Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 4 - The Grave

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THE BUICK STALLED ON THE RAILROAD TRACKS
Then Josh saw the light. Small, glaring, and unquestionably moving toward him.
He tried the engine again, with no result. He pushed at the driver's side door. It didn't open. Neither
did the passenger door. And though the windows were open, an invisible barrier held him in the car.
The tracks rumbled and groaned; the heavy wheels of the train cracked over the gaps in the rails. The
light grew brighter.
A scream for a whistle, and Josh spun around to stare in fear: the engine was a locomotive,
coal-bearing, not diesel. Where had it come from? The cowcatcher was painted bright red, the bulging
sides of the engine sleek, black, spouting brilliant white steam.
He swallowed, wondering how it would feel when the locomotive stopped an inch from the door,
wondering how he would explain his predicament. Then he stopped wondering.
And the locomotive didn't stop.
____________ 1
T
he end of April in Oxrun Station; and the dying was reversed with the temperature's slow rise and the
week's worth of rain that added to the thawing. Pavement and blacktop were washed to a shimmering,
storefronts were polished, streetlamps seemed taller, and the air lost the melancholy that had turned it
November grey. A faint green haze—still a promise, though no longer a winter's dream— appeared as a
cloud among branches and twigs, while lawns once brown showed heartening signs of struggle. Pedestrians
walked instead of shuf-fled, smiled instead of grimaced, and automobiles slowed for passengers and drivers
to examine the change.
The bench in front of the Centre Street luncheon-ette was repainted a pale blue—for the newspapers
stacked there and for those who used it to wait for the bus. Patrolmen leaving their headquarters down on
Chancellor Avenue tugged more confidently at their tapered tunics, set their caps at a slight angle just this
side of rakish, did the same for their grins as if they had just had a raise. And in front of the Town Hall
(across from the jail) the first circle of crocus broke stiffly through black soil.
It was a stretching, smiling, we-made-it-again time when only the deepest of the snowfalls was
remem-bered and made worse.
The evenings were still destined to be chilly, the afternoons not quite June, and there were already
muttered complaints about all the rain; nevertheless, the past was done for another nine months, and New
Year's was no longer the first day of the year.
Over the farmland valley beyond the village, howev-er, cupped in a bowl of low and rounded hills, the
greening was more prominent. Acres of it, square miles of it, blended into a freshly bright carpet; slopes of
it and orchards of it luring the birds back from the South. There were newly energetic prowlings at night
—small creatures looking for a leisurely meal, larger ones that refused to be driven away by progress.
Motors were tuned with an ear cocked and listening, implements sharpened, gutters cleaned, cellars and
attics aired without screens. For those who had lived for a time in the city it was quiet, an almost numbing
silence only temporarily shattered by the passing of a train; and for those who had lived in the Station and
the valley for more than one year there was no silence at all: the streams hissed, trees groaned, birds
stalked and chattered, the ground itself shifting to accommo-date the pattern.
Josh Miller listened.
He did not pretend to be a man of the soil or a huntsman more at home in the woods. He preferred, much
preferred, to sit in the front of his television set and watch an old movie with Greenstreet and Lorre, or read
a travel book or locked-room mystery, or do some quiet entertaining in the small house he owned down on
Raglin Street (near Quentin Avenue, a block and a half south of the town park). Or even better—to find
himself either here in Oxrun or in some other small community rummaging through houses and old shops at
the whims (and the pocketbooks) of his old and new customers.
On the other hand, and truthfully, he would never deny that he enjoyed Connecticut's spring and the
voices it brought back after a long and hard winter, and he took a few moments to identify what he heard.
He was sitting on a low bulbous rock just outside the first rank of trees that marked the surrounding hills'
thick woodland. Behind him was the forest, ahead and sloping down nearly two hundred yards to the
flatland was an open area or low shrubs and hidden rocks; beyond that was the untilled and sparsely treed
acreage belonging to Donald Murdoch. In the middle distance, a mile or so away and barely seen now
because of all the green, was the black streak of Cross Valley Road; and farther on, an abrupt density of
trees—on the left and right the hills again, and in the center those same trees marking the small estates of
the Station's wealthy, estates that stopped at a hill (better called a rise, though no one would admit it) that
signaled the back of the village's huge park.
Green no matter where he looked, and he knew that by August he would be praying hypocritically for
autumn and some new color.
For the time being, however, it would suffice, it wasn't white.
