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last corner into Tombstone, Arizona.
    “Nice name for a town,” said Roy.

10
    There was a warm stillness. It was High Noon. We were surrounded by a thousand footprints in backlot dust. Some of the prints belonged to Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Ken Maynard, long ago. I let the wind blow memory, lifting the hot dust. Of course the prints hadn’t stayed, dust doesn’t keep, and even John Wayne’s big strides were long since sifted off, even as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s sandal marks had vanished from the shore of the Sea of Galilee just one hundred yards over on Lot 12. Nevertheless, the smell of horses remained, the stagecoach would pull in soon with a new load of scripts, and a fresh batch of riflemen cow pokes. I was not about to refuse the quiet joy of just sitting here in the old Laurel and Hardy flivver, looking over at the Civil War locomotive, which got stoked up twice a year and became the 9:10 from Galveston, or Lincoln’s death train taking him home, Lord, taking him home.
    But at last I said, “What makes you so sure the body’s here?”
    “Hell.” Roy kicked the floorboards like Gary Cooper once kicked cow chips. “Look close at those buildings.”
    I looked.
    Behind the false fronts here in Western territory were metal welding shops, old car museums, false-front storage bins and—
    “The carpenters’ shop?” I said.
    Roy nodded and flivvered us over to let the dog die around the corner, out of sight.
    “They build coffins here, so the body’s here.” Roy climbed out of the flivver one long piece of lumber at a time. “The coffin was
returned
here because it was made here. Come
on
, before the Indians arrive!”
    I caught up with him in a cool grotto where Napoleon’s Empire furniture was hung on racks and Julius Caesar’s throne waited for his long-lost behind.
    I looked around.
    Nothing
ever
dies, I thought. It always returns. If you
want
, that is.
    And where does it hide, waiting. Where is it reborn? Here, I thought. Oh, yes,
here
.
    In the minds of men who arrive with lunch buckets, looking like workers, and leave looking like husbands or improbable lovers.
    But in between?
    Build the
Mississippi Belle
if you want to steamboat landfall New Orleans, or rear Bernini’s columns on the north forty. Or rebuild the Empire State and then steam-power an ape big enough to climb it.
    Your dream is
their
blueprint, and these are all the sons of the sons of Michelangelo and da Vinci, the fathers of yesterday winding up as sons in tomorrow.
    And right now my friend Roy leaned into the dim cavern behind a Western saloon and pulled me along, among the stashed facades of Baghdad and upper Sandusky.
    Silence. Everyone had gone to lunch.
    Roy snuffed the air and laughed quietly.
    “God, yes! Smell
that
smell! Sawdust! That’s what got me into high school woodshop with you. And the sounds of the bandsaw lathes. Sounded like people were
doing
things. Made my hands jerk. Looky here.” Roy stopped by a long glass case and looked down at beauty.
    The
Bounty
was there, in miniature, twenty inches long and fully rigged, and sailing through imaginary seas, two long centuries ago.
    “Go on,” Roy said, quietly. “Touch gently.”
    I touched and marveled and forgot why we were there and wanted to stay on forever. But Roy, at last, drew me away.
    “Hot dog,” he whispered. “Take your pick.”
    We were looking at a huge display of coffins about fifty feet back in the warm darkness.
    “How come so many?” I asked, as we moved up.
    “To bury all the turkeys the studio will make between now and Thanksgiving.”
    We reached the funeral assembly line.
    “It’s all yours,” said Roy. “Choose.”
    “Can’t be at the top. Too high. And people are lazy. So—this one.”
    I nudged the nearest coffin with my shoe.
    “Go on,” urged Roy, laughing at my hesitance. “
Open
it.”
    “You.”
    Roy bent and tried the lid.
    “Damn!”
    The coffin was nailed shut.
    A horn sounded somewhere. We glanced out.
    Out in the Tombstone street a car was pulling