Old Bob backed his weathered Ford pickup out of the garage, drove up the lane through the wide-boughed hardwoods, and turned onto Sinnissippi Road. In spite of the heat he had the windows rolled down and the air conditioner turned off because he liked to smell the woods. In his opinion, Sinnissippi Park was the most beautiful woods for miles- always had been, always would be. It was green and rolling where the cliffs rose above the Rock River, and the thick stands of shagbark hickory, white oak, red elm, and maple predated the coming of the white man into Indian territory. Nestled down within the spaces permitted by a thinning of the larger trees were walnut, cherry, birch, and a scattering of pine and blue spruce. There were wildflowers that bloomed in the spring and leaves that turned color in the fall that could make your heart ache. In Illinois, spring and fall were the seasons you waited for. Summer was just a bridge between the two, a three-to-four-month yearly preview of where you would end up if you were turned away from Heaven’s gates, a ruinous time when Mother Nature cranked up the heat as high as it would go on the local thermostat and a million insects came out to feed. It wasn’t like that every summer, and it wasn’t like that every day of every summer, but it was like that enough that you didn’t notice much of anything else. This summer was worse than usual, and today looked to be typical. The heat was intense already, even here in the woods, though not so bad beneath the canopy of the trees as it would be downtown. So Old Bob breathed in the scents of leaves and grasses and flowers and enjoyed the coolness of the shade as he drove the old truck toward the highway, reminding himself of what was good about his hometown on his way to his regular morning discussion of what wasn’t.
The strike at Midwest Continental Steel had been going on for one hundred and seven days, and there was no relief in sight. This was bad news and not just for the company and the union. The mill employed twenty-five percent of the town’s working population, and when twenty-five percent of a community’s spending capital disappears, everyone suffers. Mid-Con was at one time the largest independently owned steel mill in the country, but after the son of the founder died and the heirs lost interest, it was sold to a consortium. That produced some bad feelings all by itself, even though one of the heirs stayed around as a nominal part of the company team. The bad feelings grew when the bottom fell out of the steel market in the late seventies and early eighties in the wake of the boom hi foreign steel. The consortium underwent some management changes, the last member of the founding family was dismissed, the twenty-four-inch mill was shut down, and several hundred workers were laid off. Eventually some of the workers were hired back and the twenty-four-inch was started up again, but the bad feelings between management and union were by then so deep-seated and pervasive that neither side could bring itself ever again to trust the other.
The bad feelings had come to a head six months earlier, when the union had entered into negotiations for a new contract. A yearly cost-of-living increase in the hourly wage, better medical benefits, an expansion of what qualified as piecework, and a paid-holiday program were some of the demands on the union’s agenda. A limited increase without escalators in the hourly wage over the next five years, a cutback in medical benefits, a narrowing down of the types of payments offered for piecework, and an elimination of paid holidays were high on the list of counterdemands made by the company. A deadlock was quickly reached. Arbitration was reftised by both sides, each choosing to wait out the other. A strike deadline was set by the union. A back-to-work deadline was set by the company. As the deadlines neared and no movement was achieved in the bargaining process, both union and company went public with their grievances. Negotiators for each side kept popping up on television and radio to air out the particulars of the latest outrage perpetrated by the other. Soon both sides were talking to everyone but each other.
Then, one hundred and seven days ago, the union had struck the fourteen-inch and the wire mill. The strike soon escalated to include the twenty-four-inch and the twelve-inch, and then all of MidCon was shut down. At first no one worried much. There had been strikes before, and they had always resolved themselves. Besides, it was springtime, and with the passing of another bitterly cold Midwest winter, everyone was feeling hopeful and renewed. But a month went by and no progress was made. A mediator was called in at the behest of the mayor of Hopewell and the governor of the State of Illinois and with the blessing of both union and management, but he failed to make headway. A few ugly incidents on the picket line hardened feelings on both sides. By then, the effect of the strike was being felt by everyone-smaller companies who did business with the mill or used their products, retailers who relied on the money spent by the mill’s employees, and professional people whose clientele was in large part composed of management and union alike. Everyone began to choose sides.
After two months, the company announced that it would no longer recognize the union and that it would accept back those workers who wished to return to their old jobs, but that if those workers failed to return in seven days, new people would be brought in to replace them. On June 1, it would start up the fourteen-inch mill using company supervisors as workers. The company called this action the first step in a valid decertification process; the union called it strikebreaking and union busting. The union warned against trying to use scabs in place of “real” workers, of trying to cross the picket line, of doing anything but continuing to negotiate with the union team. It warned that use of company people on the line was foolhardy and dangerous. Only trained personnel should attempt to operate the machinery. The company replied that it would provide whatever training was deemed necessary and suggested the union start bargaining in good faith.
From there, matters only got worse. The company started up the fourteen-inch several times, and each time shut it down again after only a few days. There were reports by the union of unnecessary injuries and by the company of sabotage. Replacement workers were bused in from surrounding cities, and fights took place on the picket line. The national guard was brought in on two occasions to restore order. Finally MidCon shut down again for good and declared that the workers were all fired and the company was for sale. All negotiations came to a halt. No one even bothered to pretend at making an effort anymore. Another month passed. The pickets continued, no one made any money, and the community of Hopewell and its citizens grew steadily more depressed.
Now, with the summer heat reaching record highs, spring’s hopes were as dry as the dust that coated the roadways, and the bad feelings had burned down to white-hot embers.
Old Bob reached Lincoln Highway, turned on the lighted arrow off Sinnissippi Road, and headed for town. He passed the Kroger supermarket and the billboard put up six months ago by the Chamber of Commerce that read WELCOME TO HOPEWELL, ILLINOIS! WE’RE GROWING YOUR WAY! The billboard was faded and dust-covered in the dull shimmer of the late-morning heat, and the words seemed to mock the reality of things. Old Bob rolled up the windows and turned on the air. There weren’t any smells from here on in that mattered to him.
He drove the combined four-lane to where it divided into a pair of one-ways, Fourth Street going west into town, Third Street coming east. He passed several fast-food joints, a liquor store, a pak of gas stations, Quik Dry Cleaners, Rock River Valley Printers, and an electrical shop. Traffic was light. The heat rose off the pavement in waves, and the leaves on the trees that lined the sidewalks hung limp in the windless air. The men and women of Hopewell were closeted in their homes and offices with the air conditioners turned on high, going about the business of their lives with weary determination. Unless summer school had claimed them, the kids were all out at the parks or swimming pools, trying to stay cool and keep from being bored. At night the temperature would drop ten to fifteen degrees and there might be a breeze, but still no one would be moving very fast. There was a somnolence to the community that suggested a long siesta in progress, a dullness of pace that whispered of despair.
Old Bob shook his head. Well, the Fourth of July was almost here, and the Fourth, with its fireworks and picnics and the dance in the park, might help take people’s minds off their problems.
A few minutes later he pulled into a vacant parking space in front of Josie’s and climbed out of the cab. The sun’s brightness was so intense and the heat’s swelter so thick that for a moment he felt light-headed. He gripped the parking mirror to steady himself, feeling old and foolish, trying desperately to pretend that nothing was wrong as he studied his feet. When he had regained his balance sufficiently to stand on his own, he walked to the parking meter, fed a few coins into the slot, moved to the front door of the coffee shop, and stepped inside.
