Hey, man, Teddy said awkwardly. No hard feelins, okay? No, Chris said, and suddenly his somber, tired face broke into a sweet and sunny grin. We did it, didnt we? We did the bastard. Yeah, Vern said. Youre fuckinA. Now Billys gonna do me. So what? Chris said. Richies gonna tool up on me and Ace is probably gonna tool up on Gordie and somebody elsell tool up on Teddy. But we did it. Thats right, Vem said. But he still sounded unhappy. Chris looked at me. We did it, didnt we? he asked softly. It was worth it, wasnt it? Sure it was, I said. Fuck this, Teddy said in his dry Imlosinginterest way. You guys sound like fuckin Meet the Press. Gimme some skin, man. Im gonna toot home and see if Moms got me on the Ten Most Wanted List. We all laughed, Teddy gave us his surprised OhLordwhatnow look, and we gave him skin. Then he and Vern started off in their direction and I should have gone in mine ... but I hesitated for a second. Walk with you, Chris offered. Sure, okay. We walked a block or so without talking. Castle Rock was awesomely quiet in the days first light, and I felt an almost holy tirednessisslippingaway sort of feeling. We were awake and the whole world was asleep and I almost expected to turn the comer and see my deer standing at the far end of Carbine Street, where the GSWM tracks pass through the mills loading yard. Finally Chris spoke. Theyll tell, he said. You bet they will. But not today or tomorrow, if thats what youre worried about. Itll be a long time before they tell, I think. Years, maybe. He looked at me, surprised. Theyre scared, Chris. Teddy especially, that they wont take him in the Army. But Verns scared, too. Theyll lose some sleep over it, and theres gonna be times this fall when its right on the tips of their tongues to tell somebody, but I dont think they will. And then... you know what? It sounds fucking crazy, but... I think theyll almost forget it ever happened. He was nodding slowly. I didnt think of it just like that. You see through people, Gordie. Man, I wish I did. You do, though. We walked another block in silence. Im never gonna get out of this town, Chris said, and sighed. When you come back from college on summer vacation, youll be able to look me and Vern and Teddy up down at Sukeys after the seventothree shifts over. If you want to. Except youll probably never want to. He laughed a creepy laugh. Quit jerking yourself off, I said, trying to sound tougher than I feltI was thinking about being out there in the woods, about Chris saying And maybe I took it to old lady Simons and told her, and maybe the money was all there and I got a threeday vacation anyway, because the money never showed up. And maybe the next week old lady Simons had this brandnew skirt on when she came to school ... The look. The look in his eyes. No jerkoff, daddyO, Chris said. I rubbed my first finger against my thumb. This is the worlds smallest violin playing My Heart Pumps Purple Piss for You.  He was ours, Chris said, his eyes dark in the morning light. We had reached the comer of my street and we stopped there. It was quarter past six. Back toward town we could see the Sunday Telegram truck pulling up in front of Teddys uncles stationery shop. A man in bluejeans and a teeshirt threw off a bundle of papers. They bounced upside down on the sidewalk, showing the color funnies (always Dick Tracy and Blondie on the first page). Then the truck drove on, its driver intent on delivering the outside world to the rest of the whistlestops up the lineOtisfield, NorwaySouth Paris, Waterford, Stoneham. I wanted to say something more to Chris and didnt know how to. Gimme some skin, man, he said, sounding tired. Chris Skin. I gave him some skin. Ill see you. He grinnedthat same sweet, sunny. grin. Not if I see you first, fuckface. He walked off, still laughing, moving easily and gracefully, as though he didnt hurt like me and have blisters like me and like he wasnt lumped and bumped with mosquito and chigger and blackfly bites like me. As if he didnt have a care in the world, as if he was going to some real boss place instead of just home to a threeroom house (shack would have been closer to the truth) with no indoor plumbing and broken windows covered with plastic and a brother who was probably laying for him in the front yard. Even if Id known the right thing to say, I probably couldnt have said it. Speech destroys the functions of love, I thinkthats a hell of a thing for a writer to say, I guess, but I believe it to be true. If you speak to tell a deer you mean it no harm, it glides away with a single flip of its tail. The word is the harm. Love isnt what these asshole poets like McKuen want you to think it is. Love has teeth; they bite; the wounds never close. No word, no combination of words, can close those lovebites. Its the other way around, thats the joke. If those wounds dry up, the words die with them. Take it from me. Ive made my life from the words, and I know that is so. 30 The back door was locked so I fished the spare key out from under the mat and let myself in. The kitchen was empty, silent, suicidally clean. I could hear the hum the fluorescent bars over the sink made when I turned on the switch. It had been literally years since I had been up before my mother; I couldnt even remember the last time such a thing had happened. I took off my shirt and put it in the plastic clothesbasket behind the washing machine. I got a clean rag from under the sink and sponged off with itface, neck, pits, belly. Then I unzipped my pants and scrubbed my crotchmy testicles in particularuntil my skin began to hurt. It seemed I couldnt get clean enough down there, although the red weal left by the bloodsucker was rapidly fading. I still have a tiny crescentshaped scar there. My wife once asked about it and I told her a lie before I was even aware I meant to do so. When I was done with the rag, I threw it away. It was filthy. I got out a dozen eggs and scrambled six of them together. When they were semisolid in the pan, I added a side dish of crushed pineapple and half a quart of milk. I was just sitting down to eat when my mother came in, her gray hair tied in a knot behind her head. She was wearing a faded pink bathrobe and smoking a Camel. Gordon, where have you been? Camping, I said, and began to eat. We started off in Verns field and then went up the Brickyard Hill. Verns mom said she would call you. Didnt she? She probably talked to your father, she said, and glided past me to the sink. She looked like a pink ghost. The fluorescent bars were less than kind to her face; they made her complexion look almost yellow. She sighed... almost sobbed. I miss Dennis most in the mornings, she said. I always look in his room and its always empty, Gordon. Always. Yeah, thats a bitch, I said. He always slept with his window open and the blankets... Gordon? Did you say something? Nothing important, Mom. ... and the blankets pulled up to his chin, she finished. Then she just stared out the window, her back to me. I went on eating. I was trembling all over. 31 The story never did get out. Oh, I dont mean that Ray Browers body was never found; it was. But neither our gang nor their gang got the credit. In the end, Ace must have decided that an anonymous phone call was the safest course, because thats how the location of the corpse was reported. What I meant was that none of our parents ever found out what wed been up to that Labor Day weekend. Chriss dad was still drinking, just as Chris had said he would be. His mom had gone off to Lewiston to stay with her sister, the way she almost always did when Mr. Chambers was on a bender. She went and left Eyeball in charge of the younger kids. Eyeball had fulfilled his responsibility by going off with Ace and his j.d. buddies, leaving nineyearold Sheldon, fiveyearold Emery, and twoyearold Deborah to sink or swim on their own. Teddys mom got worried the second night and called Verns mom. Verns mom, who was also never going to do the gameshow circuit, said we were still out in Verns tent. She knew because she had seen a light on in there the night before. Teddys mom said she sure hoped no one was smoking cigarettes in there and Verns mom said it looked like a flashlight to her, and besides, she was sure that none of Verns or Billys friends smoked. My dad asked me some vague questions, looking mildly troubled at my evasive answers, said wed go fishing together sometime, and that was the end of it. If the parents had gotten together in the week or two afterward, everything would have fallen down... but they never did. Milo Pressman never spoke up, either. My guess is that he thought twice about it being our word against his, and how we would all swear that he sicced Chopper on me. So the story never came outbut that wasnt the end of it. 32 One day near the end of the month, while I was walking home from school, a black 1952 Ford cut into the curb in front of me. There was no mistaking that car. Gangster whitewalls and spinner hubcaps, highrise chrome bumpers and Lucite deathknob with a rose embedded in it clamped to the steering wheel. Painted on the back deck was a deuce and a oneeyed jack. Beneath them, in Roman Gothic script, were the words WILD CARD. The doors flew open; Ace Merrill and Fuzzy Bracowicz stepped out. Cheap hood, right? Ace said, smiling his gentle smile. My mother loves the way I do it to her, right? Were gonna rack you, baby, Fuzzy said. I dropped my schoolbooks on the sidewalk and ran. I was busting my buns but they caught me before I even made the end of the block. Ace hit me with a flying tackle and I went fulllength on the paving. My chin hit the cement and I didnt just see stars; I saw whole constellations, whole nebulae. I was already crying when they picked me up, not so much from my elbows and knees, both pairs scraped and bleeding, or even from fearit was vast, impotent rage that made me cry. Chris was right. He had been ours. I twisted and turned and almost squiggled free. Then Fuzzy hoicked his knee into my crotch. The pain was amazing, incredible, nonpareil; it widened the horizons of pain from plain old wide screen to Vista Vision. I began to scream. Screaming seemed to be my best chance. Ace punched me twice in the face, long and looping haymaker blows. The first one closed my left eye; it would be four days before I was really able to see out of that eye again. The second broke my nose with a crunch that sounded the way crispy cereal sounds inside your head when you chew. Then old Mrs. Chalmers came out on her porch with her cane clutched in one arthritistwisted hand and a Herbert Tareyton jutting from one comer of her mouth. She began to bellow at them Hi! Hi there, you boys! You stop that! Police! Poleeeece! Dont let me see you around, dipshit, Ace said, smiling, and they let go of me and backed off. I sat up and then leaned over, cupping my wounded balls, sickly sure I was going to throw up and then die. I was still crying, too. But when Fuzzy started to walk around me, the sight of his pegged jeansleg snuggered down over the top of his motorcycle boot brought all the fury back. I grabbed him and bit his calf through his jeans. I bit him just as hard as I could. Fuzzy began to do a little screaming of his own. He also began hopping around on one leg, and, incredibly, he was calling me a dirtyfighter. I was watching him hop around and that was when Ace stamped down on my left hand, breaking the first two fingers. I heard them break. They didnt sound like crispy cereal. They sounded like pretzels. Then Ace and Fuzzy were going back to Aces 52, Ace sauntering with his hands in his back pockets, Fuzzy hopping on one leg and throwing curses back over his shoulder at me. I curled up on the sidewall, crying. Aunt Evvie Chalmers came down her walk, thudding her cane angrily as she came. She asked me if I needed the doctor. I sat up and managed to stop most of the crying. I told her I