RED CEDAR REVIEW

Winter Issue

$1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
Cover woodcut: “Boy Watching” by MIMI WARD

VOLUME VI, NUMBER 4 WINTER ISSUE

RED CEDAR REVIEW isa quarterly magazine of the arts published at
Michigan State University. Manuscripts may be submitted to 325 Morrill Hall,
Michigan State, E. Lansing, Michigan 48823. Please include return address
and information for Contributors Notes.

Subscription rates: $3.50 per year. Single copies, $1.00. Libraries and
educational institutions may subscribe for $3.00 per year.

Copyright © by Red Cedar Review, December, 1968. Permission to reprint
material herein must be obtained from the authors. We request that

Red Cedar Review be cited as place of first publication on any reprinted
material.

“By the Mouth of the Goatsucker”’ translated by permission of Random
House, Inc., publishers of Hypnos Waking, by Rene Char.
‘Sylvia Wrobel

tN

Virgil Scott

Lorrie Keister —

; Michael ‘Hawden
James C. Baloian
Peter Wild

Hugh Fox
- Richard J. Amorosi © ?
H. L. Van Brunt

_ Judith Anne Greenberg —

Thomas Kretz
Susan Musgrave

_ Robert Vander Molen
Linda M. Amorosi

Albert Drake z
- Peter Fiore

Justin Kestenbaum |

3
61:

13:
oe
is

28
47

48

57

58
76
79

49
73

42

TENTS

“PROSE

Be Home is Where the Heart is Ee oe

_ Postcards from Roland
Breakfast Out —

POETRY

_ By the Mouth of the Goatsucker . ee

The Indians |
Ambush.

Note on your Picture.
Wenden | |
Smoky

after 12 | ss
from The Psychedelic pei :
It’s for the Dead and Unborn

Lion

Childhood Shadows :
Pansies & Other Confusions

_ Suspension —

Interlude : :
La Ensenanza de Ciencia en Chile ;
Celebration
Trails

: Grandfather ,

REVIEWS —

~ Over the Fence ays Rick £ Story pies

Buffalo Springfield

PHOTOGRAPHY
 

loving couples ee JIM YOUSLING
HOME
IS
WHERE
THE |
HEART

The plane out of Chicago was an hour late because of snow flurries and a low ceiling over
most of lower Michigan, and there were naturally no taxis when he came out of the terminal,
and it was after five before he could flag down a lost Chequered. “Abbott road,” he said.

The driver leaned across the seat to slam the rear door against the weather outside.
“Abbott,” he said. “Where’s Abbott, Mister?”

In Chicago, he reflected, no cab driver would have asked you that; give a Chicago
cabbie an address as far away as South Bend, Indiana, he would have known where it was.
“Pleasant Grove subdivision,” he said. ““You go due east. Out past the college. You know
where the college is?”’

The cab driver looked briefly, sympathetically at him, assessing the severity of his
hangover or his affinity to bankruptcy or the size of his alimony payments. “That’s out
of my area,” he said.

“Well,” he said, “just so you’ve got enough gas....”

“Sure,” the driver said. “Only I got to charge a flat rate. Eight bucks. Out of my
area, like that.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

 

  

 

RCR/5
The driver put the cab in gear and ground away from the curb. “No rule of mine,”
he said. ““We all got to charge a flat rate. Out of the city limits like that. Because we
can’t pick up fares on the way back, see?”’

“It’s all right,” he repeated. “Don’t lose any sleep over it. I’m on an expense
account.” ;

He put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes against the swirl of snowflakes
coming at him against the windshield and against the back of a cabbie’s head who did not
know where Abbott Road was and against a thin headache. It had been a rocky week,
and he was bushed, and naturally this had to be a Thursday and the office to face the
first thing tomorrow morning. In the week now down the drain he had smoked too many
cigarettes and drank too many Scotch-on-the-rocks and lost too much sleep, and always,
over the drink in one hand and the cigarette in the other, the dealers on his ass, the dealers
searching him out through the eddy of smoke and the burst of too many voices in the
crowded hotel suites, the dealers narrating sad stories of orders stacked up clear into April
and no goddamned inventories, or peopie begging them on their knees practically to take
their money and nothing to deliver except the convertible in the showroom window, and
what was the goddamn story on production this year, for sweet Jesus’s sake? And I am
getting to old for this crap, he thought; I am too goddamned close to forty to be living
like this. He hoped that Janet would have the apartment straightened up before he got
there, that at least the beds would be assembled and made up. And that she wouldn’t
expect anything from him in the way of a homecoming for at least one more night.

He opened his eyes again to the weather outside and the flicker of thirty acres of
lights in the Bonnavista Shopping Center and the problems of existence when you were
an Executive Vice President in charge of production in an affluent society. ““Abbott’s
another mile,” he said. ““You take a left at the blinker.”

“T know where it is now,” the cabbie said. ““Abbott’s where they’re putting up
those new apartments.”

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s where I live.”

The driver glanced over his shoulder. “I didn’t think they was finished yet.”

“Some of them aren’t. We just got in a weeK ago.”

“Jesus,” the driver said. “Four hundred units, somebody said. At two eighty a
month, somebody said.”’

“Five hundred,” he said. ‘‘At three sixty a month if you want two bedrooms and
an attached garage.”

“Jesus,” the driver said. He swung left through the yellow blinker. Down the road
the Riverview Apartments loomed through the dusk, three, four, five rows of two-story,
flat-roofed brick falling off forever and forever across the raw, wounded earth into the
January night. “‘All I can say is,” the driver said, ‘‘a guy better not be stoned if he comes
home late. He could buy himself a hell of a lot of trouble.”

“Or a hell of a lot of fun,” he said. He leaned forward in the seat. “‘I live in three
oh one,” he said. “You'll have to use that spot. I’m a stranger here myself.”

The driver gambled on one of three entrances leading into the apartment units.

He felt the shocks give when the cab swung off the pavement onto the frozen, rutted
clay, and the thought crossed his mind that Farhut Realty had better get the lead out
and blacktopping in, otherwise there’d be all hell to pay getting a car out of here come

6/RCR
spring. The cab slowed, and a spotlight danced briefly above an entrance, and the cab
ground ahead another twenty yards and then stopped. “‘There you are, Mister,”’ the
driver said. “Three oh one.” | :

The drapes in three oh one were drawn tight across the quarter ton of thermopane
which looked out upon a frozen, rutted world; behind them, a light seeped feebly through
like light escaping through a careless blackout curtain. Climbing the concrete steps to the
thick door with the oversized brass knob, he was hoping to God that Janet hadn’t gone out
to dinner or something; a week ago there had been some mix-up in the manager’s office
about keys, and he had had to go off without any, and the wind was whipping down the
alley of brick like a hurricane forced into a funnel, and his all-weather topcoat had not

been manufactured with this weather in mind. At the top of the steps he shifted his two-
suiter to his left hand and raised a fist to knock. Then he remembered that Janet had a
small-town background, and in seventeen years of marriage he had never managed to
convince her that part of the fullness of life was learning to lock an apartment door
behind her, and so he changed his mind and tried the knob first. It turned easily in his
hand and the door swung open and he stepped through into the light and the warmth.

Janet, he noted with relief when he came out of the vestibule into the living room,
had had a busy week too; the apartment had indeed been moved into. The Danish-modern
furniture was all precisely in place. The original oil abstract, which she had paid three
hundred dollars for at an exhibition at the college and which had always looked to him
like paint flung against two square yards of canvas with a faulty spray gun, was hung on
the far wall. She had even fanned out, on the coffee table before the picture window, a
half dozen copies of Time and Fortune, and the current copy of TV Guide was lying on
the television set in the corner. He dropped his suitcase in the center of the beige carpeting
and stood there a moment, luxuriating in the soft light and the warmth and the feeling of
having come home. “‘Hi, baby,” he called out. “You home?”

Somewhere down the hallway which led from the living room to the bedrooms he
heard a door open, and then she came out of the hallway shadows. She was wearing a
pair of those black, translucent harem pajamas which were being advertised in Playboy
and Esquire this year, and what between supervising movers on the location of furniture
and unpacking cartons, she had found time to visit a beauty parlor and get her hair trans-
formed from auburn to platinum, and she looked like she had just awakened from a nap.
“Is that you?” she said. ““You weren’t due til tomorrow.”

“Td have phoned,” he said, “‘if the phone had been in. Didn’t you get my telegram?”

She shook her head.

“T will never understand,” he said, “chow AT&T got to be Blue Chip. If all they ever
had was Western Union, they’d have gone into receivership years ago. You miss me, baby?”

“T always miss you,” she said. “Solitary drinking is for the birds. How was New
York?”

“Chicago,” he said. ““New York was in November.”

“Chicago, then. You look tired.”

“Not just tired. Blind. Thank God they haven’t scheduled me for any more good-
will tours in the immediate future. Not until Phoenix in April. That’s how it was.” He
tossed his topcoat in the general direction of the Danish sectional across the room and
dropped into the chair behind him. She made a small motion toward him; for a moment

RCR IT
he thought she was going to cross the room and sit down in his lap, the way she did
sometimes when he was just back from a trip. But she apparantly changed her mind.
“How was it here?” he said. “In my absence?”

“It went to seven below last night,” she said. “That’s how it was.”

She was standing just outside the circumference of the light, one shoulder barely
touching the plastered archway, and the light from the table lamp behind him was as
soft and diffused as the light in one of your better restaurants, and he couldn’t swear
to it, but through the harem pajamas he thought he could follow the darker line of
black panties and black bra. And if I hadn’t been married to her for seventeen years, he
thought, and if I weren’t so tired, and if I didn’t have the office to face first thing in
the morning, that pose might put an idea in my head. Except that he wished she had
left her hair alone. He had liked it auburn, but now it screamed bottle job so loud you
wanted to plug your ears. Besides, it reminded him of Chicago, and that dealer’s wife
who thought that maybe she had an argument which could convince him to increase
her husband’s quota thirty percent. “Dillard’s down for the Miami trip in February,”
he said. “But I’ve been thinking. How’d you like to go to Miami in February?”

“It’s going to fifteen below tonight,” she said. “That’s the prediction. Just ask
me.”

“Pll see what I can do,” he said. “Throw a little weight around. Dillard can have
San Antonio in July. One condition, though.”

“Anything. Just name it.”

“No big production. Just change back to being a redhead.”

She touched her hair with one fingertip. ““You don’t like me blonde?”

“Honey,” he said, “you could smell the peroxide from across a football field.”

“Tl thought variety was the spice of life. That’s what all the sex manuals say.”

“Baby,” he said, “there is another saying about all cats being the same color after
dark, and I have experienced variety, and all I ever found out was that you pay more
than you buy. Anyway, I’m almost forty, I’m resigned to monogamy.” His eyes drifted
from the line of her black panties to the abstract across the room. He had sometimes
played with the idea of taking up painting when he retired; at three hundred bucks a
canvas, he thought, he would lay you odds he could turn out a picture a day and still
come up to that par. He could make himself a goddamned fortune, he thought, and
no necessity for spending half his life in distant hotel suites, either. He wondered if
the painting said as little to her as it did to him; you’d never get her to own up to it,
but he had a secret theory that she’d only bought it because all their friends had gone
in for originals by unknown impressionists. Probably the influence of living in a college
community, he thought, and looked back at her. ‘““You’ve been a busy little girl this
week,” he said. “The place looks great.”

“The movers did most of it.”

“Did they hang the painting?”

“No. Mable helped me. Mable Resling. They live next door. He’s in Customer
Relations.”

“You mean with us?”

“Everybody seems to be with us. Everybody I’ve met. Jim Resling. He says he
knows you.”

8/RCR
He shook his head. ‘Maybe he’s new.”

“They've been here a year. They used to live in Brookfield Heights.”

“It’s a big operation down there. Maybe I’d know his face if I saw him.”

She raised a hand as if to touch her hair, then, apparently, decided against calling
further attention to it. “The Sayers are in three eleven,” she said. “Charley Sayers. He’s
in charge of carburetors.”

‘Not carburetors. Dan Hoffman runs carburetors.”

“They transferred him. Saturday. To Peoria, Illinois.”

He stared at her. “Dan? What the hell’d they want to go and do that for? He’s only
been here eight months.” |

She shrugged. “I like her,” she said. ““Betty Sayers. They play bridge. I asked them
over for Saturday night. All right?”

“Sure, baby.”’ His eyes drifted back to the oil. “Did the movers scratch that frame?”

