Needle in the Heart and Another Unexpected Tale | Podcast - Nightshade Diary

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you feel a sharer up your spine from fear. Yes,
it's another story from the Night's Shade Diary. You know
what that means. Check under the bed and make sure
no one or nothing is there. Is the closet door
securely shut. Then leave your disbelief behind, amp up your
imagination and hang on tight for another ride into terror

(00:22):
and mystery. And like all good horror stories, just imagine
it's a dark and stormy night, and remember screaming like
a little girl is permitted. Needle in the Heart by
Richard matheson April twenty third. At last, I have found

(00:44):
a way to kill therees. I am so happy I
could cry to end that vile dominion after all these years.
What is the phrase? Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished? Well?
I wished it long enough. Now it is time to act.
I will destroy Therese and regain my peace of mind.
I will. What distresses me is that the book has

(01:07):
been here in our library all these years. Why I
could have done it ages ago, avoiding all the agonies
and cruel humiliations I have borne. Still I must not
think like that. I must be grateful I've found it
at all. And amused how droll it really is that
therees was actually in the library with me. When I

(01:28):
came across the book. She of course, was pouring avidly
over one of the many volumes of pornography left by father.
I shall burn them all after I have killed Terse.
Thank god, our mother died before he started to collect them.
Vile man that he was. Therese loved him to the end.
Of course, she is just like him, really brutish, carnal

(01:50):
and disgusting. Oh, I will sing for joy the day
she dies. Yes, there she was below, darkly flushed with saiduality.
While I, attempting to avoid the sight of her, moved
about on the balcony where the older volumes are cut,
And there I found it, on an upper shelf, a
film of gray dust on its pages. Voodoo, an authentic

(02:14):
study by doctor William Moriority. It had been printed privately.
The Lord only knows where or when Father acquired it.
The astounding thing. I perused it, bored, and then actually
put it back in place. It was not until I
had walked away from it and glanced through many other
books that suddenly it came to me I could kill

(02:36):
Therese by use of voodoo. April twenty fifth. My hand
is trembling as I write this. I've almost completed the
doll which represents Therese Yes almost completed it. I've made
it from the cloth of one of her old dresses,
which I've found in the attic. I've used two tiny
jeweled buttons for its eyes. There's more to do, of course,

(02:56):
but the project is at last under way. I am
amused to consider what Doctor Ramsay would say if he
discovered my plans. What would his initial reaction be that
I am foolish to believe in voodoo, or that I
must learn to live with Therese if not to love her,
love that pig, Never how I despise her. If I

(03:17):
could believe me, I would happily surrender my half of
father's estate if it would mean that I would never
have to see her dissipated face again, never have to
listen to her drunken swearing, to her tales of lewd adventuring.
But this is quite impossible. She will not leave me be.
I have but one course left me to destroy her,

(03:39):
and I shall. I shall. Therese has only one more
day to live April twenty sixth. I have it all now, all.
Therese took a bath before she left to night to
the Lord knows what debaucheries. After the bath, she cut
her nails. And now I have them fastened to the
doll with red, and I have made the doll a

(04:01):
head of hair from the strands I labourishly combed from
Teresa's brush. Now the doll truly is Teres. That is
the beauty of voodoo. I hold Teresa's life in my hands,
free to choose for myself the moment of her destruction.
I will wait and savor that delicious freedom. What will
doctor Ramsay say when Teresa is dead? What can he

(04:24):
say that I am mad to think voodoo had killed her?
Not that I will ever tell him, but it will.
I will not lay a hand on her, as much
as I would like to do it personally, crushing a
breath from her throat. But no, I will survive. That
is the joy of it. To kill Teres wilfully and
yet to live, That is the utter ecstasy of it.

(04:46):
Tomorrow night, let her enjoy her last adventure. No more
will she stagger in her breath A reeking femal whisky
to regow me in learid detail with the fallubscenities she
had committed and enjoy. Nor where will she? Oh? I
cannot wait. I shall thrust a needle deep into the

(05:07):
doll's heart, bradden myself of her forever damned teres damn her.
I shall kill her now. From the notebook of John H. Ramsey,
m d. April twenty seventh. Poor Millicent is dead. Her
housekeeper found her crumpled on the floor of her bedroom

(05:27):
this morning, clutching at her heart, a lock of shock
and agony frozen on her face. A heart attack, no doubt,
no Mark's honor. Beside her on the floor was a
tiny cloth doll with a needle piercing it. Poor Millicent
had she some brainsick notions of destroying me with voodoo.
I hope she trusted me still, Why should she have?

