People who have the idea that when we entered the twentieth century we also entered an age of medical light and reason have no idea of how utterly crazy medicine could sometimes be. Perhaps its just as well; their hair would turn white. I gave Miss Stansfield my folder and she looked through it with complete attention for perhaps five minutes. I asked her permission to smoke my pipe and she gave it absently, without looking up. When she did look up at last, there was a small smile on her lips. Are you a radical, Dr. McCarron? she asked. Why do you say that? Because I advise that the expectant mother should walk her round of errands instead of riding in a smoky, jolting subway car?  Prenatal vitamins, whatever they are ... swimming recommended ... and breathing exercises! What breathing exercises? That comes later on, and noIm not a radical. Far from it. What I am is five minutes overdue on my next patient. Oh! Im sorry. She got to her feet quickly, tucking the thick folder into her purse. No need. She shrugged into her light coat, looking at me with those direct hazel eyes as she did so. No, she said. Not a radical at all. I suspect youre actually quite ... comfortable? Is that the word I want? I hope it will serve, I said. Its a word I like. If you speak to Mrs. Davidson, shell give you an appointment schedule. Ill want to see you again early next month. Your Mrs. Davidson doesnt approve of me. Oh, Im sure thats not true at all. But Ive never been a particularly good liar, and the warmth between us suddenly slipped away. I did not accompany her to the door of my consulting room. Miss Stansfield? She turned toward me, coolly enquiring. Do you intend to keep the baby? She considered me briefly and then smileda secret smile which I am convinced only pregnant women know. Oh yes, she said, and let herself out. By the end of that day I had treated identical twins for identical cases of poison ivy, lanced a boil, removed a hook of metal from a sheetwelders eye, and referred one of my oldest patients to White Memorial for what was surely cancer. I had forgotten all about Sandra Stansfield by then. Ella Davidson recalled her to my mind by saying Perhaps shes not a chippie after all. I looked up from my last patients folder. I had been looking at it, feeling that useless disgust most doctors feel when they know they have been rendered completely helpless, and thinking I ought to have a rubber stamp made up for such filesonly instead of saying ACCOUNT RECEIVABLE OR PAID IN FULL OR PATIENT MOVED, it would simply say DEATHWARRANT. Perhaps with a skull and crossbones above, like those on bottles of poison. Pardon me? Your Miss Jane Smith. She did a most peculiar thing after her appointment this morning. The set of Mrs. Davidsons head and mouth made it clear that this was the sort of peculiar thing of which she approved. And what was that? When I gave her her appointment card, she asked me to tot up her expenses. All of her expenses. Delivery and hospital stay included. That was a peculiar thing, all right. This was 1935, remember, and Miss Stansfield gave every impression of being a woman on her own. Was she well off, even comfortably off? I didnt think so. Her dress, shoes, and gloves had all been smart, but she had worn no jewelrynot even costume jewelry. And then there was her hat, that decidedly outofdate cloche. Did you do it? I asked. Mrs. Davidson looked at me as though I might have lost my senses. Did I? Of course I did! And she paid the entire amount. In cash. The last, which apparently had surprised Mrs. Davidson the most (in an extremely pleasant way, of course), surprised me not at all. One thing which the Jane Smiths of the world cant do is write checks. Took a bankbook out of her purse, opened it, and counted the money right out onto my desk, Mrs. Davidson was continuing. Then she put her receipt in where the cash had been, put the bankbook into her purse again, and said good day. Not half bad, when you think of the way weve had to chase some of these socalled respectable people to make them pay their bills! I felt chagrined for some reason. I was not happy with the Stansfield woman for having done such a thing, with Mrs. Davidson for being so pleased and complacent with the arrangement, and with myself, for some reason I couldnt define then and cant now. Something about it made me feel small. But she couldnt very well pay for a hospital stay now, could she? I askedit was a ridiculously small thing to seize on, but it was all I could find at that moment on which to express my pique and halfamused frustration. After all, none of us knows how long shell have to remain there. Or are you reading the crystal now, Ella? I told her that very thing, and she asked what the average stay was following an uncomplicated birth. I told her six days. Wasnt that right, Dr. McCarron? I had to admit it was. She said that she would pay for six days, then, and if it was longer, she would pay the difference, and if if it was shorter, we could issue her a refund, I finished wearily. I thought Damn the woman, anyway!and then I laughed. She had guts. One couldnt deny that. All kinds of guts. Mrs. Davidson allowed herself a smile ... and if I am ever tempted, now that I am in my dotage, to believe I know all there is to know about one of my fellow creatures, I try to remember that smile. Before that day I would have staked my life that I would never see Mrs. Davidson, one of the most proper women I have ever known, smile fondly as she thought about a girl who was pregnant out of wedlock. Guts? I dont know, doctor. But she knows her own mind, that one. She certainly does. A month passed, and Miss Stansfield showed up promptly for her appointment, simply appearing out of that wide, amazing flow of humanity that was New York then and is New York now. She wore a freshlooking blue dress to which she managed to communicate a feeling of originality, of oneofakindness, despite the fact that it had been quite obviously picked from a rack of dozens just like it. Her pumps did not match it; they were the same brown ones in which I had seen her last time. I checked her over carefully and found her normal in every way. I told her so and she was pleased. I found the prenatal vitamins, Dr. McCarron. Did you? Thats good. Her eyes sparkled impishly. The druggist advised me against them. God save me from pestlepounders, I said, and she giggled against the heel of her palmit was a childlike gesture, winning in its unselfconsciousness. I never met a druggist that wasnt a frustrated doctor. And a Republican. Prenatal vitamins are new, so theyre regarded with suspicion. Did you take his advice? No, I took yours. Youre my doctor. Thank you. Not at all. She looked at me straightforwardly, not giggling now. Dr. McCarron, when will I begin to show? Not until August, I should guess. September, if you choose garments which are ... uh, voluminous. Thank you. She picked up her purse but did not rise immediately to go. I thought that she wanted to talk ... and didnt know where or how to begin. Youre a working woman, I take it? She nodded. Yes. I work. Might I ask where? If youd rather I didnt She laugheda brittle, humorless laugh, as different from a giggle as day is from dark. In a department store. Where else does an unmarried woman work in the city? I sell perfume to fat ladies who rinse their hair and then have it done up in tiny fingerwaves. How long will you continue? Until my delicate condition is noticed. I suppose then Ill be asked to leave, lest I upset any of the fat ladies. The shock of being waited on by a pregnant woman with no wedding band might cause their hair to straighten. Quite suddenly her eyes were bright with tears. Her lips began to tremble, and I groped for a handkerchief. But the tears didnt fallnot so much as a single one. Her eyes brimmed for a moment and then she blinked them back. Her lips tightened ... and then smoothed out. She simply decided she was not going to lose control of her emotions ... and she did not. It was a remarkable thing to watch. Im sorry, she said. Youve been very kind to me. I wont repay your kindness with what would be a very common story. She rose to go, and I rose with her. Im not a bad listener, I said, and I have some time. My next patient cancelled. No, she said. Thank you, but no. All right, I said. But theres something else. Yes? Its not my policy to make my patientsany of my patientspay for services in advance of those services being rendered. I hope if you ... that is, if you feel youd like to ... or have to ... I fumbled my way into silence. Ive been in New York four years, Dr. McCarron, and Im thrifty by nature. After Augustor SeptemberIll have to live on whats in my savings account until I can go back to work again. Its not a great amount and sometimes, during the nights, mostly, I become frightened. She looked at me steadily with those wonderful hazel eyes. It seemed better to mesaferto pay for the baby first. Ahead of everything. Because that is where the baby is in my thoughts, and because, later on, the temptation to spend that money might become very great. All right, I said. But please remember that I see it as having been paid before accounts. If you need it, say so. And bring out the dragon in Mrs. Davidson again? The impish light was back in her eyes. I dont think so. And now, doctor You intend to work as long as possible? Absolutely as long as possible? Yes. I have to. Why? I think Im going to frighten you a little before you go, I said. Her eyes widened slightly. Dont do that, she said. Im frightened enough already. Which is exactly why Im going to do it. Sit down again, Miss Stansfield. And when she only stood there, I added Please. She sat. Reluctantly. Youre in a unique and unenviable position, I told her, sitting on the comer of my desk. You are dealing with the situation with remarkable grace. She began to speak, and I held up my hand to silence her. Thats good. I salute you for it. But I would hate to see you hurt your baby in any way out of concern for your own financial security. I had a patient who, in spite of my strenuous advice to the contrary, continued packing herself into a girdle month after month, strapping it tighter and tighter as her pregnancy progressed. She was a vain, stupid, tiresome woman, and I dont believe she really wanted the baby anyway. I dont subscribe to many of these theories of the subconscious which everyone seems to discuss over their