"That's it!"
"And did it have pointed ears and evil eyes with fire in 'em, and did it
stare at you all wicked-like?" he asked.
"Yes! Yes! You've seen it, too?"
"Better believe I have. It's that old ornery bastard Demon."
Dad said he had been chasing Demon for years. By now, Dad said, that
old Demon had figured out that it had better not mess with Rex Walls.
But if that sneaky son of a gun thought it was going to terrorize Rex
Walls's little girl, it had by God got another think coming. "Go fetch my
hunting knife," Dad said.
I got Dad his knife with the carved bone handle and the blade of blue
German steel, and he gave me a pipe wrench, and we went looking for
Demon. We looked under my bed, where I had seen it, but it was gone.
We looked all around the house—under the table, in the dark corners of
the closets, in the toolbox, even outside in the trash cans.
"C'mere, you sorry-ass old Demon!" Dad called out in the desert night.
"Come out and show your butt-ugly face, you yellow-bellied monster!"
"Yeah, c'mon, you old mean Demon!" I said, waving the pipe wrench in
the air. "We're not scared of you!"
There was only the sound of the coyotes in the distance. "This is just like
that chickenshit Demon," Dad said. He sat down on the front step and lit
up a cigarette, then told me a story about the time Demon was terrorizing
an entire town, and Dad fought it off in hand-to-hand combat, biting its
ears and sticking his fingers in its eyes. Old Demon was terrified because
that was the first time it had met anyone who wasn't afraid of it.
"Damned old Demon didn't know what to think," Dad said, shaking his