Adelaide Literary Magazine No.6

By Adelaide Books Publishers

Adelaide Literary Magazine is an independent international quarterly publication, based in New York and Lisbon. Founded by Stevan V. Nikolic and Adelaide Franco Nikolic in 2015, the magazine’s aim is to publish quality poetry, fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and photography, as well as interviews, articles, and book reviews, written in English and Portuguese. We seek to publish outstanding literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and to promote the writers we publish, helping both new, emerging, and established authors reach a wider literary audience. We publish print and digital editions of our magazine four times a year, in September, December, March, and June. Online edition is updated continuously. There are no charges for reading the magazine online. http://adelaidemagazine.org

A Revista Literária Adelaide é uma publicação trimestral internacional e independente, localizada em Nova Iorque e Lisboa. Fundada por Stevan V. Nikolic e Adelaide Franco Nikolic em 2015, o objectivo da revista é publicar poesia, ficção, não-ficção, arte e fotografia de qualidade assim como entrevistas, artigos e críticas literárias, escritas em inglês e português. Pretendemos publicar ficção, não-ficção e poesia excepcionais assim como promover os escritores que publicamos, ajudando os autores novos e emergentes a atingir uma audiência literária mais vasta. Publicamos edições impressas e digitais da nossa revista quatro vezes por ano: em Setembro, Dezembro, Março e Junho. A edição online é actualizada regularmente. Não há qualquer custo associado à leitura da revista online. (http://adelaidemagazine.org)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370298495

Adelaide Books Publishers

ADELAIDE BOOKS is a New York based independent company dedicated to publishing literary fiction and creative nonfiction. It was founded in July 2017 as an imprint of the Adelaide Literary Magazine, with the aim to facilitate publishing of novels, memoirs, and collections of short stories, poems, and essays by contributing authors of our magazine and other qualified writers. We believe that in doing so, we best fulfill the mission outlined in Adelaide Magazine – “to promote writers we publish, helping both new and emerging, and established authors reaching a wider literary audience.” Our motto is: We don't publish classics, we make classics. All titles are published in paperback and eBook format and offered through our distributors for bookstore distribution in the US, and through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other major retailers for online sale worldwide. Optionally, we do hardcover editions with or without dust-jacket. Additionally, we offer the possibility of translating books into Portuguese and Spanish and publishing short-run paperback editions for distribution in bookstores in Portugal and Spain. We offer to our authors two unique publishing contract options which guarantee full transparency of the pre-print and post-print publishing process, and generous royalties paid in a timely manner. We are members of the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Book preview

VOICES OF THE WORLD

By Stevan V. Nikolic

The sixth issue of the Adelaide Literary Magazine is out and available for purchase in paperback and all different digital formats. It is also available in the PDF version of the paperback edition that you can read online for free. And lastly, all published works can be accessed in our online edition, again, for free. http://adelaidemagazine.org.

So far, this is our largest issue. Thirty short stories, nine nonfiction works, and thirty-two poets with hundred fifty poems. Or differently – over 160.000 words on 320 pages in five languages. We came to these numbers after very rigorous selection from the vast number of submitted works. Some may say that it is still an overwhelming number of literary works in the very same issue to be digested by readers. Editors had a very heated discussion among themselves about the number of submissions that should be published in each issue. Some were pointing to magazines like The Stockholm Review. There were even claims that a big number of works published in the same issue will give an appearance of the low editing standards and devalue our publication. At the end, it was on me as an editor-in-chief, to make a final decision.

My reasoning is simple. If we hold to different standards just for the sake of appearance, we are going to undermine our main purpose. We are here to promote authors and to serve as an open platform for the presentation of different literary expressions. Technically, our publishing formats can hold very large contents. It is only the matter of reading all submitted works and making a proper selection. If there are thirty good short stories, thirty should be published, and not only five.

Originally, as we started our magazine, we pointed our attention to the US and Portuguese literary scenes. More and more, with submissions coming from all corners of the world, we are becoming truly an international publication. In our last issue, we had wonderful translations of the poems by South Korean poet Lee Yuk Sa. In this issue, we bring poems by Iraqi poet Anwer Ghani, translations from Bengali of the poems by Abu Musa Tareq, and poems in Asturian by Xe M. Sánchez. Besides works in English and Portuguese, in this issue, we also have writings in French.

In the interview section of the Spring Issue, we spent some time with our contributing authors - Kevin Drzakovski, a professor of composition and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Stout and renown author, Maya Alexandri, the author of The Celebration Husband, and Brazilian author Rita de Kasai A. Amaral. It is always nice to chat with authors and learn about their practice.

And for the end, the most important news: Both the circulation of our printed edition and visits to our website went up significantly. We must be doing something right.