didnt. Bullshit, she bellowedAunt Evvie was deaf and bellowed everything. I saw where that bully got you. Boy, your sweetmeats are going to swell up to the size of Mason jars. She took me into her house, gave me a wet rag for my noseit had begun to resemble a summer squash by thenand gave me a big cup of medicinaltasting coffee that was somehow calming. She kept bellowing at me that she should call the doctor and I kept telling her not to. Finally she gave up and I walked home. Very slowly, I walked home. My balls werent the size of Mason jars yet, but they were on their way. My mom and dad got a look at me and wigged right outI was sort of surprised that they noticed anything at all, to tell the truth. Who were the boys? Could I pick them out of a lineup? That from my father, who never missed Naked City and The Untouchables. I said I didnt think I could pick the boys out of a lineup. I said I was tired. Actually I think I was in shockin shock and more than a little drunk from Aunt Evvies coffee, which must have been at least sixty per cent VSOP brandy. I said I thought they were from some other town, or from up the citya phrase everyone understood to mean LewistonAuburn. They took me to Dr. Clarkson in the station wagonDr. Clarkson, who is still alive today, was even then old enough to have quite possibly been on armchairtoarmchair terms with God. He set my nose and my fingers and gave my mother a prescription for painkiller. Then he got them out of the examining room on some pretext or other and came over to me, shuffling, head forward, like Boris Karloff approaching Igor. Who did it, Gordon? I dont know, Dr. Cla Youre lying. No, sir. Huhuh. His sallow cheeks began to flow with color. Why should you protect the cretins who did this? Do you think they will respect you? They will laugh and call you stupidfool! Oh, theyll say, there goes the stupidfool we beat up for kicks the other day. Haha! Hoohoo! Hardeharharhar!  I didnt know them. Really. I could see his hands itching to shake me, but of course he couldnt do that. So he sent me out to my parents, shaking his white head and muttering about juvenile delinquents. He would no doubt tell his old friend God all about it that night over their cigars and sherry. I didnt care if Ace and Fuzzy and the rest of those assholes respected me or thought I was stupid or never thought about me at all. But there was Chris to think of. His brother Eyeball had broken his arm in two places and had left his face looking like a Canadian sunrise. They had to set the elbowbreak with a steel pin. Mrs. McGinn from down the road saw Chris staggering along the soft shoulder, bleeding from both ears and reading a Richie Rich comic book. She took him to the CMG Emergency Room where Chris told the doctor he had fallen down the cellar stairs in the dark. Right, the doctor said, every bit as disgusted with Chris as Dr. Clarkson had been with me, and then he went to call Constable Bannerman.. While he did that from his office, Chris went slowly down the hall, holding the temporary sling against his chest so the arm wouldnt swing and grate the broken bones together, and used a nickel in the pay phone to call Mrs. McGinnhe told me later it was the first collect call he had ever made and he was scared to death that she wouldnt accept the chargesbut she did. Chris, are you all right? she asked. Yes, thank you, Chris said. Im sorry I couldnt stay with you, Chris, but I had pies in the Thats all right, Missus McGinn, Chris said. Can you see the Buick in our dooryard? The Buick was the car Chriss mother drove. It was ten years old and when the engine got hot it smelled like frying Hush Puppies. Its there, she said cautiously. Best not to mix in too much with the Chamberses. Poor white trash; shanty Irish. Would you go over and tell Mamma to go downstairs and take the lightbulb out of the socket in the cellar? Chris, I really, my pies Tell her, Chris said implacably, to do it right away. Unless she maybe wants my brother to go to jail. There was a long, long pause and then Mrs. McGinn agreed. She asked no questions and Chris told her no lies. Constable Bannerman did indeed come out to the Chambers house, but Richie Chambers didnt go to jail. Vern and Teddy took their lumps, too, although not as bad as either Chris or I. Billy was laying for Vern when Vern got home. He took after him with a stovelength and hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious after only four or five good licks. Vern was no more than stunned, but Billy got scared he might have killed him and stopped. Three of them caught Teddy walking home from the vacant lot one afternoon. They punched him out and broke his glasses. He fought them, but they wouldnt fight him when they realized he was groping after them like a blindman in the dark. We hung out together at school looking like the remains of a Korean assault force. Nobody knew exactly what had happened, but everybody understood that wed had a pretty serious runin with the big kids and comported ourselves like men. A few stories went around. All of them were wildly wrong. When the casts came off and the bruises healed, Vern and Teddy just drifted away. They had discovered a whole new group of contemporaries that they could lord it over. Most of them were real wetsscabby, scrubby little fifthgrade assholesbut Vern and Teddy kept bringing them to the treehouse, ordering them around, strutting like Nazi generals. Chris and I began to drop by there less and less frequently, and after awhile the place was theirs by default. I remember going up one time in the spring of 1961 and noticing that the place smelled like a shootoff in a haymow. I never went there again that I can recall. Teddy and Vern slowly became just two more faces in the halls or in threethirty detention. We nodded and said hi. That was all. It happens. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, did you ever notice that? But when I think of that dream, the corpses under the water pulling implacably at my legs, it seems right that it should be that way. Some people drown, thats all. Its not fair, but it happens. Some people drown. 33 Vern Tessio was killed in a housefire that swept a Lewiston apartment building in 1966in Brooklyn and the Bronx, they call that sort of apartment building a slum tenement, I believe. The Fire Department said it started around two in the morning, and the entire building was nothing but cinders in the cellarhole by dawn. There had been a large drunken party; Vern was there. Someone fell asleep in one of the bedrooms with a live cigarette going. Vern himself, maybe, drifting off, dreaming of his pennies. They identified him and the four others who died by their teeth. Teddy went in a squalid car crash. That was 1971, I think, or maybe it was early 1972. There used to be a saying when I was growing up If you go out alone youre a hero. Take somebody else with you and youre dogpiss. Teddy, who had wanted nothing but the service since the time he was old enough to want anything, was turned down by the Air Force and classified 4F by the draft. Anyone who had seen his glasses and his hearing aid knew it was going to happen anyone but Teddy. In his junior year at high school he got a threeday vacation from school for calling the guidance counselor a lying sack of shit. The g.o. had observed Teddy coming in every so oftentike every dayand checking over his careerboard for new service literature. He told Teddy that maybe he should think about another career, and that was when Teddy blew his stack. He was held back a year for repeated absences, tardies, and the attendant flunked courses... but he did graduate. He had an ancient Chevrolet Bel Air, and he used to hang around the places where Ace and Fuzzy and the rest had hung around before him the pool hall, the dance hall, Sukeys Tavern, which is closed now, and The Mellow Tiger, which isnt. He eventually got a job with the Castle Rock Public Works Department, filling up holes with hotpatch. The crash happened over in Harlow. Teddys Bel Air was full of his friends (two of them had been part of that group he and Vern took to bossing around way back in 1960), and they were all passing around a couple of joints and a couple of bottles of Popov. They hit a utility pole and sheared it off and the Chevrolet rolled six times. One girl came out technically still alive. She lay for six months in what the nurses and orderlies at Central Maine General call the CT WardCabbages and Turnips. Then some merciful phantom pulled the plug on her respirator. Teddy Duchamp was posthumously awarded the Dogpiss of the Year Award. Chris enrolled in the college courses in his second year of junior highhe and I both knew that if he waited any longer it would be too late; he would never catch up. Everyone jawed at him about it his parents, who thought he was putting on airs, his friends, most of whom dismissed him as a pussy, the guidance counsellor, who didnt believe he could do the work, and most of all the teachers, who didnt approve of this ducktailed, leatherjacketed, engineerbooted apparition who had materialized without warning in their classrooms. You could see that the sight of those boots and that manyzippered jacket offended them in connection with such highminded subjects as algebra, Latin, and earth science; such attire was meant for the shop courses only. Chris sat among the welldressed, vivacious boys and girls from the middle class families in Castle View and Brickyard Hill like some silent, brooding Grendel that might turn on them at any moment, produce a horrible roaring like the sound of dual glasspack mufflers, and gobble them up, penny loafers, Peter Pan collars, buttondown paisley shirts, and all. He almost quit a dozen times that year. His father in particular hounded him, accusing Chris of thinking he was better than his old man, accusing Chris of wanting to go up there to the college so you can turn me into a bankrupt. He once broke a Rhinegold bottle over the back of Chriss head and Chris wound up in the CMG Emergency Room again, where it took four stitches to close his scalp. His old friends, most of whom were now majoring in Smoking Area, catcalled him on the streets. The guidance counsellor huckstered him to take at least some shop courses so he wouldnt flunk the whole slate. Worst of all, of course, was just this hed been fucking off for the entire first seven years of his public education, and now the bill had come due with a vengeance. We studied together almost every night, sometimes for as long as six hours at a stretch. I always came away from those sessions exhausted, and sometimes I came away frightened as wellfrightened by his incredulous rage at just how murderously high that bill was. Before he could even begin to understand introductory algebra, he had to relearn the fractions that he and Teddy and Vern had played pocketpool through in the fifth grade. Before he could even being to understand Pater noster qui est in caelis, he had to be told what nouns and prepositions and objects were. On the inside of his English grammar, neatly lettered, were the words FUCK GERUNDS. His compositional ideas were good and not badly organized, but his grammar was bad and he approached the whole business of punctuation as if with a shotgun. He wore out his copy of Warriners and bought another in a Portland bookstoreit was the first hardcover book he actually owned, and it became a queer sort of Bible to him. But by our junior year in high school, he had been accepted. Neither of us made top honors, but I came out seventh and Chris stood nineteenth. We were both accepted at the University of Maine, but I went to the Orono campus while Chris enrolled at the Portland campus. Prelaw, can you believe that? More Latin. We both dated through high school, but no girl ever came between us. Does that sound like we went faggot? It would have to most of our old friends, Vern and Teddy included. But it was only survival. We were clinging to each other in deep water. Ive explained about Chris, I think; my reasons for clinging to him were less definable. His desire to get away from Castle Rock and out of the mills shadow seemed to me to be my best part, and I could not just leave him to sink or swim on his own. If he had drowned, that part of me would have drowned with him, I think. Near the end of 1971, Chris went into a Chicken Delight in Portland to get a threepiece Snack Bucket. Just ahead of him, two men started arguing about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife. Chris, who had always been the best of us at making peace, stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat. The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions; he had been released from Shawshank State Prison only the week before. Chris died almost instantly. I read about it in the paperChris had been finishing his second year of graduate studies. Me, I had been married a year and a half and was teaching high school English. My wife was pregnant and I was trying to write a book. When I read the news itemSTUDENT FATALLY STABBED IN PORTLAND RESTAURANTI told my wife I was going out for a milkshake. I drove out of town, parked, and cried for him. Cried for damn near half an hour, I guess. I couldnt have done that in front of my wife, much as I love her. It would have been pussy. 