Chuck also liked days like this: unlimited visibility, no wind, perfect teaching conditions. Nevertheless, the Seneca rocked slightly as she overcorrected.

'You're losing your happy thoughts. Don't do that. Come to one-twenty. Let's go out Route 119. And drop on down to nine hundred.'

She did, the Seneca's trim once more perfect. Chuck relaxed.

They passed above Jim Rennie's Used Cars, and then die town was behind them. There were fields on either side of 119, and trees burning with color. The Seneca's cruciform shadow fled up the blacktop, one dark wing briefly brushing over an ant-man with a pack on his back. The ant-man looked up and waved. Chuck waved back, although he knew the guy couldn't see him.

'Beautiful goddam day!' Claudie exclaimed. Chuck laughed.

Their lives had another forty seconds to run.

2

The woodchuck came bumbling along the shoulder of Route 119, headed in the direction of Chester's Mill, although the town was still a mile and a half away and even Jim Rennie's Used Cars was only a series of twinkling sunflashes arranged in rows at the place — where the highway curved to the left. The chuck planned (so far as a wood-chuck can be said to plan anything) to head back into the woods long before he got that far. But for now, the shoulder was fine. He'd come farther from his burrow than he meant to, but the sun had been warm on his back and the smells were crisp in his nose, forming rudimentary images — not quite pictures — in his brain.

He stopped and rose on his back paws for an instant. His eyes weren't as good as they used to be, but good enough to make out a human up there, walking in his direction on the other shoulder.