TIFFIN UNIVERSITY
T HE
T U
JANUARY, 2016
R EV I EW
WINTER EDITION
DALVA CHURCH: EDITOR
Of an Autumn Afternoon
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
By Bradley Harris
POETRY BY BRADLEY HARRIS
VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1
1
Tiffin, Ohio
Where the leaves from summers past POETRY BY SHERYL NELMS
2,
Have aged into a crippled dryness
11
Are gently tugged into my sky And gently tumble to remind
POETRY BY DAVID SAPP
3, 12
Of an autumn afternoon, when we planted all those trees,
GROWING UP IN PACIFIC GROVE
410
whose roots have slithered beneath me.
1967 BY JOHN SCHMIDTKE COFFEEHOUSE CHRISTMAS BY JALYN POWELL
While gathering leaves into the piles 13 16
I check the yard to see the miles Of an autumn afternoon.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DALVA CHURCH
With its wistful, thieving whisper
My breath had captured all wind’s wishes I blew away what I wanted to stay, CONTACT INFORMATION
16
Finding instead what was needed to say.
Into Extinction By Sheryl Nelms Clyde, Texas
blackness floats up the Rio Grande River like an evening fugue edges among the cottonwoods
Fills the valley hill to hill west mesa flares golden sparks through tindered mesquite scrub as the sun shards the volcanic cone of Picacho Peak into sand
A thousand years from now, a few pilgrims escape the sun,
trudging down the dark, cool nave
Reliquary
of an inconsequential abbey, around the ambulatory, over
By David Sapp
the crypt of some obscure bishop, the vivid colors of stained glass reflecting on stone, arched walls – and come upon a tiny chapel tucked away in a dim niche.
There will be our reliquary, a forgotten, curious, little box covered in tarnished, beaten silver, precious stones clouded like cataracts, perhaps a solitary ruby, and our images, icons arranged in delicate cloisonné. The tourists mistakenly believe it holds dry, dusty bones, an eminent saint; one gawker awkwardly genuflects before the big toe of Mary Magdalene.
Unopened for a century or two, they’d be surprised as there is merely the relic of our fleeting days, our romance, our children, our feeble triumphs,
our fears, our laughter. There is no tunic or splinter of the cross, only a flower, a small marvel, its blossom as succulent and fragrant as the day it bloomed.
Berlin Heights, Ohio
Growing Up In Pacific Grove
1967 by
John Schmidtke Honolulu, Hawaii
When I listen to Paint It Black, We Gotta Get Outta This Place, Light My Fire, Sunshine of Your Love, or Like a Rolling Stone, I’m back in the Fort Ord Army Hospital, in an open ward filled with soldiers wounded in Vietnam, everyone rocking in bed, and everyone singing along. *** I planted my right foot on the front edge of first base—the old kind of base, a horsehair pillow, crossed with canvas straps and held in place with a long metal stake looped through the straps, and driven into the ground with a sledgehammer. My right foot slid under the base, catching on one of those canvas straps. My right foot stayed at first, anchored by that long metal stake, even though the rest of my body twisted and headed hard to second. I could see the right fielder—he still hadn’t reached the ball as I started that turn at first—when a screaming
flash of colorless pain blacked out the running outfielder, the rolling white ball, the close-mown green grass, the dirt -stained brown base, the whole world, a world that reappeared in a kaleidoscope of agony with me on the ground, and with confused, frightened tears rushing to wash away my pain. The world reappeared with me on the ground trying to understand why my right hip throbbed from the inside out—Oh, God, it throbbed—and trying to understand why I couldn’t seem to get a full breath, even though I gasped and I sobbed, trying, but not able, to grasp why I couldn’t escape the pain that had grabbed me at first base, and that still squeezed me without remorse around the hips, and in the hips, and through the hips, even though I was scooting away from first base on the grass, scooting
away from first base towards second and onto the outfield grass. Scooting, scooting, scooting away; my right leg useless, my right hip throbbing from the inside out. As the players from both teams gathered and while the gym teacher held me still—we were playing softball during PE—the right fielder tagged me out. That bastard. After I could breathe normally, the man who took care of the school fields drove me in a utility cart to the school. I cried with every bump. He helped me limp to the nurse’s office. I cried with every step. He helped me to
get on the nurse’s table, and I cried despite his tenderness. The nurse called my mom.
