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THE REBEL MAGAZINE

SPRING 1965-1966 EAST CAROLINA COLLEGE

VOLUME IX, NUMBER 2

JERRY TILLOTSON
ANNE W. NELSON
FRANK TOLAR

JOHN JUSTICE
WILLIAM R. TROTTER

MARY PASCHAL

DWIGHT W. PEARCE

SANFORD PEELE
CAROL HALLMAN

AMON LINER

Editor, Thomas Speight

Associate Editor, James Forsyth :

Business Manager, Richard Papcun

Cover art by Frank Tolar

W. H. AUDEN: a Meeting
Sojourn in Asheville

The Day the Gypsies Passed By
Artist

At the Inlet

Excerpt from a novel

Alcohol in Russia

Poetry

Contributors and a letter

Published three times a year at East Carolina College,

Box 2486, Greenville, N. C.

W. H. AUDEN

April 3, 1966
St. Marks Place
New York

James Forsyth
Sanford Peele
Thomas Speight
W.H. AUDEN: A MEETING

:

Pa Dat quite pleasant. It was not exactly pro-
Selo Ive. After we had hastily introduced our-
disieens: we were shown into his six-months-a-year
“Ty tment. He spends half the year in England.
des 4 more civilized landscape.” Stephen Spen-

ee remarked, around 1953, that Auden’s rooms
ig B. perpetual-student quality about them. It

as “a the lights are not bright. The apartment
and quiet, dusty windows, marble fireplaces, books,
oun tables covered with papers. We presently
i, ourselves seated, and telling him about
li t people we had met. We lit cigarettes, he

another. Throughout our visit, Mr. Auden

was polite, listened carefully, and smiled at jokes.
He spoke rapidly except when making a special
point, and the rapidity, with his accent and vo-
cabulary, made him somewhat difficult to hear.
The impression was that he said exactly what
he wanted to.

Sanford opened, more or less, by asking him
about his translations of the Russian poet Andrei
Voznesensky, which had just appeared in The
New York Review. He replied that the feeling
of the words was usually lost, but the inter-
nationality of smile and metaphor in these poems
made them translatable. Jim asked what he

W. H. Auden: a Meeting

thought of The New York Review. Auden had
already told the editors he thought they printed
too many unfavorable reviews. Bad books should
not be reviewed. They only provide an oppor-
tunity for cleverness or the expounding of the
critic’s personal theories. There are too many
critics who find it unfortunate and regrettable
that there must be a poem before there can be
criticism. A sympathetic reviewer will be much
more critical because he is interested in the work.
Bad books will die without being attacked; at
worst, they will only be replaced by the next gen-
eration of bad books. What should be attacked is
false information and corruption of the language.
Sanford offered that the review in the same per-
iodical of the memoirs by Picasso’s ex-mistress
was unfair. Auden agreed that the reviewer
could hardly have known enough to completely
support what he said; he would have had to have
been a familiar of the mistress or Picasso. But
the book was suspect anyway; it looked as though
she had published it for the money. He added
that the idea is widespread that there is an es-
sential relation between an artist’s life and his
work. He was only interested in the work. The
relation is either so clear as to be obvious or so
complex it would be hopeless to unravel; either
way there is just nothing to say, and no point in
saying it. Some poets, but not the majority, had
led interesting lives, Byron for instance; Byron’s
life would make no less interesting reading had
he never written a line. There are as many in-
terpretations as readers of a poem; completed, a
poem is a verbal object, he said; if a reading of
a poem is biographically incorrect, it may be still
valid for the reader. He wrote, in The Dyer’s
Hand, a group of essays, that the reverse is true
for the poet: his poem must be biographically
valid, true to himself, “in his own handwriting.”

Jim asked him what he was working on now,
and apologized for the standardness of the ques-
tion. Auden said he was very superstitious about
work he hadn’t completed. He could easily talk
it away before it got written. There was a con-
siderable silence. I confessed that we really didn’t
have any specific questions to ask him. I said
he might consider this as sort of a social call.
“Well, ask me some social questions.” I asked if
he answered scholarly questions about his work,
since I had noticed the author of a book on his
poetry had expressed indebtedness for some in-
terviews. He said he answered questions about
local references, metaphors and place names a

general reader might not know, and about points
of fact. I asked what was the proper business of
literary scholars. He said that what critics could
do for him was: (1) Introduce me to authors or
works of which I was unaware. (2) Convince me
that I have undervalued an author or a work be-
cause I had not read them carefully enough. (3)
Show me relations between works of different
ages and cultures which I could never have seen
for myself because I don’t know enough and
never shall. (4) Give a reading of a work which
increases my understanding of it. (5) Throw
light upon the process of artistic making. (6)
Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to
science, economics, ethics, religion, and so forth.
While speaking, he counted these six points off
on his fingers. He listed them probably verbatim
from The Dyer’s Hand, published in 1948, as we
found later.

We sat still. Jim asked if he ever read on any
of the poetry circuits. He said he did, but not
often; it was slightly dangerous. He thought it
best for a writer to support himself in some em-
ployment where it was not necessary to man-
ipulate words. Of those jobs which did use lan-
guage skill, translating, lecturing, and reviewing,
translating was the least dangerous. He lectured
and reviewed when he needed money. He hoped
it came out well; he did as good a job as possible,
but he only did it when he needed money. He
said that now he was pretty well set up until
Spring, 1967.

Noticing an anthology of Blake on the coffee-
table, I asked him how he liked Blake. He said
that he found the Prophetic Books unreadable,
but that Blake had written some very nice things.
Jim mentioned that Mr. Auden had said in an
essay, “American Poetry,” that Blake was not
particularly English. Auden explained that
Blake’s language and ideas were sufficiently gen-
eral that he could have occurred at almost any ©
place and time. |

Jim asked if he had any opinions on Lawrence |
Durrell. “Yes.’”’ When we had absorbed that:
“His brother writes very well. He has written
some nice books about animals.” Sanford smiled,
and spread his arms on the back of his chair. |

Then Sanford said that he admired “In Mem- |
ory of W. B. Yeats.” Auden replied that he had |
said what he had wanted to say in that poem, |
but that he was unsatisfied with the rhetoric. He —
now thought that there was too much of an ele- |
giac tone, and it tended to overshadow the con- —

tent; “It was too loud.”

Auden has written allegorical poetry, plays,
and combinations of prose and poetry. His essays
are as much philosophical as literary in intent.
He has collaborated with Benjamin Britten, and
he is now collaborating with Stravinsky on an
Opera. The day after we saw him, he gave a
lecture on the role of the poet as lyricist or libret-
tist. His contemporaries remember him as a
leader at Oxford in wit and thought. Carlo Izzo
Could not shake off a sense of puzzlement when
he met Auden.

We had gotten around, vaguely for our part,
to questions of technique, and the difference in

W. H. Auden: a Meeting

that sense between British and American poetry,
and what was going to happen to poetry in a tech-
nical way. Sanford remarked that so many of
the younger poets didn’t seem to have much
knowledge of technical things. Auden said there
had been a loss of facility and few people knew
exactly what they were doing. He said that we
all started in the same way, playing with words.
Anyone who doesn’t know all about technical de-
vices in poetry, how hany there are, and in how
many ways they can be manipulated, doesn’t
know what fun he is missing. “Someone who
asks me about dactyls and bacchics is interested
in pretty much the same things that I am.”

Se ee

VIGIL

I sat quiet by his bed

not keeping a vigil

for his sickness was not of importance,
not one you could caption

or read

or even say casually in conversation
of the pain immediate to him

who felt the sensation upturned.

I sat quiet by his bed,

filled the room

with small thoughts

of swinging across creeks

(children do this

when time and books

permit or escape them.)

of small boys writing red on themselves
since crows fly swiftly toward

a red bandana.

He would not die, I knew,

and I suspect he had sensed

that time had not lapsed

to macabre this and that,

but urgency was present,

a sense of touch proportioned

out of place so keen

was the sound of sighs

breaking loud the stillness.

