“Let’s go holler off the bridge,” said somebody in the car ahead.

They drove over a little gravel road, miles through the misty fields, and came to the bridge out in the middle of nowhere.

“Let’s dance,” said one of the boys. He grabbed Carol around the waist, and they began to tango over the boards.

“Did you miss me?” asked Ruth. She stayed by him, standing in the road.

“Woo-hoo!” they cried.

“I wish I knew what makes it holler back,” said one girl.“There’s nothing anywhere. Some of my kinfolks can’t even hear it.”

“Yes, it’s funny,” said Harris, with a cigarette in his mouth.

“Some people say it’s an old steamboat got lost once.”

“Might be.”

They drove around and waited to see if it would stop raining.

Back in the lighted rooms at Ruth’s he saw Carol, his date, give him a strange little glance. At the moment he was serving her with a drink from the tray.

“Are you the one everybody’s ’miratin’ and gyratin’ over?” she said, before she would put her hand out.

“Yes,” he said, “I come from afar.” He placed the strongest drink from the tray in her hand, with a little flourish.

“Hurry back!” called Ruth.

In the pantry Ruth came over and stood by him while he set more glasses on the tray and then followed him out to the kitchen. Was she at all curious about him? he wondered. For a moment, when they were simply close together, her lips parted, and she stared off at nothing; her jealousy seemed to let her go free. The rainy wind from the back porch stirred her hair.

As if under some illusion, he set the tray down and told her about the two hitch-hikers.

Her eyes flashed.

“What a—stupid thing!” Furiously she seized the tray when he reached for it.

The phone was ringing again. Ruth glared at him.

It was as though he had made a previous engagement with the hitch-hikers.

Everybody was meeting them at the kitchen door.

“Aha!” cried one of the men, Jackson. “He tries to put one over on you, girls. Somebody just called up, Ruth, about the murder in Tom’s car.”

“Did he die?” asked Harris, without moving.

“I knew all about it!” cried Ruth, her cheeks flaming. “He told me all about it. It practically ruined his car. Didn’t it!”

“Wouldn’t he get into something crazy like that?”

“It’s because he’s an angel,” said the girl named Carol, his date, speaking in a hollow voice from her highball glass.

“Who phoned?” asked Harris.

“Old Mrs. Daggett, that old lady about a million years old that’s always calling up. She was right there.”

Harris phoned the doctor’s home and woke the doctor’s wife. The guitar player was still the same.