Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

Sweetbreads taste better than dog food, though. We ate dog food in the winter sometimes, ate it cold if Uncle Reuben didn’t have work and Momma’d been lazy. That was when I most missed my summers in the woods with Pootie, calling in on Doug Bob.

Doug Bob would drag these goat parts back up to the smoker, where he’d take the head and the fat off the fire. He’d always give me and Pootie some of that fat, to keep us away from the head meat, I guess. Doug Bob would put the carcass and the sweetbreads on the fire and spit his high-proof tequila all over them. If they didn’t catch straight away from that, he’d light ’em with a bic.

We’d watch them burn, quiet and respectful like church on account of that’s what Doug Bob believed. He always said God told him to keep things orderly, somewhere in the beginning of Leviticus.

Then he’d close the lid and let the meat cook. He didn’t never clean up the blood around the smoker, although he would catch some to write Bible verses on the sides of that old school bus with.

The Devil lives in San Francisco in a big apartment on Telegraph Hill. Way up there with all that brass and them potted ferns and naked women with leashes on, he’s got a telescope that can see across the bay, even in the fog. They say he can see all the way to China and Asia, with little brown people and big red demon gods, and stare inside their hearts

The Devil, he can see inside everybody’s heart, just about.

It’s a lie, except that part about the hearts. There’s only one place in God’s wide world where the Devil can’t see.

Me and Pootie, we found that smoker laying over on its side, which we ain’t never seen. There was a broken tequila bottle next to it, which ain’t much like Doug Bob neither.

Well, we commenced to running back and forth, calling out “Doug Bob!” and “Mr. Aaronson!” and stuff. That was dumb cause if he was around and listening, he’d of heard us giggling and arguing by the time we’d crossed his fence line.

I guess we both knew that, cause pretty quick we fell quiet and starting looking around. I felt like I was on TV or something, and there was a bad thing fixing to happen next. Them saloon doors were flapping in my mind and I started wishing mightily for a commercial.

That old bus of Doug Bob’s, it was a long bus, like them revival preachers use to bring their people into town. I always thought going to Glory when you died meant getting on one of them long buses painted white and gold, with Bible verses on the side and a choir clapping and singing in the back and some guy in a powder blue suit and hair like a raccoon pelt kissing you on the cheek and slapping you on the forehead.

Well, I been kissed more than I want to, and I don’t know nobody with a suit, no matter the color, and there ain’t no choir ever going to sing me to my rest now, except if maybe they’re playing bob wire harps and beating time on burnt skulls. But Doug Bob’s bus, it sat there flat on the dirt with the wiry bones of tires wrapped over dented black hubs grown with morning glory, all yellow with the rusted old metal showing through, with the windows painted black from the inside and crossed over with duct tape. It had a little vestibule Doug Bob’d built over the double doors out of wood from an old church in Rosanky. The entrance to that vestibule was crossed over with duct tape just like the windows. It was bus number seven, whatever place it had come from.

And bus number seven was covered with them Bible verses written in goat’s blood, over and over each other to where there was just red-brown smears on the cracked windshield and across the hood and down the sides, scrambled scribbling that looked like Aunt Cissy’s drool on the lunch table at Wal-Mart. And they made about as much sense.

I even seen Doug Bob on the roof of that bus a few times, smearing bloody words with his fingers like a message to the turkey vultures, or maybe all the way to God above looking down from His air-conditioned heaven.

So I figured, the smoker’s tipped, the tequila’s broke, and here’s my long bus bound for glory with Bible verses on the side, and the only choir is the katydids buzzing in the trees and me and Pootie breathing hard. I saw the door of the wooden vestibule on the bus, that Doug Bob never would touch, was busted open, like it had been kicked out from the inside. The duct tape just flapped loose from the door frame.

I stared all around that bus, and there was a new verse on the side, right under the driver’s window. It was painted fresh, still shiny and red. It said, “Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand.”

“Pootie.”

“Huh?” He was gasping pretty hard. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bus, which looked as if it was gonna rise up from the dirt and rumble down the road to salvation any moment, but I knew Pootie had that wild look where his eyes get almost all white and his nose starts to bleed. I could tell from his breathing.

Smelled like he wet his pants, too.

“Pootie,” I said again, “there ain’t no fire, and there ain’t no fresh goat been killed. Where’d the blood come from for that there Bible verse?”

“Reckon he talking ’bout your Uncle?” Pootie’s voice was duller than Momma at Christmas.

Pootie was an idiot. Uncle Reuben never had no twelve thousand in his life. If he ever did, he’d of gone to Mexico and to hell with me and Momma. “Pootie,” I tried again, “where’d the blood come from?”

I knew, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it.

Pootie panted for a little while longer. I finally tore my eyes off that old bus, which was shimmering like summer heat, to see Pootie bent over with his hands on his knees and his head hanging down. “It ain’t his handwritin’ neither,” Pootie sobbed.

We both knew Doug Bob was dead.

Something was splashing around down by the creek. “Aw, shit,” I said. “Doug Bob was-is our friend. We gotta go look.”

It ain’t but a few steps to the bank. We could see a man down there, bending over with his bare ass toward us. He was washing something big and pale. It weren’t no goat.

Me and Pootie, we stopped at the top of the bank, and the stranger stood up and turned around. I about shit my pants.

He had muscles like a movie star, and a gold tan all the way down, like he’d never wore clothes. The hair on his chest and his short-and-curlies was blonde, and he was hung good. What near to made me puke was that angel’s body had a goat head. Only it weren’t no goat head you ever saw in your life.

It was like a big heavy ram’s head, except it had antlers coming up off the top, a twelve point spread off a prize buck, and baby’s eyes-big, blue and round in the middle. Not goat’s eyes at all. That fur kind of tapered off into golden skin at the neck.

And those blue eyes blazed at me like ice on fire.

The tall, golden thing pointed to a body in the creek. He’d been washing the legs with purple soap. “Help me with this. I think you know how it needs to be done.” His voice was windy and creaky, like he hadn’t talked to no one for a real long time.

The body was Doug Bob, with his big gut and saggy butt, and a bloody stump of a neck.

“You son of a bitch!” I ran down the bank, screaming and swinging my arms for the biggest punch I could throw. I don’t know, maybe I tripped over a root or stumbled at the water’s edge, but that golden thing moved like summer lightning just as I slipped off my balance.

Last thing I saw was the butt end of Doug Bob’s ragged old knife coming at me in his fist. I heard Pootie crying my name when my head went all red and painful.

The Devil lives in your neighborhood, yours and mine. He lives in every house in every town, and he has a telescope that looks out the bathroom mirror and up from the drains in the kitchen and out of the still water at the bottom of the toilet bowl. He can see inside of everyone’s heart through their eyes and down their mouth and up their asshole.