ampersand magazine - issue 1
DESCRIPTION
The Winter 2010 Issue of the UARK literary magazine, Ampersand.TRANSCRIPT
Staff
Fiction Editors
John Cartwright
Kristen Ritterbrush
Colin McNerny
Jordan D. Sousa
Lacey McKee
Amy Worob
Poetry Editors
James D. Ardis
Max Gutierrez
Whitney Ginn
Copyright
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You may only use Ampersand Magazine for educational or entertain-
ment purposes.
You may distribute Ampersand Magazine as you see fit, as long as
you don’t sell it.
If you use Ampersand Magazine, you must credit the editors.
Messages from the Chief Editors
James D. “Jimmy” Ardis
Chief Editor of Poetry
John W. “Jesus” Cartwright
Chief Editor of Prose
Last semester, I got a poem published in a magazine I’
d been sending submissions to for over a year. I was
elated, of course and did everything short of throwing
a parade in my own honor to make sure everyone knew. I
posted a link to the online copy on Facebook, and the
same supportive group of friends that always comments
on those types of posts commented on this.
The next day, somebody told me their friend didn’t
understand my poem. She wanted me to explain it to
them. I asked her why she didn’t explain it to them
herself, at which point she broke down and admitted
that she didn’t have the slightest clue what the poem
was about. After years of reading and writing I had
finally created something that, sadly, blends in quite
well with the current institution-based state of modern
poetry. I’d begun writing inside jokes for the couple
hundred people who have read the five different books
necessary to understand it.
We young poets are all imitating someone. Some of us
our young Eliots or Pounds and compare the figure of a
woman to the intricate first letter of an illuminated
manuscript. Some of us our young Dadaists and feel the
urge to grab a reader’s attention through shock
phrases. While it’s absolutely vital to understand
other poets before developing our own poetic voice,
sometimes I feel that we, in particular young, burgeon-
ing poets, use overly obscure allusions or shock words
in order to mask the fact that our poem has no meaning.
The voice of a magazine is never fully developed in its
first issue. However, I feel that this first group of
poets is a prime example of where I want this magazine
to go. The following is good advice if you plan on sub-
mitting to this magazine, or really, if you write po-
etry with the intent of having it seen by other people.
In poetry, don’t talk above me. Don’t talk below me.
Talk to me. Break my heart.
There’s this great band I listen to called Counting
Crows. You might know them for their smash hit “Mr.
Jones” or for their pop abomination called
“Accidentally in Love”. I’ve spent the last few
months scouring the world for rare and unsold Counting
Crows songs. I’ve got to say it’s the best music
I’ve ever heard and the world has never heard. Adam
Duritz, the frontman and lyricist, is nothing short of
a lyric god. Years from now, poets and writers and
songwriters are going to be invoking him as a Muse in-
stead of that stuffy Greek chick. He writes from the
inside and doesn’t really care what the music world
wants him to write (except for the songs he writes for
soundtracks, most of which are still great). I think
you people should take that attitude. Reader and
writer, you should write about what you care
about. Don’t follow every bit of advice to the let-
ter. Absorb them and metabolize them and then use
them how you wish. There’s a lot of advice from
writing teachers that can be destructive. “Show,
don’t tell” is overhashed and misused. Psycho-
sexual character dramas (those oh-so-pervasive short
stories that you find spewed upon the faces of every
creative writing class ever) can be good, but they can
also be very, very bad. Plot is important but your
characters can get lost in them. So take all the ad-
vice you get in moderation, like candy. Eat too much
and you’ll get sick and puke it all out into a jum-
bled mess, but eat just enough and you’ll get a brain
rush that’ll give you the energy to write more. And
if you want to, check out Counting Crows for some in-
spiration. Hearing that silver syrup flow from your
speakers can only do you good. Congratulations to
everyone who got published in our magazine - I hope to
see you in here someday too.
Authorial Gibbering
Adam Clay is the author of The Wash. His sec-
ond book, A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the
World, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions.
He co-edits Typo Magazine, curates the Poets
in Print Reading Series at the Kalamazoo Book
Arts Center, and teaches at Western Michigan
University.
I was able to rent out a copy of your MFA thesis from
the library and I know that your debut book of poetry
“The Wash” was based mostly on the poems included in
your thesis. How do you feel you've grown as a writer
since this first collection of poems?
I think my work has changed in a lot of ways, but
one of the major shifts I’ve noticed is that my
work has become much more narrative. I grew up in
Mississippi and wrote narrative poems, mostly. Af-
ter moving to Arkansas, I wanted to shift a bit
away from this approach—my poems used other
voices (John Clare and Roethke, to name a few),
but when I moved to Michigan, I decided to return
back to my own voice and write about what I saw on
a daily basis. I really feel that changing ap-
proaches is key—it helps me stay interested in
what I’m writing. Right now I’m working on a
book-length poem, something I thought I’d never
do.
Is there anything in your first book of poetry ?the
Wash? that you would want to go back and change? And if
so what would it be?
Absolutely. But I think that’s entirely normal. When I
read from the book now I change words or cut out lines.
I don’t ever see the poems as being done, per se. I
think they’re constantly changing, depending on where
I’m at when I’m reading the poems and how I feel
about lines or images.
I noticed in your thesis you became interested in
breaking the standard form of a stanza and employing an
almost Marianne Moore-esque system of breaking the
lines up to match the flow of the poem. Is this a tech-
nique you still use and if so, how do you decide when
to employ it and when not to?
I use it some, but again I really prefer to vary my
approaches up. My forthcoming collection has a very
long, almost prose-like, sense of line. For The Wash I
really wanted a more lyrical approach and that particu-
lar style of line seemed to work best in terms of com-
municating that lyrical sense. I firmly believe content
and form should be inseparable, something I learned
when I studied Philip Larkin with Jim Whitehead.
In the poem “Tautology of trash”, you use lines so
long that the poem as a whole blurs the line between
stanza of poetry and paragraph of fiction reminiscent
of fellow Arkansan poet C D Wright's work of poetry/
prose “Cooling Time”. Are you of the school of
thought that poetry is at its core cut off lines of
prose?
Absolutely not. I’ve tinkered with prose poems some
here or there, but I’m never very pleased with them in
the end. I liked having them in The Wash to have a bit
of relief from the other poems, but I don’t know if
I’ll ever have any prose poems in a collection again.
It’s not that I don’t think the form is legitimate; I
just feel that the line break—and the line itself—is
one of the most important poetic tools. James Tate
talks about how a prose poem is a nice way of fooling
the reader into reading a poem. Somehow a paragraph
doesn’t feel as threatening. I am really interested,
though, in how the content of a prose poem can often be
wildly varied from lineated poems. They seem to lend
themselves to a certain type of experimentation that
suits the form.
You leave the majority of your poems without a specific
title and instead use the first line of the poem as the
header. How do you decide which poems to title and
which ones not to title?
The first two poems without titles are in the voice of
John James Audbon, using lines from his journals. I
didn’t see them so much as needing titles; I pre-
ferred that they stand on their own as brief journal
entries. Something I’ve always thought a lot about is
how a poem is really another line of a poem—I try to
use the title in a way that does something new or pro-
vides an additional insight into the work. I can’t
say I always succeed, but I think more and more about
the role of titles in poems and how a title can really
impact a reader’s experience of what follows.
You begin your MFA thesis with a quote from the Bible
and use God as a constant motif in poems such as ?
Prayer for Winter Solstice? and ?His Ashes Con-
verge?. Do you believe spirituality is important to
your poetry? And if so, in what way? I did consider spirituality important in “The Wash”.
