Sympathy for the Devil (6 page)

"Oh, I saw something, no question there. Don't know what it was, but it came sliding out of nowhere, like there was a door I couldn't see standing smack in the middle of the meadow and it could just step through, easy as you please. It looked like some cross between a big cat and a wolf, I guess."

"What happened to it?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "I don't know that either. It ran off into the forest. I guess maybe it was confused about how it got to be here, and maybe even where here is and all. But I don't think it's going to stay confused. I got only the one look at its eyes and what I saw there was smart, you know? Not just human smart, but college professor smart."

"And so you came here," I say.

She nods. "I didn't know what else to do. I just packed my knapsack and stuck old Mr. Rabbitskin here in a bag. Grabbed my fiddle and we lit a shuck. I kept expecting that thing to come out of the woods while we were making our way down to the highway, but it left us alone. Then, when we got to the black top, we were lucky and hitched a ride with a trucker all the way down to the city."

She falls quiet again. I nod slowly as I look from her to the rabbit.

"Now don't get me wrong," I say, "because I'm willing to help, but I can't help but wonder why you picked me to come to."

"Well," she says. "I figured rabbit-boy here's the only one can explain what's what. So first we've got to shift him back into his human skin."

"I'm no hoodoo man," I tell her.

"No, but you knew Malicorne maybe better than any of us."

"Malicorne," I say softly.

Staley's story notwithstanding, Malicorne had to be about the damnedest thing I ever ran across in this world. She used to squat in the Tombs with the rest of us, a tall horsey-faced woman with--and I swear this is true--a great big horn growing out of the centre of her forehead. You've never seen such a thing. Fact is, most people didn't, even when she was standing right smack there in front of them. There was something about that horn that made your attention slide away from it.

"I haven't seen her in a long time," I tell Staley. "Not since we saw her and Jake walk off into the night."

Through one of those doors that Staley and the crows called up. And we didn't so much see them go, as hear them, their footsteps changing into the sounds of hoofbeats that slowly faded away. Which is what Staley's getting at here, I realize. Malicorne had some kind of healing magic about her, but she was also one of those skinwalkers who change from something mostly human into something not even close.

"I just thought maybe you'd heard from her," Staley said. "Or you'd know how to get a hold of her."

I shake my head. "There's nobody you can talk to about it out there on the rez?"

She looks a little embarrassed.

"I was hoping I could avoid that," she says. "See, I'm pretty much just a guest myself, living out there where I do. It doesn't seem polite to make a mess like I've done and not clean it up on my own."

I see through what she's saying pretty quick.

"You figure they'll be pissed," I say.

"Well, wouldn't you be? What if they kicked me off the rez? I love living up there in the deep woods. What would I do if I had to leave?"

I can see her point, though I'm thinking that friends might be more forgiving than she thinks they'll be. 'Course, I don't know how close she is to the folks living up there.

I look down at the rabbit who still seems to be following the conversation like he understands what's going on. There's a nervous look in those big brown eyes of his, but something smarter than you'd expect of an animal, too. I lift my gaze back up to meet Staley's.

"I think I know someone we can talk to," I say.

The way William had talked him up, Staley expected Robert Lonnie to be about two hundred years old and, as Grandma used to describe one of those old hound dogs of hers, full of piss and vinegar. But Robert looked to be no older than twenty-one, twenty-two--a slender black man in a pin-striped suit, small-boned and handsome, with long, delicate fingers and wavy hair brushed back from his forehead. It was only when you took a look into those dark eyes of his that you got the idea he'd been a place or two ordinary folks didn't visit. They weren't so much haunted, as haunting; when he looked at you, his gaze didn't stop at the skin, but went all the way through to the spirit held in there by your bones.

