Mount Hope Issue 2: Fall 2012

(2)

MOUNT HOPE

(3)

MOUNT HOPE

Mount Hope is published bi-annually in Bristol, Rhode Island by the Roger Williams University Department of English and Creative Writing. Individual subscription rates are: $20 annually or $35 for two years. Mount Hope © 2012, All Rights Reserved. No portion of Mount Hope may be reproduced in any form or by electronic means, including all information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission of Mount Hope magazine or authors of individual creative works. Any resemblance of events, locations or persons, living or dead, in creative works contained herein is entirely coincidental.

Mount Hope cannot be held responsible for any of the views expressed by its contributors.

(4)

www.mounthopemagazine.com Individual Issue Price: $10.00 Inner cover art: “Set Sail,” by Jeysson Santos (see p. 100 for details)

MOUNT HOPE

Editor Edward J. Delaney Writer-in-Residence

Adam Braver

Design Editor Lisa Daria Kennedy Massachusetts College of Art Poetry Editor

(5)

Shelley Puhak Notre Dame of Maryland University Associate Editor

Steven Withrow

Managing Editor Nicole Haylon, ’12 Senior Editors: Melanie Puckett, ’12 - Poetry & Fiction Shannon Seaman, ’12 - Poetry & Photography Evan Viola, ’12 - Graphics Submissions Editor:

Leah Catania,’14

Editorial Assistants: Shane Bumstead ’12 Mia Nachbar ’13 Ann Davis ’12 Katlyn Proctor ’12 Samantha Duncan ’13 Chelsea Silva ’14 Bre’Anna Metts-Nixon ’13 Krista Tierney ’14 MOUNT HOPE

In This Issue: Poetry

Page

D. Dina Friedman ........................... Second Floor ................................................. 15 Seven Lessons Learned from Sea Turtles ...... 16 Laura Jean Baker ............................. Beasts ........................................................... 23 Congratulations from the College of Letters & Science ......................................... 24 Lord Genius ................................................. 25 John Surowiecki .............................. G.T. (Jumping Bean Man, 1973) ................ 41 J.E. (Apollon Musagète: Coventry,

(6)

Connecticut) ................................................. 42 F.K. (Stupid Girl, 1952) ............................. 43 Richard Michelson........................... The Business of America ............................. 60 My Mother, At Sixty, Learns to Drive ........ 61 The Communists vs. The Capitalists ............. 64 Carrie Addington ............................ Clockwork ................................................... 78 Anesthesia .................................................... 79 Dobutamine ................................................. 80 Katherine E. Young ....................... I Dreamed You Spoke in Russian ................ 87 Speaking English........................................... 88 MOUNT HOPE

Fiction

Page

Nicole L.V. Mullis............................ Those Who Trespass .................................... 8 John Glass ....................................... Don’t Poke Fun ........................................... 26 Murli Melwani ................................. Teesta Holiday ............................................. 71 Thomas Cobb ................................. The Rise of Capitalism in the West, 1909 ... 97

Nonfiction Thomas Shane .................................. The Catbird’s Cry ........................................ 44 (7)

Michael Milburn ...............................What Fun ................................................... 89

Interviews Caroline Preston ................................................................................................... 17 Dava Sobel ............................................................................................................. 66

Photography Richard Koci Hernandez ................ Portfolio....................................................... 35 Stephan Brigidi ................................. Santuari: 1975-2012 ................................. 81

Graphic Art Andrew Cohen & Billy Lopez ....... Surrealia, Chapter 1.................................... 48 MOUNT HOPE

Nicole L. V. Mullis

Those Who Trespass It was after nine in the morning when Carol entered her old neighborhood. She drove slowly, counting empty driveways and chewing her bottom lip. Everyone appeared to be at school or work. Her eyes darted back and forth searching for garbage men, service people, meter readers, or kids playing hooky.

Yesterday, the bank’s lawn service had showed up just as she was unloading her tools. Thank God she had parked on the street. Carol remembered how her hands shook when the man—a big, blond stranger —bid her a cheerful hello before mindlessly mangling the lawn. He didn’t know she used to possess the repossessed yard. He didn’t know she was there to tend the repossessed garden.

She should be safe today. The bank only mowed once a month. The meter people weren’t due for another week. Still, she parked in the street, closer to the neighbor’s house than her own. She hefted her bucket, rake and shears, and headed for the backyard. Despite the “No Trespassing” stickers glinting in the windows, and the lousy lawn job, Carol couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride. Her former home was a beauty.

Carol hadn’t always thought so. When she had first seen it ten years ago, she thought it was ugly.

The boxy ranch had sat on the bare lot like a lone tooth in an old crone’s mouth. Her husband, on the other hand, had thought it was perfect.

“Look, Babe, no trees!” he exclaimed. “No trees mean no raking. And that garage looks big enough for a fishing boat.”

Carol hadn’t understood his enthusiasm. They had a rake. What they didn’t have was a fishing boat.

Still, the schools were good, and she was three months pregnant.

The house was out of their financial league but their loan officer, a soon-to-be-ex-friend of her soon-to-be-ex-husband, had worked some magic. He had arranged it so they didn’t need a down payment and the seller picked up the closing costs. Five years later, he had refinanced their house so her husband could buy the fishing boat. Last summer the loan officer had pleaded guilty to fraud, her husband had run off with a cocktail waitress, and their house had appraised for $20,000 less than what they owed on it. Some magic.

They had filed divorce papers in December and fought over everything. The court had ordered the house be on the market for the duration of the proceedings. The market, however, had bottomed out before her marriage, so the house just sat there, overpriced and under-visited. The divorce was final six messy months later, leaving the bank with their house, her ex-husband with their boat, and Carol with their

(8)

MOUNT HOPE

son.

(9)

Carol was devastated but not surprised. Her ex-husband was no different from her many exboyfriends—a well-built but irresponsible man. Her mother had spent Carol’s short engagement arguing against the marriage, but Carol refused to listen. So what if he had only his broad shoulders and a spotty work history? She had her good credit and the baseless belief there wasn’t anything those shoulders couldn’t bear.

When she had realized her mother was right, Carol was a mother herself. So, she had worked on her house, her marriage, and her son, with varying degrees of success. Her marriage was an obvious loss.

Her son was a work-in-progress, but her house was a clear victory.

She had removed the outdated wallpaper and pinched pennies for new windows. She had learned to lay tile, and traded favors to have the floors sanded. She had mowed the lawn, mended the fence, and mapped out the garden.

There was little money for flowers, but she had friends with gardens. She had helped them prune and plant in exchange for starts and seedlings. The property possessed surprisingly good soil. Carol merely had to turn it over to see its dark, rich nature. It made her wonder what had been there before her subdivision.

Perhaps it was a farm or the once-saturated banks of the Clemency River, now a mile south. Whatever the reason, the soil was wholesome; combined with the unbroken sunlight and rootless ground, her transplants had thrived.

Foxglove and hollyhocks, lilacs and irises, sedum and coneflowers, daisies and black-eyed-Susans had transformed the homely home into a debutante princess—all petaled skirts and demure scents.

Once her flowerbeds were established, Carol planted a vegetable garden. She had borrowed a friend’s tiller and cut a wide square in the center of the back yard. There she had planted rows of tomatoes, onions, corn, zucchinis and pumpkins. Her son had loved the vegetable garden. The first summer he had been just a toddler, playing in the dirt, planting his plastic army men and reaping Carol’s laughter. By the time he was in grade school, he was her determined helper, pulling up weeds, staking up stalks and bringing in their harvest.

Every spring, she had started her vegetables from seed, using milk-carton bottoms and yogurt cups as planters. Her husband had hated when she pushed the kitchen table under the living-room window and settled her makeshift nursery on the top. Carol hadn’t cared. From March until May, they had eaten off the coffee table, her husband complaining bitterly while Carol watched her greenlings over his broad shoulders.

When he asked for the divorce, Carol had found a lawyer with a nice smile and a nice secretary.

MOUNT HOPE

Carol had told him she wanted the house. She had asked if her husband could assume the boat loan, figuring her jobs and his child support would cover the mortgage. Her lawyer had smiled his nice smile and advised her to let him do his job. When her husband neglected to pay child support, forcing her to default the first month, she had left several dire messages with her lawyer’s nice secretary. When her nice lawyer didn’t return her calls, she had gone to his office and waited. Four hours later, he met her without the nice smile. She had asked if he could petition the court to garnish her husband’s wages. He had looked surprised that she knew what “garnish” meant.

Carol only knew because her neighbor, Simone, had told her. Simone was a shrewd woman with narrow shoulders and a narrow mouth. She had two degrees, two sons and a doting husband. She worked out of her tidy bungalow as a CPA and drove her sons to parochial school in a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

Carol, by contrast, had two jobs, a broken marriage and a rusty minivan that stalled at stop signs. Despite these differences, they had been neighborly enough. They had shared a love of dark coffee and their sons had sometimes played together. Simone had never offered much advice. She had answered questions in a quick, clipped manner, like a calculator flashing a perfect computation. The only time she had given an unsolicited opinion was when she suggested Carol get a better lawyer.

Carol’s lawyer had finally petitioned the court but he tacked on an additional fee. When Carol had asked how much of her retainer remained, he advised her not to worry her pretty little head. When Carol lost her second job, he again told her not to worry. When she lost the house, he offered to buy her dinner.

Simone had been right. She should have found a better lawyer.

Before the bank evicted her, Carol had fixed things. She had patched a hole her son made in the wall the night she told him they were moving. She had grouted the shower floor by the drain. She had called the no-good window salesman to back his guarantee on her windows, which were riddled with mold.

Simone had come over with boxes the day the window repairman arrived. She had asked why Carol was bothering to fix a house she no longer owned. Carol had shrugged. “I don’t want the bank to think I didn’t take care of things.” Simone looked puzzled by this.

Simone always looked puzzled by Carol, but not in a disparaging way. In fact, Simone seemed incapable of judgment, a quality Carol appreciated most when her foreclosure was final. Many neighbors had avoided Carol, as if financial ruin was contagious. Simone, however, had continued as if nothing changed. She was neither more friendly nor less. She had helped when Carol asked—sharing her garbage service or watching her son when daycare became unaffordable. She had also helped when Carol didn’t ask—calling the police when her ex-husband broke into the garage, or placing crisp fifty-dollar bills in her mailbox.

(10)

MOUNT HOPE

(11)

The money had started coming after the sheriff ’s sale and had lasted until Carol surrendered her keys. Four weeks in total. Carol had never seen Simone do it but she knew it was her. The understated charity had been as plain as a signature—always once a week, always a fifty-dollar bill, always unsigned.

Carol had wanted to thank Simone. She actually had wanted to stop her, but the weekly allowance had been just enough to squeeze out another tank of gas or another week of groceries. Embarrassing, but necessary.

Carol had tried to lessen her debt by baking Simone’s favorite cookies and breads. She had discovered Simone’s surprisingly large sweet tooth when they first had coffee together. Carol had laid out a dozen warm ginger cookies and Simone had eaten all but two. So, for four weeks, Carol had expressed her gratitude in edible goodies and Simone had acknowledged it with promptly-returned, washed plates. It had been a quiet, sugary affair.

During the last week, while their boys played in the yard, Carol had tried to show Simone how to make zucchini bread. Simone had watched in a detached sort of way, asking no questions beyond, “May I lick the spoon?”

The only subject Simone had ever solicited Carol’s advice on was gardening. She had openly admired Carol’s burgeoning flowerbeds. Every spring, Simone would scratch out a few stretches of dirt, splurge on a bevy of seedlings and try her hand at keeping them alive. She’d wander over to Carol’s and asked how she trained her morning glories to climb the drainpipes or why she covered her tomatoes with bed sheets. Carol had tried to help. She had answered questions, provided precious starts from her own garden, and made fertilizer recommendations. Unfortunately, Simone’s efforts never lasted past June. She never planted the transplants on time. She couldn’t grasp the concept of pruning. She pulled the volunteer flowers because they were growing in the wrong spots and left the watering largely to God. Still, Carol was never short with Simone because Simone was never short with Carol.

Now, Carol missed Simone.

Carol was also careful of Simone. Simone was the only neighbor aware of Carol’s trespassing.

Carol only knew this because one morning, after a week of subversive gardening, Simone’s hose lay on the property line, water ready.

Again, embarrassing but necessary.

The trespassing had started innocently. Her son was still part of the school district and qualified for summer school. So, Monday through Friday, during a hot July, she had parked in her old driveway and put him on the bus. While waiting, she had noticed the garden needed weeding. After the bus left, she had weeded it.

The next day she had pinched the mums. The day after, she had edged the flowerbeds. The day

MOUNT HOPE

after that, she had pruned the roses and deadheaded the coneflowers.

Eventually she started carrying gloves, trowels and a hoe in her decrepit van. The minute the neighborhood grew quiet, she got to work, harvesting the ripe vegetables and cutting back dead vines. When summer school had ended, she didn’t stop.

Every other morning before work she had returned—watering through the dry spells and watching her flowers’ grand finale. The garden was never as lovely as it was that September. She wanted to take some roots, cuttings, and starts back to the apartment but she knew this was stupid. She had no land in which to plant them. Besides, they belonged where they were. She liked them there. She liked herself there. Sinking her fingers into the earth was like holding her grandmother’s hand.

Carol looked at her Shasta daisies, running a gloved finger over a bloom as wide as her palm.

This bunch needed to be split, the center showed signs of wilting. Normally, this was a happy thing for Carol. Extracting the middle and transplanting it elsewhere in the yard was a satisfaction only a gardener could understand. Frustration boiled in Carol’s gut, spiking her eyes with tears. Why was she here torturing herself ? This was stupid, just plain— “Carol?”

Carol startled and wiped her face, dirt and tears making a muddy sheen. Simone stood above her holding two mugs of coffee. She was wearing gray, pleated slacks and a pretty, capped-sleeved blouse in a soft lilac shade. Her tasteful diamond winked in the sun as she handed a mug to Carol. Carol wiped her bare fingers on her sweatpants and accepted.

“This house has the nicest yard on the block and no one lives here,” Simone said.

A corner of Carol’s mouth jerked.

“I’m worried about you.” Simone sighed. “What are you doing?”

“Taking care of my flowers,” Carol said.

Simone’s narrow mouth grew narrower.

“You’ll have a garden again,” she said after a spell. “You can start over.”

Carol looked at Simone. It was easy for her. Just like the transplants she forgot to plant or the volunteers she unwittingly pulled, she could always start over. The plants, however, were dead. There was no starting over for them. And that’s how Carol felt. A transplant left to die on a sidewalk six inches from dirt. She offered back the cup.

“You don’t understand,” Carol said.

Simone gave that puzzled look.

“Mr. Murphy saw you,” she said. “He saw you taking the vegetables and I had to talk him out of

(12)

MOUNT HOPE

(13)

calling the police.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Carol felt sick. Once upon a time, she and Mr. Murphy gabbed about heirloom tomatoes over the fence. Now he was going to call the police on her. She supposed it made sense. He was different after her husband left. Closed, disinclined to discuss the wet spring and its effect on runner beans. The day Carol moved out, she caught him peering through his front window. She had just finished shoving her kitchen chairs into her overstuffed van. She had smiled and he retreated—she was no longer his neighbor to help, but a stranger to watch.

Simone cleared her throat and shifted her weight.

“So, here’s the deal. You can have my yard.”

