Issue 8: Fall 2019

Creative nonFiction

The Shepherd on the Mountain

AmySue Kramer

A large man with kind eyes appears in my yard like the animals that emerge from the dark Pennsylvania forest where we are brand-new neighbors. He holds in his rough, dark-stained hands a gift; a delicate antique perfume bottle taken from the nearby dump. The glass is ridged and frosted and contains the ghost of a smell of someone’s loved one, someone long gone. His name is Cooney. His deep voice is gentle, melodious, a slow yodel; it rings out like Ralph Stanley singing Gloryland.

A mound of crusty dirt rises high above our landscape and surrounding mountains; it is a dry skeleton of earth that emits a dead odor. Cooney is the caretaker of this landfill. He moves back and forth in his backhoe across this mound. Neighbors from miles around mockingly call this mountain of garbage “Cooney’s Mountain.”

III

Cooney lives in the “attached” garage of widow Mary’s old single-wide trailer. It has a cement floor and is furnished with a metal framed futon, television, and nightstand. A small propane heater is his only source of warmth. Local gossip whispers of a gambling addiction, poor mental acuity and terrible money management skills. To me, he is a friend who never fails to appear just when I need help getting my Prelude out of a snowy driveway.

A year after we first meet, he appears with a stack of early 1900’s sheet music in a brown paper Shursave bag. Pick whatever you want, he says, so I grab the prettiest piece with blue border and orange text. It’s titled “Shepherd on the Mountain” and I decide to display it on my antique upright piano without glancing at the lyrics or ever playing the music. Later on, when I study the lyrics through tears, I will be comforted by the prophetic words: “No star with gentle light befriending will guide us to our home so dear… To yonder lofty mountain we take our winding way.”

It’s August. Black bears are invading from all directions to scavenge food at the dump. A loud knock at the door and I see Cooney standing in the yellow glow of the porch light. He asks if my daughter would like to see the bears up close, a rare treat. While we get ready to go with him, he rounds up other families and waits for us out front. He sinks into his Camry to lead a procession of about 7 cars up to the gate of the dump. He unlocks the chain with his key and with a presidential wave of his hand, we are led skyward. The road is narrow and is etched into the earth much like the sides of my empty perfume bottle.

We reach the top and park along the edge to the right of Cooney’s Toyota. As each car pulls into place, the headlamps illuminate the shadows moving just out of eyesight in increments. The dark forms then begin to take shape as black bears, their strength silent as they seek the best morsels of food within the garbage. The bears do not notice the bright lights or squealing children; their glistening, powerful bodies stand dormant as the mountains. The only other sound we hear is a distant train making its way towards us from the North. As we watch the bears, I see how the stars shine their light into Cooney's gentle eyes, a hint of pride beaming out of darkness.

The weekend he died was a typical February winter, below zero and snowy. He became ill at work, so his co-workers dumped him in his garage and left him there alone, lying in bed. Nobody called a doctor or checked on him over the weekend. No one told Mary, his landlord and neighbor. He was too sick to turn on his heater or to get a drink of water. He died alone in a hospital bed in Pittsburgh from hypothermia caused by the cold temperatures and lack of fluids. When I visit, I quote Psalm 23 in as soothing voice as I can muster: “The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want…”

Richard Allen Arthurs wasn’t given a funeral. His brothers shook his ashes into a nearby lake then cleaned out his garage, tossing his things into garbage bags. I didn’t learn his real name until I read his obituary; he had always been Cooney to me. The name Richard Allen means powerful leader, noble. His last name, Arthurs, may be linked to Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Its brightness and position in the sky led people to regard this star as the "guardian of the bear" and the "leader" of the other stars in Boötes.

VII

A few months before his death, I see Cooney coming towards me with a red lantern. It is a 19th century railroad lantern with a red globe, another gift. I later learn that this particular lantern was used as a signaling device for railroad workers to use at night. Even after flashlights became available, these lanterns were preferred because of their brightness and for the fact that they would double as a heat source on chilly nights.

