Four shovels of earth isn’t much of a dent, he observed, taking a break.
A little later, he hit his first root. The root had to be chopped through, which took time and caused blisters.
Four shovels after that, he struck an old, submerged headstone, and had to start over, a few steps away.
That’s how he spent the first hour.
This, he mused, feeling sorry for himself, was going to be a bitch. Digging holes wasn’t easy to begin with, and graves were pretty big holes. Six feet down, three feet across, and they had to be nice and square, didn’t they?
Devil paused, grabbing another dose of the ocean breeze, and scanning the land around him. On the inland side, beyond the village and the narrow wood, a pasture fell away toward the true forest. The grass was dotted, far away, with black-and-white cows.
The cows looked his way. They seemed glad to see him, and began to move uphill toward the cemetery.
It was good to know some things never changed, thought the Devil, and while he was thinking this, a large black cow interposed, causing the others to stop.
Not a cow. An enormous bull, shining like obsidian, hump like Mount Rushmore, neck like a tower, head like a Viking palace.
The bull snorted. The cows began grazing their way east again.
“That’s Palestine,” someone said.
The Devil turned to find Mrs. Bull Horse behind him, carrying a pitcher of water and a glass. “You’ll want to keep an eye on him; he’ll gore you to death quick as look at you. If he gets close, you want to get up a tree or down a hole. Speaking of which, it doesn’t look as if there’s much digging been done.”
The Devil eyed the water pitcher, licking dry lips.
“Maybe it’s too much for you,” suggested Mrs. Bull Horse. “Maybe you need help.”
Proud disdain flooded the Devil’s features.
“Fair enough,” said Mrs. Bull Horse. She left the pitcher sitting in the grass, and walked off through the trees.
The bull, the Devil noticed, downing the whole pitcher at one swallow, had come the slightest bit closer in the meantime. Hadn’t he?
The thought lent him new strength as he addressed himself again to the grave.
HE SHOVELED for twenty minutes without stopping, just to see if he could.
New blood made the shovel handle sticky and brown. Blisters formed and burst—and didn’t that hurt like a bastard—but he didn’t stop until the grass had risen waist-deep around him, and he was about to lean on his shovel and see if maybe he couldn’t raise enough magic to fill the water pitcher, and maybe some cheese and Oreos, when a rustling in the grass behind made him turn with a muffled cry—
Dread Palestine!
—but it wasn’t Palestine, it was Memory, carrying water and some apples.
“Oh,” he said.
He tried to lean on the shovel in a handsome, workman kind of way.
She looked better, considering the last time he’d seen her, she had just come out of a long coma. Her long, flaxen hair looked healthy again. So did her mystical eyes. She wore the simplest of homespun dresses, with a shawl, and some kind of wooden pendant on a leather string around her neck.
“You haven’t gotten very far,” she said, bending to hand him the water and apples. The Devil took a long swallow and ate half an apple with one bite. Then he turned and got back to work, saying, “Interesting place.”
“I suppose it is,” she answered, sitting down cross-legged at the edge of the grave.
“You like it?”
“I do.”
“How come?”
She was quiet for a long time. He threw out nine loads of earth, waiting, careful not to hit her.
“They’re doing what you’ve been trying to get people to do for five thousand years, baby. They’re building a place where people can live together.”
“I’ve done that. I’ve gotten people to do it.”
“That’s fine, but these people are doing it on their own, so far. They’re not trying to build Rome or anything. They’re just trying to build this one small place. The place where they live. And that’s all.”
The ocean breeze came on a little stronger. Maybe a little colder, a late-afternoon chill.
“I feel at home here,” she said, standing and turning to go.
But she stopped.
With her back to him, she asked: “What do you want with Zachary?”
He kept digging.
“Why?” he asked. “Are you protecting him?”
“I was. I brought him here. After he shot you, I was afraid for him.”
He stopped shoveling.
“And now?”
She still faced away from him.