MahJongg boards these days, but if I did, I would say that sheor some part of herwas trying to kill the baby. And did she? Her face was very still. No, not at all. But the baby was born retarded. Its very possible that the baby would have been retarded anyway, and Im not saying otherwisewe know next to nothing about what causes such things. But she may have caused it. I take your point, she said in a low voice. You dont want me to ... to pack myself in so I can work another month or six weeks. Ill admit the thought had crossed my mind. So ... thank you for the fright. This time I walked her to the door. I would have liked to ask her just how muchor how littleshe had left in that savings book, and just how close to the edge she was. It was a question she would not answer; I knew that well enough. So I merely bade her goodbye and made a joke about her vitamins. She left. I found myself thinking about her at odd moments over the next month, and Johanssen interrupted McCarrons story at this point. They were old friends, and I suppose that gave him the right to ask the question that had surely crossed all our minds. Did you love her, Emlyn? Is that what all this is about, this stuff about her eyes and smile and how you thought of her at odd moments? I thought that McCarron might be annoyed at this interruption, but he was not. You have a right to ask the question, he said, and paused, looking into the fire. It seemed that he might almost have fallen into a doze. Then a dry knot of wood exploded, sending sparks up the chimney in a swirl, and McCarron looked around, first at Johanssen and then at the rest of us. No. I didnt love her. The things Ive said about her sound like the things a man who is falling in love would noticeher eyes, her dresses, her laugh. He lit his pipe with a special boltlike pipelighter that he carried, drawing the flame until there was a bed of coals there. Then he snapped the bolt shut, dropped it into the pocket of his jacket, and blew out a plume of smoke that shifted slowly around his head in an aromatic membrane. I admired her. That was the long and short of it. And my admiration grew with each of her visits. I suppose some of you sense this as a story of love crossed by circumstance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her story came out a bit at a time over the next halfyear or so, and when you gentlemen hear it, I think youll agree that it was every bit as common as she herself said it was. She had been drawn to the city like a thousand other girls; she had come from a small town ... ... in Iowa or Nebraska. Or possibly it was MinnesotaI dont really remember anymore. She had done a lot of high school dramatics and community theater in her small towngood reviews in the local weekly written by a drama critic with an English degree from Cow and Sileage Junior Collegeand she came to New York to try a career in acting. She was practical even about thatas practical as an impractical ambition will allow one to be, anyway. She came to New York, she told me, because she didnt believe the unstated thesis of the movie magazinesthat any girl who came to Hollywood could become a star, that she might be sipping a soda in Schwabs Drugstore one day and playing opposite Gable or MacMurray the next. She came to New York, she said, because she thought it might be easier to get her foot in the door there ... and, I think, because the legitimate theater interested her more than the talkies. She got a job selling perfume in one of the big department stores and enrolled in acting classes. She was smart and terribly determined, this girlher will was pure steel, through and throughbut she was as human as anyone else. She was lonely, too. Lonely in a way that perhaps only single girls fresh from small Midwestern towns know. Homesickness is not always a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just indifferent but ugly ... perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real sicknessthe ache of the uprooted plant. Miss Stansfield, admirable as she may have been, determined as she may have been, was not immune to it. And the rest follows so naturally it needs no telling. There was a young man in her acting classes. The two of them went out several times. She did not love him, but she needed a friend. By the time she discovered he was not that and never would be, there had been two incidents. Sexual incidents. She discovered she was pregnant. She told the young man, who told her he would stand by her and do the decent thing. A week later he was gone from his lodgings, leaving no forwarding address. That was when she came to me. During her fourth month, I introduced Miss Stansfield to the Breathing Methodwhat is today called the Lamaze Method. In those days, you understand, Monsieur Lamaze was yet to be heard from. In those daysthe phrase has cropped up again and again, I notice. I apologize for it but am unable to help itso much of what I have told you and will tell you happened as it did because it happened in those days. So ... in those days, fortyfive years ago, a visit to the delivery rooms in any large American hospital would have sounded to you like a visit to a madhouse. Women weeping wildly, women screaming that they wished they were dead, women screaming that they could not bear such agony, women screaming for Christ to forgive them their sins, women screaming out strings of curses and gutterwords their husbands and fathers never would have believed they knew. All of this was quite the accepted thing, in spite of the fact that most of the worlds women give birth in almost complete silence, aside from the grunting sounds of strain that we would associate with any piece of hard physical labor. Doctors were responsible for some of this hysteria, Im sorry to say. The stories the pregnant woman heard from friends and relatives who had already been through the birthing process also contributed to it. Believe me if you are told that some experience is going to hurt, it will hurt. Most pain is in the mind, and when a woman absorbs the idea that the act of giving birth is excruciatingly painfulwhen she gets this information from her mother, her sisters, her married friends, and her physicianthat woman has been mentally prepared to feel great agony. Even after only six years practice, I had become used to seeing women who were trying to cope with a twofold problem not just the fact that they were pregnant and must plan for the new arrival, but also the factwhat most of them saw as a fact, anywaythat they had entered the valley of the shadow of death. Many were actually trying to put their affairs in coherent order so that if they should die, their husbands would be able to carry on without them. This is neither the time nor the place for a lesson on obstetrics, but you should know that for a long time before those days, the act of giving birth was extremely dangerous in the Western countries. A revolution in medical procedure, beginning around 1900, had made the process much safer, but an absurdly small number of doctors bothered to tell their expectant mothers that. God knows why. But in light of this, is it any wonder that most delivery rooms sounded like Ward Nine in Bellevue? Here are these poor women, their time come round at last, experiencing a process which has, because of the almost Victorian decorum of the times, been described to them only in the vaguest of terms; here are these women experiencing that engine of birth finally running at full power. They are seized with an awe and wonder which they immediately interpret as insupportable pain, and most of them feel that they will very shortly die a dogs death. In the course of my reading on the subject of pregnancy, I discovered the principle of the silent birth and the idea of the Breathing Method. Screaming wastes energy which would be better used to expel the baby, it causes the woman to hyperventilate, and hyperventilation puts the body on an emergency basisadrenals running full blast, respiration and pulserate upthat is really unnecessary. The Breathing Method was supposed to help the mother focus her attention on the job at hand and to cope with pain by utilizing the bodys own resources. It was used widely at that time in India and Africa; in America, the Shoshone, Kiowa, and Micmac Indians all used it; the Eskimos have always used it; but, as you may guess, most Western doctors had little interest in it. One of my colleaguesan intelligent manreturned the typescript of my pregnancy pamphlet to me in the fall of 1931 with a red line drawn through the entire section on the Breathing Method. In the margin he had scribbled that if he wanted to know about nigger superstitions, he would stop by a newsstand and buy an issue of Weird Tales! Well, I didnt cut the section from the pamphlet as he had suggested, but I had mixed results with the methodthat was the best one could say. There were women who used it with great success. There were others who seemed to grasp the idea perfectly in principle but who lost their discipline completely as soon as their contractions became deep and heavy. In most of those cases I found that the entire idea had been subverted and undermined by wellmeaning friends and relatives who had never heard of such a thing and thus could not believe it would actually work. The method was based on the idea that, while no two labors are ever the same in specifics, all are pretty much alike in general. There are four stages contractive labor, midlabor, birth, and the expulsion of the afterbirth. Contractions are a complete hardening of the abdominal and pelvicarea muscles, and the expectant mother often finds them beginning in the sixth month. Many women pregnant for the first time expect something rather nasty, like bowel cramps, but Im told its much cleanera strongly physical sensation, which may deepen into a pain like a charley horse. A woman employing the Breathing Method began to breathe in a series of short, measured inhales and exhales when she felt a contraction coming on. Each breath was expelled in a puff, as if one were blowing a trumpet Dizzy Gillespie fashion. During midlabor, when more painful contractions begin coming every fifteen minutes or so, the woman switched to long inhales followed by long exhalesits the way a marathon runner breathes when hes starting his final kick. The harder the contraction, the longer the inhaleexhale. In my pamphlet, I called this stage riding