Trusts and Estates law in a paneled office on Wall Street, kept a sailboat on the North Shore, played squash, lived at 76 th and Fifth, walked my poodle in the park, went up an elevator to get home, tipped three doormen and four elevator men at Christmas, thought happily about making money like everyone else (money is a kind of happiness), made more money than some, married a great deal more money than most, learned how to whistle down a cab two blocks away and get in and out of â21â in time for the theater, began to enjoy (thanks to you) Brahms and Mozart (no thanks to you). Music and making money is to New Yorkers what music and war was to the Germans. And I was never so glad of anything as I was to get away from your doom and your death-dealing and your great honor and great hunts and great hates (Jesus, you could not even walk down the street on Monday morning without either wanting to kill somebody or swear a blood oath of allegiance with somebody else), yes, your great allegiance swearing and your old stories of great deeds which not even you had done but had just heard about, and under it all the death-dealing which nearly killed me and did you. God, just to get away from all that and live an ordinary mild mercantile money-making life, do mild sailing, mild poodle-walking, mild music-loving among mild good-natured folks. I even tried to believe in the Christian God because you didnât, and if you didnât maybe that was what was wrong with you so why not do the exact opposite? (Imagine, having to leave the South to find God!) Yes, I did all that and succeeded in everything except believing in the Christian Godâmaybe you were right about one thing after allâwhatâs more even beat you, made more money, wrote a law book, won an honorary degree, listened to better music.
Now Marion is dead and I canât believe I spent all those years in New York in Trusts and Estates and taking dogs down elevators and out to the park to take a crap.
In two seconds he saw that his little Yankee life had not worked after all, the nearly twenty years of making a life with a decent upstate woman and with decent Northern folk and working in an honorable Wall Street firm and making a success of it too. The whole twenty years could just as easily have been a long nightâs dream, and here he was in old Carolina, thinking of Ethel Rosenblum and having fits and falling down on the golf courseâwhat in Godâs name was I doing there, and am I doing here?
He gazed at the figure which seemed to come and go in the trembling dappled light of the poplar.
You were trying to tell me something, werenât you?
Yes.
That day in the swamp you were trying to tell me that this was what it was going to come to, not only for you but in the end for me, werenât you?
Yes.
You did it because you hoped that by having me with you when you did it you would show me what I was up against and that if I knew about it that early, I might be able to win over it instead of it winning over me, didnât you?
Yes.
Then itâs not your fault. Itâs not your fault that after all this time here I am back where we started and you ended, that there is after all no escaping it for us. At least I know that, thanks to you, you tried, and now for the first time since that day you cursed me by the fence and grabbed my gun, I donât hate you. Weâre together after all.
Silence.
Very well. At least I know why I feel better holding a shotgun than a three-iron.
He walked through the chestnut fall to the poplar. The figure changed in shape, disappeared, returned as a solid of darkness bounded by gold leaves, then vanished altogether. Glass winked in the sunlight. The leaf shook violently as he went under it.
Once he cleared the screen of leaves the sun behind him suddenly went down and came up in front, blazing into his eyes. Holding one hand against the light, he sidestepped into the shade of the pines until he
Now Marion is dead and I canât believe I spent all those years in New York in Trusts and Estates and taking dogs down elevators and out to the park to take a crap.
In two seconds he saw that his little Yankee life had not worked after all, the nearly twenty years of making a life with a decent upstate woman and with decent Northern folk and working in an honorable Wall Street firm and making a success of it too. The whole twenty years could just as easily have been a long nightâs dream, and here he was in old Carolina, thinking of Ethel Rosenblum and having fits and falling down on the golf courseâwhat in Godâs name was I doing there, and am I doing here?
He gazed at the figure which seemed to come and go in the trembling dappled light of the poplar.
You were trying to tell me something, werenât you?
Yes.
That day in the swamp you were trying to tell me that this was what it was going to come to, not only for you but in the end for me, werenât you?
Yes.
You did it because you hoped that by having me with you when you did it you would show me what I was up against and that if I knew about it that early, I might be able to win over it instead of it winning over me, didnât you?
Yes.
Then itâs not your fault. Itâs not your fault that after all this time here I am back where we started and you ended, that there is after all no escaping it for us. At least I know that, thanks to you, you tried, and now for the first time since that day you cursed me by the fence and grabbed my gun, I donât hate you. Weâre together after all.
Silence.
Very well. At least I know why I feel better holding a shotgun than a three-iron.
He walked through the chestnut fall to the poplar. The figure changed in shape, disappeared, returned as a solid of darkness bounded by gold leaves, then vanished altogether. Glass winked in the sunlight. The leaf shook violently as he went under it.
Once he cleared the screen of leaves the sun behind him suddenly went down and came up in front, blazing into his eyes. Holding one hand against the light, he sidestepped into the shade of the pines until he
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