DWIGHT W. PEARCE
SOJOURN IN ASHEVILLE

JERRY TILLOTSON

The city crowns the mountain like a tiara of
ancient jewels. By day, the jewels turn into
8ray buildings that become part of the leaden
Clouds, snows, and winds. In the night, the city
becomes a tiara again, glittering with flashes of
Silver, dashed with slurs of crimson, green, and
yellow. The city and mountain are happy; they
have joined the sky.

* * * *

I became part of Asheville two months ago.
It may have been centuries because my spirit
feels withered with living and age. I was a stran-
Ser when I came here, but the city wrapped me
into a gray coverlet of anonymity which protect-
€d me against loneliness. There were other so-
JOurners here with me, before the snow began,
Who walked the blue-shadowed sidewalks.

Solitary and quiet, we were often seen sil-
houetted against the huge sweep of cloudy sky
that hangs over Pack Square. There is a half-
hidden alley along the avenue which ends on a
Steep hill. You think the sky is an ocean there,
4nd you want to dive straight ahead.

You would have recognized us by the ex-
Pressions on our faces: quiet and faraway. Our
Voices in Tingles Cafe or the library were low
4nd rumbled together indistinctly. The intona-
tions of our vocal cacophony reminded one poet
of the school of stories told by winter’s wind in
°rchards; or of the apple and pumpkin scents

wafted on autumn twilights. The little green
radio shrieks: “... and we repeat, this will be the
last evacuation warning. Attention all Asheville
residents: you are asked to evacuate immediately.
Emergency vehicles are located at Pack Square.
The blizzard is expected to grow worse, cutting
off all food supplies and heating systems by to-
morrow morning. Death-tolls thus far are esti-
mated... ”

Michael, Cherokee. Perhaps they too came
to the mountain unbidden, but they had built
their own walls of granite, grown their own roots
of blue laurel, long ago.

1
“,. Asheboro ... Black Mountain ... Ashe-
ville...’ Mr. Bean roared these words out in his

most sonorous tone; most of his breath was
wasted since I was the only person in the little
storage room of his grocery store. I was out the
door before he had finished with “.. . ville.”

The bus chugged deliciously as I slithered
through the narrow doors and into a seat in the
extreme back. While the driver looked rather
stupidly at my crumpled ticket, and the two other
occupants drifted back into their snooze, I looked
through the window to see what the last sight of
Blue Rock would be.

A storm was in the air, winds blew remnants

Sojourn in Asheville

of paper and whirls of gravel against the un-
painted structure called “Bean’s Produce Gas and
Notions.” Across its only and broken window
was a poster nearly as old as the event it ad-
vertised: Blue Rock Centennial: Sept. 2. Yes the
the biggest little town in North Carolina will cele-
brate its birthday on this date and included will
be a greasy pig chase, a cake walk, and a woman-
less wedding. Everybody come. Sincerely, Craw-
ford Bean, Blue Rock Mayor. Blue Rock...a
name lost on the map between Greensboro and
Raleigh. For me, a cradle and a grave, a birth
and a death.

Salisbury was our only stop. The station
felt cool and moist from the heavy rain and winds
that followed the bus from Blue Rock. Gold lights
were lit in the station, burnishing everything
into muted visibility.

“Hey Judy, give me a suggestion for some-
thing to eat,” the bus driver asked the fat wait-
ress.

Judy leaned against the counter, her plump
breasts perilously close to the bus driver’s coffee
cup.

“Why, Bill, our Heavenly Patties are so
good,” she cried, her face becoming red from ex-
citement, her coyness disappearing behind the
counter.

“Let me tell you how we make them,” she
began. A tiny spot of saliva glowed at the cor-
ner of her mouth.

“First we take tiny pieces of onion and
spread them on the meat pattie, which is cooked
all the way through,” she gasped out. “Then we
put mayonaise and mustard and pickle on. Sounds
good, huh?”

Her breasts heaved from this recital. She
glanced hungrily at the hamburgers simmering
on the grill.

The driver said with a note of fright in his
voice, “I’ll take . . . two.”

“You want two Heavenly Patties, don’t you,”
Judy grinned. “We’re the only bus station diner
that has Heavenly Patties.”

The bus was empty when I returned. The
two sleeping passengers had drifted away, and
now there was a little crowd at the door of the
buss. Through an open window I could feel the
autumn air become metallic with cold. The driver
crept back into his seat with a sigh. He opened
the door and the few people stumbled along the
aisle. There was a plump woman in a soft, blue
wool coat; in the dark — overhead lights — her

coat looked as warm as a gas light in autumn,
not cold and stiff like the sky. A thin, crew-cut
boy followed her sleepily, and slipped into a
front seat. His lips were pursed in an invisible
whistle. The woman waddled unhurredly toward
me.

“Honey, you don’t mind if I sit with you, do
you?” she dazzled a smile. “I hate to sit alone
on these long trips up the mountains.”

She collapsed into the seat next to me, waft-
ing a collage of juicy-fruit gum and strong per-
fume along with her. The paper bag she placed
in her lap emanated delicious meaty scents.

“Well, let me introduce myself. I’m Katie
Shackleford ...and you must be a college girl.”

I told her of getting a scholarship to Buckner
Institute in Asheville and how —

“Oh,” she interrupted, “‘you’ll simply love ©
Buckner. I had a niece to go there and she just
loved it. She’s got a good job with the Welfare
Department in Kenansville . . . and where will
you stay there, honey?” she asked curiously.

“Well, it’s at the Mountain Hotel; my father
once stayed there years ago and became friends
with the owner, and the owner is letting me stay
there for a real nice price, twenty dollars a
month.”’

A look of distaste crossed her baby-face when
I said ‘‘Mountain Hotel.”

“How long was it since your father stayed
there, honey?” She raised her eyebrows in an
effort to tell me something.

“Ten years and they’ve got my room ready
and everything. The Dean of Women says it’s
a nice, respectable place and several more girls
will be living there.”

She stared at me incredulously and mur-
mured, “Well, I suppose you’ll like it.”

She told me of her little cottage in Biltmore;
how every morning she would have to fix a big
pan of biscuits and a large breakfast for her hus-
band, Roy; and how she loved to catch the Bilt-
more-Caledonia bus every Thursday morning and
go into town.

“Oh, you’ll simply love Asheville. I’ve lived
there for ever so long, I got tired of other places;
but not Asheville. You have to be careful, honey,”
she added with a sudden low voice, “Don’t ever let
it catch you; it can make you never want to leave
it, even for a little while. The wind beat against
the windows in a way I had never heard before.
“That’s the winter wind,” Katie said in a voice —
that reminded me of mountains. “It always ©

Starts around September, and it blows all the
time.”

She opened the delicious-smelling bag on

her lap. “Here, honey, I can’t possibly eat all
of this.” She handed her a bundle wrapped in
Wax paper. “My sister Bessie worked in that

Salisbury bus station. She always fixes me with
an outrageous supper every time I go to see her.”
The wailing wind seemed friendlier now that I
Munched on the chicken and felt warm potato
Salad inside.
I knew we were reaching the city when I saw
Speckles of silver light blinking below us on the
left. “We'll soon be there, honey,” Katie said,
between mouthfuls of chicken. We passed through
Tavines of rock and timber; travelled up sheer
drops of asphalt headed toward the stars which
Shadowed all the mountain world I was en-
tering. The crew-cut boy was asleep, his head
lolling faintly as the bus turned the corners. The
driver hunched over his wheel, lifeless and black,
like g mannequin. As we entered the outskirts
of the city, we passed a closed filling station and
an all-night hamburger stand, then more and
More buildings, houses, bridges; the streamlined
Clover-leaf intersections, the radio towers, and
the peaks of buildings. “We're here, honey,”
Said Katie, her lips glittering from chicken grease
the moonlight.
“Taxi, Miss,” a voice called from one of the
yellow cabs. The wind was bone-touching, blow-
ing my skirt against my knees, blowing away the
Sight of Katie as she got into her cab with a
Wave of her hand. The driver of my cab was
Scrawny and talked with a voice that sounded
ike the wind.
__ “Nah, the Mountain Hotel isn’t a bad place,
\t’s had better days,” he whined. The cab sped
along dark avenues, shapeless stores and build-
gs. I could see nothing. I was shivering from
herves. “Here we are,” the driver said hollowly.

hrough the darkness I could see a pale doorway.

