I walked to the end of the street. In a park of brilliant maples, dead leaves crunched under my shoes as I followed a stream. I soon reached a tall fence.
My cell phone rang.
“I hope you’ve found him,” a stern voice said.
“I’m making progress.”
“I want more than progress. The Gladstone executives phoned to remind me they expect a better profit picture when I report on Monday. I hinted I’d have major news. Don’t let me down. Get Wentworth, or don’t come back.”
Another gate blocked a lane. It was as high as my shoulders, but I managed to climb over, tearing a button off my sports jacket.
Sunlight cast the shadows of branches. To my left were the backyards of houses. But on my right, the fence stretched on. A crow cawed. Leaves rattled as I came to a door that blended with the fence. A sign warned NO SOLICITORS. A mailbox was recessed into the fence.
When I knocked on the door, the crow stopped cawing. The door shook. I waited, then knocked again, this time harder. The noise echoed in the lane. I knocked a third time.
“Mr. Wentworth?”
Leaves fell.
“Mr. Wentworth? My name’s Tom Neal. I work for March & Sons. I need to talk to you about a manuscript we think you sent.”
A breeze chilled my face.
I knocked a fourth time, hurting my knuckles. “Mr. Wentworth?”
Finally, I took out a pen and a notepad. I thought about writing that Carver was dead, but that seemed a harsh way for Wentworth to get the news. So I gave him the name of the motel and left my cell phone number. Then I remembered that Wentworth didn’t have a phone. But if he sometimes left his compound, he could use a phone in town, I concluded. Or he could walk to the motel.
“I’m shoving a note under the gate!”
Back in the park, I sat on a bench and tried to enjoy the view, but the breeze got cooler. After an hour, I climbed back into the lane and returned to Wentworth’s gate. A corner of my note remained visible under it.
“Mr. Wentworth, please, I need to talk to you! It’s important!”
Maybe he’s gone for a walk in the woods, I thought. Or maybe he isn’t even in town. Hell, he might be in a hospital somewhere.
“Did you find him?”
In the tavern, I looked up from a glass of beer. “No.” Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a lie.
Becky Shafer stood next to me at the bar. Her green eyes were as hypnotic as on the previous evening. “I saw you walk in here,” she said.
“You and everybody else in town.”
“I thought about our conversation last night. I came to apologize for being abrupt.”
“Hey, I’m from New York, remember? It’s impossible to be abrupt to me. Anyway, I can’t blame you for trying to protect someone who lives here.”
“May I sit down?”
“I welcome the company. Can I buy you a beer?”
“Rye and Diet Coke.”
“Rye?” I mock shuddered. “I admire an honest drinker.”
She laughed as the bartender took my order. “Maybe it would be good for the town if Bob published another book. Who knows? It’s just that I don’t like to feel manipulated.”
“I’m so used to being manipulated it feels normal.”
She gave me a questioning look.
“When I first became an editor, all I needed to worry about was helping an author write a good book. But now conglomerates own just about every publisher. They think of books as commodities, like laundry detergent. If authors don’t sell a quarter-million copies, the head office doesn’t care about them, and editors who don’t find the next blockbuster are taking up space. Every morning, I go to March & Sons, wondering if I still work there. What’s that line from Joseph Heller? ‘Closed doors give me the willies.’ Damned right.”
“I know what you mean.” Becky sipped her drink. “I’m also an attorney.” My surprised look made her nod. “Yep. Harvard Law School.”
“I’m impressed.”
“So was the Boston law firm that hired me. But I couldn’t bear how the senior partners pitted us against each other to see who generated the most fees. That’s why I ended here. I don’t earn much money, but I sure enjoy waking up each morning.”
“I don’t hear many people say that.”
“Stay here longer. Maybe you’ll be able to say it.”
Walking back to the motel, I again heard footsteps. As on the previous night, they stopped when I turned toward the shadows. Their echo resumed when I moved on. Thinking of my broken car window, I increased speed. My cell phone rang, but I didn’t have time to answer it. Only after I entered my room and locked the door did I listen to the message, hoping it was from Wentworth.
But the voice belonged to my CEO. “You’re taking too long,” he told me.
“Mr. Wentworth?” At nine the next morning, amid a strong breeze, I pounded on his gate. “It’s really important that I talk to you about your manuscript! And Sam Carver! I need to talk to you about him!”
I stared at the bottom of the gate. Part of my note still remained visible. A thought from yesterday struck me. Maybe he isn’t home. Maybe he’s in a hospital somewhere. Or maybe—a new thought struck harder—maybe he is home. Maybe he’s sick. Too sick to come to the gate.
“Mr. Wentworth?” I hammered the gate. “Are you all right?” I tried the knob, but it didn’t turn. “Mr. Wentworth, can you hear me? Is anything wrong? Do you need help?”
Perhaps there was another way in. Chilled by the strengthening breeze, I returned the way I had come and climbed back into the park. I followed the fence to a corner, then continued along the back, struggling through dense trees and undergrowth.
