new things.”
Lionel nodded firmly. “They will.” For some reason he looked at me when he said this.
The end of Lionel’s cane disappeared into the unmowed grass of the hill. His feet shuffled as he began to descend. I heard Harnett’s frustrated sigh as I hurried to remain at Lionel’s side.
“Just a bit farther now,” he huffed. “And such a pretty time to get there.”
6.
THE CEMETERY GRASS WAS neatly trimmed, yet still swayed in mesmerizing patterns cut from the ocean wind. Harnett assisted Lionel now, and the old man’s hand latched on to my father’s shoulder more confidently than it had mine. I had never moved through a graveyard so haltingly; between each step fell an interval of at least ten seconds.
“At the diner Boggs said something about the Rat King,” I said. “And something called the Gatlins.”
“Boggs and I worked together. Lived together,” Harnett said. “Then I met Val.”
“How?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“How?” I demanded. The scrunching noise of dead leaves announced our entry into the final grove of trees separating the cemetery grounds from the ocean. The tide rasped like dying breath.
“Not far from here. At the beach,” he said. The vision was madness—my mother in a yellow or pink bikini, tossing away her sun hat while my father chased her through seaweed and sand castles. “We got along. We spent a great deal of time together. I felt compelled to confide in her.”
“You were in love!” Lionel shouted. “Jesus Christ, can’t you say it after all these years?”
“Easy now, right foot.” Harnett steadied Lionel. “Boggs and I were away a lot on digs. He’d dig faster and better than me. Left foot, come on. And when we came home—It was a small place. Things got uncomfortable. Boggs would look at her. There were tensions.”
“Tensions,” Lionel scoffed. “He wanted Valerie for himself.”
Harnett scanned the murky horizon. “We have to get moving. Right foot. Come on, step.”
And between encouragements my father told the only story left to tell. Once upon a time there were two men who loved and hated each other as only brothers could. One brother did things according to tradition; the other craved glory at the expense of all else. One night while unearthing a coffin, Ken Harnett told Antiochus Boggs that he needed to go his own way. Seconds later, Boggs shrieked. He had discovered a dead Rat King. A terror most consider nothing more than myth, a Rat King is a number of rats whose tails have become tangled and sealed with dirt, blood, and shit. Joined as one, they move and think and die as a single creature and their discovery has always portended bad things: war, the plague. Boggs became agitated. He took up Harpakhrad and demanded that Harnett retract his words—the omens were telling them they must stay together forever. Boggs stomped and screamed and cried. Lights were turning on in nearby houses. Harnett did not know what to do except strike him down with Grinder.
After placing Boggs’s unconscious body carefully upon a park bench, Harnett hurried home to Valerie Crouch. It was three-thirty in the morning and yet she was up. She greeted him with a strange look. It’s fine, he’s sleeping it off in the park, Harnett said, but Val said that wasn’t it. She was pregnant. The first thing through Harnett’s mind: the Rat King.
The second thing: panic. What did a child mean for a Digger? He was fearful and didn’t like the feeling. The only remedy was to dig and dig boldly, and so he got into his truck and went to uncover a man named Phineas Gatlin. It was a tricky dig that he and Boggs had been contemplating for months. The belly was in a family cemetery just outside a bedroom window and within sight of unchained dogs. Harnett rushed and failed. Dogs barked. People awoke. They pursued him. Harnett made it back home long enough to throw Val into the passenger seat and then they were on the run.
When Harnett one day settled in Wisconsin, it was Elroy Gatlin who split his door with an axe. A year later in Michigan, it was Wentworth Gatlin who shattered his windows, hollering for justice. Then it was other sons and other grandsons, spread across vast stretches of time and geography. Sixteen years would pass until the day I arrived at Harnett’s door, and though Bloughton had served as his best hiding place yet, he was confident that the Gatlins would one day be the end