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Table of Contents
L e o n a r d O w e n s I I I
T h e C h i l d h o o d o f H a r o l d J e b e d i a h K e s t r e l | 3
A l e x E n d e r
T h e W e e p i n g W o m a n | 1 1
A l e x a n d e r C e n d r o w s k i
H o t S h i t G e t s H o t | 1 7
R a c h e l l e G a r z a
A n d T h e n H e T o l d M e A b o u t T h e N i g h t | 2 1
J o e y T u f a n o
A N i g h t i n t h e F i r s t S n o w f a l l | 2 5
A l l i s o n W a l l a c e
A R e d C o o l e r w i t h B i r d H e p a t i t i s | 3 1
Copyr igh t © 2014 Team Ke s t r e lAl l r i gh t s r e se rved .
2
The Childhood of Harold Jebediah Kestrel
An Account by Leonard Owens III
Harold’s parents, both of whom were
whiter than WonderBread inside and out and
wore soda bottle lenses to see with, cranked blue-
eyed soul music over the hi-fi all weekend every
weekend, late into Saturday nights, shimmying
3
hips asynchronously across the l iving room rug
as Harold and his best friend, Jorge, sipped
Fresca cans on the loveseat and didn’t partake in
the fondue.
If the two young lads happened to chance
upon a moment to slip out, Jorge would search
out an empty metal garbage can and thick palm
fronds and teach Harold the secret drum rhythms
of Venezuela as mangy cats prowled for scraps or
another’s heat. Their syncopated clanging would
compete against Harold’s parents for noisiest
nuisance on the avenue, and one night the police
came and wrote a citation on a pink square that
Harold’s father tore up in quarters—promptly
following a peek through the blinds to ensure
officers Melendez and Cruzé had turned the
corner in their squad car.
4
Harold’s mother, Anastasia, grew up with
three brothers (two older and one her junior), all
very fit and masculine boys, two of whom earned
endless honors for football while the other led
the tennis team to nationals, thrice. Whether
veracious or not, rumors abounded that the
brothers would swirly the heads of any boy who
flirted with her and saw off the gonads of the
brazen chap who so much as hugged her, even
purely platonically, as was the case when she and
Jim Wentley won 2 n d place in the debate against
Moose Tracks Prep, and Jim simply wanted to
demonstrate his gratitude at her adept handling of
the unexpected topic “To Nuke Now or To Nuke
Later,” and so he hugged her—a half-hug to be
exact—then wasn’t seen in the halls for a week,
and poor Anastasia, stricken with guilt and
5
disquiet , biked across town to his house, where
Jim’s blue racing bike lay in the yard and no one
answered her 97 knocks.
Needless to mention, Anastasia met
Harold’s father, Gregory Kestrel, during t ime
spent at an infinitesimal l iberal arts college,
which she chose based on two criteria: i t was
1,437 miles from her hometown and there were
zero athletic programs, not even intramural
badminton, leaving her brothers with li ttle to no
interest in ever visiting her there.
Gregory was the first boy with whom
Anastasia knew carnal relations; he was also the
first to ask her out, during her second week as
they exited their Microcosms of Humanity Class.
