Hawaiʻi Review Number 17: 1985

Lauk1a

Otelnch Varez

NUMBER 17

SPRING 1985

•

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII I

LIBRARIES i

• Cover by Dietrich Varez

Hawaii Review is a student publication of the Board of Pub-

lications, University of Hawaii at Manoa. It reflects only the views of its editors and writers, who are solely responsible for its content. Subscriptions and manuscripts should be sent to Hawaii Review, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of English, 1733 Donaghho Road, Honolulu , Hawaii 96822. Manuscripts should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Hawaii Review is a member

f The Coordinating Council of

Literary Magazines. c 1985 by the Board of Publicati ISSN: 0093-9625

s, University of Hawaii.

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ZDENEK KLUZAK editor in chief MARGARET RUSSO managing editor HOLLY YAMADA fiction editor DEANHONMA poetry editor

JEANNIE THOMPSON TIM ARNEY ROBERTA YOUNG CHRIS TANIGUCHI readers

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TWO POEMS

1

Frank Stewart

THREE POEMS

3

Norman Hindley

DAYBREAK OVER HALEAKALA/HEARTBREAK MEMORIES (A Two-Sided Hit)

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Rodney Morales

SIX POEMS ABOUT ARTISTS

25

Pat Matsueda

TWO POEMS

31

Chris Taniguchi

BORN AND BRED

33

Lanning Lee

HULIHEE

44

Marjorie Edel

MICHAEL'S DIRECTION

45

Debra Thomas

FOUR POEMS

46

Gene Frumkin

TWO POEMS

52

Louis Phillips

TWO POEMS

55

Peter Wild

FEBRUARY

58

Michael McPherson

TWO POEMS

59

Robert Parham

MAKING OUT BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

61

Bill Sharp

THE WAY IT BEGAN

72

Steven Goldsberry

ON THAT SAME BEACH BENEATH A FULL MOON

74

Joseph Balaz

TWO POEMS

76

Adele Dumaran

THE DEAD DONNA

79

Beth Cuthrell

AS THE DAY

91

Rob Wilson

AT THE FREDERIC INN

92

Nick Bozanic

THE FIRST TIME

94

Nicholas Kolumban

THERE WERE ALWAYS STARS

95

Lyn Lifshin

FEVER

97

Laureen Ching

Notes

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Prank Stewart I'LYING THE RED EYE

Circling slow and dipping like a fat June bug in the rain, turbos throbbing in the labored dark over Chicago, the Electra turned, one wing pivoted up, like an old dog tilted on three legs, amelling dank, with an old heaviness in him, as though he were about to tumble over into those glorious snowy lights below. There might have been freezing sleet as well. In any case, I know I laughed into a glass half-filled with bourbon, 11anced again at the two feathered props out the window, their cowling charred and smoky.

But lifted all at once out of months of killing depression, elated strangely, almost uplifted. Below, the groundlights were steady and beautiful, and nearly everyone else was asleep, so it was only me and a couple of pale girls in airline make-up and the invisible, unspeaking pilots - and the dark Chicago lakeside turning slowly underneath. " Christ, these folks will all die in their sleep," a voice behind me said, apparently to himself.

The bourbon was free as long as we circled, dumping fuel, swaying and bouncing on the rainy air.

A long time, so long it almost got dull. The fire trucks waited below us, got tired of waiting, no doubt, their red lights flickering like slow pulsars, emotionless.

On the wet tarmac in the jeep three hours later, I almost wanted it all back rather than be down.

And just now the lights through a dark window suddenly and a deep mechanical hum brought it back, and I wonder how long the circling will last and whether these small desires since make any difference.

"Flying the Red Eye " first appeared in India na Review 6:3 (Summer 1983).

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STROKE

His maples dropped their leaves in a bounty there. Unseen birds would make a rain of motion and shadow, would light in tangled boundary wires that held twisting muscadine and morning glory, so thick the forest seemed about to burst through into his yard - heavy with unmown grass and wild squirrels running through the deep, untrimmed lots on every side. Jack lay four autumn days in the leaves, until the afternoon I found him, between decay and freezing, and dropped a blanket about his head and shoulders as though for warmth, but more to conceal a final, deep kiss he a nd the earth exchanged.

The last of my father's brothers, that year (the year before my father died at fifty-seven) Jack refused to say goodbye to anyone instead he'd laugh and only turn away as if his departing guests were simply stepping out a moment into his yard to listen to nightingales or smell the jacaranda and sweet magnolia thick as constellations.

The brothers seemed to have a clock inside them, set at fifty-six or so, Jack said.

And the best of them go out face down in the leaves at home, and the worst in a drunk tank in borrowed shoes. Lucky, he said, the man who knows the number of his days. Lucky

twice over if it's autumn and the red leaves and yellow rai n haven't given all their kisses away.

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One legged, then dead.

Let me tell you that day to day and night to night I see things . . . say the moon, And I remember when it poured Like a martini over the lawn, the leaves, Over your arms, Say moon again And I see it like a pinball Through the walnut trees, through the window, Rebounding in the silver bowl, Standing when it found your finger.

Say the sun I see it touch you, see you walk, Your hair falling like sauternes. Say October.

I see your shoulder, see your autumn dress.

Say evening, And I see your h ome open, crowde~.

The lamb carved, the endive creamy, Table linen undernea th like snow, It might be winter Your dark dress a little low Your skin like rye.

Say two silk shoes You're seated, you slip them on like gin Now fast say stop.

It's how I'll have you And here I'll hold.

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FAN to Tai Babilonia

You Babilonia, please.

I'm here, a tortured man, a shit In the bleachers whistling Sibelius when you leap, Who entreats you to ditch Randy And ice dance with me, Dependable, true north, And faithful. Fleming, Hamill, Starbuck are zeros. Sonja Henie's dust.

I was right of you on a flight, First class to Denver, wearing surgical gloves And dark glasses. envisioned us' On the Boeing's steel toilet. You sipped Mineral water for dinner, I chugged a 12-pack with shellfish, It wasn't enough. You got up, I wanted to eat your seat.

Oh my athlete When you slept I looked long and hard, Your arms like gold bars, legs muscular, Copper under your clinging dress. And Tai, At the tip top of my list, your little patootie Mysterious, combed. It spoke, said " Eddy, Eddy" When I passed. I collapsed, missed the movie, Sat till we landed Sweating dynamite in the lounge.

Albums Babilonia. I've many. A shot Of you receiving a cup, Cut flowers falling like flares, An 8x10 of your sorrow in the "80" Games When Randy wrenched his nuts, And wouldn't go on, You in white under hot rink lights In Providence, perspiration spearmint,

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Your bottom my Ark. Your foot like sherbet going into a skate.

Go, Cut the Spiral of Archimedes, The crazy eights, philodendrons into the ice, But follow the echoes of Sibelius, Uncover me, Your barbary love, Fortyish, a straining XL Waiting on a wink.

5

THE MATURE MALE

They work hard with the weights, But the oldest, hardest.

Nothing clever. He squats, Cleans ton after ton. With no interest In definition or symmetry,lube jobs Or wax to remove body hair. My age Or more he's got a program. No drink, Smoke, seldom profane, Gets plenty of sleep, sunlight.

A man with answers, control.

I speed

By his place, Skin white as arsenic, Gut hanging, Shamefully under the wheel.

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Rodney Morales DAYBREAK OVER HALEAKALA/ HEARTBREAK MEMORIES (A Two-Sided Hit)

"Are you asleep?"

A few seconds of silence. Then: "Yeah. You must be too."

Bud and I giggled like two children cheating on nap time.

"Well," I said as I sat up in my sleeping bag, "no use lying around."

Bud got up too. I gazed at the long row of sleeping bags stretched out across the sands of Hakioawa. It dawned on me at that moment that Bud and I were probably the only souls awake on the island.

He lit a cigarette and offered me one. I didn't smoke but I accepted. It seemed right. As I flicked ashes on the sand the moon appeared. I imagine Bud was watching too. He sat silent.

Crescent-shaped- the heart of it implied- the moon had risen gloriously over Haleakala, the house of the sun, over on the island ofMaui. The ocean, the sand, the rocks along the shore, everything - shimmered. " So beautiful," Bud said. " So-o-o nice. " "Yeah."

"Too bad I gotta piss so-o-o-o bad! " Those words caused me to choke on my smoke. While I tried to suppress both my laughter and my choke-induced cough, to not disturb the others, Bud m ade gestures that suggested anguish, squeezing his legs together just to soak me for more painful laughter. All the while I thought: Here we are on a serious journey to an island that is being bombed to dust and still we are being hopelessly irreverent. Buddy boy, I said to myself as the coughs subsided, you '11 never change.

"Here," I said finally. " Use my flashlight ."

"And go alone?"

As we walked slowly in our bare feet toward the kiawe thicket, carefully avoiding thorns, I found myself amused (and, to tell the truth, relieved) that this powerfully build University of Hawaii football player - a first-string linebacker - who was often cited for his ferocity on the playing field was afraid to walk into the bushes alone. But being on the island of Kahoolawe did that kind of

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thing to you. Uninhabited as it was supposed to be, you couldn't help but wonder what lurked about.

We had been drawn to the "target island," the smallest in the Hawaiian island chain, on what was called an access trip by a mutual friend, Kaeo Perkins. Like Bud, Kaeo played football for the UH. And he and I shared a journalism class. He was also a member of the Protect Kahoolawe Ohana, or PKO, a Hawaiian activist group who had fought the United States Navy in an effort to wrest control ofthe island from military hands and their alleged abuses- that is, bombing it for target practice. As Bud and I pulled up our shorts (I found I had to piss, too) and started back toward our sleeping bags, I recalled reading somewhere that when Hawaiian activists- nine of them- first landed on Kahoolawe in 1976, all but two were quickly picked by the U.S. Coast Guard. The two who stayed were not seen because - ta-da - they had gone into the thicket to relieve themselves.

Back in our sleeping bags, we lay staring at the pre-dawn sky.

"Ever notice how the unseen part of the moon blends with the sky?" Bud asked.

"Hmmm ... yeah, know?" I wondered why I never seem to notice the obvious.

-路 Knowing Bud, I also waited for the punch line. Or a discourse on the moon ... and the stars ... and blackholes and white dwarfs and on and on. Bud was an astronomy major - an unlikely field for a jock- and often let us know. But all he said was. "the reason is ... ah, forget it. It's just nice." Then he faded to sleep.

I felt like the only person alive in the universe. .&

I think it was raining that March morning when the subject of Kahoolawe came up. I had coffee at the University of Hawaii's Campus Center cafeteria. It was midterm time, semicidal burnout time, and the three of us - and a disjointed parade of others retreated to "the caf' between classes for quick coffee fixes.

Caffiends, we called ourselves. " But, like, what's there to see?" Bud was saying as I sat down on a cold seat. "Just one rock."

"Bud, you fricken babozo," Kaeo replied. "It's like any adda island. Like Maui, Kauai ...."

"Oh, yeah, get hotels .. . rent a cars . ... " "No, Jes' get da bes' beaches. Good surf, even ... and no mo' traffic." " Surf? How big?"

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"Biggah dan you . . . at least three to four."

"Three to four . .. ?" Bud put his head down. "Shit, I just blew a fucking midterm." He looked up, looking somewhat serious for a change. "Three to four, eh? You better be right Kaeo .. . 'cause I'm going."

Bud Newman was a avid- forget avid-obsessive body surfer, as are many who are raised in the Hawaiian Islands. He was a Hawaii-born haole who had hard blue eyes and dark brown, slightly wavy hair which he always covered with a green UH baseball cap. Bud also had a passion for rock and roll - Stones, Springsteen, Seger, and that's just the ones that start with an "S." Kaeo was part-Hawaiian yet full-on into the culture. Though he spoke English as well as anybody, Kaeo usually opted for his comfy pidgin. He wore wire-rimmed glasses which shaded his green eyes. And though he was as muscular as Bud, he appeared to be leaner.

Kaeo looked at his watch. "Get time fo' one mo' cup." He stood up, pulled Bud's cap off and put it on his head as he went for a refill.

Bud swore at him. When he returned he addressed me: " Hey, why you no come too? You should write about da place. You can write." " Bullshit." " Just do 'om fo' da course." " For my term paper?" " Yeah ... jes' tell da prof you goin' write about what it's like to go to Kahoolawe." Kaeo held-up an invisible frame with his hands.

"The Kahoolawe Experience. " " Why you no do dat." There w:~nt my English." " I did, twice, last year. In fac(" Kaeo now spoke in a whisper, "I used da same papah twice. And got A's both times."

"So," Bud interjected, "lend him that paper." " Yeah. Lend me that paper."

"Not till I use 'om again."

"Nah, come on, go," Bud said, grabbing my shoulder. " I don't want to be the only new guy there."

"See," Kaeo jumped in. "You gotta come."

Bub they weren't convincing me. And they gave up trying.

Minutes later, when Kaeo was leaving, he told Bud, teasingly: "Da ting about the island, boy, is dat nobody comes back da same."

"Yeah, I notice you comb your hair different now."

Still teasing: "You'll see."

I don't know if I was just bored with school, or just burnt out, or what, but I found myself muttering, "What if I go?"

"What you mean 'what if,' brah?" Kaeo quickly replied. "I

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putting yo' name down." I sat back, took a deep breath, then knocked Bud's hat off Kaeo's head.

The access had been scheduled for the last week of March, during the latter part of spring break. Bud and Kaeo would be through with spring practice and I couldn't come up with any excuses to get me out of going. Instead I forced the situation upon myself by promising my journalism prof a paper. Part of the deal was I could miss class the following Monday. The Sunday we'd return would be my birthday, and I figured I'd want if not need a day off.

Bud and I had to attend an orientation session -mandatory for first timers. A woman named Susan conducted the session. She was a tall, part-Hawaiian woman whose beauty kind of crept up on you. She was well tanned, with waist-length black hair. And when she smiled she lit up the dingy YWCA room reserved for the occasion.

Sue gave us newcomers the rundown on the kinds of supplies the PKO recommended we bring: collapsible jugs to fill up at Maalaea Harbor on Maui - for_! here is no running water on Kahoolawe; waterproof flashlights - waterproof everything, if possible; fisherman's tabis - the best footwear to deal with the kiawe thorns as well as to get a grip on-things; no booze or pakalolo - leave that stuff on Maui.

Then we had to sign forms releasing theN avy from liability in case any one of us blew up in a million pieces.

After that we viewed some slides that allowed Sue to show as well as explain how the island had been devastated by the bombing once the goats ate up all the vegetation. How the goats got i nto the picture I didn't know, because I was focusing more on the conveyer of the information. Bud must have been tuned into the same wavelength. When Sue asked if there were any questions, he said, "Are you going?"

"Yes, I am," Sue replied.

"Good," Bud said. " 'Cause I need somebody to show me the archaeological sights ... or whatevers." There were rumblings of laughter all around.

Finally Sue talked about ukanas, Hawaiian for luggage, I presumed, and how we would be brought to the island on a boat that literally dropped us off- into the water- fifty to a hundred yards offshore. "Make sure everything you bring is wrapped in at least three layers of garbage bags, the 3 mils thick size, 'cause

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everything goes in the water. Everything ... cameras and other expensive equipment have been ruined because they got wet."

That night marked the first time Bud and I were together without Kaeo. Kaeo had told us he wouldn't come because, as he put it, "I don't need orientation." It turned out interesting. Like a couple of sailors on shore leave before sailing, we took on the city of Honolulu. Cruising in Bud's silver-blue Mazda RX-7, we obliterated joints while Bud continuously fed his tape deck with songs he wanted to turn me on to. And in between the short, frenzied drives there were stops at various bars and other night spots for equally frenetic moments and quick beers. Bars and joints, bars and joints .... .

And tapes. Bud had cassette tapes for every reason, season, rhyme and time of day dispersed throughout the car- in the glove compartment, under the seats, on the dashboard, next to the handbrake- Police, Doors, REM, Pink Floyd, Elvis Costello, you name it. We coasted on the H-1 to "San Lorenzo," blitzed down University Avenue to the feverish strains of "Layla," reggaed to Bob Marley on Kalakaua Avenue ....

During the David Bowie song, " Changes," which we screamed along to (Ch-ch-ch-changes ... turn and face the strange) when we were wasted to the point that Bud's driving was affect~. Bud said, " Change. You think we're gonna change?" " Shit. Everything changes: We all change ... even the light.

Bud. I said the light. The light just changed." " Oh." All that evening Bud drove recklessly, often causing me to press imaginary brake pedals from my position in the "death seat," as well as shout Kaeo's favorite line, "Bud, you fricken babozo," around scary turns. But something happened that changed his driving style to slow and deliberate, something immediately sobering.

On the corner of Kapiolani Boulevard and McCully, there appeared to be a roadblock. Bud quickly slowed down and sprayed his mouth with a breath freshener. As we neared the scene we say the ambulance ... police cars .. .a tow truck .. . a badly smashed late model Toyota Celica. One man lay on the ground. He was being attended to by medics who were placing him onto a stretcher.

Another man, the driver, was pinned in his seat in the upside-down car. People were trying to free him. He wasn't moving. As Bud drove me home I'm sure he was thinking what I was thinking: It could have been us.

