“Listen!” And he did his best to describe the bottle in the white wagon, which had been chewed up and knocked over by the same explosion that had eaten the Devil.
“This wagon?” The soldier gestured.
“Yes.”
The soldier looked puzzled, and the Devil found himself in strange circumstances. He had never begged for anything before, not even from God, not in all of time and history. Suddenly he found himself begging.
He blacked out again.
Then he felt his head lifted, tilted back. Felt something warm and heavy slide down his throat.
It tasted like piss, and he fought the urge to spit it out. Instead, he lay patiently as the bottle emptied.
HIS BODY FILLED like one of the great observation balloons, capturing hot air.
He felt himself coming together. Swelling and hardening like an erection. Filling again with the thing that made him bigger on the inside than the man he was on the outside. The golden and forever thing.
It happened slowly. Too slowly.
He tried to get up.
“Don’t,” said the kind soldier.
The Devil went dizzy, and fell. Frustrated, he collapsed on the grass.
After a while, the soldier summoned stretcher bearers, who scooped him up and bore him off to a hospital tent.
SOME DAYS LATER, he went marching over this hill and that, until he came upon Daughterry roasting sausages over a small fire. Nearby sat the wagon, more or less repaired. Millie, recovered, stood hitched in the traces, apparently pulling double duty in memory of poor Fern.
The Devil held a kerchief over his face. Gettysburg, after the battle, was an open, stinking grave. When Daughterry half turned and caught sight of him, his face was tied up in a red sheet the size of a tablecloth.
The dead blanketed the ground, draped over rocks and stones, festering and bloating in creeks, in the sun. Pigs chewed them. The bodies swelled, popping buttons. Sometimes the bodies themselves popped. Clouds of blowflies drifted low. Black birds of all sizes crowded the air.
Daughterry offered him a sausage and said, “Well?”
“You were right,” said the Devil. “It’s harder than it looks.”
Daughterry gave a satisfied sort of nod and snort.
“All the more reason,” continued the Devil, “to press the matter and get it done with.” His eyes fell on the body of a young soldier. A southern soldier. He might have been fourteen. The Devil hoisted the dead boy like a puppet.
“To be ordered into a deadly fight and walk straight into your own death. Knowing that you might be made a monster—disfigured, torn apart, or burned. The horror is unconscionable. The horror itself is a wound.”
“Yet—”
“UNCONSCIONABLE!” the Devil roared, eyes bleeding, shaking the dead soldier. “Men should think about these things before they send soldiers to fight in terror for years, because their leaders are too cowardly to really fight, decide the issue and get it over with. Any animal could teach our leaders how to war!” He paused to spit fire. “Any animal has more respect for its young.”
He flung the dead boy away.
“War is necessary,” he said, bringing himself under control. “But it doesn’t have to go on and on! A thrust here, a charge there, for years and years, eating up boys like dog food. If we’re going to have wars, and we are, then they need to be quick and terrible. A war shouldn’t chew like a kitten. It should pounce and devour like a tiger! Do its job and get back in its cage.”
Daughterry nodded, surveying the battlefield with a keen sadness he hadn’t felt before.
“And people need to see pictures of it, not so they can get used to it, and not care if it goes on and on. But so they can be sickened by it, and want to do it right, and get it done with. Maybe the day will come when they won’t want to do it at all. But today isn’t that day, and men learn slowly.”
After a time, the sadness passed, and something else crossed his mind. The corners of his mouth twitched, almost but not quite forming a smile.
“So,” he said to the Devil. “You were wrong.”
The Devil still looked sad. He looked far, far away. He said, “What’s that?”
“You just admitted that you were wrong. It surprises me. That’s all.”
The Devil looked ever farther away. His voice on the air sounded as if it were crossing oceans and years.
“I get everything wrong,” he said. “Maybe that’s my job.”
The sun sat in the sky as if nailed there, dulled by smoke. Daughterry and the Devil stared at it for a time.
