Letters

I stood trembling in my sweat. Nature bloody in fang and claw! Under me, over me, ’round about me, everything killing everything! I had dined that evening on crabs boiled alive and picked from their exoskeletons; as I ate I’d heard the day’s news: Judge Boyle denies Kennedy request to cross-examine Kopechne inquest witnesses; last of first 25,000 U.S. troops withdrawn from Viet Nam; U.S.S.R. acknowledges danger of war with China. And Drew would become a terrorist, only accidentally killing others. And you, sir, killed yourself, the only lesson you ever taught me. Horrific nature; horrific world: out, out!

Come misty morning I rowed ’round Sawmill Cove and found nothing. Trappe Creek and all its contents were dewy, fresh, innocent, almost unbearably sweet. Oh, end it! I felt heart-haggard as the Ancient Mariner; looked as zombieish as on the morn of June 22 last. End it. A northwesterly sprang up in time for me to leave cove and creek silently, under sail, as I’d hoped. No good-bye; just out, out. In the river I passed without emotion Red Nun 20. By midmorning Osborn Jones was in his Cambridge slip, fit with reasonable maintenance to sail to the end of the century; but I left him without a qualm, almost sorry I had yet to sail back to Todds Point, so done was I with what had been for 30 years my chiefest pleasure — and with having done.

I walked up hot High Street to the hotel for a shave, shower, and change of clothes; snatched up the accumulated mail without sorting through it; went over to the office to see what was what. Hello, Ms. Pond and partners. Pleasant enough, thank you. Get Buffalo on the phone, please. Come again, Buffalo? No “Monsieur Casteene” to be found in Fort Erie? No one home at Jerome Bray’s establishment (Comalot, you say? Is that first o long or short?) except a family of goats and a crazy lady who calls herself Morgana le Fay? Who you what? Have reason to suspect might be Harrison Mack’s daughter? By all means investigate further! And now, Ms. P.: Joseph Morgan, please, in Fort Erie. Not available? Your name is what? Jacob Horner, administrative assistant? Ms. Bea G., please—Bibi, I believe you call her… Not there? Since 8/14? Never mind whose birthday! Presumably with Mr. Bray in Lily Dale?

Oh, Polly, where are you to advise me? I asked your successor now to get Jane herself on the phone, thinking to share with her my concern for her, our, daughter and perhaps (discreetly) to signal my apprehensions about her fiancé. While Ms. P. dialed I leafed through the mail; saw your dear handwriting on one envelope; tore into it in the dim hope that whatever it contained might invite my apology for so rebuffing you — and found the announcement of your wedding on the 21st.

A wedding performed, you kindly explained on the back of the announcement, after that last desperate visit to Cambridge three weeks since, when — hoping against hope I’d welcome you home, order you to stay, propose marriage on the spot to the woman who’d left me only to prod my sluggish heart — you’d been coldly turned off instead; and even so, madly imagining I might just be ill or distracted, madly praying that one last word might drop the scales from my eyes and heart and prompt me at last to say Come, Polly, Come with me and old Osborn Jones, let’s sail together to the end of the chapter… you called; you telephoned me at Todds Point in the middle of the night, cursing and loving me, hoping and praying; called to propose flat out to me what, decades since, I ought to have proposed to you. And your call was answered by a sleepy young woman’s voice, and for the last time you swallowed your pride; rang off without a word; went home to Florida; said yes at last to your patient friend, and to me a hurt but even yet loving last good-bye.

Good-bye, Polly.

Cancel that call, Ms. Pond. Cancel everything. No, nothing wrong; everything is right, and full to overflowing with intrinsic value, except that I remain alive.

Back aboard the boat I sat for some time stunned, then made a certain codicil to my will regarding the posthumous disposition of my “personal papers,” including this. Home next day to Todds Point, where I spent the Labor Day weekend considering, among other things, Tomorrow Now. Why await the equinox, or the winding up of business, or the illumination of mysteries, before ending, ending, ending it? Was there any reason at all not to have done?

One. In the office on Tuesday morning last, September 2, I found Buffalo on Line One, calling me before I could have Ms. Pond call him. Nothing new on “Morgana le Fay” (which was all I cared about), but all was chaos at that other crazy place, the one across the river in Canada. As of yesterday, Labor Day, Joe Morgan was dead, an apparent suicide; all the white patients and staff were being evicted by the blacks — no Bibis or Bea Goldens or Jeannine Macks among them. Should he continue to keep an eye on things, discreetly?