Cell

some poetry. Would that be okay?'

'Do you really know some?'

'I really do,' Tom said.

'You're so smart, Tom. Thank you.' And Jordan smiled at him with weary, horrible gratitude.

Filling in the grave was quick, although in the end they had to borrow some earth from the garden's nether parts to bring it up to dead level. By the time they were finished, Clay was sweating again and he could smell himself. It had been a long time between showers.

Alice had tried to keep Jordan from helping, but he broke free of her and pitched in, using his bare hands to toss earth into the hole. By the time Clay finished tamping the ground with the flat of his spade, the boy was glassy-eyed with exhaustion, all but reeling on his feet like a drunk.

Nevertheless, he looked at Tom. 'Go ahead. You promised.' Clay almost expected him to add, And make it good, seсor, or I weel put a boolet inyou, like a homicidal bandido in a Sam Peckinpah western.

Tom stepped to one end of the grave—Clay thought it was the top, but in his weariness could no longer remember. He could not even remember for sure if the Head's first name had been Charles or Robert. Runners of mist curled around Tom's feet and ankles, twined among the dead beanstalks. He removed his baseball cap, and Alice took off hers. Clay reached for his own and remembered he wasn't wearing one.

'That's right!' Jordan cried. He was smiling, frantic with understanding. 'Hats off! Hats off to the Head!' He was bareheaded himself, but mimed taking a hat off just the same—taking it off and flinging it into the air—and Clay once more found himself fearing for the boy's sanity. 'Now the poem! Come on, Tom!'

'All right,' Tom said, 'but you have to be quiet. Show respect.'

Jordan laid a finger across his lips to show he understood, and Clay saw by the brokenhearted eyes above that upraised finger that the boy had not lost his mind yet. His friend, but not his mind.

Clay waited, curious to see how Tom would go on. He expected some Frost, maybe a fragment of Shakespeare (surely the Head would have approved of Shakespeare, even if it had only been When shall we three meet again), perhaps even a little extemporaneous Tom McCourt. What he did not expect was what came from Tom's mouth in low, precisely measured lines.

'Do not withhold Your mercy from us, O Lord; may Your love and Your truth always protect us. For troubles without numbers surround us; our sins have overtaken us and we cannot see. Our sins are more than the hairs of our heads, and our hearts fail within us. Be pleased, O Lord, to save us; O Lord, come quickly to help us.'

Alice was holding her sneaker and weeping at the foot of the grave. Her head was bowed. Her sobs were quick and low.

Tom pressed on, holding one hand out over the new grave, palm extended, fingers curled in. 'May all who seek to take our lives as this life was taken be put to shame and confusion; may all who desire our ruin be turned back in disgrace. May those who say to us, 'Aha, aha!' be appalled at their own shame. Here lies the dead, dust of the earth—'

'I'm so sorry, Head!' Jordan cried in a breaking treble voice. 'I'm so sorry, it's not right, sir, I'm so sorry you're dead—' His eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the new grave. The mist stole its greedy white fingers over him.

Clay picked him up and felt the pulse in Jordan's neck, strong and regular. 'Just fainted. What is it you're saying, Tom?'

Tom look flustered, embarrassed. 'A rather free adaptation of Psalm Forty. Let's take him inside—'

'No,' Clay said. 'If it's not too long, finish.'

'Yes, please,' Alice said. 'Finish. It's lovely. Like salve on a cut.'

Tom turned and faced the grave again. He seemed to gather himself, or perhaps he was only finding his place. 'Here lies the dead, dust of the earth, and here are we the living, poor and needy; Lord, think of us. You are our help and our deliverer; O my God, do not delay. Amen.'

'Amen,' Clay and Alice said together.

'Let's get the kid inside,' Tom said. 'It's fucking freezing out here.'

'Did you learn that from the holy Hannahs at the First N.E. Church of Christ the Redeemer?' Clay asked.

'Oh, yes,' Tom said. 'Many psalms by heart, good for extra desserts. I also learned how to beg on street corners and leaflet a whole Sears parking lot in just twenty minutes with A Million Years in Hell and Not One Drink of Water. Let's put this kid to bed. I'm betting he'll sleep through until at least four tomorrow afternoon and wake up feeling a hell of a lot better.'

'What if that man with the torn cheek comes and finds we're still here after he told us to go?' Alice asked.

Clay thought that was a good question, but not one he needed to spend a lot of time mulling over. Either the Raggedy Man would give them another day's grace or he wouldn't. As he took Jordan upstairs to his bed, Clay found he was too tired to care one way or the other.

2

At around four in the morning, alice bid clay and tom a foggy goodnight and stumbled off to bed. The two men sat in the kitchen, drinking iced tea, not talking much. There seemed nothing to say. Then, just before dawn, another of those great groans, made ghostly by distance, rode in on the foggy air from the northeast. It wavered like the cry of a theremin in an old horror movie, and just as it began to fade, a much louder answering cry came from Gaiten, where the Raggedy Man had taken his new, larger flock.

Clay and Tom went out front, pushing aside the barrier of melted boom-boxes to get down the porch steps. They could see nothing; the whole world was white. They stood there awhile and went back in.

Neither the death-cry nor the answer from Gaiten woke Alice and Jordan; they had that much to be grateful for. Their road atlas, now bent and crumpled at the corners, was on the kitchen counter. Tom thumbed through it and said, 'That might have come from Hooksett or Suncook. They're both good-sized towns northeast of here— good-sized for New Hampshire, I mean. I wonder how many they got? And how they did it.'

Clay shook his head.

'I hope it was a lot,' Tom said with a thin and charmless smile. 'I hope it was at least a thousand, and that they slow-cooked them. I find myself thinking of some restaurant chain or other that used to advertise 'broasted chicken.' Are we going tomorrow night?'

'If the Raggedy Man lets us live through today, I guess we ought to. Don't you think?'

'I don't see any choice,' Tom said, 'but I'll tell you something, Clay– I feel like a cow being driven down a tin chute into the slaughterhouse. I can almost smell the blood of my little moo-brothers.'

Clay had the same feeling, but the same question recurred: If slaughtering was what they had on their group mind, why not do it here? They could have done it yesterday afternoon, instead of leaving melted boom-boxes and Alice's pet sneaker on the porch.

Tom yawned. 'Turning in. Are you good for another couple of hours?'

'I could be,' Clay said. In fact, he had never felt less like sleeping. His body was exhausted but his mind kept turning and turning. It would begin to settle a bit, and then he'd recall the sound the pen had made coming out of the Head's eyesocket: the low squall of metal against bone. 'Why?'

'Because if they decide to kill us today, I'd rather go my way than theirs,' Tom said. 'I've seen theirs. You agree?'

Clay thought that if the collective mind which the Raggedy Man represented had really made the Head stick a fountain pen in his eye, the four remaining residents of Cheatham Lodge might find that suicide was no longer among their options. That was no thought to send Tom to bed on, however. So he nodded.

'I'll take all the guns upstairs. You've got that big old .45, right?'

'The Beth Nickerson special. Right.'

'Good night, then. And if you see them coming—or feel them coming—give a yell.' Tom paused. 'If you have time, that is. And if they let you.'

Clay watched Tom leave the kitchen, thinking Tom had been ahead of him all the time. Thinking how much he liked Tom. Thinking he'd like to get to know him better. Thinking the chances of that weren't good. And Johnny and Sharon? They had never seemed so far away.