Cold air washed over him, a welcome relief. Josie’s occupied the corner of Second Avenue and Third Street across from the liquor store, the bank parking lot, and Hays Insurance. Windows running the length of both front walls gave a clear view of the intersection and those trudging to and from their air-conditioned offices and cars. Booths lined the windows, red leather fifties-era banquettes reupholstered and restitched. An L-shaped counter wrapped with stools was situated farther in, and a scattering of tables occupied the available floor space between. There were fresh-baked doughnuts, sweet rolls, and breads displayed in a glass case at the far end of the counter, and coffee, espresso, hot chocolate, tea, and soft drinks to wash those down. Josie’s boasted black cows, green rivers, sarsaparillas, and the thickest shakes for miles. Breakfast was served anytime, and you could get lunch until three, when the kitchen closed. Takeout was available and frequently used. Josie’s had the best daytime food in town, and almost everyone drifted in to sample it at least once or twice a week. Old Bob and his union pals were there every day. Before the mill was shut down, only those who had retired carne in on a regular basis, but now all of them showed up every morning without fail. Most were already there as Old Bob made his way to the back of the room and the clutch of tables those who had gotten there first had shoved together to accommodate latecomers. Old Bob waved, then detoured toward the service counter. Carol Blier intercepted him, asked how he was doing, and told him to stop by the office sometime for a chat. Old Bob nodded and moved on, feeling Carol’s eyes following him, measuring his step. Carol sold life insurance.
“Well, there you are,” Josie greeted from behind the counter, giving him her warmest smile. “Your buddies have been wondering if you were coming in.”
Old Bob smiled back. “Have they now?”
“Sure. They can’t spit and walk at the same time without you to show them how-you know that.” Josie cocked one eyebrow playfully. “I swear you get better-looking every time I see you.”
Old Bob laughed. Josie Jackson was somewhere in her thirties, a divorcee with a teenage daughter and a worthless ex-husband last seen heading south about half a dozen years ago. She was younger-looking than her years, certainly younger-acting, with big dark eyes and a ready smile, long blondish hair and a head-turning body, and most important of all a willingness to work that would put most people to shame. She had purchased Josie’s with money loaned to her by her parents, who owned a carpet-and-tile business. Having worked much of her adult life as a waitress, Josie Jackson knew what she was doing, and in no time her business was the favorite breakfast and lunch spot in Hopewell. Josie ran it with charm and efficiency and a live-and-let-live attitude that made everyone feel welcome.
“How’s Evelyn?” she asked him, leaning her elbows on the counter as she fixed him with her dark eyes.
He shrugged. “Same as always. Rock of ages.”
“Yeah, she’ll outlive us all, won’t she?” Josie brushed at her tousled hair. “Well, go on back. You want your usual?”
Old Bob nodded, and Josie moved away. If he’d been younger and unattached, Old Bob would have given serious consideration to hooking up with Josie Jackson. But then that was the way all the old codgers felt, and most of the young bucks, too. That was Josie’s gift.
He eased through the clustered tables, stopping for a brief word here and there, working his way back to where the union crowd was gathered. They glanced up as he approached, one after the other, giving him perfunctory nods or calling out words of greeting. Al Garcia, Mel Riorden, Deny Howe, Richie Stoudt, Penny Williamson, Mike Michaelson, Junior Elway, and one or two more. They made room for him at one end of the table, and he scooted a chair over and took a seat, sinking comfortably into place.
“So this guy, he works in a post office somewhere over in Iowa, right?” Mel Riorden was saying. He was a big, overweight crane operator with spiky red hair and a tendency to blink rapidly while he was speaking. He was doing so now. Like one of those ads showing how easy it is to open and close a set of blinds. Blink, blink, blink. “He comes to work in a dress. No, this is the God’s honest truth. It was right there in the paper. He comes to work in a dress.”
“What color of dress?” Richie Stoudt interrupted, looking genuinely puzzled, not an unusual expression for Richie.
Riorden looked at him. “What the hell difference does that make? It’s a dress, on a man who works in a post office, Richie! Think about it! Anyway, he comes to work, this guy, and his supervisor sees the dress and tells him he can’t work like that, he has to go home and change. So he does. And he comes back wearing a different dress, a fur coat, and a gorilla mask. The supervisor tells him to go home again, but this time he won’t leave. So they call the police and haul him away. Charge him with disturbing the peace or something. But this is the best part. Afterward, the supervisor tells a reporter-this is true, now, I swear-tells the reporter, with a straight face, that they are considering psychiatric evaluation for the guy. Considering!”
“You know, I read about a guy who took his monkey to the emergency room a few weeks back.” Albert Garcia picked up the conversation. He was a small, solid man with thinning dark hair and close-set features, a relative newcomer to the group, having come up from Houston with his family to work at MidCon less than ten years ago. Before the strike, he set the rolls in the fourteen-inch. “The monkey was his pet, and it got sick or something. So he hauls it down to the emergency room. This was in Arkansas, I think. Tells the nurse it’s his baby. Can you imagine? His baby!”
“Did it look anything like him?” Mel Riorden laughed.
“This isn’t the same guy, is it?” Penny Williamson asked suddenly. He was a bulky, heavy-featured black man with skin that shone almost as blue as oiled steel. He was a foreman in the number-three plant, steady and reliable. He shifted his heavy frame slightly and winked knowingly at Old Bob. “You know, the postal-worker guy again?”
Al Garcia looked perplexed. “I don’t think so. Do you think it could be?”
“So what happened?” Riorden asked as he bit into a fresh Danish. His eyes blinked like a camera shutter. He rearranged’ the sizable mound of sweet rolls he had piled on a plate in front of him, already choosing his next victim.
“Nothing.” Al Garcia shrugged. “They fixed up the monkey and sent him home.”
“That’s it? That’s the whole story?” Riorden shook his head.
Al Garcia shrugged again. “I just thought it was bizarre, that’s all.”
“I think you’re bizarre.” Riorden looked away dismissively. “Hey, Bob, what news from the east end this fine morning?”
Old Bob accepted with a nod the coffee and sweet roll Josie scooted in front of him. “Nothing you don’t already know. It’s hot at that end of town, too. Any news from the mill?”
“Same old, same old. The strike goes on. Life goes on. Everybody keeps on keeping on.”
“I been getting some yard work out at Joe Preston’s,” Richie Stoudt offered, but everyone ignored him, because if brains were dynamite he didn’t have enough to blow his nose.
“I’ll give you some news,” Junior Elway said suddenly. “There’s some boys planning to cross the picket line if they can get their jobs back. It was just a few at first, but I think there’s more of them now.”
Old Bob considered him wordlessly for a moment. Junior was not the most reliable of sources. “That so, Junior? I don’t think the company will allow it, after all that’s happened.”
“They’ll allow it, all right,” Deny Howe cut in. He was a tall, angular man with close-cropped hair and an intense, suspicious stare that made people wonder. He’d been a bit strange as a boy, and two tours in Vietnam hadn’t unproved things. Since Nam, he’d lost a wife, been arrested any number of times for drinking and driving, and spotted up his mill record until it looked like someone had sneezed into an inkwell. Old Bob couldn’t understand why they hadn’t fired him. He was erratic and error-prone, and those who knew him best thought he wasn’t rowing with all his oars in the water. Junior Elway was the only friend he had, which was a dubious distinction. He was allowed to hang out with this group only because he was Mel Riorden’s sister’s boy.
“What do you mean?” Al Garcia asked quickly.
“I mean, they’ll allow it because they’re going to start up the fourteen-inch again over the weekend and have it up and running by Tuesday. Right after the Fourth. I got it from a friend on the inside.” Howe’s temple pulsed and his lips tightened. “They want to break the union, and this is their best chance. Get the company running again without us.”
“Been tried already.” Al Garcia sniffed.
“So now it’s gonna get tried again. Think about it, Al. What have they got to lose?”
