Principles of marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Principles of marketing - Essay Example P&G has always tried to position their product differently according to the changing need and preferences of the people. In the detergent market, marketers are launching their detergents in small easy to handle containers at low price. In this way marketers wanted to prove that they were charging less for more. P&G reduced their commercialization and increase their perceived value by introducing Tide with bleach, cold water Tide, Tide with bounce, etc. So by this it could be clearly assumed that P&G has an excellent marketing team to plan out such marketing strategies, so that it always remains the market leader. Table of Contents PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING 14 1 4 Mission, Vision and Objectives of Procter & Gamble 5 Mission and Vision 5 Objectives 5 Market Overview 6 Competitors 6 Customer Expectations 7 Consumer Behavior 7 Cultural Factors 7 Social Factors 8 Psychological Factors 8 Personal Factors 8 SWOT Analysis 9 Strength 9 Weakness 9 Opportunity 9 Threat 9 Marketing Mix 10 Product 10 Price 10 Place 10 Promotion 11 Conclusion 11 References 13 Mission, Vision and Objectives of Procter & Gamble Mission and Vision Procter & Gamble is one of the largest packaged product companies in the world. This fact has always motivated the company for their purpose inspired growth. The company's mission is to improve the lives of the customers round the world. The long term visions of Procter & Gamble are: The company wants to use 100 percent renewable and recycled material for the products and packaging. The plants of the company should be powered by 100 percent renewable energy. They want zero manufacturing waste to go to landfills. The company wants to design the products for maximum customer delight and conserving the natural resource (P&G, 2012). Objectives The company wants to win the customers, and help its leading brands to grow and expand into different countries. It wanted to focus mainly on the core business and build is strong global market leaders. The company al so has the objective maintaining growth and sustainability in different parts of the world. Market Overview In this study we would see the different aspects of the marketing principles and strategies with regards to a very popular brand of Procter & Gamble known as Tide. It is one of the most famous detergent brands of Procter & Gamble. It is one of the flagship brands of P & G. The basic policy of the company is to boost the sales and stimulate the customers to buy the products. This popular detergent was first launched in the market in 1946. The logo of Tide that we see today was slightly modified in 1996. P & G enjoys a well-established recognition in the developed countries of the world like United States, and Europe. The CEO of the company Bob McDonald announced in 2010 that they wanted to expand their markets and penetrate more into Chinese and Indian markets. Their aim is to reach the target of 1 billion customer base in these parts of the world. The closest competitor of P & G is Unilever and Henkel. In Figure 1 we can see that Tide is the market leader in the US detergent market among all the other brands and products of other companies. In fact, the P & G has the greatest market share among all the companies producing detergent. P & G has all its detergent brands in the top list of the consumers. Tide captures about 45 percent of the market alone. The other detergent brands capture 13 percent of the ma

IGO and NGO Essay Example for Free

IGO and NGO Essay â€Å"Moraine is a small developing country. Like all nations in the developing world, Moraine needs to develop its economy. The country has a government department which is responsible for developing grassroots entrepreneurs – the Business Assistance Department (BAD). It also has access to funding from The European Union (EU) an IGO and has been offered assistance by the One Business at a Time (OBT), an NGO that focuses on helping local populations start and develop simple, local businesses. A)What are the priorities for the leaders of: (a) BAD, (b) the EU and (c) OBT for their respective operations in Moraine? Why? The priorities for the leaders are the EU, BAD, and OBT. At first, it depends on whether the EU cooperates with developing Moraine or not because the EU is the largest organization in the European Area; therefore, the organization has a large amount of funds to support developing nations. So, if the government were able to convince the EU, it would be a big chance to develop the economy. If the EU supported, BAD needs to play a big role of managing funds from the EU because the funds from the EU must be limited. So, BAD has to assign funds for entrepreneurs. Also, BAD has to decide the standard value and rule to judge entrepreneurs. Finally, OBT has to see through them whether they contribute a developing economy in Moraine or not with the standard value and rules from BAD. 2. List two ways the New Public Management (NPM) could help the Business Assistance Department (BAD) achieve its objectives developing grassroots entrepreneurs and support your ideas.† New Public Management is a public management method to save waste expenditure and offer more convenient service. NPM has basic policies; the introduction of results-oriented approach and customer market focus. Results-oriented approach is based on the clear standard and evaluates the policy of governmental and administrative department. So, this policy makes them motivate to achieve its objectives developing grassroots entrepreneurs. Also, customer market focus is a policy that NPM pursues the customer satisfaction by regarding companies and citizens as the clients of administrative service. Therefore, NPM greatly support BAD by governmental and administrative approaches. Reference: NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: ORIGINS, DIMENSIONS, AND CRITICAL IMPLICATIONS (2013/07/08) Retrieved from http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C14/E1-34-04-01.pdf

Comparing America And Asias Elderly Care Social Work Essay

Comparing America And Asias Elderly Care Social Work Essay In general, society considers the elderly as persons above the ages of sixty or sixty-five. This is usually the beginning of old age as a person becomes less active in political, social and economic affairs. Though there are elderly persons who are in good health and active members of their communities, majority are the ones whose physical and mental functions are on the decline. Since they are not able to get along on their own, majority of the elderly persons require attention and care from their loved ones as well as friends. Consequently, psychologists use the term elderly care to refer to the personal as well as medical attention that this group of the population receives. It is evident that elderly care takes a variety of forms, ranging from personal care such as feeding and dressing, to medical attention. In addition, the care that a family chooses for its elderly persons will depend on their needs. This is because some of the elderly persons may still be in good health while others may be frail. Consequently, some of them may require home-based care while others may need specialized attention in a nursing home or in a hospital. Whatever the case, the elderly do need some form of care. In this study, I shall focus on the American culture and the Asian culture, and make comparisons between the two, in relation to the aspect of caring for the elderly. For the Asian culture, I shall examine the Japanese. In both United States of America and Japan, the number of elderly persons is on the increase. This means that both governments have to consider and put in place the best mechanisms to cater for this group of the population. Different communities accord the elderly different forms of care, depending on how their cultures dictate. The way a community perceives old age will therefore affect the manner in which it treats the elderly. The responsibility of caring for the elderly in Caucasian and Japanese cultures lies mainly with the woman, because these societies consider her as an innate caregiver due to her maternal abilities and instincts. However, this is also due to the fact that, over the years, the woman has fewer opportunities in the economic scene, and as a result, she remains at home most of the time to take care of her children and the elderly. On the other hand, when the woman is able to access the labor market, she finds herself in positions where she has to provide care for others. Most nurses, school and hospital matrons are women. However, in the above cultures, children also participate in elderly care, as a form of compensation for the nurture their parents gave them when they were young. The American society places a lot of emphasis on staying young. Consequently, as Samovar et. al. (2009) notes we find a culture that prefers youth to old age. (p.71). This negative perception of old age makes the young people avoid staying together with the elderly and caring for them. The older adult population rather than the young adults are the ones taking care of the elderly. This explains why some families in the United States give over their old relatives to nursing homes. This does not however mean that the young cut all their links with their elderly relatives. They do provide support and maintain contact with them. The nursing homes are an option for the elderly people who have no family or relatives to look after them at home. This is especially the case for those who are physically handicapped and require the help of another person to take care of them. Though the nursing homes have become the choice for most families with elderly relatives, they do have their limitations. Some of these institutions for the elderly have become money-making ventures, therefore reducing their emphasis on the needs of the elderly. Poor hygiene and lack of trained medical personnel and quality treatment as well as poor feeding programs are some of the problems the elderly face in these nursing homes. Moreover, placing the elderly in nursing homes limits their freedoms as they