Mouse

“And a mouse is miracle enough
to stagger sextillions of infidels.”
– Leaves of Grass

All eyes and ears
a tuft of gray fur
scoots across the cellar floor
on invisible feet

zigzags like a clockwork toy
and zips away,
his stubby butt-end
disappearing into the shadows

Behind a box marked Glacier Park,
hulled seeds in wisps of dryer fluff
define his winter den,
Whitman’s mouse.

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About the author
Carolyn (CAT) Phillips is a resident of Mercer County, a retired teacher of English and history, whose work has appeared in several journals. She twice won a contest for ekphrastic poems describing sculptures at Grounds for Sculpture. She continues to participate in a poetry group, established fifteen years ago, which meets at the Mercer County Library in Lawrenceville, and which is devoted to the study, reading and writing of poetry.

A Tale of the Ordinary

Wes has a gun.

I worked at a diner before I met Wes. I worked behind a long shiny counter and got to know the regulars pretty well. Shauna was one of the most memorable regulars, an energizer bunny of at least 75. She barely passed five feet and had striking red hair, swearing she never dyed it. She wore a weathered leather jacket that I was positive she had since the 1970s and never came in with anyone except herself. She was a bitter old woman. I read a quote one time, probably on an inspirational park bench somewhere, saying that you should never be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer – it eats at its host. Shauna taught me that this was true, her bitterness was eating away at her. And she wanted to eat away at everyone around her. She was always the bearer of bad news, yelling at the small Sony screen we had behind the counter playing channel 6 all day long. I remember the day the news broadcasted something about a shooting threat. No one was hurt and nothing bad happened besides a few shoppers in Barney’s having to wait a few extra hours to buy their Jimmy Choos. But it sent Shauna into a rage about guns. She told me that guns only existed because the ordinary were threatened by the extraordinary – they needed something that could keep themselves safe from the extraordinary, at a distance. She was always concerned with the ordinary and the extraordinary. I never caught any of Shauna’s bitterness, and I didn’t buy into many of her conspiracy theories. But, I did buy into her obsessions about where the ordinary and extraordinary stood in the world. I knew I was ordinary. I didn’t know if I could ever be extraordinary, or if I even wanted to be.

Wes has a gun. According to Shauna’s logic, that makes him ordinary.

It’s small and silver and looks like the kind of gun criminals hide in their waistbands in the movies. You might call the gun ordinary. It fits in his hand too comfortably, like his palm was designed to mold to its handle. The gun isn’t all shiny. There’s dark red in the creases around the handle. Wes says it’s rust – that the sleek metal ends up wearing from the oils on his hands. He says this matter of fact like he’s an expert on gunmetal and skin oils. He says it like I should believe him. He doesn’t want me to remember. So, I forget. I forget the time Wes stood stoically and shocked, seeming helpless for the first time I could remember. I forget how I made myself an accomplice for the first time by cleaning up the scene while Wes sat there helpless. I forget how the last thing I did was take the gun from Wes’s hands and rinse it off in the sink. I forget how I couldn’t get the dried blood out of the nooks and crannies of its handle. It’s the kind of moment that’s so out of the ordinary that you think you imagined it. You think that it’s something that would never happen to you. When you’re in the moment, time moves quickly and slowly at the same time. You don’t know how to make the world feel ordinary again. So, I believe Wes. There’s rust in the cracks of his gun.

I always know where Wes’s gun is. I’ve been aware of where Wes’s gun is the entire 7 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, and 14 days that we’ve been stuck in this extraordinary situation together. I am always wary of its existence because I know I am ordinary. I don’t want to fall into the trap of relying on the gun to keep the extraordinary at a distance. I want to let the extraordinary come to me if it’s meant to be. I want to know if I am meant for the life of the extraordinary.

Wes and I are staying in a shed. It’s an ordinary shed. It’s only temporary – we have something set up for us in Cincinnati. We just have to hide on our way there. It’s not that bad. We’ve stayed in places that disguised themselves as houses and apartments that were far worse than this shed. I just wish the shed had a lock. I’m nervous they’ll find us. At night, I pretend to sleep while Wes holds me in his arms in our cotton, navy sleeping bag. I don’t want him to worry that I lose sleep here. I want him to think that I’m tough – that I’m built for this seemingly extraordinary life just like he seems to be.

We’ve done what we can to make this place ours. The shed doesn’t belong to us, but the things inside of it do. We sleep on an old sleeping bag Wes grew up with. There’s an unrecognizable stain on the inside, near the top corner. I catch Wes tracing his finger around the edge of the stain when he thinks I’m sleeping. I wonder what the stain reminds him of. We have an old oak table that Wes found at a foreclosure sale a few blocks away from us. The wood had scars in it. It looks like it was used as some sort of work table in its past life, though it was clearly meant as a dining table. We eat at the table. We’ve used it as a scene for other, more devious activities at times when Wes was feeling spontaneous and loving me a little more than usual. We also have two old beach chairs we sit in throughout the day. We found those on the curb outside of a house –  a big one. I know they’re nice because they say “Tommy Bahama” on them and I always see rich people wearing clothes that say this on the beach. Our ragged, Walmart duffel bags stuffed with our belongings hold our clothes and toothbrushes. I have a few personal belongings with me that I don’t think are unique enough to share. Many parts of my life are painfully regular – you just wouldn’t expect it because I’ve been on the run with my boyfriend for 7 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, and 14 days. And that is certainly out of the ordinary.

For the first year of this never-ending, cruel game of tag, I kept track of the hours and minutes. When we hit the one-year mark, it didn’t feel necessary anymore. Wes had been on the run before I joined him. Except it wasn’t the same kind of run, he was running from a life that was set up for him – one that would’ve been too ordinary. I wonder if he wishes he stayed in that life. I guess it had to have been pretty bad for him to be content with the life we have now.

Wes has busy eyes – they’re always moving, nervous about what they might find. Every time we walk into a room, he scans the entire place. He notices things other people don’t notice – he has a knack for seeing the unseeable. It’s extraordinary, the way he pulls something out of nothing.  I like when his eyes land on me, because I know he’s seeing a part of me that others don’t see. I live this life with him because he seems to be the only person who would see something, anything, in me. I fear that I’m painfully, disappointingly ordinary. But he sees something extraordinary.

The world I lived in came off its axis when we met. I felt that it was the first extraordinary thing to find me. I wondered if it was the last. We met in an ordinary way – dumb kids being dumb kids. I had been reading Seventeen Magazine in the lobby of a Planned Parenthood (like an ordinary stupid teenager) and saw an advertisement for a new makeup brand that everyone swore by. It was beyond my price range, but I was angry at the world and wanted to take control of my life. When I left my appointment, I went to Macy’s and tried to steal a foundation and eyeshadow palette. I got caught. I was given community service at a food pantry – it could’ve been worse. Wes was also doing community service – also for some sort of robbery. We worked four straight shifts together before I was done with my stint there. He still had a ways to go. The day I left, he asked me for my number and proceeded to text me over the next few days about how it was so boring working there without me. Then he asked me to hang out. My world hasn’t been the same since. 

One night I drift off to sleep easier than normal. I’m lying in a nook that Wes created for me between his side and his arm. He’s drawing circles on my hand the same way he does around the stain on the sleeping bag. His hands are almost as busy as his eyes. I think they’re nervous, too. He’s telling me our plan to move on tomorrow – make the journey to our next halfway house. This one will be better – there’s a bed and a kitchen and a real bathroom. It sounds more like an ordinary home than what we’ve become used to lately. I drift off thinking of the ordinary life we are moving closer and closer to.

