most beautiful mountains.”
Harnett’s expression was filled with such yearning that it was all I could do not to shout my opposition. Frantically I thought of the Rotters Book. Maybe Boggs was right and it did mean our salvation, the only way for us to survive in a new century. I could describe it to Crying John, try to make him understand.
“You go,” Harnett said. “I can’t.”
“I know, I know, the kid.”
Crying John twisted and pushed at the locks but they were foreign to him and bit at his fingers until he laughed. It was a loud and unfriendly noise.
“Locks, bars. You think this crap is going to protect you?”
“John,” said Harnett.
Crying John turned on him. “You were never this stupid! What’s happened to you? Can’t you see what’s in front of your face? Do I have to spell it out?”
Harnett spread his arms, helpless.
Crying John winced. The tears fled from the corners of his eyes into the escape channels of his wrinkles.
“He told me to tell you. He made me swear. But I lied to him; I wasn’t really going to do it.”
“Who? What?”
“Under-the-Mud. He said you deserved to know. See? Even at the end, he praised you. He thought more of you than any of us did. Hell of a lot more than me.”
Harnett was shaking his head. “The end? Wait. Is he—”
“You still got your eyes, but you’re every bit as blind. So, fine, I’ll tell you.” Crying John gasped down his tears. “Anyone can see where Baby is leading you. Anyone can see where he wants you to go. I swore that I’d tell you, so, all right, here it is. But just because I tell you doesn’t mean you have to go there. You don’t have to do what Baby wants you to do. When are you going to understand that?”
Everything became clear. I covered my face with my hands.
Crying John saw me and his beard moved in silent apologies.
“Oh, god,” Harnett said. He reached for the door. “Get out of my way.”
16.
WE DROVE LIKE WE were somersaulting down a hill. Cars honked and semis wobbled as we swept into their lanes, and still we rolled faster and faster. When the sign welcoming us to Chicago passed overhead, Harnett sideswiped an Oldsmobile that subsequently chased us for half an hour. Once spat out by an exit ramp, we were lost and it was all my fault. Landmarks had rearranged in my absence. Road signs had redirected. With every U-turn Harnett toppled more kiosks and cut off more pedestrians. We squealed into three different gas stations desperate for direction. Denizens who would have never noticed me one year ago now skirted away, sensing danger. Somehow the Pakistani with the baby stroller, the Haitian with the cab, the Mexican with the food cart, they knew.
It was just a few hours to daybreak when we found Evan Hills Cemetery. And only when I touched the casket did I realize that I had done so once before, at her funeral, moments before walking away from the tarp-covered plot, so that now, eight long months later, my fingers recognized it. It was like touching anything else familiar from home—a doorknob, a banister.
It was undoubtedly the worst digging of Harnett’s life. He was crazed. Each particle of dirt was like a speck of his sanity tossed away. It rained over me, the dirt and the delirium, and I swallowed too much of both. There existed in the cemetery a vague impression of spaciousness and cleanliness, stones kept clean from weeds. For this small favor I was thankful. Night crashed down.
Two feet, three feet—misplaced excitement over the role reversal of checking on a mother tucked into bed. Four feet, five feet—would her grin at seeing me again be wide enough to eat her face? Six feet—the clang of shovel meeting casket. Don’t be noisy, Daddy, let Mommy sleep.
I sat cross-legged at the edge of the hole, facing a dark, icy cemetery I had last seen on a bright summer afternoon. Below, Harnett slaughtered the lid—it crunched like broken bone. There followed a moment of silence the length of a single breath, and then the sounds began. I shut my eyes and covered my ears. His throat had burst—it was the only explanation for the whirling, splattering sobs that tore around like cyclones.
A hand groped for the grass; I saw bloody knuckles and snapped fingernails. A second hand joined the first and this one held not one but a fistful of Polaroids, and as