Are you the Rambler type? Like to have fun? Like a car that’s fun? A car that’s got everything including personality—at prices that don’t break the bank? Then move into the driver’s seat of a Rambler, because you are the Rambler type. And how about those Rambler seats and interiors? Just wonder- ful cost twice as much. Plush, com- fortable Airliner Reclining Bucket Seats adjust individually for leg envied by owners whose cars room and seat-back angle. The new Lounge-Tilt Seat adjusts hy- draulically for knee height—low- cost options. And you're sur- rounded by expensive new fabrics and upholstery. But don’t just sit there—drive a Rambler. Try the exciting new way to drive—the E-Stick no- clutch-pedal transmission. No- clutch driving at a fraction of the usual cost! Most of the conven- ience of an automatic, but with stick-shift economy (a moderately priced option)! And Rambler quality does not just stop with its trim good looks and its responsive handling. More guarantees than any other Amer- ican car insure you a more trouble- free, more service-free car. More solid safety features, too—like Double-Safety Brake System, standard. Tandem master cylin- ders, one for front brakes, the other for rear. If one should be damaged, the other still works and they’re self-adjusting. See your Rambler dealer soon —he has a surprise for you, for Ramblers are priced lower than you would expect, much lower than cars that have far less to offer. Very big on economy, of course. RAMBLER World Standard of Compact Car Excellence IN AY VOLUME V WINTER, 1962 NUMBER 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES FEATURES Interview with Edward R. Murrow Interview with Hodding Carter FICTION A Short One From Tijuana by Jim Rockey A Short Story by Richard Taylor The Birthday Present by Dr. Elizabeth Utterback ESSAY Allegory and Billy Budd by Junius D, Grimes III. POETRY Low Tide by Sarah Hansen A Southern Lullaby by Dr. Elizabeth Utterback. Papa’s Journey by G. Carroll Norwood Haiku by Joyce Evans Haiku by Betsy Orr ART Figure Drawings - REBEL REVIEW - 3 Reviews by J. A. Withey, Francis Adams, Sue Ellen Hunsucker, Jane Teal, Milton G. Crocker and Bob Averette. COVER by Al! Dunkle THE REBEL is published by the Stu- dent Government Association of East Carolina College. It was created by the Publications Board of East Carolina College as a literary magazine to be edited by students and designed for the publication of student material. NOTICE—Contributions to THE REB- EL should be directed to P. O. Box 1420, E.C.C., Greenville, North Carolina. Editorial and business offices are locat- ed at 30614 Austin Building. Manu- scripts and art work submitted by mail should be accompanied. by a self-ad- dressed. envelope and return postage. The publishers assume no responsibility for the return of manuscripts or art work. AGE STAFF STAFF EDITOR sor ees Stine pantie? Grimesttl BUSINESS MANAGER. ___________________David Smith ASSOCIATE EDITOR. __....___________._J. Alfred Willis BOOK REVIEW EDITOR___________Sue Ellen Hunsucker EXCHANGE EDITOR Carolista Fletcher ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR_________ _Milton G. Crocker Atl SOAP Poe to oe en oan a Bob Schmitz Larry Blizard ADVERTISING MANAGERS Ronald Watson Bob Averette TYPige. Jane Teal FACULTY ADVISOR_______________Ovid Williams Pierce CIRCULATION: -: NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES _______ _._College Magazines Inc. 11 West 42nd Street New York 36, New York MEMBER ASSOCIATED COLLEGIATE PRESS EDITORIAL The practice of social promotion in public schools wrings cries of anguish and scorn from many educators. But in a public school, where law enforces mandatory at- tendance to the age of sixteen, many pupils required by law to go to school simply are not intelligent enough to do the work past a certain grade. In such cases, of what value is it to keep a child in one grade and over- load that grade when he can “not learn” just as well in a higher one? Thus, it is at least possible to discern a reason for social promotion on the grammar and secondary school levels of education; and while we justly abhor the need for it, the practice it- self is not to be so bitterly excoriated. But can we find an excuse for what might be called “social promotion” in our colleges? If college admission standards are not a farce, we can assume that college students are intelligent enough to do the work. Why then do we have in our colleges a practice apparently equivalent to social promotion on lower levels? What excuse can the col- lege offer for promoting large numbers of students who lack the ability to write co- herent prose—who lack this ability not merely as freshmen and sophomores, but as juniors and seniors as well? The law does not enforce mandatory attendance for these students, and if they fail there are equally qualified students anxious to replace them. As editor of a college publication, we are in a good position to see at least a sampling of the writing on this campus. We have ac- WINTER, 1962 cess to much student and faculty material and, in fact, the last quarter has been most gratifying in terms of publishable material received by THE REBEL. But we read much material that is not publishable, and somewhere there is inequi- ty when we see, with alarming frequency, juniors and seniors submitting (not only to THE REBEL, but to instructors) written work so full of rudimental errors in organ- ization and grammar as to be completely unsatisfactory. And the students who sub- mit this material have passed English courses in grammar and composition to reach the junior-senior level. When they are allowed to pass these courses without learning to organize and write coherently, without learning that bulky words, shoddy sentences and overall confusion do not com- municate, then the moral is clear. Such a student is left with a basic inability to com- municate beyond a certain plateau, and society finds foisted upon it, in the guise of an academic degree, a parody of a truly educated man. As a literary magazine THE REBEL is concerned with expression, not solely lit- erary and poetic expression, but expression for effective communication. To raise a standard and maintain its elevation is a task which THE REBEL attempts; it is its “social responsibility” to do so. Social re- sponsibility and “social promotion” appear incompatible. : his “Person to Person” programs. attacked by conservative leaders. When he was appointed by President Kennedy to head the USIA Mr. Murrow made an addition to the 1953 directive The directive had stated that the mission of the USIA was: “. .. to submit evidence to peoples of other nations by means of communication tech- niques that the objectives and policies of the United States are in harmony with and will advance their legitimate To this “We shall that established the Service. aspirations for freedom, progress and peace.” statement of purpose Mr. Murrow has added: operate on the basis of truth...” Interviews With Edward R. Murrow, Director of the United States Infor- mation Agency, visited Greenville in December, 1961, on a tour of the sites of the Voice of America radio transmitters scheduled for construction in Pitt County. During his visit Mr. Murrow granted a brief interview to the Rebel. In his long career in radio and television, Mr. Murrow has received numerous awards for his news reporting and commentary, and has gained a reputation for accuracy and objectivity. During World War II he became one of America’s most influential commentators through his program, “This is London,” and most television viewers are familiar with He has been termed a liberal progressive, and his political views have often been EDWARD R. MURROW Interviewer: Does the greatest benefit of the USIA lie in person-to-person contacts or mass media? How can 1250 field officers personally contact many people? Mr. Murrow: I think it is very difficult to analyze the relative importance of contacts. Cer- tainly, I think many of us who work in the field of electronic reporting are inclined to forget that the best method of communicating is always face- to-face. You are quite right, of course, in assum- ing that the 1200 United States officers abroad cannot contact personally very many people. Our total effort abroad is only a small segment of the total United States communication with foreign countries. We have, for example, 30,000 mis- sionaries abroad. We have with their dependents one million military personnel abroad. What we attempt to do in the agency is to utilize all means 4 of communication. We operate the Voice of America in thirty-six