POUI XX, 2023 JOURNAL OF CREATIVE WRITING PRODUCED BY THE UWI CAVE HILL CAMPUS
POUI
CAVE HILL JOURNAL OF CREATIVE WRITING
NUMBER XX, 2023
POUI CAVE HILL JOURNAL OF CREATIVE WRITING
Number XX, 2023
EDITORIAL BOARD : Nicola Hunte Debra Providence Jacinth Howard
CONSULTANT EDITORS: Jane Bryce
Hazel Simmons-McDonald Mark McWatt Kamau Brathwaite Philip Nanton Mark Jason Welch
COVER DESIGN: Marlo Hunte
‘ .
Poui , the Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing (CHJCW), is published by the Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
Poui welcomes submissions of previously unpublished poetry and fiction (see last page for details).
© 2023 by Poui , CHJCW, Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature. http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/LLL/poui/home.aspx
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FOREWORD
After an unexpected hiatus, POUi returns. This issue is figuratively and in a real sense, all
about time. A lot has happened in the period between this issue and the last one: political,
environmental, cultural changes that have created, in some cases, significant paradigm shifts in
how we work, communicate, and create. Does this mean that the content of this issue shows
the passage of time? Yes, very much so, as an essential backdrop to what helps us confront
human existence as finite, dynamic and valuable. The poems and stories in this issue highlight
how small but nonetheless crucial moments coexist alongside, and within, grander movements
of time. It is those moments, in their complexity, sometimes out of startling simplicity, that are
deftly captured in these pages. The theme of time and the changes it brings as well as those it
witnesses is the thread that loosely draws together the work found here. From the
transformations wrought by intimate relationships to the pursuit of closely held desires, time
directly or indirectly has a role whether as an unavoidable constant or a surprising intervention.
The works are grouped into further sections – each predictably partnered with time – but that is
where the predictably ends. Any further connections, overlaps and delightfully unexpected
insights, we leave the works to yield to each reader. Welcome to those for whom this will be a
new encounter, welcome back to those who have patiently waited.
This issue is special not only because it is the quiet resumption of the journal, but it is also our
twentieth publication. We therefore celebrate the fulfilment of this desire to provide a platform,
from within the Caribbean, for creative writing from 1999 to 2018 and look forward to its
future milestones. Speaking for the editorial board, we are happy to finally bring you POUi
XX – it’s about time we did.
From the editor: Nicola Hunte
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Table of Contents
FOREWORD................................................................................................................................................ 4 I LOVE and TIME Eugene Elira ........................................................................................................................................ 8 Recollection ................................................................................................................................. ... .... 8 Evan Balkan ...................................................................................................................................... . .. 8 Every Way You Look at This You Lose ................................................................................. .. ...... 8 Jody Rathgeb ..................................................................................................................................... 20
Pawpaw Green ............................................................................................................................... 20
II POWER and TIME Megan Elmendorf ............................................................................................................................. 28
Your ego dealt you a playing card................................................................................................ 28
Robert Knox ....................................................................................................................................... 28
Love and War................................................................................................................................. 28
III TRAVEL and Time Megan Elmendorf .............................................................................................................................. 35
Acquainted with Departing........................................................................................................... 35
Althea Romeo-Mark .......................................................................................................................... 35
Bargain Hunt.................................................................................................................................. 35
Althea Romeo-Mark .......................................................................................................................... 36
II. Pockets Empty, Head full of Stories........................................................................................... 36
Althea Romeo-Mark .......................................................................................................................... 37
Island Stories .................................................................................................................................. 37
I. Force Ripe
IV LOSS and TIME Eugene Elira ..................................................................................................................................... 40 From ashes...................................................................................................................................... 40 J ames G. Piatt ................................................................................................................................... 40
The Burdens of Life ....................................................................................................................... 40
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V FAMILY and TIME Gale Acuff .......................................................................................................................................... 43
Oral History ................................................................................................................................... 43
Samuel Cronin ................................................................................................................................... 44
The Story of Forbes’ Low Green Tent ......................................................................................... 44
VI DESIRE and TIME Cordelia Hanemann .......................................................................................................................... 59
Saved by Cezanne’s Apples ........................................................................................................... 59
Cordelia Hanemann .......................................................................................................................... 59
Black Woman Poet Visits Dead White Woman Writer’s House in Georgia: ........................... 59
A Found Poem ............... Reading Alice Walker
Stephen Mead .................................................................................................................................... 60
Each Year ....................................................................................................................................... 60
Cordelia Hanemann .......................................................................................................................... 61
Abstraction: Geometry of an Odalisk .......................................................................................... 61
Althea Romeo-Mark .......................................................................................................................... 61
Lord, Take the Rein....................................................................................................................... 61
Gale Acuff .......................................................................................................................................... 62
As Seen on TV ................................................................................................................................ 62
J. B. Toner .......................................................................................................................................... 63
The Key of the Khazilim ............................................................................................................... 63
CONTRIBUTORS ............................................................................................................................ 79
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I LOVE and TIME
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Eugene Elira
Recollection
it takes years to learn how to forget, train in the art of suppression, draw blank like the dead freshly resurrected
ancestors live on pages — we are something else
it takes affirmation peg with survival to pattern archipelagoes:
a soak rag soothing lacerations it takes time to create enough distance stumble upon your reflection, gag it, coerce now
like all things discovered we must name it, amend it, claiming this interpretation of ash
Evan Balkan
Every Way You Look at This You Lose
The nurse is at the end of his shift. That’s obvious. A nest of purple wrinkles shades his
eyes. His hair is greasy and unkempt. A yellow stain has long ago solidified on one of his
sleeves.
