The Book of Duels (25 page)

Angel, Left Shoulder

 

H
e keeps muttering,
Without regret I’d have no memory at all, without regret I’d have no memory at all
, and I see an opening to save his soul, lace my fingers and unhinge my wings, inch up to my tippy toes on his shoulder bones, shut my eyes and lean soft into his ear:
Remember the bad health and poor choices, the broken van you could never really fix and the depth of that ditch; remember when you head-butted that stop sign and how your scalp bled and itched for weeks on end; remember crashing from your back door and pitching face-first into the rocks, the blood down your shirtfront and your neighbors, smoking dope on their back porch, chuckling at you; remember sleeping with your best friend’s girl and how you’ve never forgiven yourself for his suicide
—
the concussions, the arrests, the near arrests, the times you should have been arrested so the police could have put a stop to you; remember getting caught when you shoplifted a candy bar even though you had a pocket full of cash and when you were arrested for DUI on a Friday night and couldn’t make bail till Tuesday late because of MLK’s holiday and you cursed that great man for his honor; remember the affairs, the near affairs, and the times you should have just fucked off; remember that four-day binge in which you drank only rye and woke up screaming from dehydration, and in the mirror by moonlight, you saw your skin puckered and wrinkled like some ancient ghoul, your fingers seized into knots
—
and if that wasn’t rock bottom, then tell me what is
—
but you just added water with your bourbon next day and said
, Lesson learned;
remember the baby you had aborted and, afterward, the dream you had of that baby, the little girl who lacked bones in her thumbs but she was still just so beautiful; and remember weeping, apologizing to a picture of your own self as a baby
, You had so much potential, kid,
and now you have your own living baby and will you ever stop apologizing for that
—I feel his shoulder tense, muscles hunched like a bull’s hump, and my halo dims and the light fades from my robes but then:

You are loved by God and you are loved by me
. Nothing.
Your wife loves you, your family loves you, your mom, your friends, and your baby boy too
. Not a thing. He has settled into his enormous selfish loathing.
And you, you love you. And. You. Love. Them. All
. And my robes begin to pulse once more and I am radiant, my wings unfurling about me, brilliant and wide.

Demon, Right Shoulder

 

I
rub my hands together, one over the other, cold on his cold shoulder, a shiver runs up my tail and the knuckles of my spine and I think of the lukewarm response Master gives when I fail, He always leaves me in the waiting room—with a worm, a toad, an asp—never opens the door to the inferno where the flames warm the flesh and the cries of humans send the spasms through me and I wait and smile and try a new tack:
You are so sexy when you sit on the far end of the bar, stirring the bourbon over ice with your fingertip
—
every woman looks your way, you charming devil you, the one in the lemon-yellow low-cut number wishes her man had your lips, they all want to run fingers through your hair, and they care what you say and even listen to you sing
—
and every guy, forget it, every guy wants to sit next to you, listen to your stories and jokes that they will later tell their friends and pretend they made up. What an interesting life you’ve led, pal. Your students just adore your yarns about bar fights and lost weekends in New Orleans, bootlegging uncles, and the myth of the muse in the rye. Your inherited birthright is a long tradition built by writers even more gifted than you, few though they may be: shoot it down, watch college ball, ask the girl in the wheelchair to dance, shoot an arrow into your ex-wife’s front door, buy guns every chance you get
—
LeMats, crossbows, dynamite
—
buy that Sterling MK6 semiautomatic—you need all that danger a finger’s length away because those fools need something, someone to talk about and that might as well be you
—
now it’s time to get to work, the computer’s buzzing upstairs and the notebook’s blank and the pen’s resting cool on your desk and goodness knows the whole world is waiting to read what you have to write, but first you have to clear your mind with a drink or two
—

He does not so much as flinch this time, he knows these lies too well—
Y’know there is no God, don’t cha? There is no hell. No
Heaven either. Nothing waiting for you after this. This flesh and time is all you have
. I am warmed by his cocked head like a crack in the door, like the heat of the torch set to a martyr.
What I like about you is that you’re your own man, the rules don’t apply to you and you don’t do what people tell you to do
, and he cracks a smile, the crack fissures through his whole body, and he reaches for the bottle and cracks the seal and twists off the top and holds the bottle straight out over the sink and lifts a glass from the counter and I fold my hands together, prayer-wise, and he holds it and holds it still.

Satan, Eternal, in the Guise of a Bottle

of Evan Williams Bourbon, Ruminating on the Nature of Art, Love, & Life

 