languages and dub our shows in more than forty languages. We do car- toon strips that have no text at all so that they may be understood by people who are illiterate. So we attempt to use all means, but in sophisti- cated societies particularly, where no language barrier exists, (by that I mean where we do not have to deal with the exotic languages), the face- to-face communication which can be transmitted through radio, television, or print with the local populace is certainly the most effective means of communication. Interviewer: Exactly how do these facilities abroad operate? Mr. Murrow: They place television shows on local stations where such stations exist. They THE REBEL also place local radio programs. They spend a great deal of time attempting to explain United States foreign policy to editors, to columnists, to broadcasters; in short, to make United States pol- icy intelligible wherever they can and palatable wherever possible. Interviewer: What means does the USIA have of reaching what might be called the “little man’? Mr. Murrow: I would suggest the primary method is through radio. The secondary method would be by the use of mobile transmitters to show films, to play recordings, to distribute pam- phlets. These, in many cases, do not reach what you referred to as the “little man,” because in vast areas of the world, the “little man” is illit- erate. In this area, we must put more emphasis than we have in the past on language training, particularly in the training of people to command the exotic languages. Some can be done with very simple wall newspapers. We publish a great many books, for example, that employ a vocabu- lary of not more than 1000 words so that the peo- ple who have an inadequate command of English may read and understand. This is a very slow process because we have to recognize that in many areas of the world—particularly in Africa—there is no national consciousness, the allegiance is purely tribal, and the literacy rate is very low. The essence of the problem, I am persuaded, in- volves getting the right men, more of them, in the right places, and with greater linguistic accomplishments. Interviewer: You mentioned books and maga- zines. What type of material is published in USIA publications? Mr. Murrow: We publish a vast number of them. For example, last year we published in translation about nine million books. This sounds like a sizeable number. However, it is to be re- marked that the Soviet Union in that same time moved from the publication of thirty million books in non-Communist bloc languages to forty million books in non-Communist bloc languages. We publish a magazine in Russian in the Soviet Union that is limited by inter-governmental agreement to a print run of 52,000. We could, of course, sell a hundred times that number if we were permitted to do so. We publish a similar magazine in Poland. One is published in South- east Asia, called ‘Free World,” that has a print run of 350,000, another called “Ohiyett” in Arabic with a run of about 30,000. In addition to that, WINTER, 1962 we print large numbers of pamphlets and car- toons. To answer your question specifically, much of the book translation has to do with what would be called “Americana” which is an effort to pub- lish books that reflect American political, eco- nomic, social, and literary life. Interviewer: What part of the American legend or creed have you found most difficult to repre- sent to other countries? Mr. Murrow: It is difficult to represent, par- ticularly to the emerging countries, the whole eco- nomic and governmental structure of this country because we are operating a very complex system of government. It requires a high degree of lit- eracy and a degree of political sophistication. I think our major problem has been in conveying to people abroad that we do have a diverse pluralistic society, one that is not always intelligible in its constitutional construction even to more literate persons in western Europe. But I think we have our basic success by doing what every nation has done in time of crisis: by going back to its root- holes, by making it clear that we are a revolution- ary people, that we are not allergic to change, that we have no desire to sanctify the status quo, that we are a nation of change, that we recognize im- perfections and constantly strive to improve them, and that we want to improve the conditions under which we live. Interviewer: What part do you find the least difficult? Mr. Murrow: The least difficult, obviously, is to convey the strength, both economic and mili- tary, of this country—its relatively high standard of living and the generosity of the American peo- ple. This sort of thing in most societies is not very difficult to convey. Interviewer: How damaging has our integration problem been to American prestige and how is the integration problem presented by foreign propaganda? Mr. Murrow: There is no doubt that it is dam- aging to our prestige. When many of us in this country see a picture of a burning bus, we are likely to think that it is merely an example of journalistic enterprise. We in the agency know, of course, that this will be front page news all the way from Manila around the world. However, in terms of accurate presentation» we do not at- tempt to suppress the fact that racial tensions exist in this country. We do make it clear that incidents of violence are isolated. We emphasize 5 what the Federal government does to correct the situation, and we make it clear that this is a mat- ter that is one of constant discussion, debate, and progress in the United States. Interviewer: To what extent is our internal policy affected by the desire to create the “right impression” in other countries? Mr. Murrow: I’m not quite sure I comprehend the question, but if you are asking if our domestic policy is determined by or influenced by the desire to influence foreign opinion, then I think the answer is no. Interviewer: Do you think that there has been a resurgence of McCarthyism in the United States? Do societies like the John Birch Society and the Minute Men hinder the work of the USIA? Mr. Murrow: I think it is dangerous to deal in political short-hand, by saying a revival of Mc- Carthyism. I think the sense of frustration of what the President called right-wing extremism makes our task more difficult, but movements of this kind have not yet reached the point where they present us with a major problem in telling the American story abroad. Hodding Carter began his newspaper career in the early 1930’s and continued it to become the overseas wartime editor of The Yank and The Stars and Stripes. He is now the publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, Mississippi. A Bowdoin College graduate, Mr. Carter is winner of the Pulitzer Prize and is one of the outstanding Southern lib- erals. His ideas have been of great importance, especially in politics and social movement. He has published several books: The Angry Scar, John Law Wasn't So Wrong, Lower Mississippi, The Marquis de Lafayette, Southern Legacy, The Winds of Fear, and Where Main Street Meets the River (autobiographical). Se Ah HODDING CARTER Interviewer: How responsible for present con- ditions in the South is the Reconstruction period? Mr. Carter: It is not so much the Reconstruc- tion period itself but its use by four generations 6 of Southern politicians that link the two tragic periods. In a preface to my fairly recent book, The Angry Scar, I pointed out that the North re- membered too little of the period and the South too much. Perhaps this may give you an indica- THE REBEL ad tion of my feeling without your having to read the book. Interviewer: Has the development of integra- tion in the South since the Supreme Court decis- ion been about what you expected? Mr. Carter: I expected integration to proceed much more slowly and far more violently after the Supreme Court decision in 1954. Interviewer: Has the “core of resistance” in the South been broken? Mr. Carter: In terms of widespread urban ac- ceptance of token integration only, it might be said that the Southern “core of resistance” has been dented, if not broken; but in the small town and rural areas of the deep South there has been little softening of the white will to resist by almost any means. Interviewer: Do you feel that the more wide- spread distribution of the Negro throughout the country has increased sympathy for the South in non-Southern areas? Mr. Carter: I emphatically feel that the impact of the economically and socially sub-marginal Negroes throughout the industrial areas of the non-South has made at least