Silhouette Spring 2018

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This issue is dedicated to Elsie Shabazz, the beloved retired secretary of Shawnee State University's English Department and supporter of The Silhouette.

Thank you for the many years of hard work and dedication to Shawnee and for the joy that was spread to those around you.

Dear Reader, This semester, the Silhouette staff is proud to bring you this assortment of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, covering subjects such as identity, mortality, human desperation, and portraits of life in our surrounding communities. In addition, we have an interview with novelist David Essinger, and a sample of his novel Running Out and a nonfiction piece

by Arnold R. Highfield which chronicles a past landmark establishment here in Scioto County, The American Restaurant. This semester's Editor's Choice is Jaimeson Oakley's piece "Are You Not"; a piece that examines societies' relationship with Self.

This will be my last semester here at Shawnee State University, so, in the tradition of exiting editors before me, I included a few of my own poems. I would like to take this opportunity to thank SSU and the English Department for allowing me to be involved with this publication.

-- Ian Bush

Dear Reader, It is my pleasure to present the Spring 2018 issue of the Silhouette to you and people of the Portsmouth community. It is amazing to see all of the talented artists and writers showcase their work in our magazine, and we had the opportunity to interview with Professor Matt Cram, who teaches Graphic Design at Shawnee State and is a great mentor of mine.

For this semester's Editor's Choice for art, I chose a piece by Nicko Savicz, who is extremely talented in creating imaginative digital illustrations, which shows off his unique style. I hope everyone can enjoy this issue as much as I enjoyed putting everything together. Thank you for al l of the support and submissions we have received.

- -Hannah Burns

Contents Things to Read Are You Not

-8-

Dave Essinger Interview & Excerpt

-9-

Bread

-34-

Professor Matt Cram Interview

-41-

Perspective

-59-

Ca lm Acceptance

-59-

lf Prayer Was Real

-59-

To Dust

-60-

A Parting Note on the Narcan

-61-78-

The Absence of Light

-79-

American Restaurant

Things to See Giant

-1-

Attacked by Im ag in ation

-3-

Kentucky Blue

-5-

Woman in White

-6-

House

-7-

St arry Night

-37-

Princes of Melnibone

-39-

Drawings by Matt Cram

-47-

All Star

-55-

All Star pt. 2

-57-

Editors' Choices

ARE YOU NOT

JAIMESON OAKLEY

Eyes split to each side

in children

a boy

in women.

a girl

Only man

another mess.

and man only.

Foreign language defines

We are miraculous

action

in all that we do

in jaws cut like daggers

in all that we fail.

in breasts shaped like earth.

We are brutes

Grey is never the choice

in natural rank.

with seed

Placeholders

with egg .

in all spaces.

You either are

Choice cut in two

or you aren't.

a boy

Hands carved for man

a girl

to break

another question.

to build

are you?

consistent chaos.

or are you not?

Karma's chastity offers order behind religion in front of God. Light was never seen

8

Dave Essinger: An Interview with the Author

David Essinger wears many hats: besides his literary efforts, he's also an editor of the journal Slippery Elm, a professor of creative writing at the University of Findlay, a father, and a passionate runner. In David Essinger's best known work, Running Out, he examines the sport of long distance running . He recently visited Professor Neil Carpathios' creative writing class and gave a reading, providing the Silhouette with the opportunity to speak with Essinger about his past and current projects.

9

Question: Your novel Running Out is about ultrarunning, and you're obviously passionate about it. Does your work usually involve the sport?

Answer: Yes , I'm a runner myself, and pretty invested in the sport, to the point it kind of offends me when I'm reading something that doesn't take the time to get it right. It's an intense sport with a great community, and I was see ing a lot of good nonfiction being written about it, but not much fiction at all , which shaped some of my decisions when writing the book. I've been a writer for longer than I've been a runner, though, and most of my short fiction has not been about running at all, though it has been my topic of choice for creative nonfiction in recent years- CNF being often so driven by those aspects of the author's life that other people might actually find interesting. Runners are often readers, and running ultras makes for some great stories; that said, when I do write about running, it's important to me that it be relatable to any reader, not just an audience of runners . And my next project is a long post tapocalyptic piece in which teen protagonist Rosa takes she lter from a power blackout in a bunker deep under Wright-Patt Air Force base, and emerges to find to find the world essentia lly... gone. So, not so much racing in that, so far."

Question: With most writing, what's happening on the surface covers some deeper truth . What deeper truth does Running Out have to offer?

Answers: Well, I'm not sure what readers may find in it, but themes on my mind were certainly ambition, guilt, parenthood, and redemption .

More pragmatically, I wanted to provoke thought on how much we can achieve or how long we can really persevere, given the right conditions and motivation . And for those who would never run a step if they can help it, much less train for long distances, I wanted to shine a light on why some of us enjoy it.

10

Question: What would you say running brings to your life, and is there anything that carries over into your writing?

Answer: Ah , so mu ch here! I've given long talks on the convergence of running and writing, and how the qualities that make you good at one transfer to the other. Determination and patience and training and mental perseverance are all important in both , of course, and then there's the simi larity of the meditative state you can get in on a long run or when the writing is flowing well; I think there are some deep neurologica l connections. As for the running itself, often the hour or so I'm out somewhere on a run and unreachable is my favorite part of any day. Haruki Murakami's brilliant What I Talk about When I Talk about Running says all of this in exce ll ent depth, and better than I can, too.

Question: In your latest work, what is the deeper truth?

Answer : I find it counterproductive, even extreme ly dangerous, to consider these issues of theme and message for a work in progress- nothing 's so canned and unenjoyable to read for me as an author is peddling a conscious theme . Once a deeper truth starts to emerge during the drafting and revision process, then it's time to eva luate and emphasize that . Right now, in the post apocalyptic narrative, I'm exp loring topics of governmental collapse, environmental disaster, organized religion and various forms of extremism, and conspiracy theories involving Nikola Tesla, Odin ism, HAARP arrays and EMPs and the Global Seed Vault, and more. So we'l l see where that shakes out, truth-wise .

11

Exerpt from Essinger's new novel: Running Out RUNNING OUT A novel- Chapter One

A mile, two miles below, the landscape scrolled serenely by, an irregular patchwork of conifers and bare deciduous forest where the snow showed through. Occasional lakes and rivers flashed like mirrors. Dan let the vibration of the small aircraft's engine move up his legs through his feet on the floor. His elbow buzzed where it touched the window.

"Down there on the left," the pilot called. "Last paved road in this part of Quebec. Mandatory registration, to drive it. There's more moose down there than people."

Dan pulled the valve on his water bottle, drank a single swallow and snapped it closed with the palm of his hand.

"New gear?" Deb asked idly.

Dan turned his wrist, still not sure if he liked the fit of the bottle's strap over the back of his hand. "Just a race giveaway," he said.

"It's not as nice as yours," he added, without thinking.

She looked away: every little thing was a reminder. Over the last year, she'd fought her way back onto the elite circuit alone, while 12

he trained in the opposite direction, running meaningless trail races.

Her distraction now was justifiable, though, with her father's ashes in a quart-sized Ziploc bag under her seat. Dan reached to put his hand on hers. She gazed out the window, immune to consolation. Between them, Susy slept peacefully in her carseat.