the waves. The final stage we need concern ourselves with here I called locomotive, and Lamaze instructors today frequently call it the choochoo stage of breathing. Final labor is accompanied by pains which are most frequently described as deep and glassy. They are accompanied by an irresistible urge on the mothers part to push ... to expel the baby. This is the point, gentlemen, at which that wonderful, frightening engine reaches its absolute crescendo. The cervix is fully dilated. The baby has begun its short journey down the birth canal, and if you were to look directly between the mothers legs, you would see the babys fontanel pulsing only inches from the open air. The mother using the Breathing Method now begins to take and let out short, sharp breaths between her lips, not filling her lungs, not hyperventilating, but almost panting in a perfectly controlled fashion. It really is the sound children make when they are imitating a steamdriven locomotive. All of this has a salutary effect on the bodythe mothers oxygen is kept high without putting her systems on an emergency basis, and she herself remains aware and alert, able to ask and answer questions, able to take instructions. But of course the mental results of the Breathing Method were even more important. The mother felt she was actively participating in the birth of her childthat she was in some part guiding the process. She felt on top of the experience ... and on top of the pain. You can understand that the whole process was utterly dependent on the patients state of mind. The Breathing Method was uniquely vulnerable, uniquely delicate, and if I had a good many failures, Id explain them this waywhat a patient can be convinced of by her doctor she may be unconvinced of by relatives who raise their hands in horror when told of such a heathenish practice. From this aspect, at least, Miss Stansfield was the ideal patient. She had neither friends nor relatives to talk her out of her belief in the Breathing Method (although, in all fairness, I must add that I doubt anyone ever talked her out of anything once she had made up her mind on the subject) once she came to believe in it. And she did come to believe in it. Its a little like selfhypnosis, isnt it? she asked me the first time we really discussed it. I agreed, delighted. Exactly! But you mustnt let that make you think its a trick, or that it will let you down when the going gets tough. I dont think that at all. Im very grateful to you. Ill practice assiduously, Dr. McCarron. She was the sort of woman the Breathing Method was invented for, and when she told me she would practice, she spoke nothing but the truth. I have never seen anyone embrace an idea with such enthusiasm ... but, of course, the Breathing Method was uniquely suited to her temperament. There are docile men and women in this world by the millions, and some of them are damn fine people. But there are others whose hands ache to hold the throttles of their own lives, and Miss Stansfield was one of those. When I say she embraced the Breathing Method totally, I mean it ... and I think the story of her final day at the department store where she sold perfumes and cosmetics proves the point. The end of her gainful employment finally came late in August. Miss Stansfield was a slim young woman in fine physical condition, and this was, of course, her first child. Any doctor will tell you that such a woman is apt not to show for five, perhaps even six months ... and then, one day and all at once, everything will show. She came in for her monthly checkup on the first of September, laughed ruefully, and told me she had discovered the Breathing Method had another use. Whats that? I asked her. Its even better than counting to ten when youre mad as hell at someone, she said. Those hazel eyes were dancing. Although people look at you as if you might be a lunatic when you start puffing and blowing. She told me the tale readily enough. She had gone to work as usual on the previous Monday, and all I can think is that the curiously abrupt transition from a slim young woman to an obviously pregnant young womanand that transition really can be almost as sudden as day to dark in the tropicshad happened over the weekend. Or maybe her supervisor finally decided that her suspicions were no longer just suspicions. Ill want to see you in the office on your break, this woman, a Mrs. Kelly, said coldly. She had previously been quite friendly to Miss Stansfield. She had shown her pictures of her two children, both in high school, and they had exchanged recipes at one point. Mrs. Kelly was always asking her if she had met a nice boy yet. That kindliness and friendliness were gone now. And when she stepped into Mrs. Kellys office on her break, Miss Stansfield told me, she knew what to expect. Youre in trouble, this previously kind woman said curtly. Yes, Miss Stansfield said. Its called that by some people. Mrs. Kellys cheeks had gone the color of old brick. Dont you be smart with me, young woman, she said. From the looks of your belly, youve been too smart by half already. I could see the two of them in my minds eye as she told me the storyMiss Stansfield, her direct hazel eyes fixed on Mrs. Kelly, perfectly composed, refusing to drop her eyes, or weep, or exhibit shame in any other way. I believe she had a much more practical conception of the trouble she was in than her supervisor did, with her two almostgrown children and her respectable husband, who owned his own barbershop and voted Republican. I must say you show remarkably little shame at the way youve deceived me! Mrs. Kelly burst out bitterly. I have never deceived you. No mention of my pregnancy has been made until today. She looked at Mrs. Kelly curiously. How can you say I have deceived you? I took you home! Mrs. Kelly cried. I had you to dinner ... with my sons. She looked at Miss Stansfield with utter loathing. This is when Miss Stansfield began to grow angry. Angrier, she told me, than she had ever been in her life. She had not been unaware of the sort of reaction she could expect when the secret came out, but as any one of you gentlemen will attest, the difference between academic theory and practical application can sometimes be shockingly huge. Clutching her hands firmly together in her lap, Miss Stansfield said If you are suggesting I made or ever would make any attempt to seduce your sons, thats the dirtiest, filthiest thing Ive ever heard in my life. Mrs. Kellys head rocked back as if she had been slapped. That bricky color drained from her cheeks, leaving only two small spots of hectic color. The two women looked grimly at each other across a desk littered with perfume samples in a room that smelled vaguely of flowers. It was a moment, Miss Stansfield said, that seemed much longer than it actually could have been. Then Mrs. Kelly yanked open one of her drawers and brought out a buffcolored check. A bright pink severance slip was attached to it. Showing her teeth, actually seeming to bite off each word, she said With hundreds of decent girls looking for work in this city, I hardly think we need a strumpet such as yourself in our employ, dear. She told me it was that final, contemptuous dear that brought all her anger to a sudden head. A moment later Mrs. Kellys jaw dropped and her eyes widened as Miss Stansfield, her hands locked together as tightly as links in a steel chain, so tightly she left bruises on herself (they were fading but still perfectly visible when I saw her on September 1st), began to locomotive between her clenched teeth. It wasnt a funny story, perhaps, but I burst out laughing at the image and Miss Stansfield joined me. Mrs. Davidson looked into make sure we hadnt gotten into the nitrous oxide, perhapsand then left again. It was all I could think to do, Miss Stansfield said, still laughing and wiping her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. Because at that moment, I saw myself reaching out and simply sweeping those sample bottles of perfumeevery one of themoff her desk and onto the floor, which was uncarpeted concrete. I didnt just think it, I saw it! I saw them crashing to the floor and filling the room with such a Godawful mixed stench that fumigators would have to come, I was going to do it; nothing was going to stop me doing it. Then I began to locomotive, and everything was all right. I was able to take the check, and the pink slip, and get up, and get out. I wasnt able to thank her, of courseI was still being a locomotive! We laughed again, and then she sobered. Its all passed off now, and I am even able to feel a little sorry for heror does that sound like a terribly stiffnecked thing to say? Not at all. I think its an admirable way to be able to feel. May I show you something I bought with my severance pay, Dr. McCarron? Yes, if you like. She opened her purse and took out a small flat box. I bought it at a pawnshop, she said. For two dollars. And its the only time during this whole nightmare that Ive felt ashamed and dirty. Isnt that strange? She opened the box and laid it on my desk so I could look inside. I wasnt surprised at what I saw. It was a plain gold wedding ring. Ill do whats necessary, she said. I am staying in what Mrs. Kelly would undoubtedly call a respectable boarding house. My landlady has been kind and friendly ... but Mrs. Kelly was kind and friendly, too. I think she may ask me to leave at any time now, and I suspect that if I say anything about the rentbalance due me, or the damage deposit I paid when I moved in, shell laugh in my face. My dear young woman, that would be quite illegal. There are courts and lawyers to help you answer such The courts are mens clubs, she said steadily, and not apt to go out of their way to befriend a woman in my position. Perhaps I could get my money back, perhaps not. Either way, the expense and the trouble and the ... the unpleasantness ... hardly seem worth the fortyseven dollars or so. I had no business mentioning it to you in the first place. It hasnt happened yet, and maybe it wont. But in any case, I intend to be practical from now on. She raised her head, and her eyes flashed at mine. Ive got my eye on a place down in the Villagejust in case. Its on the third floor, but its clean, and its five dollars a month cheaper than where Im staying now. She picked the ring out of the box. I wore this when the landlady showed me the room. She put it on the third finger of her left hand with a small moue of disgust of which I believe she was unaware. There. Now Im Mrs. Stansfield. My husband was a truckdriver who was killed on the PittsburghNew York run. Very sad. But I am no longer a little roundheels strumpet, and my child is no longer a bastard.