I don’t know why but I begin to light this lantern before dinner each day as a ritual. It is winter, and as the sun goes down I light a new wick as my daughter and I watch the flame cast images onto the wallpaper. It looks like spirits rising from the checkered linoleum. We close our eyes and have a moment of silence before saying grace.

Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, AmySue Kramer has held many careers in the past 21 years from professional Taste Testing for the HJ Heinz Company to traveling the continent as a Flight Attendant for US Airways. She recently graduated from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa where she was awarded the Nancy Sheridan ACA Scholarship for women. She first began writing while spending 3 quiet years in a hunting cabin in the village of Hutchins, Pennsylvania, remotely situated along the edge of the Allegheny National Forest. She currently lives on the outskirts of Cochranton, Pa with her 12 year old daughter Anna and a Basset Hound named Walter Henry.

Waiting to Clock in

K. Uwe Dunn

A nurse ran out of room 202 and grabbed the defibrillator box. This meant somebody was coding -- they had gone unresponsive -- in the nursing home, right now.

I stood there, waiting to clock in. I did nothing.

But, honestly, at that point, there was nothing I could do.

If I had found the patient not breathing, I would’ve yelled, “Call 9-1-1,” and started chest compressions.

If I was second to the room, I would’ve called 9-1-1 as the first person did chest compressions.

But the fact that the nurse ran for the defibrillator, the heart shock machine, meant they were well beyond those steps. The room was, presumably, filled with nurses and aides, providing assistance as needed.

If she wanted me to do something, she would have said, “Do this.” or “Get thing X.”

But she didn’t so I didn’t.

I would’ve been an extra body.

I would’ve gotten in the way.

Any action by me at this stage would have been purely egotistical, as if, you know, I had to act to save the day, as if I had to be the hero.

But I knew my place at that moment and it was to stay put, to stay in line.

Still, it felt strange. I was in health care. I was CPR certified. Somebody was in a crisis situation and I was standing there, looking around, counting the minutes to clock in.

I pictured the nurse straddling the resident, hand over fist, elbows out, sweat dripping, pumping her chest, both bodies shaking, the bed sliding back and forth, the ribs cracking. But still no response.

Someone hands her the defibrillator. She rips off the resident’s shirt, fastens the sticky pads -- one above the breasts and to the left, the other below, to the right -- takes the iron-looking hand grips, and presses the green button. The machine, in its creepy robot voice, says, “Apply pads firmly on skin. Do not touch patient. Analyzing heart rate. Shock advised.” Then the life-saving gadget commences with automated bursts of electricity, trying to jumpstart the heart.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. A force. A charge. A bolt.

Eeeeeeeeee-lec-tri-city, as Captain Beefheart said, courses through her being, trying to wake her up.

“Come on, come on, come on. Please. Please. Please. Don’t die on me.”

It, pure energy, runs through wires, flies in the air, and now, flows through skin, blood, and organs. It spreads indifferently, the heart just another passageway, a location in space, a dot in infinity.

I could only imagine. I had never been privy to this process when a life was on the line. I had only practiced with a dummy.

I was lucky.

I remained in line, with the others, waiting to scan our fingers to kick off evening shift. I read some PSAs on the bulletin board about uniform requirements and health insurance updates.

I checked the schedule over and over again. We had three aides and two nurses on our floor that day. With that much staffing, it was looking to be a good night for us.

I nervously glanced at other staff members as they sighed and fidgeted.

One aide leaned against her boyfriend as she sipped an iced coffee and checked her phone. Two others whispered in the corner. Another shook her head and said, “This is the longest minute ever, I swear.”

Finally, it was 3 p.m., time to clock in.

It was only later that we found out the patient didn’t make it.

The woman died, there, on a bed she had only claimed the day before.

Some people live in a nursing home for a decade, some for a year. Her stay lasted all of one day, as she was gone the next.

I had never met her. All I heard was that she was “a hot mess.” She had lots of problems and took lots of meds.

