Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of A Man Without a Country Review of Gail's Place Review of Three 1-Act Plays Review of Yesterday's A Dream Crossword (Solution Posted in May. Printable version in pdf format of journal.) Jan/Feb Crossword Solution Creative Nonfiction Imagining Nora By Lisa Norris Loving the Fat Girl By Christina Fisanick Nate's Fish and Poultry Shop By G. David Schwartz The Folly of Valentine's Day By Andy Martello Poetry Hawk King By Wanda D. Campbell After the Rain By Wanda D. Campbell You Cannot Fold the Flood. By Mariela Perez-Simons And Darkness Fell By Beth L. Block Demise of a Family Resort By Carolyn Howard-Johnson The Asparagus Cutters By Joe Wilkins Fiction Voices By Ed Boyd Little White Sambo By Brett Alan Sanders Dies Irae By Timothy Reilly Follow By Dawn Paul Crumbs By Kim Tremblett Cover Art Photography by Seth Brown 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 - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs 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.

Little White Sambo By Brett Alan Sanders I Once upon a time, as the fairy tale goes, there was a little white boy. Just call him Joey, though a different name come to mind. And know that Joey had a mother and a father who loved him and sent him to the kindergarten down the street. From which he came home early one day with another of his fevers. Looking down at him that night in his bed, where he lay sobbing as a tiger chased him, his mother sat down and stroked his face. She told him he was just dreaming. Then his father entered the room. “There, there. Don’t cry,” he said. “When you get better I’ll take you tiger hunting.” Meanwhile, he added, he would be sure himself that this particular tiger didn't get his little boy. He would stand by if he had to with his rifle. And he promised not to fall asleep like he did while waiting up for that old trespasser Santa Claus as he always teased Joey he would do. Not really meaning any harm. But Joey was afraid of his father’s gun as much as he was of his tiger. Besides, he knew that it couldn't keep the tiger away from him. Though in his nightmares it still hadn't caught him. Joey was certain, though, that someday it would. Didn't the tiger always say so itself? Joey, I’m going to eat you up! And to that he could only reply, like another little boy he had sometimes heard of: Oh, please Mr. Tiger, don’t eat me up and I’ll give you my beautiful little Red Coat. He was sure that it would always return, anyway, and eventually devour him. He would be sitting with his mother and father in a Sambo’s restaurant. The tiger would jump out of its place painted on the wall but only he would see it. It would speak to him then and Joey would cry because he wouldn't know what to offer it. If he offered it clothing he would end up naked. And his father would demand to know what he had done with it all. But maybe it would just eat him up now and finally be done with the game. Or his father, aiming for the tiger – like William Tell aiming for the apple on his son's head –, might accidentally hit Joey instead. He would be finished either way. His mother soothed him, though. And for a moment the motion of boy and tiger seemed to stop. He was just floating there. The tiger frozen simultaneously in space just above him. Mouth gaping fiercely. Smilingly. Claws outstretched like a puppet in a play. Then suddenly it lunged. And as Joey jerked to attention and into his mother’s arms, he thought he saw the gun. And then his father’s finger on the trigger. “No, Daddy!” he yelled. “No, Daddy!” He screamed. Reached forward and strained to deflect the imagined rifle. His father, hurt and bewildered, backed away from him into the hallway and after a moment turned and walked away. Only hours later after the fever had broken and she had done with rocking and singing lullabies could Joey’s mother attend to this other boy. Assure him that it had only been the fever speaking. That Joey really did love his father. He fell back asleep still wondering, though. While in the other room Joey shuddered once more and fell deeper into his own slumber. In the shadows somewhere, unseen, Joey’s tiger lurked. II Fast forward to the fourth grade. Joey’s father has relocated from Iowa to Alabama. Joey has to adjust to a new setting. To a whole new set of friends, classmates, and enemies. His tiger is a fading yet not-so-distant memory. His best friend of all is a black boy named Clarence. Joey has never met a black boy before so the experience consumes him. Clarence is a darkish brown color, not black actually, and has kinky hair that is perfectly black indeed and just touches the back of his ears. His eyes are dark too except that the whites seem to reach out to Joey and soothe him like his mother’s touch when he was little. Clarence’s face is smooth and clean except for a large quantity of pockmarks that dig into his cheeks and leave them sunken. He will smile at Joey and the very darkness of him seems bright like a