Divine Evil

Less Gladhill, Bob Meese, and Bud Hewitt. Cam walked beside his mother. They didn't touch.
    Clare got out of her car and, turning away, walked up the slope of the hill. Birds were singing as birds do on warm May mornings. The grass smelled strong and sweet. Here and there among the stones and plaques were plastic flowers or wreaths. They wouldn't fade. Clare wondered if the people who had placed them there realized how much sadder their bright artificial colors were than drooping carnations or dying daisies.
    There was family here. Her mother's mother and father, great-aunts and uncles, a young cousin who had died of polio long before Clare had been born. She walked among them while the sun stung her eyes and warmed her face.
    She didn't kneel at her father's grave. She hadn't brought flowers. She didn't weep. Instead she stood, reading his headstone over and over, trying to find some sense of him there. But there was nothing but granite and grass.
    As he stood beside his mother, Cam watched Clare. The sun turned her hair to copper. Bright and brilliant. Alive. His fingers flexed as he realized just how much he needed to touch life. Each time he put a hand on his mother's arm, her shoulder, her back, he was met with a cold wall. She had nothing for him, not even need.
    Yet he couldn't leave her, couldn't turn away as he wanted to and go to Clare, put a hand on that bright, brilliant hair, absorb that life, that need.
    He hated cemeteries, he thought, and remembered staring down into the empty grave of a child.
    When Clare walked away, returned to her car, drove away, he knew what it was to be utterly alone.
    * * *
    Clare worked furiously for the rest of the day. Driven. Her second metal sculpture was almost done. When it was time to let the steel cool, she would turn off her torch, strip off her skullcap, and take up the clay model of Ernie's arm.
    She couldn't bear to rest.
    With knives and hands and wooden pallets, she carved and smoothed and formed. She could feel the defiance as she shaped the fist. The restlessness as she detailed the taut muscles of the forearm. Patiently, she carved away minute scraps of clay with thin wire, then smoothed and textured with a damp brush.
    The music blared on her radio-the edgiest, grittiest rock she could find on the dial. Sparked with energy, she washed the clay from her hands, but she didn't rest. Couldn't. At another worktable sat a slab of cherry wood with much of its center already carved away. She took up her tools, mallet, chisels, calipers, and poured that nervous energy into her work.
    She stopped only when the sun lowered enough to force her to switch on lights, then to turn the music from rock to classical, just as passionate, just as driving. Cars cruised by unheard. The phone rang, but she ignored it.
    Her other projects faded completely from her mind. She was part of the wood now, part of its possibilities. And the wood absorbed her emotions. Cleansed them. She had no sketch, no model. Only memories and needs.
    For the fine carving, her fingers were deft and sure. Her eyes burned, but she rubbed the back of her wrist over them and kept going. The fire in her, rather than banking, grew and grew.
    Stars came out. The moon started its rise.
    Cam saw her bent over her work, a wood file flashing in her hand. Overhead the bright, naked bulbs burned, drawing pale, wide-winged moths to their death dance. Music soared, all slashing strings and crashing bass.
    There was a glow of triumph on her face, in her eyes. Every few moments, she would stroke her fingers over the curve of wood in a form of communication he recognized but couldn't understand.
    There was something raw and powerful in the shape. It swept down, forming an open profile. As he stepped inside the garage, he could see that it was a face, eerily masculine, a head lifted back and up as if toward the sun.
    He didn't speak and lost track of the time as he watched her. But he could feel the passion trembling out of her. It reached him and clashed almost painfully with his own.
    Clare set the tools aside. Slowly, she slid from the stool to step back. Her breath was coming fast, so fast she instinctively pressed a hand to her heart. Pain mixed with pleasure as she studied what she had been driven to create.
    Her father. As she remembered him. As she had loved him. Dynamic, energized, loving. Alive. Most of all alive. Tonight, finally, she had found a way to celebrate his life.
    She turned and looked at Cam.
    She