When I tell him who I’m there to see, he raises an eyebrow before leading me to her
room.
“You’re her second visitor,” he tells me when he lets me in. “She’s been here a week.”
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“I ran into a mutual acquaintance,” I say. “He told me she was here.”
The nurse just looks at me before he heads back down the hall —he doesn’t give a
damn. He just wants to go home.
When my eyes adjust to the room, I see her in the bed. What’s left of her hair lay in
strings across her scalp and looks to be the texture of cotton candy. But cotton candy gone
bad — grayed and left to molder in some unseen corner of neglect. Her eyes are closed and only
the very faint rise and fall of her body under a thin white blanket tells me she’s breathing.
I turn a way, orient myself. I need a second. I’m not even sure why I’m here.
The room is a nauseating pinkish color. I can’t imagine this engenders feelings of
health or wellness in anyone. Aren’t these places supposed to be in shades of blue or green,
like a sun-dappled pool or ocean? The view from the window is of a brick wall. If you crane
yourself one way, you can just make out the edge of the parking lot. There’s a tree there. But
you can only see a few branches of it and for only as long as you can stand to contort yourself
in the uncomfortable position required to spot it.
When I turn back to her, I say her name. But she does not move.
I move closer to her, but I dare not touch her.
I used to touch her. I used to touch her all over and every which way. But that was long
ago. Long before I reached middle age, a bit of a paunch around my waist and rather little hair
on my head. The nubile youthfulness of my once nearly hairless body is now spotted with
moles and scars, my flesh overrun with a coarse pelt as if all that left my head has migrated
south and multiplied like C diff.
“Mrs. Flanagan,” I whisper. Still, she doesn’t move. I won’t press it.
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To wake her up and reintroduce myself might be a cruel blow, designed to strip away
any remaining vestiges of memory she may have of a time when she had been, well, not young
exactly, but not old, either, and certainly not wasting away in a pink room in a dismal hospital
in a nameless suburb.
I don’t know why I remain here, why I take a seat next to her bed and wa tch her, stay
with her, bear witness to a life slowly wasting away.
Maybe because I’m the only one who’s here.
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*
*
I lay on her bed, naked except my boxer shorts. I was nineteen. For reasons I don’t
remember, or never knew, that was the ritual: that I would remove my clothes only to my
boxers and she would take care of the rest for me. She would run her hands and then her lips
over my body. I was angular and hard and rangy, my ribs threatening my skin, wrists the
diameter of young bamboo. She was thin, too, and perpetually tanned, her skin starting to show
the wear of four decades. She, Mrs. Flanagan, was forty-six.
She had furrowed wrinkles around her eyes and a few deep bruises, almost like stains,
on her shins and one on her lower thigh, but from mid- thigh up, at certain angles you’d be hard
pressed to think she wasn’t my age. But nothing about her or her nudity or her offering herself
up to me so easily was ever very shocking. It seemed to just happen and it all seemed natural, a
rite of passage for a n otherwise bored kid who’d decided to stay in his off -campus apartment
for summer break. It all seemed, somehow, normal. More shocking than anything else was
seeing Mrs. Flanagan’s eyes as we lay in bed. Seeing her face without her glasses; that made
her appear to me far more naked than her actual nakedness did.
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We met at her development’s pool. She came almost every day, her eyes obscured
behind gold-tinted reflective glasses, her hair short and dark with light brown highlights. She
planted herself in a chaise and lay, almost entirely immobile, from mid-morning to early
evening. I never saw her actually swim. Instead, every couple of hours she would raise herself
off her chaise and tuck her pointer fingers under the scallop of her buttocks to extract her suit.
Then she would lower herself into the deep end, ramrod straight without any splash at all, and
linger underwater for twenty seconds or so before reemerging and settling herself back on her
chaise.
