Page 89

By Jack Joseph Smith

Not a great deal mind you; but I had touched some evil, called Honolulu and Hollywood Now the Western Oregon Monroe House had twelve foot high Bast'e Sheephearder ceilings The hundred year old brick fireplace crumbled, with my coming, gradual as sand, deep back against the flame The brass iron bed had no fancy about its ageless function of comfort in letting dying flesh drift well under the keepers WillS I must say that it is true That it was always on red wine That I saw his shoulders leaning At the long shadow line of the chandelier Each time he had his head bowed from the wall planks, as he stood streight up like an anatomy of reeds with an iron brain My chest was never far from my knees Till his fifth appearance Had me wind up the staircase With the spirit of his bidding It was as cold as a three-o'clock ghost, when the ghost is the dream you don't sleep There were no paintings on the way to awake And I could only peer for an Eastern new Moon as I closed the last top flight door But then with no lock the door let its latch and ruffled a bit to second shut at my back It seemed to feel sure that I would be able to remember: I went to the cord at the center; where just the socket hung But through that East window There was light on the palest green moss Strung still One hundred feet outside the glass where my root Autum garden bent low like little yellow hedges down to the unpruned plum trees before the Long Tom River

Original Scan

Page 89

AI Interpretation

GPT

The narrator recalls a Monroe house with high ceilings, a crumbling fireplace and an iron bed. After repeated appearances of a bowed figure, the narrator climbs the staircase and sees pale moss, an autumn garden and the Long Tom River through an east window.

The narrator associates the house with a dreamlike ghost and red wine, then ends with a view beyond the window. The sequence continues the house and ghost material on adjacent pages. Source spelling and cancellations shape this draft; the page does not establish a supernatural event or the author's biography.

Claude

A typed draft: 'Not a great deal mind you; / but I had touched some evil, / called Honolulu and Hollywood', the 'Western Oregon Monroe House' with its 'Bast'e Sheephearder ceilings', a ghost seen 'always on red wine', and the climb upstairs to 'the palest green moss' outside the window, ending 'the Long Tom River'.

A cleaner version of the ghost-house material, setting past 'evil' against the old house and its view.