“No one from the union is going back to help them do it,” Penrod Williamson declared, glowering at Howe. “That’s foolish talk.”
“You don’t think there’s enough men out there with wives and children to feed that this ain’t become more important to them than the strike?” Howe snapped. He brushed at his close-cropped hair. “You ain’t paying attention then, Penny. The bean counters have taken over, and guys like us, we’re history! You think the national’s going to bail us out of this? Hell! The company’s going to break the union and we’re sitting here letting them do it!”
“Well, it’s not like there’s a lot else we can do, Deny,” Mel Riorden pointed out, easing his considerable weight back in his metal frame chair. “We’ve struck and picketed and that’s all the law allows us. And the national’s doing what it can. We just have to be patient. Sooner or later this thing will get settled.”
“How’s that gonna happen, Mel?” Howe pressed, flushed with anger. “Just how the hell’s that gonna happen? You see any negotiating going on? I sure as hell don’t! Striking and picketing is fine, but it ain’t getting us anywhere. These people running the show, they ain’t from here. They don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to us. If you think they do, well you’re a damn fool!”
“He’s got a point,” Junior Elway agreed, leaning forward over his coffee, nodding solemnly, lank blond hair falling into his face. Old Bob pursed his lips. Junior always thought Deny Howe had a point.
“Damn right!” Howe was rolling now, his taut features shoved forward, dominating the table. “You think we’re going to win this thing by sitting around bullshitting each other? Well, we ain’t! And there ain’t no one else gonna help us either. We have to do this ourselves, and we have to do it quick. We have to make them hurt more than we’re hurting. We have to pick their pocket the way they’re picking ours!”
“What’re you talking about?” Penny Williamson growled. He had less use for Derry Howe than any of them; he’d once had Howe booted off his shift.
Howe glared at him. “You think about it, Mr. Penrod Williamson. You were in the Nam, too. Hurt them worse than they hurt you, that was how you survived. That’s how you get anywhere in a war.”
“We ain’t in a war here,” Penny Williamson observed, his finger pointed at Howe. “And the Nam’s got nothing to do with this. What’re you saying, man? That we ought to go down to the mill and blow up a few of the enemy? You want to shoot someone while you’re at it?”
Derry Howe’s fist crashed down on the table. “If that’s what it takes, hell yes!”
There was sudden silence. A few heads turned. Howe was shaking with anger as he leaned back in his chair, refusing to look away. Al Garcia wiped at his spilled coffee with his napkin and shook his head. Mel Riorden checked his watch.
Penny Williamson folded his arms across his broad chest, regarding Derry Howe the way he might have regarded that postal worker in his dress, fur coat, and gorilla mask. “You better watch out who you say that to.”
“Derry’s just upset,” said a man sitting next to him. Old Bob hadn’t noticed the fellow before. He had blue eyes that were so pale they seemed washed of color. “His job’s on the line, and the company doesn’t even know he’s alive. You can understand how he feels. No need for us to be angry with each other. We’re all friends here.”
“Yeah, Derry don’t mean nothing,” Junior Elway agreed.
“What do you think we ought to do?” Mike Michaelson asked Robert Roosevelt Freemark suddenly, trying to turn the conversation another way.
Old Bob was still looking at the man next to Howe, trying to place him. The bland, smooth features were as familiar to him as his own, but for some reason he couldn’t think of his name. It was right on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t get a handle on it. Nor could he remember exactly what it was the fellow did. He was a mill man, all right. Too young to be retired, so he must be one of the strikers. But where did he know him from? The others seemed to know him, so why couldn’t he place him?
His gaze shifted to Michaelson, a tall, gaunt, even-tempered millwright who had retired about the same time Old Bob had. Old Bob had known Mike all his life, and he recognized at once that Mike was trying to give Derry Howe a chance to cool down.
“Well, I think we need a stronger presence from the national office,” he said. “Derry’s right about that much.” He folded his big hands on the table before him and looked down at them. “I think we need some of the government people to do more-maybe a senator or two to intervene so we can get things back on track with the negotiations.”
“More talk!” Deny Howe barely hid a sneer.
“Talk is the best way to go,” Old Bob advised, giving him a look.
“Yeah? Well, it ain’t like it was in your time, Bob Freemark. We ain’t got local owners anymore, people with a stake in the community, people with families that live here like the rest of us. We got a bunch of New York bloodsuckers draining all the money out of Hopewell, and they don’t care about us.” Derry Howe slouched in his chair, eyes downcast. “We got to do something if we expect to survive this. We can’t just sit around hoping for someone to help us. It ain’t going to happen.”
“There was a fellow out East somewhere, one of the major cities, Philadelphia, I think,” said the man sitting next to him, his strange pale eyes quizzical, his mouth quirked slightly, as if his words amused him. “His wife died, leaving him with a five-year-old daughter who was mildly retarded. He kept her in a closet off the living room for almost three years before someone discovered what he was doing and called the police. When they questioned the man, he said he was just trying to protect the girl from a hostile world.” The man cocked his head slightly. “When they asked the girl why she hadn’t tried to escape, she said she was afraid to run, that all she could do was wait for someone to help her.”
“Well, they ain’t shutting me up in no closet!” Derry Howe snapped angrily. “I can help myself just fine!”
“Sometimes,” the man said, looking at no one in particular, his voice low and compelling, “the locks get turned before you even realize that the door’s been closed.”
“I think Bob’s right,” Mike Michaelson said. “I think we have to give the negotiation process a fair chance. These things take time.”
“Time that costs us money and gives them a better chance to break us!” Derry Howe shoved back his chair and came to his feet. “I’m outta here. I got better things to do than sit around here all day. I’m sick of talking and doing nothing. Maybe you don’t care if the company takes away your job, but I ain’t having none of it!”
He stalked away, weaving angrily through the crowded tables, and slammed the door behind him. At the counter, Josie Jackson grimaced. A moment later, Junior Elway left as well. The men still seated at the table shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.
“I swear, if that boy wasn’t my sister’s son, I wouldn’t waste another moment on him,” Melvin Riorden muttered.
“He’s right about one thing,” Old Bob sighed. “Things aren’t the way they used to be. The world’s changed from when we were his age, and a lot of it’s gotten pretty ugly. People don’t want to work things out anymore like they used to.”
“People just want a pound of flesh,” A! Garcia agreed. His blocky head pivoted on his bull neck. “It’s all about money and getting your foot on the other guy’s neck. That’s why the company and the union can’t settle anything. Makes you wonder if the government hasn’t put something in the water after all.”
“You see where that man went into a grocery store out on Long Island somewhere and walked up and down the aisles stabbing people?” asked Penny Williamson. “Had two carving knives with him, one in each hand. He never said a word, just walked in and began stabbing people. He stabbed ten of them before someone stopped him. Killed two. The police say he was angry and depressed. Well, hell, who ain’t?”
“The world’s full of angry, depressed people,” said Mike Michaelson, rearranging his coffee cup and silver, staring down at his sun-browned, wrinkled hands fixedly. “Look what people are doing to each other. Parents beating and torturing their children. Young boys and girls killing each other. Teachers and priests taking advantage of their position to do awful things. Serial killers wandering the countryside. Churches and schools being vandalized and burned. It’s a travesty.”
“Some of those people you talk about live right here in Hopewell.” Penny Williamson grunted. “That Topp kid who killed his common-law wife with a butcher knife and cut her up in pieces a few years back? I grew up with that kid. Old man Peters killed ail those horses two weeks back, said they were the spawn of Satan. Tilda Mason, tried to kill herself three rimes over the past six months-twice in the mental hospital. Tried to kill a couple of the people working there as well. That fellow Riley Crisp, the one they call ‘rabbit’ lives down on Wallace? He stood out on the First Avenue Bridge and shot at people until the police came, then shot at them, and then jumped off the bridge and drowned himself. When was that? Last month?” He shook his head. “Where’s it all going to end I wonder?”