I grew up in the South and spent a lot of time in the
church. A lot of the poems really felt like opportuni-
ties for meditation or prayer. My new work has moved
away from this, but the notion of poems as prayers was
something I thought a lot about.
For many people being published in the U of A literary
magazine will be their first publication credit. Where
was the first place you were every published and how
did it feel? “Caught No Fish Last Night” from The Wash was one of
the first poems picked up from the manuscript. Black
Warrior Review expressed interest in it. I can remem-
ber feeling validated in a lot of ways, though looking
back I don’t think it was that important. Sure, hav-
ing some poems picked up helps towards publication of
the manuscript, but having edited TYPO Magazine and
working as an editor at Third Coast, I’ve learned
that so much of publication is arbitrary. Matt Henrik-
sen and I sometimes find great poems, but occasionally
they don’t work with the issue of TYPO we’re piecing
together. I haven’t had many of new poems picked up
lately, either. It’s all a matter of timing, but it’
s probably more about luck than that.
How do you go about setting up a book of poetry? Do
you put the best poems in the front, the back, or do
you take the Heffernan approach of putting the best in
the middle to give your book a rising action, falling
action feel?
That’s a great question. I can recall a class at Ar-
kansas with Davis where interviewed writers about
their first books. Quan Barry’s approach to organiza-
tion as what struck me the most. She alphabetized her
poems by title. I like the randomness of that. I tried
a similar approach by grouping the poems into catego-
ries (the first two sections had poems with birds in
them and the other didn’t). Then I alphabetized them
by the last word of the poems. The random association
gave me a great starting off point. I could tell if a
poem didn’t work well up against another one or if it
didn’t feel like a poem that needed to be in the
opening section. I liked being initially detached from
the process. Obviously I didn’t keep that order, but
it was a nice starting point.
What techniques did your thesis director, Davis
McCombs, teach you that you still use today?
Something I always liked about Davis’ class was how
he would provide specific assignments. I can remember
him asking the class to write a verb-less poem. Before
that point, I always thought of writing as this type
of thing that one had to wait for inspiration to write
a poem. Looking back, that seemed really naïve. Start-
ing back in April, I wrote a poem a day through the
end of June. And now I’m writing a page a day through
July and August of a longer poem. I think we have to
give ourselves exercise to force our way out of a rut.
That’s something I was always struck by when we went
on WITS trips. I was able to get a few new poems out
of the exercises we had the students do. There’s
something about writing everyday that really does help
one set the table for the muse, as Denise Levertov
says. That was by far my favorite part of the MFA pro-
gram: learning to write every day—or at least as of-
ten as possible. It’s something I try to encourage my
students to do. Heffernan talks about how the best re-
vision of a poem is often the next poem. The more I
write, the more true I think it is.
Poetry
Megan
Blankenship
We Are Old Children
I love the rise and walk of morning
when the dove spies the sun, the cow
spies the bucket and comes running to be milked.
Dew about our ankles, knotty pumpkins hide
in the last cut of hay, grasshoppers eat what’s left.
We pilfer brown eggs from the bases of fenceposts,
from the asparagus bed grown to a
silvery forest. The fox took another goose last night.
The pigs loose again, we coax them in
with a bucket of potato peels and cornmeal.
Up the hill, the cemetery aches with conversation
of whose apples are ripe, when the snows will come
and how many. The well is deep.
Compassion is stone-ground, baked into biscuits.
Megan Blankenship
Sam’s Work Hat Stiff with
three thousand days
of sweat, I know
this brow,
cut deep by sun and toil.
He wears his honor
on his head, righteous
in rows of red dust
and sunburned stalks, staring
at the ass-end of a mule.
I am worn out from
defending so much.
Dusk I’m hung
on a rough hickory peg by
the screen door, waiting for
daybreak while he
cleans his rifle, loves
his woman, and talks,
sometimes, to his god.
Andrew
Childress
Sequence #1 I.
that this romance just seems so flimsy
like a skirt made out of transparent plastic
like a cheap chinese umbrella on a lake in a storm
like pixie sticks in a baby's hands
wet and sticky, upside down
the colored sand is leaking out
like this ribbon on our shoes, another whimsy
another one of those contracts we're gonna have to re-
tract
function, biology, the resurrection and death of form
my thighs are giving out, watch what they demand
some day soon I'm gonna hump this town
come into the dark and leave you out
II.
that this romance just seems so flimsy
like this ribbon on our shoes, another whimsy
like a skirt made out of transparent plastic
another one of those contracts we're gonna have to re-
tract
like a cheap chinese umbrella on a lake in a storm
function, biology, the resurrection and death of form
like pixie sticks in a baby's hands
my thighs are giving out, watch what they demand
wet and sticky, upside down
some day soon I'm gonna hump this town
the colored sand is leaking out
come into the dark and leave you out
III.
that this romance just seems so flimsy
come into the dark and leave you out
like a skirt made out of transparent plastic
like this ribbon on our shoes, another whimsy
like a cheap chinese umbrella on a lake in a storm
another one of those contracts we're gonna have to re-
tract
like pixie sticks in a baby's hands
function, biology, the resurrection and death of form
wet and sticky, upside down
my thighs are giving out, watch what they demand
the colored sand is leaking out
some day soon I'm gonna hump this town
IV.
that this romance just seems so flimsy
like a skirt made out of transparent plastic
like this ribbon on our shoes, another whimsy
another one of those contracts we're gonna have to re-
tract
like a cheap chinese umbrella on a lake in a storm
like pixie sticks in a baby's hands
function, biology, the resurrection and death of form
my thighs are giving out, watch what they demand
wet and sticky, upside down
the colored sand is leaking out
some day soon I'm gonna hump this town
come into the dark and leave you out
Kris
Mastin
The Night Went On
The world spins and slows like I give a damn,
the rest moves about, forgotten.
The sky outlasts everything that dies
to live on in want of sparkling eyes,
like the rest of us.
And the nights just go on,
bleeding life into meaningless, unconnected
scenes.
***
The night went on selling me.
I watch her dance and drift from arm to arm
as a man passes in under-things...
Decide a drink to endless misery is in order:
She changes to mist in a soft black light,
(oh romantic to romance at left, at right).
I slip, further, out toward the moon,
as I lose my humanity in the crust of a room.
The night went on.
I had had the song.
I was off in New Zealand shooting WWII:
A first rate production,
a tragedy:
A swirl of ungodly emotion in the wail of a
crowd.
Now it’s back to wine and moments inces-
santly ruined with words,
blurry screen wipes and dream sequences—
—to the true, fiendish state of things.
Everything begs to be remembered frozen on a
turning screen:
She’s immortally a pair of tits, another
washes his hair.
But I’m not watching me, small in the stars,
I’m looking on apace as they swallow city
cars:
The hunter Orion there,
who’ll trace the Great Bear,
no more than white dust in that sky some-
where.
The night went on.
I saw scores of meaning in absent dialogues.
I saw a light drizzle make a scene in the
rain,
as lovers draw mist through colors and
frames.
Really it is like poems when they move—
through dull crowds or out cold rooms—
past bright lights, into the full moon,
into an endless night or a spiraling stair,
into the fading shapes of a cloud somewhere.
The night went on.
Now I’m shooting a summer blockbuster with
PG tits
and lies about romance.
The stage stinks of cologne and perfume,
but drifts away, poetically, as you wander
the roads,
through light wind the soft sky throws,
following street-stars with wands of golden
hair,
as they click off in puddles when your feet
get there.