*** The nurse couldn’t call my dad. Dad left for Vietnam the month before I turned twelve. We spent the day he left for war on a fishing boat in Monterey Bay—the only catch I remember was a blue shark that rolled over as I reeled it in on my heavy, deep-sea fishing line, the shark’s yellow-white belly signaling a surprise surrender at the surface. Given the time difference, that afternoon months later when I rounded first base on my way to the nurse’s office, Dad was most likely finishing his breakfast and preparing to fly in a helicopter between hamlets, skimming the jungle canopy and skirting rice paddies. *** My mom was teeing up a golf ball somewhere on Pebble Beach Golf Course when the school nurse called. In the days before answering machines, the Cypress Avenue phone rang and rang. On the nurse’s table in the silent infirmary, I could hear our phone ring through the handset the nurse held to her ear. No answer. Who knows why Mom chose that day to go golfing. I can’t remember her golfing any other day of my life. Who knows how she got a tee time on Pebble Beach—one of the other Army wives, I suppose—and who knows why
anyone thought having a golf-novice divot her way around one of the best courses in the country was a good idea. She would have been a natural at the 19th hole, as quick to pick up the bar tab as she was to laugh at anybody else’s jokes. But Mom teeing up at Pebble Beach as the nurse tried to reach her, still seems strange. When my mom didn’t answer, the nurse dialed the emergency contact on my health card. She put her hand over the receiver and said to me, “I’m calling Mrs. Nance.”
*** Thirteen years before, in 1954, in a trailer park near Ft. Dix, New Jersey, Roberta Nance lived in the trailer house next door to ours. Her husband, Calvin Nance, commanded a basic training company, turning draftees into soldiers. My dad did the same thing. My mom, Berta, and Roberta Nance—they liked that their names were alike— were pregnant at the same time. They gave birth at the same Army hospital. They bathed their babies together in the same trailer sinks—one of the old scrapbooks we took home from my mom’s house when she died shows Chris Nance and me looking adorably confused while covered in soap bubbles. Cal Nance, a large man with a parade-ground voice, had to have been even braver than he was big. As an
infantry lieutenant, he would have served in Korea, leading troops in combat, before being promoted to captain
and taking over as a basic training company commander. As a black officer—a dark, dark, intimidatingly black officer with a natural scowl—he took over training white and black recruits in 1954 only three years after the Army desegregated. Even though Truman had ordered desegregation back in 1948, nothing really happened until 1951. Cal Nance commanded white soldiers just seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947. He trained white men in Ft. Dix, New Jersey just one year before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Roberta, a tiny woman with elegant manners and graceful movements, had to have been just as brave.