“Huh?” “You can have my yard. Bring your tools over and transplant your flowers. You can tend them all you want and I will stay out of it.”

“Like I’m your gardener?”

“No. I’m offering use of the land. What you do with it is your call. When you find a new house, come dig everything up and take it with you.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Carol couldn’t meet Simone’s eyes and so studied her small shoulders standing in lilac-relief against the blue sky. It was like receiving those fifty-dollar bills—unsolicited but necessary.

“I don’t— ” “Go on,” she said. “Think of it as an outdoor storage unit.”

Carol nodded. Simone turned to leave.

“Simone?”

“Yes?” “Thank you.”

The next day, after dropping her son off at school, Carol pulled into Simone’s driveway with her tools and a loaf of banana bread. The stretch of earth Simone offered was narrow—like Carol’s apartment —but it had good soil and a good amount of sunlight. It would do nicely.

It took nearly a week to ready it. Sometimes Simone would come out with a cup of coffee and whatever Carol baked for her that morning. Mostly, she remained inside with her work. Once, Simone’s

MOUNT HOPE

youngest son lined his Matchbox cars around the garden’s perimeter, making Carol laugh. Before leaving that afternoon, she rearranged them in the grass, spelling out his name. The next morning she returned with his favorite chocolate-chip cookies.

The weather was slightly cooler when she pulled into her old driveway for the last time. In her mini-van were a dozen plastic buckets. She was going to take everything, but when she looked at the house, she froze.

The sky was a perfect blue, the sun still warm with summer’s memory. Hundreds of pretty, petaled heads played in the breeze. Longing broke in Carol’s breast. This was her home and the foreclosure couldn’t change that. This was where her son was born, her skills sharpened, her life changed. Now that she could take anything she wanted, Carol found herself wanting to leave everything there—her signature, in posies and patience.

She looked at Simone’s yard. The borrowed plot of earth was barren, waiting.

Carol knelt before her cluster of Shasta daisies. They needed splitting. After studying it, she took her shovel and precisely extracted its center. She took only enough dirt to keep the roots insulated before carefully raking clean earth into the hole. She watered and patted this wound, knowing the plant would be better for it come spring.

She continued, taking what needed to go, until she accounted for everything. She only filled half the buckets, but half the buckets were all she needed. Carol stepped back. The donut-hole vacancies were barely visible. She tried to imagine a new family moving in. A bride, a baby, a boy. She imagined them arriving in the dead of winter, thinking all was dead. Then, when April came, the tender sprouts of Carol’s garden would tell the truth.

Carol smiled. She didn’t have a husband, a house, or a yard. What she had was her son, her friend, and the heart of her garden.

(14)

Nicole L. V. Mullis is a Sunday columnist for the Battle Creek Enquirer. Her work has been featured in several Michigan newspapers and websites. Michigan State University produced her three-act play, Sea Glass, as its ASMSU winner.

MOUNT HOPE

D. Dina Friedman

Second Floor I run up the stairs, carpeted plaid a lavender background mistaken for mauve and at the top, a little black dog Her name is Princess. The irony is lost A lavender background mistaken for mauve all I know is the kitchen is dark as the dog Her name is Princess. The irony is lost Grime covers the air, the lonesome trees All I know is the kitchen is dark as the dog the smell of string beans overcooked on the stove Grime covers the air, the lonesome trees black smoke called pollution—I don’t know what that means (15)

The smell of string beans overcooked on the stove the window is open. The refrigerator groans black smoke called pollution—I don’t know what that means My fingers dig into the dog’s soft black fur The window is open. The refrigerator groans I drink apricot nectar. It comes in a can My fingers dig into the dog’s soft black fur I teach her politeness—how to shake hands I drink apricot nectar. It comes in a can It’s a drink for the gods, and I savor the taste I teach her politeness—how to shake hands imagining a palace with pure white lace It’s a drink for the gods, and I savor the taste I run up the stairs, carpeted plaid imagining a palace with pure white lace and at the top, a little black dog

MOUNT HOPE

D. Dina Friedman

Seven Lessons Learned from Sea Turtles I. The micromanaging mother is unnecessary.

It is enough to lay eggs in the sand and trust the earth to hatch them.

II. Keep walking; the sand is soft.

Eventually the ocean will pull you in.

III. You can pretend to be a rock.

If you are lucky, no one will notice.

If not, bite.

IV. The decoy nest, like the decoy word fools only those who don’t look deep.

(16)

V. Learn to see in the dark.

Better yet, learn to compensate for not being able to see in the dark.

VI. Rejoice in your long life the slow beauty of your aging.

VII. Return to the places you love even if you’re not sure why you love them.

D. Dina Friedman has been published widely in literary journals including Bloodroot, San Pedro River Review, Bluestem, Anderbo, Calyx, Pacific Poetry, Fiction Review, and many others. She is the author of two young adult novels and teaches at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Visit her website at www.ddinafriedman.com.

MOUNT HOPE

(17)

Mount Hope with novelist Caroline Preston on The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt Interview by Nicole Haylon

MOUNT HOPE

In The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, novelist Caroline Preston created something wholly original: A novel in the form of a scrapbook. Not a graphic novel, and not simply a novel with illustrations, the book is a visual and narrative journey. Preston is the author of three previous novels. Jackie by Josie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, was drawn from her (brief) researching stint for a Jackie O. biography. Gatsby’s Girl chronicles F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan. She speaks with Mount Hope about the creation of the work, and how her own background as an archivist took her there.

Nicole Haylon: You have published other, more traditional-style novels. What about the scrapbook form was so appealing to you that it made you change your writing style?

Caroline Preston: I wrote three traditional novels. I published Gatsby’s Girl, my third one in 2006, and then I was just casting around for an idea for my next novel. I was very interested in writing something about Ulysses and about Paris in the Twenties. My mother’s godmother was Sylvia Beach, the first publisher of Ulysses, and the era has always fascinated me. F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife, Zelda, and some other artists all kept amazing scrapbooks about the Twenties. I had always been really interested in ephemera and scrapbooks myself. I had collected vintage scrapbooks and had also worked as an archivist at Harvard and at the Peabody/Essex Museum, where I’d been the curator of old manuscripts and scrapbooks. Vintage scrapbooks have a remarkable ability to capture the life and culture of the time and can read like a good novel.

I thought that it’d be nice to reproduce some of this visual material in a novel—and then I just had this inspiration to create a novel that was a scrapbook.

(18)

NH: It’s really a beautiful book.

CP: I’m thrilled with the way it turned out. The publisher did a beautiful job reproducing the scrapbook pages. I have no training as a graphic artist. I had this nutty idea to create a scrapbook novel with vintage ephemera and learned as I went along. The first pages were very crude. I am still amazed that Frankie Pratt works as both a novel and as a vintage scrapbook, and that the finished product was so faithful to my original idea.

NH: How was the writing process itself different?

CP: People always ask me: what came first, the visual material or the writing? The answer is that I started with the basic idea of the story. A coming-of-age story of an aspiring writer named Frankie Pratt, and her journey from a New England village to Vassar, Greenwich Village and Paris. Each place would be a different chapter and I assembled material for each one. For example, for Vassar I collected yearbooks and report cards, magazines of the time, dance cards, postcards. I had individual boxes for each chapter, and I’d throw things in as I found them. As I was working on a chapter, I’d spill the contents of that box across my desk and have the story emerge from the images and ephemera that I found. I was really like a girl creating a scrapbook.

MOUNT HOPE

NH: Did the plot change at all when you couldn’t find a specific artifact or anything?

CP: The plot did change a little. It didn’t really change because I couldn’t find something. It was more that the plot evolved as I discovered interesting items or as I did more research,. The ephemera became the inspiration. I found things about, say, the automat, or the Lindbergh’s flight to Paris, or book covers.

NH: How was the experience of using the typewriter as opposed to a computer?

CP: In reality, I did use a computer. What you can do now is download the font that matches a particular typewriter so it has a very individual look. I mostly did that, because I was constantly revising it and changing the story, and I couldn’t just keep typing it up on the typewriter! Typing is hard. Vintage typewriters are really wonderful, but you’re constantly making mistakes, and you’re having to realign the lines and things like that, which I had to do plenty of times even just using the computer. Typing on a vintage typewriter requires considerable manual strength and coordination. It’s a lost art. But I love old typewriters, and do have a 1918 Corona portable that I used for a few captions. The Corona was the first portable typewriter, and it was marketed towards artists and women. It was like the first laptop computer: you could travel with it and have one of your own. It was affordable to individuals. The Corona typewriter was used by many famous writers, including Hemingway for The Sun Also Rises.

(19)

NH: What do you feel that writing in the scrapbook style says about Frankie as a character?

CP: Frankie Pratt is creating an autobiography through her scrapbook, where she glues items she finds significant, either because they are beautiful or because it’s a souvenir of an event she wants to remember.

The captions tell the story, but they’re providing a kind of exterior narrative or commentary to the images.

So she’s not saying, “This is a ticket.” She’s saying, “This is a ticket for the movie I saw on my first date with Will.” The1920s scrapbooks I’ve studied use this kind of breezy and informal tone of voice which really captures the irreverent spirit of the time. That’s what I was aiming to do with Frankie’s captions.

NH: Because the novel was written in a scrapbook form, the readers see different things about the characters that they wouldn’t see in a more traditional style novel. It was a different perspective, a different way to look at it. Is that what you intended?

CP: Frankie’s perceptions are different than the reader’s. For example, Oliver being gay—that’s something that the reader picks up on before she does! Or the fact that Jamie is a really bad choice. Her perceptions are naïve, but her perceptions are of the period. You would think that she would say Oh, this is interesting, or This has never happened, like with the first issue of The New Yorker. Instead, she says, “They just published this boring new magazine and it’s going to be a flop.” But that’s what people thought when The New Yorker was first published. No one would have imagined that it would survive for over 80 years.

MOUNT HOPE

NH: I like that through Frankie’s entries, I figured out what was going on in the world around her, but at the same time, she was somewhat unaware of it.

CP: She was aware, but she wasn’t as aware as we are. She thinks Ulysses is going to be a revolutionary book, showing she realizes at least in part its significance. But at the same time, we’re much attuned.

NH: I read this book in one sitting; it’s very quick to get through, but I know I could spend hours just looking at all the visuals and detail. How did you intend or expect to have people read the novel?

CP: That is a really good question. Many readers have told me that they read Frankie Pratt the first time through in one sitting, and then read it once more at a slower pace, taking time to look over the ephemera.

I don’t think all books are like this, but this is a book that can be read on different levels and multiple times.

NH: Yeah, readers will pick up on things that they didn’t the first time.

CP: By knowing how the story is going to turn out, you can see things coming a lot sooner. But I think it is more about appreciating and savoring the objects and the history of the objects.

NH: Regarding the layout of the book, was that all you or did you have a graphic designer help you?

(20)

CP: No, I did it all myself, which is kind of surprising. The interesting thing is that this book was not composed on the computer. I actually composed it with scissors and glue, mostly because I don’t have the design know-how to do it digitally. Also, I think that cutting things out and having the different textures and layers created an effect that would have been difficult to create digitally. I would have been intimidated to design this book with no training except the fact that this is a scrapbook. If it seems messy or lopsided, that’s the way that a vintage scrapbook looks. I cut pages that were the actual size of the book and pasted them up. I compiled these separate pages into albums. The designer at HarperCollins gave me page templates. As I did chapters, she would look them over. The understanding was if she wanted me to change the way something looked, she’d tell me, but she just said, “Keep doing what you’re doing.” There were some adjustments we made with fitting the text, and I guess I came too close to the margins, but she didn’t change anything about the design.

NH: Do you think the fact that you physically put everything together by hand made it a more worthwhile experience than your other novels?

CP: For me, yes. This goes back to a lot of my early interests in collage and collecting ephemera so there was something deeply satisfying about creating something manually. It was also rewarding in terms of working at every level of the graphic part of it and composing the pages.. It was a really complete creative experience

MOUNT HOPE

and I’m going to do a whole series of scrapbook novels.

I think not everybody would feel that way, but I do. One thing that I got frustrated with about novels is that you’re constantly having to describe with words visual things—what dresses look like, and what a book looks like, what an object looks like—and the idea that you can somehow skip that part, and that you can provide actual images was a relief.

NH: With your future scrapbook novels, are you going to make any changes to the process that you used with this one?

CP: I’m seeing the next one somewhat differently. It’s going to be a bride’s scrapbook from her engagement to her first year of marriage. In fact, it’s going to be modeled after Ann Sexton’s scrapbook. She eloped when she was 19 and during her first year of marriage, before she became a poet, she kept this really funky scrapbook.

I’m also thinking that the captions will be written more as a diary, with dates, and that it will have more text in it. That’s what I’m planning, although as I work I’m finding it to be as graphic-heavy as my last book.

(21)

In terms of the mechanics of it, Frankie Pratt was photographed, but I think for the next book we’ll do scans, because it will be less expensive. I was going try to compose this through Photoshop, but I’m not doing that, just because for me the process of creating the story comes from doing the actual layout. It’s hard for me to make that transition, although I suspect I will eventually. I’ll still collect original material, because I feel that’s very intrinsic to the process.

NH: I think there’s something about doing it by hand that just makes the whole process seem more rewarding.

CP: I think so.

NH: How do you think these novels will translate into ebooks?

CP: It’s already an ebook. It is on the iPad, and it looks pretty good. You can zoom in on the pages and the detail is fantastic. It’s different, but it looks beautiful. There are a lot of two-page spreads, and that doesn’t really work on an ebook. So, I am actually thinking about the next book more as one-page spreads.

So ebooks are changing my thinking. Do I see a future on ebooks? Absolutely. I mean, every author sees a future on ebooks. This type of book has a lot of high reproduction costs, and having it available as an ebook will keep the price down.

NH: Would you have any advice as a published scrapbook author for someone who is looking to

MOUNT HOPE

tackle a graphic novel project like this one?

CP: My advice for any writer these days is to stay open to new formats. I think no one should be constrained by the idea that a novel looks a certain way, as we certainly have in the past. We tend to think of the novel being between 200 and 300 pages long, with a conventional shape and size. I think there are many ways that a narrative can be constructed and being open to combining different forms of media is what we should all be doing.. Publishing is going through revolutionary changes, and writers today need to consider different modes of publishing. My other piece of advice is to be adventurous. When I told people that I was doing a graphic novel, they were flabbergasted! If you’re frustrated with your work, don’t be afraid to try a new approach. I think that’s the lesson I took away from Frankie Pratt.

(22)

Images excerpted from The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt © Caroline Preston.

Permission courtesy of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

MOUNT HOPE

Laura Jean Baker

Beasts

Mothers don’t hit their children anymore.

We dig into their flesh with short unpolished nails, schlep them to time-out chairs, clutch their scruff between coffee-tinged teeth, and pin them against pantries. We hover there, faces contorted with primal aggression we wash away when Dad comes home. Upstairs in the tub, over sand and sediment from smaller bodies, my oldest daughter sneaks in behind me, leans toward the apology of cold porcelain and hot steam, rubbing my shoulders, hands creamy as cocoa butter, dirty little bars of soap. Later at bedtime, she murmurs, (23)

“You smell good, like caterpillars,” nuzzling into the pit of my arm, breath like peppered fire on soft pleated skin.

