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REBEL
Spring 1964
EAST CAROLINA COLLEGE
GREENVILLE, N. C.
REBEL
Spring 1964
EAST CAROLINA COLLEGE
GREENVILLE, N. C.
LZ 260d " burjaaj-s2a0 jyaq :Aapjor
EDITORIAL
Actually this should not be entitled oedi-
torial?; oepilogue?, perhaps"epilogue to
my four years on the magazine or opro-
logue?"prologue to the coming year, but
not oeditorial.? In fact I have never felt
editorials merited space in the magazine.
A literary magazine should be concerned
with the exhibition of its literature. If the
literature expresses its significance, then
there is no need for an apologetic or divert-
ing editorial.
The editorial is just a public exhibition
of a Hobby-Horse. The rider seldom dis-
mounts to examine his Horse for he assumes
it is a thoroughbred when all too often it is
apparent that he sits astraddle a much used
saw horse. Significant Hobby-Horse riding
remains as unnoticed as the whismy of a
silly grinning Felix the Cat, whose unneces-
sary appearances in the magazine have gone
unmentioned by our readers.
Felix the Cat is blatantly on the cover of
this, the Spring issue of the REBEL Liter-
ary Magazine to proclaim that our literature
cannot be compromised.
STAFF
Editor
J. ALFRED WILLIS
Fiction Editor
ROBERT WIGINGTON
Book Review Editor
SARA McCorKLE
Copy Editor
DWIGHT PEARCE
Business Manager
ToM SPEIGHT
Art Staff
Durry ToLer, Bia CHIEF
LovuIs JONES
Doua LATTA
BEN HILL
Typists, Proofreaders, and Exchange
JAN COWARD
JAMES FORSYTH
ROBERT GATLING
HELEN JENNINGS
HELEN C. McARTHUR
Don NELSON
FRIEDA WHITE
DAWNE WHELIHAN
MARKEY WILLIS
Faculty Advisor
Ovip WILLIAMS PIERCE
Circulation
ALPHA PHI OMEGA FRATERNITY
Member Associated
Collegiate Press
VOLUME VII
oSPRING, 1964 ___ NUMBER 3
THE REBEL
EDITORIAL 1
FEATURE
Interview with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy 4
FICTION
Bimini, a recollection by Peter Hellman 7
Careful, Sharp Eggs Underfoot, a short story
by Doris Betts oer +
POETRY |
Keeper of the Dream, by Richard Clement Wood 26
Gulls, by Peter F. Neumeyer 29
The Picnic Wine, by Ulrich Troubetzkoy 30
CRITICISM
The Promise of Power, by B. Tolson Willis 32
ART
Jolly: Left-Over Feeling 21
REBEL REVIEWS an
Reviews by Mary Jane Jones, James Forsyth,
Don Tracy, and Albert Pertalion.
COVER
Duffy Toler
PHOTOGRAPHY
By Fred Robertson, Donald L. Durland, and
Bill Weiderbacher.
The REBEL is a quarterly publication of East Carolina
College. Editorial and business offices are located on the
campus at 306144 Austin Building. Inquiries and contribu-
tions should be directed to P. O. Box 2486, East Carolina
College Station, Greenville, North Carolina. Manuscripts
submitted by mail should be accompanied by a self-addressed
envelope and return postage. The publishers assume no re-
sponsibility for the return of contributions.
Robert Kennedy has acquired a considerable
reputation as the driving force in investigating
and frequently indicting Teamster Boss James
Hoffa; he is hated in the South for the pressure
he has exerted for civil rights; he is one of the
ablest politicians in the Democratic Party; and
he is a moral man. He has written two books,
The Enemy Within and Just Friends and Gentle
Enemies, the former dealing with labor unions
and the latter describing his world trip he made
for his brother in 1961.
This interview took place in the office of the
Attorney General through the efforts of Mr.
Henry Oglesby, secretary to the Honorable Her-
bert C. Bonner, member of the House of Repre-
sentatives from the First District.
Juterview with
Attorney General ROBERT F. KENNEDY
Interviewer: In the treatment of crime and vio-
lence by the movies, television and some popular
literature, it appears that the tendency is to con-
done violation of law by emphasizing a psycho-
logical complexity of motives. Do you feel that
the removal of clear-cut distinctions from ques-
tions of public morality has visibly contributed to
any compromise or breakdown in our national mor-
al fiber?
Mr. Kennedy: Well, I think probably television
and some television programs have an adverse
effect, but overall they do not. And I donTt think
4
that there is a great breakdown of the moral
fiber in the United States. Each generation is
apt to emphasize this because there are new prob-
lems that come along to deal with. Generally the
country is doing well. The young people are
ready to make a contribution if they are given
an opportunity to do so. The activities of the
Peace Corps abroad attest to this. There are
many young people around the country who are
doing things that are positive. There is some
lack of courage, but we have had such problems
in every stage in our history. I am thinking of
Daniel Webster who wrote the letter to the bank
THE REBEL
asking it to refresh his retainer while he was a
leading Senator in the United States.
Interviewer: From what non-fiction book do
you feel you have learned most about the South?
Who is your favorite Southern writer of fiction,
and why?
Mr. Kennedy: Bruce Catton and his books on
the Civil War. As to Southern fiction writers, I
donTt know if I think about people as to what part
of the country they are from. I donTt think of
anybody as a Northern or Southern writer. Per-
haps Tennessee Williams, but other than one or
two like him I donTt identify anyone as particu-
larly Southern.
Interviewer: We have here a copy of an act to
regulate visiting speakers at State-supported in-
stitutions which was enacted into law by the 1963
State Legislature of North Carolina. Would you
care to make any comments regarding it?
Mr. Kennedy: I donTt think it would be wise
for me to comment on a state law, but generally
itTs good for young people, particularly, to hear
speakers on any and all subjects. I think college
students are mature enough to make a judgment
for themselves.
An individual should be identified for what he
is. For example a communist should be identified
as a member of the Communist party. If he
isnTt, I think that that poses some difficult prob-
lems. But as long as everybody knows the subject
matter and the background of the particular
individual who is going to speak I donTt see that
thereTs any great danger or problem about it,
particularly for college students. They are ma-
ture enough to make their own judgments.
If a college student is going to become a
communist just because he is persuaded by
the first communist he hears, I donTt think
that the college is very good or that the
individual is very sound, anyway. I think
that college students, generally, should be able
to hear, listen, talk with people no matter
what they might advocate, propose, or promote
"they can make their own judgment. I donTt
think it shows much confidence in your students
if you have it otherwise.
Interviewer: Should the suppression of porno-
graphic literature be handled by some law enforce-
SPRING, 1964
ment agency of the federal government other than
and in addition to the Postal authorities?
Mr. Kennedy: Well, I think the Post Office
Department is probably best. The Department
of Justice enforces the law barring interstate
transmission of pornographic literature, so we
have certain responsibilities. But I think that
between the Postal Department and the Depart-
ment of Justice we probably handle it as satis-
factorily as it can be. It is a very difficult area,
because it involves censorship. It may be legiti-
mate censorship, but itTs censorship. So it poses
a problem.
Interviewer: Do you think racial disturbance
has been intensified by the coverage of mass med-
ia? Has the completeness of coverage by news
media in troubled spots, such as New Orleans and
others, overdramatized the situation and contribu-
ted to the complexity of the problem? Would you
care to compare the coverage of incidents connect-
ed with integration in the North and in the South?
Mr. Kennedy: I think that racial disturbances
probably have been intensified by the fact that
theyTve received a good deal of attention in public.
I think thatTs probably natural. Frequently the
demonstration or the disturbance grows and
spreads because of the attention it gets in the
newspaper. And then that, in turn, increases the
newspaper coverage, and that, in turn, increases
the demonstration or the intensity of the demon-
stration. It is difficult in a free society such as
ours to avoid this.
There sometimes has been a lack of responsi-
bility by some news media, and sometimes by
those running the demonstration. But generally,
I would say it is difficult to avoid and not the
major problem that we have to face.
When I think back on the demonstrations, they
werenTt initiated or originated because of the
fact that they were going to be covered by the
news media. ItTs had an effect on them, perhaps,
but thatTs not the basic problem.
Frequently the papers in the North play up
the incidents in the South, and that was true par-
ticularly up until September of T63 when they
began to realize that there were problems in
Northern communities as well. Southern com-
munities give a good deal of attention to those
incidents in the North, and sometimes I think
that the stories in connection with the incidents
are distorted by both areas of the country.
Interviewer: Do you feel that the maximum of
violence in resisting integration has passed in the
South, or in other words, that the South has al-
ready moved into a later phase in which acceptance
is regarded as inevitable?
Mr. Kennedy: Well, I think we could stil] have
some violence in the South. I think that there is
more acceptance of the necessity of obeying court
orders and the law in some areas than there was
before, but thereTs still a good deal of opposition"
in some parts of the North as well. I donTt think
that itTs unique with the South. There has been
~progress made in both areas, generally, but I
think that there are still some difficult problems.
Interviewer: What geographical areas in the
South will be the last in which integration is ef-
fectively accomplished?
Mr. Kennedy: I think the area thatTs most
difficult and where thereTs most opposition is
Mississippi.
Interviewer: Do you think that the integration
movement has lost some of the support, or sym-
pathy, it has had from moderates because of the
militancy of some of the integration leadership
policies?
Mr. Kennedy: Well, again I think it varies from
area to area whether the integration movement
has lost support and sympathy from moderates.
Probably in some areas it has and some areas
it has not. Any time you have disruption such
as is going on in the fight for equal rights, you
are going to have things that are done that are
unpleasant. People are going to disturb people.
But I think generally in the country there is
sympathy with the ideal that those involved are
attempting to meet and to find solutions. And
I think that the demonstrations have undoubted-
ly focused more attention on the problem than
it otherwise would have received. For instance,
the interest in obtaining the passage of the Civil
Rights legislation probably wouldnTt be present
if some of the demonstrations hadnTt taken place
over the past three years.
Interviewer: ~The Department of Justice fre-
quently acts as a friend of the court in cases in
which the government is interested. How active-
ly do they participate in segregation cases, and
could you elaborate?
6
Mr. Kennedy: Well, it varies. In some cases
we become involved and some cases we do not. It
varies in particular cases.
Interviewer: It has been Suggested in connec-
tion with the Bobby Baker case that the constitu-
tion be amended so as to prevent a public officer
from using the Fifth Amendment to prevent in-
criminating himself for things which grow out of
the conduct of his public office. Do you think this
Should be done?
Mr. Kennedy: I think itTs very disturbing for
a public official or public officer to take the Fifth
Amendment to prevent incriminating himself,
but I think that he should have the same protec-
tion as other citizens. I wouldnTt have anybody,
obviously, working for the United States Gov-
ernment who took the Fifth Amendment in con-
nection with his public responsibilities. But I
think that as an individual he should have the
Same protection as anyone else. I wouldnTt
amend the Constitution, in other words, to deal
just with public officials.
Interviewer: How do you think wire tapping
and similar methods of investigation can best be
used by federal law enforcement officers without
doing damage to First Amendment freedoms?
Mr. Kennedy: I donTt think that wire tapping
should be used. Wire tapping can be used by
the Department of Justice in national security
cases, but I think otherwise it should not be used.
And I donTt think the law is adequate to deal
with the problem. Because Section 605 of the
Federal Communications Act is complicated, it
is difficult to get any prosecutions for indiscrimi-
nate wire tapping. WeTve suggested legislation
to clarify the law. It would make wire tapping
illegal, except for law enforcement officials
acting against a few clearly specified crimes, such
as espionage and kidnapping. And even this
limited wire tapping could be done only under
court order. But unless this measure should be
passed, generally, as the law stands at the pres-
ent time, I donTt think wire tapping should be
used except in national security cases. That has
been the policy that has existed in the Depart-
ment of Justice since 1940.
I donTt know what you had in mind by osimilar
methods of investigation.? But I think it would
be wrong to break into somebodyTs house and put
a machine in there to listen to a conversation.
THE REBEL
BIMINI
A Recollection by Peter Hellman
The Florida coast passed below"a _ spatter
of white roofs on a green base, cut off at the
ocean by a stripe of beach whiter than the roofs.
Fifty miles into the South Atlantic, on the inner
fringe of the Bahamas, lay the island of Bimini,
where I was going to fish for bonefish. The
receding shoreline slowly lost shape and depth,
its texture turned grainy and bright color sapped
by a haze deepening with the distance, until there
remained only a hairline smudge on an otherwise
flawless joining of sea and sky.
