"Give thanks. You might have gotten, 'I will arise and go now.'"

"Oh, Mother's Poetry Club isn't up to Yeats yet," Laura said. "Not till the week after Hopkins."

She reached out to touch the mound and pulled her hand back. "Am I there? My body, I mean?" Michael did not answer, nor did she turn to him. "How strange."

"How did you get out so fast?" Michael asked. "I took a pretty long while getting out, but you sprouted like a geranium before the funeral was even over."

"A nice image," Laura said.

"Thank you. You should have heard me when I was alive." He waited for an answer. It was long in coming.

"Maybe you weren't quite ready to die," Laura said. "I was way overdue."

Michael said nothing. They moved aimlessly away from the grave, walking without purpose, without destination, without consciousness of motion, but always with grace. Michael turned his head to watch Laura move. The grass did not bend under her feet, nor did the few fallen leaves crackle indignantly. A small wind lifted the leaves and the marshmallow-colored spores of a broken milkweed pod, but not her hair.

Laura spoke very quietly, never once turning to him. "I represent," she said, "five minutes of wasted effort on the part of either God or my father. Death isn't so much of a change. It's as if I lived high over a noisy city and couldn't sleep because the window was jammed and the auto horns reached over the windowsill. Now I've shut the window and the horns have fallen back to the street. I'm very sleepy and I want to go to bed." Michael heard her laugh softly. "That's not a bad image, either. A little overwrought, perhaps."

"I've wedged the window open," Michael said.

"Only in your room," said Laura, "and not for long."

They stood looking at each other, each seeing a gray film over a small portion of the world.

"I've been dead for two weeks," Michael said, "and I've learned a couple of things. The big difference between the dead and the living is that the dead don't care about anything."

"That explains a good deal."

Michael missed the sarcasm. "Yes, it does. Caring about things is much more important to the dead because it's all they have to keep them conscious. Without it they fade, dwindle, thin to the texture of a whisper. The same thing happens to people, but nobody notices it because their bodies act as masks. The dead have no masks. They left them behind."

"Go on."

"A man I met told me all this a while ago. I didn't understand it at all then. I do now. What he didn't tell me was that, if you struggle, you can stay awake. It's like freezing. You have to keep walking up and down and stamping your feet. Otherwise the cold gets you."

"Here, too," Laura whispered, looking away from him. "I thought it might be warm."

"That's the easy way," Michael said. "That's what all the others did; wrapped themselves in the earth and fell asleep. All of them. I woke a couple up and tried to make them talk to me, but their talk was like snoring." His tone was full of contempt. "They've forgotten everything. Their minds have turned to sand. I still remember. I've forgotten a few things, but important ones I keep."

"Yes. It probably takes longer to forget the important things."

Michael shook his head. "No. It's a sort of weeding-out process—like picking out ten books to be cast away with. You'll see." He smiled, mentally admitting the conscious effort it was but hoping that the girl did not notice. "I'm glad you're here. We can make things easier for each other. That's part of being alive."

Laura turned abruptly and began to walk slowly back toward her grave. Michael followed, puzzled. "Where are you going?"

"To sleep," Laura said over her shoulder. "That's part of being alive too."

"Wait a minute!" Michael called. "Don't leave me alone!"

"Why not? That's another part of life. The big one. You can't have forgotten that—it's too important. If you want to be alive, you have to accept all the parts. You can't choose and you can't reject what doesn't please you. That's the privilege of the dead."

"You have to fight!" Michael shouted after her. "I know that now. Giving up the fight is death."

Laura stopped and faced him. "Death is not having to fight any more, either for yourself or for other people. I don't care what you do with your afterlife. You can take woodworking courses, or play correspondence chess, or subscribe to a lot of magazines, or start a repertory theater. Just do it quietly. I'm tired, and I've been up much too late."

Michael ran after her and caught up with her at the grave. She was standing quietly, looking at the grass. "What killed you?" he demanded. He felt clumsy and exceedingly pompous, but he also felt himself washed in anger, and the feeling was familiar and very pleasant. "Were you bored to death?"

"I was hit by a truck," Laura said, "and all of a sudden everybody realized that I was dead. Go away, whatever your name is—"

"Michael Morgan."

"That's fine. Go away, Michael Morgan, and write a letter to the editor. Fight the brave fight. The result is the same as the cowardly fight. The brave fight is just a retreat with publicity. You'll have a fine time. I'm going to sleep."

She lay down on her grave and promptly began to experience difficulty in disposing of her arms. She folded them on her breast, spread them out in the position of a crucifix, kept them to her sides, and finally crossed them on her stomach. She closed her eyes and almost immediately opened them again to look up at Michael.

"Now what? Do I just lie here, on top of the blankets, as it were, or can I get back into my coffin?"

"You can't go back," Michael said coldly. "Once you're out, you're out. Just lie there and think how nice it is without those damn birds waking you up every morning."

Laura smiled and closed her eyes. Michael turned and walked off. He thought he heard her say, "Good night, Michael," but he kept walking, furious at the contentment in her voice. He was sure he heard her laugh.

Out of sight of her grave, he sat down on a stone. He was so angry that he forgot what sitting down was like and got all snarled up in midair. On the fourth try he made it and sat with his remembered chin in recalled hand. He remembered the size and shape of his hands pretty well, but he had never taken much interest in his face and, as a result, its remembered corners and angles varied considerably from moment to moment. Right now his chin was more pointed than it had been, and more angled from his jawline, but he had forgotten.

She took the easy way out, he thought. Fall asleep—forget everything—be nothing. That's not my way. He thought of the athletes and Big Men on Campus he had known during his college career. The athletes towered over him on the stairs and talked to one another in short, heavy sentences, and he felt properly scornful of their gum-chewing acceptance of life, their C's in the two-credit psychology courses they took, and, most of all, their laughing, ring-waisted girls. I'm bound to a higher road, he had told himself, and possessed by a much more demanding mistress. He spent a few wistful seconds imagining the mistress. The Big Men chatted pleasantly in the halls, in the cafeteria, speaking of dances, pep rallies, student productions, elections, and fund-raising drives. They were neatly dressed, they belonged to honorary fraternities, and when they were asked questions in classes they managed somehow to make a speech out of the answer. The football players greeted them as equals; they greeted the football players as inferiors but fine fellows nevertheless. And when they graduated public-relations firms and advertising companies snapped them up as if they were after-dinner mints.

Phonies, Michael had thought and, sitting on the stone, thought again. False and phoney. Not for me, boy. I'm awake. I'm conscious. I know that life is strange, surprising, cruel, merciless, real, earnest. Check one. Let them be applauded, subsidized, loved; I've got my integrity.