We fall asleep this way, beast to beast, dreaming of the wooden spoon on Daddy’s buttocks, the steel-toe barn boot wedged into the soft target between Grandpa’s legs. “So help me God,” they scream when the kids misbehave, and, Lord, we hear their prayer.

MOUNT HOPE

Laura Jean Baker

Congratulations from the College of Letters & Science Upon announcement of our fourth baby to university colleagues, the historian says, “Egyptian Women of the seventeenth Century had a good handle on birth control.”

The sociologist says, “Big families, by definition, are inward-facing, counter-communal, narcissistic.”

The geologist, knuckles blistered from field work, calculates our carbon footprint as we both buy milk at the corner store. He says, “If your family were a microcosm of the world, you’d have doubled its population.”

But none of my esteemed colleagues takes time to evaluate my thesis question: Is the ability to bear four children transferrable? That is to say, if I routinely imagine the worst, if I bear the weight of worry (x four), can I negate the possibilities—

(24)

the slash of an ice skate over a son’s throat, a clump of hair floating like seaweed atop a drown daughter’s head, the calloused hand of a pedophile against a school bathroom door, a car turned inside out like a discarded shirt in the median of dark highways, tumors big as fists inside depressions diagnosed but unseen, optical illusions of space and time as children grow up and disappear in some way or another one by one by one by one?

MOUNT HOPE

Laura Jean Baker

Lord Genius My daughter tracked my warm spots as she sucked, pushing her delicate fingers through my lips, petting my small tongue like a tethered fish.

I was busy humming relics from the First Presbyterian Church—They shall mount up on wings as eagles— which sufficed as lullabies when I blurred the words.

I know the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the pages of a burgundy hymnal by scent and sound. In practice, I know God. My better inverse—her father—knows nothing of liturgies but believes in a higher power.

Holy matrimony, separation of incantation and faith.

Now nearly four, she asks, “Who is ‘amen’?”

(25)

By Christmas she has learned to paint on a weasel and to open the covers in search of food.

I begin to worry: what if language is our only saving grace? She kneels before the nativity on a Sunday at Stein’s Lawn and Garden, and she whispers to a Lord who misunderstands her muddled tongue, “Close your eyes, Baby Genius. Close them tight now.”

Laura Jean Baker is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Her work has appeared in CALYX, The Gettysburg Review, Confrontation and other journals.

MOUNT HOPE

John Glass

Don’t Poke Fun It’s likely that none of us were that excited about playing with the Hillsborough Community Symphonic Pops Band. But for many of the group’s musicians, it was all they had. So when Jill rolled in through the front door with that look on her face, it was all I could do to just bite my tongue and not say anything. She was late, the band already on the third song, and she quickly wheeled past the conductor’s podium, heading for the narrow aisle that led around to the percussion section.

The band had stopped for a moment as the conductor went over something with the woodwinds, so Herman and I started to walk over to help clear a path. But Jill wasn’t waiting. She just pushed and banged her way through, sighing and frowning at the cluttered pathway, rolling her way back to her self-appointed post at the bass drum with all the gruff and grimace of someone forced to be there against her own will.

This was only Jill’s third or fourth rehearsal but the way she frowned at all the inconvenience you’d have thought she’d started the band herself.

“I heard you guys from outside,” she muttered to me once she found the bass drum mallet and got settled, “and it sounded awful.” Her hair was a mass of auburn curls that covered most of the frames of her thick, thick eyeglasses.

Standing behind the snare drum, I smiled in disbelief and sort of forced a fake cough. Here we go again. Herman had looked over at Jill and then quickly looked away, turning his attention back to the tambourine. It was his usual modest way, pretending not to hear her whenever she began to complain. I bit my lip and just kept on smiling, patting her on the shoulder as if to say Oh, ha ha ha, really?

“Uh, yeah,” I finally stammered, “nice to see you again.” I mean, nobody’s arguing that we don’t sound bad but then there are some things that you just keep to yourself. I hadn’t said anything when I first joined the group and realized it wasn’t what I expected, but again, there are some things you just don’t say, indeed lots of things you just don’t say. I realized this was rare advice from the ex-wife, advice that had not always been that easy, admittedly, to take.

It was one of those breezy, beautiful nights with sudden, sharp gusts of wind that picked up every few minutes, so nice that we had opened up all of the windows in the rehearsal room; some people passed around paper clips to fasten their music to the stands so it wouldn’t blow away. As we finished up the song and prepared to move on to the next piece, I looked down at Jill and was about to ask what she’d been up to. But she wasn’t quite finished.

“Well, as always, the woodwinds are too loud.”

“Huh?”

(26)

MOUNT HOPE

(27)

“The woodwinds,” she said, slightly rolling her eyes, the breeze playing with her reddish curls, causing them to bounce lightly against her forehead. “They just play so loud. And they sound out of tune.”

As she spoke, she looked straight ahead at her music stand, with both arms squarely planted on the chair’s armrests.

I stared at her blankly. Everybody, at some point, played too loudly in this band, but again, there was that thing about not voicing certain things. And as for being out of tune, well, when the band puts an ad in the paper looking for musicians, what did she expect?

I started to attempt some bumbling excuse for the woodwinds but was drowned out by the usual shuffle and movement that happens when we looked for our music and rotated instruments in preparation for a new piece. Herman moved over to cymbals, his short, slight build looking almost comical standing in front of the shiny twenty-inch plates; Jill, still behind the bass drum, wasn’t budging, so I sat down, pushing my chair all the way back against the percussion closet door in order to make more room for her wheelchair.

Carol, our section-leader, took over at snare; she was fortyish and splinter-thin, and while pulling back her button-black hair in a scrunchy she gave me that God give us patience look. The Lord Himself only knew that with our newest percussionist we had to have a boatload of patience. I leaned my tall, heavy frame back against the door and tried to enjoy the brisk night air. The breeze was very common in the evenings and was actually one of the only things that I enjoyed about my new home here in the Fort Worth area. The new song—a march titled Crown Imperial—began and from where I sat I was able to get a good assessment of Jill. She had allegedly played in both high school and college, but after observing her for a few minutes I began to wonder. She banged each stroke with unnecessary force and didn’t bother to muffle either side of the large drum, causing this boomy sound to resonate throughout the room. Thud thud. I watched her manhandle the mallet, her thick fingers gripping it, her coke-bottle glasses scanning all over the sheet of music, and I suddenly became angry at having to sit here and put up with this. Thud thud. Jill was rushing, no, now dragging, now rushing again, out of tempo with the band for at least the third or fourth time.

No, we’re not the Dallas Philharmonic. But we come close!

The conductor’s exact words when we spoke by phone. The Hillsborough Symphonic Pops came about as close to the Dallas Phil as my ex-wife did to a frying pan; unless of course you count the times she was trying to hit me with it. I’d decided to stick it out for a while and wait until next year’s auditions for the few local symphonies in the area. But that was five months and two concerts ago and I was still here.

Still almost seventy-five miles from Cole, my son; still teaching in a new school district. Still living in one of my brother’s rental mobile homes, which, at his price, was the only thing I could afford right now. I knew I could be using this time to practice, to work on the different repertoire that most orchestra auditions call

MOUNT HOPE

for; there was, however, that empty feeling in my trailer that I couldn’t take every night of the week. I had to have at least one evening during which I wasn’t staring at Cole’s picture on my coffee table, one evening in which I wasn’t worrying if I’d made the wrong choice by moving way over to the western side of Fort Worth. I’d lost most of my savings in court, though, and then became a victim of the Dallas Independent School District layoffs, so moving to where there was work was virtually the only thing I could do. Either way, I hated the old adage of “wisdom accompanying age,” because even though I was getting older I sure as hell didn’t feel any wiser.

“Are you playing triangle on this?”

Carol was looking at Jill, who had just reached over and snatched the triangle and the beater from the stand in front of the snare drum, making a ruckus as the triangle banged against everything. The march had ended, and we were moving on to the next piece, a slow, melodic song that I really enjoyed, one that came as close to the orchestra in this outfit as you could. I remembered from last week that the triangle part was brief but very exposed, a lovely little part, and apparently Carol and Jill had also remembered that.

“Uh, yeah,” Jill mumbled. “I was going to because I played it last time.” Once again, she looked straight ahead at her music stand as she talked, clutching the triangle clip in her fist as the triangle swayed back and forth.

It was obvious that Carol wanted the part too. I was pretty sure that she had played it at the first rehearsal. But then she just said something under her breath and headed over to the timpani. As she walked she quickly reached up to release her scrunchy, letting her hair fall free. Then she pulled it back up, fumbling with it for a moment before finally re-fastening it.

I rolled my eyes and then pretended I was inspecting my fingernails. Played it last time. Like that even mattered. That was the problem with community bands. Everybody showed up whenever and played whatever, and it wasn’t until the dress rehearsal that somebody made a raggedy little list of who was playing what. In the symphony, there was a professional order. Everyone knew their place. I had to constantly remind myself that I was new to Fort Worth, and it would take a while to build up what I had in Dallas. My weekly percussion ensemble. The two orchestras with which I regularly played. The Dallas Pops. And then all my drum-set gigs, jazz one weekend, rock the next, a wedding the next. I was still able to drive out for a few of those gigs but most of it was just too far.

I glanced back over at Jill, who was tightly holding the triangle, squinting at the music. The music had begun, building up to a slight climax and then cascading down to a soft decrescendo, leaving just the warm flutter of the flutes and clarinets. Jill came in at the right time, playing three or four notes, but each time clanging the side of the triangle, clumsily and loudly. I leaned forward and started to give her a few

(28)

MOUNT HOPE

tips, wanting to tell her that the triangle should be played lightly and gracefully, and in accordance with the dynamics of the music.

My inner wisdom, however, or what little I had of it, intervened. I’d learned what happens when you try to advise a woman on anything. I rested my head against the percussion-closet door, closed my eyes, and listened as the flutes and clarinets now blended together with the French horns, producing in the final moments of the piece a rare but wonderful incandescence of sound in our little rehearsal hall. And for a short moment I thought I was somewhere else.

(29)

Our breaks always consisted of cookies, conversations and coffee, everybody out in the hallway picking through the food, talking about the music, their kids and whatnot. My own family, of course, wasn’t with me anymore so I tried to avoid the subject when anybody asked about them. I leaned my tall, tired body against a wall, munching on Chex Mix, looking out around the milling musicians. The Dallas Philharmonic.

What a load of manure. I still wanted to ask the conductor exactly why he’d told me that. I wasn’t one of those ‘vocational enthusiasts’ who just played my instrument at each rehearsal. I went home and practiced my xylophone, my crash cymbals, and my snare drum, all set up in the other bedroom. I practiced my drum set, which I had in my own bedroom, pushed over in the corner in front of the little twin bed and nightstand that I’d borrowed from my brother.

The thing that kept coming back to me, however, was how nice everybody in the band was, much nicer than some people in other groups I’d played with. Right now, maybe that was what I needed. My lawyer would probably say the same thing, probably try to play counselor as he had done during the divorce.

A fresh start might be the best thing for you, Frank. Think about it. But this was the same lawyer who cost me thousands of dollars and still didn’t get me custody of my son.

I looked over at one of the trombonists, Alex, who was chewing an Oreo and yakking away, a friendly fast-talker who always did just that during our break. He would talk about his accounting job, the weather, about the ongoing roof repairs on his house that he could hardly afford. I could sit and watch Alex go for hours.

Then there was Jeff, the conductor, who, despite his inaccurate description to me about the band, was a funny and jolly man, a retired New Yorker who moved down to Texas to escape the traffic and the turmoil of the big city. He was over there with the flute players, holding a cup of coffee, explaining the band’s budget problems to them. The band’s financial woes were always an issue, it seemed.

And of course the percussion section. Carol and Herman were basically just amateur players and would probably never play with an orchestra. But they were without egos and were just as pleasant and

MOUNT HOPE

relaxed as anybody I’d ever known.

Then you had Jill. I stared at her as she poked around the snack table, complaining to every third or fourth person that there weren’t any Splendas for her coffee. I began to wonder if she ever stopped when I realized that Herman was at my side, asking how my new teaching job was holding up.

I looked down at him, and then let my eyes slowly dance back and forth between him and Jill, smiling all the while to let Herman know what I was implying when I finally said, “How’s your patience holding up?” I couldn’t resist.

He blushed and jerked his head in the other direction, mumbling, “About—about as good as yours.”

I wished I had that kind of humility. If someone gave me that kind of green light I’d probably unload and go on and on about how annoying Jill was until she rolled up and caught me dead in the act.

She’d complain—her forte, it seemed—to Jeff, and have me thrown out of the band.

I asked Herman about the small day-care that he ran, and as he talked I looked over at the nowabandoned snack table. The vanilla thins were all gone, the plastic tray empty save a smattering of crumbs; the Chex Mix was wiped out, and the coffee pot was probably down to its last few drops. I felt badly that I still hadn’t signed up on the volunteer snack list to bring anything.

(30)

We were back at our stations about to resume rehearsal, and as I stood back by the xylophone and the timpani with my little cup of Chex Mix, all was well. Carol was getting our music ready for the next piece, and Jeff was on the podium finishing up a joke about some tuba player from Mexico who wasn’t allowed to bring his horn across the border. But then it looked like we were back to where we started. We were about to play “Dark Castle Night,” a deep, moving piece with lots of percussion, and something was happening between Carol and Jill.

“Jill, if you’re going to play with us, you have to be willing to share the parts.” Carol was holding one end of the bass-drum mallet and looking right at her current adversary. I remembered that the bassdrum part for this song was exciting; though it didn’t start until almost the very end of the piece, it began with a long roll which gradually crescendoed along with the rest of the band into the final, volcanic climax.

It was a part that any percussionist would relish.

Jill wasn’t backing down. “I only asked to play this one song. I am sharing the parts.” Her voice was raspy and low, and as the band had begun to play, hard to hear. “And you always say that. I’m sick of this little group trying to tell me how to do everything.” She had her hand on the other end of the mallet, with no intention of letting go. Two grown women in an outright tug-of-war! Did it get any better?

MOUNT HOPE

(31)

I was on glockenspiel and Herman was on cymbals but apparently nobody could remember who’d played bass drum at the last rehearsal. I swallowed another bite of my Chex and got my music ready, but continued to glance over as the argument escalated.

“It’s just one song,” Jill snapped. “Why can’t I play it? It’s just one song.”

Carol was persistent, nervously running her free hand through her dark hair as she talked. “Because you’ve played bass drum on a lot of other songs. You’re always on bass drum. And this is . . . ” Her voice trailed off, drowned out by the music. I looked back at my own music. I was playing glockenspiel, and since my part came in much later, towards the end of the song, there was time to skim over the page and check the notes I had to play. Herman stood nearby looking at his music, his short, thin frame hefting the cymbals. I could tell he was pretending not to notice what was happening. Me—I just looked whenever I felt like it.

Jill remained where she was, big surprise, and Carol was now rolling the big gong stand out from behind the timpani. The gong—of course. It was also at the very end of the piece, and though excruciatingly loud, was a perfect conclusion to the exciting finale of the song. Maybe they had made some kind of compromise. The band was busy, slowly working its way through the piece but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the percussion section.

I concentrated on my part, making sure I was counting in the correct section. The piece gradually became louder as different sections of the band joined in and made the piece fuller, bringing it to its eventual finish. The cues on the music page alerted me when each section of the band entered the song, which was nice because I’d been paying more attention to Jill and Carol’s little drama instead of counting from the beginning of the piece.