A brown stewardess in a white blouse propped
her rear against the arm rest of a forward aisle
seat and anchored her feet under the seat across
the aisle. An arm gesturing with a cigarette
was the only visible portion of the man in that
seat, and as it motioned, the girl laughed often.
She came back once toward my seat, looking over
her shoulder and laughing while the arm made
a finishing gesture. She bent and asked what
I would like to drink, a large grin across her face
not directed at me. I was dressed in shorts and
favorite polo shirt, looked. no older than I was,
and rated no deference, real or pretended. I
spent the trip looking carefully for any large
fish that might be close to the surface, as I do
on railroad bridges above rivers and bays.
The island of Bimini first appeared just on
the inside of the horizon at the head of an ir-
regular network of wisps and patches of coral
and earth which poked above the surface for
spaces of several acres, gave out covers of green-
ery, then trailed off gently back into the sea.
SPRING, 1964
Bimini is actually a cluster of two islands set in
a lime-colored, then abruptly blue sea. North
Bimini, a green island banded in white, is the
center of all activity. Its roofs were smaller
and better ordered than those on the mainland.
South Bimini, used only for its airstrip, was
green without a mark.
The islandTs border of alternating ribbons of
sand and coral reflected and intensified the morn-
ing sunlight, so that as we banked to the east,
and the plane of the earth was thrust up before
us at a hard angle, a shining white diagonal
crossed my round window and separated the
crisp and fluid greens of island and sea.
The plane was old, and when the landing flaps
went down the wings began to vibrate so violent-
ly that a bird might have been beating them. A
heavy growth of trees pressed closely on each
side of the landing strip. We landed with a large
bounce and several small ones. The close foliage
rushed by for a moment until the holes in the
runway slowed us down. We stopped in front
of a small wooden house painted white. A sign
said BIMINI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.
When the other people had gotten off, I took
my three fishing rods, tackle box and small suit-
case, and walked down the steps to Bimini. I
followed the others into the little white house. A
black man in a white uniform sat at a big desk
with nothing on it. He welcomed us to Bimini.
We went around to the back of the little house
and got into an old bus. A colored boy my own
age drove the bus without wearing shoes. The
7
road was dirt, and there were only the wide
tread marks of the bus on it. The land was not
bleak, but it was not the image of the tropical
island I had expected to see"lush with ferns,
coiling vines, and palms. We jounced past three
goats standing in a row staring at us. The land-
scape looked like Virginia in a summer month
with good rain.
The road ended in a turning circle, bounded
on the outside by a pair of concentric circular
ruts, and grown over in the middle with grass and
a few flowers. On the periphery of the circle
the ground sloped gently lower, beginning the
basin of a luminous blue lagoon, enclosed on the
~ opposite side by the docks and white shingled
buildings of Alicetown.
A ferry boat with straight back wooden seats
and a canopy that made it look like the top half
of an old touring car took us across the lagoon.
The boy who drove the bus also piloted the ferry.
He wore a white cap with an embroidered blue
anchor, but still no shoes. I took a seat along
the railing. I looked over the side and saw a
group of tiny fish cavorting around a mooring
post, looking as if they had escaped from an
aquarium. There were some with stripes and some
solid colored, and some that were phosphores-
cent. Many roamed in little bands, while others
preferred to wander by themselves. Tiny fish
chased tinier fish around the pole. They moved
in very quick straight-line bursts. The phos-
phorescent fish resembled comets. Different
colors and shapes mingled freely. They acted
like children running around a Maypole.
The engine cranked and the fish fled. The boat
moved across the lagoon slowly. The water was
almost supernaturally clear, but when I focused
on a single spot on the bottom in order to see
its composition, patterns of light and shadow
leaped across the spot, and then the boat was
past it. The water was without color, yet radiant
with blue light, like glassware which is colorless
when held up to light, but imparts color to liquid
when filled. The sun was high in the sky and
bright, but the source of the waterTs radiance
seemed to be below. Instead of shining down, the
light shone up. I felt as if the little boat was
floating between a pair of skies full of light.
The boy ran the boat straight into the dock,
which was buttressed with ragged tires. We
bounced so far back that we had to come in again.
I was the first to walk off the boat. A black man
at the foot of the ramp, whom I nearly gouged
with the three rods, asked if I needed a guide.
8
I said yes. He said he was the man. I asked him
if he were ready to go fishing at once. He said
yes. His name was Clarence. I gave my suitcase
and two dimes to a little colored boy, and sent
him off to the hotel where I had made reserva-
tions.
The tide was high. Bonefish move into the
tidal flats when the water is flat and the tide
is low, and sweep along the sandy bottom sucking
up small shellfish, When their mouths tip down
to filter the food out of the sand, their tails neces-
sarily tip up, and this portion is visible in the
shallow water of the flats. At high tide the fish
move out into the channels and are not easily
caught.
Clarence suggested that we fish for barracuda
until the tide was lower. We settled into his
skiff and sped around to a wooded section of the
island. Clarence took a white rag from under-
neath his seat and tore off a piece several inches
long. He impaled one end on a long shanked
bright nickel hook. The hook was attached to a
length of wire leader. The leader, hook, and rag
were connected to my line. My tackle was very
light. Clarence gunned the motor a bit and told
me to cast. I was intent on giving the appearance
of a relaxed and skilled angler. I brought the
rod tip over my shoulder without hurrying and
sent it arching forward with a compressed mo-
tion of the wrist. The little white rag shot across
a hundred feet of water and cropped without a
splash. I felt like smiling but yawned instead.
We moved through the channel at low speed.
I was considering and rejecting questions to
ask Clarence, when my rod bent almost double
and line began to be stripped from the spool.
The violence of the strike was astonishing,
Clarence gave a sharp command to start reeling.
I began to pump the handle madly. The opposing
force was sullen and very strong. Fifty feet
behind the boat a silver shape erupted from the
water, flexed, and shot straight down again.
The steady tension of the line soon gave way to
uneven spurts. Twenty feet from the boat the
fish erupted again. This time he danced on top
of the water, gills flared and head shaking. Little
bursts of light reflected from his sides. I yanked
him along in the air all the way to the side of
the boat. Clarence shot an arm out, grabbed the
line just above the wire leader, and jerked the
furious barracuda over the side. He whacked it
solidly on the head with a piece of black iron pipe.
The fish arched up until only its nose and tail
touched the bottom of the boat, shuddered along
THE REBEL
its full length, and sagged flat.
I stared at my prize. Teeth shaped like rail-
road spikes stuck out randomly from beneath
its lips. While I watched, the mouth opened
slowly until it was very wide, as if it were having
a good yawn, and clanked shut suddenly. I
thought this was how a skeleton would sound
dancing on a plank floor. The end of the white
rag hung from its lower lip, speared by a single
tooth.
Clarence whacked the fish again, wedging its
head under one foot, and worked the hook from
its jaw. Then, with his foot still on its head, he
cut a strip of white meat from its back and ran
a hook through a tip, as we had done with the
rag. I cast again. The bait was struck almost at
once. This was a heavier fish than the first, and
it charged along the bottom without coming up
to jump. It was a long time before I brought him
close to the boat. My arm was tired. He lay
like a torpedo under the boat. As Clarence
reached for the end of the wire leader, a flurry
of long shadow crisscrossed my fish. The line,
taut so long, went slack. Clarence pulled up
the head of the barracuda, cleanly sheared at
the gills. He said that probably its own mother
had eaten it. The head lay in the bottom of the
boat and clanked its teeth.
We caught four more barracuda, bringing
them in quickly once they were within reach. I
felt as if our boat were a castle and the water
about it a moat where instead of fish, crocodiles
lurked.
We anchored in a shallow bay and ate lunch.
Clarence took a knapsack from under the prow,
and produced four sandwiches and two bottles
of root beer. I sank down into the bottom of
the boat and rested the widest part of my back
against the bench seat. The sun was bright but
not hot. There were no clouds and no birds. I
sat still in the still boat and let my brain sort
out the flood of images it had registered since
morning. A complex of flat bays formed out of
strings and wisps of land stretched all about us.
Here the shallow water seemed to take on its
special luster from the bright white sand base,
perhaps as a mirror does from a silver backing.
Ribbons of very dark water coursed through broad
areas of lighter water; these were the channels
from which we took the barracuda.
Clarence drank his root beer slowly, tipping
the bottle high up but keeping his head level, and
jutting out his lower jaw to accommodate the
inverted head of the bottle. He kept the bottle
SPRING, 1964
propped up in this position for long moments,
allowing the liquid to fizz and trickle until his
mouth was full. Then, still without moving his
head, he focused both dark eyes on the level of
the root beer and swallowed. A bubble appeared
in the inverted head of the bottle and, growing
rapidly as it rose, it erupted on the surface with
a blurp. The dark eyes shifted off into space,
and the trickle and the fizz began again.
At length the bottle was emptied and returned
to the knapsack, and we both sat still. There was
neither wind nor movement. My arms were warm
and deeply browning. Clarence sat with elbows
on knees and chin on hands, looking about alert-
ly, though at nothing in particular. The whites
of his eyes provided a highly lustered ground
between dark skin and dark pupils to set off
his eye movements strikingly.
After a while Clarence said that the tide was
low enough to begin hunting for bonefish. He
cut the wire leader from the line we had used
for barracuda and substituted a long length of
fine nylon, looped at one end and rigged to a
small bronzed hook at the other. He took a live
grass shrimp from a papier-mache bucket hidden
in the shadow of the seat and slipped the hook
slightly through its tail. The little animal drew
up its body like a man punched in the groin.
Clarence dropped it back into the pail and pushed
it back out of the sun.
He knelt and jerked the outboard into motion.
We crossed the bay at high speed. Just when it
seemed we would dash headlong against the
side of the island, we entered a tiny waterway
with the suddeness that an express train enters
a tunnel, but instead of a rush of blackened ma-
sonry and red light bulbs, green foliage and
bright flowers swept close by the sides of the
boat. Ahead, all that betrayed the presence of
water was a leaf here and there, lying gently on
air.
We burst into a broad sand flat as abruptly as
we had entered the narrow waterway. Clarence
cut the motor and hoisted it from the water,
letting our momentum carry us well beyond the
shoreline. He put on a pair of sunglasses, then
slipped a bamboo pole from under the gunnel
and stood up straight on his bench seat, legs bent
a little forward, trunk tipped a little back. He
leaned against the pole to push us off, and began
to scan the water intently. We had begun to
hunt.
In a low voice, while his eyes swept the water,
Clarence warned me not to make banging noises
9
and to speak quietly, as he was. We might see
a hundred fish, but more probably, one fish. We
might see his tail tipped up as he feeds on the
bottom, or we might see normally clear water
a little clouded, where the fish had fled moments
before. We might not see any fish for a long
time. Bonefish are nervous and wary by nature,
and any noise made against the side of the boat
will send them dashing from the area at once.
I should be able to see the fish when it is pointed
out to me. If not, I will cast in the direction of
the pointed finger as far as I can. I will not be
be casting at the fish, but in the direction the fish
will probably move in his feeding pattern. Even
~ though the fish has had no dealings with man, he
knows the danger. The bait must be lying in a
natural fashion when he first takes notice. If
he accepts the bait, he will suck it up slowly, roll
it about in his mouth, and perhaps savor it for
a moment. Several seconds will elapse between
the moment he first nudges the bait and the mo-
ment I strike. The inner part of the fishTs mouth
is tough, and a firm strike is necessary to set the
hook well. When the fish first feels the sting
of the hook, he will accelerate to full speed almost
at once. I must not nestle the line in the crook
of my index finger, as I do normally, The taut
line will have the speed and efficiency of a power
saw.
I tried to follow the path of ClarenceTs gaze
with my own. Immediately about the boat the
water was of flawless clarity. There was no hint
of where the curve of the hull met the waterline.
The bottom was white sand, finely grained. But
the broad area that Clarence searched was a
shimmering surface of blue and silver, no more
transparent than molten metal. I narrowed my
eyes until the tips of my lashes meshed, and the
shimmer exploded into a flutter of prismatic hues.
I looked down at my brown arms and my eyes
enjoyed the rest.
Far out in the flat a dull black object canceled
a portion of the blue and silver shimmer, and
seemed to stir. I would have thought it was
something inanimate being flexed gently by the
wind, had there been a wind. I looked again to be
sure I really saw it, and asked Clarence what it
was. He said that it was a manta ray, perhaps
ten feet across, which was dozing in water too
shallow to cover him completely, waiting for the
tide to float him. It seemed remarkable that we
shared our bay with this strange animal which
flexed black wings broader than our boat.