“Where?”

“Right there. Right under that blob of orange.”’

“That?” she said. “That’s been done a year, honey. Remember a year ago Christmas?
When it fell down at that party?”

He couldn’t but he didn’t say so; he probably hadn’t really looked at that oil since a
year ago Christmas, but it didn’t make any difference so long as they had no claim against
the van line. He got heavily out of his chair. “I’d better unpack,” he said.

“Did they feed you on the plane?”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I came local from Chicago. The airline they operate
out of here, you’re lucky they give you a seat. I’ve got a theory they’re a subsidiary of
Greyhound.”

“I didn’t expect you til tomorrow,” she said. ‘“‘The only thing in the house is TV
dinners.”

“TV dinners are fine.”

“Fix you a drink?”

“Christ, no. I bet I soaked up ten gallons of alcohol in Chicago. I think Pll go on
the wagon for a couple weeks.” He picked up his suitcase and headed for the bedroom.
He stopped when he got to her, and leaned, and kissed her on the cheek. “Do something
about the hair tomorrow, huh, baby?” he said.

“If I can get an appointment,” she said. “I only did it because I thought you'd like
it. I thought it would be a change.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said. “It reminds me of Chicago. All you see in Chicago is hair
that color. In every goddamned hotel suite you wander into. It’s the way they advertise
their profession.” He patted her buttock mechanically, absent-mindedly. “I don’t intend
any insult, baby,” he said.

She had also found the time, he noted, when he entered their bedroom, to do some
shopping this week; she had bought green bedspreads to match the drapes in here. He
emptied his pockets of cigarette lighter and case and billfold and ballpoint pen and pocket
memo pad, lined them up neatly on the dresser, then shucked his coat, hung it in the
closet, and put on a sweater. The apartment was arranged so that you could go through
the bathroom off this bedroom into the kitchen, and both bathroom doors were slightly
ajar, and he could hear her doing things in the kitchen, opening a refrigerator door, putting

RCR/9
something on the kitchen counter, saying something he couldn’t make out. He crossed to
the bathroom door and opened it wider. “What?” he said. “What'd you say, baby?”

“I asked if you wanted fried chicken and peas or roast beef and corn?”

“Chicken,” he said. “I see you bought some new bedspreads.”

“And the coffee table,” she said. “In the living room. That’s new, too. Didn’t you
notice?”

He hadn’t; so far as he could remember, the coffee table had looked just like the one
she had apparently been unhappy with. But the spreads were clearly different. “What are
the keys on the dresser?” he said.

““What?”’

He walked into the bathroom, opened the other door wider. “The car keys on my
dresser,” he said. “They yours?”

“Oh,” she said. “I forgot. They delivered your car while you were gone”

“No kidding,” he said. “How does it look?”

“I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I can’t tell them from last year’s.”

“T’ll write a memorandum to the president,”’ he said. “Pass along that message. It
ought to warm his heart. We only spent eleven million this year redesigning.”

“T can’t help it,” she said. “I can’t see any difference.”

He stepped back into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Back in the
bedroom, he decided to unpack his suitcase later; instead he wandered down the hallway
into the living room again and leafed open the TV Guide. Television for the evening offered
him ‘“‘Dennis the Menace,” “‘Zorro,” “‘Batman”’ (second of two parts), “Love that Bob,”
“Beverly Hillbillies,” “Leave it to Beaver,” ““Dobbie Gillis,” “Hullabaloo,” and “I’ve got a
Secret.” If you wanted to put up with very eccentric reception, you could also watch
“Lost in Space,” “Patty Duke,” “My Mother the Car,” “Andy Griffith,” and “Gilligan’s
Island.” The nine o’clock movie was something called “‘I Bury the Living.”” When he
dropped the TV Guide back on the set, he was thinking that maybe he ought to add some
television stock to his portfolio; you never knew when a healthy net loss was going to come
in handy at income tax time. Then he crossed the room and dropped into a chair and picked
up this week’s Time.

He had negotiated stories on atrocities in Vietnam, two strikes, a weather disaster,
three murders, and two political scandals, and he was well embarked on a military coup in
South America when she appeared in the room again. “Want to eat in here, honey?” she
said.

“Fine,” he said. “That would be fine, baby.”

“Want to set up the TV trays?”

“Sure. Where are they?”

“In the vestibule closet.”

He struggled out of the chair, got the trays out from behind a cardtable and a slide
projector, and set them up. She came back in with the aluminum-foil trays. He wasn’t
particularly hungry, and he knew before he ever tasted the meal that the potatoes would be
instant, and the butter on tuem was margarine, and the chicken would taste strongly of
lard. He looked across the corner of the room to where she sat with a fork poised above
her slice of beef.

“Christ, but it’s good to be home, baby,” he said.

10/RCR
At a quarter to nine, he could no longer keep his eyes open. He got up in the middle
of a headache commercial and went to the bathroom, then went on into the bedroom. She
had unpacked for him, and his pajamas were laid out on his bed. He undressed and went
back out into the living room, she was leaning slightly forward in her chair, absorbed in a
hair spray commercial. “Look, baby,” he said, “I think I’ll hit the sack.”

She wrenched her attention away from the set. “Already?” she said. “It isn’t nine
yet.”

“I’m bushed. And I have to be out of here by eight tomorrow.”

“All right, honey.” She ~ up.

“You don’t have to come,” he said. “Watch the rest of your program.”

She had her finger on the switch. She turned and looked at him. “You sure, honey?”

“T’m sure. I’m beat, baby.” 3

“Well,” she said, “I'll get ready. That way I won’t bother you when I come.”

“You'll miss the rest of that program.”

“I won’t miss anything,” she said.

He was in bed, the electric blanket up around his ears, when she came naked out of
_the bathroom. Ordinarily, her last ritual before retiring was fifteen minutes of exercises,
knee-bends and sit-ups and back-bends; one of the small pleasures of his existence was to
lie in bed and watch her exercise in the nude at the foot of their beds. But tonight she
omitted them. She came around between the beds and leaned over and kissed him on the
cheek, then got her nightgown and robe out of the closet. It took her perhaps two minutes,
but later, if he had been asked to testify to it under oath, he would have been able to swear
that he was asleep before she ever switched off the light.

When the alarm on his nightstand awakened him, she was asleep on her stomach, her
hair, dark at the very roots, spread out over the pillow. He slipped on a robe and slippers and
stole out of the room. In the kitchen, the morning coffee was perking cheerfully in the
automatic coffee pot, and she had set half a chilled grapefruit in the very front of the
refrigerator where he would be sure to find it. He spooned out the maraschino cherry and
plunked it in the sink, dropped two slices of toast in the toaster, and poured a cup of coffee.
The kitchen cabinets were new to him, and he could find no jelly, so he ate his toast without.

She had not stirred when he came in from the bathroom; even the shower had not
awakened her. He opened dresser drawers and closet doors and removed the plastic dry-
cleaning bag from his Oxford-grey pinstripe as quietly as he could. The pants fitted a little
too snugly around his waist this morning; he had probably put on a couple of pounds in
Chicago, and he resolved that if he got a break in his afternoon, he’d work out an hour in
the company gym, sweat some of the fat and alcohol out of his system.

He slipped on his suit coat, then turned and looked down at her one last time. She
was still asleep on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow, her left hand lying white
and totally relaxed against the lavender sheet, her diamond solitaire looking phony as
Woolworth glass in the uncompromising light of early morning. He bent and kissed her
on the neck. “Bye, baby,” he said softly.

She stirred then. “Bye, Freddie,” she murmured into her pillow.

The Riverview Apartments had been built with garages backed up to each unit; you
got to them through a rear exit off the kitchen. He let himself out the rear door into cold

RCR/ 11
so stinging that he knew the snow would crunch dry and unforgiving underfoot this morn-
ing. The new car, he noted with a brief twinge of disappointment, was Tropic Turquoise
instead of Madeira Maroon; the Turquoise had been his second choice, but the way produc-
tion stood at the moment, he was lucky not to have to drive a year-old car clear into mid-
summer. He rolled up the garage door, unlocked the car, and slid in behind the wheel. He
was thinking as he turned the key in the ignition that Janet was nuts, that the ’68’s didn’t
look one little bit like the ’67’s, that the front bumper lines had been straightened out and
the back window swept back more sharply and the tail lights completely redesigned. You
would think, he reflected as he backed out into January, you would think that the wife of
an Executive Vice President in charge of production could learn to look at a car.

It was exactly then that the realization struck him. He sat there, the cold motor
racing under his gloved hand on the wheel, the open garage door yawning back at him
through the windshield. Freddie, he thought, Freddie, and What the hell is going on,
anyway, What the hell has she been up to in my absence? Through the tinted windshield,
the brass numbers tacked above the yawning garage doors stared at him, and he stared back

at them, and then the second thought hit him. No, he thought, no, that is ridiculous. I
have been married seventeen years, he thought, J ought to know my own goddamned
wife, for Chrissake. He turned the car wheel and headed down the frozen, rutted lane
toward Abbott Road. Ridiculous, he was thinking, but just to be absolutely positive,

he would call the Riverview Apartments as soon as he got to the office, ask the manager
whether Mr. and Mrs. James Reardon lived in 301 or 103. He knew what the answer would
be but he would call anyway, and then, come evening, he and Janet would have themselves
a very serious talk.

12/RCR
MICHAEL HOWDEN

BY THE MOUTH OF THE GOATSUCKER

translation from Rene Char, Seuls Demeurent

Children who riddle with olives the sun chained in
the woods of the sea, children o slings of wheat, from
you the stranger turns away, turns away from your martyred
blood, turns away from the water too pure, children with
lime eyes, children who made the salt sing to your ear,
how does one resign himself no longer to be dazzled by
your love? The sky which you called down, the woman whose
desire you betrayed, the thunder has iced them.

Punishments! Punishments!

RCR/ 13
JAMES C. BALOIAN

THE INDIANS

Taking all the phones

In his hands, he told

Them he wouldn’t be

Available for questioning.

He knew he could

Shut the windows,

And no one would come to his door.
He even

Bought a gun,

Insisting that the only

Noises he could hear

Were the naked feet

Of indians, coal black and hunched,
Circling the edge

Of his burning field.

14/RCR
PETER WILD

AMBUSH

Dogs ambushed us. they called
for help, but we saw their blazoned
chests, shields, teeth
spears through the bushes;
and turned into their snarls —
my friendly yak shook
his mane and threw his stave,
I slung my arquebus
then spat —
gold stones, silver arrows, amethyst. . .

being outnumbered we ran
down the trail, thirsting,
brushing aside the sun, lost them far
over crags, ravines —
took a couple rocks,
a couple arrows. . .
now hidden among swamps
we drink, read our books;
moons revolve over his purple hide
and flash like pages through my eyes;
on the ridges we see their silhouettes,
blowing their horns, routing
near us in the thorns, their snorts,
their screams... ...

RCR/ 15
16/RCR

NOTE ON YOUR PICTURE TAKEN IN THE TOWN SQUARE

OF CANANEA, SONORA

You are sitting on a stone bench
in the park ©
smiling at the camera
like a stewardess;
your camera
in its leather case
lies inert on the bench.

behind you the hexagonal
bandstand,
scrolled with wrought iron,
has a turquoise top
and base;
two boys walk past it,
looking at the back of your head,
but their faces are blurred.
the oak trees arch red in the cold
and through them the plain,
taut as a tawny leopard’s skin;
and the mountains, very far away. . .
you shiver in a slight breeze:

I see the stone bench
is made of babies’ thumbs
mixed with concrete.
the bandstand starts
and turns into a caliope
jetting steam;
and over your shoulder
mad riders tear across the plain
displaying strings of entrails
in victory;
the two boys look at you
and grow fangs. . .
very far off the peaks
curl towards us
in thin transparent waves,
the oaks shake
like old men
losing their breeches
and their teeth.

the camera
innocent in the sun
is a time bomb
Waiting to explode. . .
but
you are smiling.

RCR/ 17
18/RCR

WENDEN

We went through Wenden

fast
so fast
our tails,
cups flying

that no one knew,
even the rain,
the buildings. . .

an old miner
reared up from the vulture mtns,
shook his fist,
his glass elbow;
and Indians, cross-eyed,
heads split, over the harquahalas —
then slipped back dead,
their armlets
toes melting like
hailstones in the riverbeds. . .

