“An apple.” Jared held it up for him to see.
“That all?”
Jared nodded.
“I don’t want to catch you drinking any beer around here, kid. You want to do that with your friends, away from home, fine. But not here. You got that?”
Jared felt a flush creep into his cheeks. “I don’t drink beer.”
George Paulsen’s chin jerked up. “Don’t get smart with me!”
“George, he can’t!” His mother glanced hurriedly at Jared. “He can’t drink alcohol of any kind. You know that. His medication doesn’t mix with alcohol.”
“Hell, you think for one minute that would stop him, Enid? You think it would stop any kid?” George drank from his own can, draining the last of its contents. “Medication, hell! Just another word for drugs. Kids do drugs and drink beer everywhere. Always have, always will. And you think your kid won’t? Where’d you check your brain at, anyway? Christ almighty! You better let me do the thinking around here, okay? You just stick to cooking the meals and doing the laundry.” He gave her a long look and shook his head. “Change the channel; I want to watch Leno. You can do that, can’t you?”
Enid Scott looked down at her hands and didn’t say anything. After a moment she picked up the remote and began to flick through the channels. Jared stared at her, stone-faced. He wanted her to tell George to get out of their house and stay out, but he knew she would never do that, that she couldn’t make herself. He stood there feeling foolish, watching his mother be humiliated.
“Get on upstairs and stay there,” George told him finally, waving him off with one hand. “Take your goddamn apple and get out of here. And don’t be coming down here and bothering us again!”
Jared turned away, biting at his lip. Why did his mother stay with him? Sure, he gave her money and bought her stuff, and sometimes he was even halfway nice. But mostly he was bad-tempered and mean-spirited. Mostly he just hung out and mooched off them and found ways to make their lives miserable.
“You remember one thing, buster!” George called after him. “You don’t ever get smart with me. You hear? Not ever!”
He kept going, not looking back, until he reached the top of the stairs, then stood breathing heavily in the hallway outside his room, rage and frustration boiling through him. He listened to the guttural sound of George Paulsen’s voice, then to the silence that followed. His fists clenched. After a moment, tears flooded his eyes, and he stood crying silently in the dark.
Saturday night at Scrubby’s was wild and raucous, the crowd standing three-deep at the bar, all the booths and tables filled, the dance floor packed, and the jukebox blaring. Boots were stomping, hands clapping, and voices lifting in song with Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Travis Tritt, Wynonna Judd, and several dozen more of country-and-western’s favorite sons and daughters. The mingled smells of sweat and cologne and beer permeated the air and smoke hung over everything in a hazy shroud, but at least the air-conditioning was keeping the heat at bay and no one seemed to mind. The workweek was done, the long awaited Fourth of July weekend was under way, and all was right with the world.
Seated in the small, two-person booth crammed into a niche between the storeroom door and the back wall, Derry Howe sat talking to Junior Elway, oblivious of all of it. He was telling Junior what he was going to do, how he had worked it all out the night before. He was explaining to Junior why it would take two of them, that Junior had to be a part of it. He was burning with the heat of his conviction; he was on fire with the certainty that when it was all said and done, the union could dictate its own terms to high-and-mighty MidCon. But his patience with Junior, who had the attention span of a gnat, was wearing thin. He hunched forward over the narrow table, trying to keep his voice down in case anyone should think to listen in, trying as well to keep Junior’s mind on the business at hand instead of on Wanda Applegate, seated up at the bar, whom he’d been looking to hit on for the past two hours. Over and over he kept drawing Junior’s eyes away from Wanda and back to him. Each time the eyes stayed focused for, oh, maybe thirty seconds before they wandered off again like cats in heat.
Finally he seized the front of Junior’s shirt and dragged him halfway across the table, spilling beer and sending ashtrays and napkins flying. “You listen to me, goddamn it!” he screamed. “You listen to me when I talk to you!”
A few people turned to see what was happening, but when they saw the look on Derry Howe’s face, they quickly went back to their own conversations. The music boomed out, the dancers yelled and clapped, and the confrontation in the tiny corner booth went mostly unnoticed.
