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WINTER ISSUE

1952

Volume LVI
Number 2

staff

Editor
MARGARET CLICK

Business Manager
PATSY HAYWOOD

Managing Editor
GWEN HAMER

Feature Editor
BARBARA McLELLAN

Fiction Editor
JANET FYNE

Make-Up Editor
MARILYN TOLOCHKO

Circulation and Exchange Manager

TERRY SCHUKRAFT

^

literary staff

Bunny Greenberg

MoNTAE Imbt

LucT Page

Elizabeth Poplin

Agnes Gee

Virginia Morrison

Virginia Harris

^

art staff

Barbara Jobe
Ann Pollard

Jg)

business staff

Assistant Business Manager

Marjorie Cagle

Mike Auskern Martha May

Mary Ann Raney Louise Eaker

CORADDI

Woman's College oj the University of North Carolina
Greensboro, N. C.

CONTENTS

Fiction

The Cry, Barbara McLellan 3

Rodeo, Montae Imbt 10

Carnival, Virginia Jane Harris 14

Poetry

Time, Unhunted, Rena Furlong 9

No Leaves Fell, Montae Imbt 9

Question, Montae Imbt 21

On THE Lonely Days, Marlene Muller 22

Out of Season, Barbara McLellan 22

The Return, Barbara McLellan 23

Features

Visiting Celebrities 7

The Catcher in the Rye (Book Review) , Doris Waugh 19

Art

Photograph, Barbara Jobe Cover

Spring, Claire Cox '. Frontispiece

Tree, Phyllis Birkby 5

Woodcuts, Claire Cox, Martha Harris, Jean Hollinger \2-\?>

Spots, Ann Brown, Alice Griffin, Barbara Schoonover IS, IS, 20
Scratchboard, Dolphine Cobb 17

Claire Cox

The Cry

by Barbara McLellan

XN THE back of a long narrow room a boy stands
by a sink holding some brushes under a faucet.
The room is crowded with drawing tables and with
blatant, colorful signs — the kind you see in dress shop
windows. Most of the signs read in large, urgent let-
ters: SALE. The narrow, crowded room is a sign
shop; the boy standing by the sink is a "shopboy," an
apprentice cleaning brushes. He is young — around
eighteen — but already his hands are making love to his
brushes as he performs a shop-boy's familiar ritual, his
fingers feeling the force of the water, squeezing
the paint from the brushes, gently shaping the tips.
One wonders at the deftness and tenderness of his
long, quick fingers because he does not watch what he
is doing. His dark eyes are not looking at his finger-
tips wooing the thin sable into a razor-true wedge; his
eyes are watching the back of an old man's head bend-
ing over a drawing board in the front of the shop,
turning toward the palette on the stand beside him,
and bending again.

The man he is watching is tall. He has white, wiry
hair and a mustache; and, although the rest of the men
in the shop are in short sleeves, this man has on a coat
and tie. His name is Eric Lowe. It is THE Eric Lowe.
Eric Lowe, the former art director of Tilman's in
Chicago, the top artist among that royalty of show-
card writers who carry their kits like accolades, the
goldleaf craftsmen. The boy is watching Eric Lowe,
the fabulous cardwriter who is almost a legend. He is
watching the dance in his brush, the surety of his fin-
gers, the deliberate accuracy that speaks of years over
a drawing board, the finished perfection telling its tale
of a craftsman.

It is closing time, and the other two cardwriters
have left. Eric Lowe is leaving, too. As he crosses the
room, he pauses at the board where the boy is cutting
in a silk screen design and stands for a while, his pipe
between his teeth. Finally, "How old are you, boy?"

"I am eighteen." The boy shrugs toward the design
and shakes his head and goes on working.

Eric Lowe does not yet leave. With his eyes on the
boy's hand, cutting in the screen, he stands lighting his
pipe. Putting his lighter in his pocket and turning to
leave, he says, "You have a steady hand."

The boy puts down his blade and watches him go
out the door. The older man pauses an instant before
he opens it; and his hands rise to his coat collar, thumbs
extended under his lapels, lifting the coat a little as
his shoulders shift its weight. His fingers flick a non-
existant particle of dust from the sleeve. It is a gesture
of gold-headed canes and the spats of Vaudeville.

The boy is still watching Eric Lowe, but he is no
longer washing brushes ; he is painting a sign. The sign

says SALE, but it says it in Eric Lowe's alphabet, with
Eric Lowe's slant. There are other bits of craft in the
boy's sign that have been added piece by piece from
Eric Lowe's perfected style. There is another shop boy
in the back washing brushes. The boy with the dark
eyes is doing a layout, painting an oil sign, registering
silk screens. He pushes a squeegee, he works the cut-
all, he paints with the airbrush. He is working hard.

On this particular afternoon he and Eric Lowe leave
the sign shop together. Eric carries with him his gold-
leaf kit. They stop in front of a new real estate build-
ing and set up their equipment on the sidewalk, and
then the boy watches Eric Lowe as he does a goldleaf
job. He watches him pounce the pattern on the glass,
smear the glass with his own special gelatin mixture,
cut in the letters, and peel the gelatin off. And he
watches as Eric Lowe applies the gold. It is music. He
takes out the wide, thin gilder's tip with its expensive,
sensitive hairs, and opening the book of twenty-four-
carat gold sheets, gleaming between leaves of white
tissue, he flicks the gilder's tip across his wiry white
hair and holds it poised for a split second, an inch
above the book in his left hand. The gold sheet leaps
electrically to the tip, and he carries it quivering to
the glass to leap and stick there, tight against the glass.
He has done it all in one motion with a quick, shining
rhythm like an insect's dart. Now he is peeling off the
rest of the gelatin and painting in the black shadow.
The boy has said nothing.

This has been a day in old man Will's sign shop.
Now it is night. There is one drawing board light on
in the shop; and people passing outside occasionally
stop and press their noses against the glass and, seeing
what is inside, shrug their shoulders and walk on. A
figure sits at the drawing board. It is the boy, and he
has before him a stack of newspapers. In his hand is a
brush. He is painting black alphabets over and over
on the sheets of newspaper. Now he is laughing. Now
he is swearing. He snatches the sheet he is working on
from the board, crumples it in his hand, throws it on
the floor, and reaches for another. Hours pass. He is
stiU lettering. It is beginning to grow light when the
door opens, and Eric Lowe walks in. The boy turns,
"Hullo, what are you doing here so early?"

"Got to get that rush job out for Blair's this morn-
ing. What brings you out in the wee small hours?"

"Haven't been home. Guess I didn't realize I'd
stayed so long."

Eric Lowe walks over to the easel, grinning. He
picks up a sheet of frantic alphabets and looks at it
a long time. Now, not grinning, he says, "You do
this very often?"

"Yeah, pretty often."

"Just practicing alphabets?"

?age 3

"Yeah, just practicing alphabets."

Eric Lowe is not even smiling now. He is walking
toward the door, his thumbs straightening his lapels,
his fingers flicking the invisible dust from his sleeve,
and as he leaves he is saying from the door, "Do you
know why you do it?"

The boy does not move. He sits looking and look-
ing at the shop, at the drawing boards, the brushes,
the paint, the signs. We must look, too. It is a sign
shop. But it is also something else. It is circus. It is
pure theater. Grinning epson board clowns and color
in crazy, happy, frantic display. It is white blankness
coming alive. The sawdust-dry stench of tempera, the
hectic deadlines hovering in the air like opening nights.
It is everything gaudy and loud and brash and some-
how beautiful — and terrible. This is what the boy
sitting in a crowded room painting black alphabets on
sheets of newspaper sees. The boy is speaking now, half
audibly, "Why? . . . because if I were anywhere else
I know I'd smell it. I'd smell that tempera and come
right back. . . . That's all ... I couldn't go anywhere
else." He is smiling now and he addresses the vacant
doorway. "You ask me why. I wonder. I just wonder
why you left Chicago and came back to work in Will's
dirty sign shop. I'll bet a three-headed nickel you
smelled it, too ... it gets like that."

Now on the door of a second room over a side street
loan company there is a sign. It says ARTCRAFT
DISPLAY CO. The sign is two weeks old. The boy
has lettered his name at the bottom and after it the
word "president." Inside the door the boy with the
dark eyes sits alone lettering on newspaper. Sometimes
he gets up and washes some brushes; sometimes he runs
his hand over a second-hand cut-all. He does this for
several hours. Once the telephone rings. The boy
clears his throat and lifts the receiver, "Artcraft Dis-
play . . . Who? ... no ... no .. , you must have the
wrong number." He returns to the newspapers.

In old man Will's shop the boy walks from draw-
ing table to drawing table. The place has not changed.
It is still crowded, still busy. A shopboy washes
brushes at the sink; a new man sits at his own old
board. He stops at Eric Lowe's board. Lowe grins,
"How's business?"

"O.K. It's O.K. They trickle in."

"Not keeping you busy yet?"

"Give 'em time. It's coming. It's slow, but it's
coming. They come thinking they'll get cheaper rates,
or because they want a job in a hurry when you're
booked up. Sometimes they're just looking for some-
thing different. It's slow though."

"And when they leave do they come back?"

"Yeah, Eric, they come back. They like it. They
really do. It's the damnedest thing."

"I told you it would be that way. It doesn't matter
about the things you can't do. You can find a way
to do it anyway, you'll improvise. Your stuff's gay.
It's loud and it'll sell their merchandise. You'll be
all right."

Page 4

"Eric, there's so fool much I still can't do. I haven't
got control like you. Mine is all over the page. It's —
oh, I don't know — it's slapstick, screwball."

"You'll be all right."

"Goodbye, Eric."

"Goodbye, boy."

