AdelaideLiterary Magazine No.17, October 2018

After my great aunt’s departure, Grandmama fact, that I began to think of staying put when
called me to come and “check the gold box” for she went to the funeral parlor. I thought first
our shopping trip. of telling her I was afraid of being in the room
with the dead person, but I’d seen bodies plen-
I took the cigar box that stood in for a cash ty before, so she’d know that wasn’t true.
register from its hiding place in the dining room I thought some more until I thought how
buffet and counted. “There’s 314 dollars,” I Grandmama was overprotective, how she was
said after awhile. I was not yet fast at counting, suffocating me, when I was capable of staying
a fact I didn’t consider bought her a little more on my own.
time to work.
“Let’s go,” she called when all her slamming in
“Get a ten. And a five for good measure,” she and out of the screen door and thudding up
called. “And let’s be quick.” and down the stone steps to load the car had
stopped.
She pulled up to Pope’s Jewelry and Gifts and
honked so John Pope would come running When I didn’t come, she poked her head in the
from the back where he repaired jewelry. But doorway of the dining room. I looked up from
once inside, I couldn’t make myself rush. I the floor and said calmly, “I’m going to stay
needed to inspect each Barbie carefully. And here and play with Barbie.”
the outfits packaged in cellophane with striped
paper borders—separate from the dolls them- “It wouldn’t be safe, Emma. Come on. We have
selves— mesmerized me. All the tiny pearl to go. Bring your Barbie with you.” She dan-
buttons down the front of one dress and the gled her pocketbook by the strap in one hand
miniature rick-rack trim around the hem of and jiggled her keys in the other.
another. I saw Grandmama from the corner of
my eye, twisting and untwisting her pocket- “I don’t want to,” I said. The later she was the
book clasp, but I didn’t speed up. better, I thought. She would get antsy and
leave.
Then Mr. Pope walked over and towering over
me, said, “I believe your grandmother’s in a “We’re leaving this minute,” my grandmother
hurry.” said shrilly. I had never heard her use that
tone, but still, I didn’t move.
His big voice scared me. I stopped studying
and narrowed my choices quickly, grabbing up Then she stepped toward me and slung her
a doll and ensemble in each hand: the Bubble- pocketbook to the crook of her arm so that one
cut Barbie with the airline stewardess ward- hand was free. She reached above my elbow
robe—flight bag included—and the Pony-tail and grabbed the soft skin on my upper arm
Barbie with Hawaiian attire—adorned with a lei between her thumb and forefinger. She
of multi-colored flowers. squeezed the flesh and twisted her fingers
firmly. I cried out. I stood up on tiptoe trying to
“I like the doll with short hair and the career escape the pain. “Let’s go,” she said.
outfit,” my grandmother said and nodded at
Mr. Pope who grabbed the doll and clothes Incredulous, I followed. I was too stunned to
from my hand and rang them up. cry. My grandmother had never denied, much
less hurt me. All the way in the car, I shrank as
Grandmama was running behind when we got far to my side as I could get. I stayed silent and
back and surely must have been grateful to see rubbed the puffy red place on my arm. When
me settle in to play with my new Barbie while we arrived, Grandmama motioned for me to
she worked. Engrossed, I made a doll house by exit the car. I trailed her into the funeral home,
draping cloth napkins over a stool and cutting but didn’t follow into the visitation room
out cardboard furniture. I had so much fun, in where she would place her arrangements.

I hid. I was smoldering with shame and didn’t About the Author
want to stand alongside her.
Receiving her undergraduate and graduate
I concealed myself, I thought, behind the door degrees from Converse College, Susan
that swung into the hall and watched through Beckham Zurenda taught English for 33 years
the crack as she walked heavily back and forth, at Spartanburg Community College and as an
towing flowers in her arms. On the third trip to AP English teacher at Spartanburg High School
the car, she stopped at the door and pulled it in South Carolina. She retired from full-time
from in front of me. She had known very well teaching in 2013 and began work as a publicist
where I was. I didn’t want to look at her be- for Magic Time Literary Agency based in Spar-
cause surely, she hated me. But she bent to my tanburg. Her fiction writing accomplishments
level and rested her arms on my shoulders. include winner in Alabama Conclave First Chap-
Maybe it was because I was still distraught, but ter Novel Prize, Carolina Woman Magazine
in her face, everything seemed magnified. Her Fiction Contest, The Southern Writers Symposi-
eyes behind the blue-rimmed glasses were um Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, two-time
huge pale circles filled with veins of red. Her winner of the Jubilee Writing Competition, two
skin shone wet and wrinkled deeply on her -time winner of The South Carolina Fiction Pro-
cheeks, pleated together, like the petals of her ject with one story reprinted in Inheritance:
carnations. My grandmother was not super Selections from the SC Fiction Project, winner of
human at all; she was tired, and I was fright- the Hub City Hardegree Creative Writing Con-
ened in a different way. test in Fiction, and winner in the Porter Flem-
ing Writing Competition. She has published a
I reached out instinctively for her. “I can help number of nonfiction pieces.
you carry your flowers, Grandmama,” I whis-
pered and burrowed my head in her waist,
reaching my arms around her.

“That would be lovely,” she said. Surrounded in
the folds of her dress, I breathed in the pun-
gent smell of plumosa fern, the smell that de-
fined my grandmother. Dimly, a vision came to
me of a future without this fragrance. When
the sun parlor would be without flowers and
ribbon. When there would be only the stone
floors and wooden tables and remnants of
what had been. I shuddered suddenly and
clutched her tighter.

In that moment, she shifted and put her hand
under my chin. I looked up. The drawn lines of
her face had lifted and her smile was bright—
mercifully obscuring my vision that I prayed
was still far, far away.

WHY I WON’T SLEEP
WITH DONALD TRUMP

by Judith Roney

A surprise dinner for my cousin’s Wharton I know he expects me to ask him about it. What
graduation. Her dad wants everyone seated the trick is. I know that expression. The one
before he makes his entrance — says he’s her like, see? See how I charmed them? How I
surprise. Trimmed his mullet and the curly helped a black British woman? He wants me to
hairs from his nose. He asks me to switch seats tell him what a good human he is. That he is a
with him, says he prefers to be at the end. hero. That he’s a powerful and virile man. That
I would like a favor too.
Reminds me he recorded a video for his fune-
ral, or so he claims. I imagine there will be He is not my blood uncle.
plenty of David Koch and Rupert Murdoch
types in attendance, and a dearth of Roseannes I was the late one of the cousins to attend col-
and Teresa Giudices. lege. Took a while to find direction.

Jane, the grad, is thrilled to see him. Her idol. He asks when I’ll be finished with classes and
Her meal-ticket. Her fondler. what’s after that. It’s always about the end
with him.
He stands. Interrupts my cousin at the podium,
thanking him for coming, to tell everyone how No connective buffers, no cartilage. No pain
he helped a black British lady at the bar (he receptors — just bone on bone. I wonder what
points her out, through a glass partition) with the difference is between a corpse and a ca-
her American citizenship test. daver, and a skeleton for that matter?

“She was very, very grateful,” he snorfs. Every- After buttering his roll he rests his knife on the
one nods. Everyone claps. Everyone under- dinnerplate and his hand on my thigh.
stands this man would help anyone who asked.
“I’ll speak at your graduation dinner, you know,
He moves to the podium, shouldering Jane when you finish.”
aside.
I turn to him, trying quite hard not to let my
“I told her my trick to recall all the presidents face reveal what’s shrieking under the skin.
names” he says. His arms spread open like a
menu. Applause. Everyone’s heads nodding like He looks surprisingly benign in the low-light of
tripped-out bobbleheads. the banquet hall. Oddly, I think of Lovecraft’s
Cthulhu.
Twenty minutes later, slightly hoarse, he sits
again next to me, in his coveted place at the The author reportedly said the first h repre-
end. sents “guttural thickness,” and the pronuncia-
tion is the closest humans can come to pro-
nouncing syllables of an alien language.

“That’s okay,” I say, “I’m not planning a gradua-
tion dinner.”
But his attention is already elsewhere, the
pinkish, soft-fleshed hand removed.
He’s cutting his lamb looking at the lady at the
bar again. She is large-bosomed and has artful-
ly drawn eyebrows.
She looks.
He looks.
She raises her drink like a salute.
He chews the meat wildly, like an animal in
fear of losing its catch.

About the Author:

Judith Roney’s fiction, essays, and poetry have
appeared in numerous publications. Waiting
for Rain won an honorable mention for Two
Sylvias Press 2016 chapbook contest. Her poet-
ry collection, According to the Gospel of Haunt-
ed Women, received the 2015 Pioneer Prize.
She teaches creative writing at the University
of Central Florida, and is a staff poetry reader
for The Florida Review.

LIFE WITH THIS MAN

by Jody Sperling

The promotion to senior management has giv- job,” he’ll say. He will pause: always pause.
en them more money, disposable income, but “Okay. You could do my job, but you’d hate it
also taken him further from her and their boys: as much as I do. And believe me, babe, I’d be
physically, he travels twice as often, and men- plenty happy taking the boys on daytrips to the
tally, when he is with them, his mind is on the zoo.”
job. At dinner, he’ll hide his phone in his lap,
browsing emails while chewing roast chicken It will improve. When he first started for the
and rice. He’ll ask the boys how their day was, company he worked twelve hour days, even
but ignore their answers. The time he needs to fifteen hours. He told her then, “This was a
adjust, she wants to give him, and—or is it mistake. I can’t do it.” In those first months she
but—she fears he’ll choose drink again. found his anxiety endearing.

It takes the average person two years at any There was a period of time, as he adjusted to
job, she read somewhere, to fully understand his first promotion, when he couldn’t hear a
his role and to perform to the level at which he casual word spoken about his misery. She
is an asset to his company. She has been a might tell him he’d learn to separate his mind
mother for five years in September and feels from the job after hours, but always tears
she has a lifetime of learning left just to seemed on the verge of spilling from his wet
achieve competency at parenting. Perhaps the eyes. “No amount of money could make this
stakes raise when the product grew from your kind of soul-sucking job worthwhile,” he would
own body. say, and she would draw in close enough for
his breath to warm her face. “You don’t under-
On the days when he works from home she stand. This is killing my dreams,” he would say,
can, often does, shout to him through the wall and she would wrap him in a hug and bury her
that separates the livingroom from his office: nose in his neck.
updates about her mood, the weather, ques-
tions, summons. She feels entitled to these He is a dreamer in the sense that he can see
interruptions. Or she eavesdrops on his vide- where his ambitions lead, the day when his real
oconferences. His coworkers use familial jar- work is celebrated. This vision of his future-self
gon. “What is the DNA of your region?” and both adds to and reduces his stress. He wakes
“We can grandfather senior employees into the before sunrise, before his family, before his
new pay plan.” These terms are tacit acknowl- phone will ring, before his team clocks in for
edgment of the truly important work. She work. He writes his stories, his novels, his es-
sometimes can’t help joking that she would says and on occasion a poem or two. By the
trade places with her husband for a week. time the highways of the Midwest are choked
with traffic he has finished an hour and a half
He responds cynically: “You couldn’t do my of writing and is ready to open his email for the
day’s onslaught.

Since the most recent promotion, though, he begins its campaign to overtake an entire
has told her more times than she can count he raised bed. She thought she had pulled its eve-
can’t see the point in writing. She hesitates to ry root when she transplanted it to the terra-
comfort or offer insight at those moments. He cotta pot several months ago, but thyme, she
has a history of certain behaviors emerging learns, the heartiest of plants, much like plants
when he’s in a quitting mood. These are the designated as weeds, survives most attacks.
times when his frustration might push him too Like so much of life, it is what lies beneath the
far. There’s a novel shopping for an agent, sto- surface that is so hard to kill.
ries sitting in some literary journal’s queue, a
second novel in draft that has already been Then there are strawberries, which need a kind
rejected once. She checks his email obsessively of love she has yet to master. She moved some
in these high-stress times, praying for not yet sixteen plants that had been placed in fence
another rejection. boxes last summer. The idea for the strawber-
ries had been good, but it turned out they were
When weighted by stress, his motions are too sheltered from water. Even in the heaviest
jerky, full of lurch and stutter. She has asked if rain, their soil remained dry. She didn’t know
he would benefit from muscle relaxers. There she had let them dry to death, but now in their
are leftovers from the last baby. Marks of her new location she discovers they are beyond
episiotomy linger pale like exclamation marks, resuscitation. Could she have recognized the
reminding her of all her children have required. moment before it was too late? The guilt of
responding too late haunts her.
He jokes that a beer would be more to his lik-
ing. She is learning to read his eyes when he She will buy new plants, and by the time she
remarks on alcohol, as if she can see through and her husband are ready to move to a larger
them back to the memory he’s evoking. There house where their boys can have separate
were a handful of nights in the beginning of rooms, where there will be a basement for the
their marriage when they’d split a six-pack and litter box and the dog won’t have to use a
gotten giggly together, touchy, passionate. shower as his kennel her strawberries will
Most of the time he’d beg her to run to the thrive. The new owner will inherit her labors
grocery store for more beer, “just one more,” and harvest enough berries for a gallon of pre-
and he’d go to bed soupy-eyed and stumbling. serves.
She doesn’t like to dwell on the reasons he
decided to share his every password with her, III.
how trust can be reduced to keystrokes. He
doesn’t carry cash. These were his ideas. Her husband likes to tell the boys stories about
car accidents, plane crashes, armed robberies,
She still has trouble sleeping when he travels burning buildings, cancer, heart attacks, all
for work. Though she tells him it’s because she manner of fatalities. It is a strange nuance of
is scared of burglars and the nameless sounds male bonding she can’t comprehend. They all
at night, she knows he knows her restlessness find these outcomes humorous. But she wor-
is the product of an overactive imagination. In ries the common thread, that he is the imag-
bed alone, she’ll close her eyes and images of ined victim of all these outcomes: bones bro-
him weaving across double yellows on desert- ken, bullet in the brain, skin melting, carcino-
ed midnight highways will play across her mas spreading, ruptured ventricles. When the
mind. boys drift off to play by themselves, she tells
her husband if he ever kills himself she will file
II. his novel away never to shop it again. It is a
book five years in the making. “What if it’s the
The pea plants have pushed through. Else- next Confederacy of Dunces?” he says. She
where in the garden thyme has greened and says, “Then I guess no one will have the plea-

sure of reading a truly great work of art.” It is “You’ll make it. I know you will. I’ve seen our
truly great. She remembers reading the fourth future.”
chapter of the draft when he had finally de-
fined his voice and the scope of the project, How he wants to believe her! It is almost fun-
losing herself in his characters, believing them ny. It is funny. The flesh on his arms and neck
real, hoping for them, aching for them, seeing dimples. The hair stands on edge. His lips tight-
the pleasure in his face when she could say in en. He says, “I hope so.”
all earnestness that she liked it. “But you don’t
have to worry because you won’t kill yourself.” His need endears her to him.
His work will bear fruit and he will be rewarded
for it in time, but she knows he struggles to V.
believe.
Sometimes, when he asks her for the hun-
He is not suicidal. Death to him seems a relief, dredth time in a single day, “Do you love me?”
but he has too many dreams, too much ambi- she thinks she might wheel around and slap his
tion for death to hold sway. She can’t imagine face.
a world in which his desire to escape the pres-
sures of life outweighs the idea of his future “Stop it! Stop asking me that!”
self.
How can she love him any better? Behind his
She thought she would have hated living with a question is an accusation. He’s telling her she’s
narcissist, but seven years with this man has not loving him hard enough, well enough,
revealed a side of her she seldom saw. Feeling deeply.
needed is the surprise reward of living with a
self-absorbed spouse. Her husband believes so No one can love another person as much as
strongly in his superiority that when he fails to she loves him.
rise to his own expectations a wave of petu-
lance crashes against the berm of his ego. He And she wonders at times what life might have
needs her to be his foundation during these been like with another man: never the spe-
storms of doubt, and she needs to be needed. cifics. It is a kind of mental exercise in reassur-
ance. She could never tolerate the smell of
The new job has called upon her deepest re- another man. Her husband’s musk was made
sources. Her husband might drown in the add- for her. She read an article somewhere that
ed responsibility. When he is home—he travels detailed the complex neurological pathways
most weeks for three nights at a go—he stum- scent markers travel. Science is still in the early
bles from his office at the end of the day, six or stages of discovery regarding olfactory process,
seven at night most times, and there is a bleary but it has already proven women first identify
look of defeat etched on his face. their future mates by smell. Every person has a
unique scent-marker produced by various hor-
“I had to just pick a random stopping point,” mones in the body, a kind of fingerprint for the
he’ll say. nose. When a woman finds her ideal mate, his
smell registers in her brain, firing the same
“It will get better,” she’ll say. She’ll say this not neuron response as memory retrieval. Strange-
as a platitude, but as a sincere commitment. “It ly, the article concluded, many modern women
will get better.” When she says it he both pair off with men whose smell they cannot
knows it to be true and bristles against it. She remember. She was not surprised to learn that
has always been right before. successful marriages could be accurately pre-
dicted based on scent recognition, and she
IV. even joked about starting a new dating web-
site: SmellForever.com.
She’s been invoking a phrase of late when her
husband collapses defeated on the couch: She often told her husband how much she
loved his smell. He doubted her sincerity.

