Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Language and Mind Review of This Is My Best Review of Lost in the Void Crossword (Solution Posted in September. Printable version in pdf format of journal.) May/Jun Crossword Solution Creative Nonfiction Puttin' on My Pearls By Cathryn Braswell My Dinner with Gacy By Andy Martello Mysteries of the Shenandoah Valley By Casey Clabough Getting Lucky By Dale Purvis Poetry Your Mind and You Are Our Sargasso Sea By Lita Sorensen Midsummer By Lita Sorensen Windows By Lita Sorensen Simple Man By B.K. Birch The View from Here By Mary Hudock The Dinner Party By Ruth Mark Fiction It's in the Stars By Linda Gallant Potts An Intimate Evening with Papa By Lance Garrison Ballard The Prank By Terri L. Knight A Pocketful of Starflakes By Leslie Wolter 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.volunteermatch.org/results/org_detail.jsp?orgid=58479.

The Prank By Terri L. Knight We hadn't meant for it to happen, just three teenage boys goofing around that lazy, spring afternoon right before school let out. Principal Wilson was bitching that not enough students had participated in decorating the gym for the last dance of the year. He’d said everyone needed to lend a hand. So there we were, Lewis, Joey and me, pretending to help, running back and forth between the weight-room in the corner of the gym and the art-room next to it. Poor Arnie never saw it coming. “Hey Darryl, watch this,” Joey said to me, laying face up on the weight-bench, bragging about how much he could lift. Arms like slings, face vibrating, he raised the weights above his chest, but they would have crushed him if we hadn't caught them. “You pussy,” Lewis said. “My grandma could lift more than that.” We laughed, watching Joey’s nostrils flare, hearing him curse back about Lewis’s mother, but who could take him seriously? I looked up at the clock anchored to the wall, and decided we’d better screw around in the art-room and make it look like we were actually doing something. A mess of students gathered in the gym, chattering to each other, admiring the colorful balloons they hung from the ceiling. Streamers wavered from the rafters and they roped off an area for the band. A sign reading, Welcome to Trenton High’s Last Dance of 1977, was taped lopsided in the entrance above the double doors. None of us cared about a stupid dance; unless you counted last year’s when we snuck in after drinking a bottle of Joey’s old man’s Bacardi. Lewis bragged that he’d copped a feel of Kelly Zarston’s left titty under the bleachers. “Just like little tangerines.” He’d laughed, curling his hand as if he'd caught a baseball. We looked around in the art-room, feeling out of place while students bobbed in and out with their hand-painted, dorky signs. Teachers were scarce, letting the kids run the show. I looked up to see Darcy and Arnie standing in the doorway. Darcy was the only black chick in the school, wore her hair up, made a good name for herself, Vice President of student body, honor roll, won a bunch of beauty pageants, but not snotty. She treated everyone the same, listened like she really cared. Her dad owned a hardware store. A nice family; they had a home over in Surfside, the classier part of town. I’d never admit it to Joey or Lewis, but I wouldn’t have minded sliding into those tight jeans; the ones she wore with the different-colored, fake gemstones on the back with her still inside them. Darcy and Arnie stopped by the soda machine where she plugged in some coins. He made a face when she handed him a pop. "Oh, you think everything tastes funny since you got those braces." She evaluated his figure. "Take it. You're nothing but skin and bones." Arnie nodded and they both laughed. Sipping on their drinks, they treaded over to the art table. He was her lap dog; charity case we liked to say, just grateful that she paid him any attention. Everyone felt sorry for Arnie with those same checkered-style, different-colored shirts he wore. He wouldn't be a bad-looking guy if it weren't for those shiny new braces and his hair plastered down. Someone needed to steal his hair gel. Darcy motioned with her pop-can for Arnie to follow, said they needed more streamers around back. He sat his soda down at the art-station, picked up some crepe paper and tape and they headed for the gym. We strolled closer to the art-station where Lewis fiddled with the brushes and paints. He slid his hand around a bottle of photo-developer next to the paint thinner. The bottle should have been in the photography area, but mistakenly ended up here. “Squirt some in his drink,” Joey said. The corners of his lips curled together. “What?” Lewis asked. “Squirt some in his drink,” Joey said again. “Just a little.” “I don’t know, Joey, shit could be