various grungy bundles. My knees popped above the top of the cart like those of a child too big for his stroller, and my feet fought for room with a tall pole of some sort propped at the end of the cart, swaddled in a stained quilt and cinched tight with twine.
Above the incessant squeaking, there was music. Boggs’s Adam’s apple made paroxysmal patterns as he hummed a jaunty tune and pushed me down the alley. From this angle I could see his scraggly black tie snug against his neck. Below, the ruffles of his shirt were sharp and hardened with filth.
His left eye rolled downward.
“Top of the morning, son,” he said.
An insistent pulse pushed against the spongy underside of his jaw. My gut cramped as I felt a nearly uncontrollable desire to strangle. I pistoned myself a few inches and reached forward with one claw. Then the cart jounced again—another stone passing beneath the wheels—and I dropped cruelly against the metal grate.
“Relax—doctor’s orders.” He hummed with renewed vigor and chuckled as the cart crunched through some sort of grit. “This ride is complimentary. Just my way of saying thank you for allowing me and my brain to enjoy one more resplendent day.”
I clutched the sides of the cart and tried to tell myself that it was okay that I had crumpled into sleep last night, okay that he had not in fact taken the opportunity to kill me. That had been his choice, not mine. One night was what he had asked for and, all right, I would give him that. Only that. There was an orange hue to the horizon; night was coming soon, and when it was through, so was Boggs.
With rubbery legs I rolled myself out of the cart. Boggs watched with some amusement as I hobbled and tried to parade feeling back into my extremities. I didn’t like looking at him. His stature made him look too much like a child suffering a full-body burn. It had to be drugs, or disease, or the corrosive cocktail of both. I didn’t have time to think it out—that unbearable squeak told me he was moving. I tried to keep up, but the waving of his coattails revealed the disquieting speed at which he traveled. I limped along, almost losing him in the gray mist of dust. We exited the alley, crossed an unmarked two-lane, and entered another alley. His lead on me grew. He steered his cart through the parking lot of a housing development. With no regard for the safety of his hands, he ripped aside planks before forcing the cart through a gap in a fence. We kicked through the mangled remains of a chainlink fence and booted aside dismembered chunks of easy chairs and TV sets. The wheels shimmied over gravel. The bent and beaten shovel that lay on the cart’s lower tray thrummed with pretend life. We were lost in some netherland maze. Caught between the long-forgotten inner walls of structures built too close together, gusts of wind twisted themselves into miniature tornados, and piles of refuse levitated.
It was twilight before we emerged again into open space. A large graveyard awaited us. Boggs tucked his cart into the sheath of a drooping barn and emerged from it with the rusty shovel. From far away, the tool looked like a cane, and when he paused at the cemetery gate to beckon me, the darkness momentarily turned him into Fred Astaire—cane tapping, vest peeking smartly from the slant of his suit, playful grin anticipitating the fancy footwork soon to come.
I followed but kept a distance. I didn’t trust myself to get too close. Once the dead had us surrounded, Boggs pirouetted and motioned to a line of small stones. They were as identical as school desks. Carefully I perched upon one while Boggs rushed forward to wipe the cobwebs from the side of a crypt the approximate size of a chalkboard. He tapped the board with his shovel to call the class to attention. I flinched—he was going to call me to the front of the classroom, I just knew it.
“Pop quiz.” He sniffed the air. “Tell me what you smell.”
Keeping my eyes on him, I raised my nose. I smelled graveyard—treated grass, tilled soil, wilting flowers, the mildew of stone.
Boggs nipped at his lips with tiny teeth.
“High school’s over, son. You’re going to need to work harder.” He stuck the shovel into the dirt and lifted his nose to the air like a starving