Sympathy for the Devil - By Tim Pratt Page 0,9

toward the bridge. The younguns and the dogs was ahead of the devil in figuring things out. The younguns scrambled up a tree as quick as squirrels, and the dogs went loping into a ditch, but the devil was all preoccupied, doing a salty jump and cussing me for a dadblasted blagstagging liver-lipped stormbuzzard, jigging around right there in the middle of the bridge, and he was still cussing when I drove full tilt onto that bridge and he did not cuss any less when he jumped clean out from under his hat and he may even have stepped it up some when he went over the side. I heard a ker-plunk like a big rock chunked into a pond just as I swerved to bust the hat with a front tire and then I was off the bridge and racing back the way we’d come, and that hat mashed in the road behind me like a possum.

I knew something simply awful was going to happen, but man! I slapped the dashboard and kissed my hand and slicked it back across my hair and said aloud, “Lightly, slightly, and politely.” And I meant that thing. But my next move was to whip that razor out of my sock, flip it open and lay it on the seat beside me, just in case.

I came up the road fast, and from way off I saw Ezekiel and the mule planted in the middle of his field like rocks. As they got bigger I saw both their heads had been turned my way the whole time, like they’d started looking before I even came over the hill. When I got level with them I stopped, engine running, and leaned on the horn until Ezekiel roused himself and walked over. The mule followed behind, like a yard dog, without being cussed or hauled or whipped. I must have been a sight. Ezekiel shook his head the whole way. “Oh, John,” he said. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, John.”

“Jump in, brother,” I said. “Let Ole Massa plow this field his own damn self.”

Ezekiel rubbed his hands along the chrome on the side of the car, swiping up and down and up and down. I was scared he’d burn himself. “Oh, John.” He kept shaking his head. “John tricks Ole Massa again. High John the Conqueror rides the Terraplane to glory.”

“Quit that, now. You worry me.”

“John, those songs you wrote been keeping us going down here. Did you know that?”

“I ’preciate it.”

“But lemme ask you, John. Lemme ask you something before you ride off. How come you wrote all those songs about hellhounds and the devil and such? How come you was so sure you’d be coming down here when you died?”

I fidgeted and looked in the mirror at the road behind. “Man, I don’t know. Couldn’t imagine nothing else. Not for me, anyway.”

Ezekiel laughed once, loud, boom, like a shotgun going off.

“Don’t be doing that, man. I about jumped out of my britches. Come on and let’s go.”

He shook his head again. “Maybe you knew you was needed down here, John. Maybe you knew we was singing, and telling stories, and waiting.” He stepped back into the dirt. “This is your ride, John. But I’ll make sure everybody knows what you done. I’ll tell ’em that things has changed in Beluthahatchie.”

He looked off down the road. “You’d best get on. Shoot—maybe you can find some jook joint and have some fun afore he catches up to you.”

“Maybe so, brother, maybe so.”

I han’t gone two miles afore I got that bad old crawly feeling. I looked over to the passenger’s side of the car and saw it was all spattered with blood, the leather and the carpet and the chrome on the door, and both those mangy hound dogs was sprawled across the front seat wallowing in it, both licking my razor like it was something good, and that’s where the blood was coming from, welling up from the blade with each pass of their tongues. Time I caught sight of the dogs, they both lifted their heads and went to howling. It wan’t no howl like any dog should howl. It was more like a couple of panthers in the night.

“Hush up, you dogs!” I yelled. “Hush up, I say!”

One of the dogs kept on howling, but the other looked me in the eyes and gulped air, his jowls flapping, like he was fixing to bark, but instead of barking said:

“Hush yourself, nigger.”

When I looked back