Bill puffed his cigar and placed down all four Aces. Sam took a sip of whiskey and revealed his hand, which contained two. Bill laid down the rest of his hand.

“Y’know,” he said, grinning cheekily, the wrinkles around his eyes creasing on well-worn laugh-lines, “I think I’ve won.” Sam leaned back.

“You old cheater,” he replied, also grinning, “I’ve been told long ago that ye couldn’t be beat ‘cause you was such a good cheater. You and the old Aces-up-the-pant-leg trick. Can’t beat a classic like that, can you? You must know it better than anybody else, seeing that you do it almost every time we play!” Bill ran his wrinkled hand through his thinning gray hair and then through his huge gray bristling mustache and took his fat cigar from his mouth. He looked at it for a second.

“You know,” he said, “I can’t even remember where I got this. It seems so long ago that we were put here” 

Sam thought for a second before saying, “It comes with age. Where’d you hide the whiskey?” Old Bill chuckled before producing the half-empty decanter and handing it over.

“You better go a bit easier on it, it’s the last we’ve got left till next month’s shipment. That’s your fourth glass today. What’s up? Somethin’ botherin’ you?” Sam said nothing, and only poured himself a glass before standing up, massaging his back, and going over to the massive windows of the lighthouse, looking out over the empty plains outside. 

“You seen something?” called Bill from behind him. Sam turned around.

“No. It must be my nerves. I hadn’t told you this, but for the last month of nights I dreamed about this girl called Betty. Whoa, was she a looker. With the puffy red lips and everything. Just like in those old recolored black and white pictures from the nineteen-eighties, where they got the colors all wrong. Again and again I dreamed of her. You know, she kind of reminded me of Mary, when we used to be kids. You know Mary, the girl all the boys, me too, clamored for?” Bill leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees.

“Well?” he asked. Sam went on.

“Well, Betty was tellin’ me about how nice it was to live in this place Oakland Hollow. Ever heard of such a place, Bill?”

“No, I don’t think I ha— Wait. I know of a place called Tree Hollow. Is that what she meant?”

“Maybe. Well anyway, she was a’sayin’ that there were— hey, where you goin’, Bill? Can’t leave me alone with that around,” he said jokingly, and pointed to the decanter. 

“Just going to get the list of nearby towns and cities from downstairs. I’ll be back before you could say tomorrow.” He disappeared from the doorway and reappeared several moments later, leafing through a large book. “Oakland Hollow, Oakland Hollow, Oakland…here! Oakland City, Oakland Ranch, Oakland Town, Oakland…Hollow! Here it is!” Sam looked up.

“What’s it say about it?” he asked.

“Says here that in two-thousand and eight they renamed it to Tree Hollow…hey! It’s right out that window. Have a look below.”

“You mustn’t joke with me, Bill, not after I’ve had a glass! You know that nobody’s lived here for over a decade. Not since that bomb-or-other went off thirty years ago, and that’s why they put us here!”

“It says it in the book.”

“I believe you. I’ll have a look. You know, let’s look together. We haven’t stood by the window in a while. That storm had blocked off the view, but it left earlier today. The valley’ll look even cleaner than before.” Sam beckoned to Bill, who tottered over under the weight of the book. 

They both looked. Empty dark plains met their gaze. Not a tree, not even a blade of green grass could be seen amid the gray mass of barren stone and scorched earth.

For one perfect moment, the lighthouse light framed them in the window. Bill turned away, laying down the book atop their abandoned cards, and sat in his chair, his head in his hands. 

Suddenly he heard, very faintly, from the direction of Sam, who still stood facing the window, his gnarled hands clasped behind his back:

From over hills and under lakes,

A merry path my soul shalt take.

For in the thousand years 

that’ll come to pass

I’ll never know a prettier lass.

Bill turned and was about to speak when it came again, stronger and more full of voice.

Red of lip and strong of mind,

Her fate with mine entwined.

Of blue-grey eyes

Like autumn skies—

The singing broke off and Sam turned around. He wordlessly went over to his chair and sat down, picking up the cards and reshuffling them.

Bill asked, “What was that? I’ve never heard you sing so pretty. Where’d you hear such a song?”

Sam said nothing for a while, before finally replying with, “Betty sang it to me, again and again. She sang it much prettier than I ever could. There was more, but I can’t remember it. One thing she kept on sayin’ was that it was very nice in Oakland Hollow. Oakland Hollow, over and over. She had rambled on and on about their sheriff and their pastor. But if any of it were real…” Sam shook his head sadly before donning a false smile and saying in a half-tone voice, “Well, if it ever was real, it’s all gone now. The sheriff, the pastor, Betty, the whole lot. All gone up in that great big fireball. Even Mary too, so there’s no point for me to get all emotional about it. How about another round of Poker, unless you want to play something else?” 

Bill said nothing. Suddenly he dropped the spare deck of cards on the floor. He ducked under the table and retrieved it after a lot of noisy card movement. He replaced it, reverentially, in its place on the table. Sam knew that there was a fresh set of aces tucked up Bill’s pant leg, but he said nothing. 

Sam refreshed his hand and said, “You go first, old man.” Bill smiled and replaced his cigar in his mouth, readjusting his blue sweater and laying down a ten. They played for another half-hour before Sam started to fall asleep in his chair. Bill roused him and they both marched to the roof where their beds were. Sam dozed off soon after wrapping himself in the covers, but Bill stayed awake for another hour or so, before he too fell asleep. The lighthouse continued to spin, illuminating the landscape with a faint, warm yellow glow. At midnight the light automatically switched off.

Far down below in the valley, it was darkness. But then, in the early hours of the morning, before the sun had yet to rise, small yellow lights, the lights of a small town, slowly lit up in the valley. And over the valley there came a faint string of song:

But in that thousand years,

The land of tears, 

This world of war shall become,

But at the end of it,

As ancient poets had writ,

She and I will at last be as one.

And as the Sun slowly began to appear over the horizon, the singing was silenced and the lights, the town, vanished back into the darkness.