The extraordinary cannot exist without the ordinary. We exist in a world stuck in a cycle of painful relativity. The extraordinary would not stand out if there weren’t people like me to compare them to. Maybe I’m not meant for a life of the extraordinary to make me into an extraordinary person. Maybe I’m just a vessel to make the extraordinary standout.

I dream of a day when the game is over, and our enemies have finally tagged us “it”. Wes and I live in a house with a fence and a real address that we paint on the mailbox. Maybe I will work at another diner, or maybe I’ll work as a secretary to one of the extraordinary. I will wear khaki dress pants and shiny button-down blouses that blend in with the rest of working-class women who buy the same professional outfit to rotate every day for the rest of their working lives. Maybe Wes will get a job in construction where he can scan the construction scene looking for cracks in the foundation and using his hands to create something where there is nothing. We will come home at night, eat bland food I learned to cook from a recipe I found on the internet. We will watch television sitcoms every night for about two hours until we go to bed, where we will lay side by side on a mattress we will buy from a big box store during one of those crazy holiday weekend sales. Instead of always being at his side in case of an attack, Wes’s gun will sit in a lock box in his nightstand. We will be ordinary. Painfully, disappointingly ordinary. And to me, that will feel extraordinary.

_________________________________________________________
About the author
Emma Colby is an undergraduate student at Boston College, otherwise based in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Stylus, Next Page Ink, Orca, the Elysian Chronicles, The Massachusetts’s Review, and others. She works as an intern for Post Road Magazine and wants to publish novels in the future.

Lost in Hell’s Kitchen

Reincarnation can’t be so hard to pull off. After all, businesses do it all the time. Especially in the far west side of the city. A little bar recently died and came back to life right in front of everyone. And not for the first time. It started out as a neighborhood bar, devolved into a punk bar, transformed into a sports bar then a gay bar before shockingly becoming a juice bar for a time. Now it was a bar for the third millennium or so the owners liked to describe it even though, given its history, chances were high the current incarnation wouldn’t survive longer than a year.

The bar was gutted then re-imagined as a bar without walls, a bar whose interior was as malleable and mercurial as cloud formations in a violent sky.

The dining area could be two tables or 10. A too-crowded bar triggered mini serving stations for wine and beer to pop up until demand diminished. Even the lounge was fickle. One night an asymmetric couch, a flat-screen television and a few ottomans. The next night an explosion of love seats, coffee tables, over-stuffed pillows, even a day bed to relax on. All of it arranged haphazardly as if the pieces had been shaken up then tossed out of a tumbler.

Each night’s crowd determined how the room looked; more diners enlarged the eating area; if instead more drinkers appeared, the bar expanded, and when a crush of people showed up wanting nothing more than a place to hang out, the lounge and its harlequin-colored furniture accommodated them.

This arrangement the owners thought brilliant. A bar that changed nightly became their raison d’être. So they named the place “Fluid”.

Keane had been to Fluid once but at the moment being there did not translate into knowing where it was.

“I thought it was on Forty-Ninth,” he said as the car he drove cruised between 8th and 9th Avenues. His sister Laura and his cousin Quinn scanned the north and south sides of the street for the bar’s name that might or might not be lit up in blue neon letters, Keane couldn’t remember.

Laura fumed. She punched the entire series of pre-set station buttons on the car stereo cutting off singer after singer mid note.

Keane turned the steering wheel at 11th Avenue and the car looped around the block then tentatively came down 50th Street. A thin trail of smoke rose from the hood of the car, turned red briefly from the reflected glow of a traffic light then evaporated into thin air. Keane stared at the hood as if he could look through it. Underneath was an engine he knew not to trust. Keane sniffed the air inside the car for a burning smell, and not just for some general, vague notion of what could be burning. His nose had experience with this engine, his nose was educated. It could distinguish between burning motor oil and a burning fan belt; one whiff could discern whether the brake calipers had burned out or if instead radiator coolant boiled over and vaporized on the engine block. There was no smoke in the air now, no evidence, but he wondered how long that would hold.

Convinced the future held something detrimental Keane switched his goal from finding the bar to finding something else he hadn’t seen for a while: a parking space.

“Let’s just walk,” he said. “It’s easier to find the bar on foot.”

Suddenly all three looked for something different. Laura stayed with the neon sign, Keane searched for a parking space and Quinn, recognizing hopelessness when he heard it, hunted for an empty cab to take home.

“Explain something to me,” Laura said to her brother, the glare of the city lights flashing across her face. “If you can search someone’s entire vascular system at the hospital and find a blood clot the size of a microbe, why can’t you find this bar?”

Keane braked for a traffic light. “Did you know I stopped looking?”

“Me, too,” Quinn added.

“This cannot be our evening,” said Laura, worried the boys were content to drive aimlessly around Manhattan. “It’s my big night out in the city. I’m supposed to brag about this night to my coworkers tomorrow morning.”

From under the hood came a sharp pop then a hissing sound as if the engine was filled with snakes. Thin clouds of white steam rose in sheets from the grooves where the hood of the car met the windshield.

Keane hit the gas pedal hoping to cool the engine with a rush of evening air. The car sped toward Ninth Avenue as if being chased.

“What’s on fire this time?” Quinn asked from the back seat. He did not panic at the vision of smoke rising from the engine, frankly it wasn’t that unusual a sight.

Keane knew but shrugged. “Could be anything.” The car shot across Ninth Avenue scattering the pedestrians who lagged in the crosswalk. Keane aimed for the only legal street parking in sight.

As the car slowed, thicker, fiercer white clouds rose from the engine. Gauzy, acrid vapor floated in through the heating vents, seeping in ominously like it did into a gas chamber.

“So I guess it’s overheating,” Quinn said.

“Gee, you think?” said Laura.

Keane squeezed the car into a parking space and snapped off the ignition knowing it was the only help he could offer the engine. The hiss of the steam was louder now that it didn’t have to compete with a groaning engine.

Keane unlatched his seat belt.  “Let’s go,” he said but Quinn and Laura were already climbing out of the car.

“That was the worst ride of my life,” Laura swore.

“And you know he’ll make us chip in for gas later,” said Quinn.

“It’s 70 degrees outside. How do you overheat?” asked Laura.

Keane patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys. “Did you lock your doors?”

Involuntarily all three looked at the car. They saw the engine smoldering, the crooked front bumper and the wheels missing their hubcaps.

“You’re kidding, right?” said Laura.

Unoffended, Keane asked again.

“Okay, sure I locked my door.” Laura took off along the sidewalk.

As they walked they succumbed to the distractions of the city: they explored vainglorious store windows filled with silver jewelry, exotic clothes or hand-written signs that promised life-altering tarot card readings; they scanned illuminated menus framed in glass boxes hanging adjacent to the front doors of percolating restaurants. They even, for many long minutes, tried to look appropriately pious as a street preacher standing on an upended milk crate vehemently promised that dozens of sinners would plunge into Hell that very night. It was leisure time they were spending, Saturday night leisure time and though they had a place to go and a time to be there, their obligations were as elastic as a child’s promise to a parent.

At one point along his intentionally aimless route Quinn passed two folding aluminum tray tables, the kind he usually saw only in his grandparents’ living room in front of puffy chairs that faced a television set. The tray tables were a mustard color and had spindly, silver legs. Instead of supporting TV dinners, which was the sole use he could imagine for them, here on the sidewalk the trays displayed incense sticks and three-pronged stick-burning holders made of fired clay the color of dried blood. Next to them were small vials of oils with labels written in a calligraphy script. He read exotic names like Clary Sage oil, Neroli, Coriander, Eucalyptus, names he only vaguely recognized on bottles he could not imagine a use for. Behind the two tables sat a black man with a shaved head and a wide, shopkeeper’s smile. Quinn smiled back as he watched the tendrils of smoke from a burning incense stick rise into the air and disappear. He moved around the side of the folding table and accidentally stumbled over a corner of a blanket he hadn’t seen lying on the sidewalk.

