Table of Contents 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.

The End of Stories By Sonia Vora I came to this island to find stillness and to rest a shattered heart repaired after two days in surgery from a bullet fired by a shattered woman, my wife. I didn't press charges although I couldn't get the DA to do the same. I deserved it; she had fallen victim to jealousy, which is as close to and as far from love as the other side of the mirror. They thought I was crazy for not wanting her locked up. But would you lock someone up for contracting typhoid? AIDS? People with infectious disease are as dangerous to the public as rabid criminals. Endorphins alter our chemical makeup when we fall in love. Why not a chemical that leads us to violence? Love is an illness. I was walking along the beach one morning - a wide stretch of powdery sand that curved as deeply as a boomerang. The islanders called the bay the "Queen's Necklace" because of the way the lights from the cottages along the shoreline sparkled like gemstones at night. An old man was sitting on some rocks near the sea. I had heard of him; he was a fallen idol, an American who had been sitting by the ocean for half a century waiting for his dead love to return. I sat near him to hear his words for myself, searching for the tendrils of connection to my own story. After two months of filming in Africa I was beat. My agent told me about the Maldives, said I should come down here and learn to relax. It would make good headlines too. The studio publicized my breakup with the leading lady and the feeding frenzy was on. The papers called me "Jesse the Kid", the playboy bandit. It took me nearly twenty-four hours to fly here from Morocco. Isn't that something? The earth completed a full circle before I could travel from one life to another. Not that I put it that way back then. First thing I thought when I landed - this was a sad one-horse island. No big hotels, no nightclubs, no sports. What the hell was I supposed to do for two weeks? I sent a telegram to my manager cursing him out but he told me to calm down and lie low for a bit. Fortunately, I had packed some high-octane moonshine to keep me company. It's funny to think of it now but I remember being bored stiff those first couple of days. I think I slept for two days straight and then drank for the next five. My house sits right on the beach behind us. It has two rooms, both of them facing the ocean. A week after I landed, I stepped out onto the porch right around this time of day. A couple teenage boys were pushing a canoe out into the lagoon. Back then, there was a diving platform fifty yards out right in the center of the bay and these kids were paddling their way towards it. After hitching the canoe to one of the supports, the kids spent the rest of the morning diving in. I watched them for three days, each day getting a little closer to the water. On the third day, they waved to me before paddling out and I walked over. It was crazy - they had no idea who I was. It was the first time in three years that no one had any idea who I was. They spoke just enough English to get their meaning. They were free divers and they competed to see who could go the deepest. As they dragged the boat across the sand, I kneeled by the waterline and put my hand into the clear green water as sheer and solid looking as glass. My fingers penetrated the surface, first one knuckle, then the next and then the water just washed over the back from the outside, circling in to meet in the middle. I don't know why I was so taken with that moment; it was like I was alone in the world and the sea was taking over and all I had to do was let it. Once we got to the platform, I climbed the ladder and felt the sun blasting at my face and the splintered wood scratching against my feet. It was slippery and the next thing I knew I was flailing and falling into the water. I hit the water and twisting around, I saw the faces of the boys above the surface, rippling in and out of view before a hand reached down and hooked around my arm, hauling me out. The boys were laughing as I choked and I wanted to punch them in the head. I spit out the water and lay on the platform for a few minutes, letting the water run off me, tasting the salt in my mouth. The sounds of seagulls squawking filtered through my water-clogged ears and I had a moment of serious homesickness then. But what the hell - this Colorado boy never let anything stop him. This time I jumped in the way the boys taught me. Some divers use tanks or flippers to help push them down but these kids didn't use a thing and could sink like a stone. After years of smoking and drinking, I couldn't go too deep. But I went back every day for a week. And one day, I was halfway between the surface and the bottom when I looked down and far below, I saw a glimmer of skin shooting around the weeds. I was running out of breath fast and knew I should head up but I stopped and looked again. It was a little darker down there, but I saw a naked back, and it wasn't one of the boys. I suddenly exhaled and came up like a burst balloon. It was too fast and I nearly blacked out. I was convulsing in the shallow water - 'dancing the samba' the boys said. A couple of nights later, I walked to the shore alone with my last bottle. The wind had picked up and ruffled through the water at the edges of the beach. I sat down on a couple of dried up palm leaves and just stared out. There was no electricity on the island back then, so the only lights around were the stars. But believe me, you could read a book by the light. And there it was sitting on the platform. Her back. Long black hair wound down it like a serpent. She stood up and slipped off her dress and I saw she was naked. I felt like a peeping tom. She dove off the platform and I started looking around for something to paddle over to the platform with, splashing gin all over myself in the process. There was not a damn thing around so I decided to wait