Eventually, we engaged in small talk while I made my way around the pool’s perimeter
scrubbing tiles or while packing up the umbrellas if strong winds came and skies threatened. It
was a tiny pool, a “one - guarder,” and often it was just the two of us.
I think I knew why she invited me to come over after my s hift one day. But I don’t
remember worrying or being scared or excited even when I locked up and walked over and she
opened the door in civilian clothes, her hair smelling freshly shampooed. She kissed me and I
don’t think we even spoke as she led me to he r bedroom. I pulled a condom out of my wallet; it
had been in there since spring. But she told me I didn’t need it and then, undressed, pointed to
a scar across her abdomen. The whole thing was over in ten minutes and I ran out of there,
sweating and short of breath. I left my whistle behind.
The next day, she met me at the pool’s front gate. Spinning it around her finger, she
handed me back my whistle.
“Thanks,” I said.
She nodded.
“I’d like to come back today,” I said. “If that would be okay.”
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“That would be fine.”
It became an almost everyday occurrence after that. At closing time, I would shutter
the gate and jog across the grass. In case anyone was watching, I’d get in my car and pull out
of the neighborhood, only to park on a side street in the adjoining neighborhood and then cut
through a path in the woods that spilled out to her backyard. There, I would sneak across the
lawn, yellowed with summer heat and drought, and descend to her basement door, which she
left unlocked for me.
The ten minutes of our first session stretched to twenty and then thirty and then more
than an hour. Eventually I knew how to control myself. I enjoyed it, though I’m not certain I
considered it fun. More like an educational opportunity. My dad had urged me to get an
internship that sum mer and not laze around a pool all day. “You should be learning
something,” he said. “Something you can take with you, something that will help you later in
life.” I figured I was mostly doing that.
Just seeing her in her house, watching how she lived — a person settled, a person no
longer striving for anything, no longer envisioning a future with questions about what it held.
Apart from my parents, she was the only person I ever interacted with who lived this way. And
because of that, I never had to wrestle with the idea that what I was doing might have been
wrong in any way. We got things from each other, a mutually beneficial arrangement with a
very real and looming expiration date. And so we continued seeing each other and ignored
everything else, playing dumb at the pool by day, waiting for after.
At one point, mid-July or so, we got the idea to make mix tapes for each other (or, in
our case, mix burned CDs). She would teach me what real music was, “not the crap kids listen
to today.” And I would give her an education, too, show her that there were some great
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contemporary bands and she should give them a chance. But we acted as if it were a big joke,
like we were being ironic. It was only much later that I began to see it for what it was, what she
probably knew all along: that the ironic pose was a shield against actual feelings.
For her, that is. Not for me. I had a girlfriend.
Keeping it from Julie was easy. I think Mrs. Flanagan respected my relationship, or was
at least clear-eyed enough to realize the impossibility of competing with a nineteen year old
who went to school with me. The one time Julie was back in town for a few days, Mrs.
Flanagan kept her distance. A rainy afternoon helped; I closed up and Julie and I ate
sandwiches in the supply room while we waited out the storm. But even after the skies cleared,
Mrs. Flanagan didn’t come back.
After Julie went back to her job in New York, Mrs. Flanagan became especially
aggressive, tearing off my clothes the moment I walked in her door. For the next week, every
day, she would begin things by saying stuff like: “Does your girlfriend do this ?” and then with
a sly smile, she would engage in something that made me uncomfortable, like when she did a
striptease, humming some tune I didn’t recognize while I sat in a chair staring up at her.
It made me feel sorry for her. But I never said anything. She fascinated me. Like the
fact that she smoked a lot and yet somehow managed to never smell like it. Instead, she
smelled like chlorine and suntan lotion and something else indefinable, something I would
come to understand in later years as the smell of someone who drank hard alcohol, a lot of it,
and often in the morning.
One time, one of the neighborhood kids, an asshole named Greg, came by with a couple
of his friends, home from college for a week before they headed out west on a road trip. They
strode into the pool like they owned the place, like they owned the whole world, towels flung
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casually across their shoulders, each of them far more toned and muscular than me. Their
forms stretched across Mrs. Flanagan’s gold -tinted reflective glasses as they walked by her, but
her head never moved. If she tracked them as they passed, there was no way to tell. Her eyes
could have been closed for all anyone knew, or they could have been shooting daggers of
disdain.
Doug’s feelings for her were clear enough. He said hello to her in a sing -songy way that
shocked me. It was mocking, derisive, and no way I would ever speak to an elder. This went on
every day until she finally rose to the bait.
“Hey, Greg,” she cooed, raising her glasses to the top of her head.
“Yeah?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Then she lay back down on her chaise and repositioned her glasses while Greg’s friends
howled in delight.