34 Me? Im a writer now, like I said. A lot of critics think what I write is shit. A lot of the time I think they are right... but it still freaks me out to put those words, Freelance Writer, down in the Occupation blank of the forms you have to fill out at credit desks and in doctors offices. My story sounds so much like a fairytale that its fucking absurd. I sold the book and it was made into a movie and the movie got good reviews and it was a smash hit besides. This all had happened by the time I was twentysix. The second book was made into a movie as well, as was the third. I told youits fucking absurd. Meantime, my wife doesnt seem to mind having me around the house and we have three kids now. They all seem perfect to me, and most of the time Im happy. But like I said, the writing isnt so easy or as much fun as it used to be. The phone rings a lot. Sometimes I get headaches, bad ones, and then I have to go into a dim room and lie down until they go away. The doctors say they arent true migraines; he called them stressaches and told me to slow down. I worry about myself sometimes. What a stupid habit that is ... and yet I cant quite seem to stop it. And I wonder if there is really any point to what Im doing, or what Im supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing lets pretend. But its funny how I saw Ace Merrill again. My friends are dead but Ace is alive. I saw him pulling out of the mill parking lot just after the three oclock whistle the last time I took my kids down home to see my dad. The 52 Ford had become a 77 Ford station wagon. A faded bumpersticker said REAGANBUSH 1980. His hair was mowed into a crewcut and hed gotten fat. The sharp, handsome features I remembered were buried in an avalanche of flesh. I had left the kids with Dad long enough to go downtown and get the paper. I was standing on the corner of Main and Carbine and he glanced at me as I waited to cross. There was no sign of recognition on the face of this thirtytwoyearold man who had broken my nose in another dimension of time. I watched him wheel the Ford wagon into the dirt parking lot beside The Mellow Tiger, get out, hitch at his pants, and walk inside. I could imagine the brief wedge of countrywestern as he opened the door, the brief sour whiff of Knick and Gansett on draft, the welcoming shouts of the other regulars as he closed the door and placed his large ass on the same stool which had probably held him up for at least three hours every day of his lifeexcept Sundayssince he was twentyone. I thought So thats what Ace is now. I looked to the left, and beyond the mill I could see the Castle River not so wide now but a little cleaner, still flowing under the bridge between Castle Rock and Harlow. The trestle upstream is gone, but the river is still around. So am I. A WINTERS TALE For Peter and Susan Straub The Breathing Method I. The Club I dressed a bit more speedily than normal on that snowy, windy, bitter nightI admit. It was December 23rd, 197, and I suspect that there were other members of the club who did the same. Taxis are notoriously hard to come by in New York on stormy nights, so I called for a radiocab. I did this at fivethirty for an eight oclock pickupmy wife raised an eyebrow but said nothing. I was under the canopy of the apartment building on East Fiftyeighth Street, where Ellen and I had lived since 1946, by quarter to eight, and when the taxi was five minutes late, I found myself pacing up and down impatiently. The taxi arrived at eightten and I got in, too glad to be out of the wind to be as angry with the driver as he probably deserved. That wind, part of a cold front that had swept down from Canada the day before, meant business. It whistled and whined around the cabs windows, occasionally drowning out the salsa on the drivers radio and rocking the big Checker on its springs. Many of the stores were open but the sidewalks were nearly bare of lastminute shoppers. Those that were abroad looked uncomfortable or actually pained. It had been flurrying off and on all day, and now the snow began again, coming first in thin membranes, then twisting into cyclone shapes ahead of us in the street. Coming home that night, I would think of the combination of snow, a taxi, and New York City with considerably greater unease... but I did not of course know that then. At the comer of Second and Fortieth, a large tinsel Christmas bell went floating through the intersection like a spirit. Bad night, the cabbie said. Theyll have an extra two dozen in the morgue tomorrow. Wino Popsicles. Plus a few baglady Popsicles. I suppose. The cabbie ruminated. Well, good riddance, he said finally. Less welfare, right? Your Christmas spirit, I said, is stunning in its width and depth. The cabbie ruminated. You one of those bleedingheart liberals? he asked finally. I refuse to answer on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me, I said. The cabbie gave a whydoIalwaysgetthewisenheimers snort... but he shut up. He let me out at Second and Thirtyfifth, and I walked halfway down the block to the club, bent over against the whistling wind, holding my hat on my head with one gloved hand. In almost no time at all the lifeforce seemed to have been driven deep into my body, a flickering blue flame about the size of the pilotlight in a gas oven. At seventythree a man feels the cold quicker and deeper. That man should be home in front of a fireplace... or at least in front of an electric heater. At seventythree hot blood isnt even really a memory; its more of an academic report. The latest flurry was letting up, but snow as dry as sand still beat into my face. I was glad to see that the steps leading up to the door of 249B had been sandedthat was Stevenss work, of courseStevens knew the base alchemy of old age well enough not lead into gold but bones into glass. When I think about such things, I believe that God probably thinks a great deal like Groucho Marx. Then Stevens was there, holding the door open, and a moment later I was inside. Down the mahoganypaneled hallway, through double doors standing threequarters of the way open on their recessed tracks, into the library cum readingroom cum bar. It was a dark room in which occasional pools of light gleamedreadinglamps. A richer, more textured light glowed across the oak parquet floor, and I could hear the steady snap of birch logs in the huge fireplace. The heat radiated all the way across the roomsurely there is no welcome for a man or a woman that can equal a fire on the hearth. A paper rustleddry, slightly impatient. That would be Johanssen, with his Wall Street Journal.


After ten years, it was possible to recognize his presence simply by the way he read his stocks. Amusing... and in a quiet way, amazing. Stevens helped me off with my overcoat, murmuring that it was a dirty night; WCBS was now forecasting heavy snow before morning. I agreed that it was indeed a dirty night and looked back into that big, highceilinged room again. A dirty night, a roaring fire... and a ghost story. Did I say that at seventythree hot blood is a thing of the past? Perhaps so. But I felt something warm in my chest at the thought... something that hadnt been caused by the fire or Stevenss reliable, dignified welcome. I think it was because it was McCarrons turn to tell the tale. I had been coming to the brownstone which stands at 249B East Thirtyfifth Street for ten yearscoming at intervals that were almostbut not quiteregular. In my own mind I think of it as a gentlemens club, that amusing preGloria Steinem antiquity. But even now I am not sure thats what it really is, or how it came to be in the first place. On the night Emlyn McCarron told his storythe story of the Breathing Methodthere were perhaps thirteen clubmembers in all, although only six of us had come out on that howling, bitter night. I can remember years when there might have been as few as eight fulltime members, and others when there were at least twenty, and perhaps more. I suppose Stevens might know how it all came to beone thing I am sure of is that Stevens has been there from the first, no matter how long that may be ... and I believe Stevens to be older than he looks. Much, much older. He has a faint Brooklyn accent, but in spite of that he is as brutally correct and as cuttingly punctilious as a thirdgeneration English butler. His reserve is part of his often maddening charm, and Stevenss small smile is a locked and latched door. I have never seen any club recordsif he keeps them. I have never gotten a receipt of duesthere are no dues. I have never been called by the club secretarythere is no secretary, and at 249B East Thirtyfifth, there are no phones. There is no box of white marbles and black balls. And the clubif it is a clubhas never had a name. I first came to the club (as I must continue to call it) as the guest of George Waterhouse. Waterhouse headed the law firm for which I had worked since 1951. My progress upward in the firmone of New Yorks three biggesthad been steady but extremely slow; I was a slogger, a mule for work, something of a centerpuncher ... but I had no real flair or genius. I had seen men who had begun at the same time I had promoted in giant steps while I only continued to paceand I saw it with no real surprise. Waterhouse and I had exchanged pleasantries, attended the obligatory dinner put on by the firm each October, and had little more congress until the fall of 196, when he dropped by my office one day in early November. This in itself was unusual enough, and it had me thinking black thoughts (dismissal) that were counterbalanced by giddy ones (an unexpected promotion). It was a puzzling visit. Waterhouse leaned in the doorway, his Phi Beta Kappa key gleaming mellowly on his vest, and talked in amiable generalitiesnone of what he said seemed to have any real substance or importance. I kept expecting him to finish the pleasantries and get down to cases Now about this Casey brief or Weve been asked to research the Mayors appointment of Salkowitz to But it seemed there were no cases. He glanced at his watch, said he had enjoyed our talk and that he had to be going. I was still blinking, bewildered, when he turned back and said casually Theres a place where I go most Thursday nightsa sort of club. Old duffers, mostly, but some of them are good company. They keep a really excellent cellar, if youve a palate. Every now and then someone tells a good story as well. Why not come down some night, David? As my guest. I