there on the beach until she came back. I just sat there and drank the rest of the bottle. At some point, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know it was the middle of the night and freezing and she was gone. I walked around Male' - back then Male' was a couple of buildings and a post office - I walked around the city and asked around for her. No one seemed to know who I was talking about. I must have looked crazy - walking around asking total strangers about a woman I had never met using curvy hand gestures like I was starring in a Laurel & Hardy movie. Even if I had to go door-to-door, I knew was going to find her. I dreamt about her back, naked under the water and in the evening air - long and flat until it flared just below her hips. I fantasized about running my finger along her spine, just following the curves. Later, after I'd found her and loved her, I would stare at her sleeping. She hated covers and only agreed to a linen sheet because I needed something covering me. Listening to her breathing, I would slip the sheet to her hips. I'd start at her neck and with one fingertip follow the line down her shoulder and the outside of her arm. I'd feel the soft skin just above her ribs and the slide down to her waist and up again on her hips. Sometimes she would shift in her sleep and I would slip my hand around her thigh and keep it there. The warmth of her skin warmed me. I hadn't had trouble getting women for years. From Los Angeles to London, they would throw themselves at me at the premiere parties. I had all kinds of women, dozens, hundreds. I hadn't had to fight for one. And then there was her. As Jesse the Kid continued to talk, never looking at me once, I thought about my own story. It was a lot more ordinary than the one he was telling, but it was important because it was mine. I met my wife Rosalie when she found my wallet in a taxi-cab in New York City. Her voice was so flirty and funny over the phone that I immediately asked her out for drinks so she could return my wallet. I knew it was her when she walked in the door and I knew I would marry her before I paid the bill. This was love, I thought. A certainty, knowledge beyond reason. Even when our love faded like a sun-worn cushion cover, I knew she would always be mine. A few days after I had seen her, I was sitting on the platform watching the waters roughed up by the September wind. From a wave she burst like a dolphin breaking upwards, water streaming off her hair and shoulders. She swam over to the platform as effortless as drifting wood. Holding something in one hand, she just dropped next to me like we had known each other for years. She opened her hands, as excited as a child, and showed me what was in it. It was just a rock, crudely shaped like a knife, if you looked hard enough. I looked into her face and she was just glorious, her hair falling down her back her eyes catching the sun and glowing. They are still the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen - just heartbreaking. Wide-open and light brown, almost golden at the edges and darkening near the center. Without even asking who I was, she began to tell me the story of the knife in perfect English. Two thousand years ago, the first people to come here crossed the ocean on little more than rafts. They thought the island was uninhabited. It wasn't until the new people started fishing that they realized others had been there first. The Redin were sea-creatures but they were as beautiful as angels. The new people fell in love with them and tried to keep them on land but the Redin would die outside of the sea. So the new people imprisoned them in human bodies to keep them alive. Even in their new bodies, the Redin could not survive and soon all but a few withered in their shells and died. One of the human men watched this and decided it wasn't right. So he made a knife out of rock and cut the last of the Redin out of their human bodies and let them return to the sea. For this, the humans killed him. The children of the Redin and humans survived and their descendants live on the island today. I stared at her lips and the way the color of her eyes would explode when it caught the sun. She looked at me as if waiting for an answer, but I couldn't stop looking at her. When she stood up, I tried to get her to stay but she wouldn't. No woman had said no to me in years. I got mad and grabbed her arm. 'At least tell me your name.' Her name was Amali. Amali. It means 'a dream'. It fit her perfectly. After meeting her, I lost track of how long I'd been on the island. My manager telegrammed and I couldn't believe it had only been one month since I'd arrived. I sent a reply saying I was staying a little longer. I told Amali about how she could come back with me one day. She stared at me with her wide-open eyes. But why would I want to leave here? 'I could give you the world. You'd have everything. Money, jewels, the whole world would know who you were.' She just continued to stare at me and then smiled, taking my hand like a child who doesn't understand something plain in front of their face. She taught me how to dive. She would stand with her arms straight out from her side and just fall forward. I watched her dive off the low cliffs, nearly hovering on the air before tilting forward, pulling her arms together in front of her and into the waters below. She could go deeper than anyone else, over a hundred feet with one breath, sinking to the floor of the lagoon in moments and bringing back shells, rocks - and that knife. This knife is very special, she would say. It's very old. 