Gay and Lesbian Theme Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of This Is Not For You Review of Potato Queen Crossword (Solution Posted in March. Printable version in pdf format of journal.) Creative Nonfiction Tunis, Forever By John Champagne Bisexuality 101 By Evelyn McFarland Poetry Blackouts By Steve Rydman Self Loathing By Steve Rydman A Boy Reads YM By Steve Rydman I Finally Found Me By Lucretia Randle Acorn Boy Above the Conclave By James Penha Fiction As If In Time Of War (1985) By Christopher T. Leland General Works Creative Nonfiction Stone Musings #5 By Mike Munsil Ascent Into Being By Holly Mitchell Fiction Come Winter By Sandra M. McDow The End of Stories By Sonia Vora Coal Blood By Tom Bennitt About the Contributors © 2006, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Bill Mausteller Policy Director - vacant Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Sen. Fiction Editor - Patti Kurtz Sen. Poetry Editor - Neeldhara Misra Sen. Creative Nonfiction Editor - Brenda Coxe Contributing Editor - Robert Dittman Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/submission.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/volunteer.html. |
Stone Musings #5 By Mike Munsil It is late at night as I make my way home to Arkansas. I'm driving south and east through the Ouchita mountains. I'll turn back north, later. This route gives me more time to think and I am comforted by the mountains dark presence. I'll do all my grieving overnight as I drive, and let the wind wipe the tears from my face. This is my time to cry so that I can be strong when I need to be, at home. I'll be there when the crooked hills give way to flat-topped mountains and a great river that winds its way among them. I spent the last several days withdrawing from university and arranging my affairs. Everything I own is packed in my pickup; I have left only my dreams behind. "Dad is ill, son. It is terminal. The doctors say he has only a few months left. He wants you here." I'm not surprised that it was Mom who asked me to come home. Dad would never ask me himself. That would be too personal. I've crossed the Ouchita Mountains to get back home. Lake Ouchita lies at their heart, a rare window into the past. The rock that defines the lake is greatly contorted, bent and shaped by ancient pressures and then thrust towards the sky. The Arkansas Geologic Commission has placed marker buoys at special places around the lake, and with their handbook and a boat we can peer into the ancient world, at our ease on the lake and with no reason in the world to hurry. Geologists come here from all over the States, to study the display. The lake is unique in the access it offers to a twisted heartland writ in stone. There is nowhere else on this continent to see such a public display of private strain. Farther north the wild contortions of the Ouachitas give way to more gently folded rock and the occasional table-top mountain. This is "True Grit" country, where Mount Nebo overlooks Dardanelle and a girl's quest for justice began. Fort Smith is miles away and the only hanging judges still around pound pulpits now, not gavels. Home is here. Crow Mountain looks down over the Arkansas River Valley and our house rides the ridge. Dad chose this place to retire to. He never said, but I can imagine that he also loved it for its wild beauty. As I pull into the old gravel driveway I am surprised at how tall the cedars have grown. Dad and I planted them together, a rare example of cooperation without judgment, a momentary lapse in the struggle between us. We communicated via works, and never said the words. I wait for sunrise to step out of my truck and back into this world. I won't wake my parents up. Better to just sit here in the sweet pre-dawn air until they rise. It will give me time to think. I have been away for years and do not know what to expect. Dad has changed, they say. He is more kind now, and more open. It took this final illness, though, to even get him to ask for me. This dying is uncharted territory for us all. Arkansas was new territory for me in so many ways. It was the first place I saw my father at a loss, not in total command of his world. It was the first place I had a woman and the first place I made one cry. Of all the countries we lived in, it was the most strange. The land was beautiful, but the people were stunted. They had no joy in life it seemed, and no place in their lives for strangers. I was still young at heart when I went there and fell in love with these hills. I felt that the people should feel as I did; thankful every moment of their waking lives to be here in a place of wild beauty. So strange to learn the opposite, to see for myself the despair that fed intolerance and religion in equal measures, and tainted human lives. Most of all, Arkansas was the first place I learned to question the ways around me. The deep stone brought to the sky, the philosophy of geology and the earth's secret histories taught me to look beyond the ebbs and surges of human history -- to place Man and his works in their proper place. I no longer thought that the world revolved around us, that we were made in any god's image and that God was made in ours. I was no longer the center of my universe. It has been a month now, and Dad is weaker every day. He is even more quiet than ever before, and rarely even sees us. I know it hurts him that his family would not come to say