Up Jumps the Devil (12 page)

TWO-JOHN LEFT THE PORCH
and went inside. He emerged with a duffel bag over one shoulder, and his guitar in a burlap sack under one arm. Before, he had looked as if he belonged in another world. Now he seemed to be collecting himself in this one.

He climbed down the ladder, into the mist and the water, and waded over to the pirogue.

“I don't think she'll hold three of us, John,” said the Devil, standing in the stern, looking for something to put in his pipe.

But Two-John just tossed in his guitar and duffel bag, and said, “I ain't getting in. You're getting out.” He grabbed the boat and gave it a wobble, and the Devil pitched over backward into the swamp.

Memory didn't fall. She had the sense, in a narrow boat, to stay seated.

The Devil came up sputtering and steaming, eyes glowing.

“Calm down,” said Two John. “I need you to help me with something.”

They had a short, quiet conversation, then dove under the water and didn't come up for a while.

THE HOUSE LEANED
a particular way, stilts cracking.

The anchor chain went slack.

Then Two-John and the Devil, draped in swamp muck, rose up beside the pirogue, bearing a muddy, moss-covered, but nonetheless solid gold anchor as big as a man.

“You can't put that in the boat,” said Memory. “I'll meet you on the shore.”

She crawled across the pirogue, over the Devil's guitar—a fiddle again, wrapped in leather—and gave the motor a pull.

“How far is the shore?” asked the Devil, hoisting his end of the anchor and trudging after the pirogue.

“It changes,” said Two-John.

Memory nudged the tiller, aiming between trees. She picked up the jar from between her feet, and drank a little of Two-John's wine.

“By the way,” said the Devil to Two-John, “I brought you something.”

He jerked his chin at the pirogue, and Two-John craned his neck to peer over the gunnel.

In the bottom of the boat lay a beaten old guitar case. It hadn't been there a minute ago, Memory was sure.

“That's Dan Paul's guitar,” she said, sipping at the wine.

“His guitar,” said Two-John, stumbling a little under the weight of the anchor, “but what's in it belongs to me. Ain't sure I'm happy it come back.”

“You're gonna need it,” said the Devil.

Inside the case, something moved and scratched.

“There's something in there,” Memory observed.

“Pas de bêtise,”
said Two-John. “No shit.”

Behind them, the house surrendered to the floodwaters and drifted off into the fog. All around, the vines hung low, the moss hung low, and the river ran through it all like coffee.

THE MICROBUS STARTED
just fine, despite spending the night tire-deep in floodwater. The engine was cool, at least. That much Memory absorbed before the wine she had tasted put her to sleep.

Two-John and the Devil drove fifty miles, slowly, down the flooded northbound highway, until the rear shocks cracked into pieces under the weight of the solid gold anchor and the Microbus fishtailed, hurling the Kennedy limo into a ditch, where it tipped up and sank like a rock.

Memory woke up with a headache like a mad dog.

“Told you,” said Two-John. “It's too heavy.”

“Shut up,” said the Devil.

“‘That anchor needs a dump truck or a train to carry it,' I said. Didn't I say that, me?”

“He doesn't listen,” said Memory, trying to get her eyes to focus.

“I
listen
,” complained the Devil.

“You couldn't just snap your fingers—” said Two-John.

“He doesn't do that,” Memory told him.

“Fine!” said the Devil. Half turning in the driver's seat, he offered Memory a courtly, if sarcastic, bow. He climbed out of the Microbus, straightened his hat, and snapped his fingers.

The limo hauled itself out of the ditch.

The bus roared to life, good as new, or better, and bounced on perfect shocks.

The solid gold anchor flew out the back doors, and lay across the limo's backseat.

The Lincoln sagged, but the Devil snapped his fingers and the car steadied itself. He climbed in behind the dripping wheel, raced the engine, and waved goodbye.

“See you soon,” he called, passing on the shoulder and accelerating north, leaving a muddy wake behind.

“Which way is civilization?” Memory asked Two-John.

“That way,” he answered, pointing south. “New Orleans.”

BY THE TIME
they crossed Lake Pontchartrain and rolled down the city streets, Memory felt more or less herself, except for an uneasy stomach. She looked for a pay phone to call Bubble Records in California.

They were halfway down Bourbon Street when a tavern manager gave a yelp, leaped tables, and went down before her on one knee, kissing her hand.

Two-John shuffled beside her. He didn't feel clear yet about his role, where Memory was concerned. Was he supposed to protect her? Romance her? Treat her like a sister, what?

He decided the tavern manager wasn't a threat, which he wasn't.

He was a fan.

He babbled that he'd seen her on television, on the news, that people were still talking about the Woodstock concert and everyone who'd played there, including the mystery band who'd played part of one song and then vanished during the rainstorm.

Memory was the Amelia Earhart of rock 'n' roll.

Would she sing with his musicians in the tavern that night? He'd give her all the receipts just to be able to say she had sung at his little dive.

Memory said she would. Then she asked to use the phone, and he tugged her indoors.

Two-John bought himself a Miller beer and sat at a nearby table, watching Memory through his long hair.

Memory got through to California. Dan Paul's old studio boss wasn't in the office, but the office went nuts and patched her through to his home in Malibu.

She told him Hello when he answered, and then sat and listened while he talked—yelled, really—for almost an hour.

Her eyes got bigger and bigger.

Two-John drank his beer and gave his guitar case the evil eye. Something inside plucked a low note.

