Rotters (30 page)

I rolled from the booth and hit the floor. Above, Boggs pushed at my father’s eyes with his thumbs. Harnett twisted and tried to toss him away, but Boggs had already taken firm hold of my father’s coat and they both went crashing. Harnett’s head struck the hanging lamp and it whirled.

Knees knocked me; normal people were closing in. Their
hovering presence yanked me back to a world I had somehow forgotten. From my sunken vantage I saw beer bellies and holstered cell phones and practical purses, and I wanted it back, all of it.
Take me
, I begged of them, but to their eyes I had long since become oblivion. They only saw strange, faceless men wrestling on top of cheap tableware. Reluctantly I returned to my newer world and within the bedlam saw my father attempt to grab the steak knife still spinning upon the unbused table.

Blood was streaking down his forehead—the lamp had slashed him good. He tried to wipe away an eyeful and Boggs, his compact torso contracting ferociously, took the opportunity to slam him to the table. Plates vibrated and silverware floated in midair; the steak knife twirled and Harnett’s hand pinned it to the wall. One second later it was clutched in his fist, the blade flashing.

Finally there were arms everywhere, pulling the two fighters apart, and in the tangle of bodies I saw faces that triggered recognition: here was Brownie, lifting Boggs in a backward bear hug; here was Under-the-Mud, prying Boggs’s fingers from a bloodied neck; here was Screw, restraining Boggs’s thrashing legs; here was Fisher, doing the same to Harnett; here was Crying John, already hoisting Harnett by the coat collar; and here, like a ghost, was the Apologist, gently coaxing the knife from Harnett’s fingers.

Through it, the two men roared.

“Kenny! Kenny!” Boggs cried. “What did I do?”

“We should’ve taken care of you years ago!”

“Was it my brain?” Boggs clawed desperately at the sides of his head. “Did my brain do something wrong?”

“You’re no brother to me and no son to Lionel.”

“I am! I am!” Boggs shook free from his captors and
snatched up the Rotters Book. Panting, he regarded each old man in turn. The pale grief drained from his face and replaced itself with a florid loathing. “Why are all of you looking at me? I don’t exist to you, remember? Don’t any of you remember? You banished me. All of you agreed to it. That’s how much you all loved your Baby. You banished me and you want to pretend that you’re blameless. Well, go ahead. Pretend. Act like I don’t exist. Pretty soon you’ll change your mind. I swear it. You see this book?”

“Get out!” Harnett boomed. Crying John took handfuls of his clothes to keep him at bay.

“Yes, brother—oh, sorry, Mr. Resurrectionist, sir. Anything you say. Resurrectionist tells Baby what to do and Baby does it. Those are the rules, right?” He futzed with his suit until he recognized its hopeless condition. The tie slopped in an inebriated loop; the vest was missing buttons; the shirt was bedecked with food. The violation of this façade of respectability infuriated him. He grated his tiny teeth and glared at Harnett. “You’re no different than the rest of these rotters.”

“You stay in your territory,” Harnett said. “You remember Monro-Barclay and stay the hell away.”

“The pact?” Boggs laughed and a mist of blood painted his ruffles. “If I’m not your brother and I’m not Lionel’s son, then guess what? I’m an orphan again! I’m an orphan and I belong to nobody. Any pact you rotters have ain’t my concern. I plan to finish my book on schedule. And if that takes me into enemy territory, I don’t know what to say. I have no enemies. I love all of you. You know that. It’s you who don’t love me.”

Boggs limped in the direction of the door. He muttered as he passed me.

“Ask Daddy about the Rat King,” he said. “Ask Daddy
about the Gatlins.” He turned up the volume so that everyone—Diggers, diners, cooks, everyone—could hear. “The Rat King? The Gatlins? Your memory, old men, is selective!”

At the mention of these curious oaths, Harnett pulled against Crying John’s embrace. Boggs ducked and crabbed sideways. After his stubby fingers hooked the handle of the front door, he scanned the crowd until his eyes found mine. “Your first hole, son. Remember the feeling? Now imagine it times a hundred. Times a thousand. Imagine how a gentleman of breeding raises his little Digger.”

Boggs slipped the Rotters Book inside his coat and I felt a stab of loss. He pushed open the door and a sparkling cone of snow turned him into some dizzying dream. A jingle of door bells, a flare of coattails, and he was gone.