Hygiene was not one of his strong suits. He was VII.
given to skipping days at a time between teeth-
brushings, and he never wore deodorant—not The children are with her mother. She will run
until this recent promotion. to Mulhall’s and buy her strawberry plants,
some flower seeds, peppers, tomatoes, tubers.
In fact, it was when, returning from a recent There is nothing like watching a garden sprout
work trip, he said he felt his new job was es- from seed. She depends upon it thriving. Then,
tranging him from himself that she really began she will go to the Goodwill in search of dress
to worry. They could endure anything so long shirts for her husband. He needs at least five
as they had eachother. What if he stopped be- decent collared shirts for work meetings.
ing himself and she no longer had him to have
her? “Give it six months,” she said. “If it hasn’t She browses the books first. From time to time
gotten better by then we’ll figure something she’ll find a gem. The feeling of giving her hus-
else out.” band a great book is one she covets. She dis-
covered Robert Boswell for him: Crooked
VI. Hearts. He held that book in his hands years
ago on a cool night when they were lying in
She browses NP Dodge’s web-listing for her bed. She simply handed it to him. “For your
dream house. There are always minor flaws in birthday.”
the layout. A house will be almost perfect ex-
cept for its lacking a wraparound porch, or it “We agreed you wouldn’t give me anything.”
will be so close but have too many north-facing
windows. She wants five acres within twenty- “I know you’re sorry about what happened,
six minutes of Omaha city limits. Bennington but it didn’t seem right not getting you any-
would be ideal but for the wealthy who had thing.”
recently fled there. East of Fremont or near
Fort Calhoun would be good too unless a “Baby. I almost destroyed our family.”
strong wind pushed Cargill fumes—its pro-
cessed soybean fuel—their way. She held his gaze. Alcohol had almost cost him
his job. She wonders now if he wishes it would
If her husband can’t adapt and learn to thrive have. She had said, “You’ll like this, I think. He
in his new job, she’ll have to kiss her dream was one of Wallace’s teachers.”
house goodbye. Saying goodbye to the house
of her dreams would be hard, but not so hard There is no Boswell at the Goodwill, no Miller
as losing her husband. He is a good man. She’s or Goodman, no Thompson or Bolaño. She
certain of that. drifts toward the rack of men’s shirts.

A listing catches her eye. She clicks the link and A simple blue oxford catches her eye. She lifts
flips through the thirty attached photos. The it from the rack. It looks to be just his size. She
house is within their price-range, the upper holds the collar to her face. Its soft fabric glanc-
limit. Its porch is a work of majesty. Between es her lip. This is not the shirt. She runs her
the yard and a sprawling expanse of acres is a fingers along the cottons and silks. There are
stand of pines. At the time of day when the other shirts she likes: a buttercream plaid, one
photos were taken the pines blanket the yard of slate gray, and several in muted shades of
in cool shade. She can almost taste the lemon- red and white. Some she pulls close to her
ade in its glass, feel the wood of a handmade face. Others she knows will not suit her hus-
Adirondack chair at her back as she imagines band. Then she finds a green and white striped
looking out at her boys playing in that yard: at shirt near the end of the rack. She slips it from
last, something perfect. its hanger. What a fine piece of craftsmanship
it is. The brand is unfamiliar to her. Its cut is
long in the arms and drape, wide across the

chest and narrow through the waist. She pres-
ses the collar to her face and inhales. Time ea-
ses, drips, drip, drip. A world of possibility
opens before her. She must have this shirt.

After paying, she follows her feet out of the
store and into the parking lot. Her car is languid
hot. She has always enjoyed a sunbaked cab
after time spent in air-conditioned buildings.
The stillness of trapped heat calms her. She
starts the engine, easing on the gas, pulling
through the parking space and out of the lot.
Her husband will adjust to his new job. She
feels profoundly confident he will, and yet, it
no longer seems to matter, though she can’t
say quite why, if he doesn’t. He might buckle
under the pressure of his responsibilities, find a
bar and buy a beer, and if he does, she will
gather her courage and do what she must do.

About the Author:

Jody J. Sperling lives in Omaha, Nebraska with
Ashley, Silas, Edmund, and Tobias. His work has
been featured in Red Rock Review, The Moth
Magazine, Litro, Midwestern Gothic, Blue Earth
Reivew, and elsewhere.

THE LIGHTNING MAN

by Anna Schaeffer

The Lightning Man came to the town of Mar- Bill had his cellphone pressed to his ear and the
yanne during one of Oklahoma’s fiercest thun- he dial tone thrummed directly into it, rattling
derstorms. He burst into Kelly’s bar soaked, his eardrum.
wild-eyed and dying in nothing but his bright
white fruit-of-the-looms and a pair of dress “Uh-huh. Bill said, “Just waiting for them to
shoes. pick up.”

Bill Rockwood had never considered himself to “Good,” Roxy said, “Jesus, I think this guy might
be easily flustered, but he sat frozen in shock have been struck by lightning.”
with a bite of coleslaw held to his open mouth
as the man teetered, swayed and fell to the Bill slipped his phone back into his pocket and
ground with a wet thud. suppressed a sigh. Had the stranger waited just
a few minutes to make his grand entrance, Bill
Like grackles startled by passing footfalls, Bill could have finished his damn coleslaw. Instead,
Rockwood and the patrons of Kelly’s bar ex- the Lightning Man laid in fleshy melodrama on
ploded into a fluttering chaos. The room itself the floor of the bar. He looked like something
seemed to have begun a crazy rotation, like a that had been dragged up from the bottom of
carnival ride spinning around the semi-naked the sea, a rare, deep-sea fish, gasping for
man splayed before them. breath on dry land.

“Somebody get him a pair of pants!” Nancy “No ambulance,” the Lightning Man said. His
Wallace wailed. voice was curdled, urgent and Bill’s skin
crawled at the sound of it.
“Chrissake, Nancy, you think he needs a pair of
pants?” Bill said back to her, he struggled to Roxy used to say that Bill’s mind and heart
make his way towards the man elbowing past were as calloused as his hands, and he sup-
his fellow diners. posed it was true. Over the years, Bill had
simply become accustomed to death. He’d
“Somebody get a doctor!” found his animals frozen solid with wide-open
eyes and gasping mouths the morning after a
“I am not calling a doctor for some sick exhibi- snowstorm. He’d seen his cattle mauled by
tionist!” desperate packs of coyotes. Bills had watched
his brother die at twelve years old from an
“Kayleen, will you stop taking pictures of this asthma attack when they were too far afield to
man?” come home. Yes, he was used to death. Bill
knew the signs and smell and feel of it. As he
“Bill, can you get an ambulance over here?” stared at the pale little man on the restaurant
Roxy said to Bill. His wife was the last person to floor, Bill knew the ambulance would be too
stand up from her seat, but the first one to late, whether he wanted one or not.
really approach the man. Roxy slipped right
through the unhinged carousel of panic to The crowd seemed to sense this too. They
squat down beside him.

stood around Roxy and the Lightning Man like viewed press release, the chief of police stated
worshippers at some strange ritual. Even Ricky that no one had come forward to claim the
Connors, a hulking, ginger haired man who corpse and that it would be kept at the county
spent his days laying cement and pavement, medical examiners while an investigation was
held his hat with unusual delicacy over his underway to identify him. The people of Mar-
broad chest. yanne were already churning out possibilities
of how the strange man had arrived in town.
“Should I get him a glass of water, Rox?” Caleb People clustered in corners of coffee shops and
Ray asked from his place behind the bar. grocery stores, swearing up and down that the
Caleb’s words slipped into the tender silence. lighting man had been in the Mafia, or that he
was a disgraced politician on the run from the
“Don’t think that’ll do much good at this point, law, a Russian diplomat fleeing from federal
Caleb.” agents. Roxy and Bill came back to Kelly’s a
week later to see Ricky Connors entertaining a
Roxy drew the Lightning Man up close. For a crowd of young women who’d flocked around
moment of horror, Bill thought Roxy might kiss him with an embroidered version of the story.
the man, but she only grasped his hand in her
own and squeezed. His lungs spluttered and “There was blood everywhere,” Ricky said,
revved like a flooded motor. Roxy just kept “And he was groaning and rolling around on
holding on. the floor with this great big, lighting-shaped
gash on his chest where he got zapped…”
Later on, Bill figured it was that moment that
started the whole thing. For the first time in his “Ricky, shut your mouth, you know it didn’t go
life, Bill felt out of place. Without warning, Bill like that,” Roxy said.
had become an intruder, a voyeur witnessing
something not fit for his own eyes. It was more Ricky flushed, “Well, not exactly, girls, but
than that, though. Something incommunicable, pretty damn close-”
no, downright supernatural was happening.
The air was charged, crackling and clenched “-Alright now, that’s enough, isn’t’ it?” Bill said,
tight like a fist. No one said a word, but Bill he hadn’t even gotten to the first bite of his
could have sworn that everyone in the room burger without hearing about the Lightning
flinched when the stranger died, like they could Man and it was the third time that day he’d
feel his heart stop in their own chests. overheard the story being told. All three ver-
sions had been wildly different.
The ambulance arrived long after The Lightning
Man stopped breathing. The bemused EMTs “A man lost his life here,” Bill said, “Let’s have
concluded that the cause of death indeed had a little respect for the dead.”
been a lightning strike, one powerful enough to
blow the man’s pants, shirt and jacket right off Caleb just rolled his eyes and Beverly
his body. They found those later, in a charred smooshed up her face at him and continued to
and sodden heap on the side of highway seven- whisper to her friends over the milkshake she’d
ty-seven where he’d been walking during the ordered.
storm. Bill didn’t know what to make of that.
The strange man must have been stupid or on At first, Bill thought it was the gossip that both-
some kind of drugs to be walking along a wide, ered Roxy. Coming from four generations of
flat highways in the middle of a thunderstorm. wind-beaten Oklahoma stock, Roxy had never
been thin-skinned, but she hadn’t been finish-
No sooner had be been zippered up into the ing her coffee in the morning. Instead of
black bag and wheeled from Kelly’s restaurant, chatting with the farmhands Roxy was tight-
rumors swarmed around The Lightning Man’s lipped at work. Bill often caught her deepening
death like vultures. In a small, but highly the line between her brows and staring at

nothing in particular. Over dinner one night, Bill groaned, “Don’t, Roxy, it’s a waste of time,”
Bill felt almost silly asking Roxy if she had he said.
something bothering her.
The following morning, Roxy was gone from
“Nothing in particular, Bill,” She set her fork the house before Bill even woke up, and he’d
down traced a pattern on the table with her never been a late riser. She didn’t even return
fingernail. in time to make dinner when Bill came back
home from his day’s work. She came back late
“I just can’t understand it,” she said at last, still in the evening after the sun had set.
drawing an invisible pattern on the wood,
“You’d think someone would have come for “You find anything out about him?” Bill asked
him by now.” his wife. He no longer even needed to specify
who the ‘him’ was.
Roxy stood up to refill her half-empty glass of
water before he could press her any further. “Not exactly,” Roxy said, “but I managed to get
She wouldn’t have said anything if he did. Even a look at some Oklahoma missing person files
when he’d first started to court her, Bill had and I took some notes,” Roxy waved a college-
noticed that some small part of Roxy was elu- rule notepad in his face.
sive, like an unscratchable itch. Because even
with all of her straightforward, unbeguiling “Notes? Roxy, since when do you take notes?”
ways there remained a reticence about Roxy, Bill said. In her absence, he’d ordered a pizza
something old-world and curious to Bill that and it sat in the middle of the table like an ode
he’d never quite uncovered, even after nearly to bachelorhood.
twenty-odd years of marriage.
“I’m getting to the root of this thing, Bill. I
Late one night, Bill woke up for a glass of water gotta do my homework. Somewhere out there,
to see his wife lying wide-awake next to him. that kid’s mother might be looking for him.”
She’d gone to bed early that night, saying she She said.
was tired.
Bill rolled his eyes.
“What are you doing awake, Rox?” Bill said.
“He wasn’t a kid, Roxy, he was at least thirty.”
“I can’t sleep,” Roxy said, “Jesus, Bill I just can’t
stop thinking about that poor guy…He’s got a Roxy waved the matter away, “If I’m old
mother somewhere doesn’t he?” enough to be his mother, then he’s a kid.” she
said.
Bill scrubbed sleep from his face.
Bill just grunted and took a bite of his pizza
“I dunno, I guess I would think so…” even though his stomach had done a somer-
sault. Bill tried to stay away from the topic of
“He wasn’t that old, you’d think that someone children with Roxy, it made his usually even
would care, that someone might notice he was temper pop unpredictably like hot oil. Years
missing…” ago, before she’d even met Bill, Roxy’d had a
child of her own. That’s how Bill liked to think
“Stuff like this happens all the time Roxy, some of it anyway, that Roxy had simply manifested
folks just fall through the cracks like that.” a child in her belly with no male interference
whatsoever.
“No.” Roxy said, sitting up in bed, “There’s
gotta be at least one person out there. I’m go- Bill looked at his wife. She rolled her bottle of
ing to the police station tomorrow, tell Juan he beer around in her hands.
can pick up some extra hours. I’m gonna see if
they’ve found anything out about him.” “Rox,” He said, “You know there’s no way-”

“-I know!” She said, “It was a figure of speech.” End of story.

Somewhere far away outside, a dog howled. Four days before the Maryanne County Fair in
early October, news of the Lightning Man came
For the first time since his early youth, Bill felt back again with the morning paper. The police
dormant envy stirring inside of him, and he had made headway on the case. While the au-
couldn’t place just who or what had roused it. thorities still had not identified him, it turned
Bill went to bed early and fell into a tangle of out that the people of Maryanne were not the
feverish dreams; a giant fish with a gaping first to see the Lightning Man. He’d been walk-
mouth swam through the prairie, a gremlin ing up Highway seventy-seven for some time.
perched on the end of Bill’s bed, and a bug- Reports of a small, pale man in a dark suit had
eyed alien wrapped it’s bony, gray fingers been traced as far as New Mexico in late June.
around his throat. Roxy took it upon herself to contact every New
Mexican restaurant, dry cleaners, and motel
A week later, Roxy took yet another day off about a strangely dressed man with a brief-
work to drive down to the police station. She case. Her research kept her up late at night,
came back with a stack of manila folders filled Juan picked up more and more hours from her
with missing persons reports from the entire when she took time during the day to sleep
Midwest. Just the sight of the pale yellow files with the blinds snapped shut and the door
made a green snake twist through his stomach. locked in their bedroom. It was Roxy who’d
found the very last piece of evidence in the
“Why do you even care about this crap, Roxy!” case; a short video clip gleaned from a Lincoln
Bill said. It was the first time he’d raised his County convenience store in Nevada. The video
voice to her in so many years, but just the night was only thirty-nine seconds long, but clear
before he’s found her sitting in the unlit living enough to recognize the Lightning Man walking
room in the blue glow of her laptop, searching, up to the register with a heap of chocolate bars
he knew, for the Lighting Man. and a bottle of water. Roxy watched the video
over and over again until Bill snatched the lap-
“How would you feel Bill?” She said, “If it was top from her.
you, or if it was your son?”
“Stop it!” He said, “You’re going crazy. He’s a
“Well, he wasn’t, Roxy,” Bill said, “And I’m sure dead man, Roxy. He’s deceased, he’s a goner,”
as hell not planning on taking a suicide stroll Bill found himself grinning, “He’s pushing up
down the highway anytime so it ain’t gonna be daisies-”
me either.”
“He was my son,” Roxy said, “You stop that
“That’s not the point, Bill,” Roxy said, slapping talk, he was my son!” She said.
the manila folders onto the counter, “Wouldn’t
you want someone to care about you? Care Bill’s insides flinched and he quickly reassem-
that you died? He’s got nobody.” bled his composure. “There is no way that’s
true. Maybe that’s how you feel, but it’s not
Bill hated to admit it, but Roxy wasn’t wrong. true. There’s no way. You don’t even know his
The police hadn’t made much headway in iden- name!”
tifying the man, he didn’t even have a drivers
license on him. It seemed that the Lightning “I don’t need to know his name, Bill. I looked
Man had simply dropped from the sky, uncon- into his eyes as he died and I knew. That was
nected to any other human in the world. It was my son that died, Bill, my only son, whether
strange indeed, and Bill took comfort in know- you like it or not. And he was mine.”
ing that Roxanne wasn’t the only person inter-
ested in the mysterious man. The town Her words struck Bill like a hammer on a mis-
hummed with talk of him, it drove Bill nuts. A placed thumb.
man, a stupid man, probably strung out on
drugs anyway was struck by lightning and died.