They said the family seemed relieved, like they were glad to be rid of her.

One shouldn’t judge. One never knows the circumstances.

That night, alarms went off throughout the building, alerting the fire department to a potential situation. The light on the control board labeled “Trouble” was blinking red and identified the location as room 202, the same room the woman had passed away in earlier that day.

Nurses and aides rushed to the spot.

They found an empty bed in an empty room.

No one was there. Nothing was going on.

No smoke. No fire.

They called the firefighters off.

The alarm ceased.

It was quiet.

Was it a ghost?

A malfunction?

“So that’s it?” a nurse said.

“A whole lotta nothing,” an aide added.

The next day, as I stood in line again, waiting to clock in, I noticed a new person in room 202.

He was obese, missing a leg, and hooked up to an IV.

He ate, watched TV, and rang the call bell when he needed something.

He had no knowledge of the woman, her spectacular death, or the alarms. He had no way of knowing someone died there, in that same bed, only the day before.

K. Uwe Dunn is a certified nurse aide who lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, Isabella. He has a bachelor's degree in English literature, a master's in painting, and is fluent in the German language. His work has been featured in Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art and is forthcoming in The Tishman Review, The Petigru Review, and Echo: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction.

Rappalachia 911

Michael Dowdy

Like many buildings in my hometown, my middle school, which had been my father’s high school, was demolished a decade ago, after I’d left the mountains for good. The plot on the edge of the small downtown remains vacant, the parade of redevelopment schemes, with drab uniforms and saccharin songs, receiving only scattered cheers.

Mr. M, my 7th-grade Social Studies teacher, preferred of all artificial sweeteners the blood-sugar spike of disaster. Every Friday, in the building that no longer stands, Mr. M would wheel in a TV and cut the lights. Seconds after he inserted his VHS tape the sirens started to wail. Rescue 911, the CBS docudrama hosted by the Star Trek captain and cut-rate renaissance man William Shatner, exemplified Mr. M’s shaky pedagogy, or simply his fetish for the red lights of catastrophe.

My father tells me the latest “mixed use” plan for the middle school site will be approved any day now. The Equal of real-estate sweeteners, “mixed use” pleases the tongue just enough to choke down the swill. My high school was bulldozed a few years after the middle, when the roof of the gym where I played basketball collapsed. Its earthen hole awaits a developer’s desire.

The Wikipedia entry for Rescue 911 styles its small-screen reenactments of 911 calls as de facto public health policy. “Though never intended as a teaching tool”—a fact clear to any 12-year-old—“at least 350 lives have been saved as a result of what viewers learned from watching it.” I’m as dubious now about this statistic as I was then about the “social” dimensions of our “studies” of the show. For Mr. M, Rescue 911 was a treat for a week’s work, an hour of candy for four of whole grains. Mr. M’s “mixed use” lesson plans—to entice the 12-year-old, a bit of sweet to cut the bitter—mirrored his country’s. First, screen the misfortunes of others. Then, simmer for a sitcom-clean 30 minutes. Last, let the wounds enact their civic service willy-nilly.

Rescue 911 debuted in 1989, the year that marked, according to one critic, “the end of history.” That year jumpstarted the history I tell myself about myself. The year I first kissed another kid on the lips, the year I watched aghast as my t-shirts pitted out in homeroom, the year I learned to touch myself, the year my tongue twitched with taboo words stripped of their bodies.

Recorded that same year, “911 Is a Joke” appeared on Public Enemy’s 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet. Backed by a video parodying Rescue 911, the performance is vintage Flavor Flav. The group’s hype man clowns with glee, lampooning those deified “first responders” as the tardy janitors of white supremacy, black people bleeding out wherever they fell. In Social Studies, 911 was a sweet savior; for Public Enemy, 911 was accessory to murder. Between these sirens, a nation throbbed.

