Letters

I: Draft codicil to the last will and testament of Todd Andrews.

Morgan Memorial Tower

Marshyhope State University

Redmans Neck, Maryland 21612

Friday, September 26, 1969

I, TODD ANDREWS, a resident of Dorchester County, state of Maryland, being of sound & disposing mind, memory, & understanding, do hereby make, publish & declare this instrument of writing as & for a Codicil to my Last Will & Testament, supplementary to my Codicil of 9/1/69 comprising Article Sixth of my Last Will & Testament aforesaid. To wit:

SEVENTH: I give and bequeath to my Literary Trustee named in my Codicil of 9/1/69, in addition to my Letter to My Father, my Inquiry into his suicide, and the Log of the Skipjack Osborn Jones, this Codicil itself, if it survive the imminent demolition of the structure wherein I draft it and of myself, and whether or not it be completed, signed, and legally witnessed.

I write this by full-Harvest-Moonlight, almost bright enough to read by (but I brought with me a red-lensed pocket chart-light from the boat, along with pen, trusty yellow legal pad, and my 7x50 night glasses), in the locked & bolted Observation Belfry of the Morgan Memorial Tower, variously & popularly known as the Schott Tower, the Shit Tower, and the Tower of Truth. Drew Mack and some surviving fellow terrorists — dressed and painted as Choptank Indians to dramatize Redskin Rights in the event of apprehension — got in like burglars a few hours ago to do their work, mugging the night watchman for his keys and his watch-clock. But I entered, not long past midnight, as befits the Tidewater Foundation’s executive director & former counsel to MSU: with a gold-plated passkey presented symbolically by John Schott at last evening’s ceremonial dinner to me, to my counterpart on the State University’s Board of Regents, and to the governor of Maryland as represented by the comptroller of the treasury. A souvenir Key to Truth, which, broken off in the lock cylinder, insures my privacy to write and my freedom from rescue.

By this gorgeous light I can see clear across campus to the Mack mansion, where Jane is once again in mourning. Since her own — no doubt her first — Dark Night, Wednesday week last (9/19), when the yacht Baratarian was found derelict & half scuttled, with specimens of Harrison’s freeze-dried droppings aboard, and charts of the Mexican Caribbean, and very little else, Jane has suddenly looked her age: a metamorphosis more spectacular by far than mine because she had looked so inordinately youthful. I have done what I can to comfort her, without impressive success, and learned in the process that in fact she & Castine had concealed her late husband’s leavings lest I try to “pull another fast one” in the will case “as I did before.” And that the cache had nonetheless been stolen just prior to the Fort McHenry action — evidently but unaccountably by her fiancé! Whatever for, since her loss stood to be his? Neither Jane nor I can imagine. We rule out collusion with Drew as pointless and out of (Drew’s) character, whatever other connections the pair might have had. And we do not know what became of the crew & cargo of Baratarian. Jane declares herself inconsolable, and may be so. But I rather suspect that the opening next month of the first Cap’n Chick franchises and the early, favorable settlement of Harrison’s estate (now that the Tidewater Foundation is about to lose its director, and given Jeannine’s continued disappearance & Drew’s amenability to an out-of-court settlement) will go far towards consoling her; farther at least than my heartfelt but unavoidably detached solicitude.

Jeannine, Jeannine: what has our Author done with you? And if your little cruise with me furthered His plot, can you forgive me? We’ve little time.

My old heart pounds like a spring pile driver after an icy winter. What a heavy, hokey (but not untypical) irony it will be, if natural death prevents my suicide!