The quote for this issue is by Ernest Hemingway There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

FICTION

GETTING THERAPY IN BEIJING IS A PRODUCTION

- An excerpt from a novel Waiting for Love Child

by Maya Alexandri

I went to the International Harmony Hospital family counseling clinic because – well, because I’m an American expatriate, so I wanted an English-speaking, American-trained mental-health counselor, and Beijing offered no other options. On this front (as so many others), Beijing isn’t New York City. Talk therapy (as you well know, Sandra) isn’t something people do in China – except maybe the all things foreign-besotted set, and even with them, therapy’s a new development.

And I picked you, Sandra, among the four practitioners at the counseling center, because I wanted to unburden myself to a woman, and you looked nice in your picture on the counseling clinic’s website, and you were the only one who, as a licensed clinical social worker, wasn’t a doctor. I know it’s inconsistent (hypocritical, maybe) because I enjoy narcotics so freely, but I didn’t want anyone giving me psychotropic drugs. I don’t know why. If you ask me now what I was thinking two years ago, I can only speculate through the lens of my drama-therapy enhanced awareness: maybe, like Blanche du Bois, I was in denial about my need for psychotropic drugs; or, maybe, I thought the doctor would remove the primal me, like he did to that kid in Equus; but truthfully, I have no idea what I was thinking. I knew I needed a shrink, but, as you know, I’m not good at making decisions, and the thought of a doctor made me feel, you know, discombobulated about how to proceed, and you seemed to offer a way out of that conundrum.

After our first session, though, I wasn’t sure what you were offering. First off, I said you looked nice on the website, but I don’t mean nice in the sense of sexually attractive (sorry, is that harsh? I’m just trying to be honest here), and at our first session, I guess I kind of felt disappointed about that. I mean, let’s face it, what man doesn’t want to be turned on by his shrink? At least give me the fantasy. But there was no way I could enjoy any fantasy like that with you. You looked too much like a mom. You’re short; you’ve got sensible hair, dyed a sensible brown to hide the gray; you smile in a way that makes everyone in the world feel like they’re being hugged; and you’ve got the kind of plump, practical body that’s been serving peasant women well for centuries. And your wacky glasses, huge lenses, multi-colored frames: not sexy.

Then there was the problem of your methodology, if I can call it that. When I left your office the first time, I was thinking, So: those who can’t do teach, and those who can’t teach become drama therapists. Obviously, my thought didn’t reflect the entirety of my feelings after our first session because I came back for the second, and your technique eventually won me over – or maybe that’s too strong, what I mean to say is, I stowed my doubts and followed your lead to the best of my ability; but, my God, that first session was weird.

Part of the problem with that first session was me (I admit it, and I’d like you to acknowledge that my admission is a sign of maturity): sitting in your waiting room, I became absolutely panic-stricken that someone would see me. Secrecy, of course, was critical. Zero possibility existed that my Beijing-born wife, Lan, and her parents would understand my needing therapy. In the best case scenario, my in-laws would pressure me to enlist in the People’s Liberation Army as the fix for my undisciplined emotion. In a less positive scenario, they’d put me in a cage next to the laundry line, feed me a calming diet of vegetables and rice gruel, and tell Lan to find another husband. Plainly, if I was going to seek treatment for my addled brain, I’d have to keep it secret from them. So if someone spotted me, how could I explain sitting in the family counseling clinic’s waiting room? The only explanation was that I was waiting for treatment because I was some kind of mental case. Jittery understates the condition I was in by the time you opened your office door and bellowed, with your theatrical voice, DEAN CANNON!

But I was so relieved to escape from the waiting room into the sanctuary of your office that I didn’t shout, Have respect for the ethics of your profession and keep your voice down! I didn’t scream, How could you keep me waiting for this long when every moment increases the chance that someone will walk by and recognize me? Instead of giving voice to any of these pressing concerns, I merely scooted by you and took a seat in the expansive, easy chair (a modified couch) across from your desk.

Maybe it was my apparent nervousness, or the fact that I was mute in response to all your initial questions, that led you to begin our first session with an explanation of drama therapy as you practice it. Or maybe you thought that you could set me at ease, lull me into a comfortable state, by entertaining me a bit. You know, of course, that you’re a compelling performer, and your explanation of drama therapy was in fact terrifically entertaining. You mesmerized me with it:

Dean Cannon, you’re a lucky man, you began with low-volume intensity, and I snapped to attention. "You’re about to embark on an odyssey of drama therapy. You’ve come to counseling for a reason that you haven’t revealed yet, but whatever that reason is will find its answer on our drama therapy odyssey.

"I’m not promising that drama therapy will cure you, if curing is what you need. An odyssey is an experience, and drama therapy is a positive experience, which is not the same as a happy one. What I’m promising you is a positive experience at this time of vulnerability in your life. That experience may prove a cure, or it may prove a springboard to a career in theatrics. It will in all events be an education in the most valuable repository of knowledge about human behavior since the dawn of humanity: the theatrical canon.

‘Canon’ – wonderful segue. I was going to explain next why Stanislavski, and not Freud, is the patron saint of our therapeutic odyssey together – you’ve heard of Stanislavski? You pronounced the name Stanislavski with brio and an accent that I don’t think was Russian.

