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Here’s another thing I do know. The past is obdurate for the same reason a turtle’s shell is obdurate:
because the living flesh inside is tender and defenseless.
And something else. The multiple choices and possibilities of daily life are the music we dance to.
They are like strings on a guitar. Strum them and you create a pleasing sound. A harmonic. But then
start adding strings. Ten strings, a hundred strings, a thousand, a million. Because they multiply!
Harry didn’t know what that watery ripping sound was, but I’m pretty sure I do; that’s the sound of
too much harmony created by too many strings.
Sing high C in a voice that’s loud enough and true enough and you can shatter fine crystal. Play the
right harmonic notes through your stereo loud enough and you can shatter window glass. It follows (to
me, at least) that if you put enough strings on time’s instrument, you can shatter reality.
But the reset is almost complete each time. Sure, it leaves a residue. The Ocher Card Man said so,
and I believe him. But if I don’t make any big changes . . . if I do nothing but go to Jodie and meet
Sadie again for the first time . . . if we should happen to fall in love . . .
I want that to happen, and think it probably would. Blood calls to blood, heart calls to heart. She’ll
want children. So, for that matter, will I. I tell myself one child more or less won’t make any
difference, either. Or not much difference. Or two. Even three. (It is, after all The Era of Big Families.)
We’ll live quietly. We won’t make waves.
Only each child is a wave.
Every breath we take is a wave.
You have to go back one last time, the Ocher Card Man said. You have to close the circle. Want has
nothing to do with it.
Can I really be thinking of risking the world—perhaps reality itself—for the woman I love? That
makes Lee’s insanity look piddling.
The man with the card tucked into the brim of his hat is waiting for me beside the drying shed. I
can feel him there. Maybe he’s not sending out thought-waves, but it sure feels like it. Come back. You
don’t have to be the Jimla. It’s not too late to be Jake again. To be the good guy, the good angel. Never mind
saving the president; save the world. Do it while there’s still time.
Yes.
I will.
Probably I will.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow will be soon enough, won’t it?
10/1/58
Still here at the Tamarack. Still writing.
My uncertainty about Clayton is the worst. Clayton is what I thought about as I screwed the last of
my refills into my trusty fountain pen, and he’s what I’m thinking about now. If I knew she was going
to be safe from him, I think I could let go. Will John Clayton still turn up at Sadie’s house on Bee
Tree Lane if I subtract myself from the equation? Maybe seeing us together was what finally drove
him over the edge. But he followed her to Texas even before he knew about us, and if he does it again,
this time he might cut her throat instead of her cheek. Deke and I wouldn’t be there to stop him,
certainly.
Only maybe he did know about us. Sadie might have written a friend back in Savannah, and the
friend might have told a friend, and the news that Sadie was spending time with a guy—one who
didn’t know the imperatives of the broom—might finally have gotten back to her ex. If none of that
happened because I wasn’t there, Sadie would be all right.
The lady or the tiger?