“Careful now,” said the bald man as he reached to steady Quinn. “You don’t want to break anything.”

Quinn looked down and saw a stack of vinyl record albums.

“That isn’t my merchandise, but still,” continued the bald man pointing to the items laid out on the blanket. After nodding and apologizing Quinn decided he might as well do some browsing so he crouched down and thumbed through the albums.

“Check it out,” a voice said. Quinn looked up and saw a pale white guy stepping out from the shadow cast by the stoop he had been leaning against. “Two dollars each.” The guy paused as if catching his breath. “Lost my lease sale.”

The white guy had disheveled hair that stuck out in sporadic tufts on the top and sides of his head. It glistened with hair gel or sweat. In a fashion magazine his hair might pass as stylish, in real life it looked like he needed shampoo.

“Cool albums, some real classics,” Quinn lied. He continued flipping through the covers and for a moment the guy believed Quinn. Then Laura and Keane appeared.

“Why are you looking at those?” asked Laura. “You don’t have a record player.”

The guy behind the blanket retreated to the shadow of the stoop.

“I called Fluid,” Laura told Quinn. “Thanks to me we’re no longer lost. It’s on Ninth and Fifty-Third.”

“It must have moved,” Keane mumbled.

“Right. So let’s ask where it’s moving next week in case we go back.”

No one seemed in a hurry to leave so Keane started shopping. He looked at the few books and magazines on the blanket then spotted a slice of yellow metal on the far end of the blanket.

“Look at this,” he said. Keane moved some magazines and revealed a yellow metal box that had wires dangling from the back. “It’s the coolest car stereo Blaupunkt makes.” He picked up the stereo with a kind of reverence reserved for handling religious objects.

The guy leaning against the stoop once again emerged from the shadows. “That kind of thing goes quick around here,” he said hoping for some fast cash.

Keane ignored him. “I have the same model. It has four channels, Bluetooth and streams all the best music services.”

Laura rummaged around the piles of magazines to see what else they hid.

“I made it sound even better by hooking it up to an equalizer I hide in the glove compartment.”

“And does it look like this?” Laura asked as she held up another rectangular box. She waved the box back and forth and if her arm was a little higher and she was standing a little closer to the street, people might think she was flagging a cab.

Keane looked startled, like his sister had conjured an equalizer out of thin air. He stared at it slowly realizing that the box Laura clutched looked disturbingly similar to the one stashed in his glove compartment.

He stepped closer to the guy from the shadows. “You stole my stereo?”

The guy behind the blanket scratched the back of his neck like he had an incurable itch. “Nobody stole nothing, man.” He backed away from the blanket. Suddenly he saw the downside of setting up shop between the stoops of adjoining brownstones. The buildings behind him denied a retreat and the three now highly unsatisfied customers in front of him blocked his walking away. Yet as jittery as he felt he could not back down.

“Get out of here,” he yelled. “What kind of shit do you think you’re pulling? I didn’t steal nothing so fuck you.” He walked up and down the length of the blanket like an animal caged in a zoo. “Fuck you!”

Quinn turned away from the albums and sat back on his heels. “Did you smash a window to get in? Or just open the car door Laura didn’t lock?”

Keane and Laura stared at him.

“What? Everyone else got to ask a question,” said Quinn.

“Let’s call the police,” said Keane. “My car’s five blocks away. We can settle this in two minutes.”

“Ah now there’s no reason to be calling the police,” said the bald incense salesman. “They won’t settle nothing. And you know they’ll blame the black man.”

“Someone call the police!” Keane yelled. Miraculously some spectator did. Keane heard the notes as someone pressed the numbers on a keypad.

“You’d better be right, Keane,” Laura whispered, though she noticed neither of them released their hold on the stereo equipment.

“I just want to check it out,” Keane repeated to the jittery salesman. “We can go right now, forget the police.”

In the distance they heard a siren; police, fire, or ambulance they couldn’t tell and it hardly mattered. It couldn’t possibly be the cops headed their way. Not this fast. Still the siren electrified all those watching from the sidewalk because it stood for danger, antagonism and the need for third party intervention.

For all Keane knew, the guy with the cell phone was still on the line with the police. If not the police then maybe his girlfriend. Or his stockbroker. People gabbed to anyone on a cell phone.

But to the jumpy white guy behind the blanket this was more than just another siren in an emergency-prone city. To him this siren was the last straw. The city might have many sirens but it had many more cops. Sooner or later they’d be at his blanket. Once there the police couldn’t prove he did anything wrong but then he couldn’t prove he didn’t. It was a tie as he saw it, a tie where the win would not be given to him.

The incense salesman behind the aluminum tray tables stood to assist a few people who decided to shop while waiting for a fight to break out. He pushed back his chair and uncapped a vial of rosewood and cedar oil, claiming it promoted peace and tranquility.

“Prove it,” someone challenged him, pointing in the direction of Keane, Laura and the guy behind the blanket. It is not a magic potion the salesman wanted to say. He feared testing the liquid. After all, if it didn’t work what would he have left to sell?

The alleged stereo stealer rubbed his palms on his thighs while he plotted his next move. He saw the incense salesman’s empty chair and noticed how near it was to one of the stoops that had him cornered. The empty chair gave him an idea. It was pure impulse but he needed to escape and since he was all wound up and ready to go, why not do it now.

In a few quick steps he crossed the alcove and jumped onto the empty chair, landing with both feet on the metal seat before most of the spectators knew enough to look up. Without stopping to breathe he leaped toward the iron bannister along the stairs of the stoop, grabbed the glossy black handrail and leaned his body forward while swinging his legs over, his motion as smooth and practiced as a gymnast flying across a pommel horse. Once over the railing his two feet landed on the fourth step. To his surprise he was not twitching but calm, confident enough to take a short breath before running down the stairs and into the anonymity of the crowded, heedless sidewalk.

Keane saw the guy threading through the people milling along the street.

“He’s getting away,” he shouted.

“I believe that’s the point of running,” said Laura.

“Maybe now we can head for the bar?” asked Quinn.

The crowd around them slowly broke up, dispersing on its own once there was no threat of violence to hold their attention.

Keane took off after the runner. Laura reached out to pull him back, missed, then threw her hands up in frustration and disbelief.

“What’s he doing?! We’re supposed to be bar hopping tonight.”

Quinn shifted off the blanket and stood up, wiping blanket fuzz and flecks of album cover cardboard from his pants.

“Keane can’t let anything go. Not him and not the two million other people on this island. Everyone’s walking around with a pocket full of matches and a millimeter-long fuse. You’d think those relaxation oils the bald guy sells would be as popular as heroin around here.”

Laura shrugged. True or not, at the moment the only fuse she worried about was Keane’s.

“Let’s go get him,” Quinn said then ran after his cousin.

Laura considered leaving the equalizer. But she was certain if it went back on the blanket it would be stolen for the second time that day.

“He left all his stuff,” she said to the incense salesman.

The bald man looked up as if surprised she was speaking to him. “He knows I’ll watch it. It’s not the first time he suddenly skipped out.”

The blanket, though picked through, did not look messy or chaotic. Even with two metal boxes missing there were no gaping holes in the presentation. Looking at it now nothing seemed amiss.

Laura shoved the equalizer into her shoulder bag.

“Here,” she said to the bald man after she reached into her pocket and pulled out some bills. “When the jumpy guy comes back, give it to him. Just in case.”

The bald man pocketed the cash without nodding or committing to anything as if honesty and generosity were just two more risks one took in New York City.

