What Would Satan Do? (24 page)

“Does he have to be here?” asked Lola, gesturing at Ramón.

“I don’t have any secrets from Ramón,” he said with a lecherous old man look.

Lola winced.  “We’re here for Project Baphomet.  We need to get whatever you have.”

“
Get
Project Baphomet?” Preston chuckled.  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“Mr. Preston, this is extremely important.”

“I’m very sorry, my dear.”  He smiled congenially.  “But you see, there is nothing to get.”

Chapter 29.
          
Mean Dude in a Track Suit

Eli and the Devil staggered and shuffled their way around downtown Austin, stopping here and there to watch the spectacle as naked guys ran wild as dogs through the streets.  They came upon an old-carny type who sat in the front of one of those horse-drawn carriages that couples sometimes get into by mistake.  Satan followed Eli, assuming – quite reasonably – that he knew the driver or had some other reason for approaching the man.  But then he watched as Eli walked right past the man to engage the horse.

The horse was huge, like one of those beer horses – with the furry feet and a long, flowing mane that appeared to have come right off the cover of a romance novel.  The gigantic beast, however, looked as if he’d seen better days – better days stomping on smaller horses, and maybe smashing through barns and brick walls or something.

Eli waved Satan over to have a visit with the quadruped.  The old prophet produced a carrot from the depths of some secret compartment hidden in his flowery bathrobe, and fed it to the hormonally-challenged beast, addressing the animal by name.  He turned to Satan and explained that the horse was called Sam, but that, if you asked him (the horse) – which nobody ever did – he (the horse) would have told you that his name was Rexnord, Overlord of the Tempest.  This, Eli said, was a very typical sort of name for a horse.

They left the horse and made their way west, toward the neighborhoods of condos and students and university-centric debauchery and weird-but-not-really-
that
-weird stuff that makes Austin such a wonderful place to live.

“Where are we going?” asked Satan. 

“Why?  Are you bored?”

“Well, no.  I guess not.  Maybe a little.”

“Okay then.  Watch this.”  Eli strode out into the middle of the street and stepped up onto the median.  He held out his hands.  “My people!”  A family of tourists paused to look, but then the tourist parents quickly ushered their tourist children away.  An old lady grunted a mean old-lady grunt and waved dismissively.  “Repent!” said Eli.  A passing car honked, and Eli waved his hand in a complex signal that could have been a hex or a blessing.  “The End!”  He raised his arms for emphasis.  “The End is near!”

His announcement complete, Eli headed back to the sidewalk.  A naked guy, who had apparently been watching, yelled from across the street.  “Yes!”  He punched his fist into the air and flailed about.  He whooped and spun and did a frantic dance.  “It’s the end of the world!”

“It seems to me,” said Eli, “that the nudist contingency in town is somewhat larger than usual.  It’s a bit odd, I think.”

Satan watched as the naked guy continued to celebrate by leaping about.  “That guy can jump pretty high,” he said.

Eli nodded, joining the Devil in marveling at the athletic display.  “Yes,” he said.  “There is a reason why the Greeks used to compete naked.”  He did not point out that the Greeks, in their nudist games, never had to try to outrun Humvees.  It would have been a timely comment, though, if he had, because at that moment a very large and menacing Humvee roared up and skidded to a halt just inches short of the spot where the naked guy was writhing in a fit of ecstatic affirmation.  The truck’s doors burst open and a bunch of soldiery types leapt out.  They wore mean expressions and even meaner boots, and the two in front tackled the naked guy.

“The Governor’s new police force is … enthusiastic,” said Eli.

“Whose?  What?” asked Satan.  “What is that?”

Eli paused from his spectating for a moment and turned to look at Satan, who was hunched over slightly, staring at the Humvee with the kind of squinty eyes that are universally acknowledged to be the pantomime sign of “I can’t see very well.”  It’s not entirely clear why squinting is supposed to make it easier to see stuff, but nobody ever said these things have to make sense.

“What is that symbol?” asked Satan.  He pointed to the star painted on the side of the military truck.

“It … looks like a star,” said Eli.  He did a little bit of hunching over and squinting himself and then nodded.  “Yep.  That’s what it is.”  He nodded some more.  “A star.”

Satan stood suddenly and turned to Eli.  “Where am I?” he asked.

