The Devil's Bag Man

by Adam Mansbach

  “And why am I supposed to care?” Galvan shot back, not entirely sure which one of them he was even addressing.

  “I can help you. We can figure out how to kill him. I know shit, man. I seen shit.”

  “Yeah, you got it all figured out. You really wanna help me, tell me how to get to Rosales. I got business there.”

  Gum scrambled to his side. “I’ll show you, boss. I know exactly where it is.”

  “Just point me in the right direction. You ain’t gonna be able to keep up.”

  Gum acted like he hadn’t heard. “This way,” he said. “I know these roads like the back of my hand.”

  “There are no roads,” Galvan grunted.

  “To me there are.”

  “Shut the fuck up and walk, then.”

  IT WAS TWILIGHT when the smells and sounds of civilization began to infiltrate Galvan’s sun-dulled senses. He’d have made it there by noon without Gum, but then again, he might never have found it at all.

  The time, the world, had gone blurry; the desert had insinuated itself into Galvan’s mind, a blinding haze of sand and sun that bleached away all else. Gum’s chatter barely registered, and when it did, Galvan responded with the phrase that had become a mantra: shut the fuck up and walk.

  Cucuy’s voice was equally distant, as if the unchanging, oppressive landscape and the sheer, dumb monotony of putting one foot in front of the other had turned down the volume on all other stimuli. Galvan was in a place beyond exhaustion—not past it, but adjacent to it. Half of him wished he could linger there forever. It was the closest he’d been to peace in a long time.

  But Galvan hadn’t come here for peace.

  Not by a damn sight.

  Somebody was roasting a chicken.

  That person was a genius and a saint.

  The aroma wafted past, and Galvan’s senses reawakened. A churning hunger in the pit of his stomach led the charge.

  Columns of smoke rose in the southern distance—from homes, hearths, grills. He could see low buildings, barns and houses, their outlines framed against the crisp night sky. Farmland: neat ordered rows of earth, unruly bean plants wound their way up stakes, proud cornstalks stood at attention, the low foliage of strawberries. And beyond, through a scrim of trees—fucking trees!—the distant, jeweled glint of the ocean.

  “That’s it,” he said to himself, to Gum, to nobody, and stepped toward it—onto a proper two-lane asphalt road.

  The highway. Hugging the coastline, save for this narrow buffer of a town.

  “We should stay off the road,” Gum advised, scuffling along at his side.

  “Shut the fuck up and walk.”

  Ahead of them the road veered sharply, bent toward the town at something like a right angle. Galvan followed it.

  Where the curve resolved into a straightaway, a huge black military Jeep was parked across both lanes, kitted out with floodlights and a weapons mount. Three men loitered in front, the tips of their cigarettes glowing orange in the darkness, assault rifles slung over their shoulders.

  They were too busy trading swigs from a bottle of mezcal and casting aspersions on each other’s manhood to notice Galvan’s approach.

  He stopped a few feet from them, planted his feet, and cleared his throat.

  They scrambled to raise their guns, a three-part harmony of rote aggression.

  “Who’s there?” one of them called, stepping closer.

  “Name’s Jess. And this here’s my fuckin’ personal assistant—” He looked left and right, but Gum had vanished.

  Fair enough.

  Galvan shrugged.

  “Guess he took a coffee break.”

  The lead man stepped closer, both hands on his gun, the butt pressed to his shoulder.

  “Who you with?” he demanded, nostrils flaring. Galvan took his measure. Kid probably hadn’t seen his twenty-first birthday, and the odds weren’t looking good.

  He seemed like he might know how to shoot a gun, though.

  “You wanna be careful where you point that thing,” Galvan told him, taking a sideways step. The kid swung the barrel after him, kept Galvan between the crosshairs.

  “Who you with?” he asked again.

  “I ain’t with nobody, junior. Just me, myself, and I.”

  And just like that, a goddamn De La Soul song started boogalooing through his cranium, taking up valuable real estate.

  Dunt-dunt-dunt-dunt-dunt-dah. . .

