Rotters (23 page)

Harnett’s work schedule was nowhere near what it had been before Simmons and Diamond laid down the law, but it
had gradually increased again to two or three digs per week. He did these digs alone, yet was always home before I went to bed. Such discipline required more time spent studying newspapers and choosing quality over quantity, and I saw the toll the routine was taking on not only his wallet but also his nerves and body—having to cover more miles more quickly, he often left the cabin long before I awoke. It was not unusual for him to go on a two- or three-day sleep bender to recover from these travels. Either he remained frightened that I would make good on my vow to turn him in to my principal or his actions were an earnest, if strange, crack at good parenting.

He didn’t remember Thanksgiving but I celebrated silently as we ate our Stouffer’s pork cutlet and mashed potatoes, our side of onions, and our dessert of Cocoa Krispies. I told Two-Fingered Jesus that I was thankful for being able to embrace oblivion—everything good that had happened to me, the relative equilibrium at home and school, had begun with that. I promised him I would continue to trust in my mother, who had sent me to Iowa for a reason I still didn’t fully understand. I did not tell Two-Fingered Jesus about the weekend digs that I continued to do with Harnett, nor did I apologize. His stone emissaries were in every cemetery we entered, and they knew full well what went on there.

Once or twice a week, I managed to see Ted, so early in the morning or so late in the day that not even Woody could find out about it. Ted slapped down sheet music. I played. He clapped to stop me and pointed at the bungled bar or hummed a correction. On rare occasion he would use his fingers to guide mine through a treacherous passage. There was no celebration for good playing, no admonishment for failure. We rammed through it as if it were punishment, yet week
after week we both came back for more. The only spoken words came from Ted at hour’s end:
Next lesson, then
.

Every free minute in between was for my mom: I studied. Ignoring the smirks of Gottschalk, I dashed to class early so I could read ahead. I spent lunchtimes with a textbook opened alongside my tray, and after several days of Foley’s grousing even got him to quiz me.

And all the while there were occurrences too reminiscent of what had happened to Heidi. A kid named Kyle read a skit with me in English and it was so funny that we got applause from everyone in the room but Woody. The next day, Kyle came into class wearing a bandage over his temple and a stupefied look. A week later Laverne stopped me in the middle of the hallway to obtain my proper mailing address, and while she had my attention she jabbered numerous questions about how classes were going, how things were at home, how was I adjusting to Bloughton—and everyone saw. When I left school that day I found Laverne quietly crying over the
FAT BITCH
that someone had keyed onto the hood of her car. I slunk by without a word, repeating the Vorvolakas in my head.

With no solid proof otherwise, I found it surprisingly easy to pretend that these abuses had nothing to do with me. Besides, my mind was on Fun and Games, where, to Foley’s dismay, Celeste continued to nab me whenever there was pairing up. A couple of times, she and I were even forced to touch. As she did so, she would ask for updates on my theater connections while telling me how her Spring Fling rehearsals were progressing. I ignored the shadow of someone who might be Woody watching from the weight room doorway and convinced myself that Celeste was not repelled by my odor of onions and death. She, after all, was Incorruptible, only she.

H
UNDREDS OF FLIES EXPLODED
from the casket as soon as the lid buckled. I shielded my face with my arms. Harnett ducked. Their small black bodies bounced off our cool skin and wiggled through our hair before they oriented themselves and dispersed. It was several moments before the buzzing noise was gone.

“Is that normal?” I whispered.

“Yes,” Harnett said. He paused. “No.”

There was no normal—if anything, that was what I was learning. No body decomposed like another. Some bodies bleached until they became rice-paper skin against twig skeletons; others bloomed into extravagant deformities of rainbow colors. No two cemeteries were alike, either. Each had its own challenges of scouting and approach; some had sight lines that provided a feeling of security while we were digging, though in truth there was no security, not ever, so said Harnett. This cemetery, for instance, extended flat as pavement for miles, with stones filing all the way up to the highway before resuming on the other side of the street.

We were at one of Kansas City’s largest funeral grounds—the southernmost point of my father’s territory—and though it was a place Harnett had visited several times in the past, it made him jittery. There were fifteen-foot fences topped with razor wire, night watchmen and motion-controlled lights, security cameras that had to be fooled with mirrors. Our pace dragged. My father had yet been unable to find a suitable replacement for Grinder, and I could see the mismatch in each
swipe of his shovel, the way the handle wanted away from his fingers.

