“Seven,” I said. “Come on, Mr. Frati, work with me on this.”
He and the large lady conferred. Then he came back and offered six-to-one, which I accepted. It was still low odds for such a crazy bet, but I didn’t want to hurt Frati too badly. It was true that he’d set me up for Bill Turcotte, but he’d had his reasons.
Besides, that was in another life.
Back then, baseball was played as it was meant to be played—in bright afternoon sunshine, and on days in the early fall when it still felt like summer. People gathered in front of Benton’s Appliance Store down in the Low Town to watch the games on three twenty-one-inch Zeniths perched on pedestals in the show window. Above them was a sign reading WHY WATCH ON THE STREET WHEN YOU CAN WATCH AT HOME? EASY CREDIT TERMS!
Ah, yes. Easy credit terms. That was more like the America I had grown up in.
On October first, Milwaukee beat the Yankees one to nothing, behind Warren Spahn. On October second, Milwaukee buried the Bombers, thirteen to five. On the fourth of October, when the Series returned to the Bronx, Don Larsen blanked Milwaukee four-zip, with relief help from Ryne Duren, who had no idea where the ball was going once it left his hand, and consequently scared the living shit out of the batters who had to face him. The perfect closer, in other words.
I listened to the first part of that game on the radio in my apartment, and watched the last couple of innings with the crowd gathered in front of Benton’s. When it was over, I went into the drugstore and purchased Kaopectate (probably the same giant economy size bottle as on my last trip). Mr. Keene once more asked me if I was suffering a touch of the bug. When I told him that I felt fine, the old bastard looked disappointed. I did feel fine, and I didn’t expect that the past would throw me exactly the same Ryne Duren fastballs, but I felt it best to be prepared.
On my way out of the drugstore, my eye was attracted by a display with a sign over it that read TAKE HOME A LITTLE BIT O’ MAINE! There were postcards, inflatable toy lobsters, sweet-smelling bags of soft pine duff, replicas of the town’s Paul Bunyan statue, and small decorative pillows with the Derry Standpipe on them—the Standpipe being a circular tower that held the town’s drinking water. I bought one of these.
“For my nephew in Oklahoma City,” I told Mr. Keene.
The Yankees had won the third game of the Series by the time I pulled into the Texaco station on the Harris Avenue Extension. There was a sign in front of the pumps saying MECHANIC ON DUTY 7 DAYS A WEEK—TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE STAR!
While the pump-jockey filled the tank and washed the Sunliner’s windshield, I wandered into the garage bay, found a mechanic by the name of Randy Baker on duty, and did a little dickering with him. Baker was puzzled, but agreeable to my proposal. Twenty dollars changed hands. He gave me the numbers of both the station and his home. I left with a full tank, a clean windshield, and a satisfied mind. Well . . . relatively satisfied. It was impossible to plan for every contingency.
Because of my preparations for the following day, I dropped by The Lamplighter for my evening beer later than usual, but there was no risk of encountering Frank Dunning. It was his day to take his kids to the football game in Orono, and on the way back they were going to stop at the Ninety-Fiver for fried clams and milkshakes.
Chaz Frati was at the bar, sipping rye and water. “You better hope the Braves win tomorrow, or you’re out five hundred,” he said.
They were going to win, but I had bigger things on my mind. I’d stay in Derry long enough to collect my three grand from Mr. Frati, but I intended to finish my real business the following day. If things went as I hoped, I’d be done in Derry before Milwaukee scored what would prove to be the only run they needed in the sixth inning.
“Well,” I said, ordering a beer and some Lobster Pickin’s, “we’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
“That’s right, cuz. It’s the joy of the wager. Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Nope. Just as long as you won’t be offended if I don’t answer.”
“That’s what I like about you, cuz—that sensayuma. Must be a Wisconsin thing. What I’m curious about is why you’re in our fair city.”
“Real estate. I thought I told you that.”
He leaned close. I could smell Vitalis on his slicked-back hair and Sen-Sen on his breath. “And if I said ‘possible mall site,’ would that be a bingo?”
So we talked for awhile, but you already know that part.
I’ve said I stayed away from The Lamplighter when I thought Frank Dunning might be there because I already knew everything about him that I needed to know. It’s the truth, but not all of the truth. I need to make that clear. If I don’t, you’ll never understand why I behaved as I did in Texas.
