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FEATURED AUTHOR—FICTION Quilt Thread Gurney Norman Slowly the shining object rises through the water. Trying to get to the core of something these few remaining days. Set of words buried in ancient matter. Sunlight strikes the edges, first hint of definition. The lakeshore is barren but in the distance a small stream flows into the lake through a copse of willow trees. But where does the stream begin? Where are the headwaters? Pattern of the tributaries. People recognize me as I walk by, they nod and wave, mouthing words of greeting I cannot hear. I know as time goes by that I am less substantial as a corporealbody. A certain floating quality hovers behind the "known" world. Sweet people ofbygone times smile as they say goodbye. Goodbye, they say. Goodbye. Oh please don't go, I say. Stay a while longer. This way, says the voice of a child. A small boy motions for me to follow. I walk behind him through a narrow passageway that leads to higher ground. Ahundred years ago my grandmotherplayed inthis creek. It meant to her what it meant to my father and then to me. Spaces in a metanarrative, room in the mind to wander. Unset the stone. Impossibility of knowing mind. Floating contents. What could organize the billion images and their projections? All the people I have known, every place I've lived, places I have seen, breathed, walked upon, desert resting places, camping spots, certain hot springs in the Cascades, remote waterfalls, cold pools high in the Sierras, deep in the canyons of the Santa Cruz range, Deep Creek in the Blue Ridge, Trace Fork in Kentucky before the strip mining. I confess my conceit in thinking that all meanings can be conveyed by words. Poetry. Victory of haiku. There goes old John Stepp, headed to the post office. John writes plays for the local stage. My father worked with John on the tipple at Black Goldbefore the war; they knew each other well. I've got a picture of him standing next to my father who has his arm around my mother who is holding me. My parents are young and sweet-looking. The 39 worst ain't hit 'em yet. Soul-crushing blindside slam against the fatewall , everyone you know and love ground up, overwhelming forces, gone. The world gets lonely as the older people who knew your parents when they were young pass on. After the war my dad used to go on these long lonesomejob-hunts with twenty dollars in his pocket that his father had loaned him, riding the Greyhound bus all night to Terre Haute Lorraine Dayton Michigan City ToledoAkron Cincinnati Cleveland arriving at dawn to start a new round of job-hunting. Bus stations were elaborate facilities in those days, small towns in themselves. My dad lived in bus stations on his trips, slept in them many times, eggs toast coffee cigarettes, terminal cafes. He would set out early in the morning to call on the factories warehouses stock yards employment offices where he had left his applications on previous trips. Then go around to other factories and fill out more application forms, janitor jobs in office buildings school buildings government buildings hospitals. Before the war my dad worked in the pony mines around home. In Italy, in the mountains, the Northern Appennine, 1944 and '45, he led pack mules up the mountains hauling food and water and ammunition. Onthe wayback downhe carried out the dead andbloody wounded. Sometimes even mules couldn't get to where the fighting was, and men like my dad carried the rations and ammunition up the steep hillsides on pack boards strapped to their backs, then by hand hauled the dead and wounded down hill to the waiting mules. After the war my dad was permanently tired. I still see him in his laid-off years, walking up the creek carrying on his shoulder a box of groceries bought on credit at the commissary, dark hair slicked back from his forehead, sad shadowed face, open innocent startled look he wore most of the time, accepting of his fate. Face-down in water, the shining object rises through dark fathoms...

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