Public Enemy topped the list of rappers my friend M3 and I made on notebook paper during Mr. M’s lessons. We fell a dozen MCs short of triple digits. Some names—Redhead Kingpin, Just-Ice—have faded into oblivion, while others endure—De La Soul, Slick Rick—as ciphers of rap’s “golden age.” The plastic age of Rappalachia, there on my sleepy Main Street, was being traced with this white boy’s promiscuous pen.

In 5th grade, on safety patrol together, M3 and I sported orange belts and sashes, faux badges, and plastic yellow helmets. We made sure students boarded the buses in an orderly fashion. We raised and lowered the flag. We got up at the crack of dawn. Then, it was a prestige gig, mostly for the end-of-year trip to Busch Gardens. Now, I cringe at the cop-in-training vibe. A year of service for two days of vacation: American adulthood shrunken to size.

When M3 blasted Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, he rejected headphones, rattling his bedroom’s tower speakers, daring his mother’s knock, missing the lyrics for the pose. By the time we ran down the MCs in Social Studies he’d basically stopped listening to hip hop. I hear he became a Wall Street bro.

Unlike M3, I craved the retreat of my imitation Walkman. On a school bus creeping toward Busch Gardens’ “Old Country,” where we’d ride the Big Bad Wolf before skirting the all-white reenactors of Colonial Williamsburg, I played my Rap’s Greatest Hits cassette. Released in 1986, the tape featured classics (Roxane Shanté), one-hit wonders (Timex Social Club’s “Rumors”), and near-minstrel shows (The Fat Boys). My mom must’ve bought the Fakeman at Radio Shack. It was beige, the most uncool color, and its headphones were foam.

I was lucky to be on the bus. The previous month, wielding his helmet, M3 had taught me an early lesson in knowing who your friends are. I stood by as he dipped the helmet in the boys bathroom toilet and flung piss on the mirrors. Mrs. F caught us in the act, threatening our trip. Her verdict targeted my conscience, opting for the bittersweet dose of shame over the bloodier bite that would keep me at home. Guilt by association, Mrs. F pronounced.

When, two years later, I dove into the liner notes of Public Enemy’s 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, this guilt goosebumped my skin. The maximalist soundscape of the Bomb Squad, which produced the record, the militant symbolism of the S1Ws (“Security of the First World”), which orchestrated the stagecraft, and the jackrabbitry of Flavor Flav, which created antic levity, were all upstaged by Chuck D’s dense lyrics. Laced with allusions to black radicals, they kickstarted my education in unitedstatesian history, its sirens of rescue and neglect. My whiteness lit up like the tiny display on my beige Fakeman, blinking off and on between pleasure and shame.

My first sleepover, that white rite of passage, was at M3’s house. At 11pm, in the din of my first panic attack, I had to call my mom, begging her to bring me home. True panic, I’d learn years later, means living in a body without a body, your own or another’s, to phone for rescue. Because we come to know ourselves when our alarms can’t be stilled, let’s call the soundtrack of white privilege Panic! At the Sleepover.

I think now of liner notes when skimming the acknowledgments of a poetry collection, where it’s all good vibes, shout-outs, debts of gratitude. How I wish the poets would call out the haters, biters, non-believers. Minus the venom, the nectar slides down the throat like Sweet’n Low.

The Memorex copy of a rap tape would move like a fever among my middle school friends, the original’s liner notes kept with the love letters in a shoebox under my bed. Like the shoplifted Playboys we stashed in Ziploc bags in vacant lots, the storms of our weeks would quickly wear the copy down. The taboos of race and sex throbbing like sirens in all the white boys’ bedrooms.

Because sometimes words detonate differently, depending on the mouth. In 5th grade, M3 and I would curse up a storm in the cafeteria. Shit and fuck spat into the air like undercooked tater tots. In 7th, I devoured Too Short’s “Cuss Words,” intoning lines about Nancy Reagan giving oral sex like she’s eating “corn on the cob.” The misogynistic Too Short was nonetheless speaking truth to power. To whom was my lip-synch speaking? When I rapped along to NWA in my bedroom, never bleeping the word I’d never say in public, what racial order was I protecting, what racist was I?

