Delmarva Review, Volume 16

By Delmarva Review

WELCOME TO THE Delmarva Review’s 16th edition. The writing of 72 authors was selected from thousands of submissions during the year. This annual issue includes 70 poems, 12 short stories, and 14 essays. In all, the writers come from 23 states, the District of Columbia, and four foreign countries.

This year’s cover photograph is called “Eye of the Beholder.” It is a fitting description for the Red-tailed hawk’s large “eye,” on the cover, that allows the raptor to focus on its prey with spatial clarity from great heights at high speed.

The stories or poems in this issue carry a unique message from each author, in her or his own words. Topics naturally include grief, death, pain, love, living, place, acceptance, and freedom, among others. Aging and the uncertainties in life are frequent subjects. All have a common challenge—facing change—and the uncomfortable feelings associated with change.

As an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit literary publisher, we are greatly appreciative of the funding support we receive from individual tax-deductible contributions and a public grant from Talbot Arts with revenues from the Maryland State Arts Council.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Delmarva Review
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215527863

Delmarva Review

Founded in 2008, Delmarva Review is a literary journal dedicated to the discovery and publication of compelling new fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from emerging and established writers. Submissions from all writers are welcomed, regardless of residence. We publish annually, at a minimum, and promote various literary and educational events, to inspire readers and writers who pursue excellence in the literary arts.Delmarva Review is published by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund, supporting the literary arts across the tristate region of the Delmarva Peninsula, including portions of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. Publication is supported by a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council, with revenues provided by the Maryland State Arts Council, as well as private contributions and sales.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Delmarva Review

Copyright

PREFACE

FICTION

Featured Writer—Fiction Leslie Pietrzyk Interview

Leslie Pietrzyk

Blair Benjamin

Dale Stromberg

Craig Dobson

Curt Saltzman

Philip DiGiacomo

John Arterbury

Robert Stone

Robert Wexelblatt

Richard Sensenbrenner

John J. McKeon

Sam Campbell

NONFICTION

Featured Writer—Nonfiction Steph LiberatoreInterview

Steph Liberatore

Jean McDonough

Anne Moul

Mary-Cecile Gee

Rita Plush

Elise Seyfried

Judy Catterton

Elly Meeks

Erin Rose Belair

Michelle Cacho-Negrete

Daien Guo

Marijean Oldham

Patty Somlo

Mia Mazzeo

POETRY

Featured Writer—PoetryDevon Miller-Duggan Interview

Devon Miller-Duggan

Katherine Williams

Mary Buchinger

Andrew Payton

Kathryn Temple

Susan Okie

Julian Koslow

T. Dallas Saylor

Christopher Honey

Catherine DeNunzio

Madeleine Cohen Oakley

Samuel E. Cole

Barry Peters

Erin Stoodley

Sara Atwater

Mary Ozbolt

Bethany Reid

Pam Crow

K. Alma Peterson

P. W. Covington

Kathy Nelson

Mercedes Lawry

Colin Jeffrey Morris

Noel Sikorski

Mary Beth Hines

Emily Adams-Aucoin

Andrea Wyatt

Sally Dunn

Susan Bucci Mockler

Gina Ferrara

Brendan Rowland

Marlowe Jones

Ellis Elliott

John Muro

BOOK REVIEWS

Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems

Blue If Only I Could Tell You

A Doctor Only Pretends

Answering Alaska's Call

Living Into Darkness and Finding Light: Spiritual Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter

Stardust by the Bushel

Timepieces

A Wife In Watercolor

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

ORDERS

Delmarva

Review

Evocative Prose & Poetry

Volume 16

2023

Delmarva

Review

VOLUME 16

Cover Photograph: Eye of the Beholder by Wilson Wyatt

Delmarva Review publishes the most compelling new poetry and prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. Designed to encourage and feature outstanding writing, the literary journal is nonprofit and independent. To inquire about past and future issues, as well as submissions, please see the website: DelmarvaReview.org.

We are thankful for the generous financial support from individual tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Send general correspondence to:

Delmarva Review

P.O. Box 544

St. Michaels, MD 21663

Email: [e-mail]

Copyright © 2023 by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund, Inc.