Eli looked at Satan’s feet and then back up at his face.  “I’d say you’re about two feet – maybe eighteen inches – from me,” he said.  “And I’m right here.”  He offered Satan a reassuring smile.

“No, no,” said Satan impatiently.  “I mean:  What is this place?”  He waved his arms, gesturing to the world in general. 

“Downtown?”

Satan scowled.  His eyes glowed just a teensy bit, but Eli didn’t notice.

“Austin?”

“Okay.”  Satan nodded, apparently mollified, but then turned back to look at Eli abruptly.  “Where is Austin?”

“Texas.  The Lone Star State.  Austin is the capital of Texas.  It was an Independent Republic from 1836 to 1845.  And there are those who believe—”

The Devil exploded.  “Texas!  That’s it!  I… I think I hate… Texas!”  He threw his arms up, and stomped around a bit, making unintelligible ranting sounds to himself.  A few, lonely wisps of smoked rose from the little strip of grass that ran along the sidewalk.

“What,” asked Eli, turning his head to the side, “is wrong with Texas?”

Satan stopped and stared at Eli looking a little bit lonely and lost.  It was a second before he spoke.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I—I’m not sure.”  He gazed at the ground and scratched at his head a bit. 

“I sometimes feel the same way, my friend.”  Eli held his arm out, and patted the Devil on the back.  “It’s normal to feel such things in days like these.”

Satan shook his head, arched his eyebrows, and made kind of a cockeyed grimace.  “Days like these?”

“The End Times,” said Eli.

“Ah, yes.”

In front of them the fracas between the soldiers and the naked guys had grown.  Two more naked guys showed up to try to liberate the first.  But now all three were face down on the ground, and had been mounted by the soldiers – solely, one assumes, for the purpose of applying handcuffs and preparing the men for transport to some place where they could be sodomized by folks who were not actually on the state payroll. 

“I think we should move on,” said Eli. 

They walked together for a while.  Eli identified the buildings and offered little anecdotes.  “I once saw a man being intimate with a dog behind that dumpster.”  He scratched his chin and then pointed to the building behind the dumpster.  “That’s the Governor’s Mansion.”

Satan felt very odd for a moment.  Shadowy, flickering thoughts teased and flitted through his brain and taunted him.  What was it?  He felt … angry.  Intensely angry.  It was a strange sensation, not because it was anger, but because there just seemed to be so much of it, and it seemed, for whatever reason, to be entirely focused on the giant, white house in front of him.  He felt it build and roil and boil over itself until he felt as if his body might rip or explode even.  And then the Governor’s Mansion burst into flames.

“Huh,” said Eli.  “Isn’t that something.  Quite unusual.”  They stood together for a moment, staring at the flames.  “Right,” said Eli.  “Let us be off on our journey.”  He strode off, or shuffled rather, with dignity, confidence, and a sense of purpose – down the street. 

Satan stayed for a moment to watch the flames, but then hurried to catch up.  “I’m going to need some new clothes,” he said.  A buzzer sounded behind them, followed shortly by sirens.

“Why?” asked Eli.  “Those seem to fit you well.  I’ll grant you that they’re torn up a bit, and maybe a little stained, but they seem perfectly usable to me.”  He stared at Satan as they walked.  “If you’re uncomfortable, you should ask yourself why.  Figure that out before you go hunting new threads.”

“I am uncomfortable,” said the Devil, “because these clothes are dirty and shredded.”  He held up his arm and tugged at his sleeve to make the dirtiness and shreddedness more clearly apparent.  “And anyway, they just don’t seem … quite right or something.” 

“Trifling matters.”  Eli waved his hand dismissively and returned to his shuffling.  “Despite what they say, the clothes do not make the man.  They merely determine the set of assumptions others make about the man.”

Satan felt the odd, angry feeling again.  But this time it was less of a volcanic swelling, than kind of a low grade, electrical crackling.  He regarded the sensation as if from a distance.  It was strange and a little bit interesting – he seemed to be buzzing very slightly – but he was unsure what to make of it other than to note its strangeness.  He sighed a weary, frustrated sigh.

“Where are we going?”

Eli offered another dismissive wave.  “West.  Thar be grub thataway.”