***
Kris Mastin
Is there no more wine?
Look, here come more cougars and wolves
licking wits!
(The night moves on while I get drowned,
too heavy in the sauce, if not sentimen-
tal).
The last time I was here,
I woke feeling like a dirty, used whore
from Singapore.
My that’s a thought for a swig down me
scotch!
Everything must go in its traveling
clothes,
But...
There is the world, in sink and lift,
though I feel none of it.
I see, like a man gone wry, where the sky
goes miss,
as it circles again and again all this.
S
H
O
R
T
F
I
C
T
I
O
N
Jacob
Mosier
A Short Walk Down a City
Street
He twisted the key in the lock and
pulled the door handle until he heard the
click of the bolt sliding in to place.
Slowly, he turned toward the street, and
looked out from under the faded red awning
into the pouring rain. It wasn’t a hard
rain, but it was steady, a leaky faucet, con-
stantly dripping but never flowing, just
enough to wet the city’s streets but never
enough to make them clean. Already he was
running late, but he hesitated a moment
longer, reluctant to go and meet the woman he
loved. She was waiting for him, in the café
where they always met down the street, eager
and no doubt near to bursting with questions
about his day and stories about hers, her
blue-green eyes so full of life and love. He
could not bring himself to face such loving
adoration.
A faded chip of black paint fell softly
and settled into the mud and moss as he
brushed his hand across the top of the rail
bordering the concrete steps. Setting his
foot onto the first step with a deliberate
reluctance, he realized he would need to
paint that rail again before too long. He
stepped into the falling rain and pulled the
low brim of his hat over his eyes, the drop-
lets of water spilling off and running down
his coat until they fell to the ground below,
adding to the puddles already covering the
sidewalk. What would she say if she really
knew him, knew what he was on the inside,
knew his true character as well as he himself
did. If she saw the weak, faltering man un-
able to resist even the slightest tempta-
tions. With a final sigh, he turned his bent
head and, feet dragging through muddy flyers
and sodden wrappers, began the short walk
down the city street.
A passing car splashed brown water and
greasy magazine pages as he trudged along,
head down, eyes distant. During the summer
months the street was clogged with the odors
of a living city, the smells of vendors and
garbage drifting strenuously through the air
in those few moments when the wind was blow-
ing, settling down and seeping into every
doorstep and alleyway when the still air was
heavy with summer heat. But during the win-
ter, when the cold rains fell and soaked the
stains of summer, the street smelled of noth-
ing but rain and mud.
Up above, the warm light of a kitchen
window illuminated the silhouette of a wife
greeting her husband, highlighting their gen-
tle kiss as she asked him about his day. Down
on the street where he walked, he passed the
corner where women of less luck and looser
morals stood every night and waited for des-
perate men ready to sell their souls for a
bastard love.
Jacob Mosier
At the next street he turned, passing
by the women’s clothing store without a
second look. He had learned to never let his
eyes wander, to keep them always on a more
pure path. Anything less would be nothing
short of treachery. He didn’t even spare a
glance for the pictures in the window, the
tapestries bearing lithe models dressed in
the latest laces and gowns, their beauti-
fully smooth airbrushed skin softly re-
touched to perfection. Years of patient self
discipline and love had made him accustomed
to ignoring their longing eyes and beckon-
ingly Hellenic figures
Ahead, he saw the café where she
waited, her wavy brown hair swooping down
and crossing her brow, half covering her
eye, the way he always remembered it doing.
Maybe she was stirring her coffee, or maybe
she had decided to wait for him to order,
fending off the eager waitress, promising
“Oh, he’ll be here soon enough. He’s
never late.” But he was always late.
He stepped off the curb and into the
street, putting on his best smile so she
wouldn’t see the pouring rain behind his
eyes. She never did. In him she never saw
anything but sun and warmth and love and
strength. He was the light that gave her
life, her Apollo and her Venus, her protec-
tor and her lover. But he knew it was a
sham, knew he was no more worthy of her love
than were any of the other lowlifes and bums
in this city.
True, he had never been with another
woman, never acted on those passions which
had brought other men to their knees. But
it was the thought that counted. Even with
a lifetime of diligence, no man ever es-
caped that hubris fully; no man ever com-
pletely freed himself of that killing
weakness.
His boots sloshed through a dirty
puddle as he stepped from the street to
the sidewalk in front of the little café
where she sat, waiting for him. Inside he
could see the elderly couple at their
booth by the window, sitting as they had
for years, watching the time go by in
blissful togetherness. He wondered what
secret self doubts they shared, what hid-
den misgivings and worries they felt but
never spoke. At the counter was the week-
night crowd of steelworkers and account-
ants, truck drivers and attorneys, some
stopping for a quick cup of coffee before
going home to a warm dinner and loving
wife. The less fortunate stopping here, as
they did every evening, to waste away the
time in a clean and well lighted place be-
fore going home to empty beds and broken
dreams.
The bell rang with a homely sound as
he opened the door and slipped through,
trapping the cold and rain outside. In-
side, the cafe was warm and filled with
loving smells of home and comfort. From
Their Table near the corner window, he saw
the flash of her smile, its radiance mak-
ing him forget the cold and wetness cling-
ing to him and soaking to his soul, shed-
ding his burdens and his pain in an in-
stant. Without even taking off his coat,
he hurried to her.
“I was worried something had happened, this
weather is just so awful.”
“Sorry dear, I was just a little slow on the
walk over.”
“Here, take your coat off, it’s drenched. I
can’t have you freezing to death on me! Oh
waitress, we’re ready now.”
Jacob Mosier
Zachary
Henderson
Rabbit Trails
The snowfall the night before was
heavy. In the woods beside the red river
floodway just outside of the city, you could
measure all sorts of things about the snow,
so long as you knew how. On days like today,
the skeletal white poplar trees seemed almost
to have retreated partway into the ground.
You could tell just how deep the snow was by
comparing the closeness of birds’ nests to
the shimmering white beneath their bark-
stripped precipice platforms.
Today was a day for snowshoes. The boy loved
walking in them – loved the feel of the snow
as it grudgingly accepted his weight, dis-
persed across a web of bowed wood and treated
sinew. His mother had bought them for his fa-
ther a few years ago during a school field-
trip to a tourist-centric Indian reservation;
they were about ten years too big for him
then, and at eight years old, he still had to
walk like a cowboy, knees bent and legs
spread wide so as to keep his steps from
overlapping and sending him face-first into
the snow. He carried a walking stick that his
father had helped him carve and stain. The
snow shoes kept him from using it to any ef-
fect, and so it rested easily in his hands
like a hunting rifle while he walked.
He tried to remember where the first one was;
it was always the most difficult for him to
find. He knew that as soon as he found it, he
would know automatically which direction to
go in order to find all of the others.
At the beginning of November, once the first
permanent snowfall had guaranteed the win-
ter’s colors for the next seven months, his
father had taken him out to show him how to
set rabbit snares. “The freshest tracks are
always best, son – that means the rabbits
are still using that trail.” The boy mar-
veled at the idea that just like people, rab-
bits choose to take the same paths to get
from place to place. He would imagine small
families of rabbits following one another
through the woods on a well-beaten trail, or
rubbing their ears with their paws in a si-
lent greeting as they passed one another on
their way through the forest.
His father bent down, pointing out the ever-
strange indentation of a rabbit’s gait in
the powdery snow. “You can tell this is a
fresh trail, because even though it snowed so
much night, the tracks are still deep.” The
boy wasn’t so much listening to what his fa-
ther was saying as he was listening to his
voice. His father’s voice was deep and calm.