Harold doesn’t know much of this. In fact,
his mind is privy to rather li ttle biographical data
6
regarding his parents’ pasts. While he swayed in
the warmth of his mother’s womb, she read a new
age book about mothering that instructed, above
all others, two simple rules: “1) Don’t give
answers until they ask questions, thus fostering
an ever-inquisit ive mind from the earliest ages,
and 2) don’t answer the questions ever, thereby
reinforcing the harsh reali ty that solutions to the
great questions are highly unlikely and not to be
expected so easily.” What Harold does know
about his parents he gleaned from a closeted
shoebox late one evening after his mom and dad
experimented with laced margaritas for the first
(and final) time. The supposedly relevant details
he discovered are as such: the .271 lifetime
batting average found on the back of a baseball
card for one Conrad Quizkowlski; the chamomile
7
scent which still clung to the tattered
handkerchief; and one letter penned with
incomprehensible cursive, which Harold still
presumed was of a romantic nature and bestowed
upon his mother. Following these discoveries,
Harold reformulated his origins thusly: his
mother clearly found employment sell ing
cigarettes at the stadium where Conrad
Quizkowlski played, enchanting his eye and,
subsequently, driving his batting average beneath
the league median; one night, after bunting home
the winning run, Conrad, ripe with vigor and
vitality, found the nerve to approach Anastasia,
in the ladies room, where he seduced her in quick
order before taking her out to tea, during which
time he offered his kerchief so that she may wipe
the dribbles from her dimpled chin as they
8
giggled at passersby and locked fingers in his
lap. As for the letter, Harold deduced that it came
sometime after his mother had revealed her
impending pregnancy and Conrad only felt it
honorable to, in his own writing with battered
baseball player fingers, inform of his immediate
request to be traded to a team in Hawaii, where
coconuts are hit instead of baseballs. Of course,
Harold’s line of thought led to just one logical
outcome: that he was, without doubt, the
illegit imate son of the great Conrad Quizkowlski
and that the man who drove him to school daily
was the buffoon his mother had baited after
Conrad followed his manly urges far westward.
With this newfound information, Harold
soon gleefully regaled his playground pals with
his new and exciting l ineage. Above all else and
9
all odds, Harold Jebediah Kestrel was a very
creative boy.
And the shoebox belonged to his father, by
the way.
10
The Weeping Woman
An Account by Alex Ender
Living in Corpus Christi squelched much
of Harold Jebediah Kestrel’s eager 20s—
construction jobs were scarce, and Harold
bounced from couch to dorm to apartment to
basement to alley to couches again.
Rather than the body of Christ, Jeb
developed the other six pack—Lone Star, the
national beer of Texas, to be exact.
11
At a hopefully female laden soirée turned
stag party, Harold slammed thirteen cans of Lone
Star. There, Harold met a young Latino named
Manual, which was later corrected 10 times
between the man himself and friends at the party.
Manual was an expert junkyarder and jury rigger
who could read very well, much better than Yeb,
but his speaking voice confused Harold and the
other Texan stags.
Despite annunciations, Manual informed
Harold there was work to be had, not too far
south, to which Harold slurred that he’d dahoo
urrthin ta urn tahrucks n semwuhr ta suhleep .
Tiny rays of heat scorched his eyelids. He
could make out purple and red and orange
12
members drawn on his forearms and sprayed his
limbs with lit tle room to kink out.
The latch of the trunk popped open. No one
was there. The car door would not open.
Harold spouted the name Jorge to several
folk—they pointed down the dirt road or tugged
at their clothing or thumbed at restaurants and
shops or shrugged in despondence.
Harold stumbled upon a small playhouse.
He fumbled over words to the waiter, somehow
ordering churros. He lamented the lack of
cinnamon sugar but found their dulce de leche
extravagant.
The cheap floor l ights dimmed. A man with
a purple velvet suit and lispy utterances gave an
introduction speech. Harold ignored him and
ordered another round of churros, and a tequila.
13
The stage hosted a dirty bathtub and a few
children playing in cellophane water. Harold
scoffed at the man playing their father who
rejoiced the happiness of his family and sang
with a low baritone.
A slender woman with heavy eyebrows
takes his place. Murky makeup caked her skin,
and her white dress fi t too t ightly around her
waist. She drowned all of the children in the
cellophane and sang about i t.
Harold stood up, knocking the churros to
the ground. He nearly drowned in the one year
he was a boy scout and went on a canoeing trip.
When leaving the river bank, the canoe t ipped
over into swampy waters. He could not see the
sky or even his own arm. His hands splashed
14
above the murk until his father pulled him out
and called him a pussy.
He screamed about crocodiles in his sleep
for the next two weeks.