stammered some replyeven now Im not sure what it was. I was bewildered by the offer. It had a spurofthemoment sound, but there was nothing spurofthemoment about his eyes, blue AngloSaxon ice under the bushy white whorls of his eyebrows. And if I dont remember exactly how I replied, it was because I felt suddenly sure that his offervague and puzzling as it washad been exactly the specific I had kept expecting him to get down to. Ellens reaction that evening was one of amused exasperation. I had been with Waterhouse, Carden, Lawton, Frasier, and Effingham for something like fifteen years, and it was clear enough that I could not expect to rise much above the midlevel position I now held; it was her idea that this was the firms costefficient substitute for a gold watch. Old men telling war stories and playing poker, she said. A night of that and youre supposed to be happy in the Reading Library until they pension you off, I suppose... oh, I put two Becks on ice for you. And she kissed me warmly. I suppose she had seen something on my faceGod knows shes good at reading me after all the years weve spent together. Nothing happened over a course of weeks. When my mind turned to Waterhouses odd offercertainly odd coming from a man with whom I met less than a dozen times a year, and whom I only saw socially at perhaps three parties a year, including the company party in OctoberI supposed that I had been mistaken about the expression in his eyes, that he really had made the offer casually, and had forgotten it. Or regretted itouch! And then he approached me one late afternoon, a man of nearly seventy who was still broadshouldered and athletic looking. I was shrugging on my topcoat with my briefcase between my feet. He said If youd still like to have a drink at the club, why not come tonight? Well... I ... Good. He slapped a slip of paper into my hand. Heres the address. He was waiting for me at the foot of the steps that evening, and Stevens held the door for us. The wine was as excellent as Waterhouse had promised. He made no attempt whatsoever to introduce me aroundI took that for snobbery but later recanted the ideabut two or three of them introduced themselves to me. One of those who did so was Emlyn McCarron, even then in his late sixties. He held out his hand and I clasped it briefly. His skin was dry, leathery, tough; almost turtlelike. He asked me if I played bridge. I said I did not. Goddamned good thing, he said. That goddamned game has done more in this century to kill intelligent afterdinner conversation than anything else I can think of. And with that pronouncement he walked away into the murk of the library, where shelves of books went up apparently to infinity. I looked around for Waterhouse, but he had disappeared. Feeling a little uncomfortable and a lot out of place, I wandered over to the fireplace. It was, as I believe I have already mentioned, a huge thingit seemed particularly huge in New York, where apartmentdwellers such as myself have trouble imagining such a benevolence big enough to do anything more than pop corn or toast bread. The fireplace at 249B East Thirtyfifth was big enough to broil an ox whole. There was no mantel; instead a brawny stone arch curved over it. This arch was broken in the center by a keystone which jutted out slightly. It was just on the level of my eyes, and although the light was dim, I could read the legend engraved on that stone with no trouble IT IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT. Here you go, David, Waterhouse said from my elbow, and I jumped. He hadnt deserted me after all; had only trudged off into some uncharted locale to bring back drinks. Scotch and sodas yours, isnt it? Yes. Thank you. Mr. Waterhouse George, he said. Here its just George. George, then, I said, although it seemed slightly mad to be using his first name. What is all of Cheers, he said. We drank. Stevens tends the bar. He makes fine drinks. He likes to say its a small but vital skill. The scotch took the edge off my feelings of disorientation and awkwardness (the edge, but the feelings themselves remainedI had spent nearly half an hour gazing into my closet and wondering what to wear; I had finally settled on dark brown slacks and a rough tweed jacket that almost matched them, hoping I would not be wandering into a group of men either turned out in tuxedos or wearing bluejeans and L. L. Beans lumberjack shirts... it seemed that I hadnt gone too far wrong on the matter of dress, anyway). A new place and a new situation make one crucially aware of every social act, no matter how small, and at that moment, drink in hand and the obligatory small toast made, I wanted very much to be sure that I hadnt overlooked any of the amenities. Is there a guest book I ought to sign? I asked. Something like that? He looked mildly surprised. We dont have anything like that, he said. At least, I dont think we do. He glanced around the dim, quiet room. Johanssen rattled his Wall Street Journal. I saw Stevens pass in a doorway at the far end of the room, ghostly in his white messjacket. George put his drink on an endtable and tossed a fresh log onto the fire. Sparks corkscrewed up the black throat of the chimney. What does that mean? I asked, pointing to the inscription on the keystone. Any idea? Waterhouse read it carefully, as if for the first time. IT IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT. I suppose I have an idea, he said. You may, too, if you should come back. Yes, I should say you may have an idea or two. In time. Enjoy yourself, David. He walked away. And, although it may seem odd, having been left to sink or swim in such an unfamiliar situation, I did enjoy myself. For one thing, I have always loved books, and there was a trove of interesting ones to examine here. I walked slowly along the shelves, examining the spines as best I could in the faint light, pulling one out now and then, and pausing once to look out a narrow window at the Second Avenue intersection up the street. I stood there and watched through the frostrimmed glass as the traffic light at the intersection cycled from red to green to amber and back to red again, and quite suddenly I felt the queerestand yet very welcomesense of peace come to me. It did not flood in; instead it seemed to almost steal in. Oh yes, I can hear you saying, that makes great sense; watching a stopandgo light gives everyone a sense of peace. All right; it made no sense. I grant you that. But the feeling was there, just the same. It made me think for the first time in years of the winter nights in the Wisconsin farmhouse where I grew up lying in bed in a drafty upstairs room and marking the contrast between the whistle of the January wind outside, drifting snow as dry as sand along miles of snowfence, and the warmth my body created under the two quilts. There were some law books, but they were pretty damn strange Twenty Cases of Dismemberment and Their Outcomes Under British Law is one title I remember. Pet Cases was another. I opened that one and, sure enough, it was a scholarly legal tome dealing with the laws treatment (American law, this time) of cases which bore in some important respect upon petseverything from housecats that had inherited great sums of money to an ocelot that had broken its chain and seriously injured a postman.. There was a set of Dickens, a set of Defoe, a nearly endless set of Trollope; and there was also a set of novelseleven of themby a man named Edward Gray Seville. They were bound in handsome green leather, and the name of the firm goldstamped on the spine was Stedham  Son. I had never heard of Seville or of his publishers. The copyright date of the first SevilleThese Were Our Brotherswas 1911. The date of the last, Breakers, was 1935. Two shelves down from the set of Seville novels was a large folio volume which contained careful stepbystep plans for Erector Set enthusiasts. Next to it was another folio volume which featured famous scenes from famous movies. Each of these pictures filled one whole page, and opposite each, filling the facing pages, were freeverse poems either about the scenes with which they were paired or inspired by them. Not a very remarkable concept, but the poets who were represented were remarkableRobert Frost, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Louis Zukofsky, and Erica Jong, to mention just a few. Halfway through the book I found a poem by Algernon Williams set next to that famous photograph of Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grating and trying to hold her skirt down. The poem was titled The Toll and it began The shape of the skirt is we would say the shape of a bell The legs are the clapper And some such more. Not a terrible poem, but certainly not Williamss best or anywhere near the top drawer. I felt I could hold such an opinion because I had read a good deal of Algernon Williams over the years. I could not, however, recall this poem about Marilyn Monroe (which it is; the poem announced it even when divorced from the pictureat the end Williams writes My legs clap my namelMarilyn, ma belle). I have looked for it since then and havent been able to find it... which means nothing, of course. Poems are not like novels or legal opinions; they are more like blown leaves, and any omnibus volume titled The Complete SoandSo must certainly be a lie. Poems have a way of getting lost under sofasit is one of their charms, and one of the reasons they endure. But At some point Stevens came by with a second scotch (by then I had settled into a chair of my own with a volume of Ezra Pound). It was as fine as the first. As I sipped it I saw two of those present, George Gregson and Harry Stein (Harry was six years dead on the night Emlyn McCarron told us the story of the Breathing Method), leave the room by a peculiar door that could not have been more than fortytwo inches high. It was an Alice Down the RabbitHole door if ever there was one. They left it open, and shortly after their odd exit from the library I heard the muted click of billiard balls. Stevens passed by and asked if I would like another scotch. I declined with real regret. He nodded. Very good, sir. His face never changed, and yet I had an obscure feeling that I had somehow pleased him. Laughter startled me from my book sometime later. Someone had thrown a packet of chemical powder into the fire and turned the flames momentarily particolored. I thought of my boyhood again... but not in any wistful, sloppily romanticnostalgic way. I feel a great need to emphasize that, God knows why. I thought of times when I had done just such a thing as a kid, but the memory was a strong one, pleasant, untinged with regret. I saw that most of the others had drawn chairs up around the hearth in a semicircle. Stevens had produced a heaping, smoking platter of marvellous hot sausages. Harry Stein returned through the downtherabbithole door, introducing himself hurriedly but pleasantly to me. Gregson remained in the billiard roompracticing shots, by the sound. After a moments hesitation I joined the others. A story was toldnot a pleasant one. It was Norman Stett who told it, and while it is not my purpose to recount it here, perhaps youll understand what I mean about its quality if I tell you that it was about a man who drowned in a telephone booth. When Stettwho is also dead nowfinished, someone said, You should have saved it for Christmas, Norman. There was laughter, which I of course did not understand. At least, not then. Waterhouse himself spoke up then, and such a Waterhouse I never would have dreamed of in a thousand years of dreaming. A graduate of Yale, Phi Beta Kappa, silverhaired, threepiecesuited, head of a law firm so large it was more enterprise than companythis Waterhouse told a story that had to do with a teacher who had gotten stuck in a privy. The privy stood behind the oneroom schoolhouse in which she had taught, and