"No. There's no way, Laura. There's nothing but looking at each other and hoping that we remember each other's faces after we have forgotten our own."
The two men moved in the grave, and now and then the third man shouted their progress to the driver. Laura sat close to Michael and watched them. Whenever their heads and shoulders rose out of the grave, she knew that they must be standing on the coffin.
"We'll forget," she said bitterly. "As soon as you're gone, I'll forget you and die. And you'll forget me."
"What can I tell you? That my love for you is so great it will burn the black gates between us to ashes? That we'll meet again and know each other in that Great Ellis Island in the sky? That I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way? You know better than that, Laura. I love you, more, I think, than I know, but our kind of love isn't a sword. It's a light. Not a fire. A small light, just bright enough to read love letters by and keep the animals at a growling distance. In time it will go out. All lights go out. So do all fires, if it's any comfort. Love me, and look at me, and remember me, as I'll remember you. There's nothing more. Sit close and shut up."
The winch motor rumbled like a giant's belly, and the bright chain dipped leisurely into the grave. The shirtless man seized it in both hands with a kind of fierce affection, and he and the other man became very busy attaching it to the ropes that ran around the coffin. This took a few minutes, during which Michael and Laura looked at each other and not at the grave, and the winch idled, mumbling obsolete curses to itself.
Then the watcher between the grave and the green truck yelled something to the two men, and they came scratching out of the deep hole. The third man gave his hand to each of them and pulled them over the edge, one after the other. They did not stop to laugh or breathe deeply, but staggered a good ten feet from the grave before they finally sat down on the grass and waved to the driver in the cab of the truck. They were covered with sweat and streaked with the dark dirt of the grave.
The chain went taut and trembling. For a moment, nothing moved. There was only the noise of the winch; there was no other sound. Even the grasshoppers were silent.
Laura started to make a sound that might have turned out a whimper, but she broke it off so quickly that no more than half of it came out.
The raven crunched a silent grasshopper in his beak, and that was definitely a sound.
At that moment the hungry whine of the winch rose to a wintry howl of triumph. The whole truck shuddered under the sound. The chain rattled like a loose fiddle string, and the coffin began to rise slowly out of the grave, banging against the sides of the hole and sending soft showers of dirt sliding down into the grave. The men beside the truck bit their fingers and waited.
Laura made the "Ah" sound again, and Michael said, "Hush, Laura, hush, darling." The coffin rose clumsily, the front higher than the rear, and the whole thing canted over on one side. But it cleared the grave, and the winch howled louder than ever. A great clod of earth fell from the coffin and splashed into darkness at the bottom of the grave.
"Like pulling a tooth," Michael said. "It's exactly like pulling a tooth."
When the coffin was well above the grave, the driver shut off the motor. The coffin swung high and black, and the sun glinted off its silver handles and small silver name plate. The chain creaked a little, and the ropes fretted against the corners of the coffin.
Michael rose to his feet with a strange grace and stood with his hands at his sides and his head tilted to see the hanging coffin. The motor started again, and the winch deposited the coffin by its side in the back of the truck. One of the men went over to unhitch the chain and shove the coffin farther back in the truck. And Michael nodded, and nodded again.
Then he turned back to Laura and said quietly, "I think I'd better go now."
He gave her no time to reply. Trying to avoid her eyes, he went over to Mr. Rebeck and said, "Good-by, Jonathan. I'll miss you very much. Take care of yourself and talk to Campos when you get lonesome. The living are wonderful company at times."
Mr. Rebeck had barely time to begin a puzzled "Good-by," when Laura burst between them and stood facing Michael, crying out, "No! It isn't time yet, you don't have to go! No, Michael!"
"I might as well, Laura. They're going. It'll be easier if I go when they do."
"But it isn't time," she said desperately. "Stay, Michael, please. They aren't ready to go."
Mr. Rebeck said hesitantly, "They have to fill in the grave. That will take a little time."
"Don't," Michael said to both of them. "Don't do that I have to go. It's better if I go now."
"God damn you," Laura cried, and her voice was ugly with sorrow. "Will you for once stop being so brave? Will you please get your gallant chin out of the air, and lose your dignity, your goddam new-found dignity? Will you do me the honor, my dearest love, of breaking down just a little? Do that for me, Michael. I want to remember you the way I am, immature and uncivilized, without pride, and crying."
Michael stood close to her and said, "This isn't bravery or dignity. I was never brave or dignified, not once. This is cowardice again. This is the easy way out. I have no courage, and my sadness is not graceful. I can't say good-by, and I want to go before I have to say it."
"Stay with me," Laura said again. "As long as there's a minute left, stay with me. You don't have to go until they pass the gate. Stay with me until then."
"I can't, my Laura. Forgive me. I can't stay."
Deeply embarrassed, feeling like an eavesdropper even though they paid no attention to him, Mr. Rebeck stroked the raven's rough feathers and watched the men spilling the dirt back into the grave. Three of them worked at the same time, lifting the earth, tossing it, packing it down. They worked lazily, talking to one another, as if they had sweated away the taloned need and eagerness that had attended on the removal of the coffin. Nevertheless, even as he watched them, they finished filling up the hole in the ground. The surface dipped a little, because there wasn't quite enough earth to fill it up completely. The coffin had taken up a lot of space. One of the men was patting down the dirt with his shovel; the other two crouched to lift the headstone and put it in the back of the truck, next to the coffin. The driver stuck his head out of the window and watched the men work.
"I can't bear to sit and lose you and not be able to do anything about it," Michael said. "I haven't the courage. I'd wait with you if I dared, Laura, and say wise and warming things to you, and all the time I'd be thinking, Five minutes, four minutes, up a hill, down a hill, through the willows, now the road curves, now the bleak gate stands open, what can I say to her, what can I say? There must be something I can tell her, something that makes our losing each other good and meaningful, something that will make some sense out of this sad, stupid thing. And then I'd think Two minutes, one minute, the gate is open, and I'd say, 'I love you, Laura,' over and over, until I was gone."
"That's meaningful. What has more meaning than that? Stay with me, Michael."
"I can't," Michael said. "I haven't changed. Dying and loving haven't made me brave and gallant. I'm still Morgan, dead Morgan. Let me go, let me be done with it."
The men threw their shovels into the truck and climbed in themselves, three in the front and one in the back, as they had come. The engine made the truck shiver and the shovels clank against each other, and the man in the back braced his feet against the coffin. Then the truck drove away, and the last they saw of it as it rounded the curve was the lean red winch with the brown spots where the paint had flaked off, and the lone man sitting in the back.
"I'm going now," Michael said.
"I love you," Laura said hopelessly. "I'd love you if you were afraid of everything in the world."