Mutt
Page 25
***
They dug until their palms bled. When Emery finally conceded that the grave site was sufficient, the sky was dark. The body had been lain on a simple stretcher, which they carried out and set delicately beside the plot. Juliet saw only the outline of the emaciated frame beneath the sheet. It was more than she wished to see.
They all stood silently for a while, heads bowed. Oliver was more sedate than Juliet had ever seen him; nine-year-old Geneva was stricken. Miren wept quietly, the tears soaking her red cheeks. The effects of the medicine were already apparent: her open sores had scabbed over, a flush had ignited her pallid skin, and she no longer appeared quite as thin as she had the first time Juliet had seen her. Slowly, she was transforming, becoming the rightful owner of those stunning eyes.
Her guilt was unbearable.
Emery finally stepped forward, clearing his throat. “The only funerals I've ever attended have been in the Roccetti tradition,” he began. “Of course…Of course, we can't honor Timothy that way. The reason we can't is the same reason he got sick in the first place. He didn't have access to medicine because we live in a world where our worth is determined by where we're born. The medicine existed, it just wasn't for him. Because he was born outside. Because he was a mutt.” He spat the epithet. He was trembling. “It didn't matter who he was, didn't matter that he was more braver, more self-sacrificing…” Emery trailed off, cleared his throat again. “It didn't matter.” He knelt, placing a hand on the sheet. “To me, it matters. We honor his memory.”
They lowered the stretcher into the grave. Each of them scattered a handful of dirt across the body. Then, wordlessly, they began filling in the grave. In minutes, deep brown earth had concealed the sheet entirely. When they were finished, Oliver and Geneva scattered grass seed atop the plot. There would be no cremation, no headstone, no evidence.
“We should plant a tree here,” Miren said quietly. “It's something, at least.”
A few heads bobbed in somber reply. Juliet saw roots reaching downward, drawing their life from the decay—she cast the image from her mind.
“If everyone could follow me inside,” Emery said, “there's something I'd like to show you all.”
Juliet hung back, walking next to Lydia behind the others. “Do you know what this is about?” she whispered.
Lydia shook her head; she said nothing, but Juliet had the feeling that Emery hadn't been talking to Lydia much over the past few weeks. He hadn't been talking much at all. “He hasn't been well, has he?” Juliet remarked to no one in particular.
Emery led the way into his study, where he took his place behind the vast mahogany desk. The others assembled expectantly on the other side. Juliet leaned forward to examine the books and papers and stone tablets scattered across the desk: her friend had been hard at work on something. The volume of the writing suggested obsession.
Emery turned on a small electric desk lamp and held up a sheet of paper for the others to see. “I'm sure I've shown this to most of you before,” he said.
Juliet nodded: it was a plot of Rittenhouse's sewer system, the same one that had been used to map the labyrinthine course the outsiders traveled to enter the city.
“Well,” Emery continued, “I've been going through all these books and papers my cousin left behind. I found this map in them in the first place. Over the last couple of weeks, I dug up a few interesting things.” His voice grew more frantic as he spoke. “Well, a lot of things, really, but the one I want to show you all is this…”
He held up another plot of Rittenhouse, one Juliet didn't recognize. There was a single, bold path on the paper, running horizontally east-to-west and intersecting the city wall.
“What's that?” Geneva asked earnestly.
“That,” Emery said, “is a train tunnel. It was discovered while rebuilding the area. They sealed it off to prevent the tunnel dwellers from coming into the city through it, and eventually new construction covered up all the entrances. It's still down there, just a long tunnel with no way in or out. The original copy of this map was much smaller, but I've redrawn it to scale. Watch.”
He picked the map of the sewers up again and placed it over the picture of the tunnel. By the time he held it before the light, Juliet already understood.
“I don't know what kind of tools we'll need or how long it's going to take,” Emery said. “We'll have to go down and survey it. But if we dig here and here…” he motioned at two points where the images overlapped, one close to the sewer entrance outside, the other almost directly below Emery's estate.
By now, the others had caught on. “Why didn't you guys do this before I came along?” Oliver asked, eyes wide.
“The map of the train tunnel is decades old,” Emery said. “No one more practical than my cousin would even have something like this in their archives. If I hadn't been so…dedicated…these past few weeks—” his face darkened for just a moment— “I don't think I'd ever have found it. Like I said, I don't know how long it will take, and maybe once we get down there it just won't work, but we're damn well going to try.”
Juliet looked at the others; Lydia looked uncertain, but none of them seemed to think it was a bad idea. And Juliet had to admit that the tunnel itself wasn't. It was what it represented: Emery had buried with Timothy whatever sense of self-preservation he'd had before. He was determined now to feed every starving mouth in New Providence, and even if somehow he was never discovered and cast out, this crusade would devour him.
Geneva crossed her arms over her chest, indignant that the others were talking over her. “I still don't get it.”
Emery stepped out from behind the desk and approached the young girl. “Do you remember when you first came here? Coming through the sewer?”
Her nose crinkled in affirmation. “It was gross.”
“Well, after we do what we're talking about, no one will have to do that again.” Emery put his hands on Geneva's shoulders and knelt forward till their faces were level. “Geneva,” he said, “we're going to build a highway into Rittenhouse.” There was something wild in his eyes.
Acknowledgments
I always put an E after the G in “acknowledgments,” so my first one goes to the wonderful invention of spelling correction.
Feedback from a number of early readers was instrumental in turning a skeletal first draft into a finished novel. I'd specifically like to thank Justin Livi, Sondra Boyle, Malcolm Kenyatta, my uncle Dana Priest, and my parents and brothers for input that really improved the quality of the book. A score of other people contributed as well; you know who you are.
Thanks to Justin Livi again for assistance and encouragement in the process of publishing Mutt, including the awesome title typeface, and to Dan Govar for the phenomenal cover illustration.
With any luck, you'll be reading Book II about a year from now.
The truth belongs to God; the mistakes were mine.
About the author...
I really love food. That's probably not the most important thing about me, but I'm sitting here in a doctor's office and the doctor is running three hours late and there's nothing to be done for it but to pray he hurries so I can indulge my Chipotle craving in the immediate future.
I grew up in Catonsville, a suburb outside of Baltimore, Maryland. About a year and a half ago I moved to Philadelphia to attend Temple University, and I started writing Mutt shortly after I got here. These are all very general descriptors; I could tell you that I cook gluten-free food or struggle with depression or love Super Smash Brothers and bonfires with my friends back home, but that's a collection of personal and rather disjointed facts that probably wouldn't belong on this page. So if you want to know the really interesting stuff, follow me on Twitter (@KingOfAutumn), visit my website at https://www.evanfuller.net, or e-mail lordsofautumn@gmail.com.
0%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share