When he spoke outside in the quietness and
crispness of the morning, you could almost
feel his vocal chords rubbing together, as
though an ancient king bee was buzzing in his
throat. “The first thing you want to do is
find a place where the trail passes by a
tree; that’s where you’ll tie your snare.”
His father reached into one of his front coat
pockets and withdrew a spool of thin, gold
Zachary Henderson
wire. He unraveled a length of it, and then
twisted it in a particular way so that it
broke cleanly. His father fashioned a loop,
and showed him the proper way to tie the
slipknot with the wire so that it would
slide freely but remain tight; he watched as
his son secured the wire to the tree. After-
ward, his father told him to go find four
small forked sticks. The boy found them
quickly, and brought them to his father, who
hadn’t moved from the place where he stood
beside the rabbit trail. The big man took
the sticks and bent over at the waist, lean-
ing them against one another over the trail
so that any passing rabbit would have to
walk underneath them. They reminded the boy
of croquet loops; he thought that it would
be fun to play croquet with sticks like this
instead of wires, and how challenging it
would be to hit the balls through them with-
out knocking them over. He watched as his
father carefully set the wire to rest on top
of the sticks, with the loop hanging per-
fectly in the archway. The boy finally found
the “X” his father had scratched into the
tree with his knife that day in November to
indicate the location of the first snare. It
was empty; so far, they had been empty each
day.
Every morning he would wake up early and eat
a bowl of cereal as fast as he could. By the
time he saw the first hints of the sun over
the tree line behind the house, he would al-
ready have his snowsuit on, the hand-knit
tuke his mother had made for him over the
summer pulled down just below his ears. As
he went out the back door each morning to
check his snares before the school bus came
out to their country home, he would think
about how amazing it would be to actually
catch a rabbit. He thought about how proud
his mother would be when he brought dinner
home – how delicious his catch would be
in a stew with carrots and potatoes and
onions. He thought about how his father
had promised to teach him how to tan the
hide; he had told him to think about what
he wanted to try to make when he had
enough rabbit pelts. The boy had decided
on a pair of mittens.
The second trap was also empty, as was the
third. His heart raced as he came upon
each snare; he remembers this feeling from
beneath his bed sheets on past Christmas
eves. The fourth snare was near the edge
of the woods close to his house on the op-
posite side of the forest from the first.
The sun was fully above the trees now, and
made the fresh snow glisten like diamonds
in the branches above him and on the for-
est floor all around him. As he came
across the last trap, he was thinking
about warm mittens; after thirty minutes
outdoors, his fingers always started to
tingle inside his Made in China gloves. He
looked down at the wooden croquet arch
over the rabbit trail to make certain the
loop was still in place; it wasn’t. The
sticks were strewn about, and in the mid-
dle of the rabbit trail was a swirl in the
snow, as if some small animal had made a
snow angel, and then in embarrassment had
smeared it away. The boy’s heart raced.
His eyes tracked toward the tree where the
snare line was secured.
Years later, he would wonder what he
Zachary Henderson
actually expected. Anything, he supposed,
but the lifeless form of the rabbit hanging
as from a gallows, its body contorted from
multiple spasms, its neck broken from the
struggle. It must have moved around and
around the tree in its death dance, winding
the wire about the trunk so that when its
life finally fled, the golden snare held it
up against the tree. Its neck glinted red
where the line had cut into its skin; pink
icicles clung to its fur like ruby rain-
drops.
The boy fell backwards, more tripping than
sitting because of the long wooden backs of
his snow shoes. He stared at the rabbit for
a long time. He tried to imagine the rab-
bit’s last thoughts as it struggled; all he
could come up with was fear and pain. He
wondered if it was a he or a she; he knew
how to check, but he was afraid to find out
– afraid to worry about bunnies starving
and freezing a hundred feet away in a burrow
he had no chance of finding. His fingers
were warm once again inside his gloves; he
could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips
as the adrenaline began to disappear. After
a while the boy stood up, still shaking. He
looked upward at the sun; he had missed the
bus, but he couldn’t care today. He took
out his pocketknife-pliers combination that
his father had given to him; it was old and
rusty, but the pliers still worked and the
main blade was still sharp. He worked the
pliers on the wire attached to the tree un-
til it twanged and separated. He tried to
use the wire cutter part of the pliers to
release the slipknot from the rabbit’s
neck, but there was no slack to work with;
the wire collar was now as much a part of
the rabbit as its fur.
The boy leaned his walking stick against
the tree marked with the “X” that he had
carved as his father had shown him; he
cradled the rabbit in his arms, and walked
slowly home. As he approached, he could
see his mother in the kitchen window. He
wasn’t prepared for her to find out about
the bus just yet; he would welcome her
punishment soon – be grateful for it even
– but for now he had more important busi-
ness to take care of. Carefully, he set
the body down on the stack of wood next to
the tool shed and bent over to clear the
new snowfall from the front of the doorway
so that he could work it open enough to
slip inside. He found the shovel that was
small enough for him to use leaning
against the right wall. He closed the
door, hoping that no discovery of his
snowshoe tracks would interfere with the
work he had to do. Gingerly, he lifted the
body from the wood pile and with shovel
over shoulder, once again walked in the
direction of the first snare.
He disarmed the trap and wound the wire
into a ball which he shoved into his coat;
he had taken his tuke off of his head and
placed the body inside of it, letting the
rabbit rest on the soft snow while he
worked. His ears were freezing, but it had
seemed the proper thing to do. He did the
same with the second and third traps, and
then went to a clearing nearby that he and
his father had camped in the summer be-
fore. The shovel cleared the snow away
easily, but the frozen ground beneath it
seemed harder than the spade head.
The twelve-inch-deep hole had taken him
hours; he couldn’t feel his ears, but the
rest of his body was hot with sweat and ef-
fort. He placed the body in the cotton hat
in the center of the grave. He sat down, and
tried to recall a prayer; he couldn’t
think, but he remembered his father’s
strong baritone, and could almost feel his
vocal chords rubbing together in his mind.
The boy cleared his unsteady yet unbroken
voice, and tried to remember the words his
father would speak tonight over dinner as he
did every evening: “Give us grateful
hearts, O Father, for all thy mercies, and
make us mindful of the needs of others;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Zachary Henderson
Bently J.
Fisher
As the Crow Flies
Every night before Benji lays down, he
records the difference in good things and bad
things he has done for the day and logs the
number in the journal kept underneath his
mattress. Things like cursing, hurtful words,
burglary, and violence earn negative points.
Things like honesty, caring, and kindness
earn positive points. A mental note of pluses
and minuses is made throughout the day. If
the disparity of total bad things is greater
than five, then the next morning, he runs a
mile for each point over the allowed five
point spread. The runs are good occupational
exercise and they help to calm him.
Benji makes his living by stealing. The
work suits him. He makes his own hours, he is
his own boss, and he determines his own sal-
ary. Though he is a criminal, his crimes are
done with conscience. Truthfully, he is only
partly fraudulenthe has a code. His parents
taught him to find redemption through the
church, but there he only found Sunday morn-
ing professions and deathbed confessions. He
now finds absolution through strained calves
and a tight chest. On this morning, he is
scheduled to run three miles.
