Then they heard the stone fall again, and saw the man straighten up slowly, rubbing his back and opening his mouth in pain. The man who had driven the truck grinned at him, a grin full of triumph and sympathy, and leaped down into the grave to join him. He stood opposite the shirtless man and said clearly, "You got to squat." So they both squatted on their haunches until only their heads showed out of the grave, and together they gripped the stone and lifted it as they rose. They dropped it on the grass and climbed out of the grave, breathing hard and laughing in deep gasps. The other two men took up shovels and began to dig once more.
"That's it," Michael said. "That's the true last of Morgan. The body in the coffin that they're trying so hard to reach doesn't matter at all. All bodies are alike. But when the stone with my name on it went over, old Morgan went too. Everybody should have a stone with his name on it. Also the dates of his birth and death. I haven't got one. Pat down the earth and let the grass grow back. Morgan is finished."
"They always take the stone with them," the raven said. "They'll put it up again in Mount Merrill."
Michael did not answer. He was watching the men. Mr. Rebeck watched them too, feeling more and more nervous. Now he did not wish for spring. He only wished himself away from the hillside and the grave that was being opened as eagerly as an unexpected present.
"It isn't fair." Laura's voice was sad and childlike. "It isn't fair."
"What's fair?" Michael asked gently. "Nobody's doing this to me. I did it myself. I must have wanted it once. Hush, Laura. Don't cry."
"I'm not crying. I'm a ghost",
"Don't argue with me. I know when you're crying. I love you. I know everything about you."
The grave had grown very deep. The smallest of the men stood in it up to his shoulders as he added his shovel loads to the great pile of dirt at the foot of the grave. When he bent over to dig he could not be seen at all.
Michael said, "Maybe this is the right way. We've loved each other for half a night and half a day and been warmed a little. What more could there have been for late lovers like us? Even if we had only the half-hour I asked you for, we'd have loved longer than people do in whole lifetimes. People love for scattered minutes: five minutes here, a minute with this girl, two minutes in a subway with another girl. We know how to love. We practiced in our minds, thinking, This is how I will love if anyone ever asks me. And now we've had a morning of love. How much more is there, ever, for the living or the dead?"
"Much more," Laura said fiercely. "You don't believe a word of what you've said. You haven't even been listening to yourself. Don't try to comfort me. I don't want comfort, Michael. I don't want a tiny, perfect love. I want you. I want you for as long as I can have you, and I know the difference between a half-hour and a lifetime."
"Laura—" Michael began. But she had turned swiftly to Mr. Rebeck, her beautiful, utterly plain face commanding his eyes.
"Is that unghostlike?" she demanded of him. "I don't feel very much like a ghost. I feel greedy and human. Am I wrong not to resign myself and make the best of things, accepting the beauty in loss? Am I wrong to want more than I have? Tell me. I want to know."
How did I ever think that she had the voice of a sad child? Mr. Rebeck wondered. The voice I hear is the voice of a proud and anguished woman. What is a woman doing in this place? What can I tell her? Why should she listen to me? I wouldn't, if I had any choice.
"No," he said. "Who am I to tell you not to want anything? But I know what Michael meant. There is a kind of love that can only be spoiled by consummation."
That wasn't what you meant, was it? No. No, I didn't think so. If you didn't take the things you want to say so seriously you might get a few of them right. Feel the raven laughing under your hand.
He decided to tell them about the girl. If he could remember. He would have to speak carefully.
"Once I went somewhere with a girl, when I was a long time younger. It was in the evening. I don't remember where we went, but I know that other people were there too. And somehow we were alone, this girl and I, in a very big room with a high roof and no chairs. We could hear the other people in the next room."
You sound like an old man telling the only dirty story he knows. Put in the cello quickly, because the story is really about the cello and not about you.
"There was a cello leaning against the wall. It looked old, and one of the strings was missing. But we went over to it, and we touched it and picked out tunes on the three strings. Once in a while we would look at each other and smile, and once our hands touched when we were both playing with the cello at the same time. We stayed there for a long while, telling each other jokes in an Irish brogue, and plucking the strings of the cello. Then some of the other people began to come into the room, and we went outside on a terrace."
Just then the shovels found the coffin. There was a short sound of metal on wood, and then another. All the men shouted in triumph, and the shirtless man, who was not digging, waved his shovel over his head. The other shovels rasped up and down the coffin, clearing away the few remaining clods, and the driver slapped the shirtless man on the back and went to the truck.
"Not much time left," Michael said.
"Some," the raven answered. "They still got to get the chains onto it and fill in the dirt after they're through."
"I wouldn't know what to do with much more time. All the time they were lifting up that headstone, I kept thinking, 'Here's a gift of five minutes, maybe more, surely time enough to say something important to Laura or explain myself to myself. But nothing came out. Not a word. I love you, my Laura, but I never said anything important in my life, and I am not about to start now."
I must finish the story, Mr. Rebeck thought. I am not as honest as Michael; I must believe that whatever I am saying is important and should not be left incomplete. Finish the story, then, but do not blame them if they do not listen to you. They know what is important and what is not.
"In the moment that the girl and I stood in the room, playing with the cello and making jokes, we loved each other as much as we ever could have. When we went out into the garden it was not the same thing. And after a while we went away from each other, because both of us knew that it could never be as good again as it had been in the room with the cello. We had spent all our love in those few minutes, and what came after that was only remembering and trying to make it the way it was before."
The driver had backed the truck to the edge of the grave, and a chain was rattling down the winch, sounding very much like silverware in the sink. The shirtless man reached into the back of the truck and drew out two coils of rope. He tossed one of them to another man, and they both climbed back into the grave, letting themselves down very carefully, because it was a long way down and it would be easy to fall and get hurt.
Laura was moving more and more restlessly now on the small hill. Her eyes were huge; they hurried back and forth in her face like trapped and panicky squirrels in a cage too small for them. They moved from Michael to Mr. Rebeck's carved silence, to the raven's pirate-treasure eyes and sharp yellow beak, to the men in the grave, bending to tie their ropes around the coffin, and back to Michael. Always back to Michael. She sat as close to him as she could.
"They work so fast," she said. "Why are they in such a hurry? I can't stand watching them."
"Don't watch them, then," Michael said. "Watch me. What are you doing with your eyes away from me?"
"Michael, there must be something we can do. There must be something."