the day she got her caboose jammed into one of the privys two holes also happened to be the day the privy was scheduled to be taken away as Anniston Countys contribution to the Life As It Was in New England exhibition being held at the Prudential Center in Boston. The teacher hadnt made a sound during all the time it took to load the privy onto the back of a flatbed truck and to spike it down; she was struck dumb with embarrassment and horror, Waterhouse said. And when the privy door blew off into the passing lane on Route 128 in Somerville during rush hour But draw a curtain over that, and over any other stories which might have followed it; they are not my stories tonight. At some point Stevens produced a bottle of brandy that was more than just good; it was damned near exquisite. It was passed around and Johanssen raised a toastthe toast, one might almost say The tale, not he who tells it. We drank to that. Not long after, men began slipping away. It wasnt late; not yet midnight, anyway; but Ive noticed that when your fifties give way to your sixties, late begins coming earlier and earlier. I saw Waterhouse slipping his arms into the overcoat Stevens was holding open for him, and decided that must be my cue. I thought it strange that Waterhouse would slip away without so much as a word to me (which certainly seemed to be what he was doing; if I had come back from shelving the Pound book forty seconds later, he would have been gone), but no stranger than most of the other things that had gone on that evening. I stepped out just behind him, and Waterhouse glanced around, as if surprised to see meand almost as if he had been startled out of a light doze. Share a taxi? he asked, as though we had just met by chance on this deserted, windy street. Thank you, I said. I meant thanks for a great deal more than his offer to share a cab, and I believe that was unmistakable in my tone, but he nodded as if that were all I had meant. A taxi with its forhire light lit was cruising slowly down the streetfellows like George Waterhouse seem to luck onto cabs even on those miserably cold or snowy New York nights when you would swear there isnt a cab to be had on the entire island of Manhattanand he flagged it. Inside, safely warm, the taximeter charting our journey in measured clicks, I told him how much I had enjoyed his story. I couldnt remember laughing so hard or so spontaneously since I was eighteen, I told him, which was not flattery but only the simple truth. Oh? How kind of you to say. His voice was chillingly polite. I subsided, feeling a dull flush in my cheeks. One does not always need to hear a slam to know that the door has been closed. When the taxi drew up to the curb in front of my building, I thanked him again, and this time he showed a trifle more warmth. It was good of you to come on such short notice, he said. Come again, if you like. Dont wait for an invitation; we dont stand much on ceremony at twofournineB. Thursdays are best for stories, but the club is there every night. Am I then to assume membership? The question was on my lips. I meant to ask it; it seemed necessary to ask it. I was only mulling it over, listening to it in my head (in my tiresome lawyers way) to hear if I had got the phrasing rightperhaps that was a little too bluntwhen Waterhouse told the cabbie to drive on. The next moment the taxi was rolling on toward Park. I stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, the hem of my topcoat whipping around my shins, thinking He knew I was going to ask that questionhe knew it, and he purposely had the driver go on before I could. Then I told myself that was utterly absurdparanoid, even. And it was. But it was also true. I could scoff all I liked; none of the scoffing changed that essential certainty. I walked slowly to the door of my building and went inside. Ellen was sixty per cent asleep when I sat down on the bed to take off my shoes. She rolled over and made a fuzzy interrogative sound deep in her throat. I told her to go back to sleep. She made the muzzy sound again. This time it approximated English Howwuzzit? For a moment I hesitated, my shirt halfunbuttoned. And I thought with one moments utter clarity If I tell her, I will never see the other side of that door again. It was all right, I said. Old men telling war stories. I told you so. But it wasnt bad. I might go back again. It might do me some good with the firm.  The firm, she mocked lightly. What an old buzzard you are, my love. It takes one to know one, I said, but she had already fallen asleep again. I undressed, showered, towelled, put on my pajamas ... and then, instead of going to bed as I should have done (it was edging past one by that time), I put on my robe and had another bottle of Becks. I sat at the kitchen table, drinking it slowly, looking out the window and up the cold canyon of Madison Avenue, thinking. My head was a trifle buzzy from my evenings intake of alcoholfor me an unexpectedly large intake. But the feeling was not at all unpleasant, and I had no sense of an impending hangover. The thought which had come to me when Ellen asked me about my evening was as ridiculous as the one Id entertained about George Waterhouse as the cab drew away from mewhat in Gods name could be wrong with telling my wife about a perfectly harmless evening at my bosss stuffy mens club... and even if something were wrong with telling her, who would know that I had? No, it was every bit as ridiculous and paranoid as those earlier musings ... and, my heart told me, every bit as true. I met George Waterhouse the next day in the hallway between Accounts and the Reading Library. Met him? Passed him would be more accurate. He nodded my way and went on without speaking ... as he had done for years. My stomach muscles ached all day long. That was the only thing that completely convinced me the evening had been real. Three weeks passed. Four . . . five. No second invitation came from Waterhouse. Somehow I just hadnt been right; hadnt fit. Or so I told myself. It was a depressing, disappointing thought. I supposed it would begin to fade and lose its sting, as all disappointments eventually do. But I thought of that evening at the oddest momentsthe isolated pools of library lamplight, so still and tranquil and somehow civilized; Waterhouses absurd and hilarious tale of the schoolteacher stuck in the privy; the rich smell of leather in the narrow stacks. Most of all I thought of standing by that narrow window and watching the frost crystals change from green to amber to red. I thought of that sense of peace I had felt. During that same fiveweek period I went to the library and checked out four volumes of Algernon Williamss poetry (I had three others myself, and had already checked through them); one of these volumes purported to be The Complete Poems of. I reacquainted myself with some old favorites, but I found no poem called The Toll in any of the volumes. On that same trip to the New York Public Library, I checked the card catalogue for works of fiction by a man named Edward Gray Seville. A mystery novel by a woman named Ruth Seville was the closest I came. Come again, if you like. Dont wait for an invitation ... I was waiting for an invitation anyway, of course; my mother taught me donkeys years ago not to automatically believe people who tell you glibly to drop by anytime or that the door is always open. I didnt feel I needed an engraved card delivered to my apartment door by a footman in livery bearing a gilt plate, I dont mean that, but I did want something, even if it was only a casual remark Coming by some night, David? Hope we didnt bore you. That kind of thing. But when even that didnt come, I began to think more seriously about going back anywayafter all, sometimes people really did want you to drop in anytime; I supposed that, at some places, the door always was open; and that mothers werent always right. ... Dont wait for an invitation ... Anyway, thats how it happened that, on December 10th of that year, I found myself putting on my rough tweed coat and dark brown pants again and looking for my darkish red tie. I was rather more aware of my heartbeat than usual that night, I remember. George Waterhouse finally broke down and asked you back? Ellen asked. Back into the sty with the rest of the male chauvinist oinkers? Thats right, I said, thinking it must be the first time in at least a dozen years that I had told her a lie... and then I remembered that, after the first meeting, I had answered her question about what it had been like with a lie. Old men telling war stories, I had said. Well, maybe there really will be a promotion in it, she said... though without much hope. To her credit, she said it without much bitterness, either. Stranger things have happened, I said, and kissed her goodbye. Oinkoink, she said as I went out the door. The taxi ride that night seemed very long. It was cold, still, and starry. The cab was a Checker and I felt somehow very small in it, like a child seeing the city for the first time. It was excitement I was feeling as the cab pulled up in front of the brownstonesomething as simple and yet complete as that. But such simple excitement seems to be one of lifes qualities that slip away almost unnoticed, and its rediscovery as one grows older is always something of a surprise, like finding a black hair or two in ones comb years after one had last found such a thing. I paid the driver, got out, and walked toward the four steps leading to the door. As I mounted them, my excitement curdled into plain apprehension (a feeling the old are much more familiar with). What exactly was I doing here? The door was of thick paneled oak, and to my eye it looked as stout as the door of a castle keep. There was no doorbell that I could see, no knocker, no closedcircuit TV camera mounted unobtrusively in the shadow of a deep eave, and, of course, no Waterhouse waiting to take me in. I stopped at the foot of the steps and looked around. East Thirtyfifth Street suddenly seemed darker, colder, more threatening. The brownstones all looked somehow secret, as if hiding mysteries best not investigated. Their windows looked like eyes. Somewhere, behind one of those windows, there may be a man or woman contemplating murder, I thought. A shudder worked up my spine. Contemplating it ... or doing it. Then, suddenly, the door was open and Stevens was there. I felt an intense surge of relief. I am not an overly imaginative man, I thinkat least not under ordinary circumstancesbut this last thought had had all the eerie clarity of prophecy. I might have babbled aloud if I hadnt glanced at Stevenss eyes first. His eyes did not know me. His eyes did not know me at all. Then there was another instance of that eerie, prophetic clarity; I saw the rest of my evening in perfect detail. Three hours in a quiet bar. Three scotches (perhaps four) to dull the embarrassment of having been fool enough to go where I wasnt wanted. The humiliation my mothers advice had been intended to avoidthat which comes with knowing one has overstepped. I saw myself going home a little tipsy, but not in a good way. I saw myself merely sitting through the cab ride rather than experiencing it through that childlike lens of excitement and anticipation. I heard myself saying to Ellen, It wears thin after awhile... Waterhouse told the same story about winning a consignment of Tbone steaks for the Third Battalion in a poker game ... and they play Hearts for a dollar a point, can you believe it? ... Go back? ... I suppose I might, but I doubt it. And that would be the end of it. Except, I suppose, for my own humiliation. I saw all of this in the nothing of Stevenss eyes. Then the eyes warmed. He smiled slightly and said Mr. Adley! Come in. Ill take your coat. I mounted the steps and Stevens closed the door firmly behind me. How different a door can feel when you are on the warm side of