Old Bob smoothed back his white hair. None of them had the answer to that one. It made him wonder suddenly about Evelyn and her feeders. Might just as easily be feeders out there as something the government had put in the water.
He noticed suddenly that the man who had been sitting with Deny Howe was gone. His brow furrowed and his wide mouth tightened. When had the man left? He tried again to think of his name and failed.
“I got me some more work to do out at Preston’s,” Richie Stoudt advised solemnly. “You can laugh, but it keeps bread on the table.”
The conversation returned to the strike and the intractable position of the company, and the stories started up again, and a moment later Old Bob had forgotten the man completely.
The demon stepped out into the midday heat in front of Josie’s and felt right at home. Perhaps it was his madness that made him so comfortable with the sun’s brilliant white light and suffocating swelter, for it was true that it burned as implacably hot. Or perhaps it was his deep and abiding satisfaction at knowing that this community and its inhabitants were his to do with as he chose.
He followed Derry Howe and Junior El way to the latter’s Jeep Cherokee and climbed into the cab with them, sitting comfortably in the backseat, neither one of them quite aware that he was there. It was one of the skills he had acquired-to blend in so thoroughly with his surroundings that he seemed to be a part of them, to make himself appear so familiar that even those sitting right beside him felt no need to question his presence. He supposed there was still just enough of them in him that he was able to accomplish this. He had been human once himself, but that was long ago and all but forgotten. What remained of his humanity was just a shadow of a memory of what these creatures were, so that he could appear and act like them to the extent that his duplicity required it. His gradual transformation from human to demon had driven out the rest. He had found, after a time, that he did not miss it.
Junior turned over the Jeep’s engine and switched on the air, blowing a thick wash of heat through the vents and into the closed interior. Junior and Derry rolled down their windows to let the heat escape as the Jeep pulled away from the curb, but the demon just breathed in contentedly and smiled. He had been in Hopewell a little more than a week, not wanting to come any sooner because John Ross still tracked him relentlessly and had displayed a disturbing ability to locate him even when there was no possible way he should have been able to do so. But a week had gone by, the Fourth of July approached, and it seemed possible that this time Ross might prove a step too slow. It was important that Ross not interfere, for the demon had sown his destructive seed deep and waited long for it to grow. Now the seed’s harvest was at hand, and the demon did not want any interference. Everything was in place, everything that he had worked so long and hard to achieve-a clever subterfuge, an apocalyptic ruin, and an irreversible transformation that would hasten the coming of the Void and the banishment of the Word.
His mind spun with the possibilities as the Jeep turned off Second Avenue onto Fourth Street and headed west out of town. On his left the long, dark, corrugated-metal roofs of Mid-Con Steel could be glimpsed through gaps in the rows of the once-elegant old homes that ran the length of West Third coming in toward town from several blocks above Avenue G. The air-conditioning had kicked in, and with the windows rolled up again the demon took comfort instead from his inner heat. His passion enveloped him, a cocoon into which he could retreat and from which he could feed, a red haze of intolerance and hate and greed for power.
“Those old boys don’t know nothing,” Derry Howe was saying, slouched back in his bucket seat, his bullet head shining in the sun. “I don’t plan to listen to them no more. All they do is sit around and talk about sitting around some more. Old farts.”
“Yeah, they ain’t seeing it like it is,” Junior agreed.
No, not like you, thought the demon contentedly. Not with the bright, clear knowledge I have given to you.
“We got to do something if we want to keep our jobs,” Derry said. “We got to stop the company from breaking the union, and we got to stop them right now.”
“Yeah, but how we gonna do that?” Junior asked, glancing over uncertainly, then gunning the Jeep through a yellow light turning red.
“Oh, there’s ways. There’s ways, buddy.”
Yes, there are lots and lots of ways.
Derry Howe looked over at Junior, smiling. “You know what they say? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Well, I’ve got me a will that won’t quit. I just need me a way. I’m gonna find it, too, and you can take that to the bank! Old Bob and those others can go shove their patience where the sun don’t shine.”
They crossed Avenue G past the tire center, gas station, and west-end grocery and rode farther toward the cornfields. The buildings of the mill were still visible down the cross streets and between the old homes, plant three giving way to plant four, plant five still out ahead, back of the old speedway, the whole of MidCon spread out along the north bank of the Rock River. The demon studied the residences and the people they sped past, his for the taking, his to own, dismissing them almost as quickly as they were considered. This was a breeding ground for him and nothing more. On July fourth, all of it and all of them would pass into the hands of the feeders, and he would be on his way to another place. It was his world, too, but he felt no attachment to it. His work was what drove him, what gave him purpose, and his servitude to the dark, chaotic vision of the Void would allow for nothing else. There were in his life only need and compulsion, those to be satisfied through a venting of his madness, and nothing of his physical surroundings or of the creatures that inhabited them had any meaning for him.
The Jeep passed a junkyard of rusting automobile carcasses piled high behind a chain-link fence bordering a trailer park that looked to be the last stop of transients on their way to homelessness or the grave, and from behind the fence a pair of lean, black-faced Dobermans peered out with savage eyes. Bred to attack anything that intruded, the demon thought. Bred to destroy. He liked that.
His mind drifted in the haze of the midday summer heat, the voices of Derry and Junior a comfortable buzz that did not intrude. He had come to Hopewell afoot, walking out of the swelter of the cornfields and the blacktop roadways with the inexorable certainty of nightfall. He had chosen to appear in that manner, wanting to smell and taste the town, wanting it to give something of itself to him, something it could not give if he arrived by car or bus, if he were to be closed away. He had materialized in the manner of a mirage, given shape and form out of delusion and desperation, given life out of false hope. He had walked into a poor neighborhood on the fringe of the town, into a collection of dilapidated homes patched with tar paper and oilcloth, their painted wooden sides peeling, their shingled roofs cracked and blistered, their yards rutted and littered with ruined toys, discarded appliances, and rusting vehicles. Within the close, airless confines of the homes huddled the leavings of despair and endless disappointment. Children played beneath the shade of the trees, dust-covered, desultory, and joyless. Already they knew what the future would bring. Already their childhood was ending. The demon passed them with a smile.
At the corner of Avenue J and Twelfth Street, at a confluence of crumbling sheds, pastureland, and a few scattered residences, a boy had stood at the edge of the roadway with a massive dog. At well over a hundred pounds, all bristling hair and wicked dark markings, the dog was neither one identifiable breed nor another, but some freakish combination. It stood next to the boy, hooked on one end of a chain, the other end of which the boy held. Its eyes were deep-set and baleful, and its stance suggested a barely restrained fury. It disliked the demon instinctively, as all animals did, but it was frightened of him, too. The boy was in his early teens, wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, and high-top tennis shoes, all of them worn and stained with dirt. The boy’s stance, like the dog’s, was at once strained and cocky. He was tall and heavyset, and there was no mistaking the bully in him. Most of what he had gotten in life he had acquired through intimidation or theft. When he smiled, as he did now, there was no warmth. “Hey, you,” the boy said.
The demon’s bland face showed nothing. Just another stupid, worthless creature, the demon thought as he approached. Just another failed effort in somebody’s failed life. He would leave his mark here, with this boy, to signal his coming, to lay claim to what was now his. He would do so in blood.
“You want to go through here, you got to pay me a dollar,” the boy called out to the demon.
