He drew himself erect on the tailgate, as if he were facing a firing squad, having just rejected blindfold and cigarette.

"It's people like you who make things tough for the noncombatants," said the raven bitterly. He got up and walked to the back of the truck to look over the tailgate. The truck was approaching the ungardened path that led to the Wilder mausoleum. Remembering the roast-beef sandwich, he went back and picked it up rather awkwardly in his beak.

"Are you getting off here?" the squirrel asked. The raven nodded.

"Well, it's been very interesting talking to you," the squirrel said earnestly. "Do drop in if you're ever in the neighborhood. We have little get-togethers every Saturday night. If you're ever free some night—"

But the raven was gone, flapping heavily on stiff wings down the narrow path to the mausoleum. Turning his head, he saw the truck careening on its way. As soon as it was out of sight, he dropped to the ground and began to walk determinedly along the path.

I didn't want to walk, he thought, with that furry little bastard yapping at me. Squirrels get so damn enthusiastic about things.

The gravel skidded under his feet, providing very little for his claws to grasp and making his legs ache. The casually dashing feeling he had enjoyed on the truck before the motion began to affect his stomach was gone, and in its place came a mental picture of a somewhat carsick black bird stumbling along a slippery road that hurt his feet. It was an utterly undignified image, and the raven winced and put it from his mind. The raven believed, grudgingly and inarticulately, in dignity.

But he kept walking. Once he looked up and saw a swallow coasting down the sky. His wings jerked involuntarily, tugging like children at his body, but he did not take off. He walked on the gravel road and thought about the squirrel.

Goddam organizers, he thought. You get something good going, and somebody comes along and organizes it. He told himself that this was inevitable, the way of the world, but it bothered him. The raven would have been in favor of a movement in the general direction of chaos, consternation, and disorganization, had he not known that such a project would require the most organization of all. Besides, there would undoubtedly be a squirrel running it.

"Saturday-night get-togethers," he muttered into the roast-beef sandwich as he limped along. "Tiny little hot dogs with toothpicks through them. Crap." His feet hurt quite a bit, and the sandwich was getting heavy again.

Michael Morgan made no sound on the gravel, and when he said, "Good day, bird," the raven dropped the sandwich and sprang almost four feet straight up. He turned in the air so that he was facing Michael as he came down and he was cursing even before he hit the ground. "What a thing to do!" he cried furiously. "What a sonofabitching thing to do!" Michael slapped his thighs soundlessly, and from his throat came surfs of laughter as silent as lightning.

"I didn't know you'd take it that way." He gasped, putting out his hand to silence the angry bird. "Really I didn't. I'm sorry. I apologize." He looked closely at the dusty raven. "What makes you so touchy today?"

"I've had a tough morning," the raven said sullenly. He felt that he had acted foolishly. But he hated to be caught off guard.

"You dropped something," Michael said, pointing at the sandwich with a transparent foot. "And why in God's name are you walking?"

"I had a flat."

"Tell me why you're walking. I'm curious."

"Mind your own goddam business," the raven answered, but he said it absently and he did not seem to be thinking of Michael.

"Do you know what I think?" Michael folded his arms and grinned. "I think you've forgotten how to fly."

The raven looked at him in amazement. "I've what?"

"Of course," Michael went on cheerfully, "Like playing the piano. You know—you play beautifully, you don't even need sheet music. Then you look down at your hands and think, How did I do that, how am I doing this, what am I to do next? And then everything goes bang. You forget how to move your fingers, how to pedal, even how the piece goes. That's what's happened to you, my friend. You've thought too much, and now you don't remember how to fly."

"Go haunt a house," the raven said. He picked up the roast-beef sandwich once more and began to walk on. Michael matched his pace, talking as he did so.

"It comes from being around ghosts too much, lad. Very bad for you. You start becoming one, by osmosis, as it were. You start to forget things, the way they do. You move slowly, the way they do, because nothing in the world can rush you. Oh, you're well on the way, boy, forgetting how to fly. A few more days and you can join our chess club and have Mr. Rebeck push the pieces around for you."

The raven stopped walking and looked at Michael for a moment with something approaching pity. Then he put the sandwich on the ground and looked directly at Michael again.

"Watch me," he said. He took two quick steps and went into the air.

The wind dizzied him and made him a little drunk. He cleared a tree by a few inches, turned, and seemed to slide down an invisible tightwire to a smaller tree. Then he flew almost straight up for twenty or thirty feet. At the top of his climb he fell off on one wing and began to spiral gradually down like a sleepy leaf. He glided in small, angled circles without beating a wing until he was no higher than Michael's head. Then he made an ungraceful movement of his wings, seemed to skid a little, and was roosting in a tree off to the left, breathing hard, with his heart stuttering delightedly.

He shook his head slightly, winked maliciously at Michael, and rose from the branch with a jump that was very nearly a dance step. The air was as warm as wedding cake as he fell, volplaning directly at Michael's feet. Michael stepped back nervously, wondering if the ground would cleave before the strong beak like the Red Sea or if it wouldn't, and how the raven felt about the matter, if he gave a damn at all. And then there was a quick swirl in the gravel and pebbles scattering and a black feather on the ground, and the raven was circling overhead with the roast-beef sandwich in his beak.

The sandwich had had a pretty tiring morning itself, and as the raven circled triumphantly the worn wrapping tore, and the sandwich fell from the raven's beak, turning over and over. Michael raised his hands to catch it, and then lowered them and held them behind his back.

But the raven fell beside the sandwich, turning his head to judge its descent so that they looked like two meteors comforting each other. Then a branch broke the sandwich's fall for a moment; the raven struck and was gone, over the trees and down the path. Michael smiled with just the right touch of casual sadness and followed.

Laura saw the raven first from where she sat with Mr. Rebeck on the grass in front of the mausoleum. She had been sitting there when he had come out to stand on the steps and yawn. He had been inordinately pleased to see her and had gone back into the mausoleum to dress as fast as he could, because he felt somehow that she might be gone when he returned.

But she was there, sitting on the grass and looking curiously at the sun. He had not seen her since the time she had come with Michael, a week ago. June then, it was July now, a New York July, full of rust-colored mornings and shining noons that hurt the eyes. People came less often to the cemetery, and the roses went brown on the graves before they were replaced.

She had not come again, and he had wondered. Now he went over and sat down beside her.

"Hello, Laura," he said. "Where have you been?"

"Here and there." Laura moved her hand very slightly and was both here and there. Mr. Rebeck saw her so—sitting, with the sun shining through dress and bone and body, making her look like a pen-and-ink drawing; and walking among the olive-colored ferns that grew all around the cemetery, encircling it as cattails do a stagnant pond. She smiled at him now, and he saw her the night before, standing close to the snake-laced gate, smiling.