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Sara-Anne Beaulieu D. B. Cox Maja Hill Peter Roberts Terry Lowenstein Kelley White Corey Mesler Jenne Kaivo Susan H. Case Rochelle Hope Mehr Thomas D. Reynolds Joanna M. Weston Sam Silva Kathleen Green Gardner          Why I Should Read More Hopkins by Sara-Anne Beaulieu Back in the shack with the clapboard- covered windows, the knick-knacks tumbled off the shelves, the freezing drafts pushing through every crack.  Back to mysterious tics and tocks clicking in corners and under unknowns.  To another inch of crusty snow with acorns crowning the crisp surface. And days in bed, reading, reading! Skin dry from the air, fingers calloused; mind reeling, churning words, a well-oiled machine wheeling, wet, slick and purring.  Words dive gracefully from diving board tongue, pirouetting, spreading pearls of humidity across house walls, flesh. To invoke a solar flare, to stare face-first into hot licks of heat, to stand, feet burning in snow, calling words back into the soil, the grass splitting through ice.  And lush green will sprout lyric, a ripe sheen of language will waken the wild earth, return supple lipid to skin; harness the sonnet of August.     Weed by Sara-Anne Beaulieu The dew-slick grass divides. The rich earth sifts. The world shifts seasons. Dandelion.  A feralness.  A tuft of silken fur. Golden laurel about your crown. The sun reflects you. A pomegranate.  An apple. Something forbidden.  Illustrious. A wildness. We say weed. We pluck you.  Say you spoil the crop, then weave you into our hair. We purse our lips blow kisses on your iridescent face. Watch your everything decorate the wind. Your unrefined lineage sprouts, the world’s turf at your petals. There are some things you must sacrifice. Your wine. Your nectar. The Buddleia and Azalea bow their budding heads to your soft white hair drifting in the wind The soil sifts. The dew-slicked grass divides.     Alarm Clock by Sara-Anne Beaulieu What fickle sun could not fall for roads of Italian dusk dusted in silver? For the snowy spine of a bridge arching from a quiet bed into the R’s rolling off a Roman’s tongue? What mind could not be swayed by the courtly love of dreams; the cold snap of February dazzled by a Mediterranean wind? What hand created a machine; let loose the siren of winter morning, when my toes just consummated its love with an emerald sea?   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       jaco by D. B. Cox distant sirens break like terrible news the world’s greatest bass player lies bleeding in the gutter; twisted, like a broken bird, dying, in a dirty, half-lit, southern street... desperate fingers reaching for the no one who waits to save him the hold, the dark had on him, finally smashed away by some small-town, inconsequential badass; & where was the voice in the crowd calling for mercy— were they all tongue-tied & terrified— or maybe they were all just enjoying the show the sad truth is— in the end, jaco strayed, like a lost pilgrim, into a pack of ravenous wolves & talent, that bright currency with which he had always bought forgiveness— was as worthless as a sweet prayer to jesus     american business card by D. B. Cox the pitchless hum of an idling greyhound combines with the suffocating fumes of diesel fuel to soak the night air with noisy poison a skinny panhandler, wearing a kid’s spiderman tee-shirt, sits crumpled, like lost luggage, just outside the brownsville bus depot hard times & places chiseled across his face like engravings on a tombstone two hollow eyes, like piss-holes in the snow, stare blankly at the casual caravan of human traffic as it flows along with its totally assured sense of destination there’s a wrinkled square of cardboard at his side— a kind of faded-brown, contemporary american business card with the fractured graffiti, “out of work”, scrawled across the front one look at this guy & you know he’s done for—& knows it— & yet, his accusing eyes glare at me, as if i could somehow save him what’s going on here can’t someone help this man right now, before this humiliation goes on any longer somebody has to put things right is there no one who can put an end to this hopeless unraveling— the pitchless hum of an idling greyhound……………………………………..   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Is Humility Like... by Maja Hill Is humility like the littlest bird Rising up to perch comfortably At the tip of the thinnest branches On top of the tallest tree; Where none can reach her With grasping claw or piercing beak And she alone can see That unobstructed view?     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       ode:  dali by Peter Roberts            I the emporda the dead salvador dalí, the first dead salvador dalí, overshades all (sky-christ gazing down on child & dog —is this dog god or log?— gazing, crucified, in glaring garish orange flame). but you, salvador dalí, the second salvador dalí, shadow of a shade, the great, soiled masturbator, will cretinize the putrefactos, will have a surrealist ball (taking in all), tweaking even dada.       II  catalonia bees swirlswarm in the shape of a cathedral dome / a woman's head. bees—or are they quanta, self-contained self-absorbed self-sodomized little twists of space-time? listen . . . you can hear the hum inside atoms. ants scatter —filthy, greasy, shining black— from a vulva —fuchsia, rotting, hirsute—"eet ees eenough" to curl one's mustache (& fire one's eyes). look . . . you can see a she, fearsome female. gala walks, bearing cash, baring ass, across the water's skin—peel it back to reveal a sleeping dog (a lie). think . . . just think.       III port lligat cut!  that's the final film frame. the double image, still unresolved, bistable, oscillates. the tricks, the illusions continue, the hidden image still hides, but the painting—the one painting (it's all one painting) (with the dog) is done.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         ubiquity revealed by Terry Lowenstein forbidden fruit consumed the snake sheds its skin behind seraphim wings color bleeds black and white flaming swords grant passage as cerebellum atrophies and ribs become dust   Absolution by Terry Lowenstein The new tax laws weave magic. The improved fabric hides changes, the sins of the mighty veiled Hypocrisy dons the cloak of propriety as it offers crumbs and waits to feast on gains that will not be listed And leading a parade of confession accounting firms and executives, dressed in somber suits of regret. The wily tailor smiles at his success the Emperor's new clothes, fools the masses.     justice weeps with the voice of crows by Terry Lowenstein normalcy bartered for a silver spoon a procrustean bed hidden from the moon all is not as it appears the cottage crumbles as sugar dissolves in a rain of tears     The Pen Defined by Terry Lowenstein Genius explained as the muse lays bare upon the Freudian coach. Hidden meanings revealed. The pen is redefined. The yearning to write psychoanalyzed. The fluidity of ink becomes a culmination of passion released Writing a symbol of coitus. Freud drops his pen and the muse exits, laughing.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       A shout in the night by Kelley White A shout in the night from the deep down heavy air of my darkness and I am refusing to accept the fearful humanity in the voice of this thin frail boy who holds my daughter in her sleep     Before We Got Poison Ivy by Kelley White You came back from the South Seas and I had lost, or perhaps it is more correct to say, misplaced, our baby; I had hung with rawhide the plants you sent, spider, philodendron, Boston fern, and we lay in a circle of trees on pine needles and told each other stories.  I needed dark for I knew you only in half light, the white of your strange pocked skin, your face a pale planet below my opening eyes.  We were strangers two who had brushed up against each other on a moving train.  I felt my hollow belly and it began, an itch painful when I touched myself until I could not bear clothing, my very self, on fire.  Small solace that you too burned a continent away.  There would be a letter of two, regret, the memory of rice paper taped on your bare windows, snow falling, a mattress on the floor, the mirror in the kitchen we thought might show more than ourselves.      Debt by Kelley White I dreamed someone had pasted large sheets of blotting paper all over my door. I peeled it off carefully saving and rolling the pieces of adhesive paper trying to read the messages indented in each corner.  The mailman had placed my mail above the door and window frames but I was able to climb upon a passing giant’s back. Inside the children were making a collage of my poems.  My daughter said they were just substituting something a little livelier for my cardboard drafts.  I woke with the taste of old sugar in my mouth.  You’d left a check in the mailbox for $4.54.  What you calculate you owe me after six years of life together.