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This magazine is the first Rebel supplement to be composed of works done by high school
students. The poetry and prose included here were chosen by the staff as the best material
of the Albemarle Area Arts Council Writing Contest for high school seniors and the Washing-
ton High School Fine Arts Festival. The staff is composed of students who participated in
these two events.

The Supplement was made possible by a literary grant to the Rebel from the North Caro-
lina Arts Council. It was conceived to give young writers a chance for publication of their art
and to inspire them to continue their creative efforts.

We emphasize that the magazine was done entirely by these students"from selection,
editing, and proofreading to final decisions on layout. The Rebel staff was present only to
give advice based on experience. We feel that they have done a superb job.

We give our deepest appreciation to the North Carolina Arts Council, without whom this
magazine wouldn't exist.

Rod Ketner
Editor, the Rebel
1969-70
Contents } \ a
in the jungle ... 2... david rhees
my life... 3... roberta cashwell
kaleidoscope ... 4... sally mcrorie
i submerged ... 5... jack owens
asad circus... 6... billy armistead
rainTs relief ...12... paula weatherly
sun-bird ...12... sun-bird o
in silent vigilance ...13... joe tuttle k owens
pretending ...14... roberta cashwell latra.inabin
strange fingertips ...16... david rhees
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Art & Photo Credits: ly mcrori
te le
reflection ...4,5... annette marsh
untitled .11,12... jack owens
apocalypse 2 ...15... karen colvard
1

IN THE JUNGLE...

In the jungle
crawls a man,
sniffing

scratching

growling,

tracking the spoor of his elusive prey;
his belly is empty,
and he must eat...
Stiffing, he turns a hairy ear
toward the thunder of the jungle drums,
booming their omens of death
to the rhythm of his pounding heart.
Crouching low on his hams,
he sniffs the air,
and resumes his hunt,
never understanding
that the spoor he follows
is his own,
and that there are no drums in the jungle
only men,
sniffing

scratching
growling. . .

My life

A maze of paths

And i the rat that runs

the course in endless search of cheese

ThatTs stale.

KALEIDOSCOPE

Intimations of formlessness, confusion,

Such a state as
Before creation of the cosmos,
Before conception of the creator.
Nebulous nights known only to
Parents of God.
Whirling lights, twirling bright
Clouds through the haze"
Intimations of chaos.

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WHEN MY FATHER WAS DYING WE ALL PRAYED, BUT HE DIED ANYWAY.

The rescue squad gave him oxygen for an
hour, but he had a heart attack while he was
sitting on the toilet. They dragged him into my
room, and he died on my carpet. We all cried.
Then people came, bringing food and touching
my clothes and cleaning up my room after he
was carried away.

I was eleven and the lady next door hugged
me to her bosoms and said, oYou poor boy. You
are so young. My father died when I was seven.�
I cried.

We had been to church that morning. It was
Sunday and I was dressed up. I went to the plum
orchard with my neighbor Jeff, and we sat on
the edge of a hole we dug in summer. It was
October, and there were no plum flowers or
plums, but it wasnTt cold. The limbs of a plum
tree scratched my face.

oWhen my father had his attack,� Jeff said,
but I wasnTt listening. It was too hot to be out-
side in a tie. I went inside to change. My room
was full of people, mostly old ladies with blue

hair, who were moving my things around and
kissing my mother. My piano teacher brought
something with meat and nuts inside, and I ate
lunch.

There was a pan of half-cooked custard on
the stove. My mother had been cooking it for
ice cream, and outside somewhere a bag of ice
was melting and running to the bottom of the
driveway. The funeral director was sitting on
the red living room sofa with my mother, writ-
ing and obituary. Someone had put a white
spray of flowers on the door. Ladies walked
past me with handkerchiefs and kissed me.
Many cars had gathered in front of the house.

I did not know where my sister was. She was
fifteen. I saw my fatherTs cousin, his only local
relative, standing in the hall, and she was crying.
She was fat and blonde and usually smiled, but
now her face was not so pink as usual. I saw
the dog walking between peopleTs legs, and I
was afraid to touch her because she was blind
and snapped at everyone but my father. Her
eyes were covered with blue cataracts.

My sister was in the kitchen pouring coffee
grounds into a big pot that was not ours. The
light was out, making the room dark. She was
not crying. I was crying and I was trembling.
Someone set a podium in the hall with a book
on it, and people signed it. I went into my room
and lay on my bed. On my desk was the Super-
man comic book I had been reading when my
sister said, oMama, come here, DaddyTs sick,�
and it had happened. Poor Lady, the dog. What
had happened to the custard, I wondered, but to
my ears came the voices that said nothing from
many people all over the house. I wondered
where they had come from; it had not been that
long. In her room my mother was on the phone.
It took a long time. My hands were shaking.
oMartha,� she said, oI want you to drop every-
thing and come here.� I could not hear much
that she said as I lay in my room, because she
was far away and people were roaming past and
looking in. I hated for them to see me. At the
foot of the bed on the floor was the place where
my father had died, but it was not as scary as it
should have been maybe. I saw my sister passing
through the hall. The bathroom with the deadly
toilet linked my room with my parentsT room.