Half an hour passed, the roar of the engine hypnotic, and Dan marveled at the emptiness below them. Its vastness was calming, remote and removed, when seen safely from this altitude.

"Textbook undisturbed taiga," the pilot narrated. "Bog and muskeg. Scrub pine forest. Birch, alder. Further north you go, the more it thins into tundra."

"Are you looking, now and then?" he asked Deb. "It's beautiful."

"Mm-hmm," she answered, her eyes on their daughter.

After a while, his eyes perceived a straight line in the landscape, and at first he doubted himself, thought he was habitually imposing signs of humanity where there were none.

The pilot turned and yelled back, "We'll be to your river pretty soon. I'll come in pretty low." He smirked. "The small cargo door slides. Stay buckled in."

Dan caught Deb's eye and nodded at her bag, under her seat.

"It'll be time here."

13

She looked back at him, impatient, and he held her gaze: no, he wasn't going to do this for her. Finally she reached beneath her and withdrew the freezer bag of ashes. They looked like fine gray oatmeal, with a few calcified shards of bone. Deb nodded questioningly at Susy. Neither of them had explained to her what they were doing, or what was in the bag.

"She's sleeping," Dan murmured, and turned back to the window. "It won't even take you a minute."

They were descending, and the line below them had grown more apparent. It disappeared in rare open snowy ground, but became clearer as a paler, partly cleared stripe when it passed through dense growth. Then he saw light flashing off parallel filaments, and what looked like regular metal structures. "Are those powerlines, do you think?" he asked Deb. "What could they be powering out here?" Leaning forward , he asked the pilot the same thing. He was curious, only making conversation, really. The man turned his head, cocked an expectant ear and asked him to say it again.

And just then, past the pilot's listening profile, Dan saw a pair of geese suddenly rising . They were huge, so close he could have counted their beating wing feathers, and he flinched involuntarily just before the prolonged rattling thud that could have been one goose or both of them striking the plane.

The pilot spun around as the plane slewed sideways hard. It felt like they lost a lot of altitude fast as he cursed and fought the 14

stick. Then, just as they leveled out, a spindly top-heavy treetop appeared out Dan's window, and the impact that immediately followed was like running over a curb in a car at fifty miles an hour.

The plane lurched sickeningly. "Motherfucker FUCK!" the pilot yelled into the instrument panel. An alarm began buzzing, the engine over-revved, and behind it all rose the horrible roar of wind.

"Hold onto something," the pilot said, and Dan twisted toward the carseat, but Deb was already covering it with her body. His vision focused on her fingertips against the plastic, red under the nail and the surrounding skin white with pressure, and Susy's bright blue eyes open in orbs of surprise.

Then everything turned upside down and up and then down again, time and sound neatly disconnecting, and a splintering impact was followed by a rush of debris rattling off the fuselage. Something like a single frame of black on a filmstrip passed, and then all was bright, and motionless, and silent.

And for a moment he did not think or process further what had happened and what it meant. The last sound echoing in his ears was Susy's wavering , rising cry, abruptly cut off before its peak. He lay still waiting for her second bawl, waiting through her superhuman ability to draw breath and marshal power for a true yell, remembering all the times he'd thought that she had stopped crying when incomprehensibly she'd only been still inhaling , still building up.

He'd brought his child to a plane crash. There it is, he thought: I've failed as a fath(=;r. His head felt too full of blood and his joints 15

all wrong . He understood he was upside down.

Finally, Deb drew a shuddering breath, and when he heard Susy make a small complaining noise in her throat too, his priorities reasserted themselves, reels of a slot machine snapping mechanically into position. Out of the plane, he thought, and flares, and radio. Upside down, it was maddeningly difficult to even find the release to his lap belt, and then he had to hook his forearm under the armrest and flex to create a little slack. As soon as the buckle let go he tumbled, barely tucking his head in time to take the fall across his shoulders. Deb was already kneeling beside him on the plane's ceiling, pulling at the straps to Susy's seat. One more latch, and Susy fell into her mother's arms like a movie soldier shot off a parapet.

In front, the pilot was still harnessed in, surprisingly fine hair hanging down from his head. As Dan moved toward him, the man jerked his arms spastically.

"Where are we," Dan demanded. "How far is it to- " Then he saw the extent of it, the smashed disarray of the cockpit. The plane had skidded forward, upside down. The plastic of the windshield was crazed and fractured. Rocks and brown grasses and chunks of frozen mud spilled through the side windows.

The instrument panel and the firewall behind had given like French doors against the bulk of the engine as the nose of the plane had crumpled.

The whole front of the pilot's shirt was sticky with blood 16

where a lichened branch, flashed up one side with new wood, protruded from his chest just beside the sternum. A thick rivulet of blood streaked upward from the man's collar, along the jugular toward his ear.

Dan told him he was going to live, he was going to be all right. It was a lie, but he could think of nothing else to say. "There's a, a, an emergency beacon, or something, right?"

"We're flipped over," he said. "The antenna's on the- it can't-" "A search party, then ," Dan said. "They'll come for us. We'll get you to a hospital. You're going to live through this."

The pilot shook his head. "You really don't- out here, nothing's-" It sounded like he croaked the word , "Saffron ," and Dan thought he was delirious, already gone. Then he said it again and Dan understood: "Sat phone." He coughed and waved weakly at his chest, tapping at what looked like a bulky regular cell phone. "Help me get."

Gingerly but quickly, Dan reached past the man's trembling hand into the mess of blood and withdrew the satellite phone from his vest pocket. Its plastic surface was slick with blood, and as Dan turned it over, sparkling shards of plastic fell into his hand. Green and gold circuitry was visible, and he held the phone dumbly.

After a second or more of silence, the pilot spoke first. 'Tm so 17

sorry," he said. "Your daughter. How old?"

Dan stiffened, registering the pity, the forgone conclusion.

Blood bubbled from the pilot's lips. So sorry, he mouthed again silently, shaking his head. Fuck you, Dan wanted to tell him, but then he understood that the man was dying, not in minutes but right now, as he watched. His anger dissolved and all he felt was relief, at being useless. The dying man's eyes searched his, and Dan remained blank, offering neither forgiveness nor accusation. Dan sifted his emotions carefully for anything he was supposed to feel, any omitted duty that would rear up as guilt later, but he truly didn't know this man. He was not responsible for his misfortune.

The pilot's chest convulsed then, and a gout of blood burst from his mouth. Dan thought it had missed him at first, but on looking closer, fine red specks of the man's last breath had delicately sprayed both of his upturned hands.

Behind him, Deb clutched Susy to her with one arm, her other hand floating palm-down over her knee, each finger flexed so straight he could see the tendons in the back of her hand.

She was exhaling in the tiny fast breaths they had practiced in childbirth class. Her face was pale, her lips pressed together and bloodless. Her closed eyes twitched beneath their lids.

"We have to get out," he said and tugged once at Deb's arm.

She was half-standing until the weight hit her other leg, and her face twisted in pain.

18

Outside, the plane had cut a ragged two hundred yard swath through the trees and undergrowth before the wings had sheared off, only one of which was visible, hanging ten feet above the ground like a toy thrown by a tornado. The cabin and fuselage had plowed a further dirty stripe through uneven snow that looked knee-deep in some places and wasn't even a ground covering in others.