it! He took my coat and was gone with it. I stood in the hall for a moment, looking at my own reflection in the pier glass, a man of sixtythree whose face was rapidly becoming too gaunt to look middleaged. And yet the reflection pleased me. I slipped into the library. Johanssen was there, reading his Wall Street Journal. In another island of light, Emlyn McCarron sat over a chessboard opposite Peter Andrews. McCarron was and is a cadaverous man, possessed of a narrow, bladelike nose; Andrews was huge, slopeshouldered, and choleric. A vast gingercolored beard sprayed over his vest. Face to face over the inlaid board with its carved pieces of ivory and ebony, they looked like Indian totems eagle and bear. Waterhouse was there, frowning over that days Times. He glanced up, nodded at me without surprise, and disappeared into the paper again. Stevens brought me a scotch, unasked. I took it into the stacks and found that puzzling, enticing set of green volumes again. I began reading the works of Edward Gray Seville that night. I started at the beginning, with These Were Our Brothers. Since then I have read them all, and believe them to be eleven of the finest novels of our century.. Near the end of the evening there was a storyjust oneand Stevens brought brandy around. When the tale was told, people began to rise, preparing to leave. Stevens spoke from the double doorway which communicated with the hallway. His voice was low and pleasant, but carrying Who will bring us a tale for Christmas, then? People stopped what they were doing and glanced around. There was some low, goodnatured talk and a burst of laughter. Stevens, smiling but serious, clapped his hands together twice, like a grammarschool teacher calling an unruly class to order. Come, gentlemenwholl bring the tale? Peter Andrews, he of the sloped shoulders and gingery beard, cleared his throat. I have something Ive been thinking about. I dont know if its quite right; that is, if its That will be fine, Stevens interrupted, and there was more laughter. Andrews had his back slapped goodnaturedly. Cold drafts swirled up the hallway as men slipped out. Then Stevens was there, as if by benign magic, holding my coat for me. Good evening, Mr. Adley. Always a pleasure. Do you really meet on Christmas night? I asked, buttoning my coat. I was a little disappointed that I was going to miss Andrewss story, but we had made firm plans to drive to Schenectady and keep the holiday with Ellens sister. Stevens managed to look both shocked and amused at the same time. In no case, he said. Christmas is a night a man should spend with his family. That night, if no other. Dont you agree, sir? I certainly do. We always meet on the Thursday before Christmas. In fact, that is the one night of the year when we almost always have a large turnout. He hadnt used the word members, I noticedjust happenstance? or neat avoidance? Many tales have been spun out in the main room, Mr. Adley, tales of every sort, from the comic to the tragic to the ironic to the sentimental. But on the Thursday before Christmas, its always a tale of the uncanny. Its always been that way, at least as far back as I can remember. That at least explained the comment I had heard on my first visit, the one to the effect that Norman Stett should have saved his story for Christmas. Other questions hovered on my lips, but I saw a reflected caution in Stevenss eyes. It was not a warning that he would not answer my questions; it was, rather, a warning that I should not even ask them. Was there something else, Mr. Adley? We were alone in the hall now. All the others had left. And suddenly the hallway seemed darker, Stevenss long face paler, his lips redder. A knot exploded in the fireplace and a red glow washed momentarily across the polished parquet floor. I thought I heard, from somewhere in those asyetunexplored rooms beyond, a kind of slithery bump. I did not like the sound. Not at all. No, I said in a voice that was not quite steady. I think not. Goodnight, then, Stevens said, and I crossed the threshold. I heard the heavy door close behind me. I heard the lock turn.


And then I was walking toward the lights of Third Avenue, not looking back over my shoulder, somehow afraid to look back, as if I might see some frightful fiend matching me stride for stride, or glimpse some secret better kept than known. I reached the comer, saw an empty cab, and flagged it. More war stories? Ellen asked me that night. She was in bed with Philip Marlowe, the only lover she has ever taken. There was a war story or two, I said, hanging up my overcoat. Mostly I sat and read a book. When you werent oinking. Yes, thats right. When I wasnt oinking. Listen to this The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a RollsRoyce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers, Ellen read.  He had a younglooking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other. Nice, huh? Its The Long Goodbye, I said, taking off my shoes. You read me that same passage once every three years. Its part of your lifecycle. She wrinkled her nose at me. Oinkoink. Thank you, I said. She went back to her book. I went out into the kitchen to get a bottle of Becks. When I came back, she had laid The Long Goodbye open on the counterpane and was looking at me closely. David, are you going to join this club? I suppose I might... if Im asked. I felt uncomfortable. I had perhaps told her another lie. If there was such a thing as membership at 249B East Thirtyfifth, I already was a member. Im glad, she said. Youve needed something for a long time now. I dont think you even know it, but you have. Ive got the Relief Committee and the Commission on Womens Rights and the Theater Society. But youve needed something. Some people to grow old with, I think. I went to the bed and sat beside her and picked up The Long Goodbye. It was a bright, newminted paperback. I could remember buying the original hardback edition as a birthday present for Ellen. In 1953. Are we old? I asked her. I suspect we are, she said, and smiled brilliantly at me. I put the book down and touched her breast. Too old for this? She turned the covers back with ladylike decorum... and then, giggling, kicked them onto the floor with her feet. Beat me, daddy, Ellen said, eight to the bar. Oink, oink, I said, and then we were both laughing. The Thursday before Christmas came. That evening was much the same as the others, with two notable exceptions. There were more people there, perhaps as many as eighteen. And there was a sharp, indefinable sense of excitement in the air. Johanssen took only a cursory glance at his Journal and then joined McCarron, Hugh Beagleman, and myself. We sat near the windows, talking of this and that, and finally fell into a passionateand often hilariousdiscussion of prewar automobiles. There was, now that I think of it, a third difference as wellStevens had concocted a delicious eggnog punch. It was smooth, but it was also hot with rum and spices. It was served from an incredible Waterford bowl that looked like an icesculpture, and the animated hum of the conversation grew ever higher as the level of the punch grew lower. I looked over in the comer by the tiny door leading to the billiard room and was astounded to see Waterhouse and Norman Stett flipping baseball cards into what looked like a genuine beaver tophat. They were laughing uproariously. Groups formed and reformed. The hour grew late... and then, at the time when people usually began slipping out through the front door, I saw Peter Andrews seated in front of the fire with an unmarked packet, about the size of a seed envelope, in one hand. He tossed it into the flames without opening it, and a moment later the fire began to dance with every color of the spectrumand some, I would have sworn, from outside itbefore turning yellow again. Chairs were dragged around. Over Andrewss shoulder I could see the keystone with its etched homily IT IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT. Stevens passed unobtrusively among us, taking punch glasses and replacing them with snifters of brandy. There were murmurs of Merry Christmas and Top of the season, Stevens, and for the first time I saw money change handsa tendollar bill was unobtrusively tendered here, a bill that looked like a fifty there, one which I clearly saw was a hundred from another chair. Thank you, Mr. McCarron... Mr. Johanssen ... Mr. Beagleman ... A quiet, wellbred murmur. I have lived in New York long enough to know that the Christmas season is a carnival of tips; something for the butcher, the baker, the candlestickmakernot to mention the doorman, the super, and the cleaning lady who comes in Tuesdays and Fridays. Ive never met anyone of my own class who regarded this as anything but a necessary nuisance ... but I felt none of that grudging spirit on that night. The money was given willingly, even eagerly... and suddenly, for no reason (it was the way thoughts often seemed to come when one was at 249B), I thought of the boy calling up to Scrooge on the still, cold air of a London Christmas morning Wot? The goose thats as big as me? And Scrooge, nearly crazed with joy, giggling A good boy! An excellent boy! I found my own wallet. In the back of this, behind the pictures of Ellen I keep, there has always been a fiftydollar bill which I keep for emergencies. When Stevens gave me my brandy, I slipped it into his hand with never a qualm... although I was not a rich man. Happy Christmas, Stevens, I said. Thank you, sir. And the same to you. He finished passing out the brandies and collecting his honorariums and retired. I glanced around once, at the midpoint of Peter Andrewss story, and saw him standing by the double doors, a dim manlike shadow, stiff and silent. Im a lawyer now, as most of you know, Andrews said after sipping at his glass, clearing his throat, and then sipping again. Ive had offices on Park Avenue for the last twentytwo years. But before that, I was a legal assistant in a firm of lawyers which did business in Washington, D.C. One night in July I was required to stay late in order to finish indexing case citations in a brief which hasnt anything at all to do with this story. But then a man came ina man who was at that time one of the most widely known Senators on the Hill, a man who later almost became President. His shirt was matted with blood and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.  Ive got to talk to Joe, he said. Joe, you understand, was Joseph Woods, the head of my firm, one of the most influential privatesector lawyers in Washington, and this Senators close personal friend.  He went home hours ago, I said. I was terribly frightened, I can tell youhe looked like a man who had just walked away from a dreadful car accident, or perhaps from a knifefight. And somehow seeing his facewhich I had seen in newspaper photos and on Meet the Pressseeing it streaked with gore, one cheek twitching spasmodically below one wild eye... all of that made my fright worse. I can call him if you I was already fumbling with the phone, mad with eagerness to turn this unexpected responsibility over to someone else. Looking behind him, I could see the caked and bloody footprints he had left on the carpet.  