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Brautigan at the Home Depot by Corey Mesler Richard Brautigan wandered into the Home Depot, looking for a 6 x 2 drywall screw. He did not know, or it did not matter, that he had been dead since 1984, George Orwell’s infamous year. He was a barmy ghost, bent on finding a 6 x 2 drywall screw. But, all around him, walls teemed with silver gadgets and bright fixtures. The surplus was exotic, but, somehow wasteful.  I don’t know where I am, Richard Brautigan admitted to himself. He asked a pretty, blond teenager in a red apron for help. She said, Mr. Brautigan, we don’t sell screws separately. She smiled the kind of smile a child might save for when her mother ruins the cake. And besides, this pretty, blond teenager added, Isn’t it hard for a ghost to work with tools?  Richard Brautigan stood for a moment in all that dead air, his walrusy face a study in conflicting emotions.  And then, like a sour wind from Akron Ohio, he wafted out the door, the only reminder left behind, a three line poem, seemingly finished.     The Theft by Corey Mesler I saw the sparkle. I heard the music, as ancient as trees. And the fairy folk took my shadow, for what purpose I do not know. And, after the music had faded away like a fire reduced to glint and glow, I was bereft. Left alone on the small rise, surrounded by lush green, a life that had to go on.     Cajun to Go by Corey Mesler I eat my soft-shell crab sandwich like a monk illuminating a book which will only exist because of his labor. That’s how much I like that soft-shell crab. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       On My Own Nose by Jenne Kaivo For weeks at a time the smell of blood fills my airways. More often I am without scent. My jaws hang slack and my nostrils may as well be painted on. Food I love for its texture, taste being beyond me. But in the springtime the woods smell strongly of rising bread, of living yeast while the city street bears the strong bouquet of rot.     Railroad Caves by Jenne Kaivo railroad caves dug into the sides of things as old as time and railroad bridges held aloft by trees that have seen ten ages of man and organic composites riding in railroad cars (sectioned like insects) organic composites inside made from matter as old as time   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Dust by Susan H. Case Within each square yard of my room drifts one dust speck from outer space on average. Some motes virginal largely invisible carbony material floating in lungs—hair—clothes—bereft of ecstasy lifting off the back of my dog in cosmic wisps caught in a sunbeam as she scratches hard. I think about that set of specks— whether my accommodations meet its expectations. I don’t want to accidentally toss any out. I feel sorry for the space dust lonely not getting enough attention in spite of being far from home.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Intimate by Rochelle Hope Mehr So much to say and the ink runs dry. One day I will compose directly On keyboard and never press flesh Around pen. Never touch paper again. Paper so delicate. It shatters light. Paper the prism That imprisons. Paper the Expatriator. Paper the Great Liberator. It frees all it seizes In its pulpish fist And rests the gaze inward With a twist.   A Victimless Crime? by Rochelle Hope Mehr The tenor at the recital Scans the faces in the audience For a glimmer of recognition. The old lady in the fifth row Rolls her eyes in remembrance Of her sixth grade beau. The singer has made contact And bounces his remaining notes Off the carcass of her heart.     For Nothing by Rochelle Hope Mehr You'll know you've reached your destination When you no longer care. The ruins of the old city are faded. The tapestry has begun to wear. You'll know you've reached your destination When you knock at the gate And no one is there. You've come all this way And no one is there. Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Barker by Thomas D. Reynolds Always crisp, freshly combed, impeccably dressed. Spiritless and implacable, the only exceptional act. Out-freaking even the bearded lady and Snakewoman in creepy repose, his seemingly unshakeable faith in the paunchy young acrobat clambering gingerly onto the platform, breathlessly climbing the ladder, reaching the mark with only a brief worried glance and a weary smile to a visible relieved audience. Hyperbolically announcing each death-defying feat, the old barker never looks up, not a wrinkle moves, becomes most remarkable then (when his spiel ends), how he stands coolly unconcerned with the degree to which the world matches his expectations. Statuesque, inflexible, the barker stares ahead at a bare stretch of ground just past the crowd as the acrobat, wiping sweat, prepares to leap. Though never applauded, the barker's on display, a slender mummy raised from the Valley of Kings, impeccably preserved, drained of all imperfections. Not the king, but his long-serving manservant, eternally glossing over the young royal's mistakes, praising him for the smallest of accomplishments, shrouding his own boredom, and superiority over all.     Skippy the Wonder Rock by Thomas D. Reynolds So what if you're a mutt, mostly a coarse gray breed mixed with white flint, dotted with clear quartzite (one of your grandparents?), mud clinging to your belly. You've been a faithful rock, patient beyond understanding. My daughter saw you at the park, subject to a subliminal charm that escaped me, I'll admit. Wait for this to grow on me? Hell, I won't live that long. But you exist on a higher plain. Your hum fills a dark room, one continuous sublime bark. Definitely low maintenance, I'll say that on your behalf, though you fell from the chair once, carelessly brushing my hand. I glued the two pieces together, patted your reptilian back, muttered, "good boy, good boy," and set you on your perch. Your unwillingness to please is rivaled only by a cat's, diffidence and cool unconcern. Your best trick is playing dead, which you've got down cold. With a little assistance, you can sit up or roll over, but you could never beg.  No. We don't have the good times other pets and owners have, the playful give and take. Sometimes I feel I should hug you in the crook of my arm and slap a noogie on you. Now get yourself over here, my petrified chicken liver. Soon you'll have to face the inevitable deterioration, the slow stumbling walk, mind racing ever faster over hills it once roamed. My passing could be eased by a succession of owners. Just wait a century or two, that's all I ask. Oh, the times we've had, you asleep on the table, me spilling crumbs on you. But you never complained, never offered to desert. Forget Frisbees or ball. Let's just sit here awhile Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     Nowhere to Go by Joanna M. Weston the class of '69 remembers the stranger who took both sidewalks from outside the school tied them together put them in her backpack and carried the road to the horizon we are left with familiarity on the doorstep and a longing for the woman who stole the way out of town     Incense by Joanna M. Weston I opened the greenhouse to water my children caught them in prayer with petals folded towards dawn their leaves windless and still I crept into their requests heard the humming of bees before the children curled against my skin to suck plainsong from my body how could I rain on their scented orisons?     Three Dimensions by Joanna M. Weston I move in calibrations of space where the thickness of paper measures a minute the size of a picture frame depicts an hour noon lays snowflakes in my hands to pile as dimensions fashioned in the wheeling circle                of the clock   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       The Ruddy Spring Weather by Sam Silva As if wisdom were your soul and music my desire where daydream comes in droplets as if from yonder kitchen sink in a sound like gathering blood ...a sound the heart erases ....In from sunny spaces where April burns its other side of resurrected flowers on fire beyond the age when young gods died ...inside from that within the cool transformations of a livingroom whose lazy breezes from the open porch doors, pool I see the garden, yes! But I look at you so well ...there is a question on my lips as delicate as art and impossible to formulate where the daydream drips like the music of a fool come to beg his pardon. For you and your art are everything! ...and the love that fills my heart where the dumb fears drink in this, our speechless spring where truths abound like passion ...impossible to tell!     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Balm by Kathleen Green Gardner My cats pounce in abandon devouring catnip toys conquering all phantom forces. They jump on the bed and purr; a soothing balm for the soul. The days tick away as the littermates snuggle and groom each other; preening in a contented lull licking the other’s ears for minutes on end. Eyes closed, purring in a patch of warm sun. Oh, to be loved like that again.       Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

