Mr. Rebeck stood on the steps and thought desperately about Mrs. Klapper's hat. His mind was filled with blue-black feathers held together by hope and a shiny-headed pin. Laura was there too, somewhere, waiting. He felt sudden pain in both his thighs, and looked down to see that his hands were clutching him like frightened children. His thin fingers arched and clung, and the muscles between his thumbs and forefingers tightened into little ridges and hollows. He could not make them let go, for he knew that there would be more pain when they did.

"What is it like to be dead?" he asked. He had never asked that question before.

Morris Klapper's answer followed as closely as blood follows a knife. "Like nothing at all. It is like nothing at all."

For the moment more that he stood on the steps, shaking a bit, hands chewing into his thighs, he thought he saw Morris Klapper. It was only a fragment of an image he saw; gray, and vague as someone else's remembered sorrow, and he might easily have imagined it. But it seemed to him that he saw Morris Klapper, and it seemed that Morris Klapper did look something like him, as one man looks like another.

Then, behind him, he heard Mrs. Klapper's strident, city-colored yell. "Hey, Rebeck!"

He stood without turning, and she called again, "Rebeck! Hoo, Rebeck!" There was anxiety in her voice, and he knew that she thought she might have made a mistake and called a greeting to a man who looked very much like him but was actually somebody quite different. His hands fell away from himself, and he felt the quick pain as the blood rushed back to his thighs.

She called again, and this time Mr. Rebeck turned and walked down the road to meet her. He went partly because her voice was high and clear and made him think at once of the cry of a street peddler, the yelp of an outraged policeman, an auto horn, and the triumphant bugle of the cavalry riding to the rescue. But mostly he went to meet her because she was so glad to see that it was really he she had been calling that her voice skidded off the scale and came out as a kind of joyous squeak.

Much later, a long time later, when he was thinking once again of the afternoon he decided to leave the cemetery, he concluded that it was the squeaky "Hey, Rebeck," that did it.

Chapter 14

Oh, that was a moment, when Campos stood up straight, black over the black grave, with the coffin on his shoulders. It cast a shadow in the truck headlights, and Mr. Rebeck could not see Campos's face at all. But he saw the big hands gripping, the hands whose backs were badlands of tight muscles and thick blue veins, with the knuckles like skulls under the moon; and the naked back, where the muscles bunched like fists; and the ribs, so tight against the skin that they made Campos look tiger-striped; and, most of all, the thick legs, spread wide apart to support the man and his long burden. Campos himself cast no shadow, for the earth was very dark.

In that moment without morning, Mr. Rebeck found himself wondering, Is the world holding up Campos now, giving him a place to stand, or is it really Campos who weighs down the world and keeps it from blowing away?

The coffin was heavy up front, and it teetered forward a little, but Campos bent quickly and shifted his hands, and it was all right. Then Campos began to walk to the truck. He took slow, even steps, carrying the coffin high on his shoulder. His legs and back were straight, but his shoulders were perceptibly bowed, and his neck was twisted so that his mouth was close to the coffin, as if he were speaking love to the woman whose body he carried so tenderly. When he reached the truck, he turned and bent his knees until the coffin rested on the lowered tailgates. Then he fell away from it, touching his hand to the ground for support, and straightened up again.

"Okay," he said to the two people who sat near the truck and watched him. With a casual hand he pushed the coffin farther into the back of the truck and reached for his shirt, which hung on the tailgate where he had left it.

Mr. Rebeck heard Mrs. Klapper sigh with exaggerated relief beside him. Before she could say anything, he said to Campos, "Are we going now?"

Campos nodded. He held his shirt without putting it on. He was breathing deeply, cautiously touching a raw spot on his neck where the coffin had rubbed away the skin.

"Okay," he said again. He walked to the front of the truck and stood by the door. In the dim light there his body gleamed gold with sweat, and brown with sweat, and black. He put on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned.

"Shouldn't we fill in the grave before we go?" Mr. Rebeck asked.

Campos looked over at the empty grave with the piles of dirt scattered around it and shrugged. "Fill it in when I get back. Come on."

Mr. Rebeck rose from the stone he sat on and offered a hand to Mrs. Klapper. Grasping it, she pulled herself to her feet, brushing her dress with her free hand. She was not wearing the crescent hat, after all.

"Well," she said. "So now everything's all right? Nobody's left anything behind?"

"Everything's fine," Mr. Rebeck said. They started walking to the truck. Campos had started the engine.

"Now what?" Mrs. Klapper asked.

"Now we have to take the coffin to Mount Merrill," Mr. Rebeck said. "It's not far."

Mrs. Klapper blinked at him. "And you bury it all over again? Vey, what people. Like a dog with a bone."

"It's a favor for a friend. I told you about it."

"I know you told me. It's a favor for a friend. All right, who can refuse a friend? So fine, we sit here all night and watch your friend dig up a grave, and now we got to go with him so we can watch him bury it again. Rebeck, you got some friends I wouldn't even want for enemies."

"I couldn't refuse him," Mr. Rebeck said lamely. "He's a very good friend."

"All right, to you he's a very good friend. Me, I don't like him. He scares me."

The last few words were whispered because they had reached the cab of the truck. Mr. Rebeck pulled the door open and stepped back to let Mrs. Klapper get in first. She gave him a sour look, wagging her head slightly, and he realized that she was a little afraid of sitting next to Campos. However, there was nothing for it; Campos was looking at them, waiting impatiently for them to get in, and they would have enough trouble fitting three people into the cab without worrying about the order. So Mrs. Klapper got in and gingerly seated herself next to Campos. Mr. Rebeck climbed in after her. There was barely room enough for him, even when Mrs. Klapper moved closer against Campos's hard, sweating body. But he sat down next to her and closed the door carefully.

The engine hiccuped fiercely, and the truck jolted off. Mr. Rebeck leaned his elbow on the window and felt the door handle pressing against his leg. It was three in the morning by Mrs. Klapper's tiny wrist watch, and very dark. Mr. Rebeck found it hard to breathe, and even the beating of his heart was painful. He turned his head away from Mrs. Klapper, not wanting her to see how frightened he was.

When he had told Mrs. Klapper that he had decided to leave the cemetery, she had literally whooped with delight. After that, she sat down on a rock and began to cry. She stopped abruptly when he told her that he would have to wait until night to leave. And when he told her about Campos and the coffin she got to her feet, holding her purse in both hands, and said that he was a crazy grave-robber, and that it would undoubtedly be better if he stayed in the cemetery where the psychiatrists couldn't get at him. He had gone mad from being alone, just as she had warned him.

But she stayed, snapping her fingers for an explanation she could accept with dignity, whether she believed it or not. The one he finally chose, about doing a last favor for Campos, was not as solid as she would have preferred, but it would do. She accepted it, saying that friendship was a fine thing, and adding that she would wait with him, because he would certainly get lost if he went into the city alone at night.