She looked up at me, and the tears were in her eyes again. As I watched, one of them overspilled and rolled down her cheek. Please, I said, distressed, and reached across the desk to take her hand. It was very, very cold. Dont, my dear. She turned her handit was the leftover in my hand and looked at the ring. She smiled, and that smile was as bitter as gall and vinegar, gentlemen. Another tear felljust that one. When I hear cynics say that the days of magic and miracles are all behind us, Dr. McCarron, Ill know theyre deluded, wont I? When you can buy a ring in a pawnshop for two dollars and that ring will instantly erase both bastardy and licentiousness, what else would you call that but magic? Cheap magic. Miss Stansfield ... Sandra, if I may ... if you need help, if theres anything I can do She drew her hand away from meif I had taken her right hand instead of her left, perhaps she would not have done. I did not love her, Ive told you, but in that moment I could have loved her; I was on the verge of falling in love with her. Perhaps, if Id taken her right hand instead of the one with that lying ring on it, and if she had allowed me to hold her hand only a little longer, until my own warmed it, perhaps then I should have. Youre a good, kind man, and youve done a great deal for me and my baby ... and your Breathing Method is a much better kind of magic than this awful ring. After all, it kept me from being jailed on charges of willful destruction, didnt it? She left soon after that, and I went to the window to watch her move off down the street toward Fifth Avenue. God, I admired her just then! She looked so slight, so young, and so obviously pregnantbut there was still nothing timid or tentative about her. She did not scutter up the street; she walked as if she had every right to her place on the sidewalk. She left my view and I turned back to my desk. As I did so, the framed photograph which hung on the wall next to my diploma caught my. eye, and a terrible shudder worked through me. My skinall of it, even the skin on my forehead and the backs of my handscrawled up into cold knots of gooseflesh. The most suffocating fear of my entire life fell on me like a horrible shroud, and I found myself gasping for breath. It was a precognitive interlude, gentlemen. I do not take part in arguments about whether or not such things can occur; I know they can, because it has happened to me. Just that once, on that hot early September afternoon. I pray to God I never have another. The photograph had been taken by my mother on the day I finished medical school. It showed me standing in front of White Memorial, hands behind my back, grinning like a kid whos just gotten a fullday pass to the rides at Palisades Park. To my left the statue of Harriet White can be seen, and although the photograph cuts her off at about midshin, the pedestal and that queerly heartless inscriptionThere is no comfort without pain; thus we define salvation through sufferingcould be clearly seen. It was at the foot of the statue of my fathers first wife, directly below that inscription, that Sandra Stansfield died not quite four months later in a senseless accident that occurred just as she arrived at the hospital to deliver her child. She exhibited some anxiety that fall that I would not be there to attend her during her laborthat I would be away for the Christmas holidays or not on call. She was partly afraid that she would be delivered by some doctor who would ignore her wish to use the Breathing Method and who would instead give her gas or a spinal block. I assured her as best I could. I had no reason to leave the city, no family to visit over the holidays. My mother had died two years before, and there was no one else except a maiden aunt in California ... and the train didnt agree with me, I told Miss Stansfield. Are you ever lonely? she asked. Sometimes. Usually I keep too busy. Now, take this. I jotted my home telephone number on a card and gave it to her. If you get the answering service when your labor begins, call me here. Oh, no, I couldnt Do you want to use the Breathing Method, or do you want to get some sawbones wholl think youre mad and give you a capful of ether as soon as you start to locomotive? She smiled a little. All right. Im convinced. But as the autumn progressed and the butchers on Third Avenue began advertising the perpound price of their young and succulent Toms, it became clear that her mind was still not at rest. She had indeed been asked to leave the place where she had been living when I first met her, and had moved to the Village. But that, at least, had turned out quite well for her. She had even found work of a sort. A blind woman with a fairly comfortable income had hired her to do some light housework, and then to read to her from the works of Gene Stratton Porter and Pearl Buck. She lived on the first floor of Miss Stansfields building. She had taken on that blooming, rosy look that most healthy women come to have during the final trimester of their pregnancies. But there was a shadow on her face. I would speak to her and she would be slow to answer ... and once, when she didnt answer at all, I looked up from the notes I was making and saw her looking at the framed photograph next to my diploma with a strange, dreamy expression in her eyes. I felt a recurrence of that chill ... and her response, which had nothing to do with my question, hardly made me feel easier. I have a feeling, Dr. McCarron, sometimes quite a strong feeling, that I am doomed. Silly, melodramatic word! And yet, gentlemen, the response that rose to my own lips was this Yes; I feel that, too. I bit it off, of course; a doctor who would say such a thing should immediately put his instruments and medical books up for sale and investigate his future in the plumbing or carpentry business. I told her that she was not the first pregnant woman to have such feelings, and would not be the last. I told her that the feeling was indeed so common that doctors knew it by the tongueincheek name of The Valley of the Shadow Syndrome. Ive already mentioned it tonight, I believe. Miss Stansfield nodded with perfect seriousness, and I remember how young she looked that day, and how large her belly seemed. I know about that, she said. Ive felt it. But its quite separate from this other feeling. This other feeling is like ... like something looming up. I cant describe it any better than that. Its silly, but I cant shake it. You must try, I said. It isnt good for the But she had drifted away from me. She was looking at the photograph again. Who is that? Emlyn McCarron, I said, trying to make a joke. It sounded extraordinarily feeble. Back before the Civil War, when he was quite young. No, I recognized you, of course, she said. The woman. You can only tell it is a woman from the hem of the skirt and the shoes. Who is she? Her name is Harriet White, I said, and thought And hers will be the first face you see when you arrive to deliver your child. The chill came backthat dreadful drifting formless chill. Her stone face. And what does it say there at the base of the statue? she asked, her eyes still dreamy, almost trancelike. I dont know, I lied. My conversational Latin is not that good. That night I had the worst dream of my entire lifeI woke up from it in utter terror, and if I had been married, I suppose I would have frightened my poor wife to death. In the dream I opened the door to my consulting room and found Sandra Stansfield in there. She was wearing the brown pumps, the smart white linen dress with the brown edging, and the slightly outofdate cloche hat. But the hat was between her breasts, because she was carrying her head in her arms. The white linen was stained and streaked with gore. Blood jetted from her neck and splattered the ceiling. And then her eyes fluttered openthose wonderful hazel eyesand they fixed on mine. Doomed, the speaking head told me. Doomed. Im doomed. Theres no salvation without suffering. Its cheap magic, but its all we have. Thats when I woke up screaming. Her due date of December 10th came and went. I examined her on December 17th and suggested that, while the baby would almost certainly be born in 1935, I no longer expected the child to put in his or her appearance until after Christmas. Miss Stansfield accepted this with good grace. She seemed to have thrown off the shadow that had hung over her that fall. Mrs. Gibbs, the blind woman who had hired her to read aloud and do light housework, was impressed with herimpressed enough to tell her friends about the brave young widow who, in spite of her recent bereavement and delicate condition, was facing her own future with such determined good cheer. Several of the blind womans friends had expressed an interest in employing her following the birth of her child. Ill take them up on it, too, she told me. For the baby. But only until Im on my feet again, and able to find something steady. Sometimes I think the worst part of thisof everything thats happenedis that its changed the way I look at people. Sometimes I think to myself, How can you sleep at night, knowing that youve deceived that dear old thing? and then I think, If she knew, shed show you the door, just like all the others. Either way, its a lie, and I feel the weight of it on my heart sometimes. Before she left that day she took a small, gaily wrapped package from her purse and slid it shyly across the desk to me. Merry Christmas, Dr. McCarron. You shouldnt have, I said, sliding open a drawer and taking out a package of my own. But since I did, too She looked at me for a moment, surprised ... and then we laughed together. She had gotten me a silver tieclasp with a caduceus on it. I had gotten her an album in which to keep photographs of her baby. I still have the tieclasp; as you see, gentlemen, I am wearing it tonight. What happened to the album, I cannot say. I saw her to the door, and as we reached it, she turned to me, put her hands on my shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were cool and firm. It was not a passionate kiss, gentlemen, but neither was it the sort of kiss you might expect from a sister or an aunt. Thank you