The first lines I recited in public were Kool Moe Dee’s more sugary fantasies. Mrs. M, my 7th-grade English teacher, was of no relation to Mr. M, but she too mixed materials. For our knee-shaking poem recitation, she didn’t bat an eye at lyrics from the 1987 song “Wild Wild West.” After basketball practice, I’d watch Yo! MTV Raps hoping the host Fab Five Freddy would play the strange video. Kool Moe Dee and crew dress as cowboys, in a forest of heavy snow, far from Harlem, the mythic American west now black as their trenchcoats. Today, I find the video on YouTube. No waiting, no luck required. What will come from this dearth of serendipity?

A year later, after he’d dropped rap and embraced the lies that would guide the future Wall Streeter, M3 confronted me at my locker. When, his question pitched between accusation and plea, are you going to start hanging out with white people again?

How strange I never dreamed of being a rapper, of writing rhymes, moving crowds, being interviewed by Fab Five Freddy after my video premiered. Back then, except for the Beastie Boys, white rappers didn’t exist. Back then, “white rapper” was a slur. This was just before 3rd Bass and MC Serch’s perfect high-top fade, long before Eminem opened the floodgates. Some dreams are off-limits. Rightly so. So I dreamed in liner notes, listing as I went to sleep my shout-outs and step-offs. Once asleep, I dreamt of being a basketball star.

Like hip hop’s “golden age,” my hoop dreams faded by my junior year in high school, when I couldn’t handle the glare of coal country’s hot-box gyms. That winter, after practice, I drove to see A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul in the small basketball arena of nearby Radford University. Already by then, De La was playing their hit “Me, Myself, and I” grudgingly, opening with chants of “we hate this song, we hate this song.” Dreams, like selves in triplicate, can turn on you like that.

In the past decade many of my childhood heroes, athletes and rappers, have passed. Their highlights and songs, summoned on YouTube, scroll outside of time. “All died yesterday today / and will die again tomorrow,” the poet Pedro Pietri wrote of his generation of Puerto Ricans. This repetition, its inevitability and flatness, follows the loss, far into adulthood, of one’s childhood heroes.

But the death of a hero during childhood lives longer. Perhaps each child has a death that sticks, burrowing between the shoulder blades and plunging into the gut, where it lodges like a vital organ. Mine was the basketball star Len Bias’s. Bias overdosed in June 1986, two days after being picked 2nd in the NBA draft. I was away at basketball camp, having just turned ten. I caught the news on the dorm lounge’s tiny TV. In tears, I called my mother, as I had at M3’s sleepover, this time collect by payphone. Thanks to Bias, I don’t mess with drugs. I’ve mostly stopped calling my mother, not because the sirens in my head, blood pressing my temples like a helmet, have ceased, but because I’ve grown accustomed to the panic.

The double entendre “Thanks to Bias” reduces the black body to a lesson in my education. So, let’s step back. My first death had come two years before. One night, as we pulled up to our house, blue lights and an ambulance were blocking our driveway. Our neighbor, who was twelve, had with his father’s gun accidentally shot and killed himself. Shot and killed. His father’s gun. Accident.

From these blast fragments Rescue 911 would not deliver him. Safeties unlatched, conjunctions and prepositions blown away. Take what I left out of the story. Our neighbors were the sole black family on our street. Here I am again, the black body packaged as a lesson.

The Rescue 911 episode “Bullet Wound Neighbor” has 12,000 YouTube views, the episode “Softball Hit” 441,000. The most watched, with 750,000, is “Runaway Boxcars.” Beating them all, with over 1 million views, is the video for PE’s “911 Is a Joke.” For those keeping score, Flav’s got Shatner’s number, while bullets too close to home are going unwatched.

