What Would Satan Do? (33 page)

The militia men milled about the bowl.  Jimmy and Wayne were hunched over in a conspiratorial huddle at the back of the group.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” said Wayne.

“What do you mean, ‘What are we gonna do?’  We ain’t gonna do shit,” said Jimmy.

“We can’t just let that hippie run around the church!”

“The hell we can’t.”

“We gotta stop him!”

“You go stop him.  I’m fixin’ to go listen to this song.”  Jimmy straightened himself and headed toward the stage.  He stopped, mid-step, when he heard one of the other men yell out.

“Holy shit!  It’s Jesus!” said the man.

“What?” said the soldier beside him as he spun to face the stage.

“It’s Jesus!” said the first man.  (For those non-Texan speakers of Her Majesty’s English, “Jesus” is pronounced “Jay-zuhss.”;  “What?” sounds like “Wut?”; and “Apotheosis” – n., def. “elevation to divine status; deification” – also sounds like “Wut?”)

The music stopped.  One hundred and fifty rednecks and a handful of soldiers, most of whom wore gas masks, turned to face Festus.  “Ooh!” said some.  “Ahh,” said others.  There were also one ‘oh hell yes,’ two more ‘holy shit’s and at least one ‘fuck yeah.’  The musicians, looking confused and a little disappointed, left the stage.

In the years since he’d left the seminary, Festus had, for the most part, allowed himself to be pretty nutty.  But he’d always held something back.  He’d danced and skipped his way right up to the line, but had never quite crossed over into full-blown insanity.  There were, of course, a lot of folks at local churches – and in the City of Austin generally – who would disagree, but so what?  Fuck them. 

Whatever those church bastards thought, he’d figured he’d always had a ways to go before he reached the stage of certifiable.  Of course, he’d always known – or at least suspected – that the day would come when he’d take that last step, and cross over all the way.  Today, he thought, might very well be that day.

“My people!”  Festus held his hands up in the air, fingers pressed together in the stiff, karate-chop pseudo-wave that royalty and dictators use to acknowledge those who occupy the lower social strata.  He said it again, apparently having forgotten that he was impersonating the Son of God, rather than a Latin American dictator.

“Oooh!” said the audience.

“Behold!” said Festus, trying to think of something for his people to behold.  Nothing came to mind, so he said it again.  “Behold!”  He spread his arms out wider, looking at the mix of surprise, wonder, and mild suspicion on the faces of the militia men.  “I,” he said, “am here now.”  And he let his arms fall.

That seemed to do it.  A bunch of the men toward the front went wild, whooping and hollering.  A cowboy hat arced its way up toward the rafters where the scoreboard had once hung, and landed on the stage with a hollow clomp.

“Men!” said Festus.  Someone in the lighting booth decided to turn a spotlight on him, and Festus tried to think of what to say next.  “Men!”

There were a couple more celebratory whoops.  One man, in his apparent exuberance at the arrival of the Savior, punched another, and a little brawl broke out at the back of the crowd. 

“Men, I want to talk to you about your gas masks.”  He looked out over the crowd and watched as the half that wore gas masks turned sideways to look at the other half.  It looked like a sea of confused ducks, looking this way and that with their big, black rubbery beaks.  He saw several skeptical faces, and anyway he figured that this last thing might not be a very Jesusy thing to say, so he decided to inject a bit of Bible-speak.  “Verily, I say unto you…”  More confused looks.  Festus girded up his divine nether bits.  “Take off your masks, and throw them away!”

“Huh?” 

“You needest them not!  Cast them away from thine ownselves!  Lo, I shall keep you – uh, thee – safe!  Verily!”  He raised his arms in a gesture of Messianic victory.  If Cadmon and Whitford were going to start gassing people, these fuckers were going to go down, too.

“Jesus f’ing Christ,” said Jimmy, shoving and swaggering his way up to the front of the crowd.  He called up at Festus, “Get down from there, you dirty hippie!”

A soldier standing nearby turned and smacked Jimmy on the side of his head.  “Wront wront wront wront wront wront!” he said.

“What?” asked Jimmy.

The soldier removed his gas mask.  “You will
not
take the Lord’s name in vain.”  He lowered his voice to a whisper, and pointed to the stage, “‘Specially when he’s standin’ right there!”