She was as light a shade of color as Cal was dark. Across the Army, regardless of color, an infantry officer’s wife could enhance or hinder her husband’s career. Just like Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels, Roberta Nance did everything my mom did as an Army wife, but against backward thinkers with high prejudices. And Roberta had to have been good at being an Army wife; Cal Nance retired as a colonel. I’m not sure whether my folks personally knew a single black person before living next door to the Nance’s. I doubt it. I have no memories of that time because I was so young, but when I was older, I don’t ever remember
my folks inviting a black couple to our home, nor do I remember them socializing with any other black officer in my dad’s twenty-seven year career. But I know my folks loved the Nances—Cal and Roberta became my godparents. *** Having the Nances live close by in Pacific Grove happened by good chance. The Army stationed Col. Nance at Ft. Ord, in Monterey, just north of Pacific Grove. Putting Roberta Nance as the emergency contact on my school health card must have come naturally to my mom. When Mrs. Nance answered the phone, the nurse told her what happened. The nurse said I needed to see a doctor. When she hung up, she told me Mrs. Nance was on her way. *** I don’t remember what kind of car Mrs. Nance drove. I remember the crying pain of walking to her car from the infirmary. Mrs. Nance tried to help but she was too small. She might have been 5’2”, but that seems too tall for that tiny woman. I couldn’t sit in the car. I faced backwards on the passenger side with my right leg straight
and my left knee on the seat, supporting my weight. Mrs. Nance did what all good Army wives would have done
back then, she drove me to the Army hospital at Fort Ord. I doubt she thought about a closer civilian hospital. She spoke calmly the whole time. I winced at every bump and every stop. She parked near the main entrance to the hospital. In my memory, the Fort Ord Army Hospital is a sprawling one-story scramble of white-painted, wooden buildings trimmed in dark green, the buildings connected by covered passageways. We limped in from the car. I couldn’t sit in the waiting room and I couldn’t stand. There were others waiting their turn in front of us. The clerk, an enlisted man, looked harried and resentful at the sick and injured who were making him do paperwork. Mrs. Nance politely asked the white soldier to make me a priority. Without really looking up, the clerk said something to her. I couldn’t hear what. Suddenly, Roberta Nance seemed to grow in size. She said something like, “Young man! I am Mrs. Col. Calvin Nance. This boy is the son of LTC John Schmidtke. LTC Schmidtke is stationed in Vietnam. This boy is my godson. You will find a doctor to see him immediately. You will find him a room with a table so he doesn’t have to sit or stand. Or you will tell me the name of your commanding officer!” The waiting room went quiet. Everyone looked at the front desk. The white soldier turned red. He stood. With his right arm extended, without saying a word, he gestured us into an examination room. I limped in, leaning on Mrs. Nance like a crutch. Using my hands to brace my weight on the end of the examination table, I stepped on the stainless steel stool and got on the table. As I reclined, the stabbing pain in my hip disappeared. I relaxed and I breathed in slow, even, unpanicked breathes for the first time since reaching first base. The military doctor came in. He examined me. He said there was nothing wrong and he turned to leave.
“Captain!” Mrs. Col. Nance said in a command voice. “Please examine him again.” He did. Again, nothing wrong. “Thank you for your help, Captain,” Mrs. Nance said kindly. “Bud, let’s go.” The doctor watched as I slipped myself off the table. When my feet hit the linoleum it was like I was rounding first again. The black pain reappeared. The doctor and Mrs. Nance caught me.
“I think his hip is dislocated,” the doctor said to Mrs. Nance after examining me again. “We’ll get him to x-ray.” Soon, an orderly showed up with a wheelchair. He helped me in. I was able to sit if my leg could extend. He adjusted the chair. Mrs. Nance followed us to x-ray. The doctor was right, my hip had dislocated. They admitted me, and they scheduled surgery for the next day. They planned to put a pin in my hip, but they needed my mom’s OK. The pediatric surgery ward did not have any beds. They wheeled me into an adult male surgical ward with sixteen to twenty beds in it. Mrs. Nance didn’t come in. She left the hospital to find my mother, leaving me alone. White curtains separated the beds in the ward, if necessary, but most were pulled back. Young enlisted soldiers filled most of the beds. I was only twelve, almost thirteen, and they all seem old then. But now, thinking back, I doubt if any of them was older than twenty-four. A single TV hung over the emergency exit at the end of the ward. The orderlies lifted me into the fifth bed on the right and clamped a weighted harness on my foot to keep my hip in place with traction. I was the only kid on the ward.
“Hey, Kid,” the soldier in the bed to my right said when the orderlies left. “What happened?” *** Every soldier in my ward had been wounded in Vietnam. Some had an eye bandaged. Some a bandaged head. Some had white wrapped stumps where an arm or a hand used to be. Some couldn’t wear shirts because of the bandages on their torso. Several had no foot, no calf, no knee, or no thigh. “Hey, kid. You play cards?”