 

   

On the Up  Drew Davies Vienna Before Freud  Susan H. Case My Mother's Son   Clifford Thurlow Champion of the Dell  Zan Nordlund

The Swan River Daisy  Tom Sheehan Guileless Relation   Shipra Sharma The Elephant Man(delbaum)   Jack Goodstein The IKEA Paradox   Rob Rosen

 

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On the Up                                                                         

by Drew Davies                                                                          

An Elevator.  The doors open to reveal a CONDUCTOR standing in an empty lift.  A group of smartly dressed men and women pile in.

CONDUCTOR:  Ground Floor!  Going up!

        With a “ding” the doors close.  The Elevator starts to climb.  There’s
        another “ding” as they reach the first floor.

CONDUCTOR:  First Floor!  Major disabilities, phobias, diseases and the like.  Amputees, lepers, wheel chair users, the blind, the dumb and the deafening.  Do we have any claustrophobics?

CLAUSTROPHOBIC:  (terrified).  Oh God, yes!

CONDUCTOR:  Then this is your stop, good sir.

        The CLAUSTROPHOBIC scrambles out of the elevator.

CONDUCTOR:  Please stand clear of the doors Ladies and Gentlemen; please stand clear of the doors!

        The doors shut and Elevator lurches upwards.

HARVEY:  Excuse me?

CONDUCTOR:  Yes, sir?

HARVEY:  I know it’s not proper etiquette but I was wondering if I could ask you a question?

CONDUCTOR:  I’m sure we can accommodate.  That’s to say, if everyone agrees.

        The other PASSENGERS murmur their approval.

HARVEY:  I was just wondering why, on the floor we just visited, you could see through the ceilings and into the floor above?  I’ve seen many architectural quirks in my time but never one so transparent.

CONDUCTOR:  I don’t mean to sound condescending, sir, but I assume you’ve not been to this particular building before?

HARVEY:  That’s correct.

       The Elevator stops with a “ding”.

CONDUCTOR:  Second Floor!  Non-Caucasians!  Black persons, Hispanics, Asians, Eskimos or Inuits, Australians and anyone else with a deep hued tan.  You sir, if I could be so bold, have you been summering in the Caribbean by any chance?

TANNED MAN:  (smiles).  Yes, indeed I have!

CONDUCTOR:  You’re a lovely colour, if I do say so myself.

TANNED MAN:  Why, thank you!

CONDUCTOR:  But I’m afraid this is your stop.

TANNED MAN:  Pardon?  I’ll have you know I’m expected on the Fifth Floor!

CONDUCTOR:  Out you get!  (Pushes the TANNED MAN out of the Elevator).  Going up!

                           The doors shut. The Elevator moves on.

Now where were we?  Ah yes!  The glass ceilings.  Very practical they are.  Allow inter-personal relations on many levels.  Great for productivity.

HARVEY:  You mean you can speak to someone on another floor?  From one to the next?

CONDUCTOR:  Oh no, no.  That wouldn’t do.  Completely air tight they are.  But if I was on one floor, say, and you another, we could wave to each other.

       The Elevator stops with a “ding”.

CONDUCTOR:  Third Floor!  Women!  Brunettes, Blondes, Red Heads, Hot Heads, Vixens, Kittens, Ball Busters, Iron Ladies and anyone else of the fairer sex.

(To HARVEY, as the women exit).  You’ll notice that they wear either culottes or slacks.  It’s a precaution to stop the perverts from looking up their skirts.  We had an awful lot of trouble to begin with.

HARVEY:  Do you have a floor for perverts?

CONDUCTOR:  Of course not.  They’d never get in the main entrance.  Going up!

                  The doors shut. The Elevator moves on.

HARVEY:  How long have you been an Elevator Conductor here?

CONDUCTOR:  You’re quite the conversationalist aren’t you, sir?

HARVEY:  Am I?

CONDUCTOR:  And I think you’ll find that I’m not an “elevator porter” as you put so crassly, sir.  I am a Vertical Travel Vehicle Manager in the first order.

HARVEY:  Well that sounds very grand.

CONDUCTOR:  Oh, no it’s not sir.  I’m on the lowest rung of the employment ladder.

