August 2017

1 The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

2VOLUME: 2 - ISSUE: 5 - AUGUST - 2017 Notes from New Delhi : Dibyajyoti Sarma 02Columns: Sotto Voce -Indira Parthasarathy 07 Letter from London: John Looker 10 P&P - Yonason Goldson 15 The Wanderer - Andrew Fleck 17 Poetry: Marianne Szlyk 58Flash Fiction: Sunil Sharma 74Fiction: Mark Zipoli 24 Patrick Fealey 39 Gerald Arthur Winter 46 Julia Benally 62Novella: Serkan Engin - Part-III 76 THE WAGON MAGAZINE KGE TEAM 4/4, FIRST FLOOR, R.R.FLATS, FIRST STREET, VEDHACHALA NAGAR, KODAMBAKKAM, CHENNAI - 600 024Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

3 NOTES FROM NEW DELHI Vijay Nambisan: The last of the sagesWhile discussing RK Narayan’s The Guide in the classroom,Dr R Raj Rao of the University of Pune had explained to us thedifference between ‘sage’ and ‘saint’. As opposed to the Judeo-Christianconnotation of ‘saint’, in India, we use both the words interchangeably,to mean someone who is wise and who has discarded the worldlyconcerns. However, as Rao explained, in the context of the eventualjourney of Raju Guide, there’s is a difference between being a saintand a sage. A ‘saint’ remains tethered to the world in some way. A‘saint’ needs disciples, followers (as in the case of Raju, after his conbecomes a reality for the villagers). A saint needs to make somethinghappen (as Raju needs to make rain). But a ‘sage’ elevates these saintlyconcerns. A ‘sage’ turns himself into a perfect being, where nothingmatters, not even existence (as Narayan implied Raju achieving thisat the end of the novel). As I heard of Vijay Nambisan passing away, I was thinkingabout this distinction in the context of Nambisan as a poet (peopletend to forget that he was also a brilliant essayist, a form largely for-gotten today. He also wrote the most original treaties on ‘Language asEthics’ and looked at a Bihar with a fresh pair of eyes before talkingabout ‘New Bihar’ became fashionable in the 2000s, in ‘Bihar in theEye of the Beholder’. He has also translated classical Sanskrit poetry,a language he knew well). The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

4 My Face book timeline was flooded with quotes from Nambisan’spoetry. It was an interesting development considering it was Nambisan,the most reluctant of poets. He was one of the key poets of the secondgeneration of the Bombay School of Poetry (if you consider Ezekiel,Kolatkar, Jussawalla and others as the first generation), a generationwhich under the influence/tutelage of Dom Moraes, focused more onintellectual rigour rather than the socio-political concern of a changingIndia of the previous generation. Nambisan’s contemporaries, Jeet Thayil, CP Surendran, RanjitHoskote, among others, are all established poets today, with severalcollections to their names, but Nambisan seemed to have laggedbehind. His first published book of poems was Genini (a two-poetproject published by Dom Moraes; the other poet was Jeet Thayil) in1992. His second and last, and the only solo collection of poems FirstInfinities was published in 2015. Simply he did not want to publisha book of poems. He was already well known, since his poem MadrasCentral won him the first ever All India Poetry Competition award or-ganised by the Poetry Society of India and the British Council in 1988. He wrote in Madras Central: To think we have such power to alter our states, order comings and goings; know where we’re not wanted And carry our unwanted mess somewhere else.He was an aberration to the norm. He did not need fame and recog-nition. He would accept it if it came his way, but he wouldn’t crave forit. He did not need the outside to validate his existence. He did not runfrom the outside either. Largely a private person, he wasn’t a recluse,but a gracious host when the occasion demanded, ever willing to talkpoetry, and literature in general, with a witty sense of humour — agreat company to spend time with. This is how I remember him. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

5 I met him and his novelist/doctor wife Kavery when the couplesettled in Lonavla in the outskirts of Pune sometime in 2000s, thanksto my teacher R Raj Rao who knew Vijay from the Bombay poetrydays. I don’t remember him as a poet, but as a lover of poetry, whowould be the happiest to give me a tour of his personal library, filledwith books signed by their authors. He inspired me to collect auto-graphed books. He inspired me to reread one of his favourite poetsRobert Graves, including his autobiography ‘Goodbye to All That’. Most of all, I found him to be the generous and humble manI have ever known. This humility was hardwired into him as a manwho is extremely erudite, knew it and did not expect others to be assmart and well read as he was. He was a perfect teacher any studentcould ever hope for, though teaching was not his thing. Once, he was invited to give a guest lecture to the MA studentsof the University of Pune. At first, he was uncertain. He had nothingto tell the students, he said. Finally, he decided to discuss one of hisfavourite poems with the students — WH Auden’s ‘Musée des BeauxArts’. It was not a surprising choice. Auden wrote: About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood:I think Vijay understood this more than anyone. Personally, for me, he was a source of inspiration until the veryend. When I first met him, I was working on my second collection ofpoems. When he heard that he offered to look at the poems. At first, I The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

6was uncertain. He was a poet of rigour and discipline. I wrote poetryto let off steam. I was sure he wouldn’t even bother to go throughthe manuscript. Finally, I sent him a hard copy of the manuscriptand three months later, I received an SMS. He was in Pune for a fewhours and he would like to see me, as he was carrying my manuscriptand he wanted to talk about it. I was certain he would ask me to junk the idea of the book.Instead, we sat in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying andwent through the poems, page by page. At some places, he had madecomments. He said some poems did not work, and most were largelyfine. Then he gave me a crash course in poetry — the importance ofmusic in poetry; the dangers of mixed metaphors and most impor-tantly, the need to edit poetry. Now, you take this manuscript and keep it away safely for oneyear, he said. Exactly one year later, he said, open the manuscript, siton a desk and work on it. Make sure that you sit on a chair and use atable, he insisted, not on bed, or elsewhere, where it’s more comfortable.Then go through each word, each sentence, and each line. After that,if you are satisfied, go ahead, publish the book. It was the most inspiring moment of my life. And since thatday, I have been shamelessly recycling this advice. The book was finally out four years later, and I was happy tohand over a copy to Kavery during the launch of Vijay’s book FirstInfinities in Delhi (He was busy being a host). Kavery said Vijaywould be happy to see the book and I trusted her. The last conversation I had with Vijay was late last year, onemail. When a publisher showed the interest to publish my shortstory collection (the publisher was in a hurry, she had grand plans,nothing of which came to fruition; it’s a different story!), and neededa blurb from a ‘famous author’, I could not think of anyone otherthan Kavery Nambisan. So I dashed off a mail, without expecting The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

7much, because I knew that she had been busy with her job as a sur-geon and with her writing. Vijay and Kavery shared the email ID. Two days later, I receivedan email from Vijay. He read the manuscript, liked it and he wouldbe happy to give a blurb if I would have one. Of course, I said yes,and he gave me a glowing blurb. But he had a caveat. The stories aregreat but it needed another round of editing. I could do it for you ifyou have the time, he wrote. Unfortunately, I did not have the time;the publisher was unreasonably in a hurry (I would regret not askinghim to edit the book for the rest of my life.) Okay, then, I will edityour next book, he said. I said okay, I will finish my next book assoon as I can. The book is not complete and Vijay is gone. People would say he was a genius who never received his due.It may be true. But I don’t think he wanted his dues. I don’t think hehad any expectations. He was what he always was — a sage. Dibyajyoti Sarma 20 August 2017 New Delhi The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

8SOTTO VOCEINDIRA PARTHASARATHY Devotion as dramaAny literary work, once it is branded as a sacred religious text, getsstagnated as such, relieved of its possible other multiple aestheticdimensions, that it can be read as a play and as glorious poetry.‘Tiruvaimozhi’ by the ‘vaishnavite’ saint Nammazhvar is one suchwork that, in fact, transcends its ‘branding’. In ‘Tiruvaimozhi’, the poet has delved deep into the severallayers of consciousness for a mystic experience of God that isexpressed in various dramatic forms. To start with there is a visionand the devotee wants to experience this moment stretched intoeternity. But, interrupted by the values of space and time, the visionrecedes to make this separation a vital, dynamic force, to crave forachieving it more and more. This is what that gives the work a dramaticform. There are romantic confrontations, dramatic tensions, pathos,reconciliations and finally resolution in the form of bliss, all emo-tions captured at various psychological levels. The dramatic theme of separation and union is used alterna-tively; separation leading to alienation and union to spiritual ecstasy.The ‘hero’ (God) has many roles to play; his incarnations used as amotif for this purpose. The exploits of these incarnations can be shownon the stage as beautiful visuals. The ‘heroine’ (‘Atma’) is multi-faceted, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

