LOL SPRING 2017

Lions-on-Line (In Print)

Spring Issue 2017

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Table of Contents What the Water Gave Me, Photograph by Sidney Trasser…………………………...Cover “My Grandmother’s Spoons,” Essay by Kimberly LaChance…………………………….3 “Verdant,” Poem by Kelly Grannan………………………………………………………5 Floating, Photograph by Sarah Wenke…..………………………………………………..6 “The Village,” Fiction by Megan Simmermeyer………………………………………….7 “The Plague,” Poem by Danielle Watkins……………………………………………….17 “The Truth That Can’t Be Handled,” Poem by Patrick Tierney…………………………18 Cold & Unresponsive, Photograph by Sidney Trasser…………………………………..19 “Dejection & Anxiety,” Poem by Sidney Trasser……………………………………….20 “Fear,” Essay by Jennifer Jones………………………………………………………….22 Dejection, Someone Scratch My Brain, Photograph by Sidney Trasser…………………26 “6:14,” Poem by Emma Sule…………………………………………………………….27 “Unknown: Myself?” Poem by Sidney Trasser………………………………………….28 Mind on Fire, Photograph by Sidney Trasser……………………………………………30 “First Aid,” Poem by Danielle Watkins………………………………………………….31 “The Diary of Beatrice Wenkel,” Fiction by Josh Zeller………………………………...32 “Ricky and Lucy,” Photograph by Sarah Wenke………………………………………...38 “Interior of a Kitchen,” Poem by Patrick Zopff………………………………………….39 “Grandma’s Kitchen,” Essay by Claire Butler…………………………………………..40 “Cedars Bleeding in the Heat,” Fiction by Carolyn Kesterman…………………………42 “Johnny Cash Meets His Maker,” Poem by Lindsey Potzick……………………………51 Ty Carter, Artwork by Emma O’Dell……………………………………………………52 “I Knew What a Six Pack Was Before I Knew Times Tables,” Poem by Emma Sule….53 Submission Details/Editors and Staff……………………………………………………55

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My Grandmother’s Spoons Essay by Kimberly LaChance “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted.

Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there (Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury).”

My grandmother wasn’t just any cook; she was the BEST cook. She had the uncanny ability to take leftovers from the refrigerator and whip up a totally new dish that was even better than the original. Any time I visited, I could always count on some form of deliciousness waiting for me. Cooking, to my grandmother, was a creation, a work of art, a song to be sung…sacred. She expressed herself through the delectable delights she concocted, because there was rarely an exact recipe used. Whether making yeast rolls, blackberry cake, Christmas date bars, succotash or Thanksgiving stuffing, she knew just what spice to throw in; a pinch of this, a dollop of that. And everything she made, she made with love.

From her cooking, she made memories. It wasn’t just a meal she fixed; it was supper and storytelling around the dining room table, perfectly set with her lace tablecloth and exquisite centerpieces. It was giving thanks, not only for food, but also for each other. It was fellowship with family, guests, and neighbors. Lively conversations, somber discussions, updates on life, babies jabbering, cousins giggling, and at almost every meal, poetry recited by my beloved grandfather. We would sit for what seemed like endless time around the table, suspending our ever-busy schedules for nourishment and communion. It was so much more than 15 minutes of slaking our hunger. It was filling our souls.

The tools of my grandmother’s gift of cooking were commonplace kitchen items, used and loved. Bowls with scrape marks, baking sheets worn from years of cookie baking, bread pans of various sizes, casserole dishes, aprons, and yes, mixing spoons. All things she touched and with which she created. Some things passed down from family member to family member. Certain plates, bowls or pretty dishes used for certain food items or certain holidays, favorite and familiar items that brought comfort and joy just by their mere existence on my grandmother’s table.

Two weeks before my grandmother slipped quietly from this earth, we celebrated Christmas in her home with many loved ones. She couldn’t have known this would be her last (or maybe she did), and she lovingly gave gifts to each of us, each one especially 3

chosen and given from her heart. My gift was two of her mixing spoons. It was a simple gift but one so immensely treasured. I have used these spoons for 30 years now, and not a time goes by that I don’t feel my grandmother’s presence or think about how, yes, she made meals and memories, but more than that she touched us all, leaving a legacy of family and love.

I believe my grandmother would be very proud to know that today, when I bake cookies with my grandson, and we get all of our ingredients and utensils out, at the very last, I say “What else do we need?” He knows exactly… “Grandma’s spoons.” She lives on in us.

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Verdant Poem by Kelly Grannan Texture of the oblong ellipses, slightly prickly yet soft Like freshly sprouted grass in the yard.

Tender surfaces as supple and smooth as bird feathers sprinkled with a drizzle of rain.

Dark green stems stiff and hard like wooden toothpicks.

Small hollows in each chartreuse corolla Like the pores along the edges Of sea anemones Dancing in the current.

Nature Dispersing floral tears in the wind The faint scent of pollen And emerald grass blades Playfully tickling one’s nose.

Nature’s gold dust Drifting towards The tranquil babbling Of a nearby stream.

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Floating Photograph by Sarah Wenke

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The Village Fiction by Megan Simmermeyer This story is a sequel to “The Leader,” published in the Fall 2016 Issue of LOL We peered over the sharp lip of rock. Oliver sneered at the pale people gathered below us, but I frowned. Unlike many of our marks, these people were poor, uneducated, foreign. Something about them was different than the others we had been sent to kill, and I didn’t like it.

For eight years, I had embedded myself among the Vipers, the lead group of assassins at the Shade Society, but I wasn’t sure I could ever accustom myself to the actual killing. In fact, I wasn’t much good as an assassin. I laughed when I was afraid, and before I met Oliver, I had plotted to seduce one of his friends so that I might command the power and respect often laid at the feet of the Vipers. To say the least, I had been unsuccessful, and Theo had never noticed me.

“We will come back at dark,” Oliver told me. “Let’s go.”

Slipping away, we crept down the mountainside until we reached our tiny camp nestled between two sharp points of rock. Lying on my back, I watched the sky, streaks of white cloud spreading across the fading blue of evening. Oliver scooted closer to me, his dark face blocking out the sun. “Not much longer, love,” he murmured, a smile quirking his lips. “The others will be here soon.”

“Where have they been?”

“Following, but I asked Theo to wait, told him that we would scout these people ahead of the others.”

“Why?” He smirked at me, his finger curling itself in my hair.

“Bastard,” I laughed, no fear pushing the sound from my mouth. “Too bad it’s so cold.”

“I could—” I put a hand over his smart mouth and turned my head. Something had shifted, causing a small avalanche of pebbles to cascade down the steep mountainside. Oliver followed my gaze, but neither of us saw anything there. Still, I sat up, took a moment to survey the area before turning back to my favorite Viper. For once, he carried no blood between the creases of his eyes or the folds around his mouth. Tracing the lines of his face, I touched my forehead to his. How incredible that he was mine.

“When we are finished here, when we are safe, I want to start a life with you,” I said. “I want to leave this behind someday.”

He wound his left pinkie finger with mine and brought our joined hands to his mouth. “I love you,” he murmured, “more than life, more than breath.” I inhaled deeply and stared at the tiny tattooed vipers wrapped about our left ring fingers. They had been 7

there more than two years though I had imagined them there for far longer. If only I could have a real ring, a real home. But Oliver said we weren’t finished.

He kissed my forehead. “I will give you everything,” he said. Tugging one of my braids, he pulled away, and together, we waited for night to collapse around the mountains.

X X X They spun around their violent, dancing flames—silhouettes against the brighter blaze of ritual fires. Oliver and I watched the villagers beneath the sadistic grin of a crescent moon. Theo and the others squatted among the crags across from us, and at Oliver’s signal, they would descend upon the revelers, make them understand the fear of death and the strike of a Viper.

Before every kill, Oliver would assure me I could stay behind, that I could watch and wait while he and the other Vipers murdered and pillaged, but I never could.

Laughter would have consumed me while I waited for them to reappear—at least in the thick of death I could master my unfortunate habit and sink my blade into someone else’s screaming throat. Their screams drown out the cowardly parts of me, the parts I didn’t want Oliver or the other Vipers to see.

“Now, love,” Oliver whispered. He raised his hands, two pieces of flint clutched in his grip. Two strikes, two bright sparks—a signal to the others.

We left the lip of the mountainside overlooking the poor village of Perithians. Had Oliver not offered his hand to me, I would have stumbled headlong down into the valley below, my clumsiness giving me away to our targets. But Oliver held me, eased me down. Was I always a burden to him? Did he resent me for my poor assassin skills? If he did, my lover did not comment, and he helped wash away the blood after each murder.

What more could a woman want from her man?

The villagers did not see us, shadows darkening the fringes of the firelight. To Oliver’s left, Theo raised his dagger, the tip angled toward the neck of a fat woman hunched on a log at the edge of the circle of dancers. The other Vipers would not strike until Oliver did, but their leader had not yet chosen his target. His dark eyes scanned the necks of the villagers before us—he would choose none by the strongest.

He hesitated, eyes locked on a thick man hunched over a table. A small board sat between the man and a boy no older than ten. He murmured to the boy who shook his small head. Licking his lips, Oliver leaned toward me.

“I want him,” he whispered. “That man.”

I nodded, forcing my eyes away from the child across the board. His shock of hair stuck up everywhere, and the firelight dyed him a deep orange. Who would kill him, the innocent boy of no more than ten? Oliver told me there were to be no survivors.

Survivors breed resentment and revenge, he had told me. Even a babe cannot be spared.

I left every time the children were rounded up, and Oliver and the others dispatched them. No survivors.

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I turned my focus to the spindly man behind Oliver’s chosen target. My man was old, weak. A perfect kill for a weak assassin.

Hissing between his teeth, Oliver threw back his dark cloak and stalked up to the man. The villagers, entranced by the rhythm of the dancing and heartbeat of the drums, did not see the slender figure approach the man and his boy, and Oliver sank his blade into the man’s neck without being challenged.

The small boy screamed, the blood of the older man spraying across his face. But his screams were joined by others’ soon. Theo and the Vipers descended on the villagers with gleaming teeth and violent dagger points. My own target succumbed to the flash of my blade without much of a struggle, and I searched for my next target—a short limping woman struggling to reach the child who still screamed at the slumped figure at the game board. I lurched to intercept her, but Theo’s sword, now drawn, decapitated her in a single stroke. Blood doused my face, and I stumbled back.

