Michael Malone - Weebly

the moon and stars, long after the reader slept and
dreamed whatever compromises, accommodations, or
readjustments of reality his sleeping psyche thought it
safe to allow him. Out of the third-floor window of the
tallest home in Dingley Falls it watched like a lighthouse
beacon over all the houses anchored nearby in a bay of
night.
In Argyle a conscientious mortician, working until
nearly dawn, studied more earnestly, saw more
aesthetic possibilities in Alf Marco's face than anyone in
his life had ever seen. Another mortician stroked gently
into Sister Mary Joseph's withered cheeks the only
rouge they would ever wear.
In Argyle, while Mr. Oglethorpe's elderly sister,
exhausted by her long bus trip and the family crisis,
slept on an unfamiliarly large bed at the Holiday Inn
near the hospital, the oldest teacher at Hamilton
Academy slipped away from the nurses' intensive care
and, to their surprise, died. If there are souls, Mr.
Oglethorpe became one. If there are gatherings
elsewhere, he went to one. If he could come back to
earth and say so, Miss Ramona Dingley would be