9joyous, sad and angry, but solely dependent on the hero (God) forher sustenance. Like the ‘cut radar’, the poet intervenes on appro-priate occasions, to describe the hero’s various attributes – this readslike a dramatic interlude - to provide the reasons for the heroine’sinsatiate desire for the hero. There are also other characters like thefoster- mother of the heroine, the heroine’s companion, and the vari-ous birds those are requested to go on a mission to the hero, carryingthe heroine’s message of love for him. After having written the first three works, (“Tiruvirutham’.‘Tiruvaciriyam’, and ‘Periya Tiruvanthathi’), Nammazhvar couldhave composed ‘Tiruvaimozhi’ to integrate the individual elementsof these poems in a comprehensive manner to produce this master-piece, which, in its total and holistic form reads like a play. ‘Tiruvirutham’ deals with the theme of love in a dramaticform in the true ‘Sangam’ tradition. ‘Tiruvaciriyam’ dramatizes thevarious forms of worship. And, ‘Periya Tiruvanthathi’ dramatizes thedivine vision and continuing happiness in this terrestrial life itself. In‘Tiruvaimozhi’ the play of divine love is enacted to make the humanlife on earth as a unique meaningful dramatic experience. Here is a short scene in ‘Tiruvaimozhi’. The heroine in the state of ‘separation’ from the hero, runs af-ter a snake and cries ‘oh! It is my lover’s bed’ (‘Vishnu’ in snake-bed).Later, she showers all her body with mud and says, This is the earth,my lover measured with one step’ (Vamanavatara). Like this. she goeson visualizing all earthly objects as manifestations of her hero and assuch, the earth is the holiest place for any dramatic adventure. ‘Theworld is a stage and every object in this earth has a dramatic meaningin relation to God. Everything is the body of God and all have God astheir self. Everything exists for Him and He exists for everything. Let usenact this play and be blessed’. The concept of metaphysical truth is dramatized in materialform to capture the popular imagination and perhaps, to relieve itof its intellectual abstraction. The Indian aesthetic theory of ‘rasa’ islargely responsible for dramatizing our religious concepts. ‘Bkakti’ isdescribed as a ‘rasa’. Etymologically, ‘rasa’ means anything that can The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

10be tasted or enjoyed ONLY in drama; the various aspects of rasa canbe fully realized and as such, the bhakti poets, for whom, devotionwas more a dramatic than a religious experience. ‘Bhakti’ is a Dravidian concept (Dr. Gonda, Dr. Zimmer) Theearly ‘Tamil way of life and its philosophy’ is very earth oriented, asevidenced by the ‘sangam’ poems. As most of the major ‘puranas’were compiled in the South, according to Dr.Zimmer, they were ableto translate the spontaneity of blissful living in a mystical and dramaticidiom. This helped evolve a humanistic concept of God, which is thebottom line of romantic love and aesthetic devotion for divinity. Saint Ramanuja, who held, that the Tamil ‘prabhandas’ were equal to the ‘Vedas’ in content and quality, chose to call ‘the Eternal Play- er, for whom the ‘Universe is a stage’, as ‘Bhu- vana Sundara’. A new ‘avatara’ was introduced called, ‘arcavatara” (a new character in the eter- nal play) i.e. the incarnation of God in the icons. This led to an experience of aesthetic joy, which found expression in the innumerable festivals,and such artistic forms as music, dance and drama in the temples. Ramanuja is said to have initiated a new dance-drama genrecalled ‘Prabhanta Natyam’ that dramatized the sequences found inthe love poetry of the ‘alwar’ hymns. Sadly, this dramatic form isnow extinct. Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of R.Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

11 Letter from London - 10 from John Looker Literature and the Spiny LizardHave you ever stepped into a lift in a seemingly empty buildingand then had immediate regrets in case the thing got stuck betweenfloors? My wife and I have recently spent eight weeks in a UNESCOCity of Literature on the other side of the world. I like to think thatif we could take a lift from London down through the world’s crust,right through its core, and out again we would emerge in Dunedin,New Zealand, where two of our daughters live with their families.The alignment is not quite a neat as that but the pretence has somevalidity. And Dunedin, this Victorian and Scottish city so far away,was the eighth city in the world to be given the UNESCO designa-tion. The first was Edinburgh, where Dunedin has historic roots.Among other claims to this title Dunedin is the site of the OtagoUniversity Press, which publishes New Zealand’s longest, established The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

12literary journal. The lift I actually stepped into, with immediate sec-ond thoughts about my safety, was the one that took me upstairs totheir offices. Nothing about the entrance did justice to the prestige of thisinstitution. I had walked up and down the street looking vainly forthe entrance before discovering it to the side of a drab modern build-ing on the edge of a car park. The sign saying Otago University Presswas inconspicuous; there were no posters or displays of their publi-cations, no reassuring nameplates inside the lift and no one about. Iemerged however, on a deserted corridor and immediately found myway into the publisher’s reception area. Here at last was the reassur-ance needed: shelves displaying their publications, a table laden withpublicity material and a bell. I rang it. It was evidently a quiet afternoon at the OUP. One dead-line was comfortably behind them and the next had yet to arrive.The administrator whom I had hoped to meet had popped out. Theeditor of their literary journal was working at home. But a tall guy,who could have been in the Highlanders rugby squad but who wasin fact a poet and their marketing and publicity man, came out of hisroom and welcomed me: Victor Billot. We chatted about London,Dunedin, their literary journal (Landfall), the new poetry collectionI am slowly working on and his own books. Victor Billot has written many poems about his city. Manyare regretful or critical – you can sense the underlying ambition hehas for his home town – but one poem (Dunedin) begins “Everythingis spun from clean lonely air” and concludes: ... look north from Mount Cargill to the vibrating song of the coast and feel your heart grow like a swelling fruit. The journal that his office publishes has just celebrated its70th anniversary. It was nearly called Tuatara after a spiny lizardbut thankfully the final choice was Landfall. This seems eminentlyappropriate. New Zealand was colonised twice. The first time was bythe Maori: waves of Pacific Islanders in formidable sea-going canoesthat were really small ships; later by the Pakeha or Europeans. The The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

13founder of the journal, Charles Brasch, wasreturning to his home country after the sec-ond world war – yet another landfall. Maybethere was also a feeling in the air that it wastime for literature and the arts to make theirown distinctive entry into these islands. Charles Brasch was a prominent poetin New Zealand but he was equally interest-ed in art and when he died he bequeathed 400 paintings and drawings to the Hocken Collection in Dunedin. Brasch had a vision which would be understood in any ex-colony. He wanted New Zealand to develop its own poetry and literature, and therefore ruled out suggestions that early editions of Landfall should feature prominent British writers like Edith Sitwell; he alsoencouraged the Hocken Collection to collect contemporary paintingsby national artists. We could see the success of this policy. There’s an exhibitionin the Hocken Collection at present which shows the collaboration The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

14 in the 1940s and ‘50s between writers and artists in New Zealand, encour- aged and supported by Brasch. There are cabinets displaying documents and photographs from the early days of Landfall and its founders. And on the walls, art works incorporating po- ems. Literature is not usually very evident to the eyes. As you move around Dunedin you might assume that it would be chosen by UNESCO for art:many large-scale murals have been painted on blank elevations ofcity centre blocks, and bus shelters out into the surrounding hillshave been painted with scenes of local life. One of the few visualreminders of literature is the statue of Robert Burns in the centralpublic space, the Octagon. I discovered another however at the airport, and it was one Iparticularly liked. In the departure lounge a poem has been printed and framed. This is Saddle Hill by David Eggleton who is not only one of the foremost poets in New Zealand at present but also the current editor of Land- fall. Saddle Hill is a local land- mark – as his poem puts it: Hill telescoped and named by James Cook, sailing in the eighteenth century, for a horse saddle. Times change however and, as David Eggleton goes on toobserve, this is today: Hill clambering now a slumped dome, dug-away, quarried megaphone The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

15 trumpeting change, over which jets hurtle north for the big smoke.The poem is displayed close to a small exhibition on the geologyand wildlife of the Otago region and on the history of its settlers,both Maori and Pakeha. The poem feels exactly right just where it isplaced. Not many city airports would give poetry such a place ofprominence. It was refreshing to see Saddle Hill on our way out ofthis UNESCO city and back home to Britain. Incidentally that journey required 26 hours of flying time.Pity there’s no lift! John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England.His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 byBennison Books (through Amazon) and was selected by the Poetry Libraryfor the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and inonline journals, on local radio and in ‘When Time and Space Conspire’, ananthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin InternationalPoetry Festival. His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

16PROVERBS & PROVIDENCE YONASON GOLDSONThere’s a sparrow in the apple orchardSipping dandelion wine,Singing of a memory,A dream I had, that you were mine. There’s a tulip in an onion field,A sane word in a Van Gogh print The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