Absently, then, he scratched at the back of his neck, the side of his jaw. He was wearing a deep blue
windbreaker he had kept from the Air Force, a blue-plaid flannel shirt open at the neck, and dark blue
denims tucked into high boots that had seldom seen a shining. His hands were gloved, his white-blond hair
flattened over his ears by a sun-bleached baseball cap whose emblem had been torn off more than a
decade ago. His face was somewhat rounded, eyes deepset and black, his nose sharp-angled and
threatening to hook. Not a handsome man, nor plain; intriguing because of the thin-lipped mouth that
twitched and quivered, a consistently sardonic semaphore that added a dimen-sion to his speaking, was
somewhat unnerving when he listened.
He sighed loudly then, and stretched his arms slowly over his head, back, clasped hands, up and around
and into his lap. A grin, broad and self-mocking, at the unchallenged indolence that pre-vented him from
leaving his perch on the rock. This was unquestionably no day to be working, he thought as the grin
softened and his shoulders drooped into comfort. There were women strolling in the park with their heavy
coats and sweaters off at last, and a silver Rolls at Station Motors he wanted to dream over from all
possible angles. Not to mention the coeds spilling over the quad at Hawksted College, the naps he could
take beneath the willow in his backyard, the short drive to the Cock's Crow on Mainland Road where he
could listen to Gale Winston play her piano and conjure dreams of a past that never was. Any of that (or
any of a dozen other things) would be infinitely better than sitting on a cold rock at the end of a cold April,
hoping that a damned stupid plow would show itself miraculously so he could go home for to the Cock's
Crow, or to the college, or to the park) and count his fee for the finding.
Any of it would be better . . . and none of it would pay the bills.
He fished clumsily in his breast pocket for a ciga-rette and, after fighting a breeze that had crept up on
him from behind, lit it and coughed.
He could also stop smoking and add thirty years to his life.
Listen, his mother had told him once, if you abso-lutely have to smoke, at least smoke a pipe. You
don't inhale. You know that, of course. You don't inhale a pipe. Your father smokes a pipe. Why
don't you ask him how it's done! He won't bite you, you know. Why don't you ask him, and get rid of
those filthy things.
He had asked, and he had tried, but he could never get the hang of reading at his desk without all that
tobacco tumbling onto a book and burning a hole through to the end.
Then quit altogether, you'll live longer, she'd said. His mother would not have been his mother if she
did not have an answer for every problem life gave him.
A fly buzzed toward his eyes and he swatted it away, ducking, shuddering, thinking it was a wasp.
He wondered what his mother would say about that.
Not, he told himself quickly (as though she were listening and shaking her head), that he had any real
gripes worth mentioning. After all, he said silently to the assembled weeds and thickening brush spread
before him, I have managed to create a decent life for myself, one that doesn't tie me down to an office
with someone else as boss. And I certainly have enough money squirreled in the bank so I can live
reasonably well for a fairly long time in case it all falls apart. No mortgage, no loans . . . what more could I
want? He crossed his fingers immediately, a childhood-reaction for warding off a jinx; but he knew full well
(and sometimes frighteningly well) how lucky he was, certainly more lucky than most people he knew in
that he was able to do exactly what he wanted . . . and was getting paid for the pleasure.
In her letters his mother stopped just short of calling it sinful. His father merely shrugged, smiled, and
looked wistful.
The breeze picked up, and he hunched his shoulders against it, a cold breeze suddenly that made him
squint and turn away. And found himself looking back into the woods, as though someone behind him were
breathing shadows at his back. It wasn't the first time he had felt it—here, even in town—and the reaction
disturbed him. He wondered, then, if per-haps he wasn't trying too hard this time to get the commission. It
wouldn't be the first instance he could remember when he had driven himself too hard.
But he knew that he hated almost too much to fail.
Just eight years ago—almost to the day, he realized with a start, and a reminder for a celebration—he
had completed his hitch in the service and had decided (as much from laziness as any deep, compelling
desire) that there had to be a way he could combine his love for mysteries in book form with a way to
make a living. He had once considered a try at archeology— the perfect life, it seemed, to be able to roam
the world in pursuit of ancient civilizations, to find a Rosetta stone of his own or the whereabouts of the
true Atlantis or the untrammeled remains of Carthage in the North African desert; Stonehenge fascinated
him, and Napoleon's real death; how had Rasputin actually died, and what had really happened to those
poor souls at Roanoke.
