Riding The Bullet

pack because the mist had overlaid it, but I knew it was there. If I walked out to the road in the lefthand wheelrut of the lane, I'd find it. Hell, would likely stumble over it.

So here was my story, all neatly packaged and tied up with a bow: I had stopped for a rest at the top of this hill, had gone inside the cemetery to have a little look around, and while backing away from the grave of one George Staub had tripped over my own large and stupid feet. Fell down, banged my head on a marker. How long had I been unconscious? I wasn't savvy enough to tell time by the changing position of the moon with to-the-minute accuracy, but it had to have been at least an hour. Long enough to have a dream that I'd gotten a ride with a dead man. What dead man? George Staub, of course, the name I'd read on a grave-marker just before the lights went out. It was the classic ending, wasn't it? Gosh-What-an-Awful-Dream-I-Had. And when I got to Lewiston and found my mother had died? Just a little touch of pre-cognition in the night, put it down to that. It was the sort of story you might tell years later, near the end of a party, and people would nod their heads thought-fully and look solemn and some dinkleberry with leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket would say there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in our philosophy and then-

"Then shit," I croaked. The top of the mist was

moving slowly, like mist on a clouded mirror. "I'm never talking about this. Never, not in my whole life, not even on my deathbed."

But it had all happened just the way I remembered it, of that I was sure. George Staub had come along and picked me up in his Mustang, Ichabod Crane's old pal with his head stitched on instead of under his arm, demanding that I choose. And I had chosen-faced with the oncoming lights of the first house, I had bartered away my mother's life with hardly a pause. It might be understandable, but that didn't make the guilt of it any less. No one had to know, however; that was the good part. Her death would look natural-hell, would be natural-and that's the way I intended to leave it.

I walked out of the graveyard in the lefthand rut, and when my foot struck my pack, I picked it up and slung it back over my shoulders. Lights appeared at the bottom of the hill as if someone had given them the cue. I stuck out my thumb, oddly sure it was the old man in the Dodge-he'd come back this way look-ing for me, of course he had, it gave the story that final finishing roundness.

Only it wasn't the old guy. It was a tobacco-chewing farmer in a Ford pick-up truck filled with apple bas-kets, a perfectly ordinary fellow: not old and not dead.

"Where you goin, son?" he asked, and when I told

him he said, "That works for both of us." Less than

forty minutes later, at twenty minutes after nine, he pulled up in front of the Central Maine Medical Cen-ter. "Good luck. Hope your ma's on the mend."

"Thank you," I said, and opened the door.

"I see you been pretty nervous about it, but she'll most likely be fine. Ought to get some disinfectant on those, though." He pointed at my hands.

I looked down at them and saw the deep, purpling crescents on the backs. I remembered clutching them together, digging in with my nails, feeling it but unable to stop. And I remembered Staub's eyes, filled up with moonlight like radiant water. Did you ride the Bullet? he'd asked me. I rode that fucker four times. "Son?" the man driving the pick-up asked. "You all right?"

"Huh?"

"You come over all shivery."

"I'm okay," I said. "Thanks again." I slammed the door of the pickup and went up the wide walk past the line of parked wheelchairs gleaming in the moonlight. I walked to the information desk, reminding myself that I had to look surprised when they told me she was dead, had to look surprised, they'd think it was funny if I didn't . . . or maybe they'd just think I was in shock . . . or that we didn't get along . . . or . . . I was so deep in these thoughts that I didn't at first grasp what the woman behind the desk had told me. I had to ask her to repeat it.

"I said that she's in room 487, but you can't go up just now. Visiting hours end at nine."

"But . . ." I felt suddenly woozy. I gripped the edge of the desk. The lobby was lit by fluorescents, and in that bright even glare the cuts on the backs of my hands stood out boldly-eight small purple crescents like grins, just above the knuckles. The man in the pick-up was right, I ought to get some disinfectant on those.

The woman behind the desk was looking at me patiently. The plaque in front of her said she was yvonne ederle.

"But is she all right?"

She looked at her computer. "What I have here is S. Stands for satisfactory. And four is a general popula-tion floor. If your mother had taken a turn for the worse, she'd be in ICU. That's on three. I'm sure if you come back tomorrow, you'll find her just fine.

Visiting hours begin at-"

"She's my ma," I said. "I hitchhiked all the way down from the University of Maine to see her. Don't you think I could go up, just for a few minutes?"

"Exceptions are sometimes made for immediate

family," she said, and gave me a smile. "You just hang

on a second. Let me see what I can do." She picked up

the phone and punched a couple of buttons, no doubt

calling the nurse's station on the fourth floor, and I

could see the course of the next two minutes as if I

really did have second sight. Yvonne the Information Lady would ask if the son of Jean Parker in 487 could come up for a minute or two-just long enough to give his mother a kiss and an encouraging word-and the nurse would say oh God, Mrs. Parker died not fif-teen minutes ago, we just sent her down to the morgue, we haven't had a chance to update the com-puter, this is so terrible.