"Your grandma, maybe."

"My G.o.d!"

"G.o.d put us up to it. But it"s the weather, mostly. And, well now, the wine."

Cardiff stared at his empty gla.s.s.

"The wine makes you live to two hundred?!"

"Unless it kills you before breakfast. Finish your gla.s.s, Mr. Cardiff, finish your gla.s.s."

CHAPTER 17.

Elias Culpepper leaned forward to scan Cardiff"s notepad.

"You got any more doubts, indecisions, or opinions?"

Cardiff mused over his notes. "There don"t seem to be any roaring businesses in Summerton."

"A few mice but no buffalo."

"No travel agencies, just a train station about to sink in the dust. Main road is mostly potholes. No one seems to leave, and very few arrive. How in Hades do you all survive?"

"Think." Culpepper sucked on his pipe.

"I am, dammit!"

"You heard about the lilies of the field. We toil not, neither do we spin. Just like you. You don"t have to move, do you? On occasion, maybe, like tonight. But mostly you travel back and forth between your ears. Yes?"

"My G.o.d!" Cardiff cried, clutching his notepad. "Hideaways. Loners. Recluses. By the scores of dozens. You"re writers!"

"You can say that again."

"Writers!"

"In every room, attic, broom-closet, or bas.e.m.e.nt, both sides of the street right out to the edge of town."

"The whole town, everybody?"

"All but a few lazy illiterates."

"That"s unheard of."

"You heard it now."

"Salzburg, a town full of musicians, composers, conductors. Geneva, chock-full of bankers, clockmakers, walking wounded ski dropouts. Nantucket, once anyway, ships, sailors, and whale-widow wives. But this, this!"

Cardiff jumped up and stared wildly toward the midnight town.

"Don"t listen for typewriters," advised Culpepper. "Just quiet things."

Pens, pencils, pads, paper, thought Cardiff. Whispers of lead or ink. Summer quiet thoughts on summer quiet noons.

"Writers," murmured Cardiff, spying this house or that, across the street, "never have to get up and go. And no one knows what color you are, by mail, or what s.e.x, or how tall or how short. Could be a company of midgets, a sideshow of giants. Writers. G.o.dfrey Daniel!"

"Watch your language."

Cardiff turned to stare down at his companion. "But they can"t all be successful?"

"Mostly."

"Would I know any of their names?"

"If I told you, but I won"t."

"A beehive of talent." Cardiff exhaled. "But how did they all wind up here?"

"Genes, chromosomes, need. You"ve heard of those little writers" colonies? Well, this one"s big. We"re soul mates. Similar people. n.o.body laughing at what someone else writes. No alcoholics, however, no bats out of h.e.l.l, or wild parties."

"F. Scott Fitzgerald can"t get in?"

"Better not try."

"Sounds boring."

"Only if you lose your pad and pencil."

"You one of them?"

"In my own quiet way."

"A poet!"

"Not so loud. Someone might hear."

"A poet," Cardiff whispered.

"Mostly haiku. At midnight when I put on my specs and reach for my pen. Semi-haiku, too many beats."

"Example?"

Culpepper recited: Oh, cat that I truly love, Oh, hummingbird that I madly love.

What are you doing in the cat"s mouth?

Cardiff whooped with delight. "I never could write that!"

"Don"t try. Just do."

"I"ll be d.a.m.ned. More!"

A pillow of snow by my warm face.

A snowdrift at my touch; You are gone.

Culpepper quietly reloaded his pipe to cover his embarra.s.sment.

"I don"t recite that one often. Sad."

To break the quiet, Cardiff said: "How do you writers stay in touch with the outside world?"

Culpepper stared off into the distance toward the empty train tracks beyond the silent road.

"I take a truck full of ma.n.u.scripts to Gila Springs once a month, so we mail out from where we are not, bring back windfalls of checks, snowfalls of rejections. The wheat and chaff go into our bank, with its one teller and one president. The money waits there, in case some day we have to move."

Cardiff felt sweat suddenly break out all over his body.

"You got something to say, Mr. Cardiff?"

"Soon."

"I won"t push." Culpepper relit his pipe and recited: A mother remembers her dead son.

Today how far might he have wandered, My mighty hunter of dragonflies.

"That"s not mine. Wish it were. j.a.panese. Been around forever."

Cardiff paced back and forth on the porch and then turned.

"Good grief, it all fits. Writing is the only activity that could support a town like this, so far off. Like a mail order business."

"Writing is a mail order business. Anything you want you write a check, send it off, and before you know it, the Johnson Smith Company in Racine, Wisconsin, sends you what you need. Seebackoscopes. Gyroscopes. Mardi Gras masks. Orphan Annie dolls. Film clips from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Vanishing cards. Reappearing skeletons."

"All that good stuff." Cardiff smiled.

"All that good stuff."

They laughed quietly together.

Cardiff exhaled. "So, this is a writers" township."

"Thinking about staying?"

"No, about leaving."

Cardiff stopped and put his hand over his mouth as if he had said something he shouldn"t have said.

"Now what does that mean?" Elias Culpepper almost started up from his chair.

But before Cardiff could speak, a pale figure appeared on the lawn below the porch and started to climb the steps.

Cardiff called her name.

By the door the daughter of Elias Culpepper spoke. "When you"re ready, come upstairs."

When I"m ready!? Cardiff thought wildly. When I"m ready!

The screen door shut.

"You"ll need this," said Elias Culpepper.

He held out a last drink, which Cardiff took.

CHAPTER 18.

Again, the large bed was a bank of snow on a warm summer night. She lay on one side, looking up at the ceiling, and did not move. He sat on the far edge, saying nothing, and at last tilted over and lay his head on the pillow, and waited.

Finally Nef said, "It seems to me you"ve spent a lot of time in the town graveyard since you arrived. Looking for what?"

He scanned the empty ceiling and replied.

"It seems to me you"ve been down at that train station where hardly any trains arrive. Why?"

She did not turn, but said, "It seems both of us are looking for something but won"t or can"t say why or what."

"So it seems."

Another silence. Now, at last, she looked at him.

"Which of us is going to confess?"

"You go first."

She laughed quietly.

"My truth is bigger and more incredible than yours."