what did she look like?
was she nekkid?
it's not a woman, it's a fish. no one ever catches her.
fish looks diff'rent to diff'rent people. my daddy said it looked like the coon dog he had when he was kid, back from the dead.
how old are you?
i'm eight. that means when i'm eighteen, you'll be 28. and when i'm 28, you'll only be 38.
and when i'm 38, you'll be 48. and that's not much difference at all.
how are you gonna make it without your shoes?
promise me you'll come back.
oh. oh.
i wasn't expecting you.
i am. and you're will. i've seen your picture, that's how i recognize you. i almost said something at the store, but it would have been awkward. like this.
listen, kenny. why don't we skip the lesson today? we can go again next week.
i won't tell her if you won't.
this was on his sales route, so he was through here all the time. everyone in town knew him.
wow. wow, you just said it. i was expecting to dance around this for another half hour.
can i ask you a question? why did you come here today? if you found this deed, why didn't you just ask eddie?
look, i don't know how much you want to know about any of this. you have one image of your father and it would be wrong for me to go and change it. especially this late in the game.
the first thing you have to understand, is that your father never meant to end up here. and yet he did, twice. the first time, he was early. the second time, he was late.
those days, your father was working for himself. if there was one thing you could say about edward bloom, it's that he was a social person, and people took a liking to him. one night he was returning from three weeks on the road, when he hit a thunderstorm unlike any in his life.
fate has a way of circling back on a man, and taking him by surprise.
a man sees things differently at different times in his life. this town didn't seem the same now that he was older.
a new road had brought the outside world to spectre, and with it, banks, liens and debt. almost everywhere you looked, people were bankrupt.
two different corporations were looking at buying the town, if they could get the price low enough. one wanted to open a chicken processing plant. the other, a municipal dump. either way, spectre would be destroyed.
and so edward bloom decided to buy the town, in order to save it.
he was never a wealthy man, but he had made other men rich, and now he asked for their favors.
most of them had never seen spectre -- they only had edward's words to describe it. that's all they needed. he sold them on the dream.
so first he bought the farms. then he bought the houses. then he bought the stores.
whatever he bought, the people were not asked to leave or pay rent or anything. they were just asked to keep doing as they were doing. in that way, he could make sure the town would never die.
within six months, his trust had purchased the entire town. with one exception.
you must be edward bloom.
no one would come out here unless they had business. and no one would have business with me except for you. you're buying the town.
so i've heard.
now let me get this straight. you'll buy the swamp from me, but i'll stay in it. you'll own the house, but it'll still be mine. i'll be here, and you'll come and go as you please to one place or another. do i have that right?
then i don't think so mr. bloom. if nothing is going to change, i'd just as soon it not change in the way it hasn't been changing all this time.
mr. bloom, why are you buying this land? some sort of midlife crisis? instead of buying a convertible, you buy a town?
i'm not convinced you should be happy.
no, you did exactly what you promised. you came back. i was just expecting you sooner.
i was 18. he was 28. turns out that was a big difference.
i won't be selling you this house, mr. bloom.
it's okay, just leave it.
please. go. just go.
go.
most men in that situation would accept their failure and move on. but edward was not like most men.
as the months passed, he found more and more things to fix, until the shack no longer resembled itself.
you can leave it there.
i know.
lucky girl.
wait! edward!
one day, edward bloom left, and never returned to the town he'd saved.
as for the girl, the common belief was that she'd become a witch, and crazy at that. she became something of a legend herself.
and the story ended where it began.
no, it's logical if you think like your father. see, to him, there's only two women: your mother and everyone else.
well, therapy. and one day i realized i was in love with a man who could never love me back. i was living in a fairy tale.
people aren't like they are in stories. they hurt each other without meaning to. they are kind and unbelievably cruel at the same moment. like me, now. i'm not sure i should have told you any of this.
i wanted to meet you for the longest time. i did. i envied you so much. the way eddie would talk about you when you were at missouri, that award you won. congratulations, incidentally. and when you got the job at the a.p., everything, he was so proud of you. i mean, that's the thing. every moment he loved you.
and as brightly as the sun would shine when he was with me, every time he left it disappeared. i wanted to be as important to him as you were, and i was never going to be. i was make-believe and his other life, you, were real.
you knew that, didn't you?