'It certainly looks old. It hardly looks like a knife. Just a worn down rock.' She handled it carefully, ceremonially, laying it flat against her palm as she studied it. It's sharp enough. In the evenings, she would sing for me. She'd sit at my feet as we looked out at the ocean. I didn't understand the words but I knew the song. The notes moved in and out with the surf accompanied by the rustling palms. I would play with her hair, lifting it off her back and winding it in my fingers as the wind pushed gently against our skin. Weeks went by and we were inseparable. The days were filled with swimming and walking and talking. The temperatures were beginning to cool as we headed into December. One day this fellow stopped by my cottage. He was big, pretty muscular, about my age. I think he wore a sleeveless shirt just to show me how strong he was. 'I know you've been with her,' he said, straight off. I pushed the door wider open just to make sure he understood me. I asked what the hell business of his it was. He had dark hair like Amali but it was curly, tight up close on his head. He looked down at the glass I had in my hand and frowned as if he knew I wasn't drinking water. 'Stop seeing her,' he said. He hit the side of the house hard with one hand and I stepped out, ready to go at it. 'Why?' I had a right to know before I punched him. But I didn't wait for the answer. I just laid one into him and we went at it. Down on the ground, rolling on the sand. Amali came running out of my house crying for us to stop. Some of the fishermen near the beach came over and separated us. I stood there between two men, panting and leaning forward, just hoping he'd come at me again. Amali was mine and no son of a bitch was going to take her away. The others dragged this guy away and I turned to Amali, standing there in shock, staring at me like she didn't even know my name. 'Who the hell was that?' She was wearing her favorite dress, a long filmy green thing that reached her feet. She shook her head and looked at me like she was about to cry. That was my cousin. He's just…over-protective. My family doesn't like people who visit the island. "I don't believe you." I couldn't believe how angry I was. I just kept staring at her. My family wanted me to marry him, she finally said, looking away. But I don't love him. And he didn't love me enough. "Enough?" Enough to do what I had asked him to do. Love pretends to exist in a vacuum. It creates the sense that its tiny world space can contain no more than two people. But that's an illusion. There is always the possibility of someone else. Rosalie caught my someone else and me one afternoon when she should have been shopping. And she had already known. Because she already had the gun with her. I loved her often. Every night and every day. I couldn't be separated from her. It's a cruel thing that I can't remember exactly what it was like to sleep with her. It was like touching the ocean in the lagoon - a feeling of the water, so warm you could hardly feel it, softly closing in from the outside, pushing deeper until it covered me completely. Afterwards, when she slept and I was awake, I remembered those times we would swim together until I could go no farther and she would leave me, floating midway between the surface and the floor as she went on, further than I could go. After my run-in with Amali's cousin, I started staying with her in her little hut with two chairs, a table and a bed. And the knife. She would tell me the story again and again and I would tune it out. Again and again. One day I went into town and caught some of the old women on the street looking at me and shaking their heads. But when I turned around, they would look away. They were treating me like some kind of carpet-bagging white man, just here to violate the native women. I didn't even bother looking at the men who avoided me after my fight. It didn't really mean a damn to me, as long as I had my girl. I wanted to give Amali something wonderful for Christmas, even though she had never celebrated it. So I sent for perfume and jewelry. But she liked the sudsy bottle I got for the kids. We sat in the windowsill and I taught her how to hold the plastic stick to her lips and make bubbles. The wind picked them up and transported them around the island. It beats me to this day - but people from miles away said they saw the soap bubbles, catching the light on its skin, turning them violet. She could catch them on her fingertips by rolling her palm around just so and twisting her wrist so that when she opened her hand, there it was. I felt her slipping away from me. She would go out for walks and I would wait jealously by the window, hoping I wouldn't see any of the fishermen, or her cousin or the women with wandering eyes. I would wake up and find her missing from my bed, the thin sheet crumpled on the hard-packed floor. I'd lose my breath, my insides collapsing as I jumped around looking for her. She would be sitting outside with tears welling up in her wide-open eyes. I'd coax her back to bed and loved her again to make her feel better. I could sleep only when she put her arms around me again, her legs wrapped around mine. As winter approached, she would cry more frequently and harder, sometimes gasping for breath. One time, she was doubled over and could hardly breathe. She was so thin now I could see the bones running down the center of her back. 'What is it? What's wrong?' I couldn't stand seeing her like this. I wanted to take her away but nowhere else existed. My manager and agent had been telegramming like crazy but I had stopped answering them. They were like dried leaves, no longer alive, no longer attached to me. You have to help me. I've told you the story of the Redin over and over and you won't listen to me. You have to take the knife and you have to release me. I'm dying. Can't you see it? I'm dying. She just kept repeating this over and over again until I half wanted to hit her to make her stop. I never did of course; I never could hit a woman. 