Several who could walk or wheel themselves came to my bed. We played Hearts, Spades, and Cribbage. “Hey, kid. Will they bring you back here after surgery?” I didn’t know. *** Mom and Mrs. Nance came by after dinner. The orderlies let them in and pulled the curtains around
us. I felt fine. Mom felt like the worst mom in the world. With the hip in place with traction, the doctors had decid-
ed to postpone the surgery. Mom said she’d visit tomorrow. She did not want to leave her baby. I couldn’t wait for her to leave. *** Late that first night, I faced my first traction-related problem. I needed to poop. The orderly brought me a bedpan and explained how to use it. Peeing in the jug had not been easy, but I’d managed it. Scooting onto a bedpan, using it, wiping clean, and not soiling my sheets or hurting myself seemed impossible. I didn’t go. I couldn’t go. I held it the first night. The next day, they brought me the bedpan several times but I couldn’t go. This often happens, one orderly said, but you’ll get used to it. They measured my urine. They couldn’t measure my poop. The second night, I really had to go. My stomach knotted. I had to pinch my butt cheeks. Several hours after midnight, I told the soldier on my right I really, really had to go. He said he’d call the orderly for a bedpan. I said I couldn’t go on a bedpan. He laughed. “Just a second,” he said, and he got out of bed. I remember he used a wheel chair, but I can’t remember
why. He rolled to the bottom of my bed. He unhooked the weight from my foot. He rolled back to his bed and got in. He leaned over and pushed his wheelchair to me. “Try this. The shitter is up there,” he said, nodding to the far end. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. No pain. I hopped off my bed onto my left foot. No pain. I sat in the wheelchair. No pain. I wheeled to the toilets and carefully moved from the wheelchair to the toilet seat. I spread my cheeks. No pain. Each night, when I wheeled back to my bed, the soldier in the bed next to me reconnected the traction on my right leg. On the morning of day four, the doctors spoke to me in concerned voices about the procedure to “unpack” me. I quickly confessed my late night toilet trips without giving up my abettor. I think that’s when they decided I could go home sometime soon. *** The ward smelled odd. Despite the scrubbed antiseptic floors and the bleached white sheets, the ward
smelled like pain and pus. It smelled like old blood. It smelled like fermenting meat going bad—a nauseating sweet smell. The smell came mostly from the soldier in the third bed on the opposite side of the ward. His left leg rotted from gangrene. They took his foot before I got there. They took his calf the day after I arrived. They planned to take—“No, you Mother Fuckers! You can’t have it! No! Goddamn it! No! No! No! Oh, goddamn you, you Mother Fuckers . . . No!”—most of his thigh the day before I left. He didn’t come back to the ward before they discharged me. I don’t know why. ***
We shared one TV. Someone who could walk and reach the dial would change the channel to whatever station the ward agreed; I don’t think I’d ever heard of a remote control. No one wanted to watch war shows. No one wanted to watch the news. Almost everyone wanted a comedy. Most of all, everyone wanted rock groups playing pulsing songs with attitude. I didn’t understand why rock mattered—my folks listened to Montavani and Percy Faith at home. I don’t remember exactly what groups we watched or which songs we heard on the TV mounted over the emergency exit, but those songs still take me back. *** The soldiers bet on me. Cigarette bets, mostly—I don’t remember seeing any money. Late at night, I’d
get in a borrowed wheelchair and race down the center of the ward against any soldier who could get out of bed. I was usually faster because I wasn’t wounded. I could hit the far wall without slowing down and without splitting open. But I was not so fast as to make betting a waste of time, and besides, because I was way younger than anyone else, betting either on me or against me seemed the right thing to do. And yet, I think the soldiers would have bet on me even if I lost every time—to be alone in a open ward with part of you missing had to have been lonely and frightening. I hadn’t been to war. I wasn’t missing any pieces. My mom visited me every day. I would go home soon. Everyone in the ward rooted for me.
*** My hip stayed in place with traction so the doctors decided not to cut. After a week, they discharged me on crutches. I said goodbye to each guy on the ward. I don’t know who they were, or what happened to any of them. I don’t remember exactly what groups we watched or what songs we heard on the TV mounted over the emergency exit, but today, almost any rock song from 1967 takes me back to that ward.
