to push through the crowd and they parted like the Red Sea. Satan wasn’t exactly sure where he was going, but he knew that he needed to get away, to get to the airport and to get back to Hell. Nero followed in his wake. The crowd was silent. It was like being in church.
The first thing to hit Satan was a dirty diaper. A puffy plastic folded square that smacked him right in the shoulder, stuck for a moment and then fell to the ground. Then someone threw an empty Poland Springs bottle. A banana peel arced through the air and landed on Nero’s face. He flung it away in disgust.
Suddenly, the air was full of garbage, like rice at a wedding reception, showering down on Satan and Nero. Then came the jeers and the shouts and the catcalls and the insults. The noise was back and it was louder than before, more dangerous. And as Nero and Satan made for the highway, the sky darkened with the garbage of a thousand, thousand packed lunches, and diaper bags, and stroller pouches, and recycling bins all raining down on their heads.
In Utah, Harry Harlib lay on the floor of the TV room. His mom had let him stay home from school today so that he could see how awful Satan was so that he would do his homework and be good so he wouldn’t go to aich ee double hockey sticks. His dad was in the easy chair and his mom was on the love seat and their usual running commentary – a mixture of prayers and outrage and sarcasm – had died out when Satan started talking.
Harry’s dad was older than his mom. He’d been a cement mason specializing in concrete finishing since his first summer job at sixteen. He’d made so much money that he’d dropped out of high school and focused solely on getting rich. For years, he didn’t even have a bank account, just an empty fifty-pound Quikrete bag in his garage stuffed with cash. When he’d finally dragged it into the bank and dumped it out on the counter it turned out to contain fifty thousand, four hundred and sixteen dollars and eighty-two cents. That was enough to start a new life. Buy a house. Have a kid.
Things had been good until ten years ago when construction started slowing down. Harry’s dad would do anything for work. He’d go anywhere. But the simple fact was that there were too many cement masons and not enough cement mason jobs. He started taking extra work on the side. Odd jobs, handyman work, whatever he could pick up from day to day. Whatever would pay the bills.
Three months ago he woke up one morning and realized that he hadn’t touched a mixer in over a year. What he was now was the guy who cleaned the kennels at the local pound and thought he was still a cement mason. He was stealing twenty-five pound bags of dog chow and selling them cheap on Craigslist for extra cash. He’d tried so hard, but now they had nothing. For Harry’s dad, Satan was speaking to him.
The room was quiet. Linda didn’t read from the Bible or pray, she just put her hand on her broken husband’s back and let him have a moment. He couldn’t stop crying. He wrapped his hands around his graying head and pulled it down onto his knees as silent sobs convulsed his shoulders. Harry sat and watched. Then he looked at the TV and back at his dad. He went into the kitchen and made a big pitcher of lemonade. He took it outside with a bunch of paper cups from the kitchen. He sat on the grass in front of his house with a sign that he wrote himself:
LEMONADE – .50 cents
MONEY FOR SATAN TO BUY BACK HELL
When his parents saw what he was doing they didn’t say a word, but his dad set up a card table and a patio umbrella for him. It was going to be a hot day. They let Harry sell lemonade for Satan all afternoon. He raised sixteen dollars.
In Heaven, the Host were gathered in a presentation room. Theater-style seating. Big screen up front for the video projector. A deconstructed podium in blonde wood. Michael had come back from his journey into the Empyrean and now that he was re-hydrated he was ready to reveal God’s message.
“The Creator is affronted by Satan’s hubris,” Michael said. “The Prince of