29. Waiting Him Out (D1)

__ Munson was wondering if he should get out of the car and re-bury Clye Morrow.
__ He sat behind the wheel, Maggie next to him in the passenger seat playing "church steeple" with her fingers. The engine was running and the heat was on. He didn't know why, but Munson noted the sudden and fierce drop in temperature over the past hour.
__ "What're you gonna do?" Maggie asked, moving her fingers from the "steeple" to the "open the doors to see all the people" position.
__ "I don't know." In truth Munson didn't know what to do, let alone say. He came to Clye's grave to dig him up so that Ardy Jacobi could resurrect his sorry but and they could dialog about murder and death and hell and resurrection.... and redemption.
__ But along came the little girl, Maggie. She told him, matter of factly, that Clye was as dead as any rock on the swelling river bank, that Ardy wasn't going to bring him back to life, and that Munson was going to have to protect her from a "crazy boy" on his way out here to harm her.
__ "You have a gun, right?"
__ "Not anymore."
__ "How come?"
__ Munson frowned at his reflection in the window. "I gave it to some friends."
__ "Ardelenie and Dougie?"
__ Munson squirmed in his seat and half turned to face the girl. He rested his massive calloused hand on her dainty fidgeting digits and said, "Tell me, Maggie, please...." He waited for her to look up at him. Her eyes were enormous and green like emeralds. Her skin was smooth but dirty and tracked by long dry tear tracks. She was so innocent. "Please tell me how you know these things, and where you came from."
__ Maggie pulled her hands out from under Munson's and turned in her seat to face him. She suddenly looked so adult. "It's ending."
__ Munson seemed to know what she meant, but he was terrified at the prospect. He was more terrified that the observation came from a child. He swallowed hard, "What is?"
__ The girl looked out the window, leaned forward and craned her neck to look out down the slope beyond the headlight beams. Then she began to fidget again, mumbling to herself in a sing-song voice.
__ "Maggie," Munson said, trying to sound like a cross adult, "What's ending?"
__ The girl sighed, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. Then she said, "You needn't worry about that. You have to fight the boy."
__ "What boy?"
__ Munson was getting exasperated, but his ultimate lesson -- the price he paid by spending moments in hell -- curred him, and he held his temper at bay.
__ Still, the girl was testing his resolve, taunting him -- though not purposely he felt. She was a strange little thing without a beginning or an end. Maggie was just there. She appeared before him in a flash just like the lake of fire and the darkness, the screaming, and the oblivion without love. Only Munson felt she was something more, a key. Perhaps her few words were links in a chain that would suspend him high over hell's gate and possibly even swing him into the arms of salvation.
__ God, it's been a long night, Munson sighed.
__ "Maggie, dear, please. Tell me what I have'ta do."
__ She stared into his dark eyes, considering -- or determining her next act of postponement.
__ "Magge," Munson insisted, "What boy?"
__ "That one," Maggie said and pointed to the figure standing over Clye's body in front of the car.