       The Elevator stops with a “ding”.

Fourth Floor!  The Socially Unacceptable!  Anarchists, Over Achievers, Under Achievers, Bisexuals, Cross-Dressers and the Religiously Devout.  Anyone wearing briefs.  This is your floor please.

     A few people exit. The doors shut. The Elevator moves on.

CONDUCTOR:  You see many queer types on that floor, sir, if I do say so myself.  I’ve had to pry the buggers out with a crowbar.  I don’t know why they get so upset.  If they walked slowly no-one would even notice.  Nice biscuits they get on that floor too.  Macaroons.

HARVEY:  People just don’t know how good they have it.

CONDUCTOR:  Makes me want to cry.

       The Elevator stops with a “ding”.

        Fifth Floor!  Final Stop!  All remaining passengers please dismount! 
        Graduates, Aristocrats, Conservatives, Male Models, Jet-Setters,     
        Nepotists and anyone else that went to school at Eton.

       Everyone exits the Elevator except for the CONDUCTOR and
       HARVEY.

HARVEY:  Excuse me?

CONDUCTOR:  Are you still here?

HARVEY:  They said I should go to the Sixth Floor.

CONDUCTOR:  Really? That is a strange kettle of fish. Would you be so kind as to show me your pass?

       HARVEY takes out a gold pass card.

       Very good, sir—everything’s in order.  If you’d just like to hold on to the rail.

      The doors shut.  The Elevator starts rapidly.

      Aren’t you the lucky one, sir?  The Sixth Floor.  Imagine!

HARVEY:  What’s on the Sixth Floor?

CONDUCTOR:  Well don’t look at me, I’ve never been there.  Not my place.  You must have had a very good upbringing, sir.

HARVEY:  The very best.  My father was a scholar and my mother was a poet.  I had a Danish nanny and everything I could have cared for and nothing I would not.  My place in the world was decided the very first time I was laid down, naked and wriggling, on crème cashmere sheets.

CONDUCTOR:  I hope, sir; you’re not insinuating that wealth has brought you this opportunity?

HARVEY:  Well, I…

CONDUCTOR:  I’ll have you know that money doesn’t enter into it. We’re not prejudiced here you know.

HARVEY:  Of course not.

        Pause.

        This ride is taking a time.

CONDUCTOR:  It’s a long way to the top, as anyone worth their weight would say.  It’s a grand journey.  I’m going to miss it.

HARVEY:  Are you leaving?

CONDUCTOR:  Not of my own accord, sir.  Cut backs.  They’re going to replace me with an automated voice!  Can you believe it!  Forty years of service and they replace you with an electronic device!  Sparks will fly!

HARVEY:  I’m very sorry.

CONDUCTOR:  And to add injury to insult the person who is providing the voice for the automated service is a woman!  With a lisp!

HARVEY:  How absolutely ghastly.

CONDUCTOR:  I have ten children, you know.  As it is, I get thrupney a week and half a length of string if I’m lucky.

HARVEY:  If I were you, I’d complain.

CONDUCTOR:  Not to worry, sir.  There’s little a man in my position can do.  Nearly there!

HARVEY:  I do hope I like it up here.

CONDUCTOR:  Oh you will.  Great views.  Lots of space.  Not like those poor bastards below us.

        The Elevator stops.

                            Here we are, sir.

HARVEY:  Thank you very much.  You’ve been very helpful.

CONDUCTOR:  All in a days work, sir.

HARVEY:  Well, take this as a token.  (Gives him a few coins).

CONDUCTOR:  That’s very kind of you, sir.  (The Elevator doors open).  Have a good day, sir!  Mind the step, sir!

        HARVEY steps out.  There’s no floor.   With a cry, he falls.  His screams can be heard as the Elevator door shuts.

CONDUCTOR:  Doors closing!  Going down!

 

 

                                                    
                                                    
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Vienna Before Freud                                         

by Susan H. Case

                                                                                                                                              

n 1773 I had the privilege of being treated by the well-known physician Franz Anton Mesmer.  I was twenty-nine and for years had been troubled by a mysterious malady that, despite my looks, caused my parents to despair of my ever being married.  Miss Oesterline, Mesmer said to me and bowed, at which blood rushed to my head and I fainted, but not before experiencing a most profound tooth and ear ache.  Mesmer was rumored to have observed a woman’s face wax and wane with the moon, turning so ugly with the waning that she would not go out again until the moon was full.  It was this transformation of bone that had led some colleagues to view him as an instrument of the Devil.  Still, my parents were at their wits end over my delirium and vomiting and after my last rage, in which I threw my needlepoint at my father and screamed, tears coursing down my cheeks—it was at the end of February—they decided that something extreme needed to be done to address my apparent madness.

When I entered the room with the oval wooden baquet—not the smaller room for those less economically fortunate, but the large room for women like me—I was encouraged to take a seat near the iron filings and the wine bottles full of magnetized water.  I held onto iron rods to conduct magnetic flow to my afflicted body.  The room was crowded with patrons.  Mesmer’s treatments were quite popular, especially after the rumor began that sitting on the wrong side of the baquet would lead to unspeakable moral transgression.  When one of the young assistants, a very handsome young man I must state, lay his hands upon me in a curative gesture, rubbing my spine and knees and breasts, I could not help but swoon.  The way he stared at me!  I tried to maintain my equilibrium by listening to the music with my eyes closed—opera was popular, as was Mesmer himself on the clarinet.  I was embarrassed to view what was occurring, but I admit that I occasionally peeked.  The treatment produced violent hysterics in the women around me and when I too began to have a fit, two of the handsome assistants gathered me up and carried me into a salle des crises where I fell into a deep sleep.

It was, of course, through Mesmer that, at a point when my parents had surrendered all hope, I was introduced to his stepson, now my dear husband.

 

 

                                                    
                                                    
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My Mother's Son                                                      

by Clifford Thurlow

hen I passed the sign for Blackpool it occurred to me that I hadn't been there for years.  Blackpool 8.  It was only eight miles, but work lay at one end of my journey, home at the other, and to have turned off had always seemed inconceivable.

My hand stroked the indicator.  I caught a glimpse of my eyes as I turned right and, for a moment, it looked like somebody else in the rear-view mirror.  Then, as a child sees monsters growing from the wardrobe, I thought I saw Catherine at the edge of the glass, her eyes full of...understanding.

