but standing on the porch and looking down at me
was Grandad. He looked angry.
"What?" I asked.
"You should be in the henhouse,"
"Not this soon. Grandad. I wouldn't have been
home this early if I had taken the bus."
"You watch yourself," he warned. He looked in
Chandler's direction.
"The devil has a pleasing face."
Anyone or anything that does is the devil to
you, I wanted to tell him. but I didn't.
Instead. I lowered my head and walked into the
house, away from the fear and the threat that came
from his distrusting eves.
I knew what his trouble was. I thought. He has nothing to bring him out of the
darkness. His only companions were the shadows that
lingered in the corners of our home.
I wasn't at all like him. Rather. I hoped and
prayed I wasn't. His blood flowed through Daddy's
veins and mine, but Grandma Jennie 's and Mommy's
surely overpowered it.
Or else I would face each dawn with just as
much distrust and just as much dreadful expectation. When he lay his head down for the final sleep,
he would finally come out of his darkness only to
enter another. That was what loomed ahead for him. I thought about what Daddy had said about
Uncle Peter and Grandad, how Uncle Peter felt more
pity for him than he did anger toward him.
He might not like it, but I pitied him, too. Even
without Daddy's having told me, I just knew it was
better not to let him know.