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  “Clayton, do me a favor, buddy,” called Jock. “Run out back and find the kid’s leg for him. Hey, Garth, you there? Run around to the shop, get some of the three-inch wood screws and a drill. Willow, honey?”

  She massaged Little Craig’s hand, sucking nervously on her lip-ring.

  “C-can’t I stay with—?”

  “Take a peek inside Leo’s mouth, hey? See how much cheek skin’s in there.”

  “Well, if you do go away for good, you’ll be the first,” old Arthur said. He swept snow off the hood of his truck while his little terrier hopped down from the cab and piddled on our footprints. “I told my kids I was on my way through to Lucinda’s in Wichita but that I’d be taking my time, you see, and I do want to get there eventually, but…um.”

  “It’ll be hard to leave the bacon,” I said.

  I picked at three flaps of forearm skin that Lonny had lifted off during the scrap. They felt ropy as licorice. Watching the dog sniff around, its owner keeping a step behind it all the time as I tried to form another sentence, that really reminded me of something from my messed-up recent past.

  “Now that’s not Frisbee anymore—what are they doing?”

  I followed his gaze. In front of the dormitory, a dozen students shuffled from side to side, with significant jerks of the elbows, as a faint tinny beat drifted over the snow. Grace stepped out from the center of the line, pushed Shawn and Eric closer together, then the whole gang resumed dragging themselves back and forth. A slithery bassline.

  “They’re dancing to ‘Thriller,’ ” I explained.

  The kids were better off here, sure, but in the meantime all our everything had ground to a halt.

  “You can’t just walk away from nitrites,” Arthur went on. “I spent thirty-six hours in my own basement, without the basic strength to climb the stairs to the kitchen, and with bacon in my fridge!”

  “How’d you get out of there?”

  “Tinky kept barking until the next-door neighbors finally came home from Mexico. Am I likely to leave myself that vulnerable again? No.” He kept caressing the corners of his mouth with his gloved hand, and I guessed that as soon as I was ten feet away he’d start gnawing. “Nor should you. Make peace with Jock. Stay a few months with us lotus-eaters, that’s what we are.”

  “No, man, I told my kids I’d be back in a month. I meant it.”

  He took some dry bacon out of his coat pocket and handed me a strip.

  “So you did, you just explained that. But why the shovel?”

  “He told me to bury Lonny. I guess just by the fence there.”

  I spun the shovel in my hand like a majorette—my heart fluttered at the prospect of getting traveling, though it was only four hours since Rob had set the e-brake on the ambulance.

  “But surely you were right to finish him?” Arthur asked. “His humanity had expired?”

  “I guess, but who else should Jock get to dig, right? How about Tink, he much of a digger?”

  The dog rolled on his back beside my shoe, his stupid little feet in the air.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Arthur said.

  “You think Stephen Hawking would trade his beautiful brain for a reliable body?”

  “Well, obviously he does have his brain.” Arthur studied a boot print in the snow. “And I’ve never read about him complaining.”

  I couldn’t dig the hole wide enough in the half-frozen ground, but I folded Lonny into the bottom and kept my boot pressed between his shoulder blades while I scooped dirt over him. Here was the quiet dignity I’d demanded of the kids.

  “Sorry, man,” I said.

  Jock hadn’t given me any protocol for a funeral. No one at pbf had died before that particular Friday.

  The kids stomped toward me, each with a shovel over the shoulder—evidently from the start Jock had anticipated a lot of digging.

  “We’re going to clear the road!” Eric called. He wore lime-green earmuffs. “Mr. Jock says he wants you the fuck out of here!”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.” I stepped into the snowdrift to let them by. “Thank you.”

  “Gillbrick, did you seriously kill the Lonny dude?” asked Franny. “Like that’s not just an expression, you terminated him?”

  “Somebody had to.”

  “Cool,” they said in unison, letting out breaths of steam.

  “Hardcore,” Lydia Dershowitz said, her upper lip flashing with staples.

  Harv trudged by with a half-smile.

  “How did it feel?” he asked quietly.