When Mrs. Flanagan left, Greg turned to me. “Hey, you banging her, or what?” he
asked.
“No.”
“Yeah, sure. Just watch out for her. She’s a tiger all right. But tigers have claws you
know.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, fighting an impulse to defend her.
“Dig beyond the newspapers and magazines in her recycling bin. See what you find.”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of glass, my friend. A lot of glass.”
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That day, I made did my best to make love to Mrs. Flanagan. I didn’t see it as fucking,
or sex, or even the more clinical intercourse. It was love, or the best approximation of it I could
muster at nineteen. She seemed suddenly fragile to me, no longer the domineering and
indomitable woman who lay in the sun as if cast in marble. I did my best, but she kept telling
me to “stop being so soft.”
“What’s with you?” she demanded.
I could only mumble, “Nothing,” and say no more.
She shrugged a sheet around herself and lit a cigarette. She went to the window and
stood there. Soon, I joined her. I stood behind her and we watched the neighbor teach his son
how to box on the lawn in the rain.
“Kid’s a psycho,” she murmured. “I caught him cutting up worms once just so he could
see the segments squirm.”
“Well, maybe boxing is a good outlet then,” I suggested.
“Or maybe it will turn him into an unstoppable psycho.” She glared at the neighbor and
exhaled her cigarette smoke loudly, shaking her head.
I guessed that look held a history and a weight that went beyond the neighbor and his
kid in his shorts and oversized gloves and I had a feeling that I was in way over my head.
It was a relief when my buddy Rooster visited from Colorado and spent a week at my
place. He’d been my freshman year roommate but he failed out and moved to Denver to start a
jam band. Rooster and Mrs. Flanagan got along great; they mostly chatted and laughed while I
twirled my whistle on the lifeguard chair. She would call out different dives while he bounced
on the diving board, even though all he knew how to do were jackknives, flips, and belly flops.
One day, Mrs. Flanagan didn’t show up.
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“Dude, where’s that hot lady?” Rooster asked.
I shrugged. “How would I know?”
“I think she wants to do you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“I’m serious, man. I see the way she stares at you.”
“Whatever.”
Roo ster went back to Colorado and still Mrs. Flanagan didn’t come back for another
three days. When she returned she told me that her mother-in-law had died.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I don’t give a shit. The worst part was seeing my a -hole ex- husband.”
The only thing she ever told me about her ex-husband was that he had a trick where he
could twist his knuckles in such a way that they could almost line up flat on top of each other. I
never really understood the logistics of it but after asking her several times to explain it, I just
let it go. But not before adding that I didn’t see how that was such a trick. What was it good
for? “He could never be properly handcuffed,” she said.
“Is that a necessary skill for people?”
“He was a true son of a bitch,” she said, as i f that explained everything.
I had that feeling again, that the life she’d lived was something way beyond me, a thing
I couldn’t hope to ever understand. An occasional conversation, hanging out at the pool, sex.
That was all it would ever be. I still had my life to shape, everything was ahead of me. For her,
everything looked backward.
“You coming over later?” she asked.
“I have something to do, actually.”
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“We’ll make it quick.”
I hedged. I didn’t really want to—I didn’t know why; having a ready excuse wit h
Rooster in town had been an unexpected relief. But I didn’t know how to say no to her.
“We’ll be quick,” she repeated, irritated.
When I got there, we skipped the chatting and got right to it. She was lifting my shirt
over my head when we heard a loud squeal followed by a sickening smash of metal on metal.
“Oh my God,” I said and started for the door. But she grabbed my shirt and held me
back.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “You told me you only have an hour.”
“What if someone’s hurt?”
“No one’s drowning. You’re a lifeguard, not an EMT.”
I extricated myself and flung open the front door. There was a young woman in a
compact car which was crumpled against a light post. She pushed aside a deflated air bag and
staggered out of the driver’s seat. She took a few steps, vomited, and then sat down heavily on
the curb, where she began to wail.
“Oh, come on, I don’t need this now,” I heard Mrs. Flanagan say. I was shocked by her
hostility, as if this poor woman had intentionally chosen the light post in front of Mrs.
Flanagan’s house to crash into. “She was probably fiddling with the radio. I mean, who just
plows into a lamppost?” she said.
It was awful. But Mrs. Flanagan’s irritation stopped me on the lawn, as if I owed my
allegiance only to her and helping this woman was some kind of betrayal.
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“You should have been paying attention,” Mrs. Flanagan yelled. The woman didn’t
seem to hear, but rather moaned and slumped over onto the grass. I ran inside to call for an
ambulance.
“ God ,” Mrs. Flanagan hissed.
