A collection of works by CalhounCommunity College students, faculty, staff and alumni.

CALHOUNCOMMUNITYCOLLEGE

ADA/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/ EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

MUSE 1

muse: def.

muse v. To ponder or meditate; to consider or deliberate at length. 2. To wonder. N. (Greek Mythology)Any of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different act of science.3. In general, the spirit, or power inspiring and watching over poets, musicians, and all artists; a source ofinspiration. 4. (Archaic) a poet.

CALHOUNCOMMUNITYCOLLEGE

Editorial CommitteeJack Barham • Bernadette Jones

Leigh Ann Rhea • Kristopher Reisz (student editor)Jill Chadwick

Cover art by Stacie BritnellLayout and Design by Beth Butler, Graphic DesignerPrinting by Lana Powers, Calhoun Printing Services

Proofreading by Janet Kincherlow-Martin, Director of Public Relations

The works contained in this publication do not necessarily represent the views and/or opinions of Calhoun CommunityCollege, the Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education, or the Alabama State Board of Education.

Foreword:We’re very proud of this year’s MUSE, partly because of the quality of the submissions andpartly because so many hands joined in its creation. For the first time, we’ve included an SKDHonors student as an editor, Kris Reisz, whose insights and hard work helped shape this year’sjournal. Our Art/Photography faculty supported us more than ever before by encouragingtheir students to submit entries. We received submissions from our current students at theHuntsville and Decatur campuses, and some of our favorite entries came from our alumni,who still take time to remember us with their contributions. Last, but not least, our PublicRelations Department shared their considerable talents with us through their lay-out andproofreading skills – especially Beth Butler, Lanita Parker, and Janet Kincherlow-Martin.Thanks to all of you, and please remember that students, faculty, and staff past and presentare encouraged to send us poems, essays, short stories, artwork, and photography. This jour-nal is, quite literally, nothing without you.

Enjoy!

Jill Chadwick, Editor

Published by the Department of Language and Literature and Sigma Kappa Delta.

M U S E Volume XV: Spring 2005

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Carpe DiemBy B. J. Anderson

I vegetate.

I regurgitate.

I speculate.

I contemplate.

I hesitate.

This is living?

Time for action.

Gut reaction…

Motivation…

Satisfaction…

Time to live.

Little Girl DreamsBy B. J. Anderson

Little girl dreams die slowly as we age.

Teenaged fantasies get trapped in a cage

Of lost hope and dreams

Cause we get caught up in schemes

And forget our most cherished desires

To live our lives as another aspires.

Photo by Evelyn Houston

Photo by V. Rose Dean

Spring 2005 3

What’s Another Heartbreak?By B. J. Anderson

When we’ve reached a certain phase of life,What’s another heartbreak?

We suffer from the time of understandingThat one can hurt another.

A childhood friend hits, bites,Making us cry.

A classmate taunts, makes fun, Calling us unkind names.

A teenage friend thrusts the knife inBy spreading untrue rumors, telling lies.

A lover promises foreverBut is gone at the end of the storm.

Well-meaning parents thrash us with tongues or worseTrying to keep us in line.

Our own children step outside the boundsCausing us fear and sorrow.

Wife hurts husband; husband hurts wifeAnd romantic notions burst.

Death takes some we loveWhile others walk away.

Moments of joy too often give way to The sorrow we know will come.

In spite of our best efforts,Our hardened hearts eventually come to wonder

What’s another heartbreak?

My Muse Is a Humble MuseBy J. LaDon Dendy

My muse is a humble muse.She serves me late at night.While the city sleeps, I wander in from empty streets.She bends crane-like over eggs and tea; she knowsno ambrosia.And she does not walk on clouds; Instead, she glides most humanly across greasy tileswearing Keds she bought at the Dollar Store.A mere pen serves as her scepter.Yes, my muse is a humble muse.She feeds my body and my soul.

Artwork by Heidi Phillips

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GiftsBy Shannon Banks

Strands of a spider webPetals of a flowerVeins of a leafBeauty of nature

Lashes of the eyePores of the skinBeat of the heartBeauty of nature

Warmth of the sunLight of the moonRain of the cloudsBeauty of nature

Grace of a smileLove of a heartDreams of a soulBeauty of nature

Comfort of hugsHopes of prayersBeauty of natureGifts of God

Photo by V. Rose Dean

Spring 2005 5

On the Edge of DarknessBy J. LaDon Dendy

I wonder what it is like to live life as a fraction of the overall scheme;to never make a commotion,to never have a theme.I wonder what it is like to be an understudy yet never act; to have your infinite impression on the universe culminate into four words:...Mistah Kurtz –he dead.and be heard from no more.

*Look Out LadiesBy Lori Beth Elliott

Because you’ll find how hard it can be to tell which part of your body sings,you never should dally with any young manwho does any one of the following things:

walks with a limp to try to be cool;shakes his glass when he wants more tea;won’t take you shopping the day after Thanksgiving;when you want a favor makes you beg and plea;

makes prank calls to poor old ladies;kicks his own dog and won’t take in strays;steals street signs to hang in his room;avoids keeping you warm on the colder days;

checks out other girls as you walk through the mall;laughs at the homeless man on the street;won’t give the Wal-Mart Santa a dollar;skips out on church because he’s “too beat”;

pressures you to take that first sip;has more than one tattoo;answers his phone on a date;goes out with his friends and forgets about you;

takes canned cokes into a restaurant;blows smoke right in your face;has an earring or tongue ring;talks of dream girls he’s rather have in your place;

makes Playstation his top priority;says bad things about your best friend;won’t dress up with you on Halloween;says he loves you, but it’s just pretend.

You’re going to know soon enoughthe ones who fail this little test.Mark them off your list at onceand be very careful of all the rest.

TimeBy Bob Gossett

Forget me now until the day When you find yourself old and grayFor the memories, thenWill be sweeter, whenIt’s too late to say goodbye

Photo by Delisa Scheuplein

* a parody of distinguished poet Miller Williams’poem “For a Girl I Know about to Be a Woman” inhonor of his visit to our campus November 2004.

Winner of the National SKD Poetry Prize

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Photo by Alan Shero

New York WhirlBy Hameed El-Amin

“Tall facades of marble and iron, proud and passionate, mettlesome mad,extravagant city” - Walt Whitman – Intro. Verb and Reverb - WLRH - July24, ‘04

Delta drops your ......wheels downOut of the rain cloudOn the Mid city TarmacNext to the Donald’s 737Stenciled Metallic Blue/Gold.......T..R..U..M..P

Before I can buy my instincts backOr my ear catches the accented New York SpanishAnnouncing....all flightsI get bumped...three timesBy a turbaned Hindu, a bearded, suited, black hatted RabbiAnd a dark skin dude....who fuh show ain’t blackRemember to sling my bag...cover my walletSplit my cash in separate pocketsRemove the shades.....that black out...summers down home

Butter pecan LatinasHolding up signs...at the down escalatorStrike sassy....big-legged posesIn black waist coats, short black skirts, and chauffeur hatsCar for hire.....or Limo for Big JoeAnd Red Hot Momma.....flight 44 — AT L

Chinese girls poppin’ gum with black attitudeAt the Delta carousel........Cincinnati flight: 638Get the Big City hook upFrom a bow leg brother..........fronting big businessOn his blackberry cell

Out in the humming New York whirlA Carolina girl in hip huggin pantsFlash dances a greeting,......to her down home manIn the pick-up lane

Spaghetti twist streetsTraffic circles, narrow housesCars parked on the stepsParks you don’t dare, walk a bad dog inFlash.....round the Marriott shuttle

Fifteen minutes in this New York whirlTo buy your instincts backWhen Delta drops you......Wheels down.....out of the rain cloud....

