It is a scientific fact that, for every doubling in speed, the distance required to bring a car to a stop increases by a factor of three. And any vehicle – even a fancy-pants Italian sports car with the ceramic brakes option – will require approximately the distance of a football field to slow down from 150 miles per hour. That is, unless there is something nice and sturdy handy, like a tree or a telephone poll. But there weren’t any of those available to help out.
The other drivers on I-30, who up until that point had had very little to do other than to sit and wait, were treated to the sight of a bright orange supercar hurtling toward them as the Devil struggled to bring the car down from near-orbital velocity. They oohed and aahed as the Lamorghini’s tires howled and screeched and smoked. It kept going long enough that a couple of the folks who were waiting in the line of traffic were actually able to turn around to check in to see if there had been any forward progress. There hadn’t been any, so they turned back to the still howling and screeching tires.
“Jesus Christ!” said Satan.
The car finally came to a stop.
Hmmm, thought Satan, watching as a gaggle of people gathered around, snapping away with their camera phones. He devoted roughly half a second to cool, levelheaded reflection, and then decided that this was as good a time as any to test the off-road capabilities of his car.
The Devil inched the Lamborghini around an appalling, minivan-shaped abomination that he’d narrowly avoided hitting and eased out onto the shoulder. It wasn’t wide enough, so he had to drive with one wheel off in the grass, which was exactly the sort of thing the engineers in Sant’Agata had had in mind when they gave the Gallardo LP-460 five whole inches of ground clearance. Satan’s bumpy, tilted forward progress was punctuated periodically by reassuring scraping sounds as the car’s undercarriage made contact with the edge of the pavement. Up ahead, Satan could just make out flashing lights and what looked like the boxy shapes of military trucks parked at jaunty angles.
The checkpoint was, technically speaking, stationed within the state of Arkansas. But it had been easier that way. The border between Texas and Arkansas runs right through the middle of downtown Texarkana, and trying to police the myriad streets that crisscross the state line would have been impossible for Corporal Russell and his band of mental giants. Besides, a hundred and fifty years or so had passed since the last time a state in the Union had had to try to repel an invasion from a neighboring state, and anyway, the governor of Arkansas knew better than to try to interfere with anything set in motion by the inimitable Dick Whitford. So the people of Arkansas – a state that had recently passed a law allowing its citizens to carry firearms into houses of worship – just sat and watched. In fact, most were just too stunned to react at all to the line of military trucks that paraded in and set up shop on I-30, five miles outside of town.
Corporal Jim Russell was in charge of the checkpoint. The men under his supervision were all old friends, or acquaintances he’d known from high school. They’d all joined the military together, and Russell, the former big man on campus, literally as well as figuratively, had been the natural leader of the group from the start.
This band of courageous, committed soldiers were charged with the task of protecting the Texas border from undesirable types. And in their zeal, they’d erected a makeshift holding pen into which they’d flung every hippie, Communist, and other Liberal they’d encountered. And because Corporal Russell and his men were all good, East-Texas boys, they’d also rounded up a number of African-American folks and put them into the holding pen too.
Russell stood off to the side with a handful of his men, watching the slow interrogations and/or incarcerations taking place fifty yards up the road.
“It’s a stupid name,” he said.
“What?” asked Buck Abernathy, one of Russell’s men.
“Texarkana,” said the Corporal. “It’s a stupid name.”
“I don’t know,” said another named Ronnie. “I think it’s kinda cool.”
“Well, you’re a dumbass,” said Russell.
Ronnie narrowed his eyes, giving Russell a look that might have been intended to convey a threat of imminent bodily harm, or maybe just that Ronnie was having trouble seeing.
“You know,” said Corporal Russell, “they’ve also got a town called ‘Arkadelphia.’ What the hell kind of people go naming all their towns by sticking together parts of other town names? That’s just dumb.”
“Yeah, that’s a lot worse than just stealing names of foreign cities,” said Buck.
