by Dick Wybrow
“Right,” I said. “Yes, that’s the plan.”
“You’ll know,” he said, standing next to me now. “We’ll have one of our people reach out.”
I nodded, then nodded harder so he was sure. “Yes, yes. Whatever, yes!”
He chuckled, the laugh dry and heartless. “You don’t even know the deal yet, but you’re already saying yes to some accord?”
“Yes, yes,” I said, spitting out water and snot. Raising my head, I still couldn’t see his face. My eyes wide, I said again: “Yes.”
He took a few steps, but I couldn’t tell which direction.
“Don’t work that way, Raz. Wish it did, but there are rules,” he said. “But let’s say you and me, we’ve got a tentative agreement. You gotta sign off on the final still.”
My chest began heaving. I was sobbing. “Yes! Christ, yes! I’ll do it.”
For the first time, I saw a part of his face. Just his mouth, really. He smiled wide. “Not yet. But real, real soon. It will all come together real soon.”
I yelled with what little strength I had left. “You… but you promise to do your part? That’s how it works, right?”
“Sure, of course. As long as you meet the terms. Need to run the numbers, and then—”
“Just save her,” I screamed at the smug prick. “It’s eating her up from the inside, and you fucking probably put it there in the first place.”
“You lookin’ to blame someone for your wife dying, you gotta look up, not down, little brother. Not my thing, Raz.”
Leaning on an elbow, I cocked my finger and pointed at him. “This is exactly your thing!”
“There are concentric circles, sure, but… nah. I don’t get into that line of work. Me, I’m more of a global mover.”
He was gone again, slipping away from my sight, my outstretched hand just hanging out there in the rain. A moment later, I felt his breath on my neck.
“Listen, you know what they say about pointing fingers?” he said, grabbing mine with a hand that was both ice cold and warm. His other hand, bone white, appeared in front of my face.
With that hand he merely pointed at my forehead as if it were a gun, then pulled back his thumb, cocking the hammer. “When you point a finger at somethin’, you got three pointing back… and one at God.”
The rain stopped as if a spigot had been twisted shut. There was a final low rumble off in the sky somewhere, but the lightning was gone.
Then everything turned black as a deep, deep hole in every direction.
Finally collapsing, wet gravel dug into my cheek but before I passed out, his voice drifting toward me one last time.
“My people… they’ll reach out sometime tomorrow. Then the clock will be ticking, Raz. You better get your rest.”
And with that, I was seconds away from passing out in the middle of a lonely, rain-soaked dirt highway in bumfuck Mississippi.
Some “Crossroads.”
Not that it mattered. I had already proven them wrong! They said she couldn’t be saved.
They said “say goodbye to her” and things like “it’s just her time.”
They said there was nothing that could be done, and they were wrong.
Wrong!
At least… shit.
I damn well hope they were wrong.
Upon brief reflection, as I passed out shivering and coughing, it occurred to me that I may not have thoroughly considered the totality of my actions before green-lighting my plan.
I had just made a deal with the Devil to save my dying wife.
Me.
Damn.
Chapter Two
The next morning, I woke up slowly, frying under the Mississippi sun and caked with Mississippi dirt.
Given the circumstances—that is, if evolutionary forces had been aligned in my favor—one might have guessed that, sensing imminent danger, I’d have instantly sprung up, crouching like a tiger dragon, ready to test my fight-or-flight instincts.
But no.
I’d fallen asleep, lying facedown on a muddy highway in rural Mississippi, and my mind was slowly drifting back into my skull as if I had no cares in the world.
As if there was nothing that should concern me. Nothing at all.
Like the fact that I was lying facedown on a muddy highway in rural Mississippi.
Ultimately, it wasn’t the sun beating down hard that finally woke me. A deplorably early riser, the sun had already been up for hours.
I wasn’t even stirred by the binaural hum in my left ear, which turned out to be two small black flies that had found a dark place to express their forbidden love.
And it wasn’t the choking dust, which had risen up again after the sun had burnt away last night’s rain. That put the humidity somewhere around what you might expect to find if you tested the gap between the plastic seat and the taint of a 350-pound NASCAR fan during the final lap of the Daytona 500.
No, what actually pulled me from sleep’s embrace was the sensation that my balls were being jiggled.
And it seemed, for the first time in months, I wasn’t the jiggler.
It took me a full ten seconds to finally process all this, but when I did, my body instinctively flipped over.
“What the fu—?”
Then I was on my feet, unsteady and momentarily blinded by the sun.
I ached everywhere but managed to swing my arms in the air, hoping whoever had been digging in the front pockets of my shorts would feel the wrath of my fists.
They did not, in fact, feel my fists’ wrath.
I stood there, eyes like slits, swinging my arms like an angry drunken orchestra conductor.
A gravelly voice tumbled toward me. “Aww, you ain’t dead.”
“What?” I said. “No!”
“Shit, I thought you was dead.”
