It was a description of a character named Inkler. I couldn't make out some of the words, but essentially Inkler was an Austrian who decided to walk around the world. To raise money for his journey, he had picture postcards printed up of himself and the white bull terrier he would take along for company. Underneath the picture it stated Inkler's name, where he came from, what he intended on doing, how far it was (60,000 kilometers), that it would take four years, and that the card was his way of raising money for the trip. Would you please donate a little to this worthy cause?

There were notes on what he would look like, the name of the dog and what it looked like, which places they would pass through, and some of their adventures along the way. The entry was dated June 13, 1947.

I copied all of it down on my pad. For the first time, I felt I had really come across buried treasure. There was no Inkler in any of the France books, so I was one of the only people in the world who knew about this particular France creation. I was so greedy about it that for a moment or two I deliberated on whether or not to tell Saxony. It was mine and Marshall France's. Marshall's and mine…. But goodness prevailed and I told her. She was excited too, and we spent a happy second day in the library poring over all of the other books that he liked, according to the librarian. We made no other discoveries, but little friend Inkler would end up being quite enough to handle.

The next day, we were in the kitchen having breakfast when I wondlered out loud where France got the names for his characters. It was something I especially liked in his books.

Saxony was halfway through a piece of toast smothered in orange marmalade. She took another bite and mumbled, "The graveyard."

"What are you talking about?" I got up and poured myself another cup of the hideous chamomile tea she'd bought. My mother used to soak her feet in chamomile tea. But it was either drink that or else some kind of decaffeinated health-food coffee from Uranus that Saxony had gotten on Mrs. Fletcher's suggestion.

She brushed her hands together and a hail of breadcrumbs flew everywhere. "Yes, from the graveyard here. I took a walk through town the other day to get the lay of the land. There's a very nice church down past the post office that reminded me of one of those old English churches that you see in calendar pictures or on postcards. You know the kind – dark and dignified, a stone wall going around it…. I got interested, so I wandered up and noticed a small graveyard behind it. When I was a child I used to do a lot of gravestone rubbings, so I'm always interested in them."

Sitting down at the table, I wiggled my eyebrows up and down like Peter Lorre. "Hee… Hee. Heeee! So am I, my dear. Rats and spiders! Spiders and rats!"

"Oh, stop it, Thomas. Haven't you ever done stone rubbings? They're beautiful. Thomas, will you stop drooling? Your imitation is marvelous, okay? You're a wonderful vampire. Do you want to hear about this or not?"

"Yes, my dear."

She put two more pieces of whole-wheat bread into the toaster. The way she ate, I sometimes wondered if she had been starved in a previous existence.

"I was wandering around, but something was wrong, you know? Just off, or wrong, or not right. Then I realized what. All of the names that I saw there on the stones, or almost all of them, were the names of characters in The Night Races into Anna."

"Really?"

"That's right. Leslie Baker, Dave Miller, Irene Weigel… All of them were there."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. I was going to go back with a pad and write all the names down, but then I thought that you would probably want to go too, so I waited."

"Saxony, that is fantastic! Why didn't you tell me about it sooner?"

She reached over the table and took my hand. The longer we were together, the more it seemed that she liked to touch and be touched. Not always a sexy or loving touch, but just contact. A little electrical connection for a second or two to let the other know that you're there. I liked it too. But business was business and France business was big stuff, so I made her gulp down what was left of her toast and we headed out to the graveyard.

Fifteen minutes later we were standing in front of St. Joseph's Church. When I was little I had a lot of Catholic friends who crossed themselves whenever they went past their church. I didn't feel like being left out, so they taught me how, and I did it too whenever we went by the church together. I was with my mother one day in the car. She drove by St. Mary's, and like the good little Catholic I wasn't, I unconsciously crossed myself in full view of her horrified Methodist eyes. My analyst went crazy for weeks after that trying to dig out of me where the impulse came from.

While Saxony and I stood there, the front door opened and a priest came out of the building. He moved quickly down the steep stone steps and, giving us a clipped, formal nod, moved on by in a hurry. I turned and watched him slide into a burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Saxony started toward the church and I followed. It was an especially nice day. The air was cool and a strong wind had been gusting and whipping through the trees, raising summer dust everywhere. Overhead, it zipped all of the clouds by as if they were in a speeded-up movie. The sun was a sharp and clear seal in the middle of a cobalt-blue envelope.

"Are you coming? Don't worry, the little men under the graves won't bite you."

"Yes, ma'am." I caught up with her and took her hand.

"Look." She pointed to a gravestone with her foot.

"Hah! Brian Taylor. How do you like that! And look – Anne Megibow. Boy, they are all here. Why don't you start taking names down, Sax, and I'll have a look around."

To tell the truth, I wasn't happy with the discovery. Romantic or not, I wanted my heroes to be struck by inspiration in every aspect of their work. Stories, settings, characters, names… I wanted it all to be completely their own – to have come only from them; not a graveyard or a phone book or a newspaper. This somehow made France look too human.

Once in a while some crazily devoted fan got by the security guard at our house in California. My father's favorite story was the "Woman Who Rang the Doorbell." She rang it so long and hard that my old man thought that there was some kind of emergency. He made it a point never to answer the door, but this time he did. The woman, holding an eight-by-ten photo of him, took one look at her god and staggered back off the front step. "But why are you so short?" she wailed, and was dragged away in tears.

Saxony was right about the gravestones: they were intriguing and lovely in a sad way. The inscriptions told the stories of so much pain – babies born August 2, died August 4. Men and women whose children all died long before they did. It was so easy to envision a middle-aged couple sitting in a dumpy gray house somewhere, never talking to each other, pictures of all their dead sons and daughters on the mantelpiece. Maybe the woman even called her husband "Mister" for all the years that they were married.

"Thomas?"

I was setting a squat glass jar of flowers straight on someone's headstone when Saxony called. I guess that they had been orange marigolds once, but now they looked like tired little crepe-paper balls.

"Thomas, come here."

She was off on the other side of the graveyard, which sloped downward in her direction. She was squatting by one of the graves and balancing herself with one hand flat on the ground behind her. I got up from where I was, and my knees cracked like dry sticks of wood. Mr. Physical Fitness.

"I don't know if you're going to be very happy about this. Here's your friend Inkler."

"Oh no."

"Yes. Gert Inkler. Born 1913, died 19… Wait a second." She reached out and rubbed her hand across the face of the gray-pink stone. "Died in 1964. He wasn't that old."