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.

Nate's Fish and Poultry Shop By G. David Schwartz I do not particularly like eating chicken. This is a curious position for a Jewish person to be in. Chicken is virtually the staple of Shabbat dinners on Friday evenings. Chicken is the fundamental Jewish response to illness. But I do not enjoy eating chicken. Maybe my life would have been entirely different if the man I most respected in life had not owned a chicken store. My grandfather, Nathan Oscherwitz, was the son of a dairy farmer and milk deliverer. His father was struck in the head with a pistol during a robbery attempt, and died some days later. My grandfather subsequently found himself investing everything he had into a haberdashery. In later years, he liked to say of this experience, “I lost the shirt off my back.” When I was born, my grandfather owned the poultry shop. My earliest memories find me in that most unsanitary place, where live chickens were butchered according to the specification of customers. I can see images of my young self sticking my fingers into wire cages that held between ten and thirty squawking chickens. I can hear my grandfather’s hurried warning not to stick my fingers in the cages as he turned from one customer to another. “Okay, what do you want?” he would inquire with a business-like impatience. I remember naming chickens, although I cannot recall any of the names I gave the domestic fowl. Unbeknownst to me at the time, each of the fowl was dead within hours or days at most. Nor did the twinkling look of bemusement ever leave my grandfather's eyes as his gaze darted impatiently from customers to tenderly observe me. Spoiled, I was. I had the run of the store. I was in charge of naming chickens and sticking my fingers into cages where, yes, they were pecked. But in retrospect, it is not clear who ran the store. Clearly, my grandfather was the owner. But when I reach into that bemused perspective that my grandfather willed to me even while he was alive, it is apparent that the chickens ran the shop. They cackled when anyone approached, and everyone present knew that the cackling was a demand to be left alone, or taken. Once in a while one of the men would reach for a chicken and, in response to the cackling which was delivered, either leave that particular chicken alone, or speak with it as it was taken behind the counter, behind the great wall, to be slaughtered. My grandfather, the men who worked with him, myself, and the customers: we were all at the bidding of the chickens. And I suspect that my grandfather and the men he worked with knew it. There was a symbiosis between myself and the chickens, between the chickens and the shop, and between the men who worked with my grandfather and the job which had to be done. They were great Black men, as any man is great to a child who stood only four foot tall. They had great, guttural laughter and I, the prince of chicken-naming, was also the crown prince of generating laughter. The issue can be raised: were these men genuinely happy? Was it just my impression or were they engaging in a denial of their true feelings, a show which would have been their perceived qualifications for keeping their job? It is a matter of honoring my grandfather to at least think that I experienced his intimacy with these men, their freedom to be genuinely at ease in the shop. But does remembering in this manner simply mask the truth? My grandfather would have restrained no one. The proof? Smiling Black men with names! - Jake, Bert, Mo - would take time from their activities to stand next to me, put massive arms around my shoulders, and ask in a teasingly astute manner: How do you know that one’s name is “Henry”? I was never “Dave.” I was always “Nate’s grandson.” For someone who had always been told “David! Get away from there!” or “Don’t do that, David!” the change was refreshing. Later, a friend from South Carolina would tell me that at the very same time in her life, Black men would not dare address a white person by their first name. What a rush! In the world controlled and directed by the life, naming, and death of chickens, my grandfather was “Nate,” and I was “Nate’s grandson.” How different are our experiences. *** My grandfather was a practicing Orthodox Jew. He taught me, more than any teacher I can remember, more than any book I have studied since, what it means to live in this world. He did not teach me the Wisdom of the Fathers, nor the Bible and, while some might find this absence cause for blame or censure, he taught me the more important lessons in life - ones which cannot be obtained by any lesson or any book. He witnessed the dishevelment of my mother’s observance and family with something less than a stoic attitude. He resolutely refused to criticize my mother, at least while I was within hearing distance, yet his dignified demeanor assumed rather sad expressions when certain topics were raised. My grandfather kept kosher to the end of his life. When every bit of his savings were