“Okay, okay, I’m listening!” Junior snapped, jerking free. He was twenty pounds heavier and two inches taller, but there was fear in his eyes as he spoke the words. Damn well ought to be, Derry Howe thought with satisfaction.
“You heard anything I said so far, porkypine?” he sneered. “Anything at all?”
Junior ran his hand over his head, feeling the soft bristles of hair that were the product of this afternoon’s visit to the Clip Joint, where he’d impulsively decided on a brush cut. He’d thought it would make him look tougher, he’d told Derry afterward. He’d thought it would make him look like a lean, mean cat. What it did was make him look like a jerk. Derry had begun ragging on him right away, calling him names. Porkypine. Cactus head. Nazi brain. Like that.
“I heard every damn thing you said!” Junior snapped furiously, sick and tired of Derry’s attitude. “You want me to repeat it, smartass? Want to hear me stand up and shout it out loud maybe?”
If Derry Howe had been angry before, he was positively livid now. His expression changed, his eyes went flat and cold, and all the color drained out of his face. He looked at Junior as if a line had been crossed and Junior were no longer among the living.
Junior’s mouth worked against the sudden dryness in his throat. “Look, I just meant …”
“Shut up,” Derry Howe said softly. Even in the din, Junior heard the words plainly. “You just shut your mouth and listen. I ever hear you say something like that again, and you’re history, bub. You believe me? Do you?”
Junior nodded, sitting there as still as stone, staring into the eyes of the man across from him, the man who had been his best friend until just a moment ago and who now was someone else entirely.
“This is too important for me to let you screw it up, you understand?” Derry Howe’s voice was a soft hiss. “There’s too much at stake for you to be making stupid statements or wiseass remarks. You with me on this or not? Answer me, damn it!”
Junior nodded. He’d never seen Derry like this. “Yeah, sure, course I am.”
Derry Howe gave him a long, hard look. “All right, then. Here’s the rest of it. Don’t say nothing till I’m finished. Just listen. This is for keeps, Junior. We can’t go pussyfooting about and hope the company will just come to their senses all on their own. My uncle and those other old farts might think that’ll work, but they’re whistling down a rat hole. They’re old and they’re worn-out and the company knows it. The company ain’t about to negotiate. Never was. There’s just you and me, bub. It’s up to us. We have to bring them to the table, kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes, but with them understanding they got to reopen the mill. Right? Okay. So we’ve got to have some leverage.”
He leaned so close to Junior that his friend could smell the beer on his breath. “When this thing happens, it’s got to be big enough that it will bring the national in. It ain’t enough if it looks like an accident. It ain’t enough, even if it looks like it’s the company’s fault. That won’t do it. There’s got to be casualties. Someone’s got to be hurt, maybe even killed.”
Junior stared openmouthed, then quickly shook his head. “Man, this is crazy …”
“Crazy because it gets the job done?” Derry snapped. “Crazy because it just might work? Hell, because it will work? Every war has its sacrifices, Junior. And this is a war, don’t kid yourself. It’s a war we’re going to win. B
ut that won’t happen if the company isn’t held accountable for something they can’t talk their way out of. It won’t happen if it don’t draw the national’s attention.”
“But you can’t just … You can’t …”
“Go on, say it, Junior,” Derry hissed derisively.
“Kill someone, damn it!”
“No? Why not? Why the hell not?”
He could, of course. He’d already decided it, in fact. He would do it because it was necessary. He would do it because it was a war, just like he’d said, and in a war, people got killed. He’d talked it over with himself the day before, after he’d come up with the accident idea. It was almost like having someone sitting there with him, having a conversation with a trusted friend, talking it through, reasoning it out. It all made perfect sense. He was certain of it. He was positive.
Junior kept shaking his head. “Damn it, Derry, you’re talking about murder!”
“No, I ain’t. Don’t use that word. It ain’t murder if it’s a war. This is just—what do you call it?—a sacrifice for the greater good. For the community, for you and me and all the rest. You can see that, can’t you?”