“Frème ta djeule,”
growled Two-John. “Quiet, you.”

The Northbound Highway, 1969,
and then Egypt, 2500
BC

THE DEVIL DROVE NORTH
with the top down. The humid southern air turned his hair into a long, wet whip. He drove the Natchez Trace amid the ghosts of thieves and madmen. He drove by roads that were strange and half real, and near Memphis he stopped for chili. Near Franklin he stopped at a Holiday Inn, where he toweled his hair dry and stared out the window, watching taillights on the highway.

Then he cranked the air conditioner, smoked half a cigarette, and fell asleep dreaming a memory of long ago, when he had won back his true love in Egypt.

HE REMEMBERED
walking like a giant among the Earth's first kingdoms.

The Fallen who stayed behind were kings in those days. They rutted and mated and made children who were gods and monsters.

As the centuries passed, though, the Devil met fewer of the Fallen. Earth wore at them in a way Heaven had not, and one by one they were claimed by a bottomless sleep. He sometimes felt this great sleep grasping at him, but he was stronger than the others, and the pain of his broken heart sustained him. He missed Arden until finally he thought his loneliness must rival God's. That was the day he lay down in the desert and slept for hundreds of years.

HE MIGHT HAVE TURNED
to dust and blown away if the desert hadn't started to move over his head.

He sat up to see what was happening.

People were building mighty cities on the Nile River.

The Devil, coughing sand, blinked in amazement.

These were a new kind of people. Enterprising, and busy with impressive work. They knew mathematics and astronomy and architecture. They built pyramids, temples, and whole cities of painted stone. They called their nation “Egypt.”

People like this, thought the Devil, might someday make Earth the envy of Heaven.

The idea took his breath away.

In a single moment, purpose rushed back into his life.

Arden might be able to stomach the world the Egyptians were making. There were scholars among them, and artists, and poets! Perhaps she would come to Earth and be his again.

He got up out of the dust and marched into Egypt, determined to win his girlfriend back, and raise the civilizations of Earth until they looked down on Heaven.

HE WHISPERED IN
the ears of Egypt's mathematicians. He labored among her masons. For a time, he wore Pharaoh's double crown.

He urged them. Forced them.

They were an ancient and religious people, though. They depended to a large degree on fear and mystery, so he put on the body of a lion and the head of a man, and crouched by the roadside, asking riddles. They called him Sphinx, and honored and dreaded him.

The mission of the Sphinx was to help make Egypt wise by eating dumb people.

He would ask travelers, “Who is wiser: a wise man or a fish?”

If the traveler did not answer “a wise man,” maybe because he wished to seem clever, or because he suspected a hidden meaning, the Sphinx would eat him. In this way, he culled the stupid and the pretentious, and improved the Egyptian gene pool.

ONE DAY
, the Sphinx crouched by the roadside, and a traveler came by, cloaked and hooded.

“Which is wiser,” asked the Sphinx, “a wise man or a fish?”

“It is a trick question,” said the traveler. “The answer is ‘a wise
woman,'
the wisest of all wise things.”

The traveler's voice was familiar.

She shed hood and cloak, revealing wings and a body of shining light.

Arden
.

And they fell, coupling, right in the middle of the road.

THEY WERE HAPPY
for a time.

The Devil had been right: the pyramids and the calendars impressed her. They took a modest apartment. Domestic life was something new for them both. With only each other to entertain, they sat together in gardens, or walked in the bazaars.

“This,” she observed, “must be the way lives are supposed to fit together.”

They lay together in bed in the late morning, listening to boats and voices on the canal outside the window. The Devil was happier than he'd ever been.

If you had told him, at that particular moment, that she would be leaving again, he would have just laughed.

Practically every night, he would sit up late, talking with neighbors over the kitchen table, over mugs of beer, and platters of bread and oil. It was difficult for Arden at first, but she got used to chatting sociably and eating little finger sandwiches.

She became close with a woman named Nabiri, a young newlywed. Nabiri's husband, Apoo, had a good job with the priests, predicting the moods of the Nile. Arden and Nabiri started a kind of neighborhood women's orchestra. There were a couple of widows with panpipes, Nabiri played the oboe, and Arden sang. Every Tuesday night they practiced, and boatmen would linger on the canal beneath the windows.

The Devil became friends with Apoo, and taught the Egyptian what the stars really were, and Apoo started work on a calendar. The Devil taught him weather, and he drew tables matching rainfall to the way the river ran. When they'd been at this for more than a year, Apoo made a prediction.

“There is going to be a terrible flood,” he said.

The Devil agreed.

Apoo gathered the tables and charts, and rushed off to warn the priests, who would warn Pharaoh and the people. But he was back a short time later, looking tired and stunned.

“They didn't believe it,” he told the Devil. “I showed them the charts and explained the numbers and the weather. But they dismissed me. My assistance is no longer required at the temple.”

Apoo collapsed into a chair.

The Devil's eyes darkened.

“It's about money,” he told Apoo.

“What is?”

“You just told a group of priests—
rich
priests—that this year's crop—this year's
money
—is going to be wiped out by the weather.”

“I didn't just tell them. I showed them numbers.”

The Devil spread his arms wide, then let them fall in frustration.

“I've always kind of assumed,” he said, “that people would thirst for knowledge and understanding. But they don't. They thirst to know things that support what they already believe. They especially like to hide from anything that looks like it might cost them money.”