From that point forward, she grew especially cruel and surly, as if she had no patience
for me anymore. But I didn’t really care; summer was coming to an end and I would be locking
up the pool for the season and heading back to classes. The last week we didn’t sp eak to each
other very much. The final day dragged on forever; I had this heavy weighted feeling that we
were building toward something inevitable, that we only had so much time left and it would all
come to an unpleasant head. I worked around her and she didn’t move, didn’t speak— the hours
dragged on. There were several other people at the pool that day and they stayed until closing
time, so that may have saved me from a scene.
When I blew the summer’s final whistle, Mrs. Flanagan got up and collected her bag
and towel. “I hope you enjoy yourself back at school,” she said as she walked past me. “Do
well. Make your parents proud.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
And then it was over. She was gone, and I didn’t watch her as she left.
I only saw her once after that, in the grocery store about three years later. I ducked into
an aisle to avoid being seen and loitered at the frozen dessert case until she left. Then I watched
her through the window, where she ordered an employee in that gruff, humorless way of hers
to put the groceries in the trunk. Then she flicked on her sunglasses and was gone.
I moved away the next year. Eventually I got married — to Julie — and then divorced;
turns out I was a lousy husband.
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My current job sucks. It’s the same one I’ve had since I graduated from college. These
days I tend to look backward.
I ran into Rooster a few days ago. We literally bumped into each other at a Trader
Joe’s. I hadn’t seen him in ages.
“Jesus,” he said, pointing to my bald head. “It’s been a long time. Hey, you remember
th at crazy woman from the pool, Mrs. Fletcher or something?”
“Flanagan?”
“Yeah, that’s it. She’s dying.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it’s the craziest thing. My mother, believe it or not, wound up buying a condo in
that development after my dad died and they became g ood friends.”
“Seriously?”
“Isn’t that crazy? My mom used to tell me all the time about her friend and when they
eventually realized they had a connection, well, Mrs. Fletcher —”
“Flanagan.”
“Right. Well, she used to say all the time how much she though t you were great. Tell
me, seriously, were you screwing around with her?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, anyway, she’s dying. My mother went to see her the other day.”
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*
The sun is starting to set and the room is growing darker, the pink turning to red. I don’t
turn on the lights. Instead, I drag my chair closer to her bed. I study the lines on her face, the
indentations from her pillow, the irritated skin where a thin tube lays across her lip and enters
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her nostril. I can’t locate any of the person I used to know in there. I don’t dare pull back her
blanket and check her body for some recognition.
“Mrs. Flanagan,” I say. “I’m sure you don’t remember me, but . . .”
I expect her eyes to flutter open and take me in, uncomprehending perhaps, searching
my face for clues.
Or maybe she’ll know exactly who I am and smile and thank me for coming. Maybe
this visit will inject life into her and before we know it, to the stupefaction of the medical staff,
she’ll be sitting up, eating solid food, playing rounds of cards with me, and we’ll walk out of
here together.
But of course not. Her eyes remain closed. Only the softest whistle comes from her
mouth — that alone to tell me she ’s even alive.
I’m still not sure I know exactly why I came, or why I stay.
Or why I climb into the bed and squeeze myself next to her. What I do know is that it
feels right that I touch her again, that I hold her for the very first time.
Jody Rathgeb
Pawpaw Green
Nick showed up first, so he dragged the domino table out of the workshop, admiring it
anew. Let others knock together a few boards and slap on the varnish; Joe made a table that
was crafted as carefully as the tight wooden boats that made his living. Nick placed it in their
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shady spot between the overhang and the guinep tree, then brought out the chairs and the box
of dominoes. He was dumping them out when Joe finally came out of the house.
“Father Bolling.”
Nick straightened at the unfa miliar address and smiled at his friend. “That’s me? Why
so formal?”
Joe shrugged, took his seat and began turning and mixing the tiles.
Nick sat. “Well, then, Mister Parker.” He lifted a domino. “Eight.”
Joe lifted another for a five. They mixed again. “I’m just messing with you,” Joe said.
“You know you don’t have to be a priest here.”
“And you know I’m always a priest. I play dominoes just to save your soul.”
“The hell you do.”
Both men wore this conversation like favorite tattered hats, Joe’s a fraying straw with
deep crown and broad rim, Nick’s the Toronto Blue Jays cap he’d brought to the island years
ago. The weekly domino game allowed them their differences and found safe and easy talk
among the pips. White, black, believer, skeptic … but the re were ends that matched. Nick
slapped down his double five.
Joe quickly flipped out a tile and slid the matching side into position. Theirs was a
simple and friendly game, unlike the serious competitions of the younger men at the bar. They
didn’t bet or keep track of how many games each had won.
