Terry Brooks: Running With The Demon

But this morning as he slouched into the kitchen he was dark–browed and weary–hearted and felt not in the least as if his life had amounted to anything. Evelyn was already up, sitting at the kitchen table with her glass of orange juice laced with vodka, her cigarette, her coffee, and her magazine. Sometimes he thought she simply didn't go to bed anymore, although she'd been sleeping last night when he'd gotten up to look in on Nest. They'd kept separate bedrooms for almost ten years, and more and more it felt like they kept separate lives as well, all since Caitlin …

He caught himself, stopped himself from even thinking the words. Caitlin. Everything went back to Caitlin. Everything bad.

"Morning," he greeted perfunctorily.

Evelyn nodded, eyes lifting and lowering like window shades.

He poured himself a bowl of Cheerios, a glass of juice, and a cup of coffee and sat down across from her at the table. He attacked the cereal with single–minded intensity, devouring it in huge gulps, his head lowered to the bowl, stewing in wordless solitude. Evelyn sipped at her vodka and orange juice and took long drags on her cigarette. The length of the silence between them implied accurately the vastness of the gulf that separated their lives.

Finally Evelyn looked up, frowning in reproof. "What's bothering you, Robert?"

Old Bob looked at her. She had always called him Robert, not Old Bob, not even just Bob, as if some semblance of formality were requked in their relationship. She was a small, intense woman with sharp eyes, soft features, gray hair, and a no–nonsense attitude. She had been beautiful once, but she was only old now. Time and life's vicissitudes and her own stubborn refusal to look after herself had done her in. She smoked and drank all the time, and when he called her on it, she told him it was her life and she could lead it any way she wanted and besides, she didn't really give a damn.

"I couldn't sleep, so I got up during the night and looked in on Nest," he told her. "She wasn't there. She'd tucked some pillows under the covers to make me think she was, but she wasn't." He paused. "She was out in the park again, wasn't she?"

Evelyn looked back at her magazine. "You leave the girl alone. She's doing what she has to do."

He shook his head stubbornly, even though he knew what was coming. "There's nothing she has to be doing out there at two in the morning."

Evelyn stubbed out her cigarette and promptly lit another one. "There's everything, and you know it."

"You know it, Evelyn. I don't."

"You want me to say it for you, Robert? You seem to be having trouble finding the right words. Nest was out minding the feeders. You can accept it or not–it doesn't change the fact of it."

"Out minding the feeders …"

"The ones you can't see, Robert, because your belief in things doesn't extend beyond the tip of your nose. Nest and I aren't like that, thank the good Lord."

He shoved back his cereal bowl and glared at her. "Neither was Caitlin."

Her sharp eyes fixed on him through a haze of cigarette smoke. "Don't start, Robert."

He hesitated, then shook his head hopelessly. "I'm going to have a talk with Nest about this, Evelyn," he declared softly. "I don't want her out there at night. I don't care what the reason is."

His wife stared at him a moment longer, as if measuring the strength of his words. Then her eyes returned to the magazine. "You leave Nest alone."

He looked out the window into the backyard and the park beyond. The day was bright and sunny, the skies clear, the temperature in the eighties, and the heat rising off the grass in a damp shimmer. It was only the first of July, and already they were seeing record temperatures. There'd been good rain in the spring, so the crops were doing all right, especially the early corn and soybeans, but if the heat continued there would be problems. The farmers were complaining already that they would have to irrigate and even that wouldn't be enough without some rain. Old Bob stared into the park and thought about the hardships of farming, remembering his father's struggle when he'd owned the farm up at Yorktbwn years ago. Old Bob didn't understand farming; he didn't understand why anyone would want to do it. Of course, that was the way farmers felt about fellows who worked in a steel mill.

"Is Nest still in bed?" he asked after a moment.

Evelyn got up to pour herself another drink. Bob watched the measure of vodka she added to the orange juice. Way too much. "Why don't you lighten up on that stuff, Evelyn? It's not even nine o'clock in the morning."

She gave him a hard look, her face pinched and her mouth set. "I notice you weren't in any hurry to get home last night from telling war stories with your pals. And I don't suppose you were drinking tea and playing shuffleboard down there at the hall, were you?" She took a long pull on the drink, walked back to her chair, sat down, and picked up the magazine. "Leave me alone, Robert. And leave Nest alone, too."

Old Bob nodded slowly and looked off again out the window. They had lived in this house for almost the whole of their married life. It was a big, sprawling rambler on two acres of wooded land abutting the park; he'd supervised the building of it himself, back in the late fifties. He'd bought the land for two hundred dollars an acre. It was worth a hundred times that now, even without the house. Caitlin had grown up under this roof, and now Nest. Everything that had meaning in his life had happened while he was living here.

His eyes traveled over the aged wood of the kitchen cabinets to the molding and kickboards and down the hall to the paneled entry. He had even been happy here once.

He stood up, weary, resigned, still in a funk. He felt emasculated by Evelyn, helpless in the face of her fortress mentality, adrift in his life, unable to change things in any way that mattered. It had been bad between them for years and it was getting worse. What was going to become of them? Nest was all that bound them together now. Once she was gone, as she would be in a few years, what would be left for them?

He brushed at his thick white hair with his hand, smoothing it back. "I'm going downtown, see if there's anything new with the strike," he said. "I'll be back in a few hours."

She nodded without looking up. "Lunch will be on the table at noon if you want it."

He studied her a moment longer, then went down the hall and out the front door into the summer heat.

It was another hour before Nest appeared in the kitchen. She stretched and yawned as she entered and helped herself to the orange juice. Her grandmother was still sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking and reading her magazine. She looked up as Nest appeared and gave her a wan smile. "Good morning, Nest."

"Morning, Gran," Nest replied. She took out the bread and stuck a couple of slices in the toaster. Thinking of Bennett Scott, she stood at the counter and rolled her shoulders inside her sleep shirt to relieve the lingering ache in her muscles. "Grandpa around?"

Her grandmother put down the magazine. "He's gone out. But he wants to talk with you. He says you went into the park last night."

Nest hunched her shoulders one final time, then slouched against the counter, her eyes on the toaster. "Yep, he's right. I did."

"What happened?"

"Same as usual. The feeders got Bennett Scott this time." She told her grandmother what had happened. "I walked her to the front door and handed her over to Jared. You should have seen his face. He was so scared. He'd looked everywhere for her. He was about to call the police. His mom still wasn't home. She's a dead loss, Gran. Can't we do something about her? It isn't fair the way she saddles Jared with all the responsibility. Did you know he has to make all the meals for those kids–or almost all? He has to be there for them after school. He has to do everything!"