Jimmy regarded the man as if he were trying to see him through a fog.  A couple of others nearby made hushing sounds and gestures.

“He ain’t Jesus.  Goddamnit.”

The soldier smacked Jimmy again.  “I
told
you not to do that!”  Another whack.  The man seemed intent on beating the sin out of Jimmy. 

Jimmy threw up his arms.  “Okay!”  Behind him, Wayne pretended to be totally engrossed in staring at a random point in space.  Jimmy stepped back from the soldier and rubbed his head, and pointed to the stage.  “That,” he announced, “ain’t Jesus!” 

Now more of the soldiers and cowboy types turned to look at the doubter.  Jimmy glared at Festus, and spoke in a low, but still very audible voice.  “You ain’t Jesus, you dirty hippie.”

Up on stage, Festus paused and shook his head.  “Woe unto us, verily.  We have a doubter in our midst.  It breakest my heart.”  He crossed his hands over his broken heart and pointed a pained, beatific expression up toward the ceiling.

“Get him!” said one of the men, pointing at Jimmy.

“Yes,” said Festus.  “Gettest thou him.”  He bowed his head and raised one hand to make the sign of the cross.

A group of angry patriots and soldiers surrounded Jimmy, closing in, in an ever-tightening circle.  He did that thing that surrounded people sometimes do, which is to try to back away in one direction, only to bump into someone else who is just as hostile as the person he was backing away from.  The circle of redneck friends drew closer, and Jimmy seemed to sink down into the middle of the group, his arms flailing above him. 

“No!” he said.  “Wait!  He’s not Jes—”  But the rest sounded like gargles.  Whatever it was that Jimmy was trying to tell his compatriots was lost – though at least one witness would state later that he was sure he heard a “Help me Jesus!”

After smacking him around a bit, they stopped, and rejoined the rest of the men cheering on the putative Jesus.  They left Jimmy there on the floor by himself to think it over.  He lay very still, moaning just a little bit.  The soldier who had smacked Jimmy earlier turned and gave him a good, hard kick. 

“Quit your whinin’, you heathen,” said the soldier.

“Good job, men,” said Festus with a holy fist pump.  “Now, I want you all to take off your pan—”  Festus noticed then that everyone seemed to be looking at something behind him, so he turned to see what all the fuss was about. 

There, standing behind Festus on the stage, stood Bill Cadmon.  The be-tasseled musicians were with him.  Cadmon stared at Festus with the idle curiosity of a crow watching a happy, oblivious caterpillar. 

“What,” said the preacher, “is going on here?”

Chapter 42.
          
I’ll Take Your Army, Please

“Who are you?” asked the old man.  Satan glanced over to the corner of the room, where he noticed El Jefe slumped in a chair, looking spent.

“Does that really matter?” asked the Devil.

The old man answered quickly – almost before Satan had finished speaking.  “It does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does!”  The old man slapped his hand on the desk.

“Well, I’m not telling.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked the old man.

“I’m here for your army.”

“What army?”

“Whatever army you’ve got.”

“I don’t have an army.”

“Don’t lie to me, Harold.”

“How do you know my—”

“Do you see these?”  Satan pointed to the large, wing-shaped things on his back.  “Imagine for a moment, if you will, that they’re not part of a costume.”

Harold shrugged.  “So, what?”

At that moment, El Jefe decided, apparently, that it was time to try to contribute to the conversation.  He began by making kind of a keening noise, which quickly rose in volume and intensity until it became more of a guttural howling sound.  And then it stopped.  He levered himself up from his chair, shaking with effort, and stood for a moment, wheezing.  It almost looked as if he had something to say, but then he flung his arms out awkwardly, as if he’d been hit in the chest by something large and heavy.  He gulped, hiccupped, and gulped again.  His eyes bulged, and for a second he looked as if he were about to revisit his lunch.  Then there was a popping sound, and El Jefe disappeared in a puff of smoke.  A lone, blue feather wafted down onto the floor.

“What the hell was that?” said Harold from behind his desk.  He didn’t seem shocked or surprised so much as just grumpy, old, and pissed.

Satan raised his eyebrows, and looked at something behind the old man’s head.  There was a squawking sound, and the old man kind of levitated and turned and blurted out a consonant-free exclamation, all at the same time.  Behind him, clinging awkwardly to the frame of a black and white photograph of some young-looking guys in front of a Word-War-II era bomber, was a blue and gold macaw.