The pace and the tone of the song was methodical and ominous, and from out of nowhere, as I counted, brought back the events of my divorce; like the music, our break-up had at first seemed to be so slow, manageable and even civil, but as it ground on became loud, thunderous and almost violent. I’m keeping Cole. That’s just the way it works. Those words would probably never leave me. My lips slowly whispered the twenty-eight, twenty-nine measures of counting but then my eyes randomly scanned across the trumpets, the trombonists, the French horns, and then over at Jeff, intent and focused on his conducting. Did anybody else here experience what I had gone through? Was everybody in this breezy little town happily and forever married? What angered me was that ours was not even a marriage of abuse or infidelity; it was just one of those marriages that didn’t work, and one that managed to wring me emotionally and financially dry.

The air throughout the room became even cooler and more brisk as the wind continued to blow in, and I tried to put Cole and my ex out of my mind by staring hard at the remaining twenty or so measures.

MOUNT HOPE

Thirty-three, thirty-four . . . But it was still there. I’m taking Cole. That’s just the way it works.

E flat to F to G to A to B flat. I lowered my mallets to where they were suspended right above the shiny bars of the glockenspiel. The trumpets came in right on time, just two measures ahead of me, the shiny brass blasting fortissimo notes across the room. I looked up at Jeff ’s conducting once more, making sure I was in sync with his three and four, and then tapped out the first of my notes. Tap-tap . . . tap-tap-tap, but now louder, tap-tap . . . tap-tap-tap. E flat to F to G to A to B flat. Easy part, but it had to be loud, had to perfectly parallel what the trumpets were playing. I waited a few more measures for my next entrance, but then a strong blast of wind blew my music everywhere.

I bent down, scrambling for the papers, and noticed that Carol and Jill had resumed their little tug-of-war, this time with force. Though the gong was now there, dangling from its stand and ready, there apparently had been no compromise, for both of them had their hands on the mallet as if it were the last drumstick at the Last Supper. They were bickering back and forth, but it was Carol’s voice that I mostly heard, and I remembered that Carol, as our section leader, could really lay it down when she had to. There was another gust of wind, which convinced me to quickly grab a few clips from Herman’s stand and fasten my part to my stand. All of the instruments had now joined in on the push towards the final drive, and the end was not far off.

It looked like seniority had won out. Jill was now rolling back through the doorway of the percussion closet. “Whatever,” she grumbled loudly, audible despite the roaring melodies of the music. Carol was at the bass drum holding both mallets, getting ready for the finale. Apparently she had lined the gong part out to Jill; but where was Jill going? Carol’s face was all flushed and strained from having to be so firm, and as she looked over the music to find her place I felt so badly for her I wanted to go over and give her a hug.

I looked back at my music, regaining my focus. I picked up my mallets and got ready for my last part.

There was a celestial moment, one of those dashes of beauty within musical time that help me forget about things such as the better orchestras in which I’d played, my home and how I lost it, how much I missed my son. It was the briefest of all moments but there was something about those tiny seconds that helped me savor my existence and my appreciation of all of the great music in the world, of all the time that I’d put in as a percussionist. The wind had picked up even more, and was now sailing through the windows, enveloping the climax of “Dark Castle Night,” pulling me down into the deep, delicious valley of some lost part of history, far from the little rehearsal room and far from Fort Worth, Texas.

I played my last three measures, again perfectly aligned with the trumpets, and smiled as I put my mallets down; the shiny notes rang across the room, the fullness of that final B flat reaching the rest of the

(32)

MOUNT HOPE

(33)

instruments, meshing in with the band’s harmony, and I was in awe of just how good we sounded.

The conclusion of the piece was seconds away. I turned to help get the gong ready for Jill. But where was Jill? I looked back and saw her; she was still in the percussion closet, both of her elbows buried in our big percussion box, still complaining.

I stood in the doorway of the little room. “Jill!” I tried again, this time louder. “Jill! What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” she snapped loudly. “I’m looking for the gong mallet! Are you going to help me or what?” Carol was wailing away on the bass drum, both mallets now clamoring against the big calfskin head in the long crescendo roll. Herman was finishing up the last of his power crashes on the cymbals. The gong part would be crucial and would cap everything off, so we had to hurry.

I stared at Jill incredulously as she dipped her head down over the edge of the box, both arms almost fully submerged, searching for the mallet. Disgusted and fed up, I turned back to the others, leaving Jill to herself; the gong part wasn’t that important, I thought. But then there was Herman, taking the whole scene in. He’d put the cymbals down, and within one mighty second, shot a quick look at Jill and then one back at me, suggestion sprinkled across his face. His collar flapped in the room’s breeze, and as his eyes danced between me and Jill again, the beast of mischief slowly raised its playful head.

I thought back to his earlier reply, when I asked him how his patience was holding up and the sheepish way he’d said about as good as yours. I had a long way to go before I could be so humble.

But there was something else. The music roared on, louder than ever, Carol’s bass-drum roll providing the thunderous frame to the pounding finale. The dark castle shook and crumbled, and then shook and crumbled a little more.

And then, well, I did it.

It happened, and there was a relaxed moment, one in which I became suddenly grateful for things like the evening breeze and the meekness of Herman, such meekness that, despite our little moment of mischief, would, as I had heard all of my life, eventually inherit the Earth. I thought of the generosity of my brother, of the kindness of Jeff, of the magnificence of all the great music I had performed over the years. I thought of the delicious, teary sound of Tchaikovsky’s epic symphonies and the subliminal liquid of Debussy’s melodies. I would get back to such rehearsals and concerts one day.

But for now I would settle in and get back on my feet, get back in the dating scene, and eventually get back over to Dallas. I would one day know that this was all child’s play, would see how you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it became a cliché. Though tonight there would be no gong, the soaring harmony of “Dark Castle Night” was lifting my hopes and my spirits. I knew all too well what the power of

MOUNT HOPE

music could do to a person’s soul and senses. I also knew all too well how thick and heavy the percussion closet door behind us was.

Things would be good, though, right? I would get beyond all of this. But for now I stood beside Herman, savoring the last golden moments of the music, knowing, of course, that it might not be able to compare to the passion of the pissing match that we were about to get into. I didn’t know if the legal counsel of the Handicapped Citizens of Fort Worth would be at my doorstep in the morning, but I was too busy enjoying the beauty of the moment, the confused stares of some of the French-horn players who’d turned around in their chairs, and the howling, invigorating wind framing the pounding finale that, for the most part, sealed the screams and the repeated thumping from within the percussion closet just behind us.

And although I would know in just a few short seconds if Father Wind could be used as an excuse, I enjoyed the possibility that maybe, just maybe, her little dark incarceration would teach her something.

It would teach her to complain less, would help her try and be more reasonable with her fellow musicians.

But most of all, it would teach her to not poke fun at the Hillsborough Community Symphonic Pops Band.

(34)

John Glass is a teacher and writer, originally from the South, but now living in southern California. He has published short fiction and poetry in journals like Marco Polo Quarterly, the Rockford Review and Cooweescoowee.

You can check out some of his writings at www.johnglass.org.

MOUNT HOPE

Portfolio

(35)

MOUNT HOPE

(36)

MOUNT HOPE

(37)

MOUNT HOPE

(38)

MOUNT HOPE

(39)

MOUNT HOPE

(40)

Richard Koci Hernandez is an Emmy-Awardwinning visual journalist who worked as a photographer at the San Jose Mercury News for 15 years. His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, USA Today, The New York Times and international magazines, including Stern. In 2003, Richard was the recipient of the James K. Batten Knight Ridder Excellence Award.

MOUNT HOPE

John Surowiecki

G.T. (Jumping Bean Man, 1973) When he was told he was no longer insane he moved in with us. All summer he let the kids peer into the black omelet of his broken eye.

He taught them to wear their hats tilted against the sun the way patients on thorazine do.

Pretty soon they looked like little Fred Astaires.

That summer his legs stopped twitching.

The potato he swore looked like Villa-Lobos didn’t, the catbirds that sang arias only squawked.

It was the summer the cat survived the fan belt.

Chamomile bloomed next to the basketball court so at noon it seemed the world was ready for sleep.

(41)

In September, he said he was itching to hit the highway, but he rarely left his room. When the piano arrived we painted it blue and J.E., only three, hammered away at it, the unyielding music of our sweetest days, until G. started jump-jump-jumping saltando como um saci and he jumped right out of our lives.

MOUNT HOPE

John Surowiecki

J.E. (Apollon Musagète: Coventry, Connecticut) By the time he’s home from work and makes spaghetti with sauce from a jar the shadows have sunk into the snow and there’s hardly any light at all, only dull smudges on the surface of the ice.

The college girls across the lake hear him singing, instantly curious about the something that’s there but isn’t there, the nothing that has to be repeated to be anything at all, the waves they can’t see but know are already penetrating the jelly of their cells where they’ll incubate, soon to be born again, fully grown, in the wombs of their open mouths.

(42)

MOUNT HOPE

John Surowiecki

F.K. (Stupid Girl, 1952) She was emaciated and had lice and she never knew the right answer; her clothes smelled like turning meat or something dead or number two and one time Sister almost beat her to death, pounding, pounding her spine until her mouth dropped open and we could hear the hollow echo—Uh! Uh! Uh!—of each blow.

We felt her tears and snot on our faces like spray from Long Island Sound and her blood stained our clothes with tiny pink polka dots—and then it stopped; wiping her brow Sister said Phew! like June Allyson, which made us all laugh, but then it started again and we cried No! No! No! but she wouldn’t listen.

(43)

John Surowiecki is the author of three books of poetry and six chapbooks, most recently Mr. Z., Mrs. Z., J.Z., S.Z., published by Ugly Duckling Presse.

MOUNT HOPE

essay

(44)

MOUNT HOPE

(45)

Some saints, we know from paintings of them, kept a Death’s Head on their desks to help keep things in perspective. Some slept in coffins, too. To each his own. On my desk, I have a bird’s nest with a single egg in it. The nest is a thatch of twigs and grass, bowed, twined, and fastened into a cup (what a handy tool a beak must be!), with a few papery beech leaves and a swatch of cellophane from a cigarette pack thrown in for good measure. The egg is the palest bluish-green, almost white, with brown specks and splotches. It is so light and fragile I’m afraid to touch it.

I discovered the nest while hacking away, clumsily, at the multiflora rose bramble by the back door of my garage, which was overgrowing the mock orange and other shrubs, whose names I’ve yet to learn, planted there by a previous owner. The job was clearly overdue, but now I know, I should have been more careful. There were two eggs in it then, two fine little twins they’d be, and I wondered what to do. I piled the cutaway canes and branches loosely over the section where the nest was, hoping to shelter it sufficiently so that whoever made it would come back. For two weeks I watched as the clump of dead foliage browned and stiffened, half-expecting, at any moment, to see a song sparrow (the speckled pale green eggs, that wellformed cup). But while the cardinals seemed suspiciously proximate one day as I walked by (they’d nested in the mock orange in front of our picture window two years ago, a looser nest though, and a squirrel ruined that), in the end, nobody came. When we got down to one egg and, sure sign, potato bugs had taken up residence, I deemed the nest abandoned. So I disposed of the ugly ad-hoc camouflage, and appropriated it for my own edification. There must be some lesson for the careless suburban home-owning mortal in this, I thought: let me have it.

Of course, the beauty of the thing is edification enough. It is artfully formed: the cup so firm and neat, but loose enough to please a modern’s eye. Crooked twigs along the rim fly away at angles, like the warp for the brim of a half-finished straw hat, to an outer circumference maybe three nest-widths across.

To my overheated imagination (the competition are saints, remember, and mostly mystics at that), there is something in this that resembles pictures I’ve seen of galaxies, that spiraling of starry arms thrown wide, but better, since to me the stars pose only questions. Here, nestled at the center, the way the earth was once thought to be nestled in the universe, is an answer—this perfect, speckled egg, as secret and delicate as inspiration, waiting to be born, and born again.

Yes. Well … That’s how I thought of it at first, a worthy counter to that saintly skull. But then, a week or two after I took the nest, it was time (past time) to cut back yet another undifferentiated mass of shrubbery. Again, we’re talking mock orange and multiflora rose, some forsythia, more honeysuckle (shrub and vine) than should be tolerated, and who knows what else. This particular collection grows between our

MOUNT HOPE

side yard and the road. Our house is on a corner at the top of a rise. The shrubbery makes it hard for drivers wishing to make the turn to see the cars coming up the hill at them. One of my labors, all of them unsung, is keeping it trimmed back. So, out I go.

Working along at a steady pace (a euphemism—with summer settling in the days have gotten humid and my “steady” has begun to look more like “slow”), I find I am able to think of things a thousand miles away, and so I do. But then a background chirping I’ve been hearing strikes me suddenly as too incessant, too shrill. I leave off clipping for the moment and walk a short distance along the hedge (get him, he’s calling it a hedge now) to where the noise is coming from—Man is here, what seems to be the problem?

It’s a gray catbird, hopping nervously between branches, her feathers ruffled to warn or threaten.

Or maybe she’s just afraid. Her black eyes take me in but she stays put, doesn’t fly away, and it occurs to me she must be guarding a nest. I won’t bother you, Ma’am, don’t you worry. I am at peace with the world of my yard in all its chaotic glory; in fact, the way I look at it, it’s as much yours as mine, even if you do spend half the year on the Gulf of Mexico. I look around. The nest is well-concealed in the thickest part of the bush; it’s the two upturned yellow mouths, flickering like two little tongues of flame, that give it away. Feed them, Momma, I’ll come back later.

I turn to go and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see there is a problem, and it isn’t me. Protective coloration, like the ground, like dead leaves, like branches, made it invisible to me at first. Stretched out along a branch between the catbird and her nest, his tail curled to hold him, motionless, serene, controlled— look—a snake. Later, I’ll identify it: an immature black rat snake, a race of facile climbers. (The immature, as I can attest, is not black at all but an attractively patterned grayish-brown with a white underbelly.) For now I am content that it is not a copperhead, our only venomous snake hereabouts, but just a little ol’ snake-snake, maybe fifteen inches long, looking to prove the proverb wrong—I’ll take the “two in the bush,” thank you very much.

The catbird, bouncing from branch to branch, is fairly screaming at the snake by this time. The snake, with a forbearance I admire, as a husband and a father, is quite studiously ignoring her. The catbird looks at me, and I get an uneasy feeling. What is a man to do?

Let me say right here, I yield to no one in my affection for fluffy little hatchlings and their mothers—I love birds, darn it—and I have never been able to overcome a lifelong aversion to snakes, which is something I inherited from my mother, God rest her soul. Her statue of St. Patrick, with its writhing tangle of fire-eyed snakes at the base of it (being driven from Ireland, you see), was a family icon. Let me also say that, while I’m no philosopher, I do suspect that prejudices of this kind have nothing to do with the way the world wags. In getting up this masquerade, someone, somewhere, must have liked, or disliked,

(46)

MOUNT HOPE

(47)

all creatures equally. Or, more to the point probably, this notion of likes and dislikes, not just mine but anybody’s, simply didn’t and doesn’t enter in.

Okay, so what do you do? I could take up a stick and be a hero to this catbird. But then what? Do I become a hero to the moth the catbird brings to her nestlings? And after that? Do I mean to chase the robin off the worm, the fish off the fly, the lion off the gazelle … my daughter off her Happy Meal®?

You know where this is going.