“Can I help you, Miss?” My nervousness in-
Creased as I stood before the counter facing what
Tesembled a living male-ghost. He was slender
and fragile, but not delicate. There was nothing
*ffeminate in his figure.

_ “Yes, we certainly do have your reserva-
tion.” His voice was hollow, reminding me of
the noise I heard in seashells at the beach.

“You look tired. The trip must have worn

Jerry Tillotson

you out.” His eyes were dead, like two marbles.
There was something very attractive and re-
pulsive about him.

“If you'll follow me, I'll show you to your
room.” When he lifted my suitcase, I forgot the
slenderness of his body and thought how much
it reminded me of a tree.

“You will be the only one on the fourth floor
for some time. The other girls who were to live
here changed their minds.” His voice was like
the telephone recording, yet I could hear a par-
ticle of feeling in it, intense to the point of
hysteria.

The elevator smelled of mothballs and dis-
infectant. He stood, not visibly breathing, be-
fore the elevator buttons. We stepped into a
long, silent hall. The wind could be heard creak-
ing and snapping at things in the rooms.

“If you get frightened here or should want
anything, just push the button here by the bed.”
With the air of having done it many times before,
he opened the bathroom door, turned on some
more lights and then faced me.

“The janitor lives here on this floor, so you
won’t be completely alone,” he said.

“Oh, what ... type of man is he?” I asked,
feeling ridiculous.

“Don’t worry,’ the young man said with a
trembling of his lips, “I won’t harm you. I’m the
janitor, Michael. Some people call me Mike, but
I hate that.”

He walked toward the door. Half-way
through he stopped. “Oh, your luggage will be
here tomorrow morning; it’s in Statesville now.”
I didn’t hear him walk away because of the car-
peting. Something told me that he stood in front
of my door for a long time.

My room looked as though it was what my
father must have seen when he passed through
ten years before. It had samplings of all the
worst in dime-store millinery, furniture, and pic-
tures. Cheap cotton curtains hung stiffly over
the windows, not stiff with starch but with dust.
The cardboard pictures flanking the mirror were
bad, early twentieth century memorabilia. One
was of a young flapper sitting on a knoll over-
looking the ocean, the other was of Jean Harlow,
heavily retouched. The bed looked sound enough,
and when I sat on the edge, the other side raised
in the air like a swan.

BORN 1891

For her who gave up most utterly
Everything to God, because at sixty

She had had all else worth having,

Praise be — the voices in the Myrtle
Heard her blood’s bargin and though one
Yellowed eye observed her burnished cock
Astride a little hen like rippled water,

She could pray whole mouthfulls of prayer
And set the rigid sinews of her black neck
Against a margin of desire worn back —
A time of rodent and October sun

Busy and communal among the fallen corn.

At this heart of darkness, richer than

Black paint she wore, believing color

Hid a color made colorless by love —
Transparent as the vengence she would

Not revive, though driven like sweet
Water upward and alive singing suffer

For your patch of black — she saw, that
To have been born thus and scratch
Yourself for difference and see beneath

A swirl of gentle hair laid bare

The rose red infinitesimal corridors of grief,
Is home — where pigs root among the sour
Remains of summer — and all small
Satisfaction must be heart’s glazed hazelnut,
The green thing pulled toward golding.

POEM FOR CELEY MOSS, NEGRO

SANFORD L. PEELE

SHORT STORY

THE DAY THE GYPSIES PASSED BY

ANNE W. NELSON

_ The day the gypsies came they were playing
' the yard with the silver cardboard swords that
ad been in the back of the linen closet since
alloween. They had forgotten about them until
nnie had found them that morning and sent
£m out to play where it was cool in the yard
Under the trees. The cardboard had begun to
Shred with the heavy metallic paint flaking off
ke thick fish scales when Minnie came out on
© porch and called them, her gold brown Negro
Voice Shaking deep in her throat until it pierced
€ shadowy quiet beneath the trees with an ur-
Sent, white toned shrillness.
rom where she made them stand on the porch,
©Y watched the caravan come nearer and near-
haa along the road. The wagons seemed not to move
'N the bright sunlight, but to enlarge through
Some trick of the sun and heat until they were
Suddenly near enough that the slow sounds of
© wagon wheels turning through the powdery
“uts of the road became a part of the swish the
Teeze made through the trees in the yard.
g innie tried to get them to go into the house.
he tried to pull them with the strength of her
ark fear. They knew she silently urged them
th 80 in. Her effort was obvious to them through
© Violent strain her fright smote the air with.

ut her horror they could ignore; their excite-
Ment rendered them immune. They clung to the
mystery of the bleak caravan until their imagina-
‘Ons pulsed with a spectacle-saving colour that

endowed the meager stumbling parade with the
circus-like majesty of brilliant pace. And finally
they swooped with the thrill of having seen the
unknown. They stood on the porch and screamed
a unanimous salute of joyous welcome to the
brief vision that passed in careless splendor along
the dusty road past the house.

There they all stood next to the white woven
gingerbread of the porch railing until Minnie
enviously crumbled into quivering shards of
thrill and darted mumbling with relief back into
the safety of the house from which they heard
her in a loud, skittering voice boast of the dan-
gerous witness she had made. Knowingly, they
flowed back into the yard, made into a docile one-
ness by their bold confrontation.

It was more fun to play pirate now with the
gypsies just gone by, far better than it had been
earlier. Their daring took on new force. And
Mathew learned that he could quite easily sail
over the porch railing, over the hydrangea and
azalea bushes, into the yard. He had never been
able to jump that far before. But Harvey in-
sisted that he try. And Vernon approached the
suggestion with a new dignity. And Mathew was
not one to stand back in the face of new feats.

They were wildly practicing jumping from the
porch in a pell-mell unison of limber abandon
when Aunt Lucy came out to say that they must
help catch all the chickens and get them into
coops in case the gypsies came back to steal them

11

The Day the Gypsies Passed By

that night. So they took the limp swords and
went to the back yard to round up the ellusive
chickens. It was hard to catch the chickens,
especially the old speckled rooster who had knife-
sharp talons and kept getting in a corner by the
doorstep and then lunging out when they were
at him with his mean beak stabbing at their legs
and his hateful claws spurring the air when they
reached toward him.

They got very hot running so much and Vernon
became sick. Aunt Lucy would not believe him
until he vomited in great choking sobs into the
verbena bed where the rooster was making a des-
perate last stand; then she sent him into the
house where Mama made him lie down with a
cool cloth on his head. Mama smelled good. She
smelled like starch and she smelled like rose
water and glycerine. It was very quiet in the
house and very still. But his body kept drifting
and dropping and rising as if he had been swim-
ming for a very long time and the water adhered
to him like a ghost.

He could hear Aunt Lucy giving directions as
to how the chicken coops should be shut un. And
he could hear Minnie rattling pans in the kitchen.
He could hear Mama rocking in her gooseneck
rocker in the front parlour. He knew that she
was making the button-holes on a new shirt for
Mathew.

Aunt Lucy had been there as long as he could
remember. She had Mammyed him and Harvey
and Mathew. She had Mammyed Mama too. Aunt
Lucy was very old. She wore white string wrap-
ped in a tight spiral around the little plaits she
kept her hair in. He had seen her do it many
times. But he did not understand how she did
it. She began with a string about a yard long
and when she fininshed it looked as if she had
used many strings. None of the young Negroes
wore their hair like that. Minnie didn’t. She just
wore hers in plaits. Someday he would ask Aunt
Lucy. He could ask her because she was old. He
hoped he would not forget.

He was still thinking about Aunt Lucy’s in-
tricate coiffure when there was a noise at the
window and Mathew pulled himself up into a
precarious crouched position on the window sill.
Mama had told Mathew and Harvey to stay in
_the yard and play while Vernon was sick. Mama
thought he would feel better sooner if he stayed
very still and did not exert himself in the other
boys’ wild activity. Vernon was glad to see
Mathew. He wished he did not feel so tired. He

12

would have liked to have been friendly to Mathew.
His feeling bad made him need to be nice to
somebody. And it was sometimes quite easy to
nice to Mathew because he was so little and won-
derful with eagerness. But Mama would not like
Mathew’s being on the window sill; she would
put them both in trouble.

