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touch of pre-cognition in the night, put it down to that. It was the sort of story you might tell years later, near the end of a party, and people would nod their heads thoughtfully and look solemn and some dinkleberry with leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket would say there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in our philosophy and then—
    â€œThen shit,” I croaked. The top of the mist wasmoving slowly, like mist on a clouded mirror. “I’m never talking about this. Never, not in my whole life, not even on my deathbed.”
    But it had all happened just the way I remembered it, of that I was sure. George Staub had come along and picked me up in his Mustang, Ichabod Crane’s old pal with his head stitched on instead of under his arm, demanding that I choose. And I had chosen—faced with the oncoming lights of the first house, I had bartered away my mother’s life with hardly a pause. It might be understandable, but that didn’t make the guilt of it any less. No one had to know, however; that was the good part. Her death would look natural—hell, would be natural—and that’s the way I intended to leave it.
    I walked out of the graveyard in the lefthand rut, and when my foot struck my pack, I picked it up and slung it back over my shoulders. Lights appeared at the bottom of the hill as if someone had given them the cue. I stuck out my thumb, oddly sure it was the old man in the Dodge—he’d come back this way looking for me, of course he had, it gave the story that final finishing roundness.
    Only it wasn’t the old guy. It was a tobacco-chewing farmer in a Ford pick-up truck filled with apple baskets, a perfectly ordinary fellow: not old and not dead.
    â€œWhere you goin, son?” he asked, and when I told him he said, “That works for both of us.” Less thanforty minutes later, at twenty minutes after nine, he pulled up in front of the Central Maine Medical Center. “Good luck. Hope your ma’s on the mend.”
    â€œThank you,” I said, and opened the door.
    â€œI see you been pretty nervous about it, but she’ll most likely be fine. Ought to get some disinfectant on those, though.” He pointed at my hands.
    I looked down at them and saw the deep, purpling crescents on the backs. I remembered clutching them together, digging in with my nails, feeling it but unable to stop. And I remembered Staub’s eyes, filled up with moonlight like radiant water. Did you ride the Bullet? he’d asked me. I rode that fucker four times.
    â€œSon?” the man driving the pick-up asked. “You all right?”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou come over all shivery.”
    â€œI’m okay,” I said. “Thanks again.” I slammed the door of the pickup and went up the wide walk past the line of parked wheelchairs gleaming in the moonlight.
    I walked to the information desk, reminding myself that I had to look surprised when they told me she was dead, had to look surprised, they’d think it was funny if I didn’t . . . or maybe they’d just think I was in shock . . . or that we didn’t get along . . . or . . .
    I was so deep in these thoughts that I didn’t at first grasp what the woman behind the desk had told me. I had to ask her to repeat it.
    â€œI said that she’s in room 487, but you can’t go up just now. Visiting hours end at nine.”
    â€œBut . . .” I felt suddenly woozy. I gripped the edge of the desk. The lobby was lit by fluorescents, and in that bright even glare the cuts on the backs of my hands stood out boldly—eight small purple crescents like grins, just above the knuckles. The man in the pick-up was right, I ought to get some disinfectant on those.
    The woman behind the desk was looking at me patiently. The plaque in front of her said she was YVONNE EDERLE.
    â€œBut is she all