dangerous,” I said and grabbed it from Lewis' hand, looking for that little crossed-out skull. “Ah, just a little.” Joey laughed. Lewis grabbed it back, popped the cap up and looked around. We all looked around before hiding behind the paint jars. Flipping the bottle upside down, he squeezed. The liquid squirted, reminding me of my little brother's first whiz in the toilet. A little more this time, better in control, he gave it two more squirts. Joey and Lewis erupted in laughter each time he squeezed. “I don't know,” I said, smoothing my tongue around the insides of my dry mouth. I raised my hand, aching to take the bottle away. “Man, that’s enough, dude, stop.” “Shut up, Darryl.” Joey made chicken noises. “You’re a wuss.” The liquid spilled down the outsides of the bottle and Lewis wiped it with his t-shirt before camouflaging the container among the paint supplies and motioning for us to follow him. A steady clip to our walk, casual enough so we didn’t attract attention, but fast enough to hide behind the art lockers and wait for our bait. Like when I was a kid in the backyard trying to catch a bird with rope tied to an old clothesbasket and bread under it. Darcy came back for some paint for another sign. She squatted down on the floor, fighting to keep the paper from rolling back up, and painted in big red letters, Trenton High’s . . . Sure enough, in padded Arnie to rescue her from the wraths of that big, bad paper. He taped the corners down while she painted. Bent over with her tight ass in those jeans, Arnie's eyes locked on her. “He wants it,” Joey said in a half-whispered chuckle. They finished painting, taped the sign up to dry, and put the paints back. Arnie was ahead of Darcy, almost out the doors. Lewis sighed in disappointment, me in relief. “Hey, Arnie, don’t forget this.” Picking up his soda, she handed it to him. We watched him take a drink, then another. They talked; she looked around excited, pointing toward the colored paper like she had another idea. All the while, Arnie chugged away at his soda. The corners of his mouth puckered. Did it taste funny enough for him to stop? Sip, sip, sip. I guessed not. Joey and Lewis’ faces went red like ripened cherries. Lewis doubled over, holding his stomach while trying to muffle his hyena's laugh. Joey’s mouth was wide open as drops of slobber formed in the creases. As usual, he was out of control. “Shut up, they’re going to hear you.” I cupped my hand over his mouth, looking around to see if anyone had heard. Lewis' laugh halted. “Yeah, for Christ sake, Joey, lower it.” They were back at it, muffling bursts of laughter. My stomach turned. I wanted to bolt from behind those lockers and smash that can out of Arnie’s hand, but instead I forced a laugh, and another. Bent over like Lewis, my head bowed, I joined in, laughing a little harder, tears streamed down my face, but deep inside I didn’t think it was all that funny. “Maybe we should stop him,” I whispered. “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Lewis said, smoothing his shirttail back into his pants. “Oh fuck.” Joey pointed, his finger shaking. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Principal Wilson stroll in, having on that same tweed suit he wore every Friday, the one that looked like a sympathetic brother, two sizes smaller, might have given to him. I never cared for him. He played the good cop, bad cop routine with Vice Principal Kenzel, who got stuck disciplining the kids, handing out suspensions, all the dirty work that Wilson was too much of a pussy to do. Lewis said he caught him picking his nose once; rolling it around between his thumb and finger when he thought no one was looking. I believed him. Wilson nodded, arms behind his back and smiled in approval like he was some big-time General handling an important war. He hadn’t spotted us, so we took off toward the weight-room. Lewis first, me in the middle, with the clip of Joey’s boots close behind. I tried to forget about it. I told myself he hadn’t drunk that much. He’d probably stopped, too busy with Darcy ordering him around. * * * It was eighth period, last class of the day, Mrs. Newman’s English Lit. All those boring Steinbeck stories we read and analyzed. Why he did this? Why he wrote that? What symbol did he portray here? Who cares. I yawned and gazed through the dirty windows at the shaggy lawn where everything had gone to shit because of the janitor's hernia operation and the school couldn't afford a replacement. Trying to stay awake, I thought about Darcy and wondered what it would be like to have her in the back of dad’s Oldsmobile. A tent built in my pants as Judy Clarton read another passage from Mice and Men. My eyes shot open when the first scream echoed down the hallway. It was like a wounded animal