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-8634223-1-2

Preface

WELCOME TO THE Delmarva Review’s 16th edition. The writing of 72 authors was selected from thousands of submissions during the year. This annual issue includes 70 poems, 12 short stories, and 14 essays. In all, the writers come from 23 states, the District of Columbia, and four foreign countries. The review encourages the best new work from all writers, and it does not charge fees for reading submissions or publishing.

We are also announcing publication of an anthology, The Best of the Delmarva Review (see the end of the Preface).

Since our beginning in 2008, Delmarva Review has published new literary poetry and prose from 550 authors. They come from 47 states, the District of Columbia, and 19 foreign countries. Almost half are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region.

This year’s cover photograph is called Eye of the Beholder. It is a fitting description for the Red-tailed hawk’s large eye, on the cover, that allows the raptor to focus on its prey with spatial clarity from great heights at high speed.

While an editor’s focus and selection takes more time, we manage to cull through thousands of submissions to find the best for publication. We read every submission—from writers everywhere—without regard to an author’s place of residence or any factor other than the writing quality that makes one piece rise above the rest. That’s the prey or the prize of the work we seek. As a result, new work faces the natural competition of a world much larger than its original home. The writer’s experience varies from student and aspirational level to professional. We wish we could publish more of the fine writing we receive.

The stories or poems in this issue carry a unique message from each author, in her or his own words. We do not limit an edition to a single theme. As a literary collection, we focus on the most compelling new writing and what is at stake or at risk emotionally or intellectually in the author’s work.

Topics naturally include grief, death, pain, love, living, place, acceptance, and freedom, among others. Aging and the uncertainties in life are frequent subjects. All have a common challenge—facing change—and the uncomfortable feelings associated with change.

The book is divided into three major divisions: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. An editor’s interview with a featured writer opens the section. The interviews set a tone for the genre and draw attention to the authors’ intentions—what they were thinking or the choices they made.

We are pleased to include a personal essay from the student winner of the Delmarva Review-Talbot County Youth Writing Scholarship award. In partnership with Talbot County Schools and supported by a grant from the Talbot Arts, the review selected Mia Mazzeo, a junior at Easton High School, in Easton, Maryland.

The student collaborated with our managing editor, a writing mentor, to prepare for publication, and she received a monetary award. The mentorship-scholarship program is part of the review’s ongoing efforts to highlight literary arts regionally among aspiring young writers.

Following the three genre divisions, the edition features a Book Reviews section with reviews of eight books of special interest recommended to readers.

A Contributing Writers section, near the end of the review, provides a biographical paragraph about each writer. Most were written by the author.

It is followed by a Contributing Editors section, which gives a brief biographical summary of each editor’s background.

Announcing: The Best of the Delmarva Review

We are taking a pause from accepting new submissions for 2024 in order to produce an anthology of the best writing published in the Delmarva Review during the last sixteen years. The writing will be selected by our team of editors for publication by November 2024. Information about the anthology and future submissions will be made periodically on the website.

The Delmarva Review is available in print (paperback) and eBook editions from major online booksellers. Print editions are also available from some specialty bookstores.

As an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit literary publisher, we are greatly appreciative of the funding support we receive from individual tax-deductible contributions and a public grant from Talbot Arts with revenues from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Wilson Wyatt

Editor

Email: [e-mail]

Fiction

FEATURED WRITER—FICTION

LESLIE PIETRZYK

AN INTERVIEW AND A SHORT STORY

Interview by Harold O. Wilson, Fiction Senior Editor

Harold O. Wilson: Leslie, we are delighted to select you as our Featured Writer for Fiction to open the Fiction section of this issue of the Delmarva Review. You have a distinguished career as an author and a teacher of writing.

For this interview, I am focused on your exceptional new story Gold Digger, which follows. I found the story to be a sharp and revealing look at both psychological and cultural pressures emergent in our society today. Tell us about the story: its genesis and what is behind the topic.

Leslie Pietrzyk: I write often to open-ended, single word prompts, and I use prompts to explore characters that I’m developing for novels-in-progress and/or stories. Here, I wanted to understand how these two characters met and ended up together. Because there are so many stereotypes surrounding successful athletes and beautiful women and our imagined relationships between those two types (for example, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen), I wanted to push hard to find something unexpected yet believable to say. Reader sympathy often doesn’t extend to wealthy, accomplished people who seem to skate through life problem-free, so that challenge interested me: how to make these two human? How to find the way into a core vulnerability that’s present, if hidden, that makes us human? (By the way, the two prompt words here were discovery and juicy.)