Ive got to talk to Joe right now, he reiterated as if he hadnt heard me. Theres something in the trunk of my car ... something I found out at the Virginia place. Ive shot it and stabbed it and I cant kill it. Its not human, and I cant kill it. He began to giggle... and then to laugh... and finally to scream. And he was still screaming when I finally got Mr. Woods on the phone and told him to come, for Gods sake, to come as fast as he could... It is not my purpose to tell Peter Andrewss story, either. As a matter of fact, I am not sure I would dare to tell it. Suf  fice it to say that it was a tale so gruesome that I dreamed of it for weeks afterwards, and Ellen once looked at me over the breakfast table and asked me why I had suddenly cried out His head! His head is still speaking in the earth! in the middle of the night. I suppose it was a dream, I said. One of those you cant remember afterwards. But my eyes dropped immediately to my coffee cup, and I think that Ellen knew the lie that time. One day in August of the following year, I was buzzed as I worked in the Reading Library. It was George Waterhouse. He asked me if I could step up to his office. When I got there I saw that Robert Carden was also there, and Henry Effingham. For one moment I was positive I was about to be accused of some really dreadful act of stupidity or ineptitude. Then Carden stepped around to me and said George believes the time has come to make you a junior partner, David. The rest of us agree. Its going to be a little bit like being the worlds oldest JayCee, Effingham said with a grin, but its the channel you have to go through, David. With any luck, we can make you a full partner by Christmas. There were no bad dreams that night. Ellen and I went out to dinner, drank too much, went on to a jazz place where we hadnt been in nearly six years, and listened to that amazing blueeyed black man, Dexter Gordon, blow his horn until almost two in the morning. We woke up the next morning with fluttery stomachs and achy heads, both of us still unable to completely believe what had happened. One of them was that my salary had just climbed by eight thousand dollars a year long after our expectations of such a staggering income jump had fallen by the wayside. The firm sent me to Copenhagen for six weeks that fall, and I returned to discover that John Hanrahan, one of the regular attendees at 249B, had died of cancer. A collection was taken up for his wife, who had been left in unpleasant circumstances. I was pressed into service to total the amountwhich was given entirely in cashand convert it to a cashiers check. It came to more than ten thousand dollars. I turned the check over to Stevens and I suppose he mailed it. It just so happened that Arlene Hanrahan was a member of Ellens Theater Society, and Ellen told me sometime later that Arlene had received an anonymous check for ten thousand four hundred dollars. Written on the check stub was the brief and unilluminating message Friends of your late husband John Isnt that the most amazing thing you ever heard in your life? Ellen asked me. No, I said, but its right up there in the top ten. Are there any more strawberries, Ellen? The years went by. I discovered a warren of rooms upstairs at 249Ba writing room, a bedroom where guests sometimes stayed overnight (although, after that slithery bump I had heardor imagined I had heardI believe I personally would rather have registered at a good hotel), a small but wellequipped gymnasium, and a sauna bath. There was also a long, narrow room which ran the length of the building and contained two bowling alleys. In those same years I reread the novels of Edward Gray Seville, and discovered an absolutely stunning poetthe equal of Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, perhapsnamed Norbert Rosen. According to the back flap on one of the three volumes of his work in the stacks, he had been born in 1924 and killed at Anzio. All three volumes of his work had been published by Stedham  Son, New York and Boston. I remember going back to the New York Public Library on a bright spring afternoon during one of those years (of which year I am no longer sure) and requesting twenty years worth of Literary Market Place. The LMP is an annual publication the size of a large citys Yellow Pages, and the reference room librarian was quite put out with me, Im afraid. But I persisted, and went through each volume carefully. And although LMP is supposed to list every publisher, great and small, in the United States (in addition to agents, editors, and book club staffs), I found no listing for Stedham  Son. A year lateror perhaps it was two years laterI fell into conversation with an antiquarian bookdealer and asked him about the imprint. He said he had never heard of it. I thought of asking Stevenssaw that warning light in his eyesand dropped the question unasked. And, over those years, there were stories. Tales, to use Stevenss word. Funny tales, tales of love found and love lost, tales of unease. Yes, and even a few war stories, although none of the sort Ellen had likely been thinking of when she made the suggestion. I remember Gerard Tozemans story the most clearlythe tale of an American base of operations which took a direct hit from German artillery four months before the end of World War I, killing everyone present except for Tozeman himself. Lathrop Carruthers, the American general who everyone had by then decided must be utterly insane (he had been responsible for better than eighteen thousand casualties by thenlives and limbs spent as casually as you or I might spend a quarter in a jukebox), was standing at a map of the front lines when the shell struck. He had been explaining yet another mad flanking operation at the momentan operation which would have succeeded only on the level of all the others Carruthers had hatched it would be wonderfully successful at making new widows. And when the dust cleared, Gerard Tozeman, dazed and deaf, bleeding from his nose, his ears, and the comers of both eyes, his testicles already swelling from the force of the concussion, had come upon Carrutherss body while looking for a way out of the abbatoir that had been the staff HQ only minutes before. He looked at the generals body ... and then began to scream and laugh. The sounds went unheard by his own shellshocked ears, but they served to notify the medicos that someone was still alive in that strew of matchwood. Carruthers had not been mutilated by the blast... at least, Tozeman said, it hadnt been what the soldiers of that longago war had come to think of as mutilationmen whose arms had been blown off, men with no feet, no eyes; men whose lungs had been shrivelled by gas. No, he said, it was nothing like that. The mans mother would have known him at once. But the map ... ... the map before which Carruthers had been standing with his butchers pointer when the shell struck ... It had somehow been driven into his face. Tozeman had found himself staring into a hideous tattooed deathmask. Here was the stony shore of Brittany on the bony ridge of Lathrop Carrutherss brow. Here was the Rhine flowing like a blue scar down his left cheek. Here were some of the finest winegrowing provinces in the world bumped and ridged over his chin. Here was the Saar drawn around his throat like a hangmans noose ... and printed across one bulging eyeball was the word VERSAILLES. That was our Christmas story in the year 197. I remember many others, but they do not belong here. Properly speaking, Tozemans doesnt, either ... but it was the first Christmas tale I heard at 249B, and I could not resist telling it. And then, on the Thursday after Thanksgiving of this year, when Stevens clapped his hands together for attention and asked who would favor us with a Christmas tale, Emlyn McCarron growled I suppose Ive got something that bears telling. Tell it now or tell it never, Godll shut me up for good soon enough. In the years I had been coming to 249B, I had never heard McCarron tell a story. And perhaps thats why I called the taxi so early, and why, when Stevens passed out eggnog to the six of us who had ventured out on that bellowing, frigid night, I felt so keenly excited. Nor was I the only one; I saw that same excitement on a good many other faces. McCarron, old and dry and leathery, sat in the huge chair by the fire with the packet of powder in his gnarled hands. He tossed it in, and we watched the flames shift colors madly before returning to yellow again. Stevens passed among us with brandy, and we passed him his Christmas honorariums. Once, during that yearly ceremony, I had heard the clink of change passing from the hand of the giver to the hand of the receiver; on another occasion, I had seen a onethousanddollar bill for a moment in the firelight. On both occasions the murmur of Stevenss voice had been exactly the same low, considerate, and entirely correct. Ten years, more or less, had passed since I had first come to 249B with George Waterhouse, and while much had changed in the world outside, nothing had changed in here, and Stevens seemed not to have aged a month, or even a single day. He moved back into the shadows, and for a moment there was a silence so perfect that we could hear the faint whistle of boiling sap escaping from the burning logs on the hearth. Emlyn McCarron was looking into the fire and we all followed his gaze. The flames seemed particularly wild that night. I felt almost hypnotized by the sight of the fireas, I suppose, the cavemen who birthed us were once hypnotized by it as the wind walked and talked outside their cold northern caves. At last, still looking into the fire, bent slightly forward so that his forearms rested on his thighs and his clasped hands hung in a knot between his knees, McCarron began to speak. II The Breathing Method I am nearly eighty now, which means that I was born with the century. All my life I have been associated with a building which stands almost directly across from Madison Square Garden; this building, which looks like a great gray prisonsomething out of A Tale of Two Citiesis actually a hospital, as most of you know. It is Harriet White Memorial Hospital. The Harriet White after whom it was named was my fathers first wife, and she got her practical experience in nursing when there were still actual sheep grazing on Sheep Meadow in Central Park. A statue of the lady herself stands on a pedestal in the courtyard before the building, and if any of you have seen it, you may have wondered how a woman with such a stem and uncompromising face could have found such a gentle occupation. The motto chiselled into the statues base, once you get rid of the Latin folderol, is even less comforting There is no comfort without pain; thus we define salvation through suffering. Cato, if you please... or if you dont please! I was born inside that gray stone building on March 20th 1900. I returned there as an intern in the year 1926. Twentysix is old to be just starting out in the world of medicine, but I had done a more practical internship in France, at the end of World War I, trying to pack ruptured guts back into stomachs that had been blown wide open, and dealing on the black market for morphine, which was often tinctured and sometimes dangerous. As with the generation of physicians following World War II, we were a bedrockpractical lot of sawbones, and the records of the major medical schools show a remarkably small number of washouts in the years 1919 to 1928. We were older, more experienced, steadier. Were we also wiser? I dont know... but we were certainly more cynical. There was none of this nonsense you read about in the popular medical novels, stuff about fainting or vomiting at ones first autopsy. Not after Belleau Wood, where mamma rats sometimes raised whole litters of ratlings in the gasexploded intestines of the soldiers left to rot in no mans land. We had gotten all our puking and passing out behind us. The Harriet White Memorial Hospital also figured largely in something that happened to me nine years after I had interned thereand this is the story I want to tell you gentlemen tonight. It is not a tale to be told at Christmas, you would say (although its final scene was played out on Christmas Eve), and yet, while it is certainly horrible, it also seems to express to me all the amazing power of our cursed, doomed species. In it I see the wonder of our will... and also its horrible, tenebrous power. Birth itself, gentlemen, is a horrid thing to many; it is the fashion now that fathers should be present at the birth of