“Roxy you’re raving, look at yourself,” Bill said. shame. Bill looked back on the night when
Roxy’s laptop had slipped from his hands and
“Don’t you dare say I’m crazy Bill, don’t you the memory made his face red and hot with
dare say it,” Roxy said, “And you give me that shame. That wasn’t the only recollection that
laptop back.” returned to Bill. No, Bill couldn’t even bring
himself to turn his mind’s eye upon some of
Roxy made a wild grab for the computer. Bill the things he’d said to Roxy.
jerked his arms upwards and out of her reach.
The maneuver was well practiced from Bill’s Bill reached out to put an arm around his wife.
childhood, and for a moment effective. That Roxanne shrugged him away and moved to the
was until Bill fumbled the computer. His dry, front steps, staring up at that sickly gray sky.
calloused hands struggled to keep a grip on the
smooth plastic finish of the laptop, but it “Roxy,” Bill said, “I’m sorry.”
smacked facedown on to the tile floors with a
would-be satisfying crunch. The spine of the She didn’t reply.
computer was split, like book ripped down the
middle by an angry child and Bill could only Bill looked over at the woman leaning against
stare at it. the handrails of the front porch. If he squinted,
Bill could almost look through her.
Roxy stopped speaking to him after that.
He stood up and went inside. The Rockwood’s
After the discovery of the video, the police hit a living room was situated adjacent to their
dead end. The man simply hadn’t seemed to porch, and from where he sat in front of the TV
exist except to those who had seen him walk- set, Bill could hear his wife’s footsteps knock-
ing down the highway and the people of Mar- ing on the old wooden boards. Back and forth
yanne. Roxy was the one who finally claimed two times, then down the three porch steps
the body of the man. Bill had raged and com- and onto the he gravel path that lead to the
plained and shouted her down, but she did it main road. Each crunch of Roxy’s feet on the
anyway. Roxy bought a coffin and arranged a pulverized stone grew more distant and Bill felt
funeral for him. The service in early November each one in his stomach, but he didn’t stand
drew a small crowd. Bill wasn’t surprised, most up.
people in their right minds had moved on with
their lives. Bill stood outside to smoke a ciga- Over the incessant drip of water from the leaky
rette while his wife gave the eulogy. The Light- faucet, and the grandfather clock’s steady tick,
ning Man was buried in the Maryanne Ceme- Bill heard another sound. A steady growl rum-
tery underneath the crushingly dismal Novem- bled far above the roof. It was the sound of
ber sky. Bill wished that he’d been cremated; thunder. With it came wind and promise of
he didn’t like the thought of the Lightning rain.
Man’s body resting just beneath the surface of
his town. Waiting perhaps, for Roxy herself.

After the service, Roxy and Bill ate their lunch
in silence on the front porch; on the swing he’d
built them for their eighth anniversary. It was-
n’t a good afternoon for the swing; the clouds
looks bruised and seemed to sag with the
weight of coming rain. All that day, Bill felt still-
ness in his stomach where for the weeks be-
fore, strange poison had churned. With the
stillness, however, Bill noticed, came prickles of

About the Author:

I work as a Park Ranger in Maine. In my writing
I like to explore how larger social issues mani-
fest themselves into the humdrum of daily life
when we are least likely to notice or adress
them. My goal in my writing is to shed light on
the ways that the same issues which our nation
amd world face currently are often ignored
when they show up in our daily lives, particu-
larly when they relate to families, work and the
household.

VICTORIA

by Roger McKnight

“Valencia isn’t Ivy League, but better,” Sylvia Sylvia searched her info for Tori’s hometown,
Glasgow remarked, then wondered if she but she was left wondering where Minneapolis
meant it. As an alum, she loved her college, but ended and St. Paul began. The Mississippi
she’d been on the road for a year recruiting wound in and out between both communities
students for it, and struggling. Today a delayed and local maps seemed created to obscure the
flight from Logan had prevented her reaching boundaries.
MSP early, so she was quickly pulling up facts
about a Miss Larson, this morning’s first inter- “It’s the burbs,” Tori replied, as if reading Syl-
viewee, while giving her the standard introduc- via’s mind and trying to simplify the answer.
tion. “We’re seeking serious students for a col-
lege with conscience.” “Yes,” Sylvia agreed. “You’re from Golden Val-
ley.”
Sylvia gathered her thoughts and studied the
young woman, who had emerged from Star- “No, Apple Valley.”
buck’s noontime throng and introduced herself
as “Victoria---Tori, for short.” She was thin- “Right. To the southwest.”
lipped and looked self-effacingly sly. Yes, that
was Sylvia’s first impression or, on second Tori’s slight smile failed to show whether Sylvia
thought, maybe more like calm and self- was right or wrong. “Close enough,” she said,
contained. Like me, too, as an incoming fresh- which Sylvia took to mean ‘no matter.’
man, way back when, she thought. I stayed
quiet at Valencia in those days and let others “And you’re at Central High?” Sylvia asked.
label me as they wished. “Don’t get many apps from there.”

“Sorry for the crowded setting,” Sylvia contin- “No secret why not,” Tori explained. “Inner city
ued after filing her reactions away and wishing hood, rubbing elbows with Latinos. Blacks.
desperately for the coffee she’d ordered. “My Boat people. I had a boyfriend, one of them.
schedule’s mad. Snowing in Boston. Snarled My folks said no.”
traffic in Minneapolis. But I so wanted to see
you.” “No to what? Him or Central?”

Tori nodded. “You just flew in?” Tori nodded without saying which, so Sylvia
assumed she meant both. At last a barista ap-
Sylvia said yes. “You? Any trouble getting peared and put down a cappuccino for Sylvia,
here?” who nodded to Tori. “Your turn. My treat,”
Sylvia said, relieved to skip the intricacies of
“I drove. From home.” Metro geography.

“Which is where? Let’s see.” “Light brew, tall,” Tori ordered while looking
steadily at Sylvia. “My dad’s company,
Villospor, is close. I used that to argue for Cen-
tral, going to classes near where he works.”

“So your father’s employed at Villospor?” “Fantastic. Valencia’s new curriculum empha-
sizes communicating across boundaries. De-
“Kinda owns it.” mographics are shifting,” Sylvia explained. She
resisted delving into the anomaly of Valencia
While Tori added cream to her light brew, Syl- reaching out to the poor while recruiting the
via talked community service. “Valencia’s mov- rich.
ing from theory to awareness to engagement,
all for the common good.” She stirred her cap- “I took a mini-course on digital literacy and
puccino, then chose a napkin and delicately fake news,” Tori replied, as she nodded okay to
wiped a smudge from her cup, which she saw a refill from the barista, who spilled a tiny por-
Tori observing with a slight twist of her mouth tion. Tori swiped at the excess and licked it
but a neutral expression. from her finger with a flourish. Sylvia won-
dered if the gesture showed the young wo-
“Sorry,” Sylvia said. “My germ phobia.” man’s ease in her presence or boredom with
her questions.
“Lots have ‘em, I’m immune,” Tori replied. She
described her volunteer job at the Humane “Sorry, me and my boyfriend had that habit,”
Society, where weird microbes flourished. Car- Tori explained. “Licking.”
ing for abandoned or feral cats was her task. “I
found four scrawny kittens dumped under “At Valencia we’re taking theory and practice
some football bleachers. Lots of fleas and to the community,” Sylvia continued while fil-
claws. They scratched me. See?” ing away the girl’s words. “Explaining complex
ideas in everyday language.”
“Heavens,” Sylvia exclaimed. She applauded
Tori for the rescue but was taken aback by the “Speaking well’s a must,” Tori agreed.
length of the bandage covering her arm.
“We’re located back East. Lotsa nor’easters.
Tori lifted the gauze, so some still-moist blood Some want palm trees.”
ended up on her hand. “Dear creatures,” she
said while wiping off the stain. “What you see “Cool and breezy here, too.”
in their eyes is what they have in their hearts.
Sorry that sounds so dramatic, heard it in a “Other schools on your agenda?”
movie the other day.”
“Hanford. In San Fran. Went there with my
Sylvia jotted notes while glancing at the girl’s dad. He bought a cottage at Nob Hill. Least
injured arm and rechecking her high ‘cottage’ is what he calls it. We stayed there,
Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
school transcript. Encouraging her to talk on,
Sylvia said “yes, yes,” and wondered what to “Yes, great campus,” Sylvia responded enthusi-
expect next. astically.

“My ex is a like a kitten. He woulda been in “Cal State’s better.”
college now.”
“Two very different places.”
“He was your boyfriend?”
“My ex, he was going to go there.”
“Name’s Pancho. Long gone.”
“Cal State?”
Sylvia wondered about ‘gone’ but avoided pry-
ing. “You’ve got good grades,” she observed. Victoria nodded yes.
“Any exciting classes?”
Sylvia considered their differing sentiments
“Spanish. Our teacher’s TexMex. Señor Gonza- about the California universities and wondered
lez. Gonzo. Speech is great, too. Learning to again about Tori’s boyfriend being gone. She
get ideas across.” guessed at a disagreement between daughter
and father. Did Tori prefer state universities

because of her boyfriend or their counter- Unable to locate any nugget in Tori’s words
culture reputation? that Valencia’s tuition-driven staff would find
promising, Sylvia blurted out, much like a
“Dad says Nob Hill to impress people,” Tori schoolgirl, “Study habits? Any nook or cranny,
continued. “The cottage is on a hill, all right, where you go to get school work done? Vent,
but no nob. He makes tons buying warehouses in silence? To cool it?”
and storing stuff for companies. Dreams of
buying his way into uppity places.” A bemused smile flitted across Tori’s face.
Probably at my word choice, Sylvia thought.
“Valencia features study abroad. Interested?” Chill is what youngsters say nowadays, she re-
Sylvia asked, seizing her chance to move on. membered. Tori’s reaction made Sylvia think of
her husband Michael’s patient reaction when
“My family was in Biarritz. And a month in Ta- fielding their children’s innocent questions at
hiti. Mom even went along. French is lovely.” home.

“I spent a year in Grenoble, as an exchange “Not really. Like the testers say, I’m a creative
student,” Sylvia said, happy to pick up the ball. learner,” Tori answered.
“The Alps and trips to Paris. Changed my life.
My French prof always said the French are the Intuitive learners don’t look for places to study,
most intelligent people on our planet.” Sylvia realized, because they never study, at
least not systematically like the goal-oriented
“I liked their language better than the guys brains Valencia’s reputation rests on.
who spoke it. Way too grabby.”
“Creative, meaning what?” she asked Tori, de-
Sylvia said, “Yes, gladly,” when the barista termined to carry on.
offered her yet another refill. The coffee sim-
mered as she jotted not your usual scholar in “I hear the questions and put my label on them
her notes and wondered where they were after they’re all in.”
heading. Sylvia’s eager attempts at promoting
the great wide world plus the chance to study “So you wait for people to present their ideas
at a prestigious school had given Tori no impe- and then decide if there is a question?”
tus to explain her goals. Maybe, Sylvia pon-
dered, she’s already been there, done that. At “Kinda,” Tori agreed. She ran a finger around
eighteen? And what would I know about such the rim of her coffee-stained saucer and licked
privilege? Me, an ex-scholarship girl Valencia’s it once more. “Or if the question’s worthy of
sending out to hustle in big bucks, hopefully attention.”
with brains to match?
“So if there is a serious question, you decide to
“Let’s be frank,” Sylvia decided to say. start studying?”
“Generations of bookers have kept Valencia
steeped in tradition. We’re searching.” Whoa, “That’s when I decide to look for better an-
wrong word, she caught herself thinking. swers.”
“Actively seeking.”
What was left of Sylvia’s cappuccino cooled, so
“I know, something new,” Tori interrupted. she sipped at it distractedly while Tori watched
“I’m an intuitive learner.” She paused as the noon-hour crowd filtering off to their work-
though intuitive learner was something she’d places. In her notes, Sylvia wrote well-placed
said before, or heard somebody else say, with- family, has traveled, but she was only scrib-
out ever finding a concrete theme to match it bling. Mostly she wondered why Tori had re-
with. “Like your college, I’m looking for an an- minded her of herself at that age. Maybe Tori’s
swer.” Tori waved her half-empty cup back way of smiling from a distance at the busy
and forth as if to put her wording in perspec- downtowners was an expression of sympathy,
tive. Nothing spilled. as if she imagined the office workers scurrying
back to a demanding boss, not unlike her own

father. Sylvia remembered herself as a booker, “His real name’s Chino,” Tori admitted. “His
though not the kind who buried herself in the family’s from Guatemala. They’ve lived here
stacks at Valencia’s hallowed library. She did since he was a baby. He taught me Spanish.”
her lessons in cozy cafés and studied passers-
by, in Tori’s style, she guessed. Images flitted through Sylvia’s mind of Tori and
Chino dallying at school in Spanish. Such
“Sorry, not your usual interview, I know,” Tori scenes may have troubled her father. That vi-
said in a soft tone, half question and half apolo- sion gave Sylvia pause as well, but not because
gy, which interrupted Sylvia’s wandering she judged Tori for it.
thoughts.
Before Sylvia could carry the thought further,
Interviewer and interviewee scrutinized each the baristas began clearing tables. She and Tori
other, gradually rendering transparent the hazy were the only customers left. “My next appli-
filter separating them. Sylvia asked in confi- cants are in Park Center, wherever that is,” she
dence, “Central High. Why?” announced.

“I told you. Pancho.” “We were doing okay, me and my dad,” Tori
continued, seeming not to hear Sylvia’s words.
“And his real name? C’mon.” “He wasn’t happy about Pancho, but I handled
it. Least till Dad voted for Trumpkopf. Now
Being detected for concealing her boyfriend’s he’s in the White House kicking Latinos out in
name caused Tori to quiver, slightly. Sylvia felt the street.”
equally uncertain for having asked about it.
Calling out an applicant for a white lie isn’t a Sylvia hesitated. She wondered whether to
sin, she reflected, but not part of my job either. break her Admissions Office rules and discuss
Nevertheless, Mr. Larson’s social climbing, politics or say ‘Sorry’ and move on with her
measured against his daughter’s caring kitten trusty GPS.
rescue, suggested some discord in their family,
however trivial it might seem. Sylvia guessed “You’re looking for Oro Park plus Oro Center.
the relationship was based on strong love be- That’s Park Center for short. North from here,”
tween father and daughter, which nurtured Tori explained, again appearing to read her
Tori in the frequent absence of her mother, interviewer’s thoughts.
whose maladies Tori had alluded to in her ap-
plication essay. “So why call your boyfriend Pancho?” Sylvia
asked.
Sylvia guessed Mr. Larson’s strength of will
showed up in Tori after she started school, but “We met in Phy Ed tennis. He was so good,
in ways the father least expected. Tori had always hit the sweet spot,” Tori replied, unable
written of taking change from her little broth- to hide a blush. “The teacher said some Latino
er’s piggy bank as a ten-year-old and treating named Pancho was this tennis star, so Chino
her friends to candy and pop because the poor became Pancho.”
kids got no allowance. Yes, even in suburbs the
permanent underclass and unregistered immi- “They didn’t get along, he and your father?”
grants were present and eked out their living
as maids and day laborers, Sylvia knew. In high “Yes, no, nothing like that. Pancho was polite
school Tori joined diversity groups, as her essay to his elders,” Tori said intently. “Dad’s a push-
proudly detailed. If those extra-curriculars took over, long as you toe his line. He looks the oth-
the father by surprise, he could tolerate them er way hiring at Villospor. The feds are always
as a youthful whim. Sylvia imagined the falling- checking on him. There were considerations.”
out over Tori’s social preferences reaching a
head when she brought Pancho home to meet “Meaning?” Sylvia wondered.
her parents.
“Meaning don’t tread on Dad’s space. He takes
it personal.”

A guy with Nob Hill in his dreams found it un- ed at home, Sylvia freed herself from what
bearable, Sylvia guessed, having the govern- Youssef called middle-class convention. In the
ment interfere with his business or a Latino call long run, it was Sylvia who almost forgot
the shots with his daughter. Mr. Larson could Michael. Indeed, she would have done so, she
live with Pancho’s family in the work place, but was certain, if Youssef hadn’t left his studies
nowhere else. That issue weighed on Tori’s and returned to Bahrain, under the threat of
mind, but the more she discussed her seeming- prison at home. She and Michael got married
ly vague college plans the better Sylvia under- after graduating from Valencia.
stood Tori was bending their conversation in a
direction more pressing than her father’s ideas “So what do you want from Valencia?” Sylvia
about social standing. asked. Normally she used an interview’s final
minutes to discuss what the college and pro-
“Dad didn’t worry about Pancho,” Tori contin- spective student could give each other, but Tori
ued. “Only the gangs. Knifings, drugs. Mexi- remained so vague Sylvia narrowed the topic.
cans were meaner than Central-Americans. He
thought they’d go after Pancho.” “Getting things right,” Tori responded. “I picked
Valencia when I read about your school’s finan-
“So what did he propose?” cial problems. Dad gave in to me. I said I’d nev-
er forgive him unless.”
“I insisted I could date who I wanted. Not un-
der my roof, he said. Mom was already holed “And so, you reconciled?”
up in her sick-room, and Dad wasn’t about to
lose me, too. That’s when the travel bug hit. “You have no clue,” Tori continued. “Pancho
For him, the lifelong workaholic, seeing the took a year off after Central, so Dad took him
world was a dream, like another Nob Hill, as on at Villospor. Stock boy, to see what he’s
long as he could keep me close. France and made of. That’s when Pancho applied to Cal
Tahiti were cakewalks. We went to other pla- State. He knew what he wanted.”
ces you wouldn’t believe. Kangaroo Island,
Kamchatka, Kiev. He took my brother shooting Sylvia peered out across the empty café. The
polar bears in Spitsbergen so I’d tag along. You quiet liberated her from worries of flight delays
think Boston’s rugged, try Goodyearbyen. Or and scheduling. About Guatemala she knew
Nuuk.” only this and that. She once attended a lecture
on Mayan weaving and dyeing. Otherwise she
Tori’s voice rose, so she stopped in a hrmpph. remembered disturbing reports of brutal
“All this to make me forget a boy, which I was- attacks on Indian villages. Sylvia wondered if
n’t going to do?” Pancho’s relatives were among the casualties?
Or were they the poor boys drafted into the
Sylvia wondered the same, only the other way Guatemalan police and taught to murder?
around. She recalled her own departure for
France a decade-and-half earlier. Fearing her “But Pancho never made it to California?” Syl-
year abroad would cause Michael, then her via guessed.
college sweetheart, to forget her, she cried for
days before parting. That memory gave her a “This country’s hell. Latinos cower waiting for
twinge of conscience. Unlike Tori, she never ICE to knock at the door and jerk them away,
encountered any grabby French guys, but fell like Guatemala used to be.”
for Youssef, from Bahrain, who said he was a
political refugee in France. They met at a for- “Trump says Latinos are ‘bad hombres’,” Sylvia
eign-student reception in Grenoble and made replied and realized she had nearly crossed
love in student digs, Alpine resorts, and leafy over into partisan politics.
parks by gurgling streams. While Michael wait-
“Pancho’s little brother went around crying out
‘Trump es malo. Why does he want to take my

