Plot Summary
A man finds himself in a train station after an apparent wreck with a few of the other passengers. Unable to locate his fiancee, Willa, he decides to set out to a nearby town—where he knows she would go—to find her. The others try to convince him that not only is the train going to arrive any minute to pick them up, going to town is dangerous as the almost three-mile hike goes straight through deserted terrain that is inhabited by dangerous wolves. Ignoring their advice, he heads into town and has a close-encounter with one of the wolves on the way.
Noticing some lights and music at a nearby honky-tonk, he decides to investigate and finds Willa sitting all alone in a corner booth. As he tries to convince her to come back to the station with him, he realizes what they both have known all along: That he and Willa (along with the rest of the passengers at the train station) are actually ghosts—dead from a train-wreck that happened nearly 20 years before. When they return to the station, he sees a poster saying that the station will be demolished, a poster the other ghosts are unable to see because of their disbelief. He and Willa leave the station for good, pondering what will happen to the ghosts during demolition.
Read more about this topic: Willa (short Story)
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)