"What's the matter with Samaritan? That's a good hospital," Peggy said stroking Lida Louise's forehead.

"No, it isn't," Rudford said, looking straight ahead, warding off any possible side glance from Black Charles.

The car turned into Fenton Street and pulled up in front of Jefferson Memorial Hospital. Rudford jumped out again, followed this time by Peggy.

There was the same kind of reception desk inside, but there was a man instead of a nurse sitting at it--an attendant in a white duck suit. He was reading a newspaper.

"Please. Hurry. We got a lady outside in the car that's dying. Her appendix is busted or something. Hurry, willya?"

The attendant jumped to his feet, his newspaper falling to the floor. He followed right on Rudford'd heels.

Rudford opened the front door of the car, and stood away. The attendant looked in at Lida Louise, pale and in agony, lying across the front seat with her head on Black Charles's head.

"Oh. Well, I'm not a doctor myself. Wait just a second."

"Help us carry her in," Rudford yelled.

"Just be a minute," the attendant said. "I'll call the resident surgeon." He walked off, entering the hospital with one hand in his jacket pocket--for poise.

Rudford and Peggy let go of the awkward carry-hold they already had on Lida Louise. Redford leading, they both ran after the attendant. They reached him just as he got to his switchboard. Two nurses were standing around, and a woman with a boy who was wearing a mastoid dressing.

"Listen. I know you. You don't wanna take her. Isn't that right?"

"Wait just a min-ute, now. I'm callin' up the resident surgeon...Let go my coat, please. This is a hospital, sonny."

"Don't call him up," Rudford said through his teeth. "Don't call up anybody. We're gonna take her to a good hospital. In Memphis." Half-blinded, Rudford swung crazily around. "C'mon, Peggy."

But Peggy stood some ground, for a moment. Shaking violently, she addressed everybody in the reception lobby: "Damn you! Damn you all!"

Then she ran after Rudford.

The car started up again. But it never reached Memphis. Not even halfway to Memphis.

It was like this: Lida Louise's head was on Rudford's lap. So long as the car kept moving, her eyes were shut.

Then abruptly, for the first time, Black Charles stopped for a red light. While the car was motionless, Lida Louise opened her eyes and looked up at Rudford. "Endicott?" she said.

The boy looked down at her and answered, almost at the top of his voice, "I'm right here, Honey!"

Lida Louise smiled, closed her eyes, and died.

A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that's about all.

Rudford and Peggy attended Lida Loiuse's funeral. The following morning Rudford went away to boarding school. He didn't see Peggy again for fifteen years. During his first year at boarding school, his father moved to San Fransisco, re-married and stayed there. Rudford never returned to Agersburg.

He saw Peggy again in early summer of 1942. He had just finished a year of internship in New York. He was waiting to be called into the Army.

One afternoon he was sitting in the Palm Room of the Biltmore Hotel, waiting for his date to show up. Somewhere behind him a girl was very audibly giving away the plot to a Taylor Caldwell novel. The girl's voice was Southern, but not swampy and not blue-grass and not even particularly drawly. It sounded to Rudford very much like a Tennessee voice. He turned to look. The girl was Peggy. He didn't even have to take a second look.

He sat for a minute wondering what he would say to her; that is if he were to get up and go over to her table--a distance of fifteen years. While he was thinking, Peggy spotted him. No planner, she jumped up and went over to his table. "Rudford?"

"Yes..." He stood up.

Without embarrassment, Peggy gave him a warm, if glancing kiss.

They sat down for a minute at Rudford's table and told each other how incredible it was that they had recognized each other, and how fine they both looked. Then Rudford followed her back to her table. Her husband was sitting there.

The husband's name was Richard something, and he was a Navy flier. He was eight feet tall, and he had some theater tickets or flying goggles or a lance in one of his hands. Had Rudford brought a gun along, he would have shot Richard dead on the spot.

They all sat down at an undersized table and Peggy asked ecstatically, "Rudford, do you remember that house on Miss Packer's Street?"

"I certainly do."

"Well, who do you think's living in it now? Iva Hubbel and her husband!"

"Who?" said Rudford.

"Iva Hubbel! You remember her. She was in our class. No chin? Always snitched on everybody?"

"I think I do," Rudford said. "Fifteen years though," he added pointedly.

Peggy turned to her husband and lengthily brought him up to date on the house on Miss Packer's Street. He listened with an iron smile.

"Rudford," Peggy said suddenly. "What about Lida Louise?"

"How do you mean, Peggy?"

"I don't know. I think about her all the time." She didn't turn to her husband with an explanation. "Do you too?" she asked Rudford.

He nodded. "Sometimes, anyway."

