Kudzu Review Summer Solstice 2012 Edition, Madison Percy Jones IV (Editor), Arthur Wilke (Editor), Robin Ward (Editor) [books to read to improve english txt] 📗

have the least craving for food.
“It’s like our whole life has vanished,” Andy said. “Right before our eyes.”
Andy was the first to leave the dock that morning. He set his fishing pole on the back porch. Andy didn’t know what else to do, so he sat down.
His ex-wife Laurie was living in Houston with her husband Sam and Andy and Laurie’s son, Adam. Andy had done this same thing the day Laurie moved out. He’d plopped down onto the top step and sat for a good couple of hours. Then, as now, Andy didn’t know what to do with himself and he figured he’d sit and wait it out. At some point, a new life was sure to come around.
All around town, men and women sat, as if staying in one place might bring the fish back. The anger that first surfaced had been replaced by a silence that weighed down the wind.
Vera Wilton had never run out of something to say. That’s what she thought, sitting across the breakfast table from her husband Bud, the morning of the fourth month the fish had been gone. Vera and Bud had been married for thirty-seven years. When Bud had thrown back one too many shots of Jack Daniels, he railed at Vera, “Can’t you shut up? Give a man some peace.”
Bud would have loved to hear Vera’s voice now. He hadn’t understood that Vera’s words often soothed him. The silence left him fighting against his own desperate thoughts.
Bud started to wonder: Do I really want to go on? In the past, when there’d been trouble – hurricanes that pried the roof off or the kids getting into trouble – Vera had assured him that they would find a way out.
Even without the silence, Bud knew this latest disaster was different. Something had occurred in the ocean, and nothing Vera said would make life return to normal. Bud had to admit that Vera knew this. That’s why she’d finally shut up.
Slowly, the scientists trickled in. The first came from the state university. Fishermen stood on the dock and watched Dr. Howard Fisher and his graduate students. The air felt humid enough to start shedding itself in drops. The students had wisely worn shorts.
No one – including Dr. Fisher – bothered to talk to the fishermen. Instead, the professor rolled one cotton khaki pant leg up and then the other and proceeded to wade into the water with the graduate students following. It was hard to see from the dock but Manny, standing there, reported, “Looks like they’re collecting water in little glass bottles.”
The following day, a team arrived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Now, that there’s a boat,” Manny said, when he spotted the sleek white yacht in the water, with NOAA painted in large blue letters across the side.
A rumor started – it may have been on the dock – and traveled to the Sands Diner where Mary Carlson was serving the counter and passing on the rumor to men filling the stools and sipping coffee and free refills.
“I hear the president’s coming down to take a look for hisself.”
The rumor flew from the diner into the quiet little bungalows and board and batten-sided cottages. Before long, the rumor ended up on T.V. Vera was watching when a picture of the beach and the NOAA boat came up and she heard, “The president will travel to the coast tomorrow to assess the situation on the ground for himself.”
Even Vera went down to the beach that next morning, though the area had been roped off. There were so many police and guys in gray suits, white shirts and ties – and in that terrible heat and humidity – Vera wondered if they’d even see the president. Vera was secretly happy about the president’s visit, though she hadn’t voted for him. Vera didn’t say more than a couple of words to Bud.
“I sure hope he helps us,” she whispered as they left the house, though she couldn’t figure out how anyone other than God might be able to bring the fish back to that water.
Regardless, Bud was relieved that Vera had spoken.
The fishermen, Vera and Bud, and even Mary from the diner -- they’d closed until one o’clock so everyone could get a chance to see the president -- stood arms pressed to other sticky arms in the small roped-off area allotted to the locals. Not a single one of them had thought to bring binoculars. Instead, they squinted in the overly bright sunlight reflected off the water. And they sweat. Perspiration slid down their arms and mingled with that pooling on the skin of their neighbors.
The only way they knew where the president had gone was by looking out to where the mob of gray-suited men and cameras and reporters had headed. Manny took on the job of giving the play-by-play, even though his eyesight wasn’t the best, and he refused to wear glasses.
“The president is heading north along the shore,” Manny announced and all heads swiveled to the left. “He’s got a white shirt on and the sleeves are rolled up.”
People on the dock pictured the tall slender man they’d seen on television and the shirt sleeves folded over, a few inches below the elbow. They felt reassured by that casualness, with the sleeves suggesting to them that the president was not only here but clearly on their side.
“Oh my God,” Manny exhaled.
The crowd inhaled loudly in response.
“He’s goin’ in,” Manny shouted. “The president’s goin’ in the water.”
And sure enough, the crowd, on seeing the gray-colored mob move east, pictured the President of the United States in a pair of pressed, tailored, charcoal-gray pants stepping into the lukewarm water they’d spent their lives standing, swimming and fishing in, as if – and dared they even imagine it? – he was one of them.
Now there followed a rousing round of applause.
Manny couldn’t see a darned thing, because the president had been swallowed up by the gray throng. He knew, though, that his friends and neighbors were counting on him.
That’s when Manny began to make things up.
“The president has him some glass jars,” Manny began.
Vera couldn’t help but speak up.
“Just imagine that,” she said.
A contented murmur circulated among the women out there on the dock and several recalled how they’d once thought the president would make a fine husband and father.
“He’s got hisself some water in them jars and lifted ‘em up,” Manny said, and the women hummed.
“The president’s gonna take that there water – our water – back to Washington,” Manny announced, his voice raised a few decibels too high.
“Back to the White House,” he added, as if everyone didn’t already know how carefully the president was going to take care of their water.
The gray mob moved toward shore, and Manny gave the crowd a last bit of news.
“The president is goin’ back to the White House now,” he said, a little sad about giving up his new role. “He’s goin’ back on Air Force One.”