I shook my head.

Never mind, you said, lowering your volume. You’ll soon recognize Stanislavski’s greatness as surpassing that of all the other so-called great minds of the 20th century —

— Einstein? I asked, surprising myself by speaking, but you’d already commanded my full attention, and I was curious.

Well, no, not Einstein. But all the others. All the ones that devoted themselves to the human condition anyway. Why are we discussing Einstein? I was explaining why Stanislavski – ah yes, canon. ‘Canon’ you know is a homophone for your last name, Cannon. And a cannon is a phallic symbol, you said, turning your head so you could give me a loaded look from the corners of your eyes.

If I were a Freudian I’d care that your last name is a large and threatening representation of a penis, you warned, your voice rising again. We’d spend a lot of time analyzing what effect such a name has had on your psychic development. Because, to Freud, underlying every significant aspect of the person is sex. Sexual desire, sexual repression, sexual perversion, sex, sex, sex — and here I was distracted by your dramatic hand movements, which struck me as a cross between Vishnu and a frenetic traffic cop. I even ducked a little in my chair, giving credence to a worry that one of your arms might fly off from the exertion.

But I’m not a Freudian, you continued, to my relief – not because you weren’t a Freudian, but because the hand-waving stopped – because Freud is wrong. You made the statement simply, as if it was beyond debate, and restraint returned to your voice. We don’t have to look to a genius like Stanislavski, or even to depart from the Freudian tradition, to see Freud proved wrong: his own student, Jung, proved him wrong. Have you heard of Jung?

I shrugged my shoulders. I was guessing that the Yoong to whom you were referring was actually the Juhng I’d read about, but I couldn’t be sure.

Never mind, you sniffed. It’s more critical that you’re familiar with Shakespeare, anyway. You’ve heard of Shakespeare?

Titus Andronicus, I said, grinning.

Interesting choice, you commented, treating me to another of your significant, sidelong glances and jotting a note on the yellow pad on your desk. Well, Jung rightfully pointed out that we are more than mere products of our sexual predilections, conscious and subconscious, you continued, as you sat back in your chair and rested your hands, fingers interlaced, on your chest. Jung says that, in our development as people, culture and society also play a role, particularly as distilled in that grand, amorphous intangible, the collective unconsciousness. But instead of looking to the theatrical canon for the aggregate of human wisdom throughout history, Jung relies on myths, fairy tales and archetypes. If I were a Jungian, our sessions together would be absorbed by questions like, do you particularly identify with Jack and his bean stalk? Here you shrugged off the silk scarf around your shoulders and unfurled it above your head in a move that Martha Graham might have choreographed, if she’d been particularly influenced by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad, and cried: Or, seeing that Little Red Riding Hood is your favorite fairy tale, should we explore the possibility that you’ve squelched an ingrained desire for cross-dressing?

No! I yelped involuntarily, caught up in the performance.

No is right! you volleyed back, allowing the scarf to settle again around your shoulders and throwing one end of it across your throat with thespian flare. Because Jung might be right, but he’s not efficient!

Right on, I encouraged her.

It’s not enough to be right, the methodology must also be an efficient treatment of neurotic disorders. Efficient, meaningful pause, and appropriate! The methodologies of Freud and Jung are simply not appropriate to modern times. The subconscious is passé. It’s impossible to know with any accuracy what’s going on in the subconscious. When you ask, ‘Will my mother get the death penalty?’ when you meant to inquire, ‘Will that serial killer get the death penalty?’ does that ‘Freudian slip’ mean that you subconsciously want your mother dead? Or does that it mean that you subconsciously recognize that your mother is a serial killer? Who can say which interpretation is right? No one! With that pronouncement, you introduced me to your practice of physicalizing emotions as a means of dispelling them: to exorcise your frustration with the subconscious, you picked a dart up from your desk and hurled it with alarming speed (and what proved to be thankfully impressive accuracy) onto a dartboard hanging over my head.

Wretched subconscious! you crowed at your bull’s-eye. I must therefore ask you, Dean Cannon, with the inaccuracy of the subconscious established as indisputable fact, can a psychological method that is premised upon it be efficient?

No? I hazarded.

No is right! you agreed. Inefficiency may be justifiable in the absence of an alternative, but we have alternatives to the subconscious.

We do? I asked, hopeful. Truthfully, I’d never been comfortable with the idea of a subconscious. The idea that part of me was unknown and unknowable, lying in wait, springing dirty traps on the rest of me – well, I’ve never liked it.

"Absolutely we have alternatives to the subconscious! It’s called ‘manifested behavior.’ What we say, what we do and what we know we’re thinking are vastly better indicators of our mental health than what we dream and what we don’t know we’re desiring. When Freud started out in the Victorian age, everyone was repressed. They couldn’t talk freely. Freud thought their dreams would betray what they could never otherwise say.

