Reviewed by Leslie Friedman
Wild Pack of the Living by Eileen Cleary
Nixes Mate Books
February 2024, Paperback, 80 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1949279511
If Steven Stayner had not been abducted from his home, the world would be different. For seven years, he was missing from where he should have been. Deeply linked aspects of his ecology were out of joint. His absence made his parents become different people just as the abductor turned Steven into a different boy. In a blink, he did not recognize his surroundings or the man who took over his life.
Eileen Cleary had an experience related to being abducted; the state took her from her family. Her poem, Wild Pack of the Living, is a terrifying story told with compassion and anger. Her writing gets into the reader’s feelings as though Steven had been a classmate buddy. Her poetry is exact with nothing extra. The words are sharp; they make the matter of fact description of the act of abduction feel like tearing off one’s fingernails. It would be hard to read this without holding one’s breath in fear.
A child goes missing every 40 seconds in the US. That adds up to 765,000 per year, except that these statistics are from July, 2011. The numbers now near the million mark.
In the first poem, “If Stevie Were Never Taken,” the author thinks of what she could have done to help Steven and to capture his abductor, but it could not be done.
“ …If I recognized Stevie, sluggish
in the backseat, I’d see where the sedan’s spectacled driver –
nearly hairless, hyperglycemic, haphazardly eluding
capture—must be fleeing. And I’d pursue him,
learning by heart his license plate and face.” p 3
She writes that the kidnapper was “not a monster, per se –
more like eyes torching “dry leaves in fire season.” p 3
What monster would torch “dry leaves in fire season”? Neither Big Foot nor Godzilla would be so destructive as a person setting off a wild fire in central California. To set off a fire that destroys thousands of acres of ancient trees, kills wildlife, causes human deaths; that is evil. It starts with a few burning leaves.
Cleary brings the readers to the scene of the crime. “Dear Grief-Lake,” introduces how the abductor could have come close, close enough.
You breached the park, Dear Predator,
where we latched our children between
crisp grass and wooly clouds,
,,,,
Dear Raptor. Dear Innocence Eater,
Slash Monger, Star Stealer,
….
you approached in the way we
tried to seal you out, telltale
blue smoke of your breath
….
vanishing. How happy we were,
blind and unaware of you crouched there. P 6
The “predator” has a plan. He knows that “happy” people will not be on their guard. The kidnapper, Parnell, recruits Murph to be his helper. Murph has low intelligence and no work but to assist Parnell.
It takes so little time., “ABDUCTION: ab ducere “to lead away”
A grimy white car pulls Stevie’s eyes from his feet.
abduction-, abductio “allurement.”
Parnell drives. / Murph invites. / Stevie climbs
inside. p 8
Parnell puts Stevie in a school. The poem “Good Reasons for Stevie’s Late for School,” is a long list of childrens’ games from Capture the Flag to Red Rover, Simon Says. Mother May I. Five Minutes More.” p 9
There are natural elements in Stevie’s life: school and games. But there is nothing natural about it. He is no longer himself. He has no idea where he is or who this other man is.
There is a search. Boy Scouts “searched the Parkway’s/empty lots and gas stops/before the soggy cold drove/them inside.” The failure of the search is nothing compared to the lies that must have been tattooed on Steven’s mind.
The stolen son is made to fit his new habitat. “Stevie Folded Into the Cabin”
Dog lilies and the lark spurs may have heard,
Your parents don’t want, don’t need, can’t feed p 10
The parents could no longer keep their routines. “the hours weathering clefts in their spleens, streams/ carving them wide – their boy calling
along the trailhead. Muffled, distant – /through packed shovels of doubt.”
Life stopped. “The eggs uncracked on the counter,/coffee gone cold.”
“Kay and Del the Morning After” p 11
“Sting” is a poem that captures the extremes of the parents’ reality.
When the abductee’s mother overhears
one less mouth to feed
the words puncture her tissue paper chest,
—–
If only she could breathe,
She could fill her lungs with spring. p 14
If I could cite all the steps of Stevie’s captivity, I would, but it would be wrong to disclose his entire life experience. I will jump ahead, but not all the way ahead because you, the future readers of Eileen Cleary’s poem, should be allowed to uncover this story.
In “Silence: A Compass Rose Answers,” the mother names the beauty of peach and almond trees at the same time she wonders if her son is buried under the groves. She adopts an alternate view of nature as a source of food and possibly the place of death. She cites the cliché about how a small action can change the world, and sees nature blame nature.
So lonely. The tornado
Implicates the butterfly. p 20
“The Sun God” is about Apollo, the space mission. His classmates and neighbors still searched.
…Is he buried in the peach fields?
He could be among their blossoms. Call him.
he might lie among the plums, the almonds,
or the dunes. If he were with Cernan,
Schmitt or Evans, he’d trail a pathfinder,
rejoin Merced’s atmosphere, land safely
from the moon. Our hero would be home. p 17
Communications fell, broken. Among the “Thirteen Reasons Stevie’s Seven Years Late From School” are these.
I
Missing child posters
trashed.
II
Fireflies do not answer
When lightning bugs are called.
III
Hidden in the open city.
