Danse Macabre   ::   Кинг Стивен

I can remember going dowsing as a kid with my Uncle Clayton, a real old Mainer if oneever lived. We walked out, my Uncle Clayt and I, he in his red-and-black-checked flannel shirt and his old green cap, me in my blue parka. I was about twelve; he might have been in his late forties or his late sixties. He had his dowsing rod under one arm, a wishboneshaped piece of applewood. Applewood was the best, he said, although birch would do in a pinch. There was also maple, but Uncle Clayt's scripture was that maple was the worst of the dowsing woods, because the grain wasn't true and it would lie if you let it.

At twelve, I was old enough not to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or dowsing. One of the odd things about our culture is that many parents seem honor-bound to lay all such lovely stories to rest in their children's minds as soon as possible-Dad and Mom may not be able to find time enough to help their little ones with their homework or to read them a story in the evening (let them watch TV instead, TV's a great sitter, lotsa good stories, let 'em watch TV), but they go to great pains to discredit poor old Santa and such wonders as dowsing and stumpwater-witchcraft. There's enough time for that. Somehow such parents find the fairy tales told on Gilligan's Island, The Odd Couple, and The Love Boa t more acceptable. God knows why so many adults have confused enlightenment with emotional and imaginational bank robbery, but they have; they cannot seem to rest content until the wonder has flickered and died out of their children's eyes.

*The thought is not original with me, but I'll be damned if I can remember who said it-so let me just credit that most prolific of writers, Mr. Author Unknown.

(He doesn't mean me, you're whispering to yourself right now-but sir or madam, I just might.) Most parents quite rightly recognize the fact that children are mad, in the classic sense of that word. But I'm not altogether sure that killing Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy is the same thing as "rationality." For children, the rationality of madness seems to work remarkably well. For one thing, it keeps the thing in the closet at bay.

Uncle Clayt had lost very little of that sense of wonder. Among his other amazing talents (amazing to me, at least) was the ability to line bees-that is, to spot a honeybee bumbling at a flower and then follow it back to its hive, tramping through woods, splashing through bogs, scrambling over deadfalls-his ability to roll his own cigarettes with one hand (always giving them that final eccentric twirl before sticking them into his mouth and lighting them with Diamond matches kept in a small waterproof cannister), and his seemingly endless fund of lore and tales . . .