A L etter from the C oast Seeking to smell utterly delightful, of far-flung oils and extravagant perfumes that together constitute the fact of my cachet, I arrived upon this unknown shore. A keen wind blew, as if released from a miniature giant’s coin purse; there lay, partly submerged in the sand, seashells as large as motorcycle sidecars; and I knew not my location amid the lagoons. Damn that coachman, who deposited me so unceremoniously at the riverhead! The sun above was dressed in tatters; and the crabs all scuttled to their parlor rooms. From my rucksack, I withdrew my pistol: a gift of my late employer’s daughter. “Oh, my darling Rebecca, if only I were with you now.” Yet, the pistol would not fire; its gearings, it seemed, were clotted with barnacles. I am more than anything a man of letters. I have with the power of will threaded licorice straws through the eye of a needle. Still, I heard the death knell of my fate echo along the coastline. I stumbled, lost to despair, mere kibble for the seabirds. In my trouser pocket, I found a crumpled sheaf of paper. I wrote my name upon it. I wrote, “Thomas Jefferson, a nobody.”
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