There’s a lesson in the disparate lessons M3 and I found in hip hop. He grew into a body that would take, take, take, a mouth that would eat with relish the n-word swirling on its lips. The body I grew into had lots of questions. It would ask, ask, ask, and occasionally, too often for me, it would take.

That I made it so long before my life was touched by death illuminates the peace of the before. Was hip-hop a vehicle for toeing the danger of blackness, even as my whiteness would serve there as a shield? Beneath this ugly question rustles the idea that blackness—performative and embodied, both wilding out and dying all around me—showed me that the world is upside down and that I could assist—or at least offer my solidarity, as a teammate—in flipping the script.

Consider then how a question carries its answer: How did a white kid in southern Appalachia, far from any urban center, during the Eighties, get so into hip-hop? How, if his ears were pricked, could he not? How, in a sense, was it his passport away? And how could he not carry his Fakeman, from then on, wherever he went?

Artificial, fake, imitation, plastic, copy. To exhume these words won’t mean taking out the trash; it will mean bringing the garbage back inside. Once there, in heaps, dealing with it. Plastic may be cheap and mass-produced, but it never dies, bedrock of our closets. And “fake,” that silver bullet of white supremacy, is piling up, blocking the exits. When the house is in flames, 911 won’t arrive until the landlords reckon with the tyranny of their origin stories and leave to the fire their cherished property.

Consider then that it’s fortune or luck which brings the ambulance in time. But by Luck I mean White, and by Joke Flav meant White, and by “mixed” developers don’t mean racial integration let alone justice, and by reading liner notes like scripture and by listening to tapes like sermons I wasn’t delivered from my own sins let alone my country’s.

As I rewind the memory tapes of this time, the album I never cut wobbles into focus. My MC name was Fakeman, my record Rappalachia 911, its lead single “William Shatner vs. Flavor Flav.” Mr. and Mrs. M were the co-producers. I had no DJ, living too much in the lyrics. I had beef with M3 and let that racist MF and all the others I silently ignored in middle and high school have it on the dis track. I shouted out my sidelined mom and dad. On the cover, a beige off-brand Walkman perched on a limestone outcropping, headphones dangling over the ledge, swaying in the wind.

Sent from the future, the liner notes cleared my samples. Rappalachia bites the West Virginia writer Scott McClanahan’s satirical memoir Crapalachia as well as the Affrilachian Poets collective, founded by the Kentucky poet Frank X Walker. The first neologism mocks the stereotypes of the region, even as it flirts with reproducing them; the second accounts for the blackness of the mountains, and from way back. One diminishes, the other builds. Both let in some light. My third slipped in their cracks.

Get lost, gun claps. Good riddance, buildings which stifle, take, kill. Good riddance, whiteness, old frenemy of mine. Live long, teachers who rattle in the memory. Live long, raps with justice visions.

The liner notes fanned out in the topography of a mountain range. Below the jagged ridges, shout-outs and step-offs rolled down the page like trails and washouts, gulleys flowing into the river of lyrics running through the valley of accordion mountains. There, Fakeman spit,

Once

in the ambulance

words & worlds

(Rap & Appalachia)

which wouldn’t mix nestle against

the other’s kicks like Shatner and Flav

those master jesters of our plastic age.

Until the black light is unleashed Rappalachia 911 will be a spool of blank tape, lyrics flowing unseen through the snow-sugared valley. The nation pulsing within its whited-out lines will be a parade of runaway ambulances aimed at a target beyond which there is only a ledge and an abyss.

Michael Dowdy’s books include a collection of poems (Urbilly), a study of Latinx poetry (Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization) and, as co-editor with Claudia Rankine, an anthology (American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement). Originally from Blacksburg, Virginia, he teaches at the University of South Carolina.

Little American

Jillian Quist

“Sac de pommes de terre!” “Sack of potatoes!”

My six-year-old body slipped off the saddle in the middle of a canter. The French horsemaster barked as I came crashing down on the ring floor.

“Petite Americaine, reve toi!” “Little American, stop daydreaming!”

