Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Bliss Review of Atheist Manifesto Review of The Stones Cry Out Film review of "Karov La Bayit" Creative Nonfiction A Reverence for Words By Virginia Hendry For the Wife of Bath and the Wife of Yeats, I Give Thanks By Sara J. Ford Birth By Clint Pearson Poetry Gong Fu By Tim J. Brennan Phases By Tolu Ogunlesi They Are Driving Their Cars Again, They Are Driving... By Anne Cammon Death of the Travelers By Abigail Grant Leaves By Matt Gee Fiction The Wood Splitter By Michael Phillips Boogie & Sarah Leigh By Sandra L. West What Happened to Matt Dillon By Chris Drangle Red, Manhattan, 523 By Beth Hogan Titanic Hat By D.K. McGill 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 Senior Editor - Patti Kurtz Senior Editor - Neeldhara Misra Senior Editor - Mike Munsil Assistant Editor - Steve MacNeil Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs 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. |
Boogie and Sarah Leigh By Sandra L. West “Daydreaming, loving the wrong man, smoking, all habits hard to break.” Kaye Gibbons A Virtuous Woman Boogie sure could paint him a mess of pictures. Every one of them pretty, dark, sad-eyed ladies in reclining positions. The tourists down at the farmer’s market on the edge of the village, where he went twice a year to sell, clamored for seascapes or landscapes, as it was a seaside town, but Boogie kept on painting sad-eyed, exotic ladies. Like he was on a mission or something. Boogie’s main squeeze was a hard working woman; a four-foot-eleven, large-hearted soul with the Georgia-peach name of Sarah Mae Leigh. Her very essence told her to accept Boogie for all he was worth, which wasn’t much, if you ask me. It’s a wonder why and how she put up with him all those years. They was happy as a lark. You know, the kind of happy where you get up smiling in the morning. So we all knew, around in the village, that something mighty sweet was goin’ on right before dawn. Boogie had it down pat. He fingered her face, slowly, with those long heavy fingers of his, as if he was re-sculpting her very soul. Brush-kissed her almond-sliced eyes with his long black lashes. He was generous that way, if he didn’t do anything else; he didn’t, far as I could see. To hear the other sisters in the village tell it, Boogie knew he had crown jewels between his thighs, and he liked to spread his wealth around. He wasn’t one for jogging or marathoning cross-country, but he wore the clothes of the sports: cut-off tee-shirt and black, stick-to-the-ribs nylon pants – though it is not exactly ribs we are talking about here. Looking at Boogie in that outfit, no one could ever dispute the broad-band extensiveness of his gift, or question its impact. Oh, he was a sweet loving man, that Boogie was. Used to hold little Sarah Leigh in his arms and sing to her ala Frank Sinatra ala Nat King Cole about polka dots, moonbeams, and pug nose dreams. She sang back, eyes aglow from the words he taught her, and wept from the ecstasy of it all. A country dance was being held in a garden I felt a bump and heard an oh, beg your pardon Suddenly I saw polka dots and moonbeams All around a pug-nosed dream. * Boogie and Sarah Leigh didn’t have a great deal of material things, and he seemed content enough. She rented their little place off what she made, which didn’t allow for much. Couldn’t even get no whitewash to paint the bungalow, what with the cost of Boogie’s canvas, sable brushes and linseed oil. He didn’t have no job to speak of, that Boogie. Wouldn’t work in the shirt factory with the other village men. Stayed home and painted pretty pictures that brought home the pig’s tail instead of the bacon. Was communing with his soul, he told his woman, and she loved to see him happy so things went on like that for years. Sarah Leigh went out to work every day in a blue-less frock of many line-dried mornings. She wore that other-side-of-midnight smile perched upon Vaselined lips, and a dip in her Boogie-caressed hips. On her job she scrubbed this, and she ironed that. Honest work, it was. With her pay she bought a little food, what wasn’t raised up from her meticulously rowed backyard garden of collards, mustards, and kale; all Boogie’s favorites for the maintenance of his strength. So that he could keep painting pictures of those sad-eyed ladies -- though they barely sold down at the farmer’s market – Sarah Leigh gave him an allowance for canvas, brushes, oils; and, money for his daily lottery tickets. Boogie was a gambling man. When it came to womenfolk, his mama didn’t raise no complete fool. He knew he wasn’t giving Sarah Leigh much of nothing, but he knew he had to promise her something. So, he wrapped her ankles in sweet eucalyptus leaves, brushed-kissed her eyes with his long seductive black lashes and swore, as she scrubbed this and ironed that in last year’s blue-less frock, that, as soon as he hit, and he would surely hit big, things would be different. The music started and was I the perplexed one I held my breath and said may I have the next one In my frightened arms polka dots and moonbeams