I tell you we went through so fast
the rain never touched us;
but the town stood drenched,
brown, sunken among the dunes. . .
not even the children struck dumb
in doorways; the gas pumps
cried, and perhaps a toothless
curandera asleep in her armpits
smiled — the skeleton of a mandrill
got up and wiped a tear from his eye;

oh Aguila, Quartzsite
Blythe. . .

only flutes rattled
in the wet sky,
paint cans
turquoise beads fell
and littered the sand;
and one lean angel
hair coming out
soft underbelly open,
smoking a pipe,
her glass heart
pierced by an arrow. . .
SMOKY

When I was a kid in the woods
we saw them as great stone bears
soaring in on log and tarpaper wings,
plunging down to get us,
building fires to roast frogs;
there was always one
ready to chase us home
on Halloween Eve, or on our heels
through the thickets after stealing
melons...
and then lurking behind
a hill, watching with his one big eye,
we saw him from our beds. . . but
now speak with the
emphysematous voice of
grandfathers, harmless,
ineffectual,
who hobble from their rest homes
to plead on TV. . .

RCR/ 19
AFTER 12

take this heart
broken into silver pieces,
this tongue,
and these slips of paper,
miniature sails —
the platter is scored
the platen broken

the river lies down.
and from the head, a foggy

beach birds rise still

exhausted, disappear beyond
the steamers forever
becalmed off the rocks
in mists and weeds,
monumental. . .

we have seen the soldiers
rise like teeth from the boulders
from our arms,
at the ready, but unimpassioned,
driven by their orders —
by noon they were gone. . .

while tonight the tongue
its fibrous muscle
inlaid,
a fat bishop
crusted with jewels
passes overhead,
over penny cathedrals,
bone arcades,
his pants open... .

20/RCR
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untitled
 

PATRICIA BAZYLEWICZ

forest
POSTCARDS
F RO!MW
ROLAND

by SYLVIA WROBEL

As the dust from the mailtruck settled mote by mote on the narrow road, doors slammed
and out of each house dashed a woman or child to examine the beflagged mailboxes,
each in some private hope, a ford won in a drawing, perhaps, or a return from an accumu-
lation of boxtops. Maybe a letter. Most often they walked back to their houses with
bills, bills and catalogs.

Carroll Jackson walked to the box, not dashed, and behind her trailed Lee
Freeman. He had just taken to seeing her. He had just begun to notice girls and when
he did, it seemed like the first one he saw was Carroll Jackson moving down the high
school halls, slow and deliberate, her hair long and curly down her back.

She handed him the catalog and pushing back her hair lazily read a bright, deckle-
edged postcard while Lee stood beside her squinting at the sun. ‘“‘Oh it’s just from
Roland,” she said, flipping it on top of the catalog he already held.

“Roland who?” he asked peevishly, but she didn’t bother to answer. How many
Rolands were there in a Flat Ridge? How many who ever left it to send back cards?
People were born in Flat Ridge, finished school there, married there soon after, and
later died there with many of the same faces at the accompanying ceremonies.

“Where is he?”’ he said then.

“Oh he’s in Germany. Roland got himself drafted and that’s where he ended up.”

“‘He’s lucky,” Lee said gloomily. He thought of his own mailbox and the letter
that might well lie there greeting him on his way to Vietnam.

“He didn’t have to go,” she said almost bitterly. ““He wanted to go. So he went.
Let him go, I say.”

“Sure thing,” Lee agreed amenably. The picture showed an old building with
lots of eaves. “Germany,” he said. “Germany.”

“So what. Germany,” Carroll echoed scornfully. “Big deal.” She tore the card
in two and threw the halves in the ditch, then smiled at Lee. ““You want to ride into
town, get a pepsi?”

RCR/ 23
“Sure,” he said. It seemed like Carroll was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen
although he’d just started noticing girls. When they got back it was beginning to get
dark and she let him kiss her in the truck two, three times. When she closed the
front door behind her, he hastily picked up the torn halves of the postcard and
carried them home.

Lee Freeman was a basketball star. He had just begun finding things, girls first,
then power. He had always had basketball. His first basketball goal had been on a post
no taller than a man, put up by his father who had himself played for Flat Ridge High
School and who year after year had gone to the games, feeling duty and purpose in
those Tuesdays and Fridays when he took his familiar seat and called each year’s
players by their right names. Basketball had come easily to Lee, he did it without
thinking, but only in his junior year in high school had he discovered the power, his
power, the moving down the court with the thud of the ball in perfect rhythm
against the jagged and scream-pierced noise of the gymnasium; hands and faces moving
against him but his knowing, feeling, in his feet and arms, his own power and the goal
waiting. Lee was smart, he made good grades, but he wasn’t interested really, not in
anything but the power, starting in his feet and as they left the floor in a jump racing
up his legs, chest, to the top of his arms, his fingers seeming to slowly pull away from
the ball although the beauty of it was its fastness, the motion and thinking being in
one piece, and as the ball slid through the netting of the goal, the power coming back
stronger through his body again, his feet never doubting, already moving back toward
the other end of the court. That was what interested him, that and girls.

After the game he and Carroll sat in the front seat of his father’s truck, parked
in the church yard, kissing and kissing and murmuring oh Carroll, oh Lee, You’re so
sweet and you are too when he said for the first time in his life “I love you.” 7

“Mmm,” she hummed against his ear and her breath made the invisible hairs
there stand up.

“I do. I do, Carroll.”

“You're so full of energy.”

‘‘No, I love you, you’re so sweet.” He had heart his words with surprise but
now delighted in them. It was like a movie, and why shouldn’t he love somebody, he
was seventeen and goodlooking and smart and a basketball star. “I love you, Carroll
Jackson,” and his words sent him deeper in love, kissing her neck and hair and eyes,
running his hands up and down her back where her sweater slid under his fingers like
a live film.

“Oh you're just feeling good, oh it’t because you won the game.”

“No really really.”’ But even with his words and his lips falling against her neck
where the sweater bloomed open, he recognized the flame leaping inside him as a
cousin to that almost agonizing power straining toward the basket.

 

So Lee Freeman became the boyfriend of Carroll Jackson to the pleasing of
both of their parents. Carroll’s father had played basketball too although not nearly
as well as had Lee’s, and sometimes after church the families ate together sitting out
in the lawn at one of the houses. Lee’s father especially liked to talk of the old days
because he had been a better basketball player than Carroll’s father and it made him

24/RCR
forget that their house was smaller, much smaller, than the Jackson house, Jackson
having done well in tobacco while Freeman had tried first one thing and then another
without ever getting much ahead. The Freeman house was wooden on concrete
blocks, but stacked around were the piles of brick to fill in the underneath, started
but never quite finished, so that the bottom of the house had great gaps and the
chickens and dogs wandered in and out, disconcertingly clucking and whining in
muffled disharmony under the livingroom floor. Mr. Freeman meant to finish

it, he would finish it he said, he had worked very hard on it when he got married,
right out of high school he was, but there had been one thing and another and the
days drifted by, drifted by. When he left the Jacksons each time and drove up in
his own front yard he always said “‘Dern it, I’ve got to finish that under part one
of these days.”’ But he never did. As the Jacksons began building yet two more
houses, one for each of the Jackson girls to inherit when they married and both
with neat brick underpinnings, Mr. Freeman talked more and more of the basket-
ball days.

Carroll’s house was done. She was the oldest, she would probably need it
first. “Well, Daddy says that in the old days fathers used to give their-daughters
dowries and this is what he’s giving his,” she said to Lee. They had walked down
from the Jackson house on Saturday afternoon and stood in the new livingroom,
bare except for a couch that Mrs. Jackson had moved in the house, to get it out
of the way, she had said.

“It’s a real nice house,”’ Lee said. He had watched it go up slowly, all their
senior year in high school, and every board that was nailed in place seemed reproach-
ful to him. When you two setting the big day everybody asked him. Guess there’s
gonna be some occasion in June everybody said. The fellows on the team punched
him in the ribs and joked: she making you wait till the wedding? And Carroll.
Carroll stopped wearing the emerald ring she had always worn and she moved his
school ring to a chain around her neck so that her fingers were bare like empty
store windows. The house had kept getting built and built and there it was.

“Tt sure is nice,” he said again. She sat down on the couch and looked at
him expectantly. He sat down and kissed her. “Listen, I gotta go,” he said then.
“I want to try to sleep a little before the game tonight. I can’t afford to use all
my energy here.” He smiled and she let him up, shaking her long hair away,
always slow and deliberate.

In his room he took off his shirt and pants and laid down on the bed in his
shorts but he didn’t sleep. He took out the school annual and shook loose the
cards in it, a half dozen counting the torn one, dirty, that he had retrieved from
the ditch. They were all from Roland, all to Carroll. “Why does he keep sending
you those cards?”’ he had asked, and she said “* He thinks he’s so smart. You’d
think nobody ever went to Europe before.” Lee didn’t know anybody who ever
had.

“Look,” he said, “when he gets home, he needn’t think...”

“T reckon he doesn’t think that,” she said. “He says he isn’t coming home.”

RCR / 25
And sure enough one of the cards which she now handed Lee automatically,

now that he was her boyfriend, now that they kissed for hours (parked in the
church yard at Lee’s insistence—she would have preferred the house and second
hand couch but he insisted on his own truck even with the gears), on one of the
cards Roland had written got a job in California when this is up. Roland. “No
kidding,”’ Lee said. “‘California.”’ “Big deal,’ Carroll said.

Lying on his bed in shorts Lee thought again about California. If he went
to the service first, so he went to Vietnam, lots of guys went there and besides
it was the other side of the world, then he could go to California, maybe even
look up Roland.

He hadn’t known Roland, who was three years older. But since he had
been dating Carroll and reading the postcards he had gone to Roland’s house
once on the excuse of delivering some chocolate the senior class was selling.
Roland’s parents were just ordinary people, the mother a pretty mother-type
woman in a blue flowered dress and fresh waves in her hair. She looked like
Carroll’s mother and his own, except his was too plump. Roland’s father sat in
the living room in his overalls, his neck brown from working in the orchard,
watching television while Lee explained to Roland’s mother about the choco-
late. There were pictures of Roland around, in his graduation robes, one with
a dog, others of him in uniform in front of funny churches.

“What do you hear from Roland?” Lee had asked.

“Oh you know Roland?”

_ “Sorta,” he said.

“Well you know he’s in Germany,” his mother said proudly. “But he went
to Italy too, and to France on leave. And to England. And next September he
wants us to come to California to visit him. He has a job waiting in California.”
She spoke each name with pleasure, like an accent.

“California, huh,” Lee repeated.

“We aren’t going,” the father said sourly, not taking his eyes from the tele-
vision, just picking up a cue from a continuing argument. “‘He wants to see us, let
him come home.”

Lee left awkwardly. The underpinnings of Roland’s house weren’t finished,
and a rusty car sat in the yard on tireless rims, parts scattered in the high grass.

Lying on his bed in shorts Lee thought of the postcards and the underpinnings of
_ Roland’s house also unfinished. He said to himslef Germany, Italy, France, California...
Germany, Italy, France, California. He went to sleep saying them in a row; he did that
often lately. He only dozed, just enough to let his muscles relax before the game, and
in his half dream he was running down the court only it wasn’t with a basketball goal
as the end, it was a fantastically long court and the longer it was the more the power
grew, grew, grew in his legs and he was saying Germany, Italy, France, California over
and over, he and.the power running, running open and free, not to the end of the court
and back and forth and back but free and open. Somewhere he glimpsed Roland
grinning. 7

“Lee. Lee. Le..Ee.”’ His mother stood in the door. “Ready,” he said, instantly
awake, and he dressed for the game. It was at the game flying down the court back

26/RCR
_and forth and back and forth that he made his decision and he never played better,
he took Flat Ridge to a glorious victory. People were screaming his name and Carroll
was jumping up and down yelling something lost in the screams. His father hit him
on the shoulder, red with pride, “My boy,” he said, “my boy.” Finally Carroll found
him and kissed him wetly in front of everyone. “My baby,” she whispered in his ear.
He stood grinning at them all with his power. And he never loved them all so much
as on having decided to leave.

After the game, over milkshakes and grilled cheese sandwiches at Shorties,
Carroll seemed to study him in her slow and deliberate way and after that she insisted
she even cried, that they not park in the old truck but go to the house, to her house with
the second hand couch. And because secure in his decision he knew it would never be
their house, he was sorry for her, her fingers cleared for the ring he couldn’t give her.
He went, and there the power in him that was never so strong, the power ran and ran
through his body and on the second hand couch what happens happened and he was
a fine boy, the finest in Flat Ridge, and there was nothing else to do but what he did.