17 Seen only by dark eyes that hold Fiery sparks from virgin flint. There’s a dewdrop on a spider’s web, That glistens in the setting sun A whisper from the checkered past That all we are can be undone. There’s a heartbeat in the catacomb A sign of life beyond the pale A furtive breath, a wistful sigh, To set the course and fill the sail. There’s no answer, there’s no sound at all, No voice, just echoes in the dark; Who else could know but you and I: It is from here that we embark. Rabbi Yonason Goldson, keynote speaker with 3,000years’ experience, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri.He is a former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, newspapercolumnist, and high school teacher. His latest book, ‘Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Successand Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages’, is availableon Amazon. Visit him at yonasongoldson.com The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

18 The Wanderer Andrew FleckTomorrow, at sunrise, at the hour the fields pale,I will depart. You see, I know you are waiting.I will go through the woods, I will go through the hills.I cannot stay so far from you any longer.I will walk, eyes fixed only on my thoughts,Without seeing a thing, without hearing a noise,Alone andanonymous, my back stooped, hands crossed,And sad – the day for me will be as the night. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

19 I will look at neither the falling gold of evening, Nor the distant sails going down to Harfleur, And when I arrive, I will place on your grave A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather. The above poem is a translation of an untitled poem byVictor Hugo (1802-1885) which was written to commemorate the death of his daughter, who had died a few years earlier. Hugo addresses his daughter plainly and directly, speaking of the act of devotion he will pay the next day; for the reader, however, especially the read- er who reads the poem without knowing what it will be about, the import of these lines, and of the poet’s behaviour does not become apparent until the very last lines, when the destination and the rea- son for the journey is revealed. Despitethe undoubted sincerity of the poem’s sentiment, there is art in thisconcealment and revelation.Hugo assures his daughter that he willnot pay attention to the scenery – but again, for the reader, the verywords he uses to do so evoke the landscape which his unseeing fig-ures traverse. We could, if we were so minded, talk of a conflict herebetween the sincere and simple emotion of the mourner, and thenecessary artifice of the poet, the same man, describing his own actof mourning. But this would be to impose the ideas of our own moresceptical age onto Hugo’s world view: 19th Century France, despitethe revolution, was still a country of deeply Catholic habits of mind,and we can see that in the importance attached towhat is, in effect,a kind of ritual. Such ritual is not only a comfort to the grieving, buthelps to bridge the gulf between the living and the dead. For Hugo,this was an enduring preoccupation – in later life he took an interestin Spiritism, and participated in séances. Although Hugo is both beautifying and publicising his act The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

20of mourning, this is a very personal poem, and there is somethingin it that remains forever private and hidden. He walks fixed on histhoughts, he tells us, but he does not tell us what these thoughts are.Exactly by alluding to the landscape he walks through, although heis not looking at it, he is diverting our gaze away from him and hisprivate grief. Those distant sails in the last line fascinate me. Hugo’sdaughter died alongside her husband when a passenger boat over-turned on the Seine. Hugo must have been painfully aware that thiswas the very same river on which those sail boats head towards Har-fleur and the sea. To methe boats headed for the sea seem suggestiveof souls departing this world, and perhaps, very faintly, of that linkbetween the living and the dead that Hugo wants to make. The English poet and playwright Ben Jonson (1572-1637)left two epigrams about children hehad lost.Jonson was seen as the greatformalist of his age, especially in com-parison to his contemporary WilliamShakespeare who broke the classicalrules of drama that Jonson was eager tocleave to. But despite the great varietyof his art, Shakespeare the man remainsrather mysterious, while Jonson’s poet-ry affords us glimpses of his own deep-est joys and sorrows. This poem waswritten about his daughter who died atsix months old: Here lies, to each her parents’ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth: Yet, all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due, It makes the father less to rue. At six months’ end she parted hence With safety of her innocence; Whose soul heaven’s queen (whose name she bears), In comfort of her mother’s tears, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

21 Hath placed amongst her virgin train: Where, while that severed doth remain, This grave partakes the fleshly birth; Which cover lightly, gentle earth.The poem starts with a frank and simple admission of the he andhis wife’s pain at the loss of their daughter, and yet for the Englishpoet Ben Jonson, the certainty of an afterlife mitigates the pain ofloss. Jonson was a sincere Christian believer – indeed, until the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ (which involved friends of friends of the poet) made itawkward to be a high-profile Catholic. Jonson was a practising Catholic.‘Mary’ was, of course, a very Catholic name to give a daughter, and theMarian imagery he plays with reflects a very Catholic view of themother of God. He imagines his daughter Mary in the train of Jesus’mother Mary,‘heaven’s queen’, among all girls who have died virgins.The last lines of the poem need a little explanation: Christians believethat a person consists of a body and a soul, united in life but sepa-rated in death –‘severed’ as the poem puts it– so that the body re-mains on earth, while the soul ascends to heaven. Not until the Dayof Judgement, the end of the earthly world,would the body and soulbe reunited again, and at the end of the poem, Jonson is asking theearth – not capitalised as a deity ‘Earth’, just plain old soil ‘earth’– tolook after his daughter’s body. And yet for all the poem’s great faith,and its acceptance of God’s will in taking a young child, the last linesbring back to mind the sorrowful image of the infants’ dead body. Jonson wrote in the sixteenth and seventeenth centurieswhen infant mortality was much higher than it is now – indeed,most married couples would expect to lose babies or young infants.One could ask whether the very regularity of such losses would makethem less painful, but the very fact Jonson wrote these poems, andthe emotion that comes through them, suggests that the death of aninfant was no less a loss to seventeenth century parents than it is tomodern couples, even if it was less of a shock. Indeed, repeated griefmust have been wearying for the couples involved. Jonson’s poemabout his son, who was taken by the plague at seven years old, showsus something of the toll taken on such parents: The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

22 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O, could I lose all father now! For why Will man lament the state he should envy? To have so soon scapedworld’s and flesh’s rage, And if no other misery, yet age? Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry. For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.Ben Jonson’s son was named after his father, which explains theninth and tenth lines. It has become a bit of a cliché, even when sin-cerely meant, for parents to say to their children, ‘you’re the greatestthing I have ever done’, but it surely counts for a little bit more whenyour parent is one of the greatest poetsof a great poetic age. At the same time,it points to a world-weariness on Jonson’spart. As much as in the first epigram, Jon-son is reconciled to God’s will– or, to putit in less religious terms, the irrevocabilityof death, but he has been left a changedman, a man more spiritual but colder tothe world, never again to put too muchhope in the world or its inhabitants. The great Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) also suffered the death of two of his children, a three-year olddaughter and a six-year old boy only a few months later.‘Surprised by Joy’ was written to his daughter: Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

23 But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.There is scant consolation in Wordsworth’s poem, of a religious na-ture or any other. The title, ‘Surprised by Joy’, sounds cheerful – butthis joy only comes because he has, momentarily, forgotten that hisdaughter is no longer with him – he turns to share this moment ofhappiness or joy, only to remember that she is not there, rather longburied in the silent Tomb, / That spot which no vicissitude can find.That line is like Jonson’s writing his son has scaped world’s and flesh’srage, but even then it is somehow bleaker in tone. There is some-thing strikingly modern in Wordsworth’s poem – he articulates thesame feelings about a child’s death that I think a 20th or 21st centuryparent might: the sudden absence of joy in life, the guilt and self-re-proach when one briefly allows oneself to forget, the pain at neveragain being able to meet. The poem implies that Wordsworth does not believe in an afterlife in which one is reunit- ed with one’s loved ones. It is a psychologically acute and uncompromising description of the poet’s own grief. The American poet William Stafford (1914-1993), who lost a grown son to suicide, wrote the poem ‘A Memorial: Son Bret’ to his de- ceased son. Although he is disturbed by the mys- tery of his son’s suicide, the poem is not as raw The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

24and devastating as Wordsworth’s, and unlike the forlorn En-glishman, he allows himself to take pleasure in the memories he hasof his child. Like the other poems here, he addresses his dead childdirectly – he realises, I think, that he can do no other. Early in thepoem, he writes: In the pattern of my life, you stand Where you stood always, in the centerJonson, in his poem to his son, lamented O, could I lose all fathernow! He wishes he could lose all sense of fatherhood, now that helacks the son on whom he had foisted his paternal affections. This isunderstandable – but Stafford more calmly realises that this wouldbe impossible: although he cannot, like poets with strong religiousconvictions, believe that he can meet his son again, or that the childis in some sense ‘still with us’, he realises that the mental habits offatherhood, specifically the sense of being father to this particularson, will never leave him.Credits The poem Demaindèsl’aube, à l’heureoùblanchit la campagne is from Intro- duction to French Poetry, A Dual Language Book, Ed Stanley Applebaum, Dover, New York, 1969. The translation is my own, though influenced by that provided in the book. The Jonson and Wordsworth poems are available on the Internet. ‘A Memorial: Son Bret’ is from The Way It Is, William Stafford, Graywolf Press, 1998.Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher,proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writeson poetry and history at sweettenorbull.com. Currently, heis working on a historical fiction set in the late 16th andearly 17th centuries, a project that he hopes will come tofruition at some point in 2017. Originally from the northeast of England, he currently lives in South Korea with hiswife and two small children. www. sweettenorbull.com. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