have to follow the stipulated program. They cannot choose when to feed, sleep, interact with their fellow housemates and cannot keep their belongings. However, nursing homes for the elderly still remain the option for most American families, as there has not been much success with home-based care. On a positive note, the elderly persons in American society have more groups of friends and neighbors whom they can go to for support, than the aged people in Japanese society. This means that the American elderly are likely to receive care from their friends and neighbors, apart from their immediate family members. However, the Americans usually tend to give special care to their elderly only after they learn that the latter are facing a medical problem. However, since the family is still the main caregiver for the elderly, some of the American families employ professional nurses to take care of their old at home, instead of sending them away to nursing homes. Another reason for this is that, institutions for taking care of the elderly are expensive, and some of these families are not able to afford them. Moreover, some families opt to take their elderly to day nursing institutions, where they receive care throughout the day and then return home in the evening. This is suitable for those people who are working and cannot stay with the elderly relatives during the day as they have to report to work. It is also convenient for working adults who cannot afford specialized care for their elderly ones, either at home or in a nursing institution. In some instances, the elderly person may be able to live in his or her own house, and may be strong enough not to require specialized attention and care. In such cases, the family members of such an elderly person find a house near other aged people, in areas where the amenities they need on a day-to-day basis are readily available. This form of elderly care appeals to the community and involves them in taking responsibility for this group of the population. On the economic front, some of the big corporate organizations have introduced benefit schemes for their employees, in order to help them in caring for their elderly relatives. This is because most companies want to avoid losses in production, due to having employees who have to work while at the same time take care of their elderly relatives. Some companies also provide home-based care services for the elderly, but as a profit-making venture. This however, has a negative side to it as these privatized services are costly and not many families are able to afford them. On the other hand, Asian culture of the Japanese has a positive perception of the elderly. It teaches the children to respect and care for the elderly. The Japanese consider the family as the prime caregiver for their elderly, and in this case, it is usually a female member of the family who carries out this duty. This is because the Japanese believe that it is not in order to take the elderly to a nursing home as this is equivalent to neglecting ones responsibility of taking care of ones parents. This also makes the Japanese families give the required care to their elderly relatives throughout their old age, rather than only when they are facing a health problem. In the case of aged people who are not related to the family, Japanese wives or their daughters are the ones who tend to give their elderly friends the care they need. Sometimes, the daughters-in-law also give care to the elderly, especially if the patient is female. However, if other friends and non relatives are living under the same roof with the elderly persons, they may provide the necessary care to the latter. This is in contrast to the case of the American elderly who receive care from their family as well as friends and neighbors. In Japan, the activity of giving care to the elderly is mainly as an act of duty, rather than voluntary will. The caregiver considers this act as one that he or she has to give, and in most cases, the Japanese wife will provide the elderly attention at her husbands request. The dependence of the Japanese elderly on their immediate family is also evident in the fact that most of them rely on their spouses and their children for financial support. Since the Japanese believe that giving the elderly care is a womans job, the men usually leave this task to their wives. However, though the Japanese men are away from home most of the time, they also contribute to elderly care by giving their spouses financial as well as emotional assistance. Again, by participating in looking after their children, they allow their wives to find time to take care of the elderly members of the family. Elderly care in Japan still remains largely in the hands of the family, especially for those who are not sickly and in need of specialized medical attention. However, caring for the elderly at home is no longer the only option, and families have begun taking the old to nursing homes. This is due to a number of reasons such as the aging of the family members providing the care as well as the increasing involvement of the Japanese women in formal training and employment. Moreover, Japanese families are not living in large numbers as they did in the past. However, the number of nursing homes for the elderly and professional caregivers is on the decrease because of the Japanese belief that it is the immediate family which bears the responsibility of taking care of their elderly relatives. The elderly who are in need of very little personal and health care remain at home, but get visits from personnel who attend to them. This happens either a few times a week or every day depending on the needs of the elderly person. Due to the rising demand for health caregivers for the elderly, Japan has sought the help of care personnel from the Philippines. These caregivers are more experienced and are willing to work at a low pay. Due to the increase in the elderly population, financial resources have not been enough to allow families to put their relatives under specialized care at home and in nursing institutions. It is due to this situation that hospitals in Japan have offered to accommodate the elderly who are in need of both personal as well as medical attention. This way, the elderly in Japan can access long-term care. Though on a small-scale, the Japanese elderly engage in volunteering programs where they offer services to the community and in turn, they receive personal as well as medical care. There are however some similarities in the aspects of elderly care in American and Japanese cultures. Care for the elderly is still one of the concerns of both the United States and Japanese governments, though they differ in their policies. America gives priority to provision of medical attention, pension for retirees and shelter, while the Japanese government came up with policies to put in place insurance for every citizen including the elderly, for a long-term period. In both countries, the increase in aging members of the population has put a lot of pressure on the medical as well as retirement schemes. However, technological advances in medicine have increased and they are being used to improve the life-expectancy levels of the American and Japanese aging populations. Again, since women are increasingly going into formal employment, the men in both countries are also becoming more and more involved in elderly care. In conclusion, due to lifestyle changes, many people have started living in smaller groups and families, and are also located far from each other. Consequently, caring for the elderly can no longer be the responsibility of the immediate family alone, but has to be a prerogative of governments, non governmental organizations as well as private institutions.

Dreams :: essays research papers

Dreams After I wake up I quickly come to a reality check. Realizing that I will have a white collard job. Working through the ranks from the bottom up to reach a reasonable goal. I will have diplomas and achievements, but I doubt if I will manage a billion dollar company. In my reality working hard is part of every day life. Working hard every day feeling that I am underpaid is reality. In my dream like state again I see myself always happy. Never stressed out with the days problems or worries. Family problems are not an issue. Getting to and from work is no problem. Every idea or presentation that I have works well. Meetings run smoothly under my command. The office and staff work like a well oiled machine. All components together to reach a common goal. Reality sets in, stress is a natural part of life. Living in an ideal world with no stress or problems is boring. Anger and stress add spice and excitement to life. People always deal with stress everyday. I am no exception and either is the future. Coworkers cheery and happy enters my thoughts when dreaming of the future. Miscommunications and misunderstandings are unheard of. Every individual is nice to each other and no one is ever upset. Work atmosphere is quiet and peaceful. People respecting each one's own opinion. Every day people are on time and punctual. Work is done on time with no excuses for late work. The future is full of coworkers' being angry and disgruntled. Miscommunications and misunderstandings are a part of life. No individual is ever nice to everyone all of the time. People upset with other people is a natural process of life. Everyone has a bad day. It is not possible to be cheery and bubbly all of the time. Though nice this is not possible. Driving five minutes to work every morning in my sports car is obviously a dream. Dreaming of never having to deal with traffic or long commutes; living in a small city no bigger than 30,000. A big city is too inconvenient for travel and time. Reaching any destination takes over thirty minutes. Living in a big city is reality. Waking up at 6:00a.m. and picking up my car pool. Riding along the loop in my Geo Metro that reaches over thirty miles to the gallon. My car's starter is shot and the air-conditioning doesn't work. I will live in a big city and commute to my high rise office building down town. Each morning dreading the hour drive filled with traffic jams and spilt coffee.