“Easy, love.” Oliver caught me, his hands gentle on my shoulders. “Find another.”

He disappeared, and I searched for another to kill, another life to steal. But Theo and the other Vipers had massacred most of the dancers and people gathered on the logs.

I searched for the small boy, but he had disappeared. Perhaps he fled, I thought. If only.

Stalking forward, I grabbed the arm of a whimpering woman. Her guts spilled between her fingers, blood coursed from her nose. “Please,” she said.

I ended her life and turned away. Two deaths had been added to my eternal damnation. Two more burdens to endure.

I turned away. Across the still roaring fire, Oliver danced among the corpses, his blade flashing artistically from one throat to the next.

I’m so tired, I thought. I’m tired of death. Sheathing my dagger, I left the massacre.

A collection of huts huddled at the edge of the valley. They lay still among the cool darkness of the mountains, not even a candle left burning in the window or a wisp of smoke escaping a chimney. Did the entire village abandon their homes for the festivities by the fire? Would they have returned to their cold homes, or would they have wrapped their cloaks tight about their shoulders and slept by the roaring blaze of the bonfire?

I tapped my fingers along the outside of the closest hut and wandered deeper into the village. Traces of occupations—a smithy, half-woven baskets, cracked pots—loitered outside doorways, and at the center, a well plunged into the mountain’s guts. Was there a natural fissure leading to an underground river? Or had they toiled to rip into the rock?

My skin itched from the blood coating it, and I approached the dark well.

“Stay back.”

I froze, my fingers reaching for the bucket perched on the well’s ledge. A small shape shifted in the shadow of two huts to my right.

Dropping my hand to my belt, I toyed with the dagger sheathed there. The figure held a blade of its own, but it looked off-balance, as if the weapon were too heavy.

A child.

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I dropped my hand and sank to the ground, sitting cross-legged before the small figure.

“Come where I can see you,” I said. “Please.”

The child hesitated before inching into the moonlight. He was the little boy from the fire, the one who watched his friend slaughtered while they played a game.

“What is your name?” I asked, my tongue struggling to pronounce his strange language.

He didn’t respond, but two fat tears slipped over his round cheeks. He was so pale, much paler than my darker skin.

“Mine is Annika.”

The boy sniffed, torn between wanting to appear strong and wanting to answer an adult. I tried for a smile, hoped he wouldn’t see the blood. “Therin,” he said at last.

“Where are your parents, Therin?”

He began to sob, dropped his sword, and ran to me. His small body collided with mine, and his fists clutched at my hair. Broken by what he had witnessed, the child clung to me and cried until he began to hiccup.

I glanced back toward the fire where Oliver, Theo, and the Vipers finished their task. Soon, they would wander into the village, ransack the homes, and perhaps burn them to the ground. Oliver would insist the child die.

“We have to go, Therin,” I whispered. “Will you come with me?”

He nodded, clutching me tighter.

I struggled to stand. For a child, he was heavy, but I managed to heave us both into a standing position. No screams echoed from the fire, which meant my time was running short.

Oliver had set up our tent apart from the others—to give me privacy, he said. If I could get Therin to the safety of our tent, no one could harm him, but the climb to get there would be difficult, especially with a heavy little boy in my arms. Getting him to walk might mean screams or struggling, and I refused to let him be murdered, no matter what Oliver said.

“Crawl onto my back,” I whispered in Therin’s ear. “Please. I want to help you.”

Stifling his hiccups, the boy obeyed, his arms locked around my throat, his legs around my waist. He put me off-balance, but I managed to claw my way up the steep mountainside. Despite the showers of rocks I sent tumbling in my wake, none of the other Vipers heard me, and I reached my tent without incident. Admittedly, my hands were torn and bleeding, but Therin hadn’t made a sound.

“Here.” I tugged the child from my back and prodded him into the tent I shared with Oliver. Therin hiccupped and sniffled at the twisted blankets, but he sat where I pointed and allowed me to wipe the tears from his face.

“I am so sorry,” I murmured. “I wish I could change what happened.”

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The boy didn’t respond, the shock of the massacre sinking his narrow shoulders to a hunch. We sat in silence for a while, and then, his head dipped. Poor child had fallen asleep sitting up. Lying him gently on his side, I pulled the blankets over him and smoothed his hair from his forehead. Still a child and he had already witnessed death at its worst—only to be rescued by one of his village’s murderers.

How would I tell Oliver?

X X X Dawn had edged over the top of the mountains by the time Oliver and the others returned. Theo limped, favoring his right side, but a grin split his features. For them, the night had been a success. Two of the others bent toward each other and mimed a kill, and several more laughed at some joke. Only Oliver lingered at the fringes, his lips twisted beneath the thin skin of blood stretched over his body. His cloak had been discarded, and torn fabric flapped about his arms. From the tent’s entrance, I could see no injuries through the rents in his clothes—they had probably been torn as someone begged him for their life.

I looked back at Therin asleep on the tent’s shared pile of blankets. My Viper would not be pleased.

“Annika!” Theo shouted to me, the first to notice my presence. “Had enough fighting last night?” he called.

Behind him, Oliver straightened. He hated when I disappeared from fights—he thought I had been murdered or worse.

“I was tired,” I said, letting my gaze fall to my lap. I had cleaned the blood away last night after the child had fallen asleep, not being able to bear the thought of Therin’s people’s lifeblood lingering on my skin.

The Vipers chuckled, knowing that was not why I had left. It didn’t bother them that I was such a poor assassin—it left more lives for them to claim and boast about.

As the others wandered to their tents a hundred feet from my own, Oliver approached and sat before me.

“Why are you sitting in the cold?” he asked.

“I want to talk,” I said.

He stiffened, hating those words as they left my mouth. “Nika.”

“I want a child,” I said.

“What?”

“I want a family and a safe home.”

“We’ve tried, Nika. You know your body cannot bear a child, and I promised I would find you a home when we were finished with the Society.”

“I know, but—” I hesitated.

The Viper flinched, his gaze wandering to the open tent behind me. “Annika, what did you do?”

“Oliver, I couldn’t leave him.”

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“You can’t steal a child from a village we were sent to murder. Nika, if anyone found out—” “They won’t.”

Oliver’s jaw worked as he tried to contain hurtful words.

“Please, Oliver.” I reached for his hands, twisted our fingers together. “I’ve wanted this since I said yes to you, since I told you I wanted to try something new with you.”

He slumped—the most terrifying assassin on the continent slumped for the most pitiful assassin on the continent. “I swore I would make you happy,” he said. “No matter the cost. I swore you would come before all others.” Clenching my fingers tighter, he agreed. “I will give you this, love. This has always been for you.”

Oliver left me and ordered the other Vipers to return to the Society. “Give your report,” he told them. “Tell them I will arrive shortly. There is a matter I must attend before returning.”

They did not question his leadership or his orders, and when he returned to me, shadows haunted his face. Lying to his comrades hurt him, but he swore he would do anything for me.

X X X Oliver didn’t lie to me. Leaving the mountains, we returned to our home country and followed the Verth-Wall Road toward the capital. We wouldn’t follow the road all the way to Verth, but Oliver insisted the village we settled in be somewhat near the capital should he need to return to the Society.

I didn’t like that—Oliver’s need to return to the assassins.

On our third day back in Airadon, we reached a small town near the Break—a split in the road with one part going north, the other continuing west. The town was the first we had entered since crossing the Wall between Perith and Airadon, and I relished the opportunity to have a real bed—and some alone time with Oliver. Since we had left the mountains, I hadn’t had a single chance to speak with Oliver privately about what I had done.

At the inn, Oliver approached the desk while I lingered at the door, Therin’s fingers clutched in mine. Several other patrons glanced toward us, many doing a double take at the small, pale boy beside me. I hadn’t realized before how sharply our skin tones contrasted, and it unnerved me when a man spat at the boy’s feet.

Therin flinched back, bumping into me.

Oliver turned just as the snarling man sulked away—but my Viper had seen the glower, the small pool of spit. As we traveled, Therin had remained quiet, but Oliver had warmed to the little boy regardless. And the Viper did not take the man’s display of contempt well, but without his usual cloak of blood, Oliver appeared non-threatening and almost ordinary—no one would have guessed who he was. No one feared him.

And I think Oliver hated that—hated the lack of fear people felt when he looked at them.

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Up in the room, Oliver threw his pack onto the thin mattress and stormed to the window. Therin didn’t notice the dark mood hovering over Oliver’s shoulder—the child was too lost in the shock of the spit and the death of his villagers—but I noticed.

“Why don’t you rest for a bit?” I whispered in Therin’s ear. His soft ginger hair tickled my nose, and I pressed a kiss to his forehead. Regret for the dead mountain people reverberated in my throat, but I knew no words could express how I felt, not to the child who lost everything. I thought about what I had lost, what drove me to join the Society of assassins—but it couldn’t compare.

“Where will you go?” Therin asked. “You and Oliver.”

“Just downstairs.”

The child lowered his voice, pressed his mouth to my ear. “What about that man?

The one who—?”

I glanced at Oliver. “That man won’t find you here.”

The boy nodded and crawled into the bed. Oliver had only rented one room—one bed. As much as I ached to pull Oliver toward me and rip off his clothes, I couldn’t. Not yet. Not when there was Therin and my guilt and all that pain.

Securing Therin with tightly tucked blankets, I whispered to him for a few minutes, soft reassurances that he would be okay, but I kept my eyes on Oliver, still seething at the window. Once I was sure Therin wouldn’t leave his bed, I pulled the Viper out into the hall and locked the room behind us.

Therin would be safe. He would be fine.

“He won’t be fine,” Oliver said, eyes latched on the door.

“What are you talking about?” I stared at the door, too, as if I could see the pale boy inside. I wanted to reach for him, hug away his past.

Oliver pulled my fingers to his lips, pressed his forehead to mine. “Why did you take the boy, Nika? We were supposed to kill them all. We were paid to kill them all.

Why spare this boy?”

I sighed. A moment alone and he wanted to talk about this. “He was alone, Oliver.

And I’m tired.”

Something lightened in tense set of his shoulders, and he leaned against me. Oliver wasn’t very big—he was slighter and shorter than one would expect of the continent’s most notorious killer. Despite the publicness of the inn’s hall, Oliver pressed a kiss to my jaw.