She would be disappointed, of course and, across the hot-line, Miss Durban would be fussed.  They were my journey's frontiers, two bridge supports at the lips of the abyss:  vast, robust and really rather touching as the bridge washes away on a tide of tax demands and questionnaires all neatly completed in the crabbed capitals of Miss Durban's arthritic hand.

Delia Durban.  It was a solid, provocative, step-motherly name, the pair of Ds like the high and low notes of a musical scale, a bullet and its retort.  She was four score and more, thin as an asp, with a toad's gnarled flesh, her loyalty to Father reminding me of those old lame dogs that carry their leads in their mouths, a legacy that should have been buried with him, tossed to the flames like a Guy some dismal November night.  She was the only one who cried at the funeral.

Catherine wore her chin up; both of them:  a free-forming sculpture of burgeoning curves erupting from the constraints of a black suit a size too small, her cheeks flushed as if by exertion, plump domes of bubbling flesh rippling from her best shoes.  I studied my wife more carefully that day and felt relieved that the children had been too young to attend.

It was a jolly affair, little islands of egg and cress sandwiches ornamenting the table in the living-room, a stiff parade of sherry schooners gathered in by well-wishers with scissor smiles and the hushed reminder that he'd had a good life.  The curate had Love is God tattooed on his forearm and Catherine wasn't sure she approved.

My wife in mourning was best avoided.  Although, as I left for work next day, I realized that Miss Durban, with Father gone, was going to be worse.  Her concern for the business was as consuming as a teenager with his acne, a fixation that made me less decisive in my meek endeavours.  She was like a shadow, always behind you, or beside you, as permanent as the curate's tattoo.  She professed an inclination to claustrophobia which graced me through the open door of our offices a panoramic view of her dewy nose and squirrel eyes that squinted over a typewriter with a damaged s as she pecked away like some famished sea bird on the deck of a doomed ship.  I had no idea to whom she was writing and never cared to ask.  She was the hub around which all wheels glided, the book keeper, historian, the albatross to my Ancient Mariner.  Through eight dust hushed hours a day for two decades I had watched the old bird's silver hair bobbing behind the Underwood, her tongue darting out to coil around the gummed apex of a manila envelope, her crippled hands ironing creases in the company foolscap.  Through the length of a murderer's sentence—without remission—I had exchanged paper-clip prattle and climatic prognostications above a shoe factory that had touched its toes in cold ashes of the crematorium even before Father did the decent thing and buggered off.

I had taken command, the son and sole heir of an enterprise that manufactured English brogues, a task analogous to that of the Master on the Titanic, my assignment as hopeless as King Canute's playful lesson with the tide.  The current had always been against me and, that day, the banks had crumbled.  I was brimming with watery similes:  drowning in foreign imports.  I had been cast adrift on the flotsam of social change, the jetsam of junk footwear.  I had been sucked down in a whirlpool of trainers, sandals, sneakers, espadrilles...I would have worn them myself but Catherine didn't like that sort of thing.  I had waited for bankruptcy like a man on a quayside watching a curl of smoke on the horizon.  Finally, my ship had come in.

The trees had come to an end and I turned left:  Blackpool 3.  I saw the famous tower, neon signs like new flavours of ice cream.  The road became the sea front and my nose filled with the smell of the sea, candy floss, jellied eels.  Mothers with big legs and sleeveless dresses watched infants playing in the sand.  Pensioners like abandoned Punch and Judy puppets filled deck chairs in hostile silence.

I looked ridiculous in a charcoal suit, my brogues that I polished before I went to bed at night mirroring the spring sunshine.  They were too expensive; an anachronism, like Miss Durban.  The Americans bought them with some puritan nostalgia for something that may never have existed.  But you need a home market and that's what we didn't have.  Costs went up, sales went down and, each time we increased the price, the gap widened.

I left my jacket on the passenger seat and ambled down to the beach.  I heard someone laugh and glanced over my shoulder before realizing it was me.  The pier was suspended over the sea like an idea not fully realized.  The air, tingling like champagne bubbles, made me feel a giddy.  A child was paddling, running a few inches into the tide, then running out again shouting.  I removed my shoes and socks.  The sand felt warm as it worked its way through my toes.  I thought of Catherine as I strolled along the water's edge.  "George, really!"

She had a short list of reproaches and uttered them in the same tone, her moon face deflating as she shuddered, sucking air through her teeth like a Chinaman.  She would arrange her features into a look of forbearance and benignly hurry off to the St John's Ambulance, the Wolf Cubs, the WRVS, her uniform pressed, shoulders pulled back, her ponderous breasts swinging freely as if the Boys' Brigade Band marched at her sturdy rear, which they did at Church Parade on the second Sunday every month.  She was the Maypole around which local life turned, a do-gooder and Bob-a-Jobber, a woman of powerful convictions all neatly sealed in an unshakeable belief in the Conservative Party, the Church of England and the Daily Mail.

Perversely, it was Father who had introduced us.  They were at some charity function and when he saw her starched shirt and sensible shoes, and when she announced that she was a virgin—that's how I had imagined it—he decided it was time to deliver me from the clutches of Marjorie Mackie, a factory dyer, a girl who smelled of animal flesh and the king-sized cigarettes she smoked in quick succession.  She wore high heels as she worked.  She painted her nails the same fierce red as her lips and those lips live so sharply in my memory the periodic arousal it fires meets Catherine's fleet and missionary anticipations.

Father arranged the encounter at a garden party he had organized as treasurer of the Chamber of Commerce.  We were surrounded by panting matrons and dribbling majors and, among them, Catherine was light relief.

"How do you do?" I said, and her blue eyes as they looked back at me were clear and untroubled.  I liked her full lips, her breasts filling a frilly blouse.

"Very well, thank you," she replied, and I had a sudden vision of myself sinking into all that buttery goodness.  She was twenty-five, a year younger than me and, though too old for the ribbons in her hair, they gave her a look of cherubic well-being.  Catherine would grow into the kind of woman who, learning from the TV, would rush over to show a neighbour how to get a shine on the kitchen floor; the daughter my father never had and my mother had been unable to give him.

Mother was the odd pawn inevitably lost from a chess set, fading from my mind as she had faded from life like a flower pressed and forgotten between the pages of a Victorian girl's diary.  She was a timid woman so anxious to do the right thing, and so certain her husband was the one to do it, she gave in to some trifling malady soon after I started boarding school and I wasn't told she was dead until I came home for the holidays.  I burst into tears and, as I sat there blubbering, Father turned the same ruddy tint as the raspberry jam on our breakfast plates.  "This isn't what England's made of," he said, and left for the comforts of Miss Durban, the Daily Mail rolled like a swagger stick under his arm.