Grandma SpeaksBy Hameed El-Amin

“Live enough life to learn from”

Grandmama speaks ...Naming babiesMade moments agoFor who they’ll favor

Grandmama speaks ...With backhand slapsFor sassy talkSaying she’ll shoot youTo save you from yourself

Grandmama speaks..In whispersTo twisted soap opera plotsIn silent serpentine eyes

Grandmama speaks...Natural born wisdomAnd hissing evil...Stops!

Spring 2005 7

For Just A MomentBy Marty Kellum

I searched the faces of people I passed,Looking for something. Anything.All I found was emptiness and melancholy.These things I have.

I searched the faces of people I met,Looking for something. Anything.All I found was loneliness and despair.These things I have.

I searched the faces of people I know,Looking for something. Anything.All I found was contempt and longing.These things I have.

I searched the faces of people I love,Looking for something. Anything.All I found was heartache and sorrow.These things I have.

I searched the face I found in the mirror.Looking for something. Anything.I saw it all, and for just a moment,I knew what it was like to be God.

*For my Son Looking for just the Right OneBy Lisa King

There will always be women who make your heart beat fastwho will tempt the limits of your control,to find the one that is going to lastbe sure to avoid the one who will chew up your soul.

Avoid the one who would cheat to be with you,the one who must constantly diet,the one for whom your best will never do,the one whose outfits could cause riots

Avoid the one who respects only those with wealth,and the one whose car costs more than the rentalso avoid those who shun the elderly in ill healthor the one who will use any excuse to vent

Look for the woman who really loves to live,the one who will stay the course,with loving praise to giveand the one who abhors divorce.

Search for the one who will stay true to her vows,whose pride is her intellectthe one for whom your heart allowsno room for neglect

Finally, understand the size of a manis only truly measured in the greatness of his heart,the length of his patience,and the strength through the hardships he has weathered.Oh my son, I want you to have a good lifeI just want to make sure you choose the right wife!

Photo by Joy Parker

* a parody of distinguished poet Miller Williams’poem “For a Girl I Know about to Be a Woman” inhonor of his visit to our campus November 2004.

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Sylvy AnneBy Matthew Nolan

Once I stood in the room where Poe wrote AnnabelLee,

a dingy cottage suffocated by urban madness,formerly an asylum from the city like the name Sylvy,now from the Bronx, Poe echos on,keeping me up to write my love a song

Sylvy Anne beams light in this darkest hour,apart from her and her from me,these high ceilings that mock and tower,whispering down her name from blushing brides to

be

Her words melt candles and stop black cats fromcrossing,

her beauty chases time and men with wine, from that surety of love, I see her waiting,with outstretched arms, God’s gift is mine

She fills my hours and steals my days,a still, deep heart, my Sylvy Anne,who parades around in faces unknowing,I feel the stone behind the sand

Love and knowledge dispatch all rules,when Sylvy Anne is called to play,in my attention to her I see her growing,away from keeping love at bay

Instead she blossoms in untimely weather,in this time apart from her and her from me,where I write drowned in a sunken mansion,in this New Orleans Kingdom under the Sea

Cemetery of LoversBy Matthew Nolan

My funeral procession rolls up regret mountain,a straight march in the seam of a purple sky,atop awaits my cemetery of lovers,in tombs each awake and wondering why

My body slides as the hearse turns her last cornerto deposit me in my cell to think,dirt in increments separate me from my lovers,whose petty issues wormed their mouths from breath

Entombed they scribble on cement walls,complaints of hurt, time, and space,that specific occasion where I said something,don’t they know they are now dead with all erased

I feel being lowered, sunk in the dark—on my casket fingerprints of betrayal,from broken promises of forever, which now will pre-vail,as we all lie awake in these solitude of cells

Fertile soil separates us from touch and old smiles together the sun can’t reach,looking back on it now was it all worth it—did our heartbreak set you free,or did it buy you a plot in my cemetery of lovers,that individuality you wanted is now next to me,so full of regret, good food for a tree

Photo by Evelyn Houston

Spring 2005 9

Black MarblesBy Matthew Nolan

I could hear the commotion of people in the furry backdrop of her phone message from London professing her love like a dead jar of pickles,something green but not like crowded grass,more like soup she made with too few peas floating,escaping my spoon by bobbing so thrifty

The boys around her do somersaults before the concluded eyes of an American princess,they can melt her if they work their way from the backthrough her spine when she leans into the mirror applying the planets of mascara across her soured face,building fences of eyelashes, rows and rows of eyelash fences

The distance is too many cracked streets and wet trees crowding her cat head, providing cover for her stealth love, polite and pleasing, compromised truth behind a soggy leaf pile, too much to shovel,a chorus of kittens from the ends of branches meow for her to do it right or suffer the fatal consequence of imperfection

Her dinner is Paris lights, I got the postcard here in New Orleans,a version of something like hearing the clatter of boys inthe backdrop on the London phone message and feeling the swoosh of her doubt splashing through my Swiss cheese heart and hotdog head

Water reflections in Italy are no match for my red thoughtsskipping across a dry pool of shiny black marbles, unbreakable so I want to eat them to know their center,the things that I can and can’t see that are killing me

My Life As A Book By Travis Parker

Chapters do not endThey bleed into the nextThey live foreverAnd a book can never be put downIts words linger for a lifetimeIn the back of my mindAs do yoursAnd as my chapter of you will not endAnd as I try to put you on the shelfIt’s the casual handshakesThat break my spineIt’s the thought of youThat binds meThough to you I seem nothing more than a blurbAnd I burn to know if that were trueAnd I would shatter like brittle leaves if it wereYet I still script your nameAnd forge your memoryThough I don’t know what to do with itAnd I can’t put you downSo I’m left with imaginary sequelsThat are not that good

Photo by Heather Daniels

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Warning To My New Lover By Travis Parker

For anyone who ever tried to move on too soon...

This is my warningI will pester youI will pester youI will pester youI will pester youI will pester you until you are madI will show you new meanings of the wordsClingyOverbearingJealousI will make you sick with loveAnd you will regurgitate all that you once held

dear for meI am a poison that will ravish your body and spiritSometimes quicklySometimes throughout the course of monthsYEARSYou will never want to gaze upon my sweet face

once you have seenthe hurtand the angerand the vengefulnessThat it hidesI will make you pay for the crimes of my lost lovesI will burn you at the stake for even thinking to be

kind to meOr for telling me the truth when you said you were

honestOr for having valuesOr for having a heartAND GIVING IT TO MEI will rip it out and crush it in my handAnd show you it means nothing to meBecause I know the way of the worldAnd I will call you a FOOL for thinking meprettyAnd I will cry a thousand tears for doing soAnd for my shame I will never be able to gaze upon your sweet face againBecause I will have hunted you downAnd burned you at the stakeFor loving meHow dare youYou fool

Photo by Jason Connell

Spring 2005 11

There is No Friend Like a BrotherBy Sue Pumphrey

for Charlie and for the 1960s

The night one of my little brothers ran awayinto the stormy nightthe other kids just settled backinto the drone of the Flintstones cartoon,or maybe it was a Speed Racer episode.But anyway, the argument and the teasing were over.I followed him, crying, after seeing him running up the

basement stairs,and the echoes of his sobbingdrowned out the laughter of their teasingbecause he stuttered so so sosince he only wanted to be heard heard heard.But did they even care that he had gone,that he was not perfect enough for them,that he had decided it was best to run away,to start anew somewhere else?

The lightning flashed across the dark skies,and I ran, looking for him.I remember his brown curly hair,his front tooth just a bit differentfrom what you’d expect,his brown eyes,his caring ways.