again, Dr. McCarron, she said a little breathlessly. The color was high in her cheeks and her hazel eyes glowed lustrously. Thank you for so much. I laugheda little uneasily. You speak as if wed never meet again, Sandra. It was, I believe, the second and last time I ever used her Christian name. Oh, well meet again, she said. I dont doubt it a bit. And she was rightalthough neither of us could have foreseen the dreadful circumstances of that last meeting. Sandra Stansfields labor began on Christmas Eve, at just past six P.M. By that time, the snow which had fallen all that day had changed to sleet. And by the time Miss Stansfield entered midlabor, not quite two hours later, the city streets were a dangerous glaze of ice. Mrs. Gibbs, the blind woman, had a large and spacious firstfloor apartment, and at sixthirty P.M. Miss Stansfield worked her way carefully downstairs, knocked at her door, was admitted, and asked if she might use the telephone to call a cab. Is it the baby, dear? Mrs. Gibbs asked, fluttering already. Yes. The labors only begun, but I cant chance the weather. It will take a cab a long time. She made that call and then called me. At that time, sixforty, the pains were coming at intervals of about twentyfive minutes. She repeated to me that she had begun everything early because of the foul weather. Id rather not have my child in the back of a Yellow, she said. She sounded extraordinarily calm. The cab was late and Miss Stansfields labor was progressing more rapidly than I would have predictedbut as I have said, no two labors are alike in their specifics. The driver, seeing that his fare was about to have a baby, helped her down the slick steps, constantly adjuring her to be careful, lady. Miss Stansfield only nodded, preoccupied with her deep inhaleexhales as a fresh contraction seized her. Sleet ticked off streetlights and the roofs of cars; it melted in large, magnifying drops on the taxis yellow domelight. Mrs. Gibbs told me later that the young cab driver was more nervous than her poor, dear Sandra, and that was probably a contributing cause to the accident. Another was almost certainly the Breathing Method itself. The driver threaded his hack through the slippery streets, working his way slowly past the fenderbenders and inching through the clogged intersections, slowly closing on the hospital. He was not seriously injured in the accident, and I talked to him in the hospital. He said the sound of the steady deep breathing coming from the back seat made him nervous; he kept looking in the rearview mirror to see if she was dine or sumpin. He said he would have felt less nervous if she had let out a few healthy bellows, the way a woman in labor was supposed to do. He asked her once or twice if she was feeling all right and she only nodded, continuing to ride the waves in deep inhales and exhales. Two or three blocks from the hospital, she must have felt the onset of labors final stage. An hour had passed since she had entered the cabtraffic was that snarledbut this was still an extraordinarily fast labor for a woman having her first baby. The driver noticed the change in the way she was breathing. She started pantin like a dog on a hot day, doc, he told me. She had begun to locomotive. At almost the same time the cabbie saw a hole open in the crawling traffic and shot through it. The way to White Memorial was now open. It was less than three blocks ahead. I could see the statue of that broad, he said. Eager to be rid of his panting, pregnant passenger, he stepped down on the gas again and the cab leaped forward, wheels spinning over the ice with little or no traction. I had walked to the hospital, and my arrival coincided with the cabs arrival only because I had underestimated just how bad driving conditions had become. I believed I would find her upstairs, a legally admitted patient with all her papers signed, her prep completed, working her way steadily through her midlabor. I was mounting the steps when I saw the sudden sharp convergence of two sets of headlights reflected from the patch of ice where the janitors hadnt yet spread cinders. I turned just in time to see it happen. An ambulance was nosing its way out of the Emergency Wing rampway as Miss Stansfields cab came toward the hospital. The cab was simply going too fast to stop. The cabbie panicked and stamped down on the brakepedal rather than pumping it. The cab slid, then began to turn broadside. The pulsing domelight of the ambulance threw moving stripes and blotches of bloodcolored light over the scene, and, freakishly, one of these illuminated the face of Sandra Stansfield. For that one moment it was the face in my dream, the same bloody, openeyed face that I had seen on her severed head. I cried out her name, took two steps down, slipped, and fell sprawling. I cracked my elbow a paralyzing blow but somehow managed to hold on to my black bag. I saw the rest of what happened from where I lay, head ringing, elbow smarting. The ambulance braked, and it also began to fishtail. Its rear end struck the base of the statue. The loading doors flew open. A stretcher, mercifully empty, shot out like a tongue and then crashed upside down in the street with its wheels spinning. A young woman on the sidewalk screamed and tried to run as the two vehicles approached each other. Her feet went out from under her after two strides and she fell on her stomach. Her purse flew out of her hand and shot down the icy sidewalk like a weight in a pinball bowling game. The cab swung all the way around, now travelling backwards, and I could see the cabbie clearly. He was spinning his wheel madly, like a kid in a Dodgem Car. The ambulance rebounded from Harriet Whites statue at an angle ... and smashed broadside into the cab. The taxi spun around once in a tight circle and was slammed against the base of the statue with fearful force. Its yellow light, the letters ON RADIO CALL still flashing, exploded like a bomb. The left side of the cab crumpled like tissuepaper. A moment later I saw that it was not just the left side; the cab had struck an angle of the pedestal hard enough to tear it in two. Glass sprayed onto the slick ice like diamonds. And my patient was thrown through the rear rightside window of the dismembered cab like a ragdoll. I was on my feet again without even knowing it. I raced down the icy steps, slipped again, caught at the railing, and kept on. I was only aware of Miss Stansfield lying in the uncertain shadow cast by that hideous statue of Harriet White, some twenty feet from where the ambulance had come to rest on its side, flasher still strobing the night with red. There was something terribly wrong with that figure, but I honestly dont believe I knew what it was until my foot struck something with a heavy enough thud to almost send me sprawling again. The thing Id kicked skittered awaylike the young womans purse, it slid rather than rolled. It skittered away and it was only the fall of hairbloodstreaked but still recognizably blonde, speckled with bits of glassthat made me realize what it was. She had been decapitated in the accident. What I had kicked into the frozen gutter was her head. Moving in total numb shock now, I reached her body and turned it over. I think I tried to scream as soon as I had done it, as soon as I saw. If I did, no sound came out; I could not make a sound. The woman was still breathing, you see, gentlemen. Her chest was heaving up and down in quick, light, shallow breaths. Ice pattered down on her open coat and her blooddrenched dress. And I could hear a high, thin whistling noise. It waxed and waned like a teakettle which cant quite reach the boil. It was air being pulled into her severed windpipe and then exhaled again; little screams of air through the crude reed of vocal cords which no longer had a mouth to shape their sounds. I wanted to run but I had no strength; I fell on my knees beside her on the ice, one hand cupped to my mouth. A moment later I was aware of fresh blood seeping through the lower part of her dress ... and of movement there. I became suddenly, frenziedly convinced that there was still a chance to save the baby. I believe that as I yanked her dress up to her waist I began laughing. I believe I was mad. Her body was still warm. I remember that. I remember the way it heaved with her breathing. One of the ambulance attendants came up, weaving like a drunk, one hand clapped to the side of his head. Blood trickled through his fingers. I was still laughing, still groping. My hands had found her fully dilated. The attendant stared down at Sandra Stansfields headless body with wide eyes. I dont know if he realized the corpse was still breathing or not. Perhaps he thought it was merely a thing of the nervesa kind of final reflex action. If he did think such a thing, he could not have been driving an ambulance long. Chickens may walk around for awhile with their heads cut off, but people only twitch once or twice ... if that. Stop staring at her and get me a blanket, I snapped at him. He wandered away, but not back toward the ambulance. He was pointed more or less toward Times Square. He simply walked off into the sleety night. I have no idea what became of him. I turned back to the dead woman who was somehow not dead, hesitated a moment, and then stripped off my overcoat. Then I lifted her hips so I could get it under her. Still I heard that whistle of breath as her headless body did locomotive breathing. I sometimes hear it still, gentlemen. In my dreams. Please understand that all of this had happened in an extremely short timeit seemed longer to me, but only because my perceptions had been heightened to a feverish pitch. People were only beginning to run out of the hospital to see what had happened, and behind me a woman shrieked as she saw the severed head lying by the edge of the street. I yanked open my black bag, thanking God I hadnt lost it in my fall, and pulled out a short scalpel. I opened it, cut through her underwear, and pulled it off. Now the ambulance driver approachedhe came to within fifteen feet of us and then stopped dead. I glanced over at him, still wanting that blanket. I wasnt going to get it from him, I saw; he was staring down at the breathing body, his eyes widening until it seemed they must slip from their orbits and simply dangle from their optic nerves like grotesque seeing yoyos. Then he dropped to his knees and raised his clasped hands. He meant to