Imagine coming into a room and seeing a complex, multistory house of cards on the table. Your mission is to knock it over. If that was all, it would be easy, wouldn’t it? A hard stamp of the foot or a big puff of air—the kind you muster when it’s time to blow out all the birthday candles—would be enough to do the job. But that’s not all. The thing is, you have to knock that house of cards down at a specific moment in time. Until then, it must stand.
I knew where Dunning was going to be on the afternoon of Sunday, October 5, 1958, and I didn’t want to risk changing his course by so much as a single jot or tittle. Even crossing eyes with him in The Lamplighter might have done that. You could snort and call me excessively cautious; you could say such a minor matter would be very unlikely to knock events off-course. But the past is as fragile as a butterfly’s wing. Or a house of cards.
I had come back to Derry to knock Frank Dunning’s house of cards down, but until then I had to protect it.
I bade Chaz Frati goodnight and went back to my apartment. My bottle of Kaopectate was in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and my new souvenir pillow with the Standpipe embroidered on it in gold thread was on the kitchen table. I took a knife from the silverware drawer and carefully cut the pillow along a diagonal. I put my revolver inside, shoving it deep into the stuffing.
I wasn’t sure I’d sleep, but I did, and soundly. Do your best and let God do the rest is just one of many sayings Christy dragged back from her AA meetings. I don’t know if there’s a God or not—for Jake Epping, the jury’s still out on that one—but when I went to bed that night, I was pretty sure I’d done my best. All I could do now was get some sleep and hope my best was enough.
There was no stomach flu. This time I awoke at first light with the most paralyzing headache of my life. A migraine, I supposed. I didn’t know for sure, because I’d never had one. Looking into even dim light produced a sick, rolling thud from the nape of my neck to the base of my sinuses. My eyes gushed senseless tears.
I got up (even that hurt), put on a pair of cheap sunglasses I’d picked up on my trip north to Derry, and took five aspirin. They helped just enough for me to be able to get dressed and into my overcoat. Which I would need; the morning was chilly and gray, threatening rain. In a way, that was a plus. I’m not sure I could have survived in sunlight.
I needed a shave, but skipped it; I thought standing under a bright light—one doubled in the bathroom mirror—might cause my brains simply to disintegrate. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through this day, so I didn’t try. One step at a time, I told myself as I walked slowly down the stairs. I was clutching the railing with one hand and my souvenir pillow with the other. I must have looked like an overgrown child with a teddy bear. One step at a ti—
The banister snapped.
For a moment I tilted forward, head thudding, hands waving wildly in the air. I dropped the pillow (the gun inside clunked) and clawed at the wall above my head. In the last second before my tilt would have become a bone-breaking tumble, my fingers clutched one of the old-fashioned wall sconces screwed into the plaster. It pulled free, but the electrical wire held just long enough for me to regain my balance.
I sat down on the steps with my throbbing head on my knees. The pain pulsed in sync with the jackhammer beat of my heart. My watering eyes felt too big for their sockets. I could tell you I wanted to creep back to my apartment and give it all up, but that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth was I wanted to die right there on the stairs and have done with it. Are there people who have such headaches not just occasionally but frequently? If so, God help them.
There was only one thing that could get me back on my feet, and I forced my aching brains not just to think of it but see it: Tugga Dunning’s face suddenly obliterated as he crawled toward me. His hair and brains leaping into the air.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, yeah, okay.”
I picked up the souvenir pillow and tottered the rest of the way down the stairs. I emerged into an overcast day that seemed as bright as a Sahara afternoon. I felt for my keys. They weren’t there. What I found where they should have been was a good-sized hole in my right front pants pocket. It hadn’t been there the night before, I was almost sure of that. I turned around in small, jerky steps. The keys were lying on the stoop in a litter of spilled change. I bent down, wincing as a lead weight slid forward inside my head. I picked up the keys and made my way to the Sunliner. And when I tried the ignition, my previously reliable Ford refused to start. There was a click from the solenoid. That was all.
I had prepared for this eventuality; what I hadn’t prepared for was having to drag my poisoned head up the stairs again. Never in my life had I wished so fervently for my Nokia. With it, I could have called from behind the wheel, then just sat quietly with my eyes closed until Randy Baker came.