They walked together for several quiet minutes and passed into the more neighborhoody bits of town.  They happened upon a vertically-challenged man on the sidewalk in front of an old, run-down apartment building.  The man seemed to be in the middle of – or causing – a commotion, and this, to Eli and the Devil at least, offered the hope of some entertainment, in much the same way that a smattering of smashed up cars and recently-separated body parts offers drivers a break from the monotony of actually getting to where they were going.  So they paused to watch. 

The man on the sidewalk was called Arnie.  At least, that’s what he was called by his mother and his aunts and his boss.  He actually preferred to be called “The Tank,” but nobody ever called him that.  They might have, if he’d been a foot taller.  But he wasn’t, and they didn’t.  And so, his profound desire to be recognized as an awesome, tough guy went unrequited.  Arnie coped by engaging in as much high-volume berating, disparaging, and insulting as he could manage. 

Today, he was yelling at an old man.  “Get moving, old man!”

A frail, weather-beaten, and weary-looking old man staggered past, struggling underneath the weight of an old mattress.  Each step he took, as he made his way toward an old truck, looked as if it might be his last.

“Come on, old man!  I haven’t got all day!”

The old man stumbled and staggered, but managed to take the last few steps to the back of the truck.  He turned sideways, letting the mattress slide off his back and onto the ground, and he leaned back against the truck, panting. 

The Tank was too busy yelling to notice as Eli and the Devil approached.  “Move your ass, old man!  Get back up there and get the rest of it!” 

An elderly woman sat on the edge of a window sill, looking at her husband with hopeless eyes.  Eli sidled up to her and asked what was going on. 

“We’ve been evicted.  They want to build condominiums for the college students.  We’re old.  Social Security isn’t enough.”  She waved a crooked, boney finger in the general direction of The Tank.  “He raised our rent.  It’s just too much.  Too much.”  She let her arm drop.

The Tank noticed the old woman.  “Quit your yammering, grandma.”  She leveled a baleful gaze at him.  In her eyes was a standard dose of old-aged wisdom, and quite a bit of weariness, but there was no fear.  So he yelled at her some more.  “You better get your crap out of there by five.”

Satan glanced and saw that the woman’s husband was back on his feet, wheezing and coughing as he tried to lift the mattress into the back of the truck.  He grunted and strained and finally got the mattress up and over the rail of the truck’s bed.  He turned and, with his back up against the truck, slumped back down onto the ground in a heap of very tired old man.

Even The Tank seemed to be put off a little by the sight of the man collapsing so pathetically.  He quickly turned to try to shift the blame to the wife.  “Why don’t you get off your wrinkly old ass, grandma, and go and help him?”  He pointed a stubby finger in the direction of the old man, who had slumped further and was now lying on his side on the ground.

Eli stepped forward to address the Tank.  “You, sir, should reconsider—”

“Who the fuck are you?”  The Tank got right up into Eli’s face – as all Napoleon Complex sufferers apparently must – and gave Eli a shove, or attempted to, rather.  Eli was not an insubstantial individual, dainty floral bathrobe notwithstanding, and the be-robed prophet didn’t move.  The Tank tried again.  “Get the hell out of here, you smelly vagrant fuck.”  He shoved harder this time, and succeeded in moving Eli back a couple of steps. 

That was when the Devil chose to intervene.  He put his hand on Eli’s shoulder, and spoke in a quiet voice.  “Please allow me,” he said.

Chapter 30.
          
Satan Remembers that He Is Awesome

“Who the fuck are you?”  The Tank sneered and ran his eyes down to Satan’s ratty shoes and back up again.

Satan paused, mid-stride.  “Well, I—” 

“It was a rhetorical question, dumbass.”  The Tank had no idea that the individual he’d just insulted was the Devil.  Of course, neither did the Devil.  If the Tank had known who he was talking to, he probably would have been nicer, maybe a little bit obsequious even.  And if Satan had realized who he really was, the Tank’s head would probably have been on a stick.  But they were both blissfully ignorant.  So the Tank lobbed another sneer in the Devil’s direction, and then called the Lord of the Underworld an asshole.

Satan scowled.  “That’s not very—”  And then something clicked, as if somebody had flipped a switch inside his head.  And suddenly he knew.  He knew exactly who he was. 

“I,” he said, “am an angel of the Lord’s Vengeance.”

Yes, that’s how it was.  He was an angel.  The Devil let it roll around in his mind a bit.  An angel.  And not just any angel.  He was special.  First among all other angels.  God’s favorite.  It felt good.