A- Bomb :: essays research papers

The creation of the atomic bombs is one of the most important historical events in the field of weaponry. Don’t you think you should know some of the history behind this tremendous making of history? In my research paper, you will not only learn about the creation of the atomic bomb, you will learn about who the United States used it on first and why, who lead the project and go into great depth about him, and you will also see loads of pictures of the two first atomic bombs (and a virtual reality video of the two atomic bombs).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Before I began my project, I will give you a little background information on how the atomic bomb works. When a special type of uranium is pushed together quickly with neutrons, it’s nucleus splits into two pieces, releasing energy. When this happens, it also frees other neutrons, which then collide with the nearby uranium atoms, making the atoms split. If there is enough uranium, this process of splitting atoms keeps happening until all the uranium atoms have been split. This only takes a fraction of a second to occur. The results of this process are a nuclear chain reaction that releases amounts of energy never thought possible to be created in one explosion.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The special type of uranium needed for the a-bomb was U-235. This uranium only exists in tiny amounts in uranium that is dug up from the earth. Getting the U-235 from the uranium dug from the ground was a very hard and expensive procedure, so there wasn’t a lot of U-235. In fact, no one was sure on how to get U-235 in large amounts. Some scientists believed that the amount of U-235 need to make an a-bomb was about two tons, so it would be useless to try and build an atomic bomb because it would cost too much money and by the time the first atomic bomb was built, World War II would be over. But later on, a scientists realized that the a-bomb could be made with a lot less than two tons of U-235, so now Germany and the U.S. were in a race to make the first atomic bomb.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Atomic bomb research started in the U.S. when fears of German physicists creating an atomic bomb from uranium. Since World War II was going on and the U.S. was against Germany, the U.S. feared that the German would create this bomb and deploy it on the U.S., killing thousands of innocent Americans. Another thing that brought the U.

Generating Real-Time Visual Meaning for Live Indian Drumming :: Music Rhythm Drums Musical Essays

Generating Real-Time Visual Meaning for Live Indian Drumming Abstract: In this essay, a system developed to generate visual meaning for live performed music is described. Specifically, this system is calibrated to respond to North Indian classical and folk drumming tradition, using custom designed digital musical interfaces, such as the Electronic Tabla and Electronic Dholak. A drum, when struck, does not generate its sound as a record of the force applied, but as an artifact of a physical response to that strike within the artistically controlled conditions of its material state. With the design of the North Indian drum controllers, we developed a physical model for digital audio synthesis to recreate the aural qualities of the drums’ response under the control of the player. From there, we abstracted that concept to develop a dynamically responsive model for real-time rhythmic visual synthesis. In creating a visual experience for North Indian classical music, we sought to create a dynamic visual accompaniment with an appropriate ambience for the patterns and complexities of North Indian drumming. The design process was shaped by the need to react to a series of signals that would be received from the musician through the digitized musical interfaces, while giving a visual performer the ability to modify and shape those reactions over the course of the performance. In contrast to using a prerendered or abstract visualization, we aim to create an audiovisual composition which is both aesthetically compelling and responsive to the conditions of live performance, in addition to providing a meaningful visual context for what the performer is playing. In this essay, we will describe: - Veldt: a custom built application for visual expression of musical performance. - Digital Indian Drums: the Electronic Tabla and Electronic Dholak which digitize gestural information of a live performer. - Rhythmic visualization of our system used in live performances. Veldt Veldt is an application which was designed from the ground up for the purpose of visual expression and performance. It receives MIDI (Music Instrument Digital Interface) and OSC (Open SoundControl)[1] messages from digital musical interfaces and maps them to a system of reactive events in order to generate live visuals, which are rendered real-time using the OpenGL[2] graphics language. Mappings are flexible: sets of mappings may be arranged and modified during the design and rehearsal process, and triggered by control events during different movements of a performance, and arbitrary text, images, video, and geometric models may be used as source material.

Bag of Bones CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The book was big, okay? The book was major. I was afraid to change rooms, let alone pack up the typewriter and my slim just-begun manuscript and take it back to Derry. That would be as dangerous as taking an infant out in a windstorm. So I stayed, always reserving the right to move out if things got too weird (the way smokers reserve the right to quit if their coughs get too heavy), and a week passed. Things happened during that week, but until I met Max Devore on The Street the following Friday the seventeenth of July, it would have been the most important thing was that I continued to work on a novel which would, if finished, be called My Childhood Friend. Perhaps we always think what was lost was the best . . . or would have been the best. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that my real life that week had mostly to do with Andy Drake, John Shackleford, and a shadowy figure standing in the deep background. Raymond Garraty, John Shackle-ford's childhood friend. A man who sometimes wore a baseball cap. During that week, the manifestations in the house continued, but at a lower level there was nothing like that bloodcurdling scream. Sometimes Bunter's bell rang, and sometimes the fruit and vegetable magnets would re-form themselves into a circle . . . never with words in the middle, though; not that week. One morning I got up and the sugar cannister was overturned, making me think of Mattie's story about the flour. Nothing was written in the spill, but there was a squiggle as though something had tried to write and failed. If so, I sympathized. I knew what that was like. My depo before the redoubtable Elmer Durgin was on Friday the tenth. On the following Tuesday I took The Street down to Warrington's softball field, hoping for my own peek at Max Devore. It was going on six o'clock when I got within hearing range of the shouts, cheers, and batted balls. A path marked with rustic signs (curlicued W's burned into oak arrows) led past an abandoned boathouse, a couple of sheds, and a gazebo half-buried in blackberry creepers. I eventually came out in deep center field. A litter of potato-chip bags, candy-wrappers, and beer cans suggested that others sometimes watched the games from this vantage-point. I couldn't help thinking about Jo and her mysterious friend, the guy in the old brown sportcoat, the burly guy who had slipped an arm around her waist and led her away from the game, laughing, back toward The Street. Twice over the weekend I'd come close to calling Bonnie Amudson, seeing if maybe I could chase that guy down, put a name on him, and both time s I had backed off. Sleeping dogs, I told myself each time. Sleeping dogs, Michael. I had the area beyond deep center to myself that evening, and it felt like the right distance from home plate, considering the man who usually parked his wheelchair behind the backstop had called me a liar and I had invited him to store my telephone number where the sunshine grows dim. I needn't have worried in any case. Devore wasn't in attendance, nor was the lovely Rogette. I did spot Mattie behind the casually maintained chickenwire barrier on the first-base line. John Storrow was beside her, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, his red hair mostly corralled by a Mets cap. They stood watching the game and