Old Wheeler ambled across the yard and wheezed himself under the domino table. The
chunky mutt rarely missed a game.
“So you still believe in dog?” Nick asked.
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Joe laughed, even though their joke was ancient. He had started it the first time they’d
discussed religion, using it to stop Nick’s prodding. Nick took the hint and quit trying
outwardly to get Joe into church, any church.
But he hadn’t quite given up. Someday Joe would need his friend to be a priest, just as
Nick had needed a friend to shake him free from the loneliness of that first year on the island.
The game kept them both in line. Domino: lord and master. God above, dog below.
They threw their tiles quickly and were halfway done with the first game before Flora
appeared with beers for them. Nick smiled at Joe’s wife. He liked her, even though he still
didn’t know her well after all these years. She was a quiet woman, the good island wife who
ran an efficient household and had raised their two children with devout dignity. She balanced
Joe, prone to diatribes against organized religion, by making the rounds of all the island
churches. Nick couldn’t tell which religion she favored, but he always enjoyed seeing her
round, radiant face in his mostly Haitian congregation. Few of the native islanders were
Catholic.
Nick took his beer. “You’re all dressed up, Flora. What’s the occasion?”
“I’m going to the First Baptist. I’ll be back soon.” She kissed Joe’s cheek, and he
turned his face to catch her by surprise with a full-on kiss. When they separated, she ducked
her head and gave a shy glance at Nick. “Nice to see you, Father.”
Joe watched her leave, gazing for so long that Nick cleared his throat for attention. “It’s
your turn.” The game resumed. “What’s going on at First Baptist? This isn’t their prayer
meeting day.”
Joe swigged his beer before answering. “Memorial service. Her husband died, so they
thought it would be nice.”
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“Whose husband?”
“Flora’s. Damn, you have me blocked. I have everything but twos.” Joe began drawing
from the boneyard. Finally getting a match, he looked up at Nick. “You’re gonna catch flies
with that open mouth,” he said.
“B - but, you’re here. Y - you’re her husband.”
Joe grunted. “You’ve lived on this island for how long?”
“Eight years.”
“And you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Joe caught Nick’s eyes with a long gaze, then tipped his tiles face -down on the table
and shifted his chair to face the sea. Nick did the same and waited for the story.
“Back long time, right after the T ides was built, this Frenchman came to the island. He
was going to be the dive master. So he lived here while the hotel was getting up and running,
and he met Flora. Really fell for her. Well, you can see why, even today.
“She was young, only seventeen, a nd swept off her feet. He married her before any of
us island boys had a chance. But there it was.
“They weren’t married long before the accident. Jules— that was his name — went out to
the reef for a dive. His boatman was this island kid, green as pawpaw. H e didn’t know about
the wreck out there, thought the dark area was just sea grass. They hit it hard.”
Nick crossed himself. A flicker of Joe’s eye acknowledged the gesture.
“The kid came out all right. But Jules— he was paralyzed. The kid got him to shore, and
they took him to hospital, but that was it for him. The hotel owner called his family in France,
and they insisted on taking him there.
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“Flora, well she was just a kid herself, had never been off the island and was too scared
to go. No one blamed her for that. So Jules, practically a vegetable, has been there all these
years and she’s been here.
“Well, her family wasn’t too happy about that. Started treating her like a big burden.
She was in a bad way. So that kid, that pawpaw green kid…”
Nick wait ed for the story to go on. When it didn’t, he took his eyes from the horizon
and looked at Joe’s shining profile. “You were that kid?”
Joe nodded. “I know it looked bad. But I always liked Flora, and I wanted to help her,
make it right. She needed a friend. And then we were more than friends.
“People talked. About her, about me. I wondered if maybe we should do something
about it, but she said she wouldn’t divorce a man who couldn’t move, even if she couldn’t do
anything for him. He was Catholic, you understand.”
Joe turned his eyes on Nick, lingering long enough to make the priest uncomfortable.
Nick didn’t know if he should forgive the look or ask to be forgiven. He hunched forward in
his chair, cradling the beer bottle. “How come I never heard any of this?”
Joe drained his beer and looked out to sea again. “Eventually we all got used to it. She
and I went on, and folks stopped their whispering. The kids, the boats. We’ve been happy.
Happier than I deserve to be.” Joe turned back to Nick and forced a smile. “Living in sin, I
guess you’d call it. Come on, let’s finish this game. Want another beer?” He got up and
disappeared into the house.
Nick stared at the game board until Joe returned, and they continued the game in
silence, except for the slap of tiles. Only Nick’s triumphant “Domino!” set their tongues in
motion again.
24
“You got me,” said Joe, turning over tiles for another mixing.
“So you gonna have a wedding now?”
Joe scoffed. “Not necessary. We’re married enough.”