They tracked him down in a small bar off Palm Street, found him sitting at a booth in the back, playing a snaky blues tune on a battered old Gibson guitar. The bar was closed and except for a bald-headed white man drying beer glasses behind the bar, he had the place to himself. He never looked up when she and William walked in, just played that guitar of his, picked it with a lazy ease that was all the more surprising since the music he pulled out of it sounded like it had to come from at least a couple of guitars. It was a soulful, hurting blues, but it filled you with hope, too.

Staley stood transfixed, listening to it, to him. She felt herself slipping away somewhere, she couldn't say where. Everything in the room gave the impression it was leaning closer to him, tables, chairs, the bottles of liquor behind the bar, listening,
feeling
that music.

When William touched her arm, she started, blinked, then followed him over to the booth.

William had described Robert Lonnie as an old hoodoo man and Staley decided that even if he didn't know a lick of the kind of mojo she was looking for, he still knew a thing or two about magic--the musical kind, that is. Lord, but he could play. Then he looked up, his gaze locking on hers. It was like a static charge, that dark gaze, sudden and unexpected in its intensity, and she almost dropped her fiddlecase on the floor. She slipped slowly into the booth, took a seat across the table from him and not a moment too soon since her legs had suddenly lost their ability to hold her upright. William had to give her a nudge before she slid further down the seat to make room for him. She hugged her fiddlecase to her chest, only dimly aware of William beside her, the rabbit in its bag on his lap.

The guitarist kept his gaze on her, humming under his breath as he brought the tune to a close. His last chord hung in the air with an almost physical presence and for a long moment everything in the bar held its breath. Then he smiled, wide and easy, and the moment was gone.

"William," he said softly. "Miss."

"This is Staley," William said.

Robert gave her considering look, then turned to William. "You're early to be hitting the bars."

"It's not like you think," William said. "I'm still going to AA."

"Good for you."

"Well," William said. "Considering it's about the only thing I've done right with my life, I figured I might as well stick with it."

"Uh-huh." Robert returned his attention to Staley. "You've got the look of one who's been to the crossroads."

"I guess," Staley said, though she had no idea what he meant.

"But you don't know who you met there, do you?"

She shook her head.

Robert nodded. "That's the way it happens, all that spooky shit. You feel the wind rising and the leaves are trembling on the trees. Next thing you know, it's all falling down on you like hail, but you don't know what it is."

"Um..." Staley looked to William for guidance.

"You've just got to tell him like you told me," William said.

But Robert was looking at the shopping bag on William's lap now.

"Who've you got in there?" he asked.

Staley cleared her throat. "We were hoping you could tell us," she said.

William lowered the cloth sides of the bag. The rabbit poked its head up, raggedy ear hanging down on one side.

Robert laughed. "Well, now," he said, gaze lifting to meet Staley's again. "Why don't you tell me this story of yours."

So Staley did, started with Butch dropping her off on the county road near her trailer late the night before and took the tale all the way through to when she got to William's apartment earlier that morning. Somewhere in the middle of it the barman brought them a round of coffee, walking away before Staley could pay him, or even get out a thanks.

"I remember that Malicorne," Robert said when she was done. "Now she was a fine woman, big horn and all. You ever see her anymore?"

William shook his head. "Not since that night she went off with Jake."

"Can you help me?" Staley asked.

Robert leaned back on his side of the booth. Those long fingers of his left hand started walking up the neck of his guitar and he picked with his right, soft, a spidery twelve-bar.

"You ever hear the story of the two magicians?" he asked.

Staley shook her head.

"Don't know what the problem was between them, but the way I heard it is they got themselves into a long-time, serious altercation, went on for years. In the end, the only way they were willing to settle it was to duke it out the way those hoodoo men do, working magic. The one'd turn himself into a 'coon, the other'd become a coonhound, chase him up some tree. That treed 'coon'd come down, 'cept now he's wearing the skin of a wildcat." Robert grinned. "Only now that coonhound, he's a hornet, starts in on stinging the cat. And this just goes on.