Nothing original, nothing spectacular or insightful about the way he perceived it, and he had learned
rather quickly that he hadn't had the talent. But he did have the patience—and he did have what retrospect
proved to be an incredible stroke of luck. The right place, and the right time, and a reception for a
challenge.
Shortly after his return to Oxrun, his parents had decided they had had enough of the Puritan work ethic.
They sold their small business, gave him the house when he insisted on staying behind, and moved to
Colorado. A month afterward, his conscience in-forming him unmercifully that he could not live forever on
his discharge pay, he attended a cocktail party where, during the course of the evening, an acquaintance
mentioned she was trying to locate one of the original theater posters for a Broadway show that had lasted
exactly ten performances back in 1927. The Marvelous Kings, she'd thought it was called. Or something
like that. But she had no idea of the playwright, the actors, or even the subject in-volved.
A week later he recalled the conversation, and the title; and he could not get clear of it once remembered
no matter how hard he tried. He thought about it, cursed at it, worried at it, lay awake nights and muttered
about it, finally trained into New York because it was growing impossible, like shards of popcorn, to get it
the hell out of his teeth.
During his first day he sat in his hotel room and called himself stupid. Read the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
Saw a movie. Read the Yellow Pages again.
Then, the following morning, he told himself to either fish or cut bait; but the popcorn was still there, more
firmly lodged than ever.
So he bothered Equity, the Shuberts, City Hall, and the archives of the Metropolitan. He talked with
doormen, ticket takers, stagehands, and old actors. He prowled museums he didn't know existed. He
hunted agents and studios and theaters and bars. Within four days he had a name. In two more he was in
Boston. A day later he walked up to the woman's house in Oxrun and asked her how much she was willing
to pay for the poster he had found.
She was willing, as it turned out, to pay quite a lot.
In less than a month he had turned half of the Raglin Street house into an office, found a lawyer and
incorporated himself, and began leaving word at par-ties, at the post office, at the shops, that he was open
for business. The only things he wouldn't find were lost husbands and strayed children.
The house, however, became too uncomfortable. There were too many other people moving through the
rooms, commenting with their eyes on the fur-nishings, his living. A year ago, then, he arranged to take over
an empty office on High Street, just off Centre, with rooms above that he used for storage. Miller's
Mysteries, and the business grew, easily turning a steady and comfortable profit as word con-tinued to
spread about the curious, white-haired young man and the items he unearthed. Billboards, like the first one.
Butler's tables edged in filigree silver. Letters. Gowns. A manuscript in Maine, a derringer in Natchez, a
signed crock in New Hamp-shire, a photograph in New Jersey; and more than a few things were
uncovered right in the Station.
He hated telephone answering machines and ser-vices, and he hated working with numbers, and he
hated doing anything but his job; so he took on Felicity Lancaster to keep the books and dust the shelves,
fend off the unwanted and entice the hard-to-get.
And it had taken him quite a while to realize that he was, without question, excited . . . and content.
There were just enough challenges to keep him from getting stale.
The breeze swirled again, pushing at the fringe of hair around his cap, slipping down his shirt to tighten his
chest. He frowned as he stared at the agitated foliage around him. It felt as if there were a storm in the
offing, but the sky was still blue, no clouds to be seen. He zipped up his jacket and lit another cigarette.
The weather, he thought glumly; one day it's warm and summer, the next you'd think it was February and
snowing. His mother called it pneumonia time, the weeks when summer colds came ahead of schedule and
stayed through September, never really dying. Whatever it was, it was distressing. He didn't care for things
that changed on him without warning.
The breeze stiffened.
He squirmed and told himself he had better get moving. There were shadows here in broad daylight that
he did not like to see.
But as soon as the thought surfaced he shook his head and dismissed it. Considered a quiet visit to a
friend, Lloyd Stanworth, who would doctor him away from this unnatural reaction. And that too, he thought,
was pushing the imagination.
But he did not look behind him when he heard the leaves whisper.
____________ 2
W
hen the damp from the rock began to penetrate to his skin, Josh grunted and decided it was time to move
on. The solitude here was taking chips from his sanity, and all he needed now was to see monsters in the
woods.
I've seen some things here, his father had whispered once, while his mother was out shopping and they
were alone in the house; you can't live in the Station all your life without knowing the place isn't what
you call your normal town.