“But in the eyes of the Lord…”
Joe closed his eyes and shook his head. “Nick. Just knowing that we’re free and clear is
enough.” He shifted to look down at Wheeler. “You want to see us married, old boy?”
Nick knew better than to argue, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it as th ey slapped
into the next game and the next.
He could understand Joe’s resistance, he thought. There had been too many hypocrites
here —preachers who stole, babies passed off on husbands who weren’t the fathers— for a
humanist to bear. Nick could even agree with much of Joe’s scorn for organized religion. And
yet there was the missing core that he believed Joe needed. He was a good man. All his actions
over the years showed it, from his honest work, to his quiet word that saved Nick from
alcoholic descent, to this story of stepping up to help Flora.
As soon as Nick’s mind formed Flora’s name, she appeared around the side of the
workshop. “Welcome back,” he said, rising. “Here, Flora, sit a while. I need to get something
from my van.”
He shuffled away before Joe could register surprise, leaving husband and wife — well,
almost — looking at each other over the half-done game. He hopped in the passenger side of the
church van and opened the glove box for The Roman Missal . What else? A small vial of holy
water. His head snapped up. People. He looked around, and saw Alpheus scraping his yard
next door. Gathering his things, Nick walked over and hailed the old man.
“You got time to visit Joe and Flora right now?”
25
Alpheus threw down his rake. “Time for anything but work.”
“Your girl in the house?” Alpheus nodded. “Bring her.” He bustled away, full of a
purpose he hadn’t felt in years.
He led them to the domino table, where Joe and Flora had obediently remained. Seeing
him, they rose, knowing.
After the ceremony, Alpheus and his maid went home, and the three remaining looked
at each other awkwardly. Nick finally reached over and rearranged the domino tiles, leaving a
two at each end of the train.
“Block game,” he said. “No getting out of it now. This will be registered in the diocese.
Flora, against all odds, it looks like you’ve married yourself another Catholic.”
Joe shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Old Wheeler here doesn’t seem to care either way. And
you can have the block. You need a win more’n I do, I guess.”
The old friends locked eyes. Then Nick bent down and chucked Wheeler’s ears. “You
know, Joe, for an atheist you sure do like to play dog.”
26
II POWER and TIME
27
Megan Elmendorf
Your ego dealt you a playing card That’s left you bleeding in the schoolyard.
Robert Knox
Love and War
I pull Penny close and whisper very loudly, timing the words between the hammer-head
drumbeats of the band's endless cover of Looey-Loo-ay, "Let's go back to the room!" Maybe
Miles and the Wellesley girl won't still be there; maybe they will have withdrawn to his
bedroom. Penny hears enough to nod and yells something back that I don't catch. I take her
hand and turn, but find myself confronting a blocking presence, his too-familiar face regarding
me with an expression I don't care for.
“Pardon me, friend,” he shouts.
He looks from me to Penny and wiggles an up-and-down motion with his index finger,
some sort of sign from the preppy guys' codebook I'm supposed to understand.
"Can I dance with your pretty lady?” he says, loud enough to be heard over the band.
He is not my "friend." He is the privileged character from a celebrity family, whom I
observed checking out Penny in the dining hall in the company of his boozer cronies. Up close
this prince of the legacies is average height, about my own size, and perfectly ordinary in
appearance, his features suggesting neither beauty nor intelligence, although radiating a
palpable sense of self-regard.
28
Penny looks at the floor. She gets along well with men, but is self-conscious about
being inspected. It's clear to her that something's happening here. And that I am discomfited.
However important his family may be, Famous Name and I have never truly spoken before.
Why my pretty lady? A part of me senses he's messing with me now, after years of a mutually
satisfactory avoidance, because he senses that Penny's presence makes me vulnerable.
I decide I'm not playing his game. “Sorry,” I say. “We’re splitting.”
I take a half step toward him on the crowded floor, expecting him to give way so we
can get by, but he doesn't.
“Splitting?”
The band has collapsed into silence, having temporarily run short of loud. We can hear
each other without shouting.
“Going.”
“Going where?”
“Leaving here .”
“You’re leaving the dance ? Already? Why?”
I can't think of an answer to this question (aside from 'none of your business'). Is he for
real? I start to smolder.
“It’s much too early to leave," Famous Name says, as i f all we need is a little
persuasion, a few words from him to help us see reason. “The band is playing till midnight. It’s
the best band in New Haven.”
Next time get the worst one. Can't say this either.
The stranger smiles his practiced smile at Penny, then looks at me as if to signal that it's
my move to make an introduction. It's a message I don't wish to receive.
29
“Look, I don’t mean to be unfriendly,” I say.