.
Las Cruces Night By Sheryl Nelms
the wind
reverberates down the Organ Mountains rolls onto Tortilla Flats cymbals the tin trailer roof
overhead with the steady meat of machismo then gales off across the Rio Grande into Mexico
Sympathy by David Sapp
When I was a child, the first time I planted anything, it was radishes. I drew a line in the soil, sprinkled tiny, black seeds in the furrow, and covered them with small hands. In a few weeks, plump cupid cheeks smiled at me, knowing I needed their joy. When my mother’s petunias spilled a crazy wilderness across the walk, I didn’t know where to play no matter how carefully I tread. Each morning, heavy with dew, their petals seemed to weep for me. Even the thistles cried a little. When I was mostly grown and endured many days alone, when winter hours were especially bleak, I looked to my one, gruff plant in its plain, clay pot, whose every leaf declined to wither, whose roots took hold, stems akimbo, stubbornly for me. When I married, I dug a lilac sprig for my wife from the old matron along the fence and planted it at the corner of our house. All these years it thrived, refusing to acquiesce to implacable ice and snow. On warm days in May, its gracious fragrance drifts through our bedroom windows.
Coffeehouse Christmas By JN Powell Midland, Texas
The best thing about coffeehouses, Meg thought, were the seasonal brews, fluffy with whipped cream and happiness. And at Christmastime, when they painted the windows with drawings of snowmen and Santas drinking warm mugs of cocoa, she couldn’t bring herself to miss an afternoon sitting in the cushy chairs, sipping and staring at the like-minded Christmas-lovers loitering along with her. As Meg skipped up to the cash register with her brother, she thought: They should keep the windows decorated all year! They should sprinkle the shelves with glittery cobwebs of snow every day and sell gingerbread cookies shaped like candy-canes until the end of time! “Oh, it’s you,” said the barista with droopy eyes and dragging voice. “Skinny latte, right?” Meg forced a smile. Skinny lattes tasted like the piles of chalky ash and bark after a fire had burned down the forest. She wanted to pull out her flip lighter and demonstrate for the worthless barista exactly what she thought of a skinny latte and her droopy eyes, but as she dug in her purse, maintaining a forced smile that was too
toothy, too big, like a mask trying to take over her entire face, her brother spoke up. “She wants the Powdered Sugar Caramel Mocha, actually.” “We don’t serve that anymore. Christmas is over.” Meg’s fingers wrapped around the lighter at the bottom of her purse, and her heart went as cold as its smooth, metallic surface. What did she just say? “Uh, then next would be a Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cappuccino,” her brother said, and the barista shrugged and punched in the order. Meg’s smile fell away. She had really wanted to use her flip lighter. She turned to her brother, the man with the two-sizes-too-big jacket, a boring brown thing, like the paper bags parents use for the dried-out sandwiches, and the too-warm sodas, they pack for their children’s lunches, and inhaled a deep, deep breath so she could tell him exactly how much she hated him ruining her fun, and who was that hideous barista anyway to think--
“She’s right,” he said and handed her the Not Powdered Sugar Caramel Mocha. “It’s January now.”