The demon stopped where he was, right in the middle of the road, the sun beating down on him. “A dollar?”
“Yeah, that’s the toll. Else you got to go around the other way.”
The demon looked up the street the way he had come, then back at the boy. “This is a public street.”
“Not in front of my house it ain’t. In front of my house, it’s a toll road and it costs a dollar to pass.”
“Only if you’re traveling on foot, I guess. Not if you’re in a car. I don’t suppose that even a dog as mean as yours could stop a car.” The boy stared at him, uncomprehending. The demon shrugged. “So, does the dog collect the dollar for you?”
“The dog collects a piece of your ass if you don’t pay!” the boy snapped irritably. “You want to see what that feels like?”
The demon studied the boy silently for a moment. “What’s the dog’s name?”
“It don’t matter what his name is! Just pay me the dollar!” The boy’s face was flushed and angry.
“Well, if I don’t know his name,” said the demon softly, “how can I call him off if he attacks someone?”
The dog sensed the boy’s anger, and his hackles rose along the back of his neck and he bared his teeth with a low growl. “You just better give me the dollar, buddy,” said the boy, a thin smile twisting his lips as he looked down at the dog and jiggled the chain meaningfully.
“Oh, I don’t think I could do that,” said the demon. “I don’t carry any money. I don’t have any need for it. People just give me what I want. I don’t even need a dog like this one to make them do it.” He smiled, his bland features crinkling warmly, his strange eyes fixing the boy. “That’s not very good news for you, is it?”
The boy was staring at him. “You better pay me fast, butt-head, or I might just let go of this chain!”
The demon shook his head reprovingly. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you. I’d keep a tight hold on that chain until I’m well down the road from here.” He slipped his hands in his pockets and cocked his head at the boy. “Tell you what. I’m a fair man. You just made a big mistake, but I’m willing to let it pass. I’ll forget all about it if you apologize. Just say you’re sorry and that will be the end of it.”
The boy’s mouth dropped. “What? What did you say?” The demon smiled some more. “You heard me.” For an instant the boy froze, the disbelief on his face apparent. Then he mouthed a string of obscenities, dropped to his knee, and released the chain on the dog’s collar. “Oops!” he snarled at the demon, flinging the chain away disdainfully, eyes hot and furious.
But the demon had already invoked his skill, a small, spare movement of one hand that looked something like the blessing of a minister at the close of a service. Outwardly, nothing seemed to change. The demon still stood there in the sweltering heat, head cocked in seeming contemplation, bland face expressionless. The boy lurched to his feet as he released the dog, urging him to the attack with an angry shout. But something profound had changed in the boy. His look and smell and movement had become those of a frightened rabbit, flushed from cover and desperately trying to scurry to safety. The dog reacted on instinct. It wheeled on the boy instantly, lunging for his throat. The boy gave a cry of shock and fear as the dog slammed into him, knocking him from his feet. The boy’s hands came up as he tumbled into the dirt of his yard, and he tried desperately to shield his face. The dog tore at the boy, and the boy’s cries turned to screams. Drops of blood flew through the air. Scarlet threads laced the dusty earth.
The demon stood watching for several moments more before turning away to continue down the road. He read later that if the boy’s body hadn’t been found in front of his house, the authorities would have needed dental records to identify him. His family couldn’t recognize him from what was left of his face. The dog, which one of the neighbors described as the boy’s best friend, was quarantined for the mandatory ten days to determine if it had rabies and then put down.
Junior Elway pulled the Jeep Cherokee against the curb in front of the dilapidated apartment complex situated on Avenue L and West Third where Deny Howe rented a small, one-bedroom unit. They talked for a moment while the demon listened, agreeing to meet at Scrubby’s for pizza and beer that evening. Both were divorced, on the downside of forty, and convinced that a lot of women were missing a good bet. Derry Howe climbed out of the Jeep, and the demon climbed out with him. Together they went up the walk as Junior Elway drove off.
Inside the apartment, the window fan was rattling and buzzing as it fought to withstand the heat. It was not adequate to the task, and the air in the apartment was close and warm. Derry Howe walked to the refrigerator, pulled out a can of Bud, walked back to the living room, and flopped down on the sofa. He was supposed to be on picket duty at the number-three plant, but he had begged off the night before by claiming that his back was acting up. His union supervisor had probably known he was lying, but had chosen to let it slide. Derry was encouraged. Already he was wondering if he could pull the same scam for Sunday’s shift.
The demon sat in the rocker that had belonged to Derry Howe’s grandmother before she died, the one his mother had inherited and in turn passed on to him when he was married and she still had hopes for him. Now no one had any hopes for Derry Howe. Two tours in Vietnam followed by his failed marriage to a girl some thought would change him, a dozen arrests on various charges, some jail time served at the county lockup, and twenty years at MidCon with only one promotion and a jacket full of reprimands had pretty much settled the matter. The road that marked the course of his life had straightened and narrowed, and all that remained to be determined was how far it would run and how many more breakdowns he would suffer along the way.
It had not proved difficult for the demon to find Derry Howe. Really, there were so many like him that it scarcely took any effort at all. The demon had found him on the second day of his arrival in Hopewell, just by visiting the coffee shops and bars, just by listening to what the people of the town had to say. He had moved in with Howe right away, making himself an indispensable presence in the other’s life, insinuating himself into the other’s thoughts, twisting Derry’s mind until he had begun to think and talk in the ways that were necessary. Hardly a challenge, but definitely a requirement if the demon’s plans were to succeed. He was Deny Howe’s shadow now, his conscience, his sounding board, his devil’s advocate. His own, personal demon. And Deny Howe, in turn, was his creature.
The demon watched Howe finish his beer, struggle up in the stale air of the apartment, walk to the kitchen, and fish through the cluttered refrigerator for another. The demon waited patiently. The demon’s life was wedded to his cause, and his cause required great patience. He had sacrificed everything to become what he was, but he knew from his transformation at the hands of the Void that sacrifice was required. After he had embraced the Void he had concealed himself until his conscience had rotted and fallen away and left him free. His name had been lost. His history had faded. , His humanity had dissipated and turned to dust. All that he had been had disappeared with the change, so that now he was reborn into his present life and made over into his higher form. It had been hard in the beginning, and once, in a moment of great weakness and despair, he had even thought to reject what he had so readily embraced. But in the end reason had prevailed, and he had forsaken all.
Now it was the cause that drove him, that fed him, that gave him his purpose in life. The cause was everything, and the Void defined the cause as need required. For now, for this brief moment in time, the cause was the destruction of this town and its inhabitants. It was the release of the feeders that lurked in the caves beneath Sinnissippi Park. It was the subversion of Deny Howe. It was the infusion of chaos and madness into the sheltered world of Hopewell.
And it was one thing more, the thing that mattered most.
Deny Howe returned to the sofa and seated himself with a grunt, sipping at his beer. He looked at the demon, seeing him clearly for the first time because the demon was ready now to talk.
“We got to do something, bud,” Deny Howe intoned solemnly, nodding to emphasize the importance of his pronouncement. “We got to stop those suckers before they break us.”
The demon nodded in response. “If union men cross the picket line and return to work, the strike is finished.”
“Can’t let them do that.” Howe worked his big hands around the beer bottle, twisting slowly. “Damn traitors, anyway! What the hell they think they’re doing, selling out the rest of us!”
“What to do?” mused the demon.
“Shoot a few, by God! That’ll show them we mean business!”
The demon considered the prospect. “But “that might not stop the others from going back to work. And you would go to jail. You wouldn’t be of any use then, would you?”