The surrounding trees were all too scraggly and thin to provide real shelter. Deb held Susy in one arm and steadied herself against Dan's shoulder with the other, and they trudged back along the path of the crash to a hump of raised and relatively dry ground. Dan cast repeated wary glances back at the plane.

No sounds arose but the sighs of bent underbrush, rearranging.

Susy's crying eased to a queasy whine when Deb sat down, and Dan said, "Let me see her. Let me hold her over here a minute."

Deb's elbow described small circles as she rocked Susy in a tight arc, close to her body. She said, "She's fine. Not yet."

"I just," he started calmly. "I want to check for- can you see her pupils?"

"Her pupils are just fine," Deb whispered, her own eyes closed. "She's OK." Twin spots of livid red burned under Deb's cheekbones, the rest of her face chalk pale. She stopped her rocking motion, and Susy whimpered querulously.

19

"What about you," Dan said. She did not answer.

They had first met over an injury, when Dan was in his first year of grad school, logging hours in the sports med clinic. When he entered her examination room, Deb jumped up. Her first question was, "I won't have to rest it, will I?" Something about her skittish gaze, along with her long limbs sheathed in smooth perceptibly twitching muscle, made him think of a deer, poised for flight, uncertain whether she'd been seen. She must have come without telling her coaches, who would have made her a direct appointment and clear-taped a giant pack of ice to the front of her leg.

"I'm not the doctor," Dan said, handing her the clipboard that asked patients to rate their pain on a scale from one to ten. "I wouldn't know about that."

"But come on," she said, leaning back on her strong leg. "You have an idea." She tilted her head at him, then said, "Dan. It's Dan, isn't it? You ran cross country, like two years ago?"

"Yeah," he admitted, blinking. He did remember her. At practices, though, doing different workouts, passing in opposite directions, there'd been few opportunities to talk. And then his own season had ended so abruptly.

"You still run with the guys," she said, "but you never finish with them ."

20

He acknowledged this, still hoping to shrug off the subject without looking evasive.

She persisted, "Yeah, my sophomore year, it was big gossip.

When you walked off the team, before Nationals. It was like, a couple guys knew the story. But no one would say." She studied him a moment. "So what happened? Why'd you quit?"

Dan stopped. "Well I didn't quit," he said. "It wasn't...like that."

"So what was it like?" She watched him, obviously waiting.

"So it's which leg?" he demanded. "Your right? Not both?"

After a second, she nodded, lifting her right leg toward him, letting the foot turn out. "I ran with shin splints all last summer," she said. "I don't care about those. If it only hurts. I'm worried • about- you know." He understood that 'stress fracture' held a special superstition she dared not name. She'd be terrified of losing the rest of her season.

Dan said, "The doctor will want x-rays. But those won't show anything unless it's been weeks already."

She nodded along with him, letting him finish, then asked what he could tell her now.

He opened both palms, helpless. She persisted until he finally, after a glance out the half-open exam room door and listening 21

the whole time for footsteps in the hall, consented to lean over her and tap gently along the length of her limb in question.

She jumped at his touch to the belly of her calf. "Your hands are cold," she said, but he hadn't thought they were, really.

And now at the crash site, they were reenacting that first pose: her bare foot raised, his fingertips along her bone. He felt gently around the swelling ugly knot in the middle of her shin, and without inflection, pronounced it a clean break through the tibia.

A latent mistrust rose in her eyes, and he recognized the calculation of diagnosis against desire, and against her own experience of what she could endure. He watched as she leaned forward and pressed weight through the broken bone, compelled to test what she already knew, her expression cycling between intense focused attention and pain.

They were amazingly lucky to be alive. He knew that. Still, for what it meant to all of their continued survival, the flash of force that had broken Deb's leg might as well have been a judgment from God himself- random, terrible, immutable.

Ten yards from the wrecked fuselage, the kerosene-stink of av-gas enveloped him. Dan breathed shallowly through his mouth and knelt to peer up into the inverted cockpit. Among the dials and cracked gauges, a radio seemed intact, but its face was unlit. Reaching past the dead pilot, hanging now with his arms above his head in an absurd hallelujah, Dan snagged the 22

dangling headset, then pinched the radio's power dial. A single spark could immolate the entire wreck; after two heartbeats he twisted the switch.

A burst of static rose in the headphones, then vanished like a fleeting wind. He turned the radio off and then on again twice more, and got nothing but silence. Like an idiot, he barked "Hello? Hello? SOS," into the dead mic. In a burst of rage he roared, "Work, goddamn you!" zzvzv twisted the dial savagely one more time. The part came off delicately in his hand, lighter than a bird's bone.

He held the dial a second more, feeling its plastic roundness and ridiculous lack of weight as the high reek of gasoline filled his sinuses. All around him was the intermittent plinking of as the high reek of gasoline filled his sinuses. All around him was the intermittent plinking of liquid on metal. The fumes were making his head ache. He scanned the cockpit for anything worth salvaging, maps or charts, though it had been a mess to begin with before being turned upside down and shaken. A red cross on a white tin caught his eye, and he picked up the small, entirely inadequate first aid kit. He scooped a sheaf of printed and handwritten papers from the ceiling .

A long khaki bag was jammed under the seat beside the pilot's, level with Dan's head now. He felt tent poles through the fabric and wrenched the bag loose. Behind it was a bright blue backpack, the kind a kid would wear to grade school, and when Dan tugged at it a gallon jug of water fell at him like a poorly laid booby trap. The plastic jug didn't break, and Dan gathered 23

everything up in his arms and scuttled backwards out of the plane.

He went back to retrieve their own luggage, their heavy duffels and Susy's diaper bag, all of which had been unsecured and somehow not taken any of their heads off in the crash. Hustling all the weight made him breathe hard, and he tasted the acrid fuel -filled air on the back of his tongue.

"Do you see anywhere better for the tent?" he asked when he got back to Deb. He began assembling the collapsible poles and set everything up as quickly as he could , keeping in motion.

The backpack revealed two thin thermal blankets, matches, a cheap knife, a box of nutrition bars, and odds and ends like iodine tablets and a pocket mirror. A flashlight, which he clicked on to verify a feeble beam. There was also a flare gun, which he handed to Deb. "Looks good for one shot," he said, to which she had no comment. He shook a bottle of ibuprofen, popped the cap, and held four out until Deb opened her palm.

Reviewing the campsite, he said, "It'll get cold tonight. But you and Susy should be OK." Deb smiled humorlessly. "Me and Susy?"

Dan didn't answer, instead turning to his bag and pulling out first his shoes, then his camel - back hydration pack. His hands shook less when he had something in them, and now he wanted to get his shoes laced while his fine motor skills were still there. Tiny goals, he thought, single steps.

24

"What are you looking for," Deb said.

Above, the sky was a ringing blue against the jagged scape of pines. "Those powerlines," he said. "I remember which way they were. I'll follow them out. And, maybe even be back yet tonight.

Who knows."

"You heard what the pilot said," Deb said. "There's nothing up here. Literally nothing at all."

"Now you trust him?" Dan said.

