When he heard Campos's cheerful "Hello," he was sure that the big man was greeting another guard, and he pressed himself flat against the earth, feeling pinned and helpless. But when he heard the familiar voice of Michael Morgan answer Campos, he sat up so quickly that the bottle of rum rolled off his chest and would have spilled its contents if Campos had not snatched it out of the air. He looked up the road and saw Michael and Laura coming down together.
They looked extremely tangible, he noticed, extremely human. Part of that was understandable—their transparence was not evident against the blackness behind them. But there was more to it than that. There was an edged clarity about them, and a new sharpness of detail about their faces and bodies, as if they had looked at each other's eyes and suddenly remembered how their own were set. They walked easily; Michael did not stamp on the earth nor Laura flinch from it with each footstep. They looked almost real enough to cast shadows or be reflected in mirrors.
But this shivered through his mind and vanished. Now he stared from Campos to Michael and heard the man and the ghost call to each other. He heard both of them laugh and could tell only that one laugh was deeper and rougher than the other. Laura saw him and called his name. He nodded stiffly in reply, feeling older than he was.
"Can you see them?" he asked Campos in a wondering whisper.
"Sure," Campos said. "What kind of a dumb question is that?" Mr. Rebeck did not answer.
Campos stood up as Michael and Laura approached and demanded, "Where you been?"
"All the hell over," Michael answered. "We've been selling beads and pottery to the tourists. It's not much, but we manage in our primitive way. Sometimes she does a little primitive dance for them while I'm filling out the primitive sales slip. Sends them away happy."
"Hello," Laura said to Mr. Rebeck. She sat beside him and put her hand on his. He could not feel her fingers, but his own felt suddenly cold.
"Hello, Laura," he said. And because he could think of nothing else to say, he added, "I haven't seen you in a while."
"We meant to come," Laura said. "We'd have come." She followed his glance at Michael and Campos and smiled. "Are you surprised that we can talk to Campos too?"
"Very," Mr. Rebeck said. "I don't quite understand it."
"Neither do we, honestly," Laura said. "It was Michael. He ran into Campos first. I only met him later."
Michael turned his head to her. "What did I do?"
"You met Campos," Laura said. "I was telling Mr. Rebeck."
"So I did," Michael said complacently. "He was driving along in his truck and I stepped into the road and tried to put the whammy on him, because I wanted to see if there was anything to all the old ghost stories. The dirty dog ran right over me. Through me, really."
"I knew you were a ghost," Campos said. "Anyway, didn't I go back to make sure?"
"Oh, you did that. That I will grant you. To make sure you hadn't spoiled the pelt." He looked at Mr. Rebeck. "Well, it turned out that he could see me and talk to me, the same way you can. And Laura and I got into the habit of coming down to visit him when he's on the night shift. We sing to him and tell him stories. It keeps him awake."
"I see," Mr. Rebeck said. He sighed, and his body relaxed. "Excuse me for seeming startled. It's just that I always wondered if I might not be the only man in the world who could see ghosts. I know it sounds greedy, but after a while I began to feel that I was."
"There's never just one of anything in the world," Michael said casually. He turned back to Campos. "Listen, night watchman, watcher of the night, sing me that song about the tree. I keep forgetting it."
"It's not about a tree," Campos said. "I tell you and tell you."
"All right, it's not about a tree. It has nothing to do with trees. Now sing it."
Campos began to sing very softly. The string quartet was still going on the radio, and Campos's guttural, almost rasping, voice sounded like a fifth stringed instrument, tuned to a different scale from that of the other four and playing a completely irrelevant melody that prowled around the closed circle of the quartet, hoping to be let in.
No hay arbol que no tenga
Sombra en verano.
No hay niña que no quiera
Tarde o temprano. . . .
"And repeat," Michael said eagerly. "I know that." His own voice joined Campos's, and they sang the verse again. Michael's voice was lighter than Campos's, and more distant; he sang the words clearly and on pitch, but his voice seemed very slightly reduced in scale, like a voice on a telephone. Mr. Rebeck had never heard a ghost sing before. They usually forgot music before they forgot the name of the street on which they had lived, and, once forgotten, the songs were never remembered. But Michael sat with the big Campos and sang a song that Mr. Rebeck did not know, and did not seem in the least aware that he was doing something unusual.
"You seem sad," Laura said beside him. Mr. Rebeck had not known that she was looking at him. He hastily subpoenaed a sleepy smile.
"Not sad. A little puzzled, I suppose. This has been a strange evening, and it takes me a while to get used to new things. But I'm not unhappy or anything like that."
"That's good," Laura said. She hesitated, and then said quickly, "I think I know how you feel."
Mr. Rebeck looked at her, seeing even in the dark her straight-haired, wide-mouthed plainness, and seeing also the beauty that this one night, at least, had made of it without changing it at all.
"Do you?" he asked thoughtfully. "Because I don't, myself."
"I do," Laura said. Michael called her then, and she turned from Mr. Rebeck and added her voice to the chorus of the song. The three of them sang it together, and Mr. Rebeck listened. The song rose up like smoke, rum-colored smoke.
Laura's voice was the best of the three, Mr. Rebeck thought. It was a high, sweet memory, a voice for gardens and riverbanks and vineyards and the celebration of sea birds. She looked at him as she sang, and he closed his eyes and listened to her woman's voice, wise without being knowing. It had been a long time since he had drunk rum and heard a woman singing.
Damn it! he thought so fiercely that for a moment he thought he had spoken the words. Damn it, damn it, what is it I feel? What is it I miss? Am I sad, after all? I don't think I am. Why should I be? Michael's happy. Laura is happy—look at her. Campos is happy, or whatever emotion it is he uses at times like this. Why can I not relax and accept the moment and listen to the singing? What twists in me when they sing?
Michael's voice now, dusty around the edges, but true and sardonic, singing to enjoy himself. And Campos, laughing deeply, his voice heavier than the ghost-voices, harsh with the meaning of the song.
They never sang for me, Mr. Rebeck thought. Perhaps that is what makes me sad, that we never sang together. They came to me for comfort and conversation, they came to play chess and go for walks and simply be near somebody alive. But they sing with this man, and I have never seen them so happy. He taught them a song and now they are singing it with him. Could I have done that, I wonder?
Laura played with the melody as they sang the chorus, tossing it high like a tinsel ball, letting it wink and glitter in the light as it came down to where she waited.
Mr. Rebeck plucked a blade of grass and put it between his lips. It was sour and good to chew on.