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to listen to her bang—”
    “Well, that don’t mean—”
    “Calm the fuck down, Bartholomew, and listen. You never know when it’s your time. Mine’s comin in the spring, and I guess this is just the long way around the barn a sayin I hope you won’t leave this world with any regret.”
    “I don’t understand what you—”
    “Before you hive off, do what you been meanin to ever since you laid eyes on that filly.”
    “What in hell are you—”
    “I want you to kiss her.”
    “I couldn’t.”
    “What’s the worst she’ll do? Slap you? I’m sure you been slapped plenty. Hell, you ever tried somethin like that on me, I’d fuckin shoot you, but that’s neither here nor there. I reckon you love her, and this is my Christmas gift to you. Kiss her on your way out.”
    Bart stepped down off the stool and walked toward the door. He put on his overcoat and his hat and reached for the doorknob.
    He stopped. He walked back to the piano. His weak heart pounding, he leaned down and kissed Lana on the cheek.
    She stopped playing and bowed her head. They both trembled.
    “I apologize,” Bart said. “It’s just that . . .”
    He hurried outside and shut the door.
    Lana took a deep breath, then looked out the window, up to the second floor of the hotel across the street, at the woman sitting in the bay window.
    You could hear the noise from the dance hall down the street, where mostof the town had gathered for Christmas Eve. She started “Silent Night” on the discordant keys.
    Joss took a candle out from under the bar, went over to the stove, opened it, and held the wick to a flame. She set the burning candle in the windowsill behind the bar, stood there watching torrents of snow fall through the darkness, wondering if they could see her signal in the blizzard.

 
     
     
EIGHT
     
     
     
     

     
S
tephen Cole buttoned his black frock coat and stepped onto the musicians’ platform, tall, pale, thin to the brink of fragility. His brown hair, parted down the middle, fell in greasy strings to his shoulders, and the only facial hair he could grow was a lean mustache more befitting a teenager than a twenty-seven-year-old man. It wasn’t the snipe-gutted appearance people noticed, however, but his large eyes—brown, gentle, occasionally radiant.
    “Let us pray,” he said. “Dear Lord. Redeemer. Maker of all that is good. We thank You for the bounty of that which we are about to eat, for the hands that prepared it, for the generous Mr. Packer, who allowed his boardinghouse cooks to make this feast for the town. We thank You for Your perfect and loving Son, Jesus Christ, Who You sent to save this despicable world. Let us remember the Child born in a manger as we celebrate His birth this night and on the morrow.
    “Finally, dear Lord, I ask that You pour out Your protection upon Abandon. Protect us from the cold and snow, the deadly slides, the beasts of the mountains, the heathens, and, above all, from the wickedness in our own hearts. Kyrie eleison. Amen.” As Stephen stepped down from the stage, the fiddlers took up their instruments and plucked at the strings, turning the tiny hardwood pegs.
    Two years ago, this hurdy-gurdy would have been lined with whores of every make and model in threadbare peignoirs, bright stockings, some only children, others topless, a handful naked entirely, all painted up like lewd clowns, and the miners staggering drunk through the horde of dancers, the room redolent of a foul ambrosia—whiskey, sweat, and tobacco smoke com-mingling.
    But the mine had pinched out, the revelers departed, though their nightsin the dance hall stood memorialized in the bullet-holed walls, stains of vomit, tobacco juice, and blood on the floorboards.
    This night, half a dozen tables had been arranged in the center of the room, decorated with ribbon, spruce saplings cut from the hillsides above town, and a whole multitude of candles.
    Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice sat at the end of the table nearest