The catbird’s hopeless pleas scrape across the Sunday morning peacefulness of this Northern Virginia suburb, and my pleasure in it, like fingernails on a blackboard. Lucky for the snake he has no ears to hear with, and nobody else—bird or squirrel or butterfly—is showing the least concern. That is wisdom, I fear, however horrible. I feel sick for my momma catbird—what a nightmare her day has become. But when you think of it from the snake’s point of view—well, this is how he makes his living. And really, it’s none of my damn business.

The snake sees me, flicks his tongue, slips a few inches closer to the nest. He is inexorable, like hunger. I leave.

An hour or so later, I go back. The catbird is still crying, but it is an emptied-out sound, no longer even voluntary perhaps (can she be in shock?), and she’s not hopping around anymore. The snake, voluptuous, dangles head first from the violated nest. There is a fluffy grey ball in his unhinged jaws which, deliberate as ever, he means to swallow, however long it takes. Seconds are swaddled tight in his tail. He won’t need to eat again for a week, or even longer.

I sit here staring at the speckled egg secure in the nest on my desk. I picture my mother, who suffered multiple miscarriages, with her hands cupped around a flame that will become my life. I hear the catbird’s cry.

I could say life is crueler than I would make it if I were God, but then you wouldn’t have to know any more about me to know how truly ignorant I am. Better to stick with the obvious.

I could never be a saint.

Thomas Shane is a writer living in Alexandria, Virginia. His articles, stories, and poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines and other publications, including the anthologies Fresh Water and When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over 50.

MOUNT HOPE

(48)

MOUNT HOPE

(49)

One day, while on my lunch break, I came across a strange, quaint shop.

I knew it was quaint from the way the sign spelled the word “shoppe.”

With the extra P and E at the end, I could tell that I was in for a quaint shoppe-ing experience.

But there was another word on the sign—one I’d never seen before, and couldn’t quite pronounce: S-U-R-R-E-A-L-I-A.

MOUNT HOPE

(50)

Some shops have a string of bells that hang from the doorjamb, and go ting-a-ling when you open the door.

But this shop had a string of walnuts, instead. (At least, I think they were walnuts.)

And they didn’t go ting-a-ling at all.

They went clock-a-clock-a-clock. It was a sleepy sound—dusty and faded and dim as old brick.

MOUNT HOPE

(51)

MOUNT HOPE

(52)

And that was the first time I saw him—the strangest looking man I’d ever seen.

Where you’d expect to find a head, he had a hook.

Or a curve.

Or a cane—yes, that’s it! His head looked just like the handle of a cane, or an umbrella.

In fact, his whole person was shaped like a cane. How odd!

“Hello,” I ventured to say.

He turned his cane-head towards me and said:

MOUNT HOPE

(53)

“I’m selling things again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

So I said: “I don’t know what to say to that.”

And he said, quite simply and clearly, “I’m selling things again.”

“Well,” I thought to myself, “That’s good. But I didn’t know you’d ever stopped.”

MOUNT HOPE

(54)

But I must have been thinking out loud, as well as to myself, for he said: “Stopped?

Oh, yes.

I had to stop, for a long time.

Because no one was buying anything.�

All of a sudden there were too many things I wanted to ask him:

MOUNT HOPE

(55)

What is the word on your sign, out front?

Why are there walnuts hanging from your doorjamb?

How can you hear my thoughts?

MOUNT HOPE

I felt so overwhelmed with questions that I came very close to turning around and walking out of the store.

(56)

MOUNT HOPE

(57)

MOUNT HOPE

(58)

He smiled—or seemed to smile. (It was hard to be sure, since he had no mouth or eyes.) But somehow I understood him to smile, and then he said, somewhat grandly, “Why not have a look around?”

So I did.

MOUNT HOPE

(59)

MOUNT HOPE

Richard Michelson

The Business of America If the cost of the poem composed in the book-lined study is equal to one half the hypotenuse of the poem memorized in the jail cell of the mind, what is the value of silence? my son asks, mocking me, as another evening dawns in this storied downtown of Northampton, Massachusetts, where from my window I can see the glass door that opened into the office of Silent Cal Coolidge whose six memorable pre-depression words: the business of America is business —still quoted in the cultural literacy lexicon of the world— has a hundred million more hits than Frost’s famous five: good fences make good neighbors. Poetry is found everywhere in my neighborhood where the business of poetry is poetry. I’m not thinking of Emily’s Silence is Infinity, three words first whispered by that white devil Calvinist God named Punctuation. O, American Poetry,

(60)

what soul wouldn’t I sell to purchase a timeshare in the condominium of your college syllabi, the neighbors’ yawps notwithstanding. It’s so noisy in there I can’t hear the quiet of my country’s cash register not ringing, not even in this bargain basement of bad ideas, this prison where the poetry of America is business.

MOUNT HOPE

Richard Michelson

My Mother, At Sixty, Learns to Drive When the squirrel darted across the road, she says, I followed it, left blinker blinking, up the curb and into the bushes.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat, my son strapped in behind me, and suddenly I’m thinking of my father, and the picture of him with the funny hat. What happened, I wonder, to that hat?

I don’t think anymore about what happened to my father, not even now, when my mother mimics the look on the instructor’s face, his left foot pumping an imaginary pedal, his every effort cursing his own under-achievements, that led him, too, out of Brooklyn, but no farther

(61)

than an unpainted booth outside a suburban strip mall, three days of every week, watching his dreams driving away in the Cadillac beside him, while some lady he’s never seen before, somebody else’s old lady, leads him on this small game safari. ** My son is sleeping in the next room. In fourteen years he’ll be tooling down the Jones Beach highway, that straightaway along the coast where I tested my own manhood, losing control at 95, and twirling back to Coney Island—the Mad Hatter’s teacup— my dinner and God knows what else, spun out of me.

Kids my age were already in ‘Nam—I knew that— but all I wanted was to get lucky. I survived, as you see, and so did the girl beside me. Today she’d be sixty, my mother’s age then—mine, tomorrow—my father’s, never. ** Here is the picture. I found it and I found his hat too, just where I’d left it. It’s an umbrella hat, leaving both hands free in the rain. He let me wear it once on the beach. We’d driven a long way on his day off.

MOUNT HOPE

I never thought at the time, that between my father and the hat, it’s the hat that would still be with me.

Even if I had, I doubt I’d have worn it differently.

You don’t wear a hat like that with dignity. ** I also found my great-grandfather’s letters. The ones he wrote to my grandfather in America, from the Empress Victoria Hotel.

He’d left Tysmienica and no one knows how he ended up in Johannesburg. There are many things I’ll never know.

The point is that he was worried about his children.

To my darling sons, Nathan and Abraham, he wrote.

We don’t address letters like that anymore.

I can’t remember the last time I even mailed my kids a letter.

He talked about his health and inquired after their hearts.

If I should happen to find suitable parties for you to marry, he wrote, would you be free to do so? I’ll never know how they answered.

He was dead before the post arrived in Brooklyn. ** My son opens his eyes. He’s just learned that the world still revolves while he naps. People drive to work and home from parties. Playpens collapse.

Don’t tell him that sleep is like a little death, my wife warns,

(62)

or we’ll never keep him quiet. A little death, I repeat, with a fake French accent. I’m looking for a little va-va-voom. But she’s already stripped his sheets. No one even knows I’m still in the room. **.

I don’t have any idea what my great-grandfather thought about South Africans. Not that it matters now.

He was white, but a Jew. What was that like?

There’s no clue, not in one of his letters.

And here’s the cable from one Harry Goldberg: Johannesburg, 5.16. Feb -Your father died. Goldberg

MOUNT HOPE

There’s a letter that followed. Goldberg said he’d settle the affairs and forward the money. But next he wrote that the stocks were worthless and the jewelry, fake.

I myself, he insisted, paid for my friend’s funeral. ** If your father could see me now, my mother says, merging.

That’s just what I was thinking. At eighty-three she can barely see, but some bureaucrat renewed her license.

Now, I say, I’ll have to worry about you too; blind woman out on the throughway. Goldberg’s long dead and so is that driving instructor; maybe their kids as well, if they had any.

My own grandfather got married and my father was born.

Neither made enough money to visit Johannesburg.

(63)

** Pay attention, I tell my son. I’m sitting in the passenger seat, ticking off the dangers—tailgate, road rage, drunken driver— as we circle the parking lot during this downpour.

The wipers are whining, and our heads, hatless, poke out our windows. And there, just for a moment, my father’s face in the side-view mirror. Then, more rain.

MOUNT HOPE

Richard Michelson

The Communists vs. The Capitalists In Slovakia, at the town library, where the stacks are still empty, the young Communists are arguing with the old Capitalists, who spent their twenties imprisoned under the older Communists.

I wait for quiet, or at least a lull, before reciting my love poem about Anna Akhmatova meeting Amedeo Modigliani in Paris, in 1911, after her marriage but before her husband’s execution for his anti-Bolshevik sympathies. This was years before Lev, Anna and Gumilev’s only child, was sentenced to the Gulag at an age equal to my own son’s now. Eighteen years Lev labored, and even his mother’s patriotic dithyrambs didn’t help. Even Stalin’s death, just fourteen days after the Rosenbergs were executed for espionage by the U.S. government didn’t help. I forgot to mention, I am a Jew, Amedeo says, sliding nearer to Anna on the bench, as he could not, then or ever, afford the chairs placed throughout the Tuileries, though he’d not yet begun to drink; to waste his borrowed money and Bohemian good looks. It took Nikita Khrushchev, not someone I’d usually call courageous, to denounce Stalin, and free Lev —thirty six years after Modigliani’s impoverished death— into his keening mother’s outstretched arms. The poem ends here

(64)

but life continues; yours, of course, and for now, mine.

Lev and I even shared, though decades apart, the same taxi.

Under the Communists, my driver tells me, he had security, but was barred from crossing the border to visit his son.

Under the Capitalists, I can go anywhere, but can’t afford.

We were idling near the Hermitage where Lev labored on his theory of “The Hebrew’s Economic Enslavement of the Slavs during the Medieval Ages.” A crackpot idea, even then. I wonder what Akhmatova, mercifully dead, would have said, or Modigliani, a miserable failure under every monetary arrangement ever devised.

I taught my own son that the Rosenbergs were innocent, so I had to do some fancy footwork in 1990

MOUNT HOPE

when Khrushchev’s memoirs praised their accomplishments in accelerating production of the Soviet atomic bomb.

I’m trying to explain this to my sexy Slovak interpreter, who aced love’s synonyms but suddenly seems anxious— an old habit perhaps—that authorities might be listening.

Our audience, however, is already home and stuffed— Communists and Capitalists alike—with too much moldy cheese and crumbling crackers. I forgot to mention, I am a Jew, I say now, offering to show her my black crayon copy of “Akhmatova, Nude” by Modigliani, its sensuous lines heightening Anna’s statuesque profile.

Did she love him? Lev asks, his voice breaking the post-Perestroika silence of his St. Petersburg grave.

Yes, I’m sure, my interpreter tells me, as I slide across the back bench, counting out koruna. Then she gives me a secret kiss and clicks shut the cab door.

(65)

RICHARD MICHELSON is the current Northampton, MA Poet Laureate. His most recent collection is Battles and Lullabies (U of Illinois), and his poems have been published in many anthologies, including The Norton Introduction to Poetry. Over the past decade, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com and The New Yorker have all listed different Michelson titles among their Ten Best Books of the Year.

MOUNT HOPE

(66)

MOUNT HOPE

Dava Sobel is a science writer. She spent many years as a journalist, writing a column for The New York Times, as well as freelance articles for many magazines, including Science Digest, Discover, and The New Yorker. She has since written four books, including Galileo’s Daughter (1999), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology. This historical memoir incorporates letters from Galileo’s daughter, which were translated from Italian to English by Sobel herself. A More Perfect Heaven (2011), her most recent work detailing the life of Copernicus, is a nonfiction narrative surrounding a short play titled “And the Sun Stood Still.” In 2013, she will be the Joan Leiman Jacobson Writer-in-Residence at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

LC: What prompted you to take such different approaches with your presentations of Galileo and Copernicus’ lives?

DS: Well, they’re different stories, and I think the story shapes the telling of it. So for Galileo’s Daughter, I had a rich resource in her letters. So that shaped the book, the actual letters and the establishment of their relationship through that resource. There’s nothing like that available for Copernicus. I wouldn’t have done it the same way even if there had been, but what had interested me in the Copernicus story from the beginning was the unlikely visit from the young mathematician from Germany and trying to imagine their conversation, which I’d always thought of as a play. It just took me a long time to get up the nerve to try to write a play.

(67)

LC: So you never thought of doing Copernicus’ story through excerpts of his letters or his correspondents’ letters or anything like that?

DS: Well there are only seventeen letters that survived, so they just don’t have it. It’s not as though I chose not to use it; it’s not there. Galileo left more than a thousand letters.You really have something to work with.

Whereas with Copernicus, partly because it was longer ago, partly because of the war situation in Poland, so much material was lost. These seventeen letters all existed in the original between World War I and World War II, and now it’s a good thing copies of them were made, because the originals are gone for several more.

Any time you look at a region where there’s been bombing, fires, and all the awful things that come with war aside from the human costs, records and artifacts disappear.

LC: Do you feel as though your different styles in both books, because of those letters, lent to giving Galileo and Copernicus very distinct personalities?

DS:Yes, well, they had distinct personalities, and that much becomes clear from reading their work and reading what remains of Copernicus’ correspondence, especially his notes about the time he spent in charge of the church’s lands. He had to be visiting the peasants and signing off on their land transactions. I thought the notes he made and the way he settled things showed him to be a very fair, even-handed person.

MOUNT HOPE

LC: When you wrote about Galileo’s support of Copernicus, was that what inspired you to write more about Copernicus himself ?

DS: No, the initial inspiration for Copernicus was reading about him years ago at the start of the 500th anniversary year of his birth and finding out about this young student’s visit and thinking of the idea of the play.

That was the initial inspiration. Then I didn’t think I could write a play, so I didn’t pursue it. But I had it in mind for a long time. Then, more recently, a few things happened to get my courage up to where it needed to be. One was—my son was in school as a drama major, drama and directing, and when I visited him at school, I remembered how much fun it was to do theatre. The dean of the drama school was very helpful to me, very encouraging, and read several of the early drafts of the play. Then also, Owen Gingerich, who is quoted in A More Perfect Heaven, and not just quoted but written about because of his chasing around the world after all the existing copies of Copernicus’ book. He wrote a book called The Book Nobody Read—which is about Copernicus’ book and about how he found more than 600 copies of it and was able to see who had written what in the margins. He wrote that up as a popular account and he asked me to read his manuscript before he submitted it to the publisher. That got me very excited about the Copernicus story again and I thought, at this point in my life, I’m ready to tackle something like learning how to write a play. And so, all those things came together. Then, as you know, at one point, my editor, who had agreed to publish the play—even though publishing plays is not something that Walker usually does— had the idea that I should take all the research I’d done and write a book around the play. So that’s how the book arrived at its final form. The narrative puts the play in context.

(68)

LC: It hadn’t occurred to me that you would have thought of the play before you thought of doing the biography of Copernicus.