Josh had never believed it, never seen evidence that his father was right. But it wasn't the words that had
bothered him, back when he was twelve ... it was the sly look in his father's eyes, the wry quiver of his lips,
and the fact that the afternoon was the afternoon of Halloween. It had frightened him more than seeing the
masks on the children and hearing the wind in the trees; and it was almost a month before he knew he'd
been kidded.
Nevertheless, he did not look around when the breeze kicked again.
Go, he told himself instead; go and have a drink.
But he hesitated, hating to admit to another round of defeat. What had brought him out here had begun
two weeks ago, just after he had returned from a grateful Felicity wasn't as perfect as she'd like him to
believe. But neither had he discovered anything that even remotely resembled the implement he was
hunt-ing. From sketches Felicity had copied from texts in New Haven he knew the handplow was
constructed of two thick bows of wood joined at the base by a single huge blade, joined near the top by a
crossbar of iron easily removable if either of the handles split or wore out.
But knowing what it looked like hadn't helped him thus far.
Suddenly, as he was crushing the cigarette out under his heel, the breeze exploded into a stiff violent
wind that pelted him with dust and dead leaves. He covered his eyes instantly with his forearms and ducked
his face toward his chest, holding his breath and waiting, thinking for no reason my god it's a tornado until
the air abruptly stilled.
The silence made him realize the wind hadn't made a sound.
Cautiously, counting slowly to ten in case there was a resurgence, he lowered his arms and looked
around him, frowning. Saw nothing amiss except a faint swirling of dust that hung darkly over the slope a
dozen yards away. It hovered, scattered a moment later, and he was hard put to believe he had seen it at
all.
The sky was still blue, untouched by clouds.
There was no breeze; the leaves were still.
"Nice," he told the air then. "How about the next time you bring me the stupid plow."
He pushed himself off the rock and dusted his jacket, brushed fingers through his hair. A brittle brown
leaf clung to one knee, and he flicked it off, watched it fall, kicked at it and missed. Great, he thought; the
wind was exactly what he needed to end one hell of a miserable day. The mud was cold, the woods were
cold, in spite of the gloves his hands were cold. And all because of a lousy plow that's probably long since
rotted into the side of the hill. It was, he told himself sourly, easily the dumbest thing he had ever agreed to
find. If the request had come from anyone else but Mrs. Thames . . .
Home, then. It was time to head home when even the wind didn't want him sneaking around.
The faint sound of a siren wafted from the west. A downed tree, he guessed, or a branch through
someone's front window.
As he started down the slope he glanced to his right, at a thick and rich stand of maple that protruded
from the forest, a broad-boled and ancient stand that sur-rounded (and now concealed) a three-story
clapboard farmhouse a quarter mile distant. He felt himself taking a step toward it, changed his mind with a
warning whistle, and continued down through the brush, angling away from the homestead toward the car
he had parked at the end of the flatland. He sidestepped a patch of sodden, sinking ground and jammed his
hands into his jacket pockets, worked his face to a passable scowl.
Anyone else but Mrs. Thames . . .
He spat angrily. All he was doing was skirting the solution, and he hated it, especially when he knew,
when he positively knew that the answer was right here in front of him, his eyes for the moment simply
unable to focus on the clues he needed. Failure was not exactly a stranger to his work, and he could
remember without half thinking about it worse times than this.
But it was just so goddamned frustrating! And so goddamned unfair.
After the barn lofts and the attic rafters and the stables of the valley's tenants had proved depressingly
empty, he had made himself a series of maps of the land, blocked off and marked for quick
identification-Then he had launched a series of excursions through the lower woods in hopes of coming
across remnants of foundations that signaled a forgotten farmhouse or desolate outbuilding. Each time he
returned empty-handed he shaded the map, stared at it, at the others, hoping the roughly drawn lines would
suddenly join in an arrow, an X-marks-the-spot that would save him his temper, and Mrs. Thames'
patience.
It had only been two weeks, he kept telling himself, but the shadow of the Vermont trip refused to leave
him be. And today was the fifth day of trying, his first in an area of briar and ash at the back of Don
Murdoch's place; and his feet, he thought sourly, were rapidly turning to moss.
He kicked out in reflex, glanced back again at the house he could not see.
