by Alden Bell
Well, says Moses Todd, I reckon you and this are my inheritance.
He tells Maury to stand up, and the man obeys. Then he leads him out of the house to the edge of the grave in the front yard and tells him to say his goodbyes.
Maury stands before the mound of earth looking confused, and his attention is distracted by a plain, muddy-feathered bird that lands on a branch in the tree overhead.
All right, Moses Todd says finally. It’s time to light out. We’re heading north, and there ain’t any point in waitin on the dead.
16.
They drive north.
By the side of the road, just past the Mason-Dixon Line, Moses Todd sees a woman struggling with herself on the ground. He pulls the car over. It is difficult to tell whether she is sick and heading toward death or already gone and heading back from it. The directions of ends and beginnings are polar and perfect in the way they fit together.
He waits to make sure and then puts a bullet through her forehead.
In Ohio, there are wild horses galloping over the hills.
Maury holds his crystal ball in his hands, and when he falls asleep it slips to the floor of the car and Moses Todd reaches over to pick it up and puts it in the cup holder on the center console, where it fits as though it were made to go there.
Moses Todd speaks seldom except to other travelers they meet on the road.
He decides, late one night, that he will kill anyone who threatens Maury, and his sleep comes easier after that.
In a hardware store, Moses Todd gathers a water stone and high grit sandpaper and honing oil and a buffing chamois—and in the evenings when they rest from driving, he sharpens and polishes the gurkha knife until it looks for all the world like a mirror.
They drive through seven states to go from Point Comfort, Texas, to Niagara Falls, and it takes them two weeks.
They can hear the roar of the falls two miles away.
At the end of a small overgrown path, the trees clear and they find themselves at a cliffy overlook from which they can see everything. Like the earth turned inside out and feeding its own wide gullet. So much water, you have no idea how much. There is a rusty metal rail sunk into the rock, and Moses Todd grips it tight with both of his rough heavy hands, a thin layer of mist coating the skin of his face and arms.
He was here once before but that was in a different lifetime, when wonders were rare and announced—like amusement parks or school trips.
Now they are everywhere, for the delectation of those among the survivors who might be hunters of miracles.
And the beauty he looks over is fathomable only by a girl who would have felt the measure of it as deep as to her dazzled soul.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Above all I need to thank Josh Getzler for his professional savvy and his ongoing friendship, and Marjorie Braman for her sensitive and invaluable editorial wisdom. Also, my thanks to the early readers and supporters of this book: Maria Carreon, Phil and Patti Abbott, Amanda Newman, John Reed, Alanna Taylor, Anne Dowling, Annabella Johnson, and particularly Steven Milowitz, a true friend. I owe more than I can say to my mother, Delores Maloney, who has always believed in me with a ferocious loyalty, and my father, Sam Gaylord, with whom I used to read books and eat cheesecake at Art’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard. And, most of all, I am grateful to all the teachers I have had over the years, particularly Richard McCoun and Carol Mooney, without whom my life would have been unutterably sensible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alden Bell lives in New York City, where he teaches high school and is an adjunct professor at the New School. He is married to the Edgar Award–wining crime writer Megan Abbott. Please visit www.aldenbell.com.