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said, “Eyes and a smile.”
    â€œSomeone is there in the woods,” I said as the figure became evident to me.
    â€œA dark figure, spying from the woods,” said the nun. “Who is it?”
    â€œThe devil,” said Mary.
    â€œYou’re a smart girl,” said the nun. “Satan. Do you see how much this looks like a scene from the Garden of Eden? Well, the painter is showing us that just as Adam and Eve were subject to temptation, to death, so were the Savior and His mother. So are we all.”
    â€œWhy is he hiding?” asked Jim.
    â€œHe’s waiting and watching for the right moment to strike. He’s clever.”
    â€œBut the devil isn’t real,” said Jim. “My father told me.”
    She smiled sweetly at us. “Oh, the devil is real, child. I’ve seen him. If you don’t pay attention, he’ll take you.”
    â€œGood-bye now,” whispered Mary, who took my hand and pulled me toward the steps.
    â€œWhat does he look like?” asked Jim.
    I didn’t want to be there, but I couldn’t move. I thought the nun would get angry, but instead her smile intensified, and her face went from pleasant to scary.
    Mary pulled my arm, and we took off up the stairs. Not bothering to stop in the canteen, we kept going up the next set of steps to the outside and only rested when we made it to the bench by the fountain. We waited there for some time, hypnotized by the cascading water, before Jim finally showed up.
    â€œYou chickens should be hung for mutiny,” he said as he approached.
    â€œMary was afraid,” I said. “I had to get her out of there.”
    â€œCheck your own shorts,” he said, shaking his head. “But she told me a secret.”
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œHow to spot the devil when he walks the earth. That’s what Sister Joe said, ‘when he walks the earth,’” said Jim, and he started laughing.
    â€œShe was the devil,” said Mary, staring into the water.
    That night, back at home, the wine flowed, and my parents danced in the living room to the Ink Spots on the Victrola. Something dire was up, I could tell, because they didn’t talk and there was a joyless gravity to their spins and dips.
    Before we turned in, Nan came over from next door and told us that while we were out she had heard from Mavis across the street that the prowler had struck again. When Mavis’s husband, Dan, had taken out the trash, he heard something moving in their grape arbor. He called out, “Who’s there?” Of course there was no answer, but he saw a shadow and a pair of eyes. Dan was an airline pilot who flew all over the world, and one of his hobbies was collecting old weapons. He ran inside and fetched a long knife from Turkey that had a wriggled bladelike a flat, frozen snake. Mavis had told Nan that he charged out the back door toward the arbor, but halfway there tripped on a divot in the lawn, fell, and stabbed his own thigh. By the time he was able to hobble back beneath the hanging grapes, the prowler had vanished.
    While my mother sat in her rocker, eyes closed, rocking to the music, Jim and I arm-wrestled my father a few times, and then Mary danced with him, her bare feet on his shoes. “Bed,” my mother finally said, her eyes still closed.
    At the top of the stairs before Jim and I went into our separate rooms, he said to me, “He walks the earth.” I laughed, but he didn’t. George followed me to bed and lay by my feet, falling asleep instantly. He kicked his back leg three times and growled in his dreams. I stayed awake for a while, listening to my parents’ hushed conversation down in the living room, but I couldn’t make anything out.
    I wasn’t the least bit tired, so I got up and went over to my desk. Nan’s talking about Mavis and Dan gave me the idea to capture them in my notebook before I forgot. All I found interesting about Dan were