parents away?’ His folks had to stop him from aiding his cause, which in truth she never un-
saying that at school, where you didn’t know derstood.
who was listening.”
“Your dad? What does he say?” Sylvia asked,
Noting Tori’s switch to the past tense, Sylvia fishing to plug the temporary lull between her
patched together a sequence: First Pancho and Tori.
applied to college in California and later on Tori
began looking, too. That’s when talk started “He did research that said getting rid of immi-
about building a wall on the border and word grants would set the U. S. economy back 15%.
spread. If ICE pounds at your door, don’t open That tipped the scales for him. One hope was
it. If ICE appears without a warrant, don’t an- having Pancho brought back on a foreign stu-
swer them. If ICE asks your name, don’t give it. dent visa, but Cal State hadn’t even read his
application yet. Plus, Immigration insists he’s
“Even my dad’s aghast at the madness,” Tori an indio, and they won’t allow him back as a
continued. “Pancho’s folks went for their annu- foreign student because he’s not a foreigner.
al immigration review, but ICE put them in de- Next’ll be his brother and sister. Born here.”
tention. Pancho had to sit down with his uncle
and figure how to manage the household while “So what’s the question you’ve sorted out?”
his mom and dad were held. He got a second Sylvia asked. “Cal State, Hanford?” she asked
job to keep up payments on their mortgage, cautiously.
and an aunt agreed to care for his little brother
and sister. “No way, it’s Valencia or Verapaz,” Tori said
with a determined shake of her head.
“The authorities claimed the family had Indian
blood. They’re from a town called Verapaz. Her composure made it unclear if she had ar-
They’re descended from German immigrants, rived at Starbuck’s determined to present that
and Pancho’s got blue eyes. But even if they very ultimatum or if she’d just invented it.
were Indians, why build a wall to exclude the
continent’s original inhabitants?” “Me below the border? Dad’d never dream of
it,” Tori went on. “But if Pancho can’t come
Sylvia felt uncomfortable fielding questions back here, I’ll go there, hell or....”
containing their own answer. So she found
herself searching for a sensible response and Tori paused. “I’m begging you.”
worrying again about her next interviews.
“To step in where others failed? Who am I?”
“There’s yet more?” she asked, perfectly aware Sylvia protested.
her own question answered itself.
“Remember, a college with conscience?”
“They deported them, all three,” Tori replied,
her emotions showing clearly for the first time. Sylvia thought how that phrase had drifted
“Him and his parents. Gone. Pancho skyped me toward cliché as the drive for money took prec-
last night from Verapaz, he said the hardest edence at the college, and here was a co-ed
part was that they took his parents ‘away from with cash. If Tori chose Valencia, was it possi-
their heart, their little children. It was the worst ble, getting the college to approach Immigra-
pain. Like they were dead.’ ” tion for Pancho? And if they’d do it for him,
then others, too? Maybe, she allowed. A ware-
Sylvia thought about Youssef. Immigration au- house man’s money spoke as loud as anybody
thorities in France had treated him fairly, but else’s, but how would the college use it? Ac-
common people often looked askance at him. tions spoke louder than words.
When Youssef returned to Bahrain, Sylvia said
she’d go with him and naively imagined herself The two women looked each other in the eye.
Sylvia wondered how things would have gone if
she’d been as determined as Tori and followed

Youssef back to Bahrain. Or did Youssef cun- “No, but maybe better,” Tori answered.
ningly plan their relationship to end exactly Sylvia got in the car, zapped her window down,
when he was to leave France? and shook hands with Tori out through it. Dri-
ving off in a rush, she neglected the GPS. Soon
“Using me till the time was right?” she asked, she even lost track of which city she was in,
only to realize she was talking aloud to herself. Minneapolis or St. Paul, or where this Park
Anyway, she thought, life has turned out good, Center could possibly be, but no matter, she
for me. consoled herself, as she oftentimes had done
at confusing sites, every road eventually comes
“C’mon, time to go,” Tori said impatiently. out some place good, for somebody. Continu-
“How’ll you make Park Center alone? GPS?” ing on with only common sense to guide her,
she wondered if good was always the same as
“You have a better answer?” Sylvia replied. right.

“I’ll drive. I made you late to start with.” About the Author:

“My rental car.” Roger McKnight is a native of downstate Illi-
nois. He now lives in Minnesota. Previously
“Follow me in it.” Roger has studied and worked in Chicago, Swe-
den, and Puerto Rico. In Sweden he experi-
“The answer to my prayers,” Sylvia said. enced a nation dedicated to gender and ethnic
Getting to Park Center on time made catching equality. In Puerto Rico he saw the dignity of
her flight home a cinch; Michael fared better Puerto Rican life before the destruction and
with the kids any time she was on her way. neglect of the island during Hurricane Maria.
Roger has worked as a teacher of English and
Sylvia paid the cashier. Approaching the car, Swedish. He has published one book of crea-
she said, “Sorry, but I need to find my own tive non-fiction, a novel, and pieces of short
way.” fiction in literary journals. His stories tend to
drift toward the Midwest, though he’s traveled
Tori halted. “They didn’t name me Victoria for a bit through the years.
nothing,” she said in determination.

“You have an interesting application,” Sylvia
explained guardedly. “Don’t know what more I
can say.”

“I won’t be stopped.”

Sylvia held her car door open, one foot in the
driver’s side and the other planted outside it.
When Tori stubbornly leaned against the front
bumper, Sylvia sighed and got out. Thus

deadlocked with the younger woman as the
bleak winter sun gradually began sinking, Sylvia
compared the two of them, privileged in differ-
rent ways yet equally involved in others’ woes.
Slowly she let her guard down and smiled, first
in dismay at the world, then sympathetically
toward Tori, who returned the gesture.

They shared those smiles, until Sylvia checked
the time again. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s give it a
try. Talk to your dad. I’ll do my best back East.
No promises. We’re not Ivy League, you know.”

VLAD, TEPES, THE IMPALER,
THE SCOURGE OF THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE

by Dr Raymond Fenech

The Third Letter, was a historic ballad, written terror of the Ottoman Empire. On October 1,
by one of the most popular and greatest ro- 2014, Christopher Klein wrote in an article that
mantic poets in Romania, Mihai Eminescu Dracula’s Dungeon, the 15th century Romanian
where once, he actually invoked Tepes, as he is Ruler had been unearthed in Turkey.
still known today by the Romanian people, to
return from the grave to save them and put the Hurriyet Daily News, a Turkish newspaper re-
enemies of his country to the sword. In this ported the discovery was made by archaeolo-
historic poem, Mihai fervently requests: gists, while they were working on the restora-
tion of Tokat Castle in northern Turkey. There,
You must come, O dread Impaler, confound they uncovered two dungeons where it is be-
them to your care. lieved Vlad the Impaler was held hostage. Ar-
chaeologist Ibrahim Cetin pointed out in the
Split them in two partitions, here the fools, the newspaper that: The dungeons were built like a
rascals there; prison, adding, the castle is completely sur-
rounded by secret tunnels. It is very mysterious.
Shove them into two enclosures from the broad It is hard to estimate in which room Dracula
daylight enisle 'em, was kept, but he was around here.

Then set fire to the prison and the lunatic asy- It has always been strange how alliances are
lum. formed between the worse enemies and such
was a case in point, when Wallachia, the ruler
Vlad Dracula, the man known to the West as of Romania was forced to request the assis-
the most evil and terrifying vampire of all times tance of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II so to-
came to the fore thanks to Bram Stoker’s gether, they would engage in battle a neighbor-
novel, Dracula. But he is not the character as ing enemy who had penetrated inside Transyl-
depicted in this novel and his historic signifi- vanian territory. Vlad the II, Vlad the Implaer’s
cance goes much further than that, especially father embarked on a dangerous journey, deep
with the Romanian people who to date consid- into enemy territory that of the Turkish Empire
er him as their national hero. hoping his diplomatic mission would be suc-
cessful. Accompanying him were his two sons,
Perhaps, first it would be better to discover prince Vlad III, who was 11 and 7-year old
how Vlad the Impaler, Tepes as he is known to Radu. Eleven years earlier, their father had
his people, son of Dracul (Latin draco meaning taken a solemn oath to defend Christianity in
dragon) became the man who was to be the Eastern Europe, when he joined the Order of
the Dragon, a fellowship of knights.

The diplomatic mission which Vlad II had em- sion after Constantinople fell in 1453. Vlad III
barked upon turned out to be a trap as both led a huge force to take on the Turkish Armada
himself and his two sons were imprisoned. The and to ensure that Wallachia would not fall
elder Vlad was released under the condition under the Ottoman rule. The battle which took
that he leaves his sons behind. The two young place in 1456 turned Vlad into a legend, when
boys were held hostages at Tokat Castle, which a story of his triumph circulated the villages
was situated high up along a precipice over- that he had single handed fought Vladislave II,
looking the town of Tokat, exactly where the one of his enemy leaders, beheading him in the
archaeologists discovered the dungeons. Dur- process.
ing their stay, Vlad III and Radu were taught
science, the arts and philosophy. Vlad became Although Vlad III ruled his homeland, his prop-
a very skilled horseman and a warrior, but he erty was in ruins because of the raging wars, as
was also mistreated and tortured. His hate for well as a result of the civil wars caused by the
the Ottomans grew to a point that would later feuding boyars. To solve this problem once and
unleash his wrath, turning him into their most for all, Vlad decided to host the boyars to a
feared enemy. It was probably the Ottomans sumptuous banquet. Hundreds of them attend-
themselves who used to impale their prisoners ed never realizing this would turn out to be
that inspired him to do the same to them. their last supper as they were all murdered and
then impaled.
In the meantime, the rest of his family, weren’t
much better than he was as a prisoner of the In 1462, Vlad III received the news that an
Ottomans. Vlad II was killed by local warlords Ottoman army, eight times the size of his own
known as the Boyars in the swamps near Bal- were advancing into his territory. This was by
teni, Wallachia in 1447, whilst his older broth- far the most famous victories of Vlad III on
er, Mircea, was tortured, blinded and then bu- Mehmed II. The battle raged in 1462 when
ried alive. 250,000 Ottomans were at the end of a crush-
ing defeat by Vlad’s army, which consisted then
Surely the influence of these terrifying events of 30,000 men among them young boys.
during Vlad III’s boyhood must have contribut-
ed in no small way to turn him into a ruthless Quickly, he ordered his troops to hide in the
and merciless killer. The Ottomans themselves adjacent Romanian forests where he waged a
had created a monster which would eventually very savage but clever guerilla type of war on
unleash hell upon them. the enemy, poisoning water wells and spread-
ing death through the enemy ranks, by infil-
The day finally came when Vlad the III was re- trating men with contagious diseases. When
leased from Tokat. In 1456, Vlad III ascended to the enemy was at its extreme limits, he deci-
the throne of Wallachia. He was now ready to mated the remaining force by attacking them
make it his mission to take his revenge and and impaling over 20,000 Turkish soldiers on
become the terror of the Ottomans. His merci- steel poles outside Targoviste City. When Sul-
less way in which he dealt with the prisoners tan Mehmed II arrived on the battleground, he
earned him the nickname of Vlad the Impaler. was so horrified by the scene of his men mostly
His terrorific reign of blood went beyond the still alive and suffering excruciating pain from
imagination even of the worse psychopathic their impalement that he ran back to Constan-
murders in history. His style of torture, mutila- tinople.
tion and mass murder of his enemies involved
a variety of sadistic deaths by impalement, But it seemed that Vlad’s reign would not last,
disemboweling, beheading, skinning, or boiling when Hungarian forces captured him in Roma-
alive. nia later that same year. He was imprisoned for
over a decade for the second time in his life.
Europe was threatened with the Ottoman inva- But it was not the end of Vlad for he reclaimed

his throne in 1475, after his brother Radu died. horror and devastation would lose their appe-
A year later, Vlad III fell in a battle against his tite to fight, knowing they could meet the same
worse enemies, the Ottomans. But by then, fate.
only his body could die, because his reputation
of being the greatest most feared leader grew Vlad III’s reputation as a vicious and perhaps
to the extent that he became a legend. Stories even psychotic murderer is arguably one of the
spread quickly around his people how he can- most disputed subjects about his reign of Wal-
nibalized the bodies of his victims and soaked lachia. Some historians do not consider this as
his bread in their blood. something out of the ordinary, considering that
in those times most rulers applied various hor-
Centuries later, the legend of Vlad III, even rendous methods of death and torture for their
though already well known among the people enemies. It was most certainly no place for
in Eastern Europe, reached international fame wimps and only the strongest and most coura-
when in 1897, Irish Novelist, Bram Stoker geous survived to tell their story.
wrote fervently about the dark nature of this
Romanian hero and immortalized him forever One particular impressive story was when Vlad
in his Gothic novel, Dracula. was visited by Ottoman diplomatic envoys in
1459. When they were asked to take off their
For those who do not know what impaling is turbans, the Turkish diplomats refused, saying
and how it’s done, here are the grizzly details. it went against their religious custom to re-
Readers who are squeamish are advised to skip move them. But Vlad was not having any of
this paragraph and move on to the next. Impal- that and whilst he highly congratulated them
ing is more than what many historians describe for their devotion to their customs, he ordered
as a gruesome torture – in fact this is indeed an his soldiers to nail their turbans onto their
understatement. Specialized people were em- skulls.
ployed purposely to do this sadistic operation,
in which either a metal, or a wooden pole were But such ‘barbarities’ were very common in
used. These, unlike many would imagine had a those days. Grand Master La Valette who led
blunt edge and this was purposely made that the Great Siege of Malta in 1565 and managed
way, to avoid injuring any vital organs as they to destroy the Ottoman forces, which were 10
were inserted vertically through the vagina or times more numerous to his, on one particular
the rectum, or through the body either from occasion reacted in the same way. When one
the back or the front. The end of the pole of his fortresses fell in Ottoman’s hands, the
would either exit right through the victim's remaining few surviving knights were crucified
mouth, neck or shoulders. It would be quite on wooden crosses, beheaded and disembow-
impossible to describe the agony and the ex- eled. Some even say the Ottomans actually
cruciating pain suffered by the victims as the fried and ate the liver of the knights, whilst
poles would then be raised vertically increasing these were still alive and watching their enemy
the victim’s torment, which could last from banquet on their entrails. La Valette was so
hours to days, before death put an end to his infuriated, he ordered the hundreds of cap-
suffering. The height of the pole also had an tured Turkish prisoners to be beheaded. He
important significance. Those who had higher then ordered his men to turn the cannons on
ranks were impaled on longer poles than those the fortresses in the direction were the Otto-
who were common soldiers. The idea was to man camps had been set up and used the Tur-
intimidate Valld’s enemies as the poles could kish prisoner heads as cannon balls. You can
be easily seen from afar. The act of impaling imagine the shock of the Ottoman soldiers
was also undoubtedly intended to cause psy- when they were showered by the heads of
chological repercussions on any invading ene- their own colleagues.
my soldiers, who on witnessing such scenes of