The woman left the stage. Her once-
stricken lover returned and shouted La Llorona,
La Llorona, La Llorona! Harold flipped the table
over, scaring the locals and sending the actors
away.
The owner and some waiters threw Harold
face down into the dirt road. He looked up into
the cloud of dust to see the tight white dress, her
face peering down at him. She took him home and
undressed him, herself. Her curves folded each
other at the waist . Harold, stil l hungry from the
fallen churros, felt hungry for her saucy butt, and
took a soft bite.
15
Manuel barged through the front door and
screamed at her. When Harold hailed Manual, his
face washed over with relief. Manuel put his arm
around Harold, shook him favorably, and left out
the front door. His hermana? Good enough for
Yeb. Everyone on the dirt road heard Harold yell
La Llorona, La Llorona, La Llorona!
He and Manuel went on to build wells and
other utili ties for the people. He stayed on
Manuel’s couch—and sometimes his sister’s bed
—for two years before going back across the
border to Texas—in Manuel’s trunk, of course.
16
Hot Shit Gets Hot
An Account by Alex Cendrowski
Despite his admittedly custodial
occupation, Harold Jebediah Kestrel is humble
master over approximately 37-million American
dollars. I only say “approximately”, because he
still has not converted it from Japanese yen, and,
to be frank, conversion rates between these
countries are turbulent at the best of times. It is
not currently the best of times.
17
In 1992, Harold was, naturally, in Tokyo,
following his forced removal from the Guns N’
Roses stage crew (he had, truly, never been a fan
of Axl Rose, finding him too aggressive for his
taste—Slash was cool). Tokyo seemed the ideal
place to be in 1992, especially for those sane
human beings who did not know the language. He
found the people far more accommodating to an
acceptably Kestrel l ifestyle than America had
ever been, and, besides, the food was fantastic.
Sushi, gyoza, yakitori, all accompanied by hot
soba. Soba, of course, was served near-boiling—
at least the kind Harold appreciated—leading to
more than a few burns for his over-eager tongue.
This created a kind of vicious cycle of burning
for Harold: with a swelled tongue, he could no
longer adequately blow on the soba to cool i t,
18
and yet he stil l wished to eat it quickly, resulting
in, at its worst , near second-degree tongue
damage.
In a haste to solve this issue, he purchased
a handheld fan from a tourist attraction’s
streetcar, and proceeded to tape it to his wrist in
such a way that a simple flick of a switch would
blow cool air towards his hand, and thus, the
soba at the end of his chopsticks. As fate would
have i t, a Japanese businessman seeking to drown
his own failure-sorrows in Soba, noticed the
trick. He struck up a deal with Harold to create a
prototype and submit it to a patent board. Harold,
who, again, did not speak the language, merely
nodded and eventually handed over his telephone
information. Of course, the simplistic wrist-fan
became the inspiration for the now-explosive line
19
of Wrist-Food-Coolant Products ™. Overnight, i t
seemed, his invention became a success, and
Harold found himself seemingly drowning in yen.
Overwhelmed by his sudden wealth, and by what
promised to be a complication of an otherwise
happy life, Harold returned to the states with
over four bil lion yen in his bank account, where
he took up custodial work as a way to “get away
from it all .”
Over these twenty-two years, the yen has
been building interest, piling up in his bank
account, where it remains untouched, aside from
the continued cut of profits from his Japanese
business partner (whose name escapes Kestrel’s
mind). Harold lives in a humble, single-story
abode on Jax Beach, where he sti ll enjoys an
occasional hot soba.
20
An d Th en He To l d M e A bou t Th e N igh t
An Account by Rachelle Garza
For a short time in his forties, probably
around forty-four, or maybe forty-seven, he took
up residence outside of Washington, D.C. Jeb
would eat dinner at J.Gilbert’s, the local watering
hole. He had a standing reservation, Thursdays at
7:25 P.M., with the same server, and the same
order. Harold Jebediah Kestrel prefers his steak,
bone in rib-eye, served well done alongside
seared scallops, scampi style, with extra garlic
and lemon.