Deny Howe frowned. He took a long drink out of the bottle. “So what’s the answer, bud? We have to do something.”
“Think about it like this,” suggested the demon, having already done so long ago. “The company plans to reopen the fourteen-inch using company men to fill the skill jobs and scabs to fill the gaps. If they can open one plant and bring back a few of the union men, they can work at opening the others as well. It will snowball on you, if they can just get one mill up and running.”
Howe nodded, his face flushed and intense. “Yeah, so?”
The demon smiled, drawing him in. “So, what happens if the company can’t open the number-three plant? What happens if they can’t get the fourteen-inch up and running?”
Deny Howe stared at him wordlessly, thinking it through.
The demon gave him a hand. “What happens if it becomes clear to everyone that it’s dangerous to cross the picket line and work in the mills? What happens, Deny?”
“Yeah, right.” A light came on somewhere behind Deny Howe’s flat eyes. “No one crosses the line and the strike continues and the company has to give in. Yeah, I get it. But why wouldn’t they start up the fourteen-inch? All they need’s the workers. Unless ...”
The demon spoke the words for him, in his own voice, almost as if in his own mind. “Unless there is an accident.”
“An accident,” breathed Deny Howe. Excitement lit his rawboned features. “A really bad accident.”
“It happens sometimes,” said the demon.
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? An accident. Maybe someone even gets killed. Yeah.”
“Think about it,” said the demon. “Something will come to you.”
Derry Howe was smiling, his mind racing. He drank his beer and mulled over the possibilities the demon’s words had suggested to him. It would take little effort from here. A few more nudges. One good push in the right direction. Howe had been a demolitions man in Vietnam. It wouldn’t take much for him to figure out how to use that knowledge here. It wouldn’t even take courage. It required stupidity and blind conviction, and Derry Howe had plenty of both. That was why the demon had picked him.
The demon leaned back in the rocker and looked away, suddenly bored. What happened with Derry Howe was of such little importance. He was just another match waiting to be struck. Perhaps he would catch fire. You never knew. The demon had learned a long time ago that an explosion resulted most often from an accumulation of sparks. It was a lesson that had served him well. Derry Howe was one of several sparks the demon would strike over the next three days. Some were bound to catch fire; some might even explode. But, in the final analysis, they were all just diversions intended to draw attention away from the demon’s real purpose in coming to this tiny, insignificant Midwestern town. If things went the way he intended-and he had every reason to think they would-he would be gone before anyone had any idea at all of his interest in the girl.
And by then, of course, it would be too late to save her.
Nest Freemark went down the back steps two at a time, letting the screen door slam shut behind her. She winced at the sound, belatedly remembering how much it irritated Gran. She always forgot to catch the door. She didn’t know why, she just did. She skipped off the gravel walk and onto the lawn, heading across the yard for the park. Mr. Scratch lay stretched out in the shade beneath the closest oak, a white and orange torn, his fluffy sides rising and falling with each labored breath. He was thirteen or fourteen, and he slept most of the time now, dreaming his cat dreams. He didn’t even look up at her as she passed, his eyes closed, his ragged ears and scarred face a worn mask of contentment. He had long ago forfeited his mouser duties to the younger and sprier Miss Minx, who, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. Nest smiled at the old cat as she passed. Not for him the trials and tribulations of dealing with the feeders of Sinnissippi Park.
Nest had always known about the feeders. Or at least for as long as she could remember. Even when she hadn’t known what they were, she had known they were there. She would catch glimpses of them sometimes, small movements seen out of the corner of one eye, bits and pieces of shadow that didn’t quite fit in with their surroundings. She was very small then and not allowed out of the house alone, so she would stand at the windows at twilight, when the feeders were most likely to reveal themselves, and keep watch.
Sometimes her grandmother would take her for walks in the stroller in the cool of the evening, following the dark ribbon of the roadway as it wound through the park, and she would see them then as well. She would point, her eyes shifting to find her grandmother, her child’s face solemn and inquisitive, and her grandmother would nod and say, “Yes, I see them. But you don’t have to worry, Nest. They won’t bother you.”
Nor had they, although Nest had never really worried about it much back then. Not knowing what the feeders were, she simply assumed they were like the other creatures that lived in the park-the birds, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, deer, and what have you. Her grandmother never said anything about the feeders, never offered any explanation for them, never even seemed to pay them much attention. When Nest would point, she would always say the same thing and then let the matter drop. Several times Nest mentioned the feeders to her grandfather, but he just stared at her, glanced at her grandmother, and then smiled his most indulgent smile.
“He can’t see them,” her grandmother told her finally. “There’s no point talking about it with him, Nest. He just doesn’t see them.”
“Why doesn’t he?” she had asked, mystified.
“Because most people don’t. Most people don’t even know they exist. Only a lucky few can see them.” She leaned close and touched the tip of Nest’s small nose. “You and me, we can. But not Robert. Not your grandfather. He can’t see them at all.”
She hadn’t said why that was. Her explanations were always like that, spare and laconic. She hadn’t time for a lot of words, except when she was reading, which she did a lot. On her feet she was all movement and little talk, losing herself in her household tasks or her gardening or her walks in the park. That was then, of course. It wasn’t the same anymore, because now Gran was older and drank more and didn’t move around much at all. Small, gnarled, and gray, she sat at the kitchen table smoking her cigarettes and drinking her vodka and orange juice until noon and, afterward, her bourbon on the rocks until dusk. She still didn’t say much, even when she could have, keeping what she knew to herself, keeping her explanations and her secrets carefully tucked away somewhere deep inside.
She told Nest early on not to talk about the feeders. She was quite emphatic about it. She did so about the same time she told the little girl that only the two of them could see the feeders, so there wasn’t any point in discussing them with her grandfather. Or with anybody else, she amended soon after, apparently concerned that the increasingly talkative child might think to do so.
“It will just make people wonder about you,” she declared. “It will make them think you are a bit strange. Because you can see the feeders and they can’t. Think of the feeders as a secret that only you and I know about. Can you do that, Nest?”
Pretty much, she found she could. But the lack of a more thorough explanation on the matter was troubling and frustrating, and eventually Nest tested her grandmother’s theory about other people’s attitudes on a couple of her friends. The results were exactly as her grandmother had predicted. Her friends first teased her and then ran to their parents with the tale. Their parents called her grandmother, and her grandmother was forced to allay their concerns with an overly convoluted explanation centered around the effects of fairy tales and make-believe on a child’s imagination. Nest was very thoroughly dressed down. She was made to go back to her friends and their parents and to apologize for scaring them. She was five years old when that happened. It was the last time she told anyone about the feeders.
Of course, that was just the first of a number of secrets she learned to conceal about the creatures who lived in the park. Don’t talk about the feeders, her grandmother had warned, and in the end she did not. But there were a lot of other things she couldn’t talk about either, and for a while it seemed there was something new every time she turned around.
“Do you think the feeders would ever hurt me, Gran?” she asked once, disturbed by something she had seen in one of her picture books that reminded her of the furtiveness of their movements in the shadows of summer twilight and the dismal gloom of midday whiter. “If they had the chance, I mean?”
They were alone, sitting at the kitchen table playing dominoes on a cold midwinter Sunday, her grandfather ensconced in his den, listening to a debate over foreign aid.
Her grandmother looked up at her, her bright, darkly luminescent bird’s eyes fixed and staring. “If they had the chance, yes. But that will never happen.”
Nest frowned. “Why not?”
“Because you are my granddaughter.”
Nest frowned some more. “What difference does that make?”
“All the difference” was the reply. “You and I have magic, Nest. Didn’t you know?”
