Interim by Ruth Bowen Author Ruth Bowen, one of the well-known sophomores around the campus, is a new member on the "Scribulus" staff. She has long been interested in journalism and is an English major at Weber. In high school she also took an active interest in writing and edited the school paper. Whiffs of rich liquors steeped in stale cigarette smoke made the air rancid. It cloyed the nostrils. In the front booth a dark head was slumped over a cigarette-stained table. Minutes passed . . . then a fat fly hovering near crawled upon the man's bare arm. At first it didn't bother him, but then he raised his head and with an effort banished it clumsily away. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but his lips felt heavy; his tongue was thick, lying in his mouth without feeling. On sitting up his brows drew together. The thumping of a nearby piano set the dull pain in his head to throbbing. It was hot and humid. Through the blur that was before his eyes he caught glimpses of men fondling their women under dim lights in obscure booths. The man motioned to one of the girls lolling on the bar. She was a Mexican, and as she walked toward him, he scanned the sultry curves of her body showing darkly through clinging chiffon.. 'Hmmmmm. You want me?" The tone of her voice was rich, suggestive. The man groped for his wallet and threw ten dollars on the table. "Bring m' . . . 'nother quar' . . . then lemme 'lone . . .," he barely whispered. The Mexican girl took the ten and, folding it carefully, let it drop beneath the folds of her dress. ... "Why didn't the damn spick go away," he snorted. Her arm laying on his neck felt fat and heavy. "He had been sitting there for hours, maybe days . . . waiting . . . waiting. -Waiting for what? Somehow he couldn't quite remember." He raised his iiead up and squinted at the window. "The confusion of neon signs flickering in the street spelled out words . . . words . . . sentences . . . slowly whole paragraphs shaped themselves before his befuddled mind: "Sorry . . . sorry ... NO PUBLIC APPEAL . . . good novel no market . . . style heavy . . . sorry . . . Page Two "'Character, Carlan, a type, overly romanticized at that too dramatic, too tragic, lacks public appeal . . . sorry . . . sorry . . .'" The man's too-wide eyes were fastened to the flickering lights outside. Two glassy beads zig-zagged down his forehead only to be lost somewhere in a shaggy brow. He paced the cell of his warped mind groping for reason. "Carlan ... a type! He had created Carlan bit by bit from out the dark recess of memory . . . his hair that of a negress on the bayou . . . the lines engraved in his face were those of an old man who once sold "Shelled Peanuts" on a side street in Lanciano . . . his intense zest for life, desire for freedom belonged to his race. "They lied! They who passed judgment without understanding. Years had gone slowly while he watched Carlan grow from a faint sketch done in the pastels of imagination to something someone tangible a real character with loves and hates, inconsistencies a human being to make the pages of a book live! "He had written of Carlan because he had to write of him. One could not say to Carlan wait . . . wait . . . Occasional thoughts of him ate at the imagination like particles of rust under a slab of shining steel. Then the book was written. "Why was the air so thick ... so damp . . . "It was in this very setting he had placed Carlan to watch to observe him. Where in all this sordid life would he could he find happiness?" "In the wanton dark-skinned girls of the bar there was allure. Outside there was life!" "But life also demanded nobility of birth "He went away, and returned tired, defeated, and mentally diseased to the women at the bar. A month later they found a young Jewess crying over his body." "Carlan came back . . . Had he also?" "That damned woman. Her arm stuck like paste to his neck. He would tell her. He turned his head no one was there!" The droning of a fly was the only sound penetrating the crisp stillness of early morning. After skimming the bar and encircling twice the old-fashioned chandelier, the fly alighted to stroll leisurely over the clenched fist slumped over a table in the front booth. Suddenly, it swung up again and soon settled on the thick flesh of the man's swollen lips. A winged shadow walded a prominent cheekbone a few inches, then, turning back, retraced its steps to the man's mouth and, in a matter of seconds had disappeared inside. Page Three