Suddenly, Kahoolawe loomed as a much safer place. ~

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Change. We are going to change. That became the big joke. But as I lay awake on Hakioawa sands, gazing at the first rays of sun, it was already clear to me that Bud was not his usual self. He seemed somewhat subdued. Except for our brief episode on the beach earlier, I hadn' t heard a wise remark from him since we had landed.

Still I had no doubt that this was temporary - once we had returned to Oahu, Bud Newman would be his old self again.

The sun had begun to ascend over Haleakala, hot on the trail of the fading moon. I had thought that the daybreak I had witnessed twenty-four hours earlier at Maalaea was breathtaking, with its deep pink and orange glow edging over the verdigris and into the soft blue. But from Kahoolawe . .. the lights over on Makena- tiny rectangles of blue and orange - were still visible. Seven miles away it looked like Sleepytown. The ocean, from periphery to periphery, burst into color- rippling waves of orange-lavender melding and bending over into this blue and that blue in gold and silvery light. Those sleeping on the beach began getting up from their refreshing slumbers like clockwork. Or like mercury lamps in reverse . I stood up and stretched too, and began folding my sleeping bag as the others did. After everyone had gone to wash up or to the cooking area, I nudged Bud .......a, few times. " Hey, Bud, get up .

Beautiful morning. " "Eh, come on ... I just fell asleep . ..." He turned over. " . .. have mercy. " ,, After nudging him a few more times and listening to his moans, I began my tired trudge away from him to join the others. At one point I turned around and looked at him - the only object on the entire beach- with his cap on, sewed up in his sleeping bag. A funny sight - if it weren't so corpselike.

On the way to the island, Bud kept ribbing Kaeo. " Okay, get surf . . . and sand . . . but like, ah, what's there to see? " "Lotta tings. Bettah dan Disneyland."

"Oh. You mean ... " Bud snickered, " . . . the damage." Kaeo grabbed him by the shorts and made like he would throw Bud overboard.

The Constellation, a seaworthy craft with a skyworthy name, skipped past Molokini, a crescent-shaped atoll, obverse to the slivery moon above. I began to feel ill from the diesel fumes and sought out a section of the boat where I could find relief. At one

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point I leaned over the edge to feel the spray and to fill my lungs with fresh air.

"Hey. No jump yet." I recognized the voice. It was Susan. " Hi." I felt stupid. " Hi ... better in the front, you know. Less sway. " " I'll be all right." Sue smiled, then headed toward the bow. I went back to see where Bud and Kaeo were. I found them in the pilothouse, still going at it.

"Looks like a rock to me," Bud was saying to Kaeo. The " rock" turned out to be a pretty large island. " I gon' rock you, man," Kaeo replied. Then he turned to me. " No get your papah wet, eh? Lots to write about."

"I forgot my pen." " I get. Papermate, Bic, Flair, whatevah you like. Black ink, blue ink, red, orange . .." I covered my ears and backed away. " Green ink, purple .... "

Minutes later it was "JUMP!" We had gone from The Constellation to the small, maneuverable craft that was called a zodiac. I thought it would be easy. Wrong.

Fifty yards out, we were told to jump, and everything and everyone but the steersman went overboard. We threw the ukanas, the plastic water jugs, and ourselves into the water.

So there we were, pushing our luggage in, trying to time our thrusts to flow with the three fQP-t (and surfable) waves . I guess it hit me then that there'd be no room service.

Ashore, we dragged everything and everyone in.

Slowly, we settled in. We unpacked our ukanas, reserved our camping spots, hung out to dry the things that, in spite of the garbage bag wrappings, still got wet. Wet clothes. Wet paperbacks.

We ate some of Kaeo's soggy cookies .. ..

Instead of exploring the shoreline like the rest of us newcomers, Bud chose to stay at the base camp at Hakioawa with Kaeo and the regulars who worked either on the traditional hale - a planned meeting house; the hula mound - to be used for traditional dancing and other cultural ceremonies; and the garden of indigenous plants. These were all symbols of the Protect Kahoola~e Ohana's efforts to make valid their claim of a Hawaiian resettlement of the island.

After I got used to the feeling of kiawe thorns accumulating on

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the underpart of my slippers (I chose not to try the tabis yet), I walked alone along the shore. We had been instructed to not stray inland and to watch out for unfired shells.

When we gathered together early that evening for dinner, we were first treated to a lecture by military personnel, an officer and two Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) experts on the dangers of picking up anything that looked like it could blow up in your face.

Then we gathered to pule. We prayed standing in a circle, holding hands. And then we ate. Afterwards, some of the people hit the sack to get a jump on the next day. Others , Kaeo, Bud, and me included, sat or stood around the kiawe wood campfire and told or listened to stories till way past midnight.

It had been Kaeo's suggestion that we " rough it" with about two dozen others on the beach. It sounded like a good idea then, but the next morning . . . the exhaustion I felt made it hard to be cooperative and helpful ohana style, which was defined by Noa Kekipi, a PKO member, as " if you see dirty dishes, you clean them."

I did manage to clean some dishes -in pots of varying degrees of clean water, and I rinsed pots ilf'"the tide pools. I also helped gather kiawe for charcoal fire, hoping at times that somebody would notice and tell me to take a break. But they were all too busy.

Everyone except Bud was up and about, and plans were made to take us newcomers on a hike to the top of the island, a spot called Moaula iki. Sandwiches and drinks were packed and we were told to be ready at ten a.m. sharp for an all day hike.

Before we left, I tried a few more times to awaken Bud, without success. I even mentioned that Susan was leading us on a tour of the "archaeological sights or whatevers " and it only elicited a " leave me alone" groan. So off we went without him.

Sue and I walked side by side for a good part of the trek.

Apparently, she had heard that I was writing an article or something- this " writer" business was getting out of hand - and made the extra effort to sort of " be there" as someone who could explicate things for me along the way.

There was little she needed to say; it was all there to see. Much of the island was stark, barren, just as one would imagine. The red, hard-packed ground- top soil all gone- ran aslant for miles, it seemed, in every direction. The little vegetation we saw was usually found in the gullies, especially those that were washed out into ravines. Occasionally, we'd find projectiles about two inches long, and sometimes we'd see in the smoothed surfaces of rocks,

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and on the polished edges of harsh slopes, like they were clay, an array of colors. This was caused by smooth, cylindrical objects scraping against them - objects like missiles.

At one point we came across a dead goat. Killed by gunshot, apparently.

It had been dry and hot for most the trip, but when we neared the top we were suddenly treated to cool, steady winds. And just as suddenly there were hundreds of trees, a wispy, willowy sort I didn't recognize that leaned almost horizontal in the wind. Sue told me that the Navy had agreed to plant them in compliance with a court action and after some negotiating sessions with the PKO. The Navy had also agreed to eradicate the goat population. The success or failure of the U.S . Navy in these matters was debatable .. . and debated.

At the top we formed a circle and prayed. Then, like pilgrims at the designated shrine after a hard journey, we each wanted our quiet moment and either stood in the pali wind or sat on a rock or wandered about. Everyone seemed taken by the view, a lei of islands and mountains- Lanai, Molokai, West Maui Mountains, Haleakala - that seemed to surround the target island. Like they did, I'm sure, I experienced moments of cutting serenity.

At the topmost point of the island there were two boulder-sized slabs of rock. One lay atop the other. And one could only speculate as to how the gigantic slabs got up there. Sue told those of us standing around that these slabs were a communication device the ancient Hawaiians used to rela:t,..Jllessages across the channel. She said that a kahuna, a priest~ would strike the top slab with a hammer-like object and chant. She pointed to a long, straight crack on the top slab. The crack, she said, pointed a straight line to a similar set-up many miles away on Molokai, where the message would be received and sometimes relayed. Other times it would originate there and go the other way. I didn' t believe all this ... but I didn't doubt it either.

As we headed back I felt somewhat moved, yet cautiously distanced in a way that made me feel sure that a Bruce Springsteen concert would more likely change me than Kahoolawe would.

Still, I couldn' t wait to tell Bud what he had missed ... and what I had seen.

When we returned, I was hit by some riveting news. N oa came up to me. He said Bud had "flipped out" and had to be Medivac'd to Maui.

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" What do you mean, 'flipped out?' " I bit real hard on the corner of my lower lip. " He just ... couldn't handle. He got emotionally distraught." " What ... ? How ...? " " I'm not sure what happened. He and Kaeo were together. Kaeo was showing him some heiaus, and I guess they came across some petroglyphs, so~e that even the archaeologists hadn' t come across ... I guess . . .. Man, he must be on some kind of guilt trip." " He going be all right or what?" None of this made any sense to me. I left a sleeping Bud, and returned to some kind of madness. " Oh, yeah. He'll be all right. " Noa took a deep drag from a cigarette. " He's not the first ... well, now the Navy's got another excuse for us not coming here ... too many Hawaiians flipping out.

Fucking assholes . .. but how the fuck are we supposed to react?"

He took another deep drag then flicked his cigarette down and mashed it into the sand. " It's ironic, though, " I said, " 'cause Bud's not Hawaiian ... ." " What do you mean, he's not Hawaiian?" " I mean ... I know he was born here and all that .. . ."

Noa looked at me like I was an idiot. " What do you mean he's not Hawaiian?" He must have noticecLmy confusion. " He is . . . . Don' t let his haole looks fool you." '' You mean Hawaiian . .. as in blood?"

Sarcastically: " No. Sugar." Noa shook his head. I was embarrassed. " His grandfather- hey, you get some blood on your mouth- " I wiped it and sucked on the cut on my lip. " Anyway, his grandfather was pure Hawaiian. Well known. One of the first territorial judges. His great-grandfather, now get this, his greatgrandfather was one of the Royalists who tried to put Queen Liliuokalani back on the throne. He was one of the young ones and he got thrown in jail. .. . Lemme c lue you, Bud may not look Hawaiian, but . . . now what?"

Noa didn't finish his statement. Someone was yelling for him and he left in mid-sentence.

I wanted to be alone for a bit, to try to digest the sudden strangeness. I walked along the beach and around a rocky bend.

Instead of solitude I found Kaeo, sitting alone on a rock, facing the inscrutable surf. When he saw me, he knew I knew. I sat on the same rock, my back to his side. " Was my fricken fault ... I wen' lay too much guilt shit on him, telling him he was too haole, li' dat."

16

"I didn't know he was part-Hawaiian." " Ev'reday .... Dating is, no show, eh? I nevah know until I went to his house one day and saw his mom. When you see her, you can tell. " Then Kaeo snickered. " He got pissed off when I wen' ask 'om if he was adopted. " I almost laughed, picturing Bud. We both fell silent for a minute. ''You know," Kaeo said, " just today he was telling me all kine tings about himself, about how he got into one classy school like Punahou on one at'letic scholahship, how he wen' fool plenny people by getting heavy into da academics ... den he stahted hangin g out wit only haoles- he could fit right in, eh? ... said he figured da only way he was goin' get anywhere was by being full-on haole . . . an' dass true, right? " I nodded to affirm that I got his drift. "Da problem is, kinda hard fo' fo'get tings like eating guava and lilikoi off da tree, picking limu wit grampa, goin' net fishing, eating poi wit da fingah- " As Kaeo said this he gestured, dipping his finger into an imaginary bowl. " - an' all dat. Hard fo' get into all da competition shit. " "Yeah, " I muttered, realizing at the same time that my right hand covered my forehead. Again we fell silent.

After some long minutes Kaeo said, "Eh. No tell nobody, but, ah, we wen' stumble across some ... some bones."

"Bones?" " Yeah," he said as I turned to face him. He looked distraught. I thought: Oh, no. Don't you flip out, too. "Human bones .. . had part of one skull .. . Buddy wen try p_4:k 'om up . .. 'wen sorta crumble in his hands . .. look like da bones was used fo' target practice . .. had lotta shells . .. an' I no mean seashell s . . .. " Kaeo appeared to be fighting tears. He hid his emerald green irises by closing his eyes.

Then he pressed his palms to his forehead. " ... oh, fu-uc k. " After our third silent spell, this time a brief one, Kaeo said with a sudden shift in mood and t o ne, " So. you writing all dis down o' what? " " In my head."

He pointed an index finger to my chest. "Yo' heart, brah. Record it in yo' heart. Bettah dan Memorex. " Then he got up and said he was heading back to the camp area to haul kiawe and help prepare the evening meal. When he was about thirty feet away he turned around and faced me. "One-fourt' Hawaiian," he said. " Dass plenny, you }mow."

I headed back slowly, feeling very much alone. At times I stopped and gazed at the distant slopes of Maui's seemingly twin mountains. "Flipped out" could mean anything. I wished Bud

17

could climb up one of those mountains and pound out a message on large boulders, a message declaring his condition. And if I thought he could do it, I'd billygoat up Kahoolawe's barren slopes to receive it. But I seemed to know better. Molokini loomed in the distance. Its name means "many ties," I recalled someone telling someone on the boat. Funny name for a cut-off piece of volcanic moon, a perpetually crescent anomaly as "severed from -" as I was at that moment. No ties. Incommunicado. You walk around in a smooth groove for years and years, then one day you turn and face the strange.

Along the Hakioawa shoreline up ahead I saw a figure pulling something out of the water. A minute closer I realized it was a woman struggling to pull in what appeared to be a fishing net. I ran to help. The woman turned out to be Sue. Though I began pulling with her she seemed oblivious to my presence. I noticed she had some mean scratches on her arms. Her veins were popping out.

The wraparound garment she wore was wet up to her waist. ''I'm not sleeping on the beach again," she said, finally acknowledging my presence after we had dragged the net ashore. "No way.

This is our hammock. " Our hammock? By the way sh~iled , easy-like, I didn't want to refuse. So this is how they get those makeshift hammocks, I figured. I had seen some of those comfQJ'table looking things set up in the camp area. After we found a s'u itable spot, a clearing between five strong kiawe trees, I helped Sue set up the netting, tying many ties around the gently bending trees.

That night, after dinner and hours of conversation with whoever was around, conversations that centered on Bud or on me and my " planned article," I found my way to the hammock and climbed in.

Just as I was dozing off, I was shaken awake by Sue climbing on. "Hi," she said. " You sleeping?"

I groaned. " Still worried about your friend? " I sat up a bit and shrugged my shoulders. "He'll be all right, you know." " I hope so." Sue sat facing me in the darkness. The lack of light gave her beauty an ethereal tinge. Oh, my God, I thought.

"I heard you guys laughing last night ... on the beach. And I heard you coughing ... you guys really- " "So you were awake." • "Couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned all night ... I saw you guys walking into the bushes . ... " "Well, when you gotta go . .. ."

18

Our conversation continued that way. Light, insignificant A much needed respite, actually. And while Sue and I first opposite each other, our talk- as if by mutual strategy- drew closer together. Finally we lay side by side.

When I felt it was well past midnight I told her something that been on my mind: " It's my birthday." " Oh, .wow." She slapped her forehead. " Well," she added, ing toward me, " happy birthday," She kissed me on the cheek. " It always works. Actually, it's two months away."

"You asshole . . . ."

"Nab. It is. It really is .. . really. . .. Gee, I'm a quarter of a old-" "That's a funny way of saying you're twenty-five."

"-and a failure."

"Has it been that bad?"

"Not really, I guess. Just uneventful." " I wouldn't worry. You'll probably live to be a hundred. You've three whole quarters left." " Yeah ... it's kinda sad how the future, the unknown and unseen is the stuff I look forward to." " Well, you're a sad optimist. At least you're an optimist." Sue not elaborate. She just snuggled up to me while saying this, .,6............., her head on my chest. " Funny, I, ah, I thought to"i路 some reason that you ... were .. . or something." Sue pulled away from me. A momensilence began. __ After an eternity, after my thoughts had again turned to Bud, whispered, ''I'm separated."

"From what?" I said, without thinking. "Oh, shit ... sorry, I'm slow today." Sue said nothing. She just stared at me. ll!v .....,H I looked at her I had to quickly turn away from her eyes. Finally I was able to return her gaze and an''"'""''... , " I love your eyes."

"I love yours." Sue again placed her head on my chest. I shifted let her head rest on my arm. In minutes she was asleep.

I lay awake for hours, my mind racing and retracing the day's ts: the sleeplessness, Bud's crashing out, the long hike, the of Bud "flipping out," the conversations with Noa and Kaeo . and Sue ... and her crashing out ... maybe that's how people on Kahoolawe - in their sleep. Invasion of the Body JIJ&~CJ'le1路s ... the kiawe does look sort of pod-like in the darkness ...

I was tired.

As morning approached and I lay still awake,. I found myself

-u~c,.l路.

19

stroking Sue's hair and face with my free arm. (The other one was hopelessly numb.) Her face looked impossibly tender in the zodiacal light. Jesus. If she's been snatched, I want to be snatched, too.

At daybreak, The Constellation rocked gently in the waters a hundred yards offshore. Perhaps crew members brought with them news of Bud's condition.

I was among the first sitting on the shore awaiting our return trip to Maui. I sat next to " Uncle Leo," an elderly PKO member, a kupuna whom the largely youthful PKO membership sought out for advice. He chatted endlessly.

