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By Root 417 0

high. Looking back over the last three and a half weeks, I noticed that our typo finds had been gradually increasing. Before Benjamin had come along, the best I’d managed was three finds in a single day. He’d immediately triggered a four-typo day, and we’d had only one day under three finds since he’d been along. Together we’d redefined what a successful day looked like. During the past four days we’d found twenty-eight typos. So I could stand for a day of refocusing, and what better place than out in the text-free wilds of the Grand Canyon. Thus we decreed we’d attempt a day off. Then I’d return refreshed, and kick off the new hunt with my hundredth typo found.

TYPO TRIP TALLY

Total found: 99

Total corrected: 61

* A phenomenon that had occurred only once before, in a Subway in remote western Texas. Benjamin and I had physically pursued a fellow whose name tag proclaimed him the “Restaraunt” Manager.

10 | Over the Edge

March 28, 2008 (Grand Canyon, AZ)

Into the House of Stone & Light our undaunted Heroes tread, and in the midst of consumerist pollution at the edge of all things Grand, discover the fabled One Hundredth Typo, one with the power to determine the Leaguers’ fate forevermore.

Train horns took on an ethereal quality throughout the night, intruding into dreams as a forlorn wail of angels or oceans boiling in an apocalyptic vision. At other times the sharp call of warning jerked me from the absolute blankness—the depths of that well from which we draw the vital energies. A lady at the shops downtown had estimated that five trains pass through Flagstaff per hour, every hour, so figure on at least thirty whistles for the night entire. As a faint glimmer signaled the end of the long darkness, we both sat up. Benjamin mumbled, “The last time I had that much trouble sleeping, my parents were still burping me.” Of course, he’d had the added fun of unrolling his sleeping bag on the hardwood floor. I’d reserved a two-bed hostel room, but I had not, well, gotten one. Benjamin had shrugged it off, saying that he needed to stay tough for the Appalachian Trail. He thought that all the Econo Lodges, along with a few friends’ couches, might be making him soft.

I rubbed bleary eyes. The dawn cast its roseate light on my camera bag, hanging from a nearby chair. My Typo Correction Kit, still clipped to the camera bag, seemed luminous. One hundred typos, so near at hand. Today would—no! Benjamin had convinced me that I needed a day off, that I’d be a stronger typo hunter for it. My wave of fatigue and doubt had mostly reached its shore, but I should take this day to enjoy the glorious dimensions of the Grand Canyon, be a true tourist, committed to self-indulgence. I could be like everyone else, right? As I fumbled for a towel and my toiletries bag, I hoped Benjamin had guessed right about the Grand Canyon’s absolute lack of text. It’d be like the Carolina beaches. What text could there be when the splendor of nature spoke in a language free of prepositions and apostrophes? I looked back at the camera bag, which lay innocently where I’d placed it last night, and again felt my eyes drawn toward the Kit. I could separate them. Take the camera but leave the Typo Correction Kit upon the chair. Yet that felt so wrong, and if we stopped in a diner after working up an appetite hiking around and then spotted the One Hundredth Typo, only to be without any tools of the League’s trade …

The resolution was simple enough. I’d detach the Kit in the car, leaving it handy for any stops after the Canyon visit. I felt strangely unsettled each time I glanced at it, where it remained slung across the back of the chair, almost too still. Like the paintings in haunted mansions with eyes that tracked the cartoon hero. I scooped my accessories up quickly without even looking at them, grabbing the camera and Kit together. We climbed into Callie and, after barely maneuvering her past the overstuffed parking lot and the granola kids using it as their playground, we sailed down the highway for what would be the most consequential typo we’d