The smoker must of been working again.
The golden thing with Doug Bob’s head had Pootie spread out naked next to the smoker. I couldn’t tell if he was dead, but sure he wasn’t moving. Doug Bob’s legs hung over the side of the smoker, right where he’d always put the goat legs. Cissy’s crazy knife was in that golden right hand, hanging loose like Uncle Reuben holds his when he’s fixing to fight someone.
“I don’t understand…”I tried to talk, but burped up a little bit of vomit and another fly to finish my sentence. The inside of my nose stung with the smell, and the fly in there didn’t seem to like it much neither. “You stole Doug Bob’s head.”
“You see, my son, I have been set free from my confinement. My time is at hand.” Doug Bob’s face wrinkled into a smile, as some of his burnt lip scaled away. I wondered how much of Doug Bob was still down in the creek. “But even I cannot walk the streets with my proud horns.”
His voice got sweeter, stronger, as he talked. I stared up at him, blinking in the sunlight.
“Rise up and join me. We have much work to do, preparations for my triumph. As the first to bow to my glory you shall rank high among my new disciples, and gain your innermost desire.”
Uncle Reuben taught me long ago how this sweet bullshit always ends. The old Doug Bob liked me. Maybe even loved me a little. He was always kind to me, which this golden Doug Bob ain’t never gonna be.
It must be nice to be loved a lot.
I staggered to my feet, farting ants, using the ridges in the sheet metal of the bus for support. It was hot as hell, and even the katydids had gone quiet. Except for the turkey vultures circling low over me, I felt like I was alone in a giant dirt coffin with a huge blue lid over my head. I felt expanded, swollen in the heat like a dead coyote by the side of the road.
The thing wearing Doug Bob’s head narrowed his eyes at me. There was a faint crinkling sound as the lids creased and broke.
“Get over here, now.” His voice had the menace of a Sunday-morning twister headed for a church, the power of a wall of water in the arroyo where kids played.
I walked toward the Devil, feet stepping without my effort.
There’s a place I can go, inside, when Uncle Reuben’s pushing into me, or he’s using the metal end of the belt, or Momma’s screaming through the thin walls of our trailer the way he can make her do. It’s like ice cream without the cone, like cotton candy without the stick. It’s like how I imagine Rachel MacIntire’s nipples, sweet and total, like my eyes and heart are in my lips and the world has gone dark around me.
It’s the place where I love myself, deep inside my heart.
I went there and listened to the little shuffling of my pulse in my ears.
My feet walked on without me, but I couldn’t tell.
Cissy’s knife spoke to me. The Devil must of put it in my hand.
“We come again to Moriah,” it whispered in my heart. It had a voice like its metal blade, cold from the ground and old as time.
“What do you want?” I asked. I must of spoke out loud, because Doug Bob’s burned mouth was twisting in screaming rage as he stabbed his golden finger down toward Pootie, naked at my feet next to the smoker. All I could hear was my pulse, and the voice of the knife.
Deep inside my heart, the knife whispered again. “Do not lay a hand on the boy.”
The golden voice from Doug Bob’s face was distant thunder in my ears. I felt his irritation, rage, frustration building where I had felt that cold absence.
I tried again. “I don’t understand.”
Doug Bob’s head bounced up and down, the duct tape coming loose. I saw pink ropy strings working to bind the burned head to his golden neck. He cocked back a fist, fixing to strike me a hard blow.
I felt the knife straining across the years toward me. “You have a choice. The Enemy promises anything and everything for your help. I can give you nothing but the hope of an orderly world. You choose what happens now, and after.”
I reckoned the Devil would run the world about like Uncle Reuben might. Doug Bob was already dead, and Pootie was next, and there wasn’t nobody else like them in my life, no matter what the Devil promised. I figured there was enough hurt to go around already and I knew how to take it into me.
Another one of Uncle Reuben’s lessons.
“Where you want this killing done?” I asked.
The golden thunder in my ears paused for a moment, the tide of rage lapped back from the empty place where Doug Bob wasn’t. The fist dropped down.
“Right here, right now,” whispered the knife. “Or it will be too late. Seven is being opened.”
I stepped out of my inside place to find my eyes still open and Doug Bob’s blackened face inches from my nose. His teeth were burnt and cracked, and his breath reeked of flies and red meat. I smiled, opened my mouth to speak, but instead of words I swung Cissy’s knife right through the duct tape at the throat of Doug Bob’s head.
He looked surprised.
Doug Bob’s head flew off, bounced into the bushes. The golden body swayed, still on its two feet. I looked down at Pootie, the old knife cold in my hands.
Then I heard buzzing, like thunder made of wires.
I don’t know if you ever ate a fly, accidental or not. They go down fighting, kind of tickle the throat, you get a funny feeling for a second, and then it’s all gone. Not very filling, neither.
These flies came pouring out of the ragged neck of that golden body. They were big, the size of horseflies. All at once they were everywhere, and they came right at me. They came pushing at my eyes and my nose and my ears and flying right into my mouth, crawling down my throat. It was like stuffing yourself with raisins till you choke, except these raisins crawled and buzzed and bit at me.
The worst was they got all over me, crowding into my butt crack and pushing on my asshole and wrapping around my balls like Uncle Reuben’s fingers right before he squeezed tight. My skin rippled, as if them flies crawled through my flesh.
I jumped around, screaming and slapping at my skin. My gut heaved, but my throat was full of flies and it all met in a knot at the back of my mouth. I rolled to the ground, choking on the rippling mess that I couldn’t spit out nor swallow back down. Through the flies I saw Doug Bob’s golden body falling in on itself, like a balloon that’s been popped. Then the choking took me off.
I lied about the telescope. I don’t need one.
Right after, while I was still mostly myself, I sent Pootie away with that old knife to find one of Doug Bob’s kin. They needed that knife, to make their sacrifices that would keep me shut away. I made Pootie seal me inside the bus with Doug Bob’s duct tape before he left.
The bus is hot and dark, but I don’t really mind. There’s just me and the flies and a hot metal floor with rubber mats and huge stacks of old Bibles and hymnals that make it hard for me to move around.
It’s okay, though, because I can watch the whole world from in here.
I hate the flies, but they’re the only company I can keep. The taste grows on me.
I know Pootie must of found someone to give that old knife to. I try the doors sometimes, but they hold firm. Somewhere one of Doug Bob’s brothers or uncles or cousins cuts goats the old way. Someday I’ll find him. I can see every heart except one, but there are too many to easily tell one from another.
There’s only one place under God’s golden sun the Devil can’t see into, and that’s his own heart.
I still have my quiet place. That’s where I hold my hope, and that’s where I go when I get too close to the goat cutter.