emotional allies of many Northern whites in respect to traditional Southern viewpoints. Interviewer: Has traditional hostility towards Southern conservatism tended to isolate the South and put it on the defensive? Mr. Carter: The South has been pretty much on the defensive, politically and economically, since before the Civil War. Antagonism from out- side stemmed from many causes: race attitudes, the old political-economic clash between Northern industrialigm and Southern agriculture and in latter days the conservative attitudes of Southern spokesmen, being high among the reasons. Interviewer: Have contemporary Southern writ- ers—for example Faulkner, Caldwell, and O’Con- nor—rendered the South in depraved cliché, and to that extent done it a disservice? Mr. Carter: I doubt that the Southern writers whom you listed have misrepresented the South —incidentally, there is no such thing as the Southern Writer or The South in literature and life. They have simply concentrated upon cer- tain aspects. Interviewer: Do literary critics tend to receive well any anti-Southern writer? WINTER, 1962 Mr. Carter: I do not believe that the honest literary critic receives anti-Southern writers with open arms simply because they are anti-Southern. Much criticism of Southern attitudes is well and honestly done. I like to think that the good critics differentiate. Interviewer: What do you think of W. J. Cash’s Mind of the South? Mr. Carter: I think Cash’s Mind of the South is still the classic in its field and as responsible and objective as any treatment of our region could be. Interviewer: What do you have to say about “freedom rider” episodes in Mississippi? Mr. Carter: As to the Freedom Rider episodes, all I would want to say at this time is “‘a plague on both your houses.” State and even Federal executives let this thing get away from them. As for Mississippi, the majority of the white citizens seem determined to buck the Federal government on integrated bus stations as long as they can. How long that will be depends on the Federal gov- ernment. Interviewer: What part have newspapers played in recent crises? Mr. Carter: I am not sure I understand this question. Some notable Southern newspapers have counseled moderation. Others, less notable and more strident, have tried to make matters worse, it seems to me, by their advocacy of extreme meas- ures and extreme leaders. Interviewer: What does the future hold for the South? Is the pattern yet discernible? Mr. Carter: I am not worried about the South’s future—if there is going to be any future for anyone of us at all. The pattern is clear: increas- ed industrialism, large scale mechanized agricul- ture with more and more diversification, a deser- tion of the countryside and growth of the larger towns and cities, and a continuing radical shift of the center of Negro population from South to somewhere in the Mid-west. I think most, if not all of these trends, will be helpful. Interviewer: Has the integration problem here hurt our prestige overseas? Mr. Carter: Iam certain our prestige has been greatly damaged by the various unhappy episodes arising out of the integration issues. However, our enemies would have invented something else to hurt us even had this problem not existed. MA —=« moO VU Low Cide Some cruel and calloused hand Has pushed the river back today, Leaving exposed a mass of distorted roots Resembling broken bones. These, and the hulls of barnacled boats And jagged broken bottles Lie bare, as witnesses Of the river’s last folly ... And tiny waves come lapping in Trying to stretch and cover This naked ugliness of passion spent, That has been, until now, harbored and hidden Below the glassy surface of the river. —SARAH HANSEN A Southern Lullaby | Hush, my honey, hush yo’ cryin’, Mammy am here do’ her heart’s a-sighin’, Yo’ daddy at de crap-game— losin’ all de money, Dat I tek in washin’ fo de white-folks, honey, Hush yo cryin’ an’ sleep. Lie still, baby, rest while yo can, A yaller woman has got my man, He buy her corn liquor and dey dance an’ sin, An’ de Lawd calls in vain his soul to win— Sleep honey, sleep and rest. Sleep, my baby, de do’s on de latch, Mammy gotta go to de cotton patch When wuk is over and night is fall— I go to de church when my Jesus call— Sleep, honey, sleep and rest. I gonna kneel at de mourners bench— And pray God to take him from dat yeller wench— And pray dat the lynchers won’t never come take him But sin or no sin, Lawd I'll never forsake him— Sleep, honey child, sleep and rest! —DR. ELIZABETH UTTERBACK THE REBEL Pay s Joyrncy ie CARROLL Norwoop Now he has gone, the rugged old cuss, ’Cross the river and into the trees: Not gently tapping but raising a fuss As he bellowed for those Eternal Keys. His roaring aroused the keeper, g Who fumbled at the gate; EP Old Papa wasn’t excited, But, God, he hated the wait .. . & The glowing gilded gates swung slowly open wide, a And as the bulbous old man peered inside, With knapsack and shells, paper and pen, He snuffed through his beard and walked right in. § The brilliant light from the Sinless Skies Made Papa squint his tired, veined eyes— And as the truth and goodness found his face, p) He wondered if he would like this place. He looked like a weathered old tent, like a Ee hemp rope, As he stood heavily there, And his anger rose - As he raised his nose To smell the too pure air. “Ain’t there no maskeeters and stuff lik at, To give the air some spunk? Then what’s to swarm on the bottle When all the beer’s been drunk?” Pe With skin tanned to Ta se Papa peered out from under those great shaggy white hedges which grew in ong-jine ss his forehead, and warily viewed iene place he had decided to come to. “No damn maskeeters,” he thought. BA st wagd@/bother him when he went fishing— what was he to shoo away as he tried to read in his tent—what was to wail around his lantern and get burned and fall dead on his desk—? WINTER, 1962 9 He was a curious sight as he stood there. The land and the sea and the air all had left their auto- graphs on Papa’s great hulking frame, and they combined into one to give his bulk that same bat- tered, used look which he himself had seen on the hull on many an old boat, on the handle of many bs) a native knife, on the face of many a flinty wood- land path. His ponderous chest took a massive heave As he stooped and set his grips down, For he had decided, before pitching camp, To take a look at this new town. Py He ambled down the Avenue of Trust, Turned right on The Promised Land, And noticed that there was no dust, No weeds, no mud, no sand. All was clean, all was hard; No variance met his eyes. No cold wind, no hot wind. No rain clouds in the skies. Then, a glistening mailbox on his left Fair brought him quick to bay: The letters, fashion’d majestically there, Read, ““E. Hemingway.” His eyes ’most rolled down to his feet, And bounced on the gold of the perfect street! For there he saw, to his dismay, The mansion where he was to stay. Qo I thought I was going to enjoy myself up here, the way those gravelly preachers talked about it ‘d on earth! Are all the streets so hard with this bloody gold that I can find no place to pitch a camp? A mansion. Hell. What good is a place like this? You can’t put no tent in there, them § floors is probably harder’n these streets! I sure couldn’t flick my ashes on the floor and set upyno cook stove and build me a pine fire and spit re & I want to in this place! Whoever built it done a fine job, but why give it to me? I don’t want to live “eternally’’—as them preachers say—inf@pme- thing which ought to of been donated to t AR S or the UDC clubs. And look at the ‘where they built the monster. No trees. Just lean and per- fect everywhere. No grass which is supposed to > aeons but you just let th inter come and ferit ah nghaprobaQ no winter here, either. how flat the land is. So people won’t tire theirselves walkin’ up and down hills. Shoot. I been in places hillier’n a mule’s hind leg. I bet they don’t even have mules and stuff like that up here on account of the smell and having | 10 THE REBEL x to feed ’em the grass they don’t have and having to shelter them from a winter which never mes. “These folks don’t know what they’re missing up 4 here,” He mumbled as he clacked along, “T’ve about got a mind M) To go hunt and find The owner, and tell him he’s wrong!” So Papa went back, and Picked up his pack, and Marched toward where the Light was brightest; His one free hand Swung like a — (He felt he was at\bis tightest!) That night the saintly @ahabitants saw Great wonders in the Ye Great shafts of light, sparks red and bright, And