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he had mentioned coming over here to examine them. She wanted to know what he had found; she could locate no record in his files of what he might have concluded.”
    â€œWhat did you tell her?” R was barely breathing.
    â€œI told her he had found nothing of significance.”
    â€œDid you tell her I was coming to look at them?”
    â€œOh, no. It was a very short conversation.”
    Relieved, R let it drop.
    â€œMy condolences to you about Dr. Rush,” said Braxton. “I know the two of you were very close. The funeral is Monday?”
    â€œIt’s not really a funeral. A public commemoration would be the best way to describe it. He’s already been cremated—I witnessed that this morning before driving out here, as a matter of fact.”
    â€¢ • •
    Bill Paine had insisted that R be present for the reduction to ashes of Wally’s body at a South Philadelphia funeral home. State law now required that there be a “valid witness” in attendance to represent the deceased’s family or estate for all cremations. That followed a scandal just across the Delaware River in a Camden, New Jersey, suburb where a near-bankrupt mortician had hidden bodies in freezers and various other spots around his place while providing ashes to his customers that were actually a combination of burned leaves and dirt.
    â€œDo you want him dressed or undressed?” asked one of the morticians; it happened to be the same young man who had been on coffin-watch duty at the viewing.
    Wally was laid out on a table that had wheels like a hospital gurney. His face was grayer—clearly the makeup had begun to wear off—but he was still in his full Ben outfit, tacky tie and all.
    â€œDressed,” said R.
    The young man frowned. “Quite some time and expense was expended in securing those clothes, sir. We most often have requests that the clothing be saved as part of the remembrance mementos of the deceased—”
    â€œDressed,” R repeated.
    The young man was silent.
    â€œFarewell again, my friend, hero, and saint,” R had said to Wally.
    Then he watched, his revulsion turning to fascination, as the young mortician and three colleagues lifted the Ben-dressed body of Wallace Stephen Rush up off the table and stuck it head first into the flames of a small red-hot oven.
    R had expected there to be a terrible odor of burning flesh and bones. But the only smell resembled that of charcoal in an outdoor grill.
    â€¢ • •
    Whatever the awfulness of the details, thank God for that cremation, R thought now. He might have had difficulty facing even Wally’s grotesquely costumed corpse after what he had just seen in this first cursory examination of the twelve pieces of paper from the cloak.
    As he pulled out of the small parking lot behind the Eastville museum building and headed for the Philadelphia highway, he said, several times out loud, “Remember the Prophecy. Remember the Prophecy.”
    That helped only a little bit.

SIX

    R watched from a window in the administration building as the mourners gathered on the campus green for the beginning of Wally Day, so proclaimed by Benjamin Franklin University and the City of Philadelphia. The weather was perfect, sunny with temperatures in the mid 60s, but with less than a hour left before the ten o’clock start time, there didn’t seem to be more than a few hundred people outside. And most of them, it appeared to R, were BFU students, presumably enticed or coerced into showing up.
    â€œI’d say you have roughly nineteen thousand four hundred and thirty more to go, Elbow,” R said quietly to Clymer, when he joined R at the window.
    â€œFret not, sir,” said Clymer, with an air of good humor and confidence that so far did not seem justified. “I understand they’re already assembling at the burial ground at Fifth and Arch, and along Third and Fourth, and on Market to see our