She said, “You can’t really protect another person. Not forever. You can help people, but in the end they have to take up for themselves.” Her voice shook. “You have to trust people to stand on their own, and hope for the best.”
“So,” he said, “now—”
“Now it’s up to you.”
HE WORKED IN A TRANCE, after that. Conserved his water. Stopped now and then to stretch and eat an apple.
The sun reddened. The grave made its own shadow, which leaned on him as he gouged out the last foot of earth, bled and broke the fifth generation of blisters on his numb hands, and finally came to rest after using the blade to square off the edges all around, and even stamp the bottom flat, make the raw earth as tidy as raw earth could be.
And damned if he wasn’t proud of it.
Pride again, but this time, well, dammit, he had a right, didn’t he? It wasn’t the first time he’d made something with his hands, but it was the hardest he’d ever worked, outside of battle or the bedroom. It was a fine grave he’d dug, if he said so himself.
He took a deep breath, and as he did, he heard footsteps above. A rustling in the grass. His pride surged again, and he sat up, eager to show off his work.
Except the figure that appeared at the lip of the grave bore a head as proud as the Devil’s. Palestine.
He blotted out the dusk, darkening the hole. He snorted a great snort, which caused its own weather, was deafening, and moistened the Devil to an uncomfortable degree.
The Devil sat there, trying to magic Palestine back to the bottom of the hill, back among the cows. But the bull remained, and so the Devil remained, and remained seated.
Maybe he could scare the bull away.
It was just a bull, after all. And he was still the Devil, wasn’t he?
So he jumped up and screamed a satanic scream, which only galvanized Palestine and made him lurch around the perimeter of the grave, roaring and scooping around murderously with his horns. Before the bull settled down, it was a little darker, and the Devil had bull drool in his hair.
WAS HE GONE?
“Palestine?” said the Devil, after some time had passed.
Maybe he’d gone away.
But no … here was a snort, and a sound of bull flesh rising to its feet, and momentarily the awesome head appeared high above, actively salivating.
“Who’s a nice bull?” said the Devil, trying a different tack. “Who’s a nice, good bull?”
You wouldn’t believe how much madder this made the bull. He bellowed with rage, and started looking for a way to climb down into the grave.
The Devil’s pride fled.
“HELP!” screamed the Devil.
He wasn’t supernaturally loud, but he hoped it might be enough. Enough to reach downhill, through the trees to the village.
Palestine got down on his forelegs and hooked his left horn—the nastier, sharper, more jagged of the two—deep into the earth an inch above the Devil’s head.
The Devil’s next scream sounded much more like a little girl. Even Palestine paused for a second, before resuming his attack, madder, as always, than before.
The sun balanced on the horizon. Red light tinged the bull’s horns.
Then Palestine raised his Viking head as if something had caught his attention.
> The Devil heard something. Didn’t he?
Was it voices?
“Help!” he called, with urgency, but with dignity, too, this time. Not pride. Dignity. There’s a difference.
And voices answered. There was a sort of general murmur and hustle, as of voices talking and bodies climbing uphill between trees, snapping twigs and moving branches aside.
Flash beams played about Palestine’s head.
The bull seemed to consider things and weigh choices, and then he withdrew, head high, dignified, downhill.
Rising, as it were, from his grave, the Devil noted that some of the cows remained at the foot of the pasture, while others had wandered off along the cliff’s edge around the village perimeter. They grazed there, silhouetted against an explosive sunset.
Hoisting himself onto grass, the Devil found himself half surrounded by people in work clothes. All sorts of people. People with beards. Women. Kids. People with hats. Black people. People with bright eyes. Suspicious-looking people. White people. People with jewelry on. People with tattoos. Even people with cell phones, which surprised him.
Front and center, three men and three women carried a hot-water heater.
The hot-water heater was familiar. So was one of the men carrying it.
Zachary.
Zachary didn’t look at the Devil. His face was strained and busy.
“To the right a bit,” he grunted. “Little bit more, gang. Watch your step.”