These were medieval harsh times for all that Nikolaus Modrussa, the Bishop of Modrussa, a
and neither the Geneva Convention nor any close adviser to Pope Pius II (Papacostea 1988,
Human Rights Organizations had as yet been 227) described Vlad as follows: He was not very
invented. Having said that, even in today’s tall, but he was corpulent and muscular. His
wars, atrocities, torture, beheadings and mass appearance was cold and inspired a certain
murder is practiced on regular basis. In those horror. He had an aquiline nose, dilated nos-
days, most men would die for their word of trils, a reddish thin face, and very long eyelash-
honour, their religious values and principles – es that overshadowed big, wide, gray eyes; His
how many men today would be willing to do black, bushy eyebrows made him look menac-
the same? ing. He wore a mustache, and his prominent
cheekbones made his face look even more ener-
In 1462, Vlad wrote a letter to one of his mili- getic. A bull's neck clutched his head, from
tary allies describing in some detail a victory he which a curly black mane hung on broad shoul-
had accomplished against the Turkish invaders: ders.
I have killed peasants, men and women, old
and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novose- Vlad III’s Mythical Fame in Our Times
lo, where the Danube flows into the sea … We
killed 23,884 Turks, without counting those Dracula wouldn’t have been so popularly ac-
whom we burned in homes, or the Turks whose claimed hadn’t it been for Bram Stoker’s novel
heads were cut by our soldiers ...Thus, your and In Search of Dracula, the revelations
highness, you must know that I have broken brought to light by Florescu and McNally in
the peace. It is estimated that Vlad killed over (1972 and revised in 1994). Since Vlad’s fame
100,000 people. continuous to date because of the above publi-
cations, I strongly believe that both the legend
It has to be emphasized Vlad III had become and myth that followed deserve some space in
the terror of the Ottomans and his victories this article. The following is a series of news
became famous to the point that Pope Pius II items, scientific studies and articles which con-
was highly impressed at the devastation and tinued making Vlad the Impaler so famous
fear he had spread among the Ottomans. His even after so many years since his demise.
victories were not just celebrated in Wallachia
and Transylvania, but throughout the rest of An interesting study of what vampires are
Europe. afraid of is very relevant to the above article
since Vlad III, Dracula served as the foundation
Vlad finally met his end in 1476, whilst on yet of Stoker’s legendary vampire. What is strange
another battle against the Ottomans. He to- in the following documented evidence is that
gether with a small vanguard of soldiers patrol- there are existing conditions/diseases that ac-
ling a battlefield were ambushed. Vlad fought tually make a human a vampire look alike. Here
to the end but finally succumbed and was over- are some of these features:
powered and killed. He was then beheaded
and his head was taken to his worst enemy in Why are vampires afraid of garlic?
Constantinople, Mehmed II as a memento,
which ended up decorating the city gates. Actually garlic and the fear it induces on vam-
pires is otherwise known as alliumphobia, a
During the Communist reign of Nicolae neurosis that causes people to become terri-
Ceausescu in the 70s, the name of Vlad III was fied by the sheer foul smell of the plant. So, if
once again resurrected and proclaimed a Na- you are eating out, don’t be surprised if you
tional hero. It was declared that his ruthless- see a person running away from his food if this
ness was in line with the times and that most, if would have been sprinkled with garlic. And if
not all other European leaders were as ruthless he does, then according to this study this could
and vindictive with their enemies as he was. well be a vampire. Being close to garlic triggers

a severe panic attack strong enough for the seconds. According to them, if they stay longer
‘vampire’ to run away. starring inside the mirror, they would see that
the person inside is not their reflection. Ac-
In southern Slavic countries and Romania leg- cording to "An Excess of Phobias and Mani-
end has it that vampires are repelled by garlic. as," (Senior Scribe Publications, 2003).
This stems from its use also to ward off evil
spirits. So it was believed, those who refused to The mythical knowledge, vampires are invisible
eat garlic were vampires. Cloves of garlic were in mirrors dates back to European Myths that
placed in the mouths of the deceased prior to believe they have no reflection because they
burial to prevent them from turning into vam- have no soul.
pires, according to "In search of Dracula: the
History of Dracula and Vampires," (Houghton Blood thirsty
Mifflin Harcourt, 1994).
Biochemist David Dolphin in 1985 claimed he
Why Vampires Bite had discovered a disease that could be linked
to the vampire myth. He pointed out that this
Vampires are known to have fangs, but hu- was really nothing but porphyria, a genetic
mans like most carnivorous predators also pos- blood disorder. Porphyria sufferers feel the
sess sharp pointed teeth. What causes vam- desire to drink human blood, which in turn
pires to bite is actually termed as hydrophobia, causes abnormalities in their hemoglobin, a
better known as rabies, a disease that is often protein found in red blood cells. His theory was
found in dogs or bats and other animals. In later dismissed as a misunderstanding of the
fact, this virus affects the nervous system, but disease.
not only, it also poses serious eye problems as
these become over sensitive to sunlight and Furthermore, Mayo clinic has revealed that
other visual stimuli such as mirrors. In Latin another vampire symptom that is real is red-
rabies means madness, or rage and causes the colored urine, explaining why historically, peo-
persons affected by it to become very violent, ple may have suspected porphyria sufferers of
delusional and delirious. Sleep patterns are drinking blood.
also affected by rabies and this leads to insom-
nia or sexomania. Exposure to Sunlight

According to Mayo clinic, bat bites, to which Vampires cannot stand sunlight – is this a myth
vampires are often described as turning into, too? Not really this is actually a rare but very
are the most common source of rabies infe- realistic disease that makes the sufferer unable
ction. In fact, two strains of the rabies virus in to withstand sunlight, so much so that blisters
several European countries can only be trans- start to form on his skin within minutes of ex-
mitted to humans by bats and are therefore posure to the sun.
known as bat rabies
Are Vampires Real or a Myth?
The Mirror Effect
The following article written by Professor
Very often vampires are said to be invisible in Verselin Cajkanovic, specializing in classical
mirrors. This is of course according to fiction languages and chairman of the classics depart-
but is it? A disease known as Eisoptrophobia ment at the University of Belgrade, as well as a
actually causes people to be frightened of mir- noted ethnologist was translated by Srpski Kni-
rors. People with this kind of disorder causes jizeveni Glanik (The Serbian Literary Herald)
them severe anxiety attacks. This makes them (Begrade 1923.)
believe that just looking inside a mirror can
actually bring about a supernatural entity. According to the author of the book, The Vam-
Some can only look inside a mirror for a few pire, a Casebook edited by Alan Dundes this
article recounts as follows:

A few days ago, in a patriarchal area of Bosnia, by ‘vampires’ and the following few incidents
an unusual event occurred. In the village Tu- were highlighted in an article on the British
panari (in the Vlasenicki jurisdiction), a vampire newspaper, The Daily Mirror. According to Rod
appeared. When it became intolerable, the McPhee in his article, Vampire Britain: UK
peasants gathered, and more antique, they dug Could be Home to More Blood-sucking Night-
up from the grave, pierced it with a hawthorn feeders than Dracula's Homeland, dated 16th
stake, and then burned it. September 2014. In the last 100 years, the UK
recorded 25 times more vampire sightings than
Several Belgrade papers have written about Transylvania. Here we look at some of the most
this incident. According to a report in Vreme fascinating cases. Two hundred and Six cases of
(Time number 511, May 23 of this year) an ex- vampire encounters were reported in Britain
cerpt is claims as follows: over the same period, an average of 2 sightings
every year.
…An old peasant Paja Tomic … died … the 9th of
April this year. Shortly after his death, his wife The research was the result of a compilation of
Cvija began to complain that her dead husband evidence by Rev Lionel Fanthorpe, a paranor-
had begun to return nights as a ghost and that mal investigator who went through at least
he ran throughout the house scaring the inhab- 11,000 reports of unexplained phenomena in
itants. There are some who believe Cvija and Britain since 1914, something which he de-
some who did not, though she has unceasingly scribed as shocking.
asserted that her husband is a vampire and
that he returns every night. Thus things went I really only expected to find one or two in-
on for a whole month and then, it is said, her stances in Britain, he says. So I was amazed
sons also became aware that there was a vam- when I discovered one story after another. And
pire in the house. I really didn’t expect to find more here than in
somewhere like Transylvania. It is in a part of
Stevo and Krsto Tomic, the sons of the de- Europe where folklore and fairytales are wide-
ceased called the whole village to a discussion spread, but in fact, we could only find nine or
of what could be done about their father who 10 reports there, over the same period.
had become a vampire … The crowd led by the
two sons went to the cemetery and the corpse These are some of the reported sightings: The
was dug up. It was pierced by the hawthorn Birmingham Vampire, The Surrey Vampire, The
pole and thrown onto stakes. After the body Lady Vampire, The Croglin Vampire, The Bland-
was burnt and the ashes dispersed and those ford Vampire, The Highgate Vampire, The Iron
few charred remaining bones thrown back into Toothed Vampire, The Berwick Vampire, The
the grave … A ‘vukodlak’ (a vampire) some- Alnwick Vampire, and The Animal Vampire.
times returns to his wife and sleeps with her;
and then a child is born of such a union that Probably the most famous and the most realis-
does not have bones. tic and durable of these encounters was, The
Highgate Vampire, which terrified London in
The Vampire, a Casebook continues: And if the the 1970s. However, more recent sightings
Tupanari report does not state this plainly, it is suggest the floating spectre has returned as a
obvious the Cvija and the peasants of Tupanari floating figure dressed in top hat, cape and
made just the same assumption regarding the well over six feet. This was reported in the Dai-
purpose of the vampire Paja. As can be seen ly Star newspaper of 26th November 2016.
among our people even today, such an ancient
belief has been preserved; namely, a god, or The newspaper further reported that: Witness-
demon can have corporal union with a mortal es say, they had seen a floating man in a Victo-
woman. rian suit and top hat apparently gliding through
locked gates. Legend has it, the vampire was a
But there have been sightings and even attacks medieval nobleman who had practiced black

magic in medieval Romania. He arrived in Eng- Dracula’s homepage: Dracula: The History of Myth
land in a coffin in the 18th century, but was and the Myth of History (Elizabeth Miller)
awakened from the dead by modern Satanists
at his resting place, at Highgate Cemetery in Dracula Monster or Hero (Asleiman 38)
North London.
The newspaper quoted David Farrant, who Live Science - Pop Culture, Real Life: 7 Strange Ways
runs the British Psychic and Occult Society, as Humans Act Like Vampires (Remy Melina) March 28,
saying, He was one of the first to see the so- 2013
called vampire in 1969. Professor Verselin Cajkanovic, specializing in classical
In a letter to the Hampstead and Highgate Ex- languages and chairman of the classics department
press, he wrote, that when passing the ceme- at the University of Belgrade wrote an article on
tery he had glimpsed a grey figure. vampires in The Serbian Literary Herald, Belgrade
He said: My first reaction was like it was so real 1923. It was inspired by a newspaper report on a
that I actually thought it was someone dressed real Bosnian vampire and in turn published in the
up or messing about, because all these stories book, The Vampire a Casebook edited by Alan Dun-
about vampires were in the news. It was by des – The University of Wisconsin Press 1998
some branches but as soon as I turned up, I was
aware of something standing there and it was Vreme, Belgrade (Time number 511, May 23 of this
exuding a feeling not of evil, but menace. year)
It all happened so quickly. The whole thing last-
ed for four to five seconds and felt like whate- In search of Dracula: the History of Dracula and
ver it was filled me with energy, it is difficult to Vampires, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994).
explain, and suddenly it just vanished.
The Daily Mirror newspaper, UK, Rod McPhee - Vam-
Acknowledgements pire Britain: could be home to more blood-sucking
night-feeders than Dracula's homeland, 16th Sep-
‘Dracula’s Dungeon Unearthed in Turkey’, Hurriyet tember 2014
Daily News, Turkey (Christopher Klein - October 1,
2014 Paranormal investigator Rev Lionel Fanthorpe, from
his 11,000 reports of unexplained phenomena in
Science News Vlad the Impaler: The real Dracula was Britain since 1914 contributed his opinion in the
absolutely vicious (Marc Lallanilla) October 31, 2013 article, Vampire Britain: UK could be home to more
blood-sucking night-feeders than Dracula's home-
‘An Excess of Phobias and Manias,’ (Senior Scribe land, published in The Daily Mirror, 16th September
Publications, 2003). 2014

25 Facts about Vlad Tepes the Impaler, updated on The Daily Star, The Highgate Vampire returns: Horror
November 30, 2016 (Dr. Thomas Swan) sightings of 'floating figure' spark UK panic (Douglas
Patient 26th November 2016)
Who was the real Count Dracula? (Josh Clark)
Caption: "[Stoker's] Dracula is linked to Transylva-
nia, but the real, historic Dracula — Vlad III — never
owned anything in Transylvania," Curta told Live
Science. Bran Castle, a modern-day tourist attraction
in Transylvania that is often referred to as Dracula's
castle, was never the residence of the Wallachian
prince, he added. "Because the castle is in the moun-
tains in this foggy area and it looks spooky, it's what
one would expect of Dracula's castle," Curta said.
"But he [Vlad III] never lived there. He never even
stepped foot there."

Caption: The Battle with Torches by Romanian paint-
er Theodor Aman. It depicts the The Night Attack of
Târgovişte, a skirmish fought between forces of Vlad
III the Impaler of Wallachia and Mehmed II of the
Ottoman Empire on Thursday, June 17, 1462.

About the Author:

Raymond Fenech embarked on his writing ca-
reer as a freelance journalist at 18 and worked
for the leading newspapers, The Times and
Sunday Times of Malta. He edited two nation-
wide distributed magazines and his poems,
articles, essays and short stories have been
featured in several publications in 12 countries.
His research on ghosts has appeared in The
International Directory of the Most Haunted
Places, published by Penguin Books, USA.

CURTAIN

by Juliana Nicewarner

“Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the Step four: be loud. She nods to her mother and
art” puts a big smile on her face. One of those mov-
- Stanislavski ie star smiles she’s seen painted on faces like
Marilyn, like she imagines Daisy Buchanan
Act 1 would wear.

A thirteen-year-old girl takes her first step un- She’s suddenly on step five: sing.
der stage lights. She’s blinded. She’s woozy.
She had been practicing all day. She sang while There’s a firm feel to the stage, like it’s had
she vacuumed, she sang while she brushed the experience supporting the frightened. She
dog, she monologued and made dramatic faces opens her mouth and “Silent Night” comes out,
while she fed the horses. She quivered in the pure and soft. The director stands up and leans
car on the way to the theatre. She begged her against the stage below her, looking up, smil-
mom to turn around. Now she stares down, ing. She is suddenly conscious of her shaking
hard, at the five steps in front of her. Five steps hands, her heartbeat, fluttering loud enough to
until she knows if she’s lost her ever-loving keep time. Red velvet shimmers in the half light
mind, thinking she could act. Now she walks of the house as hundreds of seats stare back at
steps one through five up to the stage. her. She gets a bit louder.

Step one: remember to breathe. This is hard She thinks about how maybe she’s not as
for her, a quiet bookish type who only sings scared as she thinks. After all, she’s loud at
when the house is empty or she has the sound home. She can match her parents and close
of the tractor she’s driving to overpower her friends in any matches of wit thrown her way.
voice. She’s inadvertently studied with the greatest –
Jane Austen, P.G Wodehouse. She’s under-
Step two: don’t make eye contact with anyone. stood confidence from the best of women –
She’s quietly satisfied with herself. She always her mother, Jo March, Scout. She thinks of all
suspected that there had to be other people in of them. She thinks of herself. And she lets her
the world who made faces at themselves in the voice fill the theater. She opens her hands a
mirror and acted out scenes from movies. As bit, relaxing. The smile still painted on her lips
she looks around the theatre at the other ac- feels more and more genuine as she realizes,
tors preparing, she realizes that those people she can do this.
live here.
People clap.
Step three: don’t get scared. She glances up to
make eye contact with her mom, a steady This was the day she got hooked on applause.
force of absolute confidence radiating from the
audience. Their eyes catch each other – she Act 2
sighs with relief that she hasn’t tripped yet.
The stage is set up like a living room. She sits in

a chair center stage. She is sipping tea and Irishwoman and the soul of a gypsy. The furni-
dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie – a picture ture in the house would start migrating more
of a rainy day of writing. A spotlight settles and more the longer we stayed put. I have no
onto her face as she is saying her first lines. idea how many times I helped her swap the
piano for the couch or the table for the coffee
I’ve always longed for adventure, as Julie An- table in the living room. I always knew she’d be
drews would say. I sought it out in novels. I patient with my ramblings about the novels I
climbed rocks and trees. I trained horses, riding was reading. I wanted to be just like Jo March,
bareback as often as possible (with varying so I’d start writing constantly, and she’d help
levels of success – a fall on the ass and a me come up with ideas. A while later, I’d de-
cracked tailbone taught me that bareback with cide that it was more admirable to be like Fro-
no bridle was going a bit too far). I explored. I do Baggins, so I’d forgo shoes and talk to her
tried new things. I had to – I was the daughter about the possibility of saving the world from
of a Marine, so we moved every couple of some great evil. One particular day as we
years. I learned to make friends quickly and to mucked the pastures, I was feeling extra impa-
entertain myself. I learned to be great friends tient.
with my parents. My father served for twenty-
one years. He was one of those magical service “I want to do something as big as the story in
members who made the times he was home Eragon,” I remember saying.
count more than any time he had to spend
away from home did. He was fully present in A week later my mom showed me a casting call
my life every second he could be. That was part for a theatre company for homeschooled high
of the reason I was homeschooled from fourth schoolers in the area. I looked over the flyer,
grade on. I wanted to be with my dad and mom noting the Greek masks pulled from Clipart
every second we were all in the same house. paired at the top. There were no dragons on
My mind (and my family) moved too wildly to the page, but I was still terrified.
accept regular schooling. I preferred being able
to leave math class for recess whenever I want- “That does sound great. But I can’t do that. I’m
ed. Yes, I understood that eventually I would too scared.”
have to go back to it, but what was wrong with
having a bit of fun first? “No, you have to do it,” she immediately re-
torted.
(She sips her tea.)
“But I’ll be terrible!”
So I ran barefoot across the island of the
Outerbanks of North Carolina where we lived, “You don’t get it – you ask for adventure, and
competed in piano competitions, devoured here it is handed to you. You aren’t allowed to
hundreds of books, and became best friends say no to something like this,” she said matter-
with my parents. The rest of my schooling was of-factly with a little chuckle at the frown full of
seen as just as important, but fostering my regret I shot back at her. I spent the following
constant need to try new things was just as week swinging back and forth between over-
encouraged as Algebra. whelmed excitement and total terror. During
one of the overwhelmingly excited moments,
I prayed for adventure, and in times of she emailed the director saying we’d be com-
drought, I grew frustrated. My mom is a wo- ing. She’s sneaky.
man of great passion, filled with a need to
wander. She was born to teenage Irish Ameri- (She gets out of her chair and begins to pace.)
cans and adopted by Hungarian immigrants.
She always says (with a mischievous glint in her That was how I found myself panicking over
eye) that she was born with the temper of an what song to sing for my audition. At first I
leaned toward Norah Jones. I think I picked it
because she sounds nothing like me. But I

