Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

First Sunday

I’m hunkered down in the tall grass, tail down, ears back. She leans back against the oak tree, wiggling her toes in the grass, big ugly boots beside her, moonlight throwing up shadows all around. Sat herself right in the center of the hard-packed and pebbly crossroads the better part of an hour before the soft weedy patch by the roadside and the oak’s wide trunk wooed her over. That makes her luckier than that fool boy from Kansas, that one who nodded off three Sundays in. Never heard that turnip truck coming, stupid little bastard. Smashed flatter than flat, and all those turnips spread across the road to hell and breakfast and the driver dead with his back broke.

I hate turnips. Nasty mealy things.

She starts rummaging in that bag of hers, leather bag still reeking of dead cow’s fright. Other bad smells too, stinky things, and plastic things. Mebbe a sandwich down close to the bottom, but not a meat sandwich. Good brown bread smell, but no meat. Not a bit.

She comes up with a conjure bag, and even hunkered way back here in the verbena my nose can twitch it out: store bought. The girl has brought a store bought conjure bag to the crossroads. I take a long whiff. No graveyard earth; no dead man’s piss; no John the Conqueror root; no blood from a lady’s monthly. Just some tired old oregano and a little mustard powder. Bag isn’t even flannel.

Silly girl. Ugly thing, short hair like a boy, little scrawny body, looking like no girl I ever saw. Can’t hardly tell she’s female. I got better to do than sit here babysitting. Nine Sundays is a long time, and she don’t have near the tenacity it’s gonna take to see this through. Waste of my time.

The night is full of good smells; honeysuckle and butterfly lilies, lantana and night-blooming jasmine. There’s a breeze from the river and the fireflies are all bunched up in the oak tree, moving through the leaves, little flicky-flick candle flames. Go home, girl. I’ve got my own business. There’s a fox down by the river needs me to show him who’s in charge.

She sets the conjure bag aside and pulls out the sandwich. Nope, no meat in there, not a speck. Tomatoes mostly, and green things. Waste of good brown bread. She settles back further against the tree, takes out a thumbed-up old book and starts reading by moonlight. I settle into the verbena. It’s a long ways ’til sunrise.

Second Sunday

She’s back under the oak tree, I’m back in the verbena. No breeze tonight, it’s hot and close, and Mr. Moon is half the fella he used to be. She’s got a lantern, makes a little circle of light, drawing every skeeter in ten counties, big cloud of buzz and bother. She’s all over coated up with some unguent from a plastic bottle. Nasty smellin’ stuff, and not hardly working by the way she’s cussing and slapping.

She cusses like a man, and she’s wearing those big old boots again. I expect she wishes she were beautiful. That’s what I’d wish for, if I was an ugly woman.

A skeeter lights on my ear and I take a scratch. She stops reading and looks back at where I’m hiding.

“Is someone there?” she says. She holds up the lantern. The skeeter cloud rises up with it, like the mist around Mr. Moon.

“Hello?” she says. She sounds small.

I stay still as still, still as death. Nobody here but us bad things, sugar.

She listens to the night noise for a while, then settles back down, slaps at the skeeters, eats her sandwich. Brown bread again, and eggs this time. I like eggs. Raw is better, but cooked is fine too.

The dawn comes, finally. I’m achy all over from lying still so long. She packs up her stinky bag, looks back at where I’m hiding, walks down the road towards town, scratching at her arms.

I start for home. I’m almost to the shack when Red Rooster steps out of the grass in front of me.

Hear you got a task, he says, strutting up and down like he does. Since the Dark Man gave him those fighting spurs, Red Rooster thinks he’s the prettiest trick around.

I’m keeping watch on a girl at the crossroads, I say, trying to slip past him. Keep her from harm, just in case she lasts all nine Sundays.

You think she’ll make it? Red Rooster juts his head out and back, up and down, and shakes his big haughty tail. In the dawn, his feathers glow like foxfire. He swaggers a little ways past me and turns back, like he’s giving me a show.

The skeeters like to eat her alive tonight, I tell him. I don’t know if she’ll be back.

And what is it to you, I want to say, but I’ve got to stay on his sweet side. The Dark Man, he loves Red Rooster, and I’m not allowed to chase him, or bullyrag him, or nothing.

You better leave off that scratching, unless you want to frighten her away, he says.

You spying on me? I ask, and my hackles rise up. The Dark Man set me to watch over her. You mind your own business.

The Dark Man’s business is my business, dog. Remember that. And he turns and struts back into the five-finger grass, impertinent as you please, and I go on home. I am not allowed to chase Red Rooster.

Third Sunday

Three Sundays in a row, that’s more than some, less than many. I don’t scratch the skeeters when they come, and she does not hear me.

She’ll stop soon.

Fourth Sunday

It’s pissing down rain and the skeeters are all off somewhere. She’s wearing some outlandish thing, great big piece of plastic with her head poking through the middle. No sandwich tonight, just an apple while she huddles under the oak, lamp in the grass at her feet. Down by the river, something big splashes into the water and she jumps.

Bet you have a nice warm home to go to, I think. The rain is soaking in my fur, and the verbena patch stinks, a skunk having expressed her vehement displeasure somewhere very near. Here we both sit, wet and miserable, because what you have is not enough, you want more and won’t work to get it, you want the Dark Man to just hand it over to you. Greedy thing.

Sunrise comes, and she gathers up her things slowly and starts back to town. I go home.

The Dark Man is there, fussing around in the cupboard.

She’s still waiting for me, he says.

Yes, boss, I say. This one’s not giving up easy.

You’re keeping her safe for me, he says, and takes down a mason jar, wipes off the dust with a grubby old rag.

Yes, boss. No harm comes to her.

You are a good dog, he says, and my tail thumps against the table leg.

He holds the jar in the candle flame, tipping it to and fro, watches what’s inside beat against the glass.

Red Rooster struts on in.

You stink of skunk, he says to me, and the Dark Man laughs.

I know what that means. I go on out of the shack and crawl underneath the porch to a spot where it’s mostly dry. Red Rooster comes out and sashays back and forth a while, those spurs clickety-click on the tired gray boards above my head. The Dark Man calls him inside and shuts the door.

Fifth Sunday

She’s sick.

Snuffling and hacking like an old hound, standing up a ways from the lantern. The skeeters have returned, and brought all their kin besides. The verbena still stinks, so I’ve changed my hiding spot, still downwind of the oak but across the road now in a clump of switchgrass, catty-corner like. She’s racked with coughing now, bent over double with little ropy strings of bad-smelling nastiness jumping out of her. My vigil’s over soon. She’ll go back to her warm house, I’ll go back to chasing rabbits and worrying that fox-

Something stealing through the grass. Something low and sly. Rattlesnake. Diamondback, by the smell. Ireful and ill-tempered, moving right to her with murder on its spiteful little mind.

I know where it comes from. I know who sends it. He’s looking to reshuffle this deck, steal her away from my master.