25 FICTION Mark ZipoliThe cloudless midday sun often punched her eyes into humility,reminding her that-in Los Angeles- staying indoors was best. Eightblocks from where the downtown bus let her off in Boyle Heights,she marched as if she carried a hot iron on her forehead and a blowtorch at the back of her neck. Past one lawn after another of drought-burned grass, she moaned under the sun’s glare when she thoughtabout losing her sunglasses and forgetting to wear a hat. Arriving in front of the County Crematory and Cemetery, shewas taken aback by the main gate’s desolate grimness. It was bleak.It was scary ugly. Wiping her brow, her discontent growled with theknowledge that this stretch of Boyle Heights was the hottest sweepof land she’d encountered in years, except of course Death Valley,but Death Valley at least had a view. This place, she thought, was asandpaper rug. Nothing but brown patches topped with numbered The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

26markers of the nameless dead: Lena Rhodes could be poetic whenshe wanted, especially about things she didn’t like. Lena thought Vincent Price himself should be holding thefront door open for her, when in fact it was only a guy named Ray.He looked like the actor James Whitmore, with an apple pie faceand the facility of an unmarried uncle-a man with a quiet, officiouscharm that usually went unnoticed. ‘I hope you don’t mind, ma’am, that it’s so cold in here,’ hebegan, as he let her through. ‘I like air conditioning to prove itself.My name’s Ray, welcome to the Crematory.’ ‘Ray,’ she said entering the darkened foyer, ‘You’re a man af-ter my own heart. After all, we are not cacti. We need water and agood Westinghouse refrigerator. Oooh, I have to reacquire my sighthere, it’s so dim,’ said Lena. The hall’s shadowy vagueness gave her the same all-or-noth-ing punishment that the sun did a minute before, only this was anacceptable mistreatment of her senses. ‘Sometimes people feel the less they see the less there is,’ saidRay, ‘especially when it comes to the dead.’ ‘I don’t see or hear a thing besides you and me, Ray.’ ‘Not another living soul besides me and you for at least 500feet in any direction,’ he smiled his broad James Whitmore smile. ‘Itgives me great comfort,’ he said, and showed her to the registrationdesk, apologizing for the lack of a guest’s chair. ‘You ever write for the movies, Ray? Or are you just sourcematerial for James M. Cain novels, or Raymond Chandler perhaps?’ He smiled at the compliment. ‘No, ma’am. But I’m glad to know someone else besides meappreciates the finer art of a cool, clean catacomb. Let me bring upthe database, Miss...’ ‘Rhodes. Lena Rhodes. The deceased, my husband, is...wasTommy Rhodes.’ ‘My condolences, Mrs. Rhodes.’ ‘Not to worry, Ray. It’s been a while since I laid eyes on him.Not to worry.’ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

27 Their transaction was perfunctory; the payment, theissuance of a receipt, all as official as loneliness could afford.Four-hundred dollars was a lot of money. She’d brought with herthe tips she’d been saving for a few special, unidentified, personalneeds; and for insurance, she also put a little aside to pay for thingsshe wasn’t prepared for: Losing a runaway husband as quickly asshe did was one of those things. A telephone call at the café, out ofthe blue, the county worker’s voice full of relief in finding a next ofkin to Mr. Rhodes, his remains were waiting, and there went hermoney. Ray escorted Lena down a long, barely lit hallway to the rec-lamation room. ‘We, or well, I, like to call it the Library, ’he explained, and heleft the door open for her. ‘You see, each box contains a life. Each lifehas something of a story in it. No matter how boring or uneventfulit might have been, you can still make a narrative out of waking upand having your breakfast before you go outside and drop dead.’ ‘Kind of literary, don’t you think, Ray? You sure you neverwrote for ‘Law and Order’ or ‘Dragnet,’ something like that?’ He shook his head. ‘Still, I can see a thinking man like you ending up here.’ ‘What, in the boxes or at the front desk?’ he asked. ‘That’s up to you.’ ‘Your husband is number fourteen-sixty-four,’ Ray said. There was solicitude between them. He recognized it themoment she walked through his door. Lena gave him a warm inti-mate grin as if to acknowledge an obvious understanding that theycould say certain things to each other easily, like kindred souls: Heand his apple pie face, she and her aversion to the sun. They eachsaw it in the contours on one another’s face, the red outlines of eachother’s eyes. ‘That means there were a thousand four-hundred and six-ty-three before him?’ ‘So far this year.’ ‘And they’re all still unclaimed?’ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

28 ‘No, not all. Most, though, Mrs. Rhodes. Most of them.’ He positioned a small step-ladder in front of the stacks. ‘You know you didn’t have much time left to pick these up,’ ‘These? I’m only picking up one husband.’ ‘No, I meant the ashes. I refer to the deceased in the plural,because ‘the He’ has been reduced to something like a billion particles.You know what I mean? Next scheduled burial is Saturday. Still, youleft him for the last minute. Why’s that?’ ‘I’m not here for a lecture, Ray.’ ‘Sorry, but it gets personal here. I’m by myself with thesesouls. I get kind of attached to them,’ he descended the step-ladder.‘I have feelings for them. I have hopes.’ After her husband Tommy had left her, Lena often wonderedif he’d ever had enough feelings for her. And now, stuck between timeand silence, it had been made very clear to her that he didn’t. Ray approached with the box, then placed it gently on ashort, knee-high table. Lena bent over the box, turned it this wayand that. The six by six by five inch cardboard container was taggedwith a stainless steel ID disc engraved with the County’s name, theyear of death, and the number 1463. She looked up at the top shelf,saw the remaining box, and looked at Ray. ‘This says fourteen-sixty-three.’ ‘Oh, sorry.’ Ray climbed back onto the step ladder, and re-trieved #1464, placing it beside #1463.‘That could’ve been a big screwup. I really am better at my job than that.’ She looked him in the eyes. ‘These boxes are cruddy,’ she said. ‘Lots of dust on them.Lots of dust everywhere, Ray.’ ‘I know, Mrs. Rhodes. That reminds, me,’ he said. ‘I need an-other rantihistamine before I refill my coffee. I’m feeling kind of low,my nose is kind of runny.’ She smiled at his mispronunciation. ‘Forget about low. You keep mixing your ‘rantihistamines’and coffee. Soon that combo will work your heart so fast you’ll befeeling kind of dead.’ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

29 He laughed and shuffled over to a briefcase lying on a count-er in the corner of the room. From the case he extracted a white pilland downed it with a few swallows of coffee from a cow-shaped mug. As he was about to take away #1463, she held his hands tostop him. ‘Wait. Who’s in this box?’ ‘TCC 1463? Bill Somebody. Let me look.’ He walked back to his desk and consulted his computer, amachine smudged with dust, dirt, and obsolescence. ‘What’s TCC?’ she asked him. ‘Temporary Cremated Remains Container. Okay,’ he beganreading from the screen. ‘William Renner. Gulf War veteran, in theNavy. Says here ‘refused by family.’ Mmm, some other technical stuff.Says here ‘severe breakdown of internal organs.’ Police found himwith gang symbols spray painted on him. Hmm. Internal breakdownalright. Died.’ ‘Well of course he died, Ray. He’s a pile of ashes in a box.’ She lined up Bill’s and Tommy’s boxes, their numbers facingher. Ray came back, stood beside her, a strain of pride holding himupright. ‘Yes, that’s our Bill,’ he said. He looked at her wavy hair andher small, quiescent breasts, which were charmed--he thought--byan involuntary slouch. ‘What do people do with them?’ she asked. ‘Put ‘em in urns. Throw ‘em in the sea. Pour ‘em into a brookor sprinkle ‘em in a field. Then they walk away,’ he said. ‘You sound jaded,’ she said, and pulled her fingers throughher cheaply permed hair; it still retained its half-blonde half-brownmurkiness, and never got longer than her disobedient slouchingshoulders. ‘You should let your hair grow long, Mrs. Rhodes, if youdon’t mind my saying so.’ ‘Hell, no! If it gets any longer it’ll just highlight my boney ass,’Lena replied. Ray laughed. ‘And I’m not jaded, Mrs. Rhodes, it’s the cold, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