Wilson: You chose the short form (often called flash fiction) to tell the story. How does this approach lend itself to the telling of this particular story?

Pietrzyk: I like the focus of the short form, that the writer is (often) exploring moments of great significance…that everything in a character’s life quite literally can change in a flash. Given that, this story stretches across time, exploring a character thinking back over her life, trying to find that moment of transformation and trying to, once again, feel its power. If she’s being honest, she’s thinking back to determine if she made the right decision at the flash of that inflection point. The short form also offers an excellent opportunity for the writer to be a little jazzy with craft choices—here, my choice of the second person POV, the unnamed characters. No way could I pull off an entire novel under those parameters.

Wilson: In a prior conversation, you described this as a transactional relationship. What is a transactional relationship and how is it played out in your story?

Pietrzyk: The simplest definition of a transactional relationship is where each party needs something from the other and has something to offer in exchange. Perhaps this sounds terrible, yet much of life is transactional when you boil it down (i.e., the bookstore has the book I want to read, and I have a credit card to offer the funds they need). What I like exploring in my writing is the dynamic when transactional relationships are personal: do both sides accept the nature of the transaction (as in my bookstore example) or does someone want more? Does someone view the relationship differently? What is the shelf life of a relationship based on mutual need? Is it wrong to approach relationships in this way, and if so, why? After all, for centuries, marriage was primarily a transactional relationship.

Wilson: The character has a plan. What makes her change her plan?

Pietrzyk: Maybe it’s just me, but I think we all formulate various plans that most times end up shifting and adapting. I grew up planning to live in a penthouse in New York City, and while I did live in Manhattan for a brief while, I was rambling from sublet to sublet, surviving on pizza slices and street vendor hot dogs…yet I was deliriously happy. The plan seems a way to exert control, to figure out in advance how you’ll react and what you’ll do or say, to try to determine what will happen next. For many people—including our narrator, including me—there’s comfort and safety in having a thoughtful plan. But life is filled with surprises, as is the writing process: I didn’t know the narrator was changing her plan, or why until I wrote those lines. That she went in with the idea of latching herself onto this man, thinking their life together would be one way, but that her own feelings surprised—maybe betrayed?—her makes for a moment of emotional reckoning where the story pivots. She’s helpless when facing the power of her own emotions, and it’s exciting for the reader—while terrifying for the character—to witness such upheaval.

Wilson: Change is the bedrock of good fiction and if it is surprising for the protagonist and for the reader then it’s the mark of very good fiction. You say that the woman is surprised by her feelings and perhaps betrayed by them. Let me suggest that both the surprise and the betrayal emerge from a mistake she makes in the banter. She injects a serious and very human question into the rom-com transactional negotiation—a question that exposes the fear and vulnerability of the football player—What scares you? she asks. He gives a truthful and very human answer. Is it his answer that moves the story to a different level and provides the pivot point for this story?

Pietrzyk: Once a story is done, it’s in the hands of the reader, so I’m open to all interpretations. But since you asked, I’d suggest that this narrator arrives with her plan in place, which entails the expectation of rom-com banter, a slow seduction, where she remains in control. That’s what she’s familiar with, the sweet spot of her comfort zone. So when the conversation initially leads her to ask the question, Then what does scare you? she believes it’s all in hand. For me, the twist comes when he turns her own question and her own game back on her, challenging her to answer honestly. That she discovers she wants this moment of deep connection, that she does want and maybe needs to feel something beyond the superficial…well, she sure didn’t plan on that. (And the reader has to remember that we’re only getting her POV, only hearing her observations of how the conversation is proceeding. He might have his own plan in place, right?)

Wilson: How important is this level of change to any short story?

Pietrzyk: I’d have to suggest that in a world of fractured attention spans and much competition for readers’ time and energy, every story needs to offer a reason to keep reading, and the hope and/or fear of change is a powerful motivation for turning the page.

Wilson: The strength of the piece comes from this artful use of dialogue. Can you comment on this?

