into his discreetly battered Volvo wagon than he announced—
But I’m ahead of myself, and behind on my sleep. Still to describe is the ménage back at Tidewater Farms—Jane and Germaine (the latter scarcely yet moved out from the royal chambers, the former scarcely moved back in) outladying each other at one moment across the funeral baked meats, embracing tearfully the next; Ambrose and Reggie deep in cinematographic argument in the library; “Bea Golden” passed out somewhere upstairs; a raw snow just beginning to come down on Redmans Neck from a sky too leaden to alarm any groundhog with his own shadow…
But the quick must rest, if the dead will not. I’ll finish Calliope’s music another night, now I’ve got the keys tuned: introduce you to the other haunts who’ve dropped in on me lately, hic et ubique, and bring you up to date: 52nd anniversary, so I see on my calendar, of my enlistment against the kaiser in 1917.
Back to your hole, old pioner; wane with the Worm Moon! Leave me to deal with the ghosts of the living: that’s work enough for your Liebes
Todd
C: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. His life since The End of the Road . The remarkable reappearance, at the Remobilization Farm, of Joseph Morgan, with an ultimatum.
11 P.M. 3/6/69
T O :
Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
F ROM :
Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
Cyrano de Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ring Lardner, Michelangelo: happy birthday. The Alamo has fallen to Santa Anna; its garrison is massacred. FDR has closed the banks. Franco’s cruiser Baleares has been sunk off Cartagena. Napoleon’s back from Elba: we approach Day One of the Hundred Days.
In a sense, you Remain Jacob Horner. It was on the advice of the Doctor that in 1953 you Left the Teaching Profession; for a time you’d Been A Teacher of Prescriptive Grammar at the Wicomico State Teachers College in Maryland, now the Wicomico campus of Marshyhope State University.
The Doctor had brought you to a certain point in your Original Schedule of Therapies (this was October 27, 1953: anniversary of Madison’s Annexation Proclamation concerning West Florida and of Wally Simpson’s divorce, birthday of Captain Cook, Paganini, Theodore Roosevelt, Dylan Thomas, Catherine of Valois), and, as you’d Exceeded his prescriptions by perhaps Impregnating your Only Friend’s Wife, Arranging an illegal abortion which Mrs. Morgan did not survive, and Impersonating several bona fide human beings in the process, he said to you: “Jacob Horner, you mustn’t Work any longer. You will have to Sit Idle for a time.”
You Shaved, Dressed, Packed your Bags, and Called a taxi to fetch you to the terminal, where you were to Join the Doctor’s other patients for the bus ride north. While you Waited for the cab, you Rocked in your Chair and Smoked a cigarette, your Last. You were Without Weather. A few minutes later the cabby blew his horn; you Picked Up your Two Suitcases and Went Out, Leaving your bust of Laocoön where it stood, on the mantelpiece. Your Car, too, since you Saw no further use for it, you Left where it was, at the curb, and Climbed into the taxi.
Interminable, that journey, up the Susquehanna and Juniata, into the cold, dilapidated Alleghenies. You Wintered near the Cornplanter Indian Reservation in northwestern Pennsylvania. In the spring, having learned from his Indian clients that the house he’d rented, together with the village and surrounding countryside, would be under water following the government’s completion of nearby Kinzua Dam, the Doctor reestablished the Farm somewhat closer to the state line, which eventually he crossed to a pleasant site above Lily Dale, New York, Spiritualist Capital of America. There you Remained for a decade before Moving to the present establishment in Canada, at the opposite end of the Peace Bridge from Buffalo.
In the evening of October 25, 1954—100th anniversary of the charge of
But I’m ahead of myself, and behind on my sleep. Still to describe is the ménage back at Tidewater Farms—Jane and Germaine (the latter scarcely yet moved out from the royal chambers, the former scarcely moved back in) outladying each other at one moment across the funeral baked meats, embracing tearfully the next; Ambrose and Reggie deep in cinematographic argument in the library; “Bea Golden” passed out somewhere upstairs; a raw snow just beginning to come down on Redmans Neck from a sky too leaden to alarm any groundhog with his own shadow…
But the quick must rest, if the dead will not. I’ll finish Calliope’s music another night, now I’ve got the keys tuned: introduce you to the other haunts who’ve dropped in on me lately, hic et ubique, and bring you up to date: 52nd anniversary, so I see on my calendar, of my enlistment against the kaiser in 1917.
Back to your hole, old pioner; wane with the Worm Moon! Leave me to deal with the ghosts of the living: that’s work enough for your Liebes
Todd
C: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. His life since The End of the Road . The remarkable reappearance, at the Remobilization Farm, of Joseph Morgan, with an ultimatum.
11 P.M. 3/6/69
T O :
Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
F ROM :
Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
Cyrano de Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ring Lardner, Michelangelo: happy birthday. The Alamo has fallen to Santa Anna; its garrison is massacred. FDR has closed the banks. Franco’s cruiser Baleares has been sunk off Cartagena. Napoleon’s back from Elba: we approach Day One of the Hundred Days.
In a sense, you Remain Jacob Horner. It was on the advice of the Doctor that in 1953 you Left the Teaching Profession; for a time you’d Been A Teacher of Prescriptive Grammar at the Wicomico State Teachers College in Maryland, now the Wicomico campus of Marshyhope State University.
The Doctor had brought you to a certain point in your Original Schedule of Therapies (this was October 27, 1953: anniversary of Madison’s Annexation Proclamation concerning West Florida and of Wally Simpson’s divorce, birthday of Captain Cook, Paganini, Theodore Roosevelt, Dylan Thomas, Catherine of Valois), and, as you’d Exceeded his prescriptions by perhaps Impregnating your Only Friend’s Wife, Arranging an illegal abortion which Mrs. Morgan did not survive, and Impersonating several bona fide human beings in the process, he said to you: “Jacob Horner, you mustn’t Work any longer. You will have to Sit Idle for a time.”
You Shaved, Dressed, Packed your Bags, and Called a taxi to fetch you to the terminal, where you were to Join the Doctor’s other patients for the bus ride north. While you Waited for the cab, you Rocked in your Chair and Smoked a cigarette, your Last. You were Without Weather. A few minutes later the cabby blew his horn; you Picked Up your Two Suitcases and Went Out, Leaving your bust of Laocoön where it stood, on the mantelpiece. Your Car, too, since you Saw no further use for it, you Left where it was, at the curb, and Climbed into the taxi.
Interminable, that journey, up the Susquehanna and Juniata, into the cold, dilapidated Alleghenies. You Wintered near the Cornplanter Indian Reservation in northwestern Pennsylvania. In the spring, having learned from his Indian clients that the house he’d rented, together with the village and surrounding countryside, would be under water following the government’s completion of nearby Kinzua Dam, the Doctor reestablished the Farm somewhat closer to the state line, which eventually he crossed to a pleasant site above Lily Dale, New York, Spiritualist Capital of America. There you Remained for a decade before Moving to the present establishment in Canada, at the opposite end of the Peace Bridge from Buffalo.
In the evening of October 25, 1954—100th anniversary of the charge of
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