Then the Devil seemed to shake himself awake. He rubbed his eyes and turned away. He made himself busy around the fire.
A soft wind blew. A summer breeze that would have been pretty, except that it stank.
23.
Jenna’s Live Multimedia Near Suicide
Dayton, Ohio, 2005
JOHN SCRATCH THE TV STAR was in surgery again. This time, though, he was too mad to fall asleep at all. The anesthesiologist finally gave up and went away, leaving the doctors to operate under their patient’s very direct, very burning gaze.
The Devil hadn’t found a silver lining to getting shot, so far.
How come his wounds didn’t just slam shut, like in the old days? He wished Arden would come to him. Didn’t she know what was happening? She should be here. Why wasn’t she?
He coughed blood, and closed his eyes.
“That’s better,” said the surgeon.
Gloved and gowned behind the lead surgeon, the insurance agent grinned beneath his mask.
“Lucky break on the anesthetic,” he said. “I’ll bet more people could forgo that, if they gave it the old college try.”
As he fell asleep at last, the Devil decided that when he recovered, he was going to eat that guy’s soul like a corn dog.
“THEY FOUND HER!” cried the Devil’s nurse, almost tumbling into his hospital room. “They found her! They found her! They found her!”
The Devil opened one fiery eye.
“Jenna,” gulped the nurse. “Miss Steele. They found her.”
“The police?”
She shook her head. “The phone people traced her down. She kept sending multimedia to her fan clubs, and the phone company was like ‘She’s on Third Street!’ She’s on TV, right now.”
The Devil found the TV remote.
Jenna Steele filled the screen from several perspectives, in three separate interactive boxes. One was a police camera, filming from behind as they chased her up a flight of parking garage stairs. Another was a feed from the parking garage surveillance cameras, and the other was Jenna’s own cell phone, in which her face—sweaty, desperate, but perfectly made up—appeared; she was breathing hard, and crying.
“I love you, Johnny!” she bawled.
“Stop!” yelled the police.
BANG! She threw herself against an exit door and ran onto the parking garage roof.
“She loves you,” sighed the nurse, enraptured.
On the screen, Jenna Steele hopped up on the wall, and teetered at the edge of a five-story drop. An online poll asked subscribers if she should jump.
“The bitch shot me,” the Devil reminded the nurse.
The online poll came back split: 51 percent Jump, 49 percent Don’t.
On the TV, on five million phone screens, Jenna jumped.
“Johnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnny!” she screamed, all the way down.
She landed on a Dumpster, smashed through the plastic lids into a half ton of medical waste.
Would she live? Polls were 57 percent in favor.
JENNA SURVIVED her fall.
The Devil awakened to hear them moving her in down the hall, crowded round by press and police.
“I love you, Johnny!” he heard her cry.
A herd of minicams came to see the Devil.
This had to be more celebrity drama, mused the Devil, than Ohio had ever seen.
“Whaddya say, Johnny?” gushed the webcasters, pushing
doctors, nurses, and insurance thugs out of the way. “Seventy percent want to see what your baby would look like.”
“The bitch shot me!” he said.
“Yeah …” The press seemed bewildered. “But seventy percent!”
The Devil’s eyes glowed. His teeth sharpened. The skin over his forehead began to part, revealing—Something snapped in his chest.
“Get someone,” he tried to tell them, but he couldn’t get his breath.
Fifty-eight percent of subscribers texted that Johnny didn’t look so hot.
So they went to get someone.
24.
Some Kind of Cult Rip-Off
Apache Junction, 1979
IN JULY, Zachary’s dad died.
Just died. Proud Henry was having something like a normal day, watching TV. Mom brought him some things, like a sandwich and a crossword-puzzle book, and they talked about the cracked tile on the front walk. He took a nap after lunch, and Mom came in and found him dead.
Just like that (finger snap).
IT WASN’T EASY for Zachary to get away for the funeral.
