Strange Highways

real time and ordinary events. But the quality of the light alone could not provide him with blessed detachment and his gut remained knotted with tension; his throat was so constricted that he could barely swallow.
     Fumbling spare shells from his pockets, dropping them through his shaky fingers, Joey said softly, "It's my fault."
     "No, it's not. He knew where they were, where to find them. He knows who's still left in town and where they live. We didn't lead him here. He'd have come on his own anyway."
     The dropped shells rolled away from him as he tried to recover them. His fingers were half numb, and his hands were shaking so badly that he gave up trying to reload until he calmed down.
     Joey was surprised that his heart could still beat. It felt like cold iron in his chest.
     They listened to the deadly night, alert for the stealthy sound of a door slowly easing open or the telltale clink of broken glass underfoot.
     Eventually he said, "Back home, earlier, when I found the body in the trunk of his car, if I'd called the sheriff then and there, none of these people would be dead now."
     "You can't blame yourself for that."
     "Who the hell else should I blame?" He was instantly ashamed that he had responded so harshly. When he spoke again, his voice was bitter and remorseful, but his anger was directed at himself, not at her. "I knew the right thing to do, and I didn't do it."
     "Listen," she said, finding one of his hands in the green gloom, holding it tightly, "that's not what I meant when I said you couldn't blame yourself. Think about it, Joey. Not calling the sheriff - you made that mistake twenty years ago, but you didn't make it tonight because your second chance didn't begin with P.J. at the house today, didn't begin with the finding of the body. It began only when you reached Coal Valley Road. Right?"
     "Well ..."
     "You weren't given a second chance to turn him in to the sheriff earlier."
     "But twenty years ago I should've-"
     "That's history. Terrible history, and you'll have to live with that part of it. But now all that matters is what happens from here on. Nothing counts except how you chose - and continue to choose - to handle things after you took the right highway tonight."
     "Haven't handled them well so far, have I? Three people dead."
     "Three people who would've died anyway," she argued, "who probably did die the first time you lived through this night. It's horrible, it's painful, but it looks as if that part of it was meant to be, and there's no changing it."
     Sinking deeper into anguish, Joey said, "Then what's the point of being given a second chance if it isn't to save these people?"
     "You might be able to save others before the night is through."
     "But why not all of them? I'm screwing up again."
     "Stop beating yourself up. It's not for you to decide how many people you can save, how much you can change destiny. In fact, maybe the purpose of being given a second chance wasn't to save anyone in Coal Valley."
     "Except you."
     "Maybe not even me. Maybe I can't be saved either."
     Her words left him speechless. She sounded as though she could accept the possibility of her own death with equanimity - while for Joey, the thought of failing her was like a hammer blow to the heart.
     She said, "It may turn out that the only thing you can really accomplish tonight is to stop P.J. from going on from here. Stop him from committing twenty more years of murder. Maybe that's the only thing expected of you, Joey. Not saving me. Not saving anyone. Just stopping P.J. from doing even worse than what he'll do tonight. Maybe that's all God wants from you."
     "There's no God here. No God in Coal Valley tonight."
     She squeezed his hand, digging her fingernails into his flesh. "How can you say that?"
     "Go look at the people in the living room."
     "That's stupid."
     "How can a god of mercy let people die like that?"
     "Smarter people than us have tried to answer the same question."
     "And can't."
     "But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer," she said with rising anger and impatience. "Joey, if God didn't give you the chance to relive this night, then who did?"
     "I don't know," he said miserably.
     "You think maybe it was Rod Serling, and