goodbye. Three brothers, another son, and two daughters all caught up in their own lives and too busy share time with him now. They cannot overlook the past. They can only react to it. Mom and I take care of Dad as best we can. We try to ease his pain but it is clear that soon he will have to give in; he will go to the hospital to ease his dying. It will be hard to ask him to leave home for one last time. He has made the sunroom his place and looks over the land he retired to. He has only had a few years to enjoy it. What is he thinking? Is he afraid of dying? I wouldn't know; I've never been privy to his thoughts. On the phone again, I make one last try to reach Uncle Lee. He is the family patriarch and if he comes, the others will. So, I try one more time, one more time to get them to respond. Dad never tried so hard to see me. I don't understand why he wants to see them so badly, and am jealous, but still I try. "Dad wants to see his brother. Is that too much to ask? It's not like you don't have the money to come!" That was the wrong thing to say. Lee is busy, I am told, he's going to be the lead speaker at his church's convention. Call again once the funeral date is set. He'll try to attend and he might even be willing to speak. So, a fuse is lit in my mind. It burns. I've always known that I could be like this, filled with rage, ready to explode -- just like my father. I am in the hospital, sitting up with Dad. He asked me to go back to school, so I am enrolled again in some shit math class, just to be able to tell him that I haven't really quit. Days I am in school and working any jobs that I can to pay the bills I know will come. Nights are with Dad. We don't speak and he watches TV some, more now than ever before. I do my lessons and help him when he needs it. We share silence and determination, but not words. Dad knows he's in his last few weeks. I've tried several times to get him to talk to me, to really talk to me for once, but he won't. After a while I pick up the bedpan and help him once again. At least he doesn't have to endure the awful cheeriness that nurses project. I know he appreciates my effort, even if he doesn't say so. He has always been a most private man, and more proud than private, so he won't go until I am there. He holds it all day long and it angers the nurses. It is the only thing that cheers him up, I can tell. I am proud of him that he shows that much spirit. I would do the same. The pain is finally too much for Dad to bear. He cries silently and does not sleep at all. After midnight he raises a hand and I go to his side. His voice is just a thread of sound over the equipment that monitors him, and I lay my hand on his breast as I put my ear to his mouth to hear. "Kill me. Use the pillow. They'll never know. I've held out till now, but kill me please." After a while, when he sees that I cannot, he says "Damn you." and turns his face away. The fuse burns on. It is all I can feel now. I picture my heart as stone to control the rage, but I find that even stone feels pain and anger and outrage in the dark, when no one else is around. I am dreading the next evening and I can only hope that the new drugs are easing my father's pain. It took hours of badgering the doctor until he gave in, but finally they gave Dad the 'cocktail'. It is some godawful mix of alcohol and amphetamines. If he were healthy, it would kill him, but he's dying and even if it kills him quicker, at least it will stop the pain. I was too much the coward to release him. I have to drug him to ease his pain and my guilt. He has no one now. Even his oldest son has failed him and he will not look at me, and I cannot look away. Mom must have sensed my despair. She came to give me time off. I spend it with friends who know it is best to just sit there, idly chatting as the clock winds down. After a while I leave for the hospital. Mom needs her rest as well, and if Dad is sleeping I can just sit there quietly and watch him. I am at the nurse's station signing in when I hear the screams begin. I know my father's voice, even if I've never heard it this way before, and I rush to his room. A fat little man comes rushing out of the room and almost knocks me down, but I am too shocked by what I see to care. It is chaos in the room. Dad is down on the floor and there is blood on his arm. Mom is down as well but is trying to hold his hand to calm him. Dad pushes her away. He fights us all and screams again, "I'm still alive! Don't bury me. I'm still alive! Damn you. I'm still alive!" And now I'm crying as I hold him down while the nurses work to stop the blood where he tore his IV out. He's dead within the hour. He fought to the end, still frightened, terrified of us all. When I close his eyes I tell him I am so sorry, but he cannot hear me now. I should have killed my Dad when he asked. Later I take Mom home and finally get her to sleep. Then I return to the hospital to handle the 'disposition of the remains'. The staff are in a rush to move Dad to the morgue, and that and the way the nurses act arouse my suspicion. I ask and ask and after a while the nurses admit their mistake. They let that little fat man in, a Baptist preacher. They let him in even though we had said 'no visitors, and especially no preachers'. Dad demanded that. Somewhere, some time he must have been badly hurt, and turned his back on religion forever. It wasn't that much to ask. Once the nurses started