"Dey shoulda been here one hour ago. Already da tide coming up. Da surf getting rough. Stupid. Dey no listen. Wheah evrebody, anyway? Still sleeping, I bet ... mo' bettah I take on da Navy myself . . . I wen' tell one of da EODs, when I was lighting his cigarette, I said 'Take one good look at dis face. One day you goin' be hunting me down on dis island ... we friends now, now is a time fo' peace, pow we bury da hatchet. Laytah on, we pick up da hatchet, dass Hawaiian style . .--::~路 Uncle Leo went on and on and I lost track of much of what he said. Then, when the zodiac was being steered in, he said, " Damn fool~. Dey not watching da waves, dey not going wit da flow. Da damn boat goin' sink." Just then a large wave came and overturned the zodiac and its two man crew. Uncle Leo laughed. " Stupid . .. dey no learn."

The zodiac's motor wouldn't start. Though we had dragged the inflatable boat ashore and wiped the motor dry. our attempts to render it useful were fruitless. We ended up forming a human chain in the ocean, passing the ukanas , the water jugs, and anything else we were handed as those of us in the deeper parts treadetl water for what seemed like hours. At one point the two EODs who had gone on the hike with us jumped in to join the human chain. Ohana style at is fullest expression, it seemed. Or, rather felt . And this wasn't just something Hawaiian.

Bud would've got off on the whole scene. But I guess he had already created quite a scene of his own. He must've put Kaeo, N oa, and the others through a lot of shit. His "flipping out" was unreal to me, surreal, if you will. Like reading a newspaper. Like not being there.

I tried and tried to imagine the scene. Maybe to soak if for all the heart-bending drama it seemed to offer. But I wasn' t there. Still, I imagine it this way:

20

Helicopter landing. Man on stretcher, or walking with the help others. Loud, whirring noise. FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP. . . . Men army fatigues jump out of helicopter and help carzy the victim Dirt flying, people sheltering their eyes from the dust. An of words, people yelling to be heard above the din. "'"'~~~.~ .... uter takes off. More dirt ... and dust. Nothing but dirt and . . . and a green cap flying around.

That fucking vague. A fucking MASH episode.

I want to remember Bud for the brief- but intense- moments both shared . . . afterwards. 'Cause this is too fucking vague.

I saw him only three times after .. . .

The first time he was standing at the dock at Maalaea Harbor. had walked out of Maui Memorial Hospital without a release to see us return. He was all smiles, looking healthy as ever, ¡-e;,e•.. , everyone, helping us unload, down playing his own little And of course he was wearing his green cap.

It did seem that Sue disappeared fast tha t day when we all

-tired and browner. By the time we were unloading she gone. I didn' t even know how she left, if someone had picked up, or what. She had squeezed my shoulders and kissed me on cheek as I lay awkwardly comfortable on the front deck of The llation with the other tired ones and sea sicklies. I did not my eyes but I knew it wasner . Nets of sunlight warmed my Her lips warmed my soul.

Before we left for our plane fli""~ to Honolulu, Noa came up to He came to say goodbye, and also to tell me (without my that Sue was going through some bad times, and though seemed to like me a lot, it would be better on all the hearts if I kept some distance. I nodded, and before he could I asked him if he sometimes thought that what the PKO was irying to accomplish on Kahoolawe ever seemed futile to him, the .~tuff for dreamers. "All the time," he said. " But if you can' t dream, forget it, yeah?"

Then there was the time Bud came to meet me many months later, one cold, Manoa evening. I sat shivering on a bench outside Hamilton Library on the UH campus, trying to warm up my insides with a cup of bad coffee. From afar. I heard - and others heard too, unless they were deaf- someone singing, out of tune and real loud, "BORN . .. in the USA, BORN . . . in the USA .. . ." A Bruce Springsteen song. Then, out of the darkness, Bud appeared, wearing headphones attached to a portable cassette player. A far cry from Kahoolawe , an experience I still struggled to convey on

21

paper. Bud probably didn't realize how loud he was singing. Or didn't care. ''I'm a COOL ROCKING DADDY in the US of A - " And he was. Unhindered, unaffected, unassuming .. . strange. II America can produce guys like this, I thought, it can't be all bad.

Kaeo, Bud, and I - and countless others, I guess- always found ourselves wondering where being Hawaiian started and being American left off and how the two blended and why they mixed like water and oil sometimes. Kaeo continued to re-use term papers while trying to figure it out. Bud had moved to Maui, dropped out of school - Coach Tomey's dt:eams of a pro football career for him notwithstanding - to deal, perhaps, with his reorganized confusion, and had, in his own words, " just happened to be in Honolulu and thought I'd meet with the writer who can't seem to get over his writer's block and give him some scoops to get him going." By scoops he meant his looking into the Navy's plans to detonate unexploded ordnance at a safe place, the place being Molokini Atoll. Of course it meant destroying the coral reef and thousands of fish, but who cares.

This was all serious business to Bud, yet he still expressed things in a way that made it clear that he hadn't lost his comic edge.

In other words, he was still c~.

The last time I sort of saw Bud was when his ashes were being scattered at sea. Not really scatte:r~d. rather dropped into the ocean off of Makena at sunset in a pu 'olo, a ti-leaf container. It wa.s beautiful. Sue and I returned the next morning at daybreak to find that each ash had become a sparkling light riding the crest of waves forever. We threw all the flowers we had gathered plumeria, 'ilima, hibiscus, the others I don't know - and red, orange, and yellow bougainvillea leaves ... .

Bud had been killed in an auto accident. Kaeo called to let know. It was as if he had struck a hammer on a cracked fifty miles away, and the sound tore through the sky in a strai line with the speed of a missile right into my chest. Then expJ.u,...,~...

Bud was on the losing end of a head-on collision. A car full teenagers, driver reportedly drunk, had swerved onto the side of the road on that lonesome highway between Kihei Kahalui. These joy riders, like Bud and I had been some e months earlier, escaped serious injury. Bud did not.

Maybe Bud just wanted me to write. Or maybe he wanted bring Sue and me together (I had confessed to him my las crush) , I'll never know. But he surely succeeded.

22

Right now I am sitting on some pillows in a cabin on the slopes Kula. This is where Bud lived his last days much like his first, as Hawaiian. I'm typing on Bud's Smith-Corona, which is set on an ide-down cardboard box. Across the room Sue leafs through papers, laughing sometimes, sometimes smiling with tears in eyes. I stop sometimes ... to think . . . to rest, because my back head hurts. At times I pick up and again skim through the report, which we got a copy of this morning. The same rds always leap out: Laceration of the heart. Death inIt has been quite a day. The funeral was two days ago. It was

that I saw Sue for the first time in months. It was a sad time to one's heart leap. It was then that I asked Bud'·s Hawaiian·-------... mom if I could write about her son. She did not curse me or me across the face. She just stared into my eyes for one long '"v... ..,,.. t . Then she handed me Bud's housekeys.

Today Sue and I tracked down Bud's car, the same Mazda RX-7. had already been taken to a junk yard. Everything had been from it. There wasn't a cassette tape to be found. No rolled covers. No last words on a piece of paper. Nothing.

Then Sue and I searched out and found the scene of ~he accident. we found skid marks, lots of tiny pieces of broken glass pt to the side of the roadx b~rnt Qut flares, pieces of tire, u::.~"-ul•o of cigarette butts, a Volkswagen hubcap, a flattened out Leaf chicken box, a frisbee.

I still searched for something,11.1i"ything, as Sue walked off in a of daze. Many minutes later, she found me, doubled over, ....., ... ..._.u..... a green baseball cap in my hands. She caressed my from behind, letting her hair fall over my face. Then she "'"'''"""''tt in a subdued sort of way, as if thinking out loud: " I see found your bones."

After Sue had lifted me up and Medivac'd me to the rent-a-car, drove us back to Bud's place. When we were both feeling better walked around outside in the chilly December air. It was We gazed up at the sky for the longest time. The moon was -quarters full. " Ever notice how the unseen part blends with sky?" I asked her. " Oh, yeah. Always."

"That's his Hawaiian part."

She turned to me and hugged me ... real hard. It seems we both a fraction of our usual selves, and became, in each other's

23

arms, somehow whole. Afterwards, we walked back to the w cabin.

And I began to write.

Between outpourings of words onto paper, Sue and I talked. lot. She told me about her divorce, how she "zombied out" wards, took long walks, long hikes, cried a lot, tossed and turned bed for countless sleepless nights, as if her bed were a cold, beach, how she thought a few times about me and how I was doing. told her how I pretty much fucked up in school, never could get papers done, and wasted a lot of time just thinking about matters. I told her I often thought of nothing but her. We d ............,, ...., her cultural confusion, my cultural confusion, and we vented sanctimonious anger at the greed of men who overfuck e thing. Great way to start a romance. At best, like dancing on If we did dance, though, it was a gentle rock, back and forth, imaginary music on a 45 that some celestial deejay kept over and over. Joy . .. and sorrow. Joy . .. and sorrow . . ..

And, as if the world wasn't fucked, we made love.

....--

24

POEMS ABOUT ARTISTS

of Poets is out tonight, drinking with three ladies. will come home to a. fourth. presses his hand against his chest.

IUU'""'"'"' the tentative heart a. stable boy a. yearling. has dreams and tears fill all the globes and cups of your house. has come far. his youth in the process. beauty fell like petals. others sang, _ _, .. 路 bent his sorrow into a. bow. anArF!rt most of his sanity a little wisdom ---

25

II. Dancers Mondrian and Pierrot dance and banners fiy like fish frying in water.

Blue, red, orange break the sky and blaze.

Mondrian and Pierrot, symmetry and Utamaro, a kabuki face is like a white ca~~ the imprint of the sun on your closed eye.

A woman lifts her silk sleeve, and we turn and flutter.

Our banners raised, we wave our watery names high above our heads.

26

are like inexperienced lovers the poet's embrace. knows something, rs into our faces. nothing, turns away and grieves: seconds seem like great chunks of the body, the mind believes.

We are children in red dresses, small flowers pinned to our shoulders, following the faces of other children with our fingers, 路路 waiting for thoughts to force words out of our mouths.

27

IV. War Photographers Unlike other people involved in war, the poet never cries.

Crying is the last thing he will do.

He will do it after he has tried every act of the imagination, every escape from abuse.

He will do it last, ...... at the end, when he is tired, when his talent is gone, when his love is traded for the love of others.

He will do it when everything he makes he throws away, when the world is nothing but a terrible brown light invading his room.

He will cry and cry and cry.

-

28

V. The Exterminating Angel At the tip of my yellow pencil is a black triangle, an angel pulling long words out of lead.

Bunuel was glamorous and enigmatic, a pulsar emitting light twice every second.

Hanamichi, the flower path, Bunuel walked down to see God. _...Always catching Him from the corner of his eye, glimpsing the flaming hem at the edge of his vision.

So he tried to see with both eyes, focused the right and left on one thing.

Stared so long he created a new thing, an orange bird, a blue lump of coal.

We have nothing but his works to judge him by, that spiral uncoiling upward.

The silent, other tracks that play while his stories unfold.

29

VI. The Fish Catcher The page is like an aquarium filled with milk.

The poet finds the fish, numbers and colors them and gives them names.

He chooses the plants that will sway in the small currents made by the pump.

The water level, temperature, __ the bacteria that will eddy on the sunlit surface.

The placement of each aspect.

We might draw a hand through the milk, find some familiar or mysterious fragment of our past.

The poet finds many things, plants them in us, us in them.

He catches us and lets us go, our hearts beating wildly as he takes us out of the water and puts us back.

So we know.

So we swim in and out of knowing, in and out of life.

30

K. Taniguchi EATING ALONE

Li Po drowned in the Yellow River, trying to reach for the reflection of the moon in the water, drunk.

I fell for a girl who moved too fast.

Thirty-thousand verses- he is a god tome, and he fell into the river, trying to touch what was real.

Only, he had the last laugh, floating out to the Pacific, bloated, and pock-marked, and gone. _....- .... .:.

31

A WINTER NOCTURNE

Her voice full of leaves and rain, I remember it now, the gay ribbon rising from her cigarette, her white hands fluttering and lighting on me, the nights a soft coal brushing the earth.

And now this whiskey on the tongue a warm bite that tastes of burnt grain and long summers going on to ~ with her dying colors and sharp wind that strips the trees clean, the branclies now bone dark against a winter sky that's falling and burying a summertime.

32

Every afternoon at 5:00p.m., Sergeant Stillman would exercise his homing pigeons. The tradition continued during the five years I was in school on the mainland, and I remember the unexpected pleasure I felt watching that v-shaped flock cut its way through the early evening sky on my first day back in town. I recalled my own birds, and I wondered how the sergeant and Auntie Clara were getting along these days . As the months passed, that aerial display became a source of great relief for me. I looked forward to that time of day, needing it badly. The afternoon of the fire was the last time I would ever find any solace in the daily departure, flight, and sure return of those remarkable birds.

--- ~'- 路. 路.

Honolulu was depressingly hot the summer I came back, but my optimism was high. Surely some lucrative job opportunity waited for me on the horizon. -.ldter several weeks of diligent hunting, however, my initial enthusiasm wore thin. Soon I began going through the interview ritual just to look good for my folks. I wanted to appear sincere for all my concerned friends and relatives.

Getting out of bed became a struggle for me. If I wasn't too hungover to make it downtown, I made perfunctory showings at the far from " prospective" places of employment by day. By night I shot pool and hit the bars. With or without friends, it made less and less difference with time. The only thing of importance any more was being home, awake, at 5:00 p.m. Those pigeons mattered a great deal to me.

The night of the fire, drunk and weaving up the hill at 3:00a.m., I passed the last fire and police vehicles on their way down. After parking in my garage, I was convinced by the heavy smell of smoke and water that the blaze had been nearby. I walked unsteadily down the dead-end street where both Clara and the sergeant lived.

33

Coming to Clara's lot, I could see that the house had burned completely to the ground. Small wisps of steam rose in the s t ill night air. The front yard, site of her once immaculate vegetable garden, was now a trampled soup of mud and ashes. Even the spectacular bamboo forest in back had been reduced to a rubbled expanse of short, broken stumps.

As I stood swaying slightly in silence over the ruins, I became aware of soft sobbing noises behind me. Turning, I saw Sergeant Stillman sitting on his bench beneath the Norfolk pine. H e was barely visible in the shadow of the enormous tree.

"Sarge," I called.

He didn't answer.

Climbing the narrow stone stairway from the street to his yard above, I called to him again. He must have heard me, thoug h he still did not respond. The crying had stopped.

I went to the bench and sat beside him. He w a s sta ring down at Clara's lot, mesmerized by the scene. His close-cropped gray hair was streaked with ash, and so were his undershirt and khaki pants.

He looked weak and tired.

"Where's Auntie Clara?" I asked, though I somehow sensed what had happened.

-The old man wiped his face with a blackened hand, smear ing more ash and grime across it.

"I tried to go in and get her . .. but I . . . too l ate."

He shook his head slowly.

I began to cry for Auntie Clara too.

Clara Wang wasn't really my aunt. After she stopped being mean to me, she invited me to call her Auntie Clara.

When our neighborhood gang was very young, the funny little Chinese lady hated us, I thiJik. Her bamboo forest had been pri me territory for playing "army," and we used to drive Clara crazy by tearing around through her massive, overgrown jungle. Half the challenge of our mock battles was to avoid being detected by her, but she always caught us anyway because of the noise made when we ran through the thick layer of dead leaves.

"Hey you kids! " she'd scream. " Get out my yard. I gon call cops if you kids doan get out! " She always said the same thing. Scared silly, we'd take off through the stream bed behind, straight for home. Home s afe, w e'd wait for the screaming of sirens telling us that the police had converged on the scene of the crime. It never happened, and sooner

34

later we were back in her yard, daring her to discover us again.

When we grew out of the playing war stage, and into the 111.11ra.rtnt;a experimentation age, we'd still hang out in Clara's back She'd yell at us, but we reacted differently in those days. We exited via. the stream, but we walked off casually, laughing in order to spite her.

All her animosity, however, seemed to disappear after Ben died.

With her husband gone, she channeled all her attention, all her energy, into her vegetable garden.

One day we were tiptoeing past her house when she came rushing out to us. "You boys like boiled peanut?" she asked, smiling.

We had never seen that expression on her face. We relaxed our "get ready to shag it" stance, shrugged our shoulders, and said, "Sure, Mrs. Wa.ng. You bet."

"You wait hea.."

She ran into the house and came flying back with a. cut-down beer case full of boiled peanuts.

"Sit down," she encouraged, pointing to the driveway.

We sat and ate. No one said a word, partly because we were a little uneasy, partly because the peanuts were so good that we ate non-stop until they were gone. " Soda? You like soda, yeah1SrY wait." • Again she zipped into the nouse and hustled back with Diamond Head strawberries for each of us.

We thanked her as we stood kMeave. " You come back any time, okay? I always give you something good, okay?"

"Okay." We smiled and walked away.

I was the only one in the group who took Clara. up on her offer.

She kept her word. E v ery time I felt hungry before dinner, I 'd walk up to her house. She always had boiled soy beans, or shr edded mango, or cuttlefish, or something for me. I'd sit there munching away while she blended fruit and vegetable matter into her garden.

Once while we were out there, a slug happened to be oozing by on the curb. Clara got up on her little chicken legs, walked over and grabbed it, and then proceeded to work the creature into the soil with her very sharp weeder.