  The kid scrunched up his face. “This road’s restricted, fucker. If you ain’t with us, you gotta step the fuck off.”

  Galvan cracked the knuckles of one hand against the palm of the other and shot him an inquisitive look. “Who’s ‘we’ again, junior?”

  The kid furrowed his brow, took another step forward. The gun was nearly poking Galvan in the chest now. If the little shitstain had any real training, he would know better. The whole point of a weapon like that was the way it let you keep your target at a distance.

  At this range, what was to prevent your antagonist from grabbing the barrel, jerking it out of your hands, duffing you in the face with the butt, then pointing the business end at your stunned friends and splattering them all over their fancy Jeep before they could get off so much as a shot?

  Nothing.

  So that was exactly what Galvan did.

  The kid on the ground was hyperventilating now, one hand cupped around his broken nose as he tried to shuffle away from Galvan, knees bending and straightening, a comically inept quasi escape.

  Galvan rested the rifle on his shoulder.

  “I didn’t catch that, junior. One more time: who’s ‘we’?”

  The blood from the kid’s nose was dribbling down his lips, making its way into his mouth as he heaved for breath.

  Galvan stepped toward him. “Take your time, boss.”

  “Azteca!” the kid finally spat, with admirable bravado for a dude crab-walking backward as he spoke. “Azteca, maricón!”

  “Azteca Maricón, huh? Never heard of it. Are y’all affiliated with Barrio Azteca? Like a subdivision or something?”

  The kid didn’t find it as funny as Galvan did.

  “Enough with the crawling shit. Stand up.”

  The kid did as he was told, then snuck a backward glance at the carnage and nearly buckled.

  “You got a light?” Galvan asked, and the kid twisted at the waist to look at him, the soft features of his face locked in a death mask, the space between them filling up with the pungent smell of boozy urine as his bladder released.

  It took a moment for the question to register, another for the kid to fumble through the pockets of his jeans and draw out a cheap white Bic.

  He thrust it at Galvan, with considerably less force than he had the gun.

  Jess shook his head. “No. Light yourself a cigarette. You got a cigarette?”

  The kid just stared.

  “A cigarette. Un cigarillo.”

  A shaking hand produced a rumpled, generic soft pack. Somehow, the kid got it lit. He never took his eyes off Galvan. Was probably still expecting to die any minute.

  “Good. Now go over there, open up the gas tank, throw the cigarette inside, and run. Get the hell out of here, and tell your whole squad there’s a new fucking monster in town. Comprendes?”

  The kid nodded. Walked over to the Jeep like he still expected a bullet in the back and stepped gingerly over the corpses of his friends. Had the presence of mind to pull hard on the cancer stick before he tossed it in, so that the ember was good and strong.

  Gold star for that one.

  He was out of sight by the time the fire spread from the fuel line to the gas tank. Missed the spectacle of the oversized vehicle catching air as it caught fire, chunks of fiery automotive shrapnel flying through the sky as the blaze roared.

  Galvan took it in alone, grinning like a maniac and feeling recklessly, gloriously alive.

  CHAPTER 18

  Izel fled first to his family’s compound; exile would be easier if he was well pr
ovisioned. And there were the children to think of—his nieces and nephews, too young to attend the wedding feast. They had to be hidden, delivered into the hands of servants to be raised in secrecy.

  Cualli would think of that. Of them. Of all who might swear vengeance against him. He would snuff them out before they grew strong enough to—

  To what?

  How did you stop a god?

  Izel took back roads, detoured through the teeming slums of the capital and then the verdant plains of the lowlands. He ran until his lungs felt ready to burst, climbing the hill that led to the sprawling, magnificent home of his father at midday.

  It was ablaze. Flames licking at the sky. A thick cloud of black smoke billowing from the foundation.

  Izel watched as the roof collapsed.

  In the distance, through air wavy with heat, he saw more fires.