'If you want to go back to that s-o-b, you better just tell me now,' I would say. I didn't believe her crazy story of course, but I could see that she was making herself sick. Every morning in the delicate light she looked older and older. There were faint lines on her face, deepening and darkening as the days went by. I took to staying in the cottage with her, kissing her forehead, sponging her arms, whispering in her ears. On New Year's Eve, I asked her to go diving but she wanted to rest. I didn't want to leave but she insisted I go and let her sleep. When I came back, she was gone. I found her outside the house on the beach talking to that s-o-b. He looked upset, shaking his head. She seemed to be begging and he turned away from her but she held on to his arm. He pushed her off and walked away. He didn't see me rushing down to the beach where she was standing. 'I knew it!' I yelled. 'You bitch, you still love him!' I must have gone crazy because the next thing I remember she was sitting in the corner of the porch, kind of huddled up with her arms wrapped around her body. I didn't hit her. I know that. There was no way I could have done that but there was a swollen redness on her face. I sat in front of her, my anger vanishing. I placed my hand on her leg feeling the dip in the bone on her kneecap. It was so fragile I could have cried. You have to help me. She was talking about that damn story again. 'No,' I said. 'No. No. No.' I just kept saying it over and over. She stood up, wearing that same green dress she always wore. The silk slipped off her arm and her breast. She picked up the stone knife and handed it to me, the shadows on her face as dark as other side of the moon. I couldn't bear it any longer. I had to hold her as we went down to the beach. She kept stumbling; it was like I was dragging her. We got to the edge of the shoreline. The sun was setting and on the other horizon, the moon was rising. We were caught right there in the middle between the two lights - caught frozen underneath the seam of the sky. She was panting - bent over - and it was all I could do to keep her upright. Her skin felt as dry as the sand, as thin as paper. Her dress came off. She was laying on her back in front of me barely able to whisper. I held the knife in my right hand feeling the sudden chill, witnessing the water darkening the sand as it crept closer. Just one cut, down the center. I looked at her eyes wide open staring at me. I traced my finger along her collarbone and up the swell of her breast and down across her belly and the soft down between her legs. I felt myself collapsing again, the sight of her dissolving in front of me. I just couldn't have her watching me as I cut. Turn me over. Her voice caught just at the edge of hearing. I turned her over in the sand and pushed aside her hair falling across her back. Straddling her, I placed my hand between her shoulder blades, feeling her fading breath. She was pushing against me, telling me I needed to start. I could feel my own breath coming faster; I could feel myself losing control, feel myself pressing against her hips. I wanted to love her again, thought that here on the island I had lost track of time, that it didn't exist and that there was never going to be an end. But here it was. Time had returned and was demanding payment. I pressed the edge of the stone blade against the top of her spine and closed my eyes, pushing it down the curve I had grown to know so well, my eyes still closed. I was losing her and freeing her. I loved her that much. I moved off her back as I pulled the knife towards me. I didn't know what to expect. Maybe some blood or bones breaking. But it wasn't like that at all. After the first cut, her skin just slipped away as cleanly as the receding tide, melting as it touched the wet sand. There was no sound but the ocean and the wind blowing down from the star-painted sky. The tide had reached us and licked our bodies. As the skin fell away, shimmering green scales as smooth as shells rolled back with the surf leaving nothing behind but the soaking dress. I was still holding the knife, staring into the waves. Running into the water until it was chest-high, feeling the shock of it like a bullet. In the waxing moonlight, I finally spotted it, a shining crest of water breaking behind the waves. After that, I went back to her hut and stayed there until the police came. They were looking for her, but I didn't tell them where she was. They wouldn't have understood. Her cousin came around drunk one night. I wasn't there and he torched my place. He drowned in a gale in the spring. What did it matter, who came and what they did? She was gone. And that was it. The end of his story. As the sun crested towards midday, Jesse stood up slowly, an old man telling the story of a young one. He walked cautiously back up the beach to the weathered cottage about to collapse. I watched him until he disappeared inside the house and thought about how we all recreate our histories with selected memories, patching together a network of half-remembered conversations, self-built illusions and the hopeful images of our better selves. Did Jesse kill his lover out of obsessive jealousy or was Amali's story true? The answer was obvious to me and would have hardly been a comfort for Jesse to hear it. Until one rusty dawn I saw something glinting in the sand. It was a stone in the crude shape of a knife. The lip of a wave curled around it trying to tug it back into the ocean. I reached down to pick it up and drew my arm back to throw it back home. And then I didn't. The rocks, still damp from the morning rain, stood alone and I went over to sit down. After five decades of sitting in the same place, Jesse was gone and his absence filled the space around the rocks with memories and regrets. Or maybe those were mine. There doesn't seem to be a bigger injustice than people misunderstanding what we do for love. I don't judge Jesse - because it was his story. Maybe he died of old age in his cottage or drowned in the sea he had been watching for fifty years. I don't think of myself as particularly romantic, but I like to think that Jesse, who had kept the stone knife as a reminder of who he was when time didn't have meaning and love became so much it overtook his senses, finally came to terms with the way his story ended.