"I played her records all the time when I was in college. Then some crazy drunk stepped on my 'Soupy Peggy.' I cried all night. I met a boy, later, that was in Jack Teagarden's band, and he had one, but he wouldn't sell it to me or anything. I didn't even get to hear it again."

"I have one."

"Honey," Peggy's husband interrupted softly, "I don't wanna interrupt, but you know how Eddie gets. I told him we'd be there and all."

Peggy nodded. "Do you have it with you?" she asked. "In New York?"

"Well, yes, it's at my aunt's apartment. Would you like to hear it?"

"When?" Peggy demanded.

"Well, whenever you---"

"Sweetie. Excuse me. Look. It's three thirty now. I mean---"

"Rudford," Peggy said, "we have to run. Look. Could you call me tomorrow? We're staying here at the hotel. Could you? Please," Peggy implored, slipping into the jacket her husband was crowding around her shoulders.

Rudford left Peggy with a promise to phone her in the morning.

He never phoned her, though, or saw her again.

In the first place, he almost never played the record for anybody in 1942. It was terribly scratchy now. It didn't even sound like Lida Louise any more.

Hapworth 16, 1924.

by J.D. Salinger.

Some comment in advance, as plain and bare as I can make it: My name, first, is Buddy Glass, and for a great many years of my life--very possibly all forty-six--I have felt myself installed, elaborately wired, and occasionally, plugged in, for the purpose of shedding some light on the short, reticulate life and times of my late, eldest brother, Seymour Glass, who died, committed suicide, opted to discontinue living, back in 1948, when he was thirty-one.

I intend, right now, probably on this same sheet of paper, to make a start at typing up an exact copy of a letter of Seymour's that, until four hours ago, I had never read before in my life. My mother, Bessie Glass, sent it up by registered mail.

This is Friday. Last Wednesday night, over the phone, I happened to tell Bessie that I had been working for several months on a long short story about a particular party, a very consequential party, that she and Seymour and my father and I all went to one night in 1926. This last fact has some small but, I think, rather marvelous relevance to the letter at hand. Not a nice word, I grant you, "marvelous," but it seems to suit.

No further comment, except to repeat that I mean to type up an exact copy of the letter, word for word, comma for comma. Beginning here, May 28, 1965.

Camp Simon Hapworth.

Hapworth Lake Hapworth, Maine Hapworth 16, 1924, or quite.

in the lap of the gods!!

Dear Bessie, Les, Beatrice, Walter, and Waker:.

I will write for us both, I believe, as Buddy is engaged elsewhere for an indefinite period of time. Surely sixty to eighty per cent of the time, to my eternal amusement and sorrow, that magnificent, elusive, comical lad is engaged elsewhere! As you must know in your hearts and bowels, we miss you all like sheer hell. Unfortunately, I am far from above hoping the case is vice versa. This is a matter of quite a little humorous despair to me, though not so humorous. It is entirely disgusting to be forever achieving little actions of the heart or body and then taking recourse to reaction. I am utterly convinced that if A's hat blows off while he is sauntering down the street, it is the charming duty of B to pick it up and hand it to A without examining A's face or combing it for gratitude! My God, let me achieve missing my beloved family without yearning that they quite miss me in return! It requires a less wishy-washy character than the one available to me. My God, however, on the other side of the ledger, it is a pure fact that you are utterly haunting persons in simple retrospect! How we miss every excitable, emotionable face among you! I was born without any great support in the event of continued absence of loved ones. It is a simple, nagging, humorous fact that my independence is skin deep, unlike that of my elusive, younger brother and fellow camper.

While bearing in mind that my loss of you is very acute today, hardly bearable in the last analysis, I am also snatching this stunning opportunity to use my new and entirely trivial mastery of written construction and decent sentence formation as explained and slightly enriched upon in that small book, alternately priceless and sheer crap, which you saw me pouring over to excess during the difficult days prior to our departure to this place. Though this is quite a terrible bore for you, dear Bessie and Les, superb or suitable construction of sentences holds some passing, amusing importance for a young fool like myself! It would be quite a relief to rid my system of fustian this year. It is in danger of destroying my possible future as a young poet, private scholar, and unaffected person. I beg you both, and perhaps Miss Overman, should you drop by at the library or run into her at your leisure, to please run a cold eye over all the fellows and then notify me immediately if you uncover any glaring or merely sloppy errors in fundamental construction, grammar, punctuation, or excellent taste. Should you indeed run into Miss Overman by accident or design, please ask her to be merciless and deadly toward me in this little matter, assuring her amiably that I am sick to death of the wide gap of embarrassing differences, among other things, between my writing and speaking voices! It is rotten and worrisome to have two voices. Also please extend to that gracious, unsung woman my everlasting love and respect. Would to God that you, my acknowledged loved ones, would cease and cut out thinking of her in your minds as a fuddy duddy. She is far from being a fuddy duddy. In her disarming, modest way, that little bit of woman has quite a lot of the simplicity and dear fortitude of an unrecorded heroine of the Civil or Crimean War, perhaps the most moving wars of the last few centuries. My God, please take the slight trouble to remember that this worthy woman and spinster has no comfortable home in the present century! The current century, unfortunately, is a vulgar embarrassment to her from the word go!