  Cualli had wasted no time. Izel pictured his troops, flowing out from the capital like blood leaving the heart. There was no shortage of them, no limit to the destruction they could wreak. Izel fell to his knees, tears springing from his eyes as he thought about the fate of his brother’s children, and his own grandmother.

  This house was their tomb. Their pyre.

  “Uncle!”

  He turned, just as his youngest nephew, Yaretzi, threw himself on Izel’s neck. The child was covered in soot, smeared with blood, his small heart pounding so hard Izel could feel it when he splayed his palm over the boy’s back.

  Izel stood, and the boy wrapped his legs around his uncle’s torso as if he had renounced the ground entirely.

  “Your brother?” Izel said, in his ear. “Your sister? Anyone?”

  Yaretzi shook his head and hugged Izel’s neck tighter.

  They made camp that night a quarter mile upwind from the smoldering wreckage. Izel figured it was safest to remain where the earth was already scorched. When the child was asleep and the moon showed its face, he knelt and began to pray for the dead, then realized it was impossible. To whom would he supplicate himself if Tezcatlipoca was gone? What could prayer even mean?

  In that instant, Izel realized what he must do. He roused the somnolent boy, whose rest was fragile and shallow, broken frequently by cries of anguish, and hefted him onto his back. Yaretzi settled wordlessly, and Izel began to walk.

  The temples had fallen by now, he was sure. With the priests and their closest acolytes already dead, those holy sites would be defenseless and spiritually unprepared. And there was no doubt that Cualli would seek to erase all access to any memory of the other gods; resistance to his reign would be predicated on their intercession.

  Indeed, it was Izel’s only hope. Cualli might unmake the temples hewn by man, but he could not bring down the places made sacred by the gods themselves.

  On the contrary, Izel thought with a start, he might well seek them out himself. Feed upon the power that resided there, until they were unmade.

  Izel’s resolve hardened. I must get there first.

  The temple was the seat of his worship, but the Rock of Tezcatlipoca was his most hallowed and mystical ground: the place where the first priest had been anointed, and to which all who had followed were obliged to journey. It was where the god spoke directly to man, where the dictates were given and Book of Knowledge was written in the blood of priests.

  Izel had never been there.

  But then again, neither had Cualli. Only after a man had an heir was he permitted to undergo that journey.

  It was said to be grueling.

  But those who said so had never lived through times as dark as these.

  Izel set off into the desert. He would find the site and hope its holiness amplified his entreaties even in the absence of the divinity who had claimed it. He would call upon any and every god he could name, implore them to unmake this abomination whose very existence blasphemed the world they had created.

  They walked by night and slept by day, to conserve their strength. With nothing more than a knife, Izel managed to keep them both alive; he knew how to relieve a cactus of its precious store of water, how to flush a prairie dog from its hole. With each passing hour, Yaretzi seemed to withdraw further into the cocoon of his grief, but there was nothing to be done about that except go on living.

  One way or another, the boy’s pain would soon come to an end.

  On the third day, they reached the jagged quartz pillar, and Izel swallowed the other gift his knife had reaped: the fruit of a desert plant that induced a powerful trance state, opened the mind to the cosmos. Its use was ubiquitous among the priests of the gods.

  Had been ubiquitous.

  Before their slaughter.

  Whatever happens, whatever you see or hear, do not be frightened, he told the boy. Watch me, but do not speak. Do not interfere.

  Yaretzi’s dark eyes grew large, and he nodded.

  Izel lay down atop the sacred altar, and let the vision come. Soon new hues, sharper and brighter, suffused the landscape, turning the cacti a more vivid green and the earth a richer brown, filling the vault of the sky with subtle, shifting patterns. It was as if everything was coming into focus, revealing its deeper nature, its higher energetic self.

  This, Izel thought, is how the gods must see the earth. He focused on his breath, realized it was synchronized perfectly with that of the cosmos—that creation pulsed in the same rhythm, that all were one and one was all, the majesty of the moon mirrored in each and every grain of sand, every speck of animal matter.

  And in the fullness of that understanding, the great ecstasy of it, Izel cried out across the void.