But the look in his eye tells me even saying this much is a mistake. It's also a lie
because what I truly wish is for us to remain complete and utter strangers.
“Let me introduce myself,” he says. “My name is Joe Rush. I’m in my last year here.”
It's a chess move. He knows I know who he is. I stonewall.
He extends a hand; I ignore that too.
“Look, man,” I say, “we really are on our way out.”
“What’s the hurry?”
He glances at his own hand, then withdraws it with a smile and without comment, as if
refusing to take offense. He waits, a picture of patience, like something out the I Ching: The
superior man is not offended.
“We don’t like the band."
I'm groping for a way out of this unlooked-for encounter. If anybody embodies the
'other side,' it's Joe Rush. His family is Washington establishment: the war-makers. They're the
people Miles and I, and the Wellesley girl, marched to the Pentagon (along with a hundred
thousand others) to confront. And here I am trying to make it about the band.
“You don’t like the band?” He’s smiling still, but his voice takes on a hurt intonation.
“We paid good money for that band. I’m on the Master’s Council. It’s the best band in
New Haven.”
He insists on this point; a provocation. Something knots up inside me. I realize,
sickeningly, that I don't know how to escape the clutches of this phony 'friend,' this ambassador
of mock good will. Somebody from his own background would know how to do it. Even some
30
of my preppy friends. But me? My peasant emotions will soon get the better of me: Out of my
way, asshole. Where I come from, people like you get the pitchfork.
Unless, of course, I just let him win.
Joe Rush glances away and bestows his smile on Penny. Don't worry, the smile says, in
a moment or two your boyfriend will give way and we'll have our little get-together.
Penny looks at the band, then at her feet.
But I cannot help reading his expression like a neon sign. You can't ignore me. You
guys with your beads and your long hair think you can just waltz around people like me, the
people who own this place, and go hide in your dope dens. But me and my people aren't going
away. We're still here. Deal with me.
I glance at Penny. Her bright blue eyes have the look of an animal about to flee or
scratch your face. She blushes easily, but recovers quickly. I'm the opposite. When I lose my
cool, I stay miserably mad for hours. If this goes on I'll do something boorish, or overtly
hostile, and end up looking like the bad guy.
“Look, man.” I try for apologetic, but fail. "Why don’t you just find someone else to
enjoy the best band in New Haven with? We're splitting this scene."
Rush’s smile darkens.
“You don’t want me to dance with your girl?”
Such incivility; the words pain him.
“What’s wrong with being sociable?”
I have no answer.
“Is there something wrong with me ?”
31
It's a dare, extending the hand of candor, of frank disputation. But if I take it, things
will escalate.
“I’ve already extended the hand of friendship," Rush says, waggling his naked fingers.
"We can start being friends right now.”
What is the point, I ask myself, of majoring in philosophy, of studying the art of
rhetoric and its brilliant dissection by the founders of the Western intellectual tradition, if I am
flummoxed by a schoolboy sophist?
“One dance.”
I hear her words and turn to look at my 'date,' my high school girlfriend, as she carves a
path for herself among the Ivies.
Her face is reddened, determined. I have seen this look. Among the possible next
moves are burst into tears or bite your head off. Or a return to civility if you just do exactly
what she wants. She speaks these words to Rush, not to me.
“One dance,” she repeats, letting him know that she is not intimidated by guys who like
to play head games, however important their families are. “And no bullshit.”
These few words perfectly sum up her conflict resolution proposal. You get what you
say you want, but no more games. It's brilliant. I should be content, but in fact, I'm screaming
inside.
It doesn’t help that Rush grins at me, letting me know that by his rules he's won the
point, th en turns to Penny and says, “Call me Joe.”
Penny steps between us, forcing me to look at her and murmurs, “It’s just a dance, Jon.
Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”
The band is back at it, covering her words with their noise.
32
Rush puts his hand on Penny’s wrist to lead her away. She holds her arms out to the
side, a posture making it impossible to touch any other part of her. They move half a dozen feet
away to find wiggle room as the band launches into something fast -- no reason, then, for the
dancers to touch or even look at one another. Rush pumps his torso like the graceless frat boy
he is. I pretend I'm not watching and shoot furtive glances at the disconnected partners, still
boiling. When the three minutes of sloppy rock are over, Rush nods and says something to
Penny, and she gives him a stiff smile, then comes back to reclaim me.
“He can’t dance,” she whispers in my ear, with a giggle.
I grab Penny’s hand and lead us out of the hall and straight back to my dorm room.
Nothing happened when other-sider Joe Rush got his dance with my 'pretty lady.' Nothing real-
world consequential has happened at all, but I'm still swallowing bile. Slimy Joe Rush proved
he could get his way. My resistance was futile, naive. And somehow, I fear, predictive.
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