Deb blinked, and he didn't mention the hurried stop in Matagami, the glossed-over business with the flight plan. She shook her head adamantly, though . "That's still the first thing," she said. "The first absolute rule: stay put. Wait for help."

"If someone's looking for you, sure, yes," he said. "Then you should stay put."

Deb spoke past him. "There has to be," she said, her voice taut with concentration, "there has to be a beacon, or something.

There has to be."

"No," Dan said quietly. He saw the dying man's face again. "It was damaged in the crash, it wasn't transmitting. He told me so."

"When he doesn't come back," Deb said . "Someone will come looking ."

25

"Eventually," he said. "Maybe. But when would that be?

Tomorrow? The next day? Longer, before they notice and start looking?" He nodded at Susy. "How long are you willing to wait?"

Susy was flying the tip of a pine branch back and forth in the air and making swooshing noises. Was this his child, so unnaturally calm amidst chaos? He wanted to check her for shock again, and keep checking , until he found a diagnosis he could fix.

"A day," Deb proposed. "Overnight. Until tomorrow, to give a search a chance. They don't have to find us. The flare gunwe'll fire it, as soon as we hear a plane. Or- we could light the wreck on fire."

For a second he hated her calm reason, then he collected himself and responded . "The first day," he said. "Everyone survives the first day. It's the next twenty-four hours.

Exposure sets in, food and water get low."

"All right. You know what? All right. If I can't talk any sense into you," Deb said. She tugged up at the right leg of her jeans.

"If you won't stay here. The second part is still, stay together.

Don't scatter." She nodded at his trail bag. "What have you got in there? Your ankle brace? Roll of tape?"

She knew he did, along with everything else he never cleaned out of it. "What for?" he asked.

"A splint?" she said . "I don't know. Something so I can 26

walk . You're the sports med already."

"You can't be serious," Dan said. "You won't get half a mile."

"If you're so sure we're going out of here," she said. She was rotating her ankle and grimacing, and held her shoe in one hand.

"You'll break it worse," he said. "You won't be able to walk at all. Not to mention, ever race again. And Susy," he went on.

"Carrying her would slow us down. Here, she's got water, a little food . Shelter. Sort of."

Deb glared up then, her face shaking. "I will carry her out of here on my fucking back if I have to," she said. "I will shatter my tibia into a hundred pieces." Her eyes burned . "I'll crawl.

You know I will ."

Her ferocity unnerved him, but Dan flattened his lips to a line.

"You need to stay put," he said, "and off your feet. Don't stress the break any more than you have to. You're stable now, and I'm not worried about shock, but- " He stopped, then went on more gently. "Look, when the adrenaline wears off. It's going to hurt worse. You could feel a lot weaker." He apologized that the ibuprofen was all they had for pain. "You could pack snow around it, around the front of your shin, if you have to. It would help the swelling. But I'm more worried about you keeping warm ." He felt like he was talking to himself, mumbling into the recorder he carried to clinic appointments. He looked at Deb, then the tent. "Let me help you lie down," he said. "We can at 27

least keep your leg elevated."

"What if you die," she stated, her voice breaking. "We couldnever see you again."

He looked at his hands for a whole breath, then another.

If there were a hundred tender things he never knew how to say, nothing about this crisis was giving him the right words now. "You stay with Susy," he said . ''I'll go. You know that maximizes her odds." He turned on his watch . The little bar on its screen inched up interminably as it acquired its satellites. Its GPS coordinates, when he reached help, would direct rescuers back exactly to here. "I 'll follow the powerlines to open ground. Higher up. I'll try my phone every hour." He swallowed . "It will work."

When he held out his hand, she took it, and he pulled her up carefully and slid her arm over his shoulders. Even as he guided her the short steps toward the tent, his free hand above her hip, she only put a part of her weight on him, hopping on her good leg. The tent barely let her lie down stretched from corner to corner, and when he placed Susy's diaper bag under her heel, her foot pressed the fabric wall. "That hurt?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"I don't need so much room," she said. "We can all of us fit."He touched two fingers to the first ray of her foot, and followed it up her metatarsal through her thin sock. "Right there, is your dorsal pedal pulse," he said. "As long as you can feel that, it means you're 28

getting blood flow." She should rotate her ankle a bit every hour or so, he said, to keep blood clots from forming. He wanted to ask her to repeat what he'd told her; he wanted to take her hand, make her feel her owr,i pulse, so she'd know where it was.

Susy, quieter in the back corner of the tent, watched the shadow of a pine bough blur and sharpen as it brushed the fabric outside.

Dan thought of the day barely two weeks ago when Deb had left for Vancouver. It was her first major race in years, and the first night she'd spent away from home without Susy. "Just go already," he'd snapped, "please. If you don't make a big deal, Susy will be fine." He could get through dinner and bathtime and bedtime perfectly. What he'd not prepared for, what he was hoping to avoid, was explaining why Mommy was crying when she drove away. "Well you know I'm right," he'd said, when she looked at him reproachfully then. "It's just going to freak her out."

Now Susy looked on suspiciously. She was being unusually quiet and attentive, waiting to see what her parents would do.

Here was the most important reason to keep calm .

"OK then," he said, on his knees on the vinyl floor beside Deb, speaking down at his hands, "I should get going."

Snow crunched under Deb's elbow as she shifted her posture, grimacing as the movement reached her leg. "I know," she said.

Her acquiescence was too easy.

"I can't just, sit here," he protested. She knew, he'd told her, how 29

it always was for him, how he got about problems he couldn't fix. It might be his central failing as a person, as a man, as a runner, as a father, but naming it did no one any good now.

"There's nothing I can do for you here."

"We'll be fine," she said.

"Hm," he said once, the way he cleared his throat before lectures, then turned to Susy. "OK, sweetie," he said, reaching to brush her hair lightly with his fingertips, his thumb along her smooth cheek. ''I'm going for a run now. You stay here with Mommy, and I'll be back as soon as I can. I love you, OK?" Susy looked skeptical, but replied, "Have fun ."

Outside, he made his preparations quickly. The trail bag he never emptied kept yielding useful items as if by magic: spare socks, a fistful of carbohydrate gels, a baggie of electrolyte capsules. Gloves, a knit stocking cap that was warmer than he needed right now. A headlamp with fairly fresh batteries, that he hated zipping into his pack: it felt defeatist, like giving up on rescue before dark.

He made himself take his shoes off again and apply petroleum jelly between his toes and everywhere that ever rubbed; he looped a tiny roll of duct tape through one shoulder strap as further backup against blisters. Of the eight nutrition bars from the pilot's stash, he took four: every calorie he carried increased his range. He unscrewed his hand bottle and scooped it full of 30

wet crunchy snow from the drift beneath their pine tree. From the plastic jug, he poured about a quart of water into his camelback, leaving the rest for Deb and Susy. Finally, he changed into shorts and a moisture-wicking tech shirt. Wearing any n:ore would make him sweat, inviting hypothermia. A breath of cold air moved against his face, and he shivered standing still.

When he ducked to reenter the tent with the remaining supplies, Deb's eyes looked rounder, the tiny muscles that narrowed them so much of the time relaxed . For a second he feared shock, even this late, or another injury he had missed.

Then he realized it was a trusting look, almost dependent; anyway, without wariness. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so vulnerable. "Be careful," she murmured.