Night. The city noises have stopped. The boy is
alone in the second-story room that is Artcraft Dis-
play Co. He is talking. But there is no one with him.
He is talking to the room itself. The boy is talking to
the slanting drawing board with its maze of color im-
posed on color, the low, knee high windows, the gaudy
signs, the creaking boards, the odor of tempera, the
crumple and clutter in the corners, the cartoons tacked
on the walls. He is talking to the very space within
the walls. This night is months of nights. It is the
night when the boy moves a brush frantically over a
piece of canvas, with a set of oil paints at his side and
a grin on his face. It is the night when he sits lettering
alphabets, methodically crumpling each sheet into a
wad to join others like it on the floor. It is the night
when he climbs tiredly up on the long work table and
lies down but does not sleep. Instead, he moves his
eyes around the room and softly, lovingly, swears at
the shop. "Damned old paint jar, damned old brushes,
damned old dirty shelves. And you, fool epson clown
over there, do you hear me? Shut your silly face. Bas-
tard clown." This is the night, the months of nights,
and the cries alone in a sleeping city — the cries of
"Shop, Shop, Shop!"

Art Display Co. has a new location. There are two
large rooms now instead of one small one. There is a
new cut-all and an expensive airbrush on the shelf.
There is a shop boy. The telephone rings often, and
there is a work calendar on the wall with deadlines
scheduled for an entire month. The boy is bending
over a drawing board and shouting to the shop boy in
the next room when the door opens, and Eric Lowe
enters.

"Eric! It's about time you made it up here to see
the joint. What do you think? How do you like it?
Not much like the old place, is it?"

"No. It looks great. Lots of working room, too.
You could use another man up here."

"Lord, could I. I need six men. I'll swear I'd give
my painting arm to get a good man up here. We're
booked for weeks. I'm going crazy. Do you know
anybody?"

"As a matter of fact that's what I came about."

"You did? Who, for Pete's sake?"

"Me."

"What did you say?"

"I said I will take the job."

"My God, you're not serious?"

"Sure I'm serious. The business is ready for it. We'd
get along. You could use a gold leaf man."

"Where do you want your stuff? I should push my
luck and ask questions? Far be it. Just where do you
want your stuff? Anywhere you say."

Eric Lowe is laughing as he leaves, straightening his
coat with that gesture of hands and shoulders, fingers
flicking the sleeve. "The back room's O.K. Set me up
in the back room. I'll send my junk in the morning."

Eric Lowe is in the back room lettering over the
drawing board. His radio is tuned to a symphony. He is
working accurately but rapidly; and the signs around
him are the planned, deliberate cardwriter's perfec-
tion. In the front room the boy works in a maze of
color and of black letters to the blare of hit tunes from
his radio. Around him are stacks of expectant white
sheets of epson board. He fills a sheet, reaches for an-
other, answers a ringing telephone and turns away
business, "No . . . no, I'm sorry . . . not possibly by the
18th . . ." He has filled the sheet already with color
and is reaching for another. More color. The signs
around him are free, crazy, easy. The telephone is
ringing. "Yessir . . . I'll have it ready next . . . Satur-
day? Couldn't possibly, no sir . . . I'm sorry . . ."

All the days run together into one long stretch of
deadlines until it is spring, and there is a circus in
town. On the door of Artcraf t Display is a sign which
says "Out to Lunch." It is not lunch time, but the
sign says so anyway. Outside a crowd has gathered to
watch the parade. Eric Lowe and the boy are moving
behind the line of people elbowing and pushing, peer-
ing for an opening in the mob. With a shout the boy
climbs onto the hood of a car and turns calling, "Up
here, Eric. You can see for miles." But Eric is no-
where to be seen, and the parade is coming — the
painted, dizzy clowns, the loud brassy music, the
laughter, the spangles, the show artists, the color — the
circus. Then it is over, and the boy rides along with
the mob down the street; he goes up the stairs to
the shop.

He opens the door, stands, and stares.
Stares at the once white wall behind his
drawing board, and at Eric's "Couldn't
find a place where I could see," he does not
utter a sound. He merely stares at the wall.
The wall behind the drawing board, cov-
ered now with spangles, color, clowns —
filled now from the door to the other wall
with a perfect and complete painted circus.
He turns to Eric, painting in the last yellow
dots on the barker's tie, and with a sweep-
ing bow, says solemnly, "Truly a magnifi-
cent circus, Mr. Lowe. It has always been
my theory that when one cannot view a
circus properly, one should make his own
damn' circus."

Eric Lowe replies, "I share your senti-
ments, sir," and they shake hands formally
and return to work. The boy to the draw-
ing board in front of the circus — to stop
occasionally and look up into the wide
painted grin of the clown on the wall, per-
manently upon the wall, comic infinitude
on the wall of the sign shop. The phone
jangles. The frantic day moves into night.

On most any of the nights now, the two men can
be seen working late into the night. Two army cots
have been placed in the back room, and on these nights
they fall into the cots and sleep through the short
dawn hours. Sometimes they don't sleep. Sometimes
they talk. "It was different then, son. Back then it
was a craftsman's heyday, painting election banners
and vaudeville backdrops. We even ground and mixed
our own paints. Things change. It was different
then . . ." and on into the night ". . . and that teacher
thought my brother could draw. She failed me on
drawing; so I quit school for a couple of years and
learned to letter show cards and to paint. When I
knew enough I went back . . ."

"I never knew you played in a symphony orchestra,
Eric."

"I did. Composed a concerto, too — damn good
concerto."

Or, "... a what?"

"A puppet show. Designed the costumes, wrote the
music, and made the puppets. Even took one of the
parts. The thing's still running out West."

"What play was it?"

"It was the Passion play. I took the part of the
Christ. Don't laugh."

The boy lies on the cot absorbed in the business of
putting out a cigarette in the dark. The dead end of
the cigarette is carefully aimed at the red glow in the
bottom of the ash tray. "I'm not laughing." The
crunch of the hard ball of heat being pushed into soft
ash on the porcelain of the tray is the only noise in the
room. The dead cigarette pursues the scattered red
dots, grinding out each one. "I'm not laughing." It is
very quiet. The night moves into day.

The boy holds in his hand a sign. Clipped
to the top of the sign is a note scribbled in
pencil: "Sorry, this won't do. Give it to us
again with some action in it." The boy is
swearing under his breath as he crumples
the note and flings it toward the trash can.
He looks at the sign lettered in Eric's per-
fect script and then slides it behind the
cabinet. He begins painting the same copy
in his own abandoned script on a fresh
board.

Another day. The boy removes a note
from a sign for the Jew who runs the jew-
elry store down the street. "Get some life
in it." He slides the sign behind the cabinet
and gets out a new sheet of poster board.
There are five signs now behind the cabinet.
A bottle has appeared inconspicuously on
the shelf by Eric's drawing board, and there
is the stale smell of gin in the back room.

Eric Lowe enters the front room, walks
to the boy's easel, and puts down the sign.
The paint is still wet. It is for the jewelry
store down the street. The boy looks at it a
long minute and then turns his eyes toward

Phyllii Bhkby

the tall white-haired man standing at his side and
finally toward the floor as he says, "No, Eric. No, by
God, no." On the sign are Eric Lowe's careful letters
distorted and forced into the slant and rhythm of the
boy's own careless script. He gives the sign to the shop
boy. "Here go take the fool his precious sign."

The Jew from the jewelry store stands in the shop
facing the boy, the sign in his hand. There is no one
else in the shop.

"You're crazy. You don't know good art work
when you see it." The boy is almost shouting.

"Art work, the devil. I don't want art, I want signs
to sell my stuff. I want signs that jump at customers
and talk to them. This stuff's got no life in it."

"It's craftsmanship. It's the best sign work in the
business — "

"It's dead, and if you did it you've lost your touch."

"I didn't. The best show card writer in this state or
any other did your sign. Eric Lowe painted that sign."

"Well, I'm not having any more. I don't care if
Rembrandt painted it. And if you're smart you'll get
rid of that deadwood and get somebody else that can
put some zing in a sign."

Eric Lowe has entered the doorway. The boy
glances up, sees him there, and watches him turn,
straighten his coat, and walk out the door. He half
rises from the stool in front of the drawing board,
then sits down again, lights a cigarette and says to the
Jew in a voice totally devoid of expression, "Get out,
please."

He sits before that huge easel angling its fused, over-
lapping color across the room from wall to wall and
stares, not seeing, into the wide painted grin of the
clown on the wall, while outside the city slowly dies
its nightly death. Honky-tonk music of the beer joint
across the street, laughter of the theater crowd, tire
and asphalt screams, and the regular green, now red,
now green, out, on, out reflection of the corner traffic
light on his window slack, cease, die. The bank clock
chimes incongruously in the tiredness. Gong — gong —
gong — a silly midnight noise. He rises and crosses the
room, his hand fingering toward the light cord, but
he stops and puts his hand, instead, in his pocket, feel-
ing for a cigarette. Dead, dead city. Its only visible
pulse is the light across the street. Red diffusion — now
highlights, now shadows. Suddenly, sharply, it is as
if he has just walked into the room — that dry, saw-
dust smell of tempera — and out of somewhere, out of
another night, out of the hesitant shadow, rises the
old cry, "Shop, Shop, Shop!" He turns his eyes to-
ward the walls, the clutter on the floor, the grinning
epson clowns, and finally, toward the black silhouette
of a jar of paint brushes starkly visible against that red
glow. And again the old cry rises, "Shop, Shop, Shop!"
He turns and snatches at the light cords as he goes,
crossing the room to the shelves where he pauses,
watching the walls, signs, color, clutter leap familiarly
into place with the staccato flashes of the long fluores-
cent tubes sputtering their blue beginnings. He takes
a large can marked WHITE from the shelf, finds a

Page 6

wide, stiff four-inch brush, crosses the room and pulls
the drawing board from the wall. Dipping the brush
into the can he smears the painted grinning clown face
and then, starting at the bottom corner, he begins to
paint out the whole scene methodically, back and
across, back and across. The bottom part finished, he
stops, carefully, precisely, filling in the small area he
has missed, and then adjusting the easel so that it is
flat, he pushes it to the wall, and stands on it, painting
the top half, back and across, back and across. He gets
down, not looking again toward the wall, and care-
fully cleans the brush, scrubbing it against the palm of
his hand, then wipes the rim of the paint can and taps
the lid on with the wood of the brush. He puts them
back on the shelf and stands for a moment. The neon
light across the street winks out and on and out
and on.