they wondered a re Well, Papa made his tattered presence known, And if you ever get tHere, you'll see: For he, singlehanded and alone, Chucked out all that ’finéry. He hauled in dirt and rai With determination so grim, And in the course of days, or years, Made things liveable tofim. There’s no gate now, ni table there, Where you sign as you §o in. There’s gas lamps, creeks, mossy banks, And still a lack of sin. \ The maskeeters hit you thi#k and hard If you stay long in your grassy yard, But if you to relief feel bent, Jus’ duck inside your ’skeeterproof tent! A stubborn, hard-headed, bushy mountain: Papa—rebel with a cause. Folks say those who enjoy themselves won’t last long, but he is and will do it—‘eternally,” as them preachers say. He was a powerful, big wave of a tempested ocean who rolled back his @leeves and brought his long white foamy hay ms roaring in—head and shoulders above theNother seas—casting all the vessels of this mind and emotion naked upon the beach. And theseXVessels remain, dried—froth on the sand. N Farewell, then, to those mdxive arms, Which cut into hearts for life— Yet we’re content, though lacking their charms, For Papa left us his knife. WINTER, 1962 ALLEGORY and BILLY BUDD By JUNIUS D. GRIMEs III Bi, Budd is the story of a young sailor who is impressed from a merchant vessel for duty in the British Royal Navy and almost immediately, how- ever innocently, antagonizes Claggart, the master- at-arms of the warship. Claggart falsely accuses Billy before the captain of the warship, and in consternation Billy kills him with a single blow. Captain Vere unwillingly condemns Billy to the gallows. How should we interpret the story? Is it sym- bolism or is it allegory, or is it either? Much criti- cal opinion favors the allegorical interpretation; but before we can analyze Billy Budd as allegory, it is necessary to formulate some working defi- nition of allegory itself. A difficulty arises im- mediately from the lack of clear distinction be- tween allegory and symbolism. We discover this distinction in the author’s handling of the rela- tionship of object and meaning. The symbolist ordinarily begins with the ob- jects and proceeds to explore meaning. The ob- jects exist because they are a part of the narra- tive. Further, they do not derive their meaning outside the narrative; and although the object may have several levels of meaning, these levels would exist for this same object in an infinite variety of contexts. Thus, meaning must be im- plicit in the object, and the symbolist is concerned 12 with presenting at least the illusion of experience. The allegorist deals with experience less di- rectly than does the symbolist. Objects in the narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative, and the objects become con- venient emblems manipulated to suit the purpose of the allegory. The allegorist employs these ob- jects in a logical pattern dictated by the require- ments of the allegorical idea; and surface objects ultimately express an abstract idea in concrete terms. Thus strict allegory is essentially rational- istic. It is opposed to random, purely empirical experience and usually fastens upon some codifi- cation of experience to define itself. Each object in the allegory must have its logical, symbolic ex- planation and contribute to and progress towards the final allegorical significance. - the opening pages of Billy Budd, Melville draws a possible symbolic parallel. Compare to the disciples and Christ this quotation concerning the “Handsome Sailor.” In certain instances they would flank, or like a bodyguard, quite surround some su- perior figure of their own class, moving along with them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation ... With no percep- tible trace of the vainglorious about him, ra- THE REBEL 4 ther the off-hand unaffectedness of natural regality, he seemed to accept the spontaneous homage of his shipmates. But Melville keeps this almost supernatural paral- lel within the framework of reality. He gives an example. Such a figure was a large black whom he had observed once, with an aggregation around him that would have “well fitted them to be marched up by Anarchis Cloots before the bar of the first French Assembly as representatives of the Human Race.” In two paragraphs, Melville implies a possible parallel between the “Hand- some Sailor” and Christ but maintains reality by the illustration of a large black man and his brood. The possibility of progressive-symbolic (alle- gorical) interpretation arises upon the impress- ment of Billy from the merchant vessel. The captain says, . . . Billy came; and it was like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy. Not that he preached to them or said or did any- thing in particular; but the virtue went out of him, sugaring the sour ones. Christ radiated similar virtue. Later, when asked, Billy is ignorant of his background. He doesn’t know who his father is; thus we have a possible parallel to Christ if we accept Christ as the bastard son of God. But the significance of this may be, and more probably is, symbolism of Adam. Adam actually had no par- ents, and his virtue was the virtue inherent in the primitive state of innocence. And the Adam in- terpretation is strengthened later when Melville observes that Billy . .. possessed that kind and degree of intelli- gence which goes along with the unconven- tional rectitude of a sound human creature —one to whom not as yet has been proffered the questionable apple of knowledge. And Melville fortifies the probability of this sym- bolism when he says that in many respects Billy was little more than an “. . . upright barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled him- self into his company.” He adds, apparently cor- roborating the doctrine of man’s fall, that when a person is seen to have pristine virtues, these seem to derive from a time prior to civilization and not from the custom or convention of civilization. Any such virtue would certainly be more akin to Adam than to Christ, because the doubts and frustrations of a civilized man encumbered Christ. WINTER, 1962 He did not possess the primal innocence of Adam. Additional confusion of a precise interpretation of Billy as Christ appears when Billy kills Clag- gart. It is difficult to imagine such violence from Christ, the man who said, “The meek shall in- herit the earth.” The only violence Christ ex- hibited was when he drove the money-changers from the temple, and this was a case of righteous indignation. Never did Christ become indignant or frustrated to the point of violence when accused personally. On the other hand, Billy commits an error of judgment in a moment of irrationality just as Adam did when he accepted the apple from Eve. Adam knows he will be punished by God if he takes the apple, but he acts irrationally and com- mits himself to damnation. Billy, despite his in- nocence, is certainly aware that he will be punish- ed for killing Claggart, but he acts irrationally and commits himself to his fate. A parallel does exist between Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and Billy during his im- prisonment on the gundeck following his condem- nation. At the end of each experience both tran- quilly await their fate. ... as nipped in the vice of fate, Billy’s agony, mainly proceeding from a generous and young heart’s virgin experience of the diabolical in- carnate and effective in some men—the ten- sion of that agony was over now. But Billy, unlike Christ, had not gone through any period of true agony. Christ was fully cognizant of what was happening to him and Billy was not. “Not that like children Billy was incapable of conceiving what death really is. No, but he was wholly without irrational fear of it”—a fear pre- vailing more in highly civilized societies than in those which stand nearer to unadulterate nature. Billy may parallel Christ in that he dies in in- nocence, but there is neither moral nor legal ob- ligation nor moral right to condemn Christ, and as Captain Vere discusses natural and legal jus- tice: Now can we adjudge to summary and shame- ful death a fellow-creature innocent before God, and whom we feel to be so?