He let his coat drop to the ground beside her. "Extra blanket," he said.

These could be his last minutes with his wife and his daughter, and all he had for them was the coat he couldn't carry. Somewhere a pine cone dropped, and there were tiny chuckling sounds of water, snowpack busily melting beneath them. He slipped off his bottle's hand strap, and held it out too. "Easier to drink out of," he said, "than the gallon one." Deb blinked up at him, making no move to take it.

His coat, both arms splayed beside her, looked like an invisible man embracing the ground. He tossed the bottle at its empty shoulders, where it landed with the softest of blows, almost inaudible.

31

BREAD J. IAN BUSH

Crack rocks rain down on rock bottom babies at their hips

crack heads hold crack as the dealer's son sips on tap water

while his

father

slides bags of dope across the kitchen table for short stacks of cash .

He says

Son, this is the bread we eat.

Says he sells dope because the roof is getting heavy and they're a hundred dollars short on the gas bill.

He'll buy his son a good will coat.

It's going to be a cold winter.

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<,E

MORE CREATIVE MINDS ON

THE NEXT PAGE 36

Matt Cram:

Ink and Paper

Matt Cram is a Graphic Design professor and holds the position as Department Chair at Shawnee State University for the Fine, Digital, and Performing Arts. Although he is passionate about the digital arts, he is incredibly fond of elaborate ink drawings on paper. Some might say it is a rare occurrence to see him without a sketchbook and pen in hand. The Silhouette had the opportunity to interview Professor Cram and feature a few of his drawings to share with students on campus and the community.

41

Question: Many students often become frustrated with their work when it doesn't seem to be going in the direction they want. What advice do you give to your students when they become frustrated or overwhelmed?

Well, right there is one of the great lessons of art. One of our greatest sources of unhappiness is the misalignment of our expectations with reality. Drawing teache¡s me time and again that I am not there yet. I am still in the process of becoming. My drawing is still in the process of becoming . If I cou ld wake up tomorrow and draw like Master Kim Jung Gi, I think I would have missed the greatest reward to achieving rather than just having.

I experience frustration, in a sense, with almost every drawing I make. I struggle to understand why I cannot draw exactly what I see or imagine. Most of the reason is that I don't see or imagine clearly but there is more. The struggle is part of the gift.

It makes me love it more when I finally see growth in my work. I feel great about myself when this happens.

My advice to students is to accept the struggle. Focus on building the artist rather than individual works of art; each drawing is only a step. Learn the fundamentals deeply and practice them . Observe the work of the masters closely; including the greatest master, nature. If we think of drawing like a conversation . Most people will never speak as eloquently as Shakespeare or as profoundly as Lincoln or Churchill but they keep talking anyway. Of course they do! Mastery of language is not the point. It is the connections and observations that bring meaning through language to our daily lives. To me at least, 42

drawing is another way to connect to the world and hopefully find meaning through the observations.

Question: What is some advice for aspiring artists and designers who might be afraid to step out of their comfort zones and try new ideas or mediums in their work? What is your preferred choice of medium and why?

I am probably not the best person to give advice on this issue as I have been working with the same medium with little deviation for several years now. However, that is a different kind of advice: embrace obsession. Dig in deeply to one path; find all of the diamonds in the mine. I have been working with pen and ink almost exclusively and I have little intention of changing. I like the simplicity of pen and ink. It is either line or no line. It is a bit unforgiving, but it is very honest and it teaches me to embrace the mistakes. Also, it is very portable which is important for my current practice. That is what is best for me. However, I tried a variety of media before settling on pen and ink: acrylic, oil, colored pencil, watercolor, graphite, etc. Like most artists, I started with graphite simply making doodles in my school textbooks and took off from there. Every medium has its own voice, strengths, and weaknesses. In my opinion, the medium should be dictated by the intent. I have the luxury of putting my own preferences first as my only intentions with my drawing are personal. If I were to enter into the world of professional illustration, some of my preferences would have to give way to the needs of the project. Additionally, the art that I find most

43

beautiful tends to have a strong linear focus, something that pen and ink does well. So my advice is this: just try them all. Sure you will make some bad art, if there is such a thing, but that is okay.

Your comfort zone is a barrier to your growth. Staying with one medium just because it is most comfortable is like a carpenter only using a hammer. It is silly. Use the best tool for the job and soon you will find that you can find success with any medium.

Question: Why is it so important that young artists and designers have some sort of "art/design hero" or a professional they look up to? Who is your art/design hero?

There are three great teachers in life: seeing, studying, and suffering. It is best if we can learn by simply seeing and observing but this is the most elusive. However, by finding our "art heroes" and studying these masters, we have the opportunity to see how they solved a problem we may also be facing . Creating art is a translation of sorts. When I make a drawing from life, I create in 20 a representation of something that is most likely 30. I make a line on paper to represent something that is not a line and there are a million ways to do it. Studying the masters shows us their observations already translated and one specifically successful way to make the line in question. There is a warning here however, like any translation, something is lost and this distortion is a part of the beauty. It is important to not get lost too much in these distortions and measure the lessons from the masters, our heroes, against our own observations. If we study well, perhaps

44

we can avoid some of the final teacher's lessons, practice, though never entirely.

I have had many art heroes in my life. They seem to come in and out of our perception as we need them. The earliest hero I can remember is Charles Schultz whose comics I tried to imitate as early as second grade. In my middle years, I dove headlong into comic books and superheroes and there were several I admired in that vein: Art Adams, John Buscema, John Byrne, Mobius (though I had trouble getting much of his work in pre-internet days), and Bill Watterson. When I landed as an art major in college, my professors insisted that my tastes grew up: Albrect Durer, Gustav Klimt, Rembrandt van Rijn, etc. Lately I have been looking at Sergio Toppi, Kim Jung Gi, Lapin, Arnaud de Meyer, Benedetta Dossi, Gerard Michel, Mike Mignola, and so many others.

Question: Is there anything that you would go back and do differently in your career? Why or why not?

Ha ha. This is a difficult question to answer. If I could redo my life or even just my career, I would have to be very careful. Every step has brought me to this point. Kids, friends, career... I would not change those things from what they are now. If I could give young Matt advice, it would be the same advice I would give to any young person: Be kind; make your health your first priority; invest part of your money in an index fund; and draw every day.

Ok, if I could really talk to young Matt, it would be to invest in Google, Apple, and Bitcoin. Ha.

45

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C o I 11\1\ lo c,,_ .s C o l l e.9 e.. of ARt: i be.si_gn

Jrolb lF'cr31Dlr Cl

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PERSPECTIVE NATHAN NOBLE

The Queen of death with her kiss, wilts the flowers.

Some would call them ruined, she calls them beautiful...

Who are we to argue otherwise?

CALM ACCEPTANCE NATHAN NOBLE

I saw a heron pluck a fish from the water.

It was so gracefully still. No splash, no sound, It didn't even strugg le, just rode off in the Herons' talons.

It made me think the fish traded its fate for a chance to fly.

IF PRAYER WAS REAL NATHAN NOBLE

When you cried I cried for you And when you died you took God with you .

Voice now hoarse with pain, once raised with hope proved false.

The cold shock of awakening ...

Pain honing the bitter edge ever sharper to carve away more of my heart.

