Maggie Smith Mars                 for Pierre In a town more crowded with the dead than the living, we stood in line at the observatory, waiting our turn. Mars was round and red, as we'd been told. We may have taken the long way home around Gettysburg Square and over the tracks. Or we may have stilled the spinning dessert case at the Lincoln Diner for a slice of pie. What I remember is we went home and our lives did not change. Mars would never be closer, not to us, but who would miss it? Some nights ghosts still rose to our second-story windows, tipping their canteens to show us they were empty.