since death is indeed a good listenerwith his ear to the ground of every end of every road , and since he will grant nearly any wishif coveted deeply and addressed to him specifically , and since his father on this rainy day had found deaths ear square on and had loudly meant his wish , gerald soon found himself no longer in a car parked at the rain-glistered edge of a mcdonalds parking lot ( its windshield wipers still to and froing with their soft click ) , but in a different place altogether : in the front of a long line of children mostly his age , but immediately following a long line of cowled and weeping women , he was walking slowly , ceremonially , towards a first distant , then graduallystep by ceremonial stepless distant , hole in the soaring mountain face ahead .