Somehow, I got back up the stairs, past the broken banister and the light fixture that dangled against the torn plaster like a dead head on a broken neck. There was no answer at the service station—it was early and it was Sunday—so I tried Baker’s home number.
He’s probably dead, I thought. Had a heart attack in the middle of the night. Killed by the obdurate past, with Jake Epping as the unindicted co-conspirator.
My mechanic wasn’t dead. He answered on the second ring, voice sleepy, and when I told him my car wouldn’t start, he asked the logical question: “How’d you know yesterday?”
“I’m a good guesser,” I said. “Get here as soon as you can, okay? There’ll be another twenty in it for you, if you can get it going.”
When Baker replaced the battery cable that had mysteriously come loose in the night (maybe at the same moment that hole was appearing in the pocket of my slacks) and the Sunliner still wouldn’t start, he checked the plugs and found two that were badly corroded. He had extras in his large green toolkit, and when they were in place, my chariot roared to life.
“It’s probably not my business, but the only place you should be going is back to bed. Or to a doctor. You’re as pale as a ghost.”
“It’s just a migraine. I’ll be okay. Let’s look in the trunk. I want to check the spare.”
We checked the spare. Flat.
I followed him to the Texaco through what had become a light, steady drizzle. The cars we passed had their headlights on, and even with the sunglasses, each pair seemed to bore holes through my brain. Baker unlocked the service bay and tried to blow up my spare. No go. It hissed air from half a dozen cracks almost as fine as pores in human skin.
“Huh,” he said. “Never seen that before. Tire must be defective.”
“Put another one on the rim,” I said.
I went around to the back of the station while he did it. I couldn’t stand the sound of the compressor. I leaned against the cinderblock and turned my face up, letting cold mist fall on my hot skin. One step at a time, I told myself. One step at a time.
When I tried to pay Randy Baker for the tire, he shook his head. “You already give me half a week’s pay. I’d be a dog to take more. I’m just worried you’ll run off the road, or something. Is it really that important?”
“Sick relative.”
“You’re sick yourself, man.”
I couldn’t deny it.
I drove out of town on Route 7, slowing to look both ways at every intersection whether I had the right of way or not. This turned out to be an excellent idea, because a fully loaded gravel truck blew through a red at the intersection of 7 and the Old Derry Road. If I hadn’t come to an almost complete stop in spite of a green light, my Ford would have been demolished. With me turned to hamburger inside it. I laid on my horn in spite of the pain in my head, but the driver paid no attention. He looked like a zombie behind the wheel.
I’ll never be able to do this, I thought. But if I couldn’t stop Frank Dunning, how could I even hope to stop Oswald? Why go to Texas at all?
That wasn’t what kept me moving, though. It was the thought of Tugga that did that. Not to mention the other three kids. I had saved them once. If I didn’t save them again, how could I escape the sure knowledge that I had participated in murdering them, just by triggering another reset?
I approached the Derry Drive-In, and turned into the gravel drive leading to the shuttered box office. The drive was lined with decorative fir trees. I parked behind them, turned off the engine, and tried to get out of the car. I couldn’t. The door wouldn’t open. I slammed my shoulder against it a couple of times, and when it still wouldn’t open, I saw the lock was pushed down even though this was long before the era of self-locking cars, and I hadn’t pushed it down myself. I pulled on it. It wouldn’t come up. I wiggled it. It wouldn’t come up. I unrolled my window, leaned out, and managed to use my key on the door lock below the chrome thumb-button on the outside handle. This time the lock popped up. I got out, then reached in for the souvenir pillow.
Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act, I had told Al in my best school-lecture voice, and it was true. But I’d had no idea of the personal cost. Now I did.
I walked slowly up Route 7, my collar raised against the rain and my hat pulled low over my ears. When cars came—they were infrequent—I faded back into the trees that lined my side of the road. I think that once or twice I put my hands on the sides of my head to make sure it wasn’t swelling. It felt like it was.
At last, the trees pulled back. They were replaced by a rock wall. Beyond the wall were manicured rolling hills dotted with headstones and monuments. I had come to Longview Cemetery. I breasted a hill, and there was the flower stand on the other side of the road. It was shuttered and dark. Weekends would ordinarily be busy visiting-the-dead-relatives days, but in weather like this, business would be slow, and I supposed the old lady who ran the place was sleeping in a little bit. She would open later, though. I had seen that for myself.
