Fiddler

and birth and dying, to carve a face like that. He flexed his shoulders, then rolled his neck till it cracked. He pulled a pack of Camel straights from inside his vest and flipped one out.

"Got a light?" His voice was deep and warm, half gravel, half honey.

I tossed him a pack of matches through the open door; he caught it left-handed, then flipped it open, folded over a match, and struck it with his thumb.

"This the town with the dead fiddler?" he said after a long drag on the smoke.

"You might say so," I said, ignoring the look Harnie gave me. Nobody talked about her; I wondered how this fellow had even heard about her. "Ain't a fiddle, though. It's a cello, like in the symphony."

The stranger shrugged. "Close enough."

"She ain't d-dead, neither," Harnie said. "M-more sleeping, like."

He puffed out a wreath