He had a computer company up and running, for one thing. Bullhorse Technologies. Bullhorse had been featured in every tech publication in the world, and had made the cover of Time magazine (a photo of a home-computer monitor, under the title slug “The Face of the Future”). The company consisted of himself, an accountant, fifteen technicians, and a kick-ass patent lawyer, and it was like a child he’d never left home alone before. Speaking of children, he also had a dead, frozen, illegally interred four-year-old in a hot-water heater in his extra bedroom, sucking up secrecy and electricity.
So he left the technicians in charge of themselves, the accountant in charge of the lawyer, the lawyer in charge of securing the rights to whatever the technicians did, and went home to Apache Junction.
PROUD HENRY’S FUNERAL was well attended. Zachary and his mother were pleased to discover that they had been forgiven, by and large, for the Horizon debacle. It had taken a couple of years to get his clients buried, but buried they were, and time had passed. No one offered any but kind words at the graveside.
April Michael’s father came to the picnic, afterward, at the Bull Horse home. He had lost weight, and seemed afraid to ask Zachary about anything but the article in Time.
“I still have her,” Zachary assured him. “That’s not going to change.”
“What about money?”
“I have money,” said Zachary. “As long as I’ve got money, she’s paid up.”
April Michael, by God, was going to make it to the future.
BEFORE HE LEFT, Zachary asked his mom if she felt like moving to San Francisco, and she said, “Not yet.”
He drove his rental car out to the cemetery and stood over Proud Henry’s new grave. It didn’t seem fair; Dad had put up with dead future-people stuffed in his garage, and had never complained. Now that it was his turn, into the ground he went, and straight to the afterlife to take his chances.
“Do you want to know?” someone asked, just behind him.
The Devil. Dressed in black. Standing there holding a single white rose.
“Know?”
“What’s next. Heaven, Hell, nothing. I’ll tell you.”
“No, I don’t want to know.”
“Sorry about your dad,” said the Devil, handing him the rose. “Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic.”
“Thanks.”
He took the rose, smelled it, and laid on the grave.
Back at his very large Frisco home, Zachary stopped in April Michael’s room. He stood in the dark before the softly humming capsule.
“Your dad says hi,” he told her.
LESS THAN A MONTH after the funeral, Zachary’s mother moved out of Apache Junction without bothering to sell the house.
“I’m in New England,” she told him, over the phone. “There’s this nice community out here, kind of like a farm. Everybody does some of the work, and most of the money they make goes back into the farm. I like it. And the people are nice. They do everything for themselves.”
“I don’t like it,” Zachary told his mother. “Sounds like some kind of cult rip-off.”
And she told him, “Zachary, honey, I wasn’t really asking what you thought. After ten years of picking up after you and Henry, it’s nice to be someplace where people pull their own weight. I love you. Maybe I can get out there at Christmas.”
Zachary sat staring at the phone for fifteen whole minutes.
25.
Showbiz in the Time of the Black Death
Dayton, Ohio, 2005
THE DEVIL LAY in his hospital bed, dreaming of low times. His dreams and memories took him to Spain, in the time of the Black Death.
HE COULDN’T REALLY complain about the Black Death. It was his idea.
There were too many people, and not enough land. So they fought like animals over the land, until the Devil got sick of it and loosed the plague on them.
He rode a funny little donkey from village to village, saddlebags teeming with fleas, marking his progress by columns of smoke as villagers burned their dead behind him.
It was grim work, even for the Devil. He drank more than usual. One week in Salamanca, it was almost the end of him.
He hit the city gates at noon on a Friday, after a particularly macabre week in the provinces. Brushing ash from his jacket, he tied up his donkey, and stepped into a public house for a sack of ale. Out on the street, he fell to drinking with the thespians of a penniless traveling circus. He bought the acrobats and magicians bread and beer all around. In return, they entertained him.