talking I learn still more. I learn how Mom didn't immediately throw the preacher out (that makes me smile, she has ever been the image of courtesy) but let him talk. He was quiet at first but then rose to his self-appointed task. "I'm here to give this poor man comfort." he said, "I will lead him to Jesus." The preacher's voice rose and rose until even the nurses down the hall could hear him. Mom tried to quiet him he grabbed her hands and would not let go. He was in full cry, "God help this poor man with one foot in the grave! God help him!", the preacher yelled, and Dad woke and thought he had been buried alive. The fuse has burned all away and I am leaving the hospital to find that preacher man and punish him. The nurses try to stop me, but I know who this preacher must be and I know where to find him. I had seen him before, hanging around the hospital. He was notorious for that, and for living in the biggest house in town. The police catch up to me as I am dragging the preacher out of his house. In my rage it seems fitting that he apologize to my Dad, dead or not. I haven't given further thought to what to do next, but I won't hurt him much. He has already peed himself in public, and that and an apology are enough, for now. It takes all the rest of the night to get the police to agree, but they listen, finally, and check with the hospital. They have to admit that I have reason to be angry, although they are hesitant to believe that a preacher should be held accountable. No one holds the holy accountable, in Arkansas. I am there when we bury Dad. The police and the preacher and I have reached an 'accommodation'. Without that agreement I would be in jail and the preacher's role would be public. The police are there also, but at a distance. They watch me now. The preacher has left to convert the heathen in some other place, and I am prevented by court order from following him. It hurt, to make that accommodation but it allowed me to be here today when my mother needed me. Uncle Lee is there. He speaks. He and Mom leave together and on the way home he serves notice on a 50-year old debt that my father had incurred. The only way to pay up is to sell the house. He encourages her to do so, and Mom cries. Uncle Lee tells her he always admired her figure. When I get home and find out I take action. Lee won't be coming back again. Not ever. I am lucky that the police were not there to see it. It would be too much for them to overlook. Lee is holy, too. As you go north from the River Valley the Boston Mountains rise up and dominate the sky. They are heavily wooded and hide many secrets in their hollow hills. They are the last expression of the Appalachian orogeny, that grand collision with Africa that threw the eastern mountains up. The Mississippi separates the Boston Mountains from their Smoky brothers now, but the resemblance is plain to see. Annie's Chapel is hidden in those hills. The old clapboard church rises white and tall with its centuries-old spire still reaching straight to heaven. The faithful still congregate there, in one small room, to praise their god. The pulpit is sturdy Arkansas walnut. It must be strong to withstand the pounding it takes on Sundays. Across the road Annie's Chapel Cemetery rises up a hillside. Civil War vets are buried below, and my father above. He lies under a pine tree and looks north, as he did when he lay in his sunroom those last days. A simple granite stone records him in few words: CPO Lloyd Manley Munsil, 1912-1981. Twenty years later I stand before my Dad. Down below my wife waits with my boys. They know to leave me alone. I will return to them when I am ready. They know I will cry and I think they must wonder at my weakness. They don't know the rage that still fills me. I struggle to contain it but cannot. I try to speak to my father , but softly so that my children cannot hear. I try, and cannot, and my memories crowd me. They draw me back to when it happened and I cry to chase the memories away and to keep from screaming aloud. Later I gather my family and we leave. My father is left behind to drowse in the heat and pine-scented air of an Arkansas summer day. There are no more chores for him, no burdens left to bear and no bills to pay. He is at peace -- his time has come and gone. He rests in stone and will become part of the land, and I will go on as best I can. Tears will do no good today. We came to Arkansas on vacation. We spent time in the River Valley and on Mount Nebo where the air is sweet and clear. We'll work our way south through these hollow hills into older terrain. The deep-rooted rocks that form the Ouachitas will fill my boys eyes and they will shout and play in the waters of Lake Ouachita in their shadow. These rocks, these deformed beds of ancient sand were formed deep underground, under tremendous pressure, and it shows. Even the quartz crystals in the stone show the results of stress; they are strained in ways that only some of us can see. I have, finally, looked closely at myself, scrutinized my own faults and twisted life, and at the rage that remains. It is time to end it now, to forgive and to reconcile the old pressures and older sorrows. It is time to say last words to my Dad, in private while my wife and sons enjoy the lake waters. I turn to face north then, to face my father in memory as I did not in life, and speak directly to him one last time. "I forgive you Dad." "Good bye." |