But, more importantly, all psychoanalysts are power-mongering control freaks. Freud invented the subconscious so that he alone would have interpretive authority about what it meant. If you dream that you’re having sex with your mother, does that mean that you want to have sex with your mother? Or does it mean that you realize your mother is a serial killer? Who can say? Only Freud! And, with what I now recognized to be the wind-up to a dart-throw, I crouched forward as another projectile reached its target at missile speed.

The subconscious is a chimera! An illusion! A foul and pestilent congregation of vapors! I say what’s important is the concrete, not the ephemeral! you proclaimed, like a campaigning politician. Let’s look at and value what you say and do and think, not place undue emphasis on your accidental bloopers and your repressed actions and your dreams —

— But . . . You fixed a gleeful stare on me when I began to interrupt, and I felt embarrassed, worried that the question I wanted to ask would sound stupid in the context of all your theories.

Yes? You had the triumphant look of a parent who’s lured a small boy out from under a bed by tempting him with a lollipop.

I was just thinking that China’s a lot like Victorian – not that, but people don’t talk freely here. My wife’s parents don’t talk to each other. My wife Lan has to act as a go-between for all their communications. And Lan never tells me anything. Her parents bought us a business to run together, and nobody bothered to mention it to me until Lan told me to resign my old job. Lan’s parents notified me about the date of our wedding. They even bought me and Lan an apartment – right next to theirs – which I found out about when our driver took us home there after the honeymoon! I don’t have any control over my own life. All my behavior is determined by Lan’s and her parents’ expectations, and I hardly know what I’m thinking. And I lie. I can’t let them down, but I can’t go along with their demands, either, unless I lie. I know I’m not supposed to lie to you, and I won’t but, I don’t know, if you were to analyze what I say or do, maybe you’d think I was a responsible husband, but if you were to focus on my dreams —

— Brilliant! Brilliant! You actually stood and applauded for me, Sandra. I think I blushed. You will go far in our drama therapy odyssey, Dean Cannon, because you have given me such a wonderful segue to explaining why Stanislavski is the great genius of the 20th century. You inhaled loudly through your nostrils and resumed speaking in a high-volume theater whisper: Stanislavski . . . understood . . . that people, you said very slowly, can behave the same whether they’re responding to real or imagined circumstances, you finished, speeding up the last clause. That’s the essence of ‘the Method’ that actors talk about: living truthfully under imagined circumstances, that’s acting. We . . . and you slowed down again for emphasis, "use . . . that same insight . . . in drama therapy. Hear me? Living. Truthfully. In imagined circumstances. This technique allows us to enjoy the lessons of experience without incurring the scarring consequences that an experienced life entails. It allows us to experiment, to put you in a lab and test you until we discover your real-life behaviors, but without cost in your real life. Other than financial cost, of course.

I will give you a monologue — and here you crossed the room to a bookshelf and began riffing through the bound plays, looking for a text, — your wife Lan is Chinese, I gather?

Yes.

Alright, you’ll recite the monologue in our next session, and you should think about speaking the text just as you would if the circumstances of the play were your own.

What’s that going to do? I think I was only brave enough to ask you this challenging question because your back was turned to me.

Othello! you screeched, grabbing a slim volume, and tossing it to me with a throwing arm that I’m sure the U.S. Olympic softball coach is regretting hadn’t come to her attention sooner. Instead of trying to catch the book, I blocked my face with my hands, and Othello bounced off my knuckles onto the floor.

You, Dean Cannon, are going to be a star. You snatched the book off the floor and flipped through it: Here! This is what I what I want you to recite. Othello’s monologue about how he wooed Desdemona. Take it home, memorize it, and come back here next week ready to perform. Folding over the corner of the page on which the monologue appeared, you thrust the book into my hands.

I stared at the book. I looked up at you. But what’s that going to do? I repeated.

It’s an experiment, Dean Cannon. We’re going to see how you viscerally behave, when you’re not aware of what you’re doing. And we’re going to help you move beyond your base reflexes. Emoting conquers emotion, Dean. Our drama therapy odyssey is going to make you a man capable of exerting the greatest control possible over his destiny.

Really? I was shocked. It won’t turn me gay?

No force on earth will coax a woman into bed faster than a man’s appearance on the stage. As you’ll see from the Othello monologue you’re going to perform next week, the woman falls for the man because of his peerless capacity to tell his story. And, as the sex lives of the many actors who’ve played Othello demonstrate, women fall even faster for men who stand up and recount other people’s stories! After our drama therapy odyssey, you will walk the earth a man forever descending from a stage into the arms of admiring women.

I felt certain that the FDA hadn’t evaluated the accuracy of your statement, but it made such a deep impression on me that I suspended my skepticism. I took the book with me, and I read the monologue. I couldn’t memorize it because I didn’t have time. Just reading the monologue was challenging enough because I couldn’t let Lan know what I was doing. Why are you reading Shakespeare? was a question to which I couldn’t imagine a credible answer, so I had to sneak glimpses at the text while my driver, Lao Chen, was shuttling me to and from client meetings.