“Charlie!” I cried out,and beyond the thunders of memory,he heard me needing him so.He cried out that he could never go back,and I did not hear a stutter in his words.I held his two hands in my own, facing him in the night.The rain was washing the grubby dirt of a young boy away,but his heartaches spread into my own.“Then I don’t want to, either,” I cried over the crash of thunder,and I squeezed his two small hands in my own.“Our family is not a family without you in it.”Did I say it or did he.Who can say, but as we wiped our eyes,we went back, slowly through the winds and rains of the stormy nightand in, to await the storms once again.Tomorrow the sun will sparkle and shine,and always, there is no friend like a brother.

Photo by Larkin Morris

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Being Neighborly in the Twenty-First CenturyBy Sue Pumphrey

While the moon rose higher behind the massive oak trees,none of us knew that the lady two doors awayhung lifeless from a ceiling in the quiet stillness of her home.We found out, soon enough.“Did you know that lady who lived there killed herself?She was fighting off the cancer,because it came back. She must’ve grown so tired,fighting it all over again It must’ve been the only way she could winin the battle against it.” Quietly, I wondered why I couldn’t recall her name.“That lady? She was crazy! She wanted to take me to court.She said I was overcharging her for when I mowed the lawn.”Surely she would have won, I muttered to myself.You don’t even have a city license. In my day, we helpedneighbors who needed help by bein’ neighborly.“What was that?”“Never mind,” I called out, “It’s apparently not important any longer.”He planted a vine near the property line,saying it was from a friend of his who workedat a local nursery. “I knew him first at the university,but then the university kicked me out of school.We took a class in horticulture once. Do you know what horticulture is,” he asked when I commented about the beauty of the plant.Can you spell cactus plant, I almost said,but I turned away, silent, and as I went

insideI thought I heard him mutter to his son,

“She’s just crazy.”

Photo by Alan Shero

Spring 2005 13

Something BestilledBy Nicholas Rives

What Have I set free?but.....something bestilled inside of mecould it be,this hollow shell is realdried blood, I’m incandescent, feelshe of wings soars searing my souland I’m open, bruised and exposed

Such a wonderful feeling,breathand lie beside in deathour sleep,of lovers delight togethermeshed, mingle in dirt forevercrisp and new dancing in the lightsubdued and flightless in disguise

You see through me as I do youcasting phosphorescent shadows bluethe illusions of thought press on our eyetrespassing to God, nighsomething bestilled inside of meis what I came to merely set free Oh, How I Invoke Thee

By Nicholas Rives

Oh, how I invoke theeto fill my soul with immortal wordsto change the thought of wounded preyto say the miraculous life-changing verse

Should I stay on bent knees in prayerfor those who don’t listen shouldn’t shed a tearblessings be in forms that deserve a careblessings be in forms of those whom fear

Endorphin-pumping hearts change in time of needfallen angels trumpet their way to the golden gatestomping the pressed ground destroying lively seedpressure of powerlessness seeps in shapes of hate

Oh, how I invoked theea failure in words of immortalitybreathless is the void you made mebeautiful are the thoughts in this brutality

Photo by Christine Byrd-Harris

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A PictureBy Nicholas Rives

A picture isn’t worth a thousand words.A picture is a thief, capturing one’s soul in a

moment forever.Pictures never reveal the truth, lying through

its teeth as it bites down.

A soul will wander on its own behalf leavingeverything behind.

A picture holds ones soul prisoner trying tokeep face value.

A picture is for the eyes only.

A material possession without an excuse.A reason to cry.A picture holds down the hopeful mind, keep-

ing one in that moment forever.

A picture is an unopenable window.No true thought can come through, revealing

the lies within.A picture will hurt the lost and broken.

A picture has crushed dreams, feeding theenviously hungry; a war within.

Taking pictures can be greedy, lustful over pre-serving beauty that doesn’t deserve immor-tality.

A picture retains a luster, a glow to distract onefrom the truth; like a mask to makebelieve.

A thousand pictures are worth only one word:

Photo by Evelyn Houston

*For My Son….Some Advice on DatingBy Misty Schultz

Son…because you may wear your heart on your sleeve and mayhave a difficult time choosing, take some advice on girls toavoid:

Avoid girls who think that buffalo wings come from buffaloes andChicken of the Sea is really chicken;

Be leery of girls who think Bush is simply beer and Kerry is the carfrom the movie that hates all women; who thinks Paris is a tallblonde girl with bad hair extensions;

Be cautious of girls that smile and their faces don’t move and in conversation say things like….as if….and like really….

And if all else fails, use this simple test. Ask her to count to ten andif she pauses after three…she’s obviously not the brightest lighton the tree and please don’t introduce her to me.

* a parody of distinguished poet Miller Williams’ poem “For a Girl IKnow about to Be a Woman” in honor of his visit to our campusNovember 2004.

Spring 2005 15

A day at the BeachBy Angie Thom

We walked out into the emerald waters,my father and I.Past the frothy bubbles tickling the shorewhere my little brother played happily with a bucketbuilding sandcastles for the waves.We waded through the dancing whitecapsbreaking at the sandbarand splashing up into my faceas I tried to jump each one to avoid being knocked over.We swam smoothly over the thunderous green mountains,until my arms grew weary and I scrambled onto Dad’scoconut scented backcontent, for a while, to ride like a sea princessperched upon a mighty dolphin.We swam into the setting sununtil the shore looked as endless as the sea.Mom waved frantically, a tiny doll wearing greenstanding on the blinding white sand.She beckoned us back to the safety of the shallowsbut Dad never looked backso intent was he on swimmingand I pretended not to see her.Silly woman!To think that we might get hurt.Doesn’t she know nothing will happenwhile I’m here with my Dad?He’s invincible, indestructible, immortalNothing out here would dare.

Wake UpBy Jeremy West

An economy seeming to go awry,and the stock market appears to be dry.Exemptions for the wealthy makes their money grow,while poverty spreads in abundance and spirits hit a low.In addition our national deficit is so red, it glows.

Our country is divided even further,further than the days of our past.

Jobs twice needed are given to others,to others for a cheaper price than the last.His cabinet dissipates from his administration,yet somehow he’s elected to a second occupation.

A country of brave who will fight to save the free day,being misused in a severely grave way.A man of money shouldn’t lead a world power, not even

for a day.For the rest of us will all surely have to pay.When the bush did burn the people were soon led free.Does Bush really have to burn before everyone will see,See the great injustices being set on thee?

Photo by Jennifer Giannelli

*My Water Still Runs at Midnight Olivia Augustus

Had I but coffee and cream enough, andbath bubbles, this lingering would not be acrime. By my procrastination, I could sit, soak,and splash, and then sip from my hot cup ofcomfort. All the while, I would steep, absorb-ing the much needed rest for my chaoticmind. My children’s voices would echo withsymphonies, void of any urgency. Therewould be no need to clamber, nor would Istruggle, for a towel, for my warm lovelylinens laced in gold would be held open forme by eternity. For I know this lingering iswhat I deserve, and I am owed nothing less.

But in my mind, I hear the ticking of myold grandfather clock, each tick consumingthe next moment of pleasure. Its chiming isnothing more than a mockery of my foolish,but deserving, intentions. Now, I must releasethe lukewarm water and with it the swirlingmelodies of my anticipated rest. The voices ofthe children, three and eleven, bellow withthe blowing of the school bus’ horn. On thefloor, I have a towel, now five days old, coldand barren, waiting to wrap me up like atomb.

Now, therefore, while I am able with thesoundness of mind, I must choose to moveforward or lag behind. Though it is midnight,the morning really has just begun, so stealaway to my alcove, I must. With black coffeein hand, I will soak enmeshed in bubbles forall of the six hours, until the alarm goes offagain. Then, with my spry youthful glow, I willdart to the dryer to find a towel, not even aday old. Soon the patter of little feet, mixedwith an occasional yawn, will call out with thesubtle tone of rhythm and blues to greet thedawn. Thus, I cannot prevent the rising of thesun; however, at midnight my bath water willstill run.

