Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You Review of If Instead of Apes We Had Come from Grapes Review of Anson County Review of Dissolution of Ghosts Crossword (Solution Posted in July. Printable version in pdf format of journal.) Mar/Apr Crossword Solution Creative Nonfiction 1998 By Samuel Hazo Booing the Pope By Matthew D. Taylor Sgt. Robert Starbuck, USMC: Elegy and Essay By John Guthrie Shrink Wrap, Diet Cokes and a Kazoo By Sara J. Ford Poetry And the Time Is By Samuel Hazo In His Winter By Wanda D. Campbell Lester By Thomas Reynolds Generation Gap By Valerie Lauria Stanske Two Poets By Gary C. Wilkens Mongolia, 1930 By Gary C. Wilkens Fiction A Death in the Family By John Speeking Letters By Suzanne Abbot Among the Briars By Pat Tompkins Filling in the Angles By Jessica DelBalzo Miss Mary By Beth L. Block 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.

Shrink Wrap, Diet Cokes, and a Kazoo By Sara J. Ford The only thing about the roughly nineteen part-time jobs I held between the ages of fifteen and twenty that allows me to say they were, at times, amusing, is that I don't hold them anymore. There are jobs that ask so much of a person she thinks she might die, and there are jobs that ask so little of a person that she thinks she can't die soon enough. The pay is often the same. Throughout summer vacations during high school and college, I'd often sign on at local temp agencies. This allowed me to have both a flexible schedule and really terrible work options. Most of my jobs were in factories, and there I saw the manufacturing and packaging underbelly of American culture, which, as far as I could tell, is about 10% manufacturing and 90% packaging. I worked on many assembly lines, usually putting shrink wrap of varying thickness around all sorts of products before sending them into machines that heated them, causing the wrap to shrink (so that you can best appreciate what you have, remember next time you struggle to open a plastic-coated product and curse the need for pliers and industrial-strength scissors that they do it this way because it's cheap, easy, and highly wasteful). Once, moving up from packaging, I worked for a short time at a factory whose primary purpose was to spray chrome plating onto plastic car decals. My fascinating and useful task there was to clip hundreds of variously-sized, molded Thunderbirds onto huge racks, which were then wheeled by somebody else into a paint room. I never saw the finished product, I suspect because that would have given me a sense of satisfaction, if slight, at having accomplished something, and that's something most factory designers clearly work hard to avoid. For another job, I was given orders to appear at what I was told was a printing factory, where the man who would be my supervisor for the next nine hours met me in a sad little lobby. He directed me to follow him, and we set off into a vast room filled with massive, loud, and very impressive looking machines. Most of them were the size of vans, and some were as big as a small one-room cabin. Their controls consisted of huge levers and big, red and white buttons that no sane person could resist pushing. They made fantastic powerful whirring and chopping noises, and I wondered if they ever rented the place out for birthday parties. While we passed through this room, the supervisor yelled a question at me over the roar of two machines nearby that were cutting thick stacks of paper with blades bigger than my hatchback parked out on the street: "You ever collated before?" "Gosh no, but I can learn really fast," said I, wide eyed. Who thinks to look up words like collating in the dictionary? I was excited, anxious to see how big my machine was going to be, and wondering whether I too would get to wear safety goggles and thick working gloves. Then my supervisor and I approached a wall at the back of the cavernous room, against which there were paper-sized slots, like mailboxes in an employee break room. Each box was filled with two inches of paper of assorted colors. Beneath those, at about waist level, was a shallow counter. I looked at the other people facing the wall and quickly worked up a panic. There would be no machines, big or otherwise for me, and there would be no need for goggles here. No way, I thought, All day? My only piece of equipment was a disc of red goo in which I was instructed to rub my fingers whenever they lost the stickiness they needed to quickly grab a sheet of paper. I was to reach up and take one sheet of paper from the top box, one from the second, and so on, working my way down until I had a completed stack of ten. I was to count the number of stacks up to fifty, put each pile of fifty into a box, and repeat the process until the bell indicated it was break time. That was it. The great machines roared away at my back, but I couldn't even turn to watch for fear I'd lose track of how many stacks I had in my pile. Non-temporary employment, I discovered, didn't offer a great deal more stimulation. The biggest difference between most of these jobs and the temporary factory jobs is that in non-temp jobs you knew right when you got up in the morning how much your job would suck. As the only employee on duty most of the time at a seldom-visited fast food restaurant in a mall, I rarely kept busy frying and microwaving and making change. More often I