Ghost Story

He did not get home until after seven. Hungry, Lewis was still irritable. The girl had been there only a moment, like a deer jumping out before him, and when he had gone into the skid he had lost sight of her. But on that long straight road, where could she have run to, after he had landed in the field? So maybe she actually was lying dead in a ditch; but even a dog would leave a huge dent in the Morgan's body, and the car was undamaged.

'Hell,' he said out loud. The car was still in the drive; he had been in the house only long enough to get warm. The midday restlessness, the feeling that if he did not move some bad thing would happen-that something worse than the accident was aimed at him like a gun-was back. Lewis went up to his bedroom, removed the sweater and parka and put on a clean shirt, a rep tie and double-breasted blazer. He'd go to Humphrey's Place and have a hamburger and a few beers. That was the ticket.

The lot was nearly full, and Lewis had to park in a space close to the road. The light snow had ceased during the early evening, but the air was cold and so sharp it felt as if you could break pieces off it with your bare hands. Beer signs flashed from the windows of the long gray building; country music from the four-piece band came to Lewis across the spaces of the lot. Wabash Cannonball.

A keening note on the fiddle stitched into his brain as soon as he was inside, and Lewis frowned at the musician sawing away on the bandstand, hair down to his shoulders, left hip and right foot jigging in time, but the boy's eyes were closed and he never noticed. Then an instant later the music was just music again, but his headache remained. The bar was crowded and so warm that Lewis began to perspire almost immediately. Big shapeless Humphrey Stalladge, an apron over his white shirt, moved back and forth behind the bar. All the tables nearest the band seemed to be filled with kids drinking beer from pitchers. When he looked at the backs of their heads, Lewis honestly couldn't tell the boys from the girls.

What if you saw yourself running toward you, running toward the headlights of your car, your hair flying and your face twisted with fear…

'Get you anything, Lewis?' Humphrey asked.

'Two aspirin and a beer. I've got a rotten headache. And a hamburger, Humphrey. Thanks.'

Down at the other end of the bar, as far from the bandstand as he could get, looking both damp and filthy, Omar Norris was entertaining a group of men. As he talked his eyes bulged, his hands made swooping motions, and Lewis knew that if you were close enough to him you'd eventually see Omar's spittle shining on your lapels. When he had been younger, Omar's stories of getting out from under his wife's heel and of W. C. Fields-like stratagems for avoiding all work but running the town snowplow and working as the department store Santa had been amusing enough, but Lewis was mildly surprised that he could get anyone to listen to him now. People were even buying him drinks. Stalladge came back with his aspirin tablets and set a glass of beer beside them. 'Burger's on the way,' he said.

Lewis put the aspirins on his tongue and washed them down. The band had stopped playing Wabash Cannonball and was doing something else, a song he didn't recognize. One of the young women at the tables in front of the band had turned around and was staring at him. Lewis nodded to her.

He finished his beer and looked over the rest of the crowd. There were only a few empty booths by the front wall, so he caught Humphrey's eye and pointed to his glass, and when it was filled he started to go across the room to one of them. If he didn't get one early enough, he'd be pinned to the bar all night. Halfway across the room he nodded to Rollo Draeger, the druggist-come out to get away from Irmengard's endless complaints-and belatedly recognized the boy seated beside the girl who had stared at him: Jim Hardie, Eleanor's son, usually seen these days with Draeger's daughter. He glanced back at the couple, and found them both staring at him now. Jim Hardie was a suspect kid, Lewis thought: he was broad and blond and strong, but he looked like he had a streak of wildness as wide as the county. He was always grinning: Lewis had heard from Walt Hardesty that Jim Hardie was probably the one who had burned down the deserted old Pugh barn and set a field on fire. He could see the boy grinning as he did that. The girl with him tonight was older than Penny Draeger; better-looking, too.

Lewis remembered a time, years ago, when everything had been simple, and it would have been he sitting beside a girl listening to a band, Noble Sissle or Benny Goodman-Lewis with his heart on fire. The memory made him automatically look around the room for Stella Hawthorne's commanding face, but he knew that the moment he'd entered he had half-consciously recorded that she was not in the room.

Humphrey appeared with his hamburger, looked at his glass and said, 'If you're gonna drink that fast, maybe you want a pitcher?'

Lewis had not even noticed that his second beer was finished. 'Good idea.'

'You don't look so hot,' Humphrey said.

The band, which had been discussing something, noisily went back to work and spared Lewis the necessity of replying. Humphrey's two relief barmaids, Anni and Annie, came in, releasing a wave of cold into the room. They were just enough reason to stick around. Anni was gypsyish, with curly black hair fluffing out around a sensual face; Annie looked like a Viking and had strong well-shaped legs and beautiful teeth. Both of them were in their mid- thirties and talked like college professors. They lived with men off in the country and were childless. Lewis liked both of them enormously, and sometimes took one or the other out for a meal. Anni saw him and waved, he waved back, and the guitarist, backed by a seesawing fiddle, yelled

You lost your hot, I lost mine

so (feedback) we find

a spare garden to seed our dreams?

Humphrey moved away to give the women instructions. Lewis bit into his hamburger.

When he looked up Ned Rowles was standing beside him. Lewis raised his eyebrows and, still chewing, half- stood and motioned for Rowles to enter the booth. He liked Ned Rowles too; Ned had made The Urbanite an interesting newspaper, not just the usual smalltown list of firemen's picnics and advertisements for sales at the grocery stores. 'Help me drink this,' he said, and poured beer from the pitcher into Ned's nearly empty glass.

'How about me?' said a deeper, dryer voice over his shoulder, and, startled, Lewis turned his head to see Walt Hardesty glinting down at him. That explained why Lewis had not seen Ned at first; he and Hardesty had been back in the room where Humphrey stacked his surplus beer. Lewis knew that Hardesty, who was year by year surrendering himself to the bottle as surely as Omar Norris, sometimes spent all afternoon in the back room-he would not drink in front of his deputies.

'Of course, Walt,' he said, 'I didn't see you before. Please join me.' Ned Rowles was looking at him oddly. Lewis was sure that the editor found Hardesty as tiresome as he did himself and had no desire for more of his company, but did he expect him to send the sheriff away? Whatever the look meant, Rowles slid over on his side of the booth to make room for Hardesty. The sheriff was still wearing his outer jacket; that back room was probably cold. Like the college student he resembled, Ned went as long as possible with only a tweed jacket for protection against winter.

Then Lewis saw that both men were looking at him oddly, and his heart jumped-had he hit the girl after all? Had someone written down his license number? He'd be guilty of bit and run! 'Well, Walt,' he said, 'is this about anything special, or do you just want a beer?' He filled Hardesty's glass as he spoke.

'Right now, I'll settle for the beer, Mr. Benedikt,' Hardesty said, 'Quite a day, right?'

'Yes,' Lewis said simply.

'A terrible day,' said Ned Rowles, and he passed a hand through the hair falling over his forehead. He