Russell turned, mystified, toward his underling. “What’re you talkin’ about?”
“Like, every town in Texas used to be a city in some other country,” said Ronnie.
“Yeah,” said Buck. “There’s a bunch. We got a ton of towns named after foreign places.”
“Like what?”
“Paris, Texas.”
“Hmmph,” said Russell. “Shut up.”
“Carthage?” proffered Buck.
“Oh and there’s Dublin.”
“And Egypt.” Ronnie and Buck nodded at each other enthusiastically.
“That ain’t a city, dumbass,” said Russell.
“And Italy,” said Buck, ignoring his boss.
Another soldier joined in the fun. “Don’t forget Moscow. And Palestine.”
“Right,” said Buck. Ronnie nodded some more.
“All of you,” said Russell, “shut up. Just shut up!” He held a walkie-talkie to his ear. “What? What?”
The rest of the soldiers huddled toward Corporal Russell, trying to listen in.
Corporal Russell stood abruptly. “You! Move that Humvee. Block the shoulder.”
The soldier tilted his head in the manner of a confused dog and squinted at his superior.
“Move the Humvee to block the shoulder. Now!” He pointed to the space between the shoulder and a clump of trees.
The soldier jumped and ran toward the truck. Corporal Russell saw that the Lamborghini was already too close, and so heaved his corpulence over to the shoulder, where he stood with his legs spread and his fists on his waist – his best tough-guy pose. He stared with squinty, tough-guy eyes as the sports car – shaped like a wedge and colored like the sun – slowed and stopped. The engine revved, making the kind of manic barking sound that only highly-strung exotic engines make, and shut off. The door opened and a man in a pin-striped suit stood. Time seemed to slow as he pulled off his sunglasses.
“Are you the nitwits who’ve caused this disaster?” said the Prince of Darkness, pointing back toward the traffic jam.
The soldiers looked at one another and then at Russell. Corporal Russell was a big man. He’d been captain or quarterback or some other really badass thing in high school, and he wasn’t about to take shit from this effete (though that’s not the word he would have used) jerk off in the pinstriped suit.
“Get back in your car, and go back to the end of the line,” he said. His men sneered and snickered. They stopped though, and Corporal Russell let out a little yelp as Satan stepped forward, grabbing him by the collar.
“I will do no such thing,” said Satan. He said it simply, the calmness in his voice standing in stark contrast to his aggressive posture. Then he shook Corporal Russell, hard. And the man simply disappeared, leaving Satan holding a rather roomy uniform. A little mouse squeaked, and Satan let the uniform fall on top of him.
None of the men under Russell’s command had ever seen anything quite like that, and they were all, to put it mildly, a little shocked. None of them spoke a word, which was probably prudent given that the guy who’d just turned their boss into a rodent was still there among them. After a couple of seconds of this prudent silence, the little brown mouse climbed out of the Corporal’s discarded clothing. He squeaked at Satan. The Devil stepped forward, and, without even so much as a glance downward, crushed the rodent under his shoe.
Satan smiled congenially. “Now,” he said, pointing to the Humvee that had been moved
to block the shoulder. “Who would like to move that large vehicle out of the way?”
Chapter 18. Festus Is an Idiot Who Calls Too Early in the Morning
For the second time that night, the phone rang. But this time Liam sat up immediately, his mind alert and duck free. He grabbed the receiver. “What?” he barked.
“Dude!” said Festus, his feelings hurt.
Liam looked out the window. It wasn’t fully dark out anymore. The sky had that pale and pinkish hue it gets as the sun is just coming up. Regardless, it was clearly way too early for Festus to be acting so peniscuous. Or to be calling at all, for that matter. Liam glanced at the shattered remains of his clock on the floor. “What time is it, Festus?”
“It is 6:25 in the morning, and—” Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“Why,” said Liam, pausing to calm himself, “are you calling me at 6:25 in the morning?”
“Well, I need help,” said Festus. The line stayed silent for a moment. Festus could hear Liam breathing deep, slow breaths.
