Up Jumps the Devil (43 page)

The hunters looked at one another in disbelief, and looked off after the Devil until he was out of sight, walking north.

Then they continued hunting. The deep woods were probably the same everywhere in the world, they thought. Strange things happened there and abided there, and if you wandered there, you got what you deserved.

New York, 2005

LEAVING THE DREAM
was like leaving the woods at night.

The dark of the woods became the dark of the hospital room, where the Devil had fallen half out of his chair, and sprawled across Memory's legs. His throat ached from snoring, and drool soaked his cheek.

He drew himself up straight.

Then he jumped in the chair, startled.

Memory's eyes were open. She was looking at him.

MEMORY TRIED TO SPEAK
, but couldn't.

Her jaw creaked. Muscles and tendons were shrunken tight.

Her throat pulsed, but not in a useful way.

There were plenty of things Memory would have liked to talk about, now that the Devil was awake.

Her amnesia was gone, for one thing.

The memories that flooded in were hard to grasp, at first. But she had been awake for an hour now, and was dealing with it.

It's not easy, waking up and remembering that you are an angel.

It's not easy remembering that you gave yourself amnesia because you knew if you forgot you were an angel, you might be able to get used to life as an animal.

Which you wanted very badly, because your boyfriend, the Devil, lived down here. The Devil, who had been your boyfriend for a shockingly long time.

Your boyfriend, the Devil, who had been asleep across your legs, and who now sat up in his chair, looking at you.

You would have liked to say something, you really would. But you couldn't.

He had figured it out, too.

“Arden,” he said.

Memory nodded.

A single tear fell from the Devil's right eye.

He wanted to ask if she planned to stay this time, but wasn't sure he could handle the answer. So they sat like that in a silence encompassing all the years they had been apart, and Memory kept on remembering things,
knowing
things.

She felt her body around her, pinched and dry, shrunken like a mummy. But she felt and knew something else, too.

She was pregnant.

Pregnant?

“How—?” she tried to say, but only croaked.

The Devil sat there looking at her, with that one tear falling down his face.

How, indeed!

“Oo ASTARD!”
she screamed through locked teeth.

“What?” he said, his eyes worried. He leaned closer.

Good thing for him that her muscles were out of tune. He had no idea that she was straining to beat the hell out of him. As it happened, all she could do was sit there and give him an intense stare.

She tired quickly, and calmed down.

She remembered the strange night in Rome, across a universe of time, when he had held her with such love that it made him shake, trying to bring her back to him. He had tried it again, only this time there wasn't enough left of him to do it right. What was happening to him? Maybe angels, on Earth, waxed and waned like the moon. Maybe they grew old, at last, and died. Maybe they fell asleep … what was the difference?

She wouldn't allow it. She would protect him from time itself, if necessary. From
himself
, if necessary.

There was no way she would let him just wink out or fade, not now when, finally—

She lay still, feeling the odd warmth below her belly, the tiny pulse.

Did he know?

She wouldn't tell him. Not yet. Serve him right.

He took her hand. Another tear left his eye.

He quietly cried himself to sleep in his chair, almost four years of waiting finally catching up with him.

He snored horrible snores, beastly and snaggletoothed.

“Astard,” Memory croaked at him.

She commanded her arm to work, and gently stroked his hair.

SHE MADE AN EFFORT
to stretch her arms and legs. To crack her neck and roll her head around. To work her jaw until it opened and shut. To breathe in and out, and swallow and think and be awake.

Around midafternoon, some guys from the Coma Channel burst in, having caught her awakening on the live feed, from the hidden camera in the ceiling.

“We'll do a special!” they crowed.

One of them shook her hand, which hurt.

“We'll do a miniseries!” cried another.

Her exercises paid off. First she threw a water pitcher at them, then the cup, and both pillows. Mostly it was the look in her eyes, which seemed superhuman, somehow, and pissed off. When she threatened to rip down the hidden camera and feed it to them, they scuttled out of the room sideways, afraid to turn their backs on her.

The Devil slept through it all.

Washington, 1962

THE DEVIL HAD FALLEN ASLEEP
thinking how good things could be now, and from now on, if they didn't screw it up.

Things had been good before, after all, and then gone south.

He dreamed of a time when he'd almost thought they had it made, down here on Earth, just a few decades back, when America had a nifty new president called JFK.

JFK HAD BEEN HANDSOME
. He was a war hero. He had a million-dollar smile and a million-dollar wife and a million dollars. People loved him whether they meant to or not, and everything he did just installed him deeper in the department stores of their hearts.

Trouble was, it was a dangerous time, too. America and Russia each had thousands of hydrogen bombs, and any day they might blow up the planet. Just when there were so many new consumer products to buy, and department stores in which to buy them.

It would be just like people, thought the Devil, to commit a whole planet full of suicide just when things were going so well. JFK might be a swell guy, but the Devil doubted he, or any other human, no matter how handsome, could stop the Unthinkable once it got rolling.

Which was why the Devil took a jet airplane flight to Washington, caught a taxi to Pennsylvania Avenue, slipped past the White House guards and up to the second-floor residence, where he found JFK eating breakfast alone, reading the first of several newspapers.