I stopped crunching on the potato chips she'd provided. Clara noticed the lapse in my activity and purred, "Das good for my lettuce, you know." " Really?" I shuddered, making a mental note never to eat the Manoa lettuce which had looked so good just moments before.

35

"Sure. Das organic, you know. Make da vegetables come bee g."

I had a sudden inspiration to do something nice for Clara.

"Hey, Auntie Clara. You want my pigeon droppings for your garden?"

"Oh boy! Dat would be real good for dem, you know."

I ran home and returned with a heaping coffee can full of the treasured manure I'd scraped from the bottom of the coop. " Eh, tanks yeah," she beamed as she quickly mixed the stuff into the soil.

"You like soy bean? I jus wen boil urn today."

Looking skeptically at the soy plants in the middle of the heavily fertilized garden, I hastily declined.

"Gotta go, Auntie Clara. Sorry. I'll bring you droppings next time."

"Eh Clayton," she called as I walked away. "Mo betta you bring me some birds. I cook for you. Ono, you know."

I turned and looked at her as if she must have been kidding me. It seemed too weird to be real. She was smiling enthusiastically.

"Sure thing," I said, walking away with visions of slug sections, bird droppings, and barbec!:!..ed pigeons.

Not long after that, I decideef"'that I'd had it with the homing pigeon hobby. I packed all my birds and sent them air freight to a cousin who lived in Kona. Clara•.l-beiieve, missed the droppings. and I know she was disappointed that I hadn't offered her any birds to eat.

A few days later, as I approached Clara's house, I noticed a California orange crate propped up with a stick, standing in her driveway. A long string trailed from the stick to the garage. I walked into the dark building, and there sat Clara, peering intently past me at the contraption outside.

"I get food inside, I go in catch da bugga."

"What?" I asked, turning toward the crate.

There, a foot away from the trap, walking right into it, was m y Silver Bar. I was amazed. He'd flown all the way back from the Big Island.

I was about to speak when Clara pulled the string. " I get urn, I get urn," she screeched, jumping up on her pencil legs and spinning around.

"Sit on da box, Clayton, sit on da box."

The happy hunter raced into her house. I knew the pigeon couldn't lift the crate, but I sat on the box anyway. I was confused.

The thought of releasing him crossed my mind, but Auntie Clara came charging back. She carried a large kitchen knife in her hand.

36

"Get up, Clayton, get up," she screamed.

I rose slowly and stepped backward. Swiftly she knelt, lifted the crate just high enough to reach underneath, and immediately produced my Silver Bar. Walking quickly to the garden, she stooped over the Chinese peas and easily slit the bird's throat with one deft stroke. The animal jerked in her bony hand as she drained its blood into the soil, muttering all the while about a good harvest down the road.

Stunned and sick, I started to make my way for home.

"Eh! " she called. " You like eat dis bugga wit me tonight?"

"No thanks," I gestured over my shoulder. "See you later. " The steam had stopped rising from the pile of debris. Sarge and I sat watching the sun come up. I was stone cold sober, and so was be.

"Gotta go, Sarge. I've got some job interviews this morning."

As I stood to leave, he grabbed my hand.

"I'm going to miss her. Did you know that I really ... I really did like Clar- Mrs. Wang?"

"I know, Sarge," I replied.

I went toward the stairway. He spoke again: "Come with me. I'm going to take the birds to Waianae. Follow me out there, please." He loolred so pathetic, so drained. I could bear the pigeons stirring in back. I really didn't want to go. " Okay." __ By the time I drove up. he'd loaded the birds into the bed of his truck. The beat up black shotgun case leaned against the door. He took that old gun everywhere.

Sergeant Stillman, an Indiana native, moved into the Nakamoto house across the street from Clara. Twice stationed at Schofield, he'd become attached to Hawaii. A veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam wars, he settled in Honolulu after his retirement. 路The sergeant looked like a man who might have enjoyed the battles he had fought, though he only mentioned his wartime activities to me once. That was the first day I met him.

One afternoon, not long after the demise of my Silver Bar, I was eating in Clara's driveway while she plowed through her garden.

The Nakamoto's front door opened, and out c ame a large haole man. He held a gun case in one hand, and some rags in the other. He sat on the front step, removed the weapon from its case, and started

37

cleaning it.

"Who's that, Auntie Clara?" I asked, wondering where Mrs. Nakamoto might be.

Clara coughed and spat into the dirt. "New neighbor. Always watch me. Always look down here. Make me nervous." She kept digging in the dirt, muttering to herself.

"Where's Mrs. Nakamoto?"

"Hale Nani. Long time now. You neva know?"

I watched him polish the rifle. I had never seen a gun up close so I considered going over to say hello.

Suddenly he put his work aside. He stood up, walked down the stairs and crossed the street. He stuck out his hand and said, "Sergeant Stillman, Army, retired."

I wiped the shredded mango residue from my hand and shook his. ''I'm Clayton. Pleased to meet you." He had quite a grip.

The sergeant stared at Clara for an uncomfortably long time.

She seemed oblivious. Finally he took two steps toward her and said louder than necessary, "Sergeant Stillman, Army, retired.

Pleased to meet you ma'am."

Auntie Clara looked at him, then at me, and returned to business. The sergeant's face r~ned, and I noticed that he slid his hands up and down his pants in a nervous kind of way . " That's Mrs. Wang. " I tried to helE: I felt embarrassed.

"Pleased to meet you people.' Excuse me. Back to work." He walked quickly back across the street. I followed him.

He started to polish his gun. It was powerful looking. ''I'm sorry about Mrs . Wang. " "No need to apologize, Clayton. I shouldn't have acted so foolishly. All things in good time." He looked down at her, his eyes distant, sad.

I reached out and touc hed his gun. " Ever see one of these?" he asked, returning his attention to me.

He held the thing up for my inspection. " No sir," I replied. I'd never said "sir" in my life, but hi"s military air demanded it somehow. " A Browning Citori trap model shotgun. Over and under 12 gauge. A more beautiful piece of weaponry you'll hardly find. " " Yes sir," I nodded, not really understanding all that he said, but enthusiastic because he seemed so. " This sweetheart would cost you a bundle, but I picked it up in Nam for a song. " "A song? " "Yes. Simply picked it up. Easily done. Nice, huh?"

38

"Very nice," I replied, wondering what he was smiling about.

"I used to kill a great deal of time over there. Trap shooting beer bottl1es.... skeet shooting ration tins."

He'd stopped smiling. He was looking way beyond me somewhere.

"Excuse me, Clayton. Got to fix dinner."

I went back to Clara's driveway. She was still puttering away.

"Auntie Clara. Why didn't you say hello?"

The old woman stopped her digging and turned slowly toward me.

"Why you go up dere? Why you talk so much? You sit. Eat your mango seed."

I ate; she worked. Finally. she jammed her weeder into the ground and, without another word, got up and went into her house.

I figured that would be it for the afternoon. As I walked away, I turned back and looked up at the sergeant's house. I could see him staring down at Clara's lot.

I liked Sergeant Stillman from the very beginning, though I didn't quite know what to make out of his preoccupation w ith Auntie Clara. He seemed like a very kind man. Whenever I went to Clara's he'd talk to me. He'd try to make conversation with Clara too, but she'd never respond. StiH;路that didn't stop him from trying to get some kind of response out of her.

TheN a.ka.moto's yard had a.lwa.~ been in pretty bad shape. That began to change. Sergeant Stillman chopped, mowed, and weeded that place into perfect condition. He always did this work when Clara. did hers. I supposed that Clara would admire his yardwork, so I couldn't understand why she never did compliment him on it.

One day I asked her about it: "Auntie Clara. Isn't Sarge's yard nice and neat?"

She gave me one of her hard looks. Then she looked up toward his lot. "Hmph. Dat man drink too much." She kept on working.

I'd never thought about it much before, but she was right about the drinking. Whenever I'd talk to him he did smell of alcohol. With the passage of time. his drinking got worse.

One day he had really been putting it away. He leaned precariously against the Norfolk. I wondered if he'd fall over on me.

He was observing Clara. as usual.

"She doesn't like my yard."

"Sure she does. Sarge. She admires it very much," I forced myself to lie.

39

" She doesn't tell me."

I didn't know what to say . " Clay ton. A fine woman like Mrs. Wang should have someone to take care of her, don't you think?" " She used to. Her husband died a few years ago, and I guess she misses him very much. " The sergeant leaned heavily on his knees. He looked really unhappy now. I guessed I'd said the wrong thing. Down in the valley, a flock of homing pigeons was flying. " I used to have birds too," I said. "Auntie Clara loved to mix the droppings into her garden." " You don't say?" The sergeant brightened up and sat forward on the bench. " I admire those birds, Clayton. The troops could have used a lesson or two from them. True precision."

Stillman stared down at Auntie Clara. " Young man, do you still have your coop? " " Yes sir."

"You don 't suppose that I could buy it from you, do you?"

I had a sudden inspiration to do something nice for him.

"You can have it for nothing, Sarge. For a song."

He turned and stared at me f~ second. Then he smiled. " Now?" he asked. " Today?"

Together we broke my coop down. Together we reassembled it. I told him about old Mr. lzawa in Kalihi Valley. How he would sell g o od young birds cheap. The sergeant was so excited that he went right over there the next day.

A couple of weeks later I went down the dead end street, and there, on Clara's sidewalk, sat a large cardboard box full of pigeon manure. " Psst. Psst," Clara called to me from the dark garage. I walked inside. " Eh Cla yton! " she demanded, obviously upset. " Why you give him your coop? How come y ou tell him I like da droppings? What y ou tink you?"

I was very uneasy. ''I'm sorry Auntie Clara." " S o rry my foot. You Clay ton. Ho you . Look what you wen dol Get outta my garage! Doan eva come back! " She turned and stomped off.

I felt terrible. Losing Auntie Clara was like losing a real relative. After that I never saw her in the garden again. It went untended. She didn't even harvest the crop that was already flourishing.

.

40

Every day I'd go by in hopes of finding Clara out there. I wanted apologize to her. The box of manure just sat there, deteriorating. night I went over very late and threw the mess away.

Even Sergeant Stillman must have given up on Clara. Even he •tnn"'"'11 coming outside after a while. The only tangible evidence anyone was still alive came at 5:00 p .m . every afternoon. se pigeons flew like clockwork right up until the day I left for

The sun was pretty high by the time we reached the end of the . Sarge. dressed in Army jacket, cap, and black boots, still the ash covered undershirt and pants, walked ahead of me the unpaved road. The shotgun case under his arm, he carried a ~····~··"'caged bird in each hand. They must have been special to . I struggled behind with two large cages containing eight to birds apiece.

We walked a good distance in silence.

"This way," he said finally. We turned off into the bushes and ae~Laeta uphill. The brush was high and dense, and the trails were . I hoped he knew the path well because I would have been lost.

We climbed for the longest time, twisting and turning our way wherever it was he wanted to gg_. ~ had decided to ask fora break, we emerged into a clearing. It was the end of the line, a kind of outcrop wh\ch looked out at the wide Pacific.

"Here," he said, setting down -UMtcages and gun on a large, flat I gladly dropped the cages there.

He went off to some bushes on the side. When he returned, he a gallon jug. We sat together.

"Good stuff," he said, patting the bottle and looking into it . .....~ ... .,..ly. After uncorking it, he began to swallow hard.

"Here," he said, handing me the liquor.

The mash was potent, but I forced down a few mouthfuls. We in turn until I had had too much.

Then he broke the silence: "Clayton," he almost whispered, pausing a long time to stare out to sea. "You must take all the time you need to find that job."

He drank some more. then spoke again: "Don't ever settle for just anything. You must never be locked into a routine that consumes your life."

I lay down beside him, dizzy and fatigued. I closed my eyes.

"Don't ever tie yourself down, boy. Do you understand me?"

41

I think I answered in the affirmative.

When I came to, the sun was sinking. I stood and saw that the sergeant had a second bottle on the way to empty.

"Better let them go, Sarge."

"You do it. But leave the two Red Checks for me."

I walked over and undid the latches of the lar ger cages.

Stepping back to avoid the crush, I lifted the covers. The homing pigeons rose in a low roar of wing flapping and rushing air. They headed straight for the setting sun, circled overhead three times, and then headed for town.

"Excuse me, Sarge. Bathroom." I went down the trail several yards.

I was coming back to the outcrop when I heard the explosion. I ran and stopped at the clearing entrance. Stillman sat with the shotgun cradled in his arms. The dy ing light shone in his eyes, and he smiled a wicked smile.

"What you shooting at?" I asked softly, shivering a t the sight.

"Here," he said, getting slowly to his feet. " I'll show you."

Moving to the flat rock, he stooped and undid the catch of the single cage. The other carrier lay on its side, a few yards to the right.

Positioning the shotgun at h1'$";ide, he kic ked the last cage over..

The startled Red Check flopped on the gro und momentarily, then shot straight for the last sp~ck of sun. Stillman swiftly the weapon to his shoulder, sighted, and fired. Instantly the bircl disintegrated into a cloud of feathers.

I stopped breathing for several seconds. The sergeant s canned the horizon. Once again he smiled th a t peculiar smile. He murmured: " If I could see far enough, you know, Korea wo uld be just abou• over there. " He gestured with the barrel of the gun. " And Nam," he pivoted slightly, "right about there."

We stood in silence. The sun was gone.

"Oh, Clara," I heard him sigh.

"Sarge. We'd better go." I was s cared.

The sound of the gun breaking open startled me. The .. n.'"""'shells jingled on the ground. I heard him reload.

"We better split now, Sarge," I pleaded.

"You go, Clayton. I'll stay here - kill time. " ''I'll get lost, Sarge. I can't see. " "No you won't. You go downhill from h e re. All the trails lead to the bottom."

42

The sound of the gun closing made me sweat.

"Please, Sarge," I begged.

"Get out of here, Clayton!" he yelled.

I jumped, turned, and started to move down the trail as quickly possible.

"Take good care of those birds," was the last thing I heard him I wanted to get to my car in a hurry. I had to call the police. I had help. The way out was difficult. I was cut up by the dense brush. out wasn't nearly as easy as he'd made it seem.

When I did finally make the road, I ran like crazy for the ing of the pavement. Just as I reached the parking area, I the final explosion.

They sent Sergeant Stillman's body back to Indiana. The day he shot himself, I went to his house, crated the pigeons, locked the coop, and sent them off to my cousin in Kona.

I came home from the airport and collapsed on my bed. Just as I to drift off, I woke myself, got up, and walked over to the s house. I unlocked the coop door, propped it open, and the two troughs with seed and water.

That homing instinct is incredibly strong. Those birds will vel unbelievable distances gu:~turn to the familiar confines of They can't really seem to help themselves. If any of them did to make _it back, I wanted to be sure it felt welcome, Still, I hoped that I ~ld never see any of them ever

43

Marjorie Edel HULIHEE

Each evening she sits alone and watches gray appear in catspaws on the water, listens to the sucking surf in the rock pool where once the chiefs swam.

Who remembers now - except for the telling how the chiefs came to this summer place to find peace and soft air, the sea itself, to fish, dance, make love?

Except for the telling who knows how they slept in the great carved koa beds and pulled against the seachill quilts sewn_.!9.patterns of royal crowns, maile, breadfruit. She tells their stories to tourists she shows the pictures.,- ~ of kings, queens, princesses with dark hair and eyes no one can ever know again.

When the evening is thick, she returns to her little house behind the chiefs' house, cooks the papio someone left at her door, mangoes in the basket fill the air with sweetness. She drinks beer because he drank beer, her husband, who is dead and whose photograph is brown now, the hat hiding his eyes which only she can know now; the touch of his hands, the searching of his mouth.

What can anyone possibly know about all the past reaching back before time was real - except for the telling?

A knock at the door, a voice.

She turns off the lights. " I'm not home," she tells.

44

make it easy to dream you do not wave promises the starlight do you waive my hopes aside

.u~~•uc1o

like the traffic guide on the ground flags right left or forward direct the planes of my desire as they find their places damage and disconcerting subsides dreams and disappointments longer collide in mid-air stand steady on the pavement of the floor plan speaking but directing you the planes are beautifu~ough do not need to know their cargo stretch of their silver wings over you like dreams moving fast ,....~.... ,." destinations

45

0

THE ISLANDS

~

CD

Stars of the sun's night they lie in idle colonies beside the surf that rises in flash and furbelow these island women behind them a single palm standing almost haughtily human One gets up to throw her black hair suddenly to the seawind oriental eyes bursting from their white ghosts ~

Q)

The others watch They are all romantic 1 and accept the follies of romance, the frail4es dreams stuck to huge green leaves and monstrous golden blossoms When she removes her little bra and even the coral g-string when she slips nudely so into the water the other women remember their departed queen who wrote the songs of love sadly leaving Crazy gir1 they say she 'bould have flown to her man could have flown to find him on the mainland crazy girl to be so crazy about one man and not another

\

i li

Bees whisper in the cornfield where she had thought to be alone with one harvest or another.

One string of the wind in tune. the next one not. She has lived two different lives, both her own and another's . The stalks gather around, under a cavernous moon full and bare. When she returns to the house her father will gr_pa.n in his death. her mother will offer her milk from the breast on a spoon .