I climbed the wall, expecting it to give way beneath me, but it didn’t. And once I was actually in Longview, a wonderful thing happened: the headache began to abate. I sat on a gravestone beneath an overhanging elm tree, closed my eyes, and checked the pain level. What had been a screaming 10—maybe even turned up to 11, like a Spinal Tap amplifier—had gone back to 8.
“I think I broke through, Al,” I said. “I think I might be on the other side.”
Still, I moved carefully, alert for more tricks—falling trees, graverobbing thugs, maybe even a flaming meteor. There was nothing. By the time I reached the side-by-side graves marked ALTHEA PIERCE DUNNING and JAMES ALLEN DUNNING, the pain in my head was down to a 5.
I looked around and saw a mausoleum with a familiar name engraved on the pink granite: TRACKER. I went to it and tried the iron gate. In 2011 it would have been locked, but this was 1958 and it swung open easily . . . although with a horror-movie squall of rusty hinges.
I went inside, kicking my way through a drift of old brittle leaves. There was a stone meditation bench running up the center of the vault; on either side were stone storage lockers for Trackers going all the way back to 1831. According to the copper plate on the front of that earliest one, the bones of Monsieur Jean Paul Traiche lay within.
I closed my eyes.
Lay down on the meditation bench and dozed.
Slept.
When I woke up it was close to noon. I went to the front door of the Tracker vault to wait for Dunning . . . just as Oswald, five years from now, would no doubt wait for the Kennedy motorcade in his shooter’s blind on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
My headache was gone.
Dunning’s Pontiac appeared around the same time Red Schoendienst was scoring that day’s winning run for the Milwaukee Braves. Dunning parked on the closest feeder lane, got out, turned up his collar, then bent back in to get the flower baskets. He walked down the hill to his parents’ graves carrying one in each hand.
Now that the time had come, I was pretty much okay. I had gotten on the other side of whatever had been trying to hold me back. The souvenir pillow was under my coat. My hand was inside. The wet grass muffled my footsteps. There was no sun to cast my shadow. He didn’t know I was behind him until I spoke his name. Then he turned around.
“When I’m visiting my folks, I don’t like company,” he said. “Who the hell are you, anyway? And what’s that?” He was looking at the pillow, which I had taken out. I was wearing it like a glove.
I chose to answer the first question only. “My name’s Jake Epping. I came out here to ask you a question.”
“So ask and then leave me alone.” Rain was dripping off the brim of his hat. Mine, too.
“What’s the most important thing in life, Dunning?”
“What?”
“To a man, I mean.”
“What are you, wacky? What’s with the pillow, anyway?”
“Humor me. Answer the question.”
He shrugged. “His family, I suppose.”
“I think so, too,” I said, and pulled the trigger twice. The first report was a muffled thump, like hitting a rug with a carpet beater. The second was a little louder. I thought the pillow might catch on fire—I saw that in Godfather 2—but it only smoldered a little. Dunning fell over, crushing the basket of flowers he’d placed on his father’s grave. I knelt beside him, my knee squelching up water from the wet earth, placed the torn end of the pillow against his temple, and fired again. Just to make sure.
I dragged him into the Tracker mausoleum and dropped the scorched pillow on his face. When I left, a couple of cars were driving slowly through the cemetery, and a few people were standing under umbrellas at gravesites, but nobody was paying any attention to me. I walked without haste toward the rock wall, pausing every now and then to look at a grave or monument. Once I was screened by trees, I jogged back to my Ford. When I heard cars coming, I slipped into the woods. On one of those retreats, I buried the gun under a foot of earth and leaves. The Sunliner was waiting undisturbed where I’d left it, and it started on the first crank. I drove back to my apartment and listened to the end of the baseball game. I cried a little, I think. Those were tears of relief, not remorse. No matter what happened to me, the Dunning family was safe.
I slept like a baby that night.
There was plenty about the World Series in Monday’s Derry Daily News, including a nice pic of Schoendienst sliding home with the winning run after a Tony Kubek error. According to Red Barber’s column, the Bronx Bombers were finished. “Stick a fork in em,” he opined. “The Yanks are dead, long live the Yanks.”