I saw my sister go in to my mother. She sat on
the bed and listened as I watched the ceiling,
wondering how it would be to live life upside
down. I would enjoy stepping over door frames
and light fixtures. My sister was crying. The
ceiling was blank, and I wanted to shut the win-
dows and doors. The dog jumped on my bed
and I touched her fur and she growled.

"Iwas elewen and the

lady next door hugged

me toher bosome....

A neighbor came into the room and touched
my hand. She said, oCheer up.� I acted as if I
wasnTt unhappy, but I was. Through the door I
saw my mother and sister crying. I saw the
maple trees outside blowing in the sunlight. I
touched the dog again, but she jumped off the
bed. The neighbor went to put her- out.

The same things kept happening until night-
fall, with people touching me, until I was hun-
gry again and went into the kitchen. Food was
on all the counters, and I ate casseroles from
under tinfoil. The same things happened again.
I did not see much of my mother or sister, and
I went to bed.

oGet up,� my mother said. All around her
stood her relatives from Illinois, a thousand
miles away. They moved me to the couch.

It was morning when I woke up again, and
I saw aunts and uncles asleep in cots all over the
den. Some I had not seen in a year or more.
The sofa was crampy. I got up. I walked bare-
foot on the cold linoleum floor, and I looked
around the kitchen. It was dark. The custard pot
was no longer on the stove. I peeked into the
refrigerator, and things nearly fell out because
it was stuffed with other peopleTs china. I could
see the double boiler with the custard in the
corner. Mama came into the kitchen.

oDid you sleep all right?� I asked.

oT never closed my eyes,� she said.

oWhat are you going to do today?� I asked.

oWeTre going to see about the funeral.�

oCan I help?�

"The same things kept happening until nightfall.

with people touching me...�

oT want you to.�

oWhen is the funeral?�

oTomorrow.�

oMama, whatTs going to happen?�

She began to cry and I began to cry too. The
kitchen was dark, and I could not see her face,
but in the next room the rising, falling chests
of many bodies were in the sunlight. In my bed
were my grandmother and Aunt Martha, both
on DaddyTs side, and they seemed tiny and sad,
like me. I heard the perk of coffee. Soon my
mother drank some, but mostly she sat with her
head in her hands. The relatives said hello and
kissed me. My motherTs father made a joke, but
it was not cheerful. Aunt Martha cooked break-
fast. The eggs did not taste like my motherTs.
They had all come past midnight, they said.

Aunt Hester said, ooYou donTt remember when
we got you up last night, do you?�

I said I didnTt, but I did, and I didnTt like her.
She was ugly. They all sat around and made
jokes, and sometimes my mother and sister
laughed, but I never did because our relatives
from Illinois told jokes about things that werenTt
funny, mostly bathrooms.

All of us except my sister went to the coffin
store on the second floor of the funeral home.
Mr. Dean, the mortician, showed us all the
coffins. Everyone was smiling. The coffins had
linings of something like whipped cream, and in
the corner of the shop there were little ones
like tool boxes.

oWhat are these?� I asked my mother.

oThese are for babies that die,� she said.

She was already dressing in black. Her face
was white. All of the coffins were tacky, and
they cost six hundred dollars or so. Most of them
seemed to be made of fiberglass. I liked one
made of wood.

oNo,� my mother said, owe want one to match
DaddyTs suit.�

8

I thought of Daddy taking off his suit. He had
bought it in Richmond the Christmas before,
and he had gone into my bathroom to read a
mystery novel. Now he was going to wear it
again. He was somewhere in this building. I
would never be able to touch him, because I had
seen death before when my motherTs stepmother
died and I touched her face and it felt no dif-
ferent, only I knew she was dead, and I felt
pale and sick inside.

I saw him that afternoon, stuck in the jaw of
the whipped-cream coffin. The room looked
like a motel. All the furniture was sharp and
pretty, and the walls were orange. Daddy was
dead, and I did not touch him. Neither did any-
one else. We sat on a couch and my mother
talked to Mr. Dean. He had once been our
neighbor. Daddy looked very fine. He was fifty-
seven years old and not so fat when half of the
coffin lid was closed. I wondered if there were
really shillings under his eyes.

At home people were everywhere. I went out-
side to get the paper. His picture was on the
front page and it said, oLocal Physician Dies.�
His picture there was the one on the piano. He
looked too young. He was made of little dots.
Mama cut out the story and put it in her funeral
book on the podium, with Scotch tape.

I was missing school. My teacher came to see
us. The funeral was the next day, and I dressed
again in my Sunday suit. I was tired of sleeping
on the couch, but even my mother shared a bed.
The funeral home had a big auditorium and a
little one that shared the same stage. The family
sat in the little one. Through the side I heard
many people coming in. Everyone was talking
in loud whispers. I could not see them, but I
knew I had seen them all before carrying food
in Corning Ware. My sister held my motherTs
hand. I was next to my sister. The auditorium
quieted. I could not see the coffin, but I knew

it was there. I remembered the florist talking
about the flowers to my mother, but I couldnTt
see them. I knew they were like a blanket, what
color I didnTt know.

