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a spot near where he’d seen the figures running out of the trees, he stopped the car. There was no place to pull off the road, but he didn’t think he had to worry about traffic. Hardly anyone ever used the road, and it wasn’t likely that anyone was going to try driving on it in the rain.
    Rhodes put on his soggy hat and got out of the car. He’d have to cross the ditch to get to the trees, and the ditch was half full of water. As wet as he was already, he might aswell just walk through it, but he didn’t want to do that. So he decided to jump it.
    Once, a long time ago, jumping across a couple feet of running water wouldn’t have been worth a second thought. These days, however, it was a different story. One of the things Rhodes didn’t like about getting older was the discovery that doing things he’d once taken for granted had become a good bit more difficult. And it wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t as if he’d asked for his body to deteriorate.
    Thinking about it didn’t help anything, so he took a couple of halfhearted running steps and jumped the ditch. The good news was that he made it. The bad news was that the landing jarred his knees so hard that he stumbled forward for several feet and nearly fell flat on his face. His pulse raced, and he had to wave his arms to maintain his balance. When he got his momentum under control, he stood still for a minute to let his heartbeat get back to normal. He hoped no one had been watching.
    After a while, he walked up to the trees. The ground was muddier than it had been up on the hill in the cemetery, and now and then his shoes made little sucking noises as he picked up his feet.
    When he got into the trees, Rhodes listened to the sound of the rain crackling on the dead leaves. He didn’t hear anything else for a few seconds, and then he heard a faraway train whistle as an engine came to a crossing. The whistle grew louder with each crossing the train passed, and before long the cars began passing by. Rhodes watched them go, listening to the familiar clickety-clack of the wheels on the tracks.
    There had once been a depot in Clearview, and trainshad made regular stops there, though that had been before Rhodes’s time. There were no stops now, of course, and the depot had been razed when Rhodes was just a boy.
    The train passed by, and soon the only sound Rhodes could hear was that made by the rain. He wondered if he’d imagined the two figures darting across the clearing.
    He walked out of the trees and into the clearing. The rain was still falling, though it was slackening up some. Rhodes looked for tracks in the grass, but he couldn’t find any. Grass didn’t take tracks well, and the rain didn’t help. The only thing he found was an old cellophane-wrapped package that had held Camel cigarettes. It was empty and the colors were faded. It didn’t look as if it had been dropped there at any time in the recent past.
    He stuck the pack in the pocket of his raincoat and looked at the trees on the other side of the clearing. They went on for about a quarter of a mile. It would take a long time to search through them, more time than he had, but he could at least take a look.
    He didn’t find a thing, just dead leaves underfoot and rain dripping down from above. There were no houses within half a mile of the trees, and from what Rhodes could see, there was no activity at any of them.
    He squished and squashed his way back to the county car, jumping the ditch again, and then drove along the road until he came to a place where he could turn around. There was nothing in the fields along the road, and not a single car had passed since Rhodes had been in the vicinity.
    His raincoat was drenched, and his clothes were sticking to him. He had made a cold, damp spot where he sat in the front seat of the county car.
    He decided it was time to go home.

    The rain had finally stopped by the time Rhodes got home, but it was still dark and overcast. There was no more thunder and