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Photo by James O. Marble

* inspired by Andrew Marvell’s “To His CoyMistress”

Spring 2005 17

Mr. Andy Landers’ entrance into town was always thesame. Town, for Mr. Landers, was Raleigh Green’s gro-cery store, just across the road from our house. He did-n’t own a car, so he traveled wherever he went by trac-tor—an ancient, once-red Farmall “A” bleached pink bytoo many years in the Tennessee sun. It suited AndyLanders. We could see him every day, about an hourafter dinner, as he topped the hill where the switch trackcrossed the road: Mr. Landers sitting solemn in the seat,Trigger and Old Eller fully harnessed and tied loose-reinedbehind the tractor’s drawbar hitch. He always broughthis mules to rent to people in town who had no otherway to plow their gardens. But he wouldn’t rent to justanybody.

My father was one of his regular renters. Daddywould use Old Eller throughout the spring and summer tobreak, cultivate, and finally lay by the field behind ourhouse. “Nothing,” Daddy would say, “plows as good as amule, and I never saw a better one than Old Eller. Sheunderstands more about making a crop than most men Iknow.”

Daddy would plow, and I would walk alongside andlisten to the ringing of the trace chains, the pleasantsqueak of leather against leather and hame against collar.Over all these sounds were Old Eller’s steady breathingand Daddy’s gentle instructions to her: “whoap,” “hawback,” “come up,” “gee,” haw now,” the cotton linesdraped around his waist.

After half an hour or so, Mr. Landers always arrivedwith something in his hand: a Pay Day candy bar for OldEller. Daddy would unhitch the plow and the single treefrom the traces and guide Old Eller to the shade of thewhite oak at the south end of the field. By the time heremoved the bridle, Mr. Landers would be there sayingquietly, almost apologetically, what he always said: “OldEller’s old like me, and she gets tired.” Then he wouldunwrap the candy and offer it to her in one piece on theflat of his palm. The long green- and brown-stained teethwould chew, and the thick tongue and lips would smack atthe sticky, sugary caramel. Through it all, Mr. Landersstood silent, stroking Old Eller’s sweat-darkened neck.

Years later, at Mr. Landers’ funeral, the undertakersplaced green pine branches on top of his casket once itwas lowered into the grave. Malcolm, Mr. Landers’ son,explained why. “Daddy wanted us to do it,” he said, “soMama wouldn’t have to hear the dirt hit the top of thecoffin.”

I don’t think Mr. Landers ever knew my name. I wasjust a little boy walking beside his daddy and Old Eller inthe field. But even now, the memory of those dayssometimes eases through my mind like a good, slow mulepulling a turning plow through old ground.

Through Old GroundBy Dr. Randy Cross

Photo by Patti Duncan

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What is black: black is the darkest color. Black is fullof anger, filled with hostility. Black is hopeless, sodepressing as to end all hope. Black is evil or associatedwith evil. Black is dirty, covered with mud, soil, or anyother dark substance. Black is me. I sit in my room andwonder to myself, what is black? I really can’t thinkbecause my thoughts are all black. So what is black?Black is what they say my skin color is and decide to let italso be my race.

They also say black is beautiful, but I don’t feel thatway. Black makes me feel like I’m still behind time. Blackmakes me feel like death, already in my black suit, layingin my black casket, watching all these black people lookingat a black shell, crying black tears that one day will stopdropping from their black eyes. Because black makesthem forget after a week or so. Inside my body there is ablack heart and it pumps black blood. They say that sin isblack. I really don’t understand why.

I try to find love in black, but for some reason that’sfarther away than I thought. I can’t even love a blackwoman because of my black thoughts, in my black mind,my black eyes that look out of a black heart that beatsand what comes out of my black mouth won’t let me lovemy black woman. To top it off, I just found out that theblack woman whom I wanted as a black friend goes withanother black dude. Damn, what is this black world com-ing to?

I would love to take my black woman or my blackfriends to my black house but I’m ashamed of my blackhome. Not on the outside because it looks like everyother black neighbor. Inside my black home, it’s different.The doorknobs are black, the walls are black, and my liv-ing room is very nasty and smells like oil and let’s not for-get the color of oil (yep, it’s black). When I turn on thelight there are black spots on the light bulb, and I see littleblack critters crawling, I mean running from the light. Butremember, my light bulb is black. But you don’t have toworry about that because that little black light bulb withthose little black spots just blew out. I can’t see, but I canhear a black woman in black darkness on her black knees,praying a black prayer to the man upstairs. And I wonderto myself, is he black himself.

But all in all, I’m a black child that will have to one daywalk this black journey. I also realize, after a while, thatblack isn’t so bad after all. Black is the color that goeswith every other color. Black also absorbs heat and is theincorporation of all colors into one. Black stands outamong the crowd. Black is the color of my hair. Black iswho I am and if nigger, nigga, and negro is black, thenblack is me.

BlackBy Adrian Hambrick

Photo by Rose Dean

In early August of 1978, the four-month search for mymissing Uncle Ricky ended unsuccessfully, and my familytried to regroup at my grandmother’s trailer to makesense of the disappearance. Trying to escape Granny’sconfusing and forlorn sobbing, my brother and I retreatedto the backyard. Granny’s field lay fallow that year, so weused it as a giant sandbox for our Hot Wheels games.Our play clothes, not yet dirty, (his orange Sunkist Soda t-shirt with cut-off shorts and my yellow-daisy sundresswith a missing button) beaconed our location in the openfield. Afar, I heard a train whistle blow; I looked up fromthe miniature General Lee and patrol car chase to see astrange man standing at the far end of the field not twohundred feet from my brother and me. Dressed in a redand black plaid shirt, blue jeans, and a red cap, he stoodout against the thirty acres of forest behind him. Even atseven years old, I knew something was wrong. I jumpedfrom my knees and sprinted barefoot around the left sideof Granny’s faded green and white mobile home to thefront porch. “Momma, Momma,” my brother and Iyelled, “There’s a man at the woods!”

“I told y’all Bobby did it, and now he’s a watchin thehouse” my Aunt Ruth bellowed as she jumble-jogged hertwo-hundred forty-five pound mass onto the porch.Previously picking blackberries on the other side of thechicken coop and parallel to the field, she had seen theman, too. Confusion followed briefly until Dad retrievedhis .357 Magnum from the truck dash and said, “Let’sshoot some cans at the edge of the field.” Aunt Ruthgrinned, nodded, and pulled her snub-nosed .38 from herbright-yellow purse in the trailer. But the man vanishedinto the forest leaving only boot prints in the tilled andempty earth.

Ten years later, a shiny-blue Buick drove into the yard,and two men with white-starched shirts knocked onGranny’s screen door. They flashed shiny badges andintroduced themselves as Investigators Gasket and Greenfrom the homicide division in Birmingham. Grannysighed, looked at me, and said, “Neicy, get these mensome tea.” The somber men told my grandmother theyhad information about Ricky’s disappearance and asked ifshe knew a man named Bobby Bates. Granny closed herBible and replied, “Bobby was my boy’s best friend; theygrew up together.” In the living room, with JimmySwaggart on the television and beneath the slow-spinningceiling fan, the investigators explained Bobby had died

recently and left a library of journals under the floor in hishouse. Bobby’s wife found the journals and called thepolice.

