Mines harvesting potash, a key ingredient for fertilizer, were closing, and Carlsbad seemed on the road to becoming another Chihuahuan desert ghost town.
When he had seen her in the center of the road he had thought for an instant she was a ghost, and there was a ghostly detached quality in the way she moved, her lips crimped in that twist of self-criticism he had noticed in the car, when she had slid in beside him.