Then Laura slipped into the sidewalk traffic and chased a certain colored shirt, a shock of hair, a face she’d recognize as a member of her family.

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About the author
J.G. Alderburke once won a T-shirt in a writing contest sponsored by a beer company. Other wins include having work appear in White Wall Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and others.

A Right Smart Piece to Go

If Cactus Hill south from Richmond proves out as pre-Clovis, First Americans certainly crossed the Alleghenies into the Shenandoah well before sixteen thousand years ago

The Spanish never made it up into Virginia

De Soto came north from Florida for El Dorado through what became Georgia and the Carolinas, but south of the Smokies his 1540s opportunistic curiosity took him meandering on westward

In the eighteenth century the Shenandoah was already heavy with Europeans off their transatlantic crossings walking southwest via Pennsylvania down long and graceful mountain-valley Virginia for the Cumberland Gap 

My brother and I probably came into the Shenandoah over Swift Run Gap

Crossing the Blue Ridge that way, via Culpeper in our aunt’s 1942 Chevy

Fall 1943 Home Front gas rationing, but she was the Yancey Mission lady with the only car in the parish and so with a B or even a C sticker she was able to drive up out of the Shenandoah to Washington and back

The first night was spent with her in Trenton at the Stacy Trent and then she took us away on a Washington train in the morning

Riding in a parlor car

She was obligated but brave to take us on, me seven, my brother four

Intensely confused little kids 

Either she picked us up in a taxi from the Robinson farm or Elizabeth Robinson, who had saved us from state care months before, delivered us to the hotel 

It’s blurred and there is no one else alive to ask

As the deadened past tense of every event soon turns

And too, “what you see is nothing compared to the roots”  (Tomas Tranströmer)

Of a father’s suicide leaving a deranged mother with young ones 

Hemingway flogged Ballantine Ale, probably why my father drank it

“…nothing exists which does not understand its past or its future”  (Ezra Pound)

“Hem always believed that you should get yours inside the system”  (Pound in St Lz on Hemingway’s magazine ads endorsing beer and a pen)

Writers think through how to do it

How to stay at it, make it work

Understanding that they are individual, and then some are trying to be original

Doing the best they can at that

“Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another”  (Julia Kristeva)

As if most lives were the same

“Theory, that capitalized catch-all term which is meant to cover all the various ways of studying the arts so as to make the student feel as smart as the artist.”  (Clive James on Walter Benjamin)

In the dead upper trunk punk of a boxelder, the dray of flying squirrels or a pair of gray squirrels keeping cavey with their late winter progeny

The nest destroyed overnight, noticed in the dawn from dead leaf litter on the snow below, odds are a great horned owl

“I’m just not a fixer or an influence peddler”  (Alan Dershowitz)

Being the sort of sleazy ego we’ve had during Trump’s four years

Now as it is with some raptors’ unsettling ability to keep on vanishing after they’re gone, eager for the same rapid disappearance of Trump, Stephen Miller, all the ethically odious shlumps in the Trumpismo directorate

As we earnestly try to push past covid and slide beyond following a catastrophic year of dishonest federal mismanagement  

And wind down or leave it after almost twenty years in Afghanistan

Two trillion dollars and twenty-four thousand military casualties

Orthodox corruption and deceit, boundlessly vicious treatment of women, bachi bazi, Hesco barriers and pitiful hopelessness

Done in black, white and red

“Westerners have a history of undervaluing all things blue. During the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, reds, blacks and browns reigned supreme; the ancient Greeks and Romans admired the simple triumvirate of black, white and red.”  (Kassia St. Clair)

Fall 1940 or 1941, a shrimp left to my own devices along a quiet street on one side of the Princeton campus on my elbows down on the flagstone sidewalk looking at ants, then shoes were present, not bedroom slippers, and when I looked up he was smiling down

Soft accented words from him that I’ve never remembered, apologies from me as I scrambled out of his way

He with it all in his head

More than two billion galaxies, billions of stars in each, most stars orbited by exoplanets

As though reaching, reaching, reaching, Shostakovich’s eerie piano Prelude No 14 in E-Flat Minor

In the same universe as a superb supper now of Veneto risi e bisi with Puglia Primitivo

Alive in the exact particular

A dot in time                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Eighteen centuries after La Maison Carrée in Nîmes came Jefferson’s Virginia Capitol, both of course slave labor built

In front the Capitol state workers in good weather sit and read at lunch in spring sun on its dramatic steeply sloped lawn

And his Charlottesville Rotunda designed with close reference to Palladio’s drawings of the Pantheon, slave labor built as surely as was the Pantheon itself

That incredible Roman concrete dome, more than six meters thick at its base and weighing over four thousand tons

Those vividly Classical designs alive on down the line to our present, as with our huge stadiums’ peel back ETFE pneumatic cable net system cushion roofing

The serial modifications of everything pointedly linked

Or allowed to go derelict and ignored, or destroyed 

As with the new A303 highway tunnel under Stonehenge, to break ground in 2023 after “archaeological mitigation work”

As twenty-seven years after his death Mr. Jefferson’s Charlottesville went about treating his genius like so much Aeolian debris

When in 1853 the University of Virginia with slave labor attached an annex to Jefferson’s Rotunda that in 1895 burned and destroyed the Rotunda itself

Eventually re-rebuilt en toto in 1976 faithful to his design

Our aunt drove her Chevy from St. Stephen’s Mission to Charlottesville forty miles over the mountain now and then to visit her Bishop and deliver her church’s deep Depression collection plate proceeds

Nickels and dimes

From those steadfast Yancey people to whom she’d give emergency rides

“Much obliged, Miss Steward, how much I owe you?”

She was the mission lady, there to help and sympathize, to offer sound often teacherly Episcopalian counsel

Their skinny supple feed-sack dress bib overall bodies

With quiet Appalachian dignity

Their fast pace barefoot manner walking the Rocky Bar Road to church

We ring-worm “Yes Mam” kids running wild there in Yancey’s hollows, on the dirt roads and wagon tracks

Those families living up against the Blue Ridge having no economy no jobs no cash at all in the early 1940s

Trade this, trade that, fatwood, chickens, heifers, hogs, honey, berries, whittled handicrafts, smokehouse ham, bacon and game   

Don’t make me no never mind, have time, happy to help 

He called his nonchalance “specifically Appalachian in origin”

Chuck Yeager (1923-2020), “I was always afraid of dying. Always.”

Flying as he did through the sound barrier with the finesse of racing a ball joint stock car

That’s the breed those people are

Living in the Shenandoah

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About the author
D. E. Steward has many hundreds of literary magazine credits. His five volumes of Chroma are published by Avante-Garde Classics/Amazon (2018). Chroma is a month-to-month calendar book, the months are continuing past the books of them published, of which the piece published here is one.

dnr__Borderland

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About the artist:
The-O is an artist previously published by Kelsey Review. His piece represents Ukrainians’ struggles in blue and yellow. They survived the genocide of 1932 (Holodomor) and communist repression. The hands depicted resurrection of peace (dove) or to crush and suffocate it; a bilateral meaning. Calm, quiet, tranquility and peaceful, written in Russian and Ukrainian in reverse, to embody the world’s resentment of Putin’s action.