—Does that state it aright? You sigh sad assent. Well, I, too, feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to nature? The court is legally obligated to convict. The most striking parallel here is the inadequacy of man’s justice in both cases. However, it is possible to 13 examine Billy here as Adam. Both transgress the law and both are condemned—Adam by God, Billy by man. In both of these cases the justice is at least lawful. Additional parallels between Billy’s death and the death of Christ are obvious. Billy’s last words before being hanged, “God bless Captain Vere!” were— Syllables so unanticipated coming from one with the ignominious hemp about his neck— a conventional felon’s benediction directed aft towards the quarters of honour; syllables, too, delivered in the clear melody of a sing- ing-bird on the point of launching from the FWwie.. 3. What could be more like this statement among the last words of Christ? “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” Yet Billy is more artless than Christ. Certainly Melville’s comparison of Billy to the songbird has appear- ances of the immemorial songbird-soul compari- son. The innocent soul of Billy is about to be launced from the twig of life and wing its way to God. And at the precise moment of Billy’s death. It chanced that the vapoury fleece hanging low in the East, was shot through with soft glory as the fleece of the lamb of God seen in mystical vision; and simultaneously there- with, watched by the wedged mass of upturn- ed faces, Billy ascended; and ascending, took the full rose of the dawn. Compare this scene to the glorious rise of Christ to heaven following his return to the Apostles. Again there is a parallel to Christ. The spar from which Billy hung was eventually as a chip of the cross to the crew. Despite the strong and obvious parallels between Billy’s death and Christ’s death, complete justifi- cation for calling Billy an allegorical Christ is difficult to see. There are entirely too many im- plications and statements which compare him to Adam prior to the fall for us arbitrarily to decide Billy is Christ. It is better that we should study Billy as the symbol of primordial, unregenerative innocence, containing elements of both Christ and Adam. It has been said that Melville creates Claggart in vindication of the innocence in Billy. Certainly from the very first the contrast favors Billy; the evil in Claggart manifests itself in his description. He has no chin; he is like some fraud of the past; his skin has a strange pallor and is foiled by the 14 blackness of his hair; his whole appearance seem- ed... “to hint of something defective or abnormal in the constitution of the blood.” Here is definite implication of something physically evil about Claggart. Melville further links Claggart with evil figures from the past and then discourses at length about his possible origin. Melville never pinpoints the evil in Claggart, but he says early that the men, with their rude conceptions, felt rather than understood this evil. Thus, with his discussion of origins and evil, he places Claggart, at least insofar as his evil nature is concerned, out- side the realm of human comprehension. Attempting to explain this evil nature, Melville further removes him from the realm of ordinary evil as comprehended by man. He uses Plato’s definition: “Natural Depravity: a depravity ac- cording to nature.” This natural depravity is not often found in civilization and is ‘‘without vices or small sins.” And such was the nature of Clag- gart: “ ...in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or cor- rupting books or licentious living, but born with him and innate”; in short, “depravity according to nature.” Melville proceeds to exemplify the elemental and Satanic evil in Claggart. He indirectly com- pares Claggart to the insidious evil of the devil in the Garden of Eden and in the wilderness with Christ. The Dansker says to Billy: “...a sweet voice has Jimmy Legs [Claggart].” There is a portent of his evil nature when, after the soup- spilling episode in which Billy accidentally slosh- ed soup near him, Claggart must have momentarily worn some expres- sion less guarded that that of the bitter smile and, usurping the face from the heart, some distorting expression perhaps—for a drum- mer boy, chancing to come into light collision with his person was strangely disconcerted by his aspect. More illusions to the evil and mysterious nature of Claggart when: What more can partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain exceptional mor- tals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however harmless he may be?—If not called forth by that very harmlessness itself. In attempting to explain this evocation of evil Melville digresses under the heading of “pale ire, envy and despair.” He discourses on envy and antipathy as passions irreconcilable in reason, yet THE REBEL which may be found in the same person. He says the envy of Claggart did not partake of the na- ture of Saul’s for David. It is something more (or less) than human. It is perhaps the same envy that Satan felt for Adam in the Garden. And Claggart, with one possible exception, . .. was perhaps the only man in the ship in- tellectually capable of adequately appreciat- ing the moral phenomenon present in Billy Budd, and the insight but intensified his pas- sion ... which at times assumed the form of cynic disdain. In other words, Melville implies that Claggart would have shared the innocence of Billy, but he despaired of it. And despairing he felt antipathy. With no power to annul the elemental evil in himself though readily enough to hide it; ap- prehending the good, but powerless to be it; a nature like Claggart’s surcharged with ener- gy as such natures invariably are, what re- course is left but to recoil upon itself and like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act out to the end the position allotted to it. This is much the same passion the devil might have felt when confronted with the innocence manifested in Adam and Christ. It is certainly the passion he felt just before his fall from heav- en. But Melville then attempts to explain the passions of Claggart in rational, cause-and-effect terms. A stooge of Claggart’s fabricates stories concerning the actions of Billy Budd and reports them to Claggart. Here there is no evident sym- bolism, but the reader nonetheless feels that Mel- ville is making a half-hearted attempt to explain something so elemental that it is outside the realm of human cognition. The suggestions of fatality and the Satanic parallel are apparent when Melville describes the effect the sight of Billy on the upper gundeck has on Claggart. Claggart would observe Billy . with a settled meditative expression— his eyes strangely suffused with incipient fev- erish tears... Yes, and sometimes the melan- choly expression would have in it a touch of soft yearning, as if Claggart could even have loved Billy except for fate and ban. And again, when Billy is confronted by his ac- cuser, the eyes of Claggart undergo a strange transformation, “those lights of human intelli- gence losing human expression, gelidly protruding like the alien eyes of certain uncatalogued crea- tures of the deep.” WINTER, 1962 The character of Claggart evidences a more justifiable restricted allegorical parallel, at least ideally. It is perhaps proper to call Claggart an allegorical Satan in that the constituents of his character are those of Satan’s. But even this parallel is justifiable in only a general sense of character, and not through specific, contextual actions. Claggart is Satan only insofar as Satan represents the most elemental evil known to man. An evil which man knows but does not under- stand. But this allegory is not borne out in consistent, progressive action. Claggart is not Satan inter- acting with Billy-Christ in the condemnation by man, nor is he Satan interacting with Billy-Adam in the fall from grace. There are obvious elements of both. The character of Captain Vere is less clearly delineated than the characters of Budd and Clag- gart. From the very beginning of the novel he is hazy and detached. He has the “unaffected modesty of manhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature ...and... whatever his sturdy qualities [he] was without any brilliant ones.” The implied and at times expressed relationship of Billy and Vere may give a clue to the possible inter- pretation of Vere. We may choose to interpret the suggestions that Billy is the bastard son of Vere, in which case we may see Vere as God and Billy as Christ and Claggart as Satan. Thus Vere gives his only son to death to save mankind from com- plete chaos. Or we may choose to interpret Vere as God, Billy as Adam, and Claggart as Satan; then we have God punishing Adam the trans- gressor according to law, for man by his nature must be governed in law. This interpretation is more feasible than the first, but it is not supported so precisely throughout the novel. A more justifiable interpretation of Vere is as mankind, who is detached from the basic contro- versy between Billy and Claggart, but who event- ually comes to love good (innocence) even when it is defeated by evil. He represents mankind who must ultimately choose between the two without really being able. This is more justifiable be- cause— He was old enough to have been Bill’s father. The austere devotee of military duty, letting himself melt back into what remains primeval in our formalized humanity, may in the end have caught Billy to heart, even as Abraham must have caught young Isaac on the brink of resolutely offering him up in obedience to the final behest. 