The Triumph of Evil

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When the doorbell rang, he was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and watching baby birds. A pair of robins had nested in the eaves over the kitchen window. The eggs had hatched a week ago, and since then he had found himself spending hours at a time watching them. There was little drama in it, no cuckoo egg in the robins’ nest, no cats to be warded off, only the constant feeding and attendance by the parent birds and the steady growth and development of the young.

He set his cup down and went to the door, thinking that it would be the girl. “You’re early,” he said, drawing the door open.

There were two men on the step, and the taller man’s brow wrinkled at Dorn’s words. “Then you expected us?”

“No.”

“You are Mr. Dorn? Miles Dorn?”

“Yes.”

“And you are expecting someone?”

“In an hour, perhaps.”

“Then we have time for a conversation,” the taller man said. “May we come in?”

“Of course.”

He led them to the living room. The two sat on opposite ends of his couch, an empty cushion between them. Above and between their heads was a framed print, an English fox hunting scene. It had been there when he took the house, and although it was not to his taste he had decided against removing it. He liked its incongruity — this shabby southern town, this squat house of concrete block and stucco with its motel furniture and plasterboard walls, and this glorified representation of the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.

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