Due to Steve's universal good reputation and friendly demeanor, it took scant little time for the news of his bizarre supernatural jaunt to reach his wife and children. A hushed conversation at the door, her hand over her mouth, a quiet burst of tears. Moments like this are long, frozen moments - of grief and disbelief and confusion - but Amanda was a strong woman, and she brought herself into town on her own feet before sundown.
By that time, there was a hush over the town, and it was just as well, as Steve's hollering had grown faint and distant. It was unlike him to forget his duty to family. It is the nature of these towns that everybody is a builder, but even in such a place there are those who are most qualified to comment, and in this place, there were a couple of shaggy old cowpokes who had spent the better part of the day already speculating as to what to do. The hush was, in part, a hush of cautious deliberation. Amanda would call out suddenly to Steve, her mouth right up against the stairs, but there was no discernable recognition in the tone emanating from the stone.

In the days following, life continued. Amanda, even when beset by responsibility (to which she rose admirably), left a part of her mind to detachedly observe the town's business like a cactus watching ants' ceaseless etching across all parts of the earth. Often, when breaking from a reverie, she would mumble "to all things a season". Come Fall, with the harvest hands around, the town once removed a few steps from the stairs under her watch, but the immediate pointlessness put an end to it. You could even hear Steve from the removed stones - a low, sweet ringing, pulsing faintly without rhythm. In Winter, a soothsayer arrived, but without good news. In Spring, renewal of all other things. In Summer, folks from the government came to town - rumor had spread far, but by their arrival, the sound could scarcely be associated with speech. The preacher said that Steve had gone to heaven. Amanda sat through the sermon, but left without any meaningful conversation.

It was forty five years before much else happened beyond petty advancements and big politics. The same old soothsayer - dustier now - had completed a pilgrimage. To her, it looked much the same, but with conveniences, and all the details changed. Plenty of names that rang familiar, but with a Junior attached. Amanda met her eyes with indecipherable emotion. The soothsayer had consulted many - frauds and initiates, good and evil - and had in time accrued a satchel of irreconcilable facts that reminded her of something she had seen. It was years before her efforts, wakeful, and more consequentially, in dreams, allowed her to put it all together with Steve's name. Seeing her here now, it was clear to Amanda that there was a force that had driven her here, and to see her.

I will say nothing of their conversation - a private matter that does not concern us - but one day soon after, there was a note on Amanda's bed, found by her youngest, who looked after her. She was never seen again.

Today, there is a saloon - the type that remembers more than it is, populated by objects once real and living, serving locals and passersby. Out front, there are stones - declining, mossy slabs forming nobler ends to a useless wooden fence. At the end of tonight, when the cars and the conversation go silent, a barkeep will close up with practiced hands and hang up his hat, and wander out to sit under what stars remain, with a stolen stethoscope to the old rock, and listen, even now hearing soft and clear - two tones in an unwavering harmony, and remember love, and smile.