The horsemaster snapped his heels like a veteran soldier and raised his horse cane high in a salute.

“Attention,” he bellowed from the center of the ring as the mare galloped the perimeter, anxious for a way out.

The other riders tightened their reins. The army of pigeons roosting in the rafters woke up and stood at attention. The horsemaster stood in the center and fixed his stare on me.

“Et … alors?” “And ... then?” The maestro circled his horse cane high over his head like a lasso and slowly walked toward me.

He reminded me of my ballet teacher who pranced between her students, holding a pointed stick and tapping the parts of our bodies that stuck out too far. She poked us in a quick succession of taps—tap tummy, tap derriere, tap knee, tap leg, tap the back.

“Plié, releve.” “Bend, rise.”

Tap tap, poke poke. We stretched our young bodies high to the ceiling and pretended we were balancing a stack of our mother’s china plates on our heads.

“Leve toi!” “Get up!” “Woo woo woo!” He hooted, like a restless owl.

I got to one knee and put both hands on my thigh for leverage. It hurt, but I didn’t show it. I stood up slowly.

“Woo woo woo!” he continued, motioning for me to speed up, making faster and faster circles with his arm.

The other riders exploded with laughter. Like a conceited actor, the horsemaster turned to them and pressed his arms down slowly as if he were hushing a large audience.

“Shhhhh.” He quieted his fans. Then his eyes found my mare.

“Pas de chance, mon ami.” “No chance, my friend,” he said to her softly, and with more respect than he’d given me.

“Calme, calme,” he cooed and walked toward her. She eyed him warily. He grabbed her reins, tugged them hard, and walked ceremoniously to the center of the ring. She pulled her head back, resisting him. I hoped she’d break free, run the ring and steer clear of him, except to throw a snigger in his direction. But he had her reins tightly curled around his knuckles.

“Et toi?” he called to me again as I rubbed the dirt off my jodhpurs. I shuffled to the center of the ring, hoping he would send me home.

“Ally oop!” he said and laced his fingers together to make a stirrup. The horse saw what was happening, snorted, and bucked away.

“Non! Non! Non!” he roared in escalating tones, yanking the reins harder. I froze. Please God, let me go home. But my mother had dropped me off instead of waiting for me like she used to. She wasn’t here to hear my prayer.

“Non?” He checked to see if my mother was there and then pouted as if he would cry. A new round of laughter burst out from the sidelines.

“Les Americains. Bravo, courage!” he said with a military salute to me. He didn’t remind me a bit of my dad, who was a real commander. My dad had real sophistication. He’d traveled the world, and was saluted by everyone every time we went to the officer’s club on the military base near our home. At the dining hall, we’d get the best table, eat the day’s specials, and have our chairs pulled out for us. Mom sat tall like a commander’s wife. But dad never pretended he was anything special.

The mare bucked under the tight reins. Her ears were pinned back.

“Calme,” the horsemaster commanded, yanking the mare’s reins harder. She reared on her hind legs. She’d already been tricked. I knew how she felt. My mom had signed me up for horseback riding after I had a lot of fun riding on trails in the nearby woods. When my mother expressed my enthusiasm to the ring manager, he smiled, and nodded in empathy like we had something in common.

He placed the mare next to me in the mounting position. The mare snorted and spat a hot misty mucous at me. I turned my face and saw the others sitting upright in their saddles, the perfect students. The corners of their mouths turned up in a part smile. The only sounds were the pigeons rustling in the rafters.

The man made another stirrup with his hands and I stretched my leg to its full length and placed my left foot into it. He boosted me so hard that I almost see-sawed over to the other side of the saddle, but I would not let him see me fall twice.

“Ah mon dieu,” he said with phony surprise.

I sank into the saddle, one with the mare, and felt her body relax under my weight. I grabbed the reins and squeezed my legs. Heels down, I kicked her ever so lightly to move forward. She obeyed.

“Allez, allez!” He pointed to the perimeter of the ring.