“I don’t want you to be tired,” he said. “I want you to be alive.”

I twisted my fingers in his shirt. “So let me be alive. You, Therin. You both make me feel alive.”

I watched the smile creep onto his mouth, his eyes brighter at each degree of happiness I brought to him. But then he dimmed.

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“He must be disguised,” Oliver told me. “That man who spat at him was a precursor to what others will do to him when they see his skin, his hair, and his eyes.

Therin may be a child, but hate rarely discriminates based on age.”

I sighed, pressed my lips together. A darkness chewed at my thoughts, and I wanted to spit out the black musings and think of a brighter future for the boy. I wanted to believe he could assimilate, be a part of my world. But Oliver shook me from my daydream.

“They can’t know who he is, Nika. They would kill him for it.”

Kill him like Oliver and the Vipers had tried. “Do you think he will consent?” I asked. “He would have to forsake everything he knows.”

Oliver stared at me, lips pursed against whatever emotions roiled inside him. “We already took that choice from him, Nika.”

Oliver’s words hollowed me out, and I sat alone in the inn’s dining room while he disappeared into the town to search for dye to darken Therin’s pale flesh and obscure his bright orange hair. A stew—rabbit, I thought—lingered in front of me, but I pushed the spoon away and traced patterns into the table with my fingertips. I hated the results of my choice, the pain I caused myself, Oliver, and Therin, but I didn’t know what to do. Why had I rescued the boy in the first place?

A slight, dark body slid into the seat opposite me. Dark fingers placed dark bottles between us. Lifting my eyes, I found Oliver watching me.

“I will do this,” he murmured, extending his hand toward me. “For you, a thousand time over, I will do this for you.”

I took his fingers in mine. “Thank you.” A thousand times over.

X X X Therin’s small body hovered between mine and Oliver’s on the bed. We had been searching the villages along the Verth-Wall Road for several days, but none felt right.

This village was the last before we reached the capital.

“Don’t give up,” Oliver whispered. He caught my fingers on the pillow and watched me over Therin’s head. “One more. There is a village a half a day’s ride from here, and I think you will like it.”

“What’s it called?”

“Dreja. Theo told me about it once.”

Ah, the illustrious Second Viper, the one I had once tried to seduce only to fail.

Thank God I had. My reward for that failure stared at me in the dark. “Do you think Therin would like it?” I asked.

The small child’s body twitched, and he sighed at a dream. Would that I could fall asleep as easily as he, but my sleeping hours were often locked in the shackles of nightmares. All the lives I had claimed, the people I had wronged. Perhaps Therin could be my redemption, my chance for a fresh life without death. I wished for that life with every breath in my body, and I let the thought carry me into sleep.

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When we woke the next morning, Oliver disappeared to find a wagon and horse for our journey, and by the time I smoothed the dye on Therin’s face and packed away our bags, Oliver had found what we needed. It was midafternoon when we reached the village.

Dreja.

The small cluster of houses lingered an afternoon’s walk from the fringes of the Airadonese capital, but few people seemed to hold regard for capital dwellers or their upscale life. Instead, the people of Dreja were farmers and simple tradesmen with little interest in the outside world.

When we arrived, we were greeted with stares. But they weren’t stares for Therin, whose nationality was hidden beneath layers of dye and sadness. It seemed no matter what race, sadness and pain always looks the same.

“There is a house,” Oliver whispered to me. He had taken a horse and arrived before me and the boy. His pockets had chattered with coin that morning, but their tune had dimmed since he arrived in Dreja. “I want you to have this house,” he told me. “For you, Nika.”

We passed through the village to a small hut on the edges of the town. Here, few people lingered to leer, and neighbors were scarce. Inside, a rough table sulked in the kitchen, and two closed doors hid the bedrooms. Small. “Perfect,” I said.

Therin didn’t speak beside me, but I tightened my fingers around his. This home. Our home. Here we could live free of death and teach Therin about everything.

And I didn’t want to miss a moment.

Oliver, however, didn’t want to waste a moment. “You have to blend,” he said, kneeling before Therin. “We covered your skin, your hair, but now we must cover who you are. You must not let them know who you are.”

“But my name,” the boy protested, speaking at last. “No one has a name like I do.”

Oliver and I exchanged glances. “We will call you Corin,” I said at last. “That was my brother’s name.”

The boy smiled at me and stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “My name is Corin Oliverson.”

Oliver flinched but didn’t let the small boy see. Somehow, this child had burrowed under the skin of the feared killer.

“Pleased to meet you, Corin Oliverson,” I said, shaking his small hand.

Someone knocked on the door, and Oliver glanced over his shoulder. Lingering in the shady entranceway stood three people—a woman and two young children.

“Yes?” Oliver demanded. I cut him a sharp look—no need to make enemies so soon.

The woman smiled and held out a basket of bread. “You are new,” she said.

“We just arrived today,” Oliver answered softly. His eyes narrowed at her gift.

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“This is Arlo and Adelaide,” the woman said, pointing to the boy and then the girl, “and I am Maya. My husband is the blacksmith. Perhaps you would join us for a meal soon? It is rare we have newcomers in Dreja.”

Oliver didn’t reply, but Therin—Corin—stepped forward, his small hand extended to the little girl. “I am Corin Oliverson,” he announced, his tiny voice struggling with the Airadonese language he was beginning to learn. It was so different than the rugged mountain speech he had grown up using.

Giggling, the girl, no older than six, eagerly pumped his fingers. “You will be my friend,” she said. “My best friend.”

Corin nodded solemnly, as if it were his divine duty to fulfill her prophecy, but the other little boy, Arlo, regarded Corin with suspicion and contempt.

When the trio had left, Corin turned to me. “Will I go to school with those children?”

“Probably.”

Oliver moved deeper into the new house, and I sat on the floor with Corin. His stubby fingers traced words into the dirt. They were his native tongue, so I gently brushed them away and spelled out words in Airadonese, his new language. Frowning, he traced over them, but I knew he didn’t understand.

“You will be fine,” I said, tracing his name. “Already you have a friend in little Adelaide.”

Corin scowled at the dirt for a moment, but his features smoothed. “She will forget me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I am too plain for a pretty girl like her.”

“Why do you say that?”

With wisdom in his gaze, Corin met my stare. “I am too plain for her,” he repeated.

Then he smiled. “But I will make you proud someday,” he said. “Plain or not, I will make you proud, Annika. This I swear.”

X X X

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The Plague Poem by Danielle Watkins Death flew into town on Tuesday Stayed till the job was done And when she finally flew away I was the only one

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The Truth That Can’t Be Handled Poem by Patrick Tierney Dedicated to Richie S. (So sadly missed) You said you’d love me till the end of time, That I was meant for you and you for I. Your touch is warm so tender so sweet, I once felt so loved im so glad we did meet.

Now youre gone with no reason or rhyme.

It feels so cold, so empty, I assure this no lie!

Do you think this so easy this time that you ask?

To hide my pain in public I put on a mask.

I tell myself it’s a dream, a nightmare no doubt, Yet I wake these mornings still – My Love without.

Has it been a week? Seven days? It’s the same.

Glass half empty? Half full? Full? Fool am I, I am to blame!

I darkened the clouds, caused you discomfort and pain!

My storm is now upon me my tears fall like rain.

My warm day has gone, the cold winds now blow, Without your heart for shelter I have no place to go.

A kiss to your picture that a tear drop did stain, To know you’ll find another will cause me much pain!

With suffering and guilt I won’t tell another lie, I told you before, for you I would die!

The fire is gone nothing left but cold, Nothing left but truth- it’s time to be bold!

You’re my last love so my heart I do lock, I chamber a round in my .45 Glock!

I hurt you my love I know what I see, I caused you to doubt every word out of me!

Now’s the only time you’ll believe what I’ve said, Put this bullet in my brain, then I’ll be dead. . .

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Cold & Unresponsive Photograph by Sidney Trasser

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Dejection & Anxiety Poem by Sidney Trasser When I think about it, I know that I will never be the same.

Where it tore out the glowing warmth within and replaced it with a burning hole of wickedness, that was his living within his foul odor, slithering in trails of darkness around his plagued black body, seeping out to consume what light still filled my pale soft flesh, tingling and naïve, leaving me too, fouled with odor, like that of a rotting carcass of a fish quickly filling the tunneling of my ears echoing loud above my tears his laughter is ringing the rotting scent is engulfing slowly, it’s consuming a young child, in me?

Who am I? When did I get so weak, I truly cannot stand any longer, sir, forgive me.

Sir. But I just cannot stop the ringing and the laughing it burns and I can’t stop it, the collapsing my lungs it burns my heart, from choking on the bile, scratching at my throat, please remove this from my throat It burns.

I can’t tell you, because I can’t breath but why did you do this to me ring, ring, ring the child’s crying within me I can feel the pain, of everything I cannot escape you as I shrivel up, I am dying “You’re stronger than that” but I’m not 20

and it occurs to me, for the first time that no one really knows me and I need to be sick, I’m trying but I can’t when did I last eat.

I can’t.

The tunnel’s getting darker, and the ringing, it’s buzzing the little girl, she’s scared “Help!”

Help…

No one can hear me even though I’m screaming I can’t breathe everyone one is looking down, into me They stare.

They’re judging me, all of these mirrors.

The water is deep, it’s flooding my lungs.

It burns.

She’s reaching for me, deep but she’s shaking, and I’m sinking and we’re sobbing I can’t do it anymore I close my eyes, and enjoy the silent peaceful humming Black noise, living under my burnt eyelids, burning with them, it’s him.

She’s stopped crying, watching the fish swim.

I’ve stopped crying too.

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Fear Essay By Jennifer Jones I wasn’t sure if I was going to do this. I wasn’t sure I COULD do this; I’m still not… But I’ll write it out anyway and see how I feel at the end of it. This is going to be hard for some of you to read, those who care about me and those who are going through similar things especially. FYI: I currently feel like someone is squeezing my heart; like I may vomit or burst into tears. That’s the fear I have come to know quite well.

This is going to be a very honest, hard, ugly letter, to anyone and everyone who chooses to read it (Gulp).

You see, I have a confession to make: I am not perfect. I am not as strong as you may think I am. I do not have a wonderful, perfect life. I am human…a very messed-up one in fact (in my opinion).