The preacher was standing up in front of us,
and he began to talk. The words must have come
from the Bible because they were full of othee�
and ohath,� and he yelled them. Then he began
to speak of my father. Did the preacher know he
drank? I wondered if my father had gone to
heaven, not that he drank all that much. The
room was dark. All around me my relatives were
crying, but neither my mother nor my sister nor
myself cried, until he said a poem about crossing
the bar. My motherTs head fell on my sisterTs
shoulder and she cried. I cried and so did my

"Everyone was smiling.�

sister. A sister touched my motherTs back from
behind. She spoke words that were like soft
pellets, but the poem went on. My motherTs
glasses were in her lap, and her eyes were dull
and wet.

It ended at last, and I saw something pink
as someone carried the coffin away. There was
no funeral parade, because my father was to be
buried far away in Prince Edward County, Vir-
ginia, where his mother lived. My mother, my
sister, and I rode in a car with my motherTs
brother and his wife. I took off my tie. I sat by
the window. The town passed us, and then the
country began to pass us. I looked at a speck
on the window and moved around to make it
hop over the telephone poles that passed us. The
graveyard was two hundred miles away. I hop-
ped the speck over telepone poles for a long
time. Then the talking began. I saw barns and
dinky farms under pecan trees with dusty black
children in front. The sun was shining. Far away
in front of us there was shiny water on the road.
It shrank away from us, and I wondered where
it came from. I listened to the talking. They
were talking about Illinois, I felt as if I had been
here before. The same people had been in a

funeral car when my motherTs stepmother shot
herself.

About half-way we stopped at a service sta-
tion and bought Coca-Colas. My aunt and uncle
talked about their neighbors in Chicago. My
mother laughed at their stories even with dried
tears in the corners of her eyes. My sister and I
did not speak. We did not care about Illinois.
I held my coke too long and it got warm. We
started driving again. We were in the hills now,
and we passed a trio of buzzards in a circle
above the road. It made me think of a piece of
black tape. I saw the sign of Madam Olga,
palmist, and some restaurants I had passed
many times before. At last we were in Prince
Edward County, Virginia. I had been in the
graveyard many times to see the headstone of
my grandfather. Many people were there around
a tent with red and white and yellow flowers,
all the women in coarse-meshed veils. The car
rolled in on the crunchy gravel and stopped.

My fatherTs brother had died years before, and
his widow came to the window crying. My
mother had seemed all right, but she started to
cry again. They both held onto the windowsill.
My aunt had her handkerchief out. I did not
feel like crying. We did not get out. I looked
at the tent with oDean Funeral Home� printed
across it, and I saw a water faucet sticking out of

2.-stuck in the jaw of the

whipped -crearm coffin.�

the ground. I wondered what needed to be
washed. The gravestones everywhere were soft
and old and dark. There were no trees in our
part of the cemetery. I saw my mother crying
again and looking out the window at people.
I began to cry too and I looked at the coffin
and the stones and the ground.

We spent the night at my grandmotherTs, and
we were not so sad the next morning. I ate
KelloggTs Sugar Frosted Flakes and grapefruit
for breakfast. My fatherTs aunt had not come to
the funeral. She was ninety and lived in the

9

country. We all got in cars and went to see her.
Her farm was beautiful and hilly, and some of
the trees had turned red. She acted old. Her
niece, our cousin, took us down into the pasture
where there used to be horses. It was full of
cedar trees. My sister said we ought to take one
and plant it at home. We tried to pull one up,
but even the little ones stayed fast in the ground.
The weeds that scratched against our legs were
wet. My sister went to the stable for a shovel.
We dug up a tiny seedling. At the house we
wrapped up its roots in newspaper and put it

in the trunk of the car.

We went to the cemetery again. The dirt on
the grave was in a low mound, and the tent and
the flowers were still there. It made me think
of a sad circus. My mother cried for the last
time.

When we were home again my sister, my
uncle, and I planted the tree. My uncle put a
tin can in the hole. My mother said it wouldnTt
grow, but it did. The next Christmas we put
colored lights on it. Later it was so tall we had
to chop it down.

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In Silent Vigilance

Last night, the moon was shining,
And the earth was bright;

But the cold abyss of darkness
Covers the earth tonight.

The weary mind of the world,
Squandered by the deep

And overwhelming darkness,
Now begins to weep;

As it watches all its children
Dying needlessly,

It waits in silent vigilance,
Lonely, silent vigilance,

For life to come to be.

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| wanted
To play house
In the church altar
When | was
A little girl.
It was So cozy
And smelled so nice
But | didnTt ask
Because | knew
They wouldnTt let me.
| couldnTt see why
They wouldnTt let me.
They played
Christian
In the congregation

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