Now And Forever Part 4

"Yes," she said quietly. "Then."

Then, for the first time, it seemed, her mouth touched his.

CHAPTER 13.

He awoke to the sun pouring in through the high attic window. Questions gathered behind his tongue.

Beside him, the bed was empty.

Gone.

Afraid of the truth? he wondered.

No, he thought, she will have left a note on the icebox door. Somehow he knew. Go look.

The note was there.

Mr. Cardiff: Many tourists arriving. I must welcome them.

Questions at breakfast.

Nef.

Far off, wasn't there the merest wail of a locomotive whistle, the softest churn of some great engine?

On the front porch, Cardiff listened, and again the faint locomotive cry stirred beyond the horizon.

He glanced up at the top floor. Had she fled toward that sound? Had the boarders heard, too?

He ran down to the rail station and stood in the middle of the blazing hot iron tracks, daring the whistle to sound again. But this time, silence.

Separate trains bringing what? he wondered.

I arrived first, he thought, the one who tries to be good.

And what comes next?

He waited, but the air remained silent and the horizon line serene, so he walked back to the Egyptian View Arms.

There were boarders in every window, waiting. "It's all right," he called. "It was nothing."

Someone called down from above, quietly, "Are you sure?"

CHAPTER 14.

Nef was not at breakfast, or lunch, or dinner.

He went to bed hungry.

CHAPTER 15.

At midnight the wind blew softly in the window, whispering the curtains, shadowing the moonlight.

There, far across town, lay the cemetery, immense white teeth scattered on a meadow of fresh moon-silvered gra.s.s.

Four dozen stones dead, but not dead.

All lies, he thought.

And found himself halfway down the boarding house stairs, surrounded by the exhalations of sleeping people. There was no sound save the drip of the ice pan under the icebox in the moonlit kitchen. The house brimmed with lemon and lilac illumination from the candied windows over the front entrance.

He found himself on the dusty road, alone with his shadow.

He found himself at the cemetery gate.

In the middle of the graveyard, he found a shovel in his hands.

He dug until...

There was a hollow thud under the dust.

He worked swiftly, clearing away the earth, and bent to tug at the edge of the coffin, at which moment he heard a single sound.

A footstep.

Yes! he thought wildly, happily.

She's here again. She had to come find me, and take me home. She...

His heartbeat hammered and then slowed.

Slowly, Cardiff rose by the open grave.

Elias Culpepper stood by the iron gate, trying to figure out just what to say to Cardiff, who was digging where no one should dig.

Cardiff let the spade fall. "Mr. Culpepper?"

Elias Culpepper responded. "Oh G.o.d, G.o.d, go on. Lift the lid. Do it!" And when Cardiff hesitated, said, "Now!"

Cardiff bent and pulled at the coffin lid. It was neither nailed nor locked. He swung back the lid and stared down into the coffin.

Elias Culpepper came to stand beside him.

They both stared down at...

An empty coffin.

"I suspect," said Elias Culpepper, "you are in need of a drink."

"Two," said Cardiff, "would be fine."

CHAPTER 16.

They were smoking fine cigars and drinking nameless wine in the middle of the night. Cardiff leaned back in his wicker chair, eyes tight shut.

"You been noticing things?" inquired Elias Culpepper.

"A baker's dozen. When Claude took me on the bread and m.u.f.fin tour I couldn't help but notice there are no signs-anywhere-for doctors. Not one funeral parlor that I could see."

"Must be somewhere," said Culpepper.

"How come not in the phone book yellow pages? No doctors, no surgeons, no mortuary offices."

"An oversight."

Cardiff studied his notes.

"Lord, you don't even have a hospital in this almost ghost town!"

"We got one small one."

Cardiff underlined an entry on his list. "An outpatient clinic thirty feet square? Is that all that ever happens, so you don't need a big facility?"

"That," said Culpepper, "would about describe it."

"All you ever have is cut fingers, bee-stings, and the occasional sprained ankle?"

"You've whittled it down fine," said the other, "but that's the sum. Continue."

"That," said Cardiff, gazing down on the town from the high verandah, "that tells why all the gravestones are unfinished and all the coffins empty!"

"You only dug one up."

"I don't need to open more. Do I?"

Quietly, Culpepper shook his head.

"h.e.l.l, Mr. Culpepper," said Cardiff. "I'm speechless!"

"To tell the truth," said Culpepper, "so am I. This is the first time anyone has ever asked what you've been asking. We folks have been so busy just living, we never figured anyone would come, gather his spit, grab a spade, and dig!"

"I apologize."

"Now you'll want a practical history. I'll give it to you. Write it down, Mr. Cardiff, write it down. Over the years, when visitors arrived, they got bored quick, and left even quicker. We tried to look like every other town. We put on nice false-front funerals, hea.r.s.e and all, real flowers, live organ music, but empty coffins with shut lids, just to impress. We were going to hold a pretend funeral tomorrow, show off, so you'd be a.s.sured we sometimes die-"

"Sometimes?!" cried Cardiff.

"Well, it has been a while. Cars occasionally run over us. Someone might fall from a ladder."

"No diseases, whooping cough, pneumonia?"

"We don't whoop and we don't cough. We wear out...slow."

"How slow?"

"Oh, at last count, just about-"

"How slow?!"

"One hundred, two hundred years."

"Which?"

"We figure about two hundred. It's still too early to tell. We've only been at this since 1864, '65, Lincoln's time."

"All of you?"

"All."

"Nef, too?"

"Wouldn't lie."

"But she's younger than I am!"