"Death is just a hallucination," she told me, patiently and conclusively, as though explaining the answer of a riddle I had given up on. With anyone else I would have laughed. "It's just an illusion that your mommy and daddy put into your head. Your mind, your brain, your, uh, ego dies, but your body-oh-it can live forever. If you're beautiful. And you are, baby," she said, looking up into my eyes with the eyes of someone who is moved by something beyond herself. "You are. Big and beautiful."

When the girl and I talked, our conversation usually followed the same pattern. I was curious about her world and wanted her to talk about it. She was eager to share it. She had amazing confidence in the ideas she held, and her manner was proselytizing. I spoke primarily to bring her out and I tried to use her words. I played along so I could understand her better. In a way I talked down to her, as she may have done to me, but that's what any two people have to do before they can communicate.

A PICK-UP approached, and we turned and stuck out our thumbs. I thought it would stop and apparently the girl did, too, because when it did go by, she ran a few steps after it, leaned forward and squinted her eyes, and returned, "You see," she said. "I just killed them." The pick-up faded in the distance. "I can do that cause I'm a witch."

"How?" I asked, trying not to sound skeptical.

"It's easy. You just close your eyes and erase them. And when you open your eyes-poof." she opened her hands to show there was nothing in them, "they're dead." Then she added, "It's like, have you ever died on acid or something?"

I thought to say that inasmuch as a person experiences ago death. "he" doesn't experience it. Instead, I gave her an unqualified. "Yes."

"Well, it's like that," she said.

Only you don't come down.

A car finally stopped for us and agreed to give us a push. As the car backed around to get in position to push, the girl ran a few steps towards the Volvo, her bare fect barely touching the hot asphalt. Then she leaped into the air, kicking both legs, throwing her arms across her chest and back, and jerking her head back in one joyful gesture. I'd never seen anything like it.

The car started but died before we had gone a mile. The girl said she would hitch on into Albuquerque (about thirty miles) and get a tow-truck. She could use the credit card. It was pretty safe to use a gasoline credit card that didn't have your name on it, she said. All they did if you got caught was pick up the credit card. It was different using a bad department store card. You get arrested on the spot. Her sister had been thrown in jail for trying to buy sleeping bags with a stolen Sears card.

Again I stood with her on the road until she got a ride.

She talked about death frequently. She explained how it didn't matter if pigs were killed because they were going through changes. They would be incarnated as beautiful people that much sooner.

While she was gone, I waited inside the car with the two guys from New Jersey. We kept the doors open and drank the last of the water in the bag, trying to get comfortable and cool. We smoked cigarettes, or parts of them-we were too hot and dry in the mouth to enjoy smoking. "That girl's crazy," one of them said after a while.

"Yeah, she's far out all right." I said. But I left the possibility in my mind that I might be able to communicate on her wavelength.

"She says she's a witch," said the other one.