chatting like old friends for two innings before they saw me more than enough time for me to feel envious of John's position, and a little jealous as well. Finally someone lofted a long fly to center, where the edge of the woods served as the only fence. The center fielder backed up, but it was going to be far over his head. It was hit to my depth, off to my right. I moved in that direction without thinking, high-footing through the shrubs that formed a zone between the mown outfield and the trees, hoping I wasn't running through poison ivy. I caught the softball in my outstretched left hand, and laughed when some of the spectators cheered. The center fielder applauded me by tapping his bare right hand into the pocket of his glove. The batter, meanwhile, circled the bases serenely, knowing he had hit a ground-rule home run. I tossed the ball to the fielder and as I returned to my original post among the candy-wrappers and beer cans, I looked back in and saw Mattie and John looking at me. If anything confirms the idea that we're just another species of animal, one with a slightly bigger brain and a much bigger idea of our own importance in the scheme of things, it's how much we can convey by gesture when we absolutely have to. Mattie clasped her hands to her chest, tilted her head to the left, raised her eyebrows My hero. I held my hands to my shoulders and flipped the palms skyward Shucks, ma'am, ‘t'warn't nothin. John lowered his head and put his fingers to his brow, as if something there hurt You lucky sonofabitch. With those comments out of the way, I pointed at the backstop and shrugged a question. Both Mattie and John shrugged back. An inning later a little boy who looked like one giant exploding freckle ran out to where I was, his oversized Michael Jordan jersey churning around his shins like a dress. ‘Guy down there gimme fifty cent to say you should call im later on at his hotel over in the Rock,' he said, pointing at John. ‘He say you gimme another fifty cent if there was an answer.' ‘Tell him I'll call him around nine-thirty,' I said. ‘I don't have any change, though. Can you take a buck?' ‘Hey, yeah, swank.' He snatched it, turned away, then turned back. He grinned, revealing a set of teeth caught between Act I and Act II. With the softball players in the background, he looked like a Norman Rockwell archetype. ‘Guy also say tell you that was a bullshit catch.' ‘Tell him people used to say the same thing about Willie Mays all the time.' ‘Willie who?' Ah, youth. Ah, mores. ‘Just tell him, son. He'll know.' I stayed another inning, but by then the game was getting drunk, Devore still hadn't shown, and I went back home the way I had come. I met one fisherman standing out on a rock and two young people strolling along The Street toward Warrington's, their hands linked. They said hi and I hi'd them back. I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness. Some people check their phone answering machines when they get home; that summer I always checked the front of the fridge. Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, as Bullwinkle Moose used to say, the spirits are about to speak. That night they hadn't, although the fruit and vegetable magnets had re-formed into a sinuous shape like a snake or perhaps the letter S taking a nap: A little later I called John and asked him where Devore had been, and he repeated in words what he had already told me, and much more economically, by gesture. ‘It's the first game he's missed since he came back,' he said. ‘Mattie tried asking a few people if he was okay, and the consensus seemed to be that he was . . . at least as far as anyone knew.' ‘What do you mean she tried asking a few people?' ‘I mean that several wouldn't even talk to her. â€Å"Cut her dead,† my parents' generation would have said.' Watch it, buddy, I thought but didn't say, that's only half a step from my generation. ‘One of her old girlfriends spoke to her finally, but there's a general attitude about Mattie Devore. That man Osgood may be a shitty salesman, but as Devore's Mr. Moneyguy he's doing a wonderful job of separating Mattie from the other folks in the town. Is it a town, Mike? I don't quite get that part.' ‘It's just the TR,' I said absently. ‘There's no real way to explain it. Do you actually believe Devore's bribing everyone? That doesn't say much for the old Wordsworthian idea of pastoral innocence and goodness, does it?' ‘He's spreading money and using Osgood maybe Footman, too to spread stories. And the folks around here seem at least as honest as honest politicians.' ‘The ones who stay bought?' ‘Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devore's potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill. He was over by the equipment shed with some of his cronies. Did you happen to notice him?' I said I had not. ‘Guy must be a hundred and thirty,' John said. ‘He's got a cane with a gold head the size of an elephant's asshole.' ‘That's a Boston Post cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.' ‘And I have no doubt he came by it honestly. If Devore's lawyers put him on the stand, I'll debone him.' There was something chilling in John's gleeful confidence. ‘I'm sure,' I said. ‘How did Mattie take getting cut dead by her old friends?' I was thinking of her saying that she hated Tuesday nights, hated to think of the softball games going on as they always had at the field where she had met her late husband. ‘She did okay,' John said. ‘I think she's given most of them up as a lost cause, anyway.' I had my doubts about that I seem to remember that at twenty-one lost causes are sort of a specialty but I didn't say anything. ‘She's hanging in. She's been lonely and scared, I think that in her own mind she might already have begun the process of giving Kyra up, but she's got her confidence back now. Mostly thanks to meeting you. Talk about your fantastically lucky breaks.' Well, maybe. I flashed on Jo's. brother Frank once saying to me that he didn't think there was any such thing as luck, only fate and inspired choices. And then I remembered that image of the TR criss-crossed with invisible cables, connections that were unseen but as strong as steel. ‘John, I forgot to ask the most important question of all the other day, after I gave my depo. This custody case we're all so concerned about . . . has it even been scheduled?' ‘Good question. I've checked three ways to Sunday, and Bissonette has, too. Unless Devore and his people have pulled something really slippery, like filing in another court district, I don't think it has been.' ‘Could they do that? File in another district?' ‘Maybe. But probably not without us finding out.' ‘So what does it mean?' ‘That Devore's on the verge of giving up,' John said promptly. ‘As of now I see no other way of explaining it. I'm going back to New York first thing tomorrow, but I'll stay in touch. If anything comes up here, you do the same.' I said I would and went to bed. No female visitors came to share my dreams. That was sort of a relief. When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea glass late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outside and undies on the inside, where any passing nosyparkers couldn't see what you chose to wear closest to your skin. ‘You can take these in around four o'clock,' Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a woman who has been ‘doing for' well-off men her entire life. ‘Don't you forget and leave em out all night dewy clothes don't ever feel fresh until they're warshed again.' I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her feeling like a spy working an embassy party for information if the house felt all right to her. ‘All right how?' she asked, cocking one wild eyebrow at me. ‘Well, I've heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.' She sniffed. ‘It's a log house, ennit? Built in relays, so to speak. It settles, one wing against t'other. That's what you hear, most likely.' ‘No ghosts, huh?' I said, as if disappointed. ‘Not that I've ever seen,' she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, ‘but my ma said there's plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was driven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the Civil War and died there over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back . . . at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of Dark Score's also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.' ‘No I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this.' I paused. ‘Did he drown?' ‘Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn't