Chapter 20: The Entity Tries Denny's Father's Voice

The porch boards needed fixing. Three of them had softened through the winter and now gave under weight with a low creak that Earl had been meaning to address since March, or possibly the March before that. Denny sat in the middle of the good ones, back against the house siding, knees pulled to his chest, and listened to the creek.

It was past ten. His father had gone to bed at eight-thirty, which was early even for Earl, and Denny had sat with him through the news and through the beginning of something on ABC that neither of them watched and then Earl had said, without particular inflection, that he was tired, and Denny had said okay, and Earl had gone inside, and Denny had come out here instead of following him to bed, because he could not sleep, and because tomorrow morning before dawn they were going into the Calloway Mine, and he had not told his father that.

He had not told his father a lot of things.