“Magic?” Nest had breathed the word in disbelief. “Why? Why do we have magic, Gran?”
Her grandmother smiled secretively. “We just do, child. But you can’t tell anyone. You have to keep it to yourself.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Now, go on, it’s your turn, make your play. Don’t talk about it anymore.”
That was the end of the matter as far as her grandmother was concerned, and she didn’t mention it again. Nest tried to bring it up once or twice, but her grandmother always made light of, the matter, as if having magic was nothing, as if it were the same as being brown-eyed or right-handed. She never explained what she meant by it, and she never provided any evidence that it was so. Nest thought she was making it up, the same way she made up fairy tales now and then to amuse the little girl. She was doing it to keep Nest from worrying about the feeders. Magic, indeed, Nest would think, then point her fingers at the wall and try unsuccessfully to make something happen.
But then she discovered Wraith, and the subject of magic suddenly took on a whole new meaning. It was when she was still five, shortly after her attempt at telling her friends about the feeders and almost a year before she met Pick. She was playing in her backyard on the swing set, pretending at flying as she rose and fell at the end of the creaking chains, comfortably settled in the cradle of the broad canvas strap. It was a late-spring day, the air cool yet with winter’s fading breath, the grass new and dappled with jack-in-the-pulpit and bleeding heart, the leaves on the oaks and elms beginning to bud. Heavy clouds scudded across the Midwest skies, bringing rain out of the western plains, and the sunlight was pale and thin. Her grandparents were busy inside, and since she was forbidden to leave the yard without them and had never done so before, there was no reason for them to believe she would do so now.
But she did. She got down out of the swing and walked to the end of the yard where the hedgerow was still thin with new growth, slipped through a gap in the intertwined limbs, and stepped onto forbidden ground. She didn’t know exactly what it was that prompted her to do so. It had something to do with thinking about the feeders, with picturing them as they appeared and faded in shadowy patches along the fringes of her yard. She wondered about them constantly, and on this day she simply decided to have a look. Did they conceal themselves on the other side of the hedge, just beyond her view? Did they burrow into the ground like moles? What did they do back there where she couldn’t see? Why, her inquisitive five-year-old mind demanded, shouldn’t she try to find out?
So there she was, standing at the edge of the park, staring out across the broad, flat, grassy expanse of ball diamonds and picnic grounds to where the bluffs rose south and the wooded stretches began east, a pioneer set to explore a wondrous new world. Not that day, perhaps, for she knew she would not be going far on her first try. But soon, she promised herself. Soon.
Her eyes shifted then, and she became aware of the feeders. They were crouched within a copse of heavy brush that screened the Peterson backyard some fifty feet away, watching her. She saw them as you would a gathering of shadows on a gray day, indistinct and nebulous. She caught a glimpse of their flat, yellow eyes shining out of the darkness like a cat’s. She stood where she was, looking back, trying to see them more clearly, trying to determine better what they were. She stared intently, losing track of time as she did so, forgetting where she was and what she was about, mesmerized.
Then a drop of rain fell squarely on her nose, cold and wet against her skin. She blinked in surprise, and suddenly the feeders were all around her, and she was so terrified that she could feel her fear writhing inside her like a living thing.
And, just as suddenly, they were gone again. It happened so fast that she wasn’t sure if it was real or if she had imagined it. In the blink of an eye, they had appeared. In another blink, they had gone. How could they move so quickly? What would make them do so?
She saw Wraith then, standing a few feet away, a dark shape in the deepening gray, so still he might have been carved from stone. She didn’t know his name then, or what he was, or where he had come from. She stared at him, unable to look away, riveted by the sight of him. She thought he was the biggest creature she had ever seen this close up, bigger even, it seemed to her at that moment, than the horses she had petted once on a visit to the Lehman farm. He appeared to be some sort of dog, immense and fierce-looking and as immovable as the massive shade trees that grew in her backyard. He was brindle in color; his muzzle and head bore tiger-stripe markings and his body hair bristled like a porcupine’s quills. Oddly enough, she was not frightened by him. She would always remember that. She was awestruck, but she was not frightened. Not in the way she was of the feeders. He was there, she realized, without quite being sure why, to protect her from them.
Then he disappeared, and she was alone. He simply faded away, as if composed of smoke scattered by a sudden gust of wind. She stared into the space he had occupied, wondering at him. The park stretched away before her, silent and empty in the failing light. Then the rain began to fall in earnest, and she made a dash for the house.
She saw Wraith often after that, possibly because she was looking for him, possibly because he had decided to reveal himself. She still didn’t know what he was, and neither did anyone else. Pick told her later that he was some sort of crossbreed, a mix of dog and wolf. But really, since he was created from and held together by magic, his genetic origins didn’t make any difference. Whatever he was, he was probably the only one of his kind. Pick confirmed her impression that he was there to protect her. Matter of fact, he advised rather solemnly, Wraith had been shadowing her since the first time she had come into the park, still a baby in her stroller. She wondered at first how she could have missed seeing him, but then discovered that she had missed seeing a lot of other things as well, and it didn’t seem so odd.
When she finally told her grandmother about Wraith, her grandmother’s response was strange. She didn’t question what Nest was telling her. She didn’t suggest that Nest might be mistaken or confused. She went all still for a moment, her eyes assumed a distant look, and her thin, old hands tightened about the mittens she was knitting.
“Did you see anything else?” she asked softly.
“No,” said Nest, wondering suddenly if there was something she should have seen.
“He just appeared, this dog did? The feeders came close to you, and the dog appeared?” Gran’s eyes were sharp and bright.
“Yes. That first time. Now I just see him following me sometimes, watching me. He doesn’t come too close. He always stays back. But the feeders are afraid of him. I can tell.”
Her grandmother was silent.
“Do you know what he is?” Nest pressed anxiously.
Her grandmother held her gaze. “Perhaps.”
“Is he there to protect me?”
“I think we have to find that out.”
Nest frowned. “Who sent him, Gran?”
But her grandmother only shook her head and turned away. “I don’t know,” she answered, but the way she said it made Nest think that maybe she did.
For a long tune, Nest was the only one who saw the dog. Sometimes her grandmother would come into the park with her, but the dog did not show himself on those occasions.
Then one day, for no reason that Nest could ever determine, he appeared out of a cluster of spruce at twilight while the old woman and her granddaughter walked through the west-end play area toward the cliffs. Her grandmother froze, holding on to the little girl’s hand tightly.
“Gran?” Nest said uncertainly.
“Wait here for me, Nest,” her grandmother replied. “Don’t move.”
The old woman walked up to the big animal and knelt before him. It was growing dark, and it was hard to see clearly, but it seemed to Nest as if her grandmother was speaking to the beast. It was very quiet, and she could almost hear the old woman’s words. She remained standing for a while, but then she grew tired and sat down on the grass to wait. There was no one else around. Stars began to appear in the sky and shadows to swallow the last of the fading light. Her grandmother and the dog were staring at each other, locked hi a strange, silent communication that went on for a very long time.
Finally her grandmother rose and came back to her. The strange dog watched for a moment, then slowly melted back into the shadows.
“It’s all right, Nest,” her grandmother whispered in a thin, weary voice, taking her hand once more. “His name is Wraith. He is here to protect you.”
She never spoke of the meeting again.
As Nest wriggled her way through the hedgerow at the back of her yard, she paused for a moment at the edge of the rutted dirt service road that ran parallel to the south boundary of the lot and recalled anew how Sinnissippi Park had appeared to her that first time. So long ago, she thought, and smiled at the memory. The park had seemed much bigger then, a vast, sprawling, mysterious world of secrets waiting to be discovered and adventures begging to be lived. At night, sometimes, when she was abroad with Pick, she still felt as she had when she was five, and the park, with its dark woods and gloomy ravines, with its murky sloughs and massive cliffs, seemed as large and unfathomable as it had then.