have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. It's why they left, I guess it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the little fella, he stayed. She used to say that he's still on the TR.' I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since. ‘Then there was Kenny Auster's father, Normal,' she said. ‘You know that story, don't you? Oh, that's a terrible story.' She looked rather pleased either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it. ‘No,' I said. ‘I know Kenny, though. He's the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.' ‘Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny's little brother in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side going to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didn't drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.' I stood there looking at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as lakewater; down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the message on the refrigerator: help im drown. ‘He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.' ‘You aren't going to tell me Kenny Auster's dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs. Meserve?' She shook her head. ‘Nawp. He did it on the Brickers' lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch glider and blew his damned baby-murdering head off.' ‘The Brickers? I don't ‘ ‘You wouldn't. Hasn't been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware. Quality folks. You'd think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although they're gone, now, too. Place is empty. Every now and then that stark naturalborn fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but he'll never sell it at the price he's asking. Mark my words.' The Washburns I had known had played bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry snobbishness, would have called ‘quality.' Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, there's nothing much the drop to the lake gets steep, and the woods are massed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall. Normal, I thought. Hell of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump. ‘Did he leave a note? Any explanation?' ‘Nawp. But you'll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldn't say aye, no, or maybe myself; I ain't the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much I try to get it aired out. I ‘magine that's logs. Log buildins don't go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.' She had set her purse down between her Reeboks; now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywoman's purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to. ‘I can't stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summer's ha'vest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Don't let em get all dewy.' ‘I won't.' And I didn't. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven I'd been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just had to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.'s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest one of my unseen guests was saying ha ha ha. I went to the library the next day, and made renewing my library card my first order of business. Lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first telling me how sorry she had been to hear about Jo's death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was. ‘Lindy, do you have a town history?' I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife. ‘We have two,' she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes swimming behind her bifocals. In a confidential voice she added, ‘Neither is much good.' ‘Which one is better?' I asked, matching her tone. ‘Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days in 1965 or '66. He had it privately published because he couldn't find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers passed.' She sighed. ‘The locals bought it, but that's not many books, is it?' ‘No, I suppose not,' I said. ‘He just wasn't much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either those little black-and-white snaps of his make my eyes hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing's trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . ‘ ‘Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?' She nodded, smiling. ‘Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you? I'm glad to hear it. He found an old photo of them, and it's in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say he'd give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.' ‘So would I, but none were ever made.' A haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me: Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? ‘What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don't recall the name.' ‘Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake,' she said. ‘Cancer.' ‘You said there were two histories?' ‘The other one you probably know A History of Castle County and Castle Rock. Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteen's book isn't very well written, but he wasn't dry. You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there.' She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read of OF MAINE INTEREST. ‘They don't circulate.' Then she brightened. ‘Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.' Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words Nice catch. Referring to my lucky grab at Warrington's, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves. But she was right lucky or not, it had been a nice catch. ‘What are you looking for?' I was so deep into the two histories I'd found that Mattie's voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her welcoming smile put away. ‘Background on the area where I live,' I said. ‘Old stories. My housekeeper got me interested.' Then, in a lower voice: ‘Teacher's watching. Don't look around.' Mattie looked startled and, I thought, a little worried. As it turned out, she was right to be worried. In a voice that was low-pitched yet still designed to carry at least as far as the desk, she asked if she could reshelve either book for me. I gave her both. As she picked them up she said in what was almost a con's whisper: ‘That lawyer who represented you last Friday got John a private detective. He says they may have found something interesting about the guardian ad litem.' I walked over to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves with her, hoping I wasn't getting her in trouble, and asked if she knew what the something interesting might be. She shook her head, gave me a professional little librarian's smile, and I went away. On the ride back to the house, I tried to think about what I'd read, but there wasn't much. Osteen was a bad writer who had taken bad pictures, and while his stories were colorful, they were also pretty thin on the ground. He mentioned Sara and the Red-Tops, all right, but he referred to them as a ‘Dixie-Land octet,' and even I knew that wasn't right. The Red-Tops might have played some Dixieland, but they had primarily been a blues group (Friday and Saturday nights) and a gospel group (Sunday mornings). Osteen's two-page summary of the Red-Tops' stay on the TR made it clear that he had heard no one else's covers of Sara's tunes. He confirmed that a child had died of blood-poisoning caused by a traphold wound, a story which sounded like Brenda Meserve's . . . but why wouldn't it? Osteen had likely heard it from Mrs. M.'s father or grandfather. He also said that the boy was Son Tidwell's only child, and that the guitar-player's real name was Reginald. The Tidwells had supposedly drifted north from the whorehouse district of New Orleans the fabled crib-and-club streets which had been known around the turn of the century as Storyville. There was no mention of Sara and the Red-Tops in the more formal history of Castle County, and no mention of Kenny Auster's drownded little brother in either book. Not long before Mattie came over to speak to me, I'd had a wild idea: that Son Tidwell and Sara Tidwell were man and wife, and that the little boy (not named by Osteen) had been their son. I found the picture Lindy had mentioned and studied it closely. It showed at least a dozen black people standing in a stiff group in front of what looked like a cattle exhibition. There was an old-fashioned Ferris wheel in the background. It could well have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair, and as old and faded as it was, it had a simple, elemental power that all Osteen's own photos put together