where it dumped him onto the sand.
Berenice September, carrying shopping bags on her way home from work, arrived at the moment when the mob parted and allowed the child to roll his tire to the center.
She saw the unmistakable form of Gatsby lying on the sand. And she saw her son, the serious one she loved so much, crouched over the cop, a bloody hammer in his hand.
“Donovan! No, Donovan!”
Her son looked up at her, and she saw his face as she had never seen it before.
Then the crowd closed again.
Donovan September took the tire that was offered by the solemn child, and he lifted Gatsby’s head and slung the tire around his fat neck like a necklace. Then a jerrican of fuel was passed through the crowd, and Donovan doused the fat man’s body.
Gatsby was still alive, his ribs pumping, his hands reaching up to the heavens. The mob moved back a few paces, and Donovan September lit a cloth and threw it at the fat man.
Gatsby exploded into flame.
Benny Mongrel stood at the very edge of the crowd and watched as they fell upon the fat cop. Every blow that rained down on that fat body smashed the desire for revenge out of his own.
It was right that this was happening.
It was good.
It was why he had been led here.
Benny Mongrel watched as the flames consumed the man who had killed his dog.
Rudi Barnard was in the lake of fire that his preacher had prophesied. His body was spiderwebbed with black char lines as the flames burned through the layers of his skin. He lifted his arms and welcomed the flames, even though they consumed his flesh with a most terrible agony. This was when he would be granted salvation, the gift of voices, when he would emerge from the fire cleansed of mortal sin and find his reward.
He looked around him in the lake of fire and saw the sinners, the lost souls, damned to burn in this hell for eternity. He tried to lift himself, to take a step forward, toward the light that he knew was ahead of him.
But he could not.
The burning water held him back. The limbs of the damned enfolded him and pulled him deeper and deeper into the inferno. He tried one last time, to drag himself toward the light that grew fainter and fainter as it retreated from him. Then, when the light at last was dimmed forever, Rudi Barnard finally had his answer.
His god was dead.
CHAPTER 31
Susan Burn lay in the operating theater, bisected by the sterile drapes that screened her lower body from her view.
She felt dislocated, detached, a numbness beyond that caused by the epidural anesthetic. She felt alone. Unlike when Matt was born, she had no hand to hold, no familiar presence to give her strength through the pain. No Jack to share the joy when the moment came. The drapes added to the sense of dislocation and alienation. Her doctor and his team were busy beyond the curtain, and Susan was reminded of a puppet show she had seen as a child.
She heard a whirring noise, like a food processor, and the acrid smell of her own body burning reached her nostrils. He’s cauterizing your blood vessels, she told herself, trying to pretend that she was narrating something on the Discovery Channel. After the whirring ended, she heard nothing but the muted clink of surgical equipment and the whispers of the doctor and his nurse.
“We have her head here, Susan,” she heard the doctor say. “I’m suctioning fluids out of her nose and mouth.”
Thank God, she’s breathing. That dread, that terrible superstitious premonition, had hung over her the whole day. That some price would have to be paid for the wrong that she and Jack had done. And that price would be the life of her baby.
“Okay, now I’m going in for the rest of her, Susan. I need you to help me, okay?”
She heard herself reply. “Okay. What do I do?”
“Just press your hands into the upper part of your abdomen and push down.”
She felt the nurse guide her hands to the spot, and she started pressing. It was nothing like the protracted ordeal of giving birth to Matt, when she had felt as if a part of her body was being torn from her, but at least she was a participant in this drama, no longer a member of the audience. She pushed.
“Okay, we have her,” the doctor said.
Then, exactly like in one of those puppet shows, her red and yellow baby, face squashed and furious, was held up above the curtain for her to view. Instinctively, she reached out her hands, but the nurse shook her head.
“She has to go into the warmer. We’ll give her to you in a minute.”
Susan lay staring up at the lights, listening as another suction did its work. Then the nurse returned with the infant and handed her to Susan. She lay her baby daughter, Lucy, against her breast and felt those tiny lips already sucking at her nipple.
And Susan felt herself crying, really letting go, for the first time since that day in Florida when Jack had told her what he had done to their lives.
Burn wandered, dazed, at the periphery of the mob. His head throbbed, and he could feel sticky blood behind his ear, from where the rock had struck him. The sickly sweet smell of burning human flesh came to his nostrils, and through the shifting mass he saw Barnard’s body ablaze.
The crowd, after its initial violent rage, was strangely quiet, as if now that the thing was done, it had to absorb the impact of its actions. People on the outside of the pack started to break away and drift up the street.
Burn moved through the thinning mob until he came to its center. He stood over the charred form of Barnard, the face unrecognizable, the teeth visible in a grimace, the arms stretched upward, blackened claws grasping. Whether this was Barnard’s last action or an involuntary muscle contraction caused by the heat, Burn would never know.
But what he did know, with absolute certainty, was that the only man who could take him to his son was dead.
People were dispersing with more urgency. Even those closest to Barnard, the ones who had initiated this act, freed themselves from the mob’s grasp. The young man, no more than a teenager, who had beaten Barnard and set him alight, took a last look and turned and wandered into a house nearby. A middle-aged woman stood in the front doorway watching him. They said nothing to each other as the boy went into the house.
Burn realized that he had been listening to the clamor of sirens for at least a minute, and they were getting closer.
He turned and ran back up the road toward the Ford.
He had no idea what he would do next.
Benny Mongrel walked away. It was done. There was nothing more for him here.
On the corner, near the taxi stand, he saw a man around his own age propping up the gate of a cramped yard, smoking, watching the goings-on but keeping his distance. His tattoos and his demeanor were those of a man who knew enough about trouble to give it a wide berth.
“They saying that’s Gatsby they got there,” he said to Benny Mongrel.
“Ja, it’s him.”
“He was a fucken bastard.”
“Last of his kind.” Benny Mongrel saw an opportunity and took it. “You got a smoke for me, brother?”
The man removed a crumpled pack of Luckies from his trouser pocket and held it out. Benny Mongrel took one, slipped it between his lips.
“You know, Gatsby, he shot me once,” the man said as he lit Benny Mongrel’s cigarette.