DS: Well, early on, it seemed to me that there was—I mean, early on, from the time I first really learned about him—that there was so little information, just seventeen letters, not that much, and not that big a body of work that he had written, that it seemed I wouldn’t be able to say anything with confidence. That every other sentence would be, maybe this, or perhaps that or scholars think thus-and-so. So I avoided the idea of writing the book and just focused on the play. Then when I really realized how much there actually was, I thought, certainly there could be a narrative, especially like the one I constructed that goes up to the present time. It’s not completely focused on Copernicus, but it starts off completely focused on him, and then it puts him in the context of the events that followed. Because of his book, how the influence of that book spread, and what its status is today.

LC: Do you think that both of your books show not only about the two scientists’ lives but also about the way that texts and books can affect the people that they are presented to and affect the societies they are published in?

MOUNT HOPE

DS:Yes.Yes, I hope it continues to be true! Who knows what will happen with publishing in these times, but yes, I was very interested in that. Copernicus lived right around the time that publishing, especially publishing of scientific books, had just really become not only possible, but well-executed. The publisher he had did an extraordinary job of seeking out scientific manuscripts and making them available to a wide audience. It was a tremendous change in society. And Galileo, who took the other step of writing to a popular audience, not limiting himself to the Latin language and a scholarly readership. He was going for a broader audience of people who had been educated enough to be able to read their native language, but had, for one reason or another, not been able to attend university. He felt there was an intelligent class of laymen who were interested in science.

LC: Do you think that could have been why there was such a larger outpouring of rejection for Galileo than Copernicus, because Galileo actually wrote his to be understood not just by the scholars, but by the general public?

(69)

DS: Oh, certainly that’s why the Church was so outraged, why he had to be stopped. That was a dangerous idea. It’s hard to realize today what a dangerous idea that was. Between Copernicus’ and Galileo’s time, the Church had overreacted to the Protestant Reformation and had made a strong stand about interpretation of the Bible so that no Catholic was allowed to have a personal interpretation of the Bible, whereas the Protestants were. Galileo, as a Catholic, was daring to say that the Bible mentions these things, but it’s not to be taken literally. He really was prohibited from saying that. But he said it! And suffered the consequences.

LC: When you wrote Galileo’s Daughter, was one of your main purposes to show the world the ways that Galileo wasn’t an enemy of the Catholic Church, that he actually loved the Catholic Church?

DS: Absolutely to show that he was actually a Catholic, because the modern perception of him is that he was not religious, and he really was at odds with the church. When I found out about the daughter, I realized that the situation was much more nuanced. The idea that he had done everything he did as a Catholic, not as an enemy of the Church, is much more interesting. Today, we still have an issue with science and religion. We have politicians who say things like “The Bible is enough for me,” and “If it’s not in the Bible, I don’t need to know about it.” I want to remind these people that even 400 years ago, Galileo was making a distinction.

Galileo, as a Catholic, was making a distinction between the Bible and the Book of Nature and saying that you cannot learn any science from the Bible. That’s not what it’s for.

LC: Do you think it’s more interesting to look at these great men of history from the perspectives of another person, like Galileo’s daughter and Rheticus?

MOUNT HOPE

DS: It’s interesting because people are naturally drawn to stories that are more human. The name recognition that Galileo has makes people imagine him as a statue, not as the father of children So it immediately makes him seem more accessible. Then their relationship made the larger point about his being religious. So again, to bring it to modern times, where people worry if you’re religious, can you be a good scientist? Obviously you can. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler were all religious. It didn’t stop them from thinking about the natural world, doing the math, and having great ideas. In fact, it might have been inspirational to them. The problem is, as I said before, when because you feel religious, you think that the Bible tells you everything you know. That is the problem. But I definitely know astronomers and physicists who are devout in various religions. They believe in a created universe, but it doesn’t stop them from being scientists.

(70)

MOUNT HOPE

Murli Melwani

Teesta Holiday

(71)

The spring rains came early and caught us halfway up to Darjeeling. From Siliguri the road was narrow and uphill. Suman, my wife, and Vidya, Charan’s wife, sat surrounded by luggage in the back. My friend Charan sat beside me in the jeep, peering through the misty windscreen. Sometimes we imagined objects on the road, but these turned out to be festooned patterns formed by the rivulets of water gushing down the hillside. The hill rose steeply on our right. On our left was the rapidly swelling Teesta River, swirling wantonly only a few feet below the road. We ignored one man who waved frantically; there was no room and we couldn’t possibly give him a ride. But the next man stood in the middle of the road and waved his arms in a series of swift XXXs. “Where are you going?” he asked, further narrowing his small hill-man’s eyes.

“To Darjeeling,” I said, my foot lightly pressing the clutch. The hill man grimaced and said, “All roads blocked. Many landslides.” Charan and I looked at each other.

“Thank you,” I said to the stranger.

“They always exaggerate,” I said to Charan and we lurched forward. As we sped away, we saw the hill man shaking his big balding head resignedly.

We crossed the two-mile-long Teesta Bridge and, as is the practice, stopped at the popular tea stalls on the other side. It rained on. The hills were sometimes swept by gusts of wind that made us shiver.

We were cold as it was, since we were about 3,000 feet above sea level. Besides the discomfort, we were hungry.

“Will we get hot chapattis and vegetable curry?” Charan asked at one of the stalls.

“No,” answered the man as he poured steaming chai into a row of cups. Chai was all that the four stalls served. While we sipped the thick, sweet liquid, we got into conversation with a few soldiers. They were on the way back from Darjeeling, one of the soldiers said, pointing to the six military jeeps parked nearby. They were returning after completing their half-year stint of patrolling the border; Darjeeling lay close to China and closer to Nepal. For a moment, the camaraderie of sipping hot chai on a cold, rainy hillside struck me as a cozy picture. In a few hours I was to wonder whether this scene had really existed or whether I had imagined it.

“Don’t you think it is wiser to turn back?” suggested a tall Sikh soldier.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“It could get worse. You have to think. There are ladies with you.”

MOUNT HOPE

The soldiers said that they had heard that there had been landslides on the way down, though they hadn’t seen any.

Charan and I had planned this holiday for too long to give it up now. Postponements had caused our wives to laugh the whole thing off. But we had finally put our business commitments on hold and, a week before, surprised Suman and Vidya with the news that we were ready to keep our promise. We chose Darjeeling, at the foothills of the Himalayas, because it was a favorite with tourists from Calcutta. People usually flew to Siliguri and then took the narrow-gauge train to Darjeeling. We decided to go American and drive up from Siliguri.

The gray sky, the rain, and the surrounding hills brought the gloom of twilight prematurely at 3 p.m. With visibility so poor, it seemed wiser not to drive on. So we decided to stay overnight in the empty school building which stood on top of a neighboring hill, about 200 yards from the tea stall. Suman and Vidya had thoughtfully packed a few tins of canned food and carried a portable stove - just in case. We left the jeep on the side of the road and climbed the hill along a rough overgrown trail.

It was cold in the school building. We huddled into a classroom and lit the stove. While the women prepared a meal, Charan and I wondered how our schedule would be upset by this long halt. The level of the Teesta was rising, rapidly fed by the snow melting on the lower Himalayan ranges. Even during winter the Teesta, despite its placid surface, had a strong undercurrent. From early spring it begins to swell. By the middle of summer, every summer without fail, there are floods. Sometimes, when the rainfall is heavy, there are landslides too. That is why we planned our escape from the sweltering heat of the plains in late spring.

Obviously we hadn’t accounted for the rainfall; it was heavier than usual for this time of the year.

We wondered now whether the road would be motorable the next day. We still had a choice to turn back. Little did we know that half an hour later we would have none.

The next scene remains etched in my mind: a low-watt electric bulb lamp hanging from a naked length of wire, the darkness all round, the hard incessant rain outside, the four of us eating bread and boiled beans, talking and joking.

“What’s that house over there?” asked Vidya, pointing to a building on a neighboring hill. “Maybe it’s cozier there.” Vidya took a lot of pains over her grooming. She had visited a salon a few hours before we left for our holiday, and her shoulder-length hair still retained the curls set by the hairdresser. Her nails gleamed with fresh paint. Her crisply ironed beige top and black pants bore little sign of wear in spite of a long drive from the plains.

“The tea-seller told me it’s a dak bungalow,” I said. The Guest House was the name given to a cluster of cottages which served as stops for government officials on a tour of the outlying areas of the

(72)

MOUNT HOPE

county.

(73)

“Looks cozy, no doubt,” said Charan. “But it’s far too high from the road for us to keep an eye on the jeep.”

It was getting colder by the minute; the rain hammered on and the heavy swishing of the Teesta could be clearly heard even at this height.

After we ate, Charan prepared to go down and bring some warm clothing from the jeep. We stood, all three of us, waving him a quick return when we heard a sudden, ear-splitting roar. The lights went out.

Vidya screamed to Charan to come back, and as he scrambled back on the hill, we saw an angry Teesta sweep like a gigantic wave over the concrete bridge and carry on its crest all the jeeps including ours. What were those four green mannequins, flailing, bobbing? God! Green uniforms. The wave spiking. Four spots.

Then nothing, no trace of the persons we had spoken to. Where was the tea stall? And a part of the road?

The topography was changed instantly. Now the river, without its banks, looked like the sea. And like the sea it rushed over everything and rolled on. We heard rumblings of earth and wood and of trees crackling and bending and falling. The rain beat on without interruption and the Teesta danced in a frenzy of destruction. In a short time all we could see was a huge expanse of water. The Teesta had become a giant magician at whose touch everything had disappeared.

We watched silently, subdued by the power of what we had seen and by the knowledge of our new position. We had no food, no transport, no idea of the terrain nor the direction we should take once nature’s fury subsided. Below us was the swelling river, outside the rain, and above, high, cold hills leading we knew not where.

“We cannot be long here,” I said and looked towards my wife. She appeared strained and her eyes were large and tearful. I clasped her wet fingers and she held mine tight. Everything was uncertain. And outside, with every minute the water rose.

“The dak bungalow is higher up. The water will take a long time to reach it,” said Charan, pointing in the direction we could take— first down our hill and then up steeply the next to The Guest House.

“It’s raining too heavily,” I said. “We will wait.” Charan looked at me doubtfully.

“How long?” he demanded. I looked at my watch. It was 4 p.m.

“Till the river reaches that tree.” Pressed for an answer, I spoke without thinking, pointing to what looked like a needlewood tree, halfway down the hill We were tense. We could not calm ourselves. We stood on the sheltered verandah, peering downhill.

In the dark we could make out the Teesta swirling, bumping and washing over hillocks and trees and sweeping them along. We would sit quietly for a short while, before Charan or I rose up to see how much

MOUNT HOPE

higher the Teesta had risen. The others would do the same.

Then Charan, quiet, dark-eyed with black curly hair, went inside and packed a shoulder bag. I could imagine his pointed chin set in determination. He was very young, twenty-seven, and had been married for a year. He was smiling grimly as he carried the bag.

“What a holiday!” he said.

“Adventure,” whispered his wife, Vidya.

“The water is very close to the hill,” shouted Suman suddenly.

Suman and Vidya were so different in temperament and outlook that it surprised me that they were such good friends. Charan and I became friends after marriage, largely because of our wives, even though we had known each other since our St. Xavier’s College days. The four of us spent most of our leisure hours together.

“How close?” I asked and leaned over the railing to see. Before anyone could answer, a deep crackling sound echoed round the hills. We turned to see the The Guest House, high to the right of us, wobble. In silhouette we watched it being reluctantly torn out of the hill by a landslide. It began to somersault, as it mixed with the crumbling earth and was lost beneath it. A moment later, only a gaping wound stood in its place.

7 p.m. A tense quiet reigned over us. With the crumbling of The Guest House, a possible haven had gone. The sound of the roaring Teesta, the rain and the rumbling went on and I felt that it would not be long before another landslide took down our school building, too. We were silent with fear. Suman’s fingers, cold and numb, were limply intertwined in mine. I heard her sobbing. Even otherwise, Suman was slightly edgy, and, unlike Vidya, always feared the worst. However, my reassurances always put her at ease.

But now I could not reassure her about anything. Every road was blocked and we knew of no way out.

Were we going to stand here and be washed away? What else was there to do? Whom and what were we to fight? Perhaps we all knew how close death was and therefore did not ask questions of what would happen or what we should do next.

We heard the wind screech and whistle far away, and a few minutes later came a heavier downpour.

Cold gusts beat against our flimsy cardigans.

9 p.m. The Teesta was flirting with the needlewood tree.

“They’ll look for us at Darjeeling and Kalimpong,” I remarked casually. Vidya had regained a bit of her habitual liveliness and she thought that there was no cause to be grim about the inevitable.

“I wonder where the river will finally throw our bodies. Will it be close to home or all the way into Bangladesh?”she said.

(74)

MOUNT HOPE

(75)

“How do you know the fish won’t eat us first?” asked her husband.

Death seemed so close that we could talk about it flippantly.

“We should do something to spare our people the bother of searching for us,”said Charan.

He seemed ready for the end. In the pitch darkness I could imagine his aquiline nose, his thin neck and his lips set in a grim smile.

“This is what we can do,” he said, and he emptied Suman’s wicker-work basket. Then we heard the rustle of paper. Suman always says we should expect the unexpected from Charan, in word and action. She seemed to lighten a bit as she watched. I imagined that little dimple which forms below her left cheek when she is amused; it helped to put me at ease too, mostly for her sake.

“I am going to write on this,” Charan continued, “‘We were drowned near the Teesta Bridge. Please inform our relatives.’”

We could hear the scratch of paper in the eerie silence. We thought it was one of his macabre jokes.

But he did really fold the paper in a strip of polythene, fix it to the inside of the basket, and fling the basket down the hill. The water cast an eerie gleam and we imagined the basket falling halfway down the hill and rolling into the speeding Teesta. But the moment with its butterfly-lightness lasted for only a brief while.

It is strange that when one accepts the inevitable, one goes whole-hog and taunts oneself with every unpleasant fact of its consequence. We reflected on how our disappearance would affect our families.

Charan and I both knew that as members of joint families with flourishing businesses, we were respected as elder sons and as responsible men who helped in running the businesses. “ Of course, they’ll miss us,” I said.

A pause. “And then younger brothers.” Charan completed my thought. The callous fact gnawed at me: Is this all life means? Is every individual dispensable? Do we leave no mark at all? What, was life as ruthless as the Teesta which had washed away the landmarks of the valley? Like the landmarks, would we too be lost and forgotten? For the first time, in the emptiness around us and with an angry river below, the pitiable helplessness of us as individuals struck me. Four green spots atop a crest, then nothing; the image accompanied this thought.

At 10 p.m., we heard the needlewood tree crunch its last roots out of the earth and tumble with slow reluctance into the water. We looked at each other.

“What do we do now?” Charan said.

The absence of the tree’s silhouette changed the appearance of the surroundings, which in some subtle way it had helped to render familiar. The darkly gleaming expanse of water swirled ferociously close now.

MOUNT HOPE

We decided it was time to move.

We struck out uphill. It was still raining and the ground was wet and slippery and we had to pick our way slowly. I prayed that once over the hill we would see a light, a trail, or some habitation, any mark that would suggest some sort of direction. We were soaking wet. We made the best of the slippery terrain and walked single file. Suman was tired and she lagged behind. I fell back and walked behind her. Her jeans clung to her legs. I looked at Vidya. Her blouse was plastered to her body. Her hair had flattened and lay gelled over her head. I knew that her thoughts about how she looked now would add to her unhappiness.