  “Felt good at the time, I guess.”

  “Yep.” He pulled his cap down to block the glare. “Bet it would.”

  “You killed Leopold too, right?” Eric grinned. “That dude smelled like dumps!”

  “No, that was, uh, Mrs. Avery, and he’s back in the cooler. Combed his hair over the holes.”

  Their hands crept up to their own heads. No one knows better than a sixteen-year-old how a hairstyle can make or break you.

  Only Amber was in the dorm, writing at the table—demand must’ve been strictly for two-armed shovelers.

  “I was left-handed before,” she grimaced, shuffling her hand across the page. “Writing to my folks so I don’t bawl on the phone. Grace and I are starting a skate-shoe company, ask what it’s called.”

  “What’s—”

  “Legless. It’s, like, the opposite, and it means drunk, so that’s cool.”

  “You guys all getting enough to eat so far? Everybody gone to the bathroom?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  I took cold bacon from the platter.

  “Your dad wasn’t killed by that gravel truck, was he? He’s still around?”

  She shrugged. “Concussion.”

  “What about Grace, she got a hold of her mom?”

  “No.”

  “Her dad’s not around?”

  “He, uh.” She looked past my shoulder and down the dorm. “He died the summer before ninth grade.”

  I turned on the bench to see Grace, zipped to her chin in a sleeping bag, sitting up from her bed, exactly like a horror-movie scene where a guy rises from his morgue slab, and I thought zombie despite myself.

  “Didn’t they all talk about it, like in the staff room?” Grace asked sleepily. “They said, like, ‘If you don’t like the Congo war shit, go complain to Grace’?”

  “No…”

  Amber tapped her chin with the pencil. “Her dad got killed.”

  Grace swung her feet and set them on the floor, the bag still up to her chin.

  “My dad wanted to prospect for coltan because you need it to make cell phones and laptops, and he heard Congo had, like sixty-five percent of it in the world, and he was going to buy us a boat for the summers if everything went okay, maybe Butler Lake. And my mom kept saying, ‘That’s right by Rwanda,’ but the State Department or whoever was like, ‘No problem, that was like twenty years ago. Let’s not demonize Africa.’ ”

  “No,” I said, like a substitute teacher. “We shouldn’t.”

  “So he went out in the Blue Mountains with a bunch of guys, and the first thing the LRA ever did that got in the news—”

  “ ’Cause it was like two years ago,” murmured Amber.

  “First thing they did was tie him up between two trees and chop down to his skeleton, but they left his head alone so we could recognize him in the picture.” No pauses for breath. “Not a lot of Asian guys in that part of Africa anyway, I guess.”

  She stepped out of the sleeping bag, shuffled past the beds, sat down beside me, picked out a strip of bacon and snapped it in half. She emanated a sleepy warmth. I put an arm around her. Her mouth was a hard line and her eyes weren’t even misty.

  “Can’t believe they showed you the picture,” I said.

  “Wasn’t supposed to.” She crunched b
acon between her molars. “I guess his clients or whoever started screaming in Congress and stuff, and there you go.”

  “Plus there was that thing with the old women,” said Amber. “And that was way back. All their hands and feet.”

  The curtain behind the table flapped open, revealing ham-armed Jock in flip-flops, a white towel around his waist.

  “So, Giller, if your chores are done and you’ve had your chit-chat,” he said, “we’ll hit the sauna.”

  Jock held the outside door open to reveal Rob, hunched in checkered bathing trunks across from Colleen in an enormous purple T-shirt. The hot cedar smell was a solid improvement over pig shit. The door thudded shut behind us and I settled in my underwear on the bench beside Rob. My Lydia’s Minnesota cousins all had saunas so she’d wanted one in our Wahoo place, but of course events had conspired so that never happened.

  “Ah,” Rob sighed, “good timing, gentlemen.”

  “Getting ugly with you two?” asked Jock.

  “Might say,” said Colleen.

  “Why don’t you turn on a light in here?” I asked.

