Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,144

patterned with swirling designs, the kind a cartoonist would use to indicate wind.

Elwood wiped the sweat off his face with his forearm and went to him. “What are you doing here, Dad?”

“I always come here.” Which was true. He often dropped by during Elwood’s shift. “Just saying hello.”

Elwood noticed some people in the buffet line staring. “But what are you doing here…like that! Like it’s Halloween.”

“Pretty cool, huh?” He smiled and touched his face lightly and checked his fingers for paint. “I’ll do you later, if you want.”

“I don’t think so, Dad.”

“Okay.” They stood there a moment, just looking at each other, and then Denis said, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know I’m going to a bar tonight. I won’t be home when you get home.”

“You? A bar?” Elwood would not have been more surprised if his father said the world was flat and cows came from outer space.

“I know this may come as a shock to you, Elwood, but I need to have fun. I need to intermingle with people. People of the opposite sex. It’s part of the healing process.”

“Whatever. I don’t care.” Which was not entirely true, but Elwood felt more stunned than upset. “But you can’t go like that. You’ll get beat up.”

“It’s Cowboys and Indians Night down at the Wounded Soldier Tavern. I’m just adhering to dress code.” Here he winked, and Elwood noticed the Atlanta Braves shirt, the fringed buckskin pants, and the moccasin bedroom slippers his father wore. “I’ll see you later, bucko.” With that he patted his mouth with his hand and made a woo-woo noise and rain-danced his way down the aisle and out the door.

Later that night Denis came home with a woman.

From his bed, propped up on his elbow, Elwood heard them laughing in the kitchen and then whispering in the hallway as they tiptoed past him and clicked closed the bedroom door.

There followed a great deal of moaning. Elwood felt simultaneously aroused and disgusted. The bedsprings began to chirp, the headboard began to thud against the wall—and in her final excited release, the woman made these yee-yee-yee noises that reminded Elwood of coyotes barking.

His mind was still hazy from sleep when he shuffled downstairs for breakfast and saw his mother in the kitchen, doing dishes, bending her knees and singing quietly, a sort of undersong to the bluegrass playing on the radio.

She was lovely to look at, her dark rolling hair and soft brown eyes.

Hello, Mom—Elwood thought—Did you know I just can’t seem to get you out of my head? Everywhere I look there you are—at the grocery store where they sell mangoes, your favorite fruit, and in the woods where I see the columbine you might have stuck in vases. And now you have returned to your kitchen, miraculously reincarnated, making me think that night with the rifle was nothing more than an elaborate joke, a dummy covered in ketchup.

One year later and here is the punch line: Dad and I can’t get along without you.

His mother turned to grab a dishcloth. When she turned she turned into an Indian woman who dried a coffee cup. Last night flashed through his mind—he could hardly believe what had happened happened—and she blew on a dirty spot, her lips pursing into kissable goodness, and Elwood wished more than anything he were that cup.

She noticed him standing there and clicked off the radio. “Morning,” she said, and he said, “Hi.”

Her hair was long and black and her face was round and brown. She was pretty, Elwood thought, but a different sort of pretty. Not as pretty as his mother, but close.

She wore blue jeans and an untucked white blouse, wrinkled across its bottom from being tucked in. She wiped her hand off on her thigh and held it out. He took it and she shook like a man would—like: let’s see who can squeeze harder.

She said her name was Kim White Owl, from the Warm Springs Reservation. “You guys are messy, huh? Hardly a clean dish in the house.”

Elwood looked at the counter, where fruit flies swarmed around the pile of dirty dishes. Mostly he and his father ate off paper plates or over the sink, so they wouldn’t have to wash anything.

“What’s with your house?” she said. “What’s with all this stuff?” She poured coffee into her cup—the sunflower cup his mother always drank from—and sort of toasted it at the walls, where the projectile points hung in fanlike displays, and then at the adjacent living room,