could not match. You have seen photographs of western and Depression-era bandidos that have that same look of eerie truth stern faces above tight ties and collars, eyes not quite lost in the shadows of antique hatbrims. Sara stood front and center, wearing a black dress and her guitar. She was not outright smiling in this picture, but there seemed to be a smile in her eyes, and I thought they were like the eyes in some paintings, the ones that seem to follow you wherever you move in the room. I studied the photo and thought of her almost spiteful voice in my dream: What do you want to know, sugar? I suppose I wanted to know about her and the others who they had been, what they were to each other when they weren't singing and playing, why they'd left, where they'd gone. Both of her hands were clearly visible, one posed on the strings of her guitar, the other on the frets, where she had been making a G-chord on an October Fair-day in the year 1900. Her fingers were long, artistic, bare of rings. That didn't necessarily mean that she and Son Tidwell weren't married, of course, and even if they hadn't been, the little boy who'd been caught in the trap could have been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Except the same ghost of a smile lurked in Son Tidwell's eyes. The resemblance was remarkable. I had an idea that the two of them had been brother and sister, not man and wife. I thought about these things on my way home, and I thought about cables that were felt rather than seen . . . but mostly I found myself thinking about Lindy Briggs the way she had smiled at me, the way, a little later on, she had not smiled at her bright young librarian with the high-school certification. That worried me. Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily. Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette Whitmore played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening. Two other things which bear narrating happened before that. The first was a call from John Storrow on Thursday night. I was sitting in front of the TV with a baseball game running soundlessly in front of me (the MUTE button with which most remote controls come equipped may be the twentieth century's finest invention). I was thinking about Sara Tidwell and Son Tidwell and Son Tidwell's little boy. I was thinking about Storyville, a name any writer just had to love. And in the back of my mind I was thinking about my wife, who had died pregnant. ‘Hello?' I said. ‘Mike, I have some wonderful news,' John said. He sounded near to bursting. ‘Romeo Bissonette may be a weird name, but there's nothing weird about the detective-guy he found for me. His name is George Kennedy, like the actor. He's good, and he's fast. This guy could work in New York.' ‘If that's the highest compliment you can think of, you need to get out of the city more.' He went on as if he hadn't heard. ‘Kennedy's real job is with a security firm the other stuff is strictly in the moonlight. Which is a great loss, believe me. He got most of this on the phone. I can't believe it.' ‘What specifically can't you believe?' ‘Jackpot, baby.' Again he spoke in that tone of greedy satisfaction which I found both troubling and reassuring. ‘Elmer Durgin has done the following things since late May: paid off his car; paid off his camp in Rangely Lakes; caught up on about ninety years of child support ‘ ‘Nobody pays child support for ninety years,' I said, but I was just running my mouth to hear it go . . . to let off some of my own building excitement, in truth. †T'ain't possible, Mcgee.' ‘It is if you have seven kids,' John said, and began howling with laughter. I thought of the pudgy self-satisfied face, the cupid-bow mouth, the nails that looked polished and prissy. ‘He don't,' I said. ‘He do,' John said, still laughing. He sounded like a complete lunatic manic, hold the depressive. ‘He really do! Ranging in ages from f-fourteen to th-th-three! What a b-busy p-p-potent little prick he must have!' More helpless howls. And by now I was howling right along with him I'd caught it like the mumps. ‘Kennedy is going to f-f-fax me p-pictures of the whole . . . fam' . . . damily!' We broke up completely, laughing together long-distance. I could picture John Stor-row sitting alone in his Park Avenue office, bellowing like a lunatic and scaring the cleaning ladies. ‘That doesn't matter, though,' he said when he could talk coherently again. ‘You see what matters, don't you?' ‘Yes,' I said. ‘How could he be so stupid?' Meaning Durgin, but also meaning Devore. John understood, I think, that we were talking about both he's at the same time. ‘Elmer Durgin's a little lawyer from a little township tucked away in the big woods of western Maine, that's all. How could he know that some guardian angel would come along with the resources to smoke him out? He also bought a boat, by the way. Two weeks ago. It's a twin outboard. A big ‘un. It's over, Mike. The home team scores nine runs in the bottom of the ninth and the fucking pennant is ours.' ‘If you say so.' But my hand went off on its own expedition, made a loose fist, and knocked on the good solid wood of the coffee-table. ‘And hey, the softball game wasn't a total loss.' John was still talking between little giggling outbursts like helium balloons. ‘No?' ‘I'm taken with her.' ‘Her?' ‘Mattie,' he said patiently. ‘Mattie Devore.' A pause, then: ‘Mike? Are you there?' ‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Phone slipped. Sorry.' The phone hadn't slipped as much as an inch, but it came out sounding natural enough, I thought. And if it hadn't, so what? When it came to Mattie, I would be in John's mind, at least below suspicion. Like the country-house staff in an Agatha Christie. He was twenty-eight, maybe thirty. The idea that a man twelve years older might be sexually attracted to Mattie had probably never crossed his mind . . . or maybe just for a second or two there on the common, before he dismissed it as ludicrous. The way Mattie herself had dismissed the idea of Jo and the man in the brown sportcoat. ‘I can't do my courtship dance while I'm representing her,' he said, ‘wouldn't be ethical. Wouldn't be safe, either. Later, though . . . you can never tell.' ‘No,' I said, hearing my voice as you sometimes do in moments when you are caught completely fiat-footed, hearing it as though it were coming from someone else. Someone on the radio or the record-player, maybe. Are these the voices of our dead friends, or just the gramophone? I thought of his hands, the fingers long and slender and without a ring on any of them. Like Sara's hands in that old photo. ‘No, you can never tell.' We said goodbye, and I sat watching the muted baseball game. I thought about getting up to get a beer, but it seemed too far to the refrigerator a safari, in fact. What I felt was a kind of dull hurt, followed by a better emotion: rueful relief, I guess you'd call it. Was he too old for her? No, I didn't think so. Just about right. Prince Charming No. 2, this time in a three-piece suit. Mattie's luck with men might finally be changing, and if so I should be glad. I would be glad. And relieved. Because I had a book to write, and never mind the look of white sneakers flashing below a red sundress in the deepening gloom, or the ember of her cigarette dancing in the dark. Still, I felt really lonely for the first time since I saw Kyra marching up the white line of Route 68 in her bathing suit and flip-flops. ‘You funny little man, said Strickland,' I told the empty room. It came out before I knew I was going to say anything, and when it did, the channel on the TV changed. It went from baseball to a rerun of All in the Family and then to Ren & Stimpy. I glanced down at the remote control. It was still on the coffee-table where I'd left it. The TV channel changed again, and this time I was looking at Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. There was an airplane in the background, and I didn't need to pick up the remote and turn on the sound to know that Humphrey was telling Ingrid that she was getting on that plane. My wife's all-time favorite movie. She bawled at the end without fail. ‘Jo?' I asked. ‘Are you here?' Bunter's bell rang once. Very faintly. There had been several presences in the house, I was sure of it . . . but tonight, for the first time, I was positive it was Jo who was with me. ‘Who was he, hon?' I asked. ‘The guy at the softball field, who was he?' Bunter's bell hung still and quiet. She was in the room, though. I sensed her, something like a held breath. I remembered the ugly, gibing little message on the