30dry air. I’m working with corpses that we blasted at eighteen-hun-dred degrees. Just thinking about that kind of heat dries you out.’ ‘Hmm,’ she sighed. ‘The lava at Mount Saint-Helens was two-thousand degrees,’he said, aghast at her sigh. ‘Okay, but then what?’ ‘Here, when folks are forgotten about,’ his voice was softernow, as in a reasonable conversation in a parlor, ‘or dismissed as thecase might be, like Bill, all the boxes of unclaimed dead, they all getplaced together in a small grave. Annually. You know, once a year.Only marker you get is the year of the burial, not even the year ofyour expiration.’ ‘That’s it?’ ‘That’s it. You’re gone. No more you. Bunch of priests, monks,rabbis, say whatever it is they say for the restful repose of the dearlydeparted; sprinkle a little olive oil or water on the ground. Then theyhave lunch on the County. Otherwise, nobody would ever know youonce were.’ ‘Except in the memories of the people trying to forget you,’she said. ‘Somehow it doesn’t seem like enough. They end up togeth-er in a big hole in the ground? That’s it? What’s gonna happen tohim?’ She pointed to the box not containing her husband. ‘To Bill? Like I said, he’ll join the others this weekend, outthere in the field.’ ‘That’s kind of sad,’ Lena said. ‘He was ill, Ray. He was a sol-dier, Ray. He fought in a war. His family rejected him, Ray. It’s not hisfault.’ ‘Ma’am, it’s just true. It’s not anybody’s fault,’ he turned, ex-tending his reach to the stacks. ‘It’s just true.’ Lena looked at Ray as if she were looking at a tour guide. ‘Why don’t I take him?’ she said finally. ‘You want him?’ ‘Yeah, why not. But I don’t have another $400.’ ‘Mrs. Rhodes, I don’t care if you paid for one or for onehundred. You have a receipt. You can take what you want. I’ll even The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

31give you a shopping bag with the County logo on it.’ She walked back to the bus stop at Lorena and First Streets,now carrying her L.A. County canvas tote bag with its two new occu-pants. Listening to the drone of traffic and the slight breeze rufflingthe palm trees above her, she began to think. These were definitelythoughts for her book. Thirty years ago, when she was just sweet 16and had moved from Vermont to Los Angeles, she’d wanted to pub-lish a book of her sentences and declarations to help others with Life,using lines about how suffering sunlight could weigh you down; howdreading the heat, the dryness, could kill your spirit. On the otherhand, it goes without saying that Lena’s point of view regarding theSouthern California sun and weather was not the prevailing moodsurrounding her. She was someone who simply resisted the hegemo-ny of the sun. She knew her book wasn’t going to be a bestseller. Normally, when she boarded a bus, she would glide into adepression, rapidly changing her like an iguana stepping into thebushes and turning green. Today, however, she felt blistered with agiddy aftershock of the everlasting sugar of life: She was alive andher fly-by-night husband wasn’t. She had a hint, too, of the pointlessdevolution of oneself: Him ending up as a box of ashes somewhereeast of the Los Angeles River, she sitting in a flurry of purpose with adead husband and a Gulf War veteran on her lap. She hadn’t known Tommy Rhodes long, and their weddingvows had played out only slightly longer than their acquaintanceship.A marriage quick in happening, and quick in ending, was served upwith the speed of a fry cook. As a result, with nothing of Tommy’sto hold onto except his incinerated afterlife, she willingly, enthusias-tically grabbed the ends, the remains, the life of someone else she’dnever known, creating some kind of meaning to her marriage, evenif it was summed up as a snub. But four hundred dollars, plus a whole day’s work lost, shemuttered with a bitter, self-conscious nod. Lena worked at the Eastern Star Café; she worked hard, longhours of overlapping shifts. Benefits were few, but she liked its con-stancy, she liked its people. She’d even got her coworker Helga to The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

32cover for her, but that meant tomorrow in recompense she was goingto have to listen to Helga talk on and on about her perfect daughterChristina, who took perfect dance lessons, and of whose perfect faceHelga spent hundreds for perfect photographs to serve as evidenceof a perfect childstar. Meanwhile Lena spent her long-suffering tipmoney and rode this downtown bus for an hour-an hour to go fourmiles-for a man she hadn’t seen nor spoken to in years. That was asacrifice to be sure, buta victory, too, and she felt elated, like MelGibson freeing the Scots from those English bastards. When her husband Tommy left her, more than three yearsago, Lena had gone--as they say in the modern media--off the grid.She got paid in cash, so there was no need for a bank, and no incometaxes. She owned no credit cards, paid her rent in cash (electricityand water included). She didn’t vote, and she dumped her telephone,using only the one at the café. Tommy had disappeared, and so hadshe disappeared, while remaining in place. Remaining a good andconstant employee at the Eastern Star Café, a reliable tenant in a con-fining apartment, a fixture in the four square blocks of neighborhoodfilled with mature singles, aging aunts, retirees, disenchanted and de-throned older brothers. In large part, it was as happy a place and pacefor Lena as she could find, a mere step from the bothersome twilightof seclusion and discovery. Her husband had left her, not out of anger nor out of decep-tion, but from not knowing what to do with her, or what to do abouther. ‘I don’t know what to do about you,’ he’d said, less circularabout his mysticism than about hurting her feelings. For there wasno mystery in their marriage; husband and wife existed, plain andsimple. There was nothing to think about. Then at the end of a per-fectly satisfying day at the café, looking forward to the evening com-ing alive with coziness and easy words, a vodka tonic, a cigarette, thesports channel, a hand sifting through her curly hair, she’d under-stood that he wasn’t late. She’d sat alone, knowing he didn’t have anaccident. Knowing he wasn’t coming home. There wasn’t going to beanyone else there with her from now on. Nothing but her burning The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

33cigarette, the fizzing vodka tonic, and a note she’d found in the bath-room. As the late afternoon had retreated, once the vodka drifted byher, absorbing her nerves like a river about to flood, and she, wadingin the marshy parts with leaves and sticks and lost frogs and turtles,hoping that the flood would pass her by, leaving only her, she lookedat the note: Goodbye. No amount of clouds floating by the open kitchen windowcould have made her feel more content, or more complete now, asshe sat at her cheap dinette table, on which lay a small stack of Na-tional Geographic magazines that she’d rescued from a pile of booksnext to a dumpster. Besides the magazines, there was a water-stainedtumbler, a pack of tissues, and an apple. Next to these she seta half-box of donuts on top ofthe two boxes of ashes-Tommy her husband,then of course Bill the veteran. With a round of self-congratulation, she got up and tookout from beneath the sink a large plastic bottle of Popov vodka. Shepoured a shot and a half into the water-stained tumbler, tossed itdown, then separated the boxes by the space of a foot; she focusedher attention on Bill. ‘Tommy’s address was nine miles away, Bill,’ she said, takinga honey glaze donut from the box. ‘To me he was nine light yearsaway, in just another part of the L.A. desert. You know, when theytook him to the morgue, they did an autopsy. It was because he felldown the stairs and he was too young to die. Probably like you, tooyoung when it happened. Well, you know, Death.’ She opened Bill’s box and looked at the powdery grayness. ‘Didn’t even have the decency to send me a post card to letme know where he was staying. I never knew. Coroner didn’t know.Even if he did know, I wouldn’t have had the money then either. I hadto earn all the little that I don’t have. He had to stay put. And besides,Bill, he walked out on me.’ She put her right hand, sticky from the donut, into the mixand felt around the box. ‘Died two years ago, and him keeping company with theGod-awful remains of runaways, soldiers, and inmates from the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

34lock-up- those poor, homeless, insane people.’ She wiggled her fin-gers. ‘You know what it’s like, Bill. Have to be insane to be poor andhomeless.’ Lena poured another quick shot of vodka and got up fromthe table, grabbed another donut, and left the apartment. There wasa sometimes-working pay phone outside the 7-Elevena block fromher room, one of the few pay phones left in the entire country sheassumed. She needed to call her sister collect to tell her what she did.There was an accomplishment to brag about, to get credit for. ‘Your husband is dead? He died? How can that be?’ ‘Well...it goes like this...’ Lena swallowed the dusted donutand began her story. ‘No,I don’t want to know the details.’ ‘Of course not. You never want to know the details.’ ‘You piss me off.’ ‘Why?’ Lena said. ‘You don’t call me for two months and then you call me with this?’ Lena said nothing. The smell of urine around her was begin-ning to make her gag. ‘Was there a lot of ashes? He was skinny wasn’t he, Tommy was?’ ‘Skinny or not, sis, there’s just so much you can fit into theseboxes. I have the ashes of some other guy, too.’ ‘What? Who?’ ‘A Gulf War veteran,’ she said, shifting the phone from herright hand to the crook of her neck. She brushed some of Bill’s ashesaway from the phone’s push-buttons. The receiver felt slippery, whatwith being coated in the veteran’s remains. She clapped her handsand watched the mist of dusty ash fall to the ground. ‘Name’s Bill.’ ‘Who was he?’ her sister asked. ‘Don’t know,’ Lena replied. ‘It seems to me the ashes of one man would be enough for asingle person to carry.’ ‘I’m not carrying a damned thing.’ ‘I’m just saying. ...You gonna toss ‘em?’ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

