I went into my room and took the old iPhone off the closet shelf. It was holding its charge admirably. Why, exactly, did I do that? Did I mean to call him in his grave to say thank you? To ask him if he was really there? I can’t remember, and I guess it doesn’t matter, because I didn’t call. When I powered up the phone, I saw I had a text message from pirateking1. I tapped with a trembling finger to open it and read this: C C C sT

As I looked at it, a possibility that had never so much as touched my mind before that late summer day dawned on me. What if I were somehow holding Mr. Harrigan hostage? Tying him to my earthly concerns by way of the phone I had tucked into his coat pocket before the lid of his coffin went down? What if the things I had asked him to do were hurting him? Maybe even torturing him?

Not likely, I thought. Remember what Mrs. Grogan told you about Dusty Bilodeau. She said he couldn’t have gotten a job shoveling henshit out of old Dorrance Marstellar’s barn after stealing from Mr. Harrigan. He saw to it.

Yes, and something else. She said he was a square-dealing man, but if you weren’t the same, God help you. And had Dean Whitmore been square-dealing? No. Had Kenny Yanko been square-dealing? The same. So maybe Mr. Harrigan had been glad to pitch in. Maybe he even enjoyed it.

“If he was ever there at all,” I whispered.

He had been. In my deepest heart I knew that, too. And I knew something else. I knew what that message meant: Craig stop.

Because I was hurting him, or because I was hurting myself?

I decided that in the end it didn’t matter.

* * *

It rained hard the next day, the kind of chilly no-thunder downpour that means the first autumn color will begin to show in a week or two. The rain was good, because it meant that the summer people—those who remained—were all tucked up inside their seasonal hideaways and Castle Lake was deserted. I parked in the picnic area at the lake’s north end and walked to what we kids had called the Ledges, standing there in our bathing suits and daring each other to jump off. Some of us even did.

I went to the lip of the drop, where the pine needles gave out and the bare rock, which is New England’s ultimate truth, began. I reached into the right pocket of my khakis and brought out my iPhone 1. I held it in my hand for a moment, feeling its weight and remembering how delighted I’d been on that Christmas morning when I unwrapped the box and saw the Apple logo. Had I screamed for joy? I couldn’t remember, but almost certainly.

It was still holding its charge, although it was down to fifty per cent. I called Mr. Harrigan, and in the dark earth of Elm Cemetery, in the pocket of an expensive suit coat now speckled with mold, I know Tammy Wynette was singing. I listened to his scratchy old man’s voice one more time, telling me he would call back if it seemed appropriate.

I waited for the beep. I said, “Thank you for everything, Mr. Harrigan. Goodbye.”

I ended the call, cocked my arm back, and threw the phone as hard as I could. I watched it arc through the gray sky. I watched the small splash as it hit the water.

I reached into my lefthand pocket and brought out my current iPhone, the 5C with its colorful case. I meant to throw it into the lake as well. Surely I could make do with a landline, and surely it would make my life easier. So much less chitter-chatter, no more texts reading What are you doing, no more dumb emojis. If I got a job on a newspaper after I graduated and needed to keep in touch, I could use a loaner, then give it back when whatever assignment had necessitated it was finished.

I cocked my arm back, held it that way for what felt like a long time—maybe a minute, maybe two. In the end I put the phone back in my pocket. I don’t know for sure if everyone is addicted to those high-tech Del Monte cans, but I know that I am, and I know Mr. Harrigan was. It’s why I slipped it into his pocket that day. In the twenty-first century, I think our phones are how we are wedded to the world. If so, it’s probably a bad marriage.

Or maybe not. After what happened to Yanko and Whitmore, and after that last text message from pirateking1, there are a great many things I’m not sure of. Reality itself, for a start. I do know two things, however, and they are as solid as New England rock. I don’t want to be cremated when I go, and I want to be buried with empty pockets.

THE LIFE OF CHUCK

ACT III: THANKS, CHUCK!

1

The day Marty Anderson saw the billboard was just before the Internet finally went down for good. It had been wobbling for eight months since the first short interruptions. Everyone agreed it was only a matter of time, and everyone agreed they would muddle through somehow once the wired-in world finally went dark—after all, they had managed without it, hadn’t they? Besides, there were other problems, like whole species of birds and fish dying off, and now there was California to think about: going, going, possibly soon to be gone.

Marty was late leaving school, because it was that least favorite day for high school educators, the one set aside for parent-teacher conferences. As this one had played out, Marty had found few parents interested in discussing little Johnny and little Janey’s progress (or lack of it). Mostly they wanted to discuss the probable final failure of the Internet, which would sink their Facebook and Instagram accounts for good. None of them mentioned Pornhub, but Marty suspected many of the parents who showed up—female as well as male—were mourning that site’s impending extinction as well.

Ordinarily, Marty would have driven home by way of the turnpike bypass, zippity-zip, home in a jiff, but that wasn’t possible due to the collapse of the bridge over Otter Creek. That had happened four months ago, and there was no sign of repairs; just orange-striped wooden barriers that already looked dingy and were covered with taggers’ logos.

With the bypass closed, Marty was forced to drive directly through downtown to reach his house on Cedar Court along with everybody else who lived on the east side. Thanks to the conferences, he’d left at five instead of three, at the height of rush hour, and a drive that would have taken twenty minutes in the old days would take at least an hour, probably longer because some of the traffic lights were out, as well. It was stop-and-go all the way, with plenty of horns, screeching brakes, bumper-kisses, and waved middle fingers. He was stopped for ten minutes at the intersection of Main and Market, so had plenty of time to notice the billboard on top of the Midwest Trust building.

Until today, it had advertised one of the airlines, Delta or Southwest, Marty couldn’t remember which. This afternoon the happy crew of arm-in-arm flight attendants had been replaced by a photograph of a moon-faced man with black-framed glasses that matched his black, neatly combed hair. He was sitting at a desk with a pen in his hand, jacketless but with his tie carefully knotted at the collar of his white shirt. On the hand holding the pen there was a crescent-shaped scar that had for some reason not been airbrushed out. To Marty he looked like an accountant. He was smiling cheerfully down at the snarled twilight traffic from his perch high atop the bank building. Above his head, in blue, was CHARLES KRANTZ. Below his desk, in red, was 39 GREAT YEARS! THANKS, CHUCK!

Marty had never heard of Charles “Chuck” Krantz, but supposed he must have been a pretty big bug at Midwest Trust to rate a retirement photo on a spotlit billboard that had to be at least fifteen feet high and fifty feet across. And the photo must be an old one, if he’d put in almost forty years, or his hair would have been white.