They were on the corner now; their apartment building was across the street. They paused there. Frannie was looking at him closely.

“So I said, ‘Don’t I know you? Ain’t you from up around Corbett or Maxin?’ But it didn’t really seem like I knew him from those two towns. And he says, ‘No, but I passed through Corbett once with my family, when I was just a kid. It seems like I passed through just about everyplace in America when I was a kid. My dad was in the Air Force.’

“So I went back and filled up his car, and all the time I’m thinkin about him, playing place the face, and all at once it came to me. All at once I knew. And I damned near pissed myself, because the man behind the wheel of that Pontiac was supposed to be dead.”

“Who was he, Stuart? Who was he?”

“No, you let me tell it my way, Frannie. Not that it isn’t a crazy story no matter what way you tell it. I went back to the window and I says, ‘That’ll be six dollars and thirty cents.’ He gave me two five-dollar bills and told me I could keep the change. And I says, ‘I think I might have you placed now.’ And he says, ‘Well, maybe you do,’ and he gives me this weird, chilly smile, and all the time Hank Williams is singin about goin to town. I says, ‘If you are who I think you are, you’re supposed to be dead.’ He says, ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read, man.’ I says, ‘You like Hank Williams all right?’ It was all I could think of to say. Because I saw, Frannie, if I didn’t say something, he was just going to roll up that power window and go tooling on down the road… and I wanted him to go, but I also didn’t want him to go. Not yet. Not until I was sure. I didn’t know then that a person is never sure about a lot of things, no matter how much he wants to be.

“He says, ‘Hank Williams is one of the best. I like roadhouse music.’ Then he says, ‘I’m going to New Orleans, going to drive all night, sleep all day tomorrow, then barrelhouse all night long. Is it the same? New Orleans?’ And I say, ‘As what?’ And he says, ‘Well, you know.’ And I say, ‘Well, it’s all the South, you know, although there are considerable more trees down that way.’ And that makes him laugh. He says, ‘Maybe I’ll see you again.’ But I didn’t want to see him again, Frannie. Because he had the eyes of a man who has been trying to look into the dark for a long time and has maybe begun to see what is there. I think, if I ever see that man Flagg, his eyes might look a little like that.”

Stu shook his head as they pushed their bikes across the road and parked them. “I’ve been thinking of that. I thought about getting some of his records after that, but I didn’t want them. His voice… it’s a good voice, but it gives me the creeps.”

“Stuart, who are you talking about?”

“You remember a rock and roll group called The Doors? The man that stopped that night for gas in Arnette was Jim Morrison. I’m sure of it.”

Her mouth dropped open. “But he died! He died in France! He—” And then she stopped. Because there had been something funny about Morrison’s death, hadn’t there? Something secret.

“Did he?” Stu asked. “I wonder. Maybe he did, and the fellow I saw was just a guy who looked like him, but—”

“Do you really think it was?” she asked.

They were sitting on the steps of their building now, shoulders touching, like small children waiting for their mother to call them in to supper.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. And until this summer, I thought that would always be the strangest thing that ever happened to me. Boy, was I wrong.”

“And you never told anyone,” she marveled. “You saw Jim Morrison years after he supposedly died and you never told anyone. Stuart Redman, God should have given you a combination lock instead of a mouth when He sent you out into the world.”

Stu smiled. “Well, the years rolled by, as they say in the books, and whenever I thought of that night—as I did, from time to time—I got surer and surer it wasn’t him after all. Just someone who looked a little bit like him, you know. I had my mind pretty well at rest on the subject. But in the last few weeks, I’ve found myself puzzling over it again. And I think more and more that it was. Hell, he might even still be alive now. That’d be a real laugh, wouldn’t it?”

“If he is,” she said, “he’s not here.”

“No,” Stu agreed, “I wouldn’t expect him to be here. I saw his eyes, you see.”

She put her hand on his arm. “That’s some story.”

“Yeah, and there’s probably twenty million people in this country with one just like it… only about Elvis Presley or Howard Hughes.”

“Not anymore.”

“No—not anymore. Harold was something tonight, wasn’t he?”

“I believe that’s called changing the subject.”

“I believe you’re right.”

“Yes,” she said, “he was.”

He smiled at her worried tone and the slight frown which had puckered her brow. “Bothered you a little, didn’t it?”

“Yes, but I won’t say so. You’re in Harold’s corner now.”

“Now, that’s not fair, Fran. It bothered me, too. There we had those two advance meetings… hashed everything over to a fare-thee-well… at least we thought so… and along comes Harold. He takes a whack-whack here and a whack-whack there and says, ‘Ain’t that what you really meant?’ And we say, ‘Yeah, thanks, Harold. It was.’” Stu shook his head. “Putting everybody up for blanket election, how come we never thought of that, Fran? That was sharp. And we never even discussed it.”

“Well, none of us knew for sure what kind of mood they’d be in. I thought—especially after Mother Abagail walked off—that they’d be glum, maybe even mean. With that Impening talking to them like some kind of deathcrow—”

“I wonder if he should be shut up somehow,” Stu said thoughtfully.

“But it wasn’t like that. They were so… exuberant just to be together. Did you feel that?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“It was like a tent revival, almost. I don’t think it was anything Harold had planned. He just seized the moment.”

“I just don’t know how to feel about him,” Stu said. “That night after we hunted for Mother Abagail, I felt real bad for him. When Ralph and Glen turned up, he looked downright horrible, like he was going to faint, or something. But when we were talking out on the lawn just now and everybody was congratulating him, he seemed puffed up like a toad. Like he was smiling on the outside and on the inside he was saying, ‘There, you see what your committee’s worth, you stupid bunch of fools.’ He’s like one of those puzzles you could never figure out when you were a kid. The Chinese finger-pullers or those three steel rings that would come apart if you pulled them just the right way.”

Fran stuck out her feet and looked at them. “Speaking of Harold, do you see anything funny about my feet, Stuart?”

Stu looked at them judiciously. “Nope. Just that you’re wearing those funny-looking Earth Shoes from up the street. And they’re almighty big, o course.”

She slapped at him. “Earth Shoes are very good for your feet. All the best magazines say so. And I happen to be a size seven, for your information. That’s practically petite.”

“So what have your feet got to do with anything? It’s late, honey.” He began to push his bike again and she fell in beside him.

“Nothing, I guess. It’s just that Harold kept looking at my feet. After the meeting when we were sitting out on the grass and talking things over.” She shook her head, frowning a little. “Now why would Harold Lauder be interested in my feet?” she asked.

When Larry and Lucy got home, they were by themselves, walking hand in hand. Sometime before, Leo had gone into the house where he stayed with “Nadine-mom.”

Now, as they walked toward the door, Lucy said: “It was quite a meeting. I never thought—” Her words caught in her throat as a dark form unfolded itself from the shadows of their porch. Larry felt hot fear leap up in his throat. It’s him, he thought wildly. He’s come to get me… I’m going to see his face.