Green said the journal entries, dated almost to thehour of each event, revealed that Bobby meddled ineverything illegal. Prostitution, pornography, gunrunning,and gambling started his list, and my uncle Ricky, althoughmildly retarded, knew too much about Bobby’s schemes.Bobby cut the brake lines of Ricky’s car, but when thatplan failed with only a bent fender, the journal explainedthe need for a more aggressive method. Two weeks ofentries organized the centricities of Bobby’s plan. Thebrakes were fixed at the repair shop, and Bobby, alwaysthe smiling friend, gave Ricky a ride to pick up the car.The journal said Bobby drove exactly three miles from thetrailer and pulled his truck onto the gravel shoulder near awooded area close to the railroad tracks. As Bobbyabsently stuffed a three foot-long piece of cotton ropeinto his pocket, he told Ricky he wanted to show him thenew drop point. Ricky naively followed him thirty yardsinto the woods, and then Bobby suddenly turned andsprang on him winding the rope twice around Ricky’ssmall neck. Bobby maliciously described the disbelief andconfusion in Ricky’s eyes at his friend’s actions. Finally,the journal said Bobby left the body, but he watched itdeteriorate as he smirked at our search parties. Bobby’snotes claimed, “They almost found the body once, butsoon there would not be anything left to find—the ani-mals and worms demand their share.”

The disappearance of her son came back to mygrandmother with a crushing force as she listened to theinvestigators’ story, and with watery eyes and a quiveringbottom lip, she gripped her Bible, thanked the men, andtold me, “Neicy, their tea glasses are empty.” InvestigatorGasket said further journal entries commented on watch-ing the trailer, but one stood out among these—Bobbyapproached the back field from the woods and watchedtwo small children playing in the dirt. He contemplatedwhich would be the easier to snatch away—the orangesoda or a fist full of daisies.

Spring 2005 19

A Man at the WoodsBy Evelyn Houston

Winner of the National SKD Literary Essay Prize

20 MUSE

P O E T R Y

Northern winters seem long andbitterly cold, yet my brother and Ispent our childhood years occasional-ly knee-deep in Montana snow.Winter differences between Montanaand Alabama are completely polar.The only similarity linking here andthere is the children’s excitement atthe imagined thoughts of snowangels, snowball fights, and erectingthe perfect snowman.

My little brother and I could notwait for the first good snow. Withany luck, good snow (not too moistand not too dry) measured at leastsix inches or more. Anxiously wewatched the daunting half-inch flakesleisurely dance and tumble to theground. Impatience made waitingseem like forever; and I rememberthinking, “Stupid snow, fall faster, orit will be too late, and Mom won’t letus go.” Finally, Mom gave us herslow nod, and my brother and I fran-tically scrambled to thrust on ourwinter garb. I sported hot pink skipants, a matching jacket with a neon-green stripe, and two pairs of mit-tens; my brother correspondinglywore electric blue and green. Withour hoods drawn tight and tiedunder our chins and our feet shovedinto the cumbersome white snowboots, we stood tall for our inspec-tion, although we must have lookedlike disco-dipped Eskimos. Momunzipped, straightened, and re-zipped our jackets while broodingover us, “Come in if you get toocold.” My brother and I looked ateach other as if to reply, “Yeah,right.” She and we both knew thatwe would not be back in until shemade us.

Like racehorses released at thestarting gate bell, my brother and I

bolted out the front door, with oneor both falling down the icy frontsteps. “Hurry before Mom sees,” Ihissed, because she would surely callus back in to check for boo-boos.We romped and ran, kicked and col-lided until we fell down giggling in theeight inches of cold, cottony snow.Our snow angels flew into the yardon glorious white wings, yet I alwaysmanaged to get snow in my pants.My brother, thinking this hilarious,looked much better with my snow-ball in his grinning teeth.

“So there!” I yelled at him, stick-ing out my tongue and daring him todo something about it. The battlelines clearly drawn, he returned fire.With the snow-fort foxholes dug, thesnowball grenades whistled andexploded on target. Fortified with anendless supply of ammo, World WarIII ensued. The porch icicles servedas swords in our clamoring combat;my inferior sibling must surrender byany means necessary. Then Momyelled from the window, “Kids, playnice.”

“Ahhh, Mom” we complained inunison, dropping our weapons ofchoice and conceding to the mightierforce of Mom. Staring at the groundand pouting a bit, I recognized thelast thing to do.

I took one of my snowball bulletsand thrust it deep into the snow topack it tight, and the snowman slow-ly grew. I rolled and packed, rolledand packed, until the snowballbecame the size of a truck tire. Mybrother, persuaded only by mythreats, decided he could help merotate the huge white boulder intoposition. We argued over whowould make the coveted head, andfinally I bribed this all important job

from him. Besides, the head had tobe perfect, and no bratty little broth-er could accomplish this task. Hemanaged to construct the middlesnow boulder, and together we situ-ated it on our solid base; then Icarefully and proudly lofted the per-fectly symmetrical head into place.Two stick arms, stones for the eyesand nose, my mitten yarn for themouth, and an empty ice-creambucket for the top hat completed ourfrozen friend. Standing back to mar-vel at our making, my brother asked,“How come snowmen are alwaysfat?”

“Because, dummy,” I said, “Theyall look like Dad.”

In Alabama, we occasionally getthe promised half-inch dusting ofsnow, and my children carefully listento the weatherman for that magicword. Then they hug the windowwith hopeful faces and gleaming eyesand beg me to tell them again howdeep the Montana snow got and howUncle David and I built the perfectsnowman.

The Perfect SnowmanBy Evelyn Houston

Judging outward appearancesharshly is counter-productive. Wemiss out on wonderful people andtheir abilities by passing them off asless than perfect. I spent hours onthe living room floor, with my chin inmy hands, watching Granny at herantique sewing machine. My grandmawas a crumpled, old, age-defeatedwoman, but her charismatic spiritand ageless heart would never let herbody defeat her.

Her hands worked the magic ofher stitching, moving lightly over andaround the black monster that shecalled Ms. Molly. Twisted and bent,her hands looked like crooked deadtree limbs, yet they pulled the fabricwith the fluid grace and elegance of aswan. Amazingly, Granny’s cruellycurved fingers and swollen joints did-n’t inhibit her ability to create thecomforting quilts that she unselfishlygave away.

Granny’s eyes held the secrets ofher intricate soul and reflected this inthe patterns of her quilts. Theheavy-wrinkled skin and sparse lashesall but hid the opaque spheres, yether eyes sparkled like citrine-bluesapphires when the needle danced.Granny pieced her quilt puzzlestogether from a pile of scrap cloth byselecting each piece at a knowingglance. And sometimes she turnedher head from the sharp needle togive me a quick wink.

The workhorse of Granny’squilting plow was her feet. Althoughpurplish, swollen, and stumpy,Granny’s feet rocked a rhythm onthe sewing machine pedal that wouldoutdistance the most relentlessmetronome. Seeming callused andcumbersome, her feet worked incounter-time to the undulating nee-

dle and pumped an infinite hummingbeat that became hard to discernfrom the strumming in my ownchest. Like floppy goose-feet,Granny’s toes spread to better gripthe pedal, yet her touch was spar-row-light.

Not unlike the pile of discardedfabrics or a tired old woman, mostthings don’t always seem beautiful atfirst. But Granny could magicallymold those scraps with her crippledhands, transforming them into daz-zling patterns that appeared to moveand shift like a flock of tiny blackbirds in the sun. And with an echo-ing beat, the world through her eyesbecame clearer as another quilt wasgiven life and then given away.

Spring 2005 21

Grandma’s QuiltsBy Evelyn Houston

Photo by Jennifer Giannelli

I’m a pizza boy. It’s not a bad job.I waste a couple nights every weekdriving around, listening to the stereoand swapping dirty jokes with Dawn,the cute girl at work with the piercedtongue and a country twang. I getpaid $5.25 an hour plus tips, which Ican stretch to cover rent and tuition.I’m doing all right. The only problemis I’m a pizza boy.

Friends I graduated high schoolwith are engineers now. My sister-in-law is a year away from the barexam, and my cousin is an architectin Edinburgh. I wear a name tag towork and drain rancid cheese-waterout of the make line. If you’re atwenty-four year old pizza boy, it’shard not to look into the mirror andthink, “Oh, yeah. You’ve made somebad life decisions, haven’t you?”

