A Place to Write—in Spring

It's a little cabin in the mountains above Los Angeles. A place to shirk responsibiities and work on my novels.

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Early spring is all tulips, lilac blooms, cherry and apple blossoms.

Later spring has cosmos, columbine, goldenrod, and pine pollen -- a chartreuse dust that gets everywhere.

I wrote these lines up at the cabin from my book The Ghastly Year, Chapter Twenty-Six

April 1961

America

“And that, muzais puisits, is how I learned to make this tea,” Kārlis Pērkons said. He collected the empty teacup, and turned off the bedside lamp. “Feeling better?”

The flushed face bobbed as Kārlis moved toward the door.

“Wait, Uncle Kārlis,” came the high voice from the pillow. “Is Latvia a real place?”

 Kārlis stopped midstride. “Of course it’s real,” he said. “Why would you even ask me that?”

“The Mysterious Island’s not a real place.” His nephew sat up, putting a small hand on the Jules Verne tome Kārlis often read. “No one at school has heard about Latvia, not even my teacher.”

Kārlis struggled to find the right words. Events from his former life were still vivid enough to wake him in a midnight sweat. “It’s real all right.”

“So is Tante Agata still alive?” the little boy asked. “Did Lileja marry Hugo after you left? Did Peters ever come back?”

“I don’t know,” Kārlis said, “but I search every issue of the Exile Examiner for news.”

“Can’t you write and find out?”

“If they received a letter from someone in America,” Kārlis said, “they would be arrested for spying.”

“Just for getting a letter?” The boy stared, wide-eyed. “That’s not proof. Then anybody could be arrested.”

Kārlis leaned against the doorjamb with a sigh. Compared to his hulking frame, everything in the room seemed small. Stilts. Rockets. Dinosaurs. How could a little boy possibly understand? “Sounds crazy,” he said with a half-hearted shrug. “But I promise you, it’s real.”

“Then where did Grandfather bury the treasure?”

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