Cracking one eye a little farther open and shielding my vision with a dirty hand, I saw an old woman, heavy and sweating, baking in the sun where she stood. Thick, bulky clothes despite the punishing heat.
She looked disappointed.
“Gross,” I said. “Weirdo. You normally go around jiggling the balls of seemingly dead men?”
She didn’t answer.
Stumbling a few steps out of the road, I found the stump the Dark Man had been sitting on the night before.
“I know this is a bit of a flash judgment on my part,” I said to her as she continued staring at me, “but if that’s your thing—ball-jiggling dead guys—you’ve got some deep-seated, emotional fucked-upness that you should probably address with a trained professional.”
She didn’t answer.
I plunked down onto the stump, and my sore legs briefly loved me as if for the first time. For a man of thirty-two, it didn’t seem like I should feel this old yet.
Could be that the previous night’s accommodations had been rather lacking.
Could be that many of my thirty-two were “hard-livin’ years” as George Jones had once put it. Or maybe that was George Thorogood. Possibly George Michael.
“I thought you was dead,” she said again. She started walking away, slowly and wobbly, in a way only old women can.
“You already established that little fun fact, ma’am.”
“Was looking to see if you had anything… worth having.”
“Wait,” I said, letting out a deep breath. “You were robbing me?”
Nice. That’d make it the second time in twenty-four hours.
“I thought you was dead.”
“That… you know, every time you say those particular words, my thoughts turn a little more violent. I’m not normally, but… you know—”
“You don’t got nothing anyhow worth taking,” she said, still wobbling away, but she hadn’t yet traveled more than a few feet. It must have taken her weeks to make it down the road to get to my balls.
“But you thought digging through my pockets, stealing from me, would be a good way to kick off your morning, huh?”
“Well, I thought you wa—” She cleared h
er throat. I stood up from the stump to follow her. She was slow, but my best guess was she at least knew the way back toward town. She continued: “You seemed like you wouldn’t miss whatever somebody else might find.”
The old woman ambled down the middle of the dirt highway. The sun at our backs, I matched her pace but still clung toward the edge of the road.
“I’m just trying to get a feel for the locals,” I said, my voice frayed at the edges. “So when you find a guy facedown, instead of, I don’t know, calling the police or a doctor… you fine folks jiggle the man’s balls.”
The buzzing in my ear had suddenly reached a crescendo, and realizing there were two insects having sex in my skull, I violently shook my head back and forth, trying to forcibly evict them from their love nest.
Not the wisest choice. This became clear when I found myself flat on my back, down on the dirt highway again.
Thankfully, in the torrent, the bug lovers had quickly checked out. For a brief moment, I felt a little cheap and used.
I made it back up to my feet, slower this time. The old woman was now about thirty yards ahead of me.
Crazy old bat can move when she wants to, damn.
When I finally caught back up to her, the effort it took drained any last bit of anger from me. We walked silently for a few minutes.
I thought about the previous night. As much as I could say that it seemed like a dream, I knew it was real enough. Having exhausted every effort to save my Carissa, as she’d saved me time and time again, I found I’d had no options left.
In fact, that very scenario had been explained to me in detailed medical terms. But still, when it came to my wife, that wasn’t good enough. So I’d ended up at the famed Crossroads to make a deal with the Devil.
And it seemed a deal had been struck.
Or a tentative deal.
My part, which was easily established, was wagering my soul. Whatever. Frankly, without Carissa, it didn’t seem worth very much anyhow.
The deal—or “accord” as he’d called it, all fancy-like—still wasn’t clear. He’d said something about his people getting back to me. Odd.
So in essence, I was only vaguely sure that I’d put my everlasting soul on the line, hoping to save my wife from her deadly disease.
Sure, it was selfish, in part. I just didn’t see the point of being here if she wasn’t around. As I said, she’d saved my life countless times—nearly every precious day we’d had together.
And she was—if you pardon the mushiness and potential irony, given my present circumstances—my soul mate.
If she were gone, I was essentially dead anyhow. It had taken me years to finally realize a humiliating fact about myself: I’m no good on my own.
Seriously.
If it had been me on that deserted island instead of Tom Hanks, I would have died within twenty-four hours. And fuck Wilson because a) he didn’t have any hands or anything, so he was no help at all, and b) he was a critical and bitchy little leather asshole. Total downer.
I freely admit the shortcoming, but at least realize my own Achilles heel. Most people never do.
And now the only partner I wanted in the whole world was dying in a hospital bed as I trudged along, frying in the late morning sun, next to an old woman who moments earlier was trying to rob my not-dead body.
Things were not going terribly well.
“How far is it back to town?”
The old woman sighed. “What town you trying to get to?”
“I don’t know… any town.”
Then she stopped and slowly turned toward me. Staring intently for a moment, she then twisted her head back to where I’d been lying, where she’d found me not dead. She looked back at me. “What the hell was you doin’ out here, then? You fall out your car?”
“I don’t own a goddamn car, haven’t for… It doesn’t matter.”
