Seven Devils

by M. Chris Benner

  As he comes within sight of the purple elephant nailed to the post, he sees Lizzy facing the forest, looking up, and talking. Arriving shortly after, Chris locates the source of her attention:

  It’s a pudgy man – he saw him through the window the other night.

  Lizzy’s pleading but the man seems serious.

  “Hey, whatchu doin’ back there?” the man asks Chris as he approaches.

  “Sorry, we’er out camping the other night and…my niece lost somethin’ important.”

  “’Er you two the one’s that went chomped inta my brush over yonder?” he asks, squinting.

  “Yeah.”

  “Bobby – who is it? What’re you doing…” a woman calls out, approaching quickly but slowing as her eyes find the child. She stops completely as her eyes wander to Chris, her voice trailing.

  “Hey, April Mae…” Chris says.

  The woman’s features are delicate, her eyes a soft brown. Her cheek has a beauty mark and face is free of aging. Her hair is still in a bob, just as it had been so many years before. Her arms are muscular for a woman – Lizzy notices as the woman quickly moves to Chris and raises an arm. Chris flinches instinctively but the woman wraps her arms around him and gives him a hug.

  The pudgy man’s face drops in surprise.

  “You know him?” he asks.

  April Mae Junebug nods, backing from the hug.

  “Leave ‘em be, Bobby. God sake’s it’s a little girl and my friend—” then to Chris, “You remember my brother Bobby. Asshole then, asshole now.”

  Chris smiles.

  April Mae bends down at the knee, face-level with Lizzy.

  “Hello, beautiful,” she says in a warm, practiced tone. “What’s yer name?”

  “Elizabeth Marie Dawson – but everyone calls me Lizzy.”

  “Well then so shall I, sweet thing.”

  “I—” Lizzy’s voice turns frenzied, “—I lost somethin’ campin’ here the other night.”

  “You were campin’ here and you didn’t say hi?” April Mae Junebug asks Chris, and he nods, a forsaken look on his face.

  “It’s my mama’s hairclip – it’s the only thing I got left of ‘er,” Lizzy says with the tinge of a southern accent.

  “Well then we must go find it, sweetie!” April Mae Junebug says enthusiastically.

  “It’s in our old spot,” Chris tells her but she already seemed to know.

  “I’ll help your…” and she waits for Chris to fill in the gap.

  “Niece.”

  “I’ll help yer niece go and find her broach – why don’t you go on down and say a few words to yer mama. I’m sure she’d like to hear ‘em.”

  April Mae Junebug and Chris share a sad glance, and he gives a solemn nod.

  Bobby returns to the house, dismissing all of it grumpily.

  April Mae Junebug and Lizzy follow the path to the open field while Chris follows the second path, which dead ends after a few minutes at the entrance to a withered, debris-strewn cemetery. Dead chucks of tree and vines cover the graves, all enclosed by an iron fence half beaten down by the elements and under a thin shield of overhead branches and green, flourishing leaves.

  “Hi, ma. It’s Christian.” He crosses the other graves, walking on top of them, to stand directly on his mother’s grave, looking down at the granite stone that’s already beginning to age – her memory wasn’t going to last a half-century, it looked like. Chris thinks a moment, having addressed himself by a name he hadn’t heard elongated in some time. “Christian E. Lee Gibberts—E. Lee’s funny, ma. Edward Lee. I’ll give it to you – funny. What’d you always say? ‘Robert E. Lee – great man but a loser. Lost the war.’ Sort of how you thought of me, wuddin’t?”

  He crosses his arms in front of his chest and says a silent prayer.

  The silent prayers for his mother were something April Mae Junebug had asked him so kindly to do – “Tell your mother you love her. She may not’ve been a good mother or a good person but there was a person in there, an’ maybe her life wasn’t always peaches and cream, neither. Can’t carry that hate when you think’a yer mother, she brought you here into this world.” When Christian came back – after the commune, after high school and the army – he had come back for April Mae Junebug, and she seemed to have spent the interim just waiting for him to come back for her. Theirs was a sad love story, one that sputtered and stalled, as Chris grew tired of the same thing day in and out – same back yard, same job workin’ on cars in the nearby garage (one he never could get the hang of, not in two years), and same smile on the same face of the same girl he would see every day, forever. When Chris left, he had intended never to form another long-standing relationship and, subsequently, ended up in Florida making amateur porn for his own website within three years; Sadie had the same intentions as he did and that’s why she stuck around so long, and then there was Sarah, Lizzy’s mother.