One day, I made a delivery to anaddress in Point Mallard Estates.Point Mallard is the wealthiest neigh-borhood in Decatur, with houses sobig it looks like rows of Catholicchurches lining the streets.

Pulling into the driveway behindan SUV a little smaller than my apart-ment, I walked up and rang the door-bell. The man who answered was afew years older than me, maybe inhis early thirties.

“Hey there,” I said. “How arey—”

“How much?”“Um, eighteen thirty-four.”He dropped a twenty on top of

the warmer bag. “Keep it.”“Thanks.” I pulled his dinner out

of the bag while he stood two feet infront of me, staring off to the side at

nothing. “There you go. Have a nicenight, all right?”

“Yeah.” Vanishing back inside andyet to have actually looked at me, heshut the door and flipped off theporch light.

Walking back to my truck, Iadjusted my name tag and eyed theshiny gray SUV in his driveway. I wasgetting off work at one. He’d beasleep then. I thought about comingback. I thought about the lug wrenchbehind my driver’s side seat, and Ithought about him finding his rearwindshield smashed out in the morn-ing.

I didn’t do it. I probably neverwould, but that guy and his dismissivetone chewed at me the rest of thenight. Mopping the prep floor, listen-ing to the squeal in my brakes that Ididn’t have the money to fix, thinkingabout having to work late, then getup early for school, I couldn’t stopthinking about his nice house, his nicecar, and the fact that whatever hisjob was, it didn’t involve buckets ofrancid cheese-water.

I wanted what he had and twist-ed my guts into a knot thinking aboutit. Hanging out with Dawn, the cutegirl with the pierced tongue andcountry twang, didn’t help. Seeing afat guy pedaling a bicycle downEleventh Street didn’t help. The onlything that felt good was mulling overmy nihilistic daydreams— smashingup his car or playing some mailboxbaseball. I imagined spinning dough-nuts across his crisp green lawn. Mudsplashing everywhere, running overhis garden statues, just picturing itmade me smile.

22 MUSE

E S S A Y S

JealousyBy Kristopher Reisz

Photo by Evelyn Houston

Spring 2005 23

It’s hard admitting you’re jealous,even to yourself. By admitting you’rejealous of somebody, you admit ipsofacto that he’s better than you. That’stoo much for most people to stom-ach, so jealousy becomes a parasite.It attaches itself to other emotionsand rides them up to the surface tofeed. Pride makes a good host, so dorighteous indignation, prejudice, andany type of ideology. Even anger ismore palatable than jealousy. At leastyou can say you hate somebody with-out insulting yourself in the samebreath.

The truth is, none of my fantasiesthat night ended with that guy look-ing at the tire tracks in his flowerbedand resolving to treat everyone, eventhe pizza boy, with more respect.They were about destruction andavenging my bruised ego. They wereabout not being happy where I wasand simmering at the fact that hewasn’t there, too. He’d acted like hewas better than me; what I couldn’tstand was thinking maybe he wasright.

The deeper you dig into yourmiseries, the more you’ll always find.By the end of my shift, standing onthe sidewalk while Dawn locked upthe store, I couldn’t see anythingexcept the doubts, worries, andpassed-up chances. The rent wasdue. My brakes were going bad. Whyhadn’t I gone to college right out ofhigh school? When was it going to bemy turn?

“Ever notice Orion has a dick?”Dawn asked.

“What?” Looking up at the sky, she point-

ed to the constellation with her ciga-rette. “Look. There’s his shoulders

Photo by Jennifer Giannelli

and legs, right? There’s his belt. Andright below them, see those twostars? He’s got a wang.”

I looked up. Sure enough, Orionis anatomically correct.

“So, why’s he wearing a belt,then?” I asked. “Since he’s not wear-ing any pants, what’s the belt for?”

Dawn thought for a second.“Must be chaps.”

The conversation got progres-sively worse, so I won’t get into it.The main thing is that, afterwards, Ididn’t go to the man’s house with abaseball bat. I laughed until my sideshurt and forgot all about him.

There was no great change infortune. I still have to hold my breathwhen I empty out the cheese-waterbucket. My brakes are still making anawful squealing noise, and that guy isstill a jackass. I just found somethingbetter to think about.

Life isn’t fair. I’ll rot away if I dwellon it too much. My only protection isto laugh at it, to outright ridicule itsometimes, and I hope that’s enoughto get me through. To paraphraseOscar Wilde, I may be in the gutter,but I can still look up at the stars.

The room fills with the sweetsmell of fresh grasses and crispmountain air as the soft cotton cur-tains dance lazily in the breeze overthe bedroom windowsill. It hadrained the night before. It wasn’t aheavy rain but what I like to call acleansing shower. Throughout thenight it played hypnotically upon thetin roof of our cabin. That evening,we had sat in the porch swingtogether watching the droplets fall asthe sun sleepily disappeared behindthe mountains. The sky transformedto darkness displaying a shadowedalabaster moon that lit up the edgesof the silver-gray clouds. Now, thatthe rain has departed with the sun-rise a mist rises from under thecanopy of the treetops and settles asglistening beads upon the slenderneedles of the giant pines.

The air is thick with life as if puri-fied by the rain. Sounds of morningfilter in through the window andenter my dreams as the cobwebsstart to clear from my waking mind. Ibreath the first deep breath of theday filling my lungs with the sweetscents of evergreens and of theRhododendrons that have turned themountain side shades of red andpink. This is my favorite time of theyear. The crispness of the air remindsme of freshly starched cotton and lifeseems to wind down from the sum-mer drawing its last bit of energyfrom the earth.

I burrow further under the quilts.There I find the warmth of his bodyagainst my back as a strong arm slipsaround me pulling me close. Themixture of the cool air and thewarmth of his breath upon my necksend shivers through me. My eyes

close as the corners of my mouthturn up slightly with a contentedsmile.

I’ve never considered myself areligious person. But being in thisplace, this oasis we have createdaway from the cold, hard walls of theconcrete world has reminded me ofa calming spirituality that I possessand of the important things in my life.Listening to his steady breathing, Iwonder what dreams are driftingthrough his mind. I lie there for amoment wishing I could enter themand share what I was feeling at thismoment. Possibly I am there already.

A small beam of sunlight peeksthrough the division of the curtainsand rests upon the edge of the bedbeside me. I look at it for a long timeanalyzing the shadows it formedupon the sheets. Reaching out myhand, I carefully capture the ray inmy palm turning my hand slowlyallowing the bright play of light andwarmth to dance across my skin. Itamazes me that such beauty holdssuch incredible power. It can bringforth life, nurture it and strengthen itas it grows. It can brighten the dark-est recesses and warm the coldestshadows. It is life. Am I the only per-son in the world to see its signifi-cance and view it for what it really is?I’m convinced that the average per-son is too busy to notice and mosthave not even considered thethought. It is those people ... theones who live beyond the walls ofmy world where the only powerthey know of or desire is the onethat can only be purchased. Theyblindly go through their existence in anaive bliss taking their fragile worldaround them for granted. Sadly, I

realize that the power that flowsacross my palm at this moment is justas fragile as theirs. The difference,however, is once theirs has gone it ispossible to restore.

In these times of exploration ofmy spirituality, I often wonder aboutthe existence of heaven and what itwould be like. But, as I listen to thesweet sounds that ride the mountainbreeze and feel the warm embraceof the only man that I have everloved, I couldn’t imagine heavenbeing anything different from theplace I am in right at this moment.This is my heaven. But instead ofexperiencing it in death, life springsforth from it and fills my heart andsoul with strength and happiness.

