat 
preparing shouts to come. The wind was in gusts and it raised the branches of 
the tree, dropped them, and pushed one down to Cassandra where she shielded 
her face with her arms and felt the cool damp leaves before they were lifted 
again. Then the raindrops fell faster and much heavier. Cassandra leaned back 
from the window. She folded her arms and set her chin on them, humping her 
back in the new position, dropping the backs of her thighs down onto the 
backs of her calves. It was the way she once sat at the attic window of the 
tall narrow house back in England, looking down upon the street and across 
the street to the thick prison walls and over the walls to the men in the prison 
yard. She was very small then, and there was great concern for the men who 
could do only as they were told. There was sorrow and concern. And it was 
then that she would try to cheer them with a small gay dance. She remembered 
how the house was so formal and the plumbing so bad. There was Anna, strong 
and stately, rocking the chair; and Francisco, always in the bed, and the air of 
his room thick with the sterile smells that choked her throat whenever she 
brought him warm tea. And there was the day, shortly after Francisco died, the 
day when Cassandra was seven or eight, when she and Evelyn and Anna rode 
the car into the country and came upon the wail of a bagpipe. They stopped 

71 / RCR


the car and sat on the grass beneath a tree that sprawled, and they listened to 
the wail, and did not speak, and there was not a piper in sight.

And there was Scotland in the warm months of the summers. Dunoon. Still 
vivid was the image of the Hieland Mary, watching the sea for Robbie Burns, 
her cold stone eyes high above. :

And suddenly the storm came. The rain released itself, threw itself into a 
downpour; the first flash of lightning split the clouds, brightening the road and 
steeple of the church; and the thunder cracked and rumbled, cracked nearby, 
rumbled in the distance. The rain beat on the leaves like fingers drumming a 
tabletop. And then it all came together at once in a sudden surge: the crack of 
thunder, the slash of lightning, the beating of the rain; and all of these enclosed 
by the heavy black of surrounding night.

Cassandra heard the door across the hall open, and there were heavy footfalls 
that pounded down the stairs. Room by room downstairs came the sounds of 
windows sliding closed, and then the footsteps climbed the stairs quickly. 
Cassandra raised the window all the way, and she leaned out, the rain falling 
as a waterfall into her hair, soaking the loose braids and rolling across her face. 
She heard the door open behind her.

“Cassandra!”

Cassandra brought her head back inside and turned to the large man standing 
in the doorway. The water tickled her nose. It was heavy on her eyebrows. 
She smiled. :

“Did you pray for this rain, Father?”

He moved quickly and pushed her gently aside. He closed the window tight, 
the rainfall sounding now like a long way away, and he squatted down beside 
her. His gray hair was messed out of place and his eyes were wide.

“Cassie” — he touched her hair and shook his head slowly — “Cassie.” He 
breathed deeply through his nose.

“Do you want to sleep with me?” Cassandra said. “You can cuddle very 
close and I'll protect you.”

His jaws clamped together tight. He rose and stood over her.

“Go dry yourself before you get sick.”

Cassandra rose and walked past him into the hall. In the bathroom, she 
turned on the light and locked the door. In the mirror she looked very fresh. 
Her face was covered by running drops of the water that trickled from her 
hair. She smiled at her reflection. She wrinkled her nose, then wiped her face 
and erased the tickle. The rain on the roof was a gay song.

RcR / 72