realizing that he was quoting poetry. It was not the first time. “ ‘Though for a moment only, ay, or less, / To find a coffin stifling their last breath …’ ”
“Huh,” I said.
“ ‘How many have sustained this awful woe! / Humanity would shudder could we know / How many cried to God in anguish loud, / Accusing those whose haste a wrong had wrought / Beyond the worst that ever devil thought.’ ”
“Just beautiful,” I said. “Now get out of there.”
“Percy Russell.” He nodded at the attribution.
The casket lid was reassembled with fast, dexterous fingers, and moments later Harnett surfaced. Together we gripped the tarp and portioned it back in segments, pausing between strata to pack the clay. While Harnett stowed our tools, I replaced the sod, kneading the sutures with my fingertips until the blades of grass clung to one another in natural affect. I lost myself in the task; after a few minutes I looked at my work in some astonishment. Suddenly I yearned to show Harnett what I had done. Even more, I wanted to show him how my life was being patched back together: the new friend I had; the beautiful girl who did not seem to mind touching me; the fact that I was just a few measly grades away from getting straight As—my mother’s goal, but maybe one he could care about, too.
He did care, in his own way. That night, in that cemetery, it became clear to me. He taught what he felt I needed to know in order to survive. His obsessions, then, were worth understanding.
“Being buried alive,” I said. “It has something to do with being a Digger.”
Harnett paused halfway through a motion of sliding the Root into one of the sacks.
“It’s something they do?” I ventured. “Or it’s something done to them?”
He wiped his hands against his pants and stood.
“Oh, man,” I said. “It’s something they do to each other.”
Harnett turned around, one sack thrown over each shoulder, a diamond of pale moonlight shining from his eyes.
“Why?” I whispered.
He hitched up the bags.
“For punishment,” I guessed, and his dire expression told me that I was right. “Punishment for what? For screwing up? For letting people know that they exist?”
We stood motionless in the dark. I was on the right track.
Ice shot through my veins.
“Me,” I gasped. “It could happen to me.”
Once spoken, it was appallingly obvious. Among the Diggers there was no crime worse than revealing to the world their existence, and by taking me on, Harnett was accepting the greatest risk of all. A master who was also a father might be suspected of turning a blind eye to his son’s mistakes. Harnett drilled me mercilessly to save both of our skins.
“It won’t happen,” I said. It was a promise to my mother.
“No,” Harnett said. “It won’t happen.” His face, not hidden soon enough, told a story considerably less assured.
40.
FOLEY HAD TAPED INSIDE his locker door a picture of circus freaks. It was black-and-white, probably circa the 1920s, and featured an array of physical oddities, gathered on two levels of risers for a group portrait. In the back row dwarves in evening wear stood between a sword-swallower on one side and, on the other, a giant so tall that everything above the waist went unseen. Farther down, a tattooed lady stood next to a woman in a leopard-print dress who was covered in fine fur. In the front row, an obese woman sat next to a pretty girl missing her legs and balanced on a wheeled cart. Identical twins wearing cummerbunds, ties, beards, and what looked like white dreadlocks stood alongside two dark-skinned pin-heads draped in animal furs. At the right edge of the picture was a man in shirtsleeves whom I found far more disturbing than the rest. He stood with his hands on his hips, and his body seemed inexplicably conflicted—his chest too sunken, his belly too low, the bend of his arms and legs somehow misaligned.
“That guy creeps me out,” I finally said.
“It’s the Congress of Freaks,” Foley said. He pointed to the man I had mentioned. “His head’s on backwards.”
From that day on, we adopted the phrase. No more did we attend Bloughton High. Instead we were but representatives of the Congress of Freaks, and moved among our fellow initiates, troubled and troubling, but no more so than anyone else. I thought of myself as the Backwards Man, always looking at the shit I left in my wake. Foley was the Manly Giant,