Many years later, building a small man-tall basketball goal for his oldest son,

Lee briefly thought about the day and all he remembered was disjointed; the crowd
screaming, and that he had thought about joining the service but once he got married
the draft never bothered him. And nailing up the goal, he also remembered something
else vaguely, something strange, a sense of loss when Roland’s mother had sent to
California the clipping about the wedding from the local newspaper. For after that,
although each day Lee dashed out to the mailbox (before gradually in the drift from

day to day forgetting why), although it seemed important, even urgent, there were
no more postcards from Roland.

RC R / 27
HUGH FOX

28/RCR

from THE PSYCHEDELIC PROSTIBULO

Pay Before

the women with the fat legs

in the faded housedress,

in front of the Post Office

staring, staring, staring
at Siva and the blind
bone on the deep-dream-beaches
of Africa dead,

before heart transplants

painted Apartheid technocracy green

[i saa Where?
(in Cleveland, or Golden Gate Park.)
She doesn’t wanna lay,

She wants to marry George

NO PLACE TO ESCAPE TO. SURROUNDED BY RESPECTABILITY.

Up, up and a-way!
The dogs in the fountain
(in front of the Union)

Monet

Op-Buddha
Red brick is green
too

first the orchards, bridges, boats,

sunflowers,
(and I stood there in the Midi waiting but they looked
spin
(dusty)
then chairs and
tables. . ..
There was a beer sign across the street and
the yellow-bulb foam
~ poured
across her
midnights until
dawn.

YOU CAN TURN ON ANYWHERE IF YOU CAN TURN ON

“Are you happy being

OUT

OF

yourmind?”
Eyes, up from the pillow

will it rain
the menacing leaves,

walk across a
lot never walked
across before

and gravel, grass, wind

iridesce

at stress points,

RCR / 29
30/RCR

even a wall, hand,
the texture of cranberries,
can
Open your
mind-can—could.

THE SOCIAL WAVE MOVES TOWARD PSYCHODELIA.

(Mono) cyclic time
riding down the edge of
the boardwalk
(summer hot-dog sandwave smell)
just about to drop off,

backs up to the salt water taffy booth

for another
chew,

moves (linearly now, progressively, into hierarchical
architectonic outfoldings)
past Breughel fat-shoe faces
into cotton mills
out the door into hum
red-blink 7
don’t bend, staple
dome, done,
bubble cars,
I, robot.
6.
In privy council.
because you're (we’re) on
file,
cross-referenced,
-currented
14 credit cards
checking account
driver’s license
vehicle registration
house loan
fingerprinted for summer lifeguard
social securitied
wind off the wind in
the calico mountains

tourists

passing through,

take our picture,

fast,

through,

and lightly,

watch all their signs

No past, dead, present.
Litany, do your damndest,

I came to Now (and now and Now and Now)
alive.

RCR/ 31
TOTAL PSYCHIC-SURVIVAL, RARE IN OUR TIME.

I watched her watch my mole,
wedding ring (click-brain—and eyelids),

knowing that knowing her reference (A, B, Coke, Fresca, C-Pepsi,
D-Tab)
points
that

any act-re-

action

would pass through,
around, up, under
mine,
I played,
said wait another wait
until someone who’s come from where
She’s (you were!) from
starts to explode

your radar.

INTERIOR-INDIVIDUALITY SURVIVAL “THROUGH” TIME EVEN RARER.

His eyes were attics

and his mind a

hooped trunk,

his words pearl buttons rolling on

a dry wood floor.

No puttees, helmets, goal posts, seasons, proms,
even greed.

32/RCR
He hadn’t thought of himself even intermittently as a
veteran for more than thirty years,

and now was thinking less and less of himself as anything.

Until the door blows down
we get schizophrenic
and hunch against

weather (or not),

not gonna make it
(or out)
but just hang on
(to the time bar),

ache-ache-ache
let go,
drop and
we’re gonna have to let go
any-
how
on-
ly
as you flip the pages of
God Bless

aren't those—some of those—faces like
rising bread
plowed fields
the smell of new cars

a just-clipped poodle

RCR/ 33
(Rimbaud at his local bookstore)
nee because they don’t ask for
Les Iluminations?

THE CERTAINTY OF EVENTUAL ANIHILATION SHOULD GUARANTEE OUR
RECKLESSNESS.

Pushes the watch back away across the desktop,
slides back toward her,

pushes it away,

and as it slides back down again

she opens her legs and lets it

fall into her green chiffon lap.

The oak brown librarian wraps a gold medalion-tattooed fuchsia
Sari around her wooden breasts, walks around the block and climbs
back into drawer 172 of the catalogue— _

FU-for Foolfillment.

WITHOUT CONSTANT AWARENESS EFFORT (GOAL ORIENTATION RENEWAL)
PSYCHIC DEATH IS INEVITABLE.

LIFE MEANS TOTAL AWARENESS, EXPANSION OUT INTO NOW.

Grey cold early dead eye-smarting (coal-smoke) Chicago morning,
and she’d turn on Monteverdi
first,

then the vacuum cleaner,
check the white walls for
snow (ball) stains,

her white skin for wrinkles,

34/RCR
but wouldn’t go over the border

(or let-go role)

long enough to remember

her first breasts,

hymen or the watchless high school

week (while it was getting fixed) when she

almost forgot about the meat market clock on the
kitchen wall.

Pz

Kick in the hard shinbone
of the future,

NOW.

For us it’s hear,

sea

to swim in

roar on the beach of
handout, keep cool,
turn the social ladder
into summer

wreck-creation

TOTAL AWARENESS OF THE NOW, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE, HURTS.

Blonde on the other side of the theater,
with a blackman

and silver and black runged

tube (tight) pants,

cheek hollows,

RCR/ 35
36/RCR

bone-breast body,
flamboyant Mamma two rows

down,

fuchsia jacket and
family bible leather
crack-in-the-attic-dust
skin.

They interchange.

13.
A penny for your
presience,
time-piston
not
Villon, Ronsard and Baudelaire,
but their contemporaries
Bufy-Chord
held,
pressed against a
pants-leg
Kryptonite in my pineapple juice.
The equestrian statue of my little chickadee
outside the Harvard Coop’s

turning green.
Never wanted to not kill the chord,
but
be there before

and while.

I put my fangs in place and
drive downtown.
Did it

(Lose anyhow)
Gloria in excelsus Swanson,
over Hitler’s (St. Peter’s)
bones,

bones,

bones.

YOU DARE EVERYTHING BECAUSE TIME IS GOING TO TOTAL YOU OUT
ANYHOW.

Hi, take my hand,

I’m falling through degrees

and the conventions surrounding
your tea urn.

It’s all wind and I’m made out of
burning splinters,

take me now,

together through the faces, off the
tracks,

RCR / 37
38/RCR

Expresso, Capuchine, first snow, first night,
first rain, last
breath.

20.

Out

of moustaches and brogues,

civil war suitcases of Greek mythology and the Trojan Wars,
“Nature,”

etymological dictionaries,

_ the collective (sane) mind,

rollcalls, rank and tenure,
pillars by night, clouds by day
vulnerable into the clarity of
bang, between the eyes.

the palms are paper and V.D. Venus is a
spiderman comic addict
I'll believe in your legs for
60 seconds
double chins
laugh lines
down into the subway, bacon sandwiches, unrenewed

urbanity, not love, but three teaspoons of black pepper.

AWARENESS DEPENDS ON A CONSTANT PROCESS OF CONTINUING
DETACHEMENT.

Afraid of this circular brick-paved courtyard,
square house with a round lookout on top facing the sea.
As obvious a difference as whales and black ragas.
the revolving door of
Nowness
quantity-quality of impulses
the world comes in through
my skin
Now
Now
Now
purple sithars of vinyl
wind
sheets
flapping across the
thighs of
unexpectedness.

RC R / 39
Photography By
Justin Kestenbaum

 

ONCE THERE WAS A PLACE...
 

IT WENT AWAY.
A PLACE

AnD PEOPLE...

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
RICHARD J. AMOROSI

IT’S FOR THE DEAD AND UNBORN

It is

a final domain
proven in possession
the stretch of leg

to the end of the box
the flowers terrify
the mind

becomes softly

the rabbit-bone pipe
and its furl

of young smoke

The words from
your cellar

are calm

the earth has
fallen in

can it be so simple
as forgetting

RCR/ 47
H. L. VAN BRUNT

LION

Old man, your face is like the moon’s
topography — valleys, mountains, rivers
cracked and dry.

The side you never show

darkens in your eyes.

Somewhere in the Rockies

a mountain lion

feeds on a final sleep.

In the cave of this old house
your room’s the den you'll die in.

Smelling of Vasoline

your life’s compressed

to rags of memory.

They’ll sweep you out with the dust —
wrapped in Police Gazettes.

48/RCR
OVER THE FENCE by Rick Sterry. Houghton Mifflin, $4.50.

When Rick Sterry, an MSU graduate assistant in English, was in Japan
two years ago, with plenty of free time and no teevee to watch, he decided
to write a novel. This was only natural, of course, since the human body
seems to have a build-in compulsion to get words on paper—and too, with
the novel it is possible to make money. The trouble is the novel is a diffi-
cult, ponderous form, one that invites the author to insert the irrelevant
while always demanding that rigid discipline and strict economy of the
modern short story. I’ve seen quite a few first novels, either in outline

or rough draft or in finished manuscript, but I can’t remember seeing one
that was publishable. Somehow they were dull or self-indulgent or con-
trived or simply all wrong.

Over The Fence is, happily, an exception. In a way it’s a modest
book—without tricks of structure or of point of view; without dazzling
pyrotechnics of language—but one that should be read by readers and
studied by budding novelists. The errors that one sees too often, whether
in rejected manuscripts or published novels, have been avoided here.

Like the Neo-Classical painters who demonstrated in a single canvas their
ability to render architectural space, perspective, human anatomy, drapery,
and landscape, Mr. Sterry shows that he can handle all the elements of
fiction. He has a real sense of narrative; the writing is always skillful and
under control, and the irrelevant has been cleanly trimmed away. It seems
to me that anyone tempted to write a novel could learn from this one.
The first three chapters, for example, illustrate how a story might effec-
tively unfold: certain references are casually made without explanation,
then reinforced through repetition, but their meaning does not become
apparent until later. These are “‘hooks’’, as they say in the trade and they
work here; quite the opposite is the beginning writer’s tendency to tell

all, to make explicit when something should be held back. Dialogue is
another real problem, because it wants to descend to mere conversation,
but in this book dialogue is handled extremely well, and is often witty.

For this is a novel which entertains while it instructs: it is a very funny
book, even comic—and a sense of humor is that rare ingredient that cannot
be taught to the writer whose narrative unfolds with a deadly, painful
seriousness.

RCR / 49
Over The Fence is a college novel, but it avoids the classroom-dorm-
frat house material by focusing-like The Graduate—on that transitional
period between graduation and one’s entry into the Outer World. The
novel alternates between the two stories of Chevy Callister and Daniel
Blake, young rebels who find themselves faced with the difficult decision
of what to do with their lives. The choice is made easier for Daniel when
his girlfriend, Ellen, announces the night before his graduation that she
is pregnant. Although Daniel has known her for only three months, he
welcomes the idea of marriage—as a protest against his domineering
mother and her way of life—but he is soon uneasy by all the marriage
implies: a wedding, a house (a gift from his mother), and a job (in his
mother’s business). Then, too, there are those demonstrations in his own
kitchen, led by Ellen, who he realizes is more and more assuming the
identity of his mother.

The night that Daniel learns he is to become a father, Chevy meets
Alberta, a working-girl who has been dismissed from college during her
first semester. Chevy, through petitions and articles in the school paper,
has been defending her right to an education, while attacking the person -
responsible for her dismissal, Dean Callister, his father. When he meets
Alberta he is surprised by her youth and angelic homeliness, and by her

_ refusal to take the dismissal seriously—she is the victim, yet she sees no
injustice. Anyway, she didn’t like college and doesn’t want to go back
until she has “matured.” Alberta’s complex naivete confounds and
interests Chevy, and he decides it is his duty to educate her. If she is
to be a hip chick she will have to lose her virginity, and on the night
when Chevy is supposed to receive his diploma he takes Alberta to his
room in an old church and discovers that he is still learning.