Murdoch—a large man dark from his curly hair to his constantly squinting eyes, from his spiked
eye-brows to the ghost of a beard that made one wish he would either grow it or shave closer—had
purchased the small parcel of land only the summer before. He had made it clear he had no intention of
working it (other than tending a rather large, successful garden), used the fields instead for the walks he
claimed he needed to write some of his books. Josh had never heard of him or his work, and Nat Clayton at
the library had told him one afternoon that Murdoch was not the most sought-after author she had ever
encoun-tered, apparently selling just enough to keep his publishers happy and his readers from desertion.
"Let me tell you something," Murdoch had told him, standing in front of the fireplace in the house, his
hands chopping at the air as though he were sculpting, "I may not be the richest man in the world, but I
know damned well what I'm doing with my life. How many others can say that, huh? So I don't win the
Nobel Prize, so I don't sell to the movies or TV ... so what? Who cares?" He had laughed, raucously, richly.
"I got what I got, Josh, and that's all that matters."
The man was, Josh had to admit, personable enough, and had a proverbial beauty for a daughter; so he
listened politely to the stories of the agonies that eventually transformed themselves to books, and drank his
cheap liquor, and laughed at his jokes, and spent as much time as he could stealing glances at the woman.
In December Murdoch brought him out to dinner, none too subtly leaving him alone with his daughter.
But there had been an awkwardness he had been unable to surmount, and Murdoch had returned from the
kitchen, scowling as if he had been eavesdropping at the door.
In January he came to the office.
"What do you have against my Andy?" the man had demanded.
Felicity was at lunch; Josh was too surprised to speak.
"Huh? What's the matter with her, Josh? Don't you like her? She's a good girl, a fine woman, I want you
to get to know her better." There had been no leer, no wink. "She's a good girl," he said again. Softly. "A
very good girl. It isn't right she should be out there all alone."
"Don," he'd said, just as softly, "what happened to her mother?"
Murdoch sighed and slapped his hands to his sides. "Died ten years, out in Arizona. We went there for
her health, the clean air and all that. It helped her lungs, but it didn't help her heart."
"Oh. Hey, I'm sorry."
Murdoch waved the apology away. "It's all right, I'm over it. But I tell you, Josh, I'm not all that sure
Andy is, you know what I mean? She's got to have people around her, and nothing I do will make her live
on her own." He slapped his chest, his stomach, yanked at his hair untouched by grey. "I'm healthy as a
horse, and she worries about me. Me, one of the greatest unknown writers in the known universe." He
laughed again. "Josh, do me a favor and take her out once in a while, all right?"
Josh had been dumbfounded; a father who was trying to give his little girl away? To a stranger?
Murdoch suddenly lost his bluster, became nerv-ous, almost jittery. "Do it for me, will you? She's driving
me crazy out there with all her fool help."
No matter how often he replayed the scene, Josh could not remember saying yes or nodding. But he
knew he must have given the man some sort of sign, because the next thing he knew his hand was being
pumped and Murdoch was himself again.
"You won't regret it, Josh. I promise you that. She's got college, she's got smarts, she won't embarrass
you or any of the rest of the damned snobs in this town. I tell you something, pal—I never would have
come out here if I didn't have to. Give me the city anytime, that's what I say. Christ, it's miserable out
here!"
"Hey," he'd said, suddenly defensive, "it isn't that bad, you know."
"Bad enough. Bad enough. Damn, I hate waiting." He'd stopped, frowned. "Wish I could just snap my
fingers and the book'd be done, you know what I mean?"
Felicity had walked in, then, and Murdoch had left.
And Josh had taken Andrea to dinner, to movies, on rides through the country he had always thought
lovely. Not often, but enough. And now he was wondering what he'd gotten himself into.
Just like the plow. Spending every available daylight hour covering himself with mud, dead grass, and
stinging gouges from thorns that were plastered over with his name. He punched at the air. Only two things
kept him going through this miserable weather: his pride, and the idea he would let the old woman down if
he gave up so soon. It's only been two weeks, he reminded himself again; only two weeks. Give your-self a
break.
He stopped at the car for a long, pensive moment.
Here. Damnit, it had to be somewhere near here, if it was here at all. Damnit, it felt right. The land
looked right. A farm other than Murdoch's had been here before—the age of the newer trees and the
unmistakable signs of a land-clearing forest fire made it almost a certainty. Here, goddamnit, he knew it.
Knew it so much he had already spent hours past sunset checking through Oxrun histories, maps from
Town Hall, diaries held at the college; tall-tales and folklore and old surveyor's plots. And though none of
them had aided him directly, neither had they been able to prove him unarguably wrong.