......-

Lion-roars drone through the sky lazily. stars and gods blown to distant corners. Gravity tugs at her teats and groin: this way toward her self's like. that way where a bear. half-grown swipes at the harrowing bees.

She peels off the husk. her man.

47

SADDENED BY THE DEATH OF FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT,

I drive down to Puck's Alley and order the mushroom-&-cheese sandwich at Vim & Vigor. And also get coffee served in a paper cup. I try to believe that I'm in a film. that the lens will develop something interesting from today's edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin or Sulfur, a magazine, both beside my right hand, near the coffee, on the table. ~-

Will the director ask me to say a few lines, perhaps respond to some off-scene questioner?

I'll have to wait it out, believing irHove as the dog believes in its leash, wait it out as I read about Sam Feldman, who after many years of training with the Immigration & Naturalization Service, this morning shot himself in the head.

When I leave, the 5:30 sun catches me full in the face, a close-up - the hottest klieg light in the Islands. I am sweating, unsure of my role among the dead no less than among the living. Have I ever cared enough to sound clearly my own loving words through the silences?

The palms, the banana trees with their long green leaves, stand hardily upright as I take my '71 Pinto up along the avenue to the hills where I live as a temporary actor.

48

Saddened by my stray hours, my provisional humor,

I look out toward Diamond Head, craggy tip atill outlined by the evening sun. The head an immovable prehistoric beast, it survives monumentally. Inside, I turn on the lights and the classical music station; I read from The Death of Virgil. The evening will pass as usual 1n its documentary way.

Later that night I dreamed that a luminous butterfly broke from my fingertips and flew quickly, barely fluttering, into a dark and vague thickness, then the rain came swooping down .

..........

49

ORIGINS

They are my tenants, these immigrants who live in the apartment of my mouth, who raise their common geraniums on windowsills or the porch perhaps, wherever the mouth opens out to a worldly view.

They came from forest and seashore, with cultivated passports or over the toothy fence.

It took me years to grow familiar ~ough to let them stay, let them be as they are: poor albinos, cutthroats, career diplomats, little caesars and big fools. .:路~-- ~

-

They conceive themselves with humility and much desire.

How they grow even after 50 years in the same location. They go on multiplying, miscegenating, crossing the religious lines like fate itself.

And, dear lord of landlords, how they fight!

I have never gotten used to their bruises and spurts of blood.

Nor to their bragging stinks, their pretensions to pedigrees none of them has, nor to the company they k eep: librarians, sexnuts, romantics, killers. All of them mixing together in willy-nilly waylayings of my own good mouth, which is Amer ican, with a job and BIC-pen complex to prove it.

They will never assimilate, my tenants, those bastards. Let them be, I think,

50

let them do their worst. I don't even talk their language anymore.

I don't even collect the rent.

51

Louis Phillips NOAH'S FLUDE

Who would have thought so much water Could give off so much light?

All that is on dry land dies, For it is razzmatazz drowning time.

Here's mud in your eye!

All day I up & down like a bad dream, Going this way & that, Not knowing who I am Or what I wish to do. Look, The left foot of Orion is well washed.

With wave ruck __...

Crashing thru the windows of heaven, This i s no state-of-the-art technol.ogy.: All we've got is water & More water, Rain break-dancing on the roof of the world, Rain fiuting from heaven Then back to earth again.

I am drowning in indecision; This is what comes from loving the world too much.

Fanatics have no such problem; They put the innocent to death & Never look back. Forward & sideways this ark.

Ho for a winkle of shut-eye in the briney deep Where brittle stars With all five legs are shining.

When shall I do what I was meant to do?

Now a broad shield of tidal bore Taking me from the river to the boogie woogie of wave Draped with box fish & salt. It is written: What the gods create, the gods destroy.

It's thei r way of swinging.

52

their progressive jazz. the bow, the arch, the sky, shall make a covenant with our eyes. we look upon all our being blessed. Light a candle to the Madonna of Flood. says, Nothing shall be shallow again. to the fury of the sea unbolted.

53

CRISTOBEL COLON, INSTEAD OF SETTING SAIL TO INDIA, RUNS HIS MORNING ERRANDS

Electric succotash!

In America, if I ever get there, We shall be kind to things & Mean to people; we shall repair Anything that breaks down.

If you don't believe me, Ask my friend Freud.

In America, The human soul is another vacuum cleaner.

Leapin' linguini!

I have to walk to Harrod's agai~ Or to Herod's. Gotta buy baloney & something chill, 路..路路"f. . .~ Something nobody else has, Something with instant playback.

Tomorrow we shall set sail, The Nina, the Pinta, & the Santa Maria, But first I have to redeem my coupons.

I need a battery-operated hamster & a fully-automatic swizzle stick.

This is what made Iago evil: The seduction of the hardware store.

What is that crying out to me in the night?

The hammer. The nails.

Bread on the table & splinters from the true cross.

Don't tell me the earth is round; I have other places to go.

I have other things to do.

54

Peter Wild

ROBBERS

While you were driving the six hours that took you into the pines, I wandered through your house, read the newspapers I brought in.

I checked for the robbers out back in the garden that you said would be there, and they were, breaking into the shed, dragging out your tools, the old bags of cement and fertilizer that when I shouted from the front porch they left scattered across the lawn, then slunk off into the weeds to lie on their backs, cover their faces with old pieces of tar paper. _,~ _ I worried about this vacation, the first in ten years, that you'd get lost in the canyons loolftng for the right turn to the rented cabin, then did what your wife said, nibbled on what was left in the refrigerator, drank a Coke, bounced on all the beds.

Still, I heard their rakes at it again, saw the bums at the window planting petunias, and when I rushed out waving your shotgun, there they were up on the garage, firemen caught in the act, determined to save something, painters wanting to paint a building even if they weren't paid for it.

I left them standing there ashamed as if naked, brushes in hand.

In her sewing room I saw her photograph taken fifteen years ago in canoe camp, before college, before marriage, before anything.

55

RESTAURANTS

Because even as serfs they knew what was good, touching their caps with two fingers, praising their lord, as they stood hip-deep out in the bubbling hamburger furrows they paused, in their imaginations kissed the orient hems of the Virgin, and for that restaurants have always been an immigrant's business. For what else could they do thrown up on this shore, the bug-eyed children that the fe~_,lle sailor in disguise one by one threw overboard with her blessing, but each morning behind the sealed windows kneel to pray, give thanks for the-il"gl"Uel breakfasts, then true servants that they were throw open the doors, remembering how they would bring in the duchess's tea and marmalade on a silver tray, lying there a leucoplast in the sheets ravished but thinking of her next adventure.

So impatient outside waiting for this to end they came stomping in, Ernest Hemingway in his safari outfit who believed he would live forever waving at the chairs, James McNeil Whistler, whirling his cloak who didn't but made up for it with his wit, assuring his students that at the ends of their lives if they saw at all, going to heaven, that they'd be shocked to see what they had really painted, but at any rate sitting down like real troopers, stuffing themselves with the finest dishes that Brati~lava. that Sinkiang can offer when best remembered, then sitting around

56

to stare at one another with those freaky eyes,

those electric manes of beasts getting ready to enter the Peaceable Kingdom.

__. . . .

57

Michael McPherson FEBRUARY

Last night turned cold again and today a chainsaw snarls till bark breaks, snarls some more.

Closer, a hammer.

My friends are roofing half the deck, an addition to 18 years of marriage, while their son cuts wattle for firewood.

I'll move soon from this window, pack the odd pieces, photographs and scraps of paper. When I came back I heard a new fact of medical science: all the eggs a woman will produce are inside her at birth. In the glass the mountain and these islands swim east.

58

COPS AND DETECTIVES

There is the holster and the weight of gun at his armpit like a tumor, almost exposed, but in the movies it is never hard to draw a .38 and fire. Fast-frame killing, remorse perhaps, but the draw remains.

He must love himself, that is the First Law. That is what draws the gun, when liquor and age would have him stumble and stick a finger in his lapel where the flower goes, but isn't .

Mirrors break because all creation wishes him bad luck.

The Second Law is the law of sin. He must sin less than those he must kill. Danger is the price of being human. Guilt is like otÂŤ'money spent among friends . But he can have no friends.

Love is like bad news. A smut-colored brick is a place to strike a match. It i s on the corner to an alley down which even the sun fears going. He moves along the corridor, his dust its dust, he goes with no unusual fear, he knows he will find himself there, again again and a gain in yesterday's forevers .

59

A SONNET FOR HENRY

Henry's right. The world bounces c r azily, like a ball down the steps of destruction, each man making - crafting - his own stairwell to suit his sad dreams. Ah, but the hybrid cold numbly dream is apocalyptic.

Give us the chance we'd rule a moment of hell than an eon of heaven, too.

The El, you say?

Recall the Titanic, JFK, Jimmy Carter, LBJ. All news and the vengeance of tim~tself roots out the truffles of our ignorance, consumes the bliss of our wisdom, hindsight, silly caution. What we know is the .o-Jd scar.

We chalk up survival as victory.

60

OUT BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN

From a window above the alley Bob Dylan's scratchy voice :co:me's singing " Like a Rolling Stone." I pause, but the others do notice anything out of the ordinary, so we walk on.

Six o'clock at the end of hot August day and no place to buy a . the stores are closed, half the bars and restaurants are packed full, and the other half are shut- because it is the tourist season.

A line of about twenty people stands outside the ice cream cafe.

Europe is having a heat wave, and there is not enough room inside. " Why isn 't the terrace open?" Sigrid asks a waitress.

"I don't know myself, " the waitress replies. "The boss said he just didn't feel like opening it today. Keine Lust. "

.... . . . ........

So I buy four bottles of Bulg~an red wine and we walk toward the Goethe Park to drink, the four of us. It is my idea. The others are content to take another walk through the dim streets of Weimar, but I am tired of walking. Better to hide out among the trees Goethe planted around his summer house. And with my wine I persuade Janosch, Sarah, and Sigrid.

There are a handful of Americans invited to the International Germanistik Institute, and we find ourselves, while politically capitalistic pigs, socially rather popular. Sigrid, one of the East German students assigned to keep an eye on us, latches onto me.

She is skinny and pretty and not used to such heat; she wears loose t-shirts with no bra. I like her, but I have discovered that we have nothing to say to one another. When we discuss politics or world affairs I am overcome by the thought that I might just as well read Neues Deutschland and avoid the middleman.

"What about Afghanistan, Poland, Czechoslovakia?" I say, finally countering her tirade against NATO aggressions. "What

61

about Czechoslovakia? How do you pin that on NATO?" " They had to support the socialist brotherland, " say s "Socialism is the way of peace, and it was about to be overthro there. The SU was only supporting its brotherland."

"With tanks," I say.

"With tanks," she replies. "With whatever is necessary maintain peace."

My Polish roommate is Janosch, and Sigrid drives him distraction because she mentioned that she got a cold by sloo·n;p,., in the nude- one night she accidentally threw off her vv•u.• v• Apparently Polish girls don't speak of sleeping in the nude, least not to Janosch. He brings the subject up frequently. Ja.uv:.\;JI was, I think, the prototype for Steve Martin's " wild and crazy Of the dozen Poles at the Institute he is the only one who has <>u ·vo3.,.. to be here. The others have been sent for various reasons, J anosch, a heating engineer and a hard-core communist, has because it is his idea of a good time- a chance to meet some J anosch is well-groomed and handsome, and he stands not quite high as my chin. His technique ~th women, which I have ample opportunity to observe, is to get drunk and start hanging And because of his stature, his gaoa looks, and his druun,_..,3 inoffensive manner, he gets away with it. They think he is cute.

Janosch's latest, most hopeless target is Sarah, the golden from Virginia. While I considered it an accomplishment to invited to the Institute, Sarah has come " on a lark." How one come "on a lark" I have not yet found out. She teaches French, research in Italian, and speaks flawless German. Every at six she is up jogging in her warm-up suit, shock~ng, to delight, the population of Weimar. I find her irritating. When I occasion to allude to John Irving's The World According to she turns to Janosch and explains that the novel is "one of you can buy in America next to the checkout stands in stores." I hold this against her.

Janosch is either too thick to realize that Sarah's interest in is purely academic, or he does not care, and she is too naive realize that his interest in her is pure lust.

We are an unlikely foursome, finding ourselves tossed to by a common interest: cutting the evening lecture. I have come see what I can of the country and people, not to listen to a string boring propaganda speeches. Janosch has come for the girls, course. And the girls follow us - Sigrid to keep an eye on

62

and Sarah to experience J anosch, taking mental notes of his word, most likely gleaning an essay for The New Republic.

"You see that?" Janosch asks me one morning as we walk to a together. He is pointing at men shoveling coal from a truck the coal-chute of a large building. " Brown coal," he says. coal. Schweinerei. They don't have anything else. Still, it 's to ruin everything. " Even in the middle of summer the city smells of it; the dust is

tvArtnwhere. Wash at-shirt in the sink and it turns the water brown.

So, while the hundred participants resist the need to路squirm in plastic seats of the lecture hall, stifling coughs and glancing at watches, we find a cool spot under one of Goethe's trees and down. I am ready to drink in the park, really drink, and have ght along enough wine to do so. I want to see the girls drink see them drunk if possible. I am anxious to have a good time. ause here in Weimar, embraced by the spirits of Goethe, ,g~~,;uun>-L, Nietzsche, Liszt, and the Buchenwald victims, I feel so mortal, so old.

And I feel mortal for the whole world when I look into the light, light blue eyes of Sigrid and hear her say, "Of course the masses 't be allowed to read your ~tern propaganda. One can 't trust the masses to make the right decisions - the masses gave us fascism. No. They have to be educated first."

But this evening I find her resolute one-sidedness to be rather arousing. For the cool of the evening she has traded her t-shirt for a light blouse through which I can clearly make out every detail of her bra, decked with a mod design of extremely bright red, orange, and yellow flowers - I have never seen anything like them. In many ways she is like other girls I have met and thought were boring. But I find Sigrid interesting because she is so very, very foreign. Because I am aware of this discrimination within my own mind, I feel all the more sinful. But that does not bother me now.

Despite the objections of Sigrid and especially Sarah, I open all the wine bottles with my Swiss army knife and hand a bottle to each.

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" If you can't drink it all, give it to Janosch," I tell Sarah. "Zum Wohl."

Sigrid and I touch bottles and take the first swallows. The wine is too warm, even for cheap red wine. " Feuer Tanz" is its name and a gypsy woman holding a tambourine dances across the label. I look at Sigrid and wonder if this is something new for her, if the young people come out in the evening into this beautiful, immense park and drink wine. There are only a few other people in the park.

Sigrid shares my opinion of the wine. She studies her bottle as I lay on my side, my head on my hand, watching her.

"How much did you pay for this?" she asks. Her tone is innocent, but it's a loaded question.

"Seven marks, I think." " Seven marks? So much?" Her tone becomes haughty. A reasonable bottle should have cost at least twelve. "I didn't know you could get wine so cheap." " You've got it good here," I say in agreement, and take a few more swallows to show it. Sarah and Janosch have begun talking qui'etly on the other side of the massive tree.

"You know, you could have~tten more for your Western marks if you had gone to the Intershop," Sigrid tells me. " Oh really? " I feign ignorance. What can I say? I have already been to the Intershop. I know whafrcan get there.

Nylons, chocolates, coffee, wine schnapps -everything clean and nicely displayed. At least twenty-five people wait in line. I take my place at the end of it. A Finnish woman in our group is sick -from lack of fruit , she says- so I have promised to get her some grapefruit juice. Two teenagers go into the dressing room carrying armfuls of blue jeans. As the line moves forward I catch a glimpse of the front counters - soaps, perfumes, matchbox cars, jewelry, calculators. The saleswomen are friendly. I feel almost as if I am back in West Germany, because this is nothing less than a staterun black market operation. They are accepting Western currency, hard currency, and selling Western products in all oftheircapitalistic glory. Everyone is having a good time.

I have to wait an hour to buy the juice, and because they pretend they do not have the correct change in D-Marks for my bill, I get a chocolate bar to boot.

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I let Sigrid explain how the Intershop works, how I as a can simply spend my money there and she, as an East can take any Western currency she happens to come ss to the bank and receive coupons with which she can go to Intersbop and buy. buy. buy- after she has turned her money to the bank or the state, that is. But I cannot tell her that I was spoiled to stand in line for an hour. She has to put up with the 路lines every day, I know, but I chose to spend more money in a regular store on bad wine because to me it was not worth the wait.

Since I have inflicted my choice on everyone else. I do not mention this. So Sigrid explains it all to me. " We're going for a little walk." Sarah is suddenly standing above us. "Do you two want to come?"

"They don't want to come," Janosch says cheerfully before either of us can respond. He takes her arm lightly in his hand.

"Can't you see they want to be left alone?" His first move, I think to myself.

Sarah laughs nervously and leaves with him.

Sigrid only smiles as they disappear into the thicker trees. She is used to the talk of flirtation. I think. the innuendos and intentionally false assumptions. She is pretty. She avoids my gaze, her eyes fixed instead on Goethe's summer house, its light yellow walls reflecting the last of the day's sunlight. I lean over and kiss her, she lets me, &nd'then I draw back and smile and see that she is smiling too, a strange smile. I kiss her again, with a little more vigor this time. a~before I am halfway through she bites me hard on the lower lip. It hurts and I pull back, startled. " I like to tease." She laughs a little laugh. " Do you like to be teased?"