  “I hate you…just, so much,” Chris says. He looks up at the sky of green blocking out a beating, heavy-hearted sun; to his surprise, there’s a small gathering of tears in his eyes. “I’m not gonna cry over you,” he informs her, matter-of-factly, looking down and wiping the damp before it can form and fall. “It might have been hard for you but you made it so…so Goddamn hard for me. I could’ve…I could’ve gotten us out of here. I would’a been smart. You—”

  And Chris finds himself finished.

  “Goodbye, ma. I love you but…”

  And Chris turns and leaves.

  Back down the path, a curve at the post, and he finds Lizzy holding up her hairclip in triumphant fashion, April Mae Junebug standing behind her, a sad smile curled across her lips. Chris makes a decision then and there:

  When Lizzy is ready to lose the hairclip, she’ll be ready to know about her real father.

  THE AFTERMATH

  Kate found the positive results of the home pregnancy test two days before the trip to Philadelphia and debated whether or not to tell David. For the entire day they wandered the streets of Philadelphia, she thought of the best way to tell him; ultimately, while at dinner, she settled on the fact that he didn’t need to know. He had lost his hearing, and he missed his child, and he didn’t need to add anything to an already large amount of grief. Once they crossed that ocean, she thought, and after they spent their final days together, he could leave and she could abort the baby and no one would know.

  Back in London, she spent her days alone. Word spread that she was back and friends had called to go out drinking but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. After two days and nights of relentless hassling, she finally budged and, Sunday night, went to the bar with her friends. They questioned her when she didn’t smoke, which was new but not especially odd, and they bought shot after shot, washing them down with mixed drinks of vodka or tequila, but Kate refrained.

  Her friends noticed immediately, as Kate was one to throw them back.

  As they questioned her, buying her drinks that she refused, her closest friend exclaimed, “Yer pregnant, rn’tcha? Class-less street whore!” she laughed, and Kate’s somber expression only solidified the truth.

  The paparazzi were waiting for them outside the club as they left. Kate’s friends slurred insults and stumbled, one of them using Kate for support. One of the paparazzi – a fat man named Ralph, who’s round stomach poked out from beneath a stained tee-shirt enough to bare the tuft of coarse black hair around his belly button – kept yelling the normal things London paparazzi yelled at the famous people when they found them alone and vulnerable:

  “Show us yer snatch! Lily—hey Lily, why’d yer boyfriend dump you? Is it true he gave you herpes?”

  Only Kate, her friend Lily, and a model named Bianca (whom Kate had never met before) were famous or interesting enough to catch the cameramen’s attention; there were four other women with them, none getting the tirade of disrespect from the paparazzi.

  “Kate? Why ain’t you sloppy, Kate? Gonna gimme ano’er nice pho’o of’at ‘ere ‘airy snatch
? Wearin’ pan’ies?”

  The fat man named Ralph was the most vocal but the others were shouting similar things, and every so often they would lower the camera to try and sneak a photo beneath their skirts.

  Making sure each of her friends got home safe, Kate returned home to sleep.

  When she woke the following day, morning sickness finally set in and she threw up until past noon. There was a phone number penciled on a square sheet of white paper, ominously sitting on her loft’s kitchen counter. Each time she passed it, there would be a reason not to call and schedule an appointment – maybe she should tell David, maybe this would be the only child she could have and aborting it would cause irreparable damage, maybe the paparazzi would find out and publicize it in every paper, maybe this and maybe that, maddening.