Sparkled on a pug nose dream “Got to crawl before you walk, Sarah Leigh” he likened their temporary – as he saw it – condition. She arched her callused feet at the kitchen sink, remembering the feel of red patent leather stiletto heels, and washed the remnants of their simple evening meal of collards, boiled white potatoes, and Joe Louis strips down the drain. Oh day, out the clear blue sky of morning and after thankfully receiving the daily required daily released dose of after-midnight dew from her sweet loving man, she put a question to him. “Honey,” she queried, “when we hit the lottery, what we gonna buy?” “Well, sugar lump princess,” he took no time in responding, and as he slowly fingered her face: “I would get that studio space, a building with space for a studio and a gallery and maybe I would travel a little and if anything was left over I would get me a car.” Sarah Leigh listened real deep. You know like when somebody wish they hadn’t heard what they did hear? She asked him to repeat it and he did, with those same non-we wishes. He released her fingers, and turned away from her to paint in silence as if he hadn’t heard the misbeat of her heart falling out of her chest. Sarah Leigh didn’t know nothing about no art. She was a very basic person. She didn’t need no studio and no art gallery. She liked what he did because it made her man happy, but art wasn’t her thing. She didn’t have no license and never did learn how to drive either. Her kind madam, for whom she scrubbed and ironed, met her at the bus stop ever a.m. So, she listened real deep, like when somebody wish they hadn’t heard what they did hear, then left the house to wait for her ride, leaving Boogie to hum and paint them pretty pictures of sad-eyed ladies that I can’t remember ever being sold down at the farmer’s market. After hours of washing, ironing, and hanging clothes up in huge walk-in closets that would have held her whole life with years left over, Sarah Leigh got back into the car, got driven to the bus stop and, instead of taking the bus back to the bungalow where Boogie was waiting for his dinner, she walked smack into the center of town, right up to the public lottery concession on Miller and Bay, and froze. There were so many people on line, that she was shame. She didn’t want nobody seeing her, baptized daughter of Macedonia that she was, at the window. So, she left the public concession, went a little further into town to the near-windowless house tucked away in the alley called Jefferson Lane where Gable lived when the police couldn’t hold him and he was home free. Gable and Sarah Leigh was raised up together in the old neighborhood. He was the local numbers runner now, and he had made good. Gable was surprised to see her but, being a good runner, kept quiet and just watched. As he calculated in his head, because he never used paper, she emptied her purse of all she could find – one-faced bills and a quarter here and a thin dime and several buffaloed silver pieces there – to place on Aunt Bea’s house number. Sarah Leigh walked home with fingers and callused toes crossed, eucalyptus wrapped around her ankles come undone, dragging on the red clay road. Call it beginners luck if you want to. Fool’s gold, misbelievers say, but the proof was in that putting. On the very next day, when Sarah Leigh got out of madam’s car, didn’t take the bus, and walked a little further into town to the near-windowless house tucked away in the alley called Jefferson Lane, Gable met her with a capacious smile on his Buddha face. “I knew it when you walked in. Number 609, yes ma’am, 609. Used to be my pet. And you named it and claimed it, Sarah Leigh ! What you gonna do with all this money, huh?” He leaned in, grinning, counting the thousands, 20 by 20, into her shivering hands. Her eyes grew round as copper pennies. Her mouth flew open, but the words got lost somewhere in the air. She couldn’t trust herself to put her lips together to count what Gable was putting in her outstretched palm because she thought she’d stutter, one thousand one, so she just took it, two thousand one, and stuffed it into the cups of her 36c’s, ten thousand one, the gartered top of her red-brown hose, forty thousand one, and into madam’s hand-me-down Belk’s shopping bag, still counting, stuffed with button-less blouses and grass-stained skirts madam didn’t want no more and thought that Sarah Leigh did. Things ain’t been the same since Sarah Leigh became a gambling woman and hit the street numbers. Folks in the village were so disconcerted that, to this day, they can barely tell the story without soundlessly easing into a worn porch rocker and shoring up with a couple of double spiked lemonades, an indisputable sign that the tale, like a breach baby delivery, would be as difficult to weave as to believe. Gable was a good numbers runner, and he dispensed her winnings quickly. But not as quickly as Sarah Leigh did. The Sarah Leigh the villagers had grown to know and love was no more. She bought herself a sleek, white, one-seater that she’d have to figure out how to drive later. Only had one set of car keys