Twilight (33 page)

On the slope the two men had ceased their labors and stood peering into the earth. Pa? one of them called.

Tyler turned away from the sudden pain in the old man’s eyes and pulled gently from his grasp and went on to the crossroads. He thought of the old man looking into a face
he’d resigned himself to never seeing again in this world. He set the suitcase in a dry spot and seated himself on it and took off one of his new shoes and sat contemplatively rubbing his heel until faroff down the blacktop there was the sound of tires on macadam then the car itself wavering and ephemeral then gaining solidity in a rush.

A black Buick Roadmaster, he didn’t even have to thumb it. It stopped and sat idling and he took up the suitcase and peered through the windowglass and a curious trick of the light behind him rendered the glass opaque and mirrored so that instead of the driver of the car he saw only his own reflection leaning toward itself. In this altered light it was a new Tyler, older, perhaps wiser, more versed in the reckless ways of a reckless world, as if in some way he had hitched a ride with a more sinister self, ten years down the line.

He opened the door and got in.