The salesman handed me a copy of The Last Tycoon.
I opened it and turned the pages.
A loud cry came from my gaping mouth.
“He did it!” I shouted. “He did it! There are fifty more pages and the end is not the end that I read when the book was published many years ago. He did it, by God, he did it!”
Tears sprang from my eyes.
“That will be twenty-four dollars and fifty cents,” said the salesman. “What gives?”
“You’ll never know,” I said. “But I know
and all blessings to Burnham Wood.”
“Who’s he?”
“The man who played God,” I replied.
Fresh tears burned my eyes, and I pressed the book to my heart and walked from the store muttering, “Oh yes, the man who played God.”
THE GHOSTS
1950–1952
AT NIGHT THE GHOSTS floated like milkweed pod in the white meadows. Far off you could see their lantern eyes aglow, and a fitful flaring of fire when they knocked together, as if someone had shaken a brazier down and live coals were cascading from the jolt in a little fiery shower. They came under our windows, I remember well, every midsummer night for three weeks each year. And each year Papa would seal up our south windows and herd us children like small puppies into another room around north where we would spend our nights hoping the ghosts would change their direction and entertain us on our new meadow slope below. But no. The south meadow was theirs.
“They must be from Mabsbury,” said Father, his voice drifting up the hall stairs to where we three lay in bed. “But when I run out with my gun, by George, they’re gone!”
We heard Mother’s voice reply, “Well, put your gun away. You wouldn’t shoot them anyhow.”
It was Father who told us girls that the ghosts were ghosts. He nodded gravely and looked us in the eye. The ghosts were indecent, he said. For they laughed and pressed their shapes into the meadow grass. You could see where they had lain the night before, one a man, one a woman. Always laughing softly. We children woke and bent out our windows to let the wind flutter our dandelion hair, listening.
Each year we tried to shield the coming of the ghosts from Mother and Father. Sometimes we succeeded for as much as a week. Along about July 8, however, Father would begin to get nervous. He would pry at us and handle us and peer through our curtains as he asked, “Laura, Ann, Henrietta—have you—that is, at night—in the last week or so—have you noticed anything?”
“Anything, Papa?”
“Ghosts, I mean.”
“Ghosts, Papa?”
“You know, like last summer and the summer before.”
“I haven’t seen anything, have you, Henrietta?”
“I haven’t, have you, Ann?”
“No, have you, Laura?”
“Stop it, stop it!” cried Father. “Answer a simple question. Have you heard anything?”
“I heard a rabbit.”
“I saw a dog.”
“There was a cat—”
“Well, you must tell me if the ghosts return,” he said, earnestly, and edged away, blushing.