I alternated between trying to follow ClarenceTs
10
gaze with my own, watching the white sand be-
neath the boat, and finally looking down at my
brown arms. After a long time Clarence got down
from his seat and knelt again at the motor. Soon
we were racing through another narrow water-
way, the water in front invisible, the water behind
a froth, and the foliage on each side a blur of
green punctuated by spots of bright color.
We entered another flat, this one smaller than
the first. Clarence cut the motor, took his pole
from under the gunnel, and got back up on the
seat. I began my cycle of visual transitions
again.
In my mind I was constructing a scene 1n which
we had poled with stealth up to that monstrous
dozing manta, and had smashed him over the
head with an oar, and were towing him in triumph
back to the docks of Bimini, when I looked up
and saw the veins in ClarenceTs neck stand out.
His head, which for many hours had been making
sweeps from right to left with the regularity
of a swinging electric fan, stopped moving. Clar-
ence lifted his arm and pointed. Quietly I rose
and let my eyes be drawn along the line of the
motionless arm. I looked with all the intensity
I could gather. What Clarence saw I could not.
The water shimmered as before. I squinted until
the shimmer became a rainbow again. Clarence
put his arm back on the pole and pushed us off
silently. I stooped and picked up the rod. In
all the time I had thought about this trip, and
even in the hours we had been on the flats, I
had never really considered that the easy tempo
of the warm afternoon would suddenly be frozen
into this moment. In a small voice Clarence
told me to cast when he pointed again. I tried
to draw all my energy to my eyes. A dazzle of
blue and silver points of light blinked before me.
Just as the shimmer was about to explode into
color, Clarence, high on his seat, pointed. I
released the bail mechanism with one finger.
With great care I brought the rod tip over my
shoulder and let the bait fly. It sailed evenly out
in the direction of the outstretched arm and fell
lightly into the water. This was the place where
the fish should come next in his feeding pattern.
I clicked the bail into receiving position. Clar-
ence held his arm stiff and wiggled only his finger
and whispered, oSee him. See him. HeTs coming
..T I looked and could not see. The arm swung
closer to the spot where my bait lay. I was set
to explode. The arm closed the angle. The rod
dipped very slightly and gently and stopped.
It dipped a little lower. Clarence jerked his head
THE. REBEL
back. I jerked the rod back. The line snapped
taut and tore off the spool. The hum of whirling
gears rose evenly from inside the reel. Out
beyond where the bait had lain the water was
silver, but my fish"at last I saw him"was silver
in motion. The sun and ripples on his back
made a trail of little bursts of silver as he raced.
I held the rod tightly and smiled at Clarence. He
smiled back, and even his teeth sparkled.
The fish had begun his dash with three hundred
yards of nylon on the spool. The drag was set
so that the line could be pulled off the spool by
a force just under its breaking point. The line
was being stripped away quickly and with ease.
Half was gone and the rest seemed to be going
faster. A wisp of smoke undulated about the
gear housing, the product of friction. The gears
spun on. I brought the rod tip up as much as I
dared, but the additional pressure did not cut
back the speed at which I was losing line. It
occurred to me that my fish might soon be racing
through the flats trailing three hundred yards of
nylon. oWhen do they usually stop?? I asked
Clarence. He only shrugged.
The first indication that the fish did not have
limitless energy was in the uneven hum of the
drag mechanism. The line began to move off in
spurts of speed accompanied by a hum that rose
to an urgent whine, then tapered off to a slower
speed and lower hum. The fish was becoming
more tired with each additional sprint, but -I was
literally also reaching the end of the line. When
half a dozen turns were left on the spool I raised
the rod above my shoulder with both hands and
forced it to arch to its limit. Somewhere out in
the flat my fish stopped. He did not know that
he was one lunge away from freedom. I began
to retrieve. The fish leaned the other way, but
he came. I pumped with deliberation. He made
defiant little dashes, taking with him several
yards of line that I had just won. I wound line
onto the spool and watched it stripped off. Each
time I stopped winding it gave my wrist a chance
to register additional protest against its work.
To start winding again required mounting effort.
A hundred yards away the water swirled, and
I saw my fish again, racing away.
I kept on retrieving. The ache in my wrist
crept to my elbow. My arm was not used to
the work. Very slowly the fish came closer. Now
I was able to watch his method of battle. When
I retrieved, he turned sideways against the flow
of the water and wriggled. After I had won a few
SPRING, 1964
new yards of line, he flipped his tail up sharply
and dug into the water with a kick that shot
him off in the direction from which he had just
come. When he had raced away with half of
what I had gained in the last exchange, he stopped,
and I began to wind again. My arm had become
a length of pain.
After a long time the fish was ten feet from
the boat. When he stopped for a moment to sulk
on the bottom, Clarence drew a long handled net
from under the seat and held it in readiness. The
fish looked up at the net, Clarence and me. We
looked down at him. All was still for a moment.
Then the fish pivoted around on his tail again,
and the sound of whirling gears rose as he sped
away.
He went a hundred yards. I was not prepared
for this. I thought how tired I was. Then I
thought how much I weighed and how little he
weighed, and I began to get my line back. This
was easier than the first time because my arm
did not protest any more. The numbness that
had first nudged the pain out of my wrist must
have continued up into my head, because when I
had brought the fish to the boat once more, and
he had looked at us and we at him, and he had
kicked up his tail and left again, I accepted with
serenity.
Perhaps the fish understood that quality of
serenity in my face when I brought him to the
boat the third time, and thought that, like a yogi,
I must have been beyond physical victory or de-
feat. Perhaps he was not thinking at all. In any
case he lingered too long. Clarence slipped the
net under him and lifted him from the water.
He lay in the net still and glistening, not under-
standing that he could not flick his tail and be
gone. Suddenly he thrashed violently, throwing
beads of water against my face.
Clarence swung the fish into the boat and put
him on the bottom. He was slim through the
shanks, tapering evenly at each end. In back,
the taper reversed into a flared fork tail. A
spray of green extended along the length of his
back, and all the rest was silver.
The engine roared, the boat swung around,
and we sped down the bay toward Alicetown.
I began to feel my muscles again, and the warmth
of the sun. I flopped down into the bottom of the
boat next to my beautiful fish, and lay my head
on my brown arm, so that the roar of the motor
and the rush of water were all that I heard, and
we could see each other eye to eye.
11
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CAREFULL, SHARP EGGS
UNDERFOOT
The long strip of white fabric, like a giantTs
bandage, was stretched high across the town
square. It moved slightly, not from any breeze
but because it rode on layers of heat waves rising
off the cracked asphalt street.
Everytime he drove his car under that banner,
Wink Thomas swore he would not read it again,
but each time his mind recaptured the words
no matter where he sent his eye to look. In
crooked red capitals the sign said, AINTT NO-
BODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS.
Thomas groaned at it anew, stomped the ac-
celerator and shot beneath the banner and into
his usual Main Street parking place. Daily he
fitted his car into an invisible rectangle at the
right curb, where all painted guide-lines had
long since worn away, and he prided himself on
parking precisely in the same spot every morning.
If the area were measured, Wink Thomas thought,
it wouldnTt vary two inches from day to day.
Locking the car, he walked past the grimy plate
glass windows of what had once been Main Street
Grocery & Notions, and was now his law office.
His image there was powdered with dust and he
stopped to frown at the dim reflection of his face
"eyes, a mouth, the rest was blurred. Below
that his body fell, almost crashed, down the curve
where a once husky chest was suspended below
his belt. He looked his 58 years, and the summer
heat had already wilted his suit and wet his
thin hair.
He wiped the dust from black lettering on the
glass door. This he did read, looking for flaws.
WRISTON PEALE THOMAS, JR. ATTORN-
EY AT LAW. PRESIDENT, PARSONVILLE
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. STATE SENA-
TOR, 1938-40. NOTARY PUBLIC.
\ SPRING, 1964
By DORIS BETTS
He shook his head. No, he still couldnTt see
what his daughter found wrong in all that infor-
mation on his door. oSome people wouldnTt
know,? he argued aloud now, and went in and
spoke Good Morning to Miss Ida Kay King at
the front desk.
oAnother scorcher,T Miss King said without
looking up from her novel.
Wink agreed that this summer was hotter than
last, quoted the weather predictions from the
car radio, and complained about the humidity.
She was no longer listening. With a forefinger
enclosed in a coating of lotion and tipped with
pink polish, she turned another page. For the
hundreth time, he almost asked her to leave those
library books at home. For the hundred-and-first
time he decided against it, opened the gate in the
low railing behind her desk and sat down at his
own.
Wink Thomas didnTt know why he persisted
in calling that thing a railing, as if it were
cousin to those polished ones dividing Federal
courtrooms. Everybody in town knew it was
only the porch bannister off the decaying old
Richards house, and half the male population
of Parsonville could still find the initials they had
carved on it as boys. He used it now as a shelf
for sorting half a dozen letters.
Miss Ida Kay King said, oItTs Egg Day to-
morrow.?
oT know it. I know it.? He hated Egg Day.
oPhone calls this morning??
oNone,? she said crisply. She was a woman
of few words, chiefly because her new dentures
hurt and she preferred to let her tongue lie slack
between cheeks slightly puffed out like a couple
of air cushions.
13
There were seldom many telephone calls, except
that time last summer when the banner above the
square had read discreetly, PARSONVILLE EGG
FESTIVAL. All that week the sign had stirred
citizens to call him and argue the old question
about the townTs name. Some said it was really
Parsonsville, after old Nello Parsons who had
built its first house and let his chickens roost
in the chinaberry trees; but others claimed there
never had been an extra s and the banner was
correct as it stood. Or, as it floated.
The jangling telephone and the mixed history
and argument had so worn him out that this year,
when the midsummer week came for honoring
the townTs only industry"poultry raising"with
picnics and events, Wink had appointed a com-
mittee to hang a new banner over Main Street.
Well, he had only gotten what he deserved,
trusting the job to somebody else. He understood
that, in private, they had even called themselves
the Cluck Committee. No wonder the current
banner became a joke. Was it the county farm
agent who, at 36, still wore his hair in crew
cut who had swayed the others to this silliness?
And helped them hang it, at night, in a mood
he could only describe as anger?
All Thomas prayed now was that nobody he
had ever known in the North Carolina Senate
would pick this week to drive through Parson-
ville, at least not before Saturday, when he could
take the thing down and burn it.
Thomas hung his coat across his chair. oDid
you hear me say it was going to be a hundred
degrees today??
oVes,?T said Miss Ida Kay King. She refilled
her mouth with air, trying to give her gums the
illusion false teeth were merely floating lightly
in her mouth. Besides, she hated to interrupt
her book about plantations, lusty octoroons and
dueling pistols fired through curtains of Spanish
moss.
He threw away a notice about the County
Democratic Rally and Barbecue in Roxton. It
angered him to go for any reason to Roxton, with
its lace factory and trucking concern. Roxton
was a regular stop for all the trains on the North-
South line. The County Fair was always held
in Roxton, which had good schools and the only
hospital for miles. He thought of the county
as of a young tree: Roxton was the leader,
the main stem, while Parsonville shriveled for
lack of nourishment. And, in time, they will
prune us. The state and the nation will chop us
off for compost, he thought. He made a note
14
of that in case he should be asked to speak at
the service Sunday, honoring the cityTs founders
and early settlers.
That made him think of tomorrowTs duties.
oHave the eggs come??
She pointed. On his side of the railing was a
small wooden keg brimming with eggs in all
shades of cream and tan. Small eggs, of course.
No need to waste what might be good for market.
oTeed Kiser brought Tem in early this morn-
ing,T said Miss King. Regretfully she closed the
book on her thumb and fixed her mind on musk
and verbena. ThatTs how book people smelled
on an August day, back in the real South. Musk
and verbena. She came back to Parsonville with
a jolt and found her armpits damp and the glare
off Main Street painful against her bifocal
glasses. ~o~Half of the barrel,T she said, ~~must
be nest eggs for TeedTs setting hens. Be sure not
to drop one with an x marked on it.?
He could see a few penciled crosses from where
he sat. oITve never dropped one.?
oSome of those eggs must be older than I am.?
I doubt that, he thought but did not say. Miss
Ida Kay King had been his fatherTs secretary
and the veins ran in her skin like swollen rivers
down the globe. Her face was the color of gray
granite and like granite it had merely eroded
with time. There was no break in her anywhere;
she was compacted by her age. On that stony
surface rode layers of powder, rouge, lotion,
cream; and they counted for no more than a dust
mote on the side of a mountain. And at its peak,
rising cone-shaped on her skull, round piles of
gray hair grew in clusters like lichen on a stone.
