Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Review of Down to a Sunless Sea Review of Words of a Feather Creative Nonfiction Burning Men By Gerard Sarnat Integration By David Caplan Hands Across the Sea By Jennifer Mazik Poetry I Can't Wait Until the Resurrection By David Halliday Dashing With You By Mick Joyce Island of Hong By Mick Joyce Fiction The Price of Shoes By Sandra M. McDow Jeux d'Esprit By Julio Peralta-Paulino Feed Me, Pet Me By Stephen Dorneman The Lovely Peasant By G. David Schwartz About the Contributors © 2008, 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 - Kenneth Weiss, Ed.D 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 Editor - Elizabeth Murray Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs 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. |
Feed Me, Pet Me By Stephen Dorneman My hands were red and raw, aching both inside and out, and even the tiny-toothed nibbling of the new cocker spaniel pup hurt. Despite repeated rinsing, my hands smelled of dog soap and disinfectant. I had a long fresh scratch running from my elbow halfway down to my wrist where the most exotic pet in the store, the coatimundi, tagged me before I got both gloves on him. My left arm still ached from when I slipped putting a fifty-pound bag of Atlantic Turquoise aquarium gravel down in the basement. If Darla hadn’t convinced me that one more letter of recommendation, on top of my summer internship at Wells Stables, would clinch my application to Penn’s Veterinary Med school I’d have quit Bollinger’s Pet & Hobby long ago. Maybe even then, if Darla wasn’t working there too. From the front of the store I heard the CD player switch from elevator music of the sixties and seventies to one of Darla’s mashup remixes, signaling that Elvis, or at least Mr. Bollinger, had left the building along with any lingering evening customers. The Dollyrots were pounding out “Feed Me, Pet Me” as I held firm against a friendly barrage of puppy bites and checked both the cocker’s ears before putting him back into his cage. “That’s a cat song,” I called through the swinging door while topping off water bowls and bottles, “I thought you were a dog person.” “Just because I’m a bitch doesn’t make me a dog person.” Darla yelled back. “Wanna see my claws?” “Woof, woof.” “How articulate. Hey dog boy, the drawer’s almost twenty dollars over. Can you smell the pizza and beer?” Whenever the cash drawer closed out short Mr. Bollinger had Darla make up the difference out of her own purse, so she had no compunctions about taking any overages. “Anytime, if you’re treating.” “Only if you’re driving.” The Smithy was a half dozen blocks away from the store, but Darla insisted on wearing heels with practically everything and never walked when she could ride. I had my Dad’s retired car, an eight year old Honda Civic. My relationship with Darla varied from chauffer to friend to lover (once, after which she kicked me out of bed saying I was too nice for her) to slave to co-conspirator depending on factors I hadn’t been able to identify. It felt like the pendulum might be swinging back in my favor again, though, so I gladly volunteered to drive. At The Smithy we split a pizza bianca with spinach and onions and a pitcher of Coors. We talked about music, about how we both loved 4H back in high school, about veterinary school and what we were going to do afterwards, and then about music again. I realized I’d probably drank more than my share when I heard myself defending the Pussycat Dolls as musicians. Darla asked me to give her a ride back to Krinsky Hall, and as her dorm was only ten minutes away through a residential neighborhood I agreed. Particularly since I didn’t want to go back to my dorm room alone. It was getting late by the time we left. A perfect September night, still early enough in the month for t-shirts and shorts but with hints of Fall lapping through the car’s open windows. My left arm still bothered me so I steered with the right. Aside from the occasional drunken student staggering home, we had the streets to ourselves. Darla kept hitting the scan button and we played “Name the Tune” up and down the radio spectrum. Stairway to Heaven. Harmful If Swallowed. Hands Up. Strange Brew. On Broadway. Three blocks from the residence hall two green-glowing eyes appeared out of nowhere low to the ground in front of the car. I jammed on the brakes and jerked the car to the right. I heard the gargling high-pitched yowl at the same time I felt the impact. Darla shrieked too, a strangled scream followed by an oddly quiet “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. You hit a cat.” I pulled over. We both jumped out of the car, leaving it running. No cat in the road. I hoped I’d just clipped it, scared it, maybe I’d only ran over its tail, but I didn’t believe any of it. I knew it had gone under the wheels of the car. I pulled a flashlight from the glove compartment and we started walking back and forth up and down the street, shining the light under parked cars and into yards. Darla started calling softly to the cat, in sort of a pleading whisper. “Here kitty kitty, poor kitty, come out kitty.” I wondered who the cat belonged to. Almost all of the houses on the street were dark. “Shh, do you hear that?” Darla stopped calling and we both listened. I finally heard the panting too, and we found the cat at the base of a withered brown rhododendron. Its eyes were closed and moist, and I wondered if a cat in pain cried. Other than the eyes its head looked fine, but only the head. I must have run right over the middle of the cat. Its entrails hung loose and bloody, bursting open from its broken body. I was amazed that it had been able to get out from the street and under the bush, that it was still alive at all. Darla touched its head with one finger, and the cat meowed, a startlingly normal sound, like every cat I’d every known. My family had a series of dogs when I was growing up, all of them conveniently named Buster, but my girlfriends always had cats. Darla couldn’t have pets in the dorm, but her cat back home was named Dancer. “Oh God look at it what’ll we do…” Darla was crying, I was trying hard not to cry. I took Darla’s hand away from the cat, and pulled her slowly up and away from the bush. “I know what we can do. Come with me, we’re going back to the car.” I moved Darla along like I would have led a blind child, holding her elbow. At the car I pushed her gently into the passenger’s seat and went around to the trunk. I got out my father’s ancient tire iron and took it, along with the flashlight, back to the rhododendron. The banged-up handle of the iron weighed on my sore arm and cut into my hands. It smelled like rust and dried mud. I tried to make it as painless as I could. When I got back in the car, Darla shrank away from me until she was up against the passenger door. The radio started up again, but she stabbed it off before I could hear what was playing. “You killed it.” “I had to. It couldn’t be saved.” “A vet could have saved it.” “No one could have saved it. Sometimes there’s nothing else left to do, and you have to put an animal down. It’s what veterinarians do.” We crept the last few blocks to the dorm, and Darla got out without another word. The next day she quit working at Bollinger’s without giving notice. I got accepted into Penn later that year. |