A figure stood behind the counter. Jonathan maneuvered toward it.

‘You ain’t looking so good, Reverend,’ the figure said, its sharp little teeth showing in a smile and its hands rubbing together as Benbow Wikin’s hands had rubbed together twenty years before.

Jonathan squinted at him. Could it be? The man’s body zig-zagged from side to side, legs left, pouter pigeon chest right, head left again. Could this be Benbow Wikin himself? Jonathan could not bring himself to care.

‘New to town, ain’t you?’ The man cocked his head to the right, unbalancing his zig-zag body, and Jonathan staggered. ‘Hey, you look lousy and that’s official. You better—’

‘Where does Mr Finster live?’

‘Stationmaster Finster?’ Jonathan nodded. ‘Elm Street – big house – two blocks down. Turn left. Biggest house around. You can’t miss—’

Jonathan walked out.

Later, he remembered leaning against the gatepost outside a big house and suddenly finding Bessie beside him – stiff petticoats, a smell of baking and a tea towel flung over one shoulder. A girl stood behind her, a fair-skinned girl, who flushed so intense a pink at his glance that he felt a catch in his chest. What he remembered most of all was the concern on her face as she ran toward him to break his fall.

2

The girl appeared many times to Jonathan as the delirium took hold of him, but her features refused to resolve themselves. When he was a child he had whittled the hooks and joints from which Alvah made reins for the horse; he had carved the teeth for his own mouth. Later, living on the Columbia River, he had whittled for pleasure, carving out bowls and plates and even likenesses of his companions. So when he found he could not make out the girl’s face, he began to whittle a nose and mouth for her himself – light, arched brows, long eyelashes, freckles across the cheeks and a pert nose. He cut and carved and sanded; he hugged the work to him when George appeared at the outskirts of his mind, where chaos and uncertainty ruled.

George appeared there often. Think only about the girl, Jonathan would cry to himself. What about her hair? Blond? No, too harsh. Strawberry blond, red-blond – rich, soft – and pulled away from her forehead. Such a forehead! He worked and worked on it, and when at last he was satisfied with this lovely creature he’d made, the concern he saw on her face moved him so deeply that he fainted. In one lucid moment he reached out a hand to her; she took it and stroked it. He knew that she thought the fever still held him so he said nothing.

‘Jonathan? You hear me?’ Bessie said to him at last.

He nodded weakly.

‘I was terrible afraid you were going to die,’ Bessie said. ‘Could you handle a little broth?’

Jonathan pulled himself up a little ‘Who—?’ he began.

Bessie’s face widened into a smile. ‘Why, that’s my Sarah. She’s taken awful good care of you.’