59

TO DUST KEVIN LEMASTER

The roses are dusty Colored old A color one never Talks about Maybe gray Maybe a mold green Something the wind Won't touch Nor the rain glisten In its wither and beauty It waxes with age Languishes in its own Limited time And dies by the road Neglected by one Who planted the seed But isn't around To nurture its need

60

A PART NC1 NOT!="" 0\ ARNOLD R. HIGHFIELD

Arnold Highfield was born and raised in New Boston, Ohio. He went on to become a prominent historian and professor of social sciences and linguistics at the University of the Virgin Islands and various other universities. He currently divides his time between St. Croix and Middlebury, Vermont.

Some weeks ago, I received a clipping from a friend who notified me that the American Restaurant in New Boston had shut its doors, closed down, ceased doing business. That news took me by complete surprise, in fact, hit me like an unexpected obituary of a beloved friend . Even though I left the town for good around 1960 and have revisited the place only on few occasions since then, it remains impossible for me to imagine the steel town on the Ohio River that I grew up in without the American Restaurant, better known to my generation as "Joe Day's" after its founder and owner. For about six years of my life, that establishment, so much a part of almost everything that I did, became a fixed constellation in my otherwise admittedly impoverished firmament .

Over these many intervening years, it has never once occurred to me that there would come a time when Joe Day's American Restaurant would no longer exist. Like Betelgeuse, I thought it would always be there, curious and unique perhaps, but certainly eternal. But that sad day has finally arrived.

61

I am old enough to remember two American Restaurants. The first was opened sometime around the beginning of World War II in a dull brick building on the south side of Gallia St. or U.S. route 52 in my New Boston hometown, across the street from the town's three princely gas stations- the Sohio, the Pure Oil, and the Texaco. I am vague on the dates and chronology, but sometime thereafter, conveniently, Joe's son Bill set up a pool hall just next door and together the two new enterprises began to rake in all the juvenile spare change within reach.

When we spoke of "going down the street," it was these twin constellations that we had in mind as our destinations.

No one ever accused Joe Day of being a business tycoon, but his timing, as it turned out in this instance, was impeccable.

In the late 1940s after the War and into the early 1950s, the youths of New Boston town were growing restless, in search of a sense of self that reflected the rapidly changing times.

Joe opened his first American Restaurant in a nondescript brick building on Gallia Street, replete with a plate glass front window, old-time, molded ceilings, creaky wooden floors, a heavy door inset with a large oval glass and a polished, marble soda fountain with the requisite, swirling stools. About five years later, in the early 1950s, Joe moved his operation to another nondescript brick building, this one further down the street to the west a couple of blocks, next to the Ohio Theatre and an adjacent Electrolux office, a stone's throw from Glenwood High School, just around the corner. Hence the second American Restaurant, the second Joe Day's. And there the good entrepreneur hit pay- dirt. In those post-war boom

62

years, the steel mill was hiring just about anyone who could lift a lunch-bucket, so nearly everyone had a little money in his pocket. The young guys were soon tooling around in their own customized Chevies and Fords, and the girls were beginning to break away from their parents' staid expectations by cladding their wonderfully contoured bodies in those revealing sweaters with the angora collars and in marvelous, tight-fitting skirts that highlighted their exquisite bottomry. The nation and the town were experiencing the emergence of the teenager, at the same time as the appearance of Bill Haley and his Comets, duck-tails, turned up collars, and blue suede shoes on the scene. It was admittedly a lot to swallow in one load. But it was a time when the young were looking for connections beyond the home and school and church . It turned out that for a number of years, Joe Day's American Restaurant provided a perfect theatre for all those new yearnings and desires to play themselves out, within the confines of one gritty little steel town.

Joe Day was the unlikely restaurant founder. He was a short, stocky man with a gnarled proboscis through which he generally communicated, sounding for all the world like a river- boat foghorn. Whatever he said was anyone 's guess; as far as I was able to discern , no one ever clearly understood anything the man uttered . When he felt good, he grumbled; when he felt bad he growled. That was about the range of his communication talents . Conversation therefore was obviously not among his strong suits . But consistency was. Daily, he swathed his short body 63

in a long white apron and took up station behind the cash register near the front door, never far from his trademark broom , which he brandished like a Light Horse Brigade sabre . Statue-like he remained there morning, noon, and night. I don't recall ever having seen him anywhere else - not in the grocery store, not at a ball game, nor driving a car, nowhere.

However, when he was seen , never absent was a short cigar clenched tightly between his teeth, which suited his demeanor perfectly but did nothing, I'm afraid , to improve the intelligibility of his diction . So with a wraith of dense tobacco smoke hanging over his entrepreneurial head and person , he went about his daily business, faithfully manipulating his broom as he mumbled to himself.

The physical establishment of the American Restaurant was a modest affair which at best perfectly matched Joe's demeanor- solid but noticeably understated . At the heart of the place was a stately soda fountain, replete with a marble countertop and tall stools , a carry - over from the original restaurant just "up the street." There, you could for a mere dime get a cherry soda or a phosphate , made from real syrup and a dramatic squirt of soda water, then placed before you in a tall glass by a lovely but hardscrabble waitress , no doubt a steel - worker's daughter. Sitting on that high swivel stool before such a beverage, even in that 64

nondescript ambiance, you were for a moment swept away by nothing less than a draught of divine elixir among the gods of Olympus.

The other side of the room was lined with a row of high-backed booths, each one furnished with a music box contraption on the wall that connected directly to the juke box. The latter sat in the back of the room like a new age robot, at the ready to magically extract 45 rpm platters with its marvelous mechanical arm and then unleash the likes of Elvis, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison to rock your soul, in a dazzle of Wurlitzer lights and madly ascending bubbles. Some tables filled out the center of the room, along with a pinball machine or two and a gumball globe . In a word, there was about everything there that an impecunious 15-year-old could ever desire .

Few people went to the American Restaurant for the delights of the cuisine. If the hamburgers and the hot dogs were forgettable, the chili, unfortunately, was not, generally guaranteeing the casual diner a case of sphincter-buckling indigestion well into the evening. But there was no need for gastro-intestinal panic, for Joe, with an uncharacteristic fractional smile on his face, unabashedly pedaled Alka-seltzer and Tums from his goodly supply stashed under the cash register, on hand to hook the regretful diner on 65

his retreat out the front door. It was the closest one ever came to getting an after dinner drink from Joe, his version of a glass of sherry or port . This transaction, based unfortunately on explosive indigestion, was one of the few things that made Joe truly happy.

So indeed , Joe Day 's is best remembered as a hangout rather than as a fine eatery ; it was a place to go, to see and be seen, a checkpoint, a rendez vous, a stop - off, a start - out and a stop-over. As kids we all went there faithfully after school for a "bottle of pop ," as we termed the beverage, and a couple of songs on the jukebox. Famed dancers like Greasy D . and E.J. might break out into a rhythmic hand - dance , and a bandy - legged guy named Coburn might regale gaped - mouthed onlookers with flying feet in a bit of the Bop . [Where in the hell did he learn to dance like that , I have repeatedly asked myself over the inte r vening years?] But most of us were content to sit around and swig at a bottle of pop , no straw , thank you . It is more than a passing observation , by the way, that literally everyone drank Pepsi in our town ; it was absolutely unthinkable that anyone would ever dare toss down a bottle of Coke in public view within the New Boston city limits in that era . Surely people somewhere drank bottled Coke in distant lands - such as in Portsmouth - but not in our town. This custom was a curious marker of class , delineating the status of sons and daughters 66

of steel-workers , blue collar proletarians, as opposed to denizens of loftier social ranks beyond our town limits, beyond our horizons, and far beyond our imaginations and reach .