jungle moon. Joey likes him right away for reasons that are purely instinctive. And Clarence returns that liking for the same reasons, inexpressible and deep. “You’re my best friend,” Joey says to him one day as they huddle together at recess. Scrunched over in a corner looking at some dinosaur flash cards that Joey has brought from home. “This one looks funny,” Clarence answers. He smiles and averts his eyes for just a second. Looks at the next card. Bursts out laughing. “And this one looks like Miss Bannerman,” he adds. “All wrinkled up and kind of friendly.” Joey takes the card and laughs too at a resemblance that, as obvious as it is, he has never before that moment detected. Then, glancing at the next card somewhat more distractedly, “I like you too,” Clarence says. And that's all. Their eyes meet briefly in silent acknowledgment of their secret bond. Joey looks down at the grass. Too happy for more words. The end-of-recess bell is ringing then and they're being called back into class. As Joey clutches those flash cards in one hand and runs, he determines to give that one to his new best friend. Just as soon as they're back in the room. Something almost spoils that friendship when a few days later their teacher, well-meaning old spinster that she is, brings a gigantic Pancho Villa sombrero into class for the morning’s social studies lesson on Mexico. She places it on the tiny head of a diminutive Mexican girl and practically bubbles over with the revelation that Alice and her large family have come to America from the country they are going to talk about today. On cue one of Alice’s most persistent tormentors, a mean bullying boy whose parents are descended from plantation owners, launches into the Frito Bandido song: Ay ay ay ay, I am the Fri-to ban-di-to ... Others are quick to pick up that thread. The teacher smiles. Oblivious to the subtle slur. Joey, uncomprehending too, joins in with the others since that commercial has always made him laugh: I love Fri-tos corn chips, I love them I do ... At this point, unsure of the words, everyone else mumbles while the first boy finishes, with a flourish in Alice’s direction, in words partly remembered and partly invented: If my dad-dy can’t buy them I’ll steal some from you. Only when he hears Alice’s diminutive voice does Joey realize what the boy has added. And only much later, remembering the incident, how such an apparently innocuous jingle might have already contained the hurtful epithet. “Mis padres aren’t lazy,” she says, “and we don’t steal.” Then she throws that hat, which seems almost heavier than she is, onto the floor and runs out into the hallway. One of her friends goes quietly after her and they disappear for the next half hour into the girls’ bathroom. It's a full five minutes before the teacher, left standing there for a moment with her mouth open and looking as if she herself might cry, then summoning the presence of mind to send that grinning taunter down the hall to the principal’s office, can get control of what remains of the class and pretend to teach that lesson. Clarence, meanwhile, seated in the back of the room beside Joey, looks at him kind of sadly and then turns away. He doesn't look back for the rest of the day. Only another day brings Joey the knowledge that he is forgiven. He knows it because of the note Clarence passes him as soon as the second bell rings and Miss Bannerman is still taking attendance. It consists of a simple declarative sentence with an adverbial clause attached awkwardly. Between comma and period, an afterthought as it were. I know you didn’t mean it to hurt Alice, because her skin is dark. And the modest fragment of a question. Still friends? The handwriting is formed slowly and cautiously, in perfect curlicues. It's a handwriting so conscientious and so nearly perfect that Joey’s mother will comment on it at the end of May when he shows her the yearbook that the two of them and Alice and a handful of other friends will make. They'll think of that when Joey has to tell them that his father has another job and that he is moving again. Clarence will simply write: Joey, don’t ever forget me. Clarence. Joey has noticed about Clarence’s handwriting, too. He even mentioned it to Clarence once. “I bet you’ll be a famous writer someday. Like Mark Twain.” He was reading about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn just then and thought of Mark Twain as the epitome of what it meant to be a writer. “Naw. I could never do anything like that.” “Why not? You make your letters a lot neater than me. Almost like a girl.” He thinks better of that. Clarifying before more feelings can be hurt. “I mean you get A’s on penmanship all the time. Usually only the girls do. Not that you’re a girl or anything like that.” “Naw. I got what you mean. You might be a writer yourself, but me I’ll probably just work with wood and stuff like my daddy does.” “Like a carpenter you mean?” “Yeah. I kind of like that stuff anyway.” Then they are both quiet for a