It wasn’t the best looking macaw ever, or even the runner up for that prize.  In fact, were one to rank all of the macaws in the world from the best and “most stunningly beautiful” all the way to “abomination that should probably be incinerated before any kids get emotionally scarred,” El Jefe would have come in at about 7 Million.

The macaw squawked again, and the old man turned back to scowl at Satan.  “Where did he go?”

“Right there.”  Satan pointed to the bird.

“That’s … El Jefe?”  Harold looked back and forth between Satan and the precariously perched bird of paradise.  “You turned him into a bird?”

Satan made a “duh” face.  “I can also do other things.  Fire.  Pain.  Really awful, bad stuff.  Just say the word.”

“No, no.  That’s not necessary.”  Harold paused a moment to get in a little bit of head shaking and sighing.  “If you can do that, why do you need us?”

“So you admit it!”

“What?”

“That you have an army.”

Harold shook his head, as if to clear it.  “Well, yeah.  Sure.  Whatever.  The point is, you don’t need us.”

“I don’t.  I’m here because, you see, more than anything, I like to do things with style.  Panache.”  Satan gave Harold a winning angelic smile.  “I also want that ice cream machine.”

“What?”

“The one upstairs.”

“What?  You can’t—  Are you insane?”

“What are you trying to suggest?”

“That you’re insane.”

Satan opened his mouth to speak, but then looked up at the ceiling, to the spot where folks look when they’re trying to remember something or realizing something, and shrugged.  “Either way,” he said, “I want that ice cream machine.”  The Devil nodded, satisfied, but then added, “and your army too.”

“It’s really not much of an army.”

“I don’t care,” said Satan.  “Look, I’m going to go back upstairs to get my body.”  Harold squinted, evidently mystified by this statement.  “And then I’m going to head to the parking lot, where, I expect to find you, everyone you can muster, armed and ready to travel.  Understood?”

“Okay,” said Harold, with a weary shake of his head.  “Okay.”

“Alright then.”  The Devil turned to go, but then stopped.  “I’m going to grab an ice cream.  Would you like one?”

Harold looked as if he might cry.

“I’ll get you a swirl,” said Satan.

Chapter 43.
          
A Van Powered by Love

Cool air and the smell of ozone poured into the guitar shop through the open door.  Lola stood in the doorway, her cellular telephone pressed to her cheek, and watched the last few red raindrops fall as she tried to get a word in edgewise with her boss.  “I know,” she said, “but—” 

She had her back turned to Raju, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to contribute to the conversation.  “Festus said there’s a bunch of military guys there, too,” he said.

“Hang on a sec.”  Lola covered the mic on her phone.  “Wha—?  Would you please shut up?” 

“Festus said something about gas masks.  Soldiers wearing gas masks.”  He paused, his eyes glazed over with a far-away look.  “They look rubbery, you know.”

“Cas, can I—this idiot here is saying something about gas masks and military trucks.  Yeah, okay.  I’ll call you back.”  She stepped back into the shop.  “What on Earth are you talking about?”

Raju shrugged.  “They’re rubbery.”  Wasn’t that perfectly obvious?  Didn’t everyone know that?

“Raju,” said Lola, “Tell me about the gas masks, or I am going to stab you with my phone.”  She held the phone up.

“What?  That’s not going to work very well.”

“I’ll make it work,” she said.

So Raju told her.  He told her all about the gas masks, and the military trucks, and all the uber-patriotic, Independent-Texas-Now! paramilitary types that Festus had described.  And then he told her he loved her.  And that he wanted to make babies with her.  And that they should start immediately, just as soon as he could get his pants off, if she was up for it.  He tried to tell her some other stuff, but she punched him in the face and left the shop.

Fifteen seconds or so passed, and Lola came back in.  Raju, of course, saw this as a sign from God. 

“Where the hell is my car?” asked Lola.

Raju popped up from the stool and ran around the counter to stand before her.  “You are a vision,” he said.

Lola ignored the compliment.  “My car?”

Raju’s expression changed from adoration to confusion.

“It’s gone,” she said.  Still no response.  “My car is gone.”

“Oh, no!  Your car is missing?  That is terrible.”  Raju went outside to see for himself.  Lola followed him out.  “Where was it?” he asked, staring at her bottom.