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been asking. We folks have been so busy just living, we never figured anyone would come, gather his spit, grab a spade, and dig!”
    â€œI apologize.”
    â€œNow you’ll want a practical history. I’ll give it to you. Write it down, Mr. Cardiff, write it down. Over the years, when visitors arrived, they got bored quick, and left even quicker. We tried to look like every other town. We put on nice false-front funerals, hearse and all, real flowers, live organ music, but empty coffins with shut lids, just to impress. We were going to hold a pretend funeral tomorrow, show off, so you’d be assured we sometimes die—”
    â€œSometimes?!” cried Cardiff.
    â€œWell, it has been a while. Cars occasionally run over us. Someone might fall from a ladder.”
    â€œNo diseases, whooping cough, pneumonia?”
    â€œWe don’t whoop and we don’t cough. We wear out … slow.”
    â€œ How slow?”
    â€œOh, at last count, just about—”
    â€œ How slow?!”
    â€œOne hundred, two hundred years.”
    â€œ Which?”
    â€œWe figure about two hundred. It’s still too early to tell. We’ve only been at this since 1864, ’65, Lincoln’s time.”
    â€œ All of you?”
    â€œAll.”
    â€œNef, too?”
    â€œWouldn’t lie.”
    â€œBut she’s younger than I am!”
    â€œYour grandma, maybe.”
    â€œMy God!”
    â€œGod put us up to it. But it’s the weather, mostly. And, well now, the wine.”
    Cardiff stared at his empty glass.
    â€œThe wine makes you live to two hundred?!”
    â€œUnless it kills you before breakfast. Finish your glass, Mr. Cardiff, finish your glass.”

CHAPTER 17
    Elias Culpepper leaned forward to scan Cardiff’s notepad.
    â€œYou got any more doubts, indecisions, or opinions?”
    Cardiff mused over his notes. “There don’t seem to be any roaring businesses in Summerton.”
    â€œA few mice but no buffalo.”
    â€œNo travel agencies, just a train station about to sink in the dust. Main road is mostly potholes. No one seems to leave, and very few arrive. How in Hades do you all survive?”
    â€œThink.” Culpepper sucked on his pipe.
    â€œI am, dammit!”
    â€œYou heard about the lilies of the field. We toil not, neither do we spin. Just like you. You don’t have to move, do you? On occasion, maybe, like tonight. But mostly you travel back and forth between your ears. Yes?”
    â€œMy God!” Cardiff cried, clutching his notepad. “Hideaways. Loners. Recluses. By the scores of dozens. You’re writers!”
    â€œYou can say that again.”
    â€œWriters!”
    â€œIn every room, attic, broom-closet, or basement, both sides of the street right out to the edge of town.”
    â€œThe whole town, everybody?”
    â€œAll but a few lazy illiterates.”
    â€œThat’s unheard of.”
    â€œYou heard it now.”
    â€œSalzburg, a town full of musicians, composers, conductors. Geneva, chock-full of bankers, clockmakers, walking wounded ski dropouts. Nantucket, once anyway, ships, sailors, and whale-widow wives. But this, this !”
    Cardiff jumped up and stared wildly toward the midnight town.
    â€œDon’t listen for typewriters,” advised Culpepper. “Just quiet things.”
    Pens, pencils, pads, paper, thought Cardiff. Whispers of lead or ink. Summer quiet thoughts on summer quiet noons.
    â€œWriters,” murmured Cardiff, spying this house or that, across the street, “never have to get up and go. And no one knows what color you are, by mail, or what sex, or how tall or how short. Could be a company of midgets, a sideshow of giants. Writers. Godfrey Daniel!”
    â€œWatch your language.”
    Cardiff turned to stare down at his companion. “But they can’t all be successful?”
    â€œMostly.”
    â€œWould I know any of their names?”
    â€œIf