THREE DAYS AFTER HE WAS MURDERED, RICHARD PRATT BEGAN TO FEEL MUCH BETTER...
A seemingly random act of violence propels Professor Richard Pratt into The Hereafter. It is a strange, muted, netherworld of the dead-a world in which he is forced to bear...
What he didn't know at that moment, but was clear as he sat up in agony seconds later, was that the spinning wheel and his dad's heavy wooden box of tools had also taken flight. The spinning wheel was thrown clear, but Billy and the toolbox landed together in a heap. And when the tool box came down, his left foot was sprawled under it, at a brutally impossible angle.
The spinning wheel was broken. His dad's tools were strewn across the red sand. And Billy's ankle was shattered.
He took in a deep breath, instinctively pushing the heavy box off of his leg. Seeing his ankle ground into the mud and horse dung that covered the trail, he barely recognized that his foot had never before bent at that particular angle. He stared it it without breathing until he realized that the shiny white and red stick poking through his trouser leg wasn't one of his dad's tools. It was his own shin bone, poking through the heavy cloth like a sharpened spear in the warm summer air. The blood instantly blossomed around it like an opening rose.
He took in another deep breath and screamed.
The initial pain now seemed like a small echo. His brain, seeing the extent of his injury, had released the floodgates and brutal agony poured through him in a rush. Even before his parents had time to stop the wagon and rush back, he was unconscious in the dirt and mud.
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In the previous nine days Billy and Frances had grown nothing but closer—through long talks around the fire and private moments whenever they could steal them. After their conversation at Independence Rock some barrier between them had melted, and suddenly he found he could speak to her in ways he had never spoken to anyone in his life—not his friends from school, and certainly not his parents. Each night they would talk quietly about their futures, while one or more of their parents gave them sidelong, cautious glances. One of them was always present, he noticed, although never close enough to overhear their conversations. But he had overheard theirs more than once. He knew that all four of their parents were longing for them to get to Utah, so that Billy and Mattie could be parted before things got out of hand. But for Billy, that point had already come and gone.
Billy wished he and Frances could talk about their future together more openly. But despite the obvious affection between them, the reality that they would part after they got to Salt Lake City was still the only future that either of them could imagine. The dreams of him staying behind in Utah had grown in Billy's heart, but he had not yet put them into words, either to himself, or to her. But he had resolved that he would tell Frances everything before they got to Utah. He might only be fifteen, but he could, at the very least, promise her that if he couldn't stay with her, he'd come back.
He could ask her to wait for him.
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