1 Heritage A Short Short Story By Mary Scala "Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything." — bokonon Hamilton woke up that morning with A Sinking Feeling. He lay in Jbed with his eyes closed and hardly breathing at all, I'Wityk feeling his Feeling, just to make sure. Ten minutes went by, and it remained, so he jumped to the floor and tip-toed across the room to his desk. After a moments MA V- careful deliberation, he selected a bright / orange, number two pencil, and wrote across the wall in even capitals an inch high: "A Sinking Feeling." At first he wrote it just that way, in the ramrod straight, egg rounded capitals he had & practiced so carefully his two years in first grade. Then he began to experiment. Over »? W % the door, in gothic script, he wrote "a sinking feeling." He used a camel Wk paintbrush and blue tempera black v.;' 1 laundry marker on his girlfriend's right **»* • , thigh, when she woke up and made him , run the tail of the "g" right up into the crossbars of the "f" on "feeling." "Now look what you've made me do," ,i v said Hamilton sadly. His girfriend looked at Hamilton, at the walls and floor, and at her right thigh, tossed the sheet aside, threw on her coat and ran out. "Don't slam the door," Hamilton reminded her. "She left them all over the floor." "And they're all over the floor in the "Didn't she say anything at all?" Harry "You mean she's some sort of carrier, room?" asked him later, after Hamilton, prodded or somethin' like that." "Right next to the bed." by two drinks, had told him the whole By pushing his finger up against the "And they're still there?" story. glass, Hamilton found he could move his "Probably," said Hamilton, aware that "No. She just picked up and left," he drink back and forth across the he was beginning to repeat himself. said, lifted his finger out of his drink and countertop. He was delighted, because he "1 mean, are you sure you didn't bring began to write on the countertop. found tracing the words made him feel a any with you?" "Stop that," Harry said. little less worse. His drink was making little swish, swish Hamilton put his finger back into his "What?" he said vaguely. sounds, and the countertop had an uneven drink and sighed. "1 don't know what to "... carrier ," mumbled Harry, . . . wet spot where Hamilton had been make of it." watching the swaying glass with growing writing his message over itself. It was "Well, you've got to admit it was a apprehension. difficult for him to look up, or to curtail little weird." "Oh, yes, yes, definitely," answered the mad activity of his finger, and "She didn't even put her clothes back Hamilton, who had learned a long time Hamilton found he needed all his on." ago that, when he didn't understand what concentration to keep the imaginary "g" was going on, it was safer to agree with "No, I mean to wake up with a thing at the end of "sinking" from running into like that inside you. It must be pretty someone who did. the crossbars of the imaginary "f." He rough." "Then this thing, or whatever you call wished his girfriend hadn't made him mess "I can't keep them, and 1 really don't it, it might be catching?" up the italics; he wished Harry would say have any idea where to send them." "Probably," said Hamilton. something he understood. "I thought," Harry said suspiciously, "And you have it, right?" "... rslmp ..." replied Hamilton "that it was an 'it,' not a 'them.' You "Right," affirmed Hamilton, beginning vaguely. know, just one." to feel a bit confused. (Continued on back page) drawings/david The oldest volume of the Arnold family album spans the years 1850-1920. Early this year David Kirkpatrick began several sequences of drawings based on its photographs — working with the poses, feel and tone of names and faces receding through some sue generations. Concerned with the "gap" and transition of time, these drawings depict old people in nostalgic light, creating a time lapse between viewer and image. The feel of old photographs (people in the then, the past) is of age twice removed — the old in the old, time elapsed for both subject and viewer. Some possess an indistinctness of line, the subject fading to become almost one dimensional — here the feel of page and picture merge, time and form become indistinct, preventing the viewer from becoming too close to the personality and moment. The grids in several of the drawings create a tension between opposing concepts of stasis (the static flat moment of the old people on the page) and progression (an analytic growth or development). The series "Harvest 1865" is drawn in golds and brown tones, the others in black and white echoing the photographs. David also is interested in poetry and mixed media, has worked in many areas of the plastic arts and recently with film. He is presently the co-editor of FREEWAY (a newly formed literary magazine among Michigan universities based at MSU). — Dennis Pace Josiah Kirkpatrick photography by father of Jacob K. MSU and Dennis Pace grandfather of Henry, Willis & Mary (20"xl 2") Untitled (from the sequence "Harvest 186S") (20"x26"> kirkpatrick Untitled (from the sequence "Harvest 1865") (12"*12"> Untitled Portrait (20"xl 2") Ira W. Davis (20"xl 2") Heritage front of Harry. "It just seems fair," he Hamilton was sobbing uncontrollably; (Continued from front) said. he ran the back of his hand over his face. "What?" said Harry. "Now, we've got to set up this thing so Little drops of liquor slid into his mouth, it's fair and square," said Hamilton's