On the other side of the bridge, Jack took a road that led to Davenport and, once he had reached the city, he drove the minibus toward the docks; they ended up at a huge lot that contained parking facilities and a disused port authority station.

Before them lay a wharf where a few bums were loafing and an old man was looking out at the river; there was nothing special about him, aside from the fact that his brown, wrinkled skin made him look very old. They got out of the Volks to go and greet the Mississippi. It was hot and humid, and the muddy river waters rolled lazily toward the south. Jack paused, then approached the old man and exchanged a few words with him.

Later, when they were back on the road, he tried to explain something to the girl; it was hard to find the right words and he hesitated.

“Every time I . . . It’s the same every time,” he said. “Whenever I see an old man on the shore of a river, I have to go and talk to him — I can’t help myself.”

The road they were on now was no longer route 80, but 61, and it headed not west but due south. This was the road they would follow to St. Louis.

“For a long time, I wondered why I did it,” Jack went on. “I didn’t understand. I’d see an old man beside the water and every time, something urged me to go and talk to him. Today though, I think I’ve figured out why.”

He said no more; he let the silence go on until finally the girl asked what it was that he had figured out.

“Now that I want to say it, it sounds absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Here it is,” he said. “What old men are gazing at, when they dream beside the water, is their own death; I’m old enough now to know that. And I talk to them because deep down I have a question or two I’d like to ask them. Questions I’ve been asking myself for a long time. I’d like them to tell me what it is they’ve seen on the other side and whether they’ve discovered what you have to do to get there. And that’s it.”

XIII

A Wave of Memories

They arrived in St. Louis on the first of June.

It was noon, it was very humid and sultry and they didn’t know where to go. How do you set about finding a man in a city of eight hundred thousand? Should they go to the police station? Do research in museums and historical societies? Run an ad on the radio or in the newspapers? They asked themselves these questions and a number of others as they strolled down Fourth Street. They had left the Volks beside the Mississippi, in an outdoor parking lot just a few steps from the Gateway Arch.