“What kind of help could you possibly need that requires you to call me in the middle of the night?” He asked the question casually, as if he were just throwing it out there. More thunder rumbled, and it occurred to Liam that he hadn’t actually seen any clouds in the sky when he’d peeked out the window. He pushed back the shades for another look, and there it was – a big, mashed-potato-looking stack of clouds, rolling in from the west.
“Well, it’s not the middle of the night.” Both immediately regarded this statement as something of a misstep, but Festus chose to plow on anyway. “I’m in jail,” he said.
“Again.” More thunder.
“Yes, that’s correct. Again.”
For the second time that night, Liam was tempted to smash his phone. He was definitely going to move the damned thing out of his bedroom. “Festus…”
Festus could hear Liam breathing again. “It’s totally not my fault this time.”
“What? Did somebody trip you and you accidentally fell into jail?”
Festus was aware that Liam had a temper, but things had to get pretty crazy for him to lose his cool. This kind of bitchiness was unprecedented and totally unlike Liam. It was, after all, only jail. “Dude,” he asked, “I’m sorry to be calling so early, but I’m in jail, and I just spent the night cuddling with the biggest Mexican guy I’ve ever seen. Or maybe he was Hawaiian. I don’t know. What I do know is that I learned way more about man-love than I ever wanted – or even realized there was to learn.”
Liam knew better than to allow Festus to run a conversation. “Tell me why you are in jail, Festus, or I’m hanging up.”
“I went for communion last night.”
“You dumbass. I told you you’d get in trouble. You should be glad it’s just jail.”
“Whatever,” said Festus. In fact, he had been vaguely disappointed by the priest’s failure to do anything really villainous. In the end, all he’d done was ask Festus to apologize and then let his leather-clad associates beat him up a bit. And then, of course, the cops showed up and arrested him. Spending the night in jail fending off the romantic overtures of a hormonally-challenged Mexican had actually been the worst part – so far at least. Now he braced himself to tell Liam what he’d been up to – which wouldn’t be much of a surprise, really, since Festus rarely went to jail for other things.
“What was the word I used a second ago? Ah, yes. Dumbass.”
“Well— well, yeah, okay.” It wasn’t as if Liam had said something they didn’t both already know. “Anyway, jail totally sucks. So I need you to come pick me up.”
“Absolutely not. I have somewhere I need to be this morning.”
Festus was indignant. “Where? The can? It’s Saturday! Come down here and bail me out already!”
“Today is Monday, Festus.” Liam sounded calm now and a little weary.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Festus, not at all aware of the irony of his statement. The phone went quiet for a moment while Festus made a variety of contemplative “hmm” sounds at himself.
“Festus?”
“Oh, yeah. Look, it was a long night, filled with way more heinousness than any man should ever have to endure, okay? Please just come get me.”
“Sorry.” Liam shook his head, which was helpful, considering that Festus was talking to Liam from the other end of a phone line, inside a jail almost three miles away.
“Come on, man,” Festus pleaded, “I don’t have anyone else who can help. Don’t leave me here. I pretty sure Mount Iwannadoya is ready to take our relationship to the next level. He has nothing on his lower half but leather chaps, by the way.”
“Sorry, man. Gotta go.”
“Liam?! What in the hell is wrong with you this morning? Did someone die or something? Or did some kind of angry, stinging insect somehow manage to crawl up your ass?” He could hear more heavy breathing from Liam. “Just come get me already, you heartless bastard. You would not believe what this guy just told me about Governor Whitford.”
“What?” asked Liam.
“Can’t talk about it now. Just come get me.”
“I’m only coming to get you so that I can kill you and leave your body in a ditch somewhere.”
“I can live with that.”