Not only was it depressing, it was frustrating as hell.
He didn't need this. Not now. Especially not now.
He shook his head sharply and yanked open the car door . . . and threw up his hands when something
leapt at his eyes.
____________ 3
J
osh yelled, as much in abrupt fear as at the sharp pain that erupted in his shoulder when he threw himself
back and caught the edge of the door. He dropped to the ground on his back, slapping at the air in front of
his face, at his chest, rolling over several times before sitting up and staring. His mouth open and gulping
for a breath. His legs outstretched and trembling. He was cold, and his teeth chattered, his head jerking
from side to side while he blinked away unbidden tears to clear his vision.
He was a child. He was stalking Big Game through the night-infested jungles of his backyard, his
shadow clear and long from the hot burning sun overhead. Drums sounded. Lions roared. He heard
the unmis-takable grumbling of an elephant herd wallowing at a waterhole nearby. Sweat poured
down his face, dark-ened his shirt under his arms, slipped into his boots to make him feel as though
he'd been trudging through mud. He knew the jewels had been hidden some-where within reach,
came to a greybark dead tree and dropped into a crouch. Listened. Tested the wind for the scent of
the enemy. A rustling in the foliage above. A rustling in the shrubs that cut him off from the plain. He
examined the tree carefully, wiping a forearm over his face and laying his rifle on the ground beside
him. There was a hole, a large one, just above eye level. He sniffed, swallowed, checked the area
behind him and picked up his rifle again. Slowly, trying not to disturb the leopard sleeping in the
branches, he poked the butt into the hole to test for obstructions. The jewels were there; he knew
they were there; and when he felt something give he grinned, rammed the butt home . . . and
screamed as the cloud swept out of the tree and settled over his head. There was a running, then, a
shrieking, a thousand bombers buzzing in his ears. The jungle was gone, the lions were gone, the
elephants and the leopard and the waterhole and the plain; only the wasps, and the fire, and the
sound of his sobbing.
"Jesus," he whispered, reached into a hip pocket for his handkerchief. He flapped it out square, then
rubbed it hard over his face. "Jesus." The cold slipped away, the trembling subsided, but he could still feel
the race of his heart in his chest. And he thought he could still feel the fire of the stings that had stitched
over him that afternoon, so long ago he wished he could forget it. Gingerly he pressed a finger to various
parts of his neck, knowing he wouldn't find anything but doing it just the same. At the same time he
scanned the air, the car, the shadows of the weeds he had fallen into. Saw nothing until he had pushed
himself to his knees and was slapping at the dirt on his jacket with the bill of his cap.
It was a bird. A robin. It was lying just under the car, half in sun, half in oiled shadow.
He rose awkwardly to his feet and put his hands on his hips, squinting though the sun was already
wester-ing behind him, staring blindly at the forest until he could convince his mind to start working again
with-out all the remembering. Then he grabbed hold of the edge of the car door and knelt again, poking at
the dead bird with a stiff forefinger. Its neck was broken, eyes glassed over. He frowned, scratched his
cheek, turned, and dug a shallow trench in the soft earth with his heel. When it was done he shoved the bird
in and covered it. With his boot, not his hands.
He knew it hadn't been his flailing that had done it; he had already started falling backward before he had
made first contact. Then it must have been that windstorm. The bird had been slammed into the car, its
neck was snapped, and he had been so immersed in thought that he hadn't seen it lying on the roof, partway
over the door.
His imagination had done the rest.
And once he had figured it out to his satisfaction he immediately looked around him, realizing what an
idiot he must have looked like to anyone happening to see him. His grin was sheepish. A faint warmth
spread momentarily over his face. The hunter of plows and the finder of Time's secrets undone by a robin.
It was a good thing Fel hadn't been with him; she would have laughed all the way back to the office,
laughed the next morning, laughed for a week. After that, she would only grin now and then.
A grunt for a laugh, and he slipped in behind the wheel. Both front and back seats had been encased by
the cheapest terry cloth coverings he could find as protection against dirt. At least for the time he searched
for the plow. He hated them. They were green. But his car he considered close to a national treasure—a
twenty-five-year-old Buick, deep maroon, complete with the air holes on the sides of the hood, the rocket
ornament, and the weight that made him feel as if he were driving a tank. It was the only thing he had gone
looking for entirely on his own, a whimsy that became an obsession until he had found it a year after he'd
started.
Now it was his trademark, and he protected it with a jealousy usually reserved for lovers.
