The Cullums were at one end of the seesaw; the Oswalds were at the other.

And Jake Epping, also known as George Amberson? He was the tipping point.

Toward the end of our marathon session, I won my first game. Three games later, at just a few minutes past four, I actually skunked him, and laughed with delight. Baby Jenna laughed right along with me, then leaned forward from her highchair and gave my hair a companionable tug.

“That’s it!” I cried, laughing. The three Cullums were laughing right along with me. “That’s the one I stop on!” I took out my wallet and laid three fifties down on the red-and-white checked oilcloth covering the kitchen table. “And worth every cent!” Andy pushed it back to my side. “Put it in your billfold where it belongs, George. I had too much fun to take your money.”

I nodded as if I agreed, then pushed the bills to Marnie, who snatched them up. “Thank you, Mr. Amberson.” She looked reproachfully at her husband, then back at me. “We can really use this.”

“Good.” I got up and stretched, hearing my spine crackle. Somewhere—five miles from here, maybe seven—Carolyn Poulin and her father were getting back into a pickemup with POULIN

CONSTRUCTION AND CARPENTRY painted on the door. Maybe they’d gotten a deer, maybe not. Either way, I was sure they’d had a nice afternoon in the woods, talking about whatever fathers and daughters talk about, and good for them.

“Stay for supper, George,” Marnie said. “I’ve got beans and hot-dogs.” So I stayed, and afterward we watched the news on the Cullums’ little table-model TV.

There had been a hunting accident in New Hampshire, but none in Maine. I allowed myself to be talked into a second dish of Marnie’s apple cobbler, although I was full to bursting, then stood and thanked them very much for their hospitality.

Andy Cullum put out his hand. “Next time we play for free, all right?”

“You bet.” There was going to be no next time, and I think he knew that.

His wife did, too, it turned out. She caught up to me just before I got into my car. She had swaddled a blanket around the baby and put a little hat on her head, but Marnie had no coat on herself. I could see her breath, and she was shivering.

“Mrs. Cullum, you should go in before you catch your death of c—”

“What did you save him from?”

“I beg pardon?”

“I know that’s why you came. I prayed on it while you and Andy were out there on the porch. God sent me an answer, but not the whole answer. What did you save him from?” I put my hands on her shivering shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Marnie . . . if God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you.”

Abruptly she put her arms around me and hugged me. Surprised, I hugged her back. Baby Jenna, caught in between, goggled up at us.

“Whatever it was, thank you,” Marnie whispered in my ear. Her warm breath gave me goosebumps.

“Go inside, hon. Before you freeze.”

The front door opened. Andy was standing there, holding a can of beer. “Marnie? Marn?” She stepped back. Her eyes were wide and dark. “God brought us a guardian angel,” she said. “I won’t speak of this, but I’ll hold it. And ponder it in my heart.” Then she hurried up the walk to where her husband was waiting.

Angel. It was the second time I’d heard that, and I pondered the word in my own heart, both that night while I lay in my cabin, waiting for sleep, and the next day as I drifted my canoe across still Sunday waters under a cold blue tilting-to-winter sky.

Guardian angel.

On Monday the seventeenth of November, I saw the first whirling flurries of snow, and took them as a sign. I packed up, drove down to Sebago Village, and found Mr. Winchell drinking coffee and eating doughnuts at the Lakeside Restaurant (in 1958, folks eat a lot of doughnuts). I gave him my keys and told him I’d had a wonderful, restorative time. His face lit up.

“That’s good, Mr. Amberson. That’s just how it’s s’posed to be. You’re paid until the end of the month. Give me an address where I can send you a refund for your last two weeks, and I’ll put a check in the mail.”

“I won’t be entirely sure where I’m going until the brass in the home office makes up its corporate mind,” I said, “but I’ll be sure to write you.” Time-travelers lie a lot.

He held out his hand. “Been a pleasure having you.”

I shook it. “The pleasure was all mine.”

I got in my car and drove south. That night I registered at Boston’s Parker House, and checked out the infamous Combat Zone. After the weeks of peace on Sebago, the neon jangled my eyes and the surging crowds of night prowlers—mostly young, mostly male, many wearing uniforms—made me feel both agoraphobic and homesick for those peaceful nights in western Maine, when the few stores closed at six and traffic dried up at ten.

I spent the following night at the Hotel Harrington, in D.C. Three days later I was on the west coast of Florida.

CHAPTER 12

1

I took US 1 south. I ate in a lot of roadside restaurants featuring Mom’s Home Cooking, places where the Blue Plate Special, including fruit cup to start and pie à la mode for dessert, cost eighty cents. I never saw a single fast-food franchise, unless you count Howard Johnson’s, with its 28 Flavors and Simple Simon logo. I saw a troop of Boy Scouts tending a bonfire of fall leaves with their Scoutmaster; I saw women wearing overcoats and galoshes taking in laundry on a gray afternoon when rain threatened; I saw long passenger trains with names like The Southern Flyer and Star of Tampa charging toward those American climes where winter is not allowed. I saw old men smoking pipes on benches in town squares. I saw a million churches, and a cemetery where a congregation at least a hundred strong stood in a circle around an open grave singing “The Old Rugged Cross.” I saw men building barns. I saw people helping people. Two of them in a pickup truck stopped to help me when the Sunliner’s radiator popped its top and I was broken down by the side of the road. That was in Virginia, around four o’clock in the afternoon, and one of them asked me if I needed a place to sleep. I guess I can imagine that happening in 2011, but it’s a stretch.

And one more thing. In North Carolina, I stopped to gas up at a Humble Oil station, then walked around the corner to use the toilet. There were two doors and three signs. MEN was neatly stenciled over one door, LADIES over the other. The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush-covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path, being careful to sidle at a couple of points where the oily, green-shading-to-maroon leaves of poison ivy were unmistakable. I hoped the dads and moms who might have led their children down to whatever facility waited below were able to identify those troublesome bushes for what they were, because in the late fifties most children wear short pants.