'Really? Wow,' Angel said lightly. 'I mean, everybody knows Baum came here once. That's why they named some streets after the movie.'
'I'm trying to find her house. I'm trying to find where she lived.'
'Why? So you can get to Oz?' A smile.
Jonathan paused. 'It's that dumb. Yes.' Something seemed to swell in the air between them. 'I haven't got that long,' he said.
'Oh,' she said. 'I see.'
'I'm dying,' he said.
'Mmmm hmmm,' she said, pressing her lips tightly inward.
'And,' he said with a singsong sigh, 'I don't know that I'm going to find her. But I do reckon that I might stay here.'
'In Manhattan. How come?'
'I don't want to go back to L.A.,' he said, and started to tell her about NPR, and a British pop group called It's Immaterial, and how he loved their single, 'Driving Away from Home.' He told her about Ira, his friend, how they had lived together for years, and then had a fight. Dimly he realized that she might guess what he was dying of, but he didn't care suddenly. He felt like a scarf tied to a fence post, blowing in a hot wind. His words were hot.
The scarf came untied.
'It's like Gilgamesh,' he said. 'She goes to find the Wizard, like Gilgamesh tries to find… find… this Noah character and… and… and the Wizard is like a king because he and the land are the same thing, Oz and Oz, they have the same name and when he leaves in a balloon it's like his big bald head, and the land dies, and… and… and Dorothy is… goes to the Netherworld to find life. She goes to the Land of the Dead.'
He was raving. It felt good to rave. He finally found words. 'She goes to the Land of the Dead to find Life. Isn't that dumb? Why can't we find it here?' It seemed to him a very reasonable question, asked in the spirit of inquiry.
'You're scaring me,' said Angel.
Jonathan seemed to settle back. He touched his own forehead and it felt burning even to him. 'Sorry,' he murmured.
'Maybe if I read to you some more?'
Angel rattled through the pages. The plain Kansas voice spoke.
' 'My sister would never be held down. She was small and pretty, like something in a music box. People were always asking her to sing. I remember that if she liked something, she would try to give it away. She would wrap it up, sometimes even with her best hair ribbons and give it to me, or Father, or the neighborhood gals. And she'd wait and watch as we opened up her gift.
' 'The life of a farmer's wife would never have suited her. I know my father wanted her to be a schoolteacher. When she ran away to St. Louis, he was very unhappy. He need not have been. She became, I am informed, even more beautiful. How I wish now that I could have visited the refined places in which she performed, to see her success, to hear the fine gentlemen, the appreciative ladies, applaud.
' 'After the Angel of Death descended, an exhalation of my sister's perfume was sent to us, a sweet child, her daughter, Dorothy.' '
Jonathan went still on the bed, unable to move
' 'This little girl became a new source of happiness to us. I learned then what I know now, that childhood is the source of all happiness. We remember joy when reminded of our lost years.' '
'Where?' whispered Jonathan. 'Where is she?'
'Oh,' said Angel and stopped. 'You think it's her?'
'What's her name? The name of the author?'
Angel turned the wad of papers over in her hand. No name on the front. There was handwriting at the end of the manuscript.
'All it says is that this was retyped, but that most of the papers were lost in the 1903 flood. But, here, at the back it says the author was E. A. Branscomb.'
'That's her, that's her.' Jonathan nodded. He looked at Angel. 'I'm not making this up, am I?'
'Don't think so,' she said and passed him the papers.
He flipped through them, scanning. 'Do you remember her saying anything about where the farm was?'
'She mentions the Kaw.' Angel shrugged.
'She's got to tell us where she lived!' he exclaimed.
Something stopped him dead on a page before he knew consciously what he had seen. He stopped dead, and seemed to see the word 'School' and then read:
I felt as blessed as my little charge to have had Miss Ida Francis for a schoolteacher, and Sunflower School so close at hand.
'I got her!' whispered Jonathan.
And then there was a knock, and Bill Davison came in. 'Hello, I saw the note in the office,' Bill began, to Angel.