Lao Chen and I had worked together long enough that I knew he respected my privacy; while driving, he erected a fourth wall between him in the front and me in the back. Still, I didn’t want to take any chances, so I gave him 50 kuai and instructed him never to mention to Lan or her parents that I was reading in the car.

When I returned the following week for my second session, I arrived a few minutes late to ensure that I wouldn’t have to risk exposure in your waiting room. Proceeding directly to the easy chair across from your desk, I sat, opened the book, and began to read: Her father loved me, oft invited me —

STOP! you commanded. Why are you —

— I’m a busy man, and a professional, and I didn’t have time to memori—

— sitting?

Eh?

You’re sitting. Don’t do that. Rise! You are a star. A man on the stage is as Cortez astride his horse appeared to the Aztecs: a god!

I stood and raised the book, preparing to resume reading. But I paused. Standing was awkward. I felt like I was under scrutiny. Get this over with and never come back, I thought, and began reading again: Her father loved me, oft invited me —

STOP! you intoned. Take a deep breath. Plant your feet hip’s width apart. Straight spine, stop slouching. You’re standing like a petulant teenager impatient to flee detention. But Othello was a general in the Venetian army. You must stand like a man, a hero and a soldier.

I squared my shoulders, pushed my chest out, raised my chin, and tried again: Her father loved me, oft invited me — I paused, prepared for you to scream STOP! again, but when I peeked over the edge of the book I saw you watching me raptly. This time, you let me get through to And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, before you interjected:

PHYSICALIZE! You bolted upright at your desk. How is the emotion supposed to come out if you don’t physicalize it? ‘Wherein I spoke of the most disastrous chances!’ Doesn’t the word ‘disastrous’ make your skin prickle? ‘Of hairbreadth scrapes i’ the’ imminent deadly breach!’ You’re talking about almost DYING! Let the fear show in your behavior!

I had no idea how to do what you were insisting, so I shook my head and started over – but you interrupted me again: PHYSICALIZE! You can’t live truthfully under the circumstances if the scene isn’t in your body! Be a necrophiliac, Dean! In our sessions together, you’re not burying emotion, you’re digging it up! And having sex with it! Let’s see it on the surface!

At which point I marched over to your desk, grabbed a dart, and hurled it at the wall. You’ve had a lot of practice, Sandra, and I’ve always had lousy aim – the dart whizzed off to the right and embedded in the carpet. Absorbing the dart’s pathetic trajectory, I felt humiliated, but you stood and applauded me anyway. Bravo, Dean Cannon! Bravo! That’s behavior. You obviously understand how to physicalize your frustration with this process. Now let’s see you physicalize Othello’s courtship of Desdemona.

This time, you let me get through to the last lines:

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake.

She loved me for the dangers I had passed

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used.

After I finished speaking, a moment of quiet prevailed in your office. But in that silence, I did indeed detect witchcraft – an atmosphere in your office of a spell inadvertently conjured. Your next remark confirmed my perception:

Dean, your wife doesn’t see you as heroic, you pronounced, leaning forward to jot notes on your yellow pad.

She thinks I’m adorable.

You nodded, still writing, and said, But you think you used a kind of witchcraft to make her think that.

Well, I am adorable, but I lied to Lan. And her family. I’m not the person they think I am. They think I’m astrologically compatible with Lan, but I was born in the Year of the Tiger, not the Year of the Dragon. They think I’m a prestigious Harvard graduate, but my alma mater is the State University of New York, Albany. They think I’m filial and obedient and dutiful, but I’m pissed off at my mom, and I only do what they say because I’m a coward, and there’s this other woman, Lisa, who . . . well: I may be adorable, but I’m a bad boy.

You looked up, appraising me. Presumably, you’d rather be a heroic man than a bad boy.

Maybe I flinched, I don’t know. I don’t know what I did, but my unspoken response to your question made you raise your eyebrows. And it was because of that eyebrow raise that I came back the next week, and every week for what’s been almost two years. Accuse me of reading into it, go ahead, but what that eyebrow raise said to me was: Why, Dean Cannon, you wouldn’t rather be a heroic man than a bad boy – you like being a bad boy, you just wish Lan would spank you for it, instead of thinking you adorable.

And knowing that you’d gleaned that insight about me, well, I felt very intimate with you in that instant. Intimate in a way that saluted you for your intuition. It wasn’t a massive salutation, and it never happened again, but that second session I got chubby enough to need to lower my copy of Othello, and as I did so I crowed inwardly, I’m living out my fantasy!

I’ve always assumed that you understood what I was experiencing as it was ongoing, but if not, well: surprise! And I’m sorry. I know this might be difficult for you to accept, but I continued with therapy, not because of Stanislavski, but because of Freud.

