Zachary cleared his throat.
“I vote we bury it with him,” he said.
No argument.
“Your point?” said Memory to Fish.
“Record-industry fairy tales,” he replied. “That’s all it is.”
“You ever see him take the strings off his guitar?” asked Zachary.
An owl hooted, and they all shivered.
They didn’t talk about the record industry, or the Devil, any more that night. They went off to their tents and blankets and slept, except Fish. A groupie who dug him crept under his blankets and they stayed awake all night long.
4.
The Devil’s Unusual Constitution
Dayton, Ohio, 2005
THE HOSPITAL PEOPLE HAD to keep reminding John Scratch that he’d been shot.
He had lost consciousness in the limo on the way to the hospital, and when the orderlies reached in to grab him, he woke up.
“What?” he asked, disoriented.
“You’ve been shot, Mr. Scratch,” they told him. “Let us slide you out of there and help you. Sir?”
He was out again.
Next, he woke up on a gurney. Doctors and nurses were rushing him down a bright hallway. Someone had stuck tubes in him. They all looked worried.
Jenna Steele was not among them. She had gone to have her hair done before appearing on camera.
They passed by a waiting area with a wall-mounted TV set, and he saw himself on the screen. Saw himself on a gurney. Twisting his head, peering behind him, he saw—upside down—a techie with a TV camera, following.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“What’s going on?” asked his image on the TV.
“You’ve been shot,” someone told him, echoed on-screen.
He faded to black.
HE WOKE UP during surgery (the Devil had an unusual constitution, and was a light sleeper besides).
“Jesus!” cried one of the surgeons. “What’s with this guy?”
One of the nurses asked, “Don’t you know who this is? It’s that guy from that TV show where they make you an offer, like—”
“I know who he is. Somebody juice him again.”
TV cameras poked over shoulders, under elbows. The surgery had gone out on pay-per-view at fifty bucks a pop.
Instinctively, the Devil smiled for the cameras, and fell back asleep.
Viewer surveys soared when they found the first two bullets in John Scratch’s liver. The rate went up to sixty bucks and kept climbing. It would probably level out, unless it looked like he was going to die. Then the whole thing would spike.
The ratings, however, did spike, five minutes later, when Jenna Steele, hair perfect, burst in, wearing go-go boots and chewing bubble gum.
The cameras left John on the table, fighting for his life, and buzzed like a hive around Jenna.
She looked like she might be a little drunk. She often was. Her music was a billion-dollar teen-pop industry all its own, though. No matter what she did. Last month at the zoo, she had opened her blouse in public, on camera, and pretended to breast-feed John Scratch. The outraged public paid ten million dollars to watch.
The ratings bounced again, just a little, when John’s health insurance agent came charging through, gloved and gowned in his company’s trademark blue.
“Take your hands off that,” the agent commanded. “He’s not covered for that.”
“That’s his liver,” said the doc.
“You’ll have to sign for it, then,” said the agent, and they had a five-minute paperwork break, during which the Devil woke up, moaned in pain, and gasped.
“What—?”
“You’ve been shot, babe,” crooned Jenna Steele.
The Devil gave her a funny look.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
He’d been meaning to break up with her. Now suddenly seemed like a good time to do it. But before he could say anything, sleep tackled him again.
Jenna Steele tried to blow a bubble and accidentally spit her gum into a nurse’s hair. The gum sat there like a tiny pink topknot.
The cameras ate it up.
“Cute,” said millions of viewers.
5.
Soulful Cats at the Crossroads
Kansas, 1969
GETTING DAN PAUL BURIED was easier than expected. The morning after he died, the band caravanned into the next Kansas town on the map, arranged for a cheap casket with no embalming, and sang songs around his fresh grave. Fish stopped at the post office on their way out of town and sent telegrams to the studio, and to the booking agents who’d hired them for various gigs.
“We’re sticking with our schedule,” said the telegrams, more or less, “Dan Paul or no Dan Paul.”
Then they climbed into their spacey, swirly Microbuses and headed east, leaving the World’s Grooviest Guitar Player to decompose among strangers.
DRIVING THROUGH THE night, listening to the radio, the three musicians heard themselves on the airwaves, singing “Down in the Hole.”
The deejay read a news bulletin about how Dan Paul Overfield, who might have been the greatest guitar hero ever, had died on the road, and how sad that was. He said nothing about the surviving band, on its way to upstate New York.
Memory, tired but not sleepy, watched the highway roll at them out of the night and thought about the difference a day made.
One very heavy day. For the first time in her brief set of memories, something seemed like a long time ago, and it made her sad. She thought about the crowds they had played for, the crowds they were going to play for: crowds in front of stages, in city clubs, adoring her on the radio, maybe television, too.
It occurred to her that famous people probably weren’t superior to other kinds of people. They were maybe a little inferior, because they had a hole in them so vast that only the attention of thousands—millions—could fill it. Memory wanted thousands of people to think about her, to keep her in their mind’s eye so she wouldn’t just evaporate like her past.