far off. A shrill, as if it was maimed or a demented hunter might be torturing it, watching it suffer. My stomach turned over when Principal Wilson’s palpitating voice came over the loud speaker and paged Nurse Angley to immediately report to the first floor boys' bathroom. I knew something was wrong because he never paged, never. The front office secretary always made the announcements. It’s nothing, I comforted myself. Maybe Wilson got his zipper stuck, needed some help. Yeah, it’s nothing, but in the distance I heard the shrill again hidden through the siren of an ambulance. Go on by, I prayed, past the school. But it roared louder like a toddler screaming for attention. Everyone scrambled from their seats. A few cranked open the cloudy windows where an ambulance swirled in, following it, two police cruisers. Mrs. Newman rose from behind her desk and flung the door back. The smell of burnt, fatty meat crept through the classroom. She turned to the class. "Stay in your seats." Plugging her nose, she bolted out the doorway. The sound of her heels missing every other step. We heard another shrill much louder, deeper, followed by another. We scrambled out of class, but stopped behind a crowd of students who were lined up outside the boys' bathroom. A few pointed down the hall, solemn faces, eyes watering, pinching their noses. They whispered to each other. I pushed my way upfront to see paramedics rush by carrying a stretcher. They lifted their boots up as if they were maneuvering through tires in an obstacle course. At first, I pretended not to see it like my mind was playing a dirty, little trick. A shiver coiled up my spine when I forced my eyes on the deep maroon-colored clumps blended with a brown substance that led from the boys' bathroom across the hall, past the door, oozing down Arnie’s lower back where he was curled up into a tight-fitted ball, his underwear and jeans around his knees. His eyes glazed, he stared off like a dead goldfish floating gently on top of the water. He was calm, though, an eerie surreal, nothing moving except for the foam bubbling between his nostrils and pale, blue lips. Darcy was beside him, patting his forehead with a damp, paper towel. When she looked up at the paramedics, I saw tears streaming down her brown face. Principal Wilson motioned for her to step aside, but she ignored him so he grabbed her arm. Failing to pull her away, his big hand locked over her arm and yanked so hard I heard a rip. You son-of a bitch, I thought. The paramedics squeezed in close enough to clasp an oxygen mask over Arnie’s paralyzed mouth. My heart stopped when they ripped it back off because blood splattered inside it. One police officer pushed back the crowd as the other wrapped his jacket around Darcy’s shoulders. He motioned her and Wilson into his office while the other two officers followed. I turned to see Joey peeking from behind the lockers. Eyes like stones, locked on Arnie, he might have been the poor boy's twin except for the clumps and foam that possessed Arnie. Looking back at the mess, I heard bells as the whole world around me darkened. A hand grasped around my shoulder, and I turned to see Lewis. "Christ, Darryl, you okay?” His eyes darted back and forth from me to the doorway where I could make out Arnie being lifted into the back of the ambulance. “You don’t look so good.” I took a deep breath and wiped the beads of sweat forming on my temples. “Pssst, Darryl, Lewis.” We turned back to see Joey motioning us over. We weaved through the students until reaching him. “Something bad's happened to Arnie,” he said, shaking his head. “We did something really bad.” “Jesus Christ!” Lewis lunged for Joey, cupping his mouth. “Shut the fuck up, will ya, already.” He looked around. “Not a word until we get in the path.” The path was a small woods behind the school where we did our best smoking, drinking, titty grabbing and occasional pill popping. I looked at my watch. “Fifteen minutes left.” “Who cares about fifteen minutes? Class is over,” Lewis said. “I’ll meet you guys there in five.” He ground his teeth. “Remember, not a word.” We nodded and split up. I headed for my locker to get my Algebra book. I fumbled with the dial, trying to steady my hand, but couldn’t remember the combination. Once, twice, three times, I tried, before punching the locker. The whole time I pressed back tears. I sighed when it opened on the fourth try. Students were filing out, murmuring to each other. I heard wheels squeal down the locker aisle and looked up to see someone maneuvering a mop and bucket toward the boys' bathroom. I gagged on the lump in my throat when I realized they were wiping up the insides of poor Arnie. * * * Lewis and Joey were already in the path inhaling a reefer when I arrived. Smoke rings