They tumbled. They recited poems and balanced things on their noses. There was no hint of trouble until one of the magicians made his hat disappear (tumblers had eaten his rabbit), and the Devil, feeling competitive in his cups, made the magician disappear into thin air. The fellow popped unharmed out of a nearby hay wagon, but the harm was done.
Tricks were one thing. Serious black magic was another.
The circus folk averted their eyes and backed away.
Soldiers of the Inquisition invaded the Devil’s room before dawn, and by lunchtime he was sentenced to burn for witchcraft.
His head hurt. He wasn’t in the mood. Besides, metaphysical science was still at sea on the subject of whether or not he could be killed, so when they strapped him to the pyre and lit him up, he changed himself into a flock of carrion birds and fluttered away. Left his ropes hanging empty, the executioner minus his fee, and a crowd trying to figure out if they’d witnessed a miracle or more witchcraft, and marveling, out of priestly earshot, at how hard it was to tell the difference.
He rematerialized in an alley behind the cobbler’s shed with a sparkling-clear head, wrapped himself in physician’s robes, and collected his donkey.
The Inquisitors had eased his conscience about the Black Death. No matter what he did or what age he did it in, he could always count on the Church to try to top it.
At the gate, there was an awkward moment when the Devil and the traveling circus blew town at the same time. He smiled and winked. They pretended not to see him.
Cheeky bastards. He tossed some fleas their way, and nudged his donkey toward the next town.
26.
People Don’t Have to Take Your Shit If You Don’t Have Any Money
Chicago, 1984
FISH WAS DRUNK at the Chicago Four Seasons when his in-room movie was interrupted by a knock at the door.
He opened the door to find three men in dark suits.
One of them presented a badge and said, “Mr. Fish, I’m Special Agent Zimmerman, with the FBI. These are agents Early and Dunn. May we come in?”
There were smart choices and dumb choices at moments like this, and Fish had no idea which was which.
“Do I need my lawyer?” he asked.
“We just want to ask some questions,” said Zimmerman.
He let them in.
Made them wait while he changed out of his ho
tel bathrobe, and put on something he hoped implied dark powers.
Then he joined them in the outer room. They had all removed their jackets, and were sitting or standing around in a way that made the room feel like their room, not his.
“Have you ever met Congressman Buzz Joplin?” asked Zimmerman.
“Indiana,” said Dunn. “Fourth District.”
Sure he had. Buzz Joplin was one of the congressmen he bribed each month. Buzz Joplin had made it illegal not to have life insurance.
“I would like to contact my attorney,” Fish told them.
WHEN HE CALLED the Devil, Fish hoped he would pick up and say, “Don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t pick up.
“You could call another attorney,” said Special Agent Zimmerman.
“I want that one,” snarled Fish. “He’s the Devil himself.”
“Impressive!” said Zimmerman, pretending to look impressed. He looked around at Early and Dunn to see if they were impressed. They were.
“I’m sorry I can’t assist you any further today,” Fish told them. “Maybe I could call your Chicago field office after I contact my attorney. Don’t know what’s keeping him.”
“We’re not from the field office, Mr. Fish,” said Zimmerman. “If you can’t help us out with Congressman Joplin, maybe you can tell us how you know—” and Zimmerman, without notes, rattled off a list of maybe fifty people and organizations Fish and Assurance Mutual had bribed, defrauded, extorted, or blackmailed.
He tried to call his attorney again. This time, the number didn’t even ring through. The number was no longer in service.
Fish stood.
Time to retake control. He did his best to radiate dark powers. He reminded himself that he had killed a man with an ashtray at the Helen of Troy in Troy, Ohio. At least they hadn’t asked about that.
“I can’t talk to you until I get hold of him,” he said. “So whether we talk about Buzz Joplin or the moon, it’s going to have to be another day. So unless you have an arrest warrant hidden up your ass, I bid you gentlemen Good Day.”
This last was a bluff. Maybe they had a ton of evidence and a warrant, and maybe not. He bet not.
Up Jumps the Devil Page 21