35 ‘No.’ ‘Did the Gulf War veteran kill himself? You know, they’re allso unstable.’ ‘No, he was killed by some gang over on Sunset Boulevard.’ ‘Wrong place at the wrong time?’ ‘With gangs, sis, there is no right place.’ ‘Hm.’ ‘You’d know that if you paid attention to the world.’ She bit a fingernail from her right hand, felt the gritty graycinders between her teeth. She was ready to hang up. ‘What’re you going to do with them?’ ‘I don’t know. It’ll take some thought.’ ‘I’ll say.’ ‘Well, I paid for them. I get to decide.’ Returning to her room with a bottle of sweet iced tea and apacket of Doritos, Lena found a cat sitting in Bill’s ashes. It belongedto her neighbor upstairs. It blinked twice at Lena, whose immediateimpulse was to shoo the cat away, but that might upset the box andspill everything onto the floor. So she froze. Unsure of how to ex-orcise the animal without spilling the contents, she decided to takecareful steps and sit down slowly. ‘Must be nice,’ she said to the cat, ‘to sit around and be stupidall day.’ The cat purred, blinked, and with deliberation stepped outof the box, leaving tracks of powdery cat paws on the table. It gaveLena a slight pleasure, so she poured herself another shot. ‘It’s poetic,’ she said, looking at the paw prints. ‘Like fancywall paper.’ She poured and drank two more shots in succession to clearthe light out of her throat, the light which she felt was choking her. ‘You know, for a few months, when we were first married, heturned eternity upside down for me.’ Then she opened Tommy’s box. ‘I don’t know if that’s true, now, really, but it’s more lines formy book.’ The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

36 She slowly immersed her right hand, feeling the slag siftthrough her fingers. ‘Send them to my sister is what I should do, she’s so con-cerned,’ she laughed and squeezed the ashes tight, letting clumps fallfrom her palm. She stood up-her right hand pressing down now onthe powder, forcing a compactness that mirrored her mind. Thinking of her sister made her hair itch. She dug in andcircled her nails, made figure eights in her itchy, arid scalp, blendingthe two men’s soot on her hand into the hairs and skin on her head. ‘Lena and Tommy lived in dreams,’ she said while shescratched, ‘and the bitter angles of a ruined heart. Oh, yes, that’s howthe first page will begin. Oooh, this hair’s driving me crazy.’ The cat was back on the table. ‘Bill was a sailor,’ she told the cat. With a spoon she scooped some of Bill’s ashes and pouredthem into the bottle of iced tea. She shook it, dissolving much of thegray particles. There was enough room for a shot or two of vodka,so she dumped that in, shook the bottle again, and drank half of theconcoction in one, full swoop. ‘That was disgusting,’ she burped. ‘Hey, cat. I wonder ifthere’s a difference between Bill’s ashes and my Tommy’s?’ The catlooked at her and then at the boxes. ‘I wonder if I got his DNA, now.’ Lena scooped a pile out of each box and placed them besideone another on the table. She wiggled her fingers in one pile, then in thenext. The cat joined her and sniffed at both piles of ash, dabbing a pawhere, a paw there, its tail rubbing against the dusty sides of both boxes. ‘What parts have I got here,’ Lena smiled as she realized therewas a slight coarseness to the veteran’s soot; naturally, the veteranwas a hard man. He saw war. ‘Maybe it was his hairy back.’ WhereasTommy’s ashes felt more like the talcum powder from her Evening inParis tin. Holding her piles of the past, she looked around the roomand then out the window. After her husband had left, she’d convincedherself that she would never be able to love another man again. It wasa terror that she knew such a fact even before he died. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

37 ‘I hate knowing things,’ she said to the cat, to the boxes. ‘ButI suppose when you’re always awake there’s bound to be a downside,‘cause you’re the only aware person in the room.’ That’ll go into mybook, too, she thought. Her momentary creative reverie was disturbed by the mostawful flapping, pounding noise. ‘What now?’ she said aloud, jerking out of the chair, upset-ting the table with her carelessness. She took her iced tea bottle withher to the open window and watched as two low-flying Air Force he-licopters ripped apart the quiet afternoon. She could feel their bladesalmost slapping her face. ‘Too low,’ she said to the outside. ‘That’s illegal, I’m sure.’ Gulping more of the vodka-ashed tea, and being inattentiveto the table, she turned and walked into it. What did she have here before her? What had she held in herpalms and smudged along the table, spilled onto the floor, wiped overthe phone, and allowed an animal to traipse through insincerely? About a third of each box’s contents had fallen into thecracks between the floor boards, on her feet, in the cat’s face andon its tail. The sifted dunes of Tommy and Bill had now become asimple, beveled moraine on the tabletop. It was enough to make hercry, and she hardly ever gave herself over to that release, but now shedid. Maybe it was the vodka, maybe it was those nasty low-flyinghelicopters. Standing over her boxes, she felt as if she were naked inpublic, no clothes to hide the lie she was trying to tell, no screen toveil the embarrassing dislike of someone she wished was dead andwho finally was. ‘Ooh that thought hurts,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m still going to keepit, though.’ Lena reached back inside the cupboard under the sink andgrabbed the whisk broom and dust pan. On her hands and knees, sheswept the sooty mess into the dust pan, leaving behind whatever wasstuck in the floor’s cracks. She wiped her teary eyes with her dirtydry hands and stepped on the pedal to open her stainless steel trashcan. Emptying the dustpan, she caught sight of her reflection in the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

38shiny lid. Her face was a mask, painted with powdery streaks. Likethe Dinka men of Africa, she thought, remembering her NationalGeographic. Hey, I’m a Dinka! Lena closed up both boxes, stacked one on top of the other.The escaping dust made her sneeze, which scared the cat away. ‘I’ll take them to Santa Monica. I’ll take them to the pier.’ She could do it. Two cities couldn’t have the same hateful sun,she thought. That would just be selfish. She would pour the ashes intothe bay. There’s always freaky characters there. No one would notice. ‘Time to go,’ she sighed aloud, and sneezed again. She putthe Doritos into her bag, along with a sweater, the apple, and thefreshly infused bottle of iced tea, ashes, and vodka. Then she took theboxes, sneezed a third time, and walked out the door. She began her walk to the express bus stop with a satisfyingintention, because a dead husband and a Gulf War veteran under herarms were not going to make life easy. The bus ride to Santa Monica took an hour, and within thathour, a queasy alertness struggled within her against the vodka’s nowdetermined dissipation. She stepped off the bus, somewhat sleepyand shaky on her feet, and found that the sun still stalked her. Witha block to go before she reached the Santa Monica pier, Lena walkedpreoccupied with thoughts of possibility and rest to come after shedisbursed the ashes. Which was why she failed to see one of the manyspectral men who make dirt and the milk of human kindness theirhome. She tripped over a man sleeping under a blanket, then tum-bled and cried out, losing hold of both her boxes and her bag. Thefoul, disgusting man woke up with a loud groan. He cursed Lena andscratched his crusted hairy belly, demanding his rights to peace andquiet. All Lena could hear was the pounding in her head, joined bythe wet sense of blood trickling down her cheeks, and the sight of herboxes open, tipped over, the contents fanned out upon the pavementbefore her. Bill and Tommy were all over the place. Pigeons and seagulls had moved aside so as to accommodateher fall, then closed in to peck at her belongings. They pushed theboxes with their beaks, scrutinized the ashes. Their ugly feet left tracks The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