It is difficult to write about college life without resorting to campus
types or extremes, but Mr. Sterry has not caricatured; his characters, even
the minor ones, are distinct and alive and human. Beanie, a background
character, quickly becomes “real” and his toothless dialect is terrifically
funny. Alberta is the most complex character in the book, the most
enigmatic, and perhaps the most interesting. She is a skinny, homely
girl who wanders into town from somewhere, takes a job in Beanie’s

50/RCR
cafe, and in the same casual way begins college. At first it is difficult
to see why Chevy would be interested in Alberta, but soon we realize
that she is the real rebel of the novel, a loner, able to survive anywhere—
and then we begin to wonder why she is interested in Chevy.

For there is something about Chevy Callister that does not ring
true, and I think part of the problem is that the author, perhaps in order
to present the character “honestly,” is of a divided mind about the char-
acter: at times we are asked to be sympathetic toward Chevy, but more
often his actions and speech are meant to be ironic. Although he has the
trappings of a really free soul—he drives a Henry J with the doors welded
shut, and lives in the back of a church—his dissent takes the form of minor
“demonstrations” like bringing Alberta home to his parents for Sunday
dinner and refusing to attend the commencement exercises; his method
is a lofty rhetoric. But Alberta cuts through his speeches either by silence,
or by common sense, or by absurdities. “What’ll we do?” asks Chevy,
regarding their lives. Alberta thinks what they really ought to do is hike
cross-country, following the Lewis and Clark trail to Astoria. Chevy, who
is utterly serious, dismisses this foolishness—and yet, we can imagine Chevy
making this same remark to his parents. The hike is the kind of thing he
would like to do—in theory. And Alberta, with her mixed zany naivete
and worldliness, is exactly the right traveling companion. But they do
not go. He remains with Alberta until fall, when he begins graduate work
in another state—a safe choice, this—but he never really understands her.
What Chevy wants, it seems, is someone who will openly oppose him.

The author’s point is that when the rebel has things his way, he becomes
confused: Daniel’s mother approves of his marriage to Ellen, Alberta
obliges Chevy by hopping into bed. Opposition is a prop, holding up
the protester.

What especially interests me about this novel—beyond the level of
activity, the story—is the author’s view as regards form and content. And
here J am of a divided mind, for what I faintly object to I also admire.
For example, Mr. Sterry has completely avoided any of those topics which
one expects to find in a contemporary novel with a college setting: no
mention is made of civil rights, sit-ins, the peace movement, LSD, or

RCR/51
Viet Nam. No one mentions the possibility of military service. Oh, there
is an interesting drunk scene, and—almost—a seduction scene, but no one
smokes pot or promotes free love or catches a police billy-club across

his skull. To avoid these current topics is perfectly all right, of course,
since journalists constantly remind us that college activists comprise

only a tiny minority of the student population. But when I learn that
Chevy is head of the local SDS chapter, and that both Daniel and Ellen

are members, I begin to wonder if this is the same organization that
J. Edgar Hoover stays up nights worrying over. I don’t think he’ll have any

trouble with these people, however, for they are really an extension of

a time that Mr. Hoover likes to recall, the world of Andy Hardy and Henry
Aldrich. A world where life is easy, where the Dean is also Daddy, where
Sunday dinner is a ritual, and where no one worries about things like
money. Except for Alberta, who is beyond the pale of this tightly knit
community, and is busy simply trying to survive, no one even seems to

do any work.

On the other hand, I rather admire Mr. Sterry’s avoidance of that
material which is topical and which would be easy to exploit. Mr. Sterry
may or may not be telling it like it is, but it is interesting, I think, that
the novel opens after the time of demonstrations, after Alberta’s dismis-
sal has been effected. Most writers would want to include this material,
and perhaps even save it for the climax—one can almost see Chevy Callister
mounting the barricades, to throw.a Molotov cocktail through Dean
Callister’s window. By beginning in medias res the book becomes not a
novel of protest but a novel of manners; it focuses on human relationships,
where the confrontation is between people rather than between ideas or
ideologies, and this is, it seems to me, a much more difficult kind of book
to write.

ALBERT DRAKE

52/RCR
a

JUDITH ANNE GREENBERG

CHILDHOOD SHADOWS

Did you follow me down along the beach?
Were you with me then

watching in silence?

I was too young to comprehend

that fearful longing

but when the waves grew near

I knew they were afraid of you.

Did you follow me down along sleep?
Were you with me then

watching in silence?

I wish I could shut the door,

your face is kind;

dreams flee wildly to far within

and you retire softly to her room.

I can hear you still

padding down the long hallway

or stopped around the corner,
your silence breathes so loud.

All the laws within me

forbid that marriage,

your eyes look innocent with pain.

I dreamt that she went crazy

and you became a broken man
bartending in a dive on a narrow street
somewhere near the institution

and waiting out your days betrayed —
that’s one way to stop you

from following me.

RCR/ 53
PANSIES AND OTHER CONFUSIONS

I can no longer tell the difference between pansies and racoons,
black brush marks dabbed on sad clown faces

gazing wistfully upon the world.

Once I saw a racoon overfed and huge

in a private zoo with a name.like Suzie posted on the bars
but when the caretaker passed with his watering can

you leaned close to me and whispered

he was an idiot or an indian

and I couldn’t separate the two and grew confused.

I have picked pansies painstakingly —

it lengthens their season —

and given them to a smiling housewife

who droops their furry faces over rims of bowls

and does not know they should be spotted nestled

in the branches of a lonely country road

their black and puzzled eyes peering from the leaves

with a child crying from the car window that he does not see
where pansies wild and obscure creep beneath the trees.

I cannot separate ostrich from llama any more,

heavy umbrellas of fur drooped over stilts.

I remember eyes of llamas with their oval mournful gaze
of deep and pure chocolate under white fringed lashes
and will not look at ostrich eyes for fear of finding
the stupid startled glance of birds that cannot focus.
They walk on twigs that are slender and smooth

like pussy willow branches clipped early in the spring;
I place them in water on a sunny window sill

and then find canopies of fur above slim reeds

resting motionless together in still cool shallows.

You lean close to me and whisper

of the idiot’s mournful gaze

or of black brush marks dabbed on indian faces

and a child is peering puzzled from a canopy of leaves
because he cannot see

where blurred images begin to blend

beneath the stilting trees.

54/RCR
SUSPENSION

It’s been a week since you left
and I cannot call you back again;
we speak gently by phone

but there is nothing to say —

in the morning our dog was hit by a car,
he seems all right

I mean he will not die;

his tail has lost its curve

hanging limply down

and his eyes seem sadder

than the bird that keeps on crying
somewhere, some branch some tree
unseen beyond our door.

Five years old,

returning with a runaway dog

on a leash he was not strong enough to hold,
he watched the fall

the screech of brakes;

they both came running home.

He sobbed small within my arms
of fur left lying in the street

and the awful cry,

and then ran off to play —

more afraid of anger

than of death. . .

he will not speak of you.

The house is silent

and all the rooms are still;
motionless beside the open door

I listen for the bird

but there is only singing

against the expressionless sky.

RCR/ 55
INTERLUDE

I trembled when I saw you.

“You ought to see a doctor,” you said.
But no, it’s just because you are here;
it’s just because I care

somuch.. .

you smiled and shook your head.

You brought me juice in bed

in the morning;

“you are nervous,” you said
when I spilled some. . .

it’s only that I was remembering
all the night before.

My words were foolish.
““You’re a dreamer,” you said.
Because I am happy

let me dream —

it doesn’t matter

about the fall.

Of course it did matter
when it came;

it doesn’t any more;

I could move gracefully
before you;

I could tell you

all the things I know.

56/RCR
THOMAS KRETZ

LA ENSENANZA DE CIENCIA EN CHILE

Let him fish

the waterlogged brain

of Archimedes,

resist the disparate

forces of Newton,

circulate with Harvey

to the heart of Gray’s Anatomy,
fly through a treatise

on aerodynamics,

swim with icythyology,

unite stamens and pistils,

prove his stability,

withstand atmospheric pressure,
tactfully discuss babies

(yes, with birds and bees),
change skinny pounds to kilos,
flat feet to the arching meters;
when plucked of breath

explain energy and respiration.

Now if his castellano flows
like El] Rio Rahue

he may teach science

to Chilean seventh - graders.

RCR / 57
SUSAN MUSGRAVE

CELEBRATION

Being somebody’s last woman

and the only passenger of the day

I rode out after madness,

that long journey beginning nowhere
meeting shyly at motels

not for each night’s love,

but sliding around the edges

from earth to earth

on parts of a face

that love wore out.

Of course I’m still living.

No one has taken too much blood
although I admit I stole some extra
where fine needles had coffered
bundles and rolls of it. I came back
after to burn the hospital down.

But no one will find me here

asleep in my bones as polished as the night.
I am bled now

like the end of a spear

and blunt as a carpet

ruined once by careful feet.

One day the right disguise

will work, the right frame

slide into place

like counted medicine.

One day I may give up everything
and wear that disguise

to its final sleep.

58/RCR
 

PAULA KRAVITZ

involved
 

 

 

VICKIE LANDSPARGER

2nd des
 

BREAKFAST

 

by LORRIE KEISTER

At 8:15 A.M. the parking lot was empty and Naomi was able to pull the car up close to the
back door of the drugstore. Her head was full of tiresome thoughts. She rubbed a piece of
kleenex across her face and pretended to look in the mirror, being careful not to see anything.

Stepping out, she was forced to look at the scabby, blacktop with its random arrangement
of cigarette butts, candy wrappers, fragmented hamburg buns, empty beer-packs and little piles
of unidentifiable filth. Then there was that delivery hole in the brick wall, still there, still
covered inelegantly with its splintering board cover; and the once-green door, scarred with
kick marks, sticky fingerprints, black grease, and long streaks of rust from the grating over
its window.

Will I have to live in the same damn place forever? thought Naomi, pulling at the heavy
door. Everything was always the same. She felt an almost physical longing for someplace
new, some variation on the eternally repeated settings of her existence.

This door now. She had come through it hundreds of times and could hardly bear
the sight of it. It insisted upon staying the same, same, same, forever, always forcing one
to look at its brute ugliness. In this mood she went inside.

Inside a delirious odor of coffee and frying sausages gave a twist to her hungry stomach.
She had not had breakfast.

Right there, in the back corner of the huge, cluttered store, a small counter with two
booths had created a little, human-sized world. She had always thought of it before as a
soda fountain, but here it was now, functioning as a miniature restaurant. It had not
occurred to her that people might eat breakfast in a place like that, but two women were
sitting there, and in one of the booths, a man and a boy. They looked happy, all of them,
merry, care-free, enjoying life. They seemed to be laughing at the skinny young man behind
the counter, who was wearing a cook’s hat and a white apron tied up under his arm-pits. He
had a long, morose face, with deep vertical lines down the cheeks. He did not smile at all,
but was talking at high speed while he cracked eggs into a bowl, one after another.

RCR/61
“«_..There’s many a stiff upper slip between you and the contoshelated scree,” was
what she thought she heard. It was hard to make out. “Now, in the agriparious zone of
mean time, you should be sure to give her the glum with slades of mew. Because every
bottleray, I don’t care what anybody says, is contaminated with racemes. It’s as plain as
the hose in the millrace.”’ His tone was matter-of-fact, as though anybody would naturally
agree with him, but he spoke so fast that Naomi thought she was hearing the words incor-
rectly. “On the other hand,” he went on, reaching for the eggbeater, “there are plenty of
fractable rassicles too, and that’s playing fast and loose with the gong and the port of it,
but I never fly off the deep end, mind you....”

The two women, dressed in the slippery nylon uniforms of the Universal Supermarket,
were laughing immoderately, and saying, “Hey Skipper, hey, wait a minute....’”, Naomi would
have liked to stay and hear the rest of it, but she couldn’t, naturally, without sitting down and
ordering something, and she didn’t have time. Kenneth was waiting. Kenneth had to get to
work early, today especially. She went on through the loaded aisles and across to the drug
counter, where she presented Kenneth’s nose-drop prescription. After she had waited for
five minutes, studying the Vick’s Vaporub poster, it occurred to her that she might have
gone back there for a cup of coffee while she was waiting. It was probably too late now, she
thought. Five minutes later she could see that it would not have been too late then, but was
so now, etc. Eventually they brought her a tiny, paper-wrapped bottle and took her money.

