Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

A low chuckle from behind her made her turn.

The newcomer looked like he’d just stepped down out of the hills, tall and lean, a raggedy hillbilly in jeans and a flannel shirt, cowboy boots on his feet. There were acne scars on his cheeks and he wore his dark hair slicked back in a ducktail. His eyes were the clearest blue she could ever remember seeing, filled with a curious mix of distant skies and good humour. He had one hand in his pocket, the other holding the handle of a battered, black guitar case.

“You ever see such foolishness?” he asked. “You think they’d learn, but I reckon they’ve been at it now for about as long as the day is wide.”

Staley liked the sound of his voice. It held an easy-going lilt that reminded her of her daddy’s cousins who lived up past Hazard, deep in the hills.

She laughed. “Long as the day is wide?” she asked.

“Well, you know. Start to finish, the day only holds so many hours, but you go sideways and it stretches on forever.”

“I’ve never heard of time running sideways.”

“I’m sure you must know a hundred things I’ve never heard of.”

“I suppose.”

“You new around here?” he asked.

Staley glanced back at her trailer, then returned her gaze to him.

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure how I got here and even less sure as to how I’ll get back to where I come from.”

“I can show you,” he told her. “But maybe you’d favour me with a tune first? Been a long time since I got to pick with a fiddler.”

The thing that no one told you about the otherworld, Staley realized, is how everything took on a dreamlike quality when you were here. She knew she should be focusing on getting back to the summer meadow where Robert and William were waiting for her, but there just didn’t seem to be any hurry about it.

“So what do you say?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I guess…”

I’m already feeling a little dozy from the sun and fresh air when Staley begins to play her fiddle. It doesn’t sound a whole lot different from the kinds of things she usually plays, but then what do I really know about music? Don’t ask me to discuss it. I either like it or I don’t. But Robert seems pleased with what she’s doing, nodding to himself, has a little smile starting up there in the corner of his mouth.

I can see his left hand shaping chords on the neck of his guitar, but he doesn’t strum the strings. Just follows what she’s doing in his head, I guess.

I look at Staley a little longer, smiling as well to see her standing there so straight-backed in her overalls, barefoot in the grass, the sun glowing golden on her short hair. After awhile I lean back against the door of the trailer again and close my eyes. I’m drifting on the music, not really thinking much of anything, when I realize the sound of the fiddle’s starting to fade away.

“Shit,” I hear Robert say.

I open my eyes, but before I can turn to look at him, I see Staley’s gone. It’s the damnedest thing. I can still hear her fiddling, only it’s getting fainter and fainter like she’s walking away and I can’t see a sign of her anywhere. I can’t imagine a person could run as fast as she’d have to to disappear like this and still keep playing that sleepy music.

When Robert stands up, I scramble to my feet as well.

“What’s going on?” I ask him.

“She let it take her away.”

“What do you mean? Take her away where?”

But he doesn’t answer. He’s looking into the woods and then I see them too. A rabbit being chased by some ugly old dog. Might be the same rabbit that ran off on us in the city, but I can’t tell. It comes tearing out from under the trees, running straight across the meadow towards us, and then it just disappears.

I blink, not sure I actually saw what I just saw. But then the same thing happens to the dog. It’s like it goes through some door I can’t see. There one minute, gone the next.

“Well, she managed to pull them back across,” Robert says. “But I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

Hearing him talk like that makes me real nervous.

“Why?” I ask him. “This is what we wanted, right? She was going to play some music to put things back the way they were. Wasn’t that the plan?”

He nods. “But her going over wasn’t.”

“I don’t get it.”

Robert turns to look at me. “How’s she going to get back?”

“Same way she went away-right?”

He answers with a shrug and then I get a bad feeling. It’s like what happened with Malicorne and Jake, I realize. Stepped away, right out of the world, and they never came back. The only difference is, they meant to go.

“She won’t know what to do,” Robert says softly. “She’ll be upset and maybe a little scared, and then he’s going to show up, offer to show her the way back.”

I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about.

“But she’ll know better than to bargain with him,” I say.

“We can hope.”

“We’ve got to be able to do better than that,” I tell him.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

I look at that guitar in his hands.

“You could call her back,” I say.

Robert shakes his head. “The devil, he’s got himself a guitar, too.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Think about it,” Robert says. “Whose music is she going to know to follow?”

The stranger laid his guitar case on the grass and opened it up. The instrument he took out was an old Martin D-45 with the pearl inlaid “CD MARTIN” logo on the headstock-a classic, pre-war picker’s guitar.

“Don’t see many of those anymore,” Staley said.

“They didn’t make all that many.” He smiled. “Though I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen me a blue fiddle like you’ve got, not ever.”

“Got it from my grandma.”

“Well, she had taste. Give me an A, would you?”

Staley ran her bow across the A string of her fiddle and the stranger quickly tuned up to it.

“You ever play any contests?” he asked as he finished tuning.

He ran his pick across the strings, fingering an A minor chord. The guitar had a big, rich sound with lots of bottom end.

“I don’t believe in contests,” Staley said. “I think they take all the pleasure out of a music.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean nothing serious. More like swapping tunes, taking turns ’till one of you stumps the other player. Just for fun, like.”

Staley shrugged.

“’Course to make it interesting,” he added, “we could put a small wager on the outcome.”

“What kind of wager would we be talking about here?”

Staley didn’t know why she was even asking that, why she hadn’t just shut down this idea of a contest right from the get-go. It was like something in the air was turning her head all around.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How about if I win, you’ll give me a kiss?”

“A kiss?”

He shrugged. “And if you enjoy it, maybe you’ll give me something more.”

“And if I win?”

“Well, what’s the one thing you’d like most in the world?”

Staley smiled. “Tell you the truth, I don’t want for much of anything. I keep my expectations low-makes for a simple life.”

“I’m impressed,” he said. “Most people have a hankering for something they can’t have. You know, money, or fame, or a true love. Maybe living forever.”

“Don’t see much point in living forever,” Staley told him. “Come a time when everybody you care about would be long gone, but there you’d be, still trudging along on your own.”

“Well, sure. But-”

“And as for money and fame, I think they’re pretty much overrated. I don’t really need much to be happy and I surely don’t need anybody nosing in on my business.”