  It was then that she decided to tell David…she needed—she needed David, he could help and…it didn’t have to be this depressing if she just—but there was no way David would talk to her again, not after—not after abandoning him in Philadelphia, he’d probably…

  The most shocking and surprising thought she threw into the argument against herself was Lizzy – the surprise came from an inkling in her when the image of the young girl appeared in her mind; she brightened, there was a glimmer of hope in her belly, and it caused her heart to beat faster.

  A part of her actually wanted to see Lizzy again.

  And so her thoughts drilled on until Monday night.

  As she sat alone eating a box of cereal, the phone rang and she let it go to voicemail. The message was from her friend Lily and it said:

  “You’re boyfriend’s popular. Check the bestseller list.”

  The next day, she wandered toward David’s signing. She was a bit dazed, almost on autopilot. There hadn’t been a plan, nothing, and she found herself looking at baby clothes. Inside her, deep, she knew she was having a son.

  So she bought a blue onesy.

  The clothes, the signing, the ring – it happened in such a desperate blur. She had shown up outside the signing and saw him (head packed with gauze) through the window, and had been unable to move further. Tears started, paparazzi showed up…and he proposed.

  It isn’t for two nights, on Wednesday night, until things finally slow.

  David and Kate are resting on the couch in her living room. She’s cradled under his arm. The television is off, as is the music. Only an overhead light and the shadow of fan blades swinging from the ceiling. A candle’s flame flickers against the slight breeze from the fan on low, its scent described as fluffy pillow.

  It’s calm, peaceful.

  The past two days of signings had been exhausting, as each one had been packed from start to finish. At the end of each night – two days running – David and Kate had spent the evening curled together without television or music, only white ethereal noises from the SoHo-like London neighborhood around them. David couldn’t hear the sound anyway, couldn’t hear her even if she wanted to speak but she didn’t. Her reasons weren’t as important – they were together now, that was important.

  Every so often they look at each other and kiss, then return to the tranquility.

  Around 7:30 p.m., David’s phone vibrates with a text from his brother:

  BROTHER: How are you?

  There’s a brief back-and-forth between them…

  DAVID: I proposed to Kate yesterday. She said yes.

  BROTHER: That’s wonderful.

  DAVID: She’s pregnant.

  BROTHER: Congratulations.

  DAVID: I’m sorry I was such an asshole before you left.

  BROTHER: It’s ok.

  DAVID: No it’s not. I’m sorry.

  BROTHER: Forgiven.

  DAVID: I saw there have been some deaths in Philadelphia…

  BROTHER: The city is safe. For now.

  DAVID: Are you a hero?

  BROTHER: No.

  DAVID: Did you save lives?

  BROTHER: When are you coming home?

  DAVID: We want to fly everyone out for the wedding.

  BROTHER: When is it?

  DAVID: We’ll wait however long it takes to fly everyone out for the wedding.

  BROTHER: I’ll handle it. We’ll be there in three days.

  David sets his phone down and finds Kate’s adoring gaze leveled at him, her eyes watering, cheeks growing flush. She bats a hand at her face for air and says the word emotional several times in a row. David moves over her, pinning her down to kiss her neck and face all over. She giggles and spasms when he tickles her armpits and they share a devious look together.

  Her lips move and David stares a moment.

  He lets go to write on the pad, Did you say “elephant juice”?

  She shakes her head.

  He writes on the pad, “Olive juice”?

  She shakes her head again, the devious look returning.

  “What kind of juice are you talking about?”

  David and Kate make love for a total of seven minutes. It starts with aggressive grabbing and undressed, groping hands, lips and tongues, their arms wrapped around each other. They lay under the spinning ceiling fan, the shadow rapidly crossing their bare skin as they roll on the carpet. It’s the ninth time they had had sex in the last two days. Kate had been uber-sexual, from the pregnancy and overwhelming hormones or sheer attraction, David was unsure; only thing he knew was that sex had become astounding, even Earth-shattering since the loss of sound and addition of Kate’s newly unbridled passion.

  He can feel her moaning the words, “I love you.”

  After their intense, sweaty, seven-minute love-making session, David kisses Kate once more – she’s on the floor, naked but for the pillow blanketing her chest. Her hair is disheveled, sweat forming on her brow.

  THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

  Four days later, David, Chris, Rough Ralph, hoods from Kate’s side of the party, and I head off for a night of debauchery.

  Lizzy spends the day and night with a pregnant Kate, Kate’s mother and sister, Sadie, Pam Noel, Bethany Walker, and Kate’s brash London female entourage; it’s planned as a full day event with a slumber party. All of the girls and women get full-treatment at their favorite spa and salon. They buy new clothes and get Lizzy a beautiful, sparkling dress for the wedding. Since drinking isn’t an option, they spend their day traveling to clubs (sneaking Lizzy into some, to Kate’s mother’s chagrin). In the later evening, they go to the city and gorge themselves at Kate’s favorite restaurant. They rent a suite and fill it with chocolate and champagne and gossip and karaoke and more dance parties and make-up.

  Lizzy refers to this forever more as, “The best night of my life.”

  The men spend their daytime walking the streets and drinking beer. The male counterparts to Kate’s entourage split off to do their own thing, which no one protests. Rough Ralph calls it quits around dusk, his face flush from day-drinking and his speech low, practiced but faltering. Tire has overcome him before the drink and he heads back to the hotel.

  And then there are three.

  We seclude in the VIP of a strip club. Fully nude women walk around the dark back area, one with velvet couches sectioned to keep wandering eyes off each individual section. We have a chilled bottle of Don Perignon next to several empties, and the three of us are drunk – one where we haven’t crossed into the abyss, our thoughts still fully formed, but we’re slipping, close, near downright slammed. But, for this short window of debauchery, we’re coherent.

  “And so I’m broke. Or near it,” I tell them.

  They’re my best friends.

  “What! How?” Chris asks.

  “—Ha! I gotchu,” David says.

  “I spent…let’s see…” I tally the money in my head, “…well, in rentals—room and board, food, equipment, more rentals, travel…the mercenaries cost a pretty penny—”

  “Mercenaries!” they both proclaim.

  “Yeah, I hired some…” I drunkenly burp, pouring myself another glass of Don with more attention than to
my story, “…some mercenaries. Guy named Dingane. He—the prick that poisoned me, he hired this mercenary named Dingane to come kill me some years back. Guy actually ended up saving my life back then and Bartleby—who’s alive and well, the prick.” Under my breath I give a quick, “Prick. Poisoned me.” Then, “Anyway, he got me in contact. There were too many bombs around the city to handle with just my team—”

  “Bombs?!” Chris exclaims.

  “Team?” David cautiously asks.

  “Yeah. I never really told you guys much about the two years I was gone…”

  And I tell my best friends everything.

  For the first time, I tell them every detail I can recollect in my drunken stupor; and they sit there absolutely mesmerized. I tell them the truth, how the only worry I now have involves the fact that, now that I’ve pissed off the Seven Devil Nation, I may not have them guarding my back anymore, and I certainly don’t have their resources, which I didn’t utilize anyway. I tell them the truth of Philadelphia during the story of Travis and Steve…

  THE TRAGIC LOVE OF BONES & FRANKFURT

  I lost my crew in all this, though.

  I mean, you guys know yer my crew but…this is my crew away from my crew. They were the first men I called when I knew where I was going. And assumed what I had to do. Steve, the chemist from Cincinnati — smart, smart like me smart – and Travis, the black Engineer, super smart.

  Anyway, they were with me with Sensei Ki-Jo. I hired them to help me protect myself. I knew Bartleby was out there with his resources – I assumed he had the same resources as his father, which were extensive, global. So I hid in a nowhere forest in a nowhere country and waited, trained, eventually hired them. I wanted weapons for stealth, weapons that I could use quickly and discreetly incase I was attacked in public or wherever, things to keep on myself at all times.

  Well, Bartleby had hired mercenaries. Guy named Dingane, his group. They found me when I went hiring people, the only time I emerged. Instead of coming to me, Bartleby’s checks turned bad and his money ran out so they outsourced it to local bandits. The local bandits poisoned the locals so I had to deal with them…