As she passed the lunch counter on her way out, the boy in the cook’s hat was laying
out plates of bacon and eggs before the father and son in the booth. His eyes, dead serious,
were fixed on the little boy’s face, and Naomi distinctly heard him say, “Go to the ant, thou
sluggard....”. It would have been rude to stop and listen. She continued on doggedly out of
the back door, finding herself incapable of imagining what he might have been talking about.
It was very puzzling. One would have to eat a meal there, she thought, to find out what
made him talk like that, and even then probably not.... This led naturally to the notion
which entered her mind next: that she would like to eat breakfast there herself some
morning.

The thought came over her all of a sudden, most peculiarly,. . .an imagination, really of
what it would be like to get up in the morning, walk out of the house just as soon as you
could get your clothes on, and come up here to eat breakfast, sitting at the counter, watch-
ing the solemn cook perform his tasks, listening to his talk, and staring at the strangers,
maybe even talking to some of them. The idea made her feel so excited that everything in
the world became momentarily interesting, as though she were a child again.

Almost immediately, however, she realized that of course it was impossible. Kenneth
would never be willing to eat in a place like that. Well then, they could eat breakfast some-
where else, someplace that would suit Kenneth. After all, when they were traveling they
ate breakfast in restaurants. It was not an unheard of thing. The expectation, amounting
almost to certainty, that Kenneth would resist it, made the idea so much more appealing,
forbidden acts being those which one feels the strongest inclination to perform.

62/RCR
It would be like a miniature vacation, she told herself, - a vacation from their ordinary
life. She began to consider how she could suggest it to him. “Darling, let’s do something
crazy. Let’s go eat breakfast out.”” No. She knew she didn’t have the authority or the
insouciance to carry that off. “You know what I want to do? I want to go and eat breakfast
out some place, some morning.” This called up a vision of the pained look which would
appear on his face. She could hear him saying ““You what?” in a tone of nauseated disbelief.
That wouldn’t work. No. “Darling, there’s something that I want terribly much to do sometime,
but I don’t know whether or not you'll like it.” That sounded cringing and servile. She could
wait until he wanted her to do something for him, perhaps, and then say playfully, “All right.
I'll do it on condition that you take me out for breakfast tomorrow morning.” That might
just possibly work, if he happened to be in the right mood. But she realized that it wasn’t
what she wanted at all. What she wanted was the privilege of ducking out for breakfast some
morning just as the fancy struck her, sometime when the monotony of the morning routine
weighed to a particularly unbearable degree.

It was always the same. One could not say to Kenneth, “‘Well, how about some French
toast this morning?”’ Or “What about a nice English Muffin?” Kenneth always wanted the
same thing for breakfast: tomato juice, two slices of toast made from Old Settler’s cracked
wheat bread and dribbled with honey, one six minute egg (which often came out wrong),
and coffee made to his precise instructions. He could tell by the way it tasted whether she
had let the pot perk a minute overtime. No. Kenneth would not put up with restaurant
coffee for breakfast. It was probably impossible. “Don’t be a fool,” she said to herself,
and put it out of her mind.

Or tried to. It gnawed at her. Every morning as she opened the refrigerator door and
began to take out the eggs, the butter, and the tomato juice, the thought would flutter across
her mind, “How nice it would be to go out for breakfast.” Especially if the sun were shining,
her imagination was stimulated to picture the inside of a cozy little coffee shop where one
might saunter in carelessly and indulge in the luxury of ordering, oh well, waffles with little
Sausages, perhaps, or sweet rolls studded with pecans and a lovely fluffy omelet. People
were slouching about in this shop, in picturesque poses, reading the morning papers, con-
versing with the waitresses, putting on a show to watch while you ate...transient people
from all over the country, actors and salesmen, lawyers and svelte business women. That
would be the kind of people who ate breakfast out, naturally, being away from home most
of the time.

This day dream would come unbidden while she was preparing a meal. Then suddenly
she would see how ridiculous it was. “Who ever heard of doing such a thing?” She would
ask herself. “Do we know a single person who goes out for breakfast to a restaurant?”’ She
was thinking of their particular friends. But to be honest, it was necessary to admit that
there were lots of people who ate breakfast out every day, people who would start for work
a half hour early and eat in the coffee shop in the basement of the building where they worked.
Yes, of course. But all the same, for her it would be ridiculous, with a kitchen right here and
all that food. She scolded herself for thinking of it.

RCR/ 63
Later on, her attitude changed. It began to seem such a little thing that she wanted,
and monstrous that she could not have it. She saw suddenly that she was not free, that the
daily routine she adhered to with Kenneth was a form of bondage. Doing something to
break it seemed as impossible as breaking out of jail. —

After a week or so she began to despise herself for being a coward. If Kenneth wanted
to do something as much as she wanted this, they would certainly do it. She prodded herself
and reproached herself until finally one morning she spoke.

Kenneth, a green-eyed, brittly thin man, gave off a slightly effeminate impression,
perhaps because of the excessive length of his thick black hair, which he allowed to curl
softly at the nape of his neck, perhaps because of the sensuality of his delicately shaped

mouth. But this impression was erased by his self-assurance, which commanded instant respect.
He approached people with an intimate, intense manner, which was flattering at the same

time that it seemed to indicate a sense of his own importance, a natural authority. It had

been easy for him to work his way up from Salesman in men’s shirts at Stacy’s Department
store, to buyer of men’s clothing. That was where Naomi had met him seven years ago,
tumbling instantly into his magnetic orbit without making so much as one cry of resistance.
She had revolved around him ever since, quitting her job in order to minister to his upkeep

in all the precise detail which he demanded.

Only recently had she begun to look at Kenneth critically. No children had graced
their marriage, and she was beginning to be bored with her life. Sporadic attacks of disloyal
silent criticism of Kenneth had not so far affected her love for him. She looked upon him as
the only person in the world whose opinion mattered, fearing his harsh judgments and un-
moveable opinions more than anything in her world. That was what made it so hard to
think how to approach him. If the thing struck him wrong at the moment, she could never
persuade him otherwise. Her only chance of success was to hit upon the strategically correct
moment and then say it in exactly the right way. The trouble was that, even after six years
of living with him, Naomi hadn’t the slightest idea what that way was. His reactions seemed
utterly random. Sometimes he was precariously amenable, but more often her suggestions
aroused instant animosity. Since she had no idea how to manage him, she resolved to wait
for an opportune moment, and trust to whatever words came into her head. As a matter of
fact she didn’t make up her mind until the moment she said it.

Kenneth was almost always the first one out of bed. On this particular morning it was
the sound of water running in the bathroom which woke her. Sunshine streamed across the
bed in brilliant, dusty bands. Naomi sat up, thrust her feet into her slippers, and felt guilty.
7:10 and she should have been out in the kitchen measuring coffee. She threw on her robe,
picked up the hairbrush and started to drag it through her hair while she gazed out the window.
A fresh blue sky was blooming. Space. Freedom. Golden light.

Impulsively she pushed open the bathroom door and looked in on Kenneth, who was
already pulling a razor down his lathered cheek. “(Good morning,” he said, looking at her
quizzically. She rubbed her face against his shoulder. “(Good morning,” she said. Then, in
a coaxing tone, “Let’s go out for breakfast this morning.”

64/RCR
She could hardly believe she had said it. Kenneth looked at her as though he hadn’t
heard, and she guessed he really hadn’t. “What did you say, dear?” Could she possibly say
it again?

Yes. “I said, let’s go out for breakfast.” But her voice cracked in the middle of “break-
fast.”” He went on shaving.

“Oh sure,” he said. “As soon as I put on my tie.”

That was his first line of defense.

“‘1’m serious,” said Naomi, pushing into the sink in front of him in order to wet a
washcloth. She buried her face in its hot steam.

He stood back, waiting for her to finish. “What do you mean, serious?”

“TI mean, how about going out somewhere for breakfast? Don’t you think that would
be fun?” She turned on the cold water, filled the washcloth, and gingerly lowered her face
into the shock.

‘“‘Are you out of your mind?” said Kenneth emphatically. When opposing her, he was
always unnecessarily emphatic. It was enough, she always thought, just to oppose. Why
did he have to speak as though she had committed some unheard of atrocity? She sighed —
and stepped back. As he resumed his place before the mirror and went on with his shaving
she noticed that his ears had turned a delicate coral color.

“Not specially,” she said bravely, feeling surprised at herself. “I just have a yen to
eat breakfast out for once. Why not? Don’t you ever get tired of doing the same old thing
day after day?”

He turned his head and gave her the kind of arms-length look with which one might
observe a distastful piece of refuse.

“No. Asa matter of fact, I don’t,” he said coldly. “I like the kind of breakfast I eat.
I don’t have any desire to go out first thing in the morning before I’m half awake, and look
at a menu and have to make decisions about food. Besides, how would I have time to do a
thing like that? In order to do that we would have to get up an hour earlier in the morning,
so you should have brought this up last night, if you really wanted to do it.”

It was more or less what Naomi had expected. She went into the kitchen and began
to measure out the water for the coffee.

In a moment she was back at the bathroom door, saying, “How would I know the
night before that I was going to want to go out for breakfast this morning?”’ She turned
immediately back toward the kitchen. Kenneth followed her, wiping his chin with a towel.
“Honest to God!” he said furiously. ““Am I supposed to be ready to leap to attention every
time you’re struck by some crazy whim? Jesus Christ!”” He walked back to the bathroom
and slammed the door, giving Naomi time to think about what to say next. She knew by
now it was useless, but such knowledge does not stifle the desire to win an argument.

At the breakfast table Kenneth read the paper intently. Finally Naomi cleared her
throat, then said tentatively, “Dear. I’m sorry I made you angry. I didn’t mean to.”

“All right,” said Kenneth without looking up.

“T guess 1 didn’t get it across to you what I was talking about. I don’t know whether

RCR/ 65
I can describe it or not. All of a sudden our routine seemed so...so dull, I guess. Now maybe
it doesn’t to you, but it does to me. I guess I need a change or something and this thing
about going out to breakfast just came into my head for no reason at all, and it seemed like
such a good idea and I really wanted to do it so much that I just said it, that’s all. I didn’t
mean to make you mad. Would you be willing to go out to breakfast if you knew ahead
of time, like, say, tomorrow?”

Kenneth raised his head. The glass-green eyes focused on the dust at the back of her
soul. Very slowly, as though he were ejecting a stone from his mouth, he said, “No-o.”

Naomi looked down at her plate and tried to go on eating, but a couple of stupid tears
spilled out of her eyes, and her nose started to run so that she had to leave the table in order
to get a handkerchief. By the time she returned, Kenneth had finished eating and was stand-
ing at the kitchen stove pouring his second cup of coffee.

“Look,” he said roughly. “If you want to do that so damn much, why don’t you go
do it by yourself? Why do I have to go along?”

At that she burst into tears and ran into the bedroom.

“Oh hell!” said Kenneth. Then he slammed two cupboard doors, one after the other.

Intermittently, all through the morning, tears rose in her eyes and coursed down her
cheeks while she went stoically about her work. It was the day when she was due at the
thrift shop at noon, and she should have been hurrying to get through the housework, but
she moved lethargically. Nothing seemed worth doing. Cleaning the bathroom appeared
impossible and she left it undone. Dressing herself to go out proved more difficult than all
the kitchen work. It required a great effort of will to pull on her stockings and fasten the
garters. Her mind kept asking what she was doing that for, as though it was a new activity
and should be required to justify itself. The tears kept coming, and she could not think

what for. “Why am I crying?” she said into the mirror as she washed her face. She seemed
to have almost forgotten what it was which had set her off.

Marge Kovak, who worked with her on Wednesday afternoons, was already in the
shop when Naomi arrived. Marge was pushing clothes around on the racks and beamed
a cheerful smile toward Naomi as she came through the door. “Hello,” said Marge. “‘hello
Naomi. Did you see this gorgeous thing which came in from Mrs. Charles P. Frisbee last
week? Look! If only it was my size.”

Click! Just as though a switch had snapped, Naomi returned to normal. “Twenty
dollars!” she read, looking at the tag. “It must have cost her a hundred at least.”

“And she hardly wore it at all,” said Marge.

By five o’clock, when they closed the store, Naomi had not thought once of the morn-
ing’s disturbance, but as she walked up High Street toward the parking lot where Kenneth
left his car, it came back to her as something remote and unreal. “What foolishness!” she
told herself. “I’m an idiot.”

The raw place seemed healed over. During all of the next week that silly desire did
not recur, and perhaps would have been permanently suppressed if it hadn’t been for
Kenneth.

