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I told you, but I won’t.”
    â€œA beehive of talent.” Cardiff exhaled. “But how did they all wind up here?”
    â€œGenes, chromosomes, need. You’ve heard of those little writers’ colonies? Well, this one’s big. We’re soul mates. Similar people. Nobody laughing at what someone else writes. No alcoholics, however, no bats out of hell, or wild parties.”
    â€œF. Scott Fitzgerald can’t get in?”
    â€œBetter not try.”
    â€œSounds boring.”
    â€œOnly if you lose your pad and pencil.”
    â€œYou one of them?”
    â€œIn my own quiet way.”
    â€œA poet!”
    â€œNot so loud. Someone might hear.”
    â€œA poet,” Cardiff whispered.
    â€œMostly haiku. At midnight when I put on my specs and reach for my pen. Semi-haiku, too many beats.”
    â€œExample?”
    Culpepper recited:
    Â 
    Oh, cat that I truly love,
    Oh, hummingbird that I madly love.
    What are you doing in the cat’s mouth?
    Â 
    Cardiff whooped with delight. “I never could write that!”
    â€œDon’t try. Just do. ”
    â€œI’ll be damned. More!”
    Â 
    A pillow of snow by my warm face.
    A snowdrift at my touch;
    You are gone.
    Â 
    Culpepper quietly reloaded his pipe to cover his embarrassment.
    â€œI don’t recite that one often. Sad.”
    To break the quiet, Cardiff said: “How do you writers stay in touch with the outside world?”
    Culpepper stared off into the distance toward the empty train tracks beyond the silent road.
    â€œI take a truck full of manuscripts to Gila Springs once a month, so we mail out from where we are not, bring back windfalls of checks, snowfalls of rejections. The wheat and chaff go into our bank, with its one teller and one president. The money waits there, in case some day we have to move.”
    Cardiff felt sweat suddenly break out all over his body.
    â€œYou got something to say, Mr. Cardiff?”
    â€œSoon.”
    â€œI won’t push.” Culpepper relit his pipe and recited:
    Â 
    A mother remembers her dead son.
    Today how far might he have wandered,
    My mighty hunter of dragonflies.
    Â 
    â€œThat’s not mine. Wish it were. Japanese. Been around forever.”
    Cardiff paced back and forth on the porch and then turned.
    â€œGood grief, it all fits. Writing is the only activity that could support a town like this, so far off. Like a mail order business.”
    â€œWriting is a mail order business. Anything you want you write a check, send it off, and before you know it, the Johnson Smith Company in Racine, Wisconsin, sends you what you need. Seebacko-scopes. Gyroscopes. Mardi Gras masks. Orphan Annie dolls. Film clips from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Vanishing cards. Reappearing skeletons.”
    â€œAll that good stuff.” Cardiff smiled.
    â€œAll that good stuff.”
    They laughed quietly together.
    Cardiff exhaled. “So, this is a writers’ township.”
    â€œThinking about staying?”
    â€œNo, about leaving. ”
    Cardiff stopped and put his hand over his mouth as if he had said something he shouldn’t have said.
    â€œNow what does that mean?” Elias Culpepper almost started up from his chair.
    But before Cardiff could speak, a pale figure appeared on the lawn below the porch and started to climb the steps.
    Cardiff called her name.
    By the door the daughter of Elias Culpepper spoke. “When you’re ready, come upstairs.”
    When I’m ready!? Cardiff thought wildly. When I’m ready !
    The screen door shut.
    â€œYou’ll need this,” said Elias Culpepper.
    He held out a last drink, which Cardiff took.

CHAPTER 18
    Again, the large bed was a bank of snow on a warm summer night. She lay on one side, looking up at the ceiling, and did not move. He sat on the far edge, saying nothing, and at last tilted over and lay his head on the pillow, and waited.
    Finally Nef said, “It seems to me