refrigerator after my dinner with Mattie and Ki: blue rose liar ha ha. ‘Who was he?' My voice was unsteady, sounding on the verge of tears. ‘What were you doing down here with some guy? Were you . . . ‘ But I couldn't bring myself to ask if she had been lying to me, cheating on me. I couldn't ask even though the presence I felt might be, let's face it, only in my own head. The TV switched away from Casablanca and here was everybody's favorite lawyer, Perry Mason, on Nick at Nite. Perry's nemesis, Hamilton Burger, was questioning a distraught-looking woman, and all at once the sound blared on, making me jump. ‘I am not a liar!' some long-ago TV actress cried. For a moment she looked right out at me, and I was stunned breathless to see Jo's eyes in that black-and-white fifties face. ‘I never lied, Mr. Burger, never!' ‘I submit that you did!' Burger responded. He moved in on her, leering like a vampire. ‘I submit that you ‘ The TV suddenly went off. Bunter's bell gave a single brisk shake, and then whatever had been here was gone. But I felt better. I am not a liar . . . I never lied, never. I could believe that if I chose to. If I chose. I went to bed, and there were no dreams. I had taken to starting work early, before the heat could really get a hold on the study. I'd drink some juice, gobble some toast, then sit behind the IBM until almost noon, watching the Courier ball dance and twirl as the pages floated through the machine and came out with writing on them. That old magic, so strange and wonderful. It never really felt like work to me, although I called it that; it felt like some weird kind of mental trampoline I bounced on. Those were springs that took away all the weight of the world for awhile. At noon I'd break, drive down to Buddy Jellison's greaseatorium for something nasty, then return and work for another hour or so. After that I would swim and take a long dreamless nap in the north bedroom. I had barely poked my head into the master bedroom at the south end of the house, and if Mrs. M. thought this was odd, she kept it to herself. On Friday the seventeenth, I stopped at the Lakeview General on my way back to the house to gas up my Chevrolet. There are pumps at the All-Purpose Garage, and the go-juice was a penny or two cheaper, but I didn't like the vibe. Today, as I stood in front of the store with the pump on automatic feed, looking off toward the mountains, Bill Dean's Dodge Ram pulled in on the other side of the island. He climbed down and gave me a smile. ‘How's it going, Mike?' ‘Pretty fair.' ‘Brenda says you're writin up a storm.' ‘I am,' I said, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask for an update on the broken second-floor air conditioner. The tip of my tongue was where it stayed. I was still too nervous about my rediscovered ability to want to change anything about the environment in which I was doing it. Stupid, maybe, but sometimes things work just because you think they work. It's as good a definition of faith as any. ‘Well, I'm glad to hear it. Very glad.' I thought he was sincere enough, but he somehow didn't sound like Bill. Not the one who had greeted me back, anyway. ‘I've been looking up some old stuff about my side of the lake,' I said. ‘Sara and the Red-Tops? You always were sort ofint'rested in them, I remember.' ‘Them, yes, but not just them. Lots of history. I was talking to Mrs. M., and she told me about Normal Auster. Kenny's father.' Bill's smile stayed on, and he only paused a moment in the act of unscrewing the cap on his gas tank, but I still had a sense, quite clear, that he had frozen inside. ‘You wouldn't write about a thing like that, would you, Mike? Because there's a lot of people around here that'd feel it bad and take it wrong. I told Jo the same thing.' ‘Jo?' I felt an urge to step between the two pumps and over the island so I could grab him by the arm. ‘What's Jo got to do with this?' He looked at me cautiously and long. ‘She didn't tell you?' ‘What are you talking about?' ‘She thought she might write something about Sara and the Red-Tops for one of the local papers.' Bill was picking his words very slowly. I have a clear memory of that, and of how hot the sun was, beating down on my neck, and the sharpness of our shadows on the asphalt. He began to pump his gas, and the sound of the pump's motor was also very sharp. ‘I think she even mentioned Yankee magazine. I c'd be wrong about that, but I don't think I am.' I was speechless. Why would she have kept quiet about the idea to try her hand at a little local history? Because she might have thought she was poaching on my territory? That was ridiculous. She had known me better than that . . . hadn't she? ‘When did you have this conversation, Bill? Do you remember?' ‘Coss I do,' he said. ‘Same day she come down to take delivery of those plastic owls. Only I raised the subject, because folks had told me she was asking around.' ‘Prying?' ‘I didn't say that,' he said stiffly, ‘you did.' True, but I thought prying was what he meant. ‘Go on.' ‘Nothing to go on about. I told her there were sore toes here and there on the TR, same as there are anyplace, and ast her not to tread on any corns if she could help it. She said she understood. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. All I know is she kep' on asking questions. Listenin to stories from old fools with more time than sense.' ‘When was this?' ‘Fall of '93, winter and spring of '94. Went all around town, she did even over to Motton and Harlow with her notebook and little tape-recorder. Anyway, that's all I know.' I realized a stunning thing: Bill was lying. If you'd asked me before that day, I'd have laughed and told you Bill Dean didn't have a lie in him. And he must not have had many, because he did it badly. I thought of calling him on it, but to what end? I needed to think, and I couldn't do it here my mind was roaring. Given time, that roar might subside and I'd see it was really nothing, no big deal, but I needed that time. When you start finding out unexpected things about a loved one who's been dead awhile, it rocks you. Take it from me, it does. Bill's eyes had shifted away from mine, but now they shifted back. He looked both earnest and I could have sworn it a little scared. ‘She ast about little Kerry Auster, and that's a good example of what I mean about steppin on sore toes. That's not the stuff for a newspaper story or a magazine article. Normal just snapped. No one knows why. It was a terrible tragedy, senseless, and there's still people who could be hurt by it. In little towns things are kind of connected under the surface ‘ Yes, like cables you couldn't quite see. ‘ and the past dies slower. Sara and those others, that's a little different. They were just . . . just wanderers . . . from away. Jo could have stuck to those folks and it would've been all right. And say for all I know, she did. Because I never saw a single word she ever wrote. If she did write.' About that he was telling the truth, I felt. But I knew something else, knew it as surely as I'd known Mattie had been wearing white shorts when she called me on her day off. Sara and those others were just wanderers from away, Bill had said, but he hesitated in the middle of his thought, substituting wanderers for the word which had come naturally to mind. Niggers was the word he hadn't said. Sara and those others were just niggers from away. All at once I found myself thinking of an old story by Ray Bradbury, ‘Mars Is Heaven.' The first space travellers to Mars discover it's Green Town, Illinois, and all their well-loved friends and relatives are there. Only the friends and relatives are really alien monsters, and in the night, while the space travellers think they are sleeping in the beds of their long-dead kinfolk in a place that must be heaven, they are slaughtered to the last man. ‘Bill, you're sure she was up here a few times in the off-season?' ‘Ayuh. ‘T'wasn't just a few times, either. Might have been a dozen times or more. Day-trips, don't you know.' ‘Did you ever see a fellow with her? Burly guy, black hair?' He thought about it. I tried not to hold my breath. At last he shook his head. ‘Few times I saw her, she was alone. But I didn't see her every time she came. Sometimes I only heard she'd been on the TR after she ‘us gone again. Saw her in June of '94, headed up toward Halo Bay in that little car a hers. She waved, I waved back. Went down to the house later that evenin to see if she needed anythin, but she'd gone. I didn't see her again. When she died later on that summer, me and ‘Vette were so shocked.' Whatever she was looking