Up until then, I hadn't known my father.  He was just the back-slapping, moustache-wearing colossus who took me on long walks over the moors on rain-lashed Sundays.  When I was tired or sick, he would say I was my mother's son and the memory of Mother slowly dulled into a fog of pity and shame.  I learned to dry my eyes and do whatever was expected of me.  Father took the helm, as Catherine was to take over from Marjorie Mackie.

The velvety softness I had visualized at the garden party had been an apparition.  Catherine was a solid bulk, a bulk that would grow more solid and, by the time I was conversant with this affliction, I had married her.  I had pleased Father and sent him off to the crematorium behind Mother a complete and contented man.  His company was called George Tanner and Son and he had lived to see another son join the line, another pair of feet to fill his shoes and make more shoes into eternity.

I wriggled my toes.  They were like something alive.  I felt like swimming, which I hadn't done since the children were small.  I had taught them, then retired to praise and observe.  It was one of the few tasks I had performed.  Catherine had been in charge of the rest, rearing them on the fare of Grandpa's values and sending them off into the world equipped to face its perils.  Peter joined the RAF as a boy entrant at sixteen, and Jacqueline got a place at secretarial college in London as soon as she had finished her O-levels.  We didn't see much of them after that, except sometimes at Christmas when Peter talked about radar and Jacky always had some disorder that prevented her from eating.  She had grown as tall as me with legs as thin as licorice sticks in black leggings and short skirts.  I asked her once why she had gone so far away to study and she said if I didn't know, she couldn't explain.

Some things you can't explain.  I left the wet sand and stripped off my shirt and tie, trousers and underpants.  I raised my arms in the air and faced the sun.  I stepped into the water and, when I saw my nakedness in the reflection, I couldn't help laughing, a long, loud laugh that echoed over the water and woke the pensioners from their nightmares.  I had the ocean to myself.  I waded slowly forward.  The bottom banked steeply.  I took a deep breath and began to swim.

 

                                                    
                                                    
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Champion of the Dell                                                                     

 by Zan Nordlund

arie and me decided it was a great idea just to write ourselves a pass and skip school.  I couldn’t believe it took us so long just to figure this one out.  We’d thought of everything else by now.  So, instead of wasting this gorgeous afternoon listening to some poor middle-aged bastard with a cheap tie drone on about inane points of history and science nobody gave a damn about anyway, we went for a ride through the backwoods of Vermont.

Marie, by coincidence, parked behind the school, near the edge of the woods—not up close like usual.  It’d be easy to get out of there without being seen.  It was almost like she’d planned the whole thing.

Her 1970 rust-bucket of a Trans-Camero had this faded black vinyl roof with a big hole torn dead-center on the top—you could see where the elements were determined to eat their way through to the headliner. And to think, some people pay for a sunroof.  Most of the rest of the vehicle was held together with a combination of duct tape and what looked to be Bazooka Bubble Gum, though I wasn’t sure.

I tossed my knapsack through the missing rear window and hopped into the passenger’s side.  The door creaked and groaned at the sheer agony of being called into service.  The royal blue interior was beat to crap.  Its cloth seats were so slick with grime they felt downright slimy.  The whole thing reeked like mildew, and stale cigarettes, and old urine.  Marie used a screwdriver instead of a key to start the Trans up—it backfired and then rattled hard enough to make you cut a wisdom tooth when she revved the engine.  There was a grubby pacifier covered with sand on the floor under my left foot.  I was afraid to ask where it came from; I just moved it aside so I wouldn’t step on it and looked out the window.

We exited the parking lot and made our way toward the gate of the school complex.  It soon became evident shocks hadn’t been in the budget in a while—I swear I heard the rear bumper hit the ground once or twice over the ruts the spring rains had carved in the dirt road.  I just prayed the principal didn’t decide to return early from one of his Tuesday afternoon romps at the Majestic Inn with Mrs. Chezworth, the lunch aide, and catch us in the middle of our escape.

The gate was in sight and I felt a sudden sense of exhilaration—a newfound sentience of freedom.  I’d never done anything like this before.  I was looking forward to exploring all sorts of new opportunities with Marie.

That was when she pulled a pack of Kools out of the glove compartment and lit one up.  She handed the whole thing over to me and offered a smoke.

"Ugh.  Thanks . . ." I said.  I just didn’t know what else to do.  I didn’t want to sound like a geek so I tried it.  I thought somebody lit my lungs on fire—it felt like I’d brushed my teeth with a Brillo Pad.  I tossed the butt out the window after a few puffs.  She cast a funny look in my direction.

"Uh, I’m tryin’ to cut down," I said.  I wasn’t sure she believed me, I think she had a smirk on her face.  Boy.  I was rackin’ it up today.

Just then she hit another one—Marie didn’t even try to slow down over the potholes.  In fact I think she kind of sped up when she saw one.  Maybe that’s ‘cause her father was a mechanic.  He had a little goatee.  A black one.  I bet he didn’t weigh one-hundred-and-twenty-six pounds, soaking wet.  They used to tease him about being the only guy down at the shop who could fit into all the small places.  They called him ‘Ratty’ for short.  He always had to get up and inside the dirty stuff ‘cause he’d never done any of the bench presses the way the rest of those fellows had when they were in high school.  His upper body never developed as a result.  That’s ‘cause he was busy pressin’ something else.  He was thirty-six and he already had ten kids.

To my surprise we came out of the back side of the woods and pulled right into the driveway of Marie’s house.  She lived in The Dell.  The place was notorious.  Her family, in fact, was the only one in the whole Dell that lived in a house—all the rest of ‘em—they had trailers of one sort or another. Her uncle, the ‘rich one,’ he lived across the way in a double-wide with a full aluminum skirting around the bottom, and even some landscaping.  Didn’t look like he’d touched it much since, though.  At least not with plants of any sort.  Her Grandmother was at the top of the hill in the 1936 pink and white Champion.  Her Aunt Nancy was next door in a brand-spankin’ new black and white Elkhart.

My mother said for what they paid for that, they could have bought a ‘real’ house.  There was no accounting for taste she said.  I didn’t know the rest of the neighbors, but they were all related to one-another here in The Dell.