Lots of people have been open and honest on-line about depression and anxiety, and that’s great! It’s wonderful. I love reading them. But no one seems to take it “all the way.”

You see: I HAVE WANTED TO DIE. I have wanted to take “the easy way out.” Don’t worry, I don’t mean today… but recently. January through February 2017 I tried to ignore it, until I finally had a total breakdown.

It started in middle school. That’s a rough time for any kid. My home life was very stressful and I had (still have) a terrible self-esteem. I started crying every night… which turned into every day… until one day I just stopped. I could no longer cry, even if something really bad happened I just didn’t have the energy. It was like I had literally cried my heart out and I no long possessed tears. Sometime along the way, it happened.

I stared fanaticizing about my death. I’d walk down the hall at Brookville Middle School and imagine myself lying by the drinking fountain holding an empty bottle of pills, overdosed, dead (if I did that I may change my mind and be terrified and want to stop but it could be too late). I’d be at home and picture myself hanging from my closet (I don’t like the feeling of suffocating), or lying on my bed covered in blood from slitting my wrists open (gross). Shooting myself (that’s selfish; don’t want anyone having to it clean up). After all, I was alone in the world, no one would care. I knew that wasn’t true, but that’s how I felt. And it scared the HELL out of me. I learned to rationalize my way out of things, as shown previously in parentheses. I didn’t want to tell anyone about this, I knew it wasn’t normal. I didn’t want something to be wrong with me. I thought I was going crazy and if I told anyone, they would have me locked up forever. Just ignore it.

Pretend everything is fine, then it will be (HA* insert heavy sarcasm).

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Now let me be clear here: I never did self-harm or actually attempt suicide, but the thought alone was terrifying.

Finally I told my mother. That was rough. Naturally she made me tell my dad… in a public restaurant. Now I imagine hearing your child tell you this would be very hard to digest, he didn’t take it well to say the least.

I was diagnosed with depression and started taking anti-depressants. I knew something was wrong with me but I felt like taking medication made it more real. So I would stop taking it randomly when I started to feel better. I’d try to ignore it when it started to come back, as if as long as I ignored it, I was fine.

That’s my favorite word: fine.

In high school I really was fine, for a little while, un-medicated and all. I had a boyfriend who I was over-the-moon in love with, a few close friends and all was right with the world… Until, it came to a violent, screeching, halt. Boyfriend moved away for college, we grew apart, and he broke up with me. I stopped eating for a about a week. Cried nonstop and slept in my free time. Finally I sort of picked myself up, started hanging out with people who were doing things that I shouldn’t have been doing and I started to selfmedicate and trying to find the next guy who could fill the void I now felt in my heart.

Yes, I am aware this is extreme and dramatic in hindsight, but I was a teenager. Not the most rational times of anyone’s life.

The sad thing was, looking back; I wasn’t self-medicating to feel “good” or even “mellow.” I was self-medicating to feel nothing at all. Sometimes I still long for that feeling. The feeling to feel nothing at all. I wanted to not worry about if I made it through the day or not. I wanted to stop thinking because my thoughts were always racing, always conflicting. It helped me to sleep, to calm the thoughts & numb my feelings. I wanted things to just end but I didn’t want to give up at the same time.

I never really physically abused myself, but the mental abuse I put myself through was painful enough. Unfortunately I still do; I’m working on it.

Maybe these thoughts are familiar to you as well: I’m not pretty enough. Difficult. I’m not skinny enough. I’m not funny enough. Stupid.

I’m too clingy but I’m too distant. I have a child, no one will want me. I’m a whore. I cry too much. I’m not happy enough. Fat. I work too hard. I’m intimidating. Unlovable.

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Ugly. Not a good enough mother. Not working hard enough (even though I have 2-3 jobs at a time plus school). Undesirable number one. I’m not ladylike enough. I AM NOT ENOUGH!!! Bu I’m simultaneously too much. The list goes on and on until I’m lying on the floor crying so hard I can’t breathe. It’s a mental beating that I bring on myself.

I am constantly fighting myself, my own thoughts. It’s an invisible battle I fight almost constantly. Sometimes I’m okay; I think I’m safe for months, even a year. But it always comes back. Fear squeezes my heart, suffocates me. I know it’s coming, I try to fight it, but it always wins. The darkness always creeps back in eventually. September November 2015 I had to leave work on several occasions to avoid breaking down in public. I’d say for a solid month I had to talk myself out of crashing my car on purpose.

Rationalization included: My daughter needs me. I need her. What if I hit someone else?

What if it doesn’t work and I’m paralyzed or horribly disfigured, then I’d be in an even worse state. Finally I fought through it, but it came back with a vengeance Jan-Feb of this year. I fought a good fight, trying to ignore the struggle. I didn’t want to get out of bed – but I did. I didn’t want to go to work – but I did. I didn’t want to parent – but I did. I didn’t want to work out or go to church- but I did. People would ask me how I was and I’d plaster on that fake smile and reply “Fine. How are you?” while avoiding eye contact at all cost so they couldn’t see through my façade, so I wouldn’t let my guard down and tell them the truth and the truth was: I was not fine. I was not okay. It took a volcano of emotions that I could no long hold back for me to finally lose it in front of a group of amazing ladies at church. I cried so much that night that my eyes were swollen and sore the next day. At that moment, I saw that I wasn’t the only one holding things in. This brings me to the purpose of this letter: To Whom It May Concern I was never abused or beaten or deprived. My parents and family have always loved me.

I don’t know why I think the things I do. But after that breakdown at church I saw there were others. There were others going through a similar internal battle that I was, afraid to tell someone, to ask for help. I see it on Facebook too, subtle cries for help. But fear is there to stop you. I just want you to know that no matter what you are going through, you are not alone. That is a lie. Please don’t believe it. You are not crazy or weird or useless or unlovable. People care about you, they love you and are there to help you, all you have to do is speak up and say: I am not okay.

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Take a break if you need to. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Care for yourself. Things will get better.

Always keep Hope. Always keep fighting, because things will get better.

I have finally submitted to God and he has given me strength. I have always hoped that things would get better “someday”, but now I KNOW that they will, no matter how bad they may get. He loves you and He is always with you, even if you don’t yet believe; He is waiting for you.

If you need someone to talk to and you don’t know where to go, feel free to contact me.

You don’t have to go through this alone, we can do it together. Don’t let fear hold you back.

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Dejection, Someone Scratch My Brain Photograph by Sidney Trasser

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6:14 Poem by Emma Sule If I had remembered to call home, I could have delayed you approximately 6 minutes and 14 seconds.

I’d ask about what you needed from the grocery.

Mundane small talk but not much more.

Perhaps you’d mention that you were just heading out, had to get going before you were late.

With an “I love you” and a click, you’d be on your way.

6 minutes and 14 seconds later, making all the difference.

Today if I remembered to call home, I would be met with the echoing blare of a dial tone and the eerie voice of a telephone operator announcing that your number is no longer in service.

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Unknown: Myself?

Poem by Sidney Trasser Wilted resemblance of a softer time My heart aches of existential death Despair seeps from my pores, spiked with uncertain regret.

I ponder.

Who is the soul that inhabits this corpse?

Is there nothing more‌ Assume, life is a mere speck That with an exhale we are all loss, We are not remembered.

We are not here at all.

My chest heaves, Dry sharp breaths.

Within my lungs I carry the only understanding.

There is none.

My mind, like the death of a star, There are only two options, The death or the rebirth‌ Black holes form, It is my mind of fire, and my soul that is trapped, it is abstract.

We sit, I wonder.

There is more to life than to live, but do we even really exist?

We are here but alone, because life is unknown.

We travel and search, leading lives of pure research, but the answers are questions, and from there, only despair.

Our minds are wired, to see and to consume everything, as it sits.

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We refuse to admit that we may not exist.

I breath, but I am dead before I form who am I. What dimension do I live in and where did my soul begin, but from me I find nothing deeper beneath my skin.

I scratch, and I pick.

I bleed.

My sense of color is lost the minute I let the voices in.

Death is the beginning.

Life is the end.

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Mind on Fire Photograph by Sidney Trasser

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First Aid Poem by Danielle Watkins Apologies are bandages Wrapped around a wound They stop the bleeding for a while But are pulled off all too soon

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The Diary of Beatrice Wenkel Fiction by Josh Zeller For four decades after the diary had been discovered, no one at Central Lowland University had wanted to touch it. In 1939, Dr. C. Laertes Couch, a Dickens scholar of little repute and a professor at that University, had gone to the estate sale of the late literary patroness Beatrice Wenkel, who had lived in London until 1920, when she had turned 80; she had then decided to retire to Lowland, Ohio, to be close to her niece. Also a devotee of George Meredith, Dr. Couch had hoped to secure a signed copy of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, which it was rumored Beatrice had received from the author himself. For three hours he carefully perused the shelves of the Great Lady, but did not find the treasure he was seeking; clenching his fists and narrowing his eyes, he irrationally suspected that his execrable nemesis Dr. Crown (of Upper Lowland University) had gotten his psychoanalytical mitts on it before he had arrived on the scene (he had not been inclined to like Dr. Crown ever since his book Christianity, Consanguinity, and Criminality in Dickens (1931) had been blasted apart by that esteemed professor in the Fall 1932 issue of Literary Notes: Critical and Clerical).

After three hours of frustrated searching, he came suddenly upon a row of quite thick, leather-bound volumes, the first of which said in gilt lettering upon the spine, “DIARY, Volume I.” Diary of whom, he wondered. Opening the first volume, he saw, in an elaborate cursive script, “The Diary of Beatrice Theodora Wenkel (Also Known As “Wenkie”) / VOLUME I / Kept from 1 Jan. to 31 Dec. 1858.” After a few minutes of semi-interested perusal, he put it back, and flipped through the rest of the books on the shelf. They all possessed the same inscription, but with different volume numbers and dates, each making up exactly one year. He looked at the shelf below, and found that it was filled with more of Beatrice’s diary—and the shelf below that, and the shelf below that, etc. until, approximately four bookcases later, he had counted 81 volumes. Now he was intrigued.

“You won’t find much in that,” said a bored voice behind him. “I presume you’re a scholar from Upper Lowland?”

Dr. Couch whipped around and firmly intoned, “Central Lowland, thank you.” He found himself faced with a young woman, approximately 20 years old, who wasn’t in the least phased by the professor’s sharpness. He didn’t ask her how she knew he was a scholar, because that was who he was to the very core of his soul, and he always assumed that this was obvious to those around him.