did the required prep work, which was broken down into seven steps on a three-foot high, large-print poster in the back, and then stood behind the counter with not a thing to do, ruing my mundane plight. On one particularly slow afternoon, after several minutes spent shifting my polyester visor from one side of my head to the other, for variety's sake, I leaned over the counter, and rested my head on my hand. I stared off into space and felt the full weight of the exasperation my boredom evoked. Then I espied a strange couple approaching me. At first I thought the one on the left was a fragile old woman, because she was stooped over and weak, and the hulking man on the right held her arm to steady her as they walked ever-so-slowly toward my counter. But as she got closer and my eyes remembered how to focus, her clothes betrayed her. She wore trendy teenager clothes, which, it being the 1980s, meant that she wore a bright pink polo shirt with the buttons unbuttoned and the collar sticking up, stonewashed jeans that were rolled and tucked tightly around her ankles, and bright white Reebok high-tops with laces and Velcro straps. This was no old lady. It was a Cindy Lauper, Boy George, M.C. Hammer-lovin' teenage girl, probably about the same age as me. As they approached, I read all the signs. She was weak because she was so very skinny that her skeleton jutted out. Below the hem of her sleeve I could see both bones in her upper arm, and she wore a hospital bracelet on her wrist. The hulking man I assumed to be her father walked and spoke to her in a manner suggesting he was tense and frustrated. I felt hopeful and self-important, because I was sixteen and therefore had two primary responses to all situations: I oversimplified all things and considered them only in so far as they concerned or featured me. My reasoning in this case was that since my restaurant didn't sell anything I could think of that had fewer than 600 calories per serving, I could do something useful. Up at the counter, and without making eye contact with me, the girl whispered an airy, "Ah…ha… sma die co, plee." "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you," I said. Then she firmed up a bit and looked at me, and gave it another try. Though soft, the voice was clear this time: "I'll have a small diet coke please." "Sure," I said, deflated. I was just turning around when the man holding her elbow exhaled loudly, thumping his other fist on the counter. I froze and looked at him, hopeful that he'd add something to the order, demand a baked potato with imitation sour cream and baco-bits, a large fries, and a lard-based milkshake. And in a tiny, useless way, my hopes were realized, as he did, indeed, add to the order. His chest was puffed out and he bellowed his demand slowly, annunciating each word with care: "MEDIUM. She'll have a medium diet coke." And then he slapped a five dollar bill on the counter as if to suggest that he'd pay for four medium diet cokes if he could get her to drink them. I filled the order, sticking the cup under the regular coke spout for as many seconds as I thought I could get away with, and wondered helplessly what else I could throw in before putting the plastic cap on the top. If only I'd had the foresight to stick a few corndogs in the blender before this pair got here. They made their slow, trembling way toward a bench to sit down and work on the beverage, and I went home at the end of the day, aware that on that day my job was as close to meaningful as it was ever going to get. I'd have stayed longer at any of these jobs, though, would have kept clipping car decals, collating papers, and pouring diet cokes, if I could have avoided one half-hour-long bowling alley job I stumbled through sometime in high school. For a few years, I worked for a guy who owned a balloon store. We sold stuffed animals, gift bags, spinning tops, plastic rings, and balloons. I worked regular hours in his store, and during festivals I walked around selling individual mylar balloons for three dollars each. The people who bought balloons were almost always in pleasant moods, something you can't say about your typical shrink-wrapper, so the job was pretty painless. Soon after I started working at the balloon shop, the owner decided to expand his business by adding balloon deliveries to our repertoire, and I jumped at the chance to make more money for what seemed to be little work. He had an old gorilla suit lying around, and then scraped together cheap and minimal costumes for the other two characters he thought most likely to sell. Since I knew how to juggle, he bought a clown's wig and suit, and he figured a cowgirl would be discernable if he invested a few dollars in a hat and vest. So, people wanting to hire me got to choose a clown who juggled, a gorilla who played Happy Birthday on a kazoo, or a cowgirl who did nothing but hand off the balloons and leave. The deliveries were not comfortable affairs, generally, and they didn't get better as time went by; the clown always made kids cry, and, having no idea what to do about that, I'd just start juggling, count silently to twenty, and then leave, yelling out "Happy Birthday" over the screams and parental coos and hushes. The cowgirl was awkward because she had nothing to do or say, and I was incapable of coming up with a "Howdy y'all," schtick. So I handed off the