“You better get out of that window before
Mama catches you,” Vernon said. “You better go
on before she comes in here, Mathew.”

“TI tell you what,” Mathew said, “just get out
of the bed and come on out the window. She
ain’t going to come in here no time soon. She
is on the front porch behind the Kate Jazmin tree
looking at everybody go in the store.”

“Well, I don’t feel good.”

“Then you might as well come on out here
with us.”

“T don’t feel too hot. I feel bad. I don’t want

to put on my clothes. Those stockings itch my
legs horrible.”

“Come on,” Mathew said. “Just come on out
the window. She ain’t going to know.”

“She might,” Vernon said. “And you are going
to fall if you stay on that window sill like that.
Why don’t you come on and get in the room?”

“No, I’m going back out there in a minute.
We've got something out there.”

“You’ve got on another pair of new stockings,”
Vernon said.

“Papa didn’t see me get them. I went around
the counter and hid until there were a lot of peo-
ple in the store. Then I got them.”

“Mama is going to find out about this after. a
while,” Vernon said. “She is going to find out.”

“T ain’t scared of her. She’ll just beat me.”

“That wall is going to be full after a while if
you keep cramming them in that hole. That whole

wall is going to be full of stockings.”

“Well, I am not going to wear them after they
It hurts my feet to wear
them when they have been sewed up,” Mathew

have been sewed up.

SA FTN NSO SME PRE INES NR FI CORE ROPS Pe ETAT TARE coe ragae ane ee

RRR IRE A A

said. “I’m going to keep getting me some new

ones out of the store.
stockings over there.”

“They hurt my feet, too,” Vernon said. “But
I am afraid something will happen and Mama will
find out that that wall is crammed full of stock-
ings she has darned.”

“Nothing ain’t going to happen. That wall will

be just like that a hundred years from now. Right
full of stockings that have been sewed with rough
places in them,” Mathew said.

There are a whole lot of

“Get out of that window and come on in here,”’
— said. “Come on in here and stay with

ag

“IT got to go back out there with everybody
else,” Mathew said. “We got something out there.

© got Harvey’s gun. And Lester is out there
4nd Bud and Al.”

“That gun won’t shoot,” Vernon said. “The
thing that pumps air is broke on that gun.”

“Yes, it will too,’”’ Mathew said. “It will shoot.
It will shoot a nail. Big Boy fixed it so it will
Shoot a nail.”

“Mama told us not to play with the niggers
’42ymore. Don’t you know Mama will beat you
If she catches you with Big Boy?”

“Big Boy ain’t out there,’ Mathew said. “He’s

°Wn in the thicket waiting for us.”

“Mama said that Pappa is going to beat us
hisself if he catches us with that air rifle, again,”

€rnon said. “You all have not been shooting at

at mule have you?”

“We ain’t been shooting that mule today,”
Mathew said. “We just got that gun fixed. Just
While ago,”

“You go on,” Vernon said. “I think I am going
to be Sick. I think I am going to vomit again.
Why don’t you come through the room and go out
ike that?”

“All I got to do is jump,” Mathew said. He
dged around on his heels and dropped to the
Tound. He stood on his tip toes and rested his
chin On the window sill. “Are you sure you don’t
Want to go to the thicket with us, Vernon?”

: “rnon did not answer. A fly was buzzing
Sainst the screen on the inside. He wished
athew had not kept the screen open so long.

th. Wished the fly would see the little crack at
bottom and go back out.

I tell you what,” Mathew said. “If you change
your Mind, come on down there where we’re
S°ing to be at. You do that.”
€ counterpane. The peacocks in the-counter-
Pane, The big birds with the purple and green
“athers, Mama’s Mama made the counterpane.
srnon wondered what Mama would do when she

— Out that Mathew and Harvey had cut the
ge off that side of the counterpane last night.

© Side of the counterpane next to the wall; he
ss glad. The purple fringe. Like in the barber

°p. Except it was fringe. Mathew was the one

Anne W. Nelson

who had thought of it. But Harvey cut it off be-
cause he was older. Harvey was oldest of them
all.

Vernon wished he felt like going to the thicket
with everybody. He wished he did. He liked the
thicket. He liked the Chinaberry trees with the
purple blossoms. And the old bottles and cans
Mama told old Sim to throw in there. He thought
about the dark blue bottles and the broken cups
and the rusty cans. He wondered if goats really
ate tin cans.

The thicket reminded him of the counterpane.
He thought about the peacocks in the Chinaberry
trees. Mama’s duster made out of peacock feath-
ers was hanging by a string inside the closet
door. The door was open and he could see the
feathers stirring in the heat. He wished he were
in the thicket with the counterpane and the pea-
cocks and Mathew and everybody. The counter-
pane. And the thicket. He was holding a handle
broken from a cup in his hand. A white cup
handle and a little gold mark. He threw it up
through the branches of the Chinaberry trees.
The peacocks began to hum. It was a tune he
did not know.

“Mathew,” the peacocks chorused, “shot that
salesman who just drove up. He shot him with a
nail he had in that air rifle. But he was aiming
at the horse. They made him do it because he
was the littlest. They made him shoot at the
horse and the nail hit the salesman who always
has that free candy in his buggy. Papa is going
to beat Mathew. He is going to beat the others
too. He is going to beat Big Boy.” The other pea-
cocks nodded.

The thicket felt soft and green. The peacocks
hid in the purple blossoms. Mathew was crying.
A cup handle fell out of one of the Chinaberry
trees. It landed on Mathew’s chest. He lay there
crying and his tears were soft in the green thick-
et. The peacocks were whispering quietly. Mama
peered through the Kate Jazmin bush. She waved
and the air was like smoke with the smell of
Kate Jazmins. The wall crumbled like rain run-
ning down a window and Mathew’s black stock-
ings quietly slid in an unending surge into the
room and around the bed. Finally the fly went
out of the little crack at the bottom of the win-
dow. The black stockings ignited and the room
burst into a million flames.

13

: ore
ania ng a ee

Sr Se a
; Silane ales = —

Saag RN neem aa

= =
a. ae

ee
ee se

=

Frank Tolar studied with Joe Cox and George
Bireline at the N. C. State School of Design from
1958 to 1962, with Russell Arnold at Atlantic
Christian College in 1962-63, and received a Mas-

| ter’s degree. from East Carolina College in 1963-
64. In 1965, he won the Harrelson Purchase prize
at the North Carolina Museum of Art. He teaches
at A&T College in Greensboro.

14

0

FRANK TOLAR

This is a very close commentary. Close to Tolar and close in meaning. -ed.

ToLar: What am I talking about? [I’m against
all art, in all seriousness against all art. And
m trying to be serious about it, too. In a world
ull of fools and artists, which is my world, I’m
Tying to destroy the principles, the elements, the
“esthetics, and the disciplines and the mores.—
™M trying to destroy all that and develop a new
art form which is not based on any of the old
nes, and I fully believe it can be done. There
are too many panty-waists involved in it for my

Ste. What I’m saying it that a new art form is

in need of being developed, and I mean an art
form which is completely negative to all the es-
tablished, accepted principles of beauty, love,
sweetness, hate, devotion, etcetera. I’m saying
an art has got to be developed that destroys all
these concepts and yet remains art. And since,
of course, the only means right now I have of
judging art are by the things I’ve just been put-
ting down — ah — I’m having a bit of a time.
However, I see progress — progress. It is rough,
I’ll agree. It’s one of those problems which I’ve

15

Frank Tolar

got to face, as an artist, whatever that is, you
see; the very essence of what I want to do will
destroy my being an artist. Yes, I know it sounds
funny, but to me it’s a very valid thing. To me
it’s the problem I’ve set; it’s not one of space,
time, form, function, or anything else, but simply
my own problem.

INTERVIEWER: Well, it just contradicts itself,
there’s no solution.

