In early June my father drove us west in the Chevy station wagon. I turned eleven in Yellowstone National Park. For my birthday I got an Indian headdress and a tom-tom with a black rubber drumhead. I felt that I was too old for that. By the time we reached Seattle, we had broken down…
That night we walked in the Georgia dark dogs barked and ran in circles. Guided not by the star of Bethlehem but by the beneficent sign of Texaco we traveled toward the only light we saw. Weariness grew in your arms as the child began to cry. You opened your blouse and filled the dark…
Where has this face grown up before? The tintype glassing in the drawer- What, in this afro-ed cousin's-child? This meristem of sallow cheeks, this Thompson twig of fretted lids, this little hollow to the ribcage? If June and Cedar Grove were gone, still this blithe tune all triplets would play on. Cousin and offspring sit…
Joy, who is now twenty-six years old, is waiting to conceive as if by accident a child with the man she loves. This will be irrefutable proof, she reasons, that she loves him and that they must marry. Though she has not believed in God for perhaps thirteen years she reasons too that conceiving a…
In Memoriam: Columbia Military Academy 1905-1978 The itch of blue sky covers me like wool. If I look quickly I'll see the thin shadows running from themselves, the battalions of light blowing away with the years. The bugle boy with one eye winks as if to say, “Forgive.” The flag unfurls atop the brass…
MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editors for This Issue Richard Tillinghast George Garrett Managing Editor Joyce Peseroff CONTRIBUTORS Tom Alderson is a native of east Tennessee. After graduating from Vanderbilt, he served as a paratrooper and as a Russian-speaking Army Intelligence officer. He is now in the School of the Arts at Columbia…
A constable walked up and down on the pavement below the open windows. Inside, the party of eight had finished dinner and sat drinking brandy by the windows over-looking the Park. Someone in the room suggested that they each tell the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to them. The hostess spoke first, while…
Take up your cross and don't cross me. I just xeroxed my hand, veins, bones and all. See, it's blue now, my doctor says, because the sky, by mistake, mirage or otherwise, he says, is the color, arteries, of the sun's eyes. Take up your cross and follow (why me?) to the Flannery Theater. Redshift…
1. Crazy? It's after midnight, and I kiss my wife's cheek and quietly slide out of bed: No lights, no alarm. Blue jeans and work boots and a flannel shirt, then out to the backyard. I pick a spot near the toolshed. Crazy, you think? Maybe, maybe not, but listen. This is the hour of…
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