could hide behind my imitation of her smoky Act 3
tones and maybe not be seen. I sang “Sunrise”
constantly, sliding in perfect time with Norah. Lights up on what is clearly a group of actors –
A few hours before the audition, I sang it for costumes should indicate artistic personalities.
my mom. She advised as she folded clothes, Blocking should be such that they create a se-
“It’s beautiful, but don’t you want to go with ries of tableaus related to the stories she is tell-
something that sounds more like you? What ing. She is to gesture to these tableaus as she
about something simpler.” She talked about tells her story. She begins by the first tableau –
that scene from Heidi where Shirley Temple a man in silhouette.
starts singing “Silent Night.” I tried it. She was
right. I started singing “Silent Night” instead. I Once, during my first college production, I was
practiced until we hopped out of the car at the standing in the wings, waiting to make my en-
theater. trance. I was facing the wall and running over
my choreography. One of my favorite actors
Everyone else had brought accompanying I’ve ever worked with was onstage singing a
tracks to sing showtunes. They were all warm- solo in his glorious tenor. He sang that song
ing up, sirening in various corners of the thea- better than any Broadway recording. I looked
ter as I walked in. My eyes widened as I looked up at the wall as I spun, noticing movement.
up at my mom. She assured me that, if I was The actor’s shadow was projected to ten times
confident and did my best, it didn’t matter – I his size on the wall of the wing as his voice was
would at least be memorable. projecting throughout the theater. I paused
mid-spin and watched him performing as a
Those five steps were hard. But my mom was shadow. His costume and makeup was of
right. While some of the other young voices course not evident in shadow, so he looked
cracked on some of the higher notes of their more like himself. That’s what theatre is, I
more mature ballads (we were all going thought. You yourself become a shadow, only
through puberty, so vocal snaps, crackles, and visible behind the scenes, and someone else
pops were naturally abundant), my voice takes the stage. Juli Nicewarner plays the char-
settled comfortably into my range, no mis- acter, but only from backstage. Whoever she is
takes. That’s how I got a lead role from singing playing should be all that’s seen by the audi-
“Silent Night.” ence. Only the other actors get to see the per-
son themselves, as they are, uncovered by a
The company did all originals because the di- role.
rector was an aspiring playwright and his
brother an aspiring lyricist. It sounds lame, but (She walks over to the second tableau – a
it was surprisingly great. In my time with the group of actors getting into makeup and cos-
company, we did a play called A Thanksgiving
Carol, and adaptation of A Christmas Carol set tumes.)
around a grumpy actor who has grown harsh in
his fame. We did a musical called Screwtape I walked backstage during the last rehearsal
B.C. based on the premise of The Screwtape before my first show. I was in costume and
Letters but starring Joseph from the Bible. I petrified. Music started with a bang onstage as
played the demon Vanity. That’s how it all the next scene came in with a dramatic duet. I
started. reached the stairs that led down into the green
room, and a cacophony of voices erupted from
(Lights down. Exit in blackout.) below. I stopped. I took one step backwards –
all I could hear was the music onstage. I took
one step forward – all I could hear was the Les
Mis singalong happening in four-part harmony
downstairs. Even within the theatre, there are
multiple worlds, all intimately connected. Reali-

ty and make-believe exist more in tandem in a was looking at her phone in horror. Her mom
theatre than perhaps anywhere else. had just texted her. Her mom had just been
diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Eve-
The theatre attracts a menagerie of personali- ryone surrounded her in an instant and placed
ties. Going backstage is kind of like visiting the a comforting hand on her shoulders. She did
Zoo for Slightly Neurotic Extroverts. They all the show anyway. She’s strong like that.
almost invariably have one thing in common –
an abundance of quirks. I knew a girl who (She moves center stage.)
kissed every stage she walked onto. “For luck,”
she’d say as she knelt to the ground. I knew a Many people idolize actors. The ones they see
kid in a Christian theatre company who be- in the movies – the glamorous film stars with
came a gay Jew shortly after a production of a the perfectly coiffed hair. They idolize Lin-
comedy based on the biblical Joseph and his Manuel Miranda, Jonathan Groff, the theatre
many-colored dream-coat. His rendition of people from the more mainstream produc-
Potiphar, the Pharaoh’s palace guard who is in tions. But they actually meet “theatre people”
charge of Joseph, in our production of and are immediately terrified. Terrified of
Screwtape B.C. was hilariously flamboyant – a these projecting monsters, lit from within with
crowd pleaser. glitter and melodrama. But what these scared
civilians don’t understand is that, if they were
(She gestures to the third tableau – two people given the chance to spend time with theatre
hugging.) people, they would find them to be some of
the most caring, emotionally aware people in
I was crying. It was backstage at a rehearsal for the world.
Oklahoma!, and I was overwhelmed. I’d gone
into the hall so that no one would see me – I (Backlights up onstage to create a stage full of
didn’t want to distract from what was going on silhouettes.)
onstage. I heard footsteps and was in the mid-
dle of hurriedly scraping the tears off my No one can spot a person who’s hurting like an
cheeks when one of the actors came around actor can. Well, a well-adjusted, not-self-
the corner. Oklahoma! is a very ensemble- involved actor. I readily admit that there are
heavy show, so I had a lot of scenes with pretty divas in this world. Every company I’ve been in
much everyone. But I didn’t know this guy well; has at least one, and sometimes, the biggest
I was embarrassed. I saw concern wash over divas are the guys. One of the best actors I ever
his face as he saw me. worked with once stormed out of a dress re-
hearsal, throwing his hands in the air and
“Hey, do you need a hug?” he asked. I felt in- shouting “I can’t work like this!” But the vast
credibly silly, but the tears came back as I nod- majority of actors, while, yes, they can talk
ded. He didn’t need to know what was wrong. I your ear off about the brilliance of Les Misera-
guess he figured that if I wanted to talk about bles and Arthur Miller scripts, are some of the
it, I would say something. All he knew was that most diversely educated people I know, well-
I was somehow hurting, and he decided to versed in many things from the habits of the
help. psychologically disturbed to the emotional pain
of their scene partners. They have received
(The fourth tableau – one person kneeling to special training in putting themselves in some-
cry surrounded by comforting friends.) one else’s shoes, and they are good at it.

We were twenty minutes out from our en- (Exit.)
trance at a dance exhibition of West Side Story.
Everyone was sitting backstage doing home- Lights up on her seated at a table. She sits
work or messing around. The mood was light. I poised among an array of props from nine-
was reviewing choreography with a friend teenth century England, serving a group tea in
when I heard someone gasp. One of the girls the traditional style.

It’s incredible what random tidbits one picks Act 4
up while studying for a part. There’s the more
obvious ones – accents, methods for quick She stands on a platform about fifteen feet
memorization, the lyrics to every song from above the stage. A thin wire links this platform
Chicago. And then there’s the ones that are to one on the opposite side of the stage.
perhaps a bit more surprising – intuition,
knowledge of the political situation in four- Stepping onstage is akin to stepping off a cliff.
teenth century Denmark, and everything that You can never be quite prepared for that sen-
should be known by a modern major-general. I sation of falling. No matter how constantly you
once had a conversation with an actor about study your lines, how often you run your block-
the history of the German tradition of the ing, there is never a guarantee that the script
Oberammeragau Passion Play and how that won’t be blown out of your head when the
affected the progression of Christianity in many lights hit your face.
forms of art. I’ve had countless conversations
about the social histories of both European and (She walks to the other side as she speaks.)
American subcultures as they relate to clothing
and custom. If you’re performing on a set that If this happens, you have to know that without
has various items from a far-off century in a far a doubt your scene partner can bail you out.
-off place, you’d better know what everything And it is your responsibility to do the same
is for. thing for your partner. Most directors make
their actors do group exercises such as trust
(She doles out crumpets.) falls and improvisational techniques to foster
this kind of trusting environment among the
While the other skills make good party tricks, cast. But in the end, it boils down to the profes-
the intuition gained in theatre is, quite simply, sionalism of the actors – are they able to get
an essential life skill. How can you be in rela- out of their own heads enough to make others
tionships without being able to have a sense of feel at ease with them onstage? People some-
someone else’s emotions? Backstage, you are times picture Broadway littered with monsters
given a few dozen roommates of all ages and in five-inch heels, five-inch sunglasses, and
backgrounds, and you are expected to get head scarves so pretentious they make Gwen-
along. You are given a chance to train in yth Paltrow look like a humble pauper. In reali-
putting yourself in other people’s shoes and ty, these actresses don’t last long. Oh, they
then practice it. Right in front of you is a group may be talented enough to get one good role.
of people as surprisingly diverse as the day is But the effect they have on the spirit of the
long, each going through a myriad of difficul- cast gets them fired before they’ve done a full
ties. Actors wear their emotions close to the run. It is just as necessary to learn how to sup-
surface. So everyone generally knows what’s port those around you as it is to study the art
going on in the others’ lives. Sometimes it itself. Because of this, theatre people are some
doesn’t go well. Sometimes you are too close, of the best, some of the most intriguing, some
too involved in each other’s emotions, and it of the kindest. If you can get past the jazz
becomes unhealthy. And then you have to be hands, you’ll find the most understanding hug
willing to End Scene and move on. But we get waiting for you.
to care for each other, relate to each other,
and then go out and apply that in the rest of (Blackout.)
our lives, to our great joy. Not only do you have
to learn how to live with them in constant and She is surrounded by an unfinished set. Saw-
close proximity, you have to be able to trust dust is strewn about the stage, and various
each other, unwaveringly. tools are also scattered about.

(Lights down. Exit.) Every night, crew members throw on black

shirts, pants, shoes, gloves, the whole shebang. cosmos gives one a bit of courage. The process
They learn how to have frantic conversations is simple – you close your eyes, you whisper
entirely in whispers. They can use any power your fears and your need for help with a bit of
tool, find any missing prop in a total blackout, desperation, and presto! you don’t feel quite
figure out any lighting system, and fix all of so alone. The fact that the God of the universe
your problems with gaffer tape. They get paid cares enough about a girl who was, in reality, in
loads more than stage actors ever could for no actual danger (other than danger of embar-
one simple reason – when it boils down to it, rassment), to give her a little boost of courage
anyone can memorize lines, but only the few made me love Him even more.
and the proud can run scene changes. More
often than not, the people behind the scenes The stakes are deceptively high. For an actor,
are the most important. the stakes are embarrassment, failure, etc. For
a crew member, the stakes can be life or death
(She picks up a paintbrush and begins painting (melodramatic but nonetheless true). If some-
a piece of the background as the lights fade one is going to be dancing on a twenty-foot-tall
out.) platform that you set up, you have to make
damn sure you’re doing it right. These are two
Act 5 very different types of stakes, one emotional,
one physical. But both are high in their own
She stands still on an empty stage in a spot- way, and both are chased as thrilling.
light.
The art – as mentioned above, everything feels
Regardless of whether you’re working behind more intense in a theater. The level of escap-
the stage or on it, we all do theatre for the ism is heightened for the audience. They often
same reasons – the rush, the stakes, and the feel more uncomfortable. Cringy scenes on-
art. People factor in other aspects as well (for stage are much worse than cringy scenes in a
instance, I and many others do it at least in film. The emotions are heightened for stage
part for the aforementioned comradery). But actors as opposed to film actors – the give and
pretty much anyone you talk to would agree take, the push and pull between the actors and
that those three things are central to their love the audience. Quite simply, it’s just raw.
of the theatre.
In the months leading up to that first audition,
The rush is addictive. Performing a soliloquy or in my eternal quest for adventure, I’d been
doing a quick scene change have a special experimenting with rebellion. I’d spent time
charge to them, a sort of electric pulse, meter- with crazier and crazier people. Keep in mind
ing out time and adding a heightened aware- that I was thirteen, so all of my experiences
ness of senses to them. Everything feels more were fairly watered down. But nonetheless, I’d
intense in a theater. This is often palpable to wandered – from my faith, from my parents. I
the audience as well – something about thea- was lashing out at everything that loved me,
tre is much more raw (almost invasive) than raised me. And it all felt wrong.
watching a movie. We all (actors, crew, audi-
ence) are experiencing the story together. I’d come back quite a lot immediately before
the audition, apologizing to my parents. But I
The theater is where I learned to pray the hadn’t felt the need to come back to God. For
“Please help me not to suck” prayer. This is an whatever reason, as I stepped under the lights,
important prayer that many, I’ve found I wanted to pray. My heart was beating more
(religious or not) have prayed at some point in wildly than it had in a while. It could have been
their lives. It builds confidence. Something that I felt like I was going to pee my pants in
about sending a call for help out across the terror. Maybe it was that my (rather tame)
chase after adrenaline had finally been satis-

fied. I was glad that my mom had dragged me off that stage a more whole version of herself.
here. I was glad that I was scared out of my The curtain opened, and she stepped off that
wits. I finally got what I craved. And I prayed stage renewed.
not to fail. I prayed out of thankfulness. As I
trained in the arts (both of acting and of loving (Exit.)
people well), I felt myself coming back to what
I knew in a whole new way. About the Author:

The really influential people that came into my Juli Nicewarner is a senior at Colorado Chris-
life through the theatre entered (stage left) tian University. She is studying creative writing
and plans to become a teacher and a writer.
in my college years. After rehearsals, no matter Her work has been published at her university
how late it was, or how delirious we were, and in local travel magazines. She has also
we’d go out and adventure. We played on the taught summer courses in both theatre and
playground at midnight. We went bowling. We creative writing.
cooked together and played games. Four of us
drove to Utah together one day to go to In-and
-Out, then parked in the dark to spend the
night at a National Park, woke up to find that
we had parked by an inland beach, ran across
the sand and drove home. One of them be-
came my boyfriend.

Theatre has given me some of the most im-
portant things in my life – a part of my person-
ality, my faith back, my boyfriend. But it also
taught me how to let go. By the end of a show,
everyone is sick of the script. They’re ready to
move on. But when it actually ends, people are
devastated. Actors of recently closed shows
can often be found in their cars, crying while
belting the songs from the show. Shows end,
casts change, and you move companies. I had
to say goodbye to the people who introduced
me to theatre. I went off to college and met a
new cast who became even more influential in
my life than the last one. But theatre also
teaches you about life – what it means when
things are over. It teaches you how to under-
stand that ends lead to beginnings, that the
death of one thing means new life for some-
thing else.

That thirteen-year-old girl stepped onstage not
knowing what to feel. All of the emotions were
coursing through her, interwoven like fabric.
But as she acted, she learned to identify each
one, how to separate it and truly feel it. She
learned how to feel those emotions for others.
She understood how to help. And she stepped

MY ANCIENT ENEMY

by Daniel Bailey

My Nijinsky bird-feet seemed to be going over government); no one present save the arbiter
well in our first conversation that fall afternoon and World Champion Boris Spassky who, to the
in 1973. I called them that because my arches surprise and ire of his own delegation, agreed
are so high my feet make four nearly separate to play in the little space. Thus hermetically
water marks on a hard surface, like hot con- sealed, Fischer, even without the advantage of
crete beside a pool. I´d read similar feet might the first move, crushed Spassky flat for his first-
have accounted for belle epoque ballet dancer ever win over the Russian in seven career tries.
Vaslav Nijinsky´s uncanny leaping ability. In any The janitor´s closet proved a calamitous co-
case it appeared that my new college acquaint- coon for Spassky.
tance was beguiled and might even like me;
she looked very comfortable sitting there on ***
her facing couch, and she was smiling. That felt
good because I already liked her. She was 19 Shannon was on scholarship at the pricey liber-
with brown hair neither short nor long, a body al arts college we attended. She bought lumpy
neither heavy nor light, and brown eyes so cu- furniture at the Goodwill which she covered
rious they made me want to come up with all with gold- and burgundy-patterned Indian
the goods I could for them. She was cheerful prints that glowed back the light of the candles
and funny and already highly informative about she sometimes lit. She peeled stamps off
all kinds of things. A young woman devouring letters to reuse if they had escaped the post-
culture both high and low at breakneck pace, mark. Most of all she read voraciously, swiftly
clearly going places. For my part, I was a chess- organizing information with her inner schema
hooked entrope. A suicidally depressed one and seeking more. Whatever she talked about
seven months before. But that afternoon, was with surpassing clarity and insight. A class
Shannon and I seemed to be sharing an unlike- presentation she made about Alexander Pope
ly cocoon as cozy as her little yellow kitchen: seemed one prepared by a specialist twice her
two individuals unusual in different ways but age.
alike in their singularity, thus happy to meet.
Shannon was a lesbian. I was a lunatic. Or I was on the “six-year B.A. plan” attending my
close. third college, having dropped out of the first
two. Nevertheless I´d managed to accumulate
*** nearly a normal number of credits for the three
years so far invested of mostly my parents´
So it seemed had been my hero Bobby Fischer. money, for they insisted on my getting a de-
He lost the first game of the 1972 World Chess gree. At 22 I still had no clue what I wanted to
Championship, forfeited the second, and insist- do in the eventual possible condition of being a
ed on playing the third in a janitor´s closet. No college graduate. I was an English major be-
Reykjavik stage for him (the one reserved for cause I´d been forced to major in something,
the match); no tv cameras (financially ruining and nothing else appealed as much. Or at all. I
the sponsors and even damaging the Icelandic lived alone in a garret above an old woman in
her Tudor home. There I monitored my moods