There is a roll of canvas in the other room. He goes
to it now, cuts a piece, gets out the stretcher, and be-
gins tacking it on. He works rapidly, jamming in the
tacks, hurrying with the corners. When it is ready he
throws it on the easel in front of the bare white, white
wall, plows furiously through a box of charcoal and
selects a stick. He is speaking now, half audibly,
"Quick . . . hurry . . . the head . . . soldier's forms . . .
rough . . . there's another painting . . . Christ mocked
by . . . quick . . . the grin . . . Eric's nose . . . more
curve . . . the mustache . . . Eric . . . clown . . . Christ
. . . mocked by . . . Laugh, clown, laugh . . ." He
opens the paints, the oils he had used in the old shop.
Now, working deliberately he moves his hand over the
brush rack, feeling, testing, pausing. He holds three
brushes in his left hand and with a fourth reaches to-
ward the oils, toward the canvas — his head bending
over the drawing board, turning to the palette on the
stand beside him, and bending again.

It is finished, the Harlequin Christ, Eric Lowe
mocked by cardwriters. He places it carefully, meas-
uring with his eye, in the direct center of the bare
white, white wall and hammers it up, — smashing the
hammer hard into the nails — driving them in and still
smashing. His breath comes in short hard jerks. He
seems tired, very tired. Now he turns off the lights,
lights a cigarette, and sits before the huge easel that
angles its length across the room, and stares, not seeing,
into the wide painted grin of the clown on the white
wall — waiting.

When the footsteps begin their doubtful probing
up the stars, he rises, unlocks and opens the door, and
returns to his seat. The hall outside has been recently
varnished, and the footsteps make crackling, sticky
sounds as they come. Now they are in the room. "I'm
here, Eric."

The odor of gin lies thickly on the air. "I know you
are, son." Eric Lowe brings his goldleaf kit from the
back room, opens it, selects a gilder's tip, and slips it
into his pocket. He pushes the kit along the easel to-
ward the boy. He reaches for his coat from behind the
door, fumbles his arms into the sleeves, and turns to-
(Cpntiinied on Page 23)

Visiting Celebrities

The Ninth Annual Arts Forum of 1952 — with its warding forum that Woman's College has ever had.

three days of music, dance, drama, creative writing, As a preview of March 13 th, 14th, and 15 th, the dates

and art — is less than a month away. Judging from of Arts Forum — three days that will surely prove

the plans of the various departments, this Ninth memorable for us — Coraddi introduces to you six of

Forum promises to be the most interesting and re- the critics who will be present.

KatKerine cAnne ^ortei^ Writing,

To those Woman's College students for whom
the world of the short story is becoming a more and
more familiar stamping ground, Coraddi proudly an-
nounces the forthcoming visit of one of the most cele-
brated writers in the field and one of your favorites,
Katherine Anne Porter. For all of those to whom she
is a stranger, a few introductory comments about her
work and place in the literary world may make it
easier to appreciate her performance in the role of a
literary critic.

Since the publication of Floiuering Judas and Other
Stories in 1930 few discriminating readers of the short
story in America have spoken of Miss Porter without
admiration and respect. She has become a legend even
though her popularity has been confined to a rela-
tively select group of readers. Amazingly enough, her
reputation rests on three slender volumes: Flotver-
ing Judas; Vale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning
Toiver, published over a period of about fifteen years.
But in an age of overwriting, her books offer refresh-
ing relief. From her experience and her travel, she
has collected material which has found its place in her
narrative art. She has observed with keenness and she
has remembered with accuracy. Her mastery of vivid
detail has few parallels.

Miss Porter's work in the field of the narrative can-
not be definitely classified. Floivering Judas is a col-
lection of short stories, whereas the stories in Vale
Horse, Pale Rider are more expansive in scope. The
three stories which comprise the latter book seem to
be embryonic novels, and they are usually considered
the author's best work. Two of these novelettes, "Old
Mortality" and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," deal with a
central heroine artistically placed in two different
settings. "Old Mortality" presents the traditions of a
Southern family with great richness and beauty of
detail and with a strong, sure sense of the past. The
title story recreates the American scene during the
first World War. Both stories possess an inexplicable
spirit of loss. Some important human value has been
irretrievably swept away; some heroic search for
fullest life has been hopelessly thwarted. In her fore-
ward to Flowering Judas in the Modern Library edi-
tion Miss Porter explains that her "energies of mind
and spirit have been spent in the effort to grasp the
meaning" of the heavy threats of world catastrophe,
"to trace them to their sources and to understand the
logic of this majestic and terrible failure of the life of
man in the Western world." Her stories are not illus-

trations of moral law or social behavior, however.
They are "true testimony" concerning human rela-
tions in all their shifting phases and in the moments
when they come strikingly into focus. "They live lit-
erally by faith . . . they cannot be destroyed altogether
because they represent the substance of faith and are
the only reality."

The purity of Miss Porter's style is due to her poig-
nant conciseness, her Chekhovian sublety, and her
artistic selectivity. She is most concise when she is
most objective. In "The Cracked Looking Glass" and
"Noon Wine" the ability to hold her subjects at arm's
length allows her to achieve fine structural symmetry
and totality of effect. "The Downward Path to Wis-
dom" is an excellent example of the understated story
which leaves her reader vaguely suspicious that he has
not grasped its meaning. The sudden impact of reali-
zation does not come until some minutes after he has
closed the book. Careful selection of details lends itself
to richness of texture and to a high distinction in
character delineation.

Miss Porter was educated in a private school and
from an early age showed interest in writing short
stories. It is interesting to note that she began doing
her serious writing without coming into contact with
professional writers or aligning herself with any par-
ticular school. It was not until much later that she
became associated with a group of Southern writers of
which Robert Penn Warren, last year's Arts Forum
critic, was a member.

Miss Porter knows France, Germany, and Mexico,
and effectively deals with them in her stories. Many
of her earlier pieces reflect the Mexican Background,
and her long forthcoming and eagerly awaited first
novel uses German and French as well as Mexican ma-
terial. Excerpts from this unfinished work. No Safe
Harbor, appeared in the 1950 October, November,
and December editions of Harpers. They found im-
mediate critical success and awoke new hope that the
book will soon be published in its entirety. Miss Porter
has translated and published a collection of French
songs, and she is noted for her very excellent transla-
tion of the famous Mexican picaresque novel. The
Itching Parrot. Employing a more native setting, she
began work in 1927 on a study of Cotton Mather.

In 1931, after the publication of her first book, she
was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1940
she received the gold medal of the Society for the

Libraries of New York University. With this impres- happy one and that this phase of Arts Forum will be
sive literary career behind her, we may safely assume interesting and stimulating to all who attend,
that this year's choice of writing critic has been a — Gwen Hamer.

^ursei^, ^ehl, Howard - - - dAxt

>^^<HREE leading artists of the Southeast, Stuart
V-X Purser, Wolfgang Behl, and Robert Howard, will
be present at Arts Forum this year to present their
theories and ideas on the trends in art today. STUART
ROBERT PURSER is a leading painting teacher in
the Southeast and has exhibited in various southern
states, winning several awards. He is noted for his ex-
perimentation, and his painting, which is fresh and
stimulating, provides answers to some of the challenges
before the artist today. He follows the current trend
toward abstraction. Guy Northrop of the Memphis
Commercial Appeal, writes of his winning the Third
Memphis Biennial Exhibition — "His two paintings
feature the most original use of color in the entire
show. Both delve into the use of the complements,
blue and orange, without any need to 'fake' subject
matter." Purser is a native of Arkansas, and has studied
at Louisiana College, The Art Institute of Chicago,
and abroad. He has taught at Louisiana College, The
University of Chattanooga, The University of Mis-
sissippi, and at present is head of the art department at
The University of Florida.

WOLFGANG BEHL, a noted contemporary sculp-
tor, has exhibited at the Virginia Museum of Fine

Arts, and in 1950 he had a one man show at the Bertha
Schaefer Gallery in New York. Currently Mr. Behl is
teaching sculpture at Richmond Professional Institute
in Richmond, Virginia. Born and educated in Ger-
many at the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin, he has been
in this country for several years, having studied at
the Rhode Island School of Design. He is now an
American citizen, and has contributed to American
sculpture. He interprets animal and human forms in I
a variety of media. With quiet authority he stresses ;
mass and essential structure. In mass some of his
works recall Henry Moore, others incorporate almost
a Gothic stylization. His work is said to have the
evocative quality of authentic symbols.

ROBERT HOWARD, a promising young artist,
who is now a visiting sculptor at the University of
North Carolina, will be another artist present for
the Arts Forum. A native Oklahoman, he has studied
at Phillips University and The University of Tulsa in
Oklahoma. During World War II he served three
years in the European theater, and afterwards he
studied with Ossip Zadkine in Paris.

— M. A. C.

^oss Lee Finny^ - cMusic

Among Ross Lee Finney's awards in the field of
music are the Connecticut Valley Prize in 1936, the
Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and Guggenheim Fellow-
ships in 1937 and 1947. Some of his most noted com-
positions are: a piano concerto, a violin concerto,
Bleheris, Communique, and Pilgrim Psalms; he is also
the author of The Game of Harmony. Last year Mr.
Finney appeared on this campus as an Arts Forum
speaker, and this year the Woman's College School of
Music will welcome again their dynamic critic of
1951.

A native of Minnesota, Finney attended the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, received his B.A. at Carleton
College in 1927, and then continued his study at Har-
vard. His composition teachers included such noted
musicians as Nadia Boulanger, Alban Berg, and Fran-
cesco Malipiero.

Mr. Finney came to teach composition at the Uni-
versity of Michigan in 1948 after teaching at Carle-
ton, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hartt School of Music in
Hartford, Connecticut, and Amherst. During these

years he founded the Valley Music Press — unique in
that it functions as a pubHsher of contemporary music
and that it operates on a non-commercial basis.

During the Second World War, Finney transferred
his ingenuity to the fighting areas as chief of the i
I. D. C. in Paris and later as a member of the O. S. S.,
winning the Purple Heart and the Certificate of Merit.

Last year Mr. Finney charmed his audiences with
his command of the musical language. His criticisms
were highly constructive and his analyses of the Alban
Berg Violin Concerto and the Bartok Concerto for
Orchestra proved inspiring and thought provoking.