(05:52):
I could never have helped her. Really, hers was a
hopeless situation. Milica Therese Marlow suffered from the most advanced
case of multiple personality. It has ever been my misfortune
to observe the wonderful death of Dudley Stone by Ray Bradbury, alive, dead,

(06:13):
alive in New England. Damn it died twenty years ago.
Pass the hat I'll go myself and bring back his head.
That's how the talk went that night. A stranger set
it off with his mouthings about Dudley Stone dead alive.
We cried, and shouldn't we know? Weren't we the last
fair remnants of those who had burnt incense and read

(06:35):
his books by the light of blazing intellectual votives in
the twenties, The Dudley Stone, that magnificent stylus, that proudest
of literary lines. Surely you recall the head pounding, the
cliff jumping, the whistlings of doom that followed on his writings.
As publishers, This note sirs to day, aged thirty, I

(06:56):
retire from the field, renounced writing, burn all my effects,
toss my latest manuscript on the dump, Cry hail and
fare thee well yours affectionately Dudley Stone. Earthquakes and avalanches
in that order? Why we ask ourselves? Meeting down the
years and fine soap opera fashion, we debated if it

(07:20):
was women who caused them to hurl his literary future way,
was it the bottle or horses that outran him and
stopped a fine pacer in his prime? We freely admitted
to one and all that we were Stone riding now Faulkner, Hemingway,
and Steinbeck would be buried in his lava. All this
sadder that Stone, on the brink of his greatest work,

(07:41):
turned one day and went off to live in a
town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named
the past. Why that question forever lived with those of
us who had seen the glimpse of genius and his
piebald works. One night a few weeks ago, musing off
the erosion of the years, finding each other's faces somewhat
more pouched and our hair more conspicuously in absence, we

(08:06):
became enraged with the typical citizen's ignorance of Dudley Stone.
At least, we mutter Thomas Wolfe had a full measure
of success before he seized his nose and jumped off
the room of eternity. At least the critics gathered to
stare after his plunge into darkness, as after a meteor
that made much fire in its passing. But who now

(08:26):
remembered Dudley Stone, his coteries, his frenzied followers of the
twenties pass the hat, I said, I'll travel three hundred
miles grab Dudley Stone by the pants and say, look here,
mister Stone, why did you let us down so badly?
Why haven't you written a book in twenty five years?
The hat was lined with cash. I sent a telegram

(08:48):
and took a train. I do not know what I expected,
perhaps to find a doddering and frail, praying mantis whispering
about the station, blown by sea winds, a chalk white
ghoest who would husk at me with the voice of
grass and reeds blown in the night. I clunched my
knees in agony as my train shoved into the station.

(09:09):
I let myself down into a lonely countryside a mile
from the sea, like a man foolishly insane, wondering why
had come so far. On a bolton board in front
of the boarded up ticket office, I found a cluster
of announcements inches thick, pasted and nailed one upon another front,
countable years leafing under, peeling away anthropological layers of printed tissue.

(09:33):
I found what I wanted. Dudley Stone for aldermen, Dudley
Stone for sheriff, Dudley Stone for mayor on up through
the years. His photograph bleached by sun and rain, faintly recognizable,
asked for ever more responsible positions in the life of
this world. Near the sea. I stood reading them, Hey

(09:56):
and Dudley Stone plunged across the station platform behind me. Suddenly,
is that you, mister Douglas? Our world? To confront this
great architecture of a man, big, but not in the
least fat, his legs, huge pistons thrusting him on a
bright flower in his lappel, a bright tie at his neck.
He crushed my hand, looked down upon me like Michelangelo's God,

(10:18):
creating at him with a mighty touch. His face was
the face of those illustrated north winds and south winds
that blow hot and cold in ancient Mariner charts. It
was the face that symbolizes the sun and Egyptian carvings
ablaze with life. My God, I thought, and this is
the man who hasn't written in twenty odd years. Impossible.

(10:40):
He's so alive, it's sinful. I can hear his heart beat.
I must have stood with my eyes very wide to
let the look of him cram in upon my startled senses.
You thought you'd find Marley's ghost, he laughed, Admit it,
I my wife's waiting with a new England boiled dinner.

