Tim Pratt: Sympathy for the Devil

“OK, for one thing, I don’t know what you’re talking about. For another, get out of here or the screaming really starts.”

“What I’m talking about is all that smack you’ve got taped inside your underwear. The dope. Las drogas. I want you to give it to me, all of it, right now. That stuff is bad for you, in case you hadn’t heard, and it can get you in a world of trouble.”

“Screw you. You’re not getting any of it. I was serious about the screaming part.”

But then it didn’t matter, because Secrest came in right behind the Devil. He spun the Devil around by the shoulder and kneed him in the crotch. It was the first time she’d ever seen him do anything remotely resembling violence. The Devil crumpled to the concrete floor.

“Screw you both,” the Devil gasped. “I’ll take the Greyhound bus anywhere I want to ride.”

They checked in at the Economy Lodge in Asheville. Secrest checked the film in his camera and folded up an AAA map of downtown into his pocket and set out to see the sights.

“The historic district is a perfect square,” he declared, as if he’d made a scientific discovery. “So I’d like to walk every street in the grid. I figure I’ll get started today with the up and down and finish up tomorrow on the back and forth while you’re at the university. Want to come with?”

She told him she was tired and crashed out on top of the musty comforter with all of her clothes on while the overworked air-conditioner chugged away.

She met Rusty at the Maple Leaf Bar. It had been less than two years since she’d seen him, but he had to have lost close to fifty pounds, and his hair, once a luxurious mass, was now thinning and stringy. He still got that same giddy smile when he caught sight of her, though, and he rocked back and forth with inaudible laughter. They walked back to his place on McDowell Street, where he gave her the $900 he owed her plus $600 for the drugs in her underwear. They celebrated the deal by getting high in his second floor bedroom, sitting on the end of the bed and staring out the gable window over the rooftops of old downtown as the fan whirred rhythmically overhead. After a few minutes, he collapsed onto his back, let out a long sigh, and then was silent.

She was daydreaming again. In her daydream, Secrest is out walking the maze, crisscrossing through the streets until he sees the Devil walking toward him from the opposite direction. The Devil’s shoes look even filthier, and his goatee has vanished into the rest of the stubble on his face. His shirt is stained with sweat under the arms and around the collar, turning the pink to black.

“Not you again,” Secrest says, kicking the nearest lamppost with the toe of his wingtip. “I was almost finished with walking every street in the historic district.” He looks away, back toward the green hills of the Pisgah Forest to the south, then turns back, as if the Devil will have vanished in the interim.

“Yes, you’re very good at staying on the path,” the Devil says. “But now it’s time for a little detour. Your girlfriend is sitting in an apartment on McDowell Street.”

“Oh, really?” says Secrest.

“Yes, and the police are closing in, because an old friend of hers has ratted her out to the cops. They’re probably climbing the stairs right now.”

Or maybe he says, “An old friend of hers is dying on the bed next to her right now.”

Anyway, the Devil reaches out and grabs Secrest’s hand, shaking it energetically.

“Thanks for the ride, buddy,” he says.

Then Secrest comes running up the street to save her.

“Are you sure you want off here?”

“Here” was in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt county road somewhere between Tyson and Highway 14. Driving along this twisty backroad, Butch Crickman’s pickup hadn’t passed a single house for the last mile and a half. If he kept on going, he wouldn’t pass another one for at least a mile or so, except for the ruin of the old Lindy farm and that didn’t count, seeing as how no one had lived there since the place burned down ten years ago.

Staley smiled. “Don’t you worry yourself, Butch.”

“Yeah, but-”

Opening the passenger door, she jumped down onto the dirt, then leaned back inside to grab her fiddle case.

“This is perfect,” she told him. “Really.”

“I don’t know. Kate’s not going to be happy when she finds out I didn’t take you all the way home.”

Staley took a deep breath of the clean night air. On her side of the road it was all Kickaha land. She could smell the raspberry bushes choking the ditches close at hand, the weeds and scrub trees out in the field, the dark, rich scent of the forest beyond it. Up above, the stars seemed so close you’d think they were leaning down to listen to her conversation with Butch. Somewhere off in the distance, she heard a long, mournful howl. Wolf. Maybe coyote.

“This is home,” she said. Closing the door, she added through the window, “Thanks for the ride.”

Butch hesitated a moment longer, then sighed and gave her a nod. Staley stepped back from the pickup. She waited until he’d turned the vehicle around and started back, waited until all she could see was the red glimmer of his taillights through a thinning cloud of dust, before she knelt down and took out her fiddle and bow. She slung the case over her shoulder by its strap so that it hung across her back. Hoisting the fiddle and bow up above her shoulders, she pushed her way through the raspberry bushes, moving slowly and patiently so that the thorns didn’t snag on her denim overalls.

Once she got through the bushes, the field opened up before her, ghostly in the starlight. The weeds were waist-high, but she liked the brush of stem and long leaf against her legs, and though the mosquitoes quickly found her, they didn’t bite. She and the bugs had an understanding-something she’d learned from her grandmother. Like her music.

The fiddle went up, under her chin. Tightening the frog on the bow, she pulled it across the strings and woke a sweet melody.

Butch and Kate Crickman owned the roadhouse back out on the highway where Staley sat in with the house band from time to time, easily falling into whatever style they were playing that night. Honky-tonk. Western swing. Old-timey. Bluegrass. The Crickmans treated her like an errant daughter, always worried about how she was doing, and she let them fuss over her some. But she played coy when it came to her living accommodations. They wouldn’t understand. Most people didn’t.

Home was an old trailer that used to belong to her grandmother. After Grandma died, Staley had gotten a few of the boys from up on the rez to move it from her parents’ property on the outskirts of Tyson down here where it was hidden away in the deep woods. Strictly speaking, it was parked on Indian land, but the Kickaha didn’t mind either it or her being here. They had some understanding with her grandmother that went way back-Staley didn’t know the details.

So it was a couple of the Creek boys and one of their cousins who transported the trailer for her that winter, hauling it in from the road on a makeshift sled across the snowy fields, then weaving in between the older growth, flattening saplings that would spring back upright by the time spring came around again. There were no trails leading to it now except for the one narrow path Staley had walked over the years, and forget about a road. Privacy was absolute. The area was too far off the beaten track for hikers or other weekend explorers, and come hunting season anyone with an ounce of sense stayed out of the rez. Those boys were partial to keeping their deer, partridge, ducks and the like to themselves, and weren’t shy about explaining the way things were to trespassers.