The Evolution of Alice Read Online Free Page B

field, playing tag or hide-and-seek or some game like that, and walked up to Alice, and we exchanged greetings bit by bit each time she swung by me. That’s how I found out about what happened that morning, in bits and pieces, each time she passed by.
    “You believe in God, Gideon?”
    “Why?”
    Then she’d be gone, up in the air. On her way down, there was another exchange.
    “My girls saw an angel, you know.”
    “What? When?”
    Up, then down.
    “When Ryan was beating on me.”
    “How?”
    Up again, then back down, and all I pretty much did was recite “when, what, why, and how” as she said all she wanted to say.
    It was a long conversation to have that way, but as I heard more and more I wasn’t about to ask her to come down from the tire swing. Up there, she was safe, and the girls were safe and that was that. After she told me everything, she stopped pumping her legs, and after a few minutes her swinging settled into a light rocking. Made our visit a lot easier. I saw her struggling with it a bit, her brain that is. So I decided to say something all Elder-like to her. I pointed to an old dirt road just about 20 yards to our right. It was pretty much grown over with grass, you could hardly see it, but it was still a road. It went right through the field, right up to the distant tree line, and got tinier and tinier on its way.
    “You know, my grandpa used to tell me that all the roads around here just lead us right back home,” I said.
    I wasn’t even sure what the connection was, and after I’d said it I kind of felt dumb about it. I tried to figure what I was getting at, for Alice and for me, so I added, “But, I don’t know, maybe he was wrong, maybe roads take us to where we’re s’posed to be.”
    Alice crunched her eyebrows up and looked at me funny. “Are we talking about real roads, or pretend ones? Like … figurative roads?” she said.
    She knew those big words from all the reading she did. Lots of books, she read. I didn’t read much, me, but I knew that word from my grandpa, so I said, “Figurative ones. Like, the paths we take in life.”
    “I don’t know. I think your grandpa was right.” She paused, then added, “Anyway, just because they saw a man doesn’t mean they weren’t imagining it. You know? They don’t have to lie about that if they thought they saw somebody. You ever had an imaginary friend?”
    “Not one that locked me in a bathroom away from that jerk-off boyfriend of yours,” I said. I meant it, too. I knew her ex, and he was a piece of work. The day he got hauled away was a good day, and I wasn’t the only one who thought that. “But, if they’ve got an angel lookin’ over their shoulders, it’s not anything to worry about, is it?”
    “I guess not,” she said.
    We stood there in silence for a few minutes. She was looking out across the field at her girls, watching as their heads bounced in and out of view from the long grass. But I could tell her mind was somewhere else, and I didn’t have any other brilliant things to say to make things better.
    “I’m glad my mom is dead, in a way. At least today I am,” she said, “because she’d have my ass in church in a second.”
    “Well, maybe that isn’t such a bad idea, you know.”
    She shook her head and patted the tire like it was a faithful ol’ dog.
    “I got my church right here,” she said.
    I wasn’t about to argue with her about that. Even gave the tire a pat, too. I left her there to go and do my own things. She invited me over that night and I promised I’d try to make it back to see her. I didn’t see her until the morning, though. I’d like to tell you it was for something important, that I was doing something meaningful and just couldn’t go, but the truth is I fell asleep on the couch watching one of them
Law and Order
shows. I’ll probably always think about how I screwed up like that. I remember before I fell asleep I was thinking about that old road and what I was trying to