She was fighting tears when the bus—the red bus, the one that hadn’t broken down yet—lurched beneath her. Something creaked like an old door.
“Transmission,” groaned Zachary, behind the wheel.
“Suspension,” argued one of the roadies, eating beef jerky in the back.
The creaking faded, and the Microbus, for the moment, rolled on.
“She needs new shocks,” the roadie elaborated, “or one of these days we’re going to hit a bump and go scraping down the highway on our ass.”
“She needs all kinds of shit,” snapped Fish, yawning and sitting up. “None of which we can afford.”
“Call the studio,” suggested Zachary.
“You call ’em,” said Fish, kicking the back of Zachary’s seat. “They’re probably going crazy trying to get ahold of us anyway, so they can tell us to tear up our contract and come home.”
“Stop kicking,” said Zachary.
“Shit,” said Fish, folding his arms and crossing his legs until he became a petulant, sleep-deprived ball. “Maybe we should call ’em. Get it over with.”
“You don’t know—” began Zachary.
“Like hell I don’t! Who’s going to honor a contract with a band whose one big-name musician is fucking dead? We should have finished having this conversation last night, but we’re too scared to face facts. It’s over. You know it and I know it. So why are we still burning gas we can’t afford?”
Something in the engine gave a knock.
“Vapor,” said Zachary.
“Vapor,” agreed the roadie. “Are we going to get paid?”
“Yes,” said Memory. “One way or another.”
“With what?” asked Fish. “Weed? After the studio tells us to bring their buses back and sign over the rest of our gas money?”
Memory said nothing.
Neither did Zachary. He was too busy wondering what lay ahead for him if the band folded. Instead of being famous and influential and maybe having
a chance to change the world, maybe he could get a job as a bouncer. A lot of big Apaches were bouncers. Just what he’d always dreamed of … a glorious life of drunks and blood and bad vibes.
Fish, simmering, thought similar things. It had looked as if they might make a ton of money, given another year. So much for that. It pissed him off. He liked money. People treated you differently if you had it. Money was a girl magnet. Money was a magnet for more money.
Memory looked out the window and thought about all the years she couldn’t remember. Like thinking about the time before you were born. One of the nice things about singing to crowds was that someone, at any moment, might recognize her, shout her name, introduce her to herself.
Without memory, what was a person, really? Without it, all you had was now, that patch of black ice between the past and future.
The ache became too painful to bear in silence.
“We can’t just let this end,” she said, voice cracking.
It would have been hard to find any three people, anywhere, who felt more cheated, more frustrated, more like screaming, than these three. Because they missed Dan Paul, and what Dan Paul had made of them. Because nothing crushes the heart faster than touching something bright and rare and wonderful and then having it snatched away before you can grasp it.
“Memory—” Zachary started, but just watched her reflection in the windshield instead, not sure how to comfort her. The shocks creaked.
Fish leaned forward. He pulled a half-burned joint from his shirt pocket and lit up. He inhaled deeply and passed the joint to Zachary. Zachary took a short hit and said, “We’re not stoned enough to be having this conversation,” and inhaled again, “but I say we go to the crossroads.”
“You gotta be joking,” said Memory, waving the joint away. “I mean, how do you go about, I mean, what do you even do?”
“The crossroads,” said Zachary. “Every story I’ve ever heard about the Devil—”
“Then what?” asked Fish. “Is there some magic Apache dance or you cast a spell or do the evil eye or what?”
“I think you just go there. Finding him isn’t supposed to be the hard part.”
Memory threw up her hands. Fish took another hit. Zachary chewed on his lip. In the silence that followed, they decided to actually do it.
“When?” asked Memory.
Zachary shrugged his mighty shoulders.
“Now,” he said.
Memory changed her mind about the joint.
THE DEVIL IS usually nearby when you want him.
Not this time, though. He was on vacation.
He’d had a good year. A good decade. He had pushed his pet nation hard, and the ball was rolling.
They were stuck in a nasty jungle war, in Vietnam. War meant new discoveries and money. There was also a war being waged at home, by people demanding justice and equality.
They had just walked on the moon! Now whenever anyone, anywhere in the world, looked at the moon in the sky, they would know it was an American moon.
And there was a revolution, of a kind. Young people called hippies who insisted on “Being Themselves.”
Yes, America was boiling. People down here on Earth were evolving, and when people could think for themselves and fly to the moon, what did they need God for anyway?
The Devil stood in the middle of the Magic Kingdom, at Disneyland, dressed in Bermudas, a straw hat, and a plaid shirt. He looked like an insurance salesman. All American men looked like that on vacation.
When Americans were working, thought the Devil, adjusting his sunglasses, they built cars and roads. On vacation, though, they came to silly places like this, where they paid too much for everything and stood in long lines.
In four hundred years, he still hadn’t figured Americans out.
Minnie Mouse and Goofy came lolloping his way from opposite directions. He dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the ground and sat on a nearby bench, hoping they’d fight over it.