Who am I? p 24
Cleary demonstrated the mixed up, regional differences of names for bugs or plants. Looking for fireflies? Better not call for lightning bugs. The same thing would happen if you call for Steven Stayner. Parnell has given him a new name: Dennis Gregory Parnell. His hair is a different color. He lives with a man who acts the father. Calling Stevie will not work.
October 1, 1993, I heard on the radio that twelve year old Polly Klaas had been kidnapped during a slumber party at her mother’s house. The California Highway Patrol put out an All Points Bulletin to reach all the policing authorities. However, only CHP radios could receive the bulletin.
The kidnapper pulled his car into a ditch between Santa Rosa and Sonoma. A property owner saw the car and called the police. The police arrived, looked at the driver, looked at the car, let him go. The police did not know about the abduction.
Weeks later, the same property owner found clothing and called the police again. They arrested the kidnapper two days later. In custody he said that he killed Polly Klaas because he did not want to go to jail for kidnapping. He murdered her within two hours of the abduction.
There were potential opportunities to identify Stevie, but Parnell’s name was not on lists where it should have been. Parnell became greedier. He brought home another boy. Stevie/Dennis Gregory Parnell read
Junior Scholastic says to solve a mystery, be curious.
—-
He chokes, I miss my family, though
no one hears. The teacher doesn’t mean to brush him aside,
It’s just that the recess bell rings, and the class clamors to play outside.”
“Junior Scholastic.” p 28
The turning point: “Parnell Abducts a Second Child, February 13, 1980”
Stevie Stayner, never Dennis Gregory Parnell, proves that he could outdo what George Orwell doubted a captive of 1984 could do. Stevie Stayner, without a second thought, realized he could not let Timmy become a prisoner as he had been for seven years. This simple idea was powerful: he had to help the other boy.
An old wind breaches
the crack of a window painted shut,
carries news from Stevie’s first country:
Stevie? STEVEN.
Bring Timmy home.
We never gave you away.
Stevie, p 30
No, I cannot do it. I started to reveal what happens to Stevie, but I made a promise. Readers, your half of the promise is to read “Boy From Merced.”
There are two more sections of Wild Pack of the Living.
Part II Jane Doe. The first entry is written as prose; it has the inward rhythm of an anxious brain making important lists, getting things for her children, wondering if she lost consciousness. Almost waking from a nightmare, there are times one needs to scream and cannot make an audible sound. Jane Doe goes silent. Her mouth will not work. In lines standing apart from the poem, the writer observes:
The hunter moon spills
over a gathering
of blue-men, blue-lit. “Lay-A-Way,” p 46
“Jane Doe’s Obituary” is the sadness of so much missing from a life. “Died: after the thrash/without her family by her side.” “She was occasionally missed before she vanished.” “She’s preceded in death by summer,/and a lover. In lieu of flowers, send her home.” p 47
Why was Jane Doe alone? Why is she Jane Doe? Part II and Part III are about ways of dying.
Part III: Hospice Rounds is painful to read. The author is a hospice nurse. She sees the dying departing. In “Rounds” she goes through the assignments which make a job and also are for other persons’ last motion, breath, thought.
I think about the provinces the dead occupy,
especially my friend whom I did not pronounce, though I felt her
pulse wane while my ear pressed against her chest. I can’t find her.
….
This woman
hasn’t let go of her living yet. I do this for her: stall.
Keep her family occupied. Give her time to leave. p 51
Eileen Cleary mentions several poets at the beginning of her poems,* but she quotes one word from Emily Dickinson. It shows up in the last stanza of the last poem of Part I: Boy From Merced, “Portrait of Missing Child as a Cloud.” Although it is specific to Steven Stayner, there are ways the line may apply to parts II and III. He has hidden in a cloud, perhaps, he may still be himself. The hospice patients to whom the nurse gives “time to leave” may also be themselves or, perhaps, wrapped in a cloud.
Years and the cloud has not disclosed
itself. Are you Nobody too? p 44
Leslie Friedman
Notes:
Ms Cleary honors poets with “after” Paul Nemser, Dorianne Laux, Elizabeth Bishop.
Links to resources about Missing and Exploited Children:
https://www.fbi.gov/audio-repository/news-podcasts-inside-inside_071211.mp3/view
https://www.missingkids.org/home
www.pollyklaas.org includes resources for parents/caregivers, teachers, law enforcement, lawyers, missing kids
About the reviewer: Writer and dancer/choreographer Leslie Friedman’s writing has been published in France, India, Poland, and the US. Her dancing and dances have won applause from audiences and critics on four continents. The US State Dept. co-sponsored her with host countries on historic “Firsts:” performance tours to Russia, China, Egypt, Poland, Hungary, Spain, England, many others. She received her History Ph.D. from Stanford, taught there, Vassar, Case Western Reserve, and left academia to write and dance full time. She received the Fulbright Lectureship to India and Senior Lectureship to Bulgaria. She published two natural history books: The Dancer’s Garden, a garden memoir, and The Story of Our Butterflies. She has written 6 plays awarded Best Play, Best Director, Best Actor. Audubon, Stories of the City (SF), and Berkeley Selected Poetry published her poems.Tupelo Quarterly and Compulsive Reader have published her reviews. The Wall Street Journal, San Jose Mercury News, St. Louis Journal of the Arts, others have published features, op-eds, letters. In Mountain View, CA, she is an activist to save trees and open space.