Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [75]
“So, would that be all right with you?” Ross pressed. “Would you be willing to walk me over to the cemetery?”
Nest nodded, climbed out of the swing, and pointed to the gap in the hedgerow. She led the way wordlessly, setting a slow pace so that he could follow, glancing back to make certain he was able to keep up. In point of fact, he seemed stronger and more agile than she had expected. She wondered what had happened to his leg, if there was a way she could ask him without being rude.
They crossed the yard, pushed through the gap in the hedgerow, and entered the park. The evening ball games were already under way, the diamonds all in use, the benches and grassy areas behind the backstops crowded with families and fans. She led Ross down the service road behind the nearest backstop to the crossing gate at the park entrance, then along the roadway toward the burial mounds and the cliffs. Neither of them spoke. The day’s heat hung thick and heavy in the evening air, and there was little indication that the temperature would change with night’s coming. The insects buzzed and hummed in dull cacophony in the shade of the trees, and the sounds of the ballplayers rose sharp and sudden with the ebb and flow of the games’ action.
After a moment, she dropped back a step to walk beside him. “How long are you visiting?” she asked, wanting to know something more about him, about his involvement with her mother.
“Just a few days.” His movements were steady and unhurried. “I think I’ll stay for the fireworks. I hear they’re pretty spectacular.”
“You can sit with us, if you’d like,” she offered. “That way you’ll be with someone you know. You don’t know anyone else in Hopewell, do you?”
He shook his head.
“This is your first visit?”
“This is my first visit.”
They crossed the road at the divide and turned west toward the turnaround and the entry to Riverside. John Ross was looking off toward the cliffs, out to where the Rock River flowed west on both sides of the levy and the railroad tracks. Nest watched him out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be seeing something beyond what he was looking at, his gaze distant and distracted, his expression riddled with pain. He looked almost young to her for an instant, as if the years had dropped away. She thought she could see the boy in him, the way he was maybe twenty years ago, the way he had been before his life had taken him down whatever rough road it was he had traveled.
“Were you in love with my mother?” she asked him suddenly.
He looked at her in surprise, his lean face intense, his green eyes startled. He shook his head. “I think I could have been if I had gotten to know her better, but I didn’t get the chance.” He smiled. “Isn’t that tragic?”
They walked up through the spring-mounted children’s toys toward the spruce groves. “You look like her,” Ross said after a moment.
Nest glanced over at him, watching him limp alongside her, leaning on his staff, his gaze directed ahead to where they were going. “I don’t think I do,” she said. “I don’t think I look like anybody. Which is just as well, because I don’t much like the way I look, just at the moment.”
Ross nodded. “We’re our own worst critics, sometimes.” Then he cocked an eyebrow at her. “But I like the way you look, even if you don’t. So sue me.‘”
She smiled in spite of herself. They passed through the spruce trees to the turnaround and the cliffs. There were two cars parked at the cliff edge and a family on the swings nearby.
She thought back to Bennett Scott and the feeders, picturing it in her mind, remembering the night and the heat and the fear. She thought about Two Bears and wondered suddenly if he was there in the park again. She glanced about to see if she could spy him, but he was nowhere in sight. She let her thoughts of Two Bears and the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi drift away.
She led Ross to the gap in the fence line and through to the cemetery beyond. They walked along the edge of the blacktop roadway, through the rows of