depleted, he refused to abandon the “old ways.” Expense was never the issue. Although we lived in a city which was once teeming with five or six dairy farmers, and a dozen kosher butchers, it was a matter of dignity to maintain oneself despite the fact that there was only one butcher, and no dairy farmers. It was a matter of dignity; not pride, not boastfulness, not arrogance. Dignity. It would be very difficult to put into words all that my grandfather taught me, for even though he has been dead these far too many years, they are lessons I am still learning. Yet the word dignity seems to encompass the virtues which best describe my grandfather. He described to me once a teacher who, he said, “had it in for me because I was a Jew.” He described this teacher walking toward him and leaning into his face to scold him. He described the crucifix which hung from her neck. I don’t recall how old I was when I heard this story for the first time. In fact, among the repeated tales from his life, this story seems only to have been told once, twice at most. It was a terrifying story: being hated because of an “accident of birth,” for a particular approach to the divine. Yet at what must have been the most terrifying part of the story, my grandfather waved it away with the words that times have changed, are changing, for the better. Once, while my cousin Jerry and I were standing on a corner discussing nothing in particular, a car of people seven or so years older than our tender fourteen years asked us if we would like to have our “Jew-noses cut off.” I don’t remember responding. But I recall in retrospect, several times declining the offer. I do not want my nose cut off. I do not want conditions which contribute to anyone even thinking I want my nose cut off. And if I am committed to preserving my nose on my face, then I am also committed to contributing to the change of circumstances and change of environment which will preserve everyone’s nose, everyone's skin, everyone’s life. It is a matter of dignity; a matter of honoring the person who has taught me most about prestige. The status which matters is not the reputation we gain on our own. Human beings are convened in such a manner that we really can do very little on our own. We are always standing on the corner with cousins, or talking with beloved relatives, or working together, or fighting together, or calling each other names together, or threatening each other together. Given the choice, I venture to guess that each of us would prefer to engage in deep, genuine laughter rather than shared ridicule. It does not take a whole lot of study or experiment to know that most people would prefer sharing their time with beloved people rather than hateful people. Nevertheless, we have a perceived social past which has been bequeathed to us which we cannot simply put aside. It does seem to take quite a bit of study, experimentation, and new experience to address the litany of past wrongs the Jewish and Christian communities have “shared” together. It would seem to require more and better thought, developed toward more and better experience, to reconfigure the now intimate, now horrendous relationship between the Jewish and the African-American community. We are always together. What we choose to do with our togetherness seems largely to depend on the form we choose to arbitrate our relationships. In some deep, abiding sense, the form which Jews and Christians choose is the invisible form of the always impending relationships which occur when people, two or more, ten or more, stand together. The form which Blacks and Jews have most readily available to choose from is the deep, abiding pool of liberation which is redemption, salvation which is freedom. We have not even reached the point where it makes sense to utter the otherwise true, profound statement that freedom is freedom to pursue rational, creative activity. We too often hold one another in bondsman (and women) ship to our own prejudices; we are too often willing to sacrifice the intelligence and skill of the other. Why would we want to so mistreat ourselves? Why are we so little concerned to find our dignity; the nobility which is to be had from working together once we realize we are ... stuck together. But in truth, even when I find someone who is a “polar opposite” of me, a Black person next to my White personage, a female next to my maleness, a Christian next to my Jewishness, when we sunder the chains which would bind us to the false idea that male and female, Jew and non-Jew, White and Black are opposites, we begin to sculpt a realm of dignity and peace. We begin to see that we are not “stuck together,” but have an opportunity to make progress together and, indeed, are walking together in one way or another whether we care to affirm so or not. When we begin to affirm one another, make one another visible first to ourselves, and afterwards to our fellows, then we have the opportunity to return not only to the genuine deep laughter of the love of life, but of sincere joy.