39all over the mixed, thrown heaps of her husband and the veteran. ‘What the hell?’ she said, sitting on the sidewalk, ignoringthe birds, squinting through her blood-messed bangs, sniffing backher running nose. She ripped open the Doritos, ate a few, and extended the bagto the seagulls. The birds pecked at the chips, broke them up, andscattered the pieces around her, mixing them with the cinders of hertwo men. More birds arrived and quickly took off with their shareof Doritos covered in ash. They carried Tommy and Bill to WilshireBoulevard in Beverly Hills. They carried them to Malibu. Some ofthe dust even ended up in Joshua Tree. ‘What the hell,’ she exhaled again. The swift whoosh of a busspewed exhaust and grime into her face. As she looked around inoutrage, she was suddenly aware of the sun’s conversion to shadows.She noticed bars of slanted, orange-gray light transformed into som-ber metal legs extending from the alley behind her. She shudderedwith embarrassment amid the indifferent steps of strangers, as ifthe failing sun and ascendant weakness of twilight were planningto whip her one more time. Standing up, her heart in her throat, shesaw the nothing that was left of boxes 1464 and 1463, and watchedthe seagulls plodding around her, waiting for more.Born and raised in Connecticut, Mark Zipoli has livedin Florida, Illinois, New York, & Virginia. He receivedhis BA in English from Queens College/City Universityof New York, and has lived in Santa Monica, Califor-nia, for the past 27 years. His novel, The Long Habitof Living, was published through Createspace.com in 2010, and his short sto-ries have appeared in Uncharted Frontier, Hirschworth, Writing Tomorrow,Blue Monday Review, The Blotter, and Catamaran literary magazines. Markwas the administrative director for Travelers Aid Society of Los Angeles for18 years; he is currently employed with Extraordinary Families (a nonprofitfoster family/adoption agency in Los Angeles). The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

40FICTIONPatrick FealeyThe shower passed and the sun burned down. Wesat there, the raindrops growing finer on the wind-shield. Caught in Bronx summer traffic without anair conditioner, we rolled down our windows andwatched the steam rise from the pavement. Two blacks were running through the cars.They crossed the highway in front of us. They ranlike they’d stolen an apple pie. Two cops appearedbeside our car. The blacks ran up the sloped grass ofthe overpass and looked down. One of them threwa rock at the cops. It flew over the cars and overthe heads of the two cops. If you were going to bejammed in traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

41you couldn’t beat this. The cops wore dark blue jackets with heavyblack belts, very serious and helpless looking public servants. Rocksfell on them as the other two blacks joined in. The cops did not chasethe men. Their car was on a nearby access road. Standing on theirhill, the black men laughed. I couldn’t hear them laugh, but theirteeth showed smiles while they threw rocks. The cops were losingthis one in front of an audience of stalled drivers and fortunately,none of the rocks hit our windshield. What was this about, anyhow?The blacks laughed and continued their bombardment, delayingtheir escape to make the insult. Then one of the cops unbuttonedher holster and took out her pistol. She held the automatic high andstepped forward. The blacks ran to the top of the overpass and van-ished up the road. The cop put away her gun. It had been entertain-ing until the woman brought a gun into it. I guess it was one of thosemoments you’ll never see again. The blacks were having fun. Thecops were obscenely helpless and afraid. We sped through the Meadowlands, where the grass growsyellow under a sunless sky, except in blackened spots where therehave been brush fires. Smokestacks reined the horizon and the windcradled a nightmare. It was then that I noticed we were running lowon gas. I took an exit for a gas station. In New Jersey it doesn’t matterwhich exit. I filled her up and paid the Indian sitting behind an inch ofglass. He took my money through a metal drawer. He did not say aword, but he looked out from behind the glass, safe with the ciga-rettes and scratch tickets. When I say Indian, I mean from India. Notthe people who were living here when Columbus arrived looking forIndia. Columbus had made a mistake. The people who had greetedhim had made a mistake. The guy behind the glass gave me the rightchange. I turned the ignition and the starter clicked. I tried again. Nogo. Our 1967 Rover 2000 would not start. But it had been doing thisall summer. It would start if we waited for it to cool down. Jess hadrun out of patience with the car. She was afraid of it. She let out herfrustration on me and squeezed her hands between her knees. I tried The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

42to ease her worries by explaining the problem as we pushed the caraway from the pumps. The starter wires were overheating while wedrove because they were too close to the manifold. This became sig-nificant when you stopped and then tried to start again soon after.Hot wires conduct less electricity than cool wires. The starter wasn’tgetting enough juice to turn over. She was not comforted. Her fatherhad owned British cars. And maybe it was because we were drivingto California. Beaton Galafa On the freeway with warm wind rushing at us.On the move. “I think we’re going in the wrong direction,” Jess said. “We’re going north?” I said. “No we’re not.” “Yes we are. We’re headed back home.” “It looks the same.” Smokestacks and grass yellowed from a diet of smog andheadaches. A green and white highway sign finally showed up toclear the matter: I-95 North. Jess was right. I had to turn around. Wehad to get off the highway. In no time I was lost. I’d like to say we were lost, and we were,but I was driving and Jess was the innocent captive who knew bet-ter, getting dragged through the ghetto in search of a way back to I-95South. I was caught in a crossword puzzle of one-way streets lined withcinder-block homes with barred windows. People walked the streetsand gathered on the corners. They were talking. They did not seem tobe up to much, but they looked happier than their houses and cars. Wefinally found the one-way street which led back to I-95 South, hit thehighway and rolled down the windows. I turned up the music: Don’tworry, ‘bout a thing, ‘cause every little thing, is gonna be alright . . . Many songs later, the prospect of people eating all the cornin Pennsylvania and then excreting it gave me something to thinkabout. Jess found beauty in the monotony of the green stalks. Wewere driving through a Warhol. The road was wide and dry andstretched forever with no one in front of us and no one in the rear-view. We owned all of that corn without having to live in a vinylhouse on a hill. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

43 “I like it here,” Jess said. In the hills, below the trees, shadows accumulated and becamedarkness before the sun was down. In the open, the day hung withus, fading out while I drove. Jess opened the glove box and found TheAAA Guide to Camping, Northeast Edition. “There are a bunch of campgrounds near Gettysburg,” shesaid. “We’re near Gettysburg?” I said. “I think so. Let me see. Yes, we’re getting close. It’s about aninch away on the map.” “How far is an inch?” I asked. “Oh. About sixty miles. That’s more than I thought. What doyou think?” “Why not?” “I’ve always wanted to see Gettysburg,” she said. “Let’s go see what it’s all about.” Jess read me the roads and we got off the highway onto anarrow road that wound past the ends of people’s driveways for twohours. The lights in windows showed life. “Can you roll up your window a little?” Jess said. “I’m cold.” The wind blowing across my arm was cold. September dusk. Irolled my window up – a little. “It’s close to nine o’clock,” Jess said. “They close at ten. Are wegonna make it?” “I don’t know.” The road had some sharp turns, but I stepped on it. The Rov-er had a race-car suspension. Over hills. Leaves in the road. Throughchimney smoke. Jess complaining she was carsick. The town parted the trees. A wave came up the windshield andblinded me. Holy! I slowed and turned on the wipers and we saw we were on themain drag of some small town. Small-town America like so manysmall towns back in New England. The rain poured on the desolatestreets. Then I saw a sign on the outside of a store: GETTYSBURGHARDWARE. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

44 This was the famous town. “We’re in Gettysburg,” I said. “This is Gettysburg?” Jess said. “We’re out of Gettysburg.” “Go back!” “Hang on!” It was dark. I drove on. The rain hammered the roof and Ibent my head down to see out the windshield. The wipers tried to goback and forth. The steering went loose with every river I drove into.Jess was studying the AAA booklet under the focused beam of theRover Deluxe Reading Lamp while I wondered where we were. Wewere alone, I could see. Pennsylvania was a quiet state this day. It wasdark and out in the rain were fields or farmland with some trees hereand there. I squinted at the road in front of me. I could see it, but Iwas not in control. Something went by on the roadside. I slowed and hit the high beams. “Turn off the light!” Jess did. “What?” she said. “I saw something. Up on the right.” The shadows came again. Silhouettes. I slowed. Cannons. There were three of them standing in an uneven line, facingthe road. I drove on. There were more. We were close to the battle. Wewere on the battlefield. Jess gave me directions. We saw a light. Going by, we read the sign: THE BATTLE-FIELD CAMPGROUND. I’d passed it. I pulled a u-turn and headed back toward theonly light on those dark fields. I turned in at the sign onto gravel. Ashort way in was a shack with a sign in the window: VACANCY. Theshack also looked vacant. Jess waited in the car while I checked the The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

45door of the shack. The rain beat on me. The air smelled of rottingleaves. I was cold. The door to the place was locked and there was nosign of a human. There were a bunch of brochures on the counter. Iran back to the car, climbed in, soaked to the skin. “Anything?” Jess said. “Just a bunch of books.” “What time is it?” she said, looking at her watch. “It’s quarterafter ten. Now what are we going to do?” “Don’t worry.” I turned off the headlights and backed away from the shack. “What are you doing?” Jess said. “Shhhhh.” I turned the car onto the gravel road and violated the camp-ground. The parking lights cast an amber glow on the road and out-lined the trees. We crept along the gravel in the dark until we cameto a fork. I took the road on the right because it looked lonesomeand went away from the campground’s center of activity. We wouldbe less likely to get caught down there. The road turned to mud. Un-der the trees, whose trunks glowed amber, were fire pits markingthe campsites. A potential spot appeared under the leaves of a widetrunk. The tree would protect us. I flashed the headlights and sawgood ground. I secured the tarpaulin while Jess rushed the pillows and blan-kets from the car to the tent. We found our toothbrushes and went offto find the bathrooms. We had seen the white cinderblock buildingon the way in, so it didn’t take long. There was a WOMEN sign onone end and a MEN on the other. The doorways were brightly lit byfloodlights which illuminated thick gatherings of mosquitoes wait-ing for communion. Jess walked through the women’s mosquitoes, Ithrough the men’s. The men’s room was quiet. There was no one in there. Therewere showers we could use in the morning. I picked one sink fromthe long row of sinks and brushed my teeth. I washed my face in thatstrange and quiet place. I looked in the mirror and was disappointedby the professional who looked back. The road had done nothing for The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