In the informal sessions Mr. Finney produced his
guitar and sang folk-song after folk-song. His talk of
the University work and his method of teaching com-
position in private lessons was fascinating.

The composition students of Woman's College an-
ticipate Mr. Finney's return, with high hopes that the
standard of work here has gone up from last year's
promising peak.

— Lucile Hassel.

Jean Erdman ^ance

fiORSAKING New York for a week in March to
give Woman's College a delightful dose of her
own particular brand of dance knowledge is Miss
Jean Erdman noted for her teaching ability and tech-
nical and choreographic skill.

She was born in Honolulu, and went to grade school
there, studying both Japanese and Hawaiian dance
forms with native teachers. Later she studied Spanish
dance with Jose Fernandez, more Hawaiian dance
with Huapala, ballet at the School of American Ballet,
and modern dance with Martha Graham, at Benning-
ton School of the Dance, and at Sarah Lawrence Col-
lege where she was graduated in 1938.

After her graduation she joined the Martha Graham
company and remained with them until 1943. In
1944 she left Graham to organize the Jean Erdman
Dance Group, but returned as guest artist for the
1945-1946 season. In a way Miss Erdman could be
considered one of dance's goodwill ambassadors. At
the New Dance Group Studio she has taught the Ha-
waiian hula and Spanish dance in addition to her regu-
lar modern dance classes, while in the summer of 1939
she taught Graham techniques as guest instructor at
Kulamanu Dance School in Honolulu. In the summer

of 1949, she was invited to teach at the University of
Colorado, an engagement so successful that she has
returned with her group every summer since then.
She has also taught dance at Columbia University and
at present has her own studio in New York.

Miss Erdman has produced a large number of
solos, the best known among them being Hamadryad
(1948), Dawn Song (1945), Creature on a journey,
and Ophelia (1945). Most of her later works have
been choreographed to use her group of four young
dancers. These larger compositions include Sea Deep,
Forever and Sunsmell, Changing Moment, lo and
Prometheus (1951), Sailor in the Louvre (1951), The
Perilous Chapel (1949), The Fair Eccentric or the
Temporary Belle of Hangtoivn (1950), and Daugh-
ters of the Lonesome Isle (1945 ) .

In contrast to the very literal approach of many of
today's dancers. Miss Erdman 's dance is rather unreal-
istic. It has a breath of out-of-doors, a reflection of
nature rhythms, a somewhat delicate elfin quality. All
this, plus speaking ability, and a sparkling personality,
adds up to make Jean Erdman one of Woman's Col-
lege's attractions of the year!

T^ime, Unhunted

by Rena Furlong

Time lies in the grass
lost and still:

Unhunted.
Small red time that someday
will be found,
and because unhunted, will
not give back the lost hours.

1^0 Leaves Fell

by MoNTAE Imbt

The unreality of this is

That it once was real.

How could this moment and I

Have been compressed into the same small dot on the
graph of time?

It had to burst

With all the terrible energy that time suddenly re-
members.

As if waking from a drowsing sleep —

During which there was no time at all:

The tide forgot to rise

And no leaves fell

And we were not older by a minute

Than yesterday.

Page 9

Rodeo

by MoNTAE Imbt

XT WAS roundup time at the Top Hat Ranch. A
wind that was blowing right off the hills re-
minded you that it was March. It was cold, and it was
awfully early in the morning. Roy, old Pop Patton,
and the new foreman, Mat, were cutting out some
extra horses, and lots of dvist and noise was coming
from the south corral. Hart Andrews, the owner of
Top Hat, stood outside the corral gate, looking at the
men, the horses, and the rope through the sandy haze.
He hardly took his eyes off Mat and watched the long
skinny man move easily in and out among the horses.
Evidently the newcomer knew his business, and any-
one who knew Hart Andrews couldn't have helped
feeling a little sorry for Mat. He could have been a
second Buffalo Bill, and it wouldn't have gotten him
anywhere with Mr. Andrews. After training his older
son. Hart Jr., for years, to be foreman, it wasn't much
wonder nobody else could please him. Andrews had
his own ideas about ranching, and three foremen in
the last four years hadn't changed him a bit. The
thing was he didn't want to change. The bank called
him "a stickler for details"; the government inspec-
tors dreaded the trips they had to make, and always
left muttering "ornery old cuss." To his face, the
ranch hands always called out a respectful "Evenin',
Mr. Andrews," but out of hearing range, it was "King
Crank" or just plain "King." Still, everybody had to
admit he knew ranching inside and out, even if they
didn't like the way he got things done. He had carved
the Top Hat out of nothing but grass hills. He'd made
it pay and grow and pay again. Now it was 150,000
acres of good graze lands that kept 6,000 head of
bawling Herefords fat enough to bring in the highest
market prices, as Mr. Andrews himself would say. He
told Mat, when he hired him, that the only way to
make a ranch pay was to run it strictly by the books.
Hart Andrews hadn't always talked about ranching
that way. Many people said that losing Hart, Jr., in
the war had changed him completely. In the past sev-
eral years, he had run the Top Hat just like a busi-
ness— and he had made it a very lucrative business.

Mr. Andrews and his son, Hart Jr., had been close.
He had taught Hart everything that the boy knew,
riding, cattle, and ranching, in general. Pop Pattoh
said that Mr. Andrews had started Hart riding and
roping when he was only five years old, and when he
was ten, he'd told the boys that Hart Jr., was going
to make Top Hat the best foreman ever. The two
would ride the range together, checking supply sta-
tions, patching fences, and talking over ways to im-
prove the ranch. They'd never missed a rodeo, and
Hart Jr., had never missed a rodeo prize from the
time he was fourteen until he joined the air corps after
Pearl Harbor. He worshipped Hart Jr., so much, it

Page 10

was like Pop Patton said — you'd never have known
King had another boy. He did though.

Danny was almost ten years younger than his older
brother, but he looked quite a bit like him. Danny re-
membered Hart pretty well even though he had been
only eight when Hart had been killed in 1945. He
remembered certain things especially well — like Hart's
winning the track meet one year and his speech when
he graduated from high school. Hart would always
let Danny ride in front of him on the saddle, and one
day, when Danny left the big corral gate open, Hart
had said that he'd done it, and had taken the whipping.
He remembered sitting around the fireplace in the big
room downstairs with Mom and Hart Jr., listening to
his father tell about the hard winter of '23, the big
roundups they used to have, and the first rodeo given
in Cheyenne, and lots and lots of stories about the
first years at Top Hat. You could see the pride in his
eyes then — the same as you could see it when he used
to look down over the maze of corrals from the back
porch — and when he used to plant the Top Hat brand
on the rump of a white-faced little Hereford — and
most of all when he would look at Hart Jr. Mr. An-
drews had sure changed, though, when Hart was
killed, and that had made everythmg around the ranch
different. Now he stayed in his ofl&ce and close about
the corrals almost all the time. He never rode out on
the range anymore, and last year he hadn't even ridden
in roundup. Danny had gone last year, though, for
the first time, and he had loved every minute of it.
Roundup usually lasted about two weeks — counting
the branding and picking that's done back at the
ranch. Then came the stock show and rodeo, and that
was the best part of all. People flocked from all over
the country to see the Cheyenne Rodeo; it was the
"wildest, wooliest show in the West" — the high spot
of every cattleman's year.

This morning Danny was sitting huddled on the
gate of the big corral picking the mud off the high
heels of his boots and watching the boys cut out the
horses. He was thinking about the rodeo and wonder-
ing why his Dad had never let him enter any of the
cowhand competitive events. He really hadn't said he
couldn't, but he'd never said he could enter, either.
Danny had almost asked him a couple of times before
last year's show, but in the end he hadn't. Maybe he
would this year; Dad had never minded Hart's riding
in the rodeo.

"Gee! it doesn't seem possible it's already roundup
time again," Danny thought. Somehow he knew that
his Dad wouldn't be going. He had never been on a
roundup with his Dad; he probably never would be.
He remembered Hart's saying once what a good
roundup rider their Dad was. Danny couldn't help

thinking about his Dad and wondering what it was
that made him different from Thorpe's dad, who
owned the Double H or Mr. Nuggent, who was the
owner of the Rocking R, for instance. He could talk
about horses, stock, rodeos, just about everything with
them. But somehow his Dad was different. They had
ridden together only a couple times — in silence.
Danny would rather have died than to have said a
word.

Danny remembered the day he asked his Dad for
a horse of his own. He had looked at Danny — a little
surprised and a little something else. Nevertheless,
the next day a gelding was saddled in the shed for
him. His dad had never taught him to ride Buskin
though; he left that up to Pop. Not that Pop wasn't
a good teacher — he was; Danny wished that some-
times his Dad had just come out and watched,
though. He knew better than to ask his father to the
junior riding shows, too. He had tried that once. Yet
Mr. Hanford never missed a single show that Thorpe
rode in.

The difference was a lot more than that, though,
Danny thought. It was the way his Dad looked some-
times. To be more exact, it was the way he lingered
over special trophies in the game room and especially
the way he looked at the painting that hung over the
fireplace in the big room downstairs. The painting
was a portrait of Hart Jr., done by one of his crew
a few months before his death. Dad and Mom didn't
sit in the big room much any more, and if they did,
it was just to please Dad. Everything was too quiet,
and Danny always felt uneasy. When he tried to talk
with his mother, all she had said was, "Sometimes
memories come too close for talk, Danny." Then
after a moment, she added, "I do wish Hart v/ould
let me take the painting from over the mantle." And
yet Danny knew that Mom missed Hart Jr., too.

Things were quiet in south corral; Danny looked
up to see his Dad coming toward him. Hart Andrews
was a big man, powerfully built. His hands and his
voice fitted him all over; you didn't argue with either
of them. His hair, almost completely white, looked
silvery in sunlight, and it set off the silver touches
on his belt and cuffs. His eyes were funny; they
could laugh with you or at you. Danny watched h-'m
walk right across the center of the corral until he
stood in front of him. "Danny," he said, "I think
your mother wants you to drive into town with her
this morning."

"But, Dad, I was going to help Pop and F.oy cut
some foals!"

"I think they can spare you," he said quietly. He
turned from Danny and called the boys around h'm
to tell them the plans for tomorrow and roundup.