“Get away from my window you stupid
fucking bird!” was how Benji’s morning be-
gan. Minus. In fact, as of late, most all of
his mornings began like that. He’d set his
alarm for 8am, but he would be awakened at
sunrise because of the crow. Not only did the
crow interfere with his sleep, he stole
things as well. Benji was missing a red pair
of boxers and a black pair of briefs that he
had hung outside on the line to dry. The crow
had also taken a white headband, a nearly new
roll of duct tape, an old gold-plated neck-
lace, and at least a few dollar bills. If he
were to leave something on the hood of his
car or porch, or drop something on the way
inside his rickety house, the crow would
swoop down and swipe it up. That crow was an
excellent thief. Perhaps it was this common
trait that made them hate each other.
After the crow woke him that morning,
Benji decided he would kill the crow. Minus.
The bird presented a challenge to his other-
wise uneventful day, so he set out to follow
the crow.
The crow had flown off for a while af-
ter he yelled at him, but the bird returned
as Benji made himself a breakfast high in fi-
ber to get his day moving. He looked out the
bedroom window and noticed the crow jumping
around on his car, pecking and pulling off
chips of paint.
Benji put on a pair of mesh shorts and
a t-shirt, slipped on his old running shoes,
and snuck out the front door. The driveway
sat on the south side of the rental and his
front door faced east, so, he had a long wall
to hide behind as he crept closer to the
crow. He carefully planned each of his steps
and avoided any small pebbles or shards of
glass that may make a noise. At the corner of
the building he knelt down low and slowly
turned his head past the corner bricks to see
the damned bird just staring straight at him.
Benji stood up—the crow didn’t move. He
took a few steps forward and the crow flut-
tered his wings a bit, threatening flight, so
Benji paused and looked at him.
The crow stared at him with his black
eyes and hopped. Benji stared back until the
bird’s eyes melted into his ugly, black
face. If they had been cowboys, they would
have been ready to draw. Benji could almost
see the crow hiding a six shooter beneath his
right wing. He envisioned himself pulling
first on the bird, blasting him square in his
black chest, watching dark feathers explode
into the air. But they weren’t cowboys, and
just as Benji got ready to make his move, the
crow drew and squawked, “faggot!” and flew
away.
Benji chased him down 3rd Street and
across Magnolia and Orchard Rd. He lost the
bird behind an old plastic plant and decided
to turn back. The early morning sun crept
over the rolling hills and the cool breeze
brought a chill to his perspiring skin. He
had three miles to run today and he figured
he might as well get it over with.
The run felt good, really good, so
Benji continued on to the square. As he came
to the corner of the donut shop he crashed
into a lady in a wheelchair. Because of the
unexpected impact, his body was thrown into
the air and he wasn’t able to brace himself
for contact with the salty pavement. His el-
bows and knees made a sort of absent thud,
followed by the scratching sound of his skin
erasing itself in layers. Before he could get
up from the ground, the middle aged, handi-
capped woman yelled, “Watch it!”
Benji jumped up and shouted, “Why
don’t you watch where you’re walk” but he
stopped when he noticed that she was bound to
a chair. This revelation led to Benji’s own
momentary paralysis as he looked at one of
the most beautiful women he had ever seen, at
least in the face, stuck in a motorized
chair. He was mesmerized by her large green
eyes, silky brown hair, and luscious red
lips. She looked just like one of those pin-
up pulp cartoon broads from the forties.
The woman began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Benji asked.
“The look on your face. Nothing,” the
woman tried unsuccessfully to suppress her
giggling, “it doesn’t matter.”
Benji stared blankly at her. She fi-
nally stopped laughing, sighed, and wiped her
brow. He was glad that she wasn’t angry at
him but he couldn‘t understand her reaction.
“I’m really sorry,” he said as he
continued staring at her.
“You act like you’ve never seen some-
one in a wheelchair before.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“Not many people do; at least they
pretend not to. Why are you out punishing
yourself this early in the morning anyhow?”
Benji looked out into the empty street,
pinching his lip and shrugging as he replied,
“It’s what I do.” He smiled and
looked back at the woman, “I was out chasing
something.”
“You alright? You’re skinned up
pretty bad.”
Bently J. Fisher
“I’m okay. Are you?”
“Boy, I’m a tough old broad.” The
woman paused and looked down at his bleeding
knees and up at his bleeding arms. “Why
don’t you walk with me back to my house?”
Benji waited for her to begin laughing again,
but she didn’t. “I’ll get you some ban-
dages. I’m Andrea.”
Something about the old woman put him
at ease.
“I’m Benji.”
On the way to her home, Andrea rolled
along the sidewalk while Benji walked beside
her in the grass. He had an urge to grab the
handles of her chair and push her, but he
took her for a fiercely independent woman,
and he wanted to stay on her good side.
“What is it that you do Benji?”
“I’m in acquisitions.” Minus.
“Oh. I used to be a nurse. I retired
early though and moved here.”
“To be closer to family?”
“To die.” She started laughing and
then said that she actually moved to be far-
ther away from family, and then she laughed
some more.
As the two neared Andrea’s home, a
little boy came down the sidewalk in front of
them. Instead of wearing his backpack on his
shoulders, he was dragging it along the pave-
ment. Benji saw him and smiled.
“Hey honey, you headed to school?”
Andrea asked.
The boy shook his head up and down in
reply. He never looked at Andrea, just kept
his head cocked over his right shoulder and
stared at the ground.
“You sure are cute in your little
cap,” she said. Andrea lurched forward in
her chair and reached out to brush the boy’s
cheek. He jerked his head away and continued
walking to school. “He’s my neighbor’s
kid.”
“Seems a little strange.”
“It’s sad. He’s slow. I think he has
Down’s.” Benji didn’t recognize it at
first, but the boy did have a really round
face and unusually small chin. “Well, this
is me,” Andrea said as she wheeled up the
porch ramp of her house. “Listen, I need
some help moving the rest of my things around
in the house. I’ll pay you if you’re inter-
ested. It could be at night, so it doesn’t
interfere with your work.”
He was interested in her so he ac-
cepted. “I’m actually on vacation this
week. I can help.”
“Alright, on two conditions: you show
up when you’re supposed to and you never ask
how I ended up in this chair.”
Benji nodded his head and waved at her.
“Be here tomorrow around nine. Have a
good day and enjoy your run,” she said.
“You too,” he said. Minus.
When Benji returned home, he found pa-
per stuck in the frame of his front door. It
was a past due rent notice. He had been try-
ing not to work too much lately, and he would
have went to work that night if he didn’t
have the money for helping Andrea to count
on. He crumbled up the paper and threw it out
into the side yard. As soon as the paper
landed in the grass, the crow swooped down
and picked it up. The bird landed on the
neighbor’s roof and pecked and chewed the
notice into shreds.
Bently J. Fisher
The next morning began more naturally.
The crow did not wake Benji.
Benji had a good time helping Andrea
that day. He thought it was strange that she
didn’t want any pictures hung in her home.
She only allowed one picture, a photo of her
with legs that worked, to be set out. There
was a box marked “photos,” but she told
Benji not to look inside it and to put it up-
stairs, out of her reach. He felt sorry for
her and did what she said. Plus. One of the
boxes he carried upstairs was incredibly
heavy, and he looked inside it.
The box housed an old coin collection.
One coin in particular interested him. It was
a newer quarter, but it had been double
strucktwo George Washington’s on top of each
other, like being “kinged” in Checkers.
Benji thought about putting it into his
pocket in case he needed some quick cash, but
he didn’t. He put all the coins back in the
box and put the box in the corner of the up-
stairs room. Plus.