Indeed, there was another way in. Hidden among bushes, a gate shuddered as I pounded. “Mr. Wentworth?” I shoved a branch away and tried the knob, but it too wouldn’t turn. I rammed my shoulder against the gate, but it held firm. A tree grew next to the fence. I grabbed a branch and pulled myself up. Higher branches acted as steps. Buffeted by the wind, I straddled the fence, squirmed over, dangled, and dropped to a pile of soft leaves.
Immediately, I felt a difference. The wind stopped. Sounds were muted. The air became cushioned, as if a bubble enclosed the property. A buffer of some kind. No doubt, the effect was caused by the tall fence. Or maybe it was because I’d entered sacred territory. As far as I knew, I was one of the few ever to set foot there. Although I breathed quickly, I felt a hush.
Apples hung on trees or lay on the ground amid leaves. A few raspberries remained on bushes. A vegetable garden contained the frost-browned remnants of tomato plants. Pumpkins and acorn squash bulged from vines. Continuing to be enveloped in a hush, I walked along a stone path bordered by rose bushes. Ahead were a gazebo, a cottage, and a smaller building, the latter two made from white clapboard.
“Mr. Wentworth?”
When I rounded the gazebo and headed toward the cottage, I heard a door creak open. A man stepped out. He wore sneakers, jeans, and a sweater. He was slender, with slightly graying hair. He had dark, intense eyes.
But what I noticed most was the pistol in his hand.
“Wait.” I jerked up my hands, thinking, My God, he’s been living alone for so long he’s lost his mind. He’s going to shoot me.
“Walk to the front gate.”
“This isn’t what it looks like.” My chest cramped. “I thought you were ill. I came to see if I can help.”
“Stay ahead of me.”
“My name’s Tom Neal. I knocked on the gate.”
“Move.”
“I left a note. I’m an editor for March & Sons. Please,” I blurted, “I need to talk to you about a manuscript I think you sent us. It was addressed to Sam Carver. He’s dead. I took over his duties. That’s why—”
“Stop,” the man said.
His command mad
e the air feel stiller. Crows cawing, squirrels scampering along branches, leaves falling—everything seemed to halt.
“Sam’s dead?” The man frowned as if the notion was unthinkable.
“A week ago Monday.”
Slowly, he lowered the gun. He had Wentworth’s sensitive features and soulful eyes. But Wentworth would be in his late seventies, and this man looked twenty years younger, his cheeks aglow.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The man rubbed his forehead in shock. “What? Who . . . ? Nobody. Bob’s son. He’s out of town. I’m watching the house for him.”
Bob’s son? But that didn’t make sense. The child would have been born when Wentworth was around twenty, before he got married, before The Sand Castle was published. Later, the furor of interest in Wentworth was so great that it would have been impossible to keep an illegitimate child a secret.
The man continued to look shocked. “What happened to Sam?”
I explained about the firm’s new owner and how Carver was fired.
“The way you talk about the bus, are you suggesting . . . ”
“I don’t think Sam had much to live for. The look on his face when he carried his belongings from the office . . . ”
The man seemed to peer at something far away. “Too late.”
“What?”
Despondent, he shook his head from side to side. “The gate self-locks. Let yourself out.”
As he turned toward the cottage, he limped.
“You’re not Wentworth’s son.”
He paused.
“The limp’s from your accident. You’re R. J. Wentworth. You look twenty years younger. I don’t know how that’s possible, but that’s who you are.”
I’ve never been looked at so deeply. “Sam was your friend?”
“I admired him.”
His dark eyes assessed me. “Wait here.”
When he limped from the house, he held a teapot and two cups. He looked so awkward that I reached to help.
We sat in the gazebo. The air felt more cushioned and soothing. My sense of reality was tested. R. J. Wentworth. Could I actually be talking to him?
“How can you look twenty years younger than you are?”
Wentworth ignored the question and poured the tea.
He stared at the steaming fluid. His voice was tight. “I met Sam Carver in 1958 after he found The Sand Castle in a stack of unsolicited manuscripts. At the time, I was a teacher in a grade school in Connecticut. My wife taught there also. I didn’t know about agents and how publishing worked. All I knew about was children and the sadness of watching them grow up. The Sand Castle was rejected by twenty publishers. If Sam hadn’t found it, I’d probably have remained a teacher, which in the long run would have been better for me and certainly for my family. Sam understood that. After the accident, he was as regretful as I that The Sand Castle gained the attention it did.” He raised his cup. “To Sam.”
“To Sam.” I sipped, tasting a hint of cinnamon and cloves.
“He and his wife visited me each summer. He was a true friend. Perhaps my only one. After his wife died, he didn’t come here again, however.”
“You sent him The Architecture of Snow?”
Wentworth nodded. “Sam wrote me a letter that explained what was happening at March & Sons. You described his stunned look when he was fired. Well, he may have been stunned, but he wasn’t surprised. He saw it coming. I sent the manuscript so he could pretend to make one last discovery and buy himself more time at the company.”
“But why didn’t you use your real name?”
“Because I wanted the manuscript to stand on its own. I didn’t want the novel to be published because of the mystique that developed after I disappeared. The deaths of my wife and two sons caused that mystique. I couldn’t bear using it to get the book published.”
“The manuscript’s brilliant.”