Ropes were stretched across the grave. Someone told the Devil, “You’re gonna wanna scoot, fella,” and he backpedaled, hands in his pockets.
The pallbearers lowered the water heater onto the ropes, and the ropes were slackened an inch at a time until it rested on the bottom.
One by one, then, they all began to come forward and drop a shovel of earth into the grave.
Someone touched the Devil’s arm.
Memory.
“Nice grave,” she said.
“Thanks,” said the Devil. But even though she was there, and he liked the way she wrapped both of her arms around his and huddled close, his mind was elsewhere.
For the moment, his mind was on the figures around him, visible by the last of the bloody sun, by flashlight here or lantern light there. Doing what needed to be done, bit by bit. Without words. Without pettiness. And he realized that these were, in fact, humans. Not animals, so much.
It seemed there were, in fact, some animals who had taken the next evolutionary step. If they were here, they were elsewhere, too.
He discovered Zachary looking at him over the half-filled grave.
And Zachary said, “I’m sorry.”
The Devil thought about self-control. Thought about saying it was all right, it was a hard world and sometimes you got shot, but he didn’t.
“You fucking should be sorry!” he barked. “I almost died!”
“I was scared.”
“You should still be scared!”
He was. You could tell. But he stood there, his whole enormous frame shaking, waiting to see what the Devil would do. He didn’t run.
The Devil looked down into his nice, neat grave, where the last of the water heater had vanished beneath the parade of falling earth. Even now, with danger and rage in the air, the villagers came forward one by one and did what needed doing.
The one exception was Mrs. Bull Horse, who stood quietly, almost out of sight, at the edge of the trees, waiting.
Pointing down into the earth, the Devil said, “April Michael?”
Zachary quietly said, “Yes. She would have been thirty-three next week.”
“Or still four,” said Memory, “depending how you look at it.”
“What about her dad?” asked the Devil.
“Gone,” said Zachary. “Last year. Stroke.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Devil, indicating the grave.
Zachary shook his head.
“It’s the way it should have been in the first place,” he said. “Things run their course, and then they end. Other things start. Some things aren’t complicated. Birth and death aren’t complicated.”
“You had a deal with her father,” said the Devil, a little harshly. “You promised him.”
“And a deal or a promise is only good as long as it’s really useful, don’t you think?”
“Is that a dig?”
“If it is, you deserve it.”
“Okay,” said the Devil. If it was going to be about who deserved what, then so be it. And he leaped over April Michael’s grave, grabbed Zachary’s arm, and bit him good and deep before anyone knew what was happening.
EVEN THEN, they didn’t interfere.
Except Zachary’s mom, who grabbed the shovel and poked at the Devil until he turned her son loose, which, momentarily, he did.
The Devil, spitting blood and looking grim, managed to offer her a respectful bow.
He would have winked, too, just to be the Devil, but she wouldn’t have appreciated it, and she still had the shovel.
Zachary sat on the grass, fighting tears and pain, cradling his forearm.
“Happy?” he asked the Devil.
“Happi-er,” the Devil answered.
“What was that? You bit me! What’s that supposed to accomplish?”
“Maybe nothing,” said the Devil. “Maybe a lot. When’s the next full moon?”
He walked away, and they left it at that.
HE FELT STRONGER, maybe.
Did he? It was hard to tell. He walked alone to the edge of the cliff, and stood there looking out over the sea, the great night sea, the most mysterious thing in the world.
He breathed in.
Maybe it was the sea air, the night air. He did feel stronger. For now.
Maybe later he’d try to make it rain.
He breathed out.
Memory slipped up beside him again, and handed him a mug of steaming coffee. She had thrown on a cable-knit sweater big enough for Palestine the bull, and some kind of shapeless New England hat.
In one hand, she held her own mug. Her free hand hooked around his elbow.
“Thanks,” he said.
And his free arm slipped around her waist.
His hand crept inside the great sweater, to the slightest of swellings below her belly.
She let his hand rest there.
And he knew.
She knew he knew.
Below them, the sea roared its dark roar.