moment and Clarence looks over at some rope-jumping girls (he has recently confided to Joey that he's kind of sweet on one of them) and smiles. After a moment Joey breaks their silence. “I bet you’ll be good at that.” Another pause. Briefer this time. “Yeah. I bet I will.” The bell rings then and they go inside. Joey wonders still about one part of what Clarence said. About how he could never do something like be a writer. He wonders what it is that makes him think that. And what he meant in that old note about not meaning to hurt Alice because of her dark skin. He wants to make it up to Clarence too about his part of what happened to Alice and about whatever might have ever happened to him. So he thinks of inviting him to his house to spend the night and meet his family. Joey is sitting at the dinner table one evening when his father tells a riddle. “Tell me what this is,” he says, looking at them as if he can hardly wait to get it out. Fee fi fo, fee fi fo fo. Neither he nor his mother has any idea what it is. Only that it sounds something like Jack and his beanstalk. So his father hastens to explain. His eyes watering as he tries to choke back a rising sense of his own hilarity. Bald pate glistening in the dining room light. “It’s a black man,” he says. “Can’t you hear it? Trying to tell someone his phone number.” Three five four, three five four four. Joey’s father’s laughter is uncontainable then. His mother only blushes. While Joey storms away crying from the table. His father taking hold of him then and demanding to know why his son is suddenly so sensitive. “Is that any way to act to your father?” he wants to know. Finally, when Joey spills his most secret concern, everything is understood. His father goes back to his seat at the head of the table. Leans back in his chair. Lights his pipe. “Clarence!” his father exclaims. Suddenly proud and cosmopolitan in outlook. Magnanimous. “Well why didn’t you say so, son? But what’s all the fuss?” It was just a joke, anyway, his father explains. Nothing to get upset about. Sticks and stones, you know. But simple jest? All in fun? If Clarence has a sense of humor, he would laugh at it too. You have to be able to laugh at yourself. That's the important thing. If the joke were on him, Joey’s father insists, then he would laugh too. And remember Great-Grandma Chapman, his mother adds? Up on her farm in Indiana? Back home on the border with Kentucky? She lived there all her life and never saw a black person and wouldn't hurt one if she did, but she always said she wasn't sure she would want to help one either. It's like her own father’s father, Joey’s mother adds. Who always lived in town. He was a good man as ever there was but oh was he prejudiced against blacks, he just didn't know any different. You couldn't hold it against him, really. He had no other experience. But hasn't Joey’s own father always taught him to treat all people the same, his mother asks? Haven't they traveled around the country? And to Canada and Mexico? And looked in books and studied other people and countries so that Joey would know that they're no better than anyone else? Haven't they always taught him that justice in this country is for everyone? That anyone who wants to badly enough can make a good life in this country since President Lincoln freed the slaves? “Anyway,” Joey’s father says, “you should have said in the first place that it was Clarence you were thinking of.” “Yes,” his mother adds. “I’m really happy that you have such a special friend.” They talk some more about Clarence, then. And after he finally extracts a promise from his father that he will not tell any questionable jokes in Clarence’s presence, Joey starts to feel better. As for his father, genuinely pleased with himself now, he is happy to invite his son’s black friend to spend an evening with them at Clarence’s family’s earliest convenience. He considers, from everything Joey has said, that Clarence must be a fine Southern gentleman of sorts. Of undoubtedly fine parents who against whatever odds and poverty have taught him the finest of manners and culture. He doesn't even object to Joey’s idea that he also spend a night at Clarence’s house if that would be all right with his family. He imagines, after all, at the same time entertaining a private reservation as to whether or not either arrangement will in fact transpire, that so allowing can only vindicate the admittedly conservative brand of Republican liberalism that he would like to be known for espousing. As it turns out, for reasons that Joey doesn't yet wish to understand, neither arrangement does transpire. Joey sees Clarence at school the next morning. He invites him. Clarence averts his eyes and smiles before answering. He seems slightly embarrassed. “Naw,” he says. “I can’t” He glances back at his friend. Sees his stubborn incomprehension. “You just can’t do that here,” he adds. And for the rest of that day says nothing more on the subject. Only afterwards on his all-white school