15 | Vere is a man; Abraham was a man. They both have a responsibility to a higher power. And Vere neither evades nor transcends the responsibility placed upon him as the captain of the ship in her majesty’s navy (perhaps repre- sentative of the entire world.) He forces his will to be more than the lip-servant of law, and ad- ministers law so that it will benefit the world that exists—not the ideal one projected in the form of Billy. He knows that if he makes any decision other than guilty, he condemns the ship (the world) to chaos. “So Captain Vere knew that Billy Budd must hang even though the last As- sizes of man’s perfection hungering heart would acquit.” Bit, Budd is thus the dramatization of the events which befall the ideally pure Budd in the world of human realities, and the novel itself is the reconciliation of the implicit ambiguities in the demands of nature and society upon man. Captain Vere (mankind, if you will) is struck with the necessity of the choice of adherence to natural law or adherence to the laws of society. Natural law almost demands that he set Billy free. His “natural innocence” is never questioned; but the laws of man are not tractable. They are explicit, and especially in regard to naval impropriety. Billy Budd has struck down an officer, an action for which there is no justification and for which there can be only one punishment—death. Melville apparently subordinates the supernat- ural idealization to the historical reality. Despite implied and at times overt comparisons between his characters and supernatural ideals, he invests the narrative framework with an abundance of detail which certainly gives the illusion of reality. In fact there is some contention that Melville took his story from an actual case, whose similarity of events is more than striking. But even so, realism does not preclude allegory if the object- meaning equation validates the allegory. If we accept the plot of the novel as determined- ly realistic, we must then decide if the objects would retain their meanings in a variety of con- texts. Here we must distinguish between char- acter and object, because only through this distinction can we answer the question. The character, Billy Budd, has distinctive ramifica- tions not common to “Billy” the object, and these are manifest only with the particular involve- ments of the plot. Billy Budd would not neces- sarily represent innocence in any variety of con- texts. These contextual restrictions evidence them- selves for Claggart, but they become salient in the case of Vere. The incidents of the plot and the foils of the other characters are vital to Vere’s ultimate identity ; and the character Vere is him- self vital, because in one sense it is as much Vere’s story as it is Billy’s. It is Vere, confronted with the inevitability of making a decision, who makes the decision and achieves an essential identity and nobility. Certainly he would not retain these achievements in a variety of contexts. Conse- quently we cannot interpret Billy Budd as unal- loyed symbolism and indeed it is difficult to con- sider symbolism, since the objects of the narra- tive fail to satisfy the most important and defi- nitive element of symbolism. But can we, by definition, interpret Billy Budd as unalloyed allegory. Hardly. We must allow Melville some haziness of conception, for it is improbable that he viewed allegory as rigidly as theory dictates. Billy Budd does not batten upon doctrine to define itself—unless we choose to infer Calvanistic overtones in Billy’s “fate.” But then the definition is too general, because Billy Budd concerns itself with the fate of inno- cence and not random predestination. However, the objects of the narrative are equat- ed with meanings that lie outside the narrative; (This, perhaps, is a criterion for distinguishing Billy Budd the character from “Billy” the object.) the surface objects are employed in a logical pat- tern which accentuates and is ultimately vital to the abstract meaning. Thus Billy is the allegorically employed sym- bol of primal innocence engaged in the ineluctable combat with Claggart, the symbol of natural evil; and Vere is mankind, who represents sympathy and law—and must choose. Though Billy lives on in the hearts of man and is evidence that evil is finally defeat and that “natural goodness is in- vincible in the affections of man,” the novel it- self provides the peaceful conclusion that inno- cence cannot exist ideally in the world created by man. It is the reconciliation of innocence and experience and is the final admission that men must fashion moral law within the framework of human limitation and reality rather than with- in a projected framework of supernatural and transcendant ideals. 16 THE REBEL Soft snow swirling cool caresses gently on the bosom of the boughs. —JOYCE EVANS Horizon’s colors ’Tis a stormy night at sea: The paintbrush slipped. —BETSY ORR WINTER, 1962 17 vt ~ — : i all be p ( jj { } \ \\ SP), f Pe ie om 4 Short One from Tijuana By Jim ROCKEY Tijuana at night is every bit as exciting as magazines brag or deplore, depending on the kind of magazine. But some people—if tourists can qualify as people—never realize it. They hit the main street of the city, buy a few cheap leather things, flip a coin or two to the beggars, and then head back to advertise their recent tour of Mexico. I needed no guide or tourist pamphlets in Ti- juana. Once off the main street, I moved quickly through the shadows toward a tiny neon sign that blinked blue in the distance. I saw the sign, but I didn’t need to read it. I knew it would be there and I knew the words on it. It was always there. Two steps for every blink; a shorter man would need three. As I reached the door under the sign, I felt a small hand on my arm. It was ringless and dirty; looked like it had been rummaging through a garbage can or something. There was a piece of corn silk, maybe, draped across the wrist. “Hey, mister,” a voice whispered. “You like me, huh? I be real good for two dollar.” The dirty hand had started up the sleeve of my shirt toward the shoulder, squeezing as it went. I grabbed above the hand and jerked whoever or whatever it was into the neon light. I might have guessed it would be a young one, but I couldn’t help laughing when I saw the figure standing in front of me. The bare feet looked pure and untouched—by soap and water at least 18 —and the toes were doubled back under each foot. Thin legs turned into bony knees that peek- ed out from the too-short cotton dress. It was dirty, too, of course. The dress was shapeless from top to bottom and sleeveless. Just a feather of a dress on a figure that seemed too frail to hold even that much weight. “So you could be real good for two dollars, is that right?” I stooped over and put my hands on knees to look at her. The face was so serious that I stopped laughing. “Si, mister. My sister she teach me everything. She very good, and I be real good, too, for two dollar.” She looked up at me with a half-smile that she intended to be sexy and inviting. I laughed again. “How old are you, kid? Ten, eleven?” “Sixteen next week.” Varey Wizard “Sixteen, eh?” I chuckled. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she still had her baby teeth. The stringy, uncombed hair didn’t help her look any older. “I'll give you a quarter if you'll get out of here and go home,” I said as I reached into my pocket. She looked startled. “Oh, so, mister! You think I beg, eh? Me no take nothing for nothing. Me no beg!” I thought about explaining the quarter to her, but decided it wouldn’t do any good, anyway. With a push and a soft boot in the rear, I started her off down the street. She shouted back at me as I opened the door to the bar, ‘“You want me for one and half dollar, maybe?” I moved off the street and into the musty odor THE REBEL of rum and cheap tobacco. My pupils did what- ever it is they do for dark vision, and I searched for familiar faces. All were strange, except the one behind the bar—Carlos. He was a permanent ornament—smiling, but dirty like everything around him. I had hoped Rosa would be there; I wanted her especially to be there. “Hey, mahn,” shouted Carlos. He wiped a glass with a dirty towel and smiled big. “Ho! You got the hongry look in your eyes tonight, but Rosa she not here no more: She got sick with baby.” His laughter was loud, as usual. “Yeah,” I mumbled, wondering if ‘Rosa’ was written across my face or something. She was good, though. Crossing I said, “After the chica that hit me up just outside the door, I could use a full-blown night with Rosa.” The third rum from Carlos made me feel a little better ... for perhaps half a minute. Damn, no Rosa tonight! Another rum and I had spent almost an hour with no prospect of a sub- stitute for Rosa. Rather than chance picking up something I didn’t want from a quickie on the streets, I decided to go back to the gate and Cali- fornia. Leaving the tiny blue sign blinking behind me, I turned the corner in the direction of the border crossing. In the shadow directly ahead of me I could make out a small figure, like maybe it was that little girl again. It was. “T watch you from kitchen, mister. You still want gorhl, maybe you want I be real good for one dollar.” Her voice pleaded, but without a beggar’s professional tone . . . like any little kid asking for a piece of candy or an ice cream cone. “Nah, kid, get out of here, willya!” WINTER, 1962 “Maybe six bits, eh? I be good for six bits, mister.” “Tell you what, kid. How about taking this four-bit piece... just as a present from me. For your birthday or something.” “No take nothing for nothing! But I be good for four bits if you want. O. K.?” What’s a guy going to do when he can’t get it through somebody’s head that some things aren’t charity, but some kind of friendship giving? Here this little girl figured it was begging unless she did something in return for the money. What’s a guy going to do, anyway? I decided to make it a dollar for her. “Look, kid. In the States we’ve got a saint, see, that makes us give a dollar to some chica or chico every week. If we don’t, we don’t get to heaven. See what I mean?” In the dim light I could see her eyes reflect reverence and respect at the mention of a saint. “See, if you don’t let me give you this dollar, you’ll get me in trouble with the saint. O. K., kid?” I slipped the bill into her dirty fingers and watch- ed her for a moment. A tear nudged its way down her cheek as she whispered, “Gracias ... senor. Say your saint that I love her.’’ She crossed herself, and I hur- ried toward main street and the border gate. Near the gate I passed several small leather- goods shops. From inside one came a shrill voice in loud, rushed American accent. “Oh, George! Just look at this be-a-utiful purse—and only four dollars. Won’t Elsie simply die when I get back and tell her what I paid for it!” I handed the guard the two-cent fee and slipped through the gate, back into the States and away from the pleading of dirty little fingers. 19 a short story By RICHARD TAYLOR Fs as we were about to enter the railroad sta- tion my sister Marie stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. “Jimmy, how much money do you have left?” she asked. I reached into my pocket and took out the re- mainder of the money my father had given me when Marie and I left Somerset. “Three dollars. Dad only had eight left out of his pension check, you know. It’s pretty near the end of the month.” “Well, may I have it, please? I saw something in a store back there that I need for the kids. You don’t have to go back; you can wait here in the station. We've got lots of time before the train leaves.” Marie took the money that I held out to her and walked off down Broadway. I stood in the doorway a moment wanting to buy a newspaper from the rack under the marquee until I remem- bered that the half dollar I had been saving in my watch pocket would be needed for cab fare when Marie and I got home to Somerset that night. I went on through the door. The waiting room was stuffy, but it was warm- er than the streets where we had window-shopped all afternoon. There were lots of servicemen on their way back to camp from Christmas leave. Some of them couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than I was. I saw a college student sitting on a bench with a shiny suitcase plastered with stickers in front of him. He had his feet propped on the suitcase, and he was read- ing what looked like a textbook from which he looked up abruptly every little while to glance at a group of soldiers who laughed and talked and tapped their feet and ground out half-smoked cigarettes under the heels of their polished boots. A young couple with two children sat on the bench opposite me. The husband, his elbows on the arm rests and his hands clasped slackly 20 across his stomach, gazed openly at the passers-by, following their progress through the station until his attention would be attracted to someone near- er. His shoulders were bent forward and down- ward, and his hands were grey-white on the backs, shading off to stark white knuckles and ending in black rimmed fingernails. I thought he was probably a coal miner. His wife held a baby on her lap while it drank milk from a bottle. A little boy was on the floor in front of them. He crawled back and forth across their shoes for a while until his mother reached down suddenly to pull him up from the dirty floor. As she bent forward, the baby lost his grasp on the bottle, and it crashed to the floor, splashing the milk across the man’s shoes. The baby began to cry, and the man, his wandering attention brought abruptly to his family, drew the little boy roughly from the floor into his lap. The boy began to cry. There had been nothing kind about that day Marie and I had spent in Louisville. The weather had been depressingly solemn, and the city had worn that air of finality—of things being over and done with—that always mark those few days between Christmas and New Year’s. I wished that Marie would come back and I wished that it were time to leave. I wondered again, as I had off and on all day, what she would do now that she had come home again to Somerset. I wished that I had bought the paper so that I could read and not think about her. Three days before, after her husband had put her on the bus in Louisville, Marie had come home with her two children and a suitcase full of soiled clothing. That night at the bus depot was the last time she saw Phil; he had simply disappeared, and she had no idea where he had gone. Things had looked pretty good for Phil and Marie just after they were married. Phil THE REBEL still had some money left from his army pay, and they hadn’t had the children then. About a month after they married, Phil quit his job in Somerset and took Marie to Harlan with him where he went to work in the mines. That was the first time they moved; the time they came here to Louisville was the last one. In between, there had been a whole series of moves from one small Ken- tucky town to another. Phil had tried a lot of jobs, but he had either quit or been fired from all of them. He had never been able to get enough money ahead to get out of debt after the children came, and some of his creditors had written to my father about the bills. There wasn’t anything my folks could do, though; I was still in high school, and my father had no income except his pension. A couple of times, when Phil had been out of work for a long while, he brought the fam- ily to stay with us while he looked for a job. My mother blamed Phil for not keeping a job and for not taking care of his family as she thought he should. She had cried about the way Marie had to live and the places she had to live in. About two months back, after they had lived with us for the second time, Phil announced that he had found a good job in Louisville, and my folks loaned him the money to move again. My mother told him not to come back until he could support his family decently. She said that he was a liar and couldn’t do anything except invent schemes to fool Marie. She blamed Marie for believing him. Now that Phil had sent the family home and hadn’t shown up himself, my mother believed he -had abandoned them, and she had made me come to Louisville with Marie to help her bring her things home. I hadn’t wanted to come because Marie was pretty miserable and I was afraid she would feel worse when we left Somerset. But I didn’t have much choice since my father was sick and somebody had to go. I was almost glad, when I saw the room Phil and