They came down from the mountains in their cheap suits and clip-on bow ties, trying to sell encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners to the people of the plains. Without success, of course, because down here it was a different era, with new technologies and new sensibilities. The salesmen from the mountains were mystified by it all, but they were working on commission and had to persevere. As to what became of them, who can say? With their too-pale skin, bulging eyes, and rapid, almost birdlike speech, it's unlikely they could have been seamlessly assimilated into the local populace. It may be that they simply faded out of existence, by some process that is not well understood.

That was before the Great Lakes. I'm speaking of the Lake family of Lincoln, Nebraska and not of those hoary old buggers Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior, which are of course not only incredibly ancient but also actual bodies of water, not a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who somehow - purely by accident, no doubt - hit on a scheme involving land use permits and used cooking oil which made them richer than Croesus.

Wally Lake was the last of them, and he came along after the money was gone. He was my father. Or maybe my uncle. I forget. It's possible we weren't even related. It's possible he was a largemouth bass or something, not even a human being. But in my failing, unreliable memory he appears vaguely as a sort of father figure, in a loud plaid sports coat, with a cigar in his mouth and a floozie (definitely not my mother!... but then again, how can I be sure?) on his arm. He looked a little like a dad, I guess - not the kind you can depend on, but the kind who rolls in and out of your life, bringing presents and domestic unrest.

Once, when I was very young or very stupid or both, I went with Wally Lake on a long car trip. We stayed in a big hotel made of logs, with overstuffed furniture in the cathedral-sized lobby and animal heads on the walls. I seem to recall that Wally Lake loved the place. It was right up his alley. Me, I thought it smelled funny. In those days I was obsessed by peculiar odors.

They had a museum there, all about those sad pale salesmen of long ago. Perhaps the hotel was situated in those very mountains the salesmen had once come down from. It was a cramped, unlovely museum, seldom visited, in a room just off the lobby. The glass on the exhibit cases was dusty, the items within inconsequential and unilluminating - a moth-eaten bowtie, a black comb with flakes of dandruff, an empty samples case. It was as if a deliberate attempt had been made to ensure that no one learned anything, that in fact everyone left with any curiosity they might have possessed about those salesmen not only unsatisfied but somehow permanently extinguished. Nevertheless, I spent hours in that museum trying to get to the bottom of it all.

I felt like there must be a clue there somewhere - to what, I did not know. Besides, I was bored out of my mind in that big hotel. There were no other children and nothing in the way of recreational activities. The guests - what few guests there were - would just sit around in the lobby or, on those rare days when it wasn't raining or too cold, in big Adirondack chairs out on the veranda in the back, with its unspectacular view of the salt marshes and the old refinery. I think most days Wally Lake would sneak away to a card game or something of that ilk - unsavory, possibly illegal - up in one of the rooms, leaving me to my own devices. He was no prize, that Wally Lake.

I am happy to report that even if he was my father I do not take after him. Not in any way that I'm aware of, at least. One day I wandered out into the salt marshes. That was forbidden, of course. There were signs with stern warnings. A small boy could easily topple into one of those deep black pools and that would be that. There was no one around to actually prevent you from going, however. It's strange that I would have gone out there. I was not an adventurous child, and I did not really care for the out-of-doors. I think I had found something in the museum, something I thought was a clue (again, to what I do not know), which made me decide I had to seek out that old refinery, whose dark shape was visible from every window in the hotel. For some reason, I did not leave until late in the afternoon. Perhaps I was frightened of this errand and resisted it as long as I could, but I knew that this would be my last opportunity. We were leaving the next day. Wally Lake knew a woman of loose morals in Saginaw, and that's where we were headed next. (I don't think we ever made it to Saginaw, but that's another story. If there ever really is more than one story.) I was not dressed for the cold or the wet. I was wearing shorts and red sandals. I had on a polo shirt with the insignia of my school, which made me feel important. They didn't let just anybody into that school, I had been assured on numerous occasions. Whenever I wore that shirt, it seemed just conceivable that I might be somebody. I set out across the marsh with a mixture of fear and self-criticism. I knew I had left it too late. I almost wanted someone to stop me. The guests on the veranda saw me go, I'm sure, and not one tried to interfere. Perhaps they had disinterestedly watched as any number of hapless children\nhad ventured out into the marsh and disappeared forever. Perhaps they made wagers on which of us would survive, to pass the time. Do I judge these faceless, long dead hotel guests too harshly? I wouldn't put it past me. The trails across the marsh were confusing, untrustworthy. They would start off leading in one direction and then slowly, unnoticeably veer off in another. A trail would seem definitive - wide, well-trodden - and then peter out, leaving you surrounded by water and forced to backtrack. I had not gotten far before the fog rolled in, as it usually did in the late afternoons. The refinery turned ghostly and then disappeared entirely. I think I made up my mind to turn back, but by then I didn't know which way back was.

I'm sure I would have lost heart, had I not lost heart a long, long time before this, in the genuinely irretrievable days of earliest childhood. And then, all of a sudden, there it was - the refinery! Its huge hulk rose up before me, so close that it seemed impossible that I had been unable to see it at all just a moment before. It was not inviting, that haunted-looking monstrosity of steel and concrete, long abandoned, rusting away. Why in the name of God had I come here?