46him yet. It was the face of inexperience, with four wheels and dreamsof a continent yet to be realized. I went outside and waited for Jess under the overhang. Me andthe dancing mosquitoes staying out of the rain. A long while later,she appeared. We ran through the rain for our tent, across the wetgrass under the big old trees to the shelter, where I unzipped the doorand she jumped in. I followed, sealing us inside. We settled into ourpile of blankets. The floor was wet. We didn’t care. The rain pouredand we were safe in our shaking tent. I don’t know who started it, butwe were greedily taking off our clothes. I said “whoever comes firsthas to drive tomorrow.” We made love outside the rain and wind. Wedidn’t know where we were going. She was there. I was there. Tomor-row we would be somewhere else and she would be driving. Patrick Fealey’s publishing credits include many lit- erary magazines in the states and Canada, including the Wormwood Review, California’s flagship, as well as newspapers including The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and Reuters. He quit journalism at the age of 29 to pursue his own writing. He has worked many odd jobs since and is now 49, with many published short stories and one published novel, but he has not broken through with mainstream agents or publishers. He has- nine unpublished novels. As a reporter ha had published 1,600 articles. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

47 FICTION In late autumn, Jem couldn’t resist inching onto a lake’s firstfreeze to see how far he could get before the ice would begin tocrack beneath him. His adrenaline pumped with the first crack as hewatched the white lines cutting through the dark ice, just a coupleof inches thick - all that kept him from falling into 40-degree water.He thought the challenge of getting back to shore was worth the riskof falling through the ice. To Jem, the McAvoys were unpredictable,just like thin ice in Autumn. The McAvoys’ ancestors had lived in the Ramapo Mountainsin northern New Jersey for hundreds of years. A junk dealer, Mr.McAvoy displayed his goods in front of his home, a shack wherelocal newspapers had reported UFO sightings, but by unreliable wit-nesses who’d kept a moonshine still. Mr. McAvoy scared Jem with his glaring eyes and stern com-mands. There were a dozen McAvoy kids, eight boys and four girls.Jem admired his classmate, Toby McAvoy, because he could hold hisbreath underwater for four minutes, a Ramapo River record. He’d The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

48seen Toby knock a squirrel out of a tree with his slingshot, then skinit clean with his pen knife and roast it on a stick over an open fire he’dmade from rubbing two sticks together. Toby told Jem the McAvoy’shad pioneer blood from before the American Revolution. Regardless of their heritage, the McAvoys showed no inter-est in book learnin’. But they knew everything about buildin’, fixin’,swappin’, growin’, trappin’, gettin’ along, and doin’ without. They atedeer, squirrels, rabbits, eels, and game birds in thick stews with “nipsn taters.” The McAvoys piqued Jem’s interest, mostly because they weredeemed social outcasts.His mom had told him not to associate withthem, just as she’d told him to stay away from the lake until it was fro-zen a foot thick January. The temptation to get to know more aboutthe McAvoys, like thin ice, was irresistible to Jem. After school one fall day, Toby invited Jem to his home. Walk-ing towards the McAvoy spread, they turned down a dirt road thatwound into the mountains until it narrowed to a rocky path. Peoplehad been dumping junk in those woods for years, but that was a plusto the McAvoys, because they’d spit-and-shine old stuff to trade. “Say, Jem, ya hungry?” Toby asked him one afternoon. Always hungry after school, and trying to sound like a McA-voy, he said, “Yup.” “Maw will feed ya good and ya can meet the family.” Tobysuddenly froze, cocked his head, and sauntered to the SusquehannaRailroad tracks that cut along the valley. “Freight’s comin’. Must beover a hun’erd cars. We’ll hop on it so we’ll be sure to get home intime for grub. If yer late for dinner at my house, ya don’t eat.” Jumping onto a moving freight train was forbidden in Jem’sfamily, but Toby’s raw enthusiasm was too much to resist. Jem’sdry throat tightened and his palms were slicked with sweat whenhe heard the rumble of squealing metal on the tracks. As the trainpassed, they ran beside it to hop on. Jem was surprised how muchfaster a train seemed to move as he got closer to it. He puffed andwheezed with awkward footing next to the chest-high wheels, whichthreatened to draw him under the rumbling train. The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

49 Toby caught hold first, grabbed Jem’s hand and dragged himten yards before Jem could take hold of the train, lift his legs, and feelthe thrill of the train’s force. “That was the easy part.” Toby winked. “Jumping off could be apisser with only one place to jump safely cause there’s too many rocksand boulders anywhere else-the open field of tall grass.” Jem shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” “Good on ya bee-hind, but this time of day that field’s full ofcopperheads catchin’ the last sunlight.” “Jeez.” Jem said. “We ought to stay on till the freight makes a stop.” “Only stop is the station. Get off there and the cops’ll grab us.Ya ain’t scared a no snake are ya? We eat’em.” When Jem jumped from the moving train into the tall, yel-low grass, and rolled over and over, he heard scrambling-more likeslithering-in several directions from where he rolled to a stop. Heartracing, he jumped up and kept running to the forest’s edge. The McAvoys’ home was set under two huge oak trees, grow-ing there since the colonial days. Their home was a one story struc-ture made of gray cinder blocks with a corrugated, tin roof. A worn-out clearing surrounded the house near a patch of skunk cabbageswamps. Old cars, trucks, tractors, and farm implements littered theclearing. Two German shepherds and a mongrel that looked like acoyote scrambled toward them, and jumped around, biting at Jem’sheels. Laughing, Toby bear hugged the big male shepherd and wres-tled him to the ground. The other two settled down and flanked Jemas if they were standing guard in case he interfered with Toby’s play. “They won’t hurt ya,” Toby advised from under the dog hewrestled, “unless I command ’em to.” He untangled himself from thedog and gave a demonstration. Walking over to a pile of litter in the clearing, he picked up anold knapsack, bent down next to the male shepherd, and whisperedin his ear before he threw the knapsack into the air. “Attack, Strider!” he shouted. Strider leaped into the air, bitinto the knapsack before it hit the ground, and shook it violently in The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017

50his jaws. “Heel, Strider!” Toby commanded. Strider dropped the sackand returned to Toby’s side. “Trained to hunt,” Toby said proudly,leading Jem through the front door, which opened directly into thekitchen where nine McAvoy kids ages two to thirteen ran out to playin the yard. Filled with a long wooden table that could seat twenty peo-ple, the main room smelled musty. Mr. McAvoy sat at the head ofthe table and faced the door. He wore a flat brimmed, gray Stetsonhat, even while seated at the table, something Jem’s mom would haveforbidden. Mrs. McAvoy stood at the stove. She was short and thin,wearing a floor length, print dress with a stained and tattered blueapron. Her big, ochre eyes stared with a dilated lack of discernment. Her short, matted hair with a single gray streak reminded Jemof The Bride of Frankenstein, because she rarely spoke, except forshort, high-pitched chirps: “Yup-Nope-Git!” She yawned and sput-tered as she watched the pots on the stove and occasionally turnedaround to whack one of the younger boys at the table with a bigwooden spoon for messing with one of his sisters. Toby’s two older brothers, Lem and Cole, came in the back-door and sat at the table. They bent forward over plates of mysteriousstew, giving a foreboding meaning to-potluck. They ate with gusto as Mr. McAvoy drank from a metal tan-kard. Lem and Cole kept eating without looking up. “This is Jem,” Toby said to his father. “Come to share somefood with us.” Mr. McAvoy stared at Jem. “Welcome.” He gestured toward theend of the table nearest the door. Toby and Jem quickly sat. Withoutsaying a word, Mrs. McAvoy set before them two plates of steamingstew garnished with two thick slabs of homemade bread. Following Toby’s lead, Jem grabbed a fork from a basket of mixed uten-sils in the middle of the table and began eating. After a few minutes of silence, Mr. McAvoy jerked his headsideways at Lem and Cole. The two older brothers stood up, squeezed past Toby and went The Wagon Magazine - August - 2017