Up Jumps the Devil (5 page)

Minnie Mouse and Goofy came lolloping his way from opposite directions. He dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the ground and sat on a nearby bench, hoping they'd fight over it.

They didn't. Goofy picked it up and turned it in at the Lost and Found.

The Devil got a snow cone and headed for the parking lot.

Found his car, a midnight-blue Lincoln.

Sometimes people stared at the Devil's car, wondering why it looked familiar. Those who thought about it long enough, or searched their memories hard enough, were usually horrified. Sometimes they took pictures.

The Devil always smiled for the pictures. He was proud of his car.

IT TOOK HIM
two hours to leave the L.A. traffic behind. He turned east, toward the Mojave and Death Valley, and turned on the radio. His straw hat almost blew away as he gathered speed off the Barstow exit. He caught it with a long, nimble claw, laid it on the passenger seat, and settled in for a long ride. Maybe all night.

The roads the Devil traveled were not always on the map. Strange forces and realities attended him. Sometimes, on the Devil's road, it was day when it should have been night. Quite often, the sun and moon shared the sky and eclipsed each other.

Something like a campfire song was playing on the radio. Catchy! The Devil turned it up. It was a cheerful number called “Cruel April,” about people who had been executed in the springtime.

The guitar player could make the guitar talk. Made it sound like three guitars, at least, having a conversation. The singer's voice seemed to echo, faintly, as if accompanied by its own ghost:

It was the Devil's kind of song. He tapped his long nails on the steering wheel and left the highway. Ahead, two roads crossed between cornfields. Mist poured through the corn, washing over the road. A swirly-painted Microbus sat parked on the shoulder, to his right. In front of the Microbus, three hippies sat holding hands in a circle. Two boys and a girl.

The Devil parked his car on the opposite shoulder and climbed out. He didn't look like a tourist anymore. He looked like an old hippie: long-haired and tan, with a Fu Manchu beard, Lennon glasses, shirt completely open, boots and jeans.

These kids would expect horns, so he had horns.

“I like that gas-chamber song,” he said, crossing the road, pocketing his keys.

Three pairs of eyes goggled at him.

They were petrified. He had known they would be.

“Let me know when you're ready to talk,” he said. Then he stepped into the middle of the crossroads, stirred up a campfire out of nowhere, and began roasting a marshmallow.

Dammit. They always caught on fire, no matter how careful he was.

He peeled the black skin and captured it with a long, prehensile tongue, careful not to get it in his beard.

“Hey,” said the girl, beside him.

“Hey back,” he said.

“Is this for real?” she asked.

“You came to the crossroads at midnight. What did you think was going to happen?”

“I don't think we thought anything was going to happen, really. I don't think any of us really believe in the Devil.”

“Do you believe now?”

“I don't know. Do we believe now, Zachary?”

One of the boys, an Indian with the body and face of a cliff, had joined them.

Before Zachary could answer, the other boy stopped beside the Devil's car.

“Hey!” he bellowed. “Far out! This is the Kennedy limo, isn't it? From Dallas! Holy shit!”

The Devil nodded proudly, and Fish joined them at the fire.

“He made a fire out of nowhere,” Zachary told Fish.

“I think I'm scared,” said the girl.

“Let's go for a ride,” said the Devil.

He opened the shotgun door for Memory. Zachary sat on a jump seat, behind the Devil. Fish sat all the way in back.

“This is right where
he
sat,” bubbled Fish. “This is where Kennedy fucking
died
, man.”

They rolled off into the mist.

Fields and trees flashed by. The wind tossed their hair. Mist soaked their clothes.

“What do you want?” asked the Devil.

In the back, Fish started to say something, but the Devil interrupted.

“Think about it. Even if you already have. Think about it some more. Then tell me.”

“All of us?” asked the girl. “Or each of us, personally?”

“That's up to you,” he answered. “But be careful.”

They were all quiet for a while.

They passed through a town with a mighty limestone courthouse. The courthouse dome held a giant clock, lit from inside. Beside the courthouse, railroad tracks.

The Devil stopped at the tracks. Moments later, the gates lowered, flashing and dinging, and a train rumbled out of the dark.

The Devil liked trains.

The gates went up. They cruised out of town, past a Purina grain elevator and a dead tree.

“I want to be famous,” said the girl. “It's what I started out wanting. And we were almost there. I guess I mean I want to be famous without Dan Paul. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like—”

The Devil raised a hand, silencing her. “A little talk goes a long way,” he said.

The limo caught a cloud of fireflies unawares. They struck the windshield and splattered into green luminescence.

Fish spoke up.

“I want money,” he said. “I've thought about it hard. When I get right down to it, that's why I practiced so hard to do this music shit. When I think about records and playing gigs, that's the thing I think about.”

“I get it,” said the Devil.

They passed a Greyhound bus.

Zachary didn't say anything at all until they got back to the crossroads, and then he said, “I want to change the world.”

“We all change the world,” said the Devil.

“I mean in a big, huge, amazing way.”

“You sure?”

Zachary was sure.

“Far out,” said the Devil.

THEY TOASTED WIENERS
around the campfire, and the Devil explained how the deal worked.

