R: You just snapped the photo when Stillson picked up the child?
C: Matt Robeson, yessir.
R: And this is a blowup of that photo?
C: That’s my picture, yes.
R: And after you took it, what happened?
C: Two of those goons ran after me. They were yelling ‘Give us the camera, kid! Drop it.’
Shi – uh, stuff like that.
R: And you ran.
C: Did I run? Holy God, I guess I ran. They chased me almost all the way to the town garage. One of them almost had me, but he slipped on the ice and fell down.
Cohen: Young man, I’d like to suggest that you won the most important footrace of your life when you outran those two thugs.
C: Thank you, Sir. What Stillson did that day… maybe you had to be there, but … holding a little kid in front of you, that’s pretty low. I bet the people in New Hampshire wouldn’t vote for that guy for dog-catcher. Not for…
R: Thank you, Mr. Clawson. The witness is excused.
9.
October again.
Sarah had avoided this trip for a very long time, but now the time had come and it could be put off no longer. She felt that. She had left both children with Mrs. Ablanap – they had house-help now, and two cars instead of the little red Pinto; Walt’s income was scraping near thirty thousand dollars a year – and had come by herself to Pownal through the burning blaze of late autumn.
Now she pulled over on the shoulder of a pretty little country road, got out, and crossed to the small cemetery on the other side. A small, tarnished plaque on one of the stone posts announced that this was THE BIRCHES. It was enclosed by a rambling rock wall, and the grounds were neatly kept. A few faded flags remained from Memorial Day five months ago. Soon they would be buried under snow.
She walked slowly, not hurrying, the breeze catching the hem of her dark green skirt and fluttering it. Here were generations of BOWDENS; here was a whole family of
MARSTENS; here, grouped around a large marble memorial, were PILLSBURYS going back to 1750.
And near the rear wall, she found a relatively new stone, which read simply JOHN
SMITH. Sarah knelt
beside it, hesitated, touched it. She let her fingertips skate thoughtfully over its polished surface.
10.
Dear Sarah,
January 23, 1979
I’ve just written my father a very important letter, and it took me nearly an hour and a half to work my way through it. I just don’t have the energy to repeat the effort, so I am going to suggest that you call him as soon as you receive this, Go do it now, Sarah, before you read the rest of this.
So now, in all probability, you know. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve been thinking a lot about our date at the Esty Fair just recently. If I had to guess the two things that you remember most about it, I’d guess the run of luck I had on the Wheel of Fortune (remember the kid who kept saying ‘I love to see this guy take a beatin’?), and the mask I wore to fool you. That was supposed to be a big joke, but you got mad and our date damn near went right down the drain. Maybe if it had, l wouldn’t be here now and that taxi driver would still be alive. On the other hand, maybe nothing at all of importance changes in the future, and I would have been handed the same bullet to eat a week or a month or a year later.
Well, we had our chance and it came up on one of the house numbers – double zero, I guess. But I wanted you to know that I think of you, Sarah. For me there really hasn’t been anyone else, and that night was the best night for us…
11.
‘Hello, Johnny,’ she murmured, and the wind walked softly through the trees that burned and blazed; a red leaf flipped its way across the bright blue sky and landed, unnoticed, in her hair. ‘I’m here. I finally came.’