balloons, counted to five, and then left saying nothing, feeling the kids' stares and the parents' sting of wasted money at my back. At first I appreciated the gorilla suit above the others, because the mask hid my discomfort. But gorilla suit deliveries had their disadvantages too. The biggest problem was that the suit itself was made for a very large man, someone a foot taller than I was. There was no danger of it falling off, but I could hardly move in the thing. The pant legs were so long that I had to roll them up several times to keep them above my shoes. They unrolled easily, though, and when that happened, walking normally was impossible. I tried many forms of walking in this condition, the most successful of which was a kind of dragging shuffle that required neither foot to leave the ground, but I still found myself sprawled over doorways, front steps, and couches on many a delivery. The hands of the gorilla suit were not rollable, and so hung down another six inches from my hands, making the gorilla appear to have two severely broken arms and making me have to grab balloons, keys, and doorknobs through the thick synthetic fur. More problematic was that the mask was so grossly huge that the eye and mouth holes weren't anywhere close to my own eyes or mouth. And if I held the mask so that the gorilla's eyes matched up with mine, its mouth was still a good inch too low. Who has a face this big? If I could not hold the mask with both hands in order to see, because, for example, I needed one hand to hold a bunch of balloons, the eye holes rested much further south, roughly parallel to my nose. My vision, therefore, was entirely limited to the two foot wide by four foot high area directly in front of my feet. I could not look to the side, for the mask did not turn when my head did, and I could neither look straight ahead nor up. And then there was the kazoo problem. The kazoo given to me to perform my duties was a wee bit larger than the plastic mask hole into which it needed to fit. So I'd have to cram it in there using both of my hands, which were themselves struggling to feel the kazoo at all through the bunched-up gorilla suit sleeve. The kazoo-cramming exercise was so awkward and left open so big an opportunity for crude jokes that I often elected to do it before entering the house or restaurant. So I'd park the van, hide behind it to roll up the pant legs in hopes of staying on my feet, stick the kazoo in the mask and the mask on my head, fumble for the balloon strings through the sleeve of the suit, and trudge toward the door, looking only at my feet. I'd get there based on memorized details I'd gathered while still in the van: five steps to sidewalk, turn right, feel for railing, door to left. Watch for thick doormat. One night I was told to make a gorilla delivery at a bowling alley in a suburb I'd never heard of before. The bowling alley was huge—from the outside it looked like a super-sized grocery store. I felt like I was in a different world altogether, as it had never occurred to me that this many people on the entire planet went bowling. I parked in the busy parking lot and wondered how the hell I'd get inside since the distance from my van to the entrance alone was longer than any distance I'd managed to walk in the gorilla suit before. I was also acutely aware of the number of teenagers roving around the rows of cars and congregating and the main entrance, and I cursed the lack of privacy available for my costume change and for balloon deliveries in general. The parking lot was thick with slush, and my rolls of pant legs were soaked by the time I made it to the door. The kazoo sticking out of my mask led the way; my eyes, of course, peered down, and I groped for the door handle while shrinking from the teenage snickering that surrounded me. Once inside, I felt the vastness of the building and considered my next move. My instructions told me to find lane thirty-seven, where a party was being held for a man named Kevin. I was to find Kevin, hand him the balloons, and kazoo him his song. Thirty seven is a lot of lanes, and as I couldn't look up, or even out, I didn't know exactly how I would be able to identify lane numbers. So, I shuffled down the crowded lobby area at an angle. I kept my body just sideways enough so that I could count the number of bowling-ball return racks as I moved, since I could see the sloping bottoms of them where they touched the waxy floors. I couldn't see what people were doing, but I heard their conversations stop as I approached, and I felt their stares. When I got to the lane I figured was within five lanes of Kevin, give or take, I stopped and wondered what to do. People were talking about me, but nobody spoke to me to give me any direction ("Oh my god!" "What is that supposed to be?" "What's wrong with his arm?" "Is he drunk?"). I don't know why people think it acceptable to talk about gorillas right in front of them. Do they think we don't have ears? We do, and the holes work fine thank you, even if they are not always in just the right spot. I wanted to ask for Kevin, but the kazoo was wedged in my mouth hole. Since most deliveries took place in living rooms, I was not used to having to pick a balloon-recipient out of a mass of hundreds of random people. So, failing to come up with other options, I figured the gorilla's nostril holes had to suffice, and