Junior nodded doubtfully, still trying to come to terms with the idea. “All right, okay, it’s a war. So that’s different. And it’s gonna be an accident, right? Just part of something else that happens?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked carefully at Derry once more. “But it’s not gonna be deliberate, is it?”
Derry Howe’s expression did not change. Junior was such a dork. He forced himself to smile. “Course not. It’s gonna be an accident. When there’s an accident, people get hurt. It will be a real tragedy when it happens. It will make everyone feel bad, but particularly the company, because it will be the company’s fault.”
He reached out, fastened his hand around the back of Junior’s neck, and pulled his friend’s tensed face right up against his own. “Just you remember that, Junior,” he whispered. “It won’t be our fault. It will be the company’s fault. High-and-mighty MidCon’s fault.” He squeezed Junior’s neck roughly. “They’ll crawl over broken glass to get back to the bargaining table then. They’ll beg to get back. Hide and watch, Junior. Hide and watch.”
Junior Elway reached for what was left of his beer.
Nest stayed in the swing another few minutes, lost in her thoughts of John Ross, then climbed out and stood looking off into the blackness of the park. She wondered if the demon he hunted was hiding there. She wondered if it preferred the dark, twisting caves where the feeders concealed themselves to the lighted houses of the humans it preyed upon. Miss Minx crept by, stalking something Nest could not see. She watched the cat move soundlessly through the dark, silken and deadly in its pursuit, and she had a sudden sense of what it would be like to be hunted like that.
She moved toward the house, thinking to go in, knowing she would have only an hour or two of sleep before it was time to meet Two Bears at the Sinnissippi burial mounds. She wondered what Two Bears knew about all this. Did he know of the demon and John Ross and of the war they fought? Did he know of the Word and the Void? Was he aware of the existence of this other world, of its proximity to the human world, and of the ties that bound the two? She felt certain he knew a great deal he wasn’t telling her, much like John Ross. She wondered if they shared a common purpose in coming to Hopewell, perhaps a purpose no one else recognized, one tied to both the spirits of the Sinnissippi and the coming of the demon. She sighed and shook her head. It was all speculation, but speculation was all she had.
She moved up to the screen door, then slowed when she heard voices coming from the kitchen. Her grandparents were arguing. She hesitated, then moved down the side of the house to the window that opened above the sink to eavesdrop. It wasn’t something she normally did, but she’d heard John Ross’s name, and she was curious to know if he was the cause of the argument. She stood silent and unmoving in the shadows, listening.
“He seems like a fine young man to me,” her grandfather was saying. He was leaning against the counter at the sink, his back to the window. Nest could see his shadow in a pool of light thrown on the ground. “He was pleasant and straightforward when he came up to speak to me at Josie’s. He didn’t ask for a thing. It was my idea to invite him to dinner.”
“You’re too trusting, Robert,” her grandmother replied. “You always have been.”
“He’s given us no reason to be anything else.”
“Don’t you think it’s a bit odd, him showing up like this, unannounced, uninvited, just to see us, to talk about a girl he hasn’t seen in over fifteen, sixteen years? A girl who’s been dead all that time and never a word from him? Do you remember Caitlin ever saying anything about him, ever even mentioning his name?”
Old Bob sipped from his coffee cup, thinking. “No, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t know him.”
“It doesn’t mean he was a friend, either.” Nest could picture Gran sitting at the kitchen table, bourbon and water in hand, smoking her cigarette. “I didn’t like the way he took to Nest.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Evelyn.”
“Don’t invoke God for my sake, Robert!” Gran shot back. “Use the brain he gave you instead! Suppose, for a minute, John Ross is not who he claims. Suppose he’s someone else altogether.”
“Someone else? Who?”
“Him, that’s who.”
There was the sound of ice cubes tinkling in an empty glass and of a fresh cigarette being lit, then silence. Nest watched her grandfather place his coffee cup on the counter, saw his leonine head lower, heard him sigh.
“He’s gone, Evelyn. He’s not coming back. Ever.”