It wasn't until about a week later that Danny real-
ized he had decided to compete in the rodeo events
this year. He also realized that he wasn't going to
tell his Dad anything about it. Roundup had gone
off fine. Twenty-four hands had gotten 5,000 head
of cattle together and were now herding them back

to the corrals for selection and branding. Mat had
done a good job; considering it was his first time v.'ith
the Top Hat outfit, he had done an unbelievably
good job.

Danny rode above a sea of curly white faces and
red backs, humming to himself. He had had lots of
time to think the past days, and he had made up his
mind. There wouldn't be much use in Dad's getting
mad if he didn't know about it until it was all over.
Danny slowed Buskin to a walk and thought, "If I'd
make a good showing for the Top Hat, Dad might
be proud of me. I'd have to make a good showing,
though, to face Dad afterwards — a durn good show-
ing!" Danny guessed he'd do best in cutting or
herding, because while Buskin was a dependable horse
all the way, he was a really fine cutter. Just then a
little maverick got frisky and made off for the creek.
Danny chased her back and stayed in the creek bed,
letting Buskin pick his way among the uneven lime
edges and brown pools. For an instant saw his own
face looking up at him from the water. Then his
horse's hoof shattered the picture.

The next morning Danny awoke to the bawling of
some 5,000 thirsty cattle. At first he had thought
that he was still on the range, but his soft bed quickly
brought him up to date and changed his mind. The
roundup crew had arrived late the night before, and
the boys had just herded the cattle into the big corral
and the south corral. Everybody had gone to bed
then, for the two hardest days of the year — the days
before the stock show and rodeo — were ahead. They
were long, noisy days, filled with the white heat of
branding irons and the smell of singed hair.

The rodeo completely changed Cheyenne, too. Lots
of new people that had "that tourist look" flocked
in for the show — expensively, even flashily dressed
people that drove big cars and left big tips. All the
prices on everything went up all over town for the
benefit of the visitors; no native ever bought any-
thing he didn't have to during rodeo time. And, of
course, everybody wore their loudest shirts, their
most faded levis, and their Sunday boots to make
the foreigners look even more foreign.

Thorpe Hanford was riding in the rodeo, too; so
Danny got a lift into town early in the morning with
him and his Dad. Thorpe had entered lots of events
for the last two years, and he acted as if the whole
thing was all in the day's work.

"Do you get nervous — out in front of all those
people, I mean?" Danny asked. He'd never roped or
cut or done anything like that with people watch-
ing him.

"No, you don't even know they're there," Thorpe
returned casually. "Where's Buskin, Dan?"

"I sent him into town on the truck last night with
the other Top Hat horses."

"You should have made your Dad bring him in
with 'Cimmaron,' in that satin-upholstered, air-con-
(Confinucd on Fi'gc 20)

Page 1 1

/rjf/ Hollinger

J.-a„ Holling,-

Carnival

by Virginia Harris

Three days ago Mike D'Angelo, the trapese artist,
had parked his car and the trailer at the back of the
carnival lot, near the rail fence separating the lot
from the pasture behind it. Now, hunched on the
running board of the old car was Danny, the boy who
worked for Mike, his arms locked in the fold of his
body for warmth. It was cold, but the chassis of the
two-seated Chewy cut the steady sweep of the wind,
and the occasional shiver that moved over him was
nervous. He was seventeen, but he felt the same as he
had on mornings a long time ago, when he had gone
outdoors winter mornings and seen the snow, new
and sharp and bright, lying on the ground.

In front of him were the people and the bright
lights of the carnival, j^ellow lights lining the wheels
of the ferris wheel, following them in to a blazing
center, and the yellow lights on the merry-go-round,
which threw the shiny red paint and silver poles
into sharp relief. They were the warmest lights he had
ever seen. There were yellow lights on the booths
lined with cheap crockery and fluffy satin dolls. He
and Mike had won a doll at Seminic's dart game in
the last town the carnival had stopped at. It had
looked like Stella, Mike's girl who worked for Arbino
the Wop at the coffee stand; and he and Mike had
set it on the shelf, beside Mike's shaving brush and
peroxide bottle, in the trailer.

There were yellow lights on the trees on either side
of the carnival ground, too: Danny had helped fasten
them up with bits of fine wire two days before. It
had been so cold that he had not been able to feel
his face when he had rubbed it with his hand. The
Man had slapped him roughly on the back and told
him he was more help than any five of these no-good
rubes. The lights on the trees moved and turned and
swayed with the wind. Danny watched them.

The people moving inside the circle of lights were
intent, laughing their screaming laughter, stumbling
and bumping into each other. They were laughing
to drown out the wail of the wind and the cat screams
from the animal shows, and Danny smiled. He was a
friend of Valeena who trained the cats and he was
helping feed them now. Cats didn't scare him (and
he liked the cold bite of the wind) . So many people,
big and small and fat and skinny — laughing, spend-
ing their money on necklaces and canes with yellow
balloons tied on top and lacquered black pottery cats
with sparkly eyes. But the sparkle stuff rubbed off.
He felt suddenly sorry for the cats. The lights and
the people had loud voices, but not so loud as the
metal screetch of the ferris wheel stopping and start-
ing or the howl of the steam calliope on the merry-
go-round. Then Danny spread the thin wings of his
nose and remembered the smells — hot popcorn, hot

Page 14

engine grease, and the papery sweet smell of the
women. Smells and noise and light and movement
balled up and rolled around inside his head.

Then the wind changed, began blowing on him
from around the front of the car; and he pulled him-
self deeper into his new shirt. It was a heavy flannel
hunting shirt that Stella had given him last month
for his birthday. It was covered with big squares, red
and black, just like the one that Mike wore on cold
nights before he went up for his act. Danny began
to think about the afternoon that he had, well, met
Mike.

He had been sleeping out for several nights, hitch-
hiking his way south. One afternoon an old Chewy
that had been wheezing along the highway behind
a long line of cars, trailers, and canvas-covered cage
things stopped beside him. There had been a trailer
hooked on back, new and shiny with big letters in
gold and red that spelled out "Michael D'Angelo —
The Falling Star." Under that, in smaller letters, were
written "Acrobatics, Trampoline." There had been
a shooting star painted on the side.

A man had leaned out the window on the driver's
side and called, "Want a ride, kid?" Danny had
gotten in and settled himself quietly on the worn seat.
He had learned that mostly people who pick you
you up don't want to talk, or if they do, they'll start
the conversation themselves. The stuffing was com-
ing out of the back of the seat, and a spring poked
into his leg through the worn seat covering.

He hadn't noticed anything about the driver at
first. The man had unnatural bright yellow hair and
a thin mouth, and he kept his eyes on the road. He
wore a trench coat and kept his left arm crammed
down between his body and the car door. Danny
saw that he drove with one hand and that when he
changed gears he kind of pushed his knee up to hold
the wheel. Then Danny knew that the man only had
one hand. The man had driven quietly for a while and
then had said, "Where you going, kid?"

"Florida, I guess."

"Oh." There had been a short silence. Then,
"Don't suppose you'd reach me a cigarette out of
the glove compartment, would you? Take one if you
' want." Danny snapped open the glove compartment
took out an unopened pack of cigarettes and began
to tear the cellophane from the top of the pack.

The man had said abstractedly, "Going to Florida,
hey? Whereabouts?"

"Maybe to Jacksonville. I guess Jacksonville."

"Nice place." Danny had moved over in the seat
and thrust a cigarette between the man's lips, then
struck a match and held it as the man inhaled. "It's
warm." Danny had been a little nervous about talk-
ing— he didn't talk much ordinarily — and he had be-

gun rolling the cellophane into a little crackling ball
between his fingertips.

"You got to go to Jacksonville?"

"No." Danny had spun the ball of cellophane onto
the floor. "Don't guess so. But it's warm."

Mike let the cigarette hang down from his lip and
the smoke slid in little curls up past his squinted
eyes. "Don't want a job, do you?"

"Depends on what doing."

"Putting up apparatus for me and helping the
Man put the show together." The cars up ahead
slowed down and Mike shifted gears with his knee
against the wheel. "We need someone. I have . . .
trouble getting my gear together sometimes and the
Man said to get someone in one of these towns along
here. No luck so far. We're heading south."

"You Mike D'Angelo?"

"Yeah," the man said abruptly.

Danny had been excited. An acrobat or whoever
worked for a circus. He had nodded and said, "I guess
so. I wouldn't mind. Noth-
ing better to do." Mike had
nodded too, and the ash had
fallen off his cigarette onto
his jeans. Danny, not think-
ing, had reached over and
brushed them off.

"Don't do that," Mike had
said loudly. "I can take care
of it myself." Danny had
settled back onto the cushion
and been quiet. That had
been a month and a half ago.
Now he knew how to put
up Mike's complicated ap-
paratus. In fact, he had to do it in about an hour
because Mike was doing one show tonight before they
pulled out.

He had met Stella at Mike's trailer the same day
he joined the carnival. She hung around Mike a lot,
in and out of the trailer all day when they were
playing a town; and Danny liked her. She was small
and pretty, with long hair and a small, sharp voice
like young birds. Mike and Stella got along pretty
well except they argued a lot. About Mike's arm,
Danny guessed. He had heard part of an argument
once. Mike had been saying, ". . . stop thinking
about it, you dumb broad. It's none of your damn
business what I think about it. It's my own . . ."
Danny hadn't heard any more, but he hung around,
and after about an hour they had come out of the
trailer together. Stella had had a queer, sappy sort
of grin on her face and her forehead and cheeks
had been red.

They argued pretty often and it made Danny feel
as if something were pulling him in two directions
at once. Stella was so small and soft, and had such
a sharp tongue; and Mike was a fine guy who was
missing a hand. Danny knew Mike was sitting out
behind the trailer by the fire keeping warm. Mike

dW

liked to sit outside, but not where he could see people.
Danny didn't know why, maybe because he had had
too much of them. Maybe Mike would like some
coffee to warm him up. He got up and pulled his
shirt down around his narrow hips. The night Stella
had given him the shirt. Mike had stood off in a
corner and been quiet and watched them. Stella had
put her arms around Danny's neck and kissed him.
Her hair had smelled sweet. Then he had seen the
way Mike was looking at him and he had backed
off from Stella. He felt the wind against his back
and started off through the dry grass toward the
trailer.