  I’d seen a switch as we slipped in, but the only light now was from a crack at the top of the door and the barbecue full of briquettes, winking and steaming in the corner, and presumably poisoning the air.

  “I can’t take any kind of brightness as of a half-hour ago,” Rob said quietly. “Guess it’s the ol’ pupils. Nothing I can’t deal with”

  “Aw, heck, we’ll all look after you!” In the dark Jock chuckled like Santa. “Takes a village, right?”

  “We each fall apart in our own time and in our own way,” said Rob.

  By then I could make out a vague outline of Jock and Colleen on the bench across, and Rob beside me, running fingertips down his forehead.

  “Two months ago, I lost seven guys off the day shift,” he said.

  “Some so-called accident?” blurted Colleen. “You know who must’ve got to Doug, but you—”

  “Shut up, will you?” asked Rob. “Chivalry aside, shut up. I had seven guys enlist to go to the Congo after that horrible shit at the Catholic girls’ school.”

  “Anglican,” Jock corrected.

  “Yes.”

  That had been horrible shit. The photos that’d leaked out hadn’t told the entire story but it’d sure looked like the younger the girls had been, the more depraved the LRA had been in disposing of them. And what you could see of their expressions, on the ones who’d still had faces—they’d just looked tired, tired, tired of it all.

  “I’m just glad they’re not around for this debacle,” Rob finished. “Thank God.”

  “And if they’re dead now, these seven guys, they’re better off?” Colleen asked quietly. “You’re telling me my husband’s better off too, so I’ll calm the fuck down?”

  “Young lady, no,” Jock said.

  “Hippie scientists,” said Rob.

  “But we’ve got science of our own,” blurted Jock, “and Arthur says we can increase our nitrites in the liquid smoke to the nth degree! He’s writing to a chemist from his magazine, then we’ll be able to survive on a half-pound, quarter-pound of bacon a day! What’s more, we’re limiting the amino acids more every day—I really, truly mean that.”

  “But is there a cure?” I asked. “Are you even aware of such a thing?”

  “Giller, hey, this is my fifth day with this thing operating, if you think—”

  “Is there?” I asked.

  “No!” Jock threw ghostly hands in the air. “Go find Mr. Penzler himself out in Ohio, ask him if there’s a goddamn cure, ask his monkeys with the beards who came out to our place of work and set the thing up, putting our lives and livelihoods at risk!”

  “Good,” I said. “That was my plan anyway. Gas up the ambulance, I’m gone.”

  “Me too.” Colleen held her head high. “Clint told us what happened in the jail, Peter, and that’s not going to happen to my girl, you understand?”

  “Don’t be pissed at me, I’ve got no problem if you come.”

  “What happened in what jail?” asked Rob.

  Colleen wiped her brow on the hem of her shirt. “I’m telling Megan to stay here.”

  “I don’t imagine she’ll fight you too hard on that.” Jock’s belly glistening like snakeskin. “She likes that boy with the hair in his eyes.” He lowered his head between his heavy shoulders, flashed a frat-house grin. “But don’t expect me to chaperone. Hanging a picture or contemplating marriage, always drill beforehand, you get me?”

  “You sit on your asses,” said Colleen, “like that’ll keep you alive even five minutes! If you know this hippie doctor is the problem, let’s see some action, let’s—”

  “I’ve seen you two in action,” said Jock. “And you’re welcome for the bacon.”

  She started out the door in a burst of cold daylight, so I could see how the T-shirt clung to her. A widow of twenty-four hours. A black ring encircled her thigh.

  “What’s the tattoo?” I asked.

  “The Van Halen logo.” She squinted back at me through an inch of open door. She seemed to be all bottom teeth. “Doug’s favorite.”

  She let it bang shut, and while our eyes readjusted the three of us sat there blind.

  “Please, God, Giller,” said Jock. “Take that fruitcake away from here.”

  Then she howled, right outside, and something hammered against the door.

