Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Paint It Black Review of The i Tetralogy Poetry Zoology By Patricia Murphy Framed Gift By Sheila McLaughlin Sikorski Friends 'n' 'at or Ode to Pittsburghatory By Betta Risa In My Father's Shoes By Richard Fein Freedom By Skip Shea Fiction Quitting Time By Barbara Archer Tumbleweed By Thom Brennan Maternal Instincts By Diane Kimbrell You Should Write People Dead By T. M. Warfield Spring Fling By Patricia Murphy About the Contributors © 2007, 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 - Vacant 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 Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs Contributing Editor - Robert Dittman Blog Contributing Editor - Maggie Koster Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.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 VolunteerMatch. |
Spring Fling By Patricia Murphy If only they hadn’t built that snowman. But it was March, and they knew with their kid intuition that this would be the last snowfall of the year, and therefore the last snowman. All the other snowmen that had stood sentinel in the yard over the winter were gone, having sweated down to puddles during days of chinook winds and other random spring-like weather. Maybe this should’ve been a signal to them that it is unnatural to create such a thing at such a time. Maybe it was, and they just missed it. This snowman was different from the rest of them right from the start. They had been formed from the clean white snows of early and mid-winter, when accumulation had afforded the children great choice. This snowman’s birth was a frantic affair, the children scurrying around to find enough snow, any snow. So he was adorned here and there with bits of old grass and leaf that textured him inside and out. He was ugly too, but it was the kind of ugliness that the mother had always associated with great wisdom. They should have never built him facing the house. His grass-clad, obsidian-eyed, carrot-nosed presence was too voyeuristic. The mother noticed this the very first night as she closed the shades on her bedroom window. Why, he can see right in here, she thought; to her children she said “You better put his face on different tomorrow.” But they didn’t realize what she meant and just changed the angle of the nose before they went off to school. He was facing her again that night when she drew the shades. She began making offhand remarks as she closed him out at night. Her husband listened to “He sure is ugly” and “God I wish that thing would melt!” He didn’t understand why the thing bothered her so much and told her she should knock it over if she disliked it so much. His comment was met with profound silence and an icy stare. He didn’t mention the snowman again, but after a time she no longer drew down the shades on that side of the house. At the end of March it turned cold again, and the snowman solidified and gleamed in the moonlight. He was decidedly less ugly now. Perhaps the new sheen of ice gave him a more polished, charismatic air. In the house, the mother became increasingly restless at night. She began to get up to check on the children and then to brew a cup of tea and drink it while she checked on the snowman. After a few nights, she no longer looked in on her children or brewed tea, but went straight to the window instead. In the morning she blamed her weariness and newfound nocturnal stirrings on the position of the moon. She joked with her family over breakfast about becoming a lunatic with no one to keep her company but a snowman, and then laughed nervously to cover the silence that met her remark. That night she noticed he was shrinking, and then reminded herself that the correct term was melting. This realization brought out a sudden fear in her, and she knew she must touch him before he died. So she dressed quietly, not wanting them to know, because only a crazy woman would go out into the night barefoot and clad in a nightgown. Besides, it would not do to have him see her like that; they did not know each other that well. As she approached him she noticed something that the distance and waning moon had failed to reveal. His nose had begun to droop and clung tenuously to his face. I should fix him; she thought and walked timidly toward him. As she held the carrot in her hand she mused, “A nose by any other name” and wondered if her children had considered using it to depict some other part as they built him. The impropriety of this thought brought her suddenly back to earth, and she shoved his nose back onto his face and stormed back into the house. The next night as she came back near him she noticed that his progressing state of decay had caused his eyes to recede somewhat. This gave him a cynical look, one she could not bear, and she kicked him with her bare foot until the sting caused her to retreat. Inside the warm house she vowed she would never visit him again. She would cut him off — be just as frigid to him as he had been to her. And so she passed that night sleepless with shades drawn down and eyes fixed on the darkness, waiting for him to make the next move. But spring was threatening with warmth and sunlight, the nemeses of all cold and distant men. She held out as long as she could until she could stand the thought of a quarrel no more. As morning’s treacherous light invaded the bedroom through the chinks in the shades, she angled them open to find him gone. She quietly packed her bags and left, stopping only to bend down and retrieve two small rocks and a rotten carrot. |