“Ah. Well, what interest do you have in my great-aunt’s diary? She kept it from the day she turned 18, you know. January 1st, her birthday was—she got to celebrate it along with the coming of the New Year.”

Dr. Couch’s eyes widened. “18, you say? Didn’t Miss Wenkie—er, Wenkel, die at the age of 99?”

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“Oh, yes. And every volume you see on that shelf represents one year of her life from 18 onwards. Auntie never slackened one single day in writing her life down, and told me that she always wrote exactly 1,000 words per entry, give or take.”

Later on, after Dr. Couch had hauled all 81 volumes to his office (it took several trips in between classes) he had done a calculation on the back of one of his class notebooks, and found that the woman had written about 365,000 words a year times 81 years, for an approximate total of 29,565,000 words written. Her diary was nearly 30 times longer than that of Samuel Pepys’.

“I should like to take a look, perhaps, at these volumes, Miss—?” inquired Dr. Couch.

“Actually, it’s ‘Mrs.’ now. Fineman. I just got married last month, only a short time before auntie passed.”

“Then I congratulate you, Mrs. Fineman.” It didn’t take him long to get right to the point. “I—how much would you want for these 80 odd volumes?”

“Just take them.”

Dr. Couch’s heart leapt as it had never leapt before (because it had never leapt, ever). He wasn’t really sure why; it’s not as if he had discovered the private diary of Sappho under a patch of sand while beachcombing in Lesbos. But it was true that Beatrice had known them all, from Thackeray to James. There was the great possibility of attractive details within, passages which would get him just that much closer to the great authors of the past. But first, convention demanded that he demure.

“Oh. But—Mrs. Fineman. You don’t want to hold on to them as a memento of your great-aunt? She was a woman of even greater importance.”

“I’ve tried to read those things, but can’t make out her handwriting. And I can’t say that 81 leather-bound books will match with the décor in my new house. Anyway, Wenkie was sharp to the very end, practically the same girl she was when she started that damned diary, only a little wiser. I won’t forget her easily, and want someone who can actually make something of them to just take them.”

“If you’re absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely sure.” **** That night, Dr. Couch sat in his office after dining alone on roast beef—during his 62 years, he had known only two types of cooking: his mother’s, and that of his university’s cafeteria. He refused to go to trendy restaurants or clubs (in this small town, there were none), because they were frivolous environments that distracted him from his work. There was nothing more fun for him than reading, and, above all, understanding.

The best Christmas Break of his life had been spent reading Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison in its bloated, 1600-page entirety, just so that he could better understand Cowper’s far shorter Ode. And now, just as eagerly, he began to read the first entry of Beatrice Wenkel’s massive diary, dated 1 January 1858: 33

“I knew not what I wanted for my Eighteenth Birthday, and so left the choice to dear Father, who made his decision in the form of a Book: leather-bound, ivory-paged, beautifully inscribed. He said that I might use it as a Diary, in which to record the ‘quotidian happenings of my precious little life.’ In response to this thoughtful Gift, I kissed lightly that pronounced Brow of his, furrowed by many hours of deep thought and contemplation.

“Now, to fulfill the purpose of this Book. After I was awoken by sweet birdsong, I began my day as I have always, with Prayer. Whilst communing with God, I could scarcely concentrate, for the excitement of the day screwed my thoughts awry, and—” Here, in the middle of the sixth sentence, Dr. Couch felt something that the other two people who would eventually read the diary felt years down the line: despair, and a decreasing desire to live. She could write, certainly, but she was so very, very dull.

Reading on, Couch saw that she didn’t discuss books or ideas, which served to enliven many other diaries of notables that would have been intolerably dull otherwise.

But Dr. Couch wasn’t defeated that easily—he had read Sir Charles Grandison for fun, after all. Working into the wee hours of the morning, he made it to the entry for 1 May 1858, and was reading, “O! May has come, and with its arrival a spectacular array of Wildflowers; as I picked and picked and picked away the morn—giggling all the way—I found myself wishing for not just two hands, but three or four or more, for there were so very many flowers, and I wanted to pick them all—,” when he suddenly leaned back and vomited a geyser of blood. Dazed, he remained sitting for a few seconds, before collapsing forward onto his desk. Indeed, he was dead. **** For forty years, Dr. Couch’s untimely death was the most popular legend of Central Lowland University. Well, it’s only legend. To be sure, he had died of advanced stomach cancer, which the oblivious scholar had been suffering through blindly, calling it indigestion due to overwork. But his students said that he had been killed by Wenkie; her writing had made him vomit his life’s blood away. And they told this to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, so that the legend, rather than lukewarm Dickens scholarship, became his legacy. One of these great-grandchildren listened to the story with more fascination than most. As she got older and knew that she loved and wanted to study literature, it became her ambition to read Beatrice Wenkel’s diary. After Marianne Brodczyk had become known as a good and trustworthy undergraduate student at Central Lowland (Class of 1980), and was starting her PhD there, she finally, in 1980, gained access.

When she made it to the 1 May entry in volume 1, she took in the browned blood spatter on the page, and shivered as she read; she saw several decades of war, civil unrest, and oppression flash before her eyes. Then, taking a deep breath, she turned the page and read on. She had surpassed the cursed barrier. She would make it.

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As Marianne finished her coursework, and began looking forward to her dissertation, she decided to analyze Beatrice’s diary using a contemporary feminist lens, citing Beatrice’s independence, her never having married, her great prominence as a literary hostess. Now that she was past the legendary bloodstain, she knew that what she was reading had probably not been read by anyone else (not even, she often suspected, Beatrice herself), and thereby felt powerful.

The despair that Dr. Couch had felt began to touch her, though, when she finally got to read accounts of those authors which Beatrice had hosted, starting around volume twelve at the age of thirty. At twenty-four, she had been introduced to William Makepeace Thackeray by her father Theodore Wenkel. The experience had been so incredibly awe-inspiring for her, that that day she had set her heart on literary hostess-ing, which became possible six years later when a large sum of money was left to her upon the sudden death of her father. He had been a noted literary critic and lecturer in his day, made famous by his numerous essays on seventeenth century English literature which he had collected into the single, best-selling volume entitled Jacobean Literature and Drama: An Explication (1862). (It was the rave reviews of his contemporaries that led to its great success, rather than the sexy title.) The first writer his daughter had hosted was a sickly and aging Charles Dickens, whom she served tripe and onions. Marianne excitedly read on, but to her dismay, found that Beatrice conveyed little to nothing of what they had talked about. An excerpt: “Today Mr. Charles Dickens—author of the progressing EDWIN DROOD—came to dine at my Home at half-past six, along with the Financier Mr. Laughton, the Lawyer Mr. Gentuille, and an aspiring Novelist whom I have taken under my wing [Who, damn it?]. We feasted upon tripe and onions, and discoursed merrily all the way. The Great Man left at about seven past eight with many Apologies and Entreaties, for he was feeling quite Ill; the rest of the Party followed about an hour later. I said my prayers after they left, and climbed into bed, where I now write, before drifting off to Morpheus’ Domain.”

These words made up the last 103 of her daily thousand, written as a dull afterthought. It was the typical way that she wrote about such events, Marianne noted with frustration as she read on through Beatrice’s accounts of the Great Georges (Eliot, Meredith, Moore, and Gissing), Thomas Hardy, and Henry James. Venting her frustration to a friend one day, Marianne yelled, “She insists on writing of nothing more than the bare-bones action of her day, from her morning prayers to her evening prayers, and refuses to discuss one, single, goddamned idea!” Beatrice Wenkel had truly heeded her father’s advice to record the “‘quotidian happenings of [her] precious little life.’”

Around 1984—and volume 44—Marianne began to find that other authors more obviously and interestingly fit the critical lens through which she wanted to write.

Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Marianne Moore were all unafraid to discuss ideas.

Before the dawn of 1985, she had left Beatrice behind. **** 35

The last person to read Beatrice Wenkel was actually Marianne’s daughter. Around the same time that Marianne had discovered the modernists (which became the subject of her dissertation), she met a Byron scholar named Arnold Benedict. Treacherously handsome, and a great man of ideas, she promptly fell in love, married him, and became pregnant. If the child was a boy, Arnold insisted that he be named Manfred. Thankfully, it was a girl, and she was christened with the slightly less Romantic name of Ada. One summer years later, when Ada was home from the college she attended out West, Beatrice Wenkel came up as they were comparing their college experiences.

Marianne admitted that the diaries had been a struggle to get through, that she had abandoned her project after four years of intense study. Ada’s curiosity was piqued by this; she asked if she could see them. As an associate professor at Central Lowland University, Marianne had free access to the Archives (no one was exactly guarding them, she knew), and that afternoon took her daughter down to where she had worked over 20 years before.

With goose-bumped pleasure, Ada turned past the bloodstained page of the first volume with her mother looking over her shoulder, explaining its origin. Then she began flipping through the other volumes.

“Didn’t you ever look ahead, mom?” asked Ada as she picked up the final, eightyfirst volume, and flipped to an entry towards the end, dated 1 June 1939.

“No, not really,” she answered. “Because of a silly desire not to give the end away.

And I knew that if I did, the task before me would seem colossal, when it already felt gargantuan. But it all ended up falling apart anyway. And if you just read the diary, you’ll see why.”

Ada picked a passage and read, with some difficulty, because of the handwriting, “This evening I sat at the table and masticated each Bite as slowly as I could prior to Ingestion, but still found that my dentures fell out into the Casserole Dish.” She suddenly felt that infamous despair wash over her. The dullness, the inanity of daily life was nowhere more apparent than in the diary of Beatrice Theodora Wenkel.

“You know, she really was more fun in person,” Marianne continued, grimacing slightly at the words her daughter had read. “I read many letters and diary entries of her contemporaries that painted a picture of a bright and kindly hostess who was very wellread. But they note that she mostly listened and smiled, and never really said anything.

She never attempted to publish anything during her lifetime, or write anything other than her diary. More than anything, her money and support were appreciated.”

Ada, who was not a particularly voracious reader, half-listened to her mother, and waited for her to finish so that she could ask, “But aren’t you curious about the last thing she ever wrote?”

“Well…yes. I mean, I don’t have any intention of plunging back into that mess, but....”

