The grave-watch: Wayne, masked, stands watch as Gately and Hal dig up JOI's head

pivotal · late Nov YG (~1 yr after YDAU)

• When: late November YG (Year of Glad, 2010) — Hal's thought during his Arizona breakdown, ~one year after the YDAU events; the dig itself is proleptic/undated within YG
• What: The novel's last glimpse of Wayne, and the crux of his fate: strapped to a gurney in Arizona, Hal thinks of "John N. R. Wayne, who would have won this year's WhataBurger, standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my father's head." The past-conditional "would have won" implies Wayne did NOT play/win the YG WhataBurger (something befell him between YDAU and YG — meltdown fallout, injury, defection, the A.F.R.: unstated). The masked grave-watch — over the exhumation of JOI's head, presumed site of the Entertainment's Master (cf. the Joelle/Gately/Wayne material at the head-dig) — is the single strongest in-text hook for reading Wayne as party to the Québec/A.F.R. operation (event 22). RESOLVE NOTHING: the scene attests the masked watch and the missed WhataBurger; it does not narrate why, when, on whose side, or what became of him.