The following night, husbands and wives, kids, grandparents and widows watched the president as he stood on their beach telling the whole world he wouldn’t forget them. A few of the women, including Vera and Mary Carlson, cried. They’d seen this kind of thing a million times on T.V., but the victims were always strangers. Now, they were the poor people a president was promising to remember.
The next day, everyone was back in their usual spots. The more hopeful waded into the water with their poles, while the cautious lingered on the dock. The president had taken a sample of their lives with him to Washington. Now, even the doubters expected something back.
Three camera crews arrived. One cute, sweet anchor – the blond – showed up. Vera had to admit – and she said it out loud – that the anchor looked prettier on T.V. than in person. Newspaper reporters asked questions. But as Manny would relate later in his play-by-play, that was all.
Two weeks went by. Effortlessly, the weeks rolled like a series of long, slow waves into a month. The group in the water dwindled. So did the numbers on the dock. One by one, people packed up and moved away from the coast.
By the end of that year, Manny and a small group of retired folks were the only ones left. Neither the residents nor the fish ever returned. If you walk over to the dock early in the morning, you will see a man standing there, talking to the wind. He’s telling the invisible crowd that he just saw Air Force One land, on a wide runway cleared of other planes, and that the President of the United States will arrive on the beach at any moment.
The man turns his back on the water, emptied of fish, boats, fishermen, scientists and reporters. He wipes the sweat off his forehead, smoothes down his hair and gets himself ready to face another long and exhaustingly hot and humid, lonely day.
LARACHE AND LEXIS by Salma Ruth Bratt

In Northern Morocco, two cities face one another, each nesting high above the valley that separates them.
One city, Larache, is a vibrant busy city of Spanish architecture, hexagonal plazas. It has a bookstore of Arabic, English, and French treasures, the grave of Jean Genet, and old fortresses that crumble eternally toward the sea. If you stand on one of Larache’s highest points, at the end of one of those mazes of sidewalks and walls that enclose hundreds of hidden homes, you will look toward Lexis, and you will see the home of Romans, Carthaginians, and Phoenicians, all who added to the scene at Lexis, who built monuments, plazas, and homes there, many centuries ago. If