66/RCR
Naomi and Kenneth were the kind of married people who live with a continuing
struggle to think of something to say to each other, neither one being a compulsive talker.
Thus it was that in the middle of dinner one evening, Kenneth, trying to make conversation,
asked, ‘“‘Well and when are you going to go out for breakfast?”

The question threw Naomi into confusion. “Oh, I’d forgotten about it,” she said,
looking at him, trying to judge what was in his mind. He showed nothing but his usual wry
expression. She decided he was teasing and began to resent it.

“Why? Did you change your mind and decide to go with me?” she asked crossly,
hoping she could think of some clever, critical thrust, and aware that usually she couldn’t.

“No. I just think that if you want to do that so badly, you ought to do it.”

“What would be the fun, going alone?”’ |

Kenneth’s finely carved, red lips compressed themselves into a thin ugly line, and he
gave her a level stare full of severity. ““You mean you are incapable of enjoying anything
unless I’m along?”

“No. I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I just. . .Oh, wouldn’t it seem silly now, for me
to get breakfast for you and then go out to a restaurant to eat my own?”

“You don’t have to get my breakfast. Whenever you take a notion to do that, just
inform me and I'll get my own breakfast that morning. And off you can go.”

“That would be crazy.” She felt overwhelmed by the senselessness of it.

“No it wouldn’t,” said Kenneth. “The trouble with you is you’re enslaved to conven-
tion, habit, routine.”

It struck home. It was true. She could see it was true. She couldn’t think what to
say.

“You're always chafing against the boredom of routine, and that’s because you’re
really such a slave to it. You can’t break out of it by yourself. You want me to take you
out of it.”

“No I don’t, dear,” she protested, knowing she was lying. “I just don’t like the idea
of going off and leaving you like that in the morning. It seems to me married people should
do things together.”

“You're afraid to do it. I dare you to.”

“Oh nuts!” she muttered angrily. “I don’t want to go anymore.”

“You're afraid,” said Kenneth.

“Tam not. Do I have to go now, just because you’re needling me?” It was intolerable.
First he thought her a fool for wanting to go, and now he thought her a coward for not going.

But after that she could no longer forget about it. Kenneth did not mention it again,
but every morning as she started to prepare breakfast the thought came into her head rather
vaguely, “He said I should go by myself. He said I’m afraid to.”” Then she would automati-
cally put it away by thinking, “Well, one of these days I will go.”

She felt that promise as a kind of decision, although she had to repeat it to herself
every day. Gradually she came to see that she would have to act on it, or somehow look

RCR/ 67
directly at what was there inside her silly head. An absurd compulsion she told herself, and
now all this foolish indecision about what had utterly no importance. For instance, when
she considered seriously the idea of dashing out somewhere for breakfast by herself, really
doing it, say, tomorrow, the first consideration which came to mind was, “Where?” To

the drug store? The Tea Shoppe? The Motel? Possibly the coffee shop at the Statler. Or
Howard Johnson’s. And the impossibility of deciding where, would force her to put off
the whole project until tomorrow. Tomorrow she found that she overslept, getting up
barely in time to brew Kenneth’s coffee and boil his egg, for of course she had resolved
that she would not allow him to get his own breakfast simply in order to indulge her own
whim. And to go out for breakfast after Kenneth had left was impossible, because he drove
the car to work every day. The idea of walking several blocks to catch a bus in order to go
somewhere for breakfast did not appeal to her. Of course she could walk to the drug store.

Why didn’t she want to do that? After all, the lunch counter in the drug store was the spot
which had seemed so enticing in the first place, and to walk there would take only about
fifteen minutes. She felt distinctly disinclined to take this course. ..Why? she asked her-
self. Why? Because it was possible?

“True!” She gave the Swiss steak she happened to be pounding a hard wallop. And
another. “True! Absolutely true! I’m afraid to do it.”

There it was. She would have to go through with it somehow. She went on pounding
the steak with such vigor that Kenneth, who had just wandered into the kitchen, said, “Take
it easy. You'll ruin the board.”

He meant the cutting board on which she was pounding the meat. She looked at him
with an expression of exasperation. “Dear!” she said.

“Well, you will,’ said Kenneth.

“What do you think this board is for, darling? You can’t ruin it.”

“But look. You’re making marks on it.”

“T’ve made marks on it hundreds of times. They go away. And if they didn’t, what
of it?”

“But it’s so nice.” It was an excellent cutting board, thick and beautiful. “I hate to
see you ruin it.”

“I’m not ruining it, dopey. Go away.”

He went away. Tomorrow would be Sunday. The car would be absolutely available.
She resolved to go out to breakfast somewhere tomorrow morning, as early as possible. It
was a terrifying prospect.

On Sunday morning she was into her slip and pulling on stockings before Kenneth
woke up enough to make comments.

‘Where are you going?” he said untenderly.

“Out to breakfast,” she answered quickly, trying to keep her voice from trembling.
Her viscera felt as though she were going to have a tooth pulled.

68/RCR
Kenneth yawned, turned over, said “Oh,” and closed his eyes. It was insulting. He
was quick enough, she thought, to notice her timidity, but blind to evidences of courage.
Oh well, perhaps this was an oblique compliment, for it indicated that she was doing a
successful job of concealing her agitation. “Here I am, doing something I don’t want to do

at all,’ she thought. The bed looked tempting, and for a moment she contemplated pulling
off her clothes and climbing back into it, covering her head, and forgetting the whole thing.
She sat down before the dressing table and began to apply lipstick, thinking, ““How did I
get myself into this? Why do I have to do this?”

As she gathered up handbag and car keys, Kenneth opened his eyes and muttered,
“Have a good time.”

It was the patronizing tone which made her angry. “Oh shut up,” she said, and left.

All this determination had not been preceded by any form of decision about where to
go, and as she drove out of the driveway trying to make up her mind, it began to seem more
and more ludicrous that a single woman should be entering an eating place at 8:30 on Sunday
morning. What if she met someone. who knew her? How could she explain? “I’ve been
quarreling with my husband.” “I’ve been out all night and I’m afraid to go home.” She
drove into the parking lot behind the drug store, walked across the empty waste of blacktop

and stopped with her hand on the handle of the back door. It was locked.
Feeling foolish, as though she were being watched, she flooded the engine and then
was forced to sit waiting before the car would start. ‘““Everything’s going to be closed,” she

thought hysterically. She drove slowly down Market Street, which was unbelievably empty
and contained nothing but green lights. A sign, she thought, a sign to keep on toward the
center of town. The Statler. That was sure to be open.

Main Street, empty of cars, gave her suddenly a great sense of freedom. Nothing was
in the way. It was possible to park almost in front of the hotel, and climbing out she had
a fleeting sense of being in a strange city. This is how the city must look to a stranger,
coming into town alone, she thought, looking round at the clutter of inactive buildings.
But she could not quite manage the leap. The two department stores facing each other,
the thirty year old hotel, the five and ten, the conglomeration of small stores strung out along
the street in one-storey, antique buildings. . .It was irritatingly, inescapably, still only her
home town, which she knew to the point of boredom.

The taxi drivers lounging near the hotel stared at her, or she thought they did. In
front of the entranceway, the doorman in his histrionic costume was handing passengers
out of the long, black airport limousine. Naomi hesitated, reluctant to push her way into
the revolving door among all these people. Instead, she walked past the hotel door and
stopped to stare into a jewelry-store window, trying to look purposeful. She tried to
imagine that she had money to squander, but there was nothing among the expensive
baubles that she would have wanted to own. The window refused to hold her interest.
They had propped open the doors now, and two porters were unloading luggage from the
limousine. Suddenly she remembered that there was a side door leading almost directly
into the coffee shop. Feeling somewhat furtive, she escaped around the corner and into

RCR /69
that door, finding herself immediately in front of a heavy glass door marked ‘Cafe’, and
thankful to have avoided the walk across the lobby.
“What am I afraid of?’’ she said clearly inside her head, and tugged on the door.
Just in time, she saw the Kimberly family sitting inside. Eunice Kimberly had once
been Naomi’s best friend. That was when she was Eunice Plappert and they were seniors
in High School. Naomi had not seen her for years, but it would be impossible not to
speak. There she sat in unconscious bliss, with her husband and two children spread
out around a table, eating pancakes and reading the Sunday paper. Naomi quickly let
go of the door and retreated to the street, thinking, “Eunice always did have the luck.”
Feeling as though she were being watched, and afraid of showing confusion, she

began to walk briskly along Main Street. She knew there were two or three eating places
in the next block, one of which must be open. None was.

She felt ravenous and began to drive about aimlessly, but nothing was open. Obvious-
ly Sunday morning was an impossible time to go out for breakfast. Why had she got herself
into this idiotic situation anyhow? Now she would have to drive around until a decent
amount of time had elapsed before she could go home and face Kenneth. It was unthinkable
to admit to him that she had failed to enter a restaurant.

Suddenly she remembered the lunch counter in City Hospital, a spot that was open
twenty-four hours every day. Of course. She could eat something there, appease her
hunger, and kill some time before going home. If she met anyone, it would be easy to
make up a tale about bringing in a sick friend. She turned east at the next corner.

The lunch counter at the hospital was cushioned in a profusion of plush animals,
perfume atomizers, gift-boxed cosmetics, bed jackets, gold-embroidered slippers, transistor
radios, pipes, cigars, electric razors and racks of gaudy magazines. A man in a white coat
sat at one end of the counter, sipping a coke. At one of the two small round tables,
another white-coated man was drinking coffee while he read the funnies. Naomi perched
herself on a stool at the opposite end, and observed the waitresses. There were three, two
of them engrossed in conversation with each other. The third stood directly in front of
Naomi, laconically buttering a pile of toast on a crumb covered board. Without looking
up, she piled the three pieces of toast on a plate, sliced them into triangles, and carried
them to the man at the table. She came back slowly then and placed herself in front of
Naomi, presenting a sullen face with dark, hollow eyes, eyebrows raised quizzically. Naomi
decided against eating.

“Could I have a hot chocolate made with skim milk?” she asked.

The waitress looked irritated. “We don’t have any skim milk.”

“All right,” said Naomi. “I'll take one made with regular milk.” The girl shifted a
cup under one of the machines, squirted it full of hot chocolate, and slid it along the counter,
slopping into the saucer a splash of dark purple liquid.

While the waitress brushed crumbs from the board, Naomi began to drink. “Tastes
like it’s made from water,” she said suspiciously.

70/RCR
The dark face turned up toward her, frowning, overly concerned. “Oh no. That’s
made with real milk.” A sincere look. “Anything else?”

Automatically Naomi said, “No thanks.” But as soon as the girl had disappeared
through a door at the far end of the shop, she began to wish she had ordered some toast.
She stared without effect at the other two waitresses, who were still absorbed in their
animated and highly audible conversation, down there by the orange juice machine.
Although it was still only September, they were talking about Christmas shopping. “I’ve
already spent thirty dollars on my sister,” said the fat one. The other had aggressive
upper teeth which caused her to lisp. “Oh man, I wish I could think what I’m going to
get for my boy-friend,” she said excitedly. “Anyway, I know I’m going to spend at least
fifty dollars on him.” Naomi rattled her spoon and cleared her throat.

The fat one looked her way. “Could I have a piece of whole wheat toast, please?”’
said Naomi.

“We don’t have no whole wheat. Only white,” said the girl, moving slightly toward
her.

“All right. Pll take white.” The waitress began to pull slices of bleached cottony
bread from a waxed wrapper. She put them in the toaster, pushed down the lever, and
leaned back against the mirror.

“No skim milk. No whole wheat bread. You’re ruining my diet,” said Naomi,
smiling.

The waitress looked at her earnestly. “Oh you don’t have to worry,” she said. “That
hot chocolate’s made with water.” Had she been listening? If not, what did she mean by
that? In any case, what did she mean? It should have been funny, but Naomi was able to
feel only depression at this crowded encounter with pointless dishonesty. She felt betrayed
by the sincerity of the hollow-eyed waitress who had made her believe she was drinking milk
even though it tasted like water.

She watched, feeling more and more indignant, while this waitress buttered the toast
by rubbing a tiny pat of butter over the surface, and then carefully scraped off every bit of
excess and put it back on the butter dish. When the toast came to her to be eaten, it was
almost dry. She scooped out all the jelly in the little paper cup and spread the toast with
that, thinking angrily that this was once when she would not leave a tip. A moment later
she noticed a placard fixed to the mirror: ‘No tipping please.”