Marie’s house was a two-story square box with a peaked roof.  It had lemon yellow paint on top and mint green on the first story.  The shutters were falling off a window on the second floor.  The paint was faded and chipping, and several shingles were missing.  The window on the porch was broken and a sapling seeded itself in the trench where the pane used to be.  The front yard featured an old gas stove and a rusty grocery cart somebody’d pinched from the Central Market a long time ago.  Two-foot weeds grew up along the few patches of grass that remained.

A mean-looking rottweiler sat guard over the front door.  The thing had to be at least fifteen.  It was grey in the snout and missing a front tooth.  You could tell it had a cataract in its right eye and one of its ears was half-gone.  The air reeked of dog shit.  The critter got up as we neared, more out of obligation than sincerity, and began to bark and to growl.  It pretended to strain at its twenty-pound shit-covered stainless-steel chain.

"Shut-up Ruthie!" Marie yelled.  The dog cast a welcome glance at her for the command and turned its arthritic hips around to lie back in the one spot under a bush it hadn’t soiled.   It flopped with a humph and glared at me from its post.

Marie opened the aluminum screen door and let it slam behind us.

"Ma!  I’m home!" she hollered as she set foot onto the front porch.  Just like that.  She gave her schoolbooks an unceremonious toss into the corner of the foyer.  It was clear she’d retrieve them on her way out the next morning.  She threw her jacket atop a pile of other coats on a tattered chair and walked into the kitchen.

The house had a smell about it—not bad exactly, just like a little kid that needed a bath.  The wooden floors of the house had long gone grey with dust and with grime.  The ceilings were amber-colored—sticky with the tar of cigarette smoke.  A kidney-shaped ceramic ashtray overflowed with used butts onto an enamel-topped kitchen table.  It was clear it had not been washed in a while.  Two red plastic chairs were by the table.  Their seats were split with age and their stuffing poked out of their sides.  An orange kitten walked by, stretched and yawned.  The slight scent of a cat box filled my nostrils.  The kitten reached out with its paw and placed a claw through an opening in the screen of a well-worn wooden backdoor.  It was soon outside.

Marie opened the beat-up once-white refrigerator.  There was a large dent in its center and it evidenced rust around its edges.  She pulled out a can of government-issued orange juice—you couldn’t miss the generic black-and-white label, so simplistic in design.  It stated only "ORANGE JUICE" in bold block letters.  She opened a cabinet and pulled out two large glasses.  They’d come from fill-ups at the local gas station.  She nodded at me for approval.  She poured the juice, replaced the can in the fridge, and placed an artful kick centered squarely on the bottom of the door.  The entire thing warped into shape and the door resealed.

Marie then set about searching the cabinets for a snack.  She settled upon a can of tuna and white bread—she opened the can and drained it into the sink.  She didn’t bother rinsing the broth down the drain.  She pulled a bottle of mayo out of the fridge and left the door open.  She spread a thin coat on each side of the white bread, and dumped half of the tuna onto each sandwich.  She then put the mayo back and then landed another kick on the fridge like a mule.

I’d never seen anything like it.  I’d grown up in middle-class suburbia.  My mother was June Cleaver compared to this.  You came home from school.  You put your books in your room because you were going to study later.  You hung up your coat, you changed your clothes.  Hell—You mixed tuna fish in a bowl.  You rinsed a sink after you’d used it.  And ‘June’ was big on soap and water.  She washed everything.  She even washed vegetables before she cooked them.  And you—you washed your hands.  Did you ever wash your hands!  These people never washed anything.

Way cool.

Marie handed me my sandwich—without a plate—and we moved into the living room to build a fire.  Her mother wasn’t home and she was still allowed to build a fire!

She was good at it, too.  She did it almost every day.  First she put in the tinder and some newspaper.  She was sure to show me—I guess at this point she’d noticed how clean I was and figured I needed lessons.  Then she built a teepee out of the mid-sized sticks.  She chose Norway Maple today.  She said it was because it burned long, and because she liked the smell.  She went back into the kitchen and returned with a bag of Al Capp’s Fries.  We shared those as the fire got started.

I was studying the water stains on the 1920's-style wallpaper just as the school bus pulled up.  It was a traditional bright yellow one—none of this newfangled orange stuff—and about a mile long.  The noise coming from it was so loud it could have broken the sound barrier.  To make matters worse, there was a lady with a blow horn on the thing telling everybody to stay back fifty feet.  Hey!  No problem!  I don’t think anybody wanted to get closer to that thing than they had to!

I expected the bus to pull away at any moment, but it kept unloading.  Hundreds and hundreds of the little buggers got off—like ants leaving a flooding ship.

"Gee.  A lot of kids live in this neighborhood, don’t they?" I asked.  I stared out the window and tried to imagine where they could all fit.

"Not really," replied Marie.  "Just us—and my cousins, that’s all."

"Oh," I said.  Maybe not as many kids got off as I’d thought.

Just then somebody kicked the front door open like it was a drug raid.  They were all yelling and screaming at once—you’d think they’d just been let out on parole after a twenty-year stint.  Everyone of them threw their backpack right where Marie had tossed her books.  The pile was big enough to rival the annual tent sale at the Eastern Mountain Sports Outlet—only their stuff wasn’t that nice to begin with.  It was all tattered and dirty and held together with safety-pins.  It smelled of peepee.

The mob pushed right past me as though I wasn’t even there.  They hit the kitchen like a sea of locusts—cupboards slammed, dishes broke.  It was unbelievable!

"Are they this way every day?" I asked.

"Pretty much," Marie said.  "But they’ll go outside in a minute."  She looked tired.  And a lot older, all of a sudden.

I felt as though I’d just witnessed the first of the seven plagues.  She made no attempt to quiet the children or to straighten up after them.

"Well, I should be heading home now.  Thanks for having me over," I said.  "Next time you’ll have to visit me."

"Sure," Marie said.  Her voice was flat and I could tell she was disappointed I was leaving so soon.

That evening my mother called to me when I came through the door.  The smell of dinner wafted across the threshold as I hung up my coat in the entrance hall.  I was sure to wash my hands before sitting down at the table and to place my napkin in my lap.  I didn’t linger in front of the bonus episode of Alias Smith and Jones.

Instead, I spent the time on my science and history homework.  I even put in a few extra minutes on algebra.  