The Devil flew in through his ear and curled up in his brain and looked out through the president's eyes.

Time to go to work. Just as soon as he finished the president's breakfast.

JFK's wife wafted into the room just then, wearing a robe of loose-fitting silk.

The Devil's eyebrows shot up.

Breakfast and work could both wait a little while, he decided.

SOME THINGS CHANGED
around the White House, in those first few weeks. For one thing, JFK suddenly paid a lot more attention to his wife. The poor gal didn't know what hit her.

“What's got
into
you?” she gasped once, after the fifth time during one Tuesday morning.

JFK had a brother named RFK, whom he had made attorney general. He didn't listen to him enough. That also changed, which was good, because RFK was smart, and he could be mean. The Devil sent RFK to be mean to people who weren't worried enough about hydrogen bombs.

THERE WERE OTHER
problems besides the bombs.

Some people from the NAACP came to see JFK. They were black leaders from communities in the South, where black people didn't have the same rights as white people. They explained to the president that not everybody was inclined to be so damn happy about all the new consumer products, because they were worried about getting lynched.

The Devil knew about it already, of course. In recent years, though, black people had started doing something very interesting and impressive. They began boycotting things white people needed them to spend money on.

Even rednecks are smart enough to hate losing money.

The black leaders had new plans, too. They told JFK they were going to ride into Alabama on Trailways buses and do things black people weren't supposed, in Alabama, to do. Like eat at white lunch counters in the bus stations, and wait in white waiting rooms.

And the Devil thought: At last! They were rising up again, and this time they would strike hard enough to end slavery for real. Sometimes, the Devil knew, it took a little violence to get the ball of Justice rolling.

“We are committed to nonviolence,” added the leaders.

If he had been listening closely, that would have caught the Devil's attention. But he was too busy congratulating himself for bringing America to this moment.

The Freedom Riders were going to need help. He picked up the phone and said, “Miss Lincoln, uh, get me RFK.”

IT WAS SO
, so, so terrible.

People thought the Freedom Rides were just about people going places they had been told not to go, but it was also about people getting beaten half to death while cops looked the other way.

Which was what happened in Alabama.

Klansmen set one of the Trailways buses on fire with half the people still in it. Those people got out, some badly burned, and the Devil couldn't believe it when they didn't fight back. He sank into his desk chair, and winced. JFK had a bad back. He took pills for it.

He picked up the phone.

“RFK,” he said.

RFK didn't answer the phone. He came over to the White House in person.

He showed up in a limo with a famous black preacher called MLK. And the three of them went for a walk together around the south lawn of the White House, and MLK told JFK, “Love your enemies, Jack.”

His voice was big and hot. He was not a tall man, but everyone who met him came away thinking he was.

It was a mild day on the south lawn. Two yellow birds spiraled by, chasing each other.

JFK said, “‘Love your enemies' doesn't, ah, make sense, Martin. It's something only preachers can afford to believe in.”

MLK told JFK, “You can't build a house with fire.”

MLK took his time, in his long, slow, Sunday-morning way, telling JFK that how you made a thing was as important as the thing itself. And if you made a thing with violence, then that thing would be a violent thing. What a tragedy, then, if black people tried to make freedom out of violence, and enslaved themselves again with a violent freedom.

“I'd say, uh,” said JFK, “a violent freedom is what you have now.”

And MLK drilled him with hot prophet's eyes and said, “Exactly. It's not enough.”

“Love can be a weapon, Jack,” said RFK. He wasn't always mean.

“A tool,” corrected MLK, turning to make his way back to the limo. RFK followed.

When they were gone, the Devil turned to look at the great white fang of the Washington Monument out on the Mall.

Was it possible? Had he underestimated people? Could they improve in ways beyond his own comprehension? The idea was exciting.

Sitting on a bench to keep his back from spasming, he only had a hunch that this nonviolence thing was as naturally a part of America as Gettysburg. That the hall of earthly fame would value nonviolence as much, if not more, than a man on the moon.

Weird.

A man on the moon, though.
There
was an idea he could understand.

He hurried back to make some notes, make some calls, and locate that sexy wife of his.

WHEN KHRUSHCHEV MADE HIS MOVE
and tried to set up rockets down in Cuba, JFK knew what was going on, and knew how to stop it.

Which was not the way his generals advised him.

“Hydrogen bombs on rockets!” they thundered. “Ninety miles off of Florida! There's no choice but to attack! Attack, attack!”

“And, uh, then what?” he asked them.

Then, the generals explained, one thing would lead to another, and Russia and America would launch hydrogen bombs at each other. But it was either that or be a big pussy.

JFK didn't take the bait. “We'll, ah, reconvene this afternoon,” he said, “after we've examined, ah, some more options.”

In the end, the problem was solved by a lot of quiet conversation instead of a war. It was one of the most reasonable moments in history.

The Devil was beside himself! This was America's Shining Moment! This was the combination of power and progress he had always wanted for the world.
His
world!

He meant to let JFK have his wife and his job and his body back after that, he really did. But it was too much fun to take the ball and run with it. Who could blame him?