TOLAR: Oh no, no. The very essence of the con-
tradiction you spoke of is the solution, that there
is an art form someplace — and I don’t know
where yet — but there’s an art form which I
plan to find which will destroy even the essence
of contradiction. It will be an art form which
is neither yes or no, but simply 7s, for a moment
in time, and it doesn’t have to exist forever like
the classical art forms do. It’s the kind of art
which you can plug in or turn on and off, or you
can get it in a box and mix with water and it’ll
dissolve. Sort of like Tingleuy’s sculpture that
blew itself up in the Museum of Modern Art gar-
den and —

INTERVIEWER: Actually, the trouble was that the
thing didn’t completely destroy itself.

TOLAR: Yes, I know. There was metal left.
INTERVIEWER: No, it wasn’t that; it didn’t really
work.

TOLAR: That’s not the artist’s fault, it’s the en-
gineer’s fault.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, but the New York Fire De-
partment had to come around and put it out.
TOLAR: Well, this is good; it was a happening,
then. Want me to tell you about happenings? I
think happenings are the next form of art, after
Top. We’ve had Op, Pop. Top Art — topograph-
ical art. Quit laughing.

INTERVIEWER: That’s a one-piece bikini.

TOLAR: There you go — a topless art. Form
with no art. All right Larry, all right. It think
it’s more fun to shoot a game of pool anyway.
INTERVIEWER: The most obvious question is, are
these assemblages any step in the direction you
were just talking about?

TOLAR: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: All right, how? Any casual ob-
server looking at it would see elements of paint-
ing and sculpture.

TOLAR: I’ll say this much: I have discovered for
my own personal ends, now mind you, not for
anybody else’s, artists or otherwise, that to do a
good painting or a good sculpture is an art com-
parable to craftsmanship — now they’ll bomb my

16

—————___— >

house, with eggs. But I’m far enough along that
I can knock out a good painting or a good piece of
sculpture without any effort. It’s a craft, it’s like
playing Bach. I mean it’s already been said, all
I’m doing is just mouthing the words. But what
I’m searching for, as I said before, is a non-art;,
and these assemblages, as you can probably tell,
while they certainly work painterly and they work
spatially, have something else in them, and this
something else is what I’m going to control pretty
soon. I’m going to get to the place where this
something else will be so strong that you won't
even be able to see the elements of painting and
sculpture. It’s a long road, but this is the prob-
lem.

I’ve got a classic thing, by the way, when |
start a beginning painting class. Beginning stu-
dents have this fear of a canvas, you know, it’s
sort of natural-born. Always I'll wait until they
start, and they just stand there wondering what
to do, and I’ll walk up and get a large — a number
20 or so — Grumbacher flat bristle, load it up
with paint, and I mean real greasy black, and
I’ll say, ‘Now look at the beautiful virgin canvas
here, so pure, so unadulterated — look how boring
and plain and sterile it is!’ Then I’ll just crucify
it with black paint and say, ‘I just raped it, but
now it’s interesting because it has a story to tell.’
And their eyes get big because they hear the
word ‘rape. I’m also very much against art
teachers — including myself.

INTERVIEWER: Here we go again.

TOLAR: As I said, the ideal student-teacher re-
lationship would be completely negative. We
wouldn’t even be there. However, we live in 4
competitive society and we have to have degrees;
and a great deal can be learned from artists by
working with them, listening to them.

The important thing has been for me to find
a means of capturing time. That sounds so fa-
cetious — it’s not really. But it’s what I’ve bee?
trying to do I guess for the past two years. And
I don’t mean to freeze it in space as much as J
mean to establish it; to say: this happened, i§
happening, will happen.—and I don’t want to re-
cord it for posterity. I just want to freeze it right
where it happened. Now the boxes — it’s partly
psychological, it’s like peeping through a key-

. hole, you know, and seeing something — it is0o-

lates the viewer. In fact, I imagine that I wil
evolve very soon to a peep-hole sort of box where
only one person can see at a time, and what they
see will be their own. It won’t be the kind of

ee a,

\Ww

thing where you can go “ooh-ahh, how great!”
and share it with some little mink-coated friend,
Which is about all that happens at these art open-
gs anyway. But I feel as though I’m on the
verge of a very big thing, something which is
80ing to be tremendously innovative and vety
Meaningful to me. Now whether it is to the
World or not, I don’t givea....

INTERVIEWER: I don’t mean to get technical about
this, but in the sense of an impressionist tech-
hique — you do certain things to get certain ef-
fects. :
ToLar: Well, to a degree. I use the shadow-box
effect to get this key-hole thing I was talking
about, and with the four sides I compress space,
4nd there’s a certain crispness —

NTERVIEWER: I was wondering if there were any
€chnical gimmicks which were directly related
0 time.

SOLAR: This is essentially what you’re asking —
What does red represent, what does space repre-
Sent, what do I use to represent time? The fact

at as you look at it, you were just looking at it.

Night Flight

INTERVIEWER: If you’ll untangle that...
TOLAR: That’s what makes the boxes interesting.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, but what about time? Sure,
objects exist in space, but still I don’t see any
way of —

TOLAR: What do you mean, “exist in space?” I
find emotions existing in space.

INTERVIEWER: Have you been taking LSD lately ?
TOLAR: No, the time thing I’m talking about —
I’m after something so real that it just happened.
I mean I’m after something you just saw, you
just lived, you just felt. And ‘just,’ I don’t know.
A minute ago, a year ago — it doesn’t matter.
INTERVIEWER: OK.

TOLAR: Have you heard of deja vu? This is the
sensation of having done something before. And
it doesn’t have to be something you personally
did before, but it has to make you feel that way.
You want a damn technical gimmick — deja vu.
That’s my boxes, deja vu. OK, there you have the
secret. I’m the only artist in the world right now,
alive, doing something called deja vu. Yes, this
is worth your time.

17

nana its Sc A Nt a za : a

scsi antabuse tinal esse

Kepler’s Revenge

18

a mmarntntes aera

a

ns

——

The Voyage

19

20

THE GLACIAL AIR OF WINTER

The glacial air of winter

Knifes my brain and like a thief
Steals my breath while I skim the
Sea of leaves below the sky,
Whose flaming candle at once
Bursts into a last brave glow
Before it melts into night.

Then tongues of hoary winter
Air encrust the fragrant pines,
And the frozen, dappled sky

Above shrouds her sleeping child.
The knife of air sharper still,

I turn to face the wind and

Blend in with the churning leaves.

CAROL HALLMAN

SHORT STORY

AT THE INLET

JOHN JUSTICE

The live oak is the only tree which isn’t
Killed, choked by it moss — the great gnarled
trees with their grey filigreed trimmings are the
Most permanent fixtures in the low-country land-
Scape. The low-country is lonely, and sweet as
an eternal sigh. Extensive stands of sky-reach-
Ng pines are fixed in the grey sandsoil, and dark,
flat rivers trace slow paths toward the ocean.

lack marshes are scattered like sins deep in the
“rests. The oaks are tired and ancient as time
‘8 measured in this silent land. They are over
three hundred years old, and dimly dream of

€ mailed Spaniards who burst upon them like a
Summer storm, long ago. The soil is porous,
Unfertile, and unprofitably tilled.

Time ... the word has meaning where the
dull, unrough rush of the sea toward the shore
“ontinues through untold days and nights. Mur-
Tell’s Inlet people live mostly outside: fishing

Sats and small farms of soybeans, corn, toma-
Ses, so that their senses are formed by and at-
4ned to the sharp, outrageously clean sea breezes
4nd the sun-dazzled creeks and ocean, and the
Waving green fields of marsh grasses. And time
‘++ Most will stay in the village until they die.
They will live between the sea and the forests,
“Nd in death they will be taken across highway

two miles down a rutted, splotched, woods
"oad and there be given to the sand, their graves
8ently littered with pine cones and needles, their
Mortal remains guarded by the straggling iron

fence around the Methodist Church Cemetery.
The names are pebbled memories: Alston, Flagg,
Lachicotte, Murell, Pawley, and Turbeville — a
little foreign and evocative of times past, before
Roosevelt, before Wilson, and even back to the
now unimaginable days before 1861, when the
country’s undeniable tendency toward — that
grim and ludicrous word — schizophrenia was
as yet unmanifested.

A warm, colorful land far from the by-God-
damned-eternal steel and stone of more progress-
ive locales. At times hurricanes smash mind-
lessly past the dunes and trembling creeks, but
these are infrequent times. Mostly the land
sleeps.

