Letters

Thence (yesterday) over the Peace Bridge to Fort Erie and the “Remobilization Farm.” Sure enough, a general exodus of whites was in progress, ordered by a young black chap who but for his green medical tunic might have passed for Drew’s late friend Tank-Top. He called himself Doctor Tombo X; he was the son of the late owner of the establishment; he was surly; and he was perhaps quite within his rights (in the absence of either a will or a board of directors) to evict whom it pleased him to, though I warned him not to expect further support from the Tidewater Foundation. I spoke as aforementioned with Morgan’s sons: stalwart, taciturn, capable boys who however welcomed my offer of legal and funerary assistance. In an hour we’d made arrangements for interment on Saturday in Wicomico, where their mother was buried. About their father’s “freaking out” they were reticent, whether from lack of information or a wish for privacy. No doubt his defeat by the Schott-Cook party at Marshyhope, plus the general upheaval and antirationalism of this wretched decade, repotentiated Morgan’s distress at the loss of his wife, which he had never truly got over. But such dramatic metamorphoses as his are always as ultimately mysterious as is, for that matter, their absence.

Finally I interrogated Mr. Jacob Horner, an odd duck indeed, and his female companion, whom he called Marsha and the others called Pocahontas. I could make little sense of his account of Morgan’s death (Horner I gathered was a long-term “patient” at the Farm as well as some sort of administrator, and an old acquaintance of Morgan’s), but inasmuch as he’d been in the room when Joe either deliberately or accidentally shot himself — indeed, it seems there had been a scuffle between them: an inquest was being considered — I advised him to retain a local lawyer and requested from him, “for the foundation,” a copy of the account I urged him to set down for that lawyer.

On the subject of Jeannine they could or would say no more than I’d been told already: she’d come back “from Maryland” much distressed on August 11th, lingered unhappily at the Farm for two days, then gone with this “Pocahontas” person to visit Bray at Lily Dale for unspecified reasons (I suspect narcotics). Pocahontas had returned on the 15th; Jeannine had voluntarily stayed on. When I declared that she appeared to be there no longer, and that Miss Merope Bernstein was there instead, they shrugged. Perhaps “Bibi” had gone back to Reg Prinz? Such things happened.

Well. This Marsha-Pocahontas woman struck me as a bit evasive, but she might merely have been stoned, or drunk: she had the voice and manner of an old lush, not unlike Jeannine’s, but acerbic. The similarity made me weary, even cross. That Jeannine would have substantially mended her life if I’d kept her with me was neither impossible nor likely; I pitied her, hoped she was “all right,” and doubted either that she was or that if she wasn’t it was owing to foul play. Chances were she was boozing it up in New York City or Los Angeles. I had done enough; I was tired. Even so, I filed a missing-person report with both the Ontario Provincial Police and the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s office (whose jurisdiction includes Lily Dale) before returning that night exhausted to Baltimore, to Cambridge, to the Dorset Hotel.

“This morning” (I mean Friday, but time has passed), from the office (nothing new), I tried to reach Prinz, Drew, and A. B. Cook by telephone — that last to ask exactly when and how Bray had turned up from the Prohibited Area and what he knew about Merope Bernstein and Jeannine, No answer at Drew’s house. No listed number in Manhattan for Prinz. Ditto for Cook or anyone else on Bloodsworth Island, where the operator doubted there was even telephone service. I gave up. Left the office. Came out here. Rebegan this letter around lunchtime. And have kept at it unremittingly through the weekend, pausing only to eat and sleep, determined to have done with it, with you, before turning my attention for the last time to myself.

There I have succeeded: my one success in recent weeks. It is Sunday forenoon now, September 7. Bishop Pike’s body has been found in the deserts of Israel; Joseph Morgan’s will be memorialized a few hours from now; Jeannine’s is still missing. Just time to wind this up, or down, and drive over to Marshyhope for Joe’s service — where, not quite

done with guilty interest, I hope to press all relevant mourners for more information about What in the World Is Going On.

Did you expect a climax, Dad? A surprise ending, a revelation? Sorry. I here close my Inquiry for good, first opened 49 years ago this month. As you did not deign to let me know why you turned yourself off, I shall not tell you this time (as I did in 1937) how, when, and where I mean to do likewise. Commence your own Inquiry! Begin, what in your life you never once began, a Letter to

Your Son.