"One's a salmon, the other's an otter. Salmon becomes the biggest, ugliest catfish you ever saw, big enough to swallow that otter whole, but now the otter's a giant eagle, slashing at the fish with its talons. Time passes and they just keep at it, changing skins--big changes, little changes. One's a flood, the other's a drought. One's human, the other's a devil. One's night, the other's day... .

"Damnedest thing you ever saw, like paper-scissors-rock, only hoodoo man style, you know what I'm saying? Damnedest thing."

The whole time he talked, he picked at his guitar, turned the story into a talking song with that lazy drawl of his, mesmerizing. When he fell silent, it took Staley a moment or two to realize that he'd stopped talking.

"So Mr. Rabbitskin here," she said, "and that other thing I only caught half a glimpse of--you're saying they're like those two magicians?"

"Got the smell of it to me."

"And they're only interested in hurting each other?"

"Well, now," Robert told her. "That'd be the big thought on their mind, but you've got to remember that hoodoo requires a powerful amount of nourishment, just to keep the body up to fighting strength. Those boys'll be hungry and needing to feed--and I'm guessing they won't be all that particular as to what they chow down on."

Great, Staley thought. She shot the rabbit a sour look, but it wouldn't meet her gaze.

"Mr. Rabbitskin here," she said, "won't eat a thing. I've tried carrots, greens, even bread soaked in warm milk."

Robert nodded. "That'd tempt a rabbit, right enough. Problem is, what you've got here are creatures that are living on pure energy. Hell, that's probably all they are at this point, nothing but energy gussied up into a shape that makes sense to our eyes. They won't be eating food like we do. So far as that goes, the way they'd be looking at it, we probably
are
food, considering the kind of energy we've got rolling through us."

The rabbit, docile up to now, suddenly lunged out of William's lap and went skidding across the smooth floor, heading for the back door of the bar. William started after it, but Robert just shook his head.

"You'll never catch it now," he said.

"Are you saying that rabbit was feeding on me somehow?" William asked.

"I figure he was building up to it."

Staley stared in the direction that the rabbit had gone, her heart sinking. This whole situation was getting worse by the minute.

"So these two things I called over," she said. "They're the hoodoo men from your story?"

Robert shrugged. "Oh, they're not the same pair, but it's an old story and old stories have a habit of repeating themselves."

"Who won that first duel?" William asked.

"One of 'em turned himself into a virus and got the other too sick to shape a spell in reply, but I don't know which one. Doesn't much matter anyway. By the time that happened, the one was as bad as the other. Get into that kind of a state of mind and after awhile you start to forget things like kindness, decency... the fact that other people aren't put here in this world for you to feed on."

Staley's heart sank lower.

"We've got to do something about this," she said. "I've got to do something. I'm responsible for whatever hurt they cause, feeding on people and all."

"Who says it's your fault?" Robert wanted to know.

"Well, I called them over, didn't I? Though I don't understand how I did it. I've been playing my music for going on four years now in that meadow and nothing like this has ever happened before."

Robert nodded. "Maybe this time the devil was listening and you know what he's like. He purely hates anybody who can play better than him--'specially if they aren't obliged to him in some way."

"Only person I owe anything to," Staley said, "is my Grandma and she was no devil."

"But you've been at the crossroads."

Staley was starting to understand what he meant. There was always something waiting to take advantage of you, ghosts and devils sitting there at the edge of nowhere where the road to what is and what could be cross each other, spiteful creatures just waiting for the chance to step into your life and turn it all hurtful. That was the trouble with having something like her spirit fiddle. It called things to you, but unless you paid constant attention, you forgot that it can call the bad as well as the good.

"I've been at a lot of places," she said.

"You ever played that fiddle of yours in one?"

"Not so's I knew."

"Well, you've been someplace, done something to get his attention."

"That doesn't solve the problem I've got right now."

Robert nodded. "No, we're just defining it."

"So what can I do?"

"I don't know exactly. Thing I've learned is, if you call up something bad, you've got to take up the music and play it back out again or it'll never go away. I'd start there."