Thomas took off his tie and let it droop across
one shoulder. ~Collection letters??
oSent them out Monday.?T She opened her book
again, waited, and then returned to a land of
gallantry and high-spirited horses. Irritably he
tagged her, oMiss Scarlet OTHara of 1889.?
But he was silent, suddenly depressed that the
letters had been mailed and now the day, and
even the week, arched Tround him like a shell
with its contents already blown out through the
other side. Collection letters on behalf of furni-
ture stores in Charlotte and Greensboro were his
weekTs work, although he knew how few Parson-
ville people really understood their references
to payments and signed contracts. He felt about
debt the way he felt about capital punishment:
the jury who said oGuilty? ought to pull the
cyanide switch, and the manager who bragged
on his sofa ought to go collect for it, and look
into the pitiful living room where the foam rub-
THE REBEL
ber stood, well tended, under the tinsel sign,
GOD BLESS OUR HOME.
After Egg Day ceremony tomorrow, a few
chicken farmers might amble into his law office,
and take up an hour apiece talking about how
the government kept dumping eggs into the Po-
tomac until all the fish between Washington and
the sea grew fat"indirectly off the expensive
feed thrown down right here in Parsonville
before these very hens.
At the end of that ritual, there would be a dollar
bill or two, stacks of damp quarters, a tiny trickle
of soiled money like the drop of water the wicked
rich man begged Lazarus to bring to Hell and
lay upon his burning tongue. Those bits of
money would never quench so much consuming
debt, and there would be stronger demand let-
ters and repossessions. Thus, with a rare title to
search or a will to write, another whole year
would slide by, and there would be a new banner
sewed from bed sheets and lettered with house
paint, hung quivering in the heat of next August.
He talked now in a search for friction, any-
thing to impede how slippery time was.
oDidnTt see you last night at the sack race,
Miss Ida Kay.?
oToo hot.?
It had been hot, and he still felt heavy from
the picnic afterwards; rows of cakes yellow and
sad under seas of seven-minute icing, lukewarm
custards, deviled eggs, chicken salad, broth and
dumplings, egg salad sandwiches, fried chicken,
puddings under towers of scorched meringue,
gumbo and giblet gravy, pot pie and chicken cro-
quettes; and, at the end of the eating, bushel
baskets full of drumstick bones for the dogs to
crunch and get hung halfway in their throats.
Hens and eggs"he was sick of them. He would
have liked to march back through history and lo-
cate the first man who ever said, oMake the most
of what you have,? and beat him to death.
His daughter Sherrilee came into the office,
squeezed a smile from Miss King, and swung
across the bannister to him in a pink whirl of
skirt and lace petticoat.
oPlace looks like a ghost town,? she said, oAnd
your office isnTt much better.?
His daughterTs body seemed to move to a music
he could not hear. He watched her turn grace-
fully and sit on the edge of his desk. oHello,
Ducky.?
Her voice was irritable. oDonTt call me that!?
Sometimes he felt they were changing her over
at that Greensboro WomanTs College, pulling her
loose from him, while he paid with tuition and
SPRING, 1964
taxes for their end of the tug-of-war. He felt like
writing somebody a letter about it.
oItTs a good nickname for you,? was all he
said. oAs good as the day it was given.?
Te. 7
He saw she was annoyed. To Miss Ida Kay he
called, oI ever tell you how I gave Sherrilee that
name??
Patiently she closed her book and waited be-
hind glazed eyes. Sherrilee (that name had been
her motherTs idea) snapped, oA hundred times!?
He went on with it anyway. oThe day I first
heard Marva and I were going to have a baby,
ITd been duck-hunting down East .. .?
(oA thousand times, maybe,? Sherrilee said to-
ward Miss Ida Kay.)
oWith Harvey Leamon"you remember him?
Had a feed store down the street. Fell over with
a heart attack taking up church collection. And
Pete Willett went, you know? It was 1942 and
he was home on furlough. Died later in the war.?
oDaddy!? she groaned. She walked over to a
chair and sat in it. He half thought her bones
were made of perfume.
oAnyway, I came in that night and Marva
had been to the doctor. My head was full of
those wild ducks. Like women, they moved all
of a piece.?T
Seeing they looked puzzled, he spread his
hands into false wings to demonstrate. oDucks
donTt exactly turn in flight ... I thought then
it was more that they had swayed a little and
leaned into a new course. It seemed to me they
fly in air the way fish swim in water. Ever
been duck hunting, Miss Ida Kay??
oNever.? She was still watching him politely
but her hands of their own will had already
opened the novel to the proper page.
oTt was just how they moved,? he finished
lamely. oI remembered it when Sherrilee was
born. Such a pretty baby. I called her Ducky
from the start.? He did not add that he had
thought Sherrilee a terrible name, and by the
time she had her first birthday he was already
sick of spelling it for people.
oAll that,? said Sherrilee, owas before I
was born.?
oTtTs still nice to know these things.?
She seemed to be angry. oDo you know ITve
never seen you go duck hunting once, not in
my whole life.?
He shifted on his chair. oTime, you know.
Family. The office...T His voice got smaller
and smaller. oBut I really did like it. It used
to mean a lot to me.?
15
He saw that Miss Ida Kay, without comment,
had begun to read again.
oT came in,? said his daughter firmly, oto talk
about Scandinavia.?
oWhat about her??
Scandinavia had been their cook since he and
Marva were married, had nursed Marva through
cancer, operations, death. Then she stayed on
to run his house and rear his daughter; at pres-
ent she was supervising the long, slow death of
Wriston Thomas, Sr., his father, of strokes and
old age. Scandinavia seemed to him like a large,
dark lodestone, drawing pain and trouble into
herself, sponging up his own fatigue, absorbing
his fatherTs senile temper. He relied on her
as sailors might rely on the North Star.
But now even that seemed under threat, with
Sherrilee home for the summer and forever talk-
ing minorities, underprivileged homes, and Sou-
thern mores.
oScandinavia,? she declared now, oshould send
her son to college.?
oApart from the cost, Kestler wouldnTt know
what to do with college.?
oThere you go!?
oT mean it, Ducky.? (She said, oDonTt call me
that!) oScandinavia is a fine woman and a
smart one, but Kestler hardly knows dark from
daylight.?
oWhat do you expect in this environment?
DonTt you ever take environment into considera-
tion??
Thomas closed his eyes. She could ask him
that while he spent his life watching Parson-
ville disappear beneath the Industrial Revolu-
tion like a ship falling under the sea. Every
year the grass slipped in on another street,
but he and Kestler Burns would die here because
neither one of them...
He said, ~ooHave you talked to Kestler??
oIn a general way. About incentives. Self
improvement.?T
oUh hunh.? How long would it be, he won-
dered, before she joined the other college young-
sters, all colors, and marched in the Greensboro
streets under a placard about equal rights?
Marva would spin in her grave like a pinwheel.
oT still say Kestler couldnTt pass fifth grade.
I only let him vote because of his mother.?
oIf KestlerT is under-educated, whose fault
is that??
Under-educated! oI donTt know,? and looked
into her cool face, pink lipstick on an indignant
mouth. She had thrown her left arm westward,
like a wing lying on the wind. oIs it mine??
16
oOh, Daddy!T She began to pace between his
desk and the small barrel of eggs at the railing.
He guessed summer in Parsonville must be pret-
ty dull, a record heat wave surrounding the house
in which her grandfather was dying. He couldnTt
afford Wrightsville Beach, or her own car. Per-
haps in the future she would understand, when
she found herself paying the bills for another
generationTs ruined arteries. He had an awful
feeling she would never pay for his; he would
have to go off and have his death alone, under
sanitary conditions. She and Geriatrics would
tell him how really humane this was and he
could only nod"as he discovered he was nodding
now, although for the life of him he did not know
to what.
oT give up. ITm going to get some ice cream,?
said Sherrilee. She stood pressing one finger
to her cheek where she feared that once adorable
dimple might soon wrinkle her before her time.
He was relieved. oGo ahead. ItTs mad dog
weather.? Too hot to talk of such things. Too
cold in the winter. In the spring, wet.
Miss Ida Kay King, who liked her heroines
safely closed in books, watched the girl swing
across Main Street with a long stride. At thir-
teen, those legs had seemed to be hinged at
the neck. How there was this grace... In
the sun, SherrileeTs hair, which had MarvaTs
same auburn lights, burned like a torch. She
thought of marathons and torches.
oSheTs very pretty,? said Mis Ida King, making
it sound like a disease.
E... Day dawned for the fourth year hot and
cloudless, and the air felt hard.
From his bedroom window, Wink Thomas
looked out into the morning. The good weather
depressed him. Other towns rated an occasional
tornado and Federal Aid but Parsonville"
nothing.
When he, single-handed, had founded the Par-
sonville Egg Festival four years before, it
seemed a possible answer to the poverty of the
area and the monotony of the summers. He
had imagined it would draw tourists, county of-
ficials, perhaps the State Secretary of Agricul-
ture to have his picture made while plucking
chickens. There might have been a handicraft
business painting eggs for the Easter trade.
News dispatches could have been written with
leads like, oAll the good eggs in Parsonville
gathered today for...? or even, oEgged on by
fair weather...? Life Magazine might have done
THE REBEL
a picture story tracing the eggTs role in human
civilization. He had pictured chickenfeed com-
panies that would sponsor baseball teams, a
firm to package and deodorize hen manure for
flower gardeners, ceramic bantams on ashtrays
which claimed Parsonville as the Egg Center
of North Carolina, Mother Nello ParsonsT Fresh
Egg Mayonnaise...
Well, it was a farce; he had counted all those
chickens long before they hatched. Even the
weekly newspaper in Roxton no longer sent its
old maid reporter. Only the old ladies and old
gentlemen and Negroes of Parsonville came to
the annual events. They came because the sum-
mer was very hot and very long, and it was
better to eat chickens or talk chickens than feel
so trapped in feeding the unbearable rhythm
of their hunger, or sorting eggs against a candleTs
worth of light.
Wink Thomas went downstairs and into the
dining room. He still called it that, although
the table and sideboard had been stored upstairs
for six years, and his fatherTs hospital bed was
stark and incongruous under the small chandelier.
oWho~s that?? called his father, rising on an
elbow. His flesh was like papier-mache. ~~WhoTs
coming in??
oItTs Wink. Did you sleep??
oNever. I never sleep. ThereTs a dog barks
all night.?
The only dog in any of the yards on Chestnut
Street was Mr. BisonTs old cocker, and it barely
had strength enough to snore. The only sounds
in the summer night were the songs of mocking-
birds and their sweetness was sufficient to pierce
window-glass, but he never mentioned that.
oHas Sherrilee come down??
oWho??
oYour granddaughter, Sherrilee.?T
oSo much traffic in and out this house I canTt
keep track of it all.? Abruptly the old man
hacked, emptied his throat into the palm of
his hand and held it out. oLooky there,? he
breathed, his voice respectful. oSolid blood.
ThatTs what happens. ThatTs why I donTt get
well. During the night I bleed away all my
strength.?
There was nothing but spit, slightly yellow,
in his hand. Wink nodded and patted his fatherTs
thin shoulder which felt like a coat hanger.
oYouTre going to be fine,? he said, and pushed
past the swinging door through the butlerTs
pantry to the kitchen where he drank half a
pint of tomato juice"hideously red"and almost
choked.
SPRING, 1964
In the kitchen Scandinavia stood feeding
clothes through the wringer. He hoped _ she
would not begin again about spin washers and
electric dryers. They said Good Morning and, as
usual, he turned down her offer to cook his
breakfast. He never ate an egg if he could
help it.
oSherrilee has been telling me about your
boy. How old is Kestler now? Eighteen??
Seandinavia looked withdrawn and sullen. She
looked as if it gave her satisfaction to be crush-
ing his wet shirts between rollers. oHe done
it,T she said.
It was not possible. oKestler? What??
She dropped a balled garment into the basket
with a thud. He thought of guillotines. oHeard
all Miss SherrileeTs talk about bettering himself.
First thing at sunrise today he hitched straight
over to Raleigh to join the Army.?
He sat hastily at the table. oDoes Sherrilee
know ??
oNow who'll cut my stovewood?? A _ sheet
came forth like a flattened white worm and fell,
squirming, into the basket. ~~Left me here,? she
grumbled. oLeft your shrubbery to grow and no-
body to do them windows at your office. Left
Mr. Teed Kiser with nobody to cut his yard or
clean his chickenhouse. Left us all.?
oThe Army.? Acting mentally as ParsonvilleTs
one-man Chamber of Commerce, he lowered the
census by one. Left us here, he echoed. Sher-
rilee soon. First college and then...
oT canTt crawl up there and shingle my roof,?
said Scandinavia. She was less sad than angry.
oT canTt shoot no squirrels for stew. I need help
turning Mr. Thomas in that high bed.?
