On the morn­ing of Decem­ber thir­ti­eth, Mani­ac Magee woke up to an unusu­al silence and cold; the space heater was off, and Grayson, who usu­al­ly pre­pared break­fast, was still under the cov­ers. Con­cerned, Mani­ac shook Grayson and dis­cov­ered his hand was cold. Real­iz­ing what had hap­pened, he did not rush for help but instead spoke to the old man about their shared jour­neys and read aloud from the books Grayson had loved, fin­ish­ing with Grayson’s favorite, *Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shov­el.* As evening fell, Mani­ac lay beside Grayson’s mat and cried.

Three days lat­er, the funer­al took place on New Year’s Day. Mani­ac had even­tu­al­ly con­fid­ed in the zookeep­er about Grayson’s death, remain­ing most­ly out of sight there­after. Grayson arrived at the ceme­tery in a sim­ple wood­en box, car­ried by pall­bear­ers from the town’s trash-col­lect­ing corps, who smelled faint­ly of pine and spoiled fruit. Mani­ac stood alone as the only mourn­er, hop­ing for others—maybe the park Super­in­ten­dent or sum­mer food stand attendant—but none came. The only com­pa­ny were funer­al home staff and pall­bear­ers, with two men off to the side casu­al­ly smok­ing.

A pallbearer’s impa­tience broke Maniac’s reflec­tive thoughts, prompt­ing ques­tions about the arrival of the min­is­ter. As time passed with no sign of this offi­cial, frus­tra­tions grew among the pall­bear­ers. Dis­cus­sion turned to lighter sub­jects like dough­nuts and hot cof­fee, con­trast­ing sharply with the solemn occa­sion. Amid the mut­ter­ings and clanks from near­by gravedig­gers, if the min­is­ter did not arrive soon, the pall­bear­ers indi­cat­ed they would leave.

Feel­ing over­whelmed and dis­con­nect­ed from the events sur­round­ing Grayson, Mani­ac decid­ed he could not bear to wait any longer. He did­n’t want to wit­ness the con­clu­sion of the sad affair, so he took off run­ning, fad­ing into the dis­tance as the calls of the pall­bear­ers echoed behind him.