Nothing about Frank Dunning to start Derry’s workweek, but he was front-page material in Tuesday’s paper, along with a photo that showed him grinning with the-ladies-love-me good cheer. His devilish George Clooney twinkle was all present and accounted for.
BUSINESSMAN FOUND MURDERED IN LOCAL CEMETERY Dunning Was Prominent in Many Charity Drives
According to the Derry Chief of Police, the department was following up all sorts of good leads and an arrest was expected soon. Reached by phone, Doris Dunning declared herself to be “shocked and devastated.” There was no mention of the fact that she and the decedent had been living apart. Various friends and co-workers at the Center Street Market expressed similar shock. Everyone seemed in agreement that Frank Dunning had been an absolutely terrific guy, and no one could guess why someone would want to shoot him.
Tony Tracker was especially outraged (possibly because the corpse had been found in the family body-bank). “For this guy, they ought to bring back the death penalty,” he said.
On Wednesday, the eighth of October, the Yankees squeezed out a two-to-one win over the Braves at County Stadium; on Thursday they broke a two-two tie in the eighth, scoring four runs and closing the Series out. On Friday, I went back to the Mermaid Pawn & Loan, expecting to be met there by Mrs. Grump and Mr. Gloom. The large lady more than lived up to my expectations—she curled her lip when she saw me and shouted, “Chazzy! Mr. Moneybags is here!” Then she shoved through the curtained-off doorway and out of my life.
Frati came out wearing the same chipmunk grin I’d first encountered in The Lamplighter, on my previous trip into Derry’s colorful past. In one hand he was holding a well-stuffed envelope with G. AMBERSON printed on the front.
“There you are, cuz,” he said, “big as life and twice as handsome. And here’s your loot. Feel free to count it.”
“I trust you,” I said, and put the envelope in my pocket. “You’re mighty cheery for a fellow who just forked over three large.”
“I won’t deny that you cut into this year’s Fall Classic take,” he said. “Seriously cut into it, although I still made a few bucks. I always do. But I’m mostly in the game because it’s a whattayacallit, public service. People are gonna bet, people are always gonna bet, and I give em a prompt payoff when a payoff’s due. Also, I like taking bets. It’s a kind of hobby with me. And do you know when I like it best?”
“No.”
“When someone like you comes along, a real stampeder who bucks the odds and comes through. That restores my faith in the random nature of the universe.”
I wondered how random he’d think it was if he could see Al Templeton’s cheat sheet.
“Your wife’s view doesn’t appear to be so, um, catholic.”
He laughed, and his small black eyes sparkled. Win, lose, or draw, the little man with the mermaid on his arm flat-out enjoyed life. I admired that. “Oh, Marjorie. When some sad sack comes in here with his wife’s engagement ring and a sob story, she turns into a pile of goo. But on the sports-book stuff, she’s a different lady. That she takes personal.”
“You love her a lot, don’t you, Mr. Frati?”
“Like the moon and the stars, cuz. Like the moon and the stars.”
Marjorie had been reading that day’s paper, and it was still on the glass-topped counter containing the rings and things. The headline read HUNT FOR MYSTERY KILLER GOES ON AS FRANK DUNNING IS LAID TO REST.
“What do you reckon that was about?” I asked.
“Dunno, but I’ll tell you something.” He leaned forward, and the smile was gone. “He wasn’t the saint the local rag is makin him out to be. I could tell you stories, cuz.”
“Go ahead. I’ve got all day.”
The smile reappeared. “Nah. In Derry, we keep ourselves to ourselves.”
“So I’ve noticed,” I said.
I wanted to go back to Kossuth Street. I knew the cops might be watching the Dunning house to see if anyone showed an unusual interest in the family, but the desire was very strong, just the same. It wasn’t Harry I wanted to see; it was his little sister. There were things I wanted to tell her.
That she should go out trick-or-treating on Halloween no matter how sad she felt about her daddy.
That she’d be the prettiest, most magical Indian princess anyone had ever seen, and would come home with a mountain of candy.
That she had at least fifty-three long and busy years ahead of her, and probably many more.
Most of all that someday her brother Harry was going to want to put on a uniform and go for a soldier and she must do her very, very, very best to talk him out of it.
Only kids forget. Every teacher knows this.
And they think they’re going to live forever.
