(Rise [a figureless portrait], Rana Suveti, 2008)

I'm sure half of you skipped right to this chapter, and that's more than fair—so let's briskly begin.

In early 1996, after brief stints in New York, Omaha, Denver, New Orleans, Seattle, Atlanta, Taos, rural Montana, and some time that's still unaccounted for, Harry Hardiner purchased a piece of property in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and called it The Maghreb. The property, now called Hardiner Hollow, is girdled by thick woodlands that cast dark shadows over the house and the dug pond and the long twisting drive. It was over those trees that neighbors reported lights on December 31, 1999, and which others later reported to have mistaken for fireworks. 

It was along that twisting drive that an empty noose was found hanging from a black cedar. It was in that deep dug pond that a sunken safe was dredged up. It was in that gladed house the pots were discovered boiling over and seven letters were found burned into the wall: 

M-E-S-H-A-R-E. 

No sign of the author. Absolute radio silence.

The man was little seen in public after he published Tsai, and those who had seen or otherwise interacted with him in the preceding months said he was "strange and sad, but not unordinary" (Patch). Maxence Lawrence spoke out against those who claimed the author had a breakdown, saying, "Harry was a man on a mission, but he was happy, not stressed. He loved his work more than anything—he would never leave it unfinished." He was paying his bills on time and in advance, he accepted a job with Nashville-based Basin Gazetteer that was to start in February 2000, and he had written to Hi and Hattie Kerlin of the original Pinkum Press to prepare for a very special manuscript that he would be delivering in "no less than two weeks". 

We know that Harry Hardiner told Maxence Lawrence he was writing a book on the "Music Row Mafia". We know that Harry Hardiner visted Oak Ridge earlier in the month. We know that Harry Hardiner was seen at the Granny Smith Market sometime between 5 and 8pm on the evening of December 29: he bought apricot fruit leather and some produce. We know bright lights were seen over The Maghreb very early in the morning of the last day of the millennium and that police were called before sunrise. We know the noose was in the Hanging Cedar, the safe was in Treasure Pond, food was steaming but not burning on the stove, and MESHARE was on the wall. We know that after that, there has been neither hide nor hair of Harry. He is up and gone. 

Probably.