He hesitated. “Thank you.” I’ve never heard anyone speak more humbly.
“You’ve been writing all these years?”
“All these years.”
He sipped his tea. After a thoughtful silence, he stood and motioned for me to follow. We left the gazebo. Limping, he took me to the small building next to the cottage. He unlocked its door and led me inside.
His writing studio. For a moment, my heart beat faster. Then the hush of the room spread through me. The place had the calm of a sanctuary. I noticed a fireplace, a desk, a chair, and a manual typewriter.
“I have five more machines just like it—in case I need parts,” Wentworth said.
I imagined the typewriter’s bell sounding when Wentworth reached the end of each line. A ream of paper lay next to the typewriter, along with a package of carbon paper. A window directed light from behind the desk.
And in front of the desk? I approached shelves upon which were arranged twenty-one manuscripts. I counted them. Twenty-one. They sent a shiver through me. “All these years,” I repeated.
“Writing can be a form of meditation.”
“And you never felt the urge to have them published?”
“To satisfy an ego I worked hard to eliminate? No.”
“But isn’t an unread book the equivalent of one hand clapping?”
He shrugged. “It would mean returning to the world.”
“But you did send a manuscript to Sam.”
“As Peter Thomas. As a favor to my friend. But I had doubts that the ploy would work. In his final letter, Sam said the changes in publishing were too grim to be described.”
“True. In the old days, an editor read a manuscript, liked it, and bought it. But now the manuscript goes to the marketing department first. Then the marketing department takes the manuscript to the book chains and asks them, ‘If we publish this, how many copies do you think you’ll order?’ If the number isn’t high enough, the book doesn’t have a chance.”
Wentworth was appalled. “How can a book with an original vision get published? After a while, everything will be the same. The strain on your face. Now I understand. You hate the business.”
“The way it’s become.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“Because, God help me, I remember how excited I felt when I discovered a wonderful new book and found readers for it. I keep hoping corporations will realize books aren’t potato chips.”
Wentworth’s searching eyes were amazingly clear. I felt self-conscious, as if he saw into me, sensing my frustration.
“It’s a pleasant day. Why don’t we go back to the gazebo?” he asked. “I have some things I need to do. But perhaps you could pass the time by reading one of these manuscripts. I’d like your opinion.”
For a moment, I was too surprised to respond. “You’re serious?”
“An editor’s perspective would be helpful.”
“The last thing you need is my help.” I couldn’t believe my good fortune. “But I’d love to read something else you’ve written.”
The things Wentworth had to do turned out to be raking leaves, putting them in a compost bin, and cleaning his gardens for winter. Surrounded by the calming air, I sat in the gazebo and watched him, reminded of my father. Amid the muted sounds of crows, squirrels, and leaves, I finished my cup of tea, poured another, and started the manuscript, A Cloud of Witnesses.
In a slum in Boston, a five-year-old boy named Eddie lived with his mother, who was seldom at home. The implication was that she haunted bars, prostituting herself in exchange for alcohol. Because Eddie was forbidden to leave the crummy apartment (the even worse hallways were filled with drug dealers and perverts), he didn’t have any friends. The TV was broken. He resorted to the radio and, by trial and error, found a station that had an afternoon call-in program, You Get It Straight from Jake, hosted by a comedian named Jake Barton. Jake had an irreverent way of relating to the day’s
events, and even though Eddie didn’t understand most of the events referred to, he loved the way Jake talked. Jake made Eddie laugh.
As I turned the pages, the sounds of crows, squirrels, and leaves became muffled. I heard Wentworth raking but as if from a great distance, farther and fainter. My vision narrowed until I was conscious only of the page in front of me, Eddie looking forward to each day’s broadcast of You Get It Straight from Jake, Eddie laughing at Jake’s tone, Eddie wishing he had a father like Jake, Eddie . . .
A hand nudged my shoulder, the touch so gentle I barely felt it.
“Tom,” a voice whispered.
“Uh.”
“Tom, wake up.”
My eyelids flickered. Wentworth stood before me. It was difficult to see him; everything was so shadowy. I was flat on my back on the bench. I jerked upright.
“My God, I fell asleep,” I said.
“You certainly did.” Wentworth looked amused.
I glanced around. It was dusk. “All day? I slept all day? I’m so sorry.”
“Why?”
“Well, I barge in on you, but you’re generous enough to let me read a manuscript, and then I fall asleep reading it, and—”
“You needed the rest. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have dozed.”
“Dozed? I haven’t slept that soundly in years. It had nothing to do with . . . Your book’s wonderful. It’s moving and painful and yet funny and . . . I just got to the part where Jake announces he’s been fired from the radio station and Eddie can’t bear losing the only thing in his life he enjoys.”
“There’s plenty of time. Read more after we eat.”
“Eat?”
“I made soup and a salad.”
“But I can’t impose.”
“I insist.”
Except for a stove and refrigerator, the kitchen might have looked the same two hundred years earlier. The floor, the cabinets, and the walls were aged wood with a golden hue that made me think they were maple. The table and chairs were dark, perhaps oak, with dents here and there from a lifetime of use. Flaming logs crackled in a fireplace.
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