pray, I am quite sure of that. The attendant might not have known he was seeing an impossibility, but this fellow did. The next moment he had fainted dead away. I had packed forceps in my bag that night; I dont know why. I hadnt used such things in three years, not since I had seen a doctor I will not name punch through a newborns temple and into the childs brain with one of those infernal gadgets. The child died instantly. The corpse was lost and what went on the death certificate was stillborn. But, for whatever reason, I had mine with me that night. Miss Stansfields body tightened down, her belly clenching, turning from flesh to stone. And the baby crowned. I saw the crown for just a moment, bloody and membranous and pulsing. Pulsing. It was alive, then. Definitely alive. Stone became flesh again. The crown slipped back out of sight. And a voice behind me said What can I do, doctor? It was a middleaged nurse, the sort of woman who is so often the backbone of our profession. Her face was as pale as milk, and while there was terror and a kind of superstitious awe on her face as she looked down at that weirdly breathing body, there was none of that dazed shock which would have made her difficult and dangerous to work with. You can get me a blanket, stat, I said curtly. Weve still got a chance, I think. Behind her I saw perhaps two dozen people from the hospital standing on the steps, not wanting to come any closer. How much or how little did they see? I have no way of knowing for sure. All I know is that I was avoided for days afterwards (and forever by some of them), and no one, including this nurse, ever spoke to me of it. She now turned and started back toward the hospital. Nurse! I called. No time for that. Get one from the ambulance. This baby is coming now. She changed course, slipping and sliding through the slush in her white crepesoled shoes. I turned back to Miss Stansfield. Rather than slowing down, the locomotive breathing had actually begun to speed up ... and then her body turned hard again, locked and straining. The baby crowned again. I waited for it to slip back but it did not; it simply kept coming. There was no need for the forceps after all. The baby all but flew into my hands. I saw the sleet ticking off his naked bloody bodyfor it was a boy, his sex unmistakable. I saw steam rising from him as the black, icy night snatched away the last of his mothers heat. His bloodgrimed fists waved feebly; he uttered a thin, wailing cry. Nurse! I bawled, move your ass, you bitch! It was perhaps inexcusable language, but for a moment I felt I was back in France, that in a few moments the shells would begin to whistle overhead with a sound like that remorselessly ticking sleet; the machineguns would begin their hellish stutter; the Germans would begin to materialize out of the murk, running and slipping and cursing and dying in the mud and smoke. Cheap magic, I thought, seeing the bodies twist and turn and fall. But youre right, Sandra, its all we have. It was the closest I have ever come to losing my mind, gentlemen. NURSE, FOR GODS SAKE! The baby wailed againsuch a tiny, lost sound!and then he wailed no more. The steam rising from his skin had thinned to ribbons. I put my mouth against his face, smelling blood and the bland, damp aroma of placenta. I breathed into his mouth and heard the jerky susurrus of his breathing resume. Then the nurse was there, the blanket in her arms. I held out my hand for it. She started to give it to me, and then held it back. Doctor, what ... what if its a monster? Some kind of monster? Give me that blanket, I said. Give it to me now, Sarge, before I kick your asshole right up to your shoulderblades. Yes, doctor, she said with perfect calmness (we must bless the women, gentlemen, who so often understand simply by not trying to), and gave me the blanket. I wrapped the child and gave him to her. If you drop him, Sarge, youll be eating those stripes. Yes, doctor. Its cheap fucking magic, Sarge, but its all God left us with. Yes, doctor. I watched her halfwalk, halfrun back to the hospital with the child and watched the crowd on the steps part for her. Then I rose to my feet and backed away from the body. Its breathing, like the babys, hitched and caught ... stopped ... hitched again ... stopped ... I began to back away from it. My foot struck something. I turned. It was her head. And obeying some directive from outside of me, I dropped to one knee and turned the head over. The eyes were openthose direct hazel eyes that had always been full of such life and such determination. They were full of determination still. Gentlemen, she was seeing me. Her teeth were clenched, her lips slightly parted. I heard the breath slipping rapidly back and forth between those lips and through those teeth as she locomotived. Her eyes moved; they rolled slightly to the left in their sockets so as to see me better. Her lips parted. They mouthed four words Thank you, Dr. McCarron. And I heard them, gentlemen, but not from her mouth. They came from twenty feet away. From her vocal cords. And because her tongue and lips and teeth, all of which we use to shape our words, were here, they came out only in unformed modulations of sound. But there were seven of them, seven distinct sounds, just as there are seven syllables in that phrase, Thank you, Dr. McCarron. Youre welcome, Miss Stansfield, I said. Its a boy. Her lips moved again, and from behind me, thin, ghostly, came the sound boyyyyyy Her eyes lost their focus and their determination. They seemed now to look at something beyond me, perhaps in that black, sleety sky. Then they closed. She began to locomotive again ... and then she simply stopped. Whatever had happened was now over. The nurse had seen some of it, the ambulance driver had perhaps seen some of it before he fainted, and some of the onlookers might have suspected something. But it was over now, over for sure. There was only the remains of an ugly accident out here ... and a new baby in there. I looked up at the statue of Harriet White and there she still stood, looking stonily away toward the Garden across the way, as if nothing of any particular note had happened, as if such determination in a world as hard and as senseless as this one meant nothing ... or worse still, that it was perhaps the only thing which meant anything, the only thing that made any difference at all. As I recall, I knelt there in the slush before her severed head and began to weep. As I recall, I was still weeping when an intern and two nurses helped me to my feet and inside. McCarrons pipe had gone out. He relit it with his boltlighter while we sat in perfect, breathless silence. Outside, the wind howled and moaned. He snapped his lighter closed and looked up. He seemed mildly surprised to find us still there. Thats all, he said. Thats the end! What are you waiting for? Chariots of fire? he snorted, then seemed to debate for a moment. I paid her burial expenses out of my own pocket. She had no one else, you see. He smiled a little. Well . . . there was Ella Davidson, my nurse. She insisted on chipping in twentyfive dollars, which she could ill afford. But when Davidson insisted on a thing He shrugged, and then laughed a little. Youre quite sure it wasnt a reflex? I heard myself demanding suddenly. Are you quite sure Quite sure, McCarron said imperturbably. The first contraction, perhaps. But the completion of her labor was not a matter of seconds but of minutes. And I sometimes think she might have held on even longer, if it had been necessary. Thank God it was not. What about the baby? Johanssen asked. McCarron puffed at his pipe. Adopted, he said. And youll understand that, even in those days, adoption records were kept as secret as possible. Yes, but what about the baby? Johanssen asked again, and McCarron laughed in a cross way. You never let go of a thing, do you? he asked Johanssen. Johanssen shook his head. Some people have learned it to their sorrow. What about the baby? Well, if youve come with me this far, perhaps youll also understand that I had a certain vested interest in knowing how it all came out for that child. Or I felt I did, which comes to the same. I did keep track, and I still do. There was a young man and his wifetheir name was not Harrison, but that is close enough. They lived in Maine. They could have no children of their own. They adopted the child and named him ... well, Johns good enough, isnt it? John will do you fellows, wont it? He puffed at his pipe but it had gone out again. I was faintly aware of Stevens hovering behind me, and knew that somewhere our coats would be at the ready. Soon we would slip back into them ... and back into our lives. As McCarron had said, the tales were done for another year. The child I delivered that night is now head of the English Department at one of the two or three most respected private colleges in the country, McCarron said. Hes not fortyfive yet. A young man. Its early for him, but the day may well come when he will be President of that school. I shouldnt doubt it a bit. He is handsome, intelligent, and charming. Once, on a pretext, I was able to dine with him in the private faculty club. We were four that evening. I said little and so was able to watch him. He has his mothers determination, gentlemen ... . . . and his mothers hazel eyes. III. The Club Stevens saw us out as he always did, holding coats, wishing men the happiest of happy Christmases, thanking them for their generosity. I contrived to be the last, and Stevens looked at me with no surprise when I said I have a question Id like to ask, if you dont mind. He smiled a little. I suppose you should, he said. Christmas is a fine time for questions. Somewhere down the hallway to our lefta hall I had never been downa grandfather clock ticked sonorously, the sound of the age passing away. I could smell old leather and oiled wood and, much more faintly than either of these, the smell of Stevenss aftershave. But I should warn you, Stevens added as the wind rose in a gust outside, its better not to ask too much. Not if you want to keep coming here. People have been closed out for asking too much? Closed out was not really the phrase I wanted, but it was as close as I could come. No, Stevens said, his voice as low and polite as ever. They simply choose to stay away. I returned his gaze, feeling a chill prickle its way up my backit was as if a large, cold, invisible hand had been laid on my spine. I found myself remembering that strangely liquid thump I had heard upstairs one night and wondered (as I had more than once before) exactly how many rooms there really were here. If you still have a question, Mr. Adley, perhaps youd better ask it. The evenings almost over And you have a long trainride ahead of you? I asked, but Stevens only looked at me impassively. All right, I said. There are books in this library that I cant find anywhere elsenot in the New York Public Library, not in the catalogues of any of the antiquarian bookdealers Ive checked with, and certainly not in Books in Print. The billiard table in the Small Room is a Nord. Id never heard of such a brand, and so I called the International Trademark Commission.