In her heart of hearts, she would zestfully live out her remaining years as a charming, intimate neighbor of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, continually being approached by those unequally delicious heroines of "Pride and Prejudice" for sensible and worldly advice. She is not even a librarian at heart, unfortunately. At all events, please offer her any generous specimen of this letter that does not look too personal or vulgar to you, prevailing on her at the same time not to pass too heavy judgment on my penmanship again. Frankly, my penmanship is not worth the wear and tear on her patience, dwindling energies, and very shaky sense of reality. Also frankly, while my penmanship will improve a little as I grow older, looking less and less like the expression of a demented person, it is mostly beyond redemption. My personal instability and too much emotion will ever be plainly marked in every stroke of the pen, quite unfortunately.

Bessie! Les! Fellow children! God Almighty, how I miss you on this pleasant, idle morning! Pale sunshine is streaming through a very pleasing, filthy window as I lie forcibly abed here. Your humorous, excitable, beautiful faces, I can assure you, are suspended before me as perfectly as if they were on delightful strings from the ceiling! We are both in very satisfactory health, Bessie sweetheart. Buddy is eating quite beautifully when the meals are stomachable. While the food itself is not atrocious, it is cooked without a morsel of affection or inspiration, each string bean and simple carrot arriving on the camper's plate quite stripped if its tiny vegetal soul. The food situation could change in a trice, to be sure, if Mr.

and Mrs. Nelson, the cooks, man and wife, a very hellish marriage from casual appearances, would only dare to imagine that every boy who comes into their mess hall is their own beloved child, regardless of from whose loins he sprang into this particular appearance. However, if you had the racking opportunity of chatting for a few minutes with these two persons, you would quite know this is like asking for the moon. A nameless inertia hangs over these two, alternating with fits of unreasonable wrath, stripping them of any will or desire to prepare creditable, affectionate food or even to keep the bent silverware on the tables spotless and clean as a whistle. The sight of the forks alone often whips Buddy into a raw fury. He is working on this tendency, but a revolting fork is a revolting fork. Also, past a certain important, touching point, I am far from liberty to tamper with that splendid lad's furies, considering his age and stunning function in life.

On second thought, please do say anything to Miss Overman about my penmanship. It is best for her daily and hourly position to dwell or harp on my rotten penmanship to her heart's content. I am inutterably in that good woman's debt! She has been meticulously trained by the Board of Education.

Quite unfortunately, my rotten penmanship, coupled with the subject of the late hours I enjoy keeping, are very often the only grounds for discussion she finds thoroughly comfortable and familiar. I do not yet know where I have failed her in this respect. I suspect I got us off on the wrong foot when I was younger by allowing her think I am a very serious boy simply because I am an omnivorous reader. Unwittingly, I have left her no decent, human notions that ninety-eight per cent of my life, thank God, has nothing to do with the dubious pursuit of knowledge. We sometimes exchange little persiflages at her desk or while we are stepping over to the card catalogues, but they are very false persiflages, quite without decent bowels. It is very burdensome to us both to have regular communication without bowels, human silliness, and the common knowledge, quite delightful and enlivening in my opinion, that everybody seated in the library has a gall bladder and various other, touching organs under their skin. There is much more to the question than this, but I cannot pursue it profitably today. My emotions are too damnably raw today, I fear. Also the precious five of you are innumerable miles from this place and it is always too damned easy to fail to remember how little I can stand useless separations.

While this is often a very stimulating and touching place, I personally suspect that certain children in this world, like your magnificent son Buddy as well as myself, are perhaps best suited to enjoying this privilege only in a dire emergency or when they know great discord in their family life.

But let me quickly pass on to more general topics. Oh, my God, I am relishing this leisurely communication!

The majority of young campers here, you will be glad to know, could not possibly be nicer or more heartrending from day to day, particularly when they are not thriving with suspicious bliss in cliques that insure popularity or dubious prestige. Few boys, thank God with a bursting heart, that we have run into here are not the very salt of the earth when you can exchange a little conversation with them away from their damn intimates.