Left us here. Thoughts flared in his mind: /f
Daddy would die... if I were a better lawyer...
if all my old contacts in politics weren't either
dead or too prosperous ... One by one he snuffed
them all and a feeling of great sympathy for
Scandinavia swept over him.
oWell,? he said crossly, othe Army wonTt keep
him forever.?
There was a companionable silence. She turned
off the wringers, set the basket on the back porch.
oSee Day. aint owr
Wink nodded. He put the rest of the juice
into the refrigerator and stood gratefully for
an instant in its cool air before he closed the
door.
oThink I can leave Mr. Thomas long enough
to step uptown for it??
o~HeTll be fine. HeTll probably sleep.?
oGood weather for Egg Day. Hot.?
17
He sipped some coffee and began to sweat.
For all he knew, Kestler Burns was now riding
to Fort Jackson on an air-conditioned bus. The
coffee was bitter.
Scandinavia said, oIs they a pee-rade this
year ??
He shook his head. Only the first year had
there been the straggling young marchers, their
brass horns filled with noise and sunlight. Now
the small high school population of Parsonville
had been added to Roxton High, and the few
youngsters who rode to it each day on the orange
bus were not students of drum or trumpet. In-
deed, already they belonged to Roxton, to its
formica-lined drugstores, its motion picture house
and public swimming pool. They would not be
home on any August afternoon to watch a bald
man fry eggs on the sidewalk.
oNo parade, but the sewing circle will sell
lemonade,? he offered. oYou buy a glass for
a quarter and they embroider your name on the
church memorial quilt.?
oNot my name they donTt,? laughed Scandi-
navia, who viewed Jim Crow as a complicated
joke on white people. She enjoyed watching
them try to keep it all straight"yes to this, but
no to this other. Her money, she knew, would
buy lemonade in a good goblet, which would
then be set aside for an extra-careful washing.
It would be served her by smiling ladies who
would remember to ask how Kestler was and if
her bad back was better this dry weather; but
no oScandinavia Burns? would ever be silk-em-
broidered on the Methodist Church quilt. She
was glad she didnTt have the responsibility of
drawing that line between what was allowed and
forbidden.
Wink put a quarter onto the kitchen table.
oYou have a glass anyway,? he said. oMade in
the shade and stirred with a spade. Best olT
lemonade ever made.?
oT see youTre the announcer as usual.?
oAs usual,? he muttered.
On the way out he said goodbye to his father
who, after a silence, called, oGoodbye, Orlando.?
That made him stop. WinkTs brother Orlando
had been dead for 40 years, had died before he
was ten, and was thus hung forever in a time
still safe for believing princes sought and won
their fortunes, fish offered three wishes, and
magical hens might lay a golden...
oTt was a goose,? he said aloud. oIt was a god-
damn goose!?
oGoodbye, Goose,? called his father, trying
to be agreeable.
18
The people of Parsonville gathered in the town
square, clustered in the street under that silly
banner which seemed to be describing them all.
The street was as safe as sidewalks because most
traffic stayed on the by-pass and never drove
through the small town at all. The lemonade
stand had been built of packing boxes and stood
on the Main Street corner near his parking place.
When Wink came squinting into the sun from
his office, he thought the small crowd looked fun-
ereal, and the street lacked only a gallows to
complete the scene. He was still irritated with
SherrileeTs good intentions, KestlerTs flight, li-
brary books in his office. His father had set
him thinking about Orlando"Orlando, the clever
brother, the quick lad in school, the boy with
straight teeth who won all the races and could
swim upstream. If Orlando had lived, he would
not now be here in Parsonville on a hot afternoon
breaking eggs. Wink Thomas knew that much.
Men and women who waved to him were all
his age and older except of Sherrilee, who had
put on a flowing wide dress and white high heels
and earrings that glittered. Teed Kiser came
from the group and took the small barrel of eggs.
Both men spoke politely to the lemonade ladies
with their pasteboard fans which said, oSHOP
IN ROXTON.? Miss Suffolk, who could make
hand stitches as tiny as any sewing machine, re-
marked that this yearTs banner was real original.
Wink said, oTeed, is that thunder??
oT donTt hear nothing.?
He knew as soon as he came to the center of
the intersection of Main-and-Carter that Kestler
Burns had run off to the U. S. Army without
painting the customary oval outline of a giant
egg on the asphalt. Someone from the lemonade
stand had already noticed this lack and brought
a bag of sugar to trickle a wavy, uncertain circle
in place of it. The crowd was watching Wink
nervously to see how he would take it.
oAll we could think of,TT somebody said.
oBest we could do.?
oKnew it would be an aggravation.?
Wink saw then, for the first time, that just
as he went through this silly business once a year
for their sakes and to break the boredom, so
they only came for his; and he scrubbed at the
sun glare in his eyes.
oHot as hell,? he managed. oItTs a fine egg.?
It seemed to him Sherrilee ought to learn some-
thing from all this, but she had already gone
over to the lemonade stand and begun spelling
her name carefully for the Chairman of the Em-
THE REBEL
broidery Committee. oMighty resourceful,T Wink
added and then, with haste, oSmart. Real smart.?
Faces beamed and for an instant the crowd
seemed to fuse at the points of nudging elbows
into a unit.
But then somebody was heard to say, oAlways
something goes wrong!? and he saw flickers of
anger. At the speaker? The egg? The heavy
spilling of sun about their heads?
oAinTt one thing, itTs another,? said somebody
else.
Teed Kiser whispered to him, oI do hear thun-
der, sure enough!? He put the barrel of eggs
alongside the sugar-outline on the street.
Wink went on sweating, although by now he
could see a sudden cloud South, blotting up some
of the blazing light. oI didnTt hear it that time.?
oYou better hurry.? Kiser raised both hands
to quiet the talk, then gave him a nod.
oFriends,? Wink began. Suddenly his voice,
as if it were brittle and hollow, caved in. He
wondered if that embarrassed Sherrilee.
He was handed lemonade and heard his name
called toward the booth to go on the Methodist
quilt.
He tried again.
oFriends, this week the city of Parsonville
has been engaged in a celebration.?
Their faces were sober.
oOnce a year we meet together to . . . to
count our blessings. YouTve all heard, ha-ha, of
walking on eggs; well, all of us walk on them
here, because our community was founded on
eggs. Eggs and hens, of course.?
Now, belatedly, they smiled. Over their heads
the sun faded. He could hear the thunder sliding
across the sky. He spoke louder.
oNello Parsons was the first man to make a
good living here off chickens. You all remember
that in 1937 every ribbon at the State Fair in
Raleigh went to Parsonville eggs and Parson-
ville chickens. Because weTve got standards here.
We've got standards.?
He wiped his forehead on a handkerchief. At
the edge of the crowd Scandinavia leaned forward
to make sure it was a clean one, worn thin by
steady bleaching, so he would not disgrace her.
One bird passed overhead, out-flying the storm.
oSo every year,? he continued, othe first week
in August, we take this way of thanking our
lucky stars that Nello Parsons had foresight.
That Nello Parsons had standards.?
He whispered to Teed Kiser, oIs the road
cooling too fast? Will they still fry??
oThey always have,? said Kiser. But he shifted
SPRING, 1964
from one foot to another and frowned upward.
oYou all know,? said Wink to the crowd, othat
on Monday we met and cleaned up the cemetery,
put flowers on the ParsonsT plot, and heard a
fine poem about Easter and rebirth composed
by Miss Tildy Perkins...?
(Miss Perkins, who was deaf, had asked to
have her left foot stepped on when she was named
so she might smile; now three shoes ground onto
hers and she cried out instead. The people around
her stirred uneasily.)
Wink pressed on. oTuesday evening we heard
some fine quartet singing, had an egg hunt, and
a bountiful picnic supper out at the old school
grounds. And last night the competitions for
the heaviest hen, egg with most weight and big-
gest circumference, and our other contests. I
might add that Mrs. Lockley, who fell from the
judgesT platform, is resting comfortably in Rox-
ton hospital and the fracture was not a bad
one.?T
Somebody applauded.
oToday, we fry the traditional eggs on the
pavement. People are always saying itTs so hot
you could fry eggs on the sidewalk, but we do
it every year right out in the street, and Mother
Nature acts as our cook.?
Sherrilee, he saw, had stopped listening to his
speech and was gazing way down the road as
if she saw something he could not see, something
that moved.
oWe break our eggs,? he said loudly, oand drop
them around the outline of a larger egg, remem-
bering as we do that the egg is the seat of life,
that life begins in the egg and feeds on the egg.?
With a fine, high-wristed gesture he reached
behind him, cracked the first egg on the barrelTs
metal rim, and dropped the contents neatly onto
the wavery sugar outline at his feet.
Even as it fell he knew his error. Two flies
glutting on sugar were drowned in the eggTs
liquid, but the sudden smell sprang forth until
they all were choking in it.
oTeed Kiser!? he cried in an angry voice, then
gagged on the rotten, sulphur smell.
They were drawing quickly back, noses clipped
shut between fingers. Sherrilee had begun to
trot gracefully in her white pumps toward his
office door and Scandinavia, laughing, poured
out her lemonade onto the curb.
oShame on you, Teed Kiser!T?T somebody yelled.
oOld cheapskate!? called another.
And, oFed your hen buckshot before the weigh-
ing!? accused a third and one of them rushed
forward and grabbed an egg"not rotten"and
19
smashed it atop the old manTs head. At this Kiser,
insulted, let fly with a whole handful, one of which
fell unbroken into the lemonade pitcher and sank
in slow motion onto a bed of sugar grains.
Another flew from his hand to splatter on the
blouse of Miss Tildy Perkins, the Easter poet,
so that it seemed her shriveled breast had sud-
denly gushed forth; and she flailed out with her
parasol at Mr. Wilson who had stepped on her
foot during the speech, and opened a long cut
above his wrinkled ear.
Then all of them swarmed forward to the egg
barrel, like Jews stoning Stephen, and screamed
oas they threw at each other. Strange white-and-
yellow blossoms plopped into being on backs
and stomachs; Mr. BisonTs eyeglasses were cover-
ed and he walked blindly into Aunt ChristyTs
wheelchair and she beat him with her crocheted
pocketbook. Mrs. Kiser, rushing to her husbandTs
aid, slipped in a puddle of egg white and fell
heavily onto the street and got her hair frosted
with dust and sugar crystals.
A little man struck Scandinavia in the neck
with another rotten egg, yelling her nigger son
had enrolled at the University of North Carolina
and she lumbered off toward home like a brown
bear, her hands splayed up as if she were sur-
rendering under fire.
In the general rush the whole lemonade stand
was overturned; Mrs. Weiker was pinned beneath
it with her sewing needle jammed up under her
thumbnail; and the last remaining piece of Mrs.
AtkinsT crystal"her prized pitcher"broke on
the curb into bits no bigger than breadcrumbs.
Then, like the roar of JehovahTs rage over the
recalcitrant Israelites, a clap of thunder broke
in the town square and froze them into sudden
statues. They were transfixed with their raised
fists and mouths open upon insults; and one egg
which was already in the air seemed almost to
float above their stillness before it hit the trem-
bling banner and came down and broke like an
echo. They looked upon each other, unbelieving,
terrified. A river of light ran down the sky and
thunder broke over them again. Then the first
hard raindrops were thrown down around their
heads and they scattered, running, down the
four streets, and Aunt ChristyTs wheelchair rocked
crazily as it rolled away downhill behind them.
It was a downpour, ruining the little draw-
string bags and melting the words on those paper
fans the ladies had dropped in their headlong
flight, diluting both the ruined and good eggs
which lay where they had shattered, breaking up
the sugared oval outline and washing it away
20
into the gutter. The banner, heavy with rain
water, sagged down toward the street and Wink
Thomas slapped up at it as he began running too,
his heart trying to thrust out between the rib
bars and burst forth through his coat. He slipped
and slid on a street slick with raw eggs, and bits
of shell crunched with a terrible sound under his
running feet. And although he had not run all
the way to Chestnut Street since boyhood races
with his brother, he ran the distance now"heavy
footed, jarring the earth, putting new cracks into
all the sidewalks. Without even slowing down
he worked out of his wet coat and slung it into
Mr. BisonTs forsythia bush as he passed.