(11:00):
We've plenty of ale and stout. I like the ring
of those words. To ale is not to sicken, but
to revive the flagging spirit. A tricky word that, and
stout there's a nice ready sound to it. Stout. A
great golden watch bounced on his vest front, hung in
bright chains. He vised my elbow and charmed me along,
A magician well on his way back to his cave

(11:23):
with a luckless rabbit. Glad to see you. I suppose
you've come as the others came to ask the same question. Uh, well,
this time I'll tell everything. My heart jumped wonderful behind
the empty station, sat in open top nineteen twenty seven
vintage model ty Forward fresh air drive. At twilight like this,

(11:45):
you get all the fields, the grass, the flowers coming
at you in the wind. I hope you're not one
of those who tiptoe around shutting windows. Our house is
like the top of a messa. We let the weather
do our broomwork. Hop in. Ten minutes later we swung
off the highway on to a drive that had not
been leveled or filled in years. Stone drove straight on

(12:07):
over the pits and bumps. Smiling steadily, bang, we shuddered
the last few yards to a wild, unpainted two story house.
The car was allowed to gasp itself away into mortal silence.
Do you want the truth? Stone turned to look at
me in the face and hold my shoulder with an
earnest hand. I was murdered by a man with a

(12:28):
gun twenty five years ago, almost to this very day.
I sat staring after him as he leapt from the car.
He was solid as a ton of rock, no ghost
to him. But yet I knew that somehow the truth
was in what he had told me before firing himself
like a cannon at the house. This is my wife,

(12:49):
and this is the house, and that is our supper
waiting for us. Look at our view windows on three
sides of the living room of you, of the sea,
the shore, the meadows. We nail the window. Those open
three out of four seasons. I swear you get a
smell of limes here midsummer and something from Antarctica, ammonia
and ice cream. Come December. Sit down, Lena. Isn't it

(13:13):
nice having him here? I hope you like New England
boiled dinner, said Lena. Now here now there a tall,
firmly built woman, the sun in the east Father Christmas Daughter,
a bright lamp of a face that lit our table
as she dealt out the heavy, useful dishes made to
stand the pound of giants fists. The cutlery was solid

(13:34):
enough to take a lion's teeth. A great whiff of
steam rose up, through which we gladly descended sinners into hell.
I saw the second plated skin by three times, and
felt the ballast gather in my chest, my throat not
lost my ears. Dudley Stone or Mirebrew he had made
from wild concords that had cried for mercy, he said.

(13:56):
The wine bottle empty, had its green glass mouthed softly
by Stone, who summoned out a rhythmic one note tune
that was quickly done. Well, I've kept you waiting long enough,
he said, peering at me from that distance which drinking
adds between people, and which had odd turns in the evening,
seems closelyss hisself. I'll tell you about my murder. I've

(14:19):
never told anyone before, believe me. Do you know John
Otis Kendall, a minor writer in the twenties, Wasn't He
has said a few books, burnt out by thirty one,
died last week, God rested. Mister Stone lapsed into a
special brief melancholy, from which revived I began to speak again. Yes,

(14:40):
John Otis Kendall, burnt out by the year nineteen thirty one,
a writer of great potentialities, not as great as yours,
I said quickly, well, just wait. We were boys together,
John Otis and I born with the shade of an
oak tree, touched my house in the morning and his
house at night, every creek in the world, together, got

(15:02):
sick on sour apples and cigarettes together, saw the same
lights in the same blonde here, the same young girl together.
And then our late teens went out to kick fate
in the stomach and get beat on the head. Together.
We both did fair, and then I better, and still
better as the years ran. If his first book got

(15:23):
one nice notice, mine got six. If I got one bad, notice,
he got a dozen. We were like two friends on
a train. The public has uncompled. There when John Otis
on the caboose left behind, crying out save me, You're
leaving me In Tanktown, Ohio, We're on the same track,
and the conductor saying yes, but not the same train,

(15:44):
and myself yelling I believe in you, John be of
good heart, I'll come back for you, and the caboos
dwindling behind with its red and green lamps like cherry
and lime pops shining in the dark, and we yelling
our friendship to each other, John old Man Dudley Old Powell.
While John Otis went out on a dark siding behind
a tin baling shed at midnight, and my engine with

(16:06):
all the flag waivers and brass bands boiled on toward dawn.
Dudley Stone paused and noticed my look of general confusion.
All this to lead up to my murder, he said,
For it was John Otis Kendall who, when nineteen thirty,
traded a fueled clothes and some remaindered copies of his
books for a gun, and came out to this house