They have two Nordsone makes crosscountry skis and the other makes wooden kitchen accessories. Theres a Seafront jukebox in the Long Room. The ITC has a Seeburg listed, but no Seafront. What is your question, Mr. Adley? His voice was as mild as ever, but there was something terrible in his eyes suddenly ... no; if I am to be truthful, it was not just in his eyes; the terror I felt had infused the atmosphere all around me. The steady tocktock from down the lefthand hall was no longer the pendulum of a grandfather clock; it was the tapping foot of the executioner as he watches the condemned led to the scaffold. The smells of oil and leather turned bitter and menacing, and when the wind rose in another wild whoop, I felt momentarily sure that the front door would blow open, revealing not Thirtyfifth Street but an insane Clark Ashton Smith landscape where the bitter shapes of twisted trees stood silhouetted on a sterile horizon below which double suns were setting in a gruesome red glare. Oh, he knew what I had meant to ask; I saw it in his gray eyes. Where do all these things come from? I had meant to ask. Oh, I know well enough where you come from, Stevens; that accent isnt Dimension X, its pure Brooklyn. But where do you go? What has put that timeless look in your eyes and stamped it on your face? And, Stevens whereare we RIGHT THIS SECOND? But he was waiting for my question. I opened my mouth. And the question that came out was Are there many more rooms upstairs? Oh, yes, sir, he said, his eyes never leaving mine. A great many. A man could become lost. In fact, men have become lost. Sometimes it seems to me that they go on for miles. Rooms and corridors. And entrances and exits? His eyebrows went up slightly. Oh yes. Entrances and exits. He waited, but I had asked enough, I thoughtI had come to the very edge of something that would, perhaps, drive me mad. Thank you, Stevens. Of course, sir. He held out my coat and I slipped into it. There will be more tales? Here, sir, there are always more tales. That evening was some time ago, and my memory has not improved between then and now (when a man reaches my age, the opposite is much more likely to be true), but I remember with perfect clarity the stab of fear that went through me when Stevens swung the oaken door widethe cold certainty that I would see that alien landscape, cracked and hellish in the bloody light of those double suns, which might set and bring on an unspeakable darkness of an hours duration, or ten hours, or ten thousand years. I cannot explain it, but I tell you that world existsI am as sure of that as Emlyn McCarron was sure that the severed head of Sandra Stansfield went on breathing. I thought for that one timeless second that the door would open and Stevens would thrust me out into that world and I would then hear that door slam shut behind me ... forever. Instead, I saw Thirtyfifth Street and a radiocab standing at the curb, exhaling plumes of exhaust. I felt an utter, almost debilitating relief. Yes, always more tales, Stevens repeated. Goodnight, sir. Always more tales. Indeed there have been. And, one day soon, perhaps Ill tell you another. Afterword Although Where do you get your ideas? has always been the question Im most frequently asked (its number one with a bullet, you might say), the runnerup is undoubtedly this one Is horror all you write? When I say it isnt, its hard to tell if the questioner seems relieved or disappointed. Just before the publication of Carrie, my first novel, I got a letter from my editor, Bill Thompson, suggesting it was time to start thinking about what we were going to do for an encore (it may strike you as a bit strange, this thinking about the next book before the first was even out, but because the prepublication schedule for a novel is almost as long as the postproduction schedule on a film, we had been living with Carrie for a long time at that pointnearly a year). I promptly sent Bill the manuscripts of two novels, one called Blaze and one called Second Coming. The former had been written immediately after Carrie, during the sixmonth period when the first draft of Carrie was sitting in a desk drawer, mellowing; the latter was written during the year or so when Carrie inched, tortoiselike, closer and closer to publication. Blaze was a melodrama about a huge, almost retarded criminal who kidnaps a baby, planning to ransom it back to the childs rich parents ... and then falls in love with the child instead. Second Coming was a melodrama about vampires taking over a small town in Maine. Both were literary imitations of a sort, Second Coming of Dracula, Blaze of Steinbecks Of Mice and Men. I think Bill must have been flabbergasted when these two manuscripts arrived in a single big package (some of the pages of Blaze had been typed on the reverse side of milkbills, and the Second Coming manuscript reeked of beer because someone had spilled a pitcher of Black Label on it during a New Years Eve party three months before)like a woman who wishes for a bouquet of flowers and discovers her husband has gone out and bought her a hothouse. The two manuscripts together totaled about five hundred and fifty singlespaced pages. He read them both over the next couple of weeksscratch an editor and find a saintand I went down to New York from Maine to celebrate the publication of Carrie (April, 1974, friends and neighborsLennon was alive, Nixon was still hanging in there as President, and this kid had yet to see the first gray hair in his beard) and to talk about which of the two books should be next ...or if neither of them should be next. I was in the city for a couple of days, and we talked around the question three or four times. The final decision was made on a streetcornerPark Avenue and Fortysixth Street, in fact. Bill and I were standing there waiting for the light, watching the cabs roll into that funky tunnel or whatever it isthe one that seems to burrow straight through the Pan Am Building. And Bill said, I think it should be Second Coming. Well, that was the one I liked better myselfbut there was something so oddly reluctant in his voice that I looked at him sharply and asked him what the matter was. Its just that if you do a book about vampires as the followup to a book about a girl who can move things by mindpower, youre going to get typed, he said. Typed? I asked, honestly bewildered. I could see no similarities to speak of between vampires and telekinesis. As what? As a horror writer, he said, more reluctantly still. Oh, I said, vastly relieved. Is that all! Give it a few years, he said, and see if you still think its all.  Bill, I said, amused, no one can make a living writing just horror stories in America. Lovecraft starved in Providence. Bloch gave it up for suspense novels and Unknowntype spoofs. The Exorcist was a oneshot. Youll see. The light changed. Bill clapped me on the shoulder. I think youre going to be very successful, he said, but I dont think you know shit from Shinola. He was closer to the truth than I was. It turned out that it was possible to make a living writing horror stories in America. Second Coming, eventually entitled Salems Lot, did very well. By the time it was published, I was living in Colorado with my family and writing a novel about a haunted hotel. On a trip into New York, I sat up with Bill half the night in a bar called Jaspers (where a huge, foggray tomcat apparently owned the RockOla; you had to kind of lift him up to see what the selections were) and told him the plot. By the end, his elbows were planted on either side of his bourbon and his head was in his hands, like a man with a monster migraine. You dont like it, I said. I like it a lot, he said hollowly. Then whats wrong? First the telekinetic girl, then vampires, now the haunted hotel and the telepathic kid. Youre gonna get typed. This time I thought about it a little more seriouslyand then I thought about all the people who had been typed as horror writers, and who had given me such great pleasure over the yearsLovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, and Shirley Jackson (yes; even she was typed as a spook writer). And I decided there in Jaspers with the cat asleep on the juke and my editor sitting beside me with his head in his hands, that I could be in worse company. I could, for example, be an important writer like Joseph Heller and publish a novel every seven years or so, or a brilliant writer like John Gardner and write obscure books for bright academics who eat macrobiotic foods and drive old Saabs with faded but still legible GENE MCCARTHY FOR PRESIDENT stickers on the rear bumpers. Thats okay, Bill, I said, Ill be a horror writer if thats what people want. Thats just fine. We never had the discussion again. Bills still editing and Im still writing horror stories, and neither of us is in analysis. Its a good deal. So I got typed and I dont much mindafter all, I write true to type ... at least, most of the time. But is horror all I write? If youve read the foregoing stories, you know its not ... but elements of horror can be found in all of the tales, not just in The Breathing Methodthat business with the slugs in The Body is pretty gruesome, as is much of the dream imagery in Apt Pupil. Sooner or later, my mind always seems to turn back in that direction. God knows why. Each of these longish stories was written immediately after completing a novelits as if Ive always finished the big job with just enough gas left in the tank to blow off one goodsized novella. The Body, the oldest story here, was written directly after Salems Lot; Apt Pupil was written in a twoweek period following the completion of The Shining (and following Apt