“Et gallop!” He added when I reached the wooden fencing.

“Desole.” “Sorry.” He said it to the others and brought his hands together in a mock prayer for forgiveness. They nodded in solidarity.

“Les Américains," he muttered, rolling his eyes.

My back stiffened. I thought of the last time I was mocked for being an American. Just a week ago I was walking with my mother on the promenade next to the lake near our house. From a distance I saw a little girl about my age with her mother coming toward us, staring down at my blue Keds with the pink shoelaces. Her upper lip curled and her eyes widened the closer she got. I looked up to my mother to see what might be unusual about her, but it was clear, the girl focused on me. Her mouth dropped open in shock the closer she got.

She stopped in front of me and said excitedly, “Maman, regard!” “Mom, look!” she pointed at my shoes.

“Ils sont Américains.” “They are American.” Her mother threw a quick glance at us and whispered loud enough for us to hear as they strolled by looking straight ahead. My mother pretended not to notice. She’d spent too much time trying to adjust to the culture, and preferred her expat art friends. We walked past and tears filled my eyes. My mom told me I was too sensitive, but I knew I’d been mocked.

This time the insult wouldn’t stand. I looked at the horsemaster and wondered why a grown man with grey hair and a mustache needed to embarrass a six-year old. And why didn’t the French like us? Why did French kids mock me? I was getting tired of it. I threw him a backward glance, bolted straight up in my saddle, and started to trot along the perimeter. I began with a sitting trot before I posted. Every one of my lessons were on display—shoulders back, head straight, heels down. The maestro had gathered the other students to the center of the ring and spoke to them in hushed tones.

I took some breaths, happy to have the attention off me. Alone now with my mare, I leaned forward, rubbed her mane and whispered her name.

“Caramel.”

Her ears relaxed. We began again from a slow trot. I felt the rhythm of the trot and sat deep into the saddle for a sitting trot, feeling her muscles stretch and her joints flexing. She was a powerhouse beneath me. I kicked her, pressed my legs into her, squeezed and released them while I leaned forward in the saddle. Effortlessly, she moved into a canter, her three hoofbeats in stride, a trained ballerina.

I felt the rhythm of her strides and watched the sweat begin to bead on her back. We cantered around the circumference of the ring and then came to a stop again. A new stillness filled the ring. I glanced over to see the horsemaster’s mouth in motion. His arms motioned towards the different letters hanging at each quarter of the ring. A, B, C, D, we moved past all of them. His motions distracted me. He reminded me of a circus clown.

Next, I asked her to gallop. The last time we tried galloping, I‘d been thrown. This time I was ready as she sprang forward. It was like she’d just left a starting gate. I gave her full rein and wrapped my finger in her mane. Her long neck stretched out. Her legs did not hold back. I let her enjoy the run, and after our third circle, I saw everyone had turned to watch me.

I brought her to a trot, and we walked to the center of the ring, where all the horse riders had gathered. The mare held her head high, and the sweat on her body made her coat shine. Without any help from the maestro, I dismounted, hugged Caramel’s neck, and waited to be dismissed.

“Bien fait.” “Well done.” He said to me in a low voice.

The other girls dismounted. I heard lively talking as a couple of the girls looked over at me. One of them smiled. Suddenly we were comrades, fellow horse riders in concert with each other. We gathered at the center where the horsemaster gave his last command and dispatched us to the stable. Each step away from him brought more lightness to our steps. Then one of the girls came alongside me.

‘Salut, je m’appelle Claudine,” “Hello, I’m Claudine” she said.

“Je m’appelle, Jill,” I said and we walked together side by side toward the barn.

Jillian Quist writes fiction and short memoir. She lived in France as a child, in Switzerland, Ireland and Greece as an adult, and likes to write about her experiences abroad. Jillian holds a BFA in Theatre from Emerson College and an MA in Communications from San Francisco State University. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, where she is an Adjunct Professor of ESL at Durham Technical Community College. “Little American” is her first publication.