It was time to leave Derry, but I had one final little chore to take care of before I went. I waited until Monday. That afternoon, the thirteenth of October, I threw my valise into the Sunliner’s trunk, then sat behind the wheel long enough to scribble a brief note. I tucked it into an envelope, sealed it, and printed the recipient’s name on the front.
I drove down to the Low Town, parked, and walked into the Sleepy Silver Dollar. It was empty except for Pete the bartender, as I had expected. He was washing glasses and watching Love of Life on the boob tube. He turned to me reluctantly, keeping one eye on John and Marsha, or whatever their names were.
“What can I get you?”
“Nothing, but you can do me a favor. For which I will compensate you to the tune of five American dollars.”
He looked unimpressed. “Really. What’s the favor?”
I put the envelope on the bar. “Pass this over when the proper party comes in.”
He looked at the name on the front of the envelope. “What do you want with Billy Turcotte? And why don’t you give it to him yourself?”
“It’s a simple enough assignment, Pete. Do you want the five, or not?”
“Sure. Long as it won’t do no harm. Billy’s a good enough soul.”
“It won’t do him any harm. It might even do him some good.”
I put a fin on top of the envelope. Pete made it disappear and went back to his soap opera. I left. Turcotte probably got the envelope. Whether or not he did anything after he read what was inside is another question, one of many to which I will never have answers. This is what I wrote:
Dear Bill—
There is something wrong with your heart. You must go to the doctor soon, or it will be too late. You might think this is a joke, but it is not. You might think I couldn’t know such a thing, but I do. I know it as surely as you know Frank Dunning murdered your sister Clara and your nephew Mikey. PLEASE BELIEVE ME AND GO TO THE DOCTOR!
A Friend
I got into my Sunliner, and as I backed out of the slant parking slot, I saw Mr. Keene’s narrow and mistrustful face peering out at me from the drugstore. I unrolled my window, stuck out my arm, and shot him the bird. Then I drove up Up-Mile Hill and out of Derry for the last time.
CHAPTER 11
As I drove south on the Mile-A-Minute Highway, I tried to convince myself that I needn’t bother with Carolyn Poulin. I told myself she was Al Templeton’s experiment, not mine, and his experiment, like his life, was now over. I reminded myself that the Poulin girl’s case was very different from that of Doris, Troy, Tugga, and Ellen. Yes, Carolyn was going to be paralyzed from the waist down, and yes, that was a terrible thing. But being paralyzed by a bullet is not the same as being beaten to death with a sledgehammer. In a wheelchair or out of it, Carolyn Poulin was going to live a full and fruitful life. I told myself it would be crazy to risk my real mission by yet again daring the obdurate past to reach out, grab me, and chew me up.
None of it would wash.
I had meant to spend my first night on the road in Boston, but the image of Dunning on his father’s grave, with the crushed basket of flowers beneath him, kept recurring. He had deserved to die—hell, needed to—but on October 5 he had as yet done nothing to his family. Not to his second one, anyway. I could tell myself (and did!) that he’d done plenty to his first one, that on October 13 of 1958 he was already a murderer twice over, one of his victims little more than an infant, but I had only Bill Turcotte’s word for that.
I guess in the end, I wanted to balance something that felt bad, no matter how necessary, with something that felt good. So instead of driving to Boston, I got off the turnpike at Auburn and drove west into Maine’s lakes region. I checked into the cabins where Al had stayed, just before nightfall. I got the largest of the four waterside accommodations at a ridiculous off-season rate.
Those five weeks may have been the best of my life. I saw no one but the couple who ran the local store, where I bought a few simple groceries twice a week, and Mr. Winchell, who owned the cabins. He stopped in on Sundays to make sure I was okay and having a good time. Every time he asked, I told him I was, and it was no lie. He gave me a key to the equipment shed, and I took a canoe out every morning and evening when the water was calm. I remember watching the full moon rise silently over the trees on one of those evenings, and how it beat a silver avenue across the water while the reflection of my canoe hung below me like a drowned twin. A loon cried somewhere, and was answered by a pal or a mate. Soon others joined the conversation. I shipped my paddle and just sat there three hundred yards out from shore, watching the moon and listening to the loons converse. I remember thinking if there was a heaven somewhere and it wasn’t like this, then I didn’t want to go.