As we were nearing the top, Suman suddenly slipped and fell backwards. My hands stretched out in a reflex action and held her. Had I been a fraction late, she might have rolled down the hill. A shiver ran through me. God! I sighed, when would this ordeal be over? Suman gestured us to halt awhile. Tears of weariness rolled down her cheeks and she sobbed aloud. Vidya, who was probably as weary, came and stood beside her. Strangely, together the two women started crying. This was the first time I had seen confident Vidya reveal that she could be as unsure as Suman.

Wordlessly we walked a little farther uphill and sat under a pine tree. We don’t remember how long we sat there. Dawn came slowly, grayly. A little sunshine lifted the curtain on the drama of the previous evening and the hazy film of rain also stopped. From this height, the school building appeared a mere doll’s house. The Teesta rolled where the needlewood tree had stood. Its roar floated up like a dull echo, adding to the eeriness of the situation, making us wonder whether we were living through dream or reality.

The pine tree under which we sat dripped water. None of us spoke. There was still no certainty that we had escaped death. Vidya was coughing and Charan had removed his wet jacket and put it around her. The pale sunshine was soon hidden behind gray clouds, which brought intermittent rain. As we did not know which way to go, we walked along the crest of the hill.

Around noon a group of people, in circumstances similar to ours, joined us. There were four of them, a Nepali couple, a young Punjabi girl and her middle-aged husband, Vinod. The young girl appeared to be in a state of advanced pregnancy. She smiled and seemed cheerful, though it was clear that she was tired and uncomfortable. They had the idea that if we walked down westward from the crest and up the neighboring hillock, we would reach a village where we could get news about the road to Darjeeling. At any rate, the need for a roof and food and dry clothes was paramount. Our spirits were waning. There were miles to go downhill and miles again up the neighboring hillock.

We talked little. Everything was dreary and our conversation died after two or three brief sentences.

The person who made any effort to revive it was Meena, the young girl. She had a nasal cheerful voice; she threw back her head to laugh if she slipped or had to stop because of her pregnancy. Her attitude in the

(76)

MOUNT HOPE

(77)

surrounding lifelessness might have been out of place, had she not actually believed that a village was round the corner. Whenever she made conversation, her optimism came through in direct contrast to our weary tones.

Suddenly, almost like a mirage on the film of rain, we came upon a colony of little thatched huts.

We sought refuge in one, and begged an old Nepali woman there to give us food and light a fire.

But the period of relaxation was short. In a little while screams tore the air. Meena was in labor.

Vinod, her husband, looked pained and nervous. It was Meena’s first child. Was it going to be… Vinod brushed away the thought.

The old Nepali woman began to work by the glow of the fire, with the help of a few women.

Suman and Vidya, both recent brides, hung around but could not do much. The men were sent to a hut close by. Nature had shown us so many of her aspects; what else was she going to show us?

Around midnight as we sat round a fire, and Vinod stood tense, the old woman showed us the son Meena had delivered. “Nature doesn’t defeat herself,” she mumbled.

We lay down to sleep after that.

It took me a long time to fall asleep. Stark, clear images of what we had lived through during the last forty-eight hours kept hovering before my eyes. As I dozed off, and then woke up, I floated between illusion and reality. Had it really happened?

Two images before I finally fell asleep have stuck in memory: the needlewood tree tipping, slow motion, into the Teesta; the old Nepali woman, cradling the newborn child in her withered hands.

Murli Melwani is the author of Stories of a Salesman (a collection of short stories), Deep Roots: A Play In 3 Acts, and two books of literary criticism: Themes in Indo Anglian Literature and Themes in the Indian Short Story in English: An Historical and a Critical Survey. He taught English Literature at Sankardev College, Shillong, India. He obtained his Ph.D in 1973 from Guwahati University. He currently lives in Plano, Texas.

MOUNT HOPE

Carrie Addington

Clockwork I remember the day they cut me open. I handed faith to the anesthesia, and in March I died. Almost puncturing a lung. Pulling open flesh, like a moist pita pocket. Scraping that flesh, trying to make space inside me.

They carved my muscle with a spoon until a crescented curve allowed rolling room for metal: that handheld clock.

Pace Maker Make me a pulse, find me a beat, catch me a breath. Everything is a clock these days. Seconds. Minutes. Pulses. Breaths. Days until the next bill arrives: clocks. A broken, botched heart, sickened by theory. Unattached, unworking, unrevived at times. Perhaps I don’t care about the news now. Or the economy. Or men. Or when the battery will die and inevitably I will die too. Like a robot, I have four antenna attached to my heart: my own screaming leads.

Calculated counting each day checking pulses. You know, this means I’ll live longer than you. I might be more bitter too.

(78)

The scar: protruding jagged flesh puckered like a worm on a damp morning street. There are days I play with it. Fingering it around, moving it, hitting a nerve—numbing my arm—cackling at that luscious power.

Wouldn’t it suffice to rip it out one day, all on my own, with a butter knife?

Perhaps after dinner. Near clocks. The time that ticker is working best, that flicker of tedious time when you place your ear eagerly to my chest, gently, to see if I beat. One hand checking pulse, one hand sliding that metal dome on my chest, wondering how are we different now and can you still care. Bitterness is a familiar shade of red, like the burgundy that sits at the bottom of a wine glass waiting for the sex to begin. There is no sex. There are clocks.

MOUNT HOPE

Carrie Addington

Anesthesia I was completely aware.

Was entirely aware. I was— and I mean all of me—aware of what was happening.

The smells of latex, powder, a distant waif of cologne. The sound of cloth slippers sliding on linoleum, the low purr of breathing and yet, silence. I stared at the man prepping me— his dimpled pout—realized he’d soon see the modest size of my breasts, and I began thinking

(79)

of ways to make myself bigger. He muddied my chest with iodine, making small circles chase their borders into larger circles. My nose puckered to the smell of the smears and I thought of rusting, corrosion, and the strongest hues of brown. I locked his eyes and the silence fell out of our mouths.

MOUNT HOPE

Carrie Addington

Dobutamine Heart pump, blood jump, drug drip through catheter for twelve hours, every other day. Monsters are tight fists, thumping echoes: the high-pitched reek of blood pumping.

The forced heart finally beating. Eavesdropping on the upheavals of the brain, the drug flows, burrows down the veins, a mere force causing flutter. Vibe to breath. Breath to rest.

Flutter under.

(80)

Carrie Addington’s poetry has appeared in Margie Review and American Literary Review.

MOUNT HOPE

(81)

I first noticed these small but hardly innocuous shrines in 1975, during my second extended sojourn in Rome. My photographic commitment at that point was to work in hardened B/W and to document the various Roman families with whom I was making contact. But my fascination with these small altars moved me to begin to record them with honest color-transparency film. They reminded me a bit of Joseph Cornell’s boxlike sculptures, though these were specifically religious and Catholic in nature. This was, of course, Rome, the seat of Catholicism by the Vatican’s presence so prominently noticed along the Tevere River, and felt strongly in daily life here.

Devotion. That certainly is the arousal and practice these shrines serve. The Madonnas and various icons of Jesus were presented in unique and often comical ways. The city of Naples became an even greater source of discovery, and finally Sicily offered its own folksy designs and markings. I could not resist them, and would obtain the aid of a hefty iron ladder if available, to greet them at their own level.

I was tired of making exaggerated trapezoid shapes coming from ground level. Their placement over a local mechanic’s garage, or juxtaposed between a trattoria and a shoemaker’s shop, were a great curiosity for me. I came to understand that each neighborhood possessed its own shrine, or several variations. A daily offering could be made in seeking a blessing of protection on the ordinary day’s journey. Upon return home, a prayer of thanks would likely be made passing the shrine, with ever-refreshed flowers and clean linens.

Since my first glimpses and recordings of these shrines so long ago, I have continued the photographic practice to the present. On occasion, I would return to a previous site to assess a potential makeover, if any. Some received the care of devoted maintenance; others seemed to age like the cities themselves. I continue to be drawn to these amazing sculptures, and respond now with a faster format. Though the shrines comprise a portion of my Italian works, the attraction is constant and my inventory continues to grow.

MOUNT HOPE

(82)

MOUNT HOPE

(83)

MOUNT HOPE

(84)

MOUNT HOPE

(85)

MOUNT HOPE

(86)

Stephan Brigidi has been a practicing artist for more than thirty years. His work is held in more than forty museum collections in the US and Europe. He makes his home and studio in Bristol, RI. MOUNT HOPE

Katherine E. Young

I Dreamed You Spoke in Russian I dreamed you spoke in Russian in your fine, quicksilver voice.

I dreamed we walked in Pushkin Square.

Snow fell, thick and wet.

The lights of the city shivered and wept.

I dreamed you spoke in Russian, your words fluent, clear, and strong; in awkward, foreign fashion, my own tongue stumbled along. Doubt rose in your eyes—then you shrugged, (87)

turned, as if to walk away.

I dreamed Russian words clumped like kasha in my mouth, choking off my breath: gobbets of mangled words splattered on the path. Then I dreamed your arms surrounded me, your fingers brushed my cheek. I dreamed you spoke in Russian, language closest to my heart, language you do not know, never will.

I dreamed you loved me still.

MOUNT HOPE

Katherine E. Young

Speaking English Sounds so cold— like seasons growing old, like late March snow spitting at the sill where an ill-used crow gently mends rents in wind-ravaged wings, like shovels in savage song rasping against asphalt— sounds so crude you can hear in them bones straining to heft the might of the universe.

Only the o—throaty, unflinching—soars past the clicking, grinning shears and metal thickets poised to clip back its solo.

(88)

Katherine E. Young is the author of two chapbooks, Gentling the Bones (2007) and Van Gogh in Moscow (2008).

MOUNT HOPE

essay

(89)

MOUNT HOPE

“Fun”—it always seemed to leave you at a loss...

- Elizabeth Bishop, “North Haven” On the first day of school last September, I asked my ninth-grade students to write their first names on index cards and prop them on their desks, adding any doodles or favorite quotes. One girl’s scribbled “Why so serious?” made my heart sink. I’m used to being told I never smile, but she had only known me for five minutes and had already pegged me as a drag. I wanted to reassure her that I’d loosen up over time.

A few weeks later I was watching the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger’s Joker taunts his victims, saying, “Why so serious?” I realized that the girl had merely followed my instructions by writing down a favorite quote. I had applied it to my paranoia about not being or having fun.

My sensitivity to the student’s question puzzles me because I mistrust the idea of fun, both as something to be “had” and as a feeling produced by certain situations or behavior. When I watch people playing softball or celebrating at a crowded restaurant table, I understand why onlookers might envy them and see my quiet detachment as pitiable. Fun is generally considered healthy, positive, and life-affirming, whereas the self-containment that I project might look aberrant. We tend to think of fun the way we think of health—if you’re having it, you’re o.k.; if not, poor you. But I don’t always want to be doing what the fun folks are doing, and if I were, I wouldn’t necessarily be feeling the way that I like to feel.

Between the ages of eight and twelve I spent several weeks every summer visiting school friends at their vacation homes. These stays were encouraged by my parents and also looked forward to by my friends as a kind of open-ended sleepover—all the stimulation of constant companionship with none of the boredom of solitude. But I found the nights of bunk bed giggles followed by days of swims and cookouts exhausting. I’m not completely antisocial, but I do need time to myself. My boarding school advisor was onto something when he remarked to my parents about my dour expression. Contrary to his assumption, I wasn’t depressed, but the omnipresence of people in dormitories, classes, and the cafeteria made me long for escape.

I’m not sure why cheerfulness comes so hard to me, especially given how easily I am amused. I can be having a good deal of fun without looking like I’m having any. One reason for my grim demeanor is that I tend to be nervous around people I don’t know well—nervous that I will say the wrong thing or misunderstand what is said to me. When I speak in public, my stage fright can make me look “stern” (a word I overheard a student apply to me during the first week of classes) and “deadpan” (how an audience member described me reading my poetry in public). As I move through my days, I’m constantly reminding

(90)

MOUNT HOPE

(91)

myself to smile, and wishing I could warn people not to judge me by my expression.

That school advisor wasn’t the only elder troubled by my glumness in company. The therapist I saw throughout college equated mental health with an active social life. He once urged me to accept an invitation to attend the Quebec Winter Carnival with my roommate and two friends. An overnight drive north in a Volkswagen bug, a shared motel room, nights of drinking and days of revelry amid ice sculptures and parades—what college kid wouldn’t love a trip like that? he asked. One who’s uncomfortable with spontaneity, phobic about sharing his space, and allergic to sleep deprivation, I replied. The prospect of frenetic round-the-clock fun put me in mind of those scenes in movie Westerns where the villain fires bullets around the rube’s feet and says, “Dance, and smile while you’re at it.”

Not surprisingly, my relationships have occasionally foundered on this issue. One girlfriend attracted by my affinity for reading and writing reconsidered after discovering that these activities were my primary means of enjoying myself. I didn’t blame her for equating companionship with shared amusement any more than I fault people who rush to fill their free time with recreation. With the approach of my school’s summer vacation, my colleagues pose two recurring questions as they encounter one another on campus: “Are you getting away?” and “Do you have anything fun planned?” My answer to both is a shrug and a silent “yes” as I anticipate heading to my study instead of a classroom for the next three months.

Writing time aside, I hate summer. As the days grow longer and Daylight Saving Time begins, I feel besieged. People are out and about until late, biking, rollerblading, chasing Frisbees, chatting on porches. I open my windows and resign myself to the sounds that clamor inside. I dread this season for the same reason that most people can’t wait for it, for its promise of spontaneity and unpredictability.

I prefer structure, routine, and finite amounts of time for socializing. Winter’s frigid weather and early darkness mean that I don’t have to feel guilty about not going outdoors; its blizzards excuse me from driving anywhere. Housebound, I am one with my housebound fellow man. In summer, my fellow man is laughing and tinkling glasses in the yard next door. When he’s having fun, I feel disgusted with myself that I am not, do not, cannot.

The inability to have conventional group fun is central to my personality. One problem is that I like solitude, a state that many people find incompatible with a good time. Quick—what comes to mind when you hear the word fun? Friends at a ballgame? Waterskiing off Aruba? Dancing in a nightclub?

Dancing anywhere? Group activities all. Solitary fun sounds pathetic. Yet I’m uncomfortable in festive situations, reluctant to travel or try new experiences (“What I see tires me and what I don’t see worries me,” the 17th century French writer Madame de Sevigny said about sightseeing). My multiple phobias—of heights, crowds, and enclosed spaces—keep me from relaxing anywhere except at home. The only time fun

MOUNT HOPE

sneaks up on me is if I’m participating in an activity where it’s being had and I get distracted from my selfconsciousness. This often happens when I’m teaching; my shyness subsides and I start to enjoy myself.

In fact, the classroom is the only place where I’ve ever had communal fun, and then only after months of getting to know my students. Otherwise, I gravitate toward solitary pursuits or the company of a friend or family member. For example, from the time my son was a child until his present age of twentyfive, I have loved bodysurfing with him near my parents’ summer house in Rhode Island and wouldn’t be as happy doing it alone. I don’t require solitude in order to enjoy myself, just the absence of social anxiety, which limits my pool of prospective companions to him, my siblings, my girlfriend, and a few close friends.

Anxiety-free more often means people-free for me, which may be why I have cultivated such a passion for writing and reading. “By paring and paring and paring away,” says the writer protagonist of Philip Roth’s novel Exit Ghost, “I found in my solitude a species of freedom that was to my liking much of the time.”

