nt out
to look, at the storm, the dark water, the impenetrable sky.

Back of me was America, flattened out like a map in my imagination, lost
and sunk like old Atlantis. I sent my mind across it from New York to
Chicago, from Chicago to California. What was it? Earth, a continent
containing an embattled and disappointed Douglas, millions of struggling
people. Ahead of me, over thousands of miles of water, an unknown Italy.
I lived over all my life, but mostly now all my life with Dorothy, from
those first days in Jacksonville when I was under a cloud because of
Zoe and the killing of Lamborn, to our days in Nashville; the ecstasy
of first love, our walks and restings among the Cumberland hills, the
kindness of Mother Clayton, her joy when she learned that Dorothy had
consented to become my wife. I saw again the face of Jackson, his eyes,
his reverence when he kissed the brow of Dorothy; his tears and his
feeble step when he walked away from us. And I lived over early Chicago,
all my days with Douglas. Where was he now on that flattened, negligible
map called America? In what soil had Zoe moldered into the earth? What
had become of Fortescue? Where were Abigail and Aldington, Reverdy,
Sarah, this night? How could the millions storming over slavery and war,
territories, sugar and cotton and iron, gold and railways think of these
things if they were face to face with a reality as stark as I was, in a
boat rolled by dark water, tossing forward toward Europe and with a
burden like the dead body of Dorothy? All this night I walked the deck.
I saw the dawn come up, ragged and blue, patched with dark clouds, which
the wind drove close to the mounting waves.

The captain ordered an autopsy. Dorothy had died of heart failure. Then
there was to be a burial at sea. In the afternoon the clouds lifted from
the sky. Toward the west the sun burned over the water, making a wake of
fire from the boat to the utmost horizon. I took a last look at Dorothy,
kissed her cold brow. Then she was wrapped with sheets on a plank
weighted with iron, and taken to the stern of the boat. I stood near to
see it all, with little Reverdy weeping as if his heart would break.

The body is cast into the water, and in the very golden wake of the sun.
I cannot hear the splash; I only see a slight flap of the sheet. The
water closes over instantly. A gull frightened into a slight veering off
turns to the spot where Dorothy has disappeared. No ripples to mark t