Sherrilee had ridden with Miss Ida Kay King
and was already home when, heaving from his
effort, he burst into the house. She came forward
and started to touch him, but drew back from
the wet clothes, sulphur, sweat. He staggered
past her, huffing, and she followed him into the
living room.
oWhoTs that?? called old Mr. Thomas before
she could say a word, ~o~WhoTs coming in??
He tried to get his breath. In a minute he
managed to croak, oDucky, I threw them too!
I did. I did.?
oWhat got into everybody?? was all she said.
And, as an afterthought, oAre you hurt??
oT threw the most of all,? he panted.
oT never saw anything like it,? she said.
He did not have enough extra breath to ex-
plain. From under his chandelier his father
bawled, ooWhoTs out there??
oMiss Perkins laid on her umbrella like a
broadsword,? said Sherrilee. He was able to
smile.
oAnd Scandinavia got covered. If youTd had
the reporters you always wanted, you'd have hit
every newspaper in the country. Typical race
riot in small Southern town.?
He laughed, fell weakly into a chair and
laughed some more until his lungs were as empty
as envelopes; and when he sucked in the next
breath it stretched them painfully, and rushed
forth as a groan, a wail. He huddled into a ball
in the old rosewood chair, shaking with a chill
and crying like a baby.
oDaddy?? With a smooth movement she put
her hand halfway in the air between them. oWhat
is it, Daddy??
Out of what once had been the dining room
the old man began to whimper and to beg, oDonTt
cry, Orlando. It canTt be that bad. Whatever it
is, Orlando, donTt cry.
But he did.
THE REBEL
George Jolley has always whittled, his whittling
led to carving, and his carving led to sculpture.
George has been studying sculpture at East Caro-
lina since 1952. (In between his studies he has
night-clerked in a hotel, served in the Navy,
operated a railroad telegraph, and is now teach-
ing in Asheboro.) With artistic singlemindedness,
he intended only to learn how to sculpt. When
he decided to earn a degree in art, the same single-
mindedness blossomed into the familiar artistic
disdain for academics and flowered the familiar
results. One academic course now delays his
SPRING, 1964
JOLLEY:
LEFT OVER
FEELING
degree. In GeorgeTs view: oIf on my way to class
9?
I get an inspiration . . .? Hence, perhaps, oI
am a noncomformist"but worried about it.?
Asked about the influences in his work, the
quick reply comes that he has been inspired, not
influenced; and immediately after that"nature
has been his influence, his inspiration. The Turkey
is a measure of GeorgeTs inspiration from nature.
The turkey, o. . . poised on one foot, listening, de-
pending still on natural instincts, is outsmarting
the hunter and his gun.? The Turkey and Roos-
ters (illustrated) also imply a basic idea: oBeauty
is in the moment, and the capture takes away some
of the beauty ... (The viewerTs) reaction is also
momentary.? He has settled, at least for the
present, with welding, because one can owork fast
to capture the moment.? He heats, beats, and
welds, and bends.
oLeft-over feelings? from whittling prompt-
ed him to rise to carving and then again to
sculpture. Similarly he has felt compelled to
express the feeling oleft-over? from his repre-
sentational work in semi-abstraction and complete
abstraction. The Art Critic (so named to amuse
the judges at the North Carolina Artists Exhibi-
tion, Raleigh, 1963) is laughing at the viewer
and at the critic. One can imagine them shrinking
with sickly, agreeable smiles, faced with this
metallic laughter.
21
KEEPER OF THE DREAM
26
Time: 1855
Place: Northeast Mississippi
Well, now, Tom. YouTve found me sleeping off
a drunk
Among the hogs here under the doggery porch.
Lord, I know this is no way to welcome home
My lawyer-brother come all the way to Corinth
From Louisville and the like. Take my hand,
ItTs filthy, ITm ashamed, though from your look
Not half ashamed as you are to see me SO.
Damn, ITm so groggy yet, ITd best set down.
You stand up in front of me, I canTt look you
In the face, so ITll jist talk to your watch-chain,
If youTll be still and shade me with your hat.
ThereTs no need to think ITll drink myself to death
Like Pa. I keep his grave nice for you to visit
Ever ten year or so you come this way,
Frownin tragic to see your brother
Livin like Pa in them last years, like a hog,
Whilst Hokey Simms and Harbert Till done
taken on
Plantation airs and a Yankee overseer. But Tom,
I keep the place, there ainTt no debts, you'll always
Know youTve got a home, good land Pa cleared;
The bottoms is still good huntin, thereTs fence posts
For a hundred year in the locust thicket where Pa
Seen witches naked whoopin and Redcoat soldiers
Climbin the sky like it was KingTs Mountain,
And Pa there shootin with the Sayers from Ten-
nessee.
Lord, Tom, since you went off to school, there
ainTt been
No more goat barbecues like there used to be,
And I ainTt got the heart to listen to the polytics
by Richard Clement Wood
THE REBEL
SPRING, 1964
Which ainTt about the Independence, othem great
Republican times.?
TheyTre sour now, Tom, talkin about hangin abo-
litionists
And some on em rolls their eyes and grits oSe-
cession?T ;
Some says, oIf thereTs war, by God, 1 got the rifle
Papa burned them English with at Noo Orleans ;?
ThereTs talk of niggers risin up, killin chaps and
women,
But old Sam, he ainTt goin to rise untwell I ring
The breakfast bell, and there ainTt no women here.
For Nell, you know, she taken no more shine to me
After you went off to school; it was you she want-
ed anyway.
I see you wonTt quit lookin disapproval till I
Splain why I got drunk. I speck it ainTt
Whiskey you disapprove, for Lord knows you
lawyers
Are a sight a-guzzlin and a-prankin at the ses-
sions.
(O, I know, youTre goin to the legislature where
they drink polite.)
YouTre shamed to see your brother in his plowin
jeans
Plumb stoned among old RitterTs rooting hogs
Right here in a public place. Well, donTt worry
none:
I'll fix your bed and git your supper, and sun-up
Whilst youTre sleepin still, Sam and meTll be in
the field.
Grass is mostly outen the cotton anyway. I come
Down here Tbout ten oTclock to git some snuff
And then, well, I couldnTt leave, some Millerite
Was in the store and seen me take a little swig
From Ritter, shaken his finger in my face and
says
The world was endin I fergit what day, but soon,
And so I thought ITd better fortify myself, O, hell,
ThatTs jist a joke, I got the misry, Tom.
Misry hit me yestiday, itTs what them law-books,
Good clothes, fine speech and writin leaves behind
In PaTs grave and your brotherTs ignorant head
And leaves you free-wheelin for the gals in hoop-
skirts and the Congress, may-be.
ll tell you, Tom. I was plowin twixt the grave-
plot
And the thicket yestiday, when Ollie Harper and
his wife
Come in a covered wagon down the old field road
By where the Church burned, and they waved
and yelled
27
28
TheyTs headed West, and didnTt even stop.
Ollie had a stogie stuck up in his teeth, he stood up
Leanin westards with the reins, like as if
His shadow owned apiece of it already. They
rattled
Over the hill, and then I seen fat Sam a runnin
After my brindle cow what had broke tether. . .
She was headed eastward, she seemed to take the
wind
Like a flat-boat under sail. Lordy, how she never
touched the rows.
And, Tom, I couldnTt move, itTs like I fainted
Standin up atwixt the smooth plow-handles,
And dreamt that cow kept kitin out
Upcrost the Cumberland by that cove where
mother died
On our old way west. I dreamt I sunk down by
her grave
And prayed it never happened, like weTd stayed
In Tennessee, kings of the silver valley,
Where in June I couldnTt tell where stars
Begun and fireflies ended, where Ma
Said"dTyou remember"that it didnTt matter
Whether God was in the sky or inside a person,
It come to jist about the same. O, Tom,
I stood at the plow and still I hung fire by her
grave;
Sam he had the cow by a rope, but for all of me
She was crossin Delaware, the salt rivers,
Them sea-marshes where Pa said his grandad
Chopt tobacca with a tommyhawk.
So there you are, thereTs east where everTbodyTs
been,
And south where youTre goin; nothing much but
Yankees
Where you been, and Ollie Harper, not jist Ollie
Harper
But Nell, her Pa and RitterTs son, and all the
Masons"
Name the countryside"all headin west; their
mule-dust,
Wheel-dust blowin like a rancid smoke
Against my legs. I spit and give old Jake a flick,
I water my fatherTs grave and keep a farm for
my brother
To remember for a home, a box of good old time,
But yestiday, I got the misry, Tom.
I come down here tellin Ritter T'd a cow
Run off to Delaware. He give me a squint
And says, oWell, Rad, letTs likker,? and we
done it.
The hogs was kind to grunt over me right gentle
and low.
THE REBEL
Gulls
A goll in Middle English was an unfledged bird
And hence, the gulled, the fool, the person tricked.
A very different root, a different word, the gull,
Which from the Welsh word gwylan, Cornish
guilan, Breton geolaff, means to weep"
A thought that may have come to Arthur on the
Cornish Coast, or Iseult as she watched for
sails
And saw"and saw"it was only wings, wings
and wailings, skimming rocks
Dry wailings riding fogs and inlet mists and
seeming far"
Far from us, and far from tears, the salt dry cry
That scratches granite, skims the steaming sands,
to lose itself in kelp.
One by one, old ArthurTs knights had ridden
forth; some died, and some strayed long,
And guilan, thought the blear-eyed king"guilan
in the air"and crumbling stones.
And weeping in the air, and weeping thought that
queen as only black sails showed.
All Nature weeps with me; my love finds echo in
the birds.
Indeed, white cries cut through the mist
And golden beaks would stitch for silver fish.
White fliers screech in greed and, beak-full, flee, ~w
And shaken men think, oHow they weep for me.?
But still today the kingdoms crumble as the sea et ae
breaks in, ot
And from our tower we sense the black sails come. ii
And hope to hear a crying in the wind
And look for signs that allTs not changed,
That seas and beasts and birds are with us still, o
And tremble lest the gulls have gone too far,
Are now too far to care,
Have gone too far from times when geolaff meaxt =
to weep. saa
by Peter F. Neumeyer
SPRING, 1964 29
The Picnic Wine
by Ulrich Troubetzkoy
I.. Palais de Chaillot
It is prepared with exquisite irony
for the fiesta of nations:
the burgundy satin, the gold leaf,
the mirrors to ape with lustrous mimicry
the cynic rehearsal of gestures,
the private grimace and the affable
masquerade of diplomats with gloved
professional antipathies.
Dark focus on the City of Light"
the illumination of facades where crouch
the beasts invisible to electricity,
with fountains of feathered water
mocking the African thirst, the scorched wheat.
From the loud premeditated bickering,
the monotonous clicking keys,
relentless translation of grave platitudes,
the televised oration, the news flash,
are there no words or silences devised
for the healing of bruised peoples, to coagulate
the bleeding momentum of the nations?
Or have they, ill-mated, come
to this querulous assignation, in fretful prelude to
atomic orgasms of war?
_. . Read in the rubble of dead cities
the envoi of dialectics.
30
Il. The Park
When we were children we were sent,
starched and admonished, with a governess,
to play with the decorous children
in the park of the Tocadero,
where the boxwood was a tidy metaphor
of our snug lives,
bound by predictable change in the maronniers:
the tall flambeaux of spring,
the dusty shade of August and the glossed
rind of the chestnuts falling in October.
The tame trout and the gudgeon gaped at us
through glass in the aquarium
in its synthetic cavern down the stairs,
and soldiers in puttees, Americans with their
broad hats
passed with their mademoiselles
in gusts of laughter...
while the governess twittered over us
in terror and fascination.
Then suddenly we were not children there
in the somehow timeless weather of the park.
We went no more on the carrousel, at Passy,
nor watched Polichinelle, the puppet show.
We did not go to the circus to see the clowns,
the pink ballerina on a plump white horse,
nor the girl in green tights who swung from the
trapeze
while we screamed in an ecstasy.
We cantered our horses slowly,
breathing whitely with the morning frost,
skittering the crisp leaves,
the debris of our last summer
along the avenue Henri Martin.
THE REBEL
Ill. France Libre
.. . And when I came home on leave
in May, I took Elise
on the little electric train
to Meudon-Val-Fleurie.
We carried the hamper between us
into the darkness of the chestnut woods.
But when we opened it, we could not eat
the roasted chicken or the yellow rolls
in a linen napkin, or the pears.