Ada read from the last paragraph of the last entry, dated 30 June 1939: “I am 36

ninety-nine years of age, have seen much, and have met many Persons. Wars have come and gone, and one threatens to break over the Free World once more.

Thankfully, I hear Death calling to me, who is not so far away as Tonight; I shall be glad to exchange the Mortal Plane for the Celestial one, as these agèd bones ache nearly beyond endurance. I must impart before I go—Deathbeds are for Confessions— something which I have told no one. You will remember how I in 1887 entertained Mr. George Meredith, who had been experiencing great Fame since the publication of Diana of the Crossways two years before; I asked him to sign my copy of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, which he did. All night he was rather Gloomy and had been in illhealth; he was still mourning the Death of his beloved Marie, who had Passed On a year prior. I saw that he needed the comfort of a Woman, and begged that he stay after the other guests had left so that I might console him; reluctantly, he agreed. In order to supply this Balm, I proceeded to talk about Literature in a way that I could tell surprised him, for usually I am demure and silent before my guests, so as to in all politeness allow them Room to display their shrewd Intellects. I am sure that he thought I was some terrible Dullard who threw her inheritance at literary Talents without discretion—at those targets which the Critics of Good Taste held up for me. Then, I told him how I had gone as a girl with my father to see Mr. Wallis’ exquisite portrait of Chatterton, for which Mr. Meredith himself had posed, and that I had been quite taken with him ever since (despite the fact that Mr. Wallis had turned out to be a Blackguard). Mr. Meredith then gave me a look that was unmistakable—that night, I took him as my Lover. And you can be sure that George was not so Gloomy nor so Ill after that.”

There the diary ended, without the obligatory mention of evening prayers. Ada (who had never heard of George Meredith) and Marianne looked at each other with their mouths open, in complete shock. Then, they began to laugh, and continued to laugh for five minutes straight, tears streaming down their cheeks. Perhaps Beatrice Wenkel’s precious little life was not so quotidian after all.

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Ricky and Lucy Photograph by Sarah Wenke

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Interior of a Kitchen Poem by Patrick Zopff children’s paintings on the walls thick tempera strokes on sun bleached pages a scarecrow, two birds, a caterpillar watch the sun rise across the fields and wander through glass panes to reach for a spot, the linoleum floor caked with footprints and sorry blemishes the way trees can be cut to any shape but still leave a signature in the grain, in the surface always gave me hope then maybe I too after being shaved away sculpted into something unrecognizable seemingly purposeful will still have those unmistakable waves of fiber grooves of personality hidden behind the branches and sinew carved away in favor of usefulness wood kitchen cabinets always gave me some kind of respite covered in glossy images, prayer cards, shopping lists and as you’d walk into the kitchen i’d wait to see when you’d take note of how I’ve had to change

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Grandma’s Kitchen Essay by Claire Butler Grandma’s house was the oldest on their block on Hancock Street in north Dayton, Ohio. It was the original farm house on a tract of land consisting of hundreds of acres, but now stood in its original early 1900’s location surrounded only by three. The most curious room in the house to a young girl of eight years was the kitchen, frozen in time with its original barn wood flooring, white painted wood cabinetry and shelves and an “icebox” which was nothing more than a 12-inch square hole in the wall, lined with tin, and a door with a broken latch. The only purpose that icebox served in 1963 was a place to hide someone’s Easter basket.

But the thing that stands out in my mind the most about the room was the giant red hand- pump at the kitchen sink. To me, it looked like a fire plug only with a long handle.

The pump produced a forceful stream of cold water into the large basin of the countrystyle kitchen sink. Grandma heated water on her gas stove in a big, black iron pot and added the steamy water to the sink before any chores she had planned, unless she was scrubbing someone’s head. The pump provided an ideal way of rinsing shampoo from one’s hair, but oh my it was freezing cold!

Another curiosity about the room was the old juice extractor which was attached to the wall. It was hard to know when it had been added to the kitchen, but Grandma made good use of it, and so did I. Every morning she made a fresh Mason jar full of her juice and tea mixture to keep in the refrigerator for my grandfather. When I was there in the mornings, I stood on an old wooden stool with peeling paint and squeezed the juices from lemons and oranges by pressing each cut half against the ridged conical reamer that was in the center of the bowl of the juicer. I cranked the arm around and around which rotated the reamer in response. The result was fresh juices combined with pulp and seeds that needed to be strained into the jar before the tea and sugar were added.

The newest, yet still old, appliance in the kitchen was a Frigidaire refrigerator - also with a crank handle that pulled down on in order to open the door. My grandfather was a lab technician in Frigidaire’s Research and Development Department, where he and his team developed the magnetic door closure for the refrigerator. A witness to the Great Depression, he was not one to spend money frivolously, so he never owned a refrigerator with a magnetic catch. I was grateful for that in an odd way, as it would have destroyed the quaint character of the kitchen I so loved.

My grandmother raised a small vegetable garden in the back yard, outside the kitchen door, next to my grandfather’s rose garden. They were both dedicated to their gardens in an obsessive sort of way, so there were always fresh roses in the house through the summer months, and grandma harvested her garden twice per season. I was often asked to help her when canning her green beans, tomatoes and pickles, from the small cucumbers she would pick early for size. She had time-honored recipes for the 40

pickles, both sweet and sour, that had been handed down to her from her own grandmother.

Grandma and I sat for hours at the old, white, enameled metal kitchen table with tiny red flowers painted on it, stringing and snapping green beans, or slicing baby cucumbers, but we were not at all bored. The kitchen table was in front of a large window that overlooked the creek that ran alongside the house. The creek had large oaks, a weeping willow and one of the sturdiest oaks had a thick, nautical rope hanging from one of its limbs with a large, round wooden disk at the swinging end of it. This homemade swing allowed the children in the neighborhood to swing across the creek from one side to the other. The creek’s deepest end was only about four feet, but still over the heads of some of us! Grandma and I watched the kids swinging over that creek, guessing who might fall into the water. After a summer, you knew who could swim and who could not.

So far as I know, no one ever drowned there, but I’m sure that in today’s litigious world, no such swing would ever exist.

The thing I adored most about that kitchen was its old wooden screen door, which was always open to some degree no matter what the season. In the summer, when my grandfather was working in his “shop,” an extension of the garage which was built sometime in the 50’s, there would be a steady stream of people going to and from his shop. He repaired radios and televisions as a side job, and the walls of his shop were lined with manila envelopes with the schematics of almost any modern gadget, including vacuum cleaners. Back in the day, when people came to talk with my grandfather, they would first come to the front door of the house to greet my grandmother, which was the polite thing to do. She would most often lead them through the house and into the kitchen, where they would exit the house through the screen door. It was the slamming of that door that became a comforting sound to me…a sound I tried, as an adult, to duplicate in my own kitchen by purchasing an old, wooden screened door at a local architectural antiquities shop in Cincinnati. I do not know why, so I cannot explain what it was about that sound that comforted me, but it was as intoxicating for me as the fragrance of that first pot of morning coffee.

After my grandparents were gone, I kept an eye on that house looking for signs of changes to the property or the house for years. I have no illusions that subsequent owners kept the kitchen the way it was; it was antiquated even in the 60’s. Now, a recent search on Google Earth shows a barren piece of land where the house once stood. It was a wooden, two-story structure that, I imagine, became too old to maintain. The creek is still there, and evidence of the old wire fences that once surrounded the property and were supports for Grandma’s sweet pea vines, were still vaguely visible. While I was searching for evidence of my grandfather’s beloved rose garden, I could hear that kitchen screen door slam…if only in my mind.

41

Cedars Bleeding in the Heat Fiction by Carolyn Kesterman The rare Irish sun was leaning toward the Western horizon when Ailish saw a new port come into view. Port. A safe sound for some, but not when it meant leaving the bow of the boat where Ailish had learned to worm herself and wrap her arms around the metal as she and her uncle sped along. Now, with the sun turning the sea spray into sprinkles of light, land was the furthest wish from her tired mind.

“Can you give me a hand, love?” her Uncle Eoin called, and she pulled herself from the bow to join him in the shelter.

“Do you think you could set the dials for port?” he asked, and even her young tenyear-old mind could pick up on the new way he spoke to her lately, gentle and wary. She put on a smile for him and nodded, making his eyes crinkle the way her mothers’ had.

“Thanks, love.” He took his place at the high captain’s chair and watched.

As Ailish looked at the coordinates and dials, she couldn’t help but think of the last time she had gone through these motions outside her old home of Ballycastle, blissfully unaware of the car bomb that had gone off only an hour earlier. She wished she could go back in time, press a pause button like on those new TVs, and make those carefree moments stay just a little longer. < <<<<>>>> > Three Weeks Earlier “Aye, Captain Ailish, ye must bring the ship to port, where we’ll hide our treasure,” Uncle Eoin said in a pirate accent.

“Aye, aye, Captain Eoin,” his niece said with a laugh, turning the dials.

“We’ve found a great bounty, today,” he said with a nod to the modest net of fish they had caught. His voice slipped back to his real accent. “Won’t your mum and dad be impressed?”

“Do you think we could save some for her to make?”

“Sure, why not? I haven’t stayed for dinner in a while. It’ll be nice to have something other than pub food. Can’t beat sis’s cooking.”

Ailish took the wheel with a grin. She loved when Eoin came to town, with stories that could last all evening and a guitar if they didn’t. It never took much encouragement to get her parents to sing along, and it took less encouragement to get Ailish to dance.

She could see the instrument case out of the corner of her eye, and her feet suddenly felt restless and happy.

Eoin tied them off and they started down the dock to find someone who would buy their fish. As they walked down the weathered wood, though, Eoin’s always-purposeful feet slowed. Ailish looked away from the water to look at his face, then straight ahead to what he was looking at: Ailish’s neighbor was standing at the end of the dock with scared 42

eyes, a tissue in her hand at her side. Eoin put his hand on Ailish’s back and continued walking towards the woman in silence.

“Eoin?” Ailish asked. Her feet faltered on the slippery wood, but Eoin’s hand steadied her. She felt an overwhelming urge to jump into the water.

Their feet came to rest in front of Ailish’s neighbor, who bent down to be more at level with the girl. The busy harbor suddenly seemed silent.

“Ailish,” she began, her voice sad and gentle. “I have some bad news to tell you, darlin’. Some very bad people put a car bomb in the street, and your parents were there.