James remembered as he caught sight of the
trees before the house. Lillah had told him.

“Do you remember telling me how the live
oaks got their moss?”

“No, I sure don’t.” She smiled a little va-
cantly and lit a cigarette as they stopped. “In
fact, I don’t remember myself how they got it.”

“When the Spaniards first came,” they got
out and walked over the imbedded oyster shells,
“one of the soldiers fell in love with the daughter
of an Indian chief, the tribe up the Waccamaw.
But the chief didn’t think the Spaniards worthy
enough to mingle their blood with the Waxa-
phaws — sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

The smoke of her cigarette was even bluer
than the sky.

21

At The Inlet

“So the soldier hanged himself on a tall oak,
and the moss we see now is a reminder of his
lost love.” James grasped a tangle of the soft
grey moss, and with a slight bow presented it
to her. Their fingertips grazed through the in-
tricate strands.

With a sweet smile she said, “How old were
you then?”

“T don’t know. About ten, I guess.”

“I was twenty-two then... it must have
impressed you.”

“Oh, I was very much impressed. I made a
drawing of the soldier hanging by his beard in
the moonlight.”

“T remember.”

“You remember how old I made him look?
Because I thought only old persons had beards.”

“Yes, yes, you made him with wrinkles on his
forehead, James.” She laughed happily.

Stale, cool air rushed out against then when
Lillah opened the door. She moved at once to
open the windows. The house was chill with
desertion.

“Do you think we need a little fire?”

“Tt might help, anyway.”

“Do you know how to work the heater?”
Her blue skirt flared like a flame in the dim room
as she stooped to pick up a long-dead flower.

James struck a match, and waited for the
sibilant voice of the gas. He turned the brass
knob down to a whisper, and joined the gas and
match with a puff. The little rows of blue fires
danced in their sockets. Outside, the irregular
throb of a motorboat reached them, and they
went to the window, the white curtains softly
rising and falling. The boat, far out in the chan-
nel, was a red dot driven before a white froth.

“Can you tell whose it is?” he asked, look-
ing at her as she watched the boat.

“T think it’s old man Nemiah’s, the one who
takes fishing parties out.”

“Isn’t he the one who got in trouble a few
years ago for not paying taxes?”

Her profile was sundrenched, and gave him
a picture of her face he would remember — a
new point of departure: the smooth, gently
curving brow beneath the burnished, generous,
dark hair, her fine nose and firm chin, the rushing
clean line of her slender neck, the well-sculpted
lips always promising ....

“Yes, that’s him. If they got him for every-
thing he’s done, he’d never see a free day again.”
She was still looking out past the wide green

22

marshes and blue slices of creek to the white
dunes miles off. |

“You have a smudge on your face,” he point-
ed out, but they were standing so close that the
gesture was ridiculous, his elbows touching his
stomach and his wrists curved like a fairy’s, and
his finger inches away in the gentle morning
light. She raised a hand to her forehead.

“No, here.” One slim finger spanned their
lives and touched the browned cheek. She turned
her serene face to him and moved her hands
down. She wiped absently at the place and walk-
ed away, leaving him trembling and weak with
lust, as the sea-breeze blew cool and mocking
over his skin....

The key to James, the fact without knowl-
edge of which no one could know him, was that
he once sat in a closet all night waiting for his
stepfather to kill him.

James’ mother married Garland Hart whet
James was twelve. They moved into a small,
well-built house in the country, five miles from
the nearest town. Pastures stretched greenly
out from the front and both sides, and woods
loomed behind. When they first came, the grass
had not yet come up, and the front yard was 4
sea of red mud. The leaden, wintry sky imposed
a vast silence on the place — the mud-brow?
creek below, the long, red-ochre fields, the stark;
black trees with occasional wild flights of black
birds. James despised the lonely and cheerless
new life, and vented his anger by reading aloné
in his room for long hours. He answered curtly
any of his stepfather’s remarks. His stepfathe!
was a huge farmer, tall and strong, with tough,
dry skin. He looked like a cruel and stupid Lin
coln.

One night as the three of them sat at din-
ner around the long, lacquered pine table, Hart
broke a perfect silence with: “Gawd dammit! [I’ve
taken as much as I can stand.” James and his
mother looked up at him — he had on only his
undershorts; he often appeared this way, show”
ing his huge, darkhaired chest and flat, pale
stomach. He pointed a rock-like fist at James:
ec fare , you think you’re too good to livé
on a farm. You think your ....2. is better!
Well, God-damn-you .. .”

James mumbled an indistinct denial.

“Let me tell you, if you’re going to live
this house, my house,” he breathed great chunk*
of air; both arms tightened into columns of mus —
cle, “there’ll be no more of your back-talk and |

ee ae

Slamming doors, you little ________.
think you’re better than me.. .”

“Garland,” James’ mother crooned, reaching
out a short, plump arm.

“«.. but you’re not, by God. You ain’t worth
Gene Price or any of his niggers, do you hear?”

“Garland!”

James stared down at his plate, feeling he
Would rather die than take this. Yet he sat still
m the warm, coffee-scented room.

“T may not have an education or be as smart
48 you, but I pay my way — with these,” Hart
Snarled.

Silence. ,

“Which is more than you do, you no-good

Silence.

“And if you don’t like it, by God, I’ll beat

eal out of you.”

James was twelve. The night passed, and
When morning came, they sat down at the same
Shining pine-board table and had breakfast —
hot convivially, but polite and constrained, with
"Veryone passing dishes without being asked.

By the time James was in high school, Hart

‘ad changed his theme; with the exquisite sensi-
vity of a Southerner, he had discovered that
James did not hate Negroes. “God-damned
ligger-lover,” he would say, “I’ll go to hell be-
fore I'll feed and clothe a ______ nigger-lover.”

ut he did pay some expenses, and James came

me at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and in the
Summers, as though there was something in both
of them that loved self-hurt.

James was always powerless, though by his
first year at the State University he was six feet

‘1. Hart would always stand when he began
1S tirades, always catching James when he was
Sitting. He would stand in the doorway of James’
‘oom. “I’d be willing to go to prison just to
touch you with these,” he would intone, raising

1S massive hands. James took the words and
Vilifications and thrust them into his nethermost
Mind so that he would not be plagued with the
Mocking demon’s faces.

_ The first nightmare came when he was in
his Second year at the University. Late on an
autumn evening he awoke to find himself stand-
'ng before the shattered window, the curtains

’pping wildly in the night wind, and the over-

fad light blazing.

“For Christ’s sake,” his room-mate breathed.
He Was a quiet mountain boy. “For sweet Jesus’

John Justice

sake,” from the doorway where he stood with his
hand on the light-switch.

James looked and saw himself holding his
arms outward as if in supplication, bright rings
of red gleaming on each hand, and blood drip-
ping gently to the worn, wooden floor. All he
could ever remember was a terrible loneliness,
alive in a black, endless plain, followed by a
choking sensation that something was coming to
kill him in an unspeakabie horrible way, all trans-
posed from his mind to his stomach and nerves.

He lost three roommates and fifteen pounds.
He began staying up until dawn reading, drinking
coffee, and smoking tasteless cigarettes without
end. He would only fall into bed in the first
soft light of morning, when he was certain he
would have no time to think or remember before
sleep overtook him.

The night when he sat in the closet, waiting,
came between his sophomore and junior years,
when he was nineteen years old. Nineteen years
old — it galled him. He could never understand
the forces which compelled Hart to spew his
hatred. Considering those dramas as a series,
they were ridiculous and really pointless — the
aging and still potent cursing Hart and slim,
blond, docile James. And James could never
learn to anticipate the attacks. They might be
talking amiably in one of their long truces when
something in Hart’s slow-working, hypersensitive
brain would trigger a flood of abuse.

The summer James was nineteen, Hart’s
face was eight years older, he was slipping past
the edge of middle age into his old years. His
face was tinged with purple blotches, and the
thick veins on his rock-hard arms, which had
always given James a twinge, stood out danger-
ously. One night his parting words were: “Your
mother’s always stood between you and me, but
by God... .”