Given my low tolerance for socializing, it surprises me that I get along so well with my students, many of whom seem to have been born with an aptitude and appetite for comradely fun. My own high school years felt like one fraught social interaction punctuated by self-consciousness about my solitude. At the school where I teach, inclusion is mandatory. Every senior, no matter how diffident, participates in the senior play, goes on a whale-watching weekend in the fall, travels to China over spring break, and repairs to the thronged senior lounge between classes. At night, they oversee the ebb and flow of their social lives in Facebook pokes and Instant Messenger pings.

Observing these kids in class, I think they’d be amazed by how little of their kind of fun I had at their age (or have now, for that matter). For me, the biggest hurdle in overcoming the demands of conviviality was getting through school. Most of all, I dreaded the social cauldron of the cafeteria—the self-conscious entrance, the search for someone to sit with shadowed by the potential ignominy of sitting by oneself, the spirited conversation lasting long past dessert. I agree with my classmates who, in their wistful alumni notes, credit those bull sessions with providing their “true education.” They did for me, too, by teaching me that I like to eat alone.

At a friend’s New Year’s Eve party, one of the guests proposed a game that involved acting out stories. When my turn came, the host said to me, playfully, “This isn’t going to happen, is it? Too many years of upper class repression.” He was right; the idea of me joining in the fun was no more conceivable than when the instructor of my private school’s African-drumming course exhorts teachers and parents to keep time with the students’ performance at graduation. The majority of the audience claps along gamely, but I sit frozen, hands in my lap, praying for the ordeal to end. The adults’ expressions remind me of the rock star Ric Ocasek’s definition of fun as “a false sense of ecstasy,” just as my discomfort bears out his comment

(92)

MOUNT HOPE

(93)

that “I have trouble with the word ‘fun.’ And I never liked the word ‘enjoy.’”

For me, fun depends less on outer circumstances than on how an activity makes me feel. As for my contribution to others’ fun, it doesn’t involve any “life of the party” qualities, but more subtle virtues of companionship. I won’t enliven your weekend house party in the Hamptons, but could make an agreeable passenger on a cross-country drive. When my shyness burned off after a few hours, I would listen and talk without indulging in too much of either, and add some humor and inquiring observations on the passing landscape. My fellow traveler who thought me unpromisingly distant at the trip’s outset might even produce a surprised “Hey, that was fun” at its end.

That was the reaction to my most successful attempt at showing someone a good time. When my son was younger he would fly alone from his mother’s home to mine for school vacations. Arriving at the airport after one of these visits, we discovered that his flight was delayed for four hours—an eternity to spend amusing an impatient ten-year-old boy. As a non-custodial father, I already felt self-conscious about my parenting ability, so I resolved not to let this delay make him think of his visits to me as a chore. I dreamt up a game involving spies masquerading as airport merchants, travelers as shapeshifting aliens, and a need to reconnoiter the terminal. Four hours into it, my son was checking the departures board, hoping for a further delay. His happiness as he finally boarded taught me that fun is what you make of it in your own life and in another’s. Or as Aldous Huxley wrote, “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

Writer Jonathan Franzen purports to illustrate, in an anecdote, the depressed state of his friend David Foster Wallace. Franzen, an avid birdwatcher, recalls visiting Wallace shortly before the latter’s suicide.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the hummingbirds around his house and was saddened that he could, and while he was taking his heavily medicated afternoon nap, I was studying the birds of Ecuador for an upcoming trip, and I understood the difference between his unmanageable misery and my manageable discontents to be that I could escape myself in the joy of birds and he could not.

Franzen may be right about Wallace’s depression, but he’s wrong to base his diagnosis on his friend’s lack of interest in birds. Nothing is more tedious to me than birdwatching and its voluble enthusiasts, and my indifference has nothing to do with my state of mind or my ability to enjoy myself. Just because I can look at a birdwatcher hoisting his binoculars at 6 a.m. on a park trail and conclude, “That guy is having fun,” doesn’t mean that he can look at me yawning and say with equal accuracy, “That guy is depressed.”

MOUNT HOPE

Whatever the extent of Wallace’s despair, it’s unlikely that he would have marked its end at the moment when he could take pleasure in sighting a rare warbler.

Later in the article, Franzen admits that what really worries him is Wallace’s inability to escape himself in joy anywhere, especially in his writing.

He’d loved writing fiction … and he’d been very explicit, in our many discussions of the purpose of novels, about his belief that fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.

Fiction was his way off the island, and as long as it was working for him—as long as he’d been able to pour his love and passion into preparing his lonely dispatches, and as long as these dispatches were coming as urgent and fresh and honest news to the mainland—he’d achieved a measure of happiness and hope for himself. When his hope for fiction died, after years of struggle with the new novel, there was no other way out but death.

The kind of escapism-in-writing that Franzen describes here strikes me as great fun, though it’s a long way from the images of spring break revels or picnicking families that I usually associate with that word. I’m all for expanding the definition of fun to include experiences that reserved or solitary people can enjoy. The notion that conspicuous, collective gaiety equals happiness reminds me of evangelical Christians insisting that faith equals salvation. More pertinent is one’s ability to achieve inner peace, or, in the case of fun, pleasure.

(94)

Interviewer: Have you been on a water slide?

Ric Ocasek: I’ve never been on a water slide in my life.

Interviewer: They’re fun.

Ocasek: I guess they could be fun, and I guess skydiving could be fun, too. But I would never do it. It would be more fun to sit in a room with William Burroughs and listen to him grumble.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that happiness requires ebullience or gregariousness or both. The first time I read Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild, about Christopher McCandless’s solo travels across America, I envied McCandless’s ability to be alone for long periods without feeling guilty about being antisocial.

His letters and journal entries celebrate his self-sufficiency as he attempts to live off the land and limit his contact with people. Cut off from family and friends, he writes to a man he has met on the road, “You are

MOUNT HOPE

(95)

wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships.” Yet when McCandless decides to end his two-year odyssey and return home, he admits in his journal: “happiness [is] only real when shared.”

Martin Seligman, founder of the positive psychology movement, offers five crucial components of well-being, each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion, relationships, engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task), meaning, and accomplishment. Seligman recommends identifying which of these matters most to us, and then setting goals and monitoring progress. I have often invested the first two, which I associate with having fun, with a disproportionate power to determine my happiness, even though my life is rich in activities that engage me and provide meaning and accomplishment. According to Seligman, I should be able to achieve well-being by focusing on the last three alone.

“Why does he not come out of himself, have some fun?” J.M. Coetzee is asked in his fictionalized memoir Summertime. “Some of us are not built for fun,” he replies. It’s human nature to crave what can’t be easily attained, however, and it’s my nature to dwell on my shortcomings rather than my blessings, a habit that often takes the form of envying others at play. Like Franzen’s birdwatching, this pastime keeps me engaged, and therefore, Seligman might say, happy. “Misery is his element,” Coetzee writes of his alter ego.

“He is at home in misery like a fish in water. If misery were to be abolished, he would not know what to do with himself.”

Coeztee’s book shows that a degree of reserve can be conducive not just to contentment but to literature. As a reader I prefer Emerson’s measured essays to Hunter Thompson’s flamboyant ones, and would choose the former writer over the latter as a walking companion, too. Elizabeth Bishop appeals to me more than Dylan Thomas in both her person and her poetry. My favorite writer, Philip Larkin, happens to be my favorite misanthrope. These lines from Larkin’s poem “Vers de Société” give voice to thoughts that I once would have not dared utter: Just think of all the spare time that has flown Straight into nothingness by being filled With forks and faces, rather than repaid Under a lamp, hearing the noise of wind, And looking out to see the moon thinned To an air-sharpened blade.

Larkin’s girlfriend, Monica Jones, told his biographer, “He cared a tenth as much about what

MOUNT HOPE

happened around him as what was happening inside him.” In recent years I have begun to make peace with my own introversion, or perhaps age has helped me to inhabit it less guiltily. At fifty-four, it’s acceptable to act as if one’s footloose days are past and one has settled into a sedate existence. The difference between me and a sexagenarian homebody like Keith Richards is that I never sowed many wild oats, but grew up with a middle-aged suburban schoolteacher’s notion of a good time—dinner, book, and bed. Sounds like fun.

(96)

Michael Milburn teaches high school English in New Haven, CT. He is the author of a book of essays, Odd Man In. His third book of poems, Carpe Something, was published by Word Press in 2012.

MOUNT HOPE

Thomas Cobb

The Rise of Capitalism in the West, 1909

(97)

The post office was one corner of H. F. Firth’s store, the only one in Aravaipa and twenty miles beyond that. Firth noticed the good-looking blond boy from the first time he came to the store. The boy would come to the post office window, smile, and ask only, “Power?” Firth rarely nodded “yes.” But he kept an eye on the boy, sure that his slow progress around the store was the progress of a thief. Times were hard, and he didn’t need to add theft to his woes. But, as far as he could tell, the boy never stole anything, he just wandered, picking up cans and boxes and bottles and staring at them as if they were jewels or two headed cats.

“Are you planning to buy something?” Firth asked one day. He was tired, had a toothache and too many bills to pay. The question was designed to scare the boy off. It would have set any number of boys to stammering and looking for the door.

“No, Sir,” the boy said. He smiled broadly. It was a good smile, shy, but still welcoming. “You can bet I would if I had any money. Yes, Sir. I surely would.”

“Then why are you here, picking everything up, looking at all I got? I’m here to sell, not entertain boys.”

The smile again. “I ain’t going to be poor my whole life. I’m going to get me some money, and when I do, I plan to be prepared. I’m going to march right in here, money in my hand, and buy what I want.

What are applecots?”

“Apricots. They’re like little peaches, sweeter, though.”

“That’s the first thing I’m going to buy, then. I ain’t never had any, ain’t never heard of any until now. But that’s what I want. ‘Applecots.’”

“Apricots.”

The boy smiled again, a broader, brighter smile. “Apricots,” he said. “Yes, Sir. I’m going to buy me a can of those apricots.”

Then, for no reason he could have explained, Firth said, “If someone was handy with a broom and could sweep out this store, I believe I would be willing to give him a can or two.”

The boy smiled. “Where’s the broom? I’m your man for that.”

Tom Power continued to come to the store twice a week, marching in, asking for mail, which he rarely got, then marching to the back of the store, taking up the broom and sweeping out. When he was done, he would start his slow circuit of the store again, peering at all the cans and bottles. He often chose a can of apricots when he was done, but he also tried spiced apples, quince and kippered herring.

MOUNT HOPE

“You might as well come in on a more regular basis,” Firth said. “You’re here all the time anyway.

You can sweep out and run the counter here so I can take a nap. I’d guess you know my stock better than I do by now. You could tote water up from the spring as well. I’d pay you some money as well as the canned goods.”

The customers liked Tom well enough. He wasn’t shy and shifty-eyed like most boys his age, and he didn’t smirk over jokes he silently told himself. Instead, he looked customers in the eye, smiled the great smile, and with surprising speed, began to call them by name. More and more, Tom watched the store and handed out the mail while Firth attended to other business, usually his small herd of cattle. At the end of the week, Tom got three dollars and some canned goods. Firth let him take whatever he wanted, which was usually not much.

After one of Firth’s steers had knocked him into a fence post, bruising his shoulder so badly he couldn’t move his arm for two days, Tom suggested he could save Firth a lot of time and pain if he let Tom take the herd to graze with Will’s up in the gulch.

“And what would this cost me?” Firth asked.

“What’s fair?” Tom asked back. “I only want what’s fair.”

“Another couple of dollars a week?”

Tom hesitated.

“And more canned goods,” Firth offered.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

Tom drove the little herd of twenty cattle back up the canyon and brought them in with the Power and Morgan herd. There was plenty of water and good grass, and the addition of the few cows didn’t change that. Tom gave Will a dollar a week, and brought him cans of potted meat, which Will was overly fond of. Tom was now, at sixteen, making three dollars a week. And it was easy work, except for hauling the water. Everyday he took a string of burros three miles to Turley springs, filled up ten-gallon kegs with spring water and loaded them on the burros. Then they trudged three miles back.

“You take those burros back there to that spring empty, don’t you?” This was a cowboy named Albee who came to the post office every week.

“I do,” Tom said. “That’s where the water is.”

“That seems a waste, don’t it? Taking those burros back there empty?”

“I don’t know what I would take to Turley Springs, except kegs for the water.”

“Yep. That’s right. You would have to find someone who wanted to send something up that way, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess I would.”

(98)

MOUNT HOPE

(99)

A week later, Albee caught him again. “This here’s your lucky day. I found you some folks that want to send stuff back to Turley Springs.”

“Who would that be, and what do they want sent back there?”

“It wouldn’t be your problem, that’s what it would be. We’ll be getting some stuff from Phoenix and back East and such, and when it comes in, you just tote it up to Turley Springs, set it there for us, and we’ll pay you a dollar a trip. And that’s all you have to do. How’s that sound?”

There was a movement on for the prohibition of alcohol. People in Arizona were talking statehood, and the argument was that it would be easier if Arizona was to go in a dry state. The argument didn’t sit well in the most southern counties---Pima, where Tucson was or Santa Cruz that bordered on Mexico.

But in largely Mormon Graham, Greenlee and even Cochise counties, there was strong support for the prohibition.

Tom figured that that’s what this was, a preparation for prohibition. Moonshiners would need a lot of equipment, a lot of good water, and a secluded place. And Turley Springs was a secluded place with good water. The cowboys who wanted to send stuff up there were setting up a still. He was sure of that.

“I don’t think it’s right,” he told Albee. “I think it ought to be a dollar a burro.”

“Well, hell, you’re driving them up there anyway. It won’t even be out of your way.”

“I’m driving them empty,” Tom said. “You want me to drive them loaded, and you want me to do the loading and unloading. A dollar for each burro I got to load and unload.”

“Well, hell. Nothing for the burros that ain’t loaded? I guess that would be all right. Don’t you go putting a little bitty stick on each burro and claiming for a load.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Tom said. “I decide how much weight is a load for the burros, though.

They’re Mr. Firth’s burros, and we treat them right.”

For three weeks, he carted barrels and piping of all sorts, iron, gauges, burners and boxes of bottles up to the spring. He took all of this well back into the bush where it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone just visiting the spring. A happy customer was a repeat customer. He had learned that from Firth. He took a fully operational still up the steep trail in three weeks and pocketed sixty-two dollars. He was coming up on rich. He liked being on his own and making his own money. He had learned from his father that when opportunity knocked in America, you best not be broke.

THOMAS COBB is the author of four novels, including Crazy Heart, which was adapted into a major motion picture (earning Jeff Bridges the 2009 Academy Award for Best Actor). He is retired from Rhode Island College, where he directed its creative writing program for 18 years. Cobb, a Rhode Island resident, grew up in Arizona, the setting of his new novel, With Blood In Their Eyes (U. of Arizona Press 2012).

MOUNT HOPE

(100)

The making of our cover

artist Jeysson Santos

In an age of digital design and non-paint painting, we thought it would be fun to create our “inner cover” image with real materials.

Providence, RI, artist Jeysson Santos set out over a sultry couple of days in July 2012 to create something for us, on the wall of a local building. His composition, “Set Sail,” is one of many large-scale works he does.

See the video of him making “Set Sail” on our Mount Hope Facebook page or on our YouTube channel.

MOUNT HOPE