BROOM

I felt, off the start, right at home with him in this gorgeous New England spread-out home with a fantastic lawn and a pond with an island on it where Olivia de Havilland had gotten married and a tennis court and vegetable garden and a rose garden and what time of the year was it? Hmmm. Must have been summer because he introduced me to sweet corn and he had Platt, who lived to be twenty-two years of age and who died shortly after I got married—a cat.

He was sitting in front of the fire going through his briefcase that was filled with office business and now and then he’d toss pages and pages into the fire and then he would stop, he’d pet Platt and say—The poor pussy, such a bad life for a cat!

One day after he had gone through a large amount of papers to be tossed and when he had chucked them into the fire—there was a lesson for us. We were chased out of the house by a rough sound and we looked up at the chimney and saw a violet broom of fire sticking out of the chimney. It just burned itself out and nothing was hurt, but that’s how a lot of his houses burned down.

Some people speak of an energy stream in a village site or sacred place.

I put my arms around him, released him.

Such business as his! A corner of his stair hall was covered by old dry leaves that yield all by themselves.