They were killed, Ailish, sweetheart.”

Ailish looked all around, studying her neighbor’s face, the buildings nearby, the rope on the ground beside her, and finally Eoin’s red eyes.

“No,” Ailish mouthed, and Eoin’s hand on her back pressed her into his side as her neighbor handed her the tissue.

“IRA Car Bomb in Ballycastle: Civilian Couple Killed,” the papers read all over Northern Ireland the next day. “No End in Sight for the Troubles.” < <<<<>>>> > Ailish shook her head away from the memory, preferring not to think about the rest at that moment. She saw the firetrucks and debris enough when she was alone with her thoughts. She looked to Eoin and nodded to the dials, asking if they were correct.

“Couldn’t be better. You’ve got sea blood in you.”

She put her hands on the cool metal of the wheel and waited as they slowly neared a new set of docks, these slightly less crowded than Ballycastle’s and definitely less crowded than the last they had docked at temporarily. < <<<<>>>> > Eoin had stayed in the house with Ailish for two weeks as friends paid their respects and flowers were sent in from strangers. When her tears had become less frequent and her stomach a little hungrier, Eoin sat her down in the living room.

“Ailish, I want to talk with you,” he said. “You see, there’s two reasons for what I’m about to say. One, I need to make money to live, and I can’t do that unless I start fishing and delivering again. Two, and more important, I don’t want you to have to see the ash on that street every time you’re in town and feel threatened. So, I’m proposing that I take you to live with your da’s sis, your Aunt Anna, since she’ll know how to take care of you far better than me, and you’ll be in a new, peaceful town, and I’ll be able to work again.

How does that sound?”

“Can’t I live on the boat with you?”

“Ailish, you know I love having you on the boat, but it would never work if you were there all the time. Besides, you have to go to school. I’d still visit from time to time.”

43

Ailish thought for a second. The future was hard to wrap her head around, with mum and da not being there. Eoin had always been the closest person to her after her parents, but if he couldn’t watch her, she supposed it didn’t matter where she went.

“Then that sounds okay,” she said.

“Is it? I mean, you’ll have to say goodbye to all your friends and get rid of your house. That’s a lot to ask for.”

“It’s okay. I don’t want to see them anymore.”

“Your friends?”

“The bad people.”

Eoin nodded and flexed his jaw. He reached out a hand, held it midair for a moment, then patted her shoulder.

“Neither do I, love. Neither do I.” After another week, the house was put back up for rent and a chest of memories for Ailish was put on the boat. Several days later, they were coming into port at her Aunt’s town, Ailish’s hands cold on the wheel as she stared at the crowded docks.

“I’ll have to take the wheel, now. Too busy,” Eoin said, and Ailish stepped aside to climb up his high captain’s chair and watch him guide the boat into a space beside the larger vessels.

“We’ll leave your trunk here,” Eoin said after paying for dock space. “Can you hand me that map? Thanks, love. We should find her in a jiffy. You know, I think this’ll be a nice town for you; just look at the – ” Whatever he had been about to say was cut short as he felt Ailish’s hand wrap around his arm and her head tuck safely under his elbow. He looked up from the map and stopped walking.

At the end of the docks, the side of a building was covered with an IRA mural.

Eoin resumed his pace but not his optimistic tone. They entered the town and walked up the main street, looking for signs of hope in this new town. Ailish smiled and relaxed when she saw an ice cream shop, and her hand let go of Eoin as she saw two girls her age playing with a ball on a side street. As they turned onto the next street, though, her hand found his arm again.

Up ahead lay a modest church with half-burnt saplings lining charred steps, their bare branches gnarled and black. Burn patterns spiraled out from an oval shape near the pavement, the unmistakable and familiar outline of where a car had once been.

Eoin’s hand covered hers on his arm.

The dark mood was still hanging over them when they found the house, even though it should have been a comforting sight. It was just far enough away from the center of town to pass for suburbs, and there was a nice healthy garden in the front, bright pink roses weaving below the windows. The sort of place that should be perfect to start a new life in, if one didn’t know what lay nearby.

44

“There, this is a bit more comforting, don’t you think?” Eoin said with a nod to the flowers, and they walked up the path to knock on the door.

Aunt Anna was thrilled to see them, and as she took them into the parlor, she barraged her quiet niece with questions and her thoughts on the funeral service.

“I just can’t believe Seanie’s gone,” she said, finally slowing her pace a little. “You must be to bits over Mairead, Eoin.”

“Aye.” She turned to Ailish, took her hands, and looked her deep in the eyes. “You mustn’t lose hope, dear. Your mum and da are smiling on you.”

“I know. I can feel them.”

Her aunt smiled and rubbed the top of Ailish’s head. “Bless your heart, bless your heart. That they are, child; smiling. And you’re lucky to have family here on Earth that care about you and about the cause.”

Eoin leaned forward at the last word. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, Davey and I are heavily involved in the cause as well, Eoin, never fear.”

“Sean and Mairead weren’t involved in any of the Troubles. They were bystanders, civilians.”

“Oh? Well, I know they were on our side, if not involved. They were good Christian people.” She turned back to Ailish. “It’s the memory of people like them that we’re fighting for, dear, for the good of all people to come, like you.”

Ailish nodded stiffly.

Her a unt’s husband, Davey, came in, and the conversation was directed to regreeting everyone for a while. Once the conversation had been depleted, Eoin stood.

“Well, we just thought we’d come visit you two. Ailish needed a little breather from everything. I suppose we’ll be going, then.”

“Oh, so soon? You’re welcome to stay, if you’d like,” the aunt said.

“I thank you for asking, but that’s alright. I can already tell that this was a helpful visit. We’ll see you again soon.”

Once they were away from the house, Ailish looked up at Eoin, her eyes full of questions.

“Why’d you do that?”

“This town, her comments about the ‘cause,’ it all spells out danger to me. We’ll figure out somewhere else for you to go, but it isn’t here. I can’t stand this damn fighting.”

“Thank you,” Ailish said, and she put her hand around his arm again as they walked down to the docks. < <<<<>>>> > Ailish guided the boat up to the dock, and Eoin jumped out to tie them off.

She turned the boat motor off. “Did I do it alright?”

“Perfect. Sea blood, I told you.”

45

He hoisted her up onto the dock with one hand, eliciting the smile he wanted from her. On the dock, she turned and looked out at the water with the sun’s setting rays coloring it.

“It’s so pretty,” she said. “Is that why you became a fisherman?”

“You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that,” Eoin said, resting a boot on one of the dock legs and following her gaze. “Yes, in a way. I became a fisherman because I wanted to live on a boat, and I wanted to live on a boat because I loved the sea.”

She looked up at him. “Me, too.”

For a few seconds, Eoin had a look of pride on his face, the sort of look a father might have. But as always, something changed, and he shook his head and turned back towards the shore.

Halfway down the dock, though, they heard a voice come from one of the other boats.

“Eoin? That you?”

“Declan?” Eoin said. “Good to see you, mate.” The man named Declan jumped up onto the dock and clapped hands with him.

“You fancy a drink? We were going up in a few.”

“Actually,” Eoin began, twisting to the side to see Ailish standing behind him, not exactly hiding but not exactly not.

“Well, hello there,” Declan said, bending down. “Didn’t see you, darlin’. Who are you?”

“This is Ailish, sis’ daughter. She’s staying with me for a while.”

Declan winced and clapped Eoin’s shoulder. “I was so sorry to hear what happened, Eoin. Father Tom remembered her in the mass that Sunday. Tears, mate.”

“Thank you.”

“She’s can still come with us. Ryan’s got no problems against kiddos in the pub.”

Eoin looked lost. Taking care of a niece every once in a while had less responsibilities than taking care of a daughter full time, and Ailish knew that.

“We can go to the pub. I don’t mind,” she said. She wanted to see his smile as much as he wanted to see hers.

“Oh? Okay. Thanks, love,” he said.

When they reached the pub and walked inside, they were greeted with a chorus of Eoin’s name as everyone saw him. There were expressions of sympathy and free drinks promised by more than one barkeep. Ailish was intrigued to see how popular he was. She had often wondered what his life was like when he wasn’t visiting Ballycastle.

It was a long walk to the other end of the pub as everyone greeted them in turn.

Most of them acknowledged Ailish’s presence in some way like nodding or saying hello, but a few of them knelt down to talk to her for a second or ruffle her hair. For the first 46

time in weeks, Ailish didn’t feel threatened in the least. Everyone wanted to be friendly, and no one talked of The Troubles.

A woman with cropped black hair and tattoos on her arm came up to them, and Ailish assumed she wasn’t supposed to have noticed as the woman slid her hand into Eoin’s for just a second and brushed her lips past his cheek as they greeted. So Eoin had a sweetheart? Ailish grinned and looked away. Her mum had always pestered him, but he’d never said. If she were really looking over them, she was going to have a good laugh, Ailish thought.

Eoin’s lady friend asked him something, and Eoin seemed to thank her. Then she turned to Ailish, said her name was Kate, and asked if she’d like some dinner while Eoin talked to his friends. Ailish nodded and followed her through the crowd to the bar, where Kate hoisted her up onto a stool and asked an elderly man behind the counter to get her some food.

Ailish was staring at Kate’s arm when she turned back to her, making the woman laugh.

“I’m guessing you’ve never seen a woman with tattoos?” she asked.

“I’ve just never seen them up close.”

Kate’s eyebrows went up. “Your uncle has tattoos.”

“Under his sleeves.”

“Oh, I see. Well, he has this one here,” she said, pointing to a sun on her shoulder.

“We got them at the same time.”

Eoin’s chuckle made them turn around with a jump. “Are you corrupting my niece, showing her your tattoos, Kate?”

“And what if I am? Girl needs the influence of a strong woman.”

“I’d make fun, but I know you’d belt me so hard I flew out to sea,” he said, then turned to Ailish. “She get you some food?”

Kate nodded. “They’re bringing it right out. Fish and chips.”

“Good, good. Well, if you need me, Ailish, I’ll be right over here.”

“She’ll be fine, Eoin. She’s amongst friends,” Kate said, and she poked Ailish teasingly on the shoulder before walking away with Eoin to join Declan and some of the others.