21
J.Gilbert’s was rumored to be the hangout
for not only CIA operatives from just down
Dolley Madison Boulevard but a favorite for
Russian KGB operatives who liked to keep tabs
on said CIA folk. You can imagine the tension in
the room wondering if your buxom bartender was
more l ikely to be Betsy Fulcher from Jersey or
really undercover operative Varinka Aslanov
from Moscow.
One evening after eating his surf and turf
and drinking far too many amaretto sours, Jeb
took it upon himself to dismiss the regularly
scheduled lounge singer and belt out his best
version of Purple Rain into the microphone. He
made it from I to rain without a single protest ,
from patron or management.
22
His voice was a perfect cross between
Michigan J. Frog and Lionel Richie. The long
banquet table full of vodka’d Ruskies really dug
his performance. That group never liked
anything. The head of the table invited Jeb over
for a few shots, a few women, and some travel
stories. Brought up in the conversation were the
few months he had spent in Osaka, eating Soba
and frequenting Japanese brothels. Jeb had
befriended a businessman by the name of Daisuke
Inoue; they enjoyed the same type of women.
Jeb told the Russian about the machine that
Inoue had invented: a simple box consisting of an
amplifier, microphone, and an eight-track car
stereo. That night at J.Gilbert’s Jeb struck a deal
to begin importing the first Karaoke machines to
the United States.
23
On any given Thursday you can find
Harold Jebediah Kestrel wrapping up Karaoke
night at his local Dick’s Wings with the same
rendition of Purple Rain.
24
A Night in the First Snowfall
An Account by Joey Tufano
In an effort to see more of the world and
connect with old friends from his favorite local
restaurant, Jeb bought two round-trip tickets to
Zhukovsky, a city southeast of Moscow. Neither
ticket was for him. The first t icket was for the
waiter that attended the dinner orders of his two
acquaintances across the restaurant—a Polish
gentleman that hung his head over his notepad from
the weight of his glasses, who spoke Polish fluently
25
and knew more Russian than English. The second
ticket was for a friend of a friend, someone Jeb
knew through Jorge. Whereas the Polish waiter
resembled a man well-versed in the intricacies of the
world—Jeb often imagined that the man’s glasses
pinched at the poles of his globe-shaped head—
Jorge’s friend believed himself the very first envoy
between modern-day Homo sapiens and the next
human link on the evolutionary scale. Whenever this
friend recalled his great success double majoring in
Polish and International Studies (honoring his
heritage), he would sway his coattails back and
forth, lost in his proud thoughts—earning him the
nickname Rat. With prompting, Jeb bought the
waiter’s confidence, and the opportunity to visit
another country for the first time was incentive
26
enough for Rat. Jeb bought a one-way ticket for
himself.
The three men sat down with the two Russian
men and ordered drinks. The tavern was a makeshift
home turned haven for off-duty pilots, and rumored
to have been the favorite watering hole for famous
Soviet miner Alexey Stakhanov. As Rat tried to
order a pint of Smirnoff, Jeb and the waiter tapped
glasses with the familiar-faced Ruskies, turning the
heads of two older men playing chess near the door
and one bug-eyed young man clicking furiously at
his typewriter by a dwindling fire. In a kind of
happy stupor, the Russians exchanged stories with
the three men. Jeb listened to them as they spoke in
a tongue he didn’t understand, where every word
seemed like an interjection, debate, or a passionate
27
display of ideas. From here, the waiter would
translate their words into Polish (or English
whenever they spoke of things he recognized from
his years in the service industry: namely, food and
drink. And women). If Rat wasn’t too flushed or
caught up in tapping his foot to an unheard rhythm,
he would translate the waiter’s reliable Polish into
questionable English. And just like in D.C.,
regardless of whether he understood the pokes and
prods of their stories and words, Jeb bought the
Russian men drink after drink to prompt an ease
with speaking.