Overall it was a well-kept corpse.

“The flies.” My breath made spirals in the air. “How do they stay alive down there?”

“The human body has everything,” Harnett replied. “It’s a world unto itself. It has pockets of air, areas of warmth and cold. Plenty of fat and meat. All it takes is one fly to start a colony.”

He tore his gaze away from the highway long enough to frown at me.

“Remember what I told you about being buried alive? Things live underneath longer than you’d think. That includes people. There’s a condition called locked-in syndrome—the Germans call it
Eingeschlossensein
—where the nerves, they shut down; to someone who doesn’t know better it looks like brain death. You still hear, you still see, only you can’t communicate. They take you to the slab and you’re aware of every minute of it.”

I felt a flare of irritation. We’d been over this before, and once he got going on the subject he would not stop. Sometimes his voice even rose to unsafe levels. I could see his excitement as he patted the corpse’s pockets, searching for a golden watch he was certain was there.

“An EEG would tell you if someone was really dead.” I sighed. I loathed hauling out a Gottschalk fact, even in an attempt to end this tiresome conversation.

“Maybe so.” He had the body on its side and I could see where the man’s suit had been scissored up the back by the mortician for easy maneuvering. “I’ll tell you what they used to do, to make sure you were dead. They had lots of ways.”

“You’ve already told me.”

“They’d slice your feet with razors. Or use nipple pinchers.”

“They put needles under your fingernails, I know, I know.”

“Boiling wax on the forehead,” he said. “Tobacco enemas, urine in the mouth.”

“They stuck pencils up your nose and pokers up your butt. What’s your deal with this stuff?”

He squatted next to the dead man. The golden watch was already rolling around his palm—he had it, yet still he sat there absorbing the odor. Finally he looked up.

“I have my reasons,” he said. “Let’s go through it once more.”

Not far away, a heavy transport vehicle—maybe a garbage or cement truck—thundered past the cemetery. Small avalanches of dirt streamed from the side of the hole, pattering against Harnett’s shoulders. My pulse accelerated. I wasn’t used to digging in the presence of headlights.

“Let’s
not
go through it,” I said. “Come on, get out of there.”

“Tell me the three things.” He shifted so that his knee blocked the corpse’s face from the falling dirt. Again I was struck by the strange courtesy he showed the dead.

“The three things,” I repeated, thinking. “Calm? You should try to stay calm?”

“C-A-S,”
he recited impatiently. “C. Calm, remain calm.”

“Right, right,” I said. “That’s what I said, stay calm.”

“A,”
he said.

“Air. Conserve air.”

“Which means.”

“Which means,” I said, pressing shut my eyes. “Don’t hyperventilate. Don’t scream.”

“And whatever you do.”

“Whatever you do, don’t light a match because it’ll suck away all the air.”

“S,”
he said.

“Shallow. A shallow grave. Remember that if you’re buried alive most likely you’re in a shallow grave. The reason is—”

“The reason’s not important,” he said.

“It’s important to me,” I said. “The reason is that if someone is burying you alive, chances are they’re probably in a hurry and doing a half-ass job. So you’re probably just a few feet deep.”

“Which means.”

“Which means,” I said, ducking beneath the flash of passing headlights, “that you can get out. If you can find the coffin’s center of balance, figure out which end is resting higher. You can break through.”

“This is difficult because.”

“This is difficult because you can’t gain enough leverage. You can’t swing your arms. Why is this so important to you?”

He ignored me. “If the coffin is wood.”

“If the coffin is wood, you’re going to have to bust the shit out of your hands, maybe even your head. You have to use focus techniques. Find the lid’s weak point, probably along the seam, and bash it in. Get ready for a mouthful of mud and remember that you can breathe through it. It won’t seem like it, but you can. All right? A-plus?”

“And if it is a metal casket.”

“We can go over this while we fill the hole.”

“And if it is a metal casket.”

I clenched my teeth. “If it is a metal casket you need to disassemble it. Sometimes there’s runners on the inside you can take off and use like a crowbar. If the casket is lined you
can use the fabric to protect your hand while you punch. You can also use the material for a hood when the dirt starts coming in.”

“Which it will.”

“Which it will,” I repeated. “Right. Okay. Got it.”

“ ‘To die is natural; but the living death / Of those who waken into consciousness.’ ” I was lost before 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.

F
OLEY 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.