instruments, that it would consume their lives, repel any hopes they had of friendships, of wives, of children. You are the first son to become an apprentice because there have been no other sons.”
“And they hated him, right? Because he had both, a wife and a son.”
“But then they came to know her. Just through stories, true, but that made it all the better, made it into something like a fairy tale. She was a miracle to them, this mother of yours. She came into this world, where no woman had ever trod, and did not flinch. She didn’t entirely approve, either—she was like Knox in that way—yet she understood what we did and why we did it, and she brought something to our lives that no one has ever brought, not before, not since.”
He stopped. Far behind, I heard Harnett’s footsteps also stop, allowing us our privacy.
“Light.” The golden dusk glimmered in his eyes. “Happiness. Warmth. Hope. Diggers had never hoped. But now your dad would come home soaked with dirt and smelling of death and she would wrap her arms around him. I saw it; Knox saw it; and then he passed word of this unbelievable thing that we’d seen. And vicarious though it was, we lived. My stars, for a few years there we were alive. Do you have any idea what that was like for us? I imagine you do. Then you can also imagine what it was like for us when she was gone.”
We were heading downhill.
“Tell me why she left him,” I said.
“There are plenty of reasons to blame myself. Let’s face it, somewhere along the way I got it in my head that I was special, that I could effect change. And so I did things differently. I found new ways to dig holes and made sure Knox spread the word. I organized Monro-Barclay. And, Joey, truth be told, I took great satisfaction from it. I was vain and reckless. Joey, in my own way, I was not unlike Baby.”
“They say you are the greatest Digger ever,” I said.
“Was,” he corrected. “And the reason I quit wasn’t just that I was getting too old to lift Gaia. Oh—she’s my—”
“Shovel,” I guessed. “I mean your instrument.”
Lionel nodded. “I quit out of guilt. Guilt that what happened between Ken and Baby was as much my fault as anyone’s. I took on two apprentices at once. I took them to Scotland for two years to learn their history. I treated them both as sons. That’s how headstrong I was. No matter that half the stories in literature have the same plot: a king has one kingdom to bequeath and two sons, and therein lies the ruin of all three.”
The dimming light lent the conversation an added urgency. “Her ear.” I trembled at the nearness of the answer. “My mother’s ear was all messed up. She could barely hear out of it, and that’s how she died.”
Lionel’s chest was beating up and down, too fast. With a valiant grunt, Lionel pushed off from my side and we were moving again.
“I’m getting to that. Now, Knox was the one who found me your father. Your dad’s dad, your grandpa, sold a church to a black congregation and ended up dead. Didn’t pay to cut blacks a square deal back then. Anyway, Knox was starting out at that church as a preacher and befriended your father, who was hanging around services begging for food and swiping wallets. Before I knew it, Knox had me raising the kid. Naturally I didn’t tell Ken about my profession until he was fifteen.”
“He figured it out long before then,” I said, thinking back on my own sleuthing. “Believe me.”
Lionel laughed. “You may be right. So Baby came a few years later. He tracked us. No one before or since has been able to do it. He tracked us to multiple digs. By the third or fourth time I knew we were being followed, so I set a trap. We caught him just inside a cemetery fence and he tore up Ken something fierce—broke his nose, dislocated a finger, practically sliced an eyebrow clean off. Didn’t get a good look at him until after we had him pinned. Smallest little fella I’d ever seen, the strangest little body, and a couple years younger than Ken, to boot. But he wasn’t scared. He didn’t beg to be let go. He just begged to come with us.”