Behind them, in a hundred windows, candles appeared. A bonfire blazed and figures crowded around. There were smaller fires, too, with smaller crowds, or couples.
Humans.
The Devil thought about moon rockets and Rome and the hat he’d torn in two that afternoon.
He had lost control of it all, for sure.
Maybe he’d just let these humans have it. Let it happen.
“Let them happen,” he said, aloud.
And the great thing about Memory and having her there was that she knew exactly what the Hell he was talking about.
Behind them in the dark, suddenly, great shadows moved.
Five of them. Heavy, ponderous shapes. They moved closer.
Memory’s hand tightened on his elbow.
“It’s just cows,” said the Devil.
The cows approached with an old, familiar look in their eye, and he wondered if things were going to become awkward.
“Cows love me,” he explained.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book wouldn’t have happened if three extremely smart and adventurous women had not gotten behind it and pushed hard: Huge thanks to my wife and friend, writer Janine Harrison, for her support, patience, and famous red pen. To my agent, Michelle Brower, at Folio and my editor at Ecco, Abigail Holstein. Michelle sold Abby on the story. Abby brought Ecco on board, and then helped me turn a stack of insanity into a book. Thanks, Janine, Michelle, Abby. I bow to you.
My thanks to Mark Mirsky and Andrew Lieb at Fiction for publishing “The Fires of Krypton,” the experimental shor
t story which served, partly, as the genesis of this book. My thanks to Dad for the enthusiasm he has always, always shown, and for taking me up to the Superstitions, some years ago, to explore and hunt for stories and to stay in the room where Elvis slept. To Barbara and to Cavell, who have been energetic supporters. To my stepdaughter, Jianna, a boundless source of energy and wonder. Thanks to Mindy, Todd, Missy, Meri, Steve, Shannon, Britt, Logan, Reagan, Jack, and Charlie. Thanks, as always, to Mom and Bill, without whom … And to Steven. Wish you were here. To John Gibbons, who taught my first creative writing class, and to Marlene Hannah at Troy High, who made it clear that history was both real and, at the same time, a story. And to Nancy Yarger, who encouraged my writing despite the fact that I did it to the exclusion of my math homework. Thanks to my friend, poet James Hill, for his support and good eye for the best part of twenty years. The same to writer Rachel Mork, my tireless cheerleader, and to Michael and Cynthia Passafiume. Thanks to my friend and collaborator, science fiction writer Ted Kosmatka, for his support and energy, and for getting us started on “Blood Dauber” (he wrote all the smart stuff). Thanks to the Highland Writers’ Group, Indiana Writers’ Consortium, and other Indiana writers, particularly Kenneth Alexander, Kara Dokupil, Cynthia Echterling, Karen Eldred, Dorothy Emry, Katherine Page Camp, Larry Ginensky, Sharon Ginensky, Michael Gonzalez, Holly Granzow, Scott Guffy, Chad Hunter, Zach Heridia, Jack Kus, Jeff Manes, Rachel Miller, Catherine Osborne, Joshua Perz, Angella Pierce, Harry Pierce, Sunila Samuel, Maureen Smith, Gordon Stamper, Heather Stamper, Micah Urban, and Mary Tina Vrehas. Thanks, and a bottle of Vietnamese cobra wine, to Daniel Wallace, for his support and good humor. Thanks to Amanda LaFleur, coordinator of Cajun Studies at Louisiana State University, for her excellent translation assistance at the eleventh hour. Special thanks to the Mean Group: Ted, MT, and Josh. Big time thanks to all my McKinley family, especially Merielene, Ayanna, Angel, Casey, Anitra, Carlos, and Michelle, for their enthusiasm and support. Best wishes and thanks to everybody at Borders: Shaun Victor, Elaine, Jessica, Nikky, and Jimmy, for always sometimes sort of making sure my table was available. Not at all least, my thanks to Jake, Reggie, Buzz, Samantha, China, and Baloo. It’s a poor writer who isn’t grateful to his dogs.
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