“I'm like the landlord of your soul from now on,” he told them. “It belongs to me, and it does what I want it to do. It'll change you. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Everyone's different. But don't be surprised if you feel a little crazy from now on. More impulsive, more hungry—”

“More like you,” said Fish.

The Devil nodded.

“And we get—?” asked Memory.

“You'll also be smarter. Quicker. More talented. Luckier, if you believe in luck. And I provide services, like any good landlord. I'll open doors. I'll tip things in your favor. I'll make sure you get what you asked for. Along the way, you'll be making the world faster and leaner.”

The Devil's voice rose as he spoke. His eyes burned. Sharp teeth reflected starlight. He looked Memory up and down in a way that was, somehow, both gentlemanly and
not
gentlemanly.

“Sexier, too,” he said.

“And when we die,” said Zachary. “What happens then? We go to Hell?”

“There's no Hell,” scoffed the Devil. “Why would there be? God's not a monster; He's just selfish. When you die, you and I stop being of use to each other. Your soul will do what everyone else's soul does.”

“Which is what?” asked Memory, eyes wide.

The Devil shrugged.

“Maybe go to Heaven, for one.”

“There's no Hell,” said Fish, “but there's a Heaven?” He sounded doubtful.

“Heaven makes sense,” admitted the Devil. “Heaven is like the engine of the universe. It's God and God's angels and light and energy and time and all that crap. Living souls are part of it. It pulls them like gravity. You could even think of Heaven and God as the laws of Nature, except that Heaven is awake and thinks it's
better
than Nature. Which is dumb, and snobbish, and …”

His voice began to rise again, and his eyes to burn, and the kids looked at him in a worried kind of way. The Devil took a deep breath.

“Anyway, suffering for eternity makes no sense. It would serve no purpose. So maybe you go to Heaven. Maybe you stick around and get reborn. Maybe you dissolve into the atmosphere and turn into plant food. Everyone's different. Your soul will do what you expect it to do.”

“So if you expect it to suffer,” said Fish, “it would suffer.”

The Devil gave Fish a narrow-eyed look.

“You're kind of an asshole, aren't you?” he asked. “I'll tell you one thing. All of you. As far as I'm concerned, you're here to make the world a smarter, shinier, braver place. If you start making the world a dumb, frightened place, I will end your contract and burn you up like a fucking marshmallow, body and soul both. So watch your ass, you hear me?”

They heard him. They nodded, swallowing hard.

“That's the deal,” said the Devil.

A silence passed over them.

“So,” said Memory, clearing her throat. “Do we sign in blood, or dance naked around your campfire, there, or—”

“Do you want to?” asked the Devil. He wouldn't mind seeing Memory naked.

“I'm kinda tired,” she said.

The Devil shook his head.

“It's already done,” he said. “If you want out, say so now. It's the only chance you'll get.”

The kids fidgeted nervously, but no one said a word.

He let them see their souls, which was a treat.

Memory's was a butterfly.

Zachary's soul was a stone, but a wonderful stone, gleaming and translucent and shaped like a perfect egg.

Fish's soul was a fish. It popped its head out between his lips, gulped once, and retreated. He didn't really get to look at it. He didn't care.

“You'll get what you asked for,” the Devil told them. “You might get more, but you won't get less. Now back that Microbus over in front of my car.”

The kids looked puzzled, but Zachary went to do as he said.

The Devil retrieved an armload of tools from the limo.

“Towing kit,” he explained.

Zachary drove up, and the Devil got down on his back in the gravel, cursing and banging things around.

“You're coming with us?” said Memory.

“That a problem?”

She chewed her lip.
Was
it a problem?

“No,” she said. “It's just that—”

“You're not sure where you're going, or what to expect when you get there.”

“Right. Plus what am I going to tell our crew, waiting for us at the Howard Johnson's back in Springfield?”

“Tell them I'm the fucking Devil, I don't care.”

“You don't have to be rude.”

He sighed.

“Sorry. I banged my thumb, and it hurts. On top of which, it's been a long day, and Disneyland wasn't relaxing.”

Oh.

“You need anything?” she asked.

“No, hon. Thanks. Be just a minute, here.”

AN HOUR LATER
, they pulled into the Howard Johnson's parking lot. Zachary flashed his lights, and the crew gathered around as he parked.

Memory slid the side door open and spoke to the whole assembly.

“Democracy!” she shouted. “Who votes we stop for the night?”

A few hands.

The Devil peeked out, over her shoulder.

“Who votes we move on, switching drivers, until we get to our next gig, two states away, and have a whole day off when we get there?”

More hands, and a cheer. The crew dug democracy.

Memory reached for the door, but the crew had questions.

“Who's the new cat?” someone asked.

“That's the Devil,” said Memory.

Another question. Someone pointed at the Lincoln.

“Isn't that the JFK death car?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Anything else?”

No. They were a mellow crew. They hit the road.

Upstate New York, 1969

FOR A WEEK OR
so, the Devil drove the space bus. He drank a lot of coffee.

He drove the band to a gig in Virginia. When the producers wanted to cancel (“Dan Paul is
dead
, man!”), the Devil spoke softly to them.

The band played. They were loved. Memory's voice, soft and windy, seemed to grow into the space left by Dan Paul's guitar. It was a new sound, both wilder and more poetic, and the crowd was into it.