But driving home along the empty Sunday streets, a light expansive feeling unexpec-
tedly came over her. The trees and houses danced past her eyes. The street paving sparkled.
She saw the city as though looking down from some heavenly cloud: a clot of little people
living close to each other but separately in their little boxes. She saw herself as one of them,
an ant among ants, threading her way skillfully through their complex paths without touching
any of them. She was free to go where she pleased. All the things to do in the world were open
and available for her to choose from. She remembered this untethered feeling from somewhere

RCR/71
in the past. It was how she had felt after she first got up in Sunday school and recited the
names of the twelve apostles. It was a feeling which came after doing something you have
been terribly afraid to do. You see that you have done it and everything else becomes possible.
It was a spoonful of freedom, and she held it in her mouth, savoring the taste all the way home,
until she walked through the back door and saw Kenneth.

He was standing at the kitchen counter, wearing his red and grey plaid dressing gown,
eating his breakfast there, and reading the paper. As she came in, he looked toward her and
smiled his most melting smile, fixing her with a close, personal look as though he really saw
and found her interesting. “Well,” he said happily, sweetly, his delicious warm voice spilling
over her senses, reaching out to grasp her. “Well, did you have a good time?”

Naomi swallowed. The spoonful of freedom disappeared down her throat. “Marvel-
ous,” she said. It was imitation freedom.

He put his arm around her, and turned her head toward him so that she had to look
at the hypnotic eyes which were trying to force her to tell. He wanted to know. He was
directing all of his formidable weapons toward her: the smile, the eyes, the gentle touch,
the tender voice, the intense interest. ‘““Tell me about it,” he said. She almost did. She was
about to tell him all about it when he said it again. “Come on. Tell me about it.” This
time she heard in his tone the false enthusiasm one uses on a child, and she pulled away.

“TI don’t have to,” she said rather insolently. “I don’t know why I should.”

His look changed to that of a scientist observing an amoeba. He was watching her
carefully. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I guess I don’t know either, why you should.” Abruptly
he turned back to the paper he had been reading.

Her insolence crumbled. The little taste of liberty — the spoonful of freedom — had
dissipated without affecting anything. She felt the tether pulling her back into orbit and
the familiar dark anxiety, tearing at her mind. She wanted him to know. She wanted him
to want to know, to be interested in what she had done, to find everything about her fas-
cinating, to care about what she felt. That he should turn away was unbearable. She threw
the car keys on the counter top beside him and walked into the dining room.

Just then the spoonful of freedom must have trickled down to her toes for she kicked
one of the dining room chairs, and most unaccountably found herself standing at the side
window, making a speech to a robin out there who was pecking at the orange berries on a
mountain ash tree. “It’s none of your business. It’s nobody’s business. If I have to go
alone when I go out to breakfast, then I don’t have to tell where I’ve been. . .or what I ate. . .
or who I saw.” She glared at the little bouquets of berries on the tree outside. They
quivered and swayed.

Kenneth came up behind her then, and embraced her, kissing her on the neck and
cupping her left breast in his hand. He was never rough, and his touch could make her
tremble with pleasure, but she shook him off impatiently, then turned suddenly and
clutched at his arms, pressing her face against his chest. “Oh please!” she cried. “Please.”

She could not have said what she was begging for.

72/RCR
    

  

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by PETER FIORE

William Faulkner spoke of his novels as failures. What he meant was they were failures
in the sense that all human endeavors are doomed to failure simply because man’s
execution of an idea can never match his conception of it. Thus for Faulkner, success
depended a great deal on what a man set out to accomplish, the degree he was willing to
expose himself to failure, which, paradoxically, increased the possibility of success. On
the other hand, success in pop music is measured by a performer’s ability to sell records.
And the continuing phenomenon of popular success is that it is immediate and highly
volatile but treacherously temporary, since it is generally without sufficient foundation.
The recently disbanded Buffalo Springfield, a Canadian-born, California-based
rock group, failed because they were too human to succeed: That is, they thrived on taking
chances. But if their recordings did fail, it was like that of the novels of Nathaniel West.
There weren’t enough of them. For in the three years the Buffalo herded together, they
released only three albums and each was very carefully put together. This is amazing
when you consider that even Simon and Garfunkel, perhaps the most consciously artistic
performers in the pop field, have released four albums, five if you count what they did
with The Graduate, in about the same amount of time.

RCR/ 73
The Springfield always had impeccable musical sense, and at their best they pro-
jected a free-wheeling, open spontaneity. They were never a gritty, gutsy group and were
at home more in Nashville than Memphis. But that’s too easy. Listening to their albums
you re impressed by their versatility and ability to integrate colorful ingredients from
rock, country and folk on most of their songs.

The Springfield’s approach to country music was a process developed from album
to album with increasing adeptness. On their first album Buffalo Springfield, the country
elements were merely suggested, introduced to add variety, as on “Burned” and “Sit
Down I Think I Love You.” Their second album Buffalo Springfield Again was divided
between straight rock material, like “Mr. Soul” and “Bluebird,” and country blues, like
“A Child’s Claim To Fame” and “Sad Memory.” But on their monumental farewell
album Last Time Around, it was virtually impossible to distinguish country sounds from
rock, for both had been completely integrated. In fact, on “Four Days Gone,” “Special
Care” and “Kind Woman,” among others, they’ve seemed to create an idiom all their own.

Always technically to the point, the Springfield had arrangements, mostly written
by the group’s leader Steve Stills, which subtly brought out their unusual approach to
style and instrumentation, and combined the group with some very haunting strings on
their last two albums. Then there was Neil Young’s lead guitar, terse, brilliantly clear and
emotionally evocative without ever straining. On the first album it was Young’s sparkling
solos which more than anything else brought the bright country air into what was prim-
arily a rock setting. And his sweet funny counterpoint with guest dobrist James Burton
on “A Child’s Claim to Fame”’ was simply beautiful.

Young shared the vocals with Stills and rhythm guitarist Richie Furay, none of whom
stood out as remarkable vocalists. But the two and three part harmony they constructed
was remarkable. Their use of the human voice as another instrument was as advanced as any
group singing today, different from but as exciting as the Jefferson Airplane’s. That’s a
hell of a claim, but listen to what’s going on in “Flying on the Ground Is Wrong” and
‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” from the first album, then jump to “On The Way
Home” from Last Time Around, and you'll have a good idea of how voices and instru-
ments can blend and interplay into a total unity of effect.

Lyrically, the Springfield were more than adequate but far from Dylan or Paul
Simon’s minor masterpieces. Most of their songs were written by Stills or Young, and
they did produce their share of banalities:

And nobody’s right,
If everybody’s wrong.

oe ee ee

I get high just thinking of you.

74/RCR
But they could also evoke some very refreshing and rare musical moments:

In a strange game
I saw myself as you knew me.

There goes another day
And I wonder why
You and I keep tellin’ lies.

You there, on the corner,
Staring at me.
Do you think I’m trouble?

Would you like to shoot me down’?

Of all their albums Again was perhaps the most daring. Young and Stills kept you
alert and pleasantly surprised with some complex and often wonderful tempo changes.
On “Everydays” Stills’ piano was almost funky and the harmonic texture of Stills and
Richie Furay’s vocal anticipated some of the more adventuresome work of The Band on
Music From Big Pink.

But if you don’t have any of the Springfield’s. albums, start with Last Time
Around. Its only mar was a kind of African chant titled “Uno Mundo,” which just didn’t
fit with the style established by the other songs. Outside of that, the rest of the material
was fully realized and often unbelievably lovely. In it the Springfield communicated a
carefree minstral quality and a feeling of joy that emerged even from their songs of con-
flict and frustration. And that is no mean achievement.

So if the Buffalo Springfield did fail, their failure to a great extent lies in the shabby,
competitive values of pop music, values which are dictated by charletans and mindless
teeny bops. Even future musicologists may ignore the passing of the Springfield in a year
that spun through the emergeance of The Band and Laura Nyro, the demise of the Byrds
this summer and the current split between Big Brother and Janis Joplin. Still, that’s a sad
thing, if only because a small peninsula of pop music has broken off, diminished it that
much. And it can’t afford the loss.

RCR/ 75
ROBERT VANDER MOLEN

76/RCR

TRAILS

My father once found
A dead woman above

The park where horses

Were hired out

Trails in

Leaves on the floor

And crossing dogs also
Snuffed out in the vapors

Of the city which cling up there
Caught down between the waists
Of trees
 

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ate

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gett. Spectr boun. Oh dunes

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GINNY FRY

they
LINDA M. AMOROSI

GRANDFATHER

Isa

you could not speak
words I would understand
but I came to know

your love

warm in the hand

held walking springward,
glass bottles chinking

at our sides.

I found you

in your rocking chair,
late in the afternoon;
waiting for wood puzzles,
I watched your hands
reach

for those strange pieces
of soft pine. |

The lines that held your face
eased into age. .
This is the way I remember you
stretched on the downstairs cot.
Then it was I who could

not speak.

When I was twelve

I saw you

your hands

wise,

and your face

stern again.

I counted flower cards.
It was when they closed
your door |

and I couldn’t reach
your hand

that I remembered.

RCR/79
CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES

VIRGIL SCOTT isa full professor in English at Michigan State. He has published
four novels and numerous stories in such magazines as Esquire, Argosy, and

Good Housekeeping. He is presently at work on a historical novel.

MICHAEL HOWDEN’S translation from the French of Rene Char will be included
in his full translation of Char’s Seuls Demeurent, to - published by Random
House, Inc.

JAMES C. BALOIAN is an Irvine poet. He has poems in recent issues of Ararat,
Beyond Baroque, Midwest Quarterly, Alaska Review, and Colorado State Review.
PETER WILD is also an Irvine poet. His work has appeared just about everywhere.
His book, Afternoon in Dismay, was published by the Art Association of
Cincinnati last spring.

SYLVIA WROBEL isa ftee lance editor in Lexington, Kentucky. She has previously
published poetry and fiction in the Laurel Review and Descant. Also she has recently
been published in an anthology of former fiction contest winners by Seventeen.
HUGH FOX is the editor of Ghost Dance. Of the long experimental poem printed
here he writes: “‘I got the idea for this poem at the Conference of Small Magazine
Editors and Publishers held in Berkeley in May of 1968. RJS (“Captain Zero”), the
Cleveland poet and editor of the Third Class Junkmail Buddhistic Oracle, told the
audience that, for him, California was a psychedelic prostibula (whorehouse). Was
it? In 18th century Providence that summer I thought the problem through. This
poem is that thinking.”

JUSTIN KESTENBAUM is an associate re in History at Michigan State
University and we love him.

RICHARD J. AMOROSI recently moved to East ene from Amherst, Mass. His
poems appear in recent or forthcoming issues of Ghost Dance , Eikon, Quixote and
other magazines. One of his poems was recently selected for The Bantom Anthology
of East Coast Poets. A book of his poems will be published next spring.

H.L. VAN BRUNT is the widely published managing editor of The Smith. His book,
Uncertainties, was published by the Horizon Press last spring.

ALBERT DRAKE is an assistant professor in the English department at Michigan
State University. He has published fiction and poetry in North American Review,
Northwest Review, Shenandoah and West Coast Review, among others. He has also
had a story recently accepted by Redbook.

JUDITH ANNE GREENBERG lives in East Lansing. These are her first published
poems.

THOMAS KRETZ , S.J. is a Jesuit priest living in Osorno, Chile.
SUSAN MUSGROVE is from Berkeley, California and has appeared in several
literary magazines.

LORRIE KEISTER is a housewife in Akron, Clio. oe this is her first published
story, she has previously published poetry in American Haiku and Podium. She also
took first prize for fiction in the University of Indiana’s Creative Writing Contest in
1966.

PETER FIORE has recently appeared in Jessuit Missions, True Confusions and Family
Circles. For the past week he has been asleep and thus we have been unable to contact
him.

ROBERT VANDER MOLEN is the author of Blood Ink and The Invisible Lost Book
of Deep Ocean Fish, collections of poems published by Zeitgeist.

LINDA M. AMOROSI is the charming and talented wife of Richard J. Amorosi.

80/RCR
RED CEDAR REVIEW
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Red Cedar Review Staff

editor

associate editor
poetry editor
fiction editor
managing editor
art editor
Justifier

staff

PEGGY CASE
ETTA ABRAHAMS
JIM TIPTON
PETER FIORE
STEVE HATHAWAY
SUE BUDNY
SYLVIA KRIEGER
ROBERTA HERTER
DAVE MATTSEN