bus, as he is surrounded by a group of boys and girls who have been unfavorably noticing this unusual friendship, does Joey reluctantly begin to acknowledge what Clarence might have meant by that last remark. He thinks he finally is understanding when they start calling him a nigger lover and begin sticking up their noses. Sniffing in his direction and pretending to catch some offensive odor. He is sure of it when they wonder aloud, then, if everyone doesn't think he smells rather funny. Rather funny indeed for what otherwise to all appearances is a white boy. III Another four years and Joey is enrolled in a school on a hill. On the wrong side of the tracks. In a university town somewhere in Ohio. Clarence is a memory that, like Joey’s tiger, fades without ever quite vanishing. Left behind when Joey’s father relocated again that first summer, Clarence was nevertheless remembered. Joey wrote to him twice the first month and waited most of a year for a reply that would not come. That's how it goes, is all his father would say. There was nothing anyone could do about it. And now, between Joey and his father, things are not so good. Joey wonders if anyone can do anything about that or about how unhappy he is feeling at both home and school. He comes home one evening without homework, anyway, and goes straight back outside to ride his bike. Lacking better diversions, he first catches a dog and ties some tin cans to its tail. High-speed chasing it then around the neighborhood. Later he shuts a cat up in a mailbox. Then imagines it in the morning with its arched back and tiger-yellow fury as it lunges at neighbor or mailman. At home, then, confronted about the lack of homework and his declining grades, he fights with his father. Dinner, ruined by so much shouting, explodes in Joey’s tears and his father’s mockery: Wa-ah, wa-ah, wa-ah, Josephina’s crying. His father, unable to visualize a more constructive discipline, curls his lips up like a baby and tries to shame his suddenly incorrigible son into a child he can still work with: Wa-ah, wa-ah, Josephina-wina forgot her homework. Guess she can afford it with such good grades. At school next morning, Joey is cornered by the moment’s other most persistent nemesis. A black boy with an Afro who hates him for the same instinctive reasons, inexpressible and deep, that Clarence had loved him. He feels no particular hatred in return. At least not one that is conscious of a racial motivation. On the school bus in both places he has been beaten up often enough by boys who are white. And he doesn't see much difference between a white fist and a black one. Melvin, anyway, black and proud, shoves his face once more into Joey’s and wants to know what he is reading. “To kill a mah-king-bird,” he deciphers over Joey’s shoulder. “What kind of white-boy shit is that?” “It’s a story about a girl in the South. And her father who’s a lawyer and defends a black man who’s accused of something he didn’t do.” Melvin and his friends laugh at that. The spectacle of a white boy reading a book about a white man defending blacks. As if they need anyone to take care of them. Then they threaten him. That if he shows up at the basketball game that night they're going to come upside his head and teach him his place. Stay home, Little White Sambo, Melvin practically says to him, or I'll eat you right up. And Joey’s tiger, smiling fiercely once more through Melvin’s ivory teeth, seems to mock Joey unbearably. He is dropped off at the ball game by his father after a long discussion at home in which his mother finally prevailed. About grades and responsibilities and privileges. As he walks into the gymnasium, is spotted instantly by Melvin and his gang, he meets their threatening looks with his own foolhardy challenge. He slips outside after the half and is soon surrounded by black faces who thought they had told him not to come around there tonight. Hadn't he heard? In that second as he is almost raising his fists to take the first strike, Joey thinks he sees Clarence’s face instead of Melvin’s. The delusion rises in him. He immediately drops his hands to his sides. Smiles as he remembers Clarence always doing. “Didn’t you hear?” Melvin taunts one last time. “Didn’t you hear me, boy?” And Joey, in full psychosis now, must be saying something aloud about Clarence. Talking to some hallucination named Clarence. “Who’s this motherfucker Clarence? We’ll come upside his motherfucking head too.” But it's as if everything is happening far away from Joey. For this moment it seems that the anger and fear is all slipping away from him as he has been starting to think it never would. He imagines a soothing presence. The touch of his mother’s hand against his face. His friend Clarence’s voice. He allows himself to believe that the throbbing he's just now feeling is what's really being dreamed. That in the morning, after they're finally done with him, everything will be safe and fine. But of course he'll have come back to himself long before then.