and he wanted to throw up. "What?" said Leanne, lifting the "That one," he said, and father. "Now, you see this piece of pointed at the streaming colander out of the sink. "I'm candy?" cup on the far left. He was more confused sorry but I didn't hear you." Hamilton nodded, to show that he did. than he had been the time Mrs. Norris had I said, Hamilton thought, that I love cried his test paper "O.K. Now watch. I'm going to put it over that first week; the way you make lasagne. I love the way under one of these cups. Watch which more frightened than the time he had you talk out of one side of your mouth one. Then I'll move the cups around real found his mother unconscious, lying in and pay attention to me, just as if I was fast and you be sure to watch the one her own blood. really worth paying attention to. I'd love with the candy under it, o.k.? Then when "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," screeched his to spend the next 40 or 50 years lying in a I stop moving them, you tell me which father, sending the cups spinning across bed that belongs to both of us, eating cup the candy is under. If you're right, the room, "ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" lasagne. you get the candy. Now, are you sure you Hamilton turned his head away and "Hamilton, did you say something?" understand?" began to retch. "No; no, nothing important, you know Hamilton nodded again. "Ha, ha," laughed his father, "that's me,"he laughed. "You're sure now?" asked his father, what you think!" who had always been very careful to "What do you mean, it's not "Boy, I really gotta hand it to you,ttet important?" cried Harry hysterically, explain things twice to Hamilton ever you can look at something like that so "You mean it's not important that some since Mrs. Norris had tearfully explained philosophically," said Harry. "I mean, if it broad is wandering all over the city that they just couldn't pass Hamilton into were me, 1 don't know what I'd do." the second grade this year. "Fair is fair," said Hamilton, taking his spreading those things?" "I mean," said Hamilton with "Well, if you're sure, here goes." Then eyes away from the mirror and deliberate effort, "That it's my problem, his father's hands began to move. concentrating on his writing. "It's all in and I'm sorry I even brought it up." Hamilton tried very hard to keep track of the way you look at it." "Your problem! Of course it is. I don't the candy cup, but the old man's hands Harry opened his mouth, closed it and want anything to do with it. Have a few moved faster and faster and the scraping looked at Hamilton closely. "Well," he problems of my own you know. One or of the overturned cups on the wooden said finally, "I suppose so." two girls who have been spreading a lot of table made a noise that grew inside of Hamilton thought about Leanne and other stuff. Hey," he said, narrowing his Hamilton's head and made it hurt. His wondered why, for all these years, he had eyes, "you seen a doctor?" eyes crossed with effort, and he began to never bothered to look her up. "All over "No, why?" cry. the floor," he wrote in big, wet letters in "Why? Listen friend, that stuff ain't "Watch, watch! I'm going to stop in a front of Harry. much of a problem if you catch it right minute, and then you tell me which one," screamed his father, so taken with the "Yes," said Harry definitely, waving his away, but you let it go too long and it drink in front of Hamilton's face, "it's all ruins you for life, if you know what I rushing cups that he spilled his drink. The in the way you look at it." mean." cups swam madly in the liquor and little "That's all right. I'm drops flew up into Hamilton's eyes and A smile crept up the side of Hamilton's pretty much ruined already, if you mouth, making him cry even more. face. "Ha, ha," he said, and took his know what I mean," said Hamilton, looking at the "Ah, hah!" The cups were still now, finger out of his drink. He wrote "A reflection of his bald pate in the mirror and his father's hand moved over them in Sinking Feeling" in wet capitals all over over the bar. jerky patterns like a magician weaving a the front of Harry's suit. "Ha, ha," Harry's head bobbed next to his in the magic spell. "Now, boy," said his father, laughed Hamilton, "that's what you "tell me which one." think." mirror, and Hamilton watched with quiet surprise as a look of horror spread over Harry's face and tears began to well up in his eyes. "Why you poor bastard," sobbed Harry, "you never said." "Those poor bastards," sobbed Leanne, "they never had a chance." Her hand crept up to the radio knob and switched it off, cutting off the President between ''day " and ' 'infamy." "You could've at least let him finish." "All those poor boys, and they never had a chance." "Just ordinary justice," said Hamilton quietly, "neither did I." "What?" Hamilton walked into the kitchen, picked up the colander and tossed the cold, starchy noodles into the wastebasket. He was neither happy nor unhappy; reaching down, he scraped a bit of noodle from the side of the basket and stuck it in his mouth. "Let me buy you a drink," said Harry \ when he could talk again. "Here . \ bartender, give my friend here another drink. Give him two if he wants 'em." He ; -uched Hamilton gingerly on the shoulder. "How come you never said?" he asked. Hamilton moved his finger from his old {■ drink into his new one and began writing in the clean spot on the countertop in editors/robert sickels, denise mccourt graphics/ron pitts