The Dead Man: Hell in Heaven by Lee Goldberg, William Rabkin Page A

sleep, waking only when Mouse came back to take him to the Grange for the supper. When he did awake, he was pleased and only a little disturbed to discover that the damage he’d suffered when he lost his bike was almost all healed. In the months since his resurrection he’d noticed that his recuperative powers were much stronger than they had been before his death, but this was the first time he’d really put it to the test. So there were some benefits to dying, apparently.
    Matt glanced up and saw that almost everyone in the room had taken their seats, and the tables were now filled. He couldn’t be any more certain than he’d been when they’d all lined up to meet him on Main Street, but judging from the very strong gene pools that dominated here, it seemed that one side of the room was filled with Vetches and Runcibles, the other with Gilhoolies and Hogginses. They were all standing behind their chairs, like schoolchildren waiting for permission to be seated.
    As Matt reluctantly headed toward his appointed seat, a giant broke away from one of the long tables and loped over to him. He was almost seven feet tall, with arms the size of tree trunks. The only thing about him that wasn’t huge was his face, which seemed squashed and tiny on his pumpkin-sized head. Squashed and tiny and, oddly, almost identical to Orfamay’s.
    The giant Vetch—because a Vetch he must have been—reached the throne at the same time as Matt, even though he’d been coming from at least three times as far away—and drew it back from the table for him. Matt cast a questioning look at Mouse, who encouraged him with a nod, then sat down and let himself be slid up to the table.
    Only then was there a scraping of wood on wood as everybody else in the barn took their seats. And another, as they all turned their chairs to look at the short table. To look at him.
    Matt wanted to ask Mouse what they were expecting from him, but she was seated two seats away. To his immediate left was a sallow kid, maybe all of twenty, with sandy hair, a sunken chest and no chin. He looked like an Easter Peep that had been missed in the egg hunt and left out in the sun and sprinklers for days. Next to him was an empty chair, and then Mouse, who gazed up at him with worshipful eyes.
    The Peep caught Matt’s gaze and immediately misunderstood it. “Yeah, I’m Vern Gilhoolie,” he said with the kind of pride at the sound of his name that most would reserve for the birth of their first child. “You did good with that Joan bitch. Wish I’d thought of trying it your way. We would have been out of the shit faster and wouldn’t have needed to bother you.”
    “Nice to meet you,” Matt lied, wondering how it was possible the same womb produced these two siblings.
    “You want anything, you just come to me,” Vern said. “If you can’t find me, you can ask any Gilhoolie. Any Hoggins, too. They all do what I tell ‘em, and I’ll tell ‘em to treat you right.”
    “That’s good to know,” Matt said. “What I really want is a ride back to the highway as soon as possible. Can one of your people help me with that?”
    “The highway?” Vern said.
    Before Matt could press him further, there was a hacking sound on his right that sounded like another one of Ezekiel Vetch’s pigs being slaughtered. He turned to see that Orfamay had stood up and was clearing her throat for attention. The giant was sitting next to her, and even with her standing and him sitting she barely came up to his earlobe. There might have been someone sitting on the other side of the giant, but Matt was as likely to see him or her as he was to see a satellite orbiting the dark side of the moon.
    Orfamay cleared her throat again, and the room settled into silence. Matt took a moment to look around and confirmed what he had thought—the two tables were divided by clan.
    “You all know why we’re here tonight,” Orfamay started. “So I’m not going to try to make any fancy speeches about