Already the Diggers were threading into the crowd and loosening from my memory. The worst possible thing had happened. They had been seen, addressed in public, and now, thanks to my father’s rash behavior, would have to disperse far sooner than they had hoped. As the interlopers withdrew, the surrounding gawkers took on even finer dimension. I wanted so badly to run into their arms and join their routines of afternoon casseroles, evening board games, school-night early bedtimes. Any quiet mundanity—I’d take it and love it and never want anything else, I’d swear to it.

But even these people were scattering, half grinning with the anticipation of the stories they’d tell about the outrageous dispute they’d seen at lunch. Only Crying John remained at my father’s side. He took a clean towel from a cook and placed it in Harnett’s hand, then lifted that hand so that it applied pressure to the wound. Harnett shook off the man’s grip and looked away in shame. With nothing but a lugubrious frown, Crying John slipped through shoulders and
became just another plaid shirt receding from spilled food and broken dishes. I thought, but wasn’t sure, that I heard a distant muttering: “C’mon, Foulie.”

Braver legs approached. “You okay, mister?”

Harnett checked the towel. It was deep red. At his feet, blood made moth blots across the tile. He wiped his slick face and neck and tossed the towel onto the destroyed table.

“The truck,” he told me.

“Good,” I said, tearing my eyes from the gore and scooping up my biology text. “Let’s go home.”

We pushed through the crowd and were outside. Boggs was nowhere.

“We’re not going home,” Harnett said as we carved the cold morning air. The sidewalk behind him was spattered with red.

“What? But school. My test.”

“Lionel.” For once he ignored the caskets tasting fresh air across the street. “We talk to Lionel.”

B
LUE MOUNTAINS, YELLOW FORESTS
, black miles of scorched highway—landscapes metamorphosed in ways I’d never imagined as we barreled through West Virginia, then Virginia, and on into North Carolina. Harnett drove so fast I could feel the tires battle their axles.

As we neared Lionel’s home in the Outer Banks, the landscape adjusted yet again to long, shimmering inlets and grassy flatlands giving rise to tall fronded trees and spiked bushes. Houses were built on stilts. Storefronts were pink and
turquoise and waved flags that looked beaten by centuries of sand. And yes, sand—it was everywhere, shifting in random patches along the shoulder, rippling across the highway, piled intentionally in front lawns and speared with novelty flamingoes. I lowered the window and tasted fish. Harnett cranked the wheel, and for the next half hour we traveled parallel to an ocean I wanted badly to see. The surf shops and seafood restaurants ebbed. Only when there was nothing left at all did Harnett turn down an unmarked path.

He killed the engine a respectful distance away from a charming, if crooked, white house with pink trim. For a moment we sat listening to the overheated engine. Then he got out and I followed, and the ground was so solid I nearly fell.

The front door squealed and a cane stabbed its way into the driveway. It was an elderly man sporting a floppy beach hat, sunglasses, and an unbuttoned shirt that revealed a gaunt torso and sparse curls of white hair. Harnett met him in the middle of the yard. They stopped a few feet from each other.

“It’s Baby, isn’t it?” Lionel’s voice broke into octaves almost musical. “Baby’s dead. Baby’s dead.”

Harnett shook his head. “We just spoke to him.”

With a liver-spotted hand he flipped the clipped-on shades from his bifocals and examined the brown rings of blood encircling Harnett’s skull.

“Must’ve been some conversation,” he said.

“He’s up to something and I don’t know what—”

Lionel waved for silence. “Please. You’re tired and hungry. We’ll save unpleasantness for a bit.” He stretched his neck toward the truck, a smile playing at his lips. “Where’s Grinder?”

The remorse was overwhelming.

Harnett faked indifference. “She broke.”

Lionel’s face fell. There was a complicated moment of give and take between the men, hard emotions fought down and painted over with softer ones, possibly for my benefit. “I’m sorry, Ken. She was a good instrument. You’ll find another, I’m sure of it.”

Then he looked at me. Even swaddled in folds of skin, the brown eyes sparkled.

Harnett hooked a thumb my direction. “The kid.”

Lionel took an unsteady step, poked my foot with his cane, and laughed. He reached down and took up my hand. His palm was dry and his bones, as they squeezed, felt fragile. Still I could see the ghost of his former physique.

“Don’t fret,” he said softly. “All instruments break. All it means is that they have served their purpose. It’s all any of us can ask, really.” I found myself nodding, strangely heartened by how the term instrument could refer to both my trumpet and the Root.