their children, and while this fashion has served to inflict many men with a guilt which I feel they may not deserve (it is a guilt which some women use knowingly and with an almost prescient cruelty), it seems by and large to be a healthful, salubrious thing. Yet I have seen men leave the delivery room white and tottering and I have seen them swoon like girls, overcome by the cries and the blood. I remember one father who held up just fine... only to begin screaming hysterically as his perfectly healthy son pushed its way into the world. The infants eyes were open, it gave the impression of looking around... and then its eyes settled on the father. Birth is wonderful, gentlemen, but I have never found it beautifulnot by any stretch of the imagination. I believe it is too brutal to be beautiful. A womans womb is like an engine. With conception, that engine is turned on. At first it barely idles... but as the creative cycle nears the climax of birth, that engine revs up and up and up. Its idling whisper becomes a steady running hum, and then a rumble, and finally a bellowing, frightening roar. Once that engine has been turned on, every mothertobe understands that her life is in check. Either she will bring the baby forth and the engine will shut down again, or that engine will pound louder and harder and faster until it explodes, killing her in blood and pain. This is a story of birth, gentlemen, on the eve of that birth we have celebrated for almost two thousand years. I began practicing medicine in 1929a bad year to begin anything. My grandfather was able to lend me a small sum of money, so I was luckier than many of my colleagues, but I still had to survive over the next four years mostly on my wits. By 1935, things had improved a bit. I had developed a bedrock of steady patients and was getting quite a few outpatient referrals from White Memorial. In April of that year I saw a new patient, a young woman whom I will call Sandra Stansfieldthat name is close enough to what her name really was. This was a young woman, white, who stated her age to be twentyeight. After examining her, I guessed her true age to be between three and five years younger than that. She was blonde, slender, and tall for that timeabout five feet eight inches. She was quite beautiful, but in an austere way that was almost forbidding. Her features were clear and regular, her eyes intelligent... and her mouth every bit as determined as the stone mouth of Harriet White on the statue across from Madison Square Garden. The name she put on her form was not Sandra Stansfield but Jane Smith. My examination subsequently showed her to be about two months gone in pregnancy. She wore no wedding ring. After the preliminary exambut before the results of the pregnancy test were inmy nurse, Ella Davidson, said That girl yesterday? Jane Smith? If that isnt an assumed name, I never heard one. I agreed. Still, I rather admired her. She had not engaged in the usual shillyshallying, toescuffing, blushing, tearful behavior. She had been straightforward and businesslike. Even her alias had seemed more a matter of business than of shame. There had been no attempt to provide verisimilitude by creating a Betty Rucklehouse or whomping up a Ternina DeVille. You require a name for your form, she seemed to be saying, because that is the law. So here is a name; but rather than trusting to the professional ethics of a man I dont know, Ill trust in myself. If you dont mind. Ella sniffed and passed a few remarksmodern girls and bold as brassbut she was a good woman, and I dont think she said those things except for the sake of form. She knew as well as I did that, whatever my new patient might be, she was no little trollop with hard eyes and round heels. No; Jane Smith was merely an extremely serious, extremely determined young womanif either of those things can be described by such a Milquetoast adverb as merely. It was an unpleasant situation (it used to be called getting in a scrape, as you gentlemen may remember; nowadays it seems that many young women use a scrape to get out of the scrape), and she meant to go through it with whatever grace and dignity she could manage. A week after her initial appointment, she came in again. That was a peach of a dayone of the first real days of spring. The air was mild, the sky a soft, milky shade of blue, and there was a smell on the breezea warm, indefinable smell that seems to be natures signal that she is entering her own birth cycle again. The sort of day one wishes to be miles from any responsibility, sitting opposite a lovely woman of ones ownat Coney Island, maybe, or on the Palisades across from the Hudson with a picnic hamper on a checkered cloth and the lady in question wearing a great white cartwheel hat and a sleeveless gown as pretty as the day. Jane Smiths dress had sleeves, but it was still almost as pretty as the day; a smart white linen with brown edging. She wore brown pumps, white gloves, and a cloche hat that was slightly out of fashionit was the first sign I saw that she was a far from rich woman. Youre pregnant, I said. I dont believe you doubted it much, did you? If there are to be tears, I thought, they will come now. No, she said with perfect composure. There was no more a sign of tears in her eyes than there were rainclouds on the horizon that day. Im very regular as a rule. There was a pause between us. When may I expect to deliver? she asked then, with an almost soundless sigh. It was the sound a man or woman might make before bending over to pick up a heavy load. It will be a Christmas baby, I said. December tenth is the date Ill give you, but it could be two weeks on either side of that. All right. She hesitated briefly, and then plunged ahead. Will you attend me? Even though Im not married? Yes, I said. On one condition. She frowned, and in that moment her face was more like the face of Harriet White than ever. One would not think that the frown of a woman perhaps only twentythree could be particularly formidable, but this one was. She was ready to leave, and the fact that she would have to go through this entire embarrassing process again with another doctor was not going to deter her. And what might that be, she asked with perfect, colorless courtesy. Now it was I who felt an urge to drop my eyes from her steady hazel ones, but I held her gaze. I insist upon knowing your real name. We can continue to do business on a cash basis if that is how you prefer it, and I can continue to have Mrs. Davidson issue you receipts in the name of Jane Smith. But if we are going to travel through the next seven months or so together, I would like to be able to address you by the name to which you answer in all the rest of your life. I finished this absurdly stiff little speech and watched her think it through. I was somehow quite sure she was going to stand up, thank me for my time, and leave forever. I was going to feel disappointed if that happened. I liked her. Even more, I liked the straightforward way she was handling a problem which would have reduced ninety women out of a hundred to inept and undignified liars, terrified by the living clock within and so deeply ashamed of their situation that to make any reasonable plan for coping with it became impossible. I suppose many young people today would find such a state of mind ludicrous, ugly, even hard to believe. People have become so eager to demonstrate their broadmindedness that a pregnant woman who has no wedding ring is apt to be treated with twice the solicitude of one who does. You gentlemen will well remember when the situation was quite differentyou will remember a time when rectitude and hypocrisy were combined to make a situation that was viciously difficult for a woman who had gotten herself in a scrape. In those days, a married pregnant woman was a radiant woman, sure of her position and proud of fulfilling what she considered to be the function God put her on earth for. An unmarried pregnant woman was a trollop in the eyes of the world and apt to be a trollop in her own eyes as well. They were, to use Ella Davidsons word, easy, and in that world and that time, easiness was not quickly forgiven. Such women crept away to have their babies in other towns or cities. Some took pills or jumped from buildings. Others went to butcher abortionists with dirty hands or tried to do the job themselves; in my time as a physician I have seen four women die of bloodloss before my eyes as the result of punctured wombsin one case the puncturing was done by the jagged neck of a Dr Pepper bottle that had been tied to the handle of a whiskbroom. It is hard to believe now that such things happened, but they did, gentlemen. They did. It was, quite simply, the worst situation a healthy young woman could find herself in. All right, she said at last. Thats fair enough. My name is Sandra Stansfield. And she held her hand out. Rather amazed, I took it and shook it. Im rather glad Ella Davidson didnt see me do that. She would have made no comment, but the coffee would have been bitter for the next week. She smiledat my own expression of bemusement, I imagineand looked at me frankly. I hope we can be friends, Dr. McCarron. I need a friend just now. Im quite frightened. I can understand that, and Ill try to be your friend if I can, Miss Stansfield. Is there anything I can do for you now? She opened her handbag and took out a dimestore pad and a pen. She opened the pad, poised the pen, and looked up at me. For one horrified instant I believed she was going to ask me for the name and address of an abortionist. Then she said Id like to know the best things to eat. For the baby, I mean. I laughed out loud. She looked at me with some amazement. Forgive meits just that you seem so businesslike. I suppose, she said. This baby is a part of my business now, isnt it, Dr. McCarron? Yes. Of course it is. And I have a folder which I give to all my pregnant patients. It deals with diet and weight and drinking and smoking and lots of other things. Please dont laugh when you look at it. Youll hurt my feelings if you do, because I wrote it myself. And so I hadalthough it was really more of a pamphlet than a folder, and in time became my book, A Practical Guide to Pregnancy and Delivery. I was quite interested in obstetrics and gynecology in those daysstill amalthough it was not a thing to specialize in back then unless you had plenty of uptown connections. Even if you did, it might take ten or fifteen years to establish a strong practice. Having hung out my shingle at a rather tooripe age as a result of the war, I didnt feel I had the time to spare. I contented myself with the knowledge that I would see a great many happy expectant mothers and deliver a great many babies in the course of my general practice. And so I did; at last count I had delivered well over two thousand babiesenough to fill fifty classrooms. I kept up with the literature on having babies more smartly than I did on that applying to any other area of general practice. And because my opinions were strong, enthusiastic ones, I wrote my own pamphlet rather than just passing along the stale chestnuts so often foisted on young mothers then. I wont run through the whole catalogue of these chestnutswed be here all nightbut Ill mention a couple. Expectant mothers were urged to stay off their feet as much as possible, and on no account were they to walk any sustained distance lest a miscarriage or birth damage result. Now giving birth is an extremely strenuous piece of work, and such advice is like telling a football player to prepare for the big game by sitting around as much as possible so he wont tire himself out! Another sterling piece of advice, given by a. good many doctors, was that moderately overweight motherstobe take up smoking ... smoking! The rationale was perfectly expressed by an advertising slogan of the day. Have a Lucky instead of a sweet.