Everything's Eventual

   "Nothing like a funeral," he said, and laughed. "Isn't that what you said? You slipped there, Al. No doubt about it. Slipped, tripped, and fell."

   "Let me out," I whispered. "Please."

   "Well," he said, turning toward me, "we have to talk about that, don't we? Do you know who I am, Alan?"

"You're a ghost," I said.

   He gave an impatient little snort, and in the glow of the speedometer the corners of his mouth turned down. "Come on, man, you can do better than that. Fuckin Casper's a ghost. Do I float in the air? Can you see through me?" He held up one of his hands, opened and closed it in front of me. I could hear the dry, unlubricated sound of his tendons creaking.

   I tried to say something. I don't know what, and it doesn't really matter, because nothing came out.

   "I'm a kind of messenger," Staub said. "Fuckin FedEx from beyond the grave, you like that? Guys like me actually come out pretty often—whenever the circumstances are just right. You know what I think? I think that whoever runs things—God or whatever—must like to be entertained. He always wants to see if you'll keep what you already got or if he can talk you into goin for what's behind the curtain. Things have to be just right, though. Tonight they were. You out all by yourself . . . mother sick . . . needin a ride . . ."

   "If I'd stayed with the old man, none of this would have happened," I said. "Would it?" I could smell Staub clearly now, the needle-sharp smell of the chemicals and the duller, blunter stink of decaying meat, and wondered how I ever could have missed it, or mistaken it for something else.

   "Hard to say," Staub replied. "Maybe this old man you're talking about was dead, too."

   I thought of the old man's shrill handful-of-glass voice, the snap of his truss. No, he hadn't been dead, and I had traded the smell of piss in his old Dodge for something a lot worse.

   "Anyway, man, we don't have time to talk about all that. Five more miles and we'll start seeing houses again. Seven more and we're at the Lewiston city line. Which means you have to decide now."

   "Decide what?" Only I thought I knew.

   "Who rides the Bullet and who stays on the ground. You or your mother." He turned and looked at me with his drowning moonlight eyes. He smiled more fully and I saw most of his teeth were gone, knocked out in the crash. He patted the steering wheel. "I'm taking one of you with me, man. And since you're here, you get to choose. What do you say?"

   You can't be serious rose to my lips, but what would be the point of saying that, or anything like it? Of course he was serious. Dead serious.