closely because I´d read in A. Alvarez´ The Sav- Fischer, no doubt soaring Nijinsky-like after
age God (1972) that if the first year after a sui- that first win, agreed to play the rest of the
cide attempt passes without another, the Championship on stage where he continued to
chance of relapse thereafter markedly declines. bash Spassky around the board. The six-year-
A small bottle of little blue “mood elevators” old who´d contested many of his first games
sat in my medicine cabinet. against himself and the 14-year-old on the cusp
of winning eight straight U.S. Championships
Perhaps to keep me in her life, or take one last thus—almost in spite of himself (he´d barely
look at her sexual orientation, it was Shannon´s consented even to go to Iceland, requiring a
initiative to become lovers. Now the cocoon doubling of the purse and a call from Henry
extended to her bedroom. We had sex four Kissinger)—became the eleventh World Cham-
times armed to the teeth in the cause of con- pion. Whereupon he all but disappeared from
traception. I with a condom; she with a dia- view.
phragm; beside the bed, a can of spermicide.
No Greek hoplite with horsehair headgear at ***
Marathon was better protected than we, no
armadillo scuffling through dry sierra leaves. Disappearing from view is something boys of a
She missed her period anyway. And there were certain kind do. For some of those, the en-
other signs she was pregnant, but she kept chanted wood of chess is haven and succor, a
them from me. If I´d been informed, she later cocoon for one. There such a boy loses no
explained, would I have thought I was entitled sleep in torment of mind or urgings of body
to a say in the decision she would have to thinking about girls he´s too self-conscious to
make? Thus had a woman friend cautioned touch as he needs to do. Instead he devotes
her, I learned after the pregnancy proved false. himself, like a Mediaeval knight, to an Ideal
Her conclusion was No, I was not. I found this Lady: Caissa, the Thracian dryad made goddess
persuasive. of chess in a poem by Hieronymus Vida in
1527. With Caissa, no trembling hand too fear-
I found her persuasive about most everything, ful to pin a gardenia on a prom girl´s swelling
coming to turn over my critical faculties to her bosom, so that her sister has to do it for him.
wholesale. D.H. Lawrence and Hemingway No woodland night lying beside the first wom-
were to be condescended to? Check. Virginia an he ever loved too unconfident—and more
Woolf was extraordinarily good? Check. The than that, too wrecked from preceding sleep-
Nitty-Gritty Dirt Band had produced a fine, im- less nights—to exit his sleeping bag and get
portant album? I bought it and sent it to a into hers. Caissa does not ask these things of
friend in Germany though that person had nev- him. Her he can admire in his solitary room, his
er evinced the slightest interest in country mu- chessboard before him and his chessbooks
sic. Shannon identifying as gay was enough for beside him. There in complete control, at his
me to write a paper about Lawrence´s Women leisure in a hundred variations, he can master-
in Love explicating every possible manifestation fully disrobe his love and execute upon her a
of homosexual attraction, overt and covert, dozen spectacular mates with his pulsing mind.
between the two male characters—an effort
failing to fulfill the slightest requirement of the I was that knight. When my decade-older
class professor. I didn´t care; I´d made Shannon brother sternly taught me the rudiments at age
my professor. Her knowledge struck me as all- seven, chess flushed my marrow forever. In
encompassing. Her explanations were poised one of the first games I ever played I was down
and crystalline, shot through with the sunny a Rook and a Bishop to my friend Wally when
light of reason. I agreed with most everything my mother made me take out the garbage.
she said. “Don´t give up!” I told myself, lugging the black

***

bag half my size. It had rained, and the long er? Yet so it was. But if united in singularity,
grass of our big backyard soaked my Converse Shannon and I were hugely unlike otherwise.
tennis shoes. “It can still change!” On that chill Which raised an old question: what happens
fall afternoon in waning light, I moved towards when an irresistible force meets an immovable
a rotting white fence along a small-town alley object?
in a walking meditation on the 64 red and black
squares inside. But I was also walking towards ***
my Ancient Enemy.
The almost immovable object Pan, Robert
*** Graves tells us, was, with his horns, tail, beard
and goat legs so ugly at birth that his mother
Namely entropy. “Energy existing in a system ran away from her newborn in terror. Easy-
not concentrated enough for use,” as one dic- going and lazy, he loved nothing more than his
tionary defines it, was born in thermodynam- afternoon sleep. Lust seems to have been the
ics—the First Law of which proclaims that ener- only thing to rouse him to action, though he
gy in a closed system no matter how trans- did learn to play the pipes—useful for seducing
ferred is never lost. And never gained. There- nymphs, at a guess. In the end his acedia
fore, in poker terms (for which we must thank earned him the distinction of being the only
C.P. Snow)—you can´t win. The Second Law god incompetent enough to actually die. Pan is
announces, nevertheless, that energy in such a a god I can understand.
system does not quite stay at the same level;
for friction and a tendency to relax into an in- ***
ward slack sameness mean that no matter how
you play your cards on the green baize, you In my case, I could bestir myself (at least at
can´t break even. Yet another irony soon skids times)--but to what ends? At 16 in London, my
up, inasmuch as the Third Law states that no parents bought me Horowitz´s Chess Openings:
matter how long a system slides down the en- Theory and Practice. At 18 on my first day in
tropic slope, the bottom (absolute zero, no college I went down to the study area in my
energy at all) is somehow never reached. dorm, set up my board and pieces in a carrel,
Therefore abandon hope, all ye who take a and copied myriads of its most jejune varia-
chair: you can´t get out of the game. tions into a little notebook. The point? There
wasn´t one. The move sequences were right
“For all its radiance, artistry and deep fascina- there in the book. Perhaps I was simply enjoy-
tion,” as Martin Amis swaps in chess for poker, ing, to quote Martin Amis again, “The peaceful
“it is essentially a trivial pursuit. It is without glow of scholastic futility.” Or perhaps the phe-
content. … [It refuses] to serve as a paradigm nomenon went deeper.
for anything else, as Freudians, Marxists et al.,
have frustratingly found. Chess is what it is and Five years earlier I´d rolled a golf ball round our
not another thing. It is only a game.” Which is empty bathtub in a semi-trance so long my
to say: chess is, connects with, and evolves father, concerned, made me stop. Once I got
into—nothing. It is a closed system. A trap. At stuck in a chord progression on the piano I re-
seven in wet sneakers I walked into it body and peated so many times, my dad—perhaps lis-
soul. tening hopefully through the wall of his study
for some new idea, for he was a music profes-
*** sor—came out to extricate me. In addition to
such loopiness, I was the Teenage Boy of No.
So how could it be that 15 years on and still No to an opportunity to go canoeing in Minne-
besotted with chess, the antithesis of entro- sota lake country though I had nothing else to
py—the soaring Shannon—was my friend, do that summer. No to a personal invitation
mentor, and even, once every great while, lov- from a high school teacher to join Model Unit-

ed Nations. No at 16 in Greece to running the chaste woodland night. Seven months later
29-centuries-old oval at the exact site of the Bobby was a recluse and I lay in a hospital
first Olympic Games. No at 18 to running the about to have my stomach pumped.
two-mile in my high school´s year-end intramu-
ral track meet (sinking us seniors to ignomini- Celebrated by millions, the new World Champi-
ous defeat). No to my seventh-grade math on went to a far place of the psyche. There
teacher´s offer to help me after school when were reports for years of a bearded solitary
my dad and I had stayed up until 1:30 a.m. do- sometimes seen after dark on the streets of
ing all my homework wrong. Instead I´ve had Pasadena. Rumors of a return to the arena nev-
as little as possible to do with math ever since. er panned out. Then a burst of light in the night
sky: more than 20 years after Reykjavik, his old
Or perhaps it went deeper still. One August day foe Spassky agreed to play him again. The site
in my teens, I was sitting on the bed in my was U.N.-embargoed Yugoslavia in a match
brother´s upstairs bedroom after he´d gone off therefore proscribed by the State Department.
to college. Warm sunshine poured in the open In trouble also for unpaid taxes, Fischer never
window through an old screen. I looked out on set foot in his home country again. He insisted
the neighborhood houses, the quiet street, the on calling this second series another title
sycamores and hawthorns and large expanses match, but the real World Champion called the
of lush American small-town middle-class two former ones a pair of pensioners. Quality
grass. The screen, though, made everything of play, though stellar in the first game won by
that glorious afternoon a little indistinct. It the American, soon collapsed. Then the once
robbed the world of vitality. blinding light of Bobby Fischer´s public chess
went out forever.
I suddenly realized I was my own screen, con-
stantly separating myself from most everything ***
in a subtle but crucial way, in an eerily passive
way. And on that dreamy perfect afternoon I too went to a far place of the psyche. The
there didn´t seem to be a damn thing I could insomnia starting before the woodland night
do about it. The bounty of the world—the sun- extended long beyond it. The person Gail had
splashed leaves, the friendly town—was mine known in the spring became another, anxious
for the embracing. But go downstairs and out and ill, with the same name. I only really slept
the door? Mysteriously no, I would not. Then when she left town for the state´s big city.
melancholy, like a sad fine mist, laid its hand After a number of 12-hour slumbers I followed
upon me. It was a feeling I would come to her there. Not to make contact immediately—
know well. the plan was to rehabilitate myself first, make
myself whole again, better than before. I lived
*** a solitary life and read the Bible nights. Two
months passed before I called her. She agreed
Life burst from the fragrant earth and every to a stroll on the waterfront docks. There she
vine and branch of my home town in the boun- was kind, but implicitly clear: she´d moved on.
teous spring of 1972. I was sure the rest of the
year would see the glorious dawn of Bobby My whole purpose, gone.
Fischer´s life and mine. He at 29 would win the
World Championship. I at 21 was about to have What next?
sex for the first time—the only remaining hur-
dle—with a woman named Gail whom I´d met Endure. A man, if he is a man, doesn´t let prob-
in my second college. Both my wit and my gut lems with women get him down. So I thought
told me that this was my life companion. Yet my big brother believed. He was my model for
Gail, it turned out, was to be the woman in the masculine conduct though a shadowy figure I´d
other sleeping bag through all the horrifically never known well. But what I thought he be-
lieved, I had to do: endure.

*** can. Christmas Eve then passed at home with
neither of my parents the wiser about my con-
The first thoughts of suicide were like a mos- dition. But all my adolescence I´d concealed my
quito´s high-pitched whine an instant in the emotional life from them; nothing new on that
ear. Then the mosquito started coming round score. Or perhaps they´d always known much
more often. And staying longer. Suicide gradu- about their second son, but respected his pri-
ally lost its fright. From there it became nearly vacy to work out his problems by himself.
the only thing I could think about. Whether
became how and when. A few nights later with a full tank I drove
well past the farmhouse, pulled over and start-
Looking back, I believe my clinical depres- ed walking up a lightly wooded slope. There
sion—for that´s what it was—only partly de- was a moon. After a few minutes, a loud sound
rived from failed first love. Environmental fac- close at hand almost stopped my heart. A
tors were hammering me down. No roommate. frightened cow had exploded through a bush.
No sunshine (my apartment faced north in Soon another did the same. The third time, I
shortening winter days). No phone. No decent found myself facing off with the bull of the
job (I worked a graveyard dishwashing shift, herd. He was staring at me from a dozen yards
half of it alone, without even the sense to bring off, nothing between us. Though suicidally de-
a radio in). No socializing with my few friends pressed I was suddenly afraid of being gored to
(my work schedule precluded that). But under- death by a half-ton bovine or shot by its owner.
lying all these things lurked my Ancient Enemy: I´d planned death by degree with the theoreti-
entropy. Energy existing in a system not con- cal option of changing my mind late in the
centrated enough for use. I achieved no critical game should I learn something new. If I walked
mass to change any of the bleak conditions in into a forest, maybe I could walk out again. If I
which I lived. Passivity, as in the woodland, took pills, there might be a phone. I wondered
mantled me once more. Melancholy again was if one really “got away” with suicide—if there
laying its hand upon me—now gripping hard. were not some price to pay I might near the
The sad fine mist turned into bitter hard rain. end comprehend. Unlike 75% of men (The Sav-
But I believed that a man should bear up under age God) I rejected guns, cars, leaps and other
such conditions indefinitely. I did try. violent means for the passive ways favored by
women. In case the bull charged, with my pe-
Letting my parents know I was coming for ripheral vision I picked out a small tree on my
Christmas, I spent the last of my money on a left to dart behind. Minutes later I´d returned
taxi to the airport and a one-way flight home. to the car. Just possibly, though planning to die
A day or two later I met an old friend by chance of starvation and exposure, I didn´t want to get
on the street. Being a perceptive sort who´d hungry and cold.
known me since we were 12, he divined my
project. And resolved to stick to me. Was this Attempt number three. To recover a typewriter
some sort of sign I was not to go through with of mine, their high school graduation gift to
my death project? It took a fair amount of their scattered second son, my parents had
trouble and a couple of hours to get rid of him. earlier obtained a key to the fraternity house in
which I´d been a pledge at my second college.
My first plan was to walk into the moun- Learning this, I made a mental note of where
tains outside town on the night of December they kept that key. We Delts had prided our-
24 and keep going until it was over. But on the selves on being the “alternative” Greek house:
way to my starting point, my dad´s car ran out doing some drugs, having a cross-dresser per-
of gas. A second sign? I walked through the form a lip-sync routine at a rush function, and
blackness onto a farm house porch, knocked racking up the lowest cumulative grade-point
on the door and called my father to come out average of any living group on campus. Now it
in the other family car with the lawnmower gas

was winter vacation and not a soul was about. only change I´d wanted for a while was the
January had laid its hand upon the quiet col- permanent one.
lege, blackening its trees and whitening its
grounds. Under leaden skies I let myself into Prince Myshkin, Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaia
the handsome wood structure set lower than Ivanovna were dancing their intricate dance,
street level and further screened from the and I was following it quite well. Then the lines
world by a gigantic weeping willow on a lane of the text began to form into ranks and march
called Shady Rill. I chose a room on the lowest down the page. Still I continued tracking fine.
level near the one I´d lived in with my room- This isn´t so bad, I thought. This won´t be hard.
mate Roger. In the adjacent bathroom, the
disagreeable taste of the 18 Sominex pills regis- Then from the top of my field of vision I no-
tered more and more strongly as they went ticed the door suddenly swing open. I looked
down in a swallowing process taking a surpris- up. The door was shut. There had been no
ingly long time. Then I returned to the room, sound. So the door had not swung open. Un-
stripped naked save for my black sheep´s wool settled, I kept reading.
beret (a gift from my mother), lay down on the
hard gray wall-to-wall carpeting, and began to After a while I heard a voice speak quite dis-
read. The book I´d brought along to die to was tinctly into my right ear. It was three inches
Dostoyevsky´s The Idiot. away. It was Roger. He said, “Pick up sticks.” I
sat bolt upright and looked that way. No one. I
It was the only thing I´d been able to think looked all over the room. No one.
clearly about the previous couple of weeks,
aside from the plan to stop existing. When it Shaken, I lay down to read again. Soon other
came to everything else, my dropping i.q. was familiar voices, just as close, jarred me from
almost a physical sensation. Thinking had both sides. More disconnected snippets—
gotten steadily harder and slower. More and “don´t be late!”—“tie your shoe!” Each voice
more it would stop altogether with the startled me utterly, wrenching my attention
thought, “No reason to dwell on that—I won´t away from the book. It was happening more
be here.” Who would win the Frazier-Foreman and more. Each time the voice seemed real.
bout a few weeks off? “Doesn´t matter, I won´t The speaker had to be right there. But no one
be here.” And so on with everything but the was.
book, as I spiraled ever more tightly—like a golf
ball round a bathtub drain--into my death pro- And then I knew. I knew as surely as I have ever
ject. My eyes in the mirror looked filmed over known anything. I knew the voices would keep
when I bought the Sominex. The woman in the increasing in this chaotic manner. Then I would
drug store, hesitant and afraid, nearly didn´t lose consciousness from the pills. When that
sell it to me. But when I got home the bottle happened, the voices would envelop me en-
was full of cotton. A third sign? Hell-bound tirely because the evidence of my five senses
trains don´t stop for signs. Next day I bought would no longer be able to distract me.
another bottle somewhere else.
Then I would die.
The cold afternoon I lay in the bottom of the
Delt House turning the pages of The Idiot was But far from ending the torment, death would
January 4th , 1973. Alvarez wrote it was one of make it permanent. The harrowing yanks to
the year´s three leading dates for suicide. The nonsense, the jolts of chaos shouted into my
holidays over, the last hope for cheer and head at point-blank range would not cease but
change past—any cheer, any change—people be my lot forever.
give way. That wasn´t my case. I´d already en-
tered the vortex of suicide weeks before. The I knew this as certainly as I know the back of
my hand. Then occurred the greatest mystery
of my life to that time and to this. Knowing I
was heading to a very real and eternal Hell, I