And the prime time for Joe's was after football and basketball games on Friday and Saturday nights .

Thirty minutes after the final buzzer of a b - ball game in the bandbox gym at Glenwood High, located just around the corner and the American Restaurant was immediately packed. A stop at Joe's was utterly essential for the completion of the evening . Nobody dared go home before making an obligatory check - in there. The jukebox would be rocking , the girls hand dancing , the waitresses busting their sizable behinds serving up Pepsis and burgers, and the joint was abuzz with chatter and good cheer. Moments later the players would swagger through the front door, in from the newly fallen snow and a cheer would go up.

I was a second - stringer in the late 1950s , a bench warmer, a pine - timer, a butt- burner, and a Chinese bandit, all honorable designations in a town that worshiped the sport . Even in my modest station in the scheme of things, I was still the object of minor admiration because I wore a varsity jacket and was regularly seen in the company of the team stars "Rosebud" and Spurlock and Pauley and others, a presence that lit up my soul. Minuscule Glenwood High School enjoyed four or five years of excellent 67

seasons during that period, replete with twentygame win seasons, along with SOC championship titles , top - ten slots in the Ohio State high school ratings, tournament berths , all-state players, and an outstanding , state - wide reputation . All that for a school with about 35 students in the senior class , counting the girls . Showing up for the after-game celebration at Joe' s was just the icing on the cake .

We were all momentarily stars, destined no doubt for the Big Ten, the NCAA , and possibly the NBA .

Anything seemed possible in that age of fantasies, so improbably enacted in a bandbox gym.

When. the high - schoolers cleared out of the joint around mid - night , Joe's was transformed into an all - nighter, a 24 - hour beanery, a home - cooked food restaurant from its inception to the day that it closed . It was then that the late - night crowd rolled in. Depending on the demands and disposition of your gut , you could do breakfast , lunch , dinner, late night chow and then , as the sun was coming up , hit the place at 6 am for a slug of black coffee, a order of greas e- dripping bacon and eggs, and a plate stacked high with hotcakes , after a night on the town . Joe 's attracted a diverse crowd between midnight and the wee hours - the late-nighters , the mill - men changing shifts, the boozers, the Don Juans , the sweet talkers , the hucksters , the bullshitters , the hangers - on, the thinkers , the 68

tinkers, the loafers, the escape artists, the closeted gay cruisers, and an assortment of determined schemers. For the rest of the night until dawn, the joint served as the rallying point of big talk and grand plans, great expectations, unavoidable sorrows, wrenching Jeremiads, triste tales of hopelessly lost love, and the inevitable quest for the big break in life. And for some it was the last place where they would spend the night in their hometown, amongst pals and good buddies, musing over their young lives and loves before they boarded a bus for an army induction center in the cruel light of a rapidly rising sun.

Joe Day's was sometimes the focus of passing fads and fancies. For a time in the late 1950s, chess was played passionately into the morning hours by little squads of avid would-be Bobby Fishers. It centered on the figure an eccentric lawyer, let's just call him Ed, who showed up one late summer night in the late 1950s and plunked down his chess board on the table-top of a booth. He was intensely serious legal eagle, who seemed to have just landed on earth from one of the outer planets. Quickly his lucubrations collected a small coterie of youthful admirers. He was recognized as brilliant in the courtroom but admittedly somewhat less than adept at handling his own personal affairs. He simply showed up night after night for a stretch of months with his chess set 69

under his arm and took on all comers . Not many of the guys knew the game, but they rapidly caught on; they proved to be quick learners, becoming adept players in an amazingly short time. There they would sit in a booth bent over the board, locked in total concentration as a giant fan roared the hot summer night air into movement in the background .

These were guys who never did a day of homework in their lives. But they found Ed and his ancient game compelling.

Sadly enough, the little golden age ended abruptly.

At some point Edward unaccountably lost his grip on things and his life began to come apart. One night he appeared at the restaurant in an obviously agitated state and announced that the CIA was hot on his trail and that he was going into hiding . He would be back, he whispered behind his hand to his admirers, when the heat blew over. He was, rather admirably and without effort, already adopting the fugitive lingo. He was said to have boarded a Greyhound bus out on route 52, chessboard underarm and dragging a worn briefcase; he was not to be seen again for some time. His run of notoriety and fame in the nightly confines of the American Restaurant was long fondly remembered as a unexpected age of intellectual fantasy in a time otherwise marked by little more than the usual grit .

Mitch W. was another figure fondly carved in granite in the American Restaurant Hall of Weirdos.

70

He was an egg-headed looking fellow in his mid20s or so who wore horn-rimmed glasses and drove a marvelous, black, 1948 Hudson Hornet. In the cavernous backseat interior of that tank-like machine, Mitch had built book shelves which he lined, not with the expected pornography, but with the classics - Plato, Aristotle, Blake, Machiavelli, and, well, you name it. "What the hell is this stuff," we all muttered when brusquely introduced into Mitch's lumbering, four-wheeled Athenaeum. He would then launch into an impromptu lecture on the glories of literature, history, philosophy and, yes, classical music, an unlikely intellectual promenade that left most of us slack-jawed . Never mind that it was convoluted and most probably misguided, it was nevertheless enormously relevant in that it was the first time that any of us had ever heard anything about the classical tradition . Local yokals, you see, did not dabble in Greco-Roman double talk, period. The fact that Mitch was naturally double-jointed rendered his rhetorical deliveries all the more compelling , for he would sit in the front seat behind the steering wheel with his legs crossed and his upper body twisted around so that he might gaze upon his wide-eyed audience that listened attentively from the depths of the back seat.

Within a month Mitch had a bevy of sons of gritty steel-workers discussing the pros and cons of the shadows on the wall of the cave and the forms in 71

Plato's great dialog as well as the ethics and elusive causes of Aristotle . It was that kind of unpretentious delight in incongruity that many of us came to expect from a night in a low-on-gas Hudson Hornet in the parking lot at the American Restaurant .

Barbarism was not without its advocates in those same precincts in spite of pretentions to the contrary . Pals though most of us were, testosterone enlivened by a few beers nevertheless occasionally produced the inevitable masculine follies within our ranks . Spirited arguments on impossibly inconsequential matters on occasion escalated from name - calling to pushing matches and then to a flurry of flailing fists . Invariably a shout would go up - Take it out to the parking lot! - which emptied the restaurant in minutes , the lot of them rushing outside behind the prospective combatants to get prime places around the knuckle circle to have a good look at the male deer in rut . It was, however, still an age of relative innocence , because those encounters , violent though they were, remained governed rather narrowly by rules that were seemingly innate in everyone present . The combatants were constrained to engage in a clean and fair fight- no clubs, knives or guns, no brass knuckles, no kicking , no hitting while down, no punches below the belt . Our primitive world had not yet been permeated by the more modern arts 72

of war and thuggery, motivated as they are by drugs and murderous weapons. Consequently, the proceedings almost always ended as a performance that would have pleased the long slumbering Marquis of Queensbury.

