Her eyes wiggled intently. “I don’t know, Dan. He was still alive yesterday morning when I went over to Collie’s. You know, Collie has been down with the fever—you remember Collie—that’s my niece who married Joe Kohnkopfer. And her sister-in-law was getting married, and all. Mealy went with me, for the wedding. Heavens to Betsy, you ain’t even spoken to Mealy.”

He didn’t recall Amelia Niede, except as a thin child with white hair who sat outside Pock’s grocery store in her father’s farm wagon. Now she was pretty in a pale, bony fashion. She had a slender neck and coral lips and listless blue eyes. It was her hat which boasted the painted strawberries. He told her, “I apologize, Amelia. I wouldn’t have known you unless Mrs. Duffey had told—”

“You used to call me Aunt Eva.”

“Unless Aunt Eva had told me.”

Amelia said, “I wouldn’t have known you either, Mr. Bale.” She kept her hands folded in her lap. It was hot in the coach, and Dan could see little glistening dots of perspiration dwelling amid the fluffy hair at the girl’s temples.

“Why’d you grow that beard?” demanded Eva Duffey, sharply.

“It came natural, out west. But Ty tells me that I look like Jeb Stuart.”

Mrs. Duffey sucked at her tongue. “The war.”

“I’ve heard nothing else since I started east. Out there, we think about—”

“Yes?” she demanded. “What do you think about, out there?”

“Or at least I do. Other things.”

Amelia smiled drearily. Mrs. Duffey kept gazing up at him; he had the odd feeling that her eyes were sterilizing his face. “You were going to write some philosophy, or some such. A lot of books.”

“It’s always in the future,” Dan said.

The train went jolting across a gap in the rails; rows of heads jerked with each uneven shudder of the old coach.

“Tell me about the Doctor.”

“Oh,” said the woman, “Adam’s fine. He’s got his hands all wrapped up in lint, and for two days he did nothing but curse and blaspheme.”

“Wrapped up in lint?”

H’la, h’la, h’la sang the baby in plaid, a deadening sound which had begun with the world and would be present forever. Dan looked back up the car. Tyler Fanning had leaned against the seat, his body rigid, his pearly eyelids closed. His hands played with the brass corrugations on the hilt of his sword.

“Yes. He was making some kind of tonic—he had a spirit lamp going—you know how careless he is. The lamp exploded and he had to beat out the fire with his hands.”

“They—?”