Author About Herself

My novel, The Celebration Husband, was published in 2015. My short fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming in, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Fabula Argentea, The Light Ekphrastic, and Thrice Fiction. In addition, I am an organizer of the Amplified Cactus performance art series in Baltimore, Maryland, US. I have lived in China, India, and Kenya, and I have worked as a lawyer, UN consultant, blues-rock singer, and EMT. I am currently applying to medical school. Present writing projects include a novel and a cycle of linked short stories that take place in an epidemic quarantine camp. For more information, see www.mayaalexandri.com.

CAT AND DOG

By Kirk Weixel

Back then the streetcars would come sparking and clacking around the corner down from the turnaround at California Avenue as they headed into town, and Tony Hunter would stretch out a garter snake or drop a penny on the track and wait to see the damage. After school, six or eight of us would meet on the cobblestones between the rows of houses and play football with a folded and tucked Post-Gazette, something so devoid of value that Tony wouldn't want to steal it.

He was the kind of kid even a mother couldn't love, and Mrs. Hunter regularly ordered him out of the house, especially if it was raining. That summer he turned fifteen—four years ahead of me—and skinny as he was he had me by several pounds and inches. I tried to avoid him, but he would appear out of nowhere when I was tossing a ball against the house or shooting hoops in the backyard.

He usually said nothing, just caught the baseball after a bounce or grabbed the basketball as it dropped through the net, and then he'd alternate with me. When mother called me for dinner or I went in to use the bathroom, Tony would finally speak:

You go ahead. I'll just keep playing till you come out.

When I did come out, Tony would be gone, and so would my baseball or basketball, or glove, or bat. When my older brother came home from his classes at Pitt, I'd meet him at the door.

What'd he take this time? I’d tell him. Okay, I'll be back.

Ralph's conversations with Tony would go something like this:

I didn't take nothing.

Get it now, Tony.

What?

You want me to come in and get it myself?

Tony, knowing Ralph would do just that, would huff, disappear for a minute, and return with the stolen item. It was part of Tony's routine. Mrs. Hunter, if she got involved at all, would look dejected and order Tony to get what he had taken. Mr. Hunter was never home for these moments. He spent his leisure time at a place called The New Era Club in Woods Run.

I was lucky to have Ralph, since my father worked six days a week downtown, came home at 5:30, ate, smoked a cigarette, and fell asleep in his chair until it was time for bed. He wasn't an absent father, just a tired one. Mother never associated with the neighborhood women, but my friends liked her because they were always welcome, and in the evenings she'd tell stories on the porch. It was common on summer nights to have four or five kids gathered around her as she wove tales of animals that had usually been orphaned. She was particularly good at imitating animal sounds that spoke of loss or longing. Tony would sometimes stand by the hedge and listen. During the day, if I got into scrapes, she rarely intervened, preferring to busy herself with housework, ironing even our underwear.

When Ralph was home, I had a defender, but if he stayed in Oakland to study or got together with friends, Tony knew, and Tony, besides being a thief, was cruel.

A mouse got into our cellar in May when the temperature dropped suddenly, and mother was scrubbing a shirt cuff in the laundry tub when the mouse skittered over her foot. She made a phone call, and the next day we had a kitten with gray and white stripes and white paws that I called Boots. For two months he slept in a cardboard box behind the furnace and delighted us with his imitation of a lion on the prowl, leaping out from anywhere to grab an ankle or chase an imaginary enemy across the living room rug. As he grew, he'd sit with me on the sofa or curl up at night between my legs, and when we let him outside in July, Boots often followed me.

Usually I knew where he was, but I let my guard down the afternoon that Tony was burning trash in an old oil drum. I was drawn to the flames, I guess, out of simple curiosity, and we all know what curiosity does to cats.

I didn't see Boots until Tony stared past me and said,

Well, look what we have here. A kitty. I love roast kitty, and before I could move to stop him, he scooped up my cat.

I knew I was on dangerous ground. If I lunged to get the cat, Tony could squeeze it or toss it into the barrel. When I hung back, he grabbed the scruff of its neck and dangled it high over the flames. I realize so many years later that even Tony wasn't dumb enough to kill the cat openly, but I didn't know it then and began to scream.

A window flew open next door. It was Mrs. Showalter, overweight and heavily rouged as always—what my mother called a broken-down chorus girl—wagging her finger.

Tony Hunter, you put that cat down right now or I'll stick you in that barrel.

He mumbled something like I was only joking, just having some fun, but he set the cat down, and Boots raced home in seconds. When I told Mother what had happened, she patted the cat and said,

What do you expect? He's scum. Stay away from him.

Most of the time I did, and kept Boots away as well, but the cat loved to explore, and if we left the door even slightly ajar, he'd ease his way through it and head for the bushes and flowers and trees. When he got hungry, he'd be back. Mother had a soft spot for Boots and would order an extra pound of ground chuck at Schlosser's Market. What cat could pass up fresh ground chuck?