(16:27):
and this room. He really meant to kill you, meant
to hell he did. Bang have some more wine, that's better.
A strawberry shortcake was set upon the table by missus Stone.
While he enjoyed my gibbering suspense. Stone sliced it into
three huge chunks and served it around, fixing me with

(16:48):
his kindly approximation of the wedding guest eye. There he sat,
John Otis in that chair where you sit now, behind him,
outside in the smokehouse, seventeen hams in our wine cellars,
five hundred bottles of the best. Beyond the window, open country,
the elegancy and full lace over had a moon like
a dish of cool cream everywhere, the full penalope of spring,

(17:11):
and lean across the table too, a willow tree in
the wind, laughing at everything I said or did not
choose to say, both of us thirty mind you, thirty
years old life, our magnificent carotsel, our fingers playing full cords,
my books selling well, fan mail pouring upon us, and
crisp white founts, horses in the stables, from moonlight rides

(17:33):
to coves where either we or the sea might whisper
all we wished in the night. And John Oates seated
there where you sit now, quietly, taking a little blue
gun from his pocket. I laughed, thinking it was a
cigar light or some sort, said his wife. But John
Otis said, quite seriously, I'm going to kill you Stone.

(17:55):
What did you do do? I sat there, stunned, riven
I heard a terrible slam. The coffin lit in my face.
I heard cold down at black shoot, dirt on my
buried door. They say, all your past hurdles by at
such times. Nonsense the future. Does you see your face

(18:16):
a bloody porridge? You sit there until your fumbling mouth
can say. But why, John, what have I done to you? Done?
He cried, and his eyes skimmed along the vast bookshelf
and the handsome brigade of books drawn stiffly to attention
there with my name on each, blazing like a panther's
eye in the Moroccan blackness tan. He cried mortally, and

(18:39):
his hand itched the revolver in a sweat. Now, John,
I caution, what do you want? One thing more than
anything else in the world, he said, To kill you
and be famous. Get my name in headlines, be famous
as you are famous, be known for a lifetime and
beyond as the man who killed Dutley. You can't mean

(19:01):
that I do. I'll be very famous, far more famous
than I am today. In your shadow. Oh listen here.
No one in the world knows how to hate like
a writer does God how I love your work, And God,
how I hate you because you write so well, amazing ambivalence.
But I can't take it anymore, not being able to

(19:23):
write as you do. So I'll take my fame the
easy way. I'll cut you off before you reach your prime.
They say your next book will be your very finest,
your most brilliant. They exaggerate. My guess is they're right,
he said. I look beyond him to Lena, who's at
a nerd chair, frightened, but not frightened enough to scream
or run and spoil a scene, so it might end inadvertently. Calm,

(19:48):
I said, calmness, sit there, John, I ask only one minute,
then pull the trigger. No, Lena whispered, calmness, I said
to her, to myself, to John otis. I gazed out
the open window. I felt the wind. I thought of
the wine in the cellar, the coves at the beach,
the sea, the night moon like a disc of menthol cooling,

(20:08):
the summer, heavens drawing clouds of flaming salt, the stars
after in a wheel of toward morning. I thought of
myself only thirty, Leana, thirty, our whole lives ahead. I
thought of all the flush of life hung high and
waiting for me to really start banqueting. I had never
climbed a mountain. I had never sailed an ocean. I

(20:28):
had never run for mayor. I had never dived for pearls.
I had never owned a telescope. I had never acted
on a stage, or built a house, or read all
the classics I had so wished to read all the
actions to be done. So in that almost instantaneous sixty seconds,
I thought, at last of my career, the books I
had written, the books I was writing the books I

(20:51):
intended to write, the reviews. The sales are huge, balance
in the bank, and believe or disbelieve me. For the
first time in my life, I got free of it all.
I became in one moment a critic. I cleared the scales.
On one hand. I put all the boats I hadn't taken,
the flowers, I hadn't planted the children, I hadn't raised

(21:14):
all the hills I hadn't looked at with Lena there,
goddess of the harvest. In the middle, I put John
Otis Kendall with his gun, the upright that held the balances,
and on the empty scale opposite I laid my pen,
my ink, my empty paper, my dozen books. I made
some minor adjustments. The sixty seconds were ticking by the