sweetened the air, an unsullied relief from what I smelled earlier. “Where you been?” Lewis asked. His words sucked back in after a hit. He passed it to me. “I had to get my math book for a test on Monday,” I said, and inhaled before handing it to Lewis. “I’m five minutes late. What’s the big deal?” “How can you think about a goddamn book when we got real problems here?” Lewis frowned. “I’m not going down for this alone.” He pointed the end of the joint at Joey, tears forming in his eyes. “For Christ sake," Lewis, said Joey. "You need to relax a little. No one saw a thing.” “Yeah, it’ll be okay,” I added. Lewis looked over at me. “Why didn’t you stop me?” He wiped his face where tears streamed down. “You’re the level-headed one of us, you know, like the leader.” Leader? Me? I never knew they thought of me like that. Level headed, yes, but leader? No way. “I don’t know man. I tried, you wouldn’t listen.” “Wonder if he dies? Oh my God, I could go to prison for this,” Lewis said, his eyes filling back up again. “Christ, do you know what they do to young boys like me in those places?” He sucked in some more reefer. That was Lewis for you, thinking only about himself. Not one damned word about what poor Arnie might be going through. “Forget about prison, just think what your old man will do to you when he finds out,” Joey said, and he was right. Lewis' old man was a mean bastard. Rumor had it he shot his own grandmother for dancing, making too much noise when the kids laughed. No one knew for sure. “Did you see that foam coming out of his mouth?” Joey continued. “Man that was heavy shit. How could something come out of a person like that? And his lips a fucked up shade of blue like the color of a pool or something.” He said it so casually, kicking the tip of his boot into the dirt like we were deciding what movie to see. “You really fucked him up good, Lewis.” “You son-of-a-bitch! This is all your fault! I should have never listened to you.” Lewis backed him up against the tree. His fist rolled in a ball a few inches from Joey’s face. “Hey, you didn’t have to listen to me, you asshole. I didn’t make you do it.” I heard a crack as Lewis knocked Joey into the tree. Joey turned his head away from him. Hands up in the air, he tried to block him. Again, Lewis slammed him. His nose mashed into blood, he went down. The back of Lewis’s hand matched Joey’s nose. “Mother fucker!” Lewis screamed, crashing down on Joey. Fist in the air; he zoomed down again like a fighter pilot on target. “Stop it!” I clutched my hands around Lewis' arms. “Christ, you’re gonna kill him.” I dragged him off of Joey. Joey laid in a mess of blood. Eyes fluttering, he fluctuated in and out of consciousness. Lewis hunched over next to him. Chin resting on his bent knees, a stream flowed from his eyes as he rocked back and forth. I tried to comfort him. “There was like the whole class coming in and out of the art-room and gym. Last I heard, Wilson was no mind reader.” Lewis continued to rock. Head raised, he stopped and shifted towards me. "Man, it was a joke, I never meant to hurt him“. He shook his head. "Just a dumb prank." I took another hit from my smoke and sighed. He put his hands over his face. "What if they check the photo developer bottle or soda can for fingerprints? They do it all the time on those cop shows.” Joey was still flat on the ground, moaning. “Do you know how many people probably touched that developer bottle? Besides, you wiped it with your t-shirt. I don’t remember you even touching the can.” Joey groaned again. Holding his hand out, Lewis pulled him up. “If we’re asked,” I continued, “we’ll just say we were in there a few minutes and then went back into the weight-room. It’s not like we handed him the drink or something.” A smirk mocked Lewis' face. “We didn’t, but Darcy did. We could blame it on the nigger. Say we saw her giving it to him.” I kicked dirt at Lewis. “I’m not blaming Darcy for this you son-of-a-bitch! This was your fault and she’s not going down for your shit. You hear me!” “Settle down,” he said, wiping his face with his sleeve. “It was just a thought. Christ, Darryl, you got a thing for the nigger or something?” “Fuck you!” Joey cleaned blood from his nose with the edge of his flannel shirt. “Sorry man,” Lewis said. He stood up and helped Joey to his feet. “Sorry Darryl.” “Me too,” Joey answered. We walked the rest of the way in silence. Anger boiled inside me every time I thought of them blaming this on Darcy. Deep down, I hoped he got caught. * * * Kenzel questioned each of us. We all said the same thing, never saw anything, were in the weight-room most of the time. Joey was pale when he met us in the path after class. “I thought I was going to die,” he said before taking another drag off his smoke. “Why? What did Vice Kenzel say?” Lewis asked. Joey’s eyes widened. “She got right down inches from my face where I could smell garlic on her.” Probably to ward off all the vampires she fought. Joey continued. “She said, if I find out you had anything to do with this . . . Her finger dug into my chest. ‘I’m going to make sure you never see the light of day. You little shit. You hear me?’ I thought I was going piss my pants right there.” We all laughed. No one ever mentioned that photo developer was what Arnie ingested. As for the soda can, only Darcy and Arnie’s fingerprints were on it, so it couldn’t be traced back to any of us. None of us had to blame Darcy for what happened. Plenty of the other students did it for us. Someone saw her hand the can to Arnie, and that was all it took for rumors to fly. Some said Arnie got her pregnant, and he wouldn’t marry her. Some said Arnie had been stalking her, and it was the only way to get him off her back. It’s funny the shit kids will make up. They'll turn on you in a flash like a lion on its trainer. Since no one saw her put the poison in, she couldn’t be charged with anything. Besides, Arnie knew better than that. Her life was turned upside down. Anytime she entered a room, drinks were covered up, whispers, sneers, people turned away. Her old man sold the business and they moved away after someone burned a cross in their front lawn, left a racist sign across their door. Years later, I heard through the grapevine that she married, had a couple kids, and moved up to the east part of the city, not a very good neighborhood for a pretty girl like Darcy. Arnie, on the other hand, did pretty well for himself, got a new wardrobe and hairdo, home up in Trenton, a second one in Florida. That’s a big deal if you got yourself two homes, especially in different states. He's a partner for a successful law practice; not one of those sleazy ambulance chaser ones, but one that really does something good. He gets those big companies for poisoning the water, killing kids with cancer, something like that. Does a lot of the leg work for the firm. His wife’s a real beauty, Miss Idaho; good-looking kids too, a perfect Christmas card family. As for Lewis and Joey, they didn’t do so well. Lewis made a career in the army after graduating, tripped on a landmine, blew his leg clean off. Heard he sits around now at the V.A. hospital collecting disability, bitching about how lousy his life is. Joey, that poor son-of-a-bitch, him and his old lady had a couple kids, divorced. He’d been drinking before picking the kids up for the weekend, but she didn’t realize it. He drove the car right into a train. Kids were killed instantly, amazingly, not a scratch on him. Later, his brother found him hanging from the bathroom ceiling. As for me, I’m not doing too bad. I’m a draftsman for an engineering firm. Wife is on me to go back to school and get my Engineering degree, don’t know if I could stand all those books though. Wife says I drink too much, makes me see a psychologist two days a week or she’ll take the boys and leave. So I see the psychologist. Our conversations always come back to that day we almost killed Arnie. He asked me the other day if I ever considered apologizing to Arnie for what we did to him. That the truth would set me free, unbound me from my past. That I may find peace, blah, blah, blah, sounds like a bunch of psychology-junk to me. Know what I said right back to him? I looked him straight in the eyes and didn’t flinch or nothing. I told him I don’t think an apology would be enough and he asked why not. I hesitated, and then my words broke the silence. “Arnie's colon is gone because of what we did to him, and now he has to wear a bag in its place.” After a dozen or so trips to the hospital, doctors had to remove it. At the time, I didn't realized how damaging our crime had been, but now, being older, having kids of my own, I can only imagine how devastated he must have been. Not only how much we hurt him, but all the people around him. No one bothered Arnie after that. The whispers and rumors died down, and slowly kids forgot about what happened to him. Everyone got on with their lives, football games, homecoming, all the things that kids do. What we did, fading away into the walls of Trenton High. My therapist said we found ways of dealing with what we did, Lewis, fighting, me and Joey, drinking. He said that someday I would have to forgive myself for what I did. I have to let it go. Late at night when everyone's asleep and I'm haunted by the silence, my mind drifts back to that lazy, spring day. How we changed Arnie and Darcy's lives forever, our lives forever. The way I fall to sleep is by telling myself it was a joke, just a dumb prank thought up by three teenage boys, having a little fun.