24 MUSE

E S S A Y S

FragilityBy Kim Staines

The time of the year has comeonce again for Christmas to fill theair. Santa appears at the mall. Storeshelves are packed with lights,globes, stockings and things. Thesounds of “White Christmas” and“Jingle Bells” drift through my radiofor the entire weekend. The calendarsays … OCTOBER. Did I miss some-thing?

When I was a little girl, grantedthat was back in 19 … (we won’t gothere), I remember my mom, myaunts and my grandma all goingChristmas shopping together afterour usual family Thanksgiving gather-ing. They would leave the men at mygrandma’s watching the ballgames onTV or just napping off that third sliceof pumpkin pie, pile into one car and“hit the sales”. There was always a“white sale”, “clearance sale”,“Thanksgiving sale”, “red tag sale”,“grand opening sale” or some otherkind of shopping encouragementgoing on that day. It was a traditionthat marked the official start of theChristmas season. Now, I’m a grownwoman with grandchildren of myown. I hate to think that I’m so outof touch that I’ve not noticed beforewhat seems so apparent to be hap-pening. The “official start of the sea-son” seems to be coming a little ear-lier with each passing year.What got me really thinking aboutthis is something I saw during the lastweek of October that struck me asvery odd. Driving past one of ourlocal retailers, I noticed that the bigHalloween pumpkins that were forsale outside on the curb had a back-drop of beautifully lit Christmas treesin the window. The following week,Santa made his first appearance inthe local mall … three weeks

BEFORE Thanksgiving. Even beforeall of the Halloween candy has beeneaten, Thanksgiving and Christmas isblending together into a collage ofturkey and Santa Claus. I’m con-vinced that before too long, you willbe able to buy your beach towels andtwinkle lights off of the same shelf.There will be no “Merry Christmas”;it will be “Merry Holiday Season”.How did this happen, and you haveto ask yourself … WHY?

I hear my grandmother speak ofher Christmas as a child. Her fatherwould go out and choose just theright tree for their hand-made orna-ments. She and her sisters and broth-ers would string popcorn for garland.Decorating the tree was a familyaffair. Before they went to bed onChristmas Eve, her father wouldalways read them The Night BeforeChristmas and then tell them a storyabout a child in a manger. She awoketo fruit and chestnuts in her stocking.A single hand-made rag doll with apretty blue apron was under the treewith her name on it. I’m afraid thistype of family celebration may be lostforever. These days, if children wakeup to the same, I’m afraid they wouldconsider it child abuse.

So, when you ask yourself whythe Christmas season is starting earli-er with each passing year considerthis answer. The true meaning ofChristmas is being absorbed by afast-paced, fast food, fast-credit typeof society that has given birth tohigh-dollar, high-tech and high-pres-tige type of people. Status and vanityhave taken the place of tradition andhumility. It is getting buried in oursociety’s voracious hunger forexcess. Our retail industry has seenthis and has turned predator in a

materialistic jungle and we are theprey.

We ignore our loss of tradition.We make excuses for our excess. Wemake excuses for our excuses! Wemake more. We spend more. Wesave less. We have forgotten themeanings of giving, unselfishness andgratitude. A good deed and simpleacts of kindness have long fallen bythe way side. What kind of exampleare we setting for our children?

My husband once told me an oldadage that he picked up as a child. Itgoes, “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candyand nuts, it would be Christmas allyear round.” It makes me think theremay be something to this. Have weturned into a country of “ifs” and“buts”? Maybe we have made onetoo many excuses for our behavior. Itseems to be catching up to us fast.

Spring 2005 25

If “ifs” And “buts” Were Candy And Nuts …By Kim Staines

Late one brisk mid-November afternoon — “post-harvest” we used to call it— I was walking on the newtrack beside my old elementary school. I had walkedthere from my mother’s house around the corner. Aloneon the track, I walked, not briskly, but in somberness,noting the many changes in the landscape around mychildhood school and hometown. So much had changed:the school was a new, modern building; the old gymnasi-um was gone; rows and rows of elegant new houses nowstood where cotton fields had once been. I had no nostal-gia, no sentimentality for these scenes. I had an infinite,definite longing for the past: I wanted it all back.

I walked in solitude with fits and starts of sobbing. Mymood was a direct result of the year I had just experi-enced: caring for and nursing my mother-in-law through afatal illness. Once we laid her to rest, my husband and Ispent the next month nursing my weakening father-in-law,and we lost that battle, too. A mere five weeks after mymother-in law’s burial, my father-in-law joined his wife of59 years in death. This powerful act of love, my father-inlaw’s incessant longing to be with his wife, stunned myhusband and me and filled us both with awe and grief.These deaths brought back the horror of my own father’sfinal days from three years before and my close watchover my mother as she slowly recovered from losing thelove of her life.

Now, only three weeks after the traumatic loss of myin-laws, I was at my mother’s house caring for her follow-ing a minor surgery. After witnessing the fragility of lifeand the reality of death, I could not keep myself fromworrying about mother’s health although she was pro-gressing nicely. She was, after all, my third attempt atcare giving, and my success record was not encouraging. Isomehow felt responsible.

As I walked, I kept reliving moments of desperationwhen I had to accept that my father and my in-laws weredoomed to the way of all flesh. I kept meditating on thedreadful burden of love, of life, of death.

At the moment of my deepest despair, I spotted a bigbuck come from the woods along the edge of the farroad. He stood stately—erect and alert— and looked mein the eye.

Immediately, I was filled with a spontaneousWordsworthian joy. I watched until the deer turned and

headed back into the woods, back to nature, back home. Ibegan reciting Wordsworth’s “My heart leaps Up When IBehold a Rainbow in the Sky” and completely understoodthe poet’s meaning. I thought of the many times I haveintroduced the Romantic notion of nature’s comfort to myliterature students and the times I have preached the tran-scendentalist notion of solitude in nature as a healingpower, but at that moment, I felt it to the depth of myheart. It was not an epiphany because it was less headythan that. It was all about my heart. It was that feeling thathas come so seldom to me and is more potent thanknowledge: an emotional impact that my best words failto describe.

I walked on thinking about the small spots of joy thatoccur in a lifetime and how they are so similar to thescraps of sunlight I look for during the cold, dark wintermonths. And then I remembered a Shakespearean line,“Now is the Winter of our discontent,” but coupled withit came Shelley’s “Oh Wind, If winter comes, can Springbe far behind?”

26 MUSE

E S S A Y S

The Heart of the Matter By Dr. Sheila Byrd

Photo by Sharon Clark

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea,

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.-T.S. Eliot

Last Christmas I got a bike. It hadone of those silver pegs on the rearwheel so I could jump if I wanted to.I didn’t jump any, but it was there if Iwanted to one day. I was settin’ out-side when Deddy came home. Iheard someone yellin’ and looked.The boys out by the road were play-ing rough with Ernie again. Ernie wasyelling at them to let him have hisshoe back, and Deddy says thosekids are bastards, and their parentscouldn’t raise a damn kid for nothing.They are loud. And it sure is coldoutside. I remember last year aroundChristmas, school let out and Deddysaid that trashmen didn’t run for aweek. He said they need to do theirjob, or he oughta quit paying them todo it. I reckon they don’t ever work.I never see them around here any-ways. “Give Ernie his damn shoeback!” I yelled. Ernie is my brother.Momma said God made him special,and that’s why he has his fits inchurch. God’s gonna get mad oneday if Momma don’t go easier onErnie. Sometimes she’s just plainmean to him. He can’t help it. Helearnt to tie his shoes! I reckon that’swhat he was doing when the big kidstook one from him. “Give Ernie hisdamn shoe!” I yelled again. “He’sgonna have one of his fits!” Mommagets upset when Ernie has a fit. Shesays those kids oughta be nicer tosomeone God made special. She saidErnie couldn’t take care of hisself, sothat’s why we’ve got to keep a spe-

cial eye on him, and that God sentErnie to teach us a lesson on beingnice.