Walking again, she said, “And you say I got the deep-seated, emotional fucked-upness. I ain’t the one who falls asleep on dirt highways.”
“That’s not… those aren’t my usual accommodations. I passed out,” I said. “It was… You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, nah, dumb ol’ woman like me wouldn’t get you and yo’r big thinkin’ ways,” she said, all syrup and sass.
“I don’t mean it like that. It’s just… it’s kind of unbelievable.”
The old woman chuckled, deep and throaty. “Oh, I understand all right. Didn’t realize it at first. Don’t get so many out here no mo’,” she said and pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “You thought you was at the Crossroads down here to make a deal with Lucifer hisself, right?”
My mouth opened, and my jaw hung there for a moment, then I closed it and said nothing.
“Boy, they ain’t no Crossroads,” she said in a manner better suited if she were rocking in an old chair on an old, dilapidated porch. And maybe smoking a pipe. Or whittling. Maybe whittling a pipe. Or smoking a whittle. She added: “That’s just a dumb ol’ legend some record company made up to sell blues records.”
“Okay, whatever.”
“Fine, believe whatchu want.”
She hadn’t been there the night before. This woman was someone who attempted to rob not-dead bodies for chrissake! What did she know?
Ahead, through the dust and haze coming off the hot road, I saw the first signs of several buildings. Shops.
Still, my fists were banging off my thighs at how quickly she’d dismissed my incredible, mind-boggling metaphysical experience from the night before.
“So, I talked to the guy,” I said. “Not that you’d buy that.”
“Talked to who?”
“The guy. The Dark Man. I came out here, damn right, to the Crossroads. And he was there, had this wide-brimmed hat. Waiting right there for me.”
She was quiet for a moment. “That was probably Randall.”
“No, it wasn’t a guy named Randall!”
“Fine. What’d he look like?”
“What? It was dark. And he’s, you know, the guy… so you can’t see his face. I think.”
“You didn’t see the man’s face?”
“No… ’cause, you can’t, right? It’s just black.”
She shot me a look.
“I mean, it’s dark. No light. You can’t see.”
She nodded slowly. “Sound like Randall.”
“No, no, and NO! Of all the things that could possibly be anyone called Randall, this guy was none of those things!”
“Uh-huh. So I’m guessin’ you came up on a guy in the middle of the highway you didn’t know, a face you couldn’t see, and you went and said you’d sell him your soul.”
“It… it’s way, way more complicated than that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes!” I said. “He had this… stick.”
“A stick.”
“A walking stick. Very powerful. One tap, it sent these… bolts of pain right through me!”
“Right. A stick.”
“With… uh, I think it may have, sort of, had a tennis ball on the end of it. For the mud.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, looking toward me with a mocking, wide-eyed expression. “You right. Stick with a tennis ball on it? That sounds like some serious Old Testament shit right there.”
“Whatever.”
“So spooky!” She put her hands to either side of her mouth very theatrically, and I asked myself if I could live with having punched an old lady. “Boy, sounds like you met the Devil hisself!”
And all signs were pointing to yes.
“Stop talking,” I said. “Now. Okay? Please?”
Kicking up little swirls of dirt as we walked in silence, I watched the buildings form before us. One looked to be a diner, and the thought made my stomach growl.
I was hungry and so thirsty it was hard to swallow. Curling the toes of my right foot, I could feel my ID and credit card were still there. Hopefully the card hadn’t gotten too wet from last night’s storm.
“That there’s Wa
rdoff. Sort of, uh, in between spots out here. Not a big place,” she said, nodding ahead. “Got a Kmart, though. Hardware store. Diner.”
“Great,” I said. Then: “Thank you.”
She nodded, and with that, we’d made some sort of unspoken peace.
I offered to buy her lunch at the diner—after all, she’d led me back to town— but she said she’d just stick to the road, whatever that meant.
With about ten minutes left of walking before we’d reach town, she coughed something up and spit it out. Cleared her throat.
“So, why would you come all the way out here, risk expirin’ in this heat? You obviously ain’t used to it. Just to offer up your soul to Randall?”
“It wasn’t any guy named Randall.”
A small smile bent her lips, and she raised her hands as if surrendering.
“Fine, not Randall,” she said, then paused and stopped. Her breathing was a little labored. I guess nobody really gets used to that kind of heat. “Well, hold on, now. You really wanted to make a deal with the Devil, din’t you?”
I nodded, eyes closed.
“Boy, why would you even consider that? You talking about your everlasting soul, now, ya hear? For what? For a chance to be a better guitar player or to discover the unified theory or something?”
“No, nothing like th— Wait, what was that last thing?”
“I read the science magazines at the dentist’s office. Not much else to do out in these parts.”
“Except rob dead guys,” I muttered.
She shrugged. “Certainly better than jigglin’ their balls.”
I laughed, and she gave me a smile. As we walked the final few minutes into town, I explained to her why I was willing to risk my eternal soul.
Don’t let the adventure stop there! Pick up Hell inc. now