Pietrzyk: I’ll accept this lovely compliment as dialogue is something I re-re-revise. Some of my favorite tips for writing dialogue are to read it out loud, to cut out as many words as possible, and to be intentional with what people say. That is, we usually don’t need to see the logistics of two people setting up a lunch date…just get right to the two of them arguing at the table! Here, what appealed to me was the idea that both characters have a persona they rely on to get through conversations, the football star and the pretty girl. The tension of this dialogue is finding the realistic way to show each dropping that protective armor, of showing why they find such vulnerability possible (even if that vulnerability might feel ill-advised in the moment).

Wilson: You also teach writing. What is the most important quality you see in good writing?

Pietrzyk: If I have to trim my answer down to one quality, I’m always looking for voice: where the words on the page feel uniquely specific to this single story/book, where the characters become real people, I might imagine running into at the grocery store, where the language resonates with interesting details and unexpected observations, where I have the sense that the writer has something important they must urgently convey now. Someone can be taught to improve any number of craft elements—how to better pace tension, tricks for dialogue, etc.—and all of that improves your writing, obviously—but this sense of a strong, unique voice is something that emerges. Kind of like true love: you know it when you feel it, when you’re the writer or when you’re the reader!

Wilson: I found the second person POV in the story compelling. It pulled me in. In what way did this POV contribute to the strong and unique voice you created in the story?

Pietrzyk: The second person offers immediacy to the reader; we feel very much placed inside this mind. (For some readers, too much so, which is one of the risks the writer takes.) This POV is also useful when the narrator seeks distance from their actions, i.e., I’m not doing these things, ‘you’ are. This tension of a POV that’s simultaneously immediate and distant is a thrilling wrangle.

Wilson: What other elements of voice do you feel are important?

Pietrzyk: Maybe the number one element is that the writer has a deep knowledge of who this character is. Without that insight, the writer can’t know which words they will use/avoid, what they’ll be thinking/feeling as action unfolds, how their past experiences inform their reactions. Maybe a surprising component necessary for creating voice is to be a writer who really knows how to listen to people in real life—not only what people say, but also what their words aren’t saying. There’s always a story behind the story, and that’s what I find myself listening for.

Leslie Pietrzyk

GOLD DIGGER

IT’S 4 A.M., which someone told you is the loneliest hour, when people are most honest. His footsteps stalk the hallway, heading from his recliner in the den to the kitchen for more chips to another day. Heading from pills to booze, booze to pills. Heading into the end or the beginning of the end or maybe only the middle of whatever this love is.

Once upon a time…

I LIKE YOUR SENSE OF DISCOVERY, is the first meaningful compliment he gave, or maybe the first you remembered. The words flushed and warmed martini-tipsy you.

Sense of discovery, you said, leaning forward, letting him discover cleavage in the dress you’d bought that afternoon, exactly for this moment tonight.

Really, he said.

This was your second time out, and the first was only a fix-up by one of his old girlfriends, your yoga instructor. I have a feeling, she’d said. You two need each other.

Not much of a basis for a relationship, you joked, but she raised one hand:

Au contraire. She’d lived eight years in Cannes—she place-dropped constantly. So pompous, which made you trust her. She said, "Need is the basis of everything."

You agreed: give him your number. A month later, a text asking to meet for a drink that night at a hotel bar you knew. Fascinating. Who’d be so rude? On purpose? Or unintentional? You immediately typed back one letter—a lowercase k—an obnoxious response, chosen purposefully.

You were fourteen minutes late, prepared to enjoy a martini on your own, but there he was, beside the maître d’ stand: I was ready to wait all night, he said, but thanks for not making me.

Everyone in the place recognized him. People interrupted continuously for pictures and stories, so real conversation never got going—surely intentional, how to hide in plain view. His way to not-fail, same as the ridiculous last-minute invitation, setting up things that by design shouldn’t succeed. It was a juicy thought, that you both valued the sensation of feeling successful—yet went about achieving success in entirely different ways. You remember staring in the bathroom mirror in the ladies’ room that night, thinking, I’m not bored yet. When you returned to the bar, he looked straight at you and said, I’m not bored yet.