I was so convinced that Boots would always return that, on that last Thursday in July when he wasn't in by dinner, I got worried and called for him. After I finished dessert and he still wasn't back, I moved slowly down the street yelling his name. I was on the sidewalk in front of Hunters’ when I glimpsed Tony on the porch watching me.

Sounds like you lost a cat. Maybe something bad happened to it. Streetcar or something.

Then it hit me. If he came across the cat when no one else was around…I could barely

speak the words:

If you hurt that cat…

He got out of his chair slowly and leaned across the low brick wall of the porch:

Yeah, what if I did? What are you going to do about it?

As I think of that scene, I'm struck by the fact that neither of us swore, no hells or damns or worse. None of us did until we were older and needed extra ammunition. When we were younger, we said it all with intonation.

I waited for Boots into early morning, torturing myself with images of what Tony might have done or did do to my cat. And then, with the house asleep and the locusts starting their high-pitched wail, I remembered that I had one way to get back at the boy who had made my life so miserable: Tony Hunter had a dog.

Buster was a chocolate Lab and one of the friendliest dogs I have ever met. Because Tony owned him, Buster ambled freely around the neighborhood, wagging at everyone and waiting to be petted. We all obliged. If Boots was with me when Buster approached, my cat would arch its back and assume a fighting pose, but Buster never noticed, tongue out, tail swinging. I guess he figured that if Boots was with me, he must be okay.

My cat got a mixed reception in the neighborhood, cats always do, but everyone adored Buster, even his owner. I wonder if Tony ever attached himself so openly to anything else? When he brought the dog home from the pound, Tony introduced him to all of the neighbors. I recall two things from that day: I liked Buster because he was another animal whose name began with the letter B, and he was so instantly affectionate. He was also, for the only time in his life, on a leash. Within a week, Tony had lost his enthusiasm for exercising Buster. The dog was healthy and full grown; he could do his own walking. And he did, often traveling blocks away and across traffic. Buster led a charmed life, or so it seemed.

My plan was simple: wait until Buster had wandered well away from his master and then look for an opportunity to do to Buster what Tony had done to Boots.

I spent many a summer afternoon in pickup games at Marmaduke Field with friends who, like me, had skipped Little League. We had gone to tryouts, and when it was clear that the coach, Mr. Henley, was civic minded but clueless about baseball, we dropped off the team. If we weren't swimming at the local pool, we'd meet at the field to hit fly balls or play catch, and if enough of us showed up, we'd choose sides and get an actual game going. Standard equipment when we left our houses included a mitt hooked over a bat. Bats make excellent weapons.

In late afternoon, tired and dusty, we'd head home for dinner. Along my route were red or yellow brick houses whose backyards faced a gulley and a small patch of woods. When I was old enough to roam from my house, I sometimes tossed a peanut butter sandwich and a canteen into a backpack and, down in those woods, considered myself on a great adventure looking for frogs and squirrels and chipmunks. Buster loved those woods.

On the day that I was sure Boots was missing, I hung back after the game and walked on alone. When I reached the foot bridge that spanned the gulley, I went to the middle of it and called for Buster.

Here, boy. Bus-ter. Come on, boy.

Soon I heard a rustling in the brush below me, and out came Buster, tail wagging.

Come here, boy. I've got something for you.

I led him further into the woods, well enough away from the houses that no one gazing out a back window could see either of us. When I reached a level stretch, I slipped my glove off the bat, a thirty-two ounce Louisville Slugger, light enough to swing easily. I dug into my pocket and brought out a handful of dog treats. One of our neighbors, Mr. Antonelli, had told me about feeding his dying Great Dane a cheeseburger, the dog's favorite, right before the vet gave the lethal injection.

Buster, I said, Enjoy your last meal.

I wrapped my fist around the bottom of the bat just as Buster raised his head, waiting for another treat.

Now this next part is hard to explain, but I'll try. For lord-only-knows what reason, as I fed Buster I heard my mother's voice as it sounded when she was telling stories. One that she traditionally told was Bambi, and another involved a fish named Guppy, who jumped so high out of the stream that he landed in a nearby creek and couldn't get back to his family. As I looked down at Buster, though, I remembered a story called Little Hoot, about a baby owl whose mother flies off one night and never returns. Little Hoot waits in his nest, crying,

Hooo, Hoooo.

By the end of the story, he chokes out,

Why? Why?

Mother always hammed it up, but, as a small child, I wept every time she told it.

Those are the words that, in all their exaggerated, sentimental glory, I heard as Buster waited for his next Milk-Bone. Laughing, I looped the strap of my glove over my bat and slapped the side of my leg.

Come on, boy. Let's go home.

The next morning, when I came down for breakfast, there was Boots on the front porch perched on the windowsill. He had a gash under his chin and some missing fur, but he ate at least a quarter pound of ground chuck. And he survived his cuts and bruises and many more as the years went on. He died of old age, or would have if the vet hadn't shortened his life by a few days or weeks. As the doctor filled the syringe, I got out a bowl and a large helping of Andy Schlosser's finest ground round.

