There was more mud here, and the smell was stronger, mixed with basement smell. He breathed through his mouth, but then he thought he could taste the smell. It was metallic and moldy and seemed to coat his tongue. He swallowed, trying not to gag, and pulled his flashlight out of his pocket. The rotating light from the car came through the window, but all it did was throw shadows, and he thought he saw a pile of pipes and conduits or broken furniture. Then his foot hit something soft, and he shone his light down. His shoe rested against a denim covered leg. He moved the light up. There was nothing where the leg should have joined the torso. His gorge rose but he made himself look. Femoral blood leaked slowly through the torn flesh, marrow oozed out of smashed bone on the muddy cement floor. He retched and dropped the light. It rolled, and shadows jumped all around him; then it stopped. He saw bodies in the light, tangled together, thrown against the wall and covered with gray mud.

Hawkins stood under the shower until his fingers puckered and the hot water faltered and ran out. He tied a towel around his waist, came out into the kitchen, and shoved all his clothes, even his shoes and his good raincoat, into a big plastic trash bag and carried the bag out back with the rest of the garbage. It was warm again, people’s windows were open, and he heard talking and laughing. He went back and sat at the table his father had made, surrounded by cabinets his father put in thirty years ago.

His mother put on the TV in the den. Out on the street something fell with a crash and his head started aching. He tried to think about Levy, the circle of men, and the dead boys in the clubhouse, but the headache intruded and he gave up and just sat at the bare table, suspended, while background music to some TV show came out through the den door. The kitchen window was open, and the noise of his neighbors’ TVs and radios echoed in the courts and bounced off the walls of the houses until the whole back of the block echoed. It was a trick of sound that reminded Hawkins of the courtyard in A Tale of Two Cities where Sydney Carton waited on a Sunday afternoon for Lucie Manette. It was summer, London was quiet, and Carton could hear footsteps on the street he couldn’t see. As they got closer, they were magnified and multiplied by the courtyard walls until two people walking sounded like hundreds rushing. The echoes had foreshadowed the future.