While having drinks together the next
afternoon, Benji became transfixed by the
lone photo of Andrea in the living room. It
didn’t appear to be a very old picture. She
was outside an old building, smiling, holding
her pony tail in both hands, standinga cap-
tured memory, a glimpse into her pastalone,
but happy. She looked very sensual. He won-
dered if he were to make love to her, where
he would need to start and what he would need
to leave out.
“I jumped.”
He turned to see Andrea at the edge of
the room, also looking at the photo.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t know what else to
do.” She smiled at him and lit a cigarette.
Benji saw clearly, for the first time, how
much difference there was in what she said
and how she said it. He continued looking at
the photo thinking she would say more.
When she didn’t, he said, “Bet you
never do that again.” Minus. Benji’s face
reddened. Andrea laughed hysterically. “Are
you okay now?” he asked.
“I’m fine honey.” Andrea smiled
again, but Benji wasn’t convinced. “It just
wasn’t my time I guess.”
Benji regretted what he said and he
wanted to make her feel better. He ran up-
stairs to grab the box of photos that she was
too embarrassed to show him before. He wanted
to look through the albums with her and as-
sure her that she is still the same beautiful
lady. As he searched through the upstairs
room, Andrea began yelling and coughing and
shouting for him to come back down and to
stay out of there.
Benji found the box and opened it. He
saw the pictures and felt like someone had
swung a sledgehammer into his stomach. His
body grew light but his feet wouldn’t move
from the floor. In place of the old photos of
a younger, more beautiful, magnetic Andrea
were photos of young boys, sad looking, and
naked. He closed the flaps of the box and
went downstairs.
“I was going to find the box of old
photos of you, but I couldn’t,” he said.
“Well good. They’re not good pictures
anyway.” Andrea smiled at him and offered
him another drink. He didn’t want another
drink. He didn’t want to see those pictures.
Bently J. Fisher
He didn’t want to know anything more about
her. He told her that he needed to go and he
left.
On the way home, Benji saw the little
Down’s boy slowly walking down the sidewalk
with an old Labrador.
The boy’s hi-top shoe laces were un-
tied and clicking along the pavement as he
walked. His jeans were too big and stuffed
into the tongue of his shoes and he wore an
old wool cap that was pulled down too far on
his head, making his ears fold forward like
two tiny satellites. The old dog drooped
along beside the boy. His nails scratched the
concrete every time he lifted his tired back
legs. The dog stopped and lifted his big al-
mond eyes up to meet Benji’s.
“Hi,” said the boy.
“Hi yourself.”
“Wanna pet him?”
“Sure.” Benji moved over to the dog
and the dog stepped back, stuck his chest
out, pointed his tail up, and appeared to be
chomping at the air, his teeth clacking each
time his jaws closed.
“I don’t think he likes me,” Benji
said.
“He’s not trying to bite you, he’s
barking.”
“Why isn’t any noise coming out?”
“He’s never barked, he can’t. Well,
he barks, just no noise comes out.”
“Isn’t that strange?” Benji tried
again to pet him, but the dog sidestepped and
hid behind the boy. “He’s a one owner dog.
What’s his name?”
“Bodie.”
“Wonder why Bodie can’t talk?”
“I don’t know.”
Benji liked the kid and wanted to ex-
cite his imagination. “Maybe someone told
him a secret and he can’t talk so he can’t
say it.”
“Maybe. I tell him all sorts of
stuff,” the boy said.
“See, he’ll never tell on you.”
Benji paused for thought and then said,
“Maybe God told him a secret.”
“Like what?”
“The secret of the universe or the
meaning of life or something.”
“Prolly, he knows a lot.”
Benji laughed and the little boy smiled
back at him while he and his dog wandered
away. Plus.
When Benji returned home he found a
second notice on his door. It was new notice
stating that he would be evicted within two
weeks if he did not pay his past due rent in
addition to his next month’s rent payments.
While he reread the notice, he heard a
rustling in the trees east of him. He could-
n’t see any movement in the leaves, but as
he looked, a black shape began to form midway
up the tree. It was a dark presence and it
made Benji uneasy. After the noise settled,
Benji saw light reflect off of two black,
beady eyes and he heard a squawk, “qu-een.”
Benji grabbed a palm-sized rock and
reached back and chucked the rock as hard as
he could at the crow. The rock was deflected
by a branch below the crow’s stoop, and the
crow flew off across the street. Minus. Benji
went inside.
He thought about what he saw upstairs
at Andrea’s house. He thought about how she
Bently J. Fisher
talked to the little boy. He wondered about
those boys in the photos. Benji didn’t un-
derstand her. She couldn’t run enough miles
to make up for what she must have done to
them. Splattering herself on an asphalt
street wouldn’t change what she did. He de-
cided that he would go back to her house one
last time and then never see her again.
A couple of nights later, after ignor-
ing Andrea’s calls and busying himself
fighting with the crow, Benji sat a little
ways down from her house.
After the streets had cleared, Benji
walked over to the side gate of her house,
quietly unhinged the latch, and walked into
the backyard. The backyard was overgrown and
bare of any semblance of a garden, or land-
scaping, or outdoor entertaining.
There was a poorly built deck that ex-
tended to the corner of the house. Benji
climbed onto the railing, deftly balancing on
the rotting wood, and lunged half of his body
up onto the roof. He had to claw and maneuver
quite a lot before he was able to lurch his
right leg onto the sticky roof but he finally
made it up, with more noise than he’d have
liked.
He stepped lightly along the overhang
of the roof toward the second story window.
As he neared the window, the crow landed on
the roof. The bird squawked a little, but
Benji ignored him.
Benji lifted on the window. It slid up
a little before becoming stuck. He pushed on
it and quietly beat on it to loosen it up. He
started to sweat. The window finally loosened
and he crawled inside the room. As he turned
to push the window back down, the crow
flapped his wings and squawked, “bitch.”
“Ssh,” Benji commanded.
He went to the corner of the room and
opened the box of coins. He put the double
stamped coin in his pocket and quietly walked
to the edge of the stairs and looked down.
Minus. In the living room hallway, Andrea’s
wheelchair lay turned over on the floor.
Benji leaned down to look through the banis-
ter, but he couldn’t see anything more. He
slowly walked down the stairs and saw that
the front door was slightly ajar. He picked
up her chair and sat it upright. A couple of
empty pill bottles rolled from underneath the
chair. He looked around the room and took a
deep breath.
Benji walked out the front door and sat
down on the porch ramp. He saw the crow fly
down and land on the mailbox post. He waited
for the bird to squawk at him, but the crow
was silent. The crow looked at him, looked
almost sad, and then flew away. Soon after,
Benji saw the boy walking down the sidewalk
on the opposite side of the street.
“Hey,” Benji said as he ran across
the road to meet the boy.
“Are you waiting for the lady?” the
boy asked.
“Yeah, have you seen her?”
“She’s gone. The red truck took
her,” the boy said.
Benji wasn’t surprised, but it hurt
him to know. He pulled the coin from his
pocket.
“I need you to give this to her when
she comes back.”
“I can’t. Mom told me to stay away
from the lady. She’s not nice to kids.”
Bently J. Fisher
Benji nodded his head. He knew Andrea
wouldn’t be back. Benji knelt down beside
the old, mute Labrador, cupped his hands
around the dog’s ear, and whispered a se-
cret. The old dog turned to him and slurped
his big, wet tongue on Benji’s cheek. The
boy smiled widely and Benji started towards
home.
When he came to a gutter in the street,
he stopped and reached into his pocket. He
rubbed the old coin between his fingers and
tossed it into the black drain. Plus.
Benji began to run, but he slowed him-
self and walked the rest of the way home.