But we poured the picnic wine, the young rose-
colored wine,
the laughing wine that we drank solemnly
as the sun leaked through the trees,
leaf-sifted light on the sadness of Elise
and her eyes were gold with it
like a wild creature hurt.
The pain was in our kisses.
We carried the hamper back to the electric train,
the chicken and the rolls, but the pink wine,
the wine of our unused years
was spilled in the scurf of leaves at Meudon-Val-
Fleurie.
. And I was made a Lieutenant in the Second
French.
SPRING, 1964
IV. Tiergarten
What does the Red sentry wonder
pacing this island post
at the hub of chaos?
Guarding the bronze soldier, the giant shape
to nameless dead,
does he hear the planes come in at midnight
on moving beams to Tempelhof? Does he think of
Varvara?
imaging his son, Seroja?
What does the sentry dream in private loneliness,
without posters and loudspeakers,
watching this huge presumption to the dead?
What does the Greek child think
in the utter blueness of Athenian morning,
without bread, without word
from the mountains?
. or the Chinese girl] for sale
with the orphans of hunger?
What does the numb face in Budapest
hide in the fury of silence?
Where are their delegates?
Listen, the loud worldTs shell
shouts in the ear,
pounds like an extra cognac in the skull.
Listen, chic passerby on avenue Kleber"
Il pleut, il pleut, bergere,
Presse tes blanc moutons...
The nursery rhymes were once political,
the storm was real, the lightning marked
the dazzling nape of Marie Antoinette.
Will this become a fairy tale?
A once-upon-a-time of men assaulting peace
as if it were a hill of glass,
the prize or ruin, nothing in between?
Life is more tedious than a conte de fees,
more roundabout. The princess could go by
unrecognized.
Noah was a tiresome old man
who warned about unlikely, most unnatural rains.
Cassandra was a hoyden who bored everyone
repeating her predictions of calamity.
... 1 was a child in one war,
fought the other.
How can I solve what I never understood
except as mosaic, as puzzle, piece by piece?
Garcon! un Pernod bien tasse!
31
THE REBEL REVIEW
The Promise of Power, A Criticism
Helmets. Poems by James Dickey. Middletown, Connecti-
cut: Wesleyan University Press. 93 pp. $1.85.
The last few short years have seen time turn
alluvial and swallow up the Olympians of the
expatriate era. William Butler Yeats, Wallace
Stevens, Robert Frost, e. e. cummings, William
Carlos Williams"their obituaries read like a
roll call in modern belles lettres in poetry of this
century. Their names are on the stones, leaving
us Eliot in silence and Pound, who would now
tell us in his distraught and seemingly too human
voice that all that he has ever done should be
considered the ravings of a madman. Whether
this be true, and so too with EliotTs silence, is
not the case that concerns us here. We at mid-
century are in dire need of a poet of great power
who is truly of mid-century.
Some would say that such considerations are
excessive, a little too maudlin, and tend to present
an exaggerated picture of the reputation accredit-
ed these poets in the continuum of 20th century
poetry. And toward such considerations, I give
a much qualified nod. That is to say, I am aware
of Wilbur, Corso, Ginsberg, Lowell and many
other austere pretenders. The latter mentioned,
and for that matter later existing poets, are not
for the most part inferior technicians. They
know their trade; (Wilbur) oThe Death of a
Toad? and the oKingfishers?, parts of oHowl?
as well as such poems as oThe Quaker Graveyard
in Nantucket? oscillate around the grand experi-
ence.
Once I felt that the lack of poetry incised with
emotion, furthered by impact after impact of deft
expression, and attuned to ~oheartTs deep core?
could be traced back to a lessening of the grand
pose. I felt that with the introspective murmur-
ings associated with the sporadic and short-lived
vision of a poet, such as Walter De La Mare, the
mode might be moving away from the grand
pose cast against the background of society in
a significant manner; but after explicating
Stephen SpenderTs onine bean rows by a factory
wall? and, more recently, such thoughts as Robert
WatsonTs pained remembrances of a rather taste-
less silk tie. I donTt know.
These random considerations of poets and the
tenor of poetry as an art form at mid-century
32
leave us to consider the question: oWhat are we
searching for?? The answer to such a question
is by no means a simple one, but it would seem
reasonable to assume that at least one aspect of
the poet of great power can be ascertained. The
poets that I have chosen to consider as oartistic
litmus paper? lack a consistency of sensibility
and craftsmanship so necessary to view their
expression against the greater backdrop of en-
compassing human experience. That is not to say
that poetry at mid-century should explore the
realm of mundane and pedestrian human experi-
ence as an actuality, per se. Art, and poetry in
particular, has always been dependent upon its
voices having the craftsmanship and vision neces-
sary to perceive and express the human condition
in terms larger than life. This is the only constant
criteria. To restrict the artist, whether it be self-
imposed or the result of a stringent convention,
is to leave him and his expression in a state of less
than life, thereby asserting that his art is ham-
strung into a condition lacking even the spon-
taneous and inherent vitality of esoteric human
experience. In this state, poetry or any other
form of art is imbued with aspects of sterility,
leaving it a lesser existence than human specu-
lation as oThe earth hath bubbles, even as the
sea.?
Keeping in mind those voices of the expatriate
era and the one entity which seems to be ever
present in the work of a poet of power, I wish
to explore a few aspects of the poetic art of James
Dickey, a poet of great promise whose voice has
already evinced the capacity of power most
sought after at mid-century.
James Dickey, the author of two earlier books
of poetry, Into the Stone (1960) and Drowning
with Others (1962)"is now 45 years old. A
veteran of both World War II and the Korean
Conflict, he has been the recipient of the Swannee
Review Fellowship as well as a Guggenheim
grant; the latter making a yearTs work and study
in France possible in 1961. James Dickey is
presently Poet-in-Residence at Reed College, Port-
land, Oregon.
In Helmets the poet ranges through his years,
fashioning incidents both real and imaginary into
patterns of deft lyricism. The poems seem to be
THE REBEL
placed in the book according to time, place and
the nature of the incident rather than in terms
of type and technique. Sections I and II concen-
trate on, or at least allude to, the poetTs early
years in Georgia and are primarily concerned
with observations in nature and of basic experi-
ence. Poems, such as oAt Darien Bridge,?
oCherrylog Road,? and oThe Scarred GirlT
seem to be the best examples. In section III,
the poet turns to some of the situations inherent
in more mature life, such as a fatherTs concern
for his child in troubled sleep, i.e. oIn the ChildTs
Night.? And finally in the fourth section, Mr.
Dickey turns to the war years. oThe Driver?
which was first published in the New Yorker, is
a fine example from this last section.
oAt Darien Bridge? presents the poetTs pensive
reflection upon having seen convicts build a
bridge near the sea; and through the mindTs
eye, he now sees the bridge in disrepair, begin-
ning to sink into the salt marshes which once
sucked at the manacled feet of the work gang. The
poem concludes with his precisely controlled
comment on constancy and inconstancy in terms
of time.
I stand and look out over grasses
At the bridge they built, long abandoned
Breaking down into the water at last,
And long, like them, for freedom
Or death, or to believe again
That they worked on the ocean to give it
The unchanging, hopeless look
Out of which all miracles leap.
In choosing this theme, the poet has done little
that one could call unique. The theme is by no
means new" it is, rather, the expression fash-
ioned by the poet that gives the poem its indelible
lilt, shifting the basic situation upward to the
realm of intensity we seek in the poet of great
power.
In oCherrylog Road,? adolescent love with its
fumblings, fears, and unfettered releases is set
in a junkyard. Doris Holbrock and her lover
are subtly seen by the poet as existing in a state
of emotional transition. For even now as the
two move toward each other through the old cars,
an excitement with the form of T34 Fords and
ancient Pierce-Arrow " with crumbling speak-
ing tubes and fantasies about the rum runner and
the dowager owners of long ago"blend with the
twosomesT still ravenous appetite for new in-
elegant, worthless junk and their new attraction
for each other. After the act and Doris has re-
turned to her fatherTs gaze of ignorant fear, the
SPRING, 1964
boy, now feeling his sense of loss and exhilaration,
imagines his bike transformed into a motorcycle
modeled after a wrecked one that had probably
earlier served, in its wrecked state, as a transi-
tion from the Lone Ranger to a clean cut Marlon
3rando. Through the poetTs expression, we see
the simple experience in the junkyard leap far
beyond Cherrylog Road.
Restored, a bicycle fleshed
With power, and tore off
Up Highway 106, continually
Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever.
oThe Searred Girl? is indicative of a further
aspect of the poetTs range; for in the poetTs pres-
entation of the simply stated dilemma of a young
girl who holds a view of docile cattle in green
fields against the force and inward as well as
outward felt fears she now is struck with as
her face crashes through a windshield, Dickey
portrays the girlTs reconstruction of the shat-
tered scene and shattered outward self by ex-
ploring the nature of the human spirit within
its shell no matter what the condition. She re-
constructs her world. The doctors and nurses
Who do not see what she sees
Behind her odd face in the mirror:
The pastures of earth and of heaven
Restored and undamaged, the cattle
Risen out of their jagged graves
To walk in the seamless sunlight
And a newborn countenance
Put upon everything.
Her beauty gone, but to hover
Near for the rest of her life,
And good no nearer, but plainly
In sight, and the only way.
In this poem, it is the simplicity of the situation
that drives home the absoluteness of the state
of being.
In the poem oIn the ChildTs Night,? the poet
works in a quieter introspective vein. After
a father slips into a childTs bed to reassure him
in a troubled sleep by nearness, Dickey sees the
relationship, the warmth between father and son,
in terms of the infinitely complicated polarity
of the human situation. Again, we do not have
a revelation in theme but rather in terms of the
poetTs use of it. The theme has been handled by
other poets; for instance, Yeats, in oPrayer For
My Daughter? treats aspects of the same theme.
Themes in themselves have never guaranteed us
great poems, and oIn The ChildTs Night? this
is still the case. The poet imparts, through the
33
incalculable yet deeply realized physical relation-
ship, the immutable force as easily perceived as
the cosmic course, that holds the heavens over us,
even before we gave them names and dimensions.
The final poem that I will consider is from
the poetry of the war years. We have been look-
ing for a commentator for this period for some
time. To say that I have found you one would
be something more than reckless, yet I do feel
that in oThe DriverTT as well as other poems on
related subject matter, James Dickey brings a
sense of empathy and personal correlation to this
still unexhausted, and for that matter inadequate-
ly treated area of concern. Through this ap-
proach, the indigenously land-locked Illinois
farm boy can become more than just incongruous
blood upon the decks of the battleship Missouri,
for through the imagination the poet perceives,
by descending into the offshore morass of sunken
men and machinery deposited there by an ab-
sorbed invasionTs wave, these men in a continum
as assured as the sea above their decaying fixtures.
Dickey remembers
I saw, through the sensitive roof"
The uneasy, lyrical skin that lies
Between death and life, trembling always"
The poems in Helmets give us assurance as to
the poetTs range. In many more poems than I
have chosen to treat in detail, James Dickey
strives with confidence for the larger than life
vision and voice so essential in the making of
the poet of great power. He manages to stand
alongside his contemporaries with a most satis-
fying consistency, which at least indicates. that
we have another poet of strength and individuali-
ty. In these moments when he strives for and
achieves the grand screen, we possess a poet of
great power"a creature sadly lacking at present.
We look for more and soon.
"B. TOLSON WILLIS
An Ernest Endeavor
A Moveable Feast. By Ernest Hemingway. New York:
Scribners, 1964. $3.95. 211 pp.
In his introduction to A Moveable Feast, Hem-
ingway explains that this memoir of Paris was
written during the same period (1957-1960)
as was The Dangerous Summer. And remember-
ing that last debacle, one should not be too sur-
prised at this one.
The setting of the book is the early 1920Ts, dur-
ing that period when American writers trooped
as faithfully to Paris as they now do to college
English faculties. Hemingway, in Paris, schooled
34
himself to a rigorous discipline: he went hungry
in the Grand Tradition; he prevailed on Sylvia
Beach of the bookstore Shakespeare and Co. to
lend him books gratis; he cached drinks off
friends. He learned to be a writer.
He began, then, to capture the sound of Ameri-
can English (albeit, my Southerners, Midwest-
ern). And the writing of dialogue became one of
HemingwayTs great achievements. But surely
no one, no place, at no time ever engaged in a
conversation like this one:
oWhen should we leave??
oWhenever you want.?
oOh, I want to right away. DidnTt you
know ??
*oMaybe it will be fine and clear when we
come back. It can be very fine when it is
clear and cold.?
oITm sure it will be,? she said, oWeren't
you good to think of going, too.?