When the cold night led inevitably to a
discussion about women, the Russians grew
noticeably hushed, and one had a pained look on his
face. Jeb felt that his instigation into the subject was
28
too forced, and that he was to blame for the sudden
change in mood—sometimes, without realizing it,
Jeb talked about current near-and-dears when a
conversation began to lull . He made Rat and the
waiter say how he never meant to cause the men any
sorrow. When this remark made no impressionable
difference to them, Jeb took a sip of his drink,
thought for a moment, held his chest in a fashion
resembling a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance,
and said out how he only longs for a good woman,
hoping that this statement would appeal to the
unknown circumstances burdening their thoughts.
Rat’s slurred translation of “longs” became the
Polish word for “desires”, and shortly after raising
his head to say the sentence, his neck felt weak and
his head slammed onto the counter. The waiter,
overcome more by drowsiness than drink, mumbled
29
into the palm of his hand that held up his head,
unknowingly turning the Polish word “desires” into
the Russian word “lusts”. The bar was silent for
several seconds. Suddenly, the two Russian men
broke into loud laughter. Jeb smiled confusedly and
the waiter woke slightly from his daze—Rat
remained facedown. One man wagged his pointer
finger at Jeb, and they both talked in Russian as they
got up from the bar to put on their coats. Out of
courtesy, Jeb did the same. But the men threw their
arms over his shoulders, pat him on the chest, and
began leading him out of the bar with smiles on their
faces. And just as the first snow of the year began to
fall on the back roads of the Russian province, Jeb
walked with the two men he considered his friends
to a place with predictably more females than the
bar would ever have.
30
A Red Cooler with Bird Hepatitis
An Account by Allison Wallace
Harold Jebediah Kestrel became obsessed
with a certain type of waterfowl after visiting
Canada for the 1976 Summer Olympics.
While driving around the UNF campus in
search of his great nephew, he came upon the
creatures as they waddled across the road.
Enamored, Jeb parked his car in the middle of the
street and walked toward the flock of geese. The
31
Canadian geese were different from these, less
friendly. UNF geese were unafraid of humans and
were quickly becoming the majority of the
campus’ population.
At this, Jeb knew what he must do. He
applied for an on-campus job, becoming a
custodian shortly after.
He loved to drive his golf cart to the green
and spend quality t ime with the geese. Often, he
fed them gluten-free bread (so as to save them
from leaky gut syndrome) and let water pour onto
their backs from the gaps his missing teeth left
behind.
There was a certain gosling he grew fond
of, one he finally captured and brought home. He
named her Jadzia Pinzer Kestrel . Jadzia roamed
around Jeb’s Jacksonville Beach abode, prodding
32
Jeb’s feathered pillows with her beak as if they
were her siblings. Sometimes Jeb would take
Jadzia for walks down the beach while the sun
rose. He had to keep Jadzia on a leash because he
feared she’d escape into the ocean and drown in
its undercurrent. She wasn’t used to such rough
waters.
Jadzia was Jeb’s only companion for a few
months, until he noticed how lethargic she
became. Soon she showed signs of anorexia and
secreted white diarrhea. Without a second
thought, Jeb rushed her to Beaches Animal
Clinic, where he was informed Jadzia had
Derzy’s Disease, a common form of waterfowl
hepatitis with a high mortali ty rate.
Jeb brought Jadzia back to the green to say
goodbye to her family. He let her eat soba for the
33
first time that night. After nibbling one noodle,
Jadzia shit across the room and onto Jeb’s sl iding
glass door.
The taxidermist did a wonderful job
preserving Jadzia’s lit tle body once she died.
When you come across Jeb at UNF today,
you’ll find a red cooler in his possession. He
carries it wherever he goes, and sets i t in the
passenger seat while driving the golf cart. During
his lunch break, he feeds pieces of flax seed
bread to the cooler while he slurps soba from a
Tupperware bowl. If you get close enough to look
inside, you’ll realize that Jadzia l ives on—at
least in Jeb’s mind.
34
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