It was like acid in her ears. Christmas could never die, not ever, not even if-“Relax,” her brother muttered as he blew into the triangular hole for sipping of his own to-go coffee cup lid. Meg ground her teeth. How could she relax when she could still see the sugar plums dancing in dreams and hear the jingling of Santa’s sleigh deep in the night when the rest of the world was asleep, and yet there was the barista at the window with the bucket and sponge about to wipe away the snowmen and Santas, and replace them with gaudy pink hearts for Valentine’s Day. It made her want to tap on the bottom of her brother’s cup, gently, just enough to send the scalding hot coffee jumping out of the triangular hole for sipping and to splash on his blasphemous lips. If she tapped even harder, though, it could splash his entire face, maybe even get into his eyes and he would be blinded for a few minutes. She would say “Oh, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” but that would be like lying, so she would simply say “Oops!” and giggle while she walked away with her own coffee concoction safely secured beneath a closed lid. He would need napkins, or better yet, the rough brown paper towels that never absorb anything
and just smear the mess around. She would take her time “to go find some” while he rubbed his reddening lips and cheeks and nose. She looked at him, the man wearing the hideously plain brown jacket, and as he blew into the triangular hole again, she said, “Christmas is forever,” between clenched teeth. He sighed and headed for the exit as he rolled his eyes like two marbles that had fallen out of his righthand pocket, rolling and rolling down the sidewalk. She wanted to stick her foot out. Only an inch or two, not much, just enough to make his sneaker scrape against her boot and he would stumble and spill his coffee. The liquid would jump up out of the sippyhole as quick as a prairie dog and land on his exposed hand like a fat kid’s cannonball in the public swimming pool full of snot and pee. His sleeve would get all wet, and then maybe he would take the jacket off, and then she could steal it and burn it in the backyard with her flip lighter when they got home. But that wasn’t what she really wanted. What she really wanted was to push him so hard that his burnt
black coffee with no cream and no sugar would fly right out of his hand, free at last from his bad breath blowing lips, and splash all over the floor right before his face hit the ground. And the floor would be slick and scalding hot, so he would slide a little when he fell and his cheeks and nose would open up and the coffee and the blood would mingle, but more importantly the cuts would get burned on the inside from the blazing hot liquid. Then what would he do? The bathroom was out of order and she wouldn’t raise a finger or buy him a new coffee since he had been so mean to her and forget the scratchy brown paper towels that felt more like cardboard! He would be on his own, and even better, she would dump her own Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cappuccino on the back of his
head and walk out of the coffeehouse like a model on the catwalk, and slam the door closed behind her. “You coming or not?” he asked, holding the door open for her. She looked at him and frowned. “I’ll take you to the discount Christmas store, ok?” As soon as he uttered the magical C-word, Meg leapt like a bunny before Easter, and squealed with the high-pitched fervor of a baby eating ice-cream for the first time. But the joy was too much. When she scrunched her hands into fists to pump victoriously in the air, the flimsy cup collapsed inward, popping the plastic lid clean off and launching the coffeehouse goodness into the air in one silky-smooth wave before it separated into smaller strings of caffeine-laced peanut butter and chocolate and drenched her completely. Her chin quivered as the $4.50 drink dribbled down her face. Her brother didn’t laugh. He didn’t run off as if he hadn’t originally arrived with her or shake his head in shame and stand aside as she cleaned herself up in awkward silence. No, he hurried to the counter and asked for napkins. Snickering baristas handed him a bundle of the scratchy brown paper towels everyone hates and he said
“no” and grabbed a stack of the soft, white napkins reserved for the people who ordered the expensive cupcakes and cranberry-lemon scones baked fresh daily, never frozen. He blotted her hair and wiped her face, her hands, then took off her bright red jacket, soaked in coffee, and gave her his own poop-colored one instead, although now she thought it looked more like the golden crust of Mom’s apple crisp cobbler or the crunchy brown-sugar glaze of a Christmas Day ham. It was warm and fuzzy Con’t on last page
Www.tiffin.edu
“Coffee House Christmas”, Con’t
and smelled like a campfire. It reminded her of being wrapped in blankets beside the crackling hearth and waiting for
TIFFIN UNIVERSITY DRAGON WRITERS
snow to fall on Christmas Eve.
Prof. Dalva Church
Then they walked outside, only two degrees and gusty
Bridgewater #4
with pellets of sleet, but she was happy and dry and going to the
35 S Sandusky St Tiffin, Ohio 44883
discount Christmas store with her wonderful brother to look for
Phone: 419-448-5132 Fax: 419-443-5027
clearance ornaments for next year’s tree, maybe glittery ones or
Email: churchdk@tiffin.edu
blue ones or purple ones, and all for dirt cheap. She smiled. He shivered. Christmas was alive and well.
Tiffin University
For more information on the student/community writers group, or to submit work for consideration, contact Professor Dalva Church at churchdk@tiffin.edu