This second venture was more complicated: dinner for two in a private wine cellar room in a buzzy steakhouse. He was there when you walked in, exactly nine minutes late, though he hadn’t passed through the front door because you arrived twenty minutes early, paying the Uber driver to sit and wait while you watched from the backseat, feeling stood up. Startling to see him when you walked in, though you arranged your Mona Lisa smile as you murmured, So sorry I’m late. I’m terrible.

He stood, seeming to fill the room. Are you? he said, and you wondered, was the question are you late or are you terrible?

You said, I’m both.

On the table: a martini shaker nestled in a bowl of crushed ice, decanted wine, a cold seafood tray. No waiter would appear for a while. You couldn’t have planned it better yourself, and you had the sensation of being here for a job interview, not a date.

He gestured you into the seat opposite where he sat, the two of you directly across from each other, centered at a long, narrow table that could have been set for twelve. Candles flickered. Your heart thumped. You wanted this job, you suddenly thought, no, needed this job, whatever it would turn out to be.

Not that it would do to say so.

You said, Looks like you’re trying to impress me.

Are you? he said. Impressed?

Your almost-imperceptible shrug. I’d be a fool not to be, right? Big-deal football star, candles.

He frowned, and you narrowed your eyes. Where was the miscalculation?

That’s who I am, he asked, a big-deal football star?

Who am I? A pretty face?

You are pretty, he said.

You did play football. You recited the outline of his career: Nebraska, Super Bowls, the long career that trailed off into irrelevancy on the sidelines, the fans begging him to quit, his defiant refusal to leave the game, the career numbers that only almost add up to Canton.

Most people only talk about the Super Bowls, he said. Or the scandals. There was his famous smile. Heady. An invitation to peg him as the naughty boy. Of course you knew the scandals. Barely scandalous by today’s standards, you argued in your head. You liked his pride in the scandals, his steakhouse extravaganza. Both earnest and ironic, a nifty trick.

Why’d you keep playing? you asked.

He sighed.

How could you be happy as the backup after being the man for years?

Who says I was happy during any of it? he asked.

The silence wasn’t uncomfortable.

Are you bored yet? he asked with a charming smirk.

You’ll know when I am.

On like that as you both peeled shrimp and slurped oysters—"I bought the GQ with your fashion spread, you confess, and taped the cover in my locker—this faux rom-com banter passing for conversation and wit. I always win, he said. And you said, But I never lose." You could do this in your sleep, and surely so could he.

Finally, you said, Tell me one thing I wouldn’t know unless you told me, one thing not found off a Google search.

Did you do a Google search?

Didn’t you?

Nah, he said. Sometimes I like to let what’s going to happen, happen.

Even if I’m an axe murderer? you say.

That doesn’t scare me, he said.

Then what does scare you? you asked.

Questions like that, he said.

You shrugged. I don’t have to ask them.

I didn’t say stop, he said. I said they scare me. What scares you?

You paused. People rarely turn questions backward. People like talking about themselves; you rely on that.

Just as you were about to respond with mice, he said, Go ahead, give some bullshit answer like most people.

I try not to be most people, you said.

Same, he said.

You clinked his martini glass with yours. Proper gin martinis: clear, not cloudy, no tiny ice chips. That clarifying jolt.

Is this going well? he asked.

You nodded, said lightly, I see great things ahead.

That’s what scares me, he said. When everything’s going too good.

The waiter came. More martinis. Salads. Steaks ordered. And then:

What scares me, he said, the now empty martini glass couched between his two middle fingers, mesmerizingly so, what scares me…. His pupils seemed to grow and grow in the middle of those ice-blue eyes; his eyes felt so large that you almost gasped. Yes, you were drunk. Yes, you were going to go somewhere and fuck, or maybe that was going to be right here, in a minute, soon—you breaking all your careful rules. Like grabbing a fish with bare hands instead of a hook, bait, a net; instead of carefully reeling in the line. Just diving right in. You weren’t someone who dove right in. You’re about to dive in. The feeling was intoxicatingly breathable: like cool air.

What scares you? you whispered, afraid he’d break the spell by chirping that you scared him, hoping he would, so you could carefully slip back into banter and more banter. Really, weren’t you here to edge predictably and safely into his money and his life? Wasn’t that the task at hand? Stay until you got bored, then move yourself on to a better thing after getting a baby and a settlement. (No shame in taking care of yourself.) Your muscles turned as taut as a cat’s. Don’t screw this up, you thought, don’t talk, don’t talk.

