Running With The Demon

by Brooks, Terry

  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!"

  Her grandmother took a deep drag on her cigarette. A cloud of smoke enveloped her. "I'll have a talk with Mildred Walker. She's involved with the social-services people. Maybe one of them will drop by for a chat with Enid. That woman checks her brains at the door every time a man walks in. She's a sorry excuse for a mother, but those kids are stuck with her."

  "Bennett's scared of George Paulsen, too. Next thing, he'll be living there."

  Her grandmother nodded. "Well, George is good at showing up where there's a free ride." Her eyes shifted to find Nest's, and her small body bent forward over the table. "Sit with me a moment. Bring your toast."

  Nest gathered up her toast and juice and sat down. She lathered on some raspberry spread and took a bite. "Good."

  "What are you going to tell your grandfather when he asks you what you were doing in the park?"

  Nest shrugged, tossing back her dark hair. "Same as always. I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to go for a run. I tucked the pillows under the covers so he wouldn't worry."

  Her grandmother nodded. "Good enough, I expect. I told him to leave you alone. But he worries about you. He can't stop thinking about your mother. He thinks you'll end up the same way."

  They stared at each other in silence. They had been over this ground before, many times. Caitlin Freemark, Nest's mother, had fallen from the cliffs three months after Nest was born. She had been walking in the park at night. Her state of mind had been uncertain for some time; she had been a very fragile and mercurial young woman. Nest's birth and the disappearance of the father had left her deeply troubled. There was speculation that she might have committed suicide. No one had ever been able to determine if she had, but the rumors persisted.

  "I'm not my mother," Nest said quietly.

  "No, you're not," her grandmother agreed. There was a distant, haunted look in her sharp, old bird's eyes, as if she had suddenly remembered something best left forgotten. Her hands fluttered about her drink.

  "Grandpa doesn't understand, does he?"

  "He doesn't try."

  "Do you still talk to him about the feeders, Gran?"

  "He thinks I'm seeing things. He thinks it's the liquor talking. He thinks I'm an old drunk."

  "Oh, Gran."

  "It's been like that for some time, Nest." Her grandmother shook her head. "It's as much my fault as it is his. I've made it difficult for him, too." She paused, not wanting to go too far down that road. "But I can't get him even to listen to me. Like I said, he doesn't see. Not the feeders, not any of the forest creatures living in the park. He never could see any part of that world, not even when Caitlin was alive. She tried to tell him, your mother. But he thought it was all make-believe, just a young girl's imagination. He played along with her, pretended he understood. But he would talk to me about it when we were alone, tell me how worried he was about her nonsense. I told him that maybe she wasn't making it up. I told him maybe he should listen to her. But he just couldn't ever make himself do that."

  She smiled sadly. "He's never understood our connection with the park, Nest. I doubt that he ever will."

  Nest ate the last bite of toast, chewing thoughtfully. Six generations of the women of her family had been in service to the land that made up the park. They were the ones who had worked with Pick to keep the magic in balance over the years. They were the ones who had been born to magic themselves.

  Gwendolyn Wills, Caroline Glynn, Opal Anders, Gran, her mother, and now her. The Freemark women, Nest called them, though the designation was less than accurate. Their pictures hung in a grouping in the entry, framed against the wooded backdrop of the park. Gran always said that the partnering worked best with the women of the family, because the women stayed while the men too often moved on.

  "Grandpa never talks about the park with me," Nest remarked quietly.

  "No, I think he's afraid to." Her grandmother swallowed down the vodka and orange juice. Her eyes looked vague and watery. "And I don't ever want you talking about it with him."

  Nest looked down at her plate. "I know."

  The old woman reached across the table and took hold of her granddaughter's wrist. "Not with him, not with anyone. Not ever. There's good reason for this, Nest. You understand that, don't you?"

  Nest nodded. "Yep, I do." She looked up at her grandmother. "But I don't like it much. I don't like being the only one."

  Her grandmother squeezed her wrist tightly. "There's me. You can always talk to me." She released her grip and sat back. "Maybe one day your grandfather will be able to talk with you about it, too. But it's hard for him. People don't want to believe in magic. It's all they can do to make themselves believe in God. You can't see something, Nest, if you don't believe in it. Sometimes I think he just can't let himself believe, that believing just doesn't fit in with his view of things."

  Nest was silent a moment, thinking. "Mom believed, though, didn't she?"

  Her grandmother nodded wordlessly.

  "What about my dad? Do you think he believed, too?"

  The old woman reached for her cigarettes. "He believed."

  Nest studied her grandmother, watched the way her fingers shook as she worked the lighter. "Do you think he will eve
r come back?"

  "Your father? No."

  "Maybe he'll want to see how I've turned out. Maybe he'll come back for that."

  "Don't hold your breath."

  Nest worried her lip. "I wonder sometimes who he is, Gran. I wonder what he looks like." She paused. "Do you ever wonder?"

  Her grandmother drew in on the cigarette, her eyes hard and fixed on a point in space somewhere to Nest's left. "No. What would be the point?"

  "He's not a forest creature, is he?"

  She didn't know what made her ask such a question. She startled herself by even speaking the words. And the way her grandmother looked at her made her wish she had held her tongue.

  "Why would you ever think that?" Evelyn Freemark snapped, her voice brittle and sharp, her eyes bright with anger.

  Nest swallowed her surprise and shrugged. "I don't know. I just wondered, I guess."

  Her grandmother looked at her for a long moment without blinking, then turned away. "Go make your bed. Then go out and play with your friends. Cass Minter has called you twice already. Lunch will be here if you want it. Dinner's at six. Go on."

  Nest rose and carried her dishes to the sink. No one had ever told her anything about her father. No one seemed to know any thing-about him. But that didn't stop her from wondering. She had been told that her mother never revealed his identity, not even to her grandparents. But Nest suspected that Gran knew something about him anyway. It was in the way she avoided the subject-or became angry when he was mentioned. Why did she do that? What did she know that made her so uncomfortable? Maybe that was why Nest persisted in her questions about him, even silly ones like the one she had just asked. Her father couldn't be a forest creature. If he was, Nest would be a forest creature as well, wouldn't she?

  "See you later, Gran," she said as she left the room. She went down the hall to her room to shower and dress. There were all different kinds of forest creatures, Pick had told her once. Even if he hadn't told her exactly what they were. So did that mean there were some made of flesh and blood? Did it mean some were human, like her?

  She stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror looking at herself for a long time before she got into the shower.

  Chapter 3

  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 a
fter 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.