Deliver Us from Evie by M. E. Kerr

dinner on the way.”
    “Patsy and Mr. Duff?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Mrs. Duff, too?”
    “No. She’s busy with her gin bottle.”
    “That’s not kind, Evie.”
    “ She’s not kind. She doesn’t give a damn.”
    “Maybe that’s why Patsy’s the way she is,” Mom said. “Poor child.”
    “Patty’s not a poor child. She’s a survivor. And she’s not the way she is, quote unquote, because of her mother’s drinking.”
    “You don’t know that,” said Mom.
    “Do you think I’m the way I am because of something you and Dad did?”
    “I don’t think it helped that your father got you all interested in repairing tractors and doing other male things. Just because Doug wasn’t good at that kind of work didn’t mean you had to take it on.”
    “Oh, Mom, get real,” said Evie. “I came out of the womb ready to handle tools. I knew how to change a tire when I was six, and when I was ten I could fix anything broken. You couldn’t have learned it if Dad had spent an hour every day of the week instructing you!”
    “Too bad you forgot,” I said. “You could have fixed the mower and saved Cord and me a trip today.” Saved your own neck, too, I thought, because I was looking for something to blame that damn sign on besides myself.
    “Don’t count on me so much,” said Evie. “Not anymore don’t.”
    “Meaning what?” My mother looked up at that remark.
    “I’ve been thinking about living somewhere else.”
    “Where would that be, Evie?”
    “New York. San Francisco. A big city, instead of a hick town.”
    “And what would you do?” said my mother.
    “Get a job and work my way through college. I’d like to learn computers.”
    “Well, you’re good with ours. I don’t know half of what you know about ours,” said Mom. I figured she was handling the whole idea in her usual way: not showing she was upset, playing along with whatever Evie said.
    “ Ours ,” Evie scoffed. “Ours is old hat! Patty’s got a laptop you can send a fax on.”
    “Patty, Patty, Patty,” said Mom.
    “Or Angel, Angel, Angel, when it’s Parr doing the talking,” said Evie.
    Mom looked at me. “And what happened with your date tonight, Parr?”
    “Angel’s got Bible school homework.”
    “One thing I was wrong about,” said Mom. “The Kidders aren’t holy rollers at all. The Church of the Heavenly Spirit is probably much like St. Luke’s. Right, Parr?”
    “The hymns are different.”
    “Oh, well, the hymns are different in the various denominations. That’s not a great difference.”
    “They talk about sin a lot, too,” I said.
    “I think they’re a little more rigid than we are.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
    “But you’d never know it from Angel,” said Evie. “She’s not uptight.”
    Just wait, I thought.
    And it was the waiting that was getting to me, the thought of what was happening probably right about then as Mr. Duff drove past the statue, the waiting for the shit to hit the fan.
    But Evie was still sitting down in our parlor at midnight, and I don’t know how many hours past.
    The phone never rang.

24
    E VERY MORNING AROUND FIVE thirty I got up to use the bathroom, then went back to bed for a half hour. The roosters across the way would be getting up about the same time, and I’d hear them crowing. The sky would be changing from dark blue to light blue.
    I saw Evie’s bed still made, went halfway down the stairs, and saw her sleeping on the couch in her clothes.
    In thirty minutes the clock radio would wake up my folks with the farm report and the day’s prices.
    We had a squeaky mailbox down on the road in front of our house. When it was a quiet day, we could hear the mailman open and shut it.
    That’s what I heard as I was starting back to bed. I knew it couldn’t be any mailman, not at that hour, so I went to the window and looked out in the time to see one of the Duffarm station wagons head down the road. Their wagons were all long white Buick