Pupil I wrote nothing for three monthsI was pooped); Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was written after finishing The Dead Zone; and The Breathing Method, the most recently written of these stories, immediately following Firestarter.1 None of them has been published previous to this book; none has even been submitted for publication. Why? Because each of them comes out to 25,000 to 35,000 wordsnot exactly, maybe, but thats close enough to be in the ballpark. Ive got to tell you 25,000 to 35,000 words are numbers apt to make even the most stouthearted writer of fiction shake and shiver in his boots. There is no hardandfast definition of what either a novel or a short story isat least not in terms of wordcountnor should there be. But when a writer approaches the 20,000word mark, he knows he is edging out of the country of the short story. Likewise, when he passes the 40,000word mark, he is edging into the country of the novel. The borders of the country between these two more orderly regions are illdefined, but at some point the writer wakes up with alarm and realizes that hes come or is coming to a really terrible place, an anarchyridden literary banana republic called the novella (or, rather too cutesy for my taste, the novelette). Now, artistically speaking, theres nothing at all wrong with the novella. Of course, theres nothing wrong with circus freaks, either, except that you rarely see them outside of the circus. The point is that there are great novellas, but they traditionally only sell to the genre markets (thats the polite term; the impolite but more accurate one is ghetto markets). You can sell a good mystery novella to Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine or Mike Shaynes Mystery Magazine, a good science fiction novella to Amazing or Analog, maybe even to Omni or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ironically, there are also markets for good horror novellas the aforementioned FSF is one; Twilight Zone is another and there are various anthologies of original creepy fiction, such as the Shadows series published by Doubleday and edited by Charles L. Grant. But for novellas which can, on measure, only be described with the word mainstream (a word almost as depressing as genre) ... boy, as far as marketability goes, you in a heap o trouble. You look at your 25,000to35,000word manuscript dismally, twist the cap off a beer, and in your head you seem to hear a heavily accented and rather greasy voice saying Buenos dias, seor! How was your flight on Revolucin Airways? You like eet preetygoodfine I theenk, s? Welcome to Novella, seor! You going to like heet here preetygoodfine, I theenk! Have a cheap cigar! Have some feelthy peectures! Put your feet up, seor, I theenk your story is going to be here a long, long time ... qu pasa? Ahhahahhahhah! Depressing. Once upon a time (he mourned) there really was a market for such talesthere were magical magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and The American Mercury. Fictionfiction both short and longwas a staple of these and others. And, if the story was too long for a single issue, it was serialized in three parts, or five, or nine. The poisonous idea of condensing or excerpting novels was as yet unknown (both Playboy and Cosmopolitan have honed this particular obscenity to a noxious science you can now read an entire novel in twenty minutes!), the tale was given the space it demanded, and I doubt if Im the only one who can remember waiting for the mailman all day long because the new Post was due and a new short story by Ray Bradbury had been promised, or perhaps because the final episode of the latest Clarence Buddington Kelland serial was due. (My anxiety made me a particularly easy mark. When the postman finally did show up, walking briskly with his leather bag over his shoulder, dressed in his summerissue shorts and wearing his summerissue sun helmet, Id meet him at the end of the walk, dancing from one foot to the other as if I badly needed to go to the bathroom; my heart in my throat. Grinning rather cruelly, hed hand me an electric bill. Nothing but that. Heart plummets into my shoes. Finally he relents and gives me the Post after all grinning Eisenhower on the cover, painted by Norman Rockwell an article on Sophia Loren by Pete Martin; I Say Hes a Wonderful Guy by Pat Nixon, concerningyeah, you guessed ither husband, Richard; and, of course, stories. Long ones, short ones, and the last chapter of the Kelland serial. Praise God!) And this didnt happen just once in a while; this happened every fucking week! The day that the Post came, I guess I was the happiest kid on the whole eastern seaboard. There are still magazines that publish long fictionAtlantic Monthly and The New Yorker are two which have been particularly sympathetic to the publication problems of a writer who has delivered (we wont say gotten; thats too close to misbegotten) a 30,000word novella. But neither of these magazines has been particularly receptive to my stuff, which is fairly plain, not very literary, and sometimes (although it hurts like hell to admit it) downright clumsy. To some degree or other, I would guess that those very qualitiesunadmirable though they may behave been responsible for the success of my novels. Most of them have been plain fiction for plain folks, the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonalds. I am able to recognize elegant prose and to respond to it, but have found it difficult or impossible to write it myself (most of my idols as a maturing writer were muscular novelists with prose styles which ranged from the horrible to the nonexistent cats like Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris). Subtract elegance from the novelists craft and one finds himself left with only one strong leg to stand on, and that leg is good weight. As a result, Ive tried as hard as I can, always, to give good weight. Put another way, if you find out you cant run like a thoroughbred, you can still pull your brains out (a voice rises from the balcony What brains, King? Haha, very funny, fella, you can leave now). The result of all this is that, when it came to the novellas youve just read, I found myself in a puzzling position. I had gotten to a place with my novels where people were saying King could publish his laundry list if he wanted to (and there are critics who claim thats exactly what Ive been doing for the last eight years or so), but I couldnt publish these tales because they were too long to be short and too short to be really long. If you see what I mean. S, seor, I see! Take off your shoes! Have some cheap rum! Soon thee Medicore Revolucin Steel Band iss gonna come along and play some bad calypso! You like eet preetygoodfine, I theenk! And you got time, seor! You got time because I theenk your story ees gonna be here a long time, yeah, yeah, great, why dont you go somewhere and overthrow a puppet imperialist democracy? So I finally decided to see if Viking, my hardcover publisher, and New American Library, my paperback publisher, would want to do a book with stories in it about an offbeat prisonbreak, an old man and a young boy locked up in a gruesome relationship based on mutual parasitism, a quartet of country boys on a journey of discovery, and an offthewall horror story about a young woman determined to give birth to her child no matter what (or maybe the story is actually about that odd club that isnt a club). The publishers said okay. And that is how I managed to break these four long stories out of the banana republic of the novella. I hope you like them preetygoodfine, muchachos and muchachas. Oh, one other thing about typecasting before I call it a day. Was talking to my editornot Bill Thompson, this is my new editor, a real nice guy named Alan Williams, smart, witty, able, but usually on jury duty somewhere deep in the bowels of New Jerseyabout a year ago. Loved Cujo, Alan says (the editorial work on that novel, a real shaggydog story, had just been completed). Have you thought about what youre going to do next? Dj vu sets in. I have had this conversation before. Well, yeah, I say. I have given it some thought Lay it on me. What would you think about a book of four novellas? Most or all of them just sort of ordinary stories? What would you think about that? Novellas, Alan says. He is being a good sport, but his voice says some of the joy may have just gone out of his day; his voice says he feels he has just won two tickets to some dubious little banana republic on Revolucin Airways. Long stories, you mean. Yeah, thats right, I say. And well call the book something like Different Seasons, just so people will get the idea that its not about vampires or haunted hotels or anything like that. Is the next one going to be about vampires? Alan asks hopefully. No, I dont think so. What do you think, Alan? A haunted hotel, maybe? No, I did that one already. Different Seasons, Alan. Its got a nice ring to it, dont you think? Its got a great ring, Steve, Alan says, and sighs. It is the sigh of a good sport who has just taken his seat in third class on Revolucin Airways newest planea Lockheed Tristarand has seen the first cockroach trundling busily over the top of the seat ahead of him. I hoped youd like it, I say. I dont suppose, Alan says, we could have a horror story in it? Just one? A sort of ... similar season? I smile a littlejust a littlethinking of Sandra Stansfield and Dr. McCarrons Breathing Method. I can probably whomp something up. Great! And about that new novel How about a haunted car? I say. My man! Alan cries. I have the feeling that Im sending him back to his editorial meetingor possibly to jury duty in East Rahwaya happy man. Im happy, tooI love my haunted car, and I think its going to make a lot of people nervous about crossing busy streets after dark, But Ive been in love with each of these stories, too, and part of me always will be in love with them, I guess. I hope that you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should domake you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place youve never been. Its the most amiable sort of magic I know. Okay. Gotta split. Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy. Love and good wishes, STEPHEN KING January 4th, 1982 Bangor, Maine 1 Something else about them, which I just realized each one was written in a different housethree of those in Maine and one in Boulder, Colorado.