Bienvenido Belfast

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About the author
Leonora Rita V. Obed is a West Trenton-based fine artist and writer who has exhibited at the Ewing Library, Highland Farm, Trish Vergis Gallery, New Hope Arts, Artsbridge, and has published with The Sculpture Foundation, Poetry Marathon Anthology 2022, Bronte Studies Journal, Wild about Wilde Newsletter, Outlook by the Bay, Journal of the Short Story in English, The Kelsey Review, Reminisce and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Looking Up: A Lifetime’s Love of Aviation

It is a warm July morning in 2001. I have an early mornings’ flight lesson with my instructor at Princeton Airport Flight School, in Princeton NJ. I have been taking flight lessons since about December 2000. Yes, the year is 2001, about two months before 9/11 and the drastic changes that day would entail for the world of aviation. Chuck T., my instructor, is in the office manning the front desk. I am dressed as I have always dressed when I was flying, comfortable shoes, slacks, shirtsleeves and a necktie and in winter a waist length leather jacket. But always shirtsleeves and necktie. I do this out of a sense of homage to the heroes of my youth from what is called the ‘Golden Age of Aviation’, the 1920’s through the 1950’s, when aviation history was being made by men like Charles A. Lindbergh, Jimmy Doolittle, Howard Hughes, Wiley Post and Roscoe Colman, Ira Eaker, Jim Howard, and John Glenn, et al. Any pictures one may see from that era show these men invariably in shirtsleeves and necktie, if not a full suit (I do draw the line!) or military uniform.

Chuck tosses me the ignition key to a school aircraft on the flight line. I sign out, file a flight plan out to the ‘practice area’; a spot in the sky about 20 miles due west which is sort of a designated area for instructors to take students to work on basic airmanship, flight maneuvers, etc. My aircraft is a Cessna 172, registration number N5404K, painted in big numbers and letters on either side of fuselage; the classic pilot training aircraft in the Cessna company line in addition to the 152 which has a slightly tighter interior and is dimensionally smaller. Commonly called a high wing monoplane, with tricycle landing gear, that is it has a nose wheel and wheels on either side just behind the front seats. The wing lies on top of the fuselage which gives occupants an excellent view of the ground during all aspects of flight.

 Every time I make the short walk to the flight line, I know that I am fulfilling a lifelong dream. To learn to fly and become a licensed Private Pilot. I have a little book of Procedures that cover everything from the Preflight check to final tiedown and every eventuality that may occur in the air and on the ground. It is my Bible, it goes everywhere with me, I study it religiously. It will always be with me when I fly; along with Pilot’s Manual for the Cessna 172. Both will always be in my flight bag. Flying is all about procedures and detail, detail and more attention to detail. The preflight check starts at a specific part of the aircraft and goes completely around ending where it began. This can take about 20 minutes or so. No nicks in the propeller; that is good! No dents or dings in flight surfaces, that too is good. All flight control surfaces are functioning correctly and are attached as specified. A good start to the day! And yes, we do literally “kick the tires” making sure they are inflated properly and have tread on them. Check all liquids, fuel and oil. Given the high air temperatures expected today, full tanks of gas are not necessary as they would impede the aircrafts’ performance in the hot weather. The preflight check is done and all parts on the aircraft are where they should be and attached in the correct manner.

Chuck comes out, we climb aboard and do the cockpit (there are many opinions about the origins of this name, most are unmentionable!) check. I yell out the window, to no one in particular, just procedure, “clear prop!” I start the engine. Revs are good. Check left and right. Taxi out to taxiway to Runway 28. A little hint: the numbers after ‘Runway’ denote the compass heading of that runway by adding ‘0’ to the end of number. So, for example, Runway 28 has a compass heading of 280 degrees, almost due west. This is true of every runway anywhere in the world no matter how big or small the airport may be. We sit at the head of taxiway and do a final engine ‘run-up’. Magnetos working, final check of flight surfaces functions, check pattern, make sure no one is landing, radio call “Cessna November 5404K departing 28”, flaps 10 degrees, advance throttle to move out onto runway, engage brakes at top of rudder pedals to hold in place, final visual clearance of airspace, advance throttles to 2600 rpm’s, release brakes and we are rolling! Trim set ‘nose up’ and we break ground about a third of the way down the thirty-five- hundred-foot runway. I had done this many times in the past months, but it still gave me such a feeling of exhilaration that it is hard to put into words. Flaps up and Chuck tells me we are just going to “shoot a couple of touch and go’s” before we head out to the practice area. A touch and go is a normal landing and after ‘touchdown’, go to 10 degrees flaps, increase power from ‘idle’ to 2600 rpm’s, accelerate to take off speed and lift off again. I do this a couple of times and after the last Chuck tells me to taxi off to the taxiway. I do as he says. At the taxiway, he opens his door, gathers up his equipment and gets out. “Go solo”, he says. “You’re ready. Stay in the pattern, do as many ‘touch and go’s’ as you want”. I am taken by surprise, not expecting this but it is every fledgling aviator’s first goal. Door closes, ‘thumbs up’ and off I go.

My love of aviation and ‘man-made things with wings’ is hard to define and give a starting point. All I know is that I have always, and still do, ‘look up’ at the passing of any aircraft; no matter how low or high it may be, no matter the type of aircraft. I grew up in the Bronx, NYC in the 1950’s and commercial airliners overflew the area where my family lived quite often, as we lived in the landing/takeoff approach routes to LaGuardia Airport. All aircraft, private and commercial were prop-driven at this time, the jet age did not arrive, commercially at least until the rollout of the Boeing 707 in 1954. The prop-driven airliners were usually below 10000 feet, allowing them to be identified by type; and if they were low enough, I could make out the airline’s logo and paint scheme. I had excellent eyesight in those days and the height of the aircraft usually presented no problem in identifying type and airline. Lockheed Constellations, DC-3’s, 4’s, 6’s and 7’s (DC stood for Douglas Company), Martin 202’s and 404’s and Convair 240’s and 340’s and Boeing Stratocruisers; TWA, Eastern Airlines, United and Pan Am, and the smaller carriers, I knew them all and could identify them all with the merest of glances. The Constellation (the ‘Connie’ to real enthusiasts) was easy to identify with its beautifully curved tail and triple rudder tail assembly. The most beautiful airliner to ever grace the skies! I built models obsessively; balsa and paper models, plastic models, every cent of allowance or whatever I could make as a ‘shoeshine boy’ in the neighborhood went toward the purchase of model airplanes. My father was relatively supportive, but my mother had, as most mothers do, higher aspirations for ‘her oldest’, thus I got no real support from her other than I needed to be “better at math”. Not a necessity for a Private Pilot’s license, but absolutely for a career as a Naval Aviator, my other not-too-secret passion.

All through my pre-teen years and beyond, into junior high school and high school, aviation was always ‘there’, but girls and sports had crept in and ‘usurped’ my interest. There was no airport close to me that would allow me to pursue my passion, so aviation kind of retreated to the recesses of my consciousness. But it was always there. Then family came into the picture; two kids, a wife and a house. Then a big career change, becoming a police officer, which would be my focus until December 2000. But aviation and airplanes were still there, tucked ‘away’, every now and then a side trip to Princeton Airport, which, providentially was in the next town west of where I was employed as a police officer, sometimes in a patrol car while still on duty I would ‘sneak’ over to the airport, since it was close to my patrol area, to watch the aircraft taking off and landing and to talk to the pilots. I also had a brother officer who had just got his Private Pilot’s license and would take me up every now and then. We made a couple of trips up the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge, when private aircraft could do that with no problems. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the late afternoon sun; what a beautiful sight! Out of the question post 9/11! Those flights did it, the old desire was ‘rekindled’, and I resolved to do this before it was too late. I enrolled in the course at Princeton Airport and went up for my first instructional flight with ‘Chuck’. Did what was known then as the Basic ‘Four’…climbs, turns, straight and level and descents. Take-offs and landings are by necessity, part of any lesson, for obvious reasons. At the end of any pilot’s career, if he or she has 9867 total take-offs in your logbooks, you want to have 9867 landings. That is a successful career by aviation standards. My logbook filled up with flight time with Chuck in the right seat. My hat is off to anyone who can go up with someone who has never been off the ground and teach that person to fly an airplane. You must be cool and calm with a totally unflappable personality. Chuck was that and more, an inspirational and more importantly, a patient teacher. I treasure the time we had together in a 172, I learned much under his tutelage and will always remember the flights, every one of them! Aviation is rife with adages, all aimed at keeping fledgling aviators and their passengers to- be safe. Chuck was full of them, his favorite, I think, was asking “What is the most useless thing to a pilot? The air above him”. Meaning being the higher you are the more time you have to deal with any emergency and having the ability to put the nose down and trade altitude for speed, which leads to another adage, from the book ‘ALOFT’ by William Langwiesche, “Keep thy speed up lest the Earth reach up and smite thee”. When given thought to in purely aviation terms, they make complete sense.