I murmured, "Is this Kevin's birthday party?" with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, which was not enough to be measurable or even, apparently, heard. Nobody responded, that I could tell, so I stood there looking at the floor a while longer, hoping whoever the hell had ordered me would stand up and take charge of the situation. How could anyone miss this slumped over, broken-armed gorilla with a kazoo wedged into its mouth? Finally, thinking I'd die there if I didn't do something, I stammered out a louder, "WHERE"S KEVIN?" through the nostril holes, and a woman's voice did, at last, acknowledge me. She took me by my gorilla sleeve and directed me to where I could see the belt and legs and shoes of Kevin. I held out my left arm to deliver the balloons, the left hand of the gorilla dangling below, parallel to the balloon ribbons. I held the balloons with a very tight fist for what I hope by now are obvious reasons. I could not see the actual hand-to-hand transaction because that took place well above my line of vision, so there was some struggle involved before Kevin's legs could communicate to me that he had them thank you and please let go. During this struggle, I said nothing, as my only plan for further _expression involved the kazoo, and for that I needed my hands free. Noting that the slew of balloon ribbons hanging in front of the legs of Kevin stayed there, facing me, and noting the obvious hush of expectancy all around me, including even a lack of thuds from bowling balls hitting the floor and ball-to-pin crashes, I understood that the time had come to perform. Preparing to kazoo involved tilting the gorilla mask upward so that my mouth could make contact with the kazoo. This was, by the way, the only time in costume that I was able to look up, since the eye holes, if the mouth hole was in the right place, were about an inch higher than my eyes. This meant my visual memories of all gorilla deliveries were limited to details of flooring, stairs, and the legs and feet of people, and a few quick glances at ceilings. There at Kevin's birthday part, my lips groped in the darkness for the back of the instrument, and I commenced kazooing. As I kazooed I thought of several things other than the song itself or Kevin's happiness. I tried to focus, out of necessity, on holding the gorilla's face up toward the ceiling so that I could blow on the instrument. But while doing this, I became aware that I was standing on one leg of the gorilla suit. It had come unrolled during the balloon hand-off and was now irretrievable. And, unable to see anybody, even anybody's shoes, staring up as I was, the social mortification that began in the parking lot leapt to new, unchecked heights, and I imagined the body postures and facial expressions that must surely have surrounded me, all of them showing disgust at my ineptitude, and at least one of them showing appropriate fury at how much she'd paid to have to endure this. I was nearly paralyzed with a desire to be anyplace else. As is well known in balloon delivery circles, it takes a lot of air to get your typical kazoo to boom like it was meant to, and I was too defeated to muster enough, so about half of my rendition of "Happy Birthday" came out kazooed, and half came out as indiscernible airy passages. When it was over, not that anybody knew it was over but me, I noted the relative silence of the place, thought of my usual nothing to say, and so pivoted around on the dangerously entangled leg to face the long path leading to the exit. Since readjusting my pants was impossible without taking my mask off, and since there was no way in hell I was taking my mask off, I settled for dragging that leg and its undignified train over the carpet and eventually through the slush, until I could sling the whole thing violently into the back of the van. The walk out of the goddamned bowling alley felt far longer than the by-no-means-brief walk in, and as I moved I watched hundreds of legs and feet, all facing me, part to the sides, making a path for my solitary, limping, and dragging retreat. I peeled out of the parking lot as fast as the slush would allow and sped home indignant and humiliated. When I become president and grand poobah, the first item on my agenda will be to create and christen a new branch of government, something called MERA, the Meaningless Employment Regulatory Agency. They'll monitor the worst low-paying jobs and make sure of two things: that everyone has one for a short time and that nobody has one for long. And I know just where I'd house the hundreds of full-time employees who would staff MERA. In Washington DC there is an official-looking five-story building a few blocks off the mall on G Street, a building that takes up more than half a city block. Out front is a sign, declaring the building to be the "Government Accountability Office." Since this building is obviously not currently being used for a damned thing, I would move MERA in immediately and order a corresponding sign to replace the one now there, so that passersby would no longer fall to the ground laughing, scuffing even their non-gorilla pant legs and spilling their drinks. Once MERA is up and running, everyone will look forward to the day when they can look back and laugh at the work they once did, because as I said, it's not funny until you're not doing it anymore.