But now, in the harsh light of the July midday, the sun blazing down out of another cloudless sky, the heat a faint shimmer rising off the burned-out flats, the park seemed small and constrained. The ball fields lay just beyond the service road, their parched diamonds turned dusty and hardened and dry, their grassy outfields gray-tipped and spiky. There were four altogether, two close and two across the way east. Farther on, a cluster of hardwoods and spruce shaded a play area for small children, replete with swings and monkey bars and teeter-totters and painted animals on heavy springs set in concrete that you could climb aboard and ride.
The entrance to the park was to Nest’s immediate right, and the blacktop road leading into the park ran under the crossbar toward the river before splitting off in two directions. If you went right, you traveled to the turnaround and the cliffs, where the previous night she had rescued Bennett Scott. Beyond the turnaround, separated from the park by a high chain-link fence that any kid over the age of seven who was worth his salt could climb, was Riverside Cemetery, rolling, tree-shaded, and sublimely peaceful. The cemetery was where her mother was buried. If you turned left off the blacktop, you either looped down under a bridge to the riverbank at the bottom of the cliffs, where a few picnic tables were situated, or you continued on some distance to the east end of the park where a large, sheltered pavilion, a toboggan slide, a playground, and the deep woods waited. The toboggan slide ran all the way from the heights beyond the parking lot to the reedy depths of the bayou. A good run hi deep winter would take you out across the ice all the way to the embankment that supported the railroad tracks running east to Chicago and west to the plains. Stretching a ran to the embankment was every toboggan rider’s goal. Nest had done it three times. There were large brick-chimney and smaller iron hibachi-style cooking stations and wooden picnic tables all over the park, so that any number of church outings or family reunions could be carried on at one tune. Farther east, back in the deep woods, there were nature trails that ran from the Woodland Heights subdivision where Robert Heppler lived down to the banks of the Rock River. There were trees that were well over two hundred years old. Some of the oaks and elms and shagbark hickories rose over a hundred feet, and the park was filled with dark, mysterious places that whispered of things you couldn’t see, but could only imagine and secretly wish for.
The park was old, Nest knew. It had never been anything but a park. Before it was officially titled and protected by state law, it had been an untamed stretch of virgin timber. No one had lived there since the time of the Indians. Except, of course, the feeders.
She took it all in for a moment, embracing it with her senses, reclaiming it for herself as she did each tune she returned, familiar ground that belonged to her. She felt that about the park-that through her peculiar and endemic familiarity with its myriad creatures, its secretive places, its changeless look and feel, and its oddly compelling solitude, it was hers. She felt this way whenever she stepped into the park, as if she were fulfilling a purpose in her life, as if she knew that here, of all places in the world, she belonged.
Of course, Pick had more than a little to do with that, having enlisted her years ago as his human partner in the care and upkeep of the park’s magic.
She walked across the service road, kicking idly at the dirt with her running shoes, moving onto the heat-crisped grasses of the ball diamond, intent on taking the shortcut across the park to Cass Minter’s house on Spring Drive. The others were ‘ probably already there: Robert, Brianna, and Jared. She would be the last to arrive, late as usual. But it was summer, and it really didn’t matter if she was late. The days stretched on, and tune lost meaning. Today they were going fishing down by the old boat launch below the dam, just off the east end of the park. Bass, bluegill, perch, and sunfish, you could still catch them all, if not so easily as once. You didn’t eat them, of course. Rock River wasn’t clean enough for that, not the way it had been when her grandfather was a boy. But the fishing was fun, and it was as good a way as any to spend an afternoon.
She was skipping off behind the backstop of the closest ball field when she heard a voice call out.
“Nest! Wait up!”
Turning awkward and flushed the moment she realized who it was, she watched Jared Scott come loping up the service road from the park entry. She glanced down at her Grunge Lives T-shirt and her running shorts, at the stupid way they hung on her, at the flatness of her chest and the leanness of her legs and arms, and she wished for the thousandth time that she looked more like Brianna. She was angry at herself for thinking like that, then for feeling so bizarre over a boy, and then because there he was, right hi front of her, smiling and waving and looking at her in that strange way of his.
“Hey, Nest,” he greeted.
“Hey, Jared.” She looked quickly away.
They fell into step beside each other, moving along the third-base line of the diamond, both of them looking at their feet. Jared wore old jeans, a faded gray T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. Nothing fit quite right, but Nest thought he looked pretty cute anyway.
“You get any sleep last night?” he asked after a minute.
He was just about her height (oh, all right, he was an inch or so shorter, maybe), with dark blond hair cut short, eyes so blue they were startling, a stoic smile that suggested both familiarity and long-suffering indulgence with life’s vicissitudes, and a penchant for clearing his throat before speaking that betrayed his nervousness at making conversation. She didn’t know why she liked him. She hadn’t felt this way about him a year ago. A year ago, she had thought he was weird. She still wasn’t sure what had happened to change things.
She shrugged. “I slept a little.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, no thanks to me, I guess. You saved my bacon, bringing Bennett home.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Big tune. I didn’t know what to do. I spaced, and the next thing I knew, she was outta there. I didn’t know where she’d gone.”
“Well, she’s pretty little, so-“
“I messed up.” He was having trouble getting the words out. “I should have locked the door or something, because the attacks can-“
“It wasn’t your fault,” she interrupted heatedly. Her eyes flicked to his, then away again. “Your mom shouldn’t be leaving you alone to baby-sit those kids. She knows what can happen.”
He was silent a moment. “She doesn’t have any money for a sitter.”
Oh, but she does have money to go out drinking at the bars, I suppose, Nest wanted to say, but didn’t. “Your mom needs to get a life,” she said instead.
“Yeah, I guess. George sure doesn’t give her much of one.”
“George Paulsen doesn’t know how.” Nest spit deliberately. “Do you know what he did with Bennett’s kitten?”
Jared looked at her. “Spook? What do you mean? Bennett didn’t say anything about it to me.”
Nest nodded. “Well, she did to me,. She said George took Spook away somewhere ‘cause he doesn’t like cats. You don’t know anything about it?”
“No. Spook?”
“She was probably scared to tell you. I wouldn’t put it past that creep to threaten her not to say anything.” She looked off into the park. “I told her I’d help find Spook. But I don’t know where to look.”
Jared shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “Me, either. But I’ll look, too.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”
They crossed the park toward the woods that bordered the houses leading to Cass Minter’s, lost in their separate thoughts, breathing in the heat and the dryness and watching the dust rise beneath their feet in small clouds.
“Maybe your mom will think twice before she goes out with him again, once she learns about Spook,” Nest said after a minute.
“Maybe.”
“Does she know about last night?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “No. I didn’t want to tell her. Bennett didn’t say anything either.”
They walked on in silence to the beginning of the woods and started through the trees toward the houses and the road. From somewhere ahead came the excited shriek of a child, followed by laughter. They could hear the sound of a sprinkler running. Whisk, whisk, whisk. It triggered memories of times already lost to them, gone with childhood’s brief innocence.
Nest spoke to Jared Scott without looking at him. “I don’t blame you. You know, for not telling your mom. I wouldn’t have told her either.”
Jared nodded. His hands slipped deeper into his pockets.
She gripped his arm impulsively. “Next time she leaves you alone to baby-sit, give me a call. I’ll come over and help.”
“Okay,” he agreed, giving her a sideways smile.
But she knew just from the way he said it that he wouldn’t.