In this same martial spirit, Joe Day's American Restaurant was considered a sacred acropolis by all male New Bostonians . Outsiders were barely tolerated, especially those from Sciotoville and the precincts roundabout the nearby hostile Portsmouth.

Those were foreign countries, their inhabitants regarded as potential invaders . If young male visitors came in peace and humility and if they kept their mouths shut, they might escape unscathed . But if they arrived aggressively and in numbers, they would definitively fall afoul of flying fists, eviction, and no little humiliation.

Love in all of its forms from the wickedly perverse to the innocently na¡1ve played themselves out in the restaurant during long hours from dusk to dawn . I was there one night when there showed up from a visiting county fair a lady whose profession was that of an animal lover. She had heard about an amply endowed New Bostonian youth whom we shall simply call Jackson. The good lady did not place much faith in the exaggerated reports she had recently heard about Jackson's organic dimensions 73

and had come to town after work to verify matters for herself. Timid she was not . Jackson , however, was not to be found on the premises so a posse was formed to flush him out . When he finally arrived amidst great circumstance, a great circle formed , one reminiscent of the painting of the meeting of the Estates General in the French Revolution . And there in the American Restaurant parking lot , Jackson rendered proof of the veracity of the rumors, yes , on the hood of a 1949 Plymouth , much to the astonishment of the good lady, as well as to the satisfaction of his long-believing pals . The good lady departed a new true believer, singing Jackson 's praises at considerable length across several counties and, who knows , probably into other jurisdictions.

How often the hopelessly perverse rubbed shoulders in the American Restaurant with the naively innocent . Young Mildred worked in the American Restaurant for a number of years, beginning in high school and continuing along right into her twenties .

No matter how hard she tried to arrange her modest waitress uniform, she was never quite able to camouflage her pronounced maidenly dimensions .

But she remained ever the straight- shooter who effortle ssly deflected the hundreds of passes made at her by the boys . So cold and impersonal were her ripostes toward the lot of us that she picked up the nickname "The Machine. " It was the prevailing 74

opinion that such a cognomen was altogether fitting, for how could it be that any normal, young girl could resist so thoroughly the evident charms of the likes of us? So the young lass endured a great deal of ribbing, not all of it entirely good - natured . But it didn't untrack her. She continued silently serving up our food and cleaning counter- tops, humming a Christian tune . In a town of working class people, Mildred's family was a notch lower than most on the local totem pole . Work was not a noble option for her but a stark necessity. No dances for this lass. No parties and no movies . No hanging out with the girls .

No cheerleading. Just a regular diet of work at home and homework assignments and her crucial job in Joe Day 's American Restaurant . In due time, she headed for Nursing School. Many years later everyone could see that Mildred had not merely lived her life , she consciously made it , in the face of unrelenting diversity, the enormous success that it was .

We are talking here about a short space of a few years in the mid-1950s here . World War Two was still very much a presence at that time in the thinking and everyday lives of folk. Every family in the town had members who had fought overseas; not a few had given their lives . Not a few returned home physically wounded and mentally scarred.

At the end of the conflict, many soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen simply drifted home to the town 75

and the steel mill that sat along the broad bend in the Ohio River and tried to take up their lives again.

Very few succeeded. One such was a broken man who called himself just "an old Gyrene." Though only in his early forties, he was a bent and twisted as if by some unimaginable force. About once a month he would stroll into the American Restaurant with his monthly money burning the proverbial hole in his pocket . "Are there any gat-damned gyrenes in the f .. .. dump who'd like to join a brother for some strong drink?" Volunteers for such sport were never lacking. And off they would go in some dinged up 1948 Dodge or 1949 Ford, the old Gyrene sitting in the shotgun seat- he had the money-and a couple of the town hotshots in the back. Once they had acquired a case of beer in brown bottles, they would cruise around the county until the drinks were all finished, the tank was empty, and the old Gyrene was plowed. At that point, he knighted the scrawny 17-year-olds with strange-sounding names, and they each and all became members of a platoon fighting for survival on Guadalcanal, or Okinawa. The old Gyrene narrated the scene with painful authenticity regarding terrain, ordnance, tactics and so forth.

After an hour so of intense hand-to-hand combat, he announced rather pitifully that he had "taken a bullet ." He rolled over and grew quiet. Usually he ended up by being propped up against a wall in the parking lot of the American Restaurant where 76

he spent the wee hours of the morning before the police picked him up, covered with dew and vomit, and hauled him home to his mother in one of the row houses down on Rhodes Avenue alongside the steel mill. The American Restaurant was in many instances a starting line, a jumping off point for most of its patrons. For a couple of them, like the gnarled old Gyrene, it was a dead end .

I could go on, good Lord, I could go on. But the sky is leaking light in the east; it's time for an ending. Though now gone, Joe Day's American Restaurant has left a thousand images etched in my memory. But none of them is stronger and more enduring than the night I left New Boston and Joe Day's for the last time. It was a chilly November, well past midnight, when I decided to finally move on and get on with my life. On the way out of town, headed for Columbus and the university, I made one last turn around town in a pointedly maudlin promenade. As I tooled past the restaurant in a lightly falling snow, I caught sight of a familiar figure in his accustomed position, one foot propped up behind him as he leaned casually against the brick wall in front of the restaurant, drawing on his usual cigarette.

A light layer of snow covered his head and shoulders. He and I had spent seemingly a thousand nights in this place together, with friends and pals, presiding over good times and bad, parting company reluctantly as the dawn broke upriver. This night would be the last. When he saw me passing, he slowly raised his hand in a final goodbye.

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N/\ IA

,r M~ s Bl,,~

Portsmouth, You have your fruit digging in the trash cans, picking tin, glass bottles, new/old clothes, making homes out of sidewalks in the middle of red giant September. We learn early: day drinking by noon, don't stop until sun down, then night drinking until dawn.

Bellies at 8 AM begging for tobacco, throats vomiting all this dysfunction, but ready to rip off shirts, square up, prove who's the bigger man. Here, we're lucky to keep our bodies sheltered by what we find in Good Will boxes. Here, every morning we wake to an obituary for the latest pile of bodies NARCAN didn't bless. What else do you expect from a garden of weeds? This is the only thing that will grow in rock bottom.

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THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT J. IAN BUSCH

They board up the houses with crucified pile wood, making walls of the windows, hopping to keep the ghosts from copping more dope. Dead homes bare their black skull tops to Heaven, eyes closed, glowing with the absence of light. Asphalt lined with ectoplasm, sidewalks on Mabert Road possessed with stuffed animals in front of the cottage where that boy's parents left his skin and bone body under the dinner table, lips wore down to their ribcage by thirst. They'll board this house up too, keep his ghost from getting a drink.

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SILHOUETTE STAFF PROFESSOR NEIL CARPATHIOS -- ADVISOR IAN BUSH -- LITERATURE EDITOR HANNAH BURNS -- ART & DESIGN EDITOR JAMES HORNSBY -- STAFF

THANKS FOR READING

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