But why, he thought wryly, should this car be any different from what he did for a living?
Sometimes, as now, he could not help stepping back and looking at himself, seeing what he was doing,
thinking that the people who had first settled this part of the country would have thought him a lout, if not
directly engaged in some of the devil's own work. As he backed carefully toward one of the potholed
spokes that poked off of Cross Valley, he tried to imagine another man of thirty-three spending his beautiful
spring days on the hunt for a dumb plow. No, he decided; he was probably the only one in the world fool
enough to try it.
He considered, then, stopping in at the Murdochs' for a drink and a free dinner. Decided against it when
he remembered with a wince the paperwork waiting back at the office. He had promised Fel that morning
he would spend at least part of the day there, before she rebelled and started screaming at all his work she
was doing. A promise, he realized, already two hours late in the keeping.
Cross Valley Road extended from a handful of abandoned iron mines on the slopes of the northern hills to
an abrupt dead end on the slope of those to the south. It was straight, well maintained, and from it extended
any number of spurs poking into the farm-land, spurs that were known only by the houses and homesteads
they passed. No one knew why it didn't carry on over the hills, why it stopped where it did, why it didn't
curve to encircle the rest of the land; and no one (save newcomers who didn't know any better, and were
taught quick enough once the issue was raised) ever proposed making additions or alterations. Cross Valley
was Cross Valley; it was almost as though there were a Commandment to protect it.
Josh drove slowly, feeling now a delayed reaction to the imagined assault, and not wanting to leave the
open space for the closeness of the village. There were also the potholes, which the Buick accepted with a
minimum of shuddering, dropping in and out of them with remarkable disdain. He grinned at the power he
gave himself behind the wheel, scowled at a streak of dust he saw on the hood, then told himself that if he
didn't watch out he would be spending every sunny day for the rest of his life spread-eagled over the roof
to protect it from the elements. He knew he loved the old bus, but it was hard not to fall into the role of
fanatic.
Once on Cross Valley, his delays having run out, he turned right and headed for the intersection with
Williamston Pike. From there it was a four-mile (and then some) ride to the village center, passing along the
way the estates of those whose money was so old, so ingrained, they never even considered the possibility
of its going. And that, in a large and small way, was one of the reasons why he had remained in the Station
after his parents had left. The village itself was not large at all, virtually self-contained, and its popula-tion
was generally more wealthy than the facade it gave to the world. Yet upper class or middle, the town as a
whole took care of its own. Not like a family, but as protection against the world.
A horn blared at him suddenly and he shook his head once, saw up ahead a gathering of vehicles at the
intersection he wanted. He stiffened and took his foot from the accelerator. On his right was nothing but
barbed wire fencing and telephone poles, the fields sweeping beyond them. On the left, a space of
wood-land between the road and the railroad tracks where a few small homes crouched in the shadows.
And at the corner a young willow that had been snapped in half and slammed to the ground. A yellow
sedan was angled over the stump, bleeding oil and blue-grey smoke, its front end smashed to chrome and
glass glitter. The windshield was gone, the passenger door jammed open and twisted almost off its hinges.
There were two ambulances idling on the shoulder, and as Josh pulled off to the side and yanked on the
parking brake, one of them crawled onto the pike and darted away, silently, its red light spinning. A
patrol-man stood in the middle of the road, hands in his pockets and waiting for some traffic to direct
around the scene. He lifted his head slightly when he saw Josh stop, but made no move to join him, eying
instead the hesitant work of a second patrolman who was walking around the demolished car with an
extinguisher in his hand.
A wasp settled on the outside mirror. Josh rolled his window up slowly and watched it slip around the
curve of the chrome. A trickle of perspiration drifted down his spine. The car grew warm. When he blinked
and the wasp was gone, he threw open the door without checking for cars, stopped only long enough to toss
his cap onto the front seat before strolling over to the cop,
Fred Borg had been a policeman in Oxrun Station since before Josh's birth, had finally and beefily
摘要：

THEBUICKSTALLEDONTHERAILROADTRACKSThenJoshsawthelight.Small,glaring,andunquestionablymovingtowardhim.Hetriedtheengineagain,withnoresult.Hepushedatthedriver'ssidedoor.Itdidn'topen.Neitherdidthepassengerdoor.Andthoughthewindowswereopen,aninvisiblebarrierheldhiminthecar.Thetracksrumbledandgroaned;thehe...

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