Mike was sitting beside the fire, a trench coat
pulled over his shoulders and buttoned once at the
throat. The collar was turned up around his ears,
almost meeting the shingle of bleached hair that he
wore brushed straight back. He had a narrow face,
sharp and sallow in the small light, with flat cheeks
and a pointed, cleft chin. The light caught on his
high forehead and the dry, yellow hair.

He was staring into the fire, his eyes half closed
and one elbow on his knee. Nothing moved except
his hand, which hung with fingers slightly bent and
swung rhythmically. The trench coat fell apart over
his knees and in the flickering glow the sequined belt
of his leotard glittered like a hundred small eyes. As
Danny circled the trailer, he lifted his eyes and
looked at the cold field in front of him. Then he
shivered and pulled his shirt closer with one hand.
There was still a lighter ice blue where the sun had
set, and the wrought iron skeletons of the southern
pines picked sharply at the fabric of the sky. Mike
turned his head and seemed to be listening to the dry
crackle of the stiff dead grass under his feet.

"Yeah?" Mike asked softly.

Danny started out in a loud cheerful tone, "Just
came around to see if you wanted some coffee. It's
cold and I thought . . ."

"You always thinking. Scram." There was no ex-
pression in Mike's voice; it was dead, flat crackling
sound like the grass breaking. Danny stopped short
and stared down at Mike.

"What's the matter with you? You got to go in an
hour. Probably freezing." There was a hesitating
warmth in his voice. He wanted to do something for
Mike.

"I don't want any coffee. And if I did, I could
make it myself, couldn't I?"

"Sure, Mike, but I thought you might like some
here."

"No, I don't want none here."

Danny felt himself shrink away from the sound of
Mike's voice. He never talked like that except when
he had had a fight with Stella, — Stella who was like
a doll. Then he always talked flat without moving
his lips, and he told Danny to go away.

"You ought to have something hot, maybe, and
I'm going to get it for you," he said rapidly, trying to
say the words in a hurry. Mike moved slowly, shifting

Page 15

one leg up over the other and slipping his hand up
under his coat. Danny saw the movement and the
lump the hand made when it fastened over the stump
of Mike's forearm. He said suddenly in a high voice,
"You want some coffee?"

"No, I don't, you goddamn fool. You should have
gone to Jacksonville."

Danny rubbed his hands against the back of his
shirt and the material was soft like a small animal.
"I like it here."

"Probably. Should have gone to Jacksonville." Mike
was quiet for a minute and Danny could see a small
jerking under the coat where Mike's fingers were
tightening. "You stupid kid. And that crazy broad.
Both taking care of me. It's a wonder I don't swell
up like a bag and bust. Get out of here." Then his
voice changed, became almost wheedling. "And say,
Danny, you go on over to Arbino's and get Stella.
You tell her I . . . got something for her. Something
she likes. If you want, tell her to bring some coffee."

Danny knew Stella was over across the grounds,
behind the plank counter serving coffee and dough-
nuts and making change. She would be trading cracks
with the men and smiling at the children and leaning
over to stroke the soft hair of the babies. He remem-
bered the drunken stain on her face and the wet look
of her eyes that time he had seen Mike and her leave
the trailer after the fight, and he did not want to go
and get her.

"I can make coffee here."

"You go and tell Stella I want to see her."

Danny pulled a pack of Luckies out of his breast
pocket and stuck his finger in through the hole in
the top. He felt around, found one, and tossed the
empty pack at the fire. It blazed briefly with a yel-
low light. "I won't do it. You go tell her yourself.
And she won't come."

Mike turned suddenly on the box and it cracked
under his weight. "Who says?"

"You had a fight." Danny lit his cigarette, hold-
ing the match between his middle and index fingers.
"You had a fight and she won't come."

Mike laughed shortly and turned back to the fire.
"Hell of a lot you know. Stella does what I say." His
voice softened, and Danny could barely hear it above
the wind. "And kid, don't talk back. Go and get
her. She'll come."

Danny dragged on his cigarette and the smoke ex-
ploded into the cold air. "You don't want to talk to
Stella. You only got a half hour before you got to go
up. Go on inside and I'll make you some coffee and fry
an egg and we can both go and talk to her after-
ward." He shifted his feet in the grass uneasily. Mike's
hand began to move under the coat, slowly, rubbing
around the stump.

"What is it with you, kid? Go get her."

"Go and get her yourself."

Mike turned on the box again, this time slowly, and
his wide-open eyes were on Danny's face. "Why don't
you want to go get her? Ain't I never done anything

Page 16

for you? I just want to talk to her. You're not think-
ing that she's too good for me, are you? You not let-
ting no shirt make you think she's God's answer to . . .
have you?" Danny's breath was cold and hard inside
his lungs. He took another deep drag from his cig-
arette, swallowed a little smoke, and began to cough.

"You better throw that cigarette away, young 'un."

Danny forced himself to stop coughing. "You know
I'm grateful, Mike." It was hard for him to talk.
"But Stella's working and you'll be going up in a
minute. I'll get her to come over and watch the act
and then, afterwards, we'll . . ."

"Stop talking and go get her. Now."

Danny's lungs were frozen inside him and he could
not take his eyes away from the moving lump under
Mike's coat. "All right!" He turned away and started
moving through the grass jerkily, as if he had no joints
in his legs. He looked back over his shoulder then, his
mouth opened wide, and the words came out without
his knowing it. He screamed, "Cut out playing with
your arm." Then he began to run, stiffly, around the
end of the trailer into the crowd. He was almost
crying.

He crossed the field. The barkers were shouting.
"Ten cents, one dime. If the wheel stops on the red
you win, on the black, you lose. A doll, a beautiful
doll, one dime. Animal show starting in five minutes.
He puts his head right inside the lion's mouth. Right
between the powerful jaws. Lemonade, popcorn, ten
cents, ten cents, a doll. You may win a beautiful doll."
He pushed through the crowd, using his elbows. He
wanted to hurt someone. There was a nigger woman
laughing with her head thrown back and the laughter
coming in great fat bubbles from her working throat.
He hated her and he shoved her with his hip when he
cut in front of her. He felt better for a while.

It didn't take long to get to Arbino's stand. He
stood a little way off for a moment, watching Stella.
She was talking to a man in a business suit with a grey
confederate hat on his head. They laughed and she
reached up to feel the material of the hat. She was so
small — almost a foot shorter than Danny — and her
hair was long and black. She wore it caught back with
a pin that sparkled with little pieces of glass. She had
big black eyes, too, and a mouth that was wet and red
and curvy. She always moved suddenly, and her skirts
fell away behind her in slanting folds as if she were
walking in a wind. Tonight she had on a windbreaker
with a little red scarf poking out above the collar. She
was so little and soft and sweet. And funny the way
she talked to people, sharp-like. She didn't talk sharp
to him, but in words that were salty. And she smelled
good.

Stella moved her hand from the man's hat, laughed
once more into his eyes and scooped up the piece of
change that he spun onto the counter. "Come back,
now," Danny heard her say, and he moved up to the
counter and lounged onto his elbows.

Stella looked up at him and smiled. "Hello, Danny.
You want something?" She walked up to the counter

toward him, piling paper cups into one another as she
came. She dropped them into the waste can and
stopped in front of him.

"Everything ok?" she asked. Danny noticed that
her thin wing-shaped eyebrows were tilted up on the
ends. The doll he and Mike had won looked very
much hke her.

"I guess so."

"You want something?" She began moving a wet
rag over the counter. "That shirt looks real good on
you, boy, if I do say so. Nice fit."

Danny grinned at her. "I hke it." Then he forgot
to grin and straightened up. "Mike says . . . that is,
Mike said I should come over here and ask you would
you like to go and see him now. He's got to go up in
half- three quarters of an hour." He stuck his hand
in his breast pocket and then remembered he was out
of cigarettes. "Say, you got a cigarette?"

Stella's face hardened. She got a half-empty pack
from the shelf under the counter and handed it to
him. "Keep it," she said. "Mike wants me to come
over? I don't suppose it occurred to the big slob that
he might come over here." A man came up. She took
his order, moved over to the coffee pot near Danny,
and poured some into a paper cup. "I don't suppose
it occurred to him that I might like it if he apologized
before I came trotting back, did it?" She took the
man his coffee, picked up his dime and flounced back.
She leaned over and talked in Danny's face, both
hands braced against the counter. "I don't suppose
he . . . oh, there's no point in taking it out on you."

Danny lit his cigarette
and moved back. He
wasn't listening to what
she had said, only to the
sound of her voice rising,
sharp and high over the
noises of the crowd, and
seeing her body push for-
ward with each word.
"You tell him to take it
. . . hell, tell him . . ."

Danny broke in. He
hadn't delivered all of
the message. He had to
tell her all of it. " He
said I was to bring you
back. He has something
for you." Stella held very
still.

"What?"

"He said he had some-
thing for you. I don't
know what. He didn't
tell me what."

"He . . ." She turned
suddenly and called to
Arbino, a tall, greasy-
looking dark man with

a wide, thick mouth who was making sandwiches.
" 'Bino, I got to go off for about an hour. That all
right?"

Arbino nodded, and sliced the knife through an-
other pile of sandwiches. Stella ducked under the
counter. "We'll go and see. And don't leave me, you
hear? Don't you dare go away from me."

They crossed the grounds quickly, not paying any
attention to the people or the barkers' high shouts. It
was about ten and the carnival was getting under way.
As they passed the cat show a crowd boiled out, laugh-
ing. The booths were doing a big business. The black,
laughing faces of the Negroes were turned queer shades
of grey green under the yellow lights. High school
kids on the ferris wheel were shrieking to each other
and rocking their cars back and forth as the wheel
turned. The calliope was wheezing out a Strauss waltz
flat on the high notes. The apes were howling. Round
lumps of muscle knotted under Danny's belt, and he
felt sick.