did not act. Energy existing in a system not con- over. “If you don´t pump my stomach soon, I
centrated enough for use. will die,” I said. She looked at me for several
seconds in silence. Then she returned to the
Perhaps two minutes passed. I have no good orderly.
idea. Whatever that desperately dangerous
length of time, I did not act. My enemy is an When at last the hospital found our family doc-
Ancient One, and powerful. tor, he said my case was not in his line and rec-
ommended another man. That person soon
*** arrived. By the time my gurney finally started
rolling, I felt like I weighed several hundred
There was a telephone—surprise surprise—in pounds smashing the mattress. Then it seemed
the hall outside the room. I found I could walk. I was sinking more and more deeply into the
I found I could dial and talk. I called 911 and bottom of a well. I lay looking up at the multi-
asked for an ambulance. ple figures ringing the top. They were peering
down at me, lowering a rope. It was unclear
I dressed and went outside, bringing along The whether the rope was going to be long enough.
Idiot, wearing my black beret. I stood on the They took my pulse and blood pressure at fre-
curb. The voices had stopped. An ambulance, quent intervals. Once I heard someone mur-
wailing in the distance, approached through mur “high” about the first and “low” about the
the cold dreary day. “An ambulance,” I second. I was asked to sign something; people
thought. “I wonder where it´s going.” The siren pushed me onto my side for the purpose. But I
grew loud. Then the vehicle hove into sight, saw two versions of some form and couldn´t
turning right into a lane called Shady Rill. “It´s tell which was the real one, or if I were writing
coming in here,” I thought. “That´s odd.” The anything legible, or remotely in the right place.
ambulance stopped in front of me. “Oh!” I “Do you feel nauseous?” they asked afterwards
thought. “It´s for me.” I took a step forward. twice from the top of the well. “I feel numb,” I
replied twice from the bottom.
The middle-aged driver leaned over, rolled
down the passenger window, and looked me Suddenly the emetic they´d given me twist-
over. I was both on the street and watching ed my stomach they were about to pump. I
from 10 feet above. He saw the title of my shot upright and vomited on the nurse my soul
book and rolled his eyes: “That figures,” he had fastened to—the only one who knew how
might as well have said aloud. The me on the scared I was, the only one scared with me.
street was expressionless. The me in the air With the vomit went all my air. I couldn´t
was exquisitely amused. It was the first time I´d breathe. I tried so hard my drugged body
found something funny in many weeks. clenched and I couldn´t. The seconds passed.
One nurse pounded my back. Another looked
I got in. He took my name and address. Tiredly: at me in consternation. They couldn´t help be-
“Well Dan, where do you want me to take cause they didn´t understand that I was terri-
you?” I named the hospital where I´d been fied.
born. There was almost no traffic but he
stopped at every red light. No siren. After a while an unearthly sound began
to escape me. A physically impossible sound
At the hospital, it was quite some time before not produced by air. It rose from the bed and
someone took my case. Our family doctor was swam above us like a tiny eel. It was the sound
unreachable but the emergency room people of a man pulling in with so much desperate
didn´t give up. I lay by myself on one side of a strength he had instead sealed himself com-
large empty space listening to a faraway nurse pletely off. The nurse covered in my vomit was
tell an orderly about her problematic brother- the only one who understood this. To me, that
in-law. I felt my body growing heavier. After
what seemed like a long time I called the nurse

meant she was the only one who could help. “Come on,” she said. “Stop making jokes. You
“Relax,” she implored me. It was very difficult are not Bobby Fischer! Yesterday we had Dali
to trust her. In order to breathe, I had to stop in here, today, now, we have Fischer.” Then
trying to breathe? She stood close, bending she smiled. “But look, buy me another glass of
down, looking into my eyes. “Relax, relax… champagne and I´ll call you Bobby for the rest
please relax!” Finally—just slightly—I risked it. of the evening.”
With a jagged rasp I fell heavily back on the
bed. The doctor came in, saw the vomit, said The chess-world figure, listening over his shoul-
“That will do,” and left. der from the next table, convulsed with laugh-
ter.
***
Fischer was shocked. He ransacked his wallet
It had been seven months from my best late and jacket trying to prove who he was. In vain.
spring to my worst early winter, and it would After years of concealing his identity, in that
be seven more before I met Shannon. In the rare moment he was proud to assume it he
interim I went a dozen times to a bland psy- could not.
chologist paid for by my brother into whose
home I had moved. Then I began at my third ***
college. I could talk about things like Nijinsky´s
bird feet and feel vague hopes for the future Summer vacation 1974 was fast approaching.
again. But I knew my Ancient Enemy was far My old roommate Roger arrived on his Honda
from vanquished. As classes started, I put much 150 from out of town with homemade wine
faith in the little blue allies in the medicine cab- he´d just proudly concocted. Next morning we
inet. I took only one but carefully safeguarded woke more hung over than we´d ever been in
the rest. our lives. With splitting headaches and queasy
guts, we took soft little steps to a nearby fast-
This was who Shannon was dealing with in the food joint and carefully downed a few fries.
fall of 1973. Soon he had to roar off—how he survived that
I have no idea—but on the whole, despite the
*** alcohol poisoning, I considered his visit a solid
success. This was because I had a new plan.
Meanwhile Bobby Fischer, if he was not to play More precisely, I had a plan. On the basis of a
in public again, sometimes held secret conver- single comment of Roger´s while we were
sations with people who hoped he would. getting baked that I later thought I remem-
Mostly he was suspicious of being exploited bered, I´d decided to accompany him picking
and hid his identity. The safe confines of a dark pine cones for pennies in some unnamed for-
strip club once served as venue with one such est.
chess-world figure as we learn from Grandmas-
ter Yasser Seirawan´s Chess Duels. Shannon refrained from expressing her view of
this plan for something like two minutes. All I
“So. What is it you do for a living?” a young remember is the look on her face and how she
performer asked Bobby. He straightened up in edged the words, “… fucking around. Which is
his chair. what you´re doing.”

“I am an International Grandmaster of Chess!” ***

“No! Really? I play chess too! I know the names With my graduation assured (amazing!) but
of many Grandmasters. What´s yours?” Bobby feeling slammed by Shannon, I retreated to the
felt very happy. enchanted wood of chess. The nutrients there,
if few, are rich. I memorized a great mass of
“My name is Robert James Fischer. I am the Queen Pawn openings which I called The Arma-
World Chess Champion!”

da. I speed-walked to my rented garret from books were studied, boards were packed,
the city chess club many a late night through sleeping bags rolled up tight. The knights as-
freezing cold burning to analyze the games I´d sembled to joust in their enchanted wood.
just played.
I ran for editor and won. Won what? Outward-
But Shannon´s comment burned as well. Pine ly, a handful of chaff. To me, a glowing jewel.
cones? In time I admitted it: I was direction-
less—passive—to the point of being deranged. With a worthy cause to serve, I felt trans-
Energy existing in a system not concentrated formed. I moved to the big city once more, this
enough for use. For the first time in my life, I time into a second-floor fifty-five-dollar apart-
felt ashamed that I´d never attempted to shape ment measuring 10 by 14 feet (“somewhat less
that life. than my minimum requirements,” drily ob-
served my brother). I called it The Treehouse
And sensed that my Ancient Enemy was stir- because big windows on two sides opened into
ring. the generous branches, like reaching arms, of
large trees. Sun-splashed leaves all but fell on-
*** to my tiny half-moon desk. No screen between
me and the world now. Tournament reports,
A new idea occurred to me, the likes of which ads, interesting games, and instructional arti-
had never before swam into my ken. Instead of cles filled my mailbox. I trimmed some with
picking pine cones, could I run for editor of the scissors, retyped others and cut and pasted the
regional chess magazine? This post, at a low- lot onto blue-lined layout sheets. I collected ad
tech monthly printed on muddy pulp, was un- monies to give to the treasurer with a strict
paid. I´ve only seen one other magazine like accounting. Wrote science fiction writer Fritz
it—a rural chicken-fanciers´ circular in Tuscany. Lieber for permission to run his haunting chess
Never have black-and-white chess positions story Midnight by the Morphy Watch. He con-
and Italian chickens borne such a striking re- sented, and my fellow knights loved this first-
semblance. If someone had switched the mail- ever reprinting of chess fiction in our magazine.
ing lists of the two monthlies, it could well have I taped, transcribed and published interviews
taken the subscribers on both sides of the At- with the eight State Championship contenders,
lantic some moments to notice anything amiss. an honor for me and another first for the mag-
azine. I attended board meetings of the Feder-
If the chess magazine´s circulation reached four ation. The magazine had appeared every
digits, it wasn´t by much. To any objective ob- month since 1947, so the legend ran, with the
server an almost-college graduate aspiring to sole exception of the month Willi Skubi´s dog
put out such a rag for free—and thrilled to em- crapped on the layout sheets. Resolved to up-
brace such an anti-opportunity—had to be hold that nearly perfect record I never missed a
daft. Yet I did aspire, and I did thrill. The elec- deadline.
tion was coming up soon. Was it really possible
I could take responsibility for the beating heart For the game that had sequestered me now
of our regional chess community? Every month showed its Janus face: entropic behind, dynam-
we waited in our homes to know who, in chess ic before. Where chess had isolated, it now
terms, we were. Then the magazine would ar- connected me to the world and some who be-
rive and we´d eagerly search out our new came lifelong friends. One is a many-time cap-
ratings, calculated by unvarying formula to tain of the U.S. Olympiad team; another would
quantify our most recent tournament results. counsel me into the Peace Corps. A third waits
Had we risen or fallen? How far? Whom were for our next six-game match in our home town,
we now better and worse than? We read about where I once went to die, whenever I can make
upcoming tournaments in the back pages. it back. These are just a few of my chess
Friend called friend, rides were arranged, brothers for life.

Because lives are bound with the thread of His life for me is a cautionary tale of a man
chess. Maybe the commonality of experience is overcoming all his foes save for the one within.
what spins this thread. All who take chess to To fight my own such foe, Bobby, the hero of
the arena experience the thrill of a tight win, my youth, helps me do what I´ve learned—as
the frozen shock of a game suddenly ruined. an existential matter—I must: despise the sad
The warm feeling of hard-earned competence fine mist of passivity to do work that is good
leading to success. The self-doubt and de- for my soul.
spondence after emotion floods the brain ***
wrecking the dominion one had exerted just For I am under no illusions about my Ancient
moments before. Enemy. His losses are not conclusive. No one is
more patient or more alert. He stirs when I let
And then there are those rare games when the things slide. Draws near when I flounder in
struggle of sport (versus the other, versus the procrastination and solipsism. Lays his hand
self) falls away because something else, some- upon me when I don´t prioritize and plan, or
thing wondrous, emerges: a work of art pro- confront deteriorating conditions.
gressively fashioned, or unveiled, by two trans- He tried to kill me once. He´s trying still.
ported minds. That is strong thread indeed. And could yet succeed.
That is when awe gets into it. Two chessplayers
can´t forget such a game—the feelings The End
attendant or the one with whom it happened—
any more than two lovers who have truly About the Author:
joined can forget the rapture and the other.
Born and raised in Walla Walla, Washington,
*** Dan Bailey holds a B.A. in English Literature and
an M.A. in Theater Arts. He´s resided in seven
When I cast the net of memory back to Shan- countries, most recently Venezuela and Pana-
non, it´s clear her help was key. Her remark ma with his Venezuelan wife. He´s taught Eng-
proved catalytic because it issued from her lish to foreigners of all ages through the years
magnificent example of an eager soul in moti-
on. She would go on to become what she pre-
saged: a scholar mightily contended for by top
universities, and then the author of landmarks
in her areas of interest. Shannon´s irresistible
force budged my immovable object. Her bread
crumb trail led me out of Tuscan Dante´s wood
of the suicides.

As for Bobby Fischer, a decade separates his
life from ours. He once won 20 straight games
against elite competition. That was considered
impossible, like hitting a dozen straight big
league homers. But he lived much of his life
tormented in a dark wood of the mind. A pas-
sionate anti-Semite (though Jewish himself), he
died at 64 in an Icelandic hospital of easily pre-
ventable degenerative renal failure because
he´d refused surgery, and all medications, for a
urinary tract blockage. Earlier he´d had all the
metal fillings removed from his teeth (which
then rotted) fearing Russian and American radi-
ation attacks through them.

and assisted foreign academics in the publica-
tion of their articles and book chapters in the
language. He´s edited a chess magazine and
copy-edited another.

His publications consist of two academic
articles on foreign language acquisition and
one on the Model United Nations activity´s
effectiveness for that purpose. Five pieces he
called “Notes from Another America,” four
bitterly opposed to the gathering political dark-
ness in Venezuela, were run in his hometown
(Walla Walla, Washington) newspaper. The
fifth gave intercultural dating and marriage
advice to young Latin Americans and North
Americans dealing with each other inside the
U.S.

Last but not least, he´s been published
three times on chess, the great gift his big
brother gave him when he began grade school.

RESTLESS RAMBLINGS

by Sara Magruder

Complete and Utter Nonsense Vision Elite in black. After a long day of use, it
was still going. My brain turned on its sympa-
I sit in the living room at 1:30 am and begin thy module and went with it:
writing. I know I am going to be tired and
cranky in the morning, but I can’t help it. This “I feel so used. Every day, I am picked up and
has become the norm in my life; when I can’t put to work. I write papers. I draw doodles. I
sleep, I write. I am lounging on our comfortable underline. I make checklists that I have to
couch, lent from grandparents to my room- check off. I am the one that makes notes last
mates and me. It still has the original horrific forever. I don’t erase my mistakes but glide
fabric, the dull variety of all vomit colors dis- over them absentmindedly. I feel like there is
played in a tacky floral print. While I retch at never a break. Constantly busy, no time for
the thought of visitors ever seeing this mon- rest. During the day, I work nonstop, and my
strosity, I have to say it really is the most relax- job doesn’t end until the wee hours of the
ing couch in our apartment, often used for morning when I am finally laid down for a pow-
naps. I look out the window behind the sofa er nap before starting all over again. My writer
and see the hazy lights of the parking lot beside doesn’t know what to say sometimes, so I just
me. I hear the rustle of wind whipping through have to wing it, going from one idea to anoth-
the unsealed frame and the buzz of cars driving er. What do you say when you can’t speak? We
down the adjacent street. I hear the soft and are so close most of the time that before she
muffled voices of freshmen just coming home can formulate the correct words to say, I am
from their “crazy” night out, and as they draw already writing them down. Warmth from our
closer, the big talk of their putt-putt experience intimacy allows my ink to dance across the pa-
and the “sweet sinking” on that last hole really per. They are her thoughts in the palm of her
boosts their confidence. hand, and yet she allows me to write them
down. I hold the deepest secrets, the best kept
“I can’t believe we just went mini-golfing at lies, and the moments of doubt. But I also hold
midnight!” the joys of the day. I know her genuine emo-
tions. What she can’t admit to anyone, she
I chuckle as their voices pass by, hoping they admits to me. The more I think about it, I guess
will get to sleep quickly and not develop my I don’t mind being used so much. I enjoy the
insomnia habits. I don’t remember what I had important role of being the pen in a writer’s
been writing at the time, but I remember the hand.”
thoughts that came after.
See what I mean? This is the nonsense that my
I turn back to reality, to the quiet in the apart- brain decides to bring up. Why is it the inani-
ment and look down at the pen in my hand. mate objects that have the most interesting
When writing at night, I am old school: paper stories at night? I have no clue, but I quickly
and pen. If great writers like Hemingway and retire the pen, suddenly aware of its over-
Fitzgerald did this, it was good enough for me. worked hours.
At the time, I preferred the trusty .5 Uni-ball

I attempt to go back to sleep, but as I lay in ing glue, the sound of the spine cracked for the
bed, trying to make shapes out of the darkness, first time—that brings me home. As Paul Kala-
the jackets hanging on the back of the door in nithi says in When Breath Becomes Air, “it was
front of me stand out. In my brain, I know literature that brought me back to life” every
these are simply black jackets, pushed out be- time I felt like I lost myself. The imaginary
cause of their thick, down make, but for a split worlds gave me a break from the tough reality
second when my eyes catch their form, my in front of me.
scare radar goes off. There’s someone standing
in front of you. Those aren’t jackets, it’s a per- Similar to this, but not nearly as effective, tele-
son disguised. They are sticking out more than vision shows from my youth also played a part
usual. Yep, you are definitely going to die to- in my active mind. My favorite cartoon growing
night. Better say your last prayers. up was Scooby Doo. I loved helping solve the
complex mysteries alongside those meddling
Thank you, overactive imagination. After an- kids and their dog. Forget Dora the Explorer.
other ten minutes spent trying not to move, She was never challenging enough. But with
seeing if there are legs at the jacket’s end, my Scooby Doo, did you ever notice what time of
mind decides I am not going to die tonight. day the villains normally made their appear-
Though the jackets are made from goose feath- ance? The Creeper shows up after dark. The
ers, and geese and I have a hate-hate relation- Ghost of Captain Cutler emerges from the
ship, their plumage will not fly up to smother depths of the ocean glowing in the night. The
me. Black Knight only comes out when the full
moon is up. As a kid, all of this mystery associ-
Stressed and sweating from the previous heart ated with the night only drew me further in,
attack, my mind is on high alert, and I am hot wanting desperately to observe all of its se-
under all of the covers. Against my better crets. Most of the time, findings related to this
judgement, I stick my leg out and over the side section of my thoughts only brought up more
of the highly set bed. Remembering that there paranoia.
is a black hole under it, normally a study nook
occupied by yours truly when I want to do When I talk about the night, I am talking about
homework or watch Netflix and not be both- my definition of it, which is anytime from 2:00
ered, I quickly pull my leg back to safety, wor- to 7:00 am. For as long as I can remember, the
ried that the monster under the bed from my night has fascinated me. I don’t know if it is the
childhood has come to college with me. quiet hums of cars, the stillness of life, or the
alone time that so easily gets skipped over.
Origin There is a beauty and a mystery that comes
with it. From childhood books and shows, kids
My mom passed on her love of reading solely get the sense that darkness is scary and brood-
to me. My brother and sister could not care ing. Bad things happen at night. But the older I
less about books, but I have always loved get, the more I realize that bad things happen
them. I was an avid reader even before know- just as much in the daytime. The midnight hour
ing how to read. I liked the idea of it so much, simply brings about more creativity. Fabrica-
my three-year-old self with overalls and pigtails tion is fun for my imagination, and when it is
would grab the closest book and sit in the most paired with sleep deprivation, the thoughts
obscure place, like a laundry basket, with it become somewhat irrational.
upside down, making up words to the vivid
Disney pictures in front of me. Though these feelings are generally centered
around paranoia in the darkness, I often think
There’s something about the feeling of a book of times with my dad, who reminds me of the
in my hands— the smooth touch of the pages sweetness and complexity of the night. From a
between my fingers, the smell of ink and bind-