                                                                                                      

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The Swan River Daisy                                                  

 by Tom Sheehan

hester McNaughton Connaughton, aptly named for both sides of the family, landowner in the new world, squeezer of pennies and nickels at the very corpulence of coin, embarrassed at times by his own good fortune where his roots had once been controlled and ordained by potatoes and turnips or the lack thereof, gazed over the latest acquisition of a two-acre parcel abutting his prime abode and wondered how he could best utilize it.  Mere coinage, he had early assessed, would apply the jimmy bar under Carlton Smithers and separate him from the land in their town of Saxon, not far from Boston.  Carlton was old, alone, susceptible.  It would be a piece of cake.  It was, subsequently and as he had forecast, a swift steal, and papers and proper process moved the property under the shield of his name.

A big man in his own right, massive across the shoulders, Chester, even as a dreamer of large proportions, was given to talking to his father long gone down the pike, from a runaway case of pneumonia, to better pasture.  The old gent had once called it “a greater kingdom and a lesser court.”  Still civil in such matters, Chester addressed his father as “sir,” never once forgetting his manner of address.  “Sir,” he said this day, “how can I best use this land?  The farmer is no longer in me; no endless hours, no thievery of land and what it will allow to be taken from it, these I do not envision.  What would you propose?  I would by design do whatever you suggest.”  On his porch, the sun wavering its heat across the width of the two acres, Chester transposed himself into his study mode.

Now it takes all kinds of beliefs to manage oneself in this world, and commerce or business demands certain of those beliefs come into the fate of a man.  Chester heard his father say, in the same enigmatic voice, the same wonder of voice, the simple words, “Swan River Daisy,” the words a barely audible breath coming upon his porch, like an aside from forever.  The long-gone old man had not entirely eluded him.  A sense of trust redoubled itself in him as he heard the echo say again, from some parallax athwart the universe, “Swan River Daisy,” and repeating, “Swan River Daisy.”

Acceptance struck him.  Oh, he knew that sun-yellow flower well, a hardy, deep-root grower that dispelled an easy pull of root work in the fall.  One year a decade or so earlier he had planted the whole flower bed across the front of the old colonial house with the tenacious daisies, waiting for their yellow waves to unfold a day in May, a wave a teasing breath of wind could set to dancing, the daisies standing so tall.  Both the blossoming and the root work came back to him in swift recall.  Did the old man mean to have him construct a greenhouse on the property, to specialize in Swan River Daisies?  Was that the evolution of the simple answer a soft wind had brought him across the field?  Should he plant the whole field with such golden color it would attract tourists?  Should he run horses, like roans and pintos, through the field, and to what end?  What good means is such advice without fair and equitable interpretation?

At length, in this quandary, the sun nodded his head and closed his eyes, and the old man said again from off the porch yet at immeasurable distance, “Swan River Daisy.”

Came upon him eventually turmoil and noise and his daughter crying out to him, “Father!  Father!  Look, look at the field!”

Upon his new property sat the most gorgeous Mississippi paddle wheel steamboat he had ever seen.  It was red and blue of color and proud in its bearing and was smoking at its single black stack.  Bales of cotton, like pale brown dominoes, stood on the prow of its deck and the paddle wheel astern of it, like a huge radius, spun itself through slow, angry revolutions.  But there were no passengers crowding its deck, no crew evident about its surfaces, no movement other than smoke in a single column drifting upward to dispersion and the paddle wheel only partly visible in its circular passage.

Boldly printed in large yellow letters against the blue hull was the name, “Swan River Daisy.”

In less than the passage of one hour he was nearly assaulted by the Building Inspector who had come in answer to neighbors’ complaints.  “How did you get it here?  Do you have a permit? Was there a building plan submitted to Town Hall before this traffic?  I suspect, sir, that you have violated many laws and regulations and will be held accountable.”

Chester shrugged his shoulders.  “I did not bring it here.  How could I do that?  It was just there.  My daughter, in great confusion, yelled at me and said, ‘Look in the field.’  There it was.”

“Is that your field?”  The inspector was indeed young, indeed officious and surly in manner, the way Chester looked upon him, and wore his hair long and uncombed.

“Yes, I bought it quite recently.”  A pup is still a pup, Chester announced to himself.

“I suggest, sir, that this must go all the way to the Town Manager and the Board of Selectman.  You, most likely, as I have said, have broken all kinds of rules.  That plot is not zoned for business.”  The inspector was young, snotty-nosed, arrogant in an imperial and puerile manner at one and the same time, and was shaking his head and pointing the most possible accusatory finger at landowner Chester McNaughton Connaughton, smarting at the surliness.

“What business is that, inspector?  Chester could not bring himself to call the young man sir.  That was reserved for his father.  His father came from that distant point again, that far parallax, “Swan River Daisy.”

The wide-eyed young inspector, obviously not in on the other conversation, replied, from his haughty countenance, “Why, that of transportation, having a river boat, delivering cotton bales, obviously a horde of passengers who are below deck and gambling illegally.”  His head shook in a fearfully authoritative manner, superior counsel judging the Swan River Daisy from his dais, and thus judging Chester McNaughton Connaughton.

“Delivering bales where?”  Chester’s hands were on his hips, his arms like sails, a big man towering over the young judge in pants though not in robe.

“Why, the next port of call, perhaps.”  The young man looked down past the fields the way one might look down river.  Fluster, for the lack of another expression, came on him.  “I must report this to higher authorities.  I will call the electric and telephone and cable companies to see if any of their wires have been cut or disturbed.  This is highly unusual.  Improper displacement of utilities most certainly has been commissioned in this transport.  Think of all your neighbors so unceremoniously impacted.  Perhaps half the town.  Why haven’t I been so informed?”  In the most inquisitive gesture, he cocked his head to one side, a half smile at his mouth, as if to say you can let me in on this, and said, “How did you ever in this world navigate the underpass from the main highway?  That seems quite impossible.”

“I suspect it does look that way, but I did not bring it here.  I did not build it.  I did not order it.  I did not wish for it.  And I assure you I know nothing about the underpass or the overpass or how it was, as you say, navigated.”  Chester suspected there was in his own eyes a merry twinkle at this point.  He consciously depressed the words, “Perhaps there’s been a change of tide.”

“But, sure as heaven, you are responsible for it.”  The finger was wagging at Chester once more.  “It’s on your property, sir, and you are therefore responsible.  I hope you have insurance.”

“For what?” replied Chester, still hearing the far voice saying, “Swan River Daisy.”

“For the obvious damages you have incurred getting it here.”

“Getting what here?”

“Getting the Swan River Daisy onto your property, that’s what.  I can read the name on the hull.  I know what a Mississippi steamboat is, and a stern paddle wheeler for all that.  You can’t fool me in these matters.  I assure you I have read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  I know about the big river and the boats.  I even saw