Bently J. Fisher
A Most Interesting Fact about
Cups and Seashells
Air bubbles rush upward toward the top
of the cooler and the lower tray quickly
fills with fresh water of alternating tem-
peratures as she presses each release lever
one at a time – red first because it matches
her sun-baked curls much closer than the blue
cold-water switch. A puddle builds at her
feet while impatient glares from all direc-
tions let her know that no one else in the
waiting room thinks she’s very cute anymore.
But then a familiar bearded smile rises
steadily from a group of seats just to the
side of the water cooler and he confidently
stretches his arm toward a small tube at its
side. He locates a Styrofoam cup tucked
safely inside and he pulls down slowly to re-
duce any possible cracking, because after
all, it’s supposed to be a gift and every-
thing has to be just perfect. She stretches
an innocently wide grin and fearfully studies
his movements, confused to find no punishment
for having gone ahead with her plans to build
a neighborhood swimming pool on the linoleum
floor.
“Quite a mess you’ve got going there,
huh?” He holds back a laugh while pretending
not to notice the row of angry faces behind
her.
“How could anyone stay mad at that
smile?” He relents softly while pushing his
pinky finger in the gap between her unevenly
spaced molars and her newly developing inci-
sors.
“No, not that again!” She giggles ex-
citedly, still not quite adjusted to the
small white bump pushing up through her gums.
“I’m sorry! I just can’t help my-
self.”At a loss for excuses, he admits his
fascination.
She has no patience for that sort of
business.
“Are you going to do that every time I
lose one?” New experiences can be a mixed
blessing to someone so eager for a challenge.
“Sorry - last time, I promise!” He
agrees for now, but they both know that par-
ticular game still has a few more years left.
He grabs a stack of paper towels from the
counter beside the water cooler and attempts
to soak up any evidence of her creative dis-
aster. She quickly notices the cup in his
hand and groans at the suggestion that she
might not be old enough to know the proper
way to pour a drink.
“I don’t need it.” She asserts her
independence at an early age. “I’m not
thirsty. Sorry I made everyone mad. I didn’t
mean to, honest. I can be quiet, I promise.”
Guilt sets in slowly as she rocks gently back
on her heels and immediately forward again on
her toes. She leans her back against the wall
and her eye lashes blink innocence back into
her nervous smile.
“What – you mean that puddle over
Andrew
Hincapie
there?” He looks over his shoulder at the
sparkling wet patch of linoleum just waiting
to initiate a customer lawsuit and they head
toward two empty chairs in the far corner
away from the cooler. “It’ll be fine, sit
down. Hardly anyone noticed. Besides, it’s
so hot outside I bet they were all wishing
they could jump in with you.”
“But it’s so boring here.” She re-
luctantly sits in her own chair, having al-
ready moved on from the possible threat of
punishment. “When will it be ready? I want
to go home.”
“I told you – all four tires have to
be changed.” He looks out the small window
in the waiting room and locates a familiar
greasy blue shirt rolling several large black
rings toward the far corner of the garage.
“You just have to be patient.”
“But I’m tired of being patient.”
Her attention span falters from a few years
of training mostly with commercial breaks
during early morning cartoons. “Why do they
have to get changed? Why can’t we just keep
the old ones and go home?”
“It’s like when you wear out your old
shoes and we have to buy you knew ones.” He
taps his fingers against her small feet and
smiles proudly. “The old ones are no good.
Everything needs changing sometime.”
“Well I don’t care.” She crosses her
arms in defiance and sits restlessly in her
chair with her legs tucked up underneath her.
“This is boring and I want to go
home.”
“Well here – listen.” He advocates a
second attempt for the success of Styrofoam.
“Listen to what?” Confused but inter-
ested, she takes the small cup from his out-
stretched hand and tries to decipher what
could be so fascinating.
“Here – like this.” With an encourag-
ing nod, he takes the cup from her tiny hand
and places it comfortably around her equally
tiny ear.
“What do you hear?” He watches pa-
tiently, hiding his smile to keep her curios-
ity.
She holds the cup evenly around her ear
and waits attentively, hoping for a hidden
music box or even a special radio inside.
“I can’t hear anything!” Frustrated,
she surrenders the cup to its former owner.
“Sure you can.” He devotedly convinces
her of her natural ability and offers the
necessary moral support. “Let me try. Maybe
it’s not working right.”
He places it confidently over his own
ear and fumbles with several imaginary fre-
quency knobs with his index finger on the
bottom of the cup.
“There, see!” He smiles and hands the
cup back to her while she watches intently in
deep admiration of his newfound technical
skills. “It works just fine.”
“Wait, what? It’s not doing any-
thing!” She grows increasingly frustrated
and looks at the bottom to determine if the
invisible switches and knobs need any further
adjusting.
He takes a moment to relate to her cu-
riosity. “Do you remember last year when we
visited the family and you got to see the
beach?
He recalls his sister’s black dress
and stuffing a ball of tissues in his pocket
Andrew Hincapie
while his mother huddles quietly with several
nameless mourners on a bench just outside a
tall stained glass door. His eyes follow the
black station wagon with the oversized back
hatch door as it leads a group of slow moving
vehicles around the front driveway and out of
sight. He pictures the bridge splitting in
half and raising up so the boats can pass
through on their way back to the harbor while
he finds a much needed retreat and a quick
opportunity to share the Atlantic Ocean. He
can smell the cool eastern breeze blowing
gently over the crashing waves while a noisy
seagull plants its feet firmly in the sand
next to his daughter’s bucket and shovel –
her first experience of real loss and she
didn’t even know to react, but then life is
always easier with your feet in the sand.
“I remember!” She yells proudly so
that everyone in the waiting room looks up
from their distractions. “We went to
Grandma’s house and I got to play in the
sand and we chased all those birds and then I
ran out into the water but it was too cold to
go in and the waves chased me back and I ran
back to you so they wouldn’t catch me and -
“Yes, exactly.” He laughs affection-
ately, relieved that she hadn’t saved a mem-
ory of all the watery eyes of the relatives
she had only met once telling her how closely
she resembles her Grandfather, even if he
wasn’t there to prove it to her.
“Well, do you remember what all those
waves sounded like?”
“Oh yes, I remember, I do.” She imi-
tates the explosions of a wave crashing in on
itself and pretends to scout a safe route
back to the top of the shore line like she
had done so many times before.
“Perfect.” He grabs her waist before
she can run out after a third invisible wave
and race the incoming tide of the muffled
waiting room. “That’s exactly right.”
Guilt flushes his skin red to match her
flailing curls as he recognizes that they
still haven’t been back since last winter.
He knows he should have made the trip down
much sooner and no amount of dedication can
make up for lost time, but an hour in the
cold sand was the first moment he realized
that she really would be just fine, and maybe
she wouldn’t need him as much as he knows he
needs her.
“Told you I remembered!” She yells out
excitedly, having all but forgotten about the
Styrofoam cup in her father’s lap.
“Now, listen,” He tries to calm her,
brushing a bright red curl away from her
eyes. He raises the cup gently back to her
waiting ear. “Try it again. What do you hear
this time?”
She takes the cup in her hand and holds
it firmly over her ear, confident in her fa-
ther’s instructions. She waits and impa-
tiently swings her feet under the chair, but
then a smile slowly stretches from the tip of
the cup all the way across her face and up to
her other ear.
“I hear it this time! I can hear it!”
She swings her legs back hard and kicks off
from the chair with the cup still pressed
firmly against the side of her head. Her left
foot pounds on the untied shoelace of her
right foot and sends her tumbling down toward
the still-wet linoleum floor where her col-
lapsing knee crushes the source of her ex-
Andrew Hincapie
citement.