Buster didn't fare as well. I lived between two major roads, and a common sound in our neighborhood was the screech of brakes. Mr. McDougall, who lived near California Avenue, heard it that afternoon and discovered Buster when he investigated. He couldn't lift the dog on his own and phoned the Hunters with the news. I was out in the street that October tossing a football, my first real one, in the air when I watched the car coming. As I stepped aside to let it pass, Mr. Hunter was driving, stone-faced as ever. Tony was riding shotgun, crying. When they pulled into the driveway, I walked toward them, not wanting to miss whatever it was that caused Tony to weep.

Nearing the car, I could see them lifting something large out of the back seat.

Wrapped in an old blanket was Buster.

After dinner, I returned to the Hunters, entering their basement for one of the rare times, to help get shovels and string. We dug an enormous hole—Buster was a Lab after all— grabbed each end of the blanket, lowered him in, filled the hole, and tied two sticks together for a cross.

Thanks, Tony said.

Two weeks later, Ralph retrieved the football that Tony had stolen earlier that day.

About the Author

Kirk Weixel is professor emeritus in English at Saint Francis University, Loretto, Pennsylvania, where he continues to teach literature and creative writing. He has previously served as regional correspondent for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, fiction editor for The Loyalhanna Review, and program director for the Ligonier Valley Writers Conference. He has three children and lives in Loretto with his wife, Mary Jeanne.

MOURNER’S PRAYER

By Richard Klin

After the end of the Second World War—after the German occupation, the round-ups, the hiding—the tailor’s son and daughter boarded a ship and left Brussels forever, bound for New York City and a father they barely remembered.

The tailor’s son and daughter hadn’t laid eyes on their father since his own departure from Brussels in the late 1930s. Vast prosperity, the tailor had promised, awaited in this mythical place called New York City, and in due time his wife, son, and daughter would follow. But the war, of course, had intervened.

The tailor had seemed shockingly unfamiliar when the son and daughter were reunited with their father. For one, his French had mostly evaporated. The tailor’s practical temperament precluded any sort of sentimental baggage: language was for strictly utilitarian purposes, a means to an end. Long ago he had left Poland to set up shop as a tailor in Brussels and proceeded to master French only because his economic survival depended on it. Here in Brooklyn, of course, there was no need for French and it was mostly discarded, the remnants trotted out to serve as, in essence, a party trick, something to wow a customer or impress Ida on her all-too-frequent visits.

The tailor’s English was completely fluent, peppered with unfamiliar colloquialisms and references to baseball, cherry lime rickeys, that monumental poker game on Pitkin Avenue. This epic card game had transpired soon after the tailor’s own arrival in the United States. It seemed to serve as the cornerstone of his very existence. The assumption had been that this newly arrived tailor was a greenhorn, a patsy who didn’t know the first thing whatsoever about poker. But the tailor—with skill, cunning, and a dexterity that had never failed him—had bested the other players, forcing their respect and forever smashing any assumptions that he was some sort of rube. The tailor related this saga at regular intervals, calling up the details in painful, unwavering exactitude. The tailor’s son could repeat, verbatim, entire swaths of the story.

Perhaps the single most arresting thing to the tailor’s son was that his father had somehow acquired his very own American moniker: Red, in honor of his mane of red hair. It was like something straight out of those American cowboy movies that he and the entire neighborhood had followed so avidly. The idea that this was the name of his very own father was so absurdly striking that he too had started to refer to his father as Red, which had, over time, become a habit.

The tailor’s son, in that first, disorienting period of his new life in Brooklyn, had instinctively searched far and wide for French, any snatches or hints of the familiar cadence, cocking his head to the radio in the faint hopes of a familiar song, going so far as to strike up conversations with the reticent Mr. Gindi, the French-speaking Sephardic baker on Avenue M, who seemed less than interested.

And Yiddish, of which the tailor’s son did have a working knowledge, also proved to be basically a dead end. Red’s Yiddish—like all of Brooklyn, it seemed—had shifted into a strange, thoroughly unfamiliar American patois.

And in that initial, disorienting stage, the tailor’s son--so thoroughly shaped by his wartime experience as a trusted altar boy--also instinctively kept his eyes peeled for an appropriate Catholic church.

His mother had made those complicated arrangements for him and his sister to be placed in hiding. The blond, blue-eyed tailor’s son—simply by dint of his physical appearance—had become the unofficial leader of the little gaggle of Jewish children passing themselves off as Catholic, hiding in plain sight from the omniscient gaze of the Germans and their Belgian supporters. It was the tailor’s son who was responsible for going into the village to fetch the ration of milk for the others. In the closing days of the war, this necessitated making his way past an encampment of German soldiers. Some, he could see, were not significantly older than he was.

The tailor’s son had gained the trust of the strict and exacting priest, serving with distinction as an altar