Lionel’s other hand sealed our handshake. “My stars! He looks like Val, Ken. My boy, you look just like your mother.”

These unexpected words, this warm welcome—it was all I could do not to start sobbing. As if in sympathy, his own eyes filled with tears. His arthritic hands gripped harder.

“Honored,” he said. “Honored.”

“Lionel, easy,” Harnett sighed. “He needs that hand for digging.”

Lionel chuckled. He took a step back and regarded us both. He drove his cane into the dirt.

“What a treat! Come in, come in!”

He began hobbling back toward the house. Harnett and I followed.

“I’ll have Lahn make up the spare room,” Lionel said.

“We can’t stay,” Harnett said.

“What? That’s idiotic.”

Harnett glanced at me and again I felt guilty. “The kid’s got school.”

“Hmm.” He yanked at the ungreased door. “Well, I’ll have Lahn make up the room just in case.”

The normality of his home was heartbreaking. There were no stacks of papers, no ash-stained hearth, no hastily assembled bedding alongside the sink. There was a sofa and end tables with coasters. There were framed pictures. There was an aquarium in which bright fish waggled. There was a TV. With a grunt, Lionel leaned over and picked up a phone. A phone! I shot a yearning look at Harnett, feeling like a little kid inside a pet shop.

“Lahn, two very special guests have arrived at my home,” Lionel said pleasantly. “Would you mind terribly coming by and fixing up the spare room?”

“Lionel, look—” Harnett began.

“Oh, thank you, Lahn. We won’t be here when you arrive, so just let yourself—That’s right. Oh? That might be nice, too. Yes, let’s plan on it. We’ll see you then.” He hung up the phone. “Lahn will be fixing us dinner. You remember Lahn’s dinners.”

Harnett swallowed his protest. “Fine. Dinner. But then, really, we have to leave. The kid’s got some test he says is important.”

“Then I’m certain it is.” Lionel gave me another long look. “Well. We can discuss it during our walk.”

“What walk?”

Lionel indicated a closet. “Joey, get yourself a good coat. It gets cold on the beach.”

The ocean—it was impossible to conceal my grin. I sorted
through the coats, only for a moment remembering the one I had abandoned in my locker before fleeing the school.

“You shouldn’t be walking,” Harnett said. There was a note of genuine concern in his voice. “You can barely make it across the room. We’ll drive.”

“Hogwash.” Lionel rapped his cane against the floor. “And where we’re going you can’t drive.”

Properly gloved and hatted, we exited through a rear door, passed through a backyard dominated by off-season flower patches and a freestanding porch swing, and picked up a faint trail leading into the trees. Harnett hovered over Lionel, tensed to catch the old man’s fall, but the probing cane seemed to know the location of every rock and root.

Harnett recounted the relocation, Boggs’s surprise appearance, and the contents of the Rotters Book. As he spoke I tried to envision my father as a little boy, looking up to his teacher much as I looked up to mine. Lionel took the news stoically, his brown eyes squinting through the fading light.

“And he looked bad,” Harnett finished. “Really bad, and he wasn’t making sense. He might be on something.”

“His has always been an addictive personality. It’s what made him such a Digger.” Lionel kept his eyes on the trail. “Part of me isn’t surprised he’s acting out. He blames me for a lot; blames you for even more. But the way he’s chosen to go about it, it’s the worst thing he could do. You know what would happen if that book got out? Or, how do you say it, computerized? And sent out through the computers?”

“He’s left evidence in every single coffin,” Harnett said. “Someone gets exhumed for an autopsy and they start finding these? Hundreds of years of history up in smoke.”

“It’s just another sign,” the old man said. “You can only
fight so much, Ken. Are you going to fight the turning of time? Not sure I see the use of it anymore. How many of us are left now? Less than a dozen?”

“We need to do something. Don’t we?”

Lionel paused. “What exactly would you do?”

The prospective murder of Boggs, their brother and son, hung in the air.

Harnett kicked at the ground. “I don’t know.”

“If you’re expecting me to issue some magnificent edict, I’m afraid I will disappoint,” Lionel said. “No Monro-Barclay Pact would work now, not with what Baby has become.”

I interrupted. “Everyone keeps talking about that Monro-whatever. No one ever says what it is.”

Lionel missed a beat; his foot landed awkwardly and Harnett was there with both arms. Lionel fought free. “He doesn’t know?”