Chapter 19. I Love a Parade of Naked Guys
In the 1970s, lots of people thought that the world was going to end. The Earth was supposedly going to melt or freeze or explode or something, all because we couldn’t be bothered to turn off the tap water while brushing our teeth, and so we were all definitely going to die. In this period of disco and wild-blue-sky optimism, there emerged the worst architectural style the world has ever known: modernism. “Build ‘em big,” they said. “Build ‘em big and ugly and monolithic. Build ‘em so that they’re still here when the Time Traveler arrives and dinosaurs have reappeared and evolved to the point where dino-archaeologists can be impressed by our stupendous architectural achievements.” And so they built them big and ugly and monolithic. And now we’re stuck with the damned things. These awful tributes to the dystopian future –where old people are melted down and recycled as food – infest our cities and, perhaps appropriately, are used primarily for government offices, low-income housing, or (combining the two) jails.
The Austin City Jail is one of these ultra-modern abominations. It is a very tall, very brown, and very government-looking building on the eastern edge of downtown. It was built, of course, in the 1970s, and there are now very few people alive who will admit to having had any part in its construction.
Liam and Festus walked out of the front of the jail building and down the front steps to the street. Liam wore the kind of pained expression you might see on the face of a person who is on his first visit to a sewage processing plant.
“So he said that it’s the end of the world,” said Festus.
“Who did?”
“Haven’t you been listening? The guy last night.”
“Some crazy dude you met in jail?”
“Well, yeah. But I’m not sure he was crazy. He told me some really wild stuff.”
“Wait, did you hear what you just said?”
“Wild stuff, man,” said Festus.
“You need to stop going to jail, dumbass,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Festus, nodding as if he were receiving an ancient Chinese secret or other bit of profound wisdom. But then he muttered, mostly under his breath, “It’s not like I was trying.”
“The hell you weren’t.”
They crossed the street in silence.
“You know,” said Festus, by way of changing the subject entirely, “I’m pretty excited about animal adjectives.” He paused, looking around. “Where the hell did you park?” Liam nodded toward a parking lot up the street and kept walking. Festus had to scramble to catch up.
“So,” he said. “Animal adjectives.” He waggled his eyebrows at Liam as he were referring to an inside joke about their shared harem or a horde of cash they’d recen
tly liberated from a bank.
“What—?”
“You know—”
“—the fuck?”
“—like feline, which means ‘cat-like,’ and canine, and equine. But those are just the usual ones.”
“Oh sure,” said Liam. “Right.” He kept walking. An outside observer might have thought, based on his body language and the way that he seemed to speed up his pace, that Liam was trying to tune out Festus’ rambling. An outside observer would have been correct.
“And my favorite – get this,” Festus smacked Liam’s arm, “—is turdine! It means ‘bluebird-like.’ Caprine is pretty good too, I guess. Means ‘goat-like.’”
Liam stopped and turned to face Festus. “You done yet?”
“Yeah, I guess. Sure.”
Liam turned and stepped into the street, only to have a motorcycle cop blip his siren at him. “What th—?” He stepped backward, but missed the curb and fell backward onto his butt.
“Wow,” said Festus, leaning over to offer Liam a hand. “What was that?” He pulled Liam up, and the two watched two more police motorcycles roll down the street. A third burbled and blatted its engine as it followed the others, but then slowed and came to a stop five feet away from Liam and Festus. The policeman, still seated on his bike, held his arms straight out, signaling that no pedestrians should cross the street.
“What’s going on?” asked Festus.
The cop stared straight through them, ignoring Festus’ question. “Stay back, gentlemen.” Liam and Festus looked at each other for half a second and then headed off down the sidewalk.
As they walked, and the sound of the cop’s idling motorbike faded, they heard voices – men’s voices. They turned to see what was coming and there, half a block away and five-abreast, was a very long line of men dressed in a random assortment of camouflage fatigues, trucker caps, and T-shirts advertising professional wrestlers. Many of the men had signs. The line of men in front marched shoulder-to-shoulder, holding a banner that read, “Texas Independence NOW!!” They were chanting too, but there seemed to be little in the way of organization, rhyming schemes or even coherence to their discordant cacophony.
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