(21:36):
sweet night. Whend blew across the table. It touched the
curl of hair on Lena's neck. Oh lord, how softly
softly it touched. The gun pointed at me. I have
seen the moon craters and photographs, and that hole in
space called the Great coal Sack Nebula, But neither was
as big, take my word, as the mouth of that

(21:56):
gun across the room from me. John I said, at last,
do you hate me that much because I've been lucky
and you not? Yes, damn it, he cried. It was
almost funny. He should envy me. I was not that
much better writer than he. A flick of the wrist
made the difference. John I said quietly to him, if

(22:19):
you want me dead, I'll be dead. Would you like
for me to never write again? I'd like nothing better,
he cried. Get Ready, he aimed at my heart. All right,
I said, I'll never write again. What he said? We're
old friends. We've never lied to each other, have we? Then?
Take my word from this night on, I'll never put

(22:40):
pen to paper. Oh god, he said, and laughed with
contempt and disbelief. There, I said, nodding my head at
the dusk near him. Are the only original copies of
the two books I've been working on for the last
three years. I'll burn one in front of you now.
The other you yourself may throw in the sea, clean

(23:00):
out the house, take everything faintly resembling literature. Burn my
published books too. Here, I got up. He could have
shot me then, but I had him fascinated. I tossed
one manuscript on the hearth and touched the match to it. No,
Lena said, I turned. I know what I'm doing, I said.
She began to cry. John Otis Kendall simply stared at me, bewitched.

(23:22):
I brought him the other unpublished manuscript here, I said,
tucking it under his right shoe. Say his foot was
a paperweight. I went back and sat down. The wind
was blowing and the night was warm, and Lina was
white as apple blossoms. There across the table, I said,
from this day forward, I will not write ever again.
At last, John Otis managed to say, how can you

(23:45):
do this? To make everyone happy? I said, to make
you happy because we'll be friends again eventually. To make
Lena happy because I'll just be your husband again. I
know agents performing seal, and myself happy because I'd rather
be alive man then a dead author. A dying man
will do anything. John. Now'll take my last novel and

(24:05):
get along with you. We sat there, the three of us,
just as we three are sitting to night. There was
a smell of lemons and limes and camellias. The ocean
roared on the stony coastline below. God, what a lovely
moonlit sound. And at last, picking up the manuscript, John
noticed took them like my body out of the room.

(24:26):
He paused the door and said, I believe you, and
then he was gone. I heard him drive away. I
put Lena to bed. There was one of the few
nights in my life I ever walked down by the shore.
But walk I did, taking deep breaths, and feeding my
arms and legs and my face with my hands, crying
like a child, walking and waiting in the surf to

(24:47):
feel the cold salt water foaming about me in a
million SuDS. Dudleystone paused, time had made a stop in
the room. Time was in another year. The three of
us sitting there in chant with his telling of the murder,
And did he destroy your last novel? I asked. Sudleystone nodded.
A week later, one of the pages drifted up on

(25:09):
the shore. He must have thrown them over the cliff.
A thousand pages. I'd see it in my mind's eye,
a flock of white seagulls, and it might seem flying
down to the water and going out with the tide.
At four in the black morning, Lena ran up the
beach with that single page in her hand, crying, look, look,
And when I saw what she handed me, I tossed
it back in the ocean. Don't tell me you honored

(25:30):
your promise, Dudleystone looked at me steadily. What would you
have done in a similar position? Look at it this way.
John Otis did me a favor. He didn't kill me.
He didn't shoot me. He took my word, He honored
my word. He let me live. He let me go
on eating and sleeping and breathing. Quite suddenly he had
broaden my horizons. I was so grateful that standing on

(25:53):
the beach, hip deep in water that night, I cried,
I was grateful. Do you really understand that word? Grateful?
He had let me live when he had had it
in his hand to annihilate me. Forever. Missus Stone rose up.
The dinner was ended. She cleared the dishes, We lit cigars,
and Dudley Stone strolled me over to his office at home.

(26:15):
A roll up desk is giles, propped white with parcels
and papers and ink bottles, a typewriter, documents, ledgers, indexes.
It was all rolling to a boil in me. John
Otis simply spooned the froth off the top so I
could see the brew. It was very clear, said Dudley Stone.
Writing was always so much mustard and gullweed to me,

(26:37):
fidgeting words on paper, experiencing vast depressions of heart and soul,
watching the greedy critics graft me up, chart me down,
slice me like sausage, eat me at midnight breakfast, work
of the worst sort. I was ready to fling the pack.
My trigger was sat boom, there was John Otis. Look here.

