Just After Sunset(5)

"We need to go back and tell the others."

Her lips pressed together. "Why?"

"Because-"

Two men in cowboy hats led two laughing women in jeans, Western shirts, and ponytails toward their booth. As they neared it, an iden tical expression of puzzlement-not quite fear-touched their faces, and they headed back toward the bar instead. They feel us, David thought. Like cold air pushing them away-that's what we are now.

"Because it's the right thing to do."

Willa laughed. It was a weary sound. "You remind me of the old guy who used to sell the oatmeal on TV."

"Hon, they think they're waiting for a train to come and pick them up!"

"Well, maybe there is!" He was almost frightened by her sudden ferocity. "Maybe the one they're always singing about, the gospel train, the train to glory, the one that don't carry no gamblers or midnight ramblers..."

"I don't think Amtrak runs to heaven," David said. He was hoping to make her laugh, but she looked down at her hands almost sullenly, and he had a sudden intuition. "Is there something else you know? Something we should tell them? There is, isn't there?"

"I don't know why we should bother when we can just stay here," she said, and was that petulance in her voice? He thought it was. This was a Willa he had never even suspected. "You may be a little nearsighted, David, but at least you came. I love you for that." And she kissed him again.

"There was a wolf, too," he said. "I clapped my hands and scared it off. I'm thinking of changing my name to Wolf Frightener."

She stared at him for a moment with her mouth open, and David had time to think: I had to wait until we were dead to really surprise the woman I love. Then she dropped against the padded back of the booth, roaring with laughter. A waitress who happened to be passing dropped a full tray of beers with a crash and swore colorfully.

"Wolf Frightener!" Willa cried. "I want to call you that in bed! 'Oh, oh, Wolf Frightener, you so big! You so hairy!'"

The waitress was staring down at the foaming mess, still cursing like a sailor on shore leave. All the while keeping well away from that one empty booth.

David said, "Do you think we still can? Make love, I mean?"

Willa wiped at her streaming eyes and said, "Perception and expec tation, remember? Together they can move mountains." She took his hand again. "I still love you, and you still love me. Don't you?"

"Am I not Wolf Frightener?" he asked. He could joke, because his nerves didn't believe he was dead. He looked past her, into the mirror, and saw them. Then just himself, his hand holding nothing. Then they were both gone. And still...he breathed, he smelled beer and whiskey and perfume.

A busboy had come from somewhere and was helping the waitress mop up the mess. "Felt like I stepped down," David heard her saying. Was that the kind of thing you heard in the afterlife?

"I guess I'll go back with you," she said, "but I'm not staying in that boring station with those boring people when this place is around."

"Okay," he said.

"Who's Buck Owens?"

"I'll tell you all about him," David said. "Roy Clark, too. But first tell me what else you know."

"Most of them I don't even care about," she said, "but Henry Lander's nice. So's his wife."

"Phil Palmer's not bad, either."

She wrinkled her nose. "Phil the Pill."

"What do you know, Willa?"

"You'll see for yourself, if you really look."

"Wouldn't it be simpler if you just-"

Apparently not. She rose until her thighs pressed against the edge of the table, and pointed. "Look! The band is coming back!"

The moon was high when he and Willa walked back to the road, holding hands. David didn't see how that could be-they had stayed for only the first two songs of the next set-but there it was, floating all the way up there in the spangled black. That was troubling, but something else troubled him even more.

"Willa," he said, "what year is it?"

She thought it over. The wind rippled her dress as it would the dress of any live woman. "I don't exactly remember," she said at last. "Isn't that odd?"

"Considering I can't remember the last time I ate a meal or drank a glass of water? Not too odd. If you had to guess, what would you say? Quick, without thinking."

"Nineteen...eighty-eight?"

He nodded. He would have said 1987 himself. "There was a girl in there wearing a T-shirt that said CROWHEART SPRINGS HIGH SCHOOL, CLASS OF '03. And if she was old enough to be in a roadhouse-"

"Then '03 must have been at least three years ago."

"That's what I was thinking." He stopped. "It can't be 2006, Willa, can it? I mean, the twenty-first century?"

Before she could reply, they heard the click-click-click of toenails on asphalt. This time more than just one set; this time there were four wolves behind them on the highway. The biggest, standing in front of the others, was the one that had come up behind David on his walk toward Crowheart Springs. He would have known that shaggy black pelt anywhere. Its eyes were brighter now. A half-moon floated in each like a drowned lamp.