for, she must never have written any of it down. I would have found the manuscript. Was that true, though? She had made many trips down here with no apparent attempts at concealment, on one of them she had even been accompanied by a strange man, and I had only found out about these visits by accident. ‘This is hard to talk about,' Bill said, ‘but since we've gotten started hard, we might as well go the rest of the way. Livin on the TR is like the way we used to sleep four or even five in a bed when it was January and true cold. If everyone rests easy, you do all right. But if one person gets restless, gets tossing and turning, no one can sleep. Right now you're the restless one. That's how people see it.' He waited to see what I'd say. When almost twenty seconds passed without a word from me (Harold Oblowski would have been proud), he shuffled his feet and went on. ‘There are people in town uneasy about the interest you've taken in Mattie Devore, for instance. Now I'm not sayin there's anythin going on between the two of you although there's folks who do say it but if you want to stay on the TR you're makin it tough on yourself.' ‘Why?' ‘Comes back to what I said a week and a half ago. She's trouble.' ‘As I recall, Bill, you said she was in trouble. And she is. I'm trying to help her out of it. There's nothing going on between us but that.' ‘I seem to recall telling you that Max Devore is nuts,' he said. ‘If you make him mad, we all pay the price.' The pump clicked off and he racked it up. Then he sighed, raised his hands, dropped them. ‘You think this is easy for me to say?' ‘You think it's easy for me to listen to?' ‘All right, ayuh, we're in the same skiff. But Mattie Devore isn't the only person on the TR livin hand-to-mouth, you know. There's others got their woes, as well. Can't you understand that?' Maybe he saw that I understood too much and too well, because his shoulders slumped. ‘If you're asking me to stand aside and let Devore take Mattie's baby without a fight, you can forget it,' I said. ‘And I hope that's not it. Because I think I'd have to be quits with a man who'd ask another man to do something like that.' ‘I wouldn't ask it now anywise,' he said, his accent thickening almost to the point of contempt. ‘It'd be too late, wouldn't it?' And then, unexpectedly, he softened. ‘Christ, man, I'm worried about you. Let the rest of it go hang, all right? Hang high where the crows can pick it.' He was lying again, but this time I didn't mind so much, because I thought he was lying to himself. ‘But you need to have a care. When I said Devore was crazy, that was no figure of speech. Do you think he'll bother with court if court can't get him what he wants? Folks died in those summer fires back in 1933. Good people. One related to me. They burned over half the goddam county and Max Devore set em. That was his going-away present to the TR. It could never be proved, but he did it. Back then he was young and broke, not yet twenty and no law in his pocket. What do you think he'd do now?' He looked at me searchingly. I said nothing. Bill nodded as if I had spoken. ‘Think about it. And you remember this, Mike: no man who didn't care for you would ever talk to you straight as I have.' ‘How straight was that, Bill?' I was faintly aware of some tourist walking from his Volvo to the store and looking at us curiously, and when I replayed the scene in my mind later on, I realized we must have looked like guys on the verge of a fistfight. I remember that I felt like crying out of sadness and bewilderment and an incompletely defined sense of betrayal, but I also remember being furious with this lanky old man him in his shining-clean cotton undershirt and his mouthful of false teeth. So maybe we were close to fighting, and I just didn't know it at the time. ‘Straight as I could be,' he said, and turned away to go inside and pay for his gas. ‘My house is haunted,' I said. He stopped, back to me, shoulders hunched as if to absorb a blow. Then, slowly, he turned back. ‘Sara Laughs has always been haunted, Mike. You've stirred em up. P'raps you should go back to Derry and let em settle. That might be the best thing.' He paused, as if replaying this last to see if he agreed with it, then nodded. He nodded as slowly as he had turned. ‘Ayuh, that might be best all around.' When I got back to Sara I called Ward Hankins. Then I finally made that call to Bonnie Amudson. Part of me was rooting for her not to be in at the travel agency in Augusta she co-owned, but she was. Halfway through my talk with her, the fax began to print out xeroxed pages from Jo's appointment calendars. On the first one Ward had scrawled, ‘Hope this helps.' I didn't rehearse what I was going to say to Bonnie; I felt that to do so would be a recipe for disaster. I told her that Jo had been writing something maybe an article, maybe a series of them about the township where our summerhouse was located, and that some of the locals had apparently been cheesed off by her curiosity. Some still were. Had she talked to Bonnie? Perhaps showed her an early draft? ‘No, huh-uh.' Bonnie sounded honestly surprised. ‘She used to show me her photos, and more herb samples than I honestly cared to see, but she never showed me anything she was writing. In fact, I remember her once saying that she'd decided to leave the writing to you and just ‘ ‘ take a little taste of everything else, right?' ‘Yes.' I thought this was a good place to end the conversation, but the guys in the basement seemed to have other ideas. ‘Was she seeing anyone, Bonnie?' Silence from the other end. With a hand that seemed at least four miles down my arm, I plucked the fax sheets out of the basket. Ten of them November of 1993 to August of 1994. Jottings everywhere in Jo's neat hand. Had we even had a fax before she died? I couldn't remember. There was so fucking much I couldn't remember. ‘Bonnie? If you know something, please tell me. Jo's dead, but I'm not. I can forgive her if I have to, but I can't forgive what I don't underst ‘ ‘I'm sorry,' she said, and gave a nervous little laugh. ‘It's just that I didn't understand at first. â€Å"Seeing anyone,† that was just so . . . so foreign to Jo . . . the Jo I knew . . . that I couldn't figure out what you were talking about. I thought maybe you meant a shrink, but you didn't, did you? You meant seeing someone like seeing a guy. A boyfriend.' ‘That's what I meant.' Thumbing through the faxed calendar sheets now, my hand not quite back to its proper distance from my eyes but getting there, getting there. I felt relief at the honest bewilderment in Bonnie's voice, but not as much as I'd expected. Because I'd known. I hadn't even needed the woman in the old Perry Mason episode to put in her two cents, not really. It was Jo we were talking about, after all. Jo. ‘Mike,' Bonnie was saying, very softly, as if I might be crazy, ‘she loved you. She loved you. ‘Yes. I suppose she did.' The calendar pages showed how busy my wife had been. How productive. S-Ks of Maine . . . the soup kitchens. WomShel, a county-to-county network of shelters for battered women. TeenShel. Friends of Me. Libes. She had been at two or three meetings a month two or three a week at some points and I'd barely noticed. I had been too busy with my women in jeopardy. ‘I loved her too, Bonnie, but she was up to something in the last ten months of her life. She didn't give you any hint of what it might have been when you were riding to meetings of the Soup Kitchens board or the Friends of Maine Libraries?' Silence from the other end. ‘Bonnie?' I took the phone away from my ear to see if the red LOW BATTERY light was on, and it squawked my name. I put it back. ‘Bonnie, what is it?' ‘There were no long drives those last nine or ten months. We talked on the phone and I remember once we had lunch in Waterville, but there were no long drives. She quit.' I thumbed through the fax-sheets again. Meetings noted everywhere in Jo's neat hand, Soup Kitchens of Maine among them. ‘I don't understand. She quit the Soup Kitchens board?' Another moment of silence. Then, speaking carefully: ‘No, Mike. She quit all of them. She finished with Woman Shelters and Teen Shelters at the end of '93 her term was up then. The other two, Soup Kitchens and Friends of Maine Libraries . . . she resigned in October or November of 1993.' Meetings noted on all the sheets Ward had sent me. Dozens of them. Meetings in 1993, meetings in 1994. Meetings of boards to which she'd no longer belonged. She had been down here. On all those supposed meeting-days, Jo had been on the TR. I would have bet my life on it. But why?