What was I hoping to find? I entered the refinery, although I no longer had any wish to do so. What can I tell you about that place? I think my actual memories have been corrupted by later nightmares. There were steep, dangerously rusted steel stairs rising to long catwalks spanning cavernous spaces. There was an intricate interweaving of pipes running between huge tanks. There were broken machines of uncertain purpose. There were once-colorful, now faded murals of happy children playing amid giant, cartoony flowers. When you looked closely you saw that the children were all mutants, with two heads or extra limbs, as if the owners of the place had wanted to show there was nothing to fear from the genetic havoc its toxic effluents were unleashing. You must know by now that nothing happened in the refinery. Nothing at all. A dark figure did not step out from the shadows, nor did a strange little girl beckon me to follow her up ladders to the top of the highest tower where I would feel an irresistible urge to jump. It was, after all, just an abandoned refinery out in the middle of some salt marshes. It wasn't haunted. It wasn't a portal. It offered no revelations.

It was very late when I got back to the hotel, but it looked like every single light in the whole place was on. In the drive I could see the flashing blue lights of police cars - or whatever passed for police in those remote parts. Naturally I assumed that all the fuss was about me. Wally Lake had become alarmed when he finally emerged bleary-eyed and broke from his card game (or whatever) at midnight and found the roll-away bed in our small room empty. After he roused the staff and a thorough search of the premises turned up nothing, the authorities had been alerted... But no. It was not about me. I don't suppose it ever will be. No one had noticed that I was missing. Least of all Wally Lake, whose lifeless body lay sprawled on top of a rose bush just at the edge of the veranda, looking as if he had plummeted from the window of an upper floor of the hotel. Pushed or jumped, it would be up to the investigators to decide. Investigators who would have to be summoned from a nearby metropolis, because the local constabulary had neither the expertise or the resources to handle such a baffling case... But no. Wally Lake could not have been dead, because I remember that we left the hotel as planned the next morning - well, perhaps not precisely as planned, because shortly after I fell into that roll-away bed at the crack of dawn, utterly exhausted, Wally Lake roused me with a finger to his lips and told me to pack, quickly, quickly. We slipped out of the hotel via the back stairs and were on our way. Of course, maybe that had been the plan all along.

So the lights, the cop cars - what was that about? Well, as I warily entered the hotel, embarrassed to have been the cause of so much commotion, I was approached by the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. No, not the most beautiful exactly, but the most striking. Like one of those fashion models where you can't decide whether they're incredibly beautiful or incredibly ugly. She wore a white silk blouse and tan riding breeches, with high black boots. She looked like Katherine Hepburn playing an heiress in a 30s movie, except for the standard-issue police revolver strapped to her hip. "Hello there, my young friend," she said kindly but awkwardly, clearly unused to speaking with children. "I'm Sheriff Simms. May I ask, what brings you into this fine establishment at this ungoldy (that's not a typo, she did say 'ungoldy') hour of the night? You're a minor, if I'm not mistaken, and therefore I assume two in the morning is past your usual bedtime. Not that I would know." She proceeded to launch into a lengthy explanation of why she had never wanted offspring, or, rather, perhaps she had, at one time, or at least she'd thought she wanted them, but then her life had taken a different turn. It was too bad, I thought - she would have made someone a very interesting mother. Finally she circled back to the point at hand. Did I know anything about what had happened inthe museum? The museum, it turned out, had been thoroughly vandalized - the glass cases smashed, indecipherable graffiti sprayed all over the walls. Many of the exhibits had been defaced or stolen. A mannequin which had formerly displayed the salemen's signature outfit - white shirt, bow tie, cheap suit, sensible shoes - now wore a floral dress and a clown mask. Sheriff Simms could not imagine who could have perpetrated such a senseless crime - especially since the museum was due to be closed shortly, to be replaced by a gift shop. Fortunately she did not suspect me. She could tell that I was a sensitive child, no mischief-maker or delinquent. The way she said it, this was no compliment. She clearly had no respect for those who obeyed the rules merely out of fear or lack of imagination. After a brief interrogation, punctuated by more reflections on the unexpected directions her life had taken, she returned me to my room.

Much later, I learned from a magazine article - it was about something totally different, but it mentioned the case in passing - that the crime had eventually been solved, at least to the satisfaction of the authorities. A Mrs. Johns, a middle-aged widow resident of a town five miles distant from the hotel, had been apprehended trying to sell a stained clip-on bowtie to an antique shop in Bisbee, Arizona. When questioned, she said the tie had come from a man who had approached her in a roadside diner and with whom she subsequently had a brief assignation at a nearby motel. Afterward, he had given her the bowtie as a memento of their dalliance and told her of its significance as a relic of those vanished salesmen, of whom she had heard as a child. But no evidence of this man could be found, so Mrs. Johns was charged and convicted of felony vandalism and petit larceny. At the time the article was written, she was still serving out a five-year sentence, but she had found Jesus and was active in a prison ministry. The author of the article, if you read between the lines, was skeptical of Mrs. Johns's guilt. So was I.

So was I.