made, kept pinned deep inside. Bought an IRA, for rainier days she never again wanted to witness, and some treasury notes. Invested in Biltmore, as she had seen madam do, and sent all investment certificates for extra safe keeping to Aunt Bea out in Oakland, near the city of guardian angels, far from the hard, red clay of Georgia. Went on down past the farmer’s market, she did. Over the bridge, into the next county and bought herself a nice little red brick cottage that wouldn’t never be needing no whitewash. Furnished it up fine with one Chippendale chair, a whole set of single-mismatched coffee mugs for the dining room breakfront, including a huge black porcelain mug gold-stamped “609.” Treated herself to a bedroom set, canopied, and single spaced. Floors sleek and waxed, just waiting for the sharp reassurance of fancy, high, red patent leather stilettos. One rocking chair sat on the enclosed front porch. One toothbrush in black and white marble bathroom. One black bath towel monogrammed “S.M.L.” One. As if she was on a mission or something. Didn’t tell nobody what she was up to. Except her madam, because she wouldn’t be coming by there no more. She unwrapped the eucalyptus leaves from her ankles, and tossed them out the back door into the wind. The wind had been holding its breath – ‘cause who would know all that Sarah Leigh had on her mind – but it gratefully captured the leaves, swept them on their way, far away, and lamented Sarah Leigh’s long lost song. Now in a cottage built of lilacs and laughter I know the meaning of the words ever after And I’ll always see polka dots and moonbeams When I kiss the pug nose dream. After she stood in the middle of her living room a long time, took it all in, and finally realized it was hers, she sat down to her mahogany desk and telephoned Rev. Hood at Macedonia Fire Baptized Primitive Free Will Baptist Church, where she joined, straight from the mourner’s bench, when she was ten years old. Macedonia was lit with gossip so thunderous that when she walked in you could barely hear the organ play “Just as I am without one plea,” on Communion morning. Still dressed in her years-old blue-less frock, she made a maiden voyage to Belk’s, and filled her own shopping bag with a Sunday-go-to-meeting, deep indigo, slit-up-the-side, double-breasted suit and feathered wide brim. They could gossip if they wanted to, and they certainly did want to, but Sarah Leigh didn’t let her eyes slide left or right; she was strictly straight ahead. News of Sarah Leigh’s luck had spread quickly through the small village, and into the bungalow she once shared with Boogie. When his whole life flashed before his eyes – like when you are drowning and getting ready to see your maker – Boogie shuddered, and made his move. He collected himself, packed his stretched canvas, sable brushes, and linseed oil in a duffel bag, took his sweet back on down the road, and set up in Dorie Bell Johnson’s lonely little shack. He kept on painting those pretty, dark, sad-eyed ladies in reclining positions all day long while the village brothers, noting his swift relocation, speechlessly worked at the shirt factory. They wondered how he could handle such public dismissal, and they counted the days when Sarah Leigh would surely announce that she, once again, would be “taking company.” One of the men folk down in the village wagered for three weeks and counting, and put his meager factory wages down, possibly thinking, and foolishly proposing given the saga of Sarah Leigh, that he would be as successful, betting on her, as she was at Gable’s lottery table. Oh, they wanted her bad, they did. Especially when they saw her drive about the village, to Macedonia and to Belk’s, in her red one-seater with the top down. Now, these was grown men but they just didn’t believe lard was greasy! They fantasized about rolling and riding Sarah Leigh up, down, and around in her canopied, single bed. The stories they told about what they could do to Sarah Leigh – making her whoop, holler and virtually sing opera – outlived them all. The village sisters were a mite wiser. They pressed their thighs tightly together against all that was released into the universe, and listened to the solitary drops of after-midnight dew, which was all they could do since their men folk spent every moment – and some grew gray from waiting – gambling on the where-with-all, and the who-with-all, of Miss Sarah Mae Leigh. But Dorie Bell Johnson rose happily every morning the good Lord gave. She scrubbed this and ironed that, with a smile perched upon her Vaselined lips, and a daily required daily released dip in her Boogie-caressed hips. Humming a haunting tune about polka dots, moonbeams, and pug nose dreams. * “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” is a 1940s vintage melody, words by Johnny Burke, music by Jimmy van Heusen that has been recorded by many vocalists including The Four Freshmen, John Denver, Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole in addition to jazz artists Wes Montgomery, Lester Young, and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. |