Mike was still sitting in front of the trailer, crouched
a little closer to the dying fire. Stella stopped beside
the trailer and stood for a moment, watching him.
Danny saw her hands pulling at the folds of her
skirt, white fingers digging into bunches of red ma-
terial. Then she started forward again, moving slowly
and smoothly. Mike raised his head and looked out
toward the now invisible row of trees. Stopping be-
side the fire, Stella raised one hand and pulled the ties
of her scarf out over her collar. They stayed still, one
staring into a dark field, the other pulling at a scarf.
Danny stepped forward through the dry grass to
build up the fire. He
crouched down by the
shallow pit and began
feeding twigs in under
the two-by-four across
the top of the fire. Then,
sitting back, he dusted
his hands against his
jeans. The wood caught
with small snappings and
he went to lean against
the trailer.

Stella shrugged and
put her hands into her
pockets. "What do you
want, Mike?"

Mike sat quiet a mo-
ment, watching the fire
flare along thedry needles
left on a pine twig. "Just
wanted to talk awhile
before I went up. Let's
go inside." He got up,
the trench coat hanging
from his shoulders like
some kind of a cape.
Stella laughed oddly, as
if she were taking short

Page 17

Dotphine Cobb

breaths. It made Danny uneasy. "Inside where it's
warm. Tliat all you've got to say?"

Mike stood beside her. "That's not enough?" He
was taller than she was and he stood so close that his
left arm was pressed against her shoulder. Danny saw
Stella shiver and move away. "I don't know. How
should I know?" They moved together toward the
end of the trailer. Danny followed them and closed
the trailer door silently behind them.

It was warm inside. The little heater in the corner
had almost gone out; it had probably emptied the
kerosene bottle, but you could still see a little of the
red glow through the isinglass door. Mike and Danny
lived in the back part of the trailer, and the front was
partitioned off for Mike's equipment. There was a bed
where Mike slept and a mattress in the corner for
Danny. A corner was curtained off for a bathroom,
and through the opening Danny could see a gleam
from the satin dress of the doll on the shelf. The air
smelled of the kerosene in the heater and of the stuff
that Mike used on his hair, and of musty old clothing.
Danny sat down quietly on his mattress and lit a
cigarette.

Mike and Stella eased down onto the edge of the
unmade bed, sitting at arms length from one another.
They looked like cold robins on a telephone wire, and
Danny half-grinned to himself.
"Well?"

"Well, what?" said Mike.

Stella crossed her knees and frowned. "I've got
better things to do than wander over here and sit
and . . ."

"What better things?"

"Don't be so damn . . . silly." She was looking at
Danny but Danny felt that she did not see him. He
was uncomfortable, and sick again, and he thought he
understood what she had meant about not leaving
her.

"I'm not being silly, you are." Mike stretched out
his good arm and gripped her shoulder. "You're so
damn stupid. You're such a dumb broad, such a half-
witted, stupid, dumb broad." His voice took on a
crooning quality, and he moved closed to her. "You've
got a brain like a dried pea. And it rattles when you
move, but you move so cute like grass in a wind." His
voice was sing-song and soft now, and he was staring
intently at that little of her face that he could see in
the shadow. "Like trees in a quiet rain and your
clothes move behind you so smooth and free." Danny
could feel something building, and it scared him. He
mashed his cigarette out and sat up. Stella was staring
at the floor and swaying a little with the rhythm of
Mike's voice. Mike's long-fingered hand began to
move on her shoulder, rubbing gently, and then it
disappeared down her back and she shivered all over.
Danny got up. "Cut it out," he said, "Stop it."

Mike snapped around and said, "Are you still here?"
Stella lifted her head, and Danny knew that she saw
him this time. "Don't you move, Danny." She looked

Page 18

as if she had been knocked awake. "Don't you dare
leave."

Mike tightened his hand on her shoulder cruelly.
"Shut up!" His upper lip hfted away from his teeth.
"Get out of here, Danny. Scram before I knock a hole
through you." There were rolls of dust on the floor,
and dirt was grained into the permanent wrinkles in
the bed sheet. There was a little smear of blood on
Mike's teeth as if he had bitten his lip. Danny began

to understand what he did not want to understand,
and he was afraid and began moving toward the door.
He pulled his eyes away from Mike's lip and then
Stella staring at him, and she was angry and afraid too,
but more angry than afraid. He stopped.

The stove gurgled; the sound was very loud in his
ears. He turned, and keeping as far from the bed and
the pair on it as possible, almost ran to the curtained
bathroom. He pushed the curtains farther to one side,
reached in and took the doll from the shelf. Then he
walked quickly, his heels cracking on the floor, opened
the door of the trailer and went out, leaving it open
behind him.

Stella screamed something at him, but he walked on
down the steps of the trailer. He started across the
carnival grounds, remembed that Mike's apparatus
was not up yet, and kept on. The yellow lights on
the trees were moving in the wind; the ferris wheel
was a circle of yellow light against the sky. He passed
the coffee stand and the Italian raised a hand to him,
but he went on. He crossed the last line of lights and
came out onto the highway. There were cars parked,
and he dodged between two of them, then waited for
a few of them to pass and went over to the other side
of the road.

On the other side of the highway there was a pile
of boxes that had been thrown there when the carnival
■ had been set up. He sat down on one of them and
put the doll down beside him. Reaching into his
breast pocket, he got a cigarette and lit it, holding the
match carefully between his middle and index fingers.
He took a deep drag and then knocked the ash off
against the edge of a box. Picking the doll up, he
settled it firmly between his knees. The wind was
blowing and the coal on the cigarette burned red in
the dark. Gripping the cigarette, lit end down like a
pencil, he pressed it, very slowly, against the soft face
of the doll.

^OOK ^EVIEW^

<T/ie Catcher in the Rye

by J. D. Salinger
Little, Brown Co., 1951

The idle bookstore-browser, thumbing the pages and
skimming the jacket blurb of J. D. Salinger's first
novel The Catcher in the Rye will find nothing very
unusual about the theme of the book. Volumes of
stories have already been written about a generation
bewildered by the complexity and ugliness of mod-
ern life.

But somewhere in the retelling of this familiar
theme, The Catcher in the Rye stops short of being
stereotyped. It became a disturbing novel about
young Holden Caulfield, whose feelings of revulsion
are uncomfortably contagious.

In brief. The Catcher in the Rye is the story of 48
hours in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield. A
boy who is strangely alien to everyday life, he has been
dismissed from school again, this time from Pencey
Prep School. Dreading to face the disappointment of
his parents, Holden disappears for three days into the
concrete-and-steel jungle of New York City. The
Catcher in the Rye is the story of what happens to the
boy while he is underground in New York.

Apart from the complex character of Caulfield him-
self, the events in the book have no real meaning. But
as they relate to Holden Caulfield — a young stranger
lost in a schizophrenic world — they fall into a sort of
pattern. The pattern barely stops short of being
tragic; it leaves the reader frowning over a story he
can only describe as "pathetic."

Salinger's leading character is sympathetic even
when he is least understood. Young Caulfield is
morally revolted by anything ugly, evil, or cruel, but
his appreciation of beauty and innocence is almost
painful. The most moving accounts in the book are
the conversations between Holden and his beloved
little sister Phoebe, a grave, too-wise child. This acute
love for a child's innocence is repeated in Holden's
frequent memories of his dead brother, who recorded
snatches of poetry on a baseball glove. The adult Caul-
fields remain vague and indistinct, stable adults who
hover in the background of an unstable world.

Many of fiction's leading characters have looked
upon the ugliness of the world, been appalled by it,
and drawn back in contempt. Holden Caulfield draws
back from it, not in contempt, but in despair.

Beyond his sister Phoebe, he has no real friends ex-
cept a former English teacher who takes him in and
makes him long speeches on life and its meaning.
When Holden awakes in the night to find the teacher
stroking his head affectionately, he leaves abruptly.
The ugliness of reality has ruined this for him, too.

On the train to New York, young Holden meets the
mother of one of his least attractive classmates. It is
typical of him that he tells her wonderful lies about
her son in order to make her happy.

Throughout the novel, the ugliness of reality strikes
at a boy who is a part of something better. In New
York City, he has a prostitute sent up to his room, but
finds he cannot go through with it. When he offers to
pay the woman anyway, she and the elevator boy beat
him up and steal his money. Yet this book is more
than the story of an idealist faced suddenly with a
world far from ideal. It is the story of Holden Caul-
field— an individual — and it is no trite message-bearer.

Young Caulfield reveals his own nature in answer
to a query from his sister Phoebe. Bewildered by his
expulsion from various schools and his seeming lack of
ambition, she asks him what he would really like to
be. He tells her:

"I keep picturing all these little kids playing some
game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of
little kids and nobody's around — nobody big, — I mean

except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some

crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch every-
body if they start to go over the cliff. I mean if they're
running and they don't look where they're going I
have to come out from somewhere and catch them.
That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the
rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only
thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

And it does seem a little crazy, in a world so smugly
sane that it has lost the gift for seeing children in
rye fields.

Notable about Mr. Salinger's literary technique is
his ability to capture the character of Holden Caul-
field and remain true to it throughout the book. While
the vocabulary is sometimes raw, it is true to the ver-
nacular and the thinking of the characters. He catches
the dialogue of prep-school boys in the opening chap-
ters when Holden talks with his classmates.

Jerome David Salinger was 33 years old this New
Year's Day. Holden Caulfield is a character he has
carried about in his mind for many years. He spent
ten years on The Catcher in the Rye.

At the end of the book, in a 2-page closing chapter,
Holden has a peculiar soliloquy that ties the novel up
in a disturbing package. "It's funny," he says, about
having written the story down, "Don't ever tell any-
body anything. If you do, you start missing every-
body . . ."

It remains to be seen whether The Catcher in the
Rye will be written off as simply another second-lost-
generation novel, or whether there is really enough
depth in the story to make it lasting. Certainly at the
end of the book, the reader is left wondering what will
become of Holden and the others like him. It is a dis-
turbing novel which will not be easily forgotten.

It has somehow become intensely important that
young Caulfield and his generation find the rye field
and the herd of laughing children,

Doris Waugh.

Page 19

Rodeo

(Continued from Page 11)

ditioned rig he keeps for that staUion of his," Mr.
Hanford said, smiUng.