I rub my lip and smile. I do not understand what she is doing. I put my arm around her to kiss her again and she pushes me back with both hands saying, " Nein, nein, " and giggles, genuinely amused.

I am not sure how to play. I look at her and grin. ''I'm just a big tease." she says.

I turn my head away from her mocking smile and look out into the trees where Janosch and Sarah have gone. I wonder vaguely what would have happened if I, instead of Janosch, had pursued Sarah. And I realize the answer at once. Nothing. I look back at Sigrid. She is still smiling at me, challenging me.

"Siggy, Siggy. Siggy," I say slowly. like Cary Grant. She laughs, though I know she does not understand the allusion. "I wonder what would you be doing tonight if America hadn't traded .w ... at.a ....,,A..

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away this wunderbar part of the country for half of Berlin?"

She shakes her head. " Certainly not teasing me. What then? Eating at a MacDonald's across the street from the Franz Liszt house, Big Mac's and ViertelPfunders? Going to the roller disco with you girl friends ? Would you be a Valley Girl, I wonder?" " Doubtless," she says leaning forward and biting me on the lip again, lightly this time, playfully. She does not understand any of it, I am sure, but I am on the right track- ridiculing capitalism is definitely getting her hot. " The things I could show you, if only you'd come back with me.

The laundromats, the strip shows, the drive-in churches!" I work my hand up behind her and begin massaging her back with my index finger. " There's a lake near my town, in Kansas. with a wave-making machine. We could go body surfing on artificial waves. think of it. In Kansas! " " I'd settle for a new pair of jeans." she says.

I take her firmly around the waist and kiss her as we fall backwards. She bites me hard again. but I hold on to her this time and bite her right back, and then she is working her tongue into my mouth, running it over my sore li1"9.

*****

WhenJanosch and Sarah return. Sigrid and! are sitting up with our backs against Goethe's old tree. My cowboy boots stand by themselves. facing us; I have taken to pulling blades of grass out of the ground with my bare toes.

"And what have you two been doing?" Janosch a sks. He is acting drunk. He has his arm around Sarah and has been lecturing her as if he is dead serious, but of course he is not. They do not have their bottles with them. I hand him Sigrid's, which is half full. He accepts it and tries to get Sarah to take a swallow. holding the bottle up to her mouth as she laughs and tries to push it away. and only when it seems as if the wine will start pouring down her blouse unless she swallows does she take a few sips. Sarah laughs. pats her chest. and gives Janosch a squeeze.

I have Sarah all wrong. I think.

To show off, J anosch takes the bottle from her and finishes it. He

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laughs with a little bravado, empty bottle in hand, but then unintentionally staggers a bit backwards. Live it up, Janosch, in a week you'll be back in Poland. And I know that is exactly what he is thinking.

Janosch and I breakfast together at the Ring-Hotel, arriving there earlier than most, staying later, so that he can drink pot after pot of coffee, paying, of course, for each one. It's as if he's trying to store up the coffee for the months he may go without drinking it again.

I cannot tolerate the coffee and have switched to tea. It is not that I don 't like the taste. I don't like what it does to my digestive system.

"I can't take much coffee back with me," he tells me. "There are regulations, you see, on how much coffee one can take across the border."

Janosch sits down heavily beside me. "Well what do we do now?" he says. " No more wine."

"And no place to get any," I say. I am a little loaded.

"You boys should have planned ahead," Sarah says, giggling.

She sits beside Janosch and Ifuts.her head on his shoulder. Sarah is fun when she has had a little to drink.

We all sit quietly for a few.-minutes. The park is unlit and beautiful. Because we are at the bottom of the valley we cannot see any lights from Weimar. Only a twenty-minute walkaway, and one feels as if he is completely out in the country, cut off from the rest of Europe. No lights, no people, no animal sounds, just black, black trees. From the distance comes a deep, long rumble, like thunder, but none of us can tell whether it is really thunder or if it is the cannons at the Soviet helicopter base or even, by some strange wind currents and thermals, the NATO tanks across the border.

They practice at all hours . The sky gives us no clue: a cryptic milky-gray. No lightning. My feet grow chilly and I put my socks back on.

Sigrid, who has said nothing for some time - perhaps she senses my deliberation- says, "Does anyone feel like drinking? If you do, I know where we can buy more wine."

"At ten o'clock?" Janosch says. "Is that possible in Weimar?"

I'd like to drink some more," I say quietly.

"Where can we do this?" asks Janosch, sitting up. He is eager

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for the evening to continue. This is vacation.

Sigrid gets to her knees and takes charge. " In the hotel." she says and stops. waiting for us to prompt her.

"In our hotel?" Janosch obliges her. " Yes. The porter has the key to the refrigerator. and you can buy a bottle from him if you know where to find him."

"And you know where to find him," I say. " He's supposed to stay up all night, really. in the lobby. But he hides down in the furnace room. We'll have to give him a tip, of course. to coax him upstairs."

"Well. let's go," says Sarah, catching my spirit. " What are we waiting for?"

"Indeed," I say. and we stand up and start making our way up through the sable trees, Sarah holding on to J anosch in front of us.

Summertime in the GDR. " And Mark," Sigrid says to me. She, too, takes hold of her consort's arm. " Maybe you could get the money from your room tonight and we'll trade before I go home. If you don't mind. that is. I wanted to try and buy them before the weekend."

"Ah yes," I say. " Of course. " She gives my arm a squeeztr"and then gnaws at my shoulder through my sweatshirt.

"How many GDR marks do you have?" Sigrid asks me, her head on my lap, my back against the tree. I hold the bottle of " Feuer Tanz " loosely in one hand. It is almost empty, but Sigrid has a lot left in hers. Janosch and Sarah have been gone more than an hour. I wonder if Janosch has considered where I will sleep tonight. " I don't know," I say. "At least thirty."

"So you 're going to have to trade money, " she says, "at the

bank."

"I suppose so, yes. I'll have to do that tomorrow, before the weekend comes."

She rolls over on her side and turns her face toward my face.

"Trading one-to-one at the bank is robbery. Absolute robbery. You shouldn't do it."

"Yes, well," I say, "what else can I do? They leave you with no other choice, really."

She is serious: "How much do you need to trade?" " A hundred marks, I think. Why?" " I'll give you two-to one, " she says.

But that is not what I meant by no other choice, I want to tell her

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do not. I am thinking of the trip in, and of my currency on form, and of the boyish border guard who had looked at so carefully and then looked at me as if he might, on a whim, a strip search to see if I had not in fact brought some extra along with me to trade black. But I had filled out the slip "I really do need a new pair of jeans," Sigrid says. "These have out, and I can't mend them any more. See? " She rolls over to me the patches on the seat of her jeans. She runs her hand ...,.-.,_~"'' them, and then so do I. I put my finger in the holes, and she still for me. "And of course the only place I can get them is at Intershop."

Going back I will have to show the same slip to the border along with the bank exchange receipts to account for any ~~Air'ArtnA in the amount of money I have brought in and the I am taking out - i f they check. It is the fear that they will check which keeps one honest.

Sigrid is running her fingers across my belly. " Sure," I say slowly. "I mean, I'm the one who would be getting Ule bargain."

"Wonderful," she says, smiling, kissing me, no biting, never again any biting.

No receipt with Sigrid. Perhaps I can alter some numbers on the form, I think- a one to a four: m ; it would have to be the other way around- smaller numbers. How much have I brought in? I cannot remember. I will have to look. B~oi even still have the same pen I filled out the form with? A slightly different color would be a giveaway. I begin to despair, and Sigrid again lays her head in my lap.

Back in the Ring-Hotel we find the porter where Sigrid said he would be. However, the few GDR marks Sigrid waves in front of him, do not make enough of an impression for him to move from his cushion in the corner. So, I press a West German five mark piece in his hand and he becomes more agreeable. We get our two bottles of wine. And my c urrency declaration is already five marks off.

We sit in our room, two on each bed, facing one another, drinking. One bottle per bed. But there will be no orgy, I realize.

Though Janosch and I have gotten our.second wind, the girls are beginning to yawn. Their eyes are filling with water. The flirtation W.lk becomes one-sided and boring. Finally Sigrid tells us she has

69

to be going and asks me if I will walk her home. "Home" is the house around the corner where our East German hosts are staying.

She is tired, and we do not talk on the way there except to stop once to exchange the money. I insist that we find a dark alley somewhere, but she says don't be silly and we make the trade right there on the street. She kisses me goodnight at her front door.

***** I want to take us all out to eat on my leftover East German cash before I leave, but we cannot get a table in any of the restaurants that are open. And so, as I leave Weimar, half the restaurants and bars are closed. The employees are on vacation in the middle of the tourist season. In a tourist town. Because when you are working for the state you don't want to be working the busiest part of the year, if you can help it.

I give some of the money back to Sigrid and keep the rest, twenty marks, to spend in the dining car on the night train back.

But there is a long line on the tra,iwe.nd I am not hungry enough to wait. I try for a while to give the money away, but each person I approach is only passing through on his way from West Berlin. I cannot find anyone who is getting off before the border. When no one is looking, I throw the money out the window.

I have done nothing- could do nothing- to alter my currency declaration form. For the return trip I have accurately filled out how much Western money I have with me. So the form is false, because I only have one bank exchange form to account for the difference between the amount of money I had coming in and the amount! am taking out, and it does notnearlycoverit. One look at the form and receipts and you can see I traded black. I can only hope that they will not go so far as to add and subtract. I do not know what will happen if they catch me. Perhaps it is not so bad.

All those East Germans in the Intershop - they had to get their Western currency somewhere. Maybe everyone does it. The odds are with me, I speculate, but if they ask? My plan, if trouble arises, is to act confused and foreign. Make them repeat things slowly, and say them louder. Try to make them impatient with me so that they might want to simply move on. A poor plan, but I have no other.

Sigrid had bought her jeans. They did not fit her well - too loose. They could be taken in, she told me.

I stare at the window but cannot see out - the light in the

70

partment is too bright. I cannot tell if it is a black sky behind reflection, or black fields, or black tree s . My face looks tired, I travel-fatigued perhaps, but not suspicious, not criminal.

I make eye contact with my reflection and I think: Your sins cost you. Sin costs. Every moral Midwestern doctrine I do not ve in will soon be vindicated, authenticated by the mere 路 ing look of s o me eighteen-year-old kid here, now, at the ast German frontier.

I turn away from the window and watch the elderly couple from me sitting quietly with their passports in their laps. I take mine out and wait.

The passport control officer is not a boy this time, but a husky, animated Frau who, upon seeing from my passport cover that I am American, stays standing in the corridor and says, "Komm zu mir, Mann," smiling, her arms outstretched like a barmaid at the Hofbrauhaus holding three mugs of beer in each hand. She takes my passport and glances through it, sees that the currency declaration is there but does not look at it, and then hands it back to me.

"Danke Schoen," she says and then she is already speaking to the elderly couple, "Ihre Ausweise, bitte."

I find my seat again. My passport is moist, I notice, as I slip it back into my hip pocket. I wipe my hands on my trousers. The customs officer comes next;but does not look at my suitcase. I lean my head against the headrest as the train slowly begins moving again towards Frankfurt. ...,-

71

Steven Goldsberry "THE WAY IT BEGAN"

In summer the leaves grew long and filled the trees, and the women walked down the shaded sidewalks in their cool summer dresses, or sat in the cafes and looked out the windows and watched the men. The men watched the women too, and often the men and women would get together and eat pasta and drink their red wines a nd smoke and regard each other's skin and teeth the way you might regard the horns on a bull.

At last it happened that a couple in Harry's Bar began to arm wrestle. The woman put up a good fight, because they had bet a bottle of pale Chianti, aged in oa.Js...and the thought of the cold, dry wine touching her lips gave her a beautiful strength. But finally the m a n broke her a nd slammed her hand hard against the table.

Just then the manager appeared-behind the man and whispered, " I know a woman who can bone you like a mullet." The manager had a reputation for severe honesty. He smelled of olive oil and ran a clean place with wonderful food. He knew how he looked, with a red napkin draped over his forearm and his cuffs turned up, and he grinned.

"Bring her on," said the man at the table.

Soon she was seated across from him, a thick woman with a dark nose shaped like a garlic, nostrils that whistled. She was terribly ugly and fat, a nd her head had that grease-dipped look, and there was a big blotch of a pus-filled pimple as big as a chrysalis on her cheek. When she gripped the man's hand in.her own fat paw and began the pressure he understood something about her that required no explanation from the manager or from the crowd of patrons that had gathered to watch. He unders't ood that hers was an ugliness that began with birth and that she had grown uglier and larger each day of her life and the boys and men had always hated her and yelled obscenities at her. But her shape was the source of her power, the absence of love her triumph over the opposite sex. A female nemesis. It was more complicated than this but the man had to think it simply, so this was the way it came out.

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And still he wanted to beat her, more than anything he wanted to smash that enormous arm to the wood. So he braced himself and pushed and grunted and pushed, and the woman pushed back. and her nostrils whistled, and both of them sweat, and the crowd began yelling and betting, and he wanted to win this one, boy, he wanted it. He groaned and pushed hard but his hand began to come down.

Someone gave him a drink, and the sweet liquor helped. His hand began to rise. The crowd yelled more. Then his hand started coming down again. She was beating him. And suddenly he did not want to win but to look good as he lost, look gracious and calm in his humiliation. He had lost often before. He was an expert. He would lose this one so well that people would talk about it. They would remember. What he needed was a memorable gesture of defeat. Then it occurred to him, and just before his weakening arm could be flattened he leaned over and kissed the woman' s hand. She looked up at him, startled, and her arm suddenly became an empty cannelloni, and more out of reflex than anything else he swung his arm around and banged hers down. " Alia fiorentina! " someone shouted. He had won.

He never saw the look on his competitor's face, the love she had for him, for the cheering crowd swept him away toward a long night of celebration.

But later, walking alone down a dark narrow street, through a drizzle of rain, he was cornere_9.))y.her. She spoke in Italian to him and breathed deeply, her chest rising beneath a new dress, and she puckered up her hard lips for a kiss. ~

73

Joseph P. Balaz ON THAT SAME BEACH BENEATH A FULL MOON

reading Bukowski an appropriate prelude 12:23 a.m. is shattered by gunshots outside my high-rise, ocean view, studio apartment window. so I turn off the lights and walk over to the louvers

....-

just in case the idiot wants to send some lead my way to find some jerk down on the beach squeezing off rounds at the moonless horizon. in a few minutes blue lights are screeching into the parking lot and they proceed to cart away some weak-ass fool who's going to tell them how rough it's been all the way to the station. spineless mental wimp one should never deal with guns and moonless nights.

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kill six-packs heave guts onto the sand let a quiet and disgusting pride seeping into the grains.

.... .

75

Adele Dumaran

Dear Ginger, The gardenias are in bloom, large clusters outside my window, white as your china cups.

They remind me of so many summers ago, and the white tuberose you planted in the sand behind your house, insisting it would grow, your hair falling around you as you worked, catching the blond light, a web in the sun.

And those other mornings in your kitchen, the two of us looking over the bay not noticing how slowly the shoreline was c~ging, how much sand was b e ing taken by the strong current.

That was before you married, before your mother died old and alone in Baton Rouge with a storm sweeping up from the Gulf.

It tore into everything, left you a few antiques, her silver hair brush, and a ring you will not wear.

Her name, like yours, was Virginia, a young swimmer, jumped horses, won the prize and on Sundays she wore sheer white dresses, hair loosely chignoned, pearls translucent as her skin. She was beautiful then, before your father died, you said.

But not when I met her, on her fourth husband, old not quite sober, every line a scar.

By the time she died I knew you were bitter as the tea we brewed and drank together that long rainy season when the north shore darkened for days. To be unlike her you began to change. You gave up

76

sundresses and our long evening swims. Waking before dawn you would twist your wild hair into tight braids, pin your blouses closed at the neck and wear those long corduroy skirts.

You began polishing your hard wood floors methodically rubbing in layer after l ayer of wax.

You stayed married, took the beatings, became devout.

Finally you gave up gardenias .

Ginger, your changing changed me.

I do not easily avoid your calls . but so much strain mixes in our voices, long silences, so much refusaC 路 How can I tell you I've become like your m other, that the few things that matter Wn'le now are Keats and vodka and the Borodin nocturne I play over and over.

Even after this long neither of us can mention the white sky over Baton Rouge.

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MOOREA for William Sawyer

He is at the sea bar the night the music rouses me from sleep.

Sawyer the Dutchman who sits with the last of the movie crew pouring champagne, toasting six months work completed - everyone hiding the panic at the thought of leaving or being left. Tafina wrapped in a pareo next to Graham, already alone.

Other girls, bare during the day, wearing short ruffled dresses from Paris, dancing under strobe lights, not under the-tm-ches that flame the beach.

Later we sit alone, Sawyer and I drinking scotch, this man who used to play rock with Wack Foot Smoke remembers the women he had ..... in crowded dressing rooms between sets, lives alone now, sails French Polynesia and pours it down.

In my bungalow that night after a swim and brandy, a light r ain falling on a pandana roof, a husband 2600 miles away, more than that, the rain was a silver spray blowing through the screens evaporating in the glow of a single yellow light.