I ran into the street then. Iknowed them kids was bigger thanme, but I hit the black one in thenuts like Deddy taught me to do ifsomeone was picking on Ernie. I gaveErnie his shoe back and took him inthe house. It sure was cold outsideand it’s so warm in the house. Youcould almost smell how warm it wasin the livin’ room. Then Deddy andMomma started yellin’ about some-thing to do with Deddy’s work. Hesaid nobody was building houses thistime of year because it was so cold,and no one wanted to build a housearound Christmas time. ThenMomma said that he had two kids hehad to buy Christmas for, and howare they gonna afford it after the rentwent up two months ago. Mommastarted crying then. She was talkingabout how Aunt Erma Jean said thatshe would take care of us if sheneeded her to. I think they weretalkin’ about Santa Claus. I don’tbelieve in him no more, but Ernie stillthinks he fills his sock with candy onChristmas day. I don’t think anybodywould want to leave anything inErnie’s socks; especially candy orsomething somebody might want toeat later on. Then Deddy said he wasgoing to see Paul; that was his boss atwork. I seen Paul before. Deddyalways picked up his check on Friday,and he let me ride with him to Paul’sto pick it up. Paul always had suckerson his coffee table. They were in thisglass bowl with prickly glass triangleson top that tickled when you ranyour hand across it. He had the goodsuckers too, like the ones you get atBuddy Johnson’s for ten cents. I

asked Deddy if I could go with him,and he said yeah. So I got into thecar. It was a big Buick, and Deddysaid it was a v-8 so it had some pick-up.When I got in it still had mud inthe floor-board. You could smell it,too. You could smell the mud and therain and sweat and I had to moveDeddy’s tool belt to set down. It washeavy, and the nails jingled. WhenDeddy pulled out of the driveway Ifound his tape measure in the glovecompartment. I played with it to seehow hard it would be to bend overand when it did it would snap andDeddy said I needed to quit andsometimes I needed my tailwhooped. I didn’t think it neededwhooped. I remember one timeMomma caught me spittin’ on Ernie,and she whooped the tar out of meand told me that God didn’t like kidsto pick on his special children. Sonow I turned over a new leaf. I putup Deddy’s tape measure and start-ed looking out the window at thecars going by. I saw a firetruck in onefellow’s yard. It looked like the bigred truck Aunt Erma Jean gave meon my birthday last year. But it won’tbe long and I’ll be too old to playwith toys, Momma said. She said Iwould be turning nine in February.Deddy lit a cigarette and the smokewas going up my nose and I told himand he said he would crack a win-dow but that never helped. It tastedso dry and made me cough. Deddysaid damn it and rolled down thewindow and threw it out. There arethose hills I like to look at when wedrive to Paul’s. They remind me ofwaves, but these are green, and theyare all lumpy and covered in whatDeddy calls “folage.” It don’t lookpretty now, though. It’s so cold and

Spring 2005 27

S H O R T S T O R Y

Vor Vollen Schusseln or “In Front of Full Bowls”By J. LaDon Dendy

gray and wet outside. It makes myfingers numb when it’s this cold. I betErnie’s foot got cold whallago. Thosedamn kids oughta not pick on him.Or Momma oughta whoop them,too. It ain’t fair.

I wasn’t looking, but you couldfeel it when the car pulled into Paul’sdriveway. You can feel the rocks rollunder the tires like when you step ona pile of rocks in your shoes on theplayground at school. They all scrubtogether, and you can feel it throughthe shoe. You can see the goatsaround Paul’s trailer. He’s got themfenced in but they still make it stink.This whole holler smells like goats.Deddy said to stay in the car and Isaid that Paul had the good suckersand Deddy cussed and said he wouldget me one if I would just sit still fora minute. He slammed the car doorwhen he got out; the car felt soempty then. The seats felt so coldwhen I ran my hand across them. Isaw that fancy ruler with the greenwater and the bubble in it in his sideof the floor board. I started to get it,but I was afraid Deddy would comeback and not give me a sucker. So Ilooked around Paul’s trailer. Therewere birds in the trees, and one flewpast the hood and by the windshieldand scared me. There’s a crack in thedashboard by the vent, too. It hasthis brown stuff in it and it feels allfuzzy when you run your fingeracross it. It’s so cold outside. I betthose goats get cold, too. Deddy saysthey got fur on them like Bruno andthat’s why they can stay outside atChristmas, but I don’t see how theycan’t be cold. Even Bruno gets ice onhim sometimes. He’s a chow andDeddy says he’s full blooded, andthat’s why he’s got a purple belly.Then I saw Deddy come out of Paul’sdoor and slam the storm door backso hard it made a scraping sound on

the trailer. He got back in the car andI asked him if he got me a sucker andhe said Paul was a son of a bitch andno he didn’t. Momma don’t get madwhen Deddy cusses, but she’llwhoop me with her flip-flop if I do it.She says that Ernie might start sayin’it like he said “fun” that time. Hemust have said that fifty times a daylast year. Momma said she’s glad hegrew out of it, and I am, too. Deddywas looking real mean, and he wasn’tsaying much to me now. I hope I did-n’t make him mad when I asked for asucker. I like Paul, though. He’salways nice to me. I asked him whyhe’s mad at Paul, and then Deddysaid he’s got a damn good mind tobeat the hell out of him. He said thatit’s because he won’t let him borrowsome Christmas money. He said thatit would be a cold day when ErmaJean bought us Christmas. But I don’tsee why he’s so mad; my fingers arestill numb. Then Deddy got real quietagain. He must’ve not said anythingfor five whole minutes. All I couldhear was the tires and that noiseunder the hood that Deddy called arod knocking; he was thinking. Thenhe started talking again and asked mereal nice if I wanted to get a cokeand a candy bar and I told him yeah ifwe stopped I wanted a Dr. Pepper.He said we would stop at BuddyJohnson’s on the way to the house.Then a couple of minutes laterDeddy pulled into the parking lot ofthe store. Then he did somethingreal strange. He put his hand on myhead and it was so hard and big andcold and almost fit over my head justabout. Then he told me he loved me,and looked me straight in the eyesfor a long time. He reached underthe seat and got something, but healready opened the door and wasgetting’ out before I could see it.Deddy sure was gone for a long

time. It was so long I think we werethe only ones there. Everyone elsewas probably at home in front of theheater. When he came back he gotright in the car and put his hammerunder the seat. I wonder if he builtMr. Buddy some cabinets like he didUncle Steve. He got my Dr. Pepperand candy bar out of a real crinkybrown paper bag. It was real big, andyou could smell the fresh paper sackwhen he opened it. There was a fiftydollar bill stuck to the side of the Dr.Pepper -he snatched it off real quick.I never seen Deddy with that muchmoney before. But I didn’t drink theDr. Pepper right away. It was alreadyso cold out and my hands werealready numb and the bottle waswet. Deddy pulled up our drivewayand parked by the lawn mower. I gotout and saw all the grass clippings onit. It was all caked up in a puddle ofwater on the part that covers theblade and then Deddy said not to getmy good pants dirty so I went on inthe house with him. I went back tome and Ernie’s room and got outthat firetruck to play with. I couldhear Ernie in Momma’s room. I couldsee him through the doorway; hewas playing with some army men hegot out of the toy box. Then I heardsomeone beating on the door.Momma opened the door and I couldhear a radio talking and he was call-ing her m’am and it sure was coldwith the door open. I think that itwas a D.A.R.E. officer like officer Jimat school. He started talking toMomma real serious and then shestarted yelling at Deddy and he wasyelling at Momma and Ernie wasscreaming and biting on the back ofhis hand and I put my firetruck upand then it got real quiet, and all Icould hear was Momma crying.

28 MUSE