I am taxiing down the taxiway slowly; do not taxi too fast, it is hard on the toe brakes. Holy crap! I am about to solo; by myself, all alone, just me! Procedure and detail, procedure and detail. This is one of the two things I have wanted to do (the other was to be a working cowboy…had already done it…another story!) in my life since I was a little boy. Back to matters at hand. Come to stop so that I can see aircraft in their ‘final’ and ‘base’ legs, conduct my rev tests, magneto’s okay, all flight surfaces functioning, control column pushed forward and pulled back making sure the elevators are free and functioning, turn it left and right, ailerons functioning, rudder pedals, push one in then the other, rudder functioning. Check pattern, no one on ‘base’ or ‘final’. Key radio button on the control column: “Princeton Tower… November 5404 Kilo departing on ‘28’, touch and go’s”. Wait a few seconds, no response from anyone in the traffic pattern. I am good to go.

Advance throttle a little bit, release brakes and roll out onto runway 28. Engaging the toe brakes, I straighten out facing down the runway; heat shimmers off the far end of the runway, thirty- five hundred feet away. Toe brakes engaged, I advance the throttle full in, the engine is throbbing, flaps at 10 degrees. Release brakes and I am rolling, feet dancing on the rudder pedals, keeping straight down the runway, watching the airspeed indicator…40…50…60…a little nose up trim and she breaks ground on her own, a little back pressure on the control column to show positive ascent on altimeter and I am climbing out, positive rate of climb, flaps up. At a given point on the ground, I initiate a left turn at 900 feet altitude to my crosswind leg. At another point I turn left again, ascending to my ‘downwind’ leg ‘traffic pattern altitude’(TPA) of 1200 feet. Every airport has its own TPA, the maximum altitude an aircraft looking to land at that airport should maintain, upon entering the landing pattern until its ‘base’ leg. I parallel the runway on my left about a quarter mile away. As I pass the point at the end of the runway from where I took off, throttle back to 1200 rpm’s, drop 10 degrees of flap, roll in a little nose down trim, I feel the aircraft starting its descent. Looking back over my left shoulder, when the runway is approximately under my wing at my left shoulder, I key the radio and call “Princeton Tower, November 5404 Kilo turning left to ‘base leg’,” still descending, throttle back a little more, I am perpendicular to the runway, descending through 700 feet. At a given point over the ground I key the radio again, “Princeton Tower, November 5404 Kilo turning left onto ‘final’. Drop in flaps to 15 degrees, the control column is ‘pushing’ back so I roll in some nose down trim, this relieves the pressure on the control column. Three things are important in keeping things smooth on ‘final’, Pitch, Power and Trim, Pitch, Power and Trim. Suddenly I realize at this point that tears are running down my cheeks. I am crying, not sobbing uncontrollably, but I am definitely ‘tearing up’. This is what you have wanted since…forever. Get a grip, fella!

Nose down, pass over the Land Rover car dealership, on Rt. 206, cars are whizzing by beneath me as I pass over them, looking good, flare, sink rate good, throttle down; back on the column, main wheels hit with a little ‘chirp’, the nose wheel settles as I throttle back, rolling down the runway to the first taxiway. Flaps up, turn onto taxiway, Chuck is standing nearby, gives me a ‘thumbs up’ and walks back to the office. He cannot see the tears in my eyes, I did it, I finally did it! I think I did about seven or eight ‘touch &go’s’, taxied back to ‘the line’, conducted post-flight, tied down and went into the office where my tie was promptly cut in half, my shirt and what was left of my tie put up on wall in the office with a caricature drawing of me and the date of my solo signed by Chuck, along with the hundreds of other students who learned to fly there. I think my eyes were still a little teary; always my ‘emotions on my sleeves’.

I will admit here that the day I soloed was the greatest moment of my life, bar none, that includes the births of my kids, the day I married my wife and the times I was able to fulfill my other wish to be a ‘working cowboy’. I hope that does not shock and upset those that I love the most, but I harbored a love for flying long before they were a part of my existence, and I theirs. Our dreams sometimes are derailed as nothing is certain in this world, it is said, except ‘death and taxes’. Several months later, as if the horrors of 9/11 were not enough, I started to suffer from bouts of ‘vertigo’, not good at any time, and absolutely a deadly thing for a pilot, especially if you are aloft. They would come on unexpectedly and last for several hours. Advised not to fly by medical professionals, that was pretty much the end of ‘my dream’. But prior to that, after a couple more flights with Chuck to make certain I could handle emergencies and was proficient in the basics, he ‘cut me loose’ to fly solo out to the ‘practice area’ and to any other area airports and practice landings and takeoffs from other airdromes. Those were the happiest and most memorable of my flying experiences. Flying solo is indescribable! I still have my logbook; it lists everywhere I flew, how long it took and when, the exact aircraft flown, endorsed by Chuck or any instructor I could talk into going up with me, if needed and he was not available. But, as stated, medical reality set in and I have not piloted an aircraft since.

Even today, as I look up at any aircraft today in the landing pattern to nearby Trenton-Mercer Airport, I am ‘in the cockpit’ trying to emulate in my mind the procedures the pilots are going through. My love of aviation will always be with me, never to really go away. I hope that anyone who has a childhood dream, and has an opportunity to fulfill that childhood dream, feels the pure joy I felt as I turned onto ‘final approach’ that hot July day in 2001.

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About the author
Elliot O. Smith is a 75 year old student at MCCC, also retired law enforcement (30 years). A lifelong passion for aviation and desire to learn to fly was finally realized in 2001.

half-light

after pulling my hair back tight
I lace my boots, my ankles sturdy

the people I love have been awake for hours on the east coast
I’m waking up at moonset
pre-sun, hungry for something
California feeds me—: 

alone, I hike up carved crests
I don’t stop for anything

ravens caw and linger at the yarrow
poppies slowly unfurl their petals 
bending towards sun peeking over the ridge
tule elk graze in the hip high meadow

not me—: 
I trudge forward until majesty greets me
2500 feet above the sea I’m straddling the cloudline 
commanding the fog

when I was young, 
my most ethereal moments
were spent alone

so I hike hushed slopes
keeping pace, counting the dips of my thumping heart

I wish I was a girl again: 
unbroken soul full like ambered honey
buzzing beauty
infinite breath

I place my hands on the soil when I summit
bare and wild with wonder

I want to be above it all
just a few moments longer

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About the author
Lauren Fedorko, M.Ed., is an Adjunct Professor of writing at Rutgers University, teaches AP and Honors high school English, and advises a creative writing club for her students. Her passion for writing is longstanding and ongoing, composed mostly of poetry and creative non-fiction. She enjoys exploring, good company, and traveling the world every chance she gets. Her work has previously been published in the Kelsey Review and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Even Leif Erikson Made it to Greenland

Disclaimer: This story is inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters, names, businesses, incidents, locations and events have been fictionalized for purposes of presentation and continuity. The story does not depict any actual person, business entity or events. Any similarity to names, characters, history, or operations is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

It was the trip of a lifetime, planned with military precision. Passports, bills paid in advance, COVID tests within 72-hours of sailing, credit card notifications, and flights all in order. They had to be. There were only two cruises a year to Greenland on our carrier, Arctic Cruise Line (ACL), and we were booked on the second. We were to take a cruise from Iceland to Greenland to see the fjords, and the terrestrial ice cap that calved into the sea each summer. This created Iceberg Alley, that narrow passageway that floats huge icebergs down to Labrador before they melt into oblivion. We’d need to start this trip in late July and finish this trip before the snow started in September. In anticipation, I brushed up on my Norse mythology, hoping for Odin’s blessing and researched further Eric the Red’s discovery of Greenland, and his son’s, Leif Erickson, eventual settlement of the world’s largest island. A thousand years ago, the Vikings followed the stars, birds, whales and prominent geography to get where they were going. Sailing was simpler then; and bookings not a particular problem. The concept of hub and spoke had not occurred to the Norse.

