Letters

Finally I interrogated Mr. Jacob Horner, an odd duck indeed, and his female companion, whom he called Marsha and the others called Pocahontas. I could make little sense of his account of Morgan’s death (Horner I gathered was a long-term “patient” at the Farm as well as some sort of administrator, and an old acquaintance of Morgan’s), but inasmuch as he’d been in the room when Joe either deliberately or accidentally shot himself — indeed, it seems there had been a scuffle between them: an inquest was being considered — I advised him to retain a local lawyer and requested from him, “for the foundation,” a copy of the account I urged him to set down for that lawyer.

On the subject of Jea

Well. This Marsha-Pocahontas woman struck me as a bit evasive, but she might merely have been stoned, or drunk: she had the voice and ma

“This morning” (I mean Friday, but time has passed), from the office (nothing new), I tried to reach Prinz, Drew, and A. B. Cook by telephone — that last to ask exactly when and how Bray had turned up from the Prohibited Area and what he knew about Merope Bernstein and Jea

There I have succeeded: my one success in recent weeks. It is Sunday forenoon now, September 7. Bishop Pike’s body has been found in the deserts of Israel; Joseph Morgan’s will be memorialized a few hours from now; Jea

Did you expect a climax, Dad? A surprise ending, a revelation? Sorry. I here close my Inquiry for good, first opened 49 years ago this month. As you did not deign to let me know why you turned yourself off, I shall not tell you this time (as I did in 1937) how, when, and where I mean to do likewise. Commence your own Inquiry! Begin, what in your life you never once began, a Letter to

Your Son.

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 di

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 co

Jea

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!

That other pounding — an almost furtive pounding, one could call it — is not my heart: it’s Drew and/or his associate Indians at my door. No, there’s no one in here. No, I shan’t open up. Yes, I daresay there is an Emergency of Sorts requiring immediate evacuation of the building; but I am not inclined to believe it a fire, as you now disingenuously claim, inasmuch as you have not seen fit to sound the fire alarm. Come on, Drew, you can do better than that. Saw a bit of light up here, did you? I’ll switch to the red night-vision lens on my pen light. And I saw you, too, my lad, with my 7x50’s, sequestering the watchman (I’m pleased you didn’t hurt him, or sequester him in the building you’re about to dynamite. May you at least acquire the Tragic-Humanist View of Terrorism). Very impressive you are, son, in your Indian redface, warpaint, braids, & matchcoat: the reincarnation, not of the lost Choptanks, but of your white ancestors in redskin drag who hosted the Boston Tea Party & related festivities. I wonder whether your discovery of my death at your inadvertent hands will prove the first step of your regression from radicalism to good old Stock Bourgeois-Liberal Tragic-Viewing Humanism; and I wonder whether I hope it will. I believe I do. Go away, now: time to make your mugged watchman’s rounds for him.