P
lease allow me to introduce myself, I am the one who made this world the way it is—I am sure by now you will have heard how some other angel forced me from Heaven—Saint Michael, that arch braggart and blowhard, the great liar and exaggerator extraordinaire—don’t believe a word of it, kid—I came here willing, this earth is my haven, though when I first arrived the whole joint was a wreck and you can trust me when I say Pangaea was all one big chunk of crust, an island, surrounded by a single body of water—nothing had been planned, nothing thought all the way through—I took time and considerable pains to cut runnels for rivers, to carve craters for lakes and seas, to vary the vegetation and cross-pollinate and design new breeds because, being the loner He is, He never dreamt of procreation—His ideas on sex are laughable, naïve at best—not for animals, not even for trees, and damn sure not for His people—yeah, yeah, yeah, that whole “be fruitful and multiply” number was a late edit to the story, believe you me—I am the one who invented sex, thank you very much—His plan was for everything to live forever but all that changed when the first dude ate the fruit and passed it off on his lady and now even roses and rabbits have to fuck and die—why? Because misery loves company, because His people disappointed Him, like He knew they would, like I knew they would, and He still did it anyway, and that’s why I wouldn’t bow before them—but I digress—listen, you seem like a smart
enough guy, a reasonably intelligent guy, let me ask you this: Does death to everything sound fair? Does that sound like a reasonable punishment sufficient to fit the crime, the sins of the father visited not only upon his son but also on his sheep and lentils?—He didn’t think the whole thing through like I have, even-headed and cool-like—He did not, in fact, even provide for the full color spectrum—sure, He invented rain, but I brought the rainbows—before then, there wasn’t a speck of purple on the planet but then I swiped it across horizons so lovers holding hands could coo and admire my work—instead they say,
Oh my God, isn’t that lovely
—and it is, but not because of Him, because of me, and they call it the godly color, the royal color—that’s what I do, I bring people together, create spectacles of love like music—oh yeah, He shuns music, has nothing whatever to do with it, hates it as a cacophony—it makes me laugh how every time some fool makes a joyful noise unto the Lord, I can see Him squirm, preparing to send another plague of rats or brew another violent storm to shut them the hell up, but I was the current in Jimi’s amp, the horn in Armstrong’s hands, the strings on Stravinsky’s violin, and I love the baroque as much as the punk and the women in the woods chanting and banging sticks onto rocks while Pan teeters on those little goat hooves of his, eyelashes and flute tunes driving those ladies wild, and I was there, you know, when the Christians drove them from the hills, hummocks, and fields deep into caves where they coiled all manwomanplantandanimal to create a living grotesquery and I’ve been confused with that guy ever since, as if I were some puny goat-god, but nahhh, I’m a man-god maligned by good Christians such as your boy Charlie Daniels who, I’m here to tell you, is a world-class liar—I’ve never
even been to Georgia, let alone lost a fiddle match—I was in Mississippi with your Mr. Johnson, and I was his goat hooch laced with strychnine—I was the ale served to kings and their courts during tournaments and the khat in Abel’s mouth, the brandy that steadied the artists’ hands so they could chisel and paint and pick at the strings; I was the ergot-poisoned wine that turned giants into windmills and windmills into giants and called forth from the deep recesses dragons and mystic visions; I was the fermented fruit in your jailhouse, the rye in your brothels, the vodka in cold tsarist Russia, and the tequila in the teenagers who drive and love carelessly in the summer; I was the scotch in Mr. Dickey’s flask at a cockfight outside Macon, Georgia, consoling him after he’d just been kicked off the set of
Deliverance
. I am always here, even now as you and your friends tell stories of duels in the past, how I taught them mean pride and envy and honor and gave them all a false sense of revenge at the tip of the knife, the sword, the bullet, the tongue, and I can teach you as well, because right now, I am only with you, here before your typewriter, your paper, your pens, all laid out before you on your desk, the dim light of an old lamp, the curtains closed, your family asleep. It’s just you and me, kid.

Yes, your wife is slated to outlive you by twenty years or more and your son will grow old in his days too, don’t fear—I have my eyes on your new lad as well but that’s another story yet untold—it doesn’t have to be that way. Destiny is not written in stone. Oh no, if you wish for the elixir of immortality then pray listen and I’ll tell it true, because I know you want the same things I want—everything this world has to offer and more—you don’t have to allow it to dictate to you, son, that’s
what I’m saying. You have to make of this place what you want. That’s what I did. The trouble with you mortals is this: because you can’t compare this life with another one, and because you have no chance to revise the one you do get, you are driven into despair and confusion. You all live in doubt, regret, and shame. And why not? You have only this one life to live, or so you think, but I say, leave all of those notions behind—enter the immortals, drink this elixir and know the difference between life and death, between the right way to live and the wrong ways to die, and I’ll give you all the chance you will ever need to get it right. Cradle me, swirl me in my bottle, bring me to your mouth and when you’re ready to shoot me, bring my lip to your lips, pour me into your mouth, savor the burn, and fire me down your throat, and blow out again and if you do, you will never get drunk, you will never suffer a hangover, and I promise, you will never, ever die.

Acknowledgments

Black Warrior Review:
“Pistols at Twenty Paces”

Faultline:
“Night of the Chicken Run,” “A Scalping”

Juked
(online): “Man above Challenge”

Louisiana Literature:
“Peleas de Gallo” (as “In the Gallodrome”)

Minnesota Review
: “Into the Greasy Grass”

New Letters:
“First-Called Quits”

Nimrod International Journal:
“Fiesta de Semana Santa”

The Southern Review:
“Custody Battle for Chelsea Tammy” (as “Custody Battle in the Cabbage Patch”)

storySouth:
“Me and the Devil Blues”

Surreal South ’09:
“On Moses’s Failed Insurrection” (as “On Gabriel’s Failed Insurrection”)