James stood a moment watching the fleeting
silver and grey patterns thrown on the bedspread
by the moon and racing coulds. Something par-
ticularly furious in Hart’s eyes suggested to
James that this night would be the culmination
of the years of rage. He went to his bureau and
felt his way through papers, books, golf-balls, old
pens and mirrors, and found an ancient scout
knife, long, with a leather thonged handle. He
eased himself into the closet and down onto the
floor among the rugs and old clothes, and he
waited. His heart made sickening leaps trying
to free itself. If Hart came in, James would

23

At The Inlet

be hidden for an extra instant behind the bureau
to the right of the closet door. He could spring
up from the clothes and plunge the knife into the
pale stomach. He had no doubt that something
would happen this night; he only doubted whether
he could get to the point where the knife touched
the flesh, so he could consider himself having no
choice, and ram it as far as it would go. Natural-
ly, Hart would not have thought of James like
this, and would be unprepared.

James was an avid newspaper reader, and
was aware that hardly a week passes without a
farmer somewhere in the country shooting, knif-
ing, axing, or poisoning his family. Possibly Hart
would kill himself after James and his mother —
some consolation. He visualized Hart’s per-
verted Lincolnesque feature above the headline:
“N. C. FARMER SLAYS WIFE, SON. PLEADS
TEMPORARY INSANITY.” Through the thin
closet wall behind him, James could hear angry
muttering from the bedroom. The knife handle
grew damp in his grasp.

24

eee ll

Gradually resignation replaced the acidic

fear. He began to look forward to Hart’s coming
— it was all ordained and planned long ago that

he should die or kill in this room in the house that
he hated. He cursed and wept silently, passing
into near madness, ready to take the initiative
and kill Hart, watch his stupid, brown eyes fill
with death. He held the knife as if it were 4
grail. Leaning back into a musty pile of old
rugs, he slept. And waking later to the raucous
cries of the chickens and the aristocratic snorting
of the pigs, he saw the delicate blue morning
sky behind the elms out back. He crawled into
bed without thinking much of how ridiculous he
felt.

To James from that time, his loves, his
friends, his dreams, all his life had to be placed
beside that night, fitted to the touchstone. The
memory was a dark beacon, hideous, but no less
cherished for a malign face. The nightmares
continued.

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EXCERPT FROM A NOVEL BY

WILLIAM R. TROTTER

Speaking again, the web began to draw

~Ughter around him, the facts and dreams, in-

‘eparable, began to thicken; and she spoke about
€ future and she saw it, the future which he
hew was the outgrowth of the past which he

. — not see: he himself stood right in the mid-
e

» Tight in the smack center of it, to hear her
‘Speak — he would color what came from now on,
but not to any altering of the physical aspects of
‘t, which he knew and reassured her was as it
Should have been and could be no other way. She
Spoke a little in spattered fragments of the
Teams of the past, connecting words and phrases
~here came the bulky shadow of South America
drifting through their minds like an unthinkably
Vast exotic bird’s shape flashing by over water,
‘een only by the shadow and never by the actual
‘ight, the continent supine and humid with fer-
le dream, steamed hopes rising from the earthy

Pit of her brain, skeletal statements fleshed out

Row for the first time: they talked, they talked,

utpoured synthesis of their love, words edged
With all times reckoned by men, depthed with
touch and thought, they talked in the essential in-
‘Mate way they had to talk, synthesis of love in
words, the free exchange where past and future
Wirled around present. The continent again, the
‘Imple uttering of the two words that made up its
— was enough to wash away many trivial

°ughts and leave something primal there, flat
Nd wide and receptive, with images falling on

it and splattering thickly like big soft rocks,
warm, magmous, words like falling snowballs,
listening to the words flow cooly up from her
throat, visions: the throat a long, dark, cool tun-
nel with the words lurking there, all of them,
now-and-future, hanging like bats inside her
skull, hanging by sharp talons, hoary fears left
unuttered, eyes of bestial glowing yellow, the
yellow a lone night-walker fears to see suddenly
looking at him from some dark place; listening to
her speak was liquid time pouring through the
brain, a flow uncharted, perhaps circular, or per-
haps meandering in a course more intricate and
twisting than the mind itself could follow, a
course which reason was unable to determine,
but which instinct might have dimly sniffed, and
shuddered: Future.

There would be the continent stretching out
like a lover, quivering at the hot touch of her
spoken dreams, the jungles turning fragrant as
she passed, the mountains, the Andes, the moun-
tains like great vertical loaves of bread filed to
points with mysterious dream blocks of ceno-
taphic stones clinging to their sheer sides by in-
visible ancient roots, dark temples of the mind,
mythos and mouldy ruins inscribed to forgotten
gods, in the mist lost llamas wandered bearing
robed, masked priests accompanied by disem-
bodied flutes streaming in the rare atmosphere
like thin silver jets of mercury, threads of bright
silver lost in the black mists: puma-eyed dreams,

25

Excerpt

Inca drums, wailing cliffs, hardly navigable ter-
races leading to something unguessable; her
words touching and stroking and raising vibra-
tions in the chords stretched by the sounding

drum of the unconscious, — the images of her
words would gradually thicken like solidifying
nebluae and assume shape: Somewhere — Inca

fortress — she had seen it, and there she seemed
to have touched the face of serpent gods and
breathed the sweat from conquistador helmets,
scraped and imbedded forever beneath her finger-
nails the blood of shattered condors, sacrificed
granite Andean virgins, her soul having mounted
the condor skies and soared across to the other
mountains, the far ones, the ones which you
could not learn to know in ten lifetimes; des-
cending from the side of the mountains to the
valley where the mist never melted and where
the rivers were there one hour and gone the next
and traceless, sourcesless; the Indian: — the ones
with tarnished gold lurking in the depths of their
eyes, the ones with shawls the color of the au-
tumn’s flute music, the ones whose eyes saw not
only through the air around them, and through
the mist, but through the mountains themselves
into whatever lost caverns there were inside
them, whatever unguessed entrails hid the fa-
bled long-sought treasures, whatever intestinal
darknesses moved slowly, slithering — the Indian
eyes that not only looked through the pillars of
the low lead sky, but saw through time and could
see at any given instant, the ancestors of their
race in their dazzling, dyed condor feather plum-
age, dancing steps taught to them by dreams,
by moonlight dazzling on broken jewels and drip-
ping blood, diamond daggers in hot bronze hearts,
steaming vessels like poured gold, beaten into
sunbursts over subterranian temples where gods
still brooded on their onyx thrones rooted to the
walls of rock; Indian eyes seeing to the places
where the gods must still live, Indian eyes that
always seemed to be hiding some incredible se-
cret, eyes the white man could never look into,
but eyes which SHE had looked into and seen
within the mute touch of grandeur and the end-
less coiled serpent of suffering; she did not know
their secret, but she would someday be able to
make a guess: he saw a vast mountain split to
reveal a monstrous scaly worm coiled there for
uncounted centuries; the Indians whose rare and
singular smile was worth innumerable civilized
expressions, the people among whom she would
someday go...someday....

26

Why, why as a veteranarian? The only rea-
son she could give him had been given when
they had first met, and she had revealed to him
that which she would become, what she had al-
ready been working on with her summers in a lab-
oratory up north, with her studies in the advanced
biology course, and now, yes, when she mentioned
it he remembered the times he had taken her
home during the afternoon and there had been
waiting there some mysterious package in which
would be neat data cards and little cotton-swad-
dled bottles which contained specimens and re-
sults from something or other, some project
which she had left unfinished in the care of one
of her numerous unnamed intimate friends whom
she always seemed to leave behind her in her
wanderings like a trail of lost garments — the
single small rat foetus which resided in special
significance on the top shelf of her closet, lost
and sorrowing remarks about a dog which, he
gathered, had been used for something that past
summer in that same laboratory, on which she
was running tests with small tools and droppers
bottles smelling of pale lavender chemicals which
seemed somehow unhealthy to him... . the way
she would sit there and make little comments to
him about the dog: “Why, why didn’t they go
ahead and kill her — now the stuff’s spreading
through the system according to these latest sam-
ples. ’'m going to write back and demand that
she be put to sleep. It would have been so much
simpler if they had done it in the beginning when
they injected her with it...’ The veteranary,
horse doctor, the woman with the medicine — to
the Indians, because she would not have been
comfortable as a human being in the white man’s
world and because she loved animals so much and
because there was not anyone down there, not
anyone, to look into those Indian eyes and try
to comprehend centuries of subjugation, try to
tell which flashing spark in those slant orifices
might be the gene of some ancient prince gleam-
ing like a dagger in the moist darkness; She
would help them, she would doctor, he supposed,
their flocks and their llamas and she would of
course doctor them when there was something
she could do — and he knew, the way she had
spoken of subjects touching it, that she had at
times and in places as yet unrevealed, learned
how to doctor people in initial stages of treat-
ment — better, it was implied in her very mo-
tions, better than a graduate of the red cross
courses; tricks she had learned during what

plague and what conflict? Mexico.
Peru itself.

