"They'll see me," Mr. Rebeck said. He drew his legs under him to rise, but the raven nudged his hand and said, "Not unless you get up. Stay put." He relaxed, feeling a little ashamed of his fright, but glad that the men would not see him.

"Do something," Laura said to Mr. Rebeck, to the raven, to Michael. She kept looking from Michael to the oncoming truck and back. "Please do something."

The truck was moving very slowly, now. One of the men in the cab had stuck his head out of the window and was looking at the graves as the truck passed them.

"There's nothing they can do," Michael said. "The time for doing something, like the time for touching and the time for being kind, is past. Anyway, it's not everybody who gets to see himself dug up." He essayed a frown. "Dug up. I don't like putting it that way. Exhumed. That's no good either. Disinterred. Jesus."

"Excavated," the raven said. "Mined. How about mined?"

"Mined is very good."

Mr. Rebeck heard a wordless shout from the man with his head out of the window, and the truck scraped to a halt.

"Bingo," Michael murmured. "Our side wins the treasure hunt."

The four men got out of the car and stood around the grave. They were wearing clean dungarees and heavy shoes. The driver went to the back of the truck and returned with four shovels. Mr. Rebeck had thought vaguely that there would be picks, but it was summer and the ground was soft. They would have no trouble with the earth.

One of the men lifted his shovel, held it high a moment, shifting his grip, and then struck it into the earth at the foot of the grave. He put his foot on the shovel to drive it in deeper. When he wrenched it free, tossing the dirt to one side with a quick flip, there was a dark brown gash in the middle of the grasses.

"Oh, God," Laura said softly. She turned suddenly to Mr. Rebeck, her imploring shadowiness very close to him. "Do something," she said. "You must do something."

She is beautiful, after all, Mr. Rebeck thought, and I never noticed. But why does she turn to me? Why to me? I can't do anything.

Michael said it for him. "There's nothing, Laura. What do you want him to do? Would you have him go charging down the hill, yelling, 'Unhand that specter! If you take him away, I won't have anybody to talk to'? There's nothing to be done. What's the good of yelling?"

Nothing at all, Mr. Rebeck thought. But there must be yelling. There ought to be a good deal of yelling and fist-shaking and cursing, for how will we know we are alive if there is no noise?

Laura, Laura, for your sake I might be a little brave and go running down at those men, cursing them very loudly and telling them to leave Michael alone. That doesn't take too much bravery. But when I ran out of curses, when they saw how small I am, they would look at each other and laugh and go on digging. They might even dig me up. I am not brave enough for that, and no one can convince me that I am.

The first man nodded at another, and this man also plunged his shovel into the ground until only a thin flake of blade showed. They dug together, one at the foot of the grave and one at the side, while the two other men leaned on their shovels and talked to each other. The broad-leafed ivy on Michael's grave was ripped from its tentative hold on the earth and shoveled casually to one side, where it lay like a worn bedspread. For a moment the grave was outlined, a dark brown oblong in the grass, black-wounded where the shovels had struck.

"The ivy didn't even have time to take," Michael said. "It looked very thick and protective, but the poor damn thing probably hadn't even taken root. Poor old hothouse ivy. I wish they'd get it over with. How long does a thing like this usually take?"

"I don't know," Mr. Rebeck said. "I never saw it before."

The raven's head was small and surprisingly hard under Mr. Rebeck's fingers. He had read once that birds' bones were as light and fragile as the glass balls on Christmas trees.

The bird said, "I've seen a couple. Half an hour. Maybe less, maybe more. Depends how much trouble they have getting the coffin into the truck. That's what they have the winch for."

"Half an hour," Michael said. "Thank you. Could you manage to love me for half an hour more, Laura?"

The men were working very fast. They were beginning to stoop as they dug on the grave and threw the dirt over their shoulders. Already two straggly wings of earth spread away from the grave.

"Is that all you want?" Laura asked quietly. "Half an hour of my love?"

"It's all I'm going to get, so it's all I want. I believe in rationalizing before the fact. But I need that half-hour very badly, Laura."

"All right, Michael. Half an hour."

"Give or take a little. Maybe they'll have trouble with the winch. How fast they dig."

As he spoke, the two men stopped digging and the hitherto idle pair took over. They dug eagerly, barely allowing themselves time to spill the dirt away before their blades were in the ground again. One had taken his shirt off and could be seen to bare his upper teeth in an abstracted grin at every lunge and twist of his shovel. The two relieved men dabbed at their foreheads and necks and drank sparingly from a nearby faucet.

"I wonder what happens when they're finished," Michael said. "Probably nothing until they drive out of the cemetery. Then what?" He glanced inquiringly at Mr. Rebeck.

"I've never seen anything like this before," Mr. Rebeck repeated. "I don't know what happens."

"That's true. I don't imagine you would. Well, it doesn't matter. They can't make me any more dead or any less. That was a mistake of mine. I would like to know where they're taking me, though."

"Mount Merrill," the raven said. "A little place way down at the butt end of the Bronx. They get all the Yorkchester rejects. Your old lady made the arrangements."

"Pleasant name. Alliterative." Michael did not appear to have noticed the raven's last remark. "You know, if you stop to think of it, this—mining operation shouldn't affect me very much. It isn't as if I'm actually leaving anyone I haven't left already. Except Laura. Always excepting Laura."

He turned quickly to Mr. Rebeck. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded, Jonathan." He had never called Mr. Rebeck that before. "We've been friends here. We would have been friends if we'd known each other when I was alive. We might have grown old playing pinochle, and the children would have been forcibly encouraged to call you Uncle Jonathan. But, as man and ghost, we had only a little time left to be friends. You know that. It was like the red second of light that remains after you have switched off a lamp. That short."

Very suddenly, Michael's tombstone began to fall. Mr. Rebeck heard one of the standing men shout a warning and saw the two diggers scramble out of the grave as the stone moved above them. Like the ivy, it had not had time to settle into the ground, and now it toppled slowly forward, crumpling the little earth that still held it up, making no sound at all. It swayed for a moment before it fell and vanished into the shallow hole that the men had dug. The four watching on the hillside heard the flat sound it made on the earth, and Mr. Rebeck thought he detected a slight hollowness under the sound. The shovels could not have much farther to go.

Laura said, "Ah," as if the stone had fallen on her. The men stood around the grave, looking at one another.

"What a sound," Michael marveled. "Like a suitcase slamming shut. Very symbolic. Even the stone cries out. Well, it should give us a little more time. I'm grateful for it."

They watched as the shirtless man waved the others back and jumped into the grave. He rubbed his hands against his thighs and bent down to the stone. Mr. Rebeck could see only the man's broad brown back from where he sat, but he could hear the whistling grunts of effort that burst past the man's teeth as he struggled with the headstone, and see the prison stripes of dirt and sweat forming on his sides. There was a moment when he almost had it lifted; when he stood nearly erect, with his shoulders curved and neck thrust forward, and his arms hanging straight down, a bowstring to his sweating back, and the stone in his hands, clear of the ground. His elbows were scraped and very dirty.