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this…” he waved at his wrapped-up head, “makes that life less bearable. I think differently now. And things look strange to me. I have odd thoughts. I can’t bear to go outside and be among other people. You’re the only person I’ve seen in weeks.”
    I moved a step closer to him.
    “ I get very lonely,” he said.
    I sat down opposite him across the table. My hand, dirt-stained and calloused, rested scant inches from his.
    “ I tried to make a companion for myself once,” he said, softly. “When the loneliness became too great. I commissioned a Winkie carpenter to make her body – a much finer one than I have, certainly – and I planned to give her a head like mine, though perhaps crafted with greater care. Only the Powder of Life, which gave me my vital spark, and also the Sawhorse and the Gump, was all gone long ago and the magician who made it had committed suicide by jumping off the side of a mountain.”
    “ I searched for another magician to help me, hard because magic has been outlawed for all except Ozma and Glinda. But eventually I found one, hiding in a swamp, practicing his craft there. He gave me Powder of Life in exchange for some valuables I had – a jeweled belt, and a bracelet of gold, both gifts of my mother.”
    “ But couldn’t she have helped you?” I interrupted. “Since she can practice magic.”
    “ She knew nothing of this,” he said. “She still doesn’t. I wanted it to be private. Personal.”
    I nodded. “I understand.”
    “ Do you?” he said. “Well, I had the body, and I selected my finest pumpkin and carved her face myself. You may well wonder why I didn’t get a famous artist to do it, but the truth is that I wanted to have that connection. It may not have been the most beautiful face ever carved, but it pleased me and that’s all that mattered.”
    I nodded again. “So what happened?”
    He bowed his toweled head, then poured more of the drink into his mouth.
    “ I laid her out in my bed, dressed in a nice yellow sundress decorated with daisies. And she was so beautiful, lying there. And I sprinkled…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I sprinkled the powder on her.”
    I was almost holding my breath at the story.
    “ Did it work?”
    He raised his head. “In a way. It brought her to life, her limbs started moving almost immediately, but,” he took another gulp of the alcohol, “she had no sense in her. She was alive, but without any thought, without any brains. Mindless.”
    I said nothing, not knowing what to say.
    “ You can’t imagine what it was like to see her, to see this beautiful creature, thrashing around without purpose, without any understanding of what was happening or where she was. She…she attacked me. Savagely. I ran to escape her. Outside into the pumpkin field, and she ran after me. I was only able to stop her by…by hitting her. With a shovel. She fell down, but still thrashed. So I grabbed an axe and I cut at her arms and legs, splintering the fine, sanded wood, ripping her yellow dress and cutting the pumpkin from her head. Then, when it was all done and she had stopped moving, I dragged the pieces to the graveyard and buried them beneath the ground.”
    His head lowered, propped against one wrist. I reached my hand across to his other, slipped my fingers over his worn white glove.
    “ I never told anyone that before,” he said. “Not even my mother.”
    “ I understand,” I said. And before I could think about it, and perhaps in an effort to also share something I’d never told anyone, I told him about my parents’ death and the graveyard and the garden I planted on top of it.
    He nodded. During his talk and the drinking and listening to me afterward, his towel had come undone and his mismatched features were now revealed. A dribble of the liquor down his open mouth lent him a monstrous appearance, but I kept my face blank.
    “ There’s more, though,” I said. “The night I left town, I packed up my belongings,