What scares me is that without football, I’m no one, he said. That’s what I’ve been afraid of my whole fucking life without the balls to admit. He looked straight at you, into you, a dare.

The right things to say were heat lightning, empty flash charging through you: sympathy, empathy, comfort, brisk words to fix-it-all-up-and-wrap-it-with-a-bow; me too! That’s what we’re all afraid of, even if we don’t admit it.

There’s a job at hand, you think, do your damn job.

You match the intensity of his pale eyes and say, You can tell me anything. You can tell me who you really are. I’m not afraid of you.

And that’s when he gave the line about discovery. That’s when he admired your cleavage. That’s when you bent over that long table, hiking up your new dress, hoping he was worth smashing all your rules for, not his money and his life, but him. The man who dared admit such a fear, who needed someone to know who he really was. How did you, of all people, not know that what you needed was to care about someone? To say, for once, fuck the job.

Blair Benjamin

FOR ALL YOUR GOOD FORTUNE

KENNETH SITS QUIETLY as his twin brother, Mike, turns the pages of the Carver Corp. sales catalog, spread open on the dining room table.

Mike describes Carver Corp., its family-owned history, its lifetime guarantee, its commitment to ethically sourced metals and product safety, like he actually cares. This from the guy who spent about 30 percent of most days in high school smoking weed.

They’re in one of the most elegant houses in town, a beautifully restored Victorian with uncracked plaster walls, high ceilings, and original crown moldings. Above the fireplace mantel is a looping signature directly on the wall, which they were told was put there by President McKinley on a visit back when their town was a thriving small industrial hub.

Dr. Earle—who had been their dad’s cardiac surgeon and was the mother of nine-year-old twin boys that Mike used to babysit—doesn’t lean back with her hands in her lap but goes right for the sample knives and practices different slicing and dicing motions, testing their weight and feel in her hand the way a real chef should.

They’ve got a nice grip, she says.

Do you like to cook? Kenneth asks.

He often enters the sales pitch with that question. People know him as the shy kid whom everyone said should be on Iron Chef, the kid who had been his dad’s little sous chef at their diner for so many years. All the middle-aged women who’ve been buying knives from them this summer know their family’s sob story and were suckers for it: how the diner is the center of their world; how their mom isn’t even sure she can keep it going now that their dad is dead—or if she even wants to; and now, miraculously, because they’ve suckered enough people into pity, now they have a shot at being Carver Corp.’s highest grossing sellers in the entire country for the month of August, which would win them a $10,000 prize that might save the diner, or help put them through college, or whatever life-changing outcome people want to believe.

I’m not much of a cook, she says. I never seem to have time. Ty does more of the cooking.

Mr. Earle—a former Marine—lifts one knife in each hand, crosses them in an x in front of him like a comic book Samurai. He seems to be admiring his reflection in the shiny metal of the blades. I don’t really enjoy the cooking, he says. It’s for survival, not pleasure, at least for me.

The doorbell rings, and Dr. Earle gets up to answer it.

What about you? Mr. Earle asks. Do you plan to be a chef?

There are parts I enjoy, I guess, but I don’t know if it’s how I’d wanna make a living, Kenneth says. My parents haven’t exactly had it easy.

That’s one thing I liked about your dad, Mr. Earle says. No one could say he wasn’t a hard worker.

Kenneth wonders what things Mr. Earle didn’t like about their dad.

That’s true, Mike says.

Do you know he told me once he almost enlisted in the army before he met your mom? Mr. Earle says. I could’ve seen him wearing the uniform.

This idea is absurd, infuriating. Clearly, Mr. Earle has no idea who Kenneth’s father really was. He was the kind of man who could tell you about the constellations, for God’s sake. He was a gentle soul, not some killer.

He wasn’t really one to bark orders, Kenneth says.

Mr. Earle smiles. Well, yeah, maybe not drill sergeant material, but he could’ve been a steady and trusted corporal.

Kenneth remembers how Mr. Earle had visited their house the day before their dad’s funeral, and took Kenneth and Mike aside, looked them