Peru ... the dark green mossy sound of the
word in her mouth like a monolith overgrown on
Some barren moor. The dream which found it-

Self in mystic fullness and yet had the porous

Perhaps

Wiliam R. Trotter

flexibility of dreams, bending in his own thoughts
like soft iron, electric to his mind’s touch: that
would mean medical school when she got out of
high school, after two years of college at least,
let us say, he thought, six years before we can
get married ....

27

ANOTHER SPRING FOR THE LOVER’S BENCH

The invisible lover sits

on the pale lovers’ bench, waiting
for love, or Romantic music.
Greyflaked, the bench waits

for another season, for the chance
to settle into rich texture.

Empty, milk-bottle air of this
early Spring reduces the bench
to flatness. Barren, slick
branches and strawdull grass
wither the concrete
come-hither. The pellucid

lover settles for invisible
peerings at shocking pink,
egg-golden, and gunmetal blue
negligees flashing on

the clothsline. Swollen in
playful winds, like seductive
philosophies, the vivid sheers
convert the pellucid lover.

No longer the obsolete lyric!

Let the fat bird with the

dingy orange front

make his own song as he

scrabbles for worms and dirty straw.
The invisible lover waits

on the pale bench, to settle

into seethrough textures, |

dense with the colors of bathroom

and synthetic blood.

AMON LINER

28

‘‘See, the vase is empty,’’ said the Monk

)
I slide my hand over
its cold flank; the white
porcelain does not
respond; the vase
knows its use, somehow
by that formal knowledge
artifacts have built
into them. Wiser than God,
or even a wife, this vase
is joy, a silence
equal to, but more music than,
this barren web of stone and light,
watching me with bloody eyes
and a hunger for garish noises.

2.
brittle as language
and as streaked
with marks of fire, the vase
agrees with my idea
of Vision, a silence
more human than God’s,
more music than rage. I slide
my hand over the porcelain; the vase,
of course, does not respond; it knows
the uses of silence,
and flowers would be
a formal declaration of war.

AMON LINER

29

ALCOHOL IN RUSSIA

MARY PASCHAL

“Plus ca change, plus c’est la méme chose.”

In his recent book, Conversations with Stalin,
Milovan Djilas points to the truth of the above
saying, particularly in regard to the drinking
habits of the Russions. Jehan Sauvage, a 16th
century French traveler to Russia,’ and Djilas had
similar experiences in accepting Russian hospi-
tality.

Jehan Sauvage of Dieppe went on a trading
mission to Russia in 1586. He sailed from Dieppe
to Vologda on the Dwina during the summer
months, carrying tallow, leather, flax, beeswax,
and tanned hides. He was stopped on two oc-
casions by the Russians. The first was at Varde-
housse where it was necessary to obtain per-
mission to proceed to Archangel, and the second
at Archangel where the merchandise was sold.
The ships, however, proceeded to Vologda.

When Sauvage arrived at Vardehousse, the

officer in charge delayed his voyage for three
days because he had no commission to allow
Frenchmen to pass, for no Frenchman had been
there before. Sauvage paid a tribute of 250
dalles which was followed by a welcome to Sau-
vage and his men. Sauvage gives the following

*Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1962).

*Jehan Sauvage, Mémoire du voiage en Russie (Paris:
Auguste Aubry, 1855). The references are to this edi-
tion, published by Louis Lacour according to Manu-
script 71403 of the Bibliothéque Impériale.

*Tbid., pp. 5-6.

30

account:

. the servants of the lord brought to M. Colas a
large pot of red wood which held more than twelve pots,
which was completely full of heavy black beer and
stronger than wine, and it was necessary to drink it all.
And believe that the lords Colas and du Renel were
angrier at drinking so much than at the money they
had just spent; for it was necessary to empty this jug
or else to act like a drunkard in order to leave, for such
is their custom.*

After leaving Vardehousse, Sauvage was al-
lowed to continue his way to Archangel. There
again he had to pay tribute and customs. The
official at Archangel was much pleased to have
merchants from France and caused alcoholic bev-
erages to be served in their honor.

He took a large silver cup and had it filled, and it
was necessary to empty it; and then another, and still to
re-empty it; then still the 3rd that it was necessary to
finish; and having made these three drinks, one thinks
to be through; but the worst is the last, for it is neces-

Sary to drink a cup of brandy which is so strong that it
Sets one’s stomach and throat on fire. When one has
drunk a cup, it is still not all, and having spoken a word
With you, it is necessary still to drink to the health of
your king, for you would not dare refuse it, and it is
the custom of the country to drink well.‘

In 1948, Milovan Djilas has a similar experi-
€nce in the consumption of prodigious quantities
of aleohol when he was visiting in Moscow. Dijilas
Was a guest at a six-hour dinner at Stalin’s villa.
The dinner began with a proposal, probably from
Stalin, “that everyone guess how many degrees
below zero it was, and that everyone be made to
drink as many glasses of vodka as the number of
degrees he guessed wrong.’” Djilas had checked
the temperature earlier, and by calculating the

eon

‘Ibid., p. 12.

*Diilas, op. cit., p. 161.
*Thid.

Ibid., p. 158.

‘Ibid., p. 161.

probable drop during the night succeeded in
missing by only one degree. Beria missed by
three degrees, saying that it was an intentional
miss so that he might drink more vodka. This
“parlor game” caused Diilas to recall that Peter
the Great of Russia held similar suppers with his
lieutenants “at which they gorged and drank
themselves into a stupor while ordaining the fate
of Russia and the Russian people.’’ Before the
evening was over, Djilas was forced to drink a
glass of peretsovka, a strong vodka with pepper.’
Stalin ended the dinner by proposing a toast to
the memory of Lenin. Djilas recalls that: “We
all stood and drank in mute solemnity, which in
our drunkedness we soon forgot.’

The forced drinking on social occasions in Rus-
sia is that which changes, yet stays the same.

81

A NOTE FROM ALLEN TATE

Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 18, 1966

To the Editor:

Sir:

Mr. Aiken informs me that I was wrong in what
I said about the revival of Trumbull Stickey’s
poetry. It was Mr. Aiken himself to whom we
are indebted for getting Stickney back into the
anthologies. Mr. Aiken “discovered” Stickney
at Harvard in 1909, and later put him in his
Twentieth Century American Poets, which ante-
dated by some twenty-five or thirty years the
rediscovery by Matthiessen and myself.

ALLEN TATE

CONTRIBUTORS

Jerry Tillotson is a graduate of ECC writing for the Wilmington Star News.
“Sojourn in Asheville” is the beginning of a novel.

Anne W. Nelson teaches high school in Wilson.
John Justice works for the North Carolina Fund in Durham.

William R. Trotter is a senior at Davidson. The excerpt is from his third
novel. He is having “The Winter War, Russia against Finland,” a diplo-
matic and military history, published by North Michigan University this
summer. He is now working on a biography of Stravinsky.

Mary Paschal teaches in the foreign language department at ECC.

Dwight W. Pearce is a graduate of ECC teaching at Fork Union Military
Academy in Virginia.

Sanford Peele taught English at ECC last year. He is now an assistant
editor in the language arts division of Silver Burdette Publishing Company.
Carol Hallman is a freshman at ECC.

Amon Liner is a graduate of Davidson and UNC. He has been published
in many “little magazines.”

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