Sawyer tells me about a wife who after ten years couldn't live here anymore, about his mother and father, both doctors who set up clinics in the 30's, about his grandmother, the only one left still living in Amsterdam, smokes hash, sends him harps twice a year.

There are more than a hundred islands in French Polynesiawe couldn't live long enough to sail them all, he says.

This man路who pours it down, smokes cigarettes one after the other, plays the blues on a mouth harp the way he makes love, begins every dazzling Moorean morning with Hinano, knows the island is mostly for people passing through.

78

DEAD DONNA

I tried it with a woman once. She was an older woman, a friend of family who explained she wanted to help out- she knew what I going through. Her name was Eunice and she was Jewish and and visiting from New York. I lived with my sister then and had come to stay with us for a few days while her husband on a business trip. She was so horribly typical I could just die uw1n.~u~ about it. I mean she was just this tremendously horny t woman who had a thing for young men.

Anyway, I woke up at three in the morning to her hands slowly my body . She'd touch me disappointedly and then smile it's-okay-don't-worry smile, then she'd kiss me again, touch me Still nothing. She told me to lie on my back, finally, and to ...,, ....,,uLâ&#x20AC;˘"' about whatever it was that "turned me on." I guess I was pretty bad and tr~mbling because she started telling me there was nothing to be nervous about; she told me to relax and to enjoy the moment. The worst thing anyone can tell you when 're nervous is to relax. I meÂŤn this woman was so predictableher whole life was a cliche. Relax and enjoy the moment. For God's sakes - what an idiot.

After about a half hour passed, she got up and promised she'd be right back. "Take your time," I said, with a huge, toothy isn't-thisfun grin. I wanted to say take a year. Take two, for Christ's sakes. I wanted to jump up and lock the door behind her and feign absolute sleep when she tried to come back in. Basically, I wanted her to die.

Her silhouette appeared in the doorway; she was holding two glasses and a bottle of wine. My stomach let out this bellowing growl of disdain. Holy shit, what next. I wondered? I thought of all the young male virgins in the world who prayed for this proverbial older woman, this wide-hipped wonder, this lovely, lusty Eunice, who couldn't get enough, who wanted to make me a man. I thought of my brother Murphy who really deserved to have his bones jumped in the middle of the night. Poor Murphy, he feared he would live to be the victim of permanent wet dreams. "I can't go to a

79

prostitute, though," he once told me. " I don' t want it to be like that. I want it to be right, you know?" Poor Murph. He was such an idealist. He probably wouldn't have gone for Eunice.

Eunice poured the wine and told me to drink. I obeyed, and she refilled my glass. " Drink again," she smiled. I was immediately dizzy. She laid on her back and led my hand over her body. My hand was like a claw at first, I was unsure what to do so it was stuck in this stiff position, like a back scratcher. She had to keep picking it up and putting it back down again where she wanted it. I was greatly relieve d when she finally let out this huge walrus-like moan. I thought, thank God, it's finally over. Just then she reached down to see if I was aroused yet. Still nothing. I started sweating again . So then she bolts up like a light bulb just went off in her head and she tells me to get her purse from the guest room. When I gave it to her, she pulled out a prescription bottle and asked me if I'd ever taken a quaalude. I told her no and so she hands me one with another glass of wine. " What's this going to make me do? " I asked her, willing to try anything. " Wonderful things." She smiled and swallowed one of the large white pills. " Wonderful things, all night long. " I hesitated. " Swallow it," she demanded. She pushe~e on my back again and ran her hands through my hair, telling me all along how much I turned her on.

The next thing I remember, I was J')r11ying in my head. I mean, I wanted it to work, I wanted to at least feel normal, you know what I mean? And in away, I feltlikemywhole life depended on it. To tell the truth, I knew how tough life would be otherwise. For one thing, I'd never be able to look my old man in the eye. And what would my brother Murph think? He would convince himself that I was mentally ill, that I was unreliable. I'd never be able to have a family . "Get hard," I heard myself say. " God damn it. Get hard."

My face was soaked with tears and that idiot Eunice was catching them on her tongue and licking my cheeks - I guess she thought she was sensual or something. I grabbed her and pushed her away . " Don 't you know when to give up? " She looked shocked. " It's not going to work. " My head was spinning and water rushed to my mouth. Somehow I staggered to the bathroom in time to avoid getting sick all over her. She knocked on the bathroom door and whispered my name. I told her to leave me alone, that I'd be fine.

"It was probably the quaalude, " she offered. "You shouldn't mix them with wine. " "Yeah," I said, and faked the most disgusting gagging sound I

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come up with.

So that was my big one night stand with a woman.

Murph and I got together for the first tl.me in two years and had a He'd been training in upstate New Yorkforacoupleofyears a boxer, but then he was injured. So,last night after a few strong he starts on about how we should be going out on double dates IO'tet.her. "C'mon Danny," he tells me. "You must know a lot of .nr.Attvcity girls. How about fixing us up? That's what brothers are nn.ne~~â&#x20AC;˘n to do, man. Go out on dates and stuff. " See, Murph had just called me out of the blue. "Hey Disco," he says over the phone. (Calling me Disco had been his favorite joke since high school when I wore a very John Travolta hairdo and dressed in polyester and white shoes and religiously practiced the Night Fever line dance in the living room when my father wasn't home. I'd mouth the steps until I had it perfect- step IOgether, step together, touch, turn, walk, walk. Click your heels like Dorothy, goin' home- goin' home. And point to the air, to the hip, to the air.) ''I'm having a birthday on Friday," Murph says, "how about taking me out for a drink? I don't have anything to do."

"Sure. Yeah, sure," I said, with forced enthusiasm, wishing I hadn't agreed as soon as I did. I knew I would be nervous as all hell, I'm always nervous with peopte I haven't seen for a while. I never know what to say and I feel like an immediate failure. I'm not into psychology or anything but it ~.s back to my father; he hated my silence.

"How old? " I asked Murphy.

"What?"

"I said, how old are you going to be?"

"Hey. hey Disco," he says, doing his Rocky imitation that really gets on my nerves. "This is Murphy, your older brother. Remember "Vaguely." " Yeah, well I'm the one who protected you from the weirdos in every ethnic neighborhood we ever lived in and that includes Ludlow Street when all those fags used to whistle at us. " "Age, Murph. We're talking age. How old, for Christ's sake?"

"So you're still using the Lord's name in vain. Our mother is right, you never learned to be a good Catholic. Twenty-four, Danny," he laughs. "Friday I turn twenty-four."

I never really thought of Murph as my older brother. He was just my father's favorite, my father's buddy, ole pal. They could sit

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at the kitchen table for hours shooting the shit like nobody else existed, like they were having some kind of a love affair. Talk about something getting on your nerves, the house could've burned down around them and they still wouldn't budge until one of them moved to get another beer. Really sick. I mean they did everything together. They jogged, they boxed, they yelled at the tube on Sundays, or actually on any day a sports event was on. I mean they'd stand up in the middle of the living room and shout at the athletes, as if anyone could hear them. Their faces would get red and they'd clench their fists and shout stuff like, " Pick it up, pick it up!" or " Right hook. Right, you idiot." Nuts. Absolutely nuts.

I also suppose I didn't consider him to be an older brother because I'm smarter than he is, which should have meant something, but it didn't because I was practically bodiless- you know, an absolute wimp. Not to mention the fact that my face was one huge zit during my entire adolescence which infected me with an absolute foul temperament. All of which caused me to be reclusive, somewhat mute and socially inept- even though the old man called me flamboyant.

I suppose I appeared younger .because I was defenseless when opposed by nearly anyone, and true, good old Murph stalked every slimy bastard that ever distorted m~ face and pummelled them with his fists. Thus, he became a rather skilled boxer and I became the pale, protected brother. And as a result neither of us could ever meet girls. He was labeled as the high school bully which I might as well tell you right now couldn't have been less true- Murph is quite simply the gentlest soul I've ever known - and I was "Disco," the wimp, the fag. The skinny zit of a kid who danced in his room.

Sometimes though, I think it was harder on him than it was on me. When somebody called me a name, the skin directly surrounding his eyes would turn a deep crimson and his mouth would fall sort of like open. Other than that, he would be expressionless and pale until he decided to fight the kid.

He really despised boxing at first. I think it made him sick. A lot of times after he'd been in a fight he'd duck into the bushes and throw up. His curse was he was good at it, and my father admired the skill. The whole situation was really pathetic because he had the qualities to be the high school prom king, or homecoming king, or whatever they call it. I mean Murph is made of the stuff popular kids are made of. He has the kind of pleasant-looking face that girls think is cute, you know, those all-American good looks- tall,

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...... ..., .......... ,white teeth, lots of hair, and tan in the summer.

Old people loved him too, and naturally the relatives were he was the family's gift from heaven. He smiled when he supposed to and shoveled their sidewalks in the winter. It was disgusting now that I really think about it. But I have to tell , it was all sincere- whether he was helping our Aunt Martha on her wooden leg, or laughing hysterically as he pressed his pwâ&#x20AC;˘uu.ul!!!t socks against my face and told me to breathe the sweet - every movement he ever did was sincere.

What was crazy was that he had all this stuff going for him but was depressed a lot because he didn't have a girlfriend. It was important to him because he wanted to fit in and be normal. girlfriend to Murph was success, it meant that he was one of the s. As far as I know though, he only ever had one date and that to the prom.

This was in '80, his senior year. There was a girl that he was vv.u u.F, over. He wasn't nuts about the idea of going to the prom u~"~"'~'"'"' he didn't dance, but he heard this girl wanted him to ask her. I think her name was Clara. He came running up the stairs that night. his face was one huge grin, all flushed and everything. It was the first time he had ever asked a girl out. Of course he had heard that she liked him which made it easier, but all the same it was a big breakthrough in Murph's life.

I was lying on my sister's..bed staring at a life-sized poster of John Travolta, in a white suit with his arm in the air, when Murph does this dive from five feet across the room and lands right on top of me. " Goddamn it, Murph," IS'~id. "Off. Off of me. Now. " So he wraps both of his arms around me and rolls me onto the floor with him. I wasn't really pissed at all, yet I acted like I was furious. He sat on my stomach with his knees tucked on each side of my chest and held my fists in his hands.

"She said yes. Do you believe it? She actually said yes. I don't believe it. Do you believe it? 'Yes,' she said and that was it. Just yes."

I rolled my eyes like I could give a shit yet actually I was pretty excited. " Disco, you got - " "My name is not Disco." " I mean Danny. Anything. But listen. you have to teach me to dance. I mean I can maybe fake the slow stuff," he said and looked at me for reinforcement. " Right?" he asked, panicking. I laughed.

He shook me, still gripping my hands. " Answer me, Danny."

"Let go of my Goddamn hands."

"All I have to do is stand there and hug her, right?"

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"How the hell am I supposed to know? Look I'll teach you the line dance everyone will probably be doing. but that's i~. If you think I'm going to teach you any couple dancing, you're crazy. " " Do you think I can learn it in a month?"

"If you practice."

Murph was a terrible dancer. I mean he wasn't a three-hundredpound barbell, but he always just missed the beat, so a line dance was the perfect thing for him to learn. All terrible dancers love line dances. They know the steps and they can depend on everyone else for the timing.

We moved the living room furniture aside and practiced until Murph was sweating like a glass of ice water on a hot summer day.

He got pretty frustrated now and then, but we made an agreement that I was his coach and we didn't stop training until I gave the word. I yelled the steps at him over and over again. I was feeling very Bob Fosse. very Balanchine. very famous. I stood to the side and snapped out the counts; I tapped my foot and caught my reflection in the mirror. Stunning. I decided, more like Travolta every day. It was the white polyester pants . Johnny Travolta and I looked just alike in them. ..Murph finally learned the steps and we chanted them in unison as we moved across the floor while the BeeGees played on the stereo. Step together, step together~ touch, turn , walk, walk. Click your heels like Dorothy- goin' home goin' home. And point t o the air, to the hip, the air, to the hip. Roll the hands up- hip thrust hip thrust, roll the hands down- hip thrust hip thrust. Now repeat in the other direction.

After a couple of hours. I had to get Murph to stop mouthing the moves - you know counting them out loud, it's just really an uncool thing to do. Especially the goin' home part, every time we got to the click-your-heels-like-Dorothy part, Murph would scrunch his shoulders up and sing out, " goin' home goin' h ome."

So anyway. we practiced and we practiced until Murph stopped moving like a frozen tv dinner; we practiced until he thawed out, until he was doing this little hip curve, this little pelvic thrust, this little awkward ass sway that let me know he thought he was the Thanksgiving feast. He was strutting like a rooster. And smiling, Murph couldn' t stop smiling, and the BeeGees were singing and we were singing with them. " Fever night, fever night feverrrrrr, you gotta learn to do it.... " The n ext week we went to Tuxedo Junction and I had to sit there like his mother and tell him what looked good on him. Murph knew nothing about clothes. We ordered him a powder-puff blue number

navy blue velveteen trim. We ordered Clara a wrist corsage of carnations sprayed blue around the edges. Murph got a to match.

I guess Murph had a good time. Clara's mother drove them so he 't get to make out with her, and he never did get to do the line because as I should have known, none of the idiots in our ~~.~u\JJ. were progressive enough to know it. But they slow danced, he said Clara didn't mind that he didn't fast dance.

After the prom he called her up for another date, but she told him went back with her old boyfriend. Murph told her he was happy her and that he hoped everything worked out for them. I would told her she was a stupid bitch. The more I think about it, I bet was one of those girls that just use guys to take .t hem to the - I've heard of girls like that before.

Anyway, Murph was fuckin' picture perfect and I was best as a scowl. I'd scowl at anyone who expected me to. Don't me wrong, I wasn't totally useless and unambitious, I was just victim of basic sibling rivalry. Basic paternal oppression.

You see I spent my life wishing I was Murph, wishing I could be he was to the old man, so naturally I began to loathe him, was crazy because I loved every stupid thing about him. Yet it was inevitable that we just stopped talking unless we needed 1omething from each other. There was never any real anger between us though, it was more like a sad silen ce that we both wished we could penetrate.

Sometimes I used to think if only I could have crawled inside of and used his body, just m1de, just so I could have sat at the ,a.~'''"''""u table with the old man and looked into his eyes and seen looking back at me without disdain and disappointment. I to think that that would be it - that somehow that would be There was this one bitter cold December night when I was just ng home from work and I walked by the kitchen window, which you have to do to get into the house, and I stopped and looked in at Murph and my father. They were sitting at the kitchen table leaning in toward each other, you know, elbows on the table - the whole bit. Murph looked like he'd just finished working out and the old man had his hair all slicked back.

I just stood there at the window shivering my ass off, stinking like the Goddamn Italian restaurant where I worked as a busboy, stinking like pepperoni and dirty dishes, and wishing just once I could sit at that table and stink like an athlete. Yeah I felt sorry for myself, sure I did. I was seventeen and certain ifl'd only learned to

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throw a football or a left jab, I could have been sitting at that table too. I didn't feel like walking by them so I went around the side of the house and climbed in through the basement window. It was black as hell down there, but the only way into the house was through the kitchen so I sat there on the basement steps with my head against the door listening to Murph and the old man talking.

It was kind of nice, because in a way, I felt like I was sitting right there with them. listening and nodding and just more or less thinking about what they were saying.

So I just about died when Murph called me up. I told him to meet me at the rather posh, very blue-rinse ladies' establishment where I've been employed as a waiter for the last couple of years. He told me he didn't go near places like that so we agreed on XYZ'S , a local club where we'd both feel comfortable.

I arrived a half hour early and quickly sipped two glasses of white wine and ate an entire bowl of little orange crackers shaped like goldfish. I was a nervous wreck.

For two years, Murph had been training and boxing in New York. He was doing really good until he got this back injury, and no o ne knows how long it will talte, or if he'll ever even recover.

Severe vertebrae damage - that's what my mother called it.

Murph lives with her and the old n+aa now. I guess he's okay as long as he stays inactive but he's in some kind of pain all the time.

My mother says it's nice to have him home, except when he drinks t oo much and starts kicking her furniture . " Depression," she said. " It makes nice boys into ugly drinkers."

So, you know, I sat there thinking about all this stuff and wondered what I was going to say to him when he walks in. I pulled out my appointment book and starting writing some things down, some topics and stuff. in ca se our conversation hit a lull. I also swallowed a valium.

When Murph walked in, I nearly died. I turned my bar stool toward him but I didn't stand up . His face was bloated and his walk seemed strained. " Hey. hey Disco," his voice boomed. " How you doing, man?"

We shot the shit for a while, but it was like ice skating, you know, we stayed on the surface of things. We were avoiding the seriousness. the importance of us getting together for the first time in years. But then I realized that Murph didn' t need to do that kind of stuff. He didn't need to seize the moment and examine it; for Murph, the moment was just the moment- no different from any other.

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After my third glass of wine the valium seemed to be taking effect. The room was a hum, Murph's head was the universe. I was so damn happy to be sitting with him that I grabbed his knee and squeezed it. He laughed and made a hooting noise. "All right, Disco. All right. OhMan," he said, throwing his arm around my shoulder. "Man, we're brothers. Hey bartender, this here is Disco and he's my brother and I love this Party Animal, I love him. Bring us another round, would you?" Murph took out a pain pill and asked me if I wanted one. " You're not supposed to drink with these things but I do all the time," he said, " it makes the pain stop."