  The days were so short that it was already dark by the time I’d loaded in the cooler full of bacon, warmed up the ambulance’s engine and checked that my shovel was still under the gurney. Silhouettes approached from the dormitory. I leaned against the grill, waiting for Colleen. I had nine hundred miles to plan what we were going to say to Penzler and his bearded hippies so we could roll back into pbf with a cure. Then back to our lives.

  “Hey, Mr. Giller?” Amber called through the darkness, her unseen boots crunching snow. “I think, with my arm already, you know, I think I’d better stay here in case …” Ten feet away, her feet stopped crunching. “You’re not pissed off, are you?”

  I was a head-stomping Lonny killer, so even I didn’t know what might set me off.

  “It’s better you don’t come,” I said.

  Then I smelled foundation makeup and there were three arms around my middle.

  “I guess I’d better stay here too,” Grace said to my armpit. “There’s a bunch of white paint in the shed, when you get back we can pour it all over ourselves for the nbzambi parade, it’ll look creepy-awesome.”

  “Speak for yourself, Crazy,” said Amber.

  “And I didn’t hand in my phone,” Grace whispered. “We’ve got Franny’s number, and we told her and Megan we’ll text all the time.”

  “Those two are coming?” I asked. “What the hell for?”

  “Turn on the headlights and you might see each other,” Colleen suggested.

  I flinched at her voice, because who knew who she’d hit next and with what?

  “You’ll be back next week, right?” said Amber, unfazed.

  “Back with results, sure.”

  The two girls’ shapes drifted away, then Colleen must’ve gone beside the steering wheel and flicked the knob—a headlight flared up on either side of me. Franny, Clint and Harv stood out in the snow, shielding their eyes like I was a divine manifestation.

  “Tell me you’re not all coming,” I called.

  “Are you really wearing that jacket to Ohio?” asked Franny. “ ’Cause you look exactly like a paramedic.”

  “No!” I held up discouraging playground-supervision hands. “Why the hell do you think I brought you out here? I’m not dragging you into the line of fire anymore, so you all go back in there and behave yourselves!”

  The kids stood there with their arms at their sides—their eyes didn’t flicker, their jaws were square.
They looked years older than when they’d climbed on the yellow bus to Velouria, like they already had rents to pay.

  “Dude,” said Clint, “we’re in a line of fire no matter where we are, could be an ankle, a shoulder—”

  “My ass could slip off any second,” said Franny. “And it’s not like you’re a Navy seal, man. We don’t make you any more fucked-up than you already were.”

  And so the polite children trudged past me to the back doors, while Megan stood in the glare beside the cab with her arms around her mother. She’d put her sequinned cardigan back on as though it was already time to resume our pre-Velouria lives.

  “Okay, I’m in no position to discourage anybody.” Colleen’s voice cracked again. “I want to hold onto all of them and not move a step.”

  “Naw, if you left us here we’d just be waiting for you to come back.” Harv rubbed his chin like he was at the foul line, concentrating. “This is way better.”

  People only say It’s your funeral when it’s an obvious exaggeration, so I didn’t, just gave a solemn nod like some hard-assed movie coach—hell, maybe Harv’d had me in mind all the time to lead his doomed basketball team.

  “Plus those old guys are super-creepy!” called Clint and Franny.

  “Seriously?” That mighty right arm swinging, Amber ran out of the dark toward Harv, her mouth crumpled like a washcloth. “You aren’t staying here?”

  “Aw,” he said, starting to smile.

  She thumped into him so he stepped backward into a puddle then dragged them both out of it, holding her up. He put his fingers through her hair.

  “Back next week?” she said to his chest. “I’m sorry but I really have to stay here just in case!”

  “Oh.” His back was straighter than I’d ever seen, his chin on her head. “Sure.”

  Considering that she’d once aspired to hump him on the hood of her car in a gravel pit, she was playing it pretty cool. Harv pressed his big hand to her cheek, pressing her wet face against him.

  Saturday, October 29.

  In the early-morning darkness a so much to discover sign welcomed us to Ohio, and I hoped that it was right. And that the “so much” could be discovered easily. From the back I heard the distinct crunching din of vast quantities of bacon being masticated, which meant the four kids were awake.