Marie had rented, that my father hadn’t come. The place was a lot worse than either of the places where they had lived in Barbourville or Manches- ter. The room was dim and cold, and we didn’t stay there any longer than it took to make a bun- dle of the bed clothes and fill a box with Marie’s hotplate and some odds and ends of dishes. There wasn’t any furniture to bother with because it had been lost in a flood when they lived in Pine- ville. We got the canary too. Phil and Marie had bought it the day they came to Louisville. It was a pitiful sight to me, but it was alive, huddled in WINTER, 1962 a shoebox Phil had fixed for it to live in. The box had air holes punched through the top, and it had some shredded newspaper inside. After three days in the box, the canary had made a mess of the paper. It was wet where the water cup had been spilled, and it was matted with ma- nure and crumbs. The canary reminded me of a puppy Phil had bought when the children were still pretty small. They had fondled and mauled it so much that it had finally sickened and died. I was glad to get away from that room although I was embarrassed having to walk back to the station with those boxes and the bundle of bed- ding. We left the canary box and the other things in a locker at the station since we still had several hours to wait, but if I had thought it could live in the city, I would have turned the bird loose. Not all of Marie’s belongings had been in the room; there were still some packages to be picked up at the bus depot which was about six blocks from the train station. Phil had left the things at the bus depot when he sent Marie home because she hadn’t been able to manage them along with her suitcase and the children. He had promised to bring them down with him the next day after he met his payday at International Harvester where he worked. It was when he didn’t show up with them that Marie had become worried. She called the people who lived in the room next to hers, but they hadn’t seen Phil for several days. She and Phil had had a phone of their own when they first came to Louisville, and Marie had called home every week, but the telephone company dis- connected it later because Phil couldn’t pay the bill. After she talked to her neighbor, Marie called the personnel manager at the factory where Phil worked, and that was when she learned that he had never been employed there at all. It was noon when we reached the bus depot, and it was even more crowded than the railroad station had been. Marie and I went to the locker where Phil had left the things, and I opened it with the key Marie had found in her room that morning. There was nothing inside except a slip of paper with a date and some numbers on it. I guessed that after the twenty-four hour check- ing period had expired the things had been picked up by the maintenance men. With the crowd of travelers in the depot the employees were pretty busy, but I finally located a man who unlocked the lost-and-found room and gave me the packages. I had not known what they were until then, and when I saw them, two gaily printed cartons with a toy train and a little girl’s tea set inside, I felt pretty bad. 21 “My God! It’s the kids’ Christmas presents!’ I cried. The man stood holding the doorknob waiting for me to move so he could close the room. He had to get back to his regular work in the baggage room. “Yeah, I thought about them Christmas presents when I found ’em,” he said. “TI figured somebody’d hidden ’em here and forgot to pick "em up.” I took the toys back to the waiting room where Marie had stayed, and I wished that they had been wrapped or had been in a sack so that she wouldn’t be reminded of the children. I didn’t enjoy looking at them myself, and when I reached Marie I immediately suggested that we go to lunch, hoping that would keep her from thinking about the presents. She hardly mentioned them though, and I was relieved. We went to Walgreen’s for lunch. There was a restaurant next to the drug store, and Marie wanted to eat there because she and Phil had eaten there not long after they were married. They had come to Louisville then to celebrate a large bonus Phil had gotten through the Veterans Administration. He had been a prisoner of war in North Africa and Europe for almost the whole duration, and that was what the bonus was for. He had told me lots of interesting stories about the war, but I had never been able to get him to tell me about those months he had spent under the Germans. Anyway, after I explained to Marie that we couldn’t afford to eat at the restaurant, she was willing to settle for the lunch counter. I could tell that she was disappointed, but I couldn’t help it. We finished lunch and walked up Fourth Street to the river, looking in store windows and occa- sionally going into a store to look at the left over Christmas merchandise and decorations. At the river, we crossed the street and spent an hour walking down that side. When we came back to Broadway, we decided to go back to the train station and wait. On the way, Marie stopped in a couple of stores, and she saw a lot of things that I know she wanted to buy, but she didn’t say anything. I guess it was because I felt sorry for her when we were in those stores that I didn’t protest when she asked me for the last of the money. I did feel sorry for her, and sitting there in the Union Sta- tion thinking about her suitation and the day we had spent in town made everything worse, espe- cially when I couldn’t think of anything to do about it all. I would be glad when we were on the train going home. 22 Thinking about the train reminded me to check the time, and when I turned around to look at the clock, I saw Marie coming toward me across the waiting room. “T didn’t mean to be away so long,” she said, “but I had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted. I was going to buy a flashlight that Phil had been wanting for a long time, but it cost four dollars, so I didn’t get it. And then, at that last store where we stopped, I found this.” She handed me a book, and I read its title: A Pictorial History of Old Louisville. “It leoks like a pretty interesting book,” I said, and I leaf- ed through the pages. I tried not to imagine what my folks would say when they saw it. “TI thought Phil would like it. You know how he is about books.” “It’s a nice book,’ I replied, because I didn’t know what else to say. I looked through it a moment longer and handed it back. “I guess I’d better get the things out of the locker. They’ll announce the train any minute now, so why don’t you take the toys and walk down to the gate. Maybe we won’t have to stand in line very long.” I waited until she had gathered up the toys and her book and had started toward the gate. The lockers were not far from my bench, and I opened ours and took out Marie’s things. I set the bundle and the box of dishes on the floor and held the canary box in my hand. Its bottom was limp and soggy against my palm. When I reached inside to see if the canary was still alive, I felt him brush my hand as he tried to get away from it. He struggled, and he smeared manure on my hand with his feet, but I caught him and took him out into the light. I held him in my hand, his back against my palm, and he blinked in the station lights. I watched him for a moment, and I looked at his box in my other hand, feeling its dampness and smelling the faint acrid ammonia of the bird droppings. Then, without really thinking about it, I closed my thumb and forefinger on his neck. I held them tightly pinched together until he stopped struggling and his eyes were closed. I put the dead bird back into his box and pushed the bundle and the other box away from the locker with my foot. When I moved them the locker door swung shut with a soft bump, and the row of lockers was flat and smooth again. On the way to the gate I dropped the shoebox into a trash can and went on to where Marie was waiting. I told her that the bird must have suf- focated in the locker. I couldn’t tell her that I had killed it because I couldn’t think of any reason why I had. THE REBEL © < = ‘ shes your taste — o™ r SP et », veer ay * ef shane Ee a yet Lae} 2 # a ‘ ey ok " o ist x : * ‘ -menthol fresh: 7240.4 ur. 1S Springtint, ‘so terethingt the sound of enrich a waterfall in springtime and the soft coolness around it. . . like the rich toba cco taste smoke of a Salem cigarette. Special High Porosity paper “air-softens” J modern filter, too every rich-tasting puff . . . Smoke refreshed . . . smoke Salem! Created by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company J ‘are