Unfortunately, here as elsewhere on this touching planet, imitation is the watchword and prestige the highest ambition. It is not my business to worry about the general situation, but I am hardly made of steel. Few of these magnificent, healthy, sometimes remarkably handsome boys will mature. The majority, I will give you my heartbreaking opinion, will merely senesce. Is that a picture to tolerate in one's heart? On the contrary, it is a picture to rip the heart to pieces. The counselors themselves are counselors in name only. Most of them appear slated to go through their entire lives, from birth to dusty death, with picayune, stunted attitudes toward everything in the universe and beyond. This is a cruel and harsh statement, to be sure. It fails to be harsh enough! You think I am a kind fellow at heart, is that not so? God reward me with hailstones and rock, I am not! No single day passes that I do not listen to the heartless indifferences and stupidities passing from the counselors' lips without secretly wishing I could improve matters quite substantially by bashing a few culprits over the head with an excellent shovel or stout club! I would be less heartless, I am hoping, if the young campers themselves were not so damned heartrending and thrilling in their basic nature. Perhaps the most heartrending boy within sound of my ridiculous voice is Griffith Hammersmith. Oh, what a heartrending boy he is!

His very name brings the usual fluid to my eyes when I am not exercising decent control over my emotions; I am working daily on this emotional tendency while I am here, but I am doing quite poorly. Would to God that loving parents would wait and see their children at a practical age before they name them Griffith or something else that will by no means ease the little personality's burdens in life. My own first name "Seymour" was quite a gigantic, innocent mistake, for some attractive diminutive-like "Chuck" or even "Tip" or "Connie" might have been more comfortable for adults and teachers wont to address me in casual conversation; so I have some acquaintance with this petty problem. He, young Griffith Hammersmith, is also seven; however I am his senior by a brisk and quite trivial matter of three weeks. In the physical bulk, he is the smallest boy in the entire camp, being smaller, to one's amazement and sadness, than your magnificent son Buddy, despite the gross age difference of two years. His load in this appearance in the world is staggering. Please consider the following crosses the excellent, droll, touching, intelligent lad has to bear. Resign yourselves to ripping your hearts out by the roots!

A) He has a severe speech impediment. It amounts to far more than a charming lisp, his entire body stumbling at the brink of conversation, so counselors and other adults are not diverted.

B) This little child has to sleep with a rubber sheet on his bed for obvious reasons, similar to our own dear Waker, but quite different in the last analysis. Young Hammersmith's bladder has given up all hope of soliciting any interest or favor.

C) He has had nine (9) different toothbrushes since camp quite opened.

He buries or hides them in the woods, like a chap of three or four, or conceals them beneath the leaves and other crap under his bungalow.

This he does without humor or revenge or private relish. There is quite an element of revenge in it, but he is not at liberty to enjoy his revenge to the hilt or get any keen satisfaction out of it, so totally has his spirit been dampened or quite smothered by his relatives. The situation is thoroughly subtle and rotten, I assure you.

He, young Griffith Hammersmith, follows your two eldest sons around quite a bit, often pursuing us into every nook and cranny. He is excellent, touching, intelligent company when he is not being hounded by his past and present. His future, I am fairly sick to death to say, looks abominable. I would bring him home with us after camp is over in a minute, with complete confidence, joy, and abandon, were he an orphan. He has a mother, however, a young divorcee with an exquisite, swanky face slightly ravaged by vanity and self-love and a few silly disappointments in life, though not silly to her, we may be sure. One's heart and pure sensuality go out to her, we have found, even though she does have such a maddening, crappy job as a mother and woman. Last Sunday afternoon, a stunning day, utterly cloudless, she popped by and invited us to join her and Griffith for a spin in their imposing, ritzy Pierce-Arrow, to be followed by a snack at the Elms before returning.

We regretfully declined the invitation. Jesus, it was a frigid invitation! I have heard some stunning, frigid invitations in my time, but this one quite took the cake! I am hoping you would have been slightly amused by her utterly false, friendly gesture, Bessie, but I doubt it; you are not old enough, sweetheart! Not too deep in Mrs.

Hammersmith's transparent, slightly comical heart, she was keenly disappointed that we are Griffith's best friends at camp, her mind and admirably quick eye instantaneously preferring Richard Mace and Donald Weigmuller, two members of Griffith's own bungalow and more to her taste. The reasons were quite obvious, but I will not go into them in an ordinary, sociable letter to one's family. With the passage of time, I am getting used to this stuff; and your son Buddy, as you have ample reason to know, is no man's fool, despite his charming, tender age on the surface. However, for a young, attractive, bitter, lonely mother with all the municipal advantages of swanky, patrician, facial features, great monetary wealth, unlimited entree, and bejeweled fingers to show this kind of social disappointment in full view of her young son, a callow child already cursed with a nervous and lonely bladder, is fairly inexcusable and hopeless. Hopeless is too broad, but I see no solution on the horizon to damnable and subtle matters of this kind. I am working on it, but one must of necessity consider my youth and quite limited experience in this appearance.