The Devil_s Workshop

KENNIDI BISHOP CUNNINGHAM BRAVE BEYOND HER YEARS 1991-1995

He seemed rooted there, looking for something meaningful, but he could find no elevating factors. The remembered taste of the "heart starters" he had snuck from his father's bar that morning consumed his thoughts, intensifying his need for a booster. As he stood looking down at the grave, he no longer wanted to blame himself for his daughter's sickness, but self-loathing hovered on the shifting winds of grief and loss. Then his thoughts jumped. Perhaps when he'd started drinking, he'd really only been looking for a way to escape his golden life. Had it been intentionally self-destroyed? Had he been afraid to raise the bar one notch higher, as he had time after time since elementary school, until even heroics in the Gulf War weren't enough to validate him? Had Kennidi's torment been his escape? Had he ducked out on his life using her death as his exit card? Was it possible that he was that hollow, or that selfish? Why, he wondered, did he have such an emptiness? Why was it that nothing he did fulfilled him?

He had begun to suspect that he had lived his life in pursuit of the wrong things, but how could he find the strength to redirect himself or even know what to aim at? His life before Kennidi died had been about trophies and medals; now it was about self-pity and despair. He had jumped out of his comfortable life almost in desperation, but the chute hadn't opened. Instead, he had experienced four years of free fall with his silk canopy streaming uselessly above him, flapping and tugging at his shoulders like ghostly memories. There was almost no time left; the ground was coming at him fast. The impact would be sudden and devastating. He had no solution.

The sun was finally setting, and the approaching night cooled his freshly shaved head. He wondered what he should do. He didn't want to sleep in doorways or under railroad bridges anymore, but he couldn't stand his old bedroom. No place seemed like home. He desperately needed a drink.

"I still owe you a meal," a voice said, pulling him out of these thoughts.

Cris turned and looked at a pretty blond woman standing just behind him. He could see his father down the hill, waiting by the car. He couldn't place her for a minute, but she looked familiar.

"Stacy," she said, reading the confusion in his eyes. "You cleaned up after my raccoons."

Then he nodded and smiled weakly, exposing the temporary tooth put in that afternoon.

Stacy almost couldn't recognize him. The long, greasy blond hair had been completely shaved off. He stood before her, bald-headed and sallow-cheeked; the skin around his eyes was mottled and unhealthy-looking. His shoulders were hunched, but at least the garbage bags had been replaced by expensive brown loafers.

"That's not much of a haircut," she said, smiling at him.

Absent-mindedly he rubbed his hand over his shaved head. "It's not a haircut, it's a medical procedure. Guy hit me with a wrench. Took fifteen stitches." He turned and exposed a nasty cut on the back of his head.

"Ouch," she said, then after a moment, "Listen, Mr. Cunningham… Cris… I need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"It's about Mike Brazil and Sidney Saunders, and that whole horrible disaster up at Vanishing Lake."

"Oh," he said, and then they both fell silent as a gust of wind blew dry leaves across the raised metal names of the dead.