The exact situation would have required a lot of
explaining, and Danny wasn't sure he wanted to ex-
plain. So he said, simply, "Dad's not coming in until
tomorrow, Mr. Hanford."

"What do you mean, not coming in 'til tomorrow,
boy? Your Dad was put on the welcoming com-
mittee to meet the governor today! He'd better be
in town today, or the Chamber of Commerce will be
out after him. He's supposed to drive his car in the
parade, too."

Danny didn't even hear what Mr. Hanford said
after he had said the words "welcoming committee."
He knew what that meant. His Dad would be sitting
in the big, flag-draped box right in the center over
the ring — watching everything and everybody. He
should have known his Dad would have been picked
for the committee. His Dad might have understood
if Danny could have told him about it when it was
all over. But wouldn't now — now that he would be
watching the whole thing. How could he do any-
thing right at all, knowing that his Dad was watch-
ing him? Suddenly he thought of Hart Jr., and a
funny sick feeling came to his stomach. He looked
out the car window at the stream of automobiles
ahead and behind them and dully realized that they
were all going to the rodeo in Cheyenne and that he

was going, too.

* * * *

They reached the show grounds an hour later.
Danny and Thorpe walked back to the desk to check
in, and then Danny went to find Buskin. He was
glad he had decided not to go to the parade down-
town. It was funny — the difference between the
rodeo to an onlooker and to a participant in the
show. Before now, Danny had heard the loud band,
seen the bright flags hanging down from the ceiling,
watched the people in the box seats while they
smoked cigars and long cigarettes and drank beer;
now he noticed the thick, spicy sawdust, the size of
the arena and the location of its gates, and the thick
haze of dust and smoke that kept pushing to the iron
beams under the roof. Then he looked at the little
herd of cattle in the arena; they seemed funny, too —
unlike any stock he'd ever seen before. Maybe it was
just that he'd never really looked at them before, but
right now, each little Hereford seemed to be a frisky,
headstrong problem on four legs. He had entered the
cutting division; that was picking five marked calves
out of a herd of twenty-five in the shortest time
possible. He stood there, wondering which calf
would give him trouble.

Danny watched a roping class, and then he walked
back to the horse stalls behind the arena section. Each
ranch rented a couple of stalls apiece for its horses
and painted its brand over the the doors, Danny

Page 20

went up and down two rows before he saw a top hat
painted big and black above the stall door. Old Pop
Patton had just finished putting some oats in "Cim-
maron's" nose feeder, when he turned around and
found himself face to face with Danny.

"What are you doing here? Everybody's been look-
ing all the ranch for you. Finally your mother figured
you had come to town earlier. Why didn't you tell
somebody where you were going?"

"I'm riding in the cutting class today. Pop. Please
don't say anything about seeing me — please — it's a
surprise."

Pop Patton looked slightly bewildered, but he kept
quiet. Just then the loud speaker alerted all the
cutting entries; so he told Pop to wish him good luck,
and he ran out of the stall rows down to the arena
rampart. He swung up on Buskin and walked over
to his place. "Dad's sittin' up there. Buck, boy, and
he's going to be watching everything we do," he said
to his horse, softly. "Help me keep my eyes open;
we've got to do good." The
bell sounded, and the gate
swung open. Danny swal-
lowed hard and galloped out
into the blaze of the arena.

Then in what seemed only
an instant, he was back be-
hind the gates again, pulling
Buskin to a halt, and listen-
ing to the announcer say,
"Andrews — Top Hat ranch,
fifty-two seconds . . . flat."
That was good. Danny knew
that was good. But he also
knew that the class had an-
other hour and twenty more
contestants, at least, to go.
He wondered what his Dad was thinking right now.
It was Thorpe Hanford who told Danny that he
had won the cutting section.

"I knew you had it, Danny — from the minute the
man said fifty-two seconds flat! You can't beat
that!" Thorpe cried, whopping Danny on the back.
Danny let out a whoopee, but inside his head, the
words "Now it will be all right — now it will be all
right," repeated themselves again and again. If only
he could see his Dad right now!

An admiring group formed around Danny to con-
gratulate him. "It's a new record here, isn't it?"
asked Crane Stemson, foreman at the Rocking R.

"It's bound to be something!" Thorpe answered.
Everybody laughed, and Danny did, too.

"Hey, Andrews!" a voice called from the desk.
"Presentation of awards for the cutting section!"
And Danny was hurried off to the arena platform.

Danny knew only that he wanted to see his Dad —
he didn't know how in the world to reach him. Hold-

ing his little silver cup in both hands, he ran out of
the arena section back through the rows of stalls.
Suddenly he thought that Pop might know how he
could get up to the boxes; so he headed for "Cim-
maron's" stall. He tore around a corner and almost
ran smack into — his father!

"Dad! What are you doing here? I was just trying
to find you. Did you — see me win?" Danny stopped
short and looked up at his father's face. His eyes
were cold steel; his mouth was set hard.

"What, in God's name, were you trying to do?
What did you mean to do?" he heard his Dad say.
Then he watched him turn and walk quickly out
to the parking lot area.

Danny rode home with the Hanfords early that
evening. All afternoon he had tried over and over
again to figure out what his Dad meant. He had
never seen his Dad so terribly angry. He wanted to
ask Mr. Hanford and Thorpe about it, but he just
couldn't somehow.

"Hope the rest of the rodeo is as good as today
was," Thorpe said, after they had gotten out of the
city traffic. "But, oh boy! Am I tired."

Danny didn't say anything; he just took off his
boots and stretched out his legs.

"You want to go into town with us early tomor-
row morning, Danny?" Mr. Hanford asked. "Thorpe
and I want to see that Palomino show."

"No, I guess not, thanks," Danny replied after a
moment. "I'd better stick around home tomorrow."

"You don't think anyone would make yoii work
after winning that cup with your fifty-two flat to-
day, do you?" He paused a second, then continued:
"You know, Danny, we're awfully proud of you for
winning today. Your Dad will be proud of you,
too; you're following right in your brother's foot-
steps."

"In Hart Jr.'s footsteps? How do you mean, Mr.
Hanford."

"Why, your fifty-two seconds flat cut a couple
seconds off Hart's cutting record of fifty-four flat
that he set back in '42. I don't think he'd mind a
bit, Danny; seeing that you kept it in the family, I
don't think he'd mind a bit."

Danny thought that Mr. Hanford was going to
say something more; so he turned to look out the
window. After a moment the numbness left him.
Then he took the silver cup out of his lap and put
it down on the floor by his boots.

Question

by MoNTAE Imbt

And yet it must be forgotten? —

That singing tenderness that would close about this

moment
And give us response to one another —
Lending light beyond these outer eyes
Offering fingers that are unafraid of tears?
But yet you look beyond me,
Into the southward blue —
Without an utterance.
Without experience.
Must all desires lie as leaves
Upon forgotten steps?

Page 21

On the Lonely Days

by Marlene Muller

See how the children laugh . . .

It is so good to see a group of youngsters gay,

To hear their innocent laugh,

To feel the sweetness and the joy therein.

It is something that an old spinster like me treasures

And remembers on the lonely days.

See how they point . . .

They point to me!

They see that I enjoy it.

They know I am a friend who shares their happiness.

And still they laugh.

And loudly . . .

And they titter . . .

And in a little group

They stare at me.

They point

At me . . . My God . . .

The children laugh

At me.

Out of a Season

by Barbara McLellan

The people-like toads roost under mud
In winter. Skin laxing, they lie.
Living on last season's saturate.
While the sand freezes between toes.
Loosing warts and growing lean.
They become a concentrate.
(Refrigeration is necessary;
Cold is anesthetic or a cathartic.)
Puffing out feathers, they hold their noses,
Swallow, and grow blessedly dull.
Time has a wisdom involved in matters
Of seasons, and alternation is a virtue.

The toad-like people are satiated —

After-summer monotones —

And it is relief, really, when

They feel the sun go for good,

Because the large long fingers

Of the darker cold reach under their eyelids

To make them weep an ice cocoon

In which to huddle and get back wings.

So long as things are grey completely

And bare, with no pulse at all.

So long as smoke rises up like bats

(But not like swallows) , it's all all right.

But if spring comes, a half-true lie
Out of turn in December, it is,
To say the least, upsetting.

Page 22

The Cry

(Coirtiniu'J from Pay^c 6)

ward the door. His hands rise to his coat collar, his the cot. He is tired, very tired, and he lies watching the

thumbs extend under his lapels; his hands fall. As the pink luminosity come and go through the window on

older man leaves, the boy sits hearing the steps, crack, Eric Lowe's jar of brushes. His eyes burn, and he ^ays

crack, crack, down the hallway, hesitating at ths stair, softly, into his teeth, "Cry, boy, cry. Where do you

now down and out the door. He rises, takes the gold- hide tears?" Outside, the neon sign winks out and on
leaf kit to the shelf and goes into the back room to and out . . .

TKe Return

by Barbara McLellan

Wasted down and washed over
With a thin, tense fragrance
That clutches in wisps at memory,

They, the lives he lived in once.
Move in transparencies across the tomb
Called memory. Leaning out longingly,
Fingering toward the old laughs, the old cries.
He would fit them once more around his days,
And wear them again — remembered gloves.

Like a crowd of grotesque dreams
In a hurry, they flee from him.
Flowing, plastic, into themselves.

It was like trying to ride his own shadow

Or stand on some wet beach

Where the small, quick waves

Softly sift out sand beneath

His feet. His poor face wondering,

His hands reaching still, he cries:

I, it's only I.

I've only been away . . .

You, surely you —

They stop to turn, facing him finally. .

In high, hollow tones, like echoes,

And with curling mouths, they taunt in laughter:

We, who are we? What are we?

And, peering at each lean form.

He bends to see and cannot answer.

Their faces are drifted over

With huge, white time.

He has even forgotten their names.

Page 2}

Comment on Forthcoming Issue

In keeping with our chief interest which is the creative writing done by students
on the campus, we are pleased to announce our Arts Forum Issue (Spring Issue)
made up of the best creative writing submitted for the writing paneL The Forum
provides impetus for better creative effort not onlv here, but throughout the Southeast.

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kid Trie-

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