Her grandmother pushed back her chair and rose. Nest could hear her move to the counter and pour herself a drink. “Oh, he’s coming, all right, Robert. He’s coming. I’ve known it from the first, from the moment Caitlin died and he disappeared. I’ve always known it.”
“Why would he do that?” Old Bob’s voice sounded uneasy. “Evelyn, you can’t be serious.”
Nest stood transfixed in the heat and the dark, unable to turn away. They were talking about her father.
“He wants Nest,” Gran said quietly. She drew on the cigarette and took a long swallow of the drink. Nest heard each sound clearly in the pause between her grandmother’s words. “He’s always wanted her.”
“Nest? Why would he want Nest? Especially after all this time?”
“Because she’s his, Robert. Because she belongs to him, and he doesn’t give anything up this side of the grave. Don’t you know that by now? After Caitlin, don’t you know that?”
There was another pause, and then some sounds that Nest could not identify, muttered words perhaps, grumbling. Her grandfather straightened at the window.
“It’s been fifteen years, but I remember him well enough.” Old Bob spoke softly, but distinctly. “John Ross doesn’t look anything like him, Evelyn. They’re not the same man.”
Gran gave a quick, harsh laugh. “Really, Robert. Sometimes you appall me. Doesn’t look like him? You think for a minute that man couldn’t change his looks if there was reason enough to do so? You think he couldn’t look like anyone he wanted to? Don’t you realize what he is?”
“Evelyn, don’t start.”
“Sometimes you’re a fool, Robert,” Gran declared sharply. “If you want to go on pretending that I’m a crazy old woman who imagines things that aren’t there, that’s fine. If you want to pretend there’s no feeders in the park, that’s fine, too. But there’s some things you can’t wish away, and he’s one of them. You saw what he was. You saw what he did to Caitlin. I wouldn’t put anything past him. He’s coming here, coming for Nest, and when he does he won’t be stupid enough to look the same as he did when he left. You do what you want, Robert, but I plan to be ready for him.”
The kitchen was silent again. Nest waited, straining to hear.
“I notice you didn’t worry about letting him take her into the park,” Old Bob said
finally.
Gran didn’t say anything. Nest could hear the sound of her glass being raised and lowered.
“So maybe there’s not as much to be afraid of as you’d like me to believe. Maybe you’re not sure who John Ross is either.”
“Maybe,” Gran said softly.
“I invited him to come to church tomorrow morning,” Old Bob went on deliberately. “I asked him to sit with us. Will you be coming?”
There was a pause. “I don’t expect so,” Gran replied.
Nest took a long, slow breath. Her grandfather moved away from the window. “I invited him to picnic with us in the park afterward, too. So we could talk some more.” Her grandfather cleared his throat. “I like him, Evelyn. I think Nest likes him. I don’t think there’s any reason to be scared of him.”
“You will pardon me if I reserve my opinion on that?” Gran replied after a moment. “That way, we won’t all be caught by surprise.” She laughed softly. “Spare me that look. And don’t ask me if I plan to have another drink either, because I do. You go on to bed, Robert. I’ll be just fine by myself. Have been for a long time. Go on.”
Nest heard her grandfather move away wordlessly. She stayed where she was for a moment longer, staring up at the empty, lighted kitchen window, listening to the silence. Then she slipped back through the shadows like the ghost of the child she had grown out of being.
CHAPTER 16
Nest did not sleep when she finally reached her bedroom, but lay awake in the dark staring up at the ceiling and listening to the raucous hum of the locusts through the screen window. The air felt thick and damp with the July heat, and even the whirling blades of the big floor fan did little to give relief. She lay atop her covers in her running shorts and T-shirt, waiting for midnight and her rendezvous with Two Bears. The bedroom door stood open; the hallway beyond was silent and dark. Gran might have gone to bed, but Nest could not be certain. She imagined her grandmother sitting alone at the kitchen table in the soft, tree-filtered light of moon and stars, smoking her cigarettes, drinking her bourbon, and reflecting on the secrets she hid.