There was always a weak link; our connection from Toronto to Reykjavik, Iceland. Our cruise line booked it for us, noting there was about a four-hour contingency on either end; enough to connect to our awaiting flight in Toronto, they claimed, and then our awaiting ship in Reykjavik. It was a promotional fare and my wife was (theoretically) flying free for traveling 800 miles out of our way. It was an enticement that we were willing to believe. There were several direct flights scheduled that very same evening, but ACL ignored the schedule, despite earlier promises to fly direct. To change now would cost us a hefty penalty, only several weeks before we took off.

Noting recent horror stories about air travel, we arrived at Newark Airport about three and a half hours before our 6:45 PM departing flight. By then, our flight was already scheduled to depart 35 minutes late. No worries, the Air North gate agent explained. We had plenty of time. At 7:20 PM, our flight was still scheduled to leave for Toronto at 7:20 PM, though there was no plane. The gate agent insisted this was not mathematically impossible, as I contended, because that “was on her screen.”  I objected, armed with algebraic formulae and multiple theorems, never used in the context of air travel since Icarus charted his course to escape Crete. Air North changed the departure time to 7:30 PM soon thereafter; a pyrrhic victory, which corresponded to when the arriving plane came to a full stop at the gate, not its actual departure. We would board once passengers disembarked and cabin cleaning was completed. We finally left the gate at 8:15 PM, now 1 ½ hours late. With any luck, we’d arrive Toronto at 9:45 PM, with enough time to catch our scheduled 11 PM connecting flight to Iceland. But there was no luck. Odin had rejected our pleas.

We taxied from the gate to the runway, but were moving at a snail’s pace. Another 30 minutes elapsed, without the ability to test Bernoulli’s Principle of fluid flow over an airplane wing to create lift. Bernoulli never considered the inefficiencies of Newark Liberty International Airport. The captain came on the intercom, just when passengers were hungry for peanuts and losing hope.

“Folks, this is the captain. You’ve probably noticed that we’re going nowhere. We’re number 15 on the tarmac departure queue. Figure about one minute per plane ahead.” At least, I figured. I recalculated the grim statistics and probabilities of connection. They weren’t good, but there was nothing else to do but remain fully belted in our seats and slowly boil. They claim that a frog, first placed in a pot of room temperature water, will not feel the slow rise in temperature. We did.

We finally took off at 9:20 PM, with the captain advising that Toronto was experiencing “serious” thunderstorms. As a result, the wind was with us, and the flight to Toronto would be just an hour; we’d make up some time in the air. There was still a chance to catch our connection to Reykjavik, if, and only if, you believed the Mets would win a World Series anytime soon.

And then, “Folks, this is your captain again. There is a ground stop in Toronto. No planes are landing or taking off until the thunderstorms clear.” Good news and bad news, as not only would our flight be delayed, but our connection as well. We still had hope as we circled the city for 40 minutes, before landing, as we watched the clock drift. Time was merely a concept now.

We landed in Toronto. Finally. As we taxied to the gate, we confirmed that our connecting flight, originally set to depart at 11 PM, would now depart at midnight. We had roughly 40 minutes to catch it. The stewardess, not accepting the fact that the last time I ran a six-minute mile was 50 years ago, smiled, encouraged us and told us that “if you run fast, you could still make it.” She would let us off first, as a token of Air North’s appreciation of our plight and likely missed connection. Finally, an advantage to old age, unless you count the senior special at Denny’s.  

The captain came on again. He had two items on his agenda.

 “Folks, this is the captain. As you know, the airlines are experiencing staff shortages. As a result, we are waiting for baggage handlers to remove baggage. Sorry for the inconvenience.” How could he not be sorry? How could I not know the specifics of Canadian aviation personnel staffing? I questioned my own existence and finally understood why French Canadians wanted to secede from this country.

Our hopes were dwindling, but not dashed completely. We figured that we’d foreswear our luggage if we made our connection. It would not be the first time wearing the same clothes for two weeks, while not in a POW camp. We could buy clothes onboard ship or in port. We imagined stylish Greenlandic fashion featuring fur boots and seal hoods. We’d make it work. And then the gut punching second announcement.

“Folks, you may have noticed that no one is exiting the plane. The gangway has malfunctioned and we’ll need to call in a mechanic. Shouldn’t take long. We’ll let you know as soon as it is fixed.” By this time, the captain was not identifying himself as the captain. A subtle change. Undoubtedly, he was much too embarrassed and likely considering retirement by now. Another blow to Canadian aviation staffing.

Thirty-five minutes later, at 11:55 PM, the exit doors opened, just five minutes before our connection was scheduled to leave. “Remember to run fast,” the stewardess advised with a broad smile. I wanted to smack her, but more specifically the captain, who refused to notify the connecting flight that we had landed and needed some extra minutes to make our way over to the departure gate. He claimed the captain of the connecting flight, as all are, are aware of passenger connections and the decision to wait or go was theirs. Our only hope was to run fast, which we did, all the while hoping to avoid cardiac arrest. There were no other flights to Reykjavik for 24 hours, much the same amount of time to be seen by an emergency physician in Canada.

For reasons I’ll never understand, we’d have to pass through Canadian customs first, though we were not intending to stay. It was at a distant location, from where we’d be able to get to the connecting gate. After midnight, it was now closed; a sign that our connecting flight on the other side of the departure hall had already departed and that the entire country of Canada didn’t give a damn about our arrival unless we were carrying forbidden poultry. The cleaning crew told us, through closed doors, to head down to the next Customs location, about a football field away. A Canadian football field; adding about 50 yards to our destination. Of course, the automated walkways were in full stop, apparently to cut down on carbon emissions, in accordance with Canadian pledges to save the planet, but kill its visitors.

Upon arrival at Customs, we were drenched in sweat, more akin to Haiti in July, than Toronto with the nighttime A/C set to 90; less in Celsius, which is why they use it to carry out the illusion of comfort for unsuspecting Americans. We were greeted by a friendly customs agent who advised us to enter our life stories, since puberty, into a kiosk in either English or French. When prompted to answer what the purpose of our trip to Canada was, none of the drop downs allowed “I don’t even want to f’kin be here.” The kiosk’s artificial intelligence, sensing an irate American, directed us to a live customs agent, who confirmed that our flight to Iceland had departed, just minutes earlier. Bienvenue `a Toronto. We’d be staying.