Murph swallowed the pill. " Disco, we got to do this more often, go out as brothers. You're the only one I got."

Rod Stewart came on the radio and Murph tapped out the beat with his stir stick. He sang way too loud, but for once I didn't care. I joined him. Spent a long time feeling inferior/ standing in front of the mirror/ combed my hair in a thousand ways/ But I came out looking just the same.. . . Murph's stir stick became our microphone. We sang louder. Daddy said son you better see the world/ I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to leave/ but remember one thing/ don 't lose your head to a woman who'll spend your bread so I got out.

We were laughing our asses off. Murph laid a cold-lipped locker-room kiss on my forehead and I thought how it was okay for him to do that because he didil't"doubt his sexuality and no one else did either. Athletes are free in that respect. They're always patting each other's ass, or hugging and路kissing and the crowd loves it. I envied that kind of freedom, I'd never known it.

So anyway, we were in the middle of all this affectionate reunion crap, when one of the waiters I work with named Antony swishes by. " Ooooooweee, Daniel," he said, sliding up to Murph.

"What do we have here?" I was suddenly dizzy with fear.

I heard myself say, "This is my brother."

"Mmmmmm, I'm sure," An tony said. "I used that one once too."

Murph seemed to sense my discomfort and turned to Antony.

"Look buddy, you're starting to annoy me, so take a hike." " Oh, you are so Clint Eastwood," Antony said. " I bet you watch all his movies."

"Fuck off faggot," said Murph.

Antony stepped back and bowed. "But, of course. Ah, don't forget though, Clint. It takes one to know one." Antony headed towards a table, then stopped and called over his shoulder. "If you boys, or, do excuse me, I mean brothers, decide you need some company later, give me a call. You do still have my number don't

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you Daniel?" Antony smiled sweetly, "Ta ta boys."

Murph stared at me, but I couldn't look back at him. I sipped my wine. He turned toward his gin and tonic and started fishing for the lime with his stir stick. "So what, " he said without looking up. " You know that guy pretty good?"

"I work with him," I said. Murph swallowed the remainder of his drink. " Oh, I see," he said. " Bartender, me and Daniel here. would like another drink.''

After that we stumbled through conversation. I asked how the old man was, what upstate had been like, how bad his injury was. I asked all the questions I had written down in case there might not have been anything to say. He responded in short phrases. His mind was obviously preoccupied.

After a while I guess he decided to test me. " So ah, Danny, do you have a girlfriend or anything?" " No," I responded dryly. " Not anymore." " You mean you had one recently? " He appeared tremendously relieved. " Yes," I said. "But she's dead now."

Murph's expression softened. ''Ohman, I'm so sorry. My God, I wish I would have known. Does anybody know? Does mom know?" " No. "

" What hap-" " Please, " I said, and waved my hand. " I'd rather not talk about it." I looked at him straight in the eye, hating myself for lying.

"Maybe some other time."

"Yeah, yeah sure. Anytime."

"Her name was Donna. " "Donna? That's a beautiful name." " Yeah. Two syllables. I like two-syllable names."

I was so upset, I felt like the heavyweight title was going on inside of my stomach. I wanted to grab Murph and shake him. I wanted to tell him yeah, you love me now, now that I'm suffering the normal kind of emotional disturbance. I just couldn't take it anymore. " Shit," I said and stumbled toward the door.

Murph followed me and hailed us a cab. When we got to my place he practically carried me up the stairs and put me into bed. The weird thing was, he then propped a pillow against the wall and sat beside me. He folded his hands over his stomach and leaned his head against the backboard and then just sat there in the dark staring at the door. He was acting so strange that I sobered up. I

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remember thinking, Jesus Christ, I hope he doesn't start kicking furniture.

So then he just began talking monotone-like. " Life is so unfair, man, so damn unfair. I wish I understood why, you and me, what'd we do? We were nice kids, we never hurt anybody. But look at us, I'm twenty-four and I might as well be eighty- I'm a virgin and a gimp, and I don't even have a driver's license. And you fall in love and the girl dies . All I ever wanted to do was box, Danny. What else was I good at, I was a workout-a-holic, man. You remember, don't you? " "Yeah, I do." " N ow look at me, I'm a handicap." Murph crossed his feet at the ankles. "Listen you said you didn' t want to talk about Donna, which makes me happy because I really don't feel like hearing the whole schmeal- I mean I care about your problems, but I got problems too. Besides, it's my birthday- so give me the floor." I was so happy to be lying in the darkness, I couldn' t have handled seeing Murph's face while he was talking like that. " I'm in so much pain in my back and it just keeps getting worse.

I feel like killing myself, Danny. Like holding a gun to my head just to stop it. It's not getting better. I'm telling you how I feel like killing myself. Bammo," he said and he pointed his index finger at his temple and pretended his thumb was the trigger. " Murph, you sound lik~. &-movie. I swear I seen this movie before. This is too depress-" " Oh yeah, well go to hell. It's all right for me to listen to you, and your dead Donna story, but youdon't have time for me. Talk about movies, what are you talking about movies? That's a real fucked thing to say. Look I only called you to see if you could set me up with someone. I thought it would be fun. Brothers and stuff. But forget it."

"You' re serious about this double date stuff?"

"Of course I'm serious," Murph said. ''I'm going crazy. I think I got a reputation for being a fag. It's not fact or nothing but that's what people think. See I had the chance to do it with one of the neighborhood girls but it didn't work out; I just felt guilty as hell.

I'd been giving her illusions, telling her, 'this is your first timemy first time and I think you're beautiful.' Then all of a sudden, I felt oily as hell, like a fish,like a real schmucko, and I couldn't do it.

She told a bunch of people. " Murph shook me again, "So what, what do you think? Say yes, man. Tell me you'll fix us up on a double date."

"All right, fine. Fine. Just let me go to sleep. Look, you can sleep

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on the foldout couch. It's a ll made up ."

Murph moved obediently toward the couch and lay down. I felt like a bum because he called my name and I started breathing real loud like I was asleep. I just didn't feel like getting into anymore of the double date crap.

Double date, for God's sakes. I'd never been on a date, never mind a double date. Who would I take, Antony? There was a girl at work who always noticed when I had my hair cut- maybe I could ask her. But what if she wanted to come home with me and then the Eunice thing happened all over again? I couldn't go through that.

Good Christ, no.

I got up and opened the window. The curtains started blowing all over the place and the street lamp turned the room a weird yellow color. Murph was sleeping on his back with all his clothes and shoes and stuff on, and every time the wind blew, the yellow light moved over him and rested on his face and chest so he looked just like a Goddamn saint.

I started feeling really guilty about the dead Donna story and more and more worried about the double date I promised Murph.

"Hey Murph," I said. I was still dizzy. " Murph, wake up." I walked over to him and knelt beside the co uch. I wanted to wake him but when I looked at his face , I couldn' t . He was smiling and then the bastard laughed in his sleep. It 'ÂŤas just like him to give me insomnia while he went to heaven in his dreams.

I started to stand up unsteadily when his face sort of twisted and he pushed his hands into the air. ' 'No," he said, and pulled his knees up to his chest. I didn' t understand what he mumbled after that. " Murph, you all right?" He put his hands in between his knees and opened and closed his mouth. I pulled the covers up to his n eck, even though he was sweating. and patted his head. I was fee ling very maternal.

I knelt beside him for h ours watching light patterns move across his face whenever a car went by . I knelt there listening to him breathe and wimper and snore until I was about to nod off and then, I swear to God, h e said something about Eunice.

Maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe he said "Munich" . He knocked out a boxer from there once. Or maybe he said "you nice" or something like that. But I don't think so. He probably told me that neighborhood-girl story to throw me off. It would be just like that bitch to ruin Murph. She was supposed to be a friend of the family. A fri end, for Christ's sakes. Yeah, the more I think about it. it was ''Eunice" he said.

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the day wends into nothing done and nothing said blessing of mere breath falls fuller times times when the October moon full over the tiny American bars op Whore hill last night when beer absence seemed a cure her not being here, the letters all burnt a hardhat's fire, plowed under by a fake Mac truck I wend away to an empty r'Oom dust without hands

.....

gave me the blessing of many nights the icesea off Inchon - so ghostly green would seem obscene admission the tomb of nothing nights

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Nick Bozanic

AT THE FREDERIC INN for Michael Delp

Maybe James Wright could salvage something from the wreckage of this place, could sense whatever blessings the dust and damp here might bestow.

Maybe Richard Hugo could wring just one more heartache out of the ruined Wurlitzer, the sagging floor.

Maybe John Berryman could redeem the sorrows that stain these walls.

But what can we do?

What do we know who are not ghosts路 but young and hungry in the afternoon?

We eat our burgers, drink our beers, two tourists in this last resort of poetry.

The waitress leans against the bar, her eyes fixed on the edge of night as the world turns once more away from light, away from all of us.

The last good kiss goes off the air.

She stares and stares.

We fall in love, of course, we take her to our hearts and ask, "What's a girl like you up to in this haunted dump?"

She serves

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us drinks. She serves us holy spirits from bottle arranged like a choir of bells beneath fluorescent stars.

We make ourselves at home here, drunk and mad as bats and weeping in the dusk of our desire.

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Nicholas Kolumban

THE FffiST TIME

It was glorious to stay inside you,

you severe, green-eyed brunette It was sublime that you brought me back to earth

that you spilled my blood It didn't occur to me until now that there's death The taste of immortality is salty Kisses, July heat, blood, sweat flowing into my mouth Thank you for pulling me back to earth but paradoxically we ascended This happened in a borrowed bed in a shaggy apartment in a provincial capital Thank you for not concealing your wrinkles your warts and political convictions We practically agree on things and I'm not young What joy it is to love you through my senses!

To love you with your trimmed fingernails, with your manicured short hair You stand before me naked to your waist wearing a hand-made skirt You're a poetic patchwork you formerly blond virgin I'm pleased that you' re so harsh in your desires in your egoism so naively soothing I don't know how long I live but I know that now you're the most beautiful in this godly light inside this purgatory You smile you menstruate

by Elemer tr. from H

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Lyn Lifshin THERE WERE ALWAYS STARS

at night, loud exploding the closeness of wrinkled silk I remember the smell of my mother's h air holding m e curled into her coolness of marble and the hard lines of a chair shading us the wood becoming a tree again.

The blue of sky trees in the bottom of a tea cup. Even when the one wall was ash mother scrubbed and kept lace squares on h a lf the couch, lit candles. One Friday the bed posts flared wilder than wax in silver.

It was all we knew blue berry jam blue

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veins breaking the blue of violets Nana's .blue sweater one arm shorter. unravelling sh.apes dissolve like margarine wpuldhigh noon.on the Sahara.

Bl~e was the last color David's eyes as the train door shut blue tattoo blue flame I'd only touch once.

Everything trans formed the way a scalp stuns, shaved of hair.

If I had lived in your cities of bill boards and media the blue couldn't have out lined n ight if I had lived that dark ink would have stained what came near it

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passed it on ter by daughter. one possessing pit fire

....

"'"'"'

is, is.

You burn for a reason.

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Contributors' Notes JOSEPH P. BALAZ was born in Wahiawa Hospital and grew up in Wahiawa Heights. He has worked as a factory worker, forklift driver, night janitor, quarry worker, truck driver. plantation field laborer, construction worker. heavy equipment crane operator, dishwasher, groundskeeper. and a poultry farm worker. He is now working on an aquacultu re farm in Kahuku.

NICK BOZANIC's poems have appeared in numerous journals. including New Orleans Review, The Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Pulpsmith, and Southern Poetry Review. He is a former Director of the

Creative Writing Program at Interlochen Arts Academy (MI).

LAUREEN CHING. 33, graduated from t h e University of Hawaii in 1973, has had poems in Pawn Review, South Dakota Review, Dacotah Territory, Mississippi Valley Review, Davidson Miscellany, Bridge, and others. She has路 published four novels under her married name Laureen Kwock and the pen name Clarice Peters. Her current work in progress is a novel about two Chinese, Catholic school brats growing up in the Hawaii of the Sixties.

BETH CUTHRELL is a student at the University of Hawaii.

ADELE DUMARAN is a g r aduate student at the University of Hawaii.

MARJORIE EDEL's book of poems, The Place Your Body Is, was published in 1984 by Petroni urn Press. She is at present working on another b ook of poems.

GENE FRUMKIN's latest book of poems is Clouds and Red Earth, published by Swallow / Ohio University Press. A resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, be was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii during the 1984-85 academic year. Other poems were recently published or are forthcoming in Boundary 2, Conjunctions, Chelsea. The Chariton Review, Yankee, and Another Chicago Magazine.

STEVEN GOLDSBERRY teaches English at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of MA UI: The Demigod.

NORMAN HINDLEY's collection of poems, Winter Eel, was published in 1984 by Petronium Press.

ELEMER HORVATH. 51, is considered one of the foremost Hungarian poets. He has four books of poems to his credit, the latest being The Roo t s of Weather Vanes. He lives in the States and is a printer.

NICHOLAS KOLUMBAN was born in Budapest: he teaches creative writing to adults and children. His poems and translations appeared in APR, Antioch Review, Chariton Review, Epoch, Iowa Review, New Letters, Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His latest book is the Hungarian Sandor Csoori 's Memory of the Snow (Penmaen Press. 1983) in translation.

LANNING LEE was born in Honolulu. He teaches at University High School.

LYN LIFSHIN is a. winner of the 1984 Jack Keroua.c Award for her manuscript Kiss the Sun Off, recently published by Cherry Valley Editions. She is the author of Naked Charm, Upstate Madonna, Black Apples, and forthcoming books Reading Lips, Mad Girl Poems, Want Ads, and Hotel Lifshin. She recently completed a California reading tour and is working on a collection of women's memoirs following Tangled Vines and Ariadne 's Thread.

PAT MATSUEDA is the editor and publisher of The Paper.

MICHAEL McPHERSON still lives on Ma.ui.

RODNEY MORALES writes fiction and non-fiction. He is currently working on a new sentence.

ROBERT PARHAM was born in Takoma Park, Maryland in 1943. He received the Ph.D . from Florida. State University in 1980 and is an Associate Professor at Francis Marion College in Florence, S .C. His publications include work in the Southwest Review, Rolling Stone, Christian Science Monitor, South Carolina Review, Kansas Quarterly, and other periodicals. A second poem of his will appear in the forthcoming Anthology of Magazine Vers(liHJd Yearbook of American Poetry.

LOUIS PHILLIPS is a. poet and playwright whose most recent collection of poems - The Time, The Hour, The Solitariness of the Place - will be published in September by Swallow's Tale Press. His full-length plays include The Last of the Ma rx Brothers ' Writers (for which he did the film-script for Stanley Kramer) and The Ballroom in St. Patrick's Cathedral. He currently teaches creative writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

BILL SHARP has an M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from the University of Kansas. His stories have been published in Shinola and Vanderbilt Review, and he is currently working on a biography of Lewis Lindsay Dyche, a turn-of-the-century naturalist.

FRANK STEWART's second book, Flying the Red Eye, will be published in 1986. This is his first appearance in Hawaii Review.

CHRIS K. TANIGUCHI has a degree in English from the University of Hawaii. He lives in Hono lulu.

DEBRA THOMAS lives in Manoa.

PETER WILD's most recent collection of poems. Getting Ready for a Date, was published by Abra.xa.s Press last year.

ROB WILSON has published poems in Ploughshares, Partisan Review, Poetry of Chicago and other journals; he is back teaching at the University of Hawaii after a two-year Fulbright at Korea University in Seoul.

Robert Louis Stevenson and The Beach of Falesa A Study in Victorian Publishing WITH THE ORIGINAL TEXT

Barry Menikoff. One of Stevenson's finest achievements, Falesd ranks a mong the masterpieces of English novellas. Henry James called it "an art brought to perfection," and Stevenson himself said it was "nearer what I mean than anything I have ever done." Yet until now, Falesd has never appeared in print as it was written . Set in the Western Pacific, using pidgin and rough slang, and told by a white trader who lives with and later marries a native girl, the book ran counter to the deeply held political, sexual, and religious convictions of its Victorian editors and publishers.

Language was revised, distorted, or delete<i, . entire passages were garbled or bowdlerized, and punctuation was systematically changed to " refine" or "correct" Stevenson's style. Small wonder that Stevenson referred to the printed version as "slashed and gapi ng ruins." But now, for the first time, we have falesd as it was written, faithfully transcribed fro m the original manuscript. An ana lysis preceding the text shows how the work was corrupted by friends, publishers, ed itors, and printers, and explores Stevenson's own role a nd responsibility in th e process. Illus . S2-l-50

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Toyoko Yamasaki Translated by James T. Araki A new translati o n of an important novel depicting Japan's rise from postwar desolation and headlong rush into frenzi ed economic expansion . The Barren Zone tells th e story of one man ' s struggle to adjust to the changing world of his homeland . $22.50, c lo th

FOR YESTERDAY Marina Makarova " One refreshing quality in Marina Makarova路s poems is the intimacy with which she conveys exp er ien ce ... " -W. S. Mer)Vin. Winner 'of the 1984 Pacific Poetry Series. $5.95 paper

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