A bad parody of a bad parody! But perhaps, as
Faulkner remarked of Hemingway in another
instance, what else can burned out writers do?
However, to do the man justice, this stylistic
nonsense does not. go on the entire course of
A. Moveable Feast; or could it be that one doesnTt
notice it after awhile for watching the feast move
from roast contemporary to roast contemporary ?
In striking examples of HemingwayTs gifts to
characterization, we see the gods of the era neat-
ly and systematically mowed down before the
Hemingway ego. Joyce is a blind, remote stick
figure, never given life at all. Wyndham Lewis
has othe eyes of an unsuccessful rapist.? Ford
Madox Ford is an odiferous toad: oHe was breath-
ing heavily through a heavy, stained mustache
and holding himself as upright as an ambulatory,
well clothed, up-ended hogshead.?
More of this condescending vein is evident in
HemingwayTs presentation of Gertrude Stein. oIn
the three or four years that we were good friends
I cannot remember Gertrude Stein ever speaking
well of any writer who had not written favorably
about her work or done something to advance
her career .... oShe got to look like a Roman
emperor and that was fine if you liked your
women to look like Roman emperors.? He
doesnTt even leave her with having originated
the term olost generation.? He claims she bor-
rowed it from a French garage mechanic. And
of their famous falling-out, he says he overheard
her and a companion (presumably. Alice B.
Toklas) in a most degrading, for Miss Stein,
argument; at which he was properly and forever
disgusted.
Throughout these diatribes, Hemingway, for
THE REBEL
all his chest-beating masculinity, is a prig and a
bitch. Only in his treatment of Ezra Pound"
o... he was a great poet and a gentle and generous
man .. .?"is he less than vindictive.
He is at his most patronizing in his dealings
with Scott Fitzgerald. At the time in question,
and although Hemingway thought him a prosti-
tute (it seems he sold material to the Saturday
Evening Post), Fitzgerald was a successful writ-
er. But here he is treated like an erring and way-
ward child, to be led into the paths of righteous-
ness by Papa Hemingway. In a really funny
anecdote, the two are taking a trip together
through southern France. The Renault they drive
has had its top sawed off due to Zelda FitzgeraldTs
finagling, and, of course, it rains. Fitzgerald
thereupon decides that he has pneumonia. At
their hotel, he insists that Hemingway send for
a thermometer. After much to-do"the drug-
stores are closed and the hotel people are unco-
operative"he locates one"ua bath thermometer
with a wooden back. The thermometer eventual-
ly convinces Fitzgerald that he is not dying; and,
after several whiskey sours to ward off any
stray germs which might be lurking about, he
calls Zelda in Paris to tell her all about it.
Perhaps one of the values of the book (and it
does have some) is the insights gained into the
nature of Scott Fitzgerald. His wife, of course,
was mad"Ernest donTt you think Al Jolson is
greater than Jesus?? Furthermore, she was
an artist of sorts, and Hemingway felt that she
was making a deliberate attempt to destroy Fitz-
gerald as a writer by constantly dragging him
into parties and drunks. Of them at one of these
parties, he gleefully tells us: oZelda had hawkTs
eyes and a thin mouth and deep-south manners
and accent... Scott was being the good, cheerful
host and Zelda looked at him and she smiled
happily with her eyes and her mouth too as
he drank the wine. I learned to know that smile
very well. It meant she knew Scott would not
be able to write.?
And, we are told, Zelda cast aspersions on Fitz-
geraldTs manhood; an idea which Hemingway, in
a locker room mood, attempts to dispel from
poor FitzgeraldTs mind. The irksome aspect of
HemingwayTs commentary on all of this is that
he seemingly cannot help a smirk, like a very
smug, very dirty-minded little boy.
Well, maybe Fitzgerald, Zelda, and the rest
weren't Code Heroes. Or maybe Hemingway is
pandering to an audience hungry for literary
gossip.
At any rate, and for all this, A Moveable Feast
is certainly Hemingway (though perhaps aided
SPRING, 1964
and abetted posthumously by Miss Mary and
brother Leicester). Here is the familiar sense
of loss, (his marriage was breaking up, the bone
clean imagery) ; even the elaborate drinking rit-
uals. It is unfortunate that he felt that he, like
a boxer past his prime, had to bolster his ego
by trotting out trophies won at the expense of
old friends. It might have been less painful and
much less embarrassing if he had just gone ahead
and titled the thing The Importance of Being
Ernest.
"MArRY JANE JONES
A Cluttered Endeavor
Renaissance in the South, A Critical History of the Litera-
ture, 1920-1960. By John M. Bradbury. Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press. $5.00. 222 pages.
After the First World War, the South, as well
as the rest of the world, found itself in a changed
environment. Some new standard of values had
to be discovered, or the old ones altered. Because
it had been stagnant for such a long period of
time, in the South the situation was more drastic
than most other sections of the world. oThe South
had experienced a primary challenge in the 1860Ts,
but the social upheaval attending the war was ac-
companied by no intellectual ferment, only an
emotional response that demanded expression in
action... The Southern situation in 1920 called
for reassessment, not for regrets and recrimini-
tions.??T The decayed Compsons were met by the
opportunistic Snopeses. WolfeTs hero odid not
understand change.? Whichever way they en-
countered the strangeness of something that they
had taken for granted for so long, they intently
explored the region and the lives which immedi-
ately surrounded them.
Renaissance in the South is the second such
piece of work by John Bradbury, a professor of
humanities at Union College, Schenectady, New
York. His first book was also about the literary
situation in the South; however, it covers a much
narrower range, as its title, The Fugitives: A
Critical Account, implies. His new book starts
with the awakening more or less founded by
the Fugitive movement under John Crowe Ransom
in Nashville in the Twenties and follows the
growth of Southern literature up through 1963.
Patterns in poetry, fiction, and drama are traced;
and the works of leading writers are evaluated.
Mr. Bradbury took on far too much to cover
in 222 pages, particularly the way he approached
the subject. Rather than isolating his topic to
just the more important figures, the author chose
to drag in all sorts of lesser figures who tend to
35
clutter the book up and take up space needed for
more study of the main currents of thought. Au-
thors are seldom ever mentioned in depth and
usually whenever he would reach the point of
more than just passing criticism about one of
them, he would switch the conversation to a group
of minor writers.
Renaissance in the South could have been writ-
ten in a much better way, particularly consider-
ing the large amount of knowledge Mr. Bradbury
obviously has about his subject, but it can still
be of considerable value to a student of American
literature.
"JAMES FORSYTH
Put a Nickel in the Slot
Music in the Life of Man. By Julius Portnoy. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1963. 260 pp. $5.95.
Modestly billed on the dust cover as a volume
that embraces ~o~the entire tradition of the hu-
manities to demonstrate dramatically how music
has influenced, inspired, and enriched the life of
man,? Julius Portnoy has come forth with Music
In The Life of Man as a new addition to an ever
increasing line of philosophically oriented ma-
terial on music which tries to reason on an
art and pigeonhole its essence into an immediate-
ly obtainable form.
Built around a format similar to that used in
many music appreciation courses where some of
the basic vocabulary, elements, and techniques
of music are discussed, the rest of the book is
made up of musings upon quotations by many of
the great philosophers, psychologists, sociologists,
painters, and occasionally, musicians. After
reading so many varied views upon the single
subject of music by so many respected persons
as Plato, Kant, Spienosa, Leibniz, Coleridge,
Keats, and many others, it becomes quite appar-
ent that in spite of its scholarly writing, the valid-
ity of this book is in its proving that music is
an art with a history and principals, but it defies
being philosophized into a slot for which there
is no need.
If Portnoy were to feel the poignancy of one
of his own statements he might see what mu-
sicians have almost always felt. oDuring all this
time, as in times before, the musicians marveled
at the ease and wisdom with which scholars,
who do not create fine art, could speak about such
matters, since he himself could not.T?T Musicians
of today still marvel at this phenomenon not as
to how these scholars speak, but to what purpose
and cause, for certainly it is not for music when
music is not the art of talk.
"DON TRACY
36
The Art of Rhetoric
Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr. By Jean-Paul Sartre,
Trans. by Bernard Frechtman. New York: George Brazil-
ler. 1963. 625 pp. $8.50.
Saint Genet, Jean-Paul SartreTs titular word
play on the martyred Saint Genestus, patron saint
of actors, and on GenetTs exhalted position in the
heirarchy of evil, was originally published in
France in 1952. The book was written to be an
introduction to the collected works of Jean Genet.
Whatever the intention of the writer at the
outset of his work, an introduction Saint Genet
is not, neither is it a biography. Rather it is an
artistic, philosophical treatise on a human type"
a unique type"that coincides with Jean Genet.
For although Sartre talks about Genet, starts
his book with an incident early in the life of
Genet, it seems likely that he would have written
this work even if Genet had never existed.
SartreTs rhetoric is beautiful; the book is well
worth reading for his prose alone. He spends
pages developing seemingly irrefutable syllogisms
to point a blaming finger at society for GenetTs
willful perversion and evil, but it is extremely
difficult to tell when the ideas are GenetTs and
when they are SartreTs. This assigning each man
his own thoughts is not a winnowing process in
Saint Genet; indeed, it is probably necessary.
Since Sartre has such a cavalier attitude about
facts and the order of GenetTs life, why should
we be so mundane as to try to call his book any-
thing like a biography or introduction. Actually,
the entire book is so stamped with SartreTs su-
perior intellect that it exists as a work of art
without even considering the life and writings
of Jean Genet.
Although Sartre feels that, considering the
Masoch-de Sade genre of writers of evil, Genet
could evolve as the most important, he is more
concerned with the flower of evil as a person
(Saint Genet was published before oThe Blacks?
and oThe Balcony.T) than as a writer. Sartre
is not GenetTs explicator; that is, his exegesis
is not for GenetTs writing, but for his depravity.
And illuminating he is.
This reviewer could not honestly recommend
Saint Genet to the general reader and expect to
be taken seriously. Saint Genet will not be wide-
ly read, unless it be by philosophy students, and
perhaps special ones at that. This is unfortunate,
for few writers equal Sartre for treading the
sometime thin line that exists before true artistic
rhetoric becomes clever sophistry.
"ALBERT PERTALION
THE REBEL
Notes On Our Contributors
Peter Hellman by now has graduated from Duke
University and is an ensign in the Navy. His
recollection, oBimini,? won second place in the
prose division of the Fifth National Rebel Writing
Contest. In 1963 oBimini? won the Flexner Prize
for undergraduate writing at Duke University. He
has been published in the Archive.
Doris Betts wrote the short story, oCareful,
Sharp Eggs Underfoot,? and won first place in the
prose division of the Fifth National Rebel Writing
Contest. She has two published books, The Gentle
Insurrection, And Other Stories and Tall Houses
in Winter, a novel. A second novel, o. . . titled
either ~White Bird, Black Bird,? which sounds
too racial or ~Bread and Stones,T which sounds too
Biblical,? will be published by HarperTs.
Richard Clement Wood is Director of the Ameri-
can Studies Program at Randolph-Macon College.
His poem, oKeeper of the Dream,? won second
place in the poetry division of the Fifth National
Rebel Writing Contest. He won prizes for verse at
the Southern Literary Festivals of 1947 and 1948.
His poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review.
Peter F. Neumeyer is Assistant Professor of Ed-
ucation and Tutor in the Department of English
at Harvard University. His poem, oGulls,? won
first place in the poetry division of the Fifth Na-
tional Rebel Writing Contest. He has an article in
the April issue of The Clearing House and an arti-
cle on Kafka accepted for the December issue of
The University Review. New Mexico Quarterly
has accepted two of his poems for publication.
Ulrich Troubetzkoy is Writer-in-Residence at
the University of Richmond. Her poetry has won
numerous prizes. She has appeared regularly in
Essence.
B. Tolson Willis is one of the directors of the
East Carolina College Poetry Forum. He is also a
member of the Greenville Poetry Group whose ap-
pearance in the Fall issue of the Rebel led to the
publication of their book, Local Habitation.
Mary Jane Jones, Don Tracy, and Albert Per-
talion are members of the faculty of East Carolina
College.
James Forsyth is an ex-officio member of our
staff.
The judges for the Fifth National Rebel Writing
Contest were Dr. Howard German, Dr. William H.
Grate, Mrs. Antoinette Jenkins, and Mr. John Con-
ner Atkeson; all are members of the faculty of
East Carolina College.
For the Bright Spot
on Campus
STUDENT'S SUPPLY STORES
EAST CAROLINA COLLEGE
Greenville, N. C.