The good folks at Canadian Customs directed us up the stairs, where helpful Air North agents would let us know our options, rebook our flight or find us hotels for the evening. Actually, it was morning, about 12:40 AM now. The line was easy to spot, having about 100 disgruntled passengers who had missed connections and were scouting lounge chairs just in case. Even the babies were too tired to cry. We stood on line for about fifteen minutes, when a nicely dressed Air North agent in a sporty gray vest and tie informed us that Air North staff was going home for the evening and they had no more recommendations on where to stay or how to rebook. Come back tomorrow and good luck, they advised with a smile. Hey, they had lives too. No sense sticking around to be insulted by customers like me. The airline had already gone bankrupt once before. No worries. This was tradition; like Boxing Day without the presents.

It was time to work the iPhone. There was no credible way to catch up with the cruise, given its departure time, expected time at sea, itinerary and lack of air fields in the first two Greenland ports. In my imagination, the possibility of flying to Copenhagen, flying back to Nuuk in west Greenland and then helicoptering over to east Greenland to catch the ship existed. Then I realized I wasn’t Bruce Willis, and this wasn’t a movie. I was just happy that my wife didn’t mention that she originally wanted to go to Hawaii.

I called ACL’s emergency number, the number they said would be invaluable in the event I ever missed a flight connection.  I did so at about 1:15 AM. I got a recording. “We’re sorry, but please call us back during normal working hours between 8:30 AM and 5:30 PM.” You’re kidding me. This is the emergency number. Emergencies happen outside of normal working hours. That’s why they’re called emergencies!

In a few hours, the cruise ship would soon be heading to Nanortalik. The town’s name translates to “place where the polar bears go,” which likely explains why there are only 1,185 inhabitants left. I imagined that if the population dwindled further, the revised correct translation would be “place where the polar bears used to go for lunch.” We were defeated. The polar bears won. As far as I was concerned, more should be set adrift on the melting ice.

Exhausted, we next went to baggage claim. No one was surprised to learn that our bags were not there. There was, after all, a baggage handler shortage. Remember? We checked with customer service, which by now was any uniformed person with a pulse. We were told that our bags were offloaded from our flight from Newark, but no one could determine where they were. Come back tomorrow was the best advice. Sure. We hadn’t seen the entire airport yet. We filed a baggage claim report.

It was after 2 AM now. We thought about sleeping in the airport, but preferred a bed to the benches of Tim Horton’s 24-hour diabetes factory. We were 70-year-old retirees on our first vacation since the pandemic. Downtown hotels were quite a distance away and rather expensive. Hotel space was at a premium as there were several festivals going on in Toronto that week-Global Black Pride, Toronto Gay Pride, and Caribbean Pride. One of the downsides of so much pride is downtown hotel room rates skyrocket to $600. Sure, it was Canadian dollars, but still expensive. Most of the airport hotels were full too, but we eventually found space at the smaller of the two airport Vacation Inns; the first one had recently been converted to a homeless shelter, no doubt reflecting the number of permanently stranded Air North passengers unable to leave. Ever.

We checked in around 3 AM, exhausted and just a few hours later, awoke for breakfast. Friendly staff were quick to remind us that we had to check out at noon, with no hope of extension; or else. We’d be subject to the full force of Canadian law, which viewed jaywalking as a felony. By now, these were idle threats. Nevertheless, nothing that needed to be done could be accomplished online and waiting times to speak with any ACL agent on the phone were upwards of an hour or two while listening to horrible music, interspersed with recordings suggesting I consider my next ACL vacation, when I hadn’t even started my first.

We returned to the airport and proceeded to Baggage Claim. The agent proudly proclaimed that our bags were coming off the carousel now. He had no idea where they were last night. We’ll never know. We were grateful to have toothpaste. With luck on our side and momentum building, we proceeded to Air North upstairs. With no credible way to catch the ship, it was time to go home. The only purpose of this trip was to get to Greenland (we had spent two weeks previously in Iceland). There was no practical way to do so and no one who could answer a phone and rebook us. We did what any reasonable person would do.

After waiting on another long line, a friendly Air North agent explained that he could not rebook our flight to either Iceland in time to catch our ship or Newark. All Canadians are trained to be friendly from the age of six to counter the fact that nothing works in their country, particularly a government-founded airline, formerly in bankruptcy. It explains why health care is free, but largely unavailable. As diplomatically as I could, I asked:

“Aren’t you an Air North agent? Don’t you sit behind the Air North check-in counter at the airport? Don’t you have a uniform? Don’t you regularly fly passengers to other airports?”

He answered affirmatively to all my questions, reaffirming my faith in God; Odin had been useless and I sought a higher authority. The agent still insisted he could not rebook our flight home.  Sorry. Another overused Canadian term. Instead, I’d have to call Air North reservations to rebook our flight. And so, from within the Toronto airport, within eyesight of Air North check-in gates, we were calling over to Air North reservations to rebook our flight. Just typing this raises my blood pressure. But it gets better. After waiting 30 minutes for someone to pick up the phone, the reservations agent at Air North noted that he could not, after apologizing, rebook me either. Did God abandon me? Like Moses, I was about to break something.

“Why?” I inquired.

“Because you don’t own the ticket.”

“But I’m looking at the previously provided, but unused boarding pass for yesterday’s flight right now. It’s in my hands. If I didn’t own the ticket. Who does?”

“Arctic Cruise Line. It’s a promotional ticket. You’ll have to call them.” At least this emergency was now during normal working hours, though the chances of them actually picking up the phone were slim.

I took a deep breath. “Just for fun,” I asked, “if I wanted to get back to Newark today, are there any flights?”

“No. The next flight back is tomorrow at 4:30 PM.” Of course.

We hopped on the shuttle bus with our new found bags and went back to the Vacation Inn, where we begged for our old room and bought a bag of chips from the hotel gift shop for a late lunch. There was no time for poutine. From there we called the Arctic Cruise Line emergency number. It was about 3:15 PM. It took over an hour for someone to answer, and I’m guessing that by now you know what they told me.

“We’re sorry you missed your connection, but we can’t get you to Iceland to catch the cruise ship and we can’t rebook your flight.” There were a lot of things they couldn’t do, but apparently few things they could do. “This was a promotional fare. You’ll have to purchase a new ticket to get home. But not from us. You’re lucky, you have travel insurance with Big Insurance Group (BIG). When you get home, just file a claim for the whole trip. It should be simple. You’ll get all your money back.” I was so delirious, I believed her. I could feel my body shaking and wondered whether the potato chips were laced with fentanyl from China. But that only happens at our other border. I was thinking about calling my cardiologist to see if he might call in an emergency prescription stronger than my current regimen, preferring that my last breath would not be at an airport Vacation Inn.

We went down to the business center to sit in front of a screen larger than a can of corn, to book a flight online for the next day. Though we made the reservation, there were only four seats left and were instructed that we couldn’t complete the check-in. We’d have to see another gate agent the next day for seat selection. And who was that agent? It was the agent who couldn’t rebook my flight the previous day. He remembered me, and I explained that everything Air North told me about the process was incorrect. He claimed, that had he known the ticket was issued by ACL then he would have suggested other alternatives. I had one alternative for him, but my wife pulled me away, before I suggested it. This was Canada. Cursing is a capital crime, unless done bilingually. My French was rusty, but my English was pure Brooklyn, with a hint of Jersey. We proceeded to the departure gate without further small talk.

Going home, everything was on time. We arrived home at 8 PM, about 54 hours from the time we originally left our home, having seen only two airports, a shuttle bus and a hotel room. On my next trip to Greenland, I’ll be taking an authentic Viking longboat from Bayonne, NJ. You don’t have to change planes in Toronto.

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About the author
Paul Levine is a retired environmental consultant. When not writing, he finds periodic solace in participating in current events clubs and investment forums.

Crossing the Delaware

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About the artist
Stephanie Cuddahy, a resident of Trenton, carries on her family’s pandemic tradition of taking a “Nature Photo of the Day” on their daily walks.