There was plenty of entertainment in the pub that evening, that was for sure. The whole lot of them started to sing, two men had an impromptu arm-wrestling match, and the elderly barkeep said silly jokes to Ailish every time he walked past her, smiling a toothless grin each time he got a chuckle. After she had finished her food, though, she started to wonder what she should do. Looking down at the clean white napkins in a holder in front of her, she climbed down from the stool and went to ask Eoin if he had a pencil so she could draw.

But as she came up behind him and his friends, she heard their conversation and stopped.

47

“So are you going to get a house, now?” one of the strangers asked.

“No,” Eoin said, “She’s just with me temporarily.”

“Oh? Taking her to family?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, soon as I can decide where the best place is.”

“Maybe it’s with you,” Declan said. “She’d have lots of fun.”

Eoin shook his head and Ailish’s heart sank. “Nah,” he said. “It wouldn’t work.”

“You don’t want to give up your freedom, that it?” the first stranger asked.

“No. Well, maybe a little, but that’s not all. She’d be bored being on the boat all the time, and I’m used to a certain routine, and then there’s school.” He sighed. “I’m just not the parenting sort. I’m the big brother, the funny, eccentric uncle. I used to love visiting, but I just can’t see myself doing it full time.”

Ailish disappeared back into the crowd before any of them could notice her, and she stood by one of the windows, looking out to the now-dark sea. Why couldn’t things be so simple in an adult’s mind, she wondered, playing with a lock of her hair. If Eoin could just realize that he was already a parent figure to her, that she felt safe with him, that he did teach her things. Why did the world have to be so complicated?

Looking out at the ocean, she could feel it calling to her. Land no longer felt like home, not after the bomb. Land meant fire, hateful murals, violence. Ocean meant adventure, beauty, peace. Whoever Eoin took her to live with, they might not let her play in the ocean. They might not even live by the water at all. She’d be stuck on hateful, troubling land, Eoin only visiting once in a blue moon, and the ocean would be only a distant memory as the world burned around her.

She turned away from it. Staring out at it would only hurt, and she desperately wanted to be rid of hurt. She flitted back through the crowd to get to her lonely barstool again, but just as she passed the doorway, she ran right into a large man entering the pub.

“I’m sorry,” she said immediately, and the man’s angry look softened.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he said, his slurred speech suggesting that this wasn’t the first pub he’d visited that night. “No problem at all – ” He stopped and stared, his face confused as he looked at something just below her own gaze. “What. Is. That?” he asked, poking her in the collarbone. She reached up and grabbed at her throat, realizing what he had seen. It was a Saint Agnes necklace.

“You’re a ruddy Taig,” he shouted, and she flinched at the derogatory name for Catholics. She opened her mouth to say something about being peaceful, but his arm had already wound to the side and the back of his hand sped towards her face.

Ailish sat up on the ground with dazed wide eyes. It had happened too fast to entirely register. She blinked and looked up to see Eoin standing protectively in front of her, his pocket knife out at his side.

“You touch her again and I’ll gut you like a fish,” Eoin said.

Ailish watched the people in the pub adjust their footing as they prepared to back Eoin up.

48

“Get out,” the elderly man behind the counter said. The drunken man slowly walked out of the pub, muttering something under his breath about Taigs before the doors closed behind him.

Eoin sheathed the knife and knelt down to look at the side of Ailish’s face. Kate was there, too, and she dabbed a napkin on the dew of a glass and pressed it against Ailish’s face. Eoin checked the wound and whispered comforts in Gaelic which she couldn’t understand. The concern in his eyes almost made up for any sadness she had felt over the conversation she’d overheard earlier.

“I think I should take her back to the boat,” Eoin said to the others.

“Nonsense. Take her up to a room upstairs, no charge,” the elderly barkeep said.

“Better to have a nice soft bed after a scare like that.”

“I’m alright,” Ailish said.

“It’s no trouble, lassie,” the barkeep said, and she flinched noticeably at the t-word.

Eoin picked her up without another word and thanked the barkeeper as he led them up the steps to a room.

“I can’t believe that bastard, hitting a child like that,” Eoin muttered as he tucked Ailish into bed. He touched the place where the flesh was torn on her face and winced, shaking his head. “Why can’t those sons of bitches keep the fighting away from kids?”

He took a step away and finally met her eyes, which were watching him warily.

Mum and da had never sworn like that in front of her. His face softened.

“Sorry for the language, love. This IRA nonsense has just got my blood boiling. It’s everywhere; you can’t walk down a street without seeing one of those blasted murals or hearing someone talking about ‘the cause.’ I’m just tired of it.”

“I am, too.”

He nodded stoically and patted her on the head. “Goodnight, love. Sleep tight.” He turned to leave.

“You’re wrong,” she said.

He stopped at the door and looked back with a smirk. “About what?”

“It’s not everywhere. It can’t touch the sea. She wouldn’t let it.”

His eyebrows went up. “No, I guess you don’t see much of The Troubles out at sea, do you?”

“No,” she said, her eyes hard on his face. “It’s the only place I feel safe.”

Eoin’s face turned a strange combination of serious and heartbroken, and he took a step back to her to sit on the edge of the bed. His voice was breathless when he spoke.

“Ailish, I wish,” he began, then started over. “Ailish, if it were that easy, I’d…

Ailish, if I knew it’d do you more good than harm, I’d take you away from this wretched world and keep you on the boat with me forever. But it’s not that easy.”

She looked down. “I’m sorry.”

He chuckled, and there was a teary undertone in his voice. “Don’t be sorry, love; not like that. Believe me, I wish I could keep you. When you and I are out on the boat, 49

it’s like when your mum and I used to go on adventures before she settled down. You’re so much like her, you know. Sometimes I see you out on that bow and think it’s her, just for a moment…”

He suddenly stopped talking, and Ailish looked up to see tears in her uncle’s eyes.

His brow furrowed and he put a fist over his mouth.

“Mairead,” he murmured. He shook his head and lifted his head.

“Oh, Ailish, you’re right, the sea is safe. I can’t bear to know you’re hearing guns and bombs day after day, and I’d kill myself if I got a call one day that you’d been hurt when I could’ve kept you and let you grow up safe and happy.”

Ailish sat up in the bed, her eyes wide.

“I’ll have to figure some stuff out, like what I’d need to do about teaching you myself, and I can see if Kate will let us stay with her when the weather’s bad, if you liked her, and she could be like an aunt to you. It wouldn’t be perfect, but at least you’d be safe and we’d be together.”

Ailish threw her arms around him, and Eoin hugged back with a content chuckle.

“Then we’ll make a go of it, eh, love?”

He stayed a couple minutes longer, then ruffled her hair and said goodnight, turning the light off on his way out.

Ailish smiled and closed her eyes, the sounds from downstairs lulling her away. For the first time in three weeks, no bomb wreckage or burnt streets crept into her thoughts as she tried to fall asleep. There was only sea spray, putting out the fires in her heart.

50

Johnny Cash Meets His Maker Poem by Lindsey Potzick Well I drove on down to Nickajack Cave to lay my body down, to lay my body down and add another layer of dust to that cave and add another soul to that grave of Indians and confederates.

I was aiming to trap my soul so I couldn’t cause anymore hurt.

Well that cave was a labyrinth, impossible to escape.

If I crawled in far enough I’d be swallowed by my hopelessness and despair. I lost my way and when my flashlight burned out I figured I was done for sure.

I’d bet you’d never experienced such an absolute lack of light, an absolute separation from my maker, complete until J.R. You’re hiding, feeling sorry for yourself.

You’re lonely but I am with you, since the beginning, I am.

I know your grit and I know your heart but Boy, you’ve been sweeping sand in the desert.

Some thought you’ve got, thinking you’re in charge of your own destiny.

I left Him but he hadn’t left me and with that clarity I crawled crab-like on bended knees.

After some time I felt a breeze, the breath of life guiding me.

I got out and now I wear black ‘cause I’ve been there, built and destroyed to be brought back.

51

Ty Carter

By Emma Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Dell

52

I Knew What a Six Pack Was Before I Knew Times Tables Poem by Emma Sule I was eight years old when I looked up “beer” in a World Book Encyclopedia.

Trying to understand why my father was so fascinated by the drink, thinking that perhaps I would discover something magical to give reason why he chose it so often.

The encyclopedia was full of words that I didn’t understand.

So I read about bears instead.

It wasn’t until I was twelve that I realized not everyone’s fathers drank like mine.

I was astonished that fathers whom chose soda over alcohol existed and I was jealous.

Fathers that gave hugs and played board games instead of smacks and cursed shouts.

It was almost a daily occurrence a six pack and a candy bar at the local gas station while mom was at work.

Though the sugary high didn’t make up for the way his hazed over eyes filled rage over the simplest thing or the way he ignored when I asked for help with homework or how fast I ran to my bedroom to hide under the covers when he was looking for a fight.

He has two daughters but lives alone.

A cold beer in his hand as he tries to understand Why they refuse to see him.

He has a wife but lives alone.

A cigarette to his lips as he tries to understand why she refused to keep him.

Sitting alone in the dark corner of the room swearing under his breath, it wasn’t his fault 53

it could never be.

Though he knows it was that same poison in a can that broke everything he built but could never love more than a cold drink.

54

Submission Details Initiated in January 2005, Lions-on-Line is a literally collection of works by the students and alumni of Mount St. Joseph University published online with the cooperation of the Liberal Arts Department.

Lions-on-Line is published online twice yearly, during the fall and spring semesters.

When our budget allows, Lions-on-Line goes “in print”. We take submissions during all twelve months of the year.

If you are currently a student or a graduate of Mount St. Joseph and you would like to see your work published, you may submit your work to LOL simply by emailing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction or artwork to LOL@msj.edu. For full submission guidelines, consult our website.

Lions-on-Line is always looking for new staff members. If you’re interested in joining LOL, please contact faculty advisor, Elizabeth Taryn Mason, Ph.D. at the following email address: elizabeth.mason@msj.edu.

Editors and Staff President/Fiction Editor:

Megan Simmermeyer

Treasurer/Creative Nonfiction Editor:

Josh Zeller

Poetry Editor:

Lindsey Potzick

Art Editor:

Sidney Trasser

Club Representative:

Kathryn VandenOever

Assistant Editors:

Penelope Epple Brittany Hein Carolyn Kesterman Emma Sule Sarah Wenke

Faculty Advisor:

Elizabeth Taryn Mason, Ph.D.

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