They didn’t. Goofy picked it up and turned it in at the Lost and Found.
The Devil got a snow cone and headed for the parking lot.
Found his car, a midnight-blue Lincoln.
Sometimes people stared at the Devil’s car, wondering why it looked familiar. Those who thought about it long enough, or searched their memories hard enough, were usually horrified. Sometimes they took pictures.
The Devil always smiled for the pictures. He was proud of his car.
IT TOOK HIM two hours to leave the L.A. traffic behind. He turned east, toward the Mojave and Death Valley, and turned on the radio. His straw hat almost blew away as he gathered speed off the Barstow exit. He caught it with a long, nimble claw, laid it on the passenger seat, and settled in for a long ride. Maybe all night.
The roads the Devil traveled were not always on the map. Strange forces and realities attended him. Sometimes, on the Devil’s road, it was day when it should have been night. Quite often, the sun and moon shared the sky and eclipsed each other.
Something like a campfire song was playing on the radio. Catchy! The Devil turned it up. It was a cheerful number called “Cruel April,” about people who had been executed in the springtime.
The guitar player could make the guitar talk. Made it sound like three guitars, at least, having a conversation. The singer’s voice seemed to echo, faintly, as if accompanied by its own ghost:
Clark Freeman, gas chamber! Such a pretty day!
Winter’s dyin’! Dandelion! Cyanide spray!
It was the Devil’s kind of song. He tapped his long nails on the steering wheel and left the highway. Ahead, two roads crossed between cornfields. Mist poured through the corn, washing over the road. A swirly-painted Microbus sat parked on the shoulder, to his right. In front of the Microbus, three hippies sat holding hands in a circle. Two boys and a girl.
The Devil parked his car on the opposite shoulder and climbed out. He didn’t look like a tourist anymore. He looked like an old hippie: long-haired and tan, with a Fu Manchu beard, Lennon glasses, shirt completely open, boots and jeans.
These kids would expect horns, so he had horns.
“I like that gas-chamber song,” he said, crossing the road, pocketing his keys.
Three pairs of eyes goggled at him.
They were petrified. He had known they would be.
“Let me know when you’re ready to talk,” he said. Then he stepped into the middle of the crossroads, stirred up a campfire out of nowhere, and began roasting a marshmallow.
Dammit. They always caught on fire, no matter how careful he was.
He peeled the black skin and captured it with a long, prehensile tongue, careful not to get it in his beard.
“Hey,” said the girl, beside him.
“Hey back,” he said.
“Is this for real?” she asked.
“You came to the crossroads at midnight. What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t think we thought anything was going to happen, really. I don’t think any of us really believe in the Devil.”
“Do you believe now?”
“I don’t know. Do we believe now, Zachary?”
One of the boys, an Indian with the body and face of a cliff, had joined them.
Before Zachary could answer, the other boy stopped beside the Devil’s car.
“Hey!” he bellowed. “Far out! This is the Kennedy limo, isn’t it? From Dallas! Holy shit!”
The Devil nodded proudly, and Fish joined them at the fire.
“He made a fire out of nowhere,” Zachary told Fish.
“I think I’m scared,” said the girl.
“Let’s go for a ride,” said the Devil.
He opened the shotgun door for Memory. Zachary sat on a jump seat, behind the Devil. Fish sat all the way in back.
“This is right where he sat,” bubbled Fish. “This is where Kennedy fucking died, man.”
They rolled off into the mist.
Fields and trees flashed by. The wind tossed their hair. Mist s
oaked their clothes.
“What do you want?” asked the Devil.
In the back, Fish started to say something, but the Devil interrupted.
“Think about it. Even if you already have. Think about it some more. Then tell me.”
“All of us?” asked the girl. “Or each of us, personally?”
“That’s up to you,” he answered. “But be careful.”
They were all quiet for a while.
They passed through a town with a mighty limestone courthouse. The courthouse dome held a giant clock, lit from inside. Beside the courthouse, railroad tracks.
The Devil stopped at the tracks. Moments later, the gates lowered, flashing and dinging, and a train rumbled out of the dark.
The Devil liked trains.
The gates went up. They cruised out of town, past a Purina grain elevator and a dead tree.
“I want to be famous,” said the girl. “It’s what I started out wanting. And we were almost there. I guess I mean I want to be famous without Dan Paul. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s like—”
The Devil raised a hand, silencing her. “A little talk goes a long way,” he said.
The limo caught a cloud of fireflies unawares. They struck the windshield and splattered into green luminescence.
Fish spoke up.
“I want money,” he said. “I’ve thought about it hard. When I get right down to it, that’s why I practiced so hard to do this music shit. When I think about records and playing gigs, that’s the thing I think about.”
“I get it,” said the Devil.
They passed a Greyhound bus.
Zachary didn’t say anything at all until they got back to the crossroads, and then he said, “I want to change the world.”
Up Jumps the Devil Page 3