The Garden of Last Days
Page 45
She stared at her garden and tried not to think of anything. Just to see it. Its beauty here for as long as she was, as long as she cared for it.
A lizard flitted over the brickwork into the ferns. One of them trembled, then went still. The cat just stared after it as if she were through chasing things. Then another fern moved, and Jean’s cat shot into them and she couldn’t see her anymore, just heard her, her frantic search in the garden.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to the following people who were most generous with their time and expertise: Professor Peter Whelan of Francis Marion University, Parkie Jones, Gale Brunault, Robin Pearson Cogan, Lieutenant Blair Waller of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Deptartment, Rema Badwan, Joel Gotler, Rick Taylor, Gunner Davis, Kerrie Clapp, my brother Jeb Dubus, Bill Cantwell, Stephen Haley, Jim Champoux, and Joseph Hurka; Pin Print technician Shannon Conrad, and JoEllyn Rackleff, press secretary at the Florida Department of Corrections.
I am deeply indebted to the Guggenheim Foundation for its support. And I thank my agent, Philip Spitzer, for his patience and good cheer, as well as my tenacious and persevering editor, Alane Salierno Mason. Finally, I thank my wife, Fontaine, for the gift of her faith.
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Copyright © Andre Dubus III 2008
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Collected Poems 1909–1962 copyright © 2002 by the Estate of T. S. Eliot and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by William Heinemann
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