Letters

But I’m ahead of myself, and behind on my sleep. Still to describe is the ménage back at Tidewater Farms — Jane and Germaine (the latter scarcely yet moved out from the royal chambers, the former scarcely moved back in) outladying each other at one moment across the funeral baked meats, embracing tearfully the next; Ambrose and Reggie deep in cinematographic argument in the library; “Bea Golden” passed out somewhere upstairs; a raw snow just begi

But the quick must rest, if the dead will not. I’ll finish Calliope’s music another night, now I’ve got the keys tuned: introduce you to the other haunts who’ve dropped in on me lately, hic et ubique, and bring you up to date: 52nd a

Back to your hole, old pioner; wane with the Worm Moon! Leave me to deal with the ghosts of the living: that’s work enough for your Liebes

Todd

C: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. His life since The End of the Road. The remarkable reappearance, at the Remobilization Farm, of Joseph Morgan, with an ultimatum.

11 P.M. 3/6/69

TO:

Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada

FROM:

Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada

Cyrano de Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ring Lardner, Michelangelo: happy birthday. The Alamo has fallen to Santa A

In a sense, you Remain Jacob Horner. It was on the advice of the Doctor that in 1953 you Left the Teaching Profession; for a time you’d Been A Teacher of Prescriptive Grammar at the Wicomico State Teachers College in Maryland, now the Wicomico campus of Marshyhope State University.

The Doctor had brought you to a certain point in your Original Schedule of Therapies (this was October 27, 1953: a

You Shaved, Dressed, Packed your Bags, and Called a taxi to fetch you to the terminal, where you were to Join the Doctor’s other patients for the bus ride north. While you Waited for the cab, you Rocked in your Chair and Smoked a cigarette, your Last. You were Without Weather. A few minutes later the cabby blew his horn; you Picked Up your Two Suitcases and Went Out, Leaving your bust of Laocoön where it stood, on the mantelpiece. Your Car, too, since you Saw no further use for it, you Left where it was, at the curb, and Climbed into the taxi.

Interminable, that journey, up the Susqueha

In the evening of October 25, 1954—100th a

Not long after first publication of that book, its narrative mainspring, coiled like the Chambered Nautilus or Lippes Loop, was rendered quaint as Clarissa Harlowe’s by the development, legalization, and general use of oral contraceptive pills, together with the liberalization of U.S. abortion laws. Re

Of the subsequent history of Joseph Morgan you Had No Inkling; of your Own there was none, virtually, in the fifteen years between 1954 and this evening. South Vietnamese Premier Ky walked out of the Paris peace conference to protest “the bombardment of his nation’s cities by North Vietnamese artillery”; U.S. Astronaut Schweickart took a space walk from the orbiting Apollo-9 vehicle; at the State University of New York at Buffalo a protest “teach-in” against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia continued, but most classes went on as usual. You had Prepared your almanac card for the day and were Rocking in your Chair on the porch of the Remobilization Farm after di

Tressed and beaded, buckski

“You’re going to Rewrite History, Horner,” he declared: the same clear, still voice that had terminated your Last Conversation with him, in 1953. “You’re going to Change the Past. You’re going to Bring Re

As before, you Could Not Reply. Gracious, ubiquitous Monsieur Casteene, frowning Tombo X, and the two impassive young men — Morgan’s sons, dear God! — led him off toward the Progress and Advice Room for his preadmission interview, and you Returned here to the porch to Write this letter.

Tomorrow, Luther Burbank Day, Madame de Staël will flee Paris to Coppet, her Swiss estate, before Napoleon’s advance. Franco will bomb Barcelona, killing 1,000. The Germans, in violation of the Locarno Pact, will occupy the Rhineland, and U.S. troops will cross the Rhine at Remagen Bridge. Jacob Horner, you Like to Imagine, will Step into the poisoned river and Sweep beneath the flaking bridge; past the poisonous plants of Ford and the intakes of the sources of their power; down the cold rapids by Goat Island; over the crumbling, tumbling American Falls at last.