  A creature of terrible purpose violates the beauty you have wrought, oh Great Ones. He wields a power that is yours and yours alone. Your priests lie dead. Your worship is at an end, if you do not stop him.

  The blackness faded from the sky, until it was a parched white the likes of which Izel had never seen—not the white of cloud cover, but a white as pure and pale as death.

  He sensed that he was not alone and scrambled to his feet.

  Indeed, striding toward him across a landscape that suddenly appeared as cold and lifeless as the moon was a being of such luminescence that Izel averted his eyes. The light that emanated from her filled his eyes, his brain—to wash his insides clean, purge all impurity away. There was no color to it, and no warmth.

  And yet, it burned. Burned cold.

  Her form was human, but this being was not of matter, not of earth.

  She was light. She was spirit.

  She was a fraction of her true self, as unglorious as she could make herself appear, so human eyes and ears could perceive her at all. So that a human soul could withstand her presence, even for a moment.

  Izel felt as if he were floating. He wanted nothing more than to be subsumed by her light. Pulled into that vortex and obliterated.

  He closed his eyes.

  It made no difference. There she was.

  The goddess of fertility. Of life and death. Of rebirth.

  Chimalma.

  Izel’s heart pounded in his ears. Yes. This was perfect. Who among the Great Ones could be more offended than she by the sorcery of Tezcatlipoca, the sin that was Cualli?

  Surely, she would set things right.

  I have heard you, Izel, Priest of the Sorcerer. Your words have reached me, across the Great Vale.

  Her voice was everywhere at once, cold, beautiful, a voice like a thousand flutes.

  I beg your help, Chimalma, Shepherdess of Life, he said, and fell to his knees before her.

  There is no help to give. I am the last to withdraw from this world, but withdraw I shall. For the abomination our brother has brought into being so affronts the gods that we renounce this world and leave it to its doom.

  But . . . Izel stammered. But . . . you cannot!

  I am sorry, Priest. Already, our dear brother Tezcatlipoca is lost to us. I assure you, worlds have been renounced for less.

  Please, Most Exalted One. If he so offends you, tell me how to stop him.

>   I cannot.

  Chimalma’s light began to fade.

  No! Izel felt madness set in, felt the world flicker and move, before his eyes and beneath his feet, as the glow of the goddess diminished.

  In a moment, it would depart this world forever.

  What is hell? Cualli has once asked him.

  Izel had fumbled for a response, and the priest had interrupted.

  The answer is simple, Izel. Hell is merely the absence of the divine.

  He cast wildly around, a primal scream emanating from the depths of him as the darkness spun up to engulf Izel, engulf everything.

  Yaretzi ran toward him, a look of terror on his face.

  Izel rose, grabbed the boy by the neck, and threw him down upon the altar. The knife flashed in his fist; he pressed the blade to his nephew’s neck and bellowed into the abyss the goddess trailed in her wake.

  Beloved Shepherdess of Life and Death, do not forsake us yet! I offer you that which is most precious to me!

  It was the oldest of all oaths—the most powerful, the most reviled. A primitive enticement, from a time when the gods were understood only as elemental abstractions, bringers of calamity who fed on human misery.

  It was the oath that rendered Tezcatlipoca’s need of Chacanza legible. Perhaps, Izel thought, as the sweat poured off him and the knife drew its first drop of crimson from the boy’s soft neck, it was the only oath that had ever meant anything between the gods and their creations.

  God does not die for man.

  Man dies for god.

  The light of Chimalma flared bright.

  In an instant her potency, her presence, filled the world again.

  Release the child. That which is most precious to you has already been surrendered.

  Izel’s knife clattered to the ground.

  Thank you, Most Honored One.

  Her light grew so intense Izel feared he might be incinerated, reduced to a small pile of fine white ash. He clenched his fists, squeezed shut his eyes.

  Chimalma was everywhere.

  And not just now.

  Not just her.

  The gods were present in everything and everyone. He had always known this, and yet had never realized it until this very moment.