(26:59):
He rummaged in the dusk and brought fourth handbills and posters.
I have been writing about living. Now I wanted to
live do things instead of tell about them. I ran
for the Board of Education, I won. I ran for
Aldermen I won. I ran for mayor, I won, sheriff
to how librarian Sewage dis postal official. I shook a

(27:22):
lot of hands, saw a lot of life, that a
lot of things. We've lived every way there is to
live with our eyes and noses and mouths. With our
ears and hands. We've climbed hills and painted pictures. There
are some on the wall. We've been three times around
the world. I even delivered our baby's son unexpectedly. He's

(27:43):
grown and married, now lives in New York. We've done
and done again. Stone, paws and smile. Come on out
in the yard. We've set up a telescope. Would you
like to see the rings of Saturn. We stood in
the yard and the wind blew from a thousand miles
at sea. And while we were standing there looking at
the stars through the telescope, Missus Stone went down into

(28:03):
the midnight cellar after a rare Spanish wine. It was
noon the next day when we reached the Lonely station
after a hurricane trip across the jouncing meadows from the sea.
Mister Dudley Stone let the car have its head while
he talked to me, laughing, smiling, pointing to this or
that outcrop of neolithic stone, this or that wild flower,

(28:25):
falling silent again, only as we parked and waited for
the train to come and take me away. I suppose
he said, look at the sky, you think I'm quite insane. No,
I'd never say that, well, said Dudley Stone. John ODIs
Kendall did me one other favor. What was that Stone
hitched around conversationally in the patched leather seat. He helped

(28:48):
me get out when the going was good. Deep down inside,
I must have guessed that my literary success was something
that would melt when they turned off the cooling system.
My subconscious had a pretty fair picture of my future.
I knew what none of my critics knew. That I
was headed nowhere but down. The two books John Otis

(29:08):
destroyed were very bad. They would have killed me deater
than ODIs possibly could. So he helped me decide, unwittingly,
what I might not have had the courage to decide myself,
To bow gracefully out while the cotillion was still on,
while the Chinese lantern still cast flattering pink lights on
my Harvard complexion. I had seen too many writers up,

(29:29):
down and out, hurt, unhappy, suicidal. The combination of circumstances
coincidence subconscious knowledge, relief, and gratitude to John Otis Kendall
to just be alive or fortuitous, to say the least.
We sat in the warm sunlight another minute, and then
I had the pleasure of seeing myself compared to all

(29:50):
the greats when I announced my departure from the literary scene.
Few authors in recent history have bowed out to such publicity.
It was a lovely funeral. I looked, as they say, natural,
and the echoes lingered His next book, the critics cried,
would have been it a masterpiece? I had them panting waiting.
Little did they know. Even now a quarter century later,

(30:14):
my readers, who were college boys then make sooty excursions
on drafting kerosenes, thinking short line trains to save the
mystery of why I've made them wait so long for
my masterpiece. And thanks to John Otis Kendall, I still
have a little reputation. It has receded slowly, painlessly. The
next year I might have died by my own writing hand.

(30:34):
How much better to cut your own caboos off the
train before others do it for you. My friendship with
John Otis Kendall. It came back. It took time of course,
but he was out here to see me in nineteen
forty seven. Was a nice day all around, like old times.
Now he's dead, and at last I've told someone everything.

(30:55):
What will you tell your friends in the city. They
won't believe a word of this, but it is true.
I swear it. As I sit here and breathe God's
good air and look at the caluses on my hand,
I begin to resemble that faded handbills I used when
I ran for County treasurer. We stood at the station platform. Goodbye,
and thanks for coming and opening your ears and laying

(31:17):
my world crush in on you. God, bless to all
your curious friends. Here comes the train. I've got to run.
Lena and I are going to a Red Cross drive
down the coast this afternoon. Goodbye. I watched the dead
man's stomp and leap across the platform, felt the planking shudder,
saw him jump into his Model tee, heard it lurch

(31:37):
under the book, saw him bang the floorboards with a
big foot, idle the motor roar. It turned, smile, waved me,
and then rore off and away toward that suddenly brilliant
town called Obscurity by a dazzling sea, shore called the
past

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Needle in the Heart and Another Unexpected Tale | Podcast

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Needle in the Heart and Another Unexpected Tale | Podcast