“Oh, no! Are you alright?” He helps
her get back on her unreliable feet and
brushes another red curl out of her eyes.
A small tear builds in her eye and she
reluctantly hands back the destroyed cup
while wiping the remaining curls from her wet
eyes.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” he
comforts her. “But what about those feet of
yours?” He sits her back down in her chair
and moves a white shoe string in each hand
while reciting a story about rabbit ears
looping around each other.
“But I did hear it this time, honest.”
She has more important things to worry about
than the safety of shoelaces. “I heard the
waves and the ocean just like at Grandma’s.
But I broke it!”
“Go look in there.” He points back to
the white tube attached to the water cooler.
“I bet you we can find another one just like
it.”
“But that one was special.” She holds
back a wave of tears and sniffles back to re-
ality. “Now we can’t hear the waves any-
more.”
He walks deliberately across the dried
up riverbank commissioned moments earlier and
reaches for the white tube on the side of the
water cooler. He locates a single lonely Sty-
rofoam cup tucked safely inside and he pulls
down slowly to reduce any possible cracking,
because after all, it is the very last one
and he must be careful with it.
“Ah, here we go.” He adjusts another
set of invisible buttons and dials on the
bottom of this new cup and signals its effec-
tiveness with a confident smile. “Try this
one. I think it’s working.”
“That’s just like the last one.” She
doesn’t let anything get past her. “It’s
just a trick, isn’t it? It’s not real.”
“You’re always too smart for me.” He
points affectionately at his own forehead and
hands her what might now be just another cup
from a waiting room water cooler. “Well, I
hear it anyway. We can just pretend it’s a
seashell and we’re visiting everyone and
we’re all playing at the beach.”
“I can hear it too, but I still wish we
had real seashells.” Her small hands barely
cover the Styrofoam surface as the familiar
muffled hum of the crowded waiting room flows
the welcoming coastline directly into her se-
lective memory. “When can we go there again?
It was so much fun and I miss Grandma and
everybody.”
She swings her legs back and jumps up
out of her chair again – both shoes tied
safely this time – with both of her hands
clasped tightly around her new treasure. Her
feet trace out the path of the water moving
across the shoreline and she runs back to the
safety of the chairs before the rumble of the
waves can catch up to her.
“Still didn’t get you, just like last
time.” He allows a heavy sigh behind his
soothing grin and kisses each one of her
hands held so tightly around her new discov-
ery. His eyes lower to the now dry linoleum
tile in front of the water cooler and he ap-
preciates how lucky she must feel to experi-
ence life so honestly with no concern of loss
or failure. But then it isn’t so easy as all
of that anyway, and there will always be cer-
Andrew Hincapie
tain experiences that no amount of prepara-
tion will resolve. She will rush head first
into every experience worth having, and some-
one has to teach her how to carry on. But she
still has her father’s present, and that’s
good enough for now.
An older couple near the waiting room
entry way finally stands up from their rest-
ing place and heads toward the front counter
where a voice behind the main desk drones
through a series of documents to sign and
technical terms to misunderstand. Everyone
has their backs to the wall with their eyes
pointed downward and their phones tied to
their ears. A student wrestles with a book
and some papers in the corner. No one else
speaks to each other or makes any sudden
movements, but like a parent visiting a pe-
diatrician for the first time, she won’t sit
still knowing that the car might be sick.
“So what’s wrong with those old tires?
Is the car broken?” She sits back down in
her chair and shows an impressive attention
to detail while expecting a better answer
than just shoes.
“I told you already.” He laughs again
and shakes his head. “The old ones are worn
out. We need new ones so it will run better,
that way we can make it home safe.”
“How much longer?” She does her best
to keep her one-track mind focused at all
times, despite the temporary distraction.
“See that man behind the desk in the
next room?” He points toward the older cou-
ple who still haven’t gotten their keys back
yet. “When he calls our name, the car will
be all ready to go.”
“Good.” She sighs and raises the cup
back to her ear. “Then can we get dinner
too?”
“Of course we can.” He offers a truce
and the distraction resumes.
“I want to go somewhere special.” Her
insistence impresses him. “Like on my birth-
day when I had the balloon and they gave us a
piece of cake with my name written on it.”
“But it’s not your birthday.” He
tilts his head slightly to the side and puts
his hand on her dropping shoulders.
“I know!” She protests the calendar
with a quick stomp of her toes. “Well,
when’s your birthday? Maybe they’ll let you
because we have to fix the car so they’ll
give us some extra help.” Her world falls
into order and everything makes perfect
sense. “And we can show them the ocean cup
you made for me so they’ll have to give us a
birthday dinner!”
“But that’s a present just for you.”
He gently taps his finger on the side of the
cup and the waves in her ear roar much louder
for a brief moment.
“I know, and I’ll take good care of
it, honest.” She smiles and rocks gently in
her chair.
“Make sure those shoes are tied so you
don’t fall down again.” He points down to
the bunny ears on her feet and smiles. “That
was the last one so we can’t make anymore.”
The older couple at the front counter
finally walks out the main door and the boom-
ing voice summons another blank face from the
waiting room.
“Why don’t you go see if it’s almost
ready?” He looks back through the window
from the waiting room into the garage and
Andrew Hincapie
catches the familiar greasy blue shirt rising
to his feet and handing a clipboard to some-
one near the front office.
“By myself?” Her bottom lip pushes out
just past the top and her eyes droop down
just enough to get a reaction.
“You’ll be fine, I promise.” He pic-
tures her carelessly playing in the sand and
offers himself to whoever in his head is lis-
tening so that she will never have to change
her shoe size and never cry over anything
worse than broken Styrofoam. But then he just
smiles and knows that she can handle the
challenge, so he pushes her forward as she
leans back on her heels.
“Don’t worry - you can see me from
there. I’ll watch you, honest.”
“Can you hold this for me?” She
stretches out her arms as far as she can
reach with her palms flat up and the seashell
cup rested perfectly on the edge of her fin-
gertips. “Don’t keep it, I’ll be right
back.”
“I don’t mind.” He offers a confused
grin. “You can take it with you if you
want.”
“No, can you hold it for when I get
back?” Her eyes spark genuine concern. “I
don’t want to lose it. And besides, I broke
the last one.”
“Good thinking.” He nods in agreement.
“Just planning ahead, huh? You sure you
still want to go check on the car? I can go
with you if you need.”
“No, I can do it.” She stretches up-
ward to look as tall as possible. “Just ask
the man sitting there if it’s ready yet?”
“Think you can handle that?” He raises
an eyebrow and puts his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll be right back.”
After a quick look over her shoulder,
she darts full speed through the waiting room
door and weaves between several stacks of
tires and a pricing display board where she
jumps forward to a halt just in front of the
main counter. She stretches up on her toes
and pulls her fingers in along the edge of
the counter to raise her eye level just high
enough to see the familiar greasy blue shirt
signing a clipboard and pushing some buttons
on the desktop computer.
She looks back toward the waiting room
at the friendly bearded smile waiting eagerly
to hear the latest news, and they make eye
contact just long enough to help her build up
the confidence to turn back toward the
counter instead of rushing for the door. He
nods in approval as she runs out the door to-
ward life and responsibility, and although
she may rush head first toward a new chal-
lenge, she will always stop to put her sea-
shells aside – if only so her father’s pre-
sent won’t get crushed in all the excite-
ment.
Andrew Hincapie
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