“That what you call a broken nose?” the woman said without looking at them, or raising her voice. “I call that touchin’ ’im pretty good.”
“He made Joby do that!” Benjamin protested.
Her sneering smile revealed a line of crooked gray teeth. “Took your fist, and shoved it up his own nose, did he? You boys sound like the liars to me. You better get outta here,” she drawled, “ ’fore I call the law, and tell ’em to make you go.”
“It’s a public sidewalk!” Benjamin objected.
“Benjamin,” Joby said quietly. “Forget it. This isn’t going to work.” He stood on his pedals, preparing to ride.
“But—”
The woman laughed to herself, and murmured, “You’re every bit the little wimps he said you were.”
There was a shuffling racket from inside the darkened doorway behind her. The patched screen lurched open, and Jamie stepped out looking startled and angry to see Joby and Benjamin. His stepmom looked at him with even less sympathy than she’d shown the other boys. “You’d best go back inside, Jamie.”
“What’re they—”
“Make yourself scarce, boy,” she hissed.
Jamie grew visibly pale and vanished back into the darkness, the screen banging shut behind him.
The woman rose lazily, took one last pull on her cigarette before tossing it casually onto the porch. “I’m goin’ inside to call the police. You’d better be outta here before I finish dialin’, or I swear, you’ll be callin’ your folks up from downtown.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, and when Benjamin had pried his angry stare from her retreating back, the boys didn’t wait to find out if she meant it.
“She was bluffin’!” Benjamin insisted as they pedaled away down the dismal street. “She can’t get someone arrested just for standing on the sidewalk, can she?”
“I don’t know,” Joby said. “But you know what? I think Jamie’s whole family works for the devil.”
“I’ll tell you what!” Benjamin replied. “I think his stepmom is the devil!”
Lindwald came to school the next morning as close to elated as he had ever felt. Joby had finally handed him precisely what he needed! Knowing that his master wouldn’t want Joby getting in trouble again, however, Lindwald had been forced to wait until school got out before cashing in.
“Hey, Joby!” he hollered, charging angrily across the playground as everyone headed toward the bus stop or their parents’ cars in the parking lot. “Who the fuck didja think you were—comin’ to my house, an’ tellin’ my folks a bunch a lies!”
The crowd of kids between them parted like milk before a chopping maul, and before Joby could react, Lindwald rammed him into the air and sent him flying for the second time in three days.
“Stop it! . . . Stop it this minute, you PIG!”
To everyone’s amazement, Laura Bayer had leapt into Lindwald’s path, planting herself firmly in front of Joby.
“I’m sick of this!” she yelled. “Who do you think you are!”
“Laura,” Joby began as he stood up, clutching a skinned arm, “don’t—”
“No!” she insisted. “If he wants to fight so bad, he should have to fight us all!” She tilted her head back, and peered belligerently up at Lindwald. “You that brave, mister jerk, bully, fat face?”
She stood there, a slight little girl in thick-rimmed glasses, wearing her cast like a shield of invulnerability, and Lindwald realized that she really didn’t think he’d hit her. It was all he could do not to laugh. These little specks of dung dust were so clueless! He drew one arm back and hit her hard in the stomach. Joby would have to fight him now.
There was a horrified gasp from all around as Laura folded and fell, her mouth open, but no voice to fill it. Then every boy there lunged at Lindwald.
“Back!” Joby barked. Something in his voice froze all those angry arms and knees as if time itself had stopped, and Lindwald had just enough time to remind himself to make it convincing before Joby was on him like a crashing plane.
“Convincing” turned out to be no problem. Trapped in the illusion of flesh, stripped of any special power, Lindwald could do nothing to deflect the blows or mute the pain, and the unrestrained fury of Joby’s assault was somehow far more frightening than the coldly calculated torments inflicted by his “parents” each night. His sudden panic was as genuine as it was unexpected.
“Stop it! I give up!” Lindwald wailed, falling to the ground, his head cradled under his arms. “You’re killing me! . . . HELP!” he screeched.
Lindwald vaguely registered the confusion around them, some voices calling for Joby to stop, Laura’s among them—others cheering Joby on. But Joby seemed too lost in rage to heed anything but his one horribly singular purpose.
Suddenly, Lindwald found himself in a room he had not so much as thought of in three hundred years, trying to press himself through a stone wall as his mortal father hammered relentlessly at his back and limbs with an iron hearth tool on the night that Jamie, himself, had died. It wasn’t fair! He was already dead! They couldn’t make him go through this again! The numb strength of pure transcendent terror possessed him then. Leaping up, Lindwald dimly felt Joby’s weight tumble from his back like a load of wet leaves. Then he ran.
In seconds he was through the playground gate and into the field behind the school, but he heard Joby and Benjamin shouting right behind him. They were never going to let him go!
Alerted by Williamson, Lucifer hovered over the viewing bowl in his office, watching Lindwald’s long-awaited rout with almost sensual relish. “I could almost forgive your bungling for the pleasure this affords me, you little bastard.” The grin he wore threatened to overflow his face and wrap around his head. “Run, Jamie! Run!” he cackled in quiet falsetto. Then, even more softly, “Joby, my angry little friend, I never guessed you had such marvelous potential! Get him, boy! Sic him!” Lucifer howled with mirth, watching them corner Jamie in a small, dense copse of dusty trees.
“What’s a matter, Lindwald?” Joby taunted as he and Benjamin dodged one way, then the other, to keep Jamie from bolting. “Don’cha wanna fight me anymore?”
“Let me go!” Lindwald wailed. “You win! I told you! You win!”
“Laura’s arm is broken, you asshole!” Joby shouted. “What the hell made you think it was okay to—”
“I’M SORRY!” Jamie screamed. “Don’t hit me anymore!”
“He’s nothing but a yellow little stink ball,” Benjamin jeered. “That the best a demon can do?”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Jamie whimpered. “I ain’t no demon.”
“We know what you are, Lindwald,” Joby sneered, “and who you work for.”
“I don’t work for anyone!” Jamie moaned. “You’re crazy.” He tried to rush past them again, but Joby reached out and grabbed his shirt, which ripped down one side, exposing his back as Benjamin threw him to the ground, where he lay, shaking and rippling with sobs.
“What . . . is that?” Benjamin gasped, jumping back from him in revulsion.
Joby just stared.
Lindwald’s back was covered with livid welts like long, fat caterpillars made of raw hamburger.
Jamie’s crying grew softer, and he rolled slowly over to face his tormentors.
“What’re you starin’ at?” he whined.
“What’s that all over your back?” Joby demanded in disgust.
For a moment, Lindwald looked blank. Then he pouted, and said, “That’s what they do to me.” The calculating look that crossed his face was so brief that Lucifer doubted anyone but himself had seen it. “That’s what you made my folks do to me,” Lindwald pressed, looking as pathetic as possible.
“Us?” Joby demanded. “We had nothing to do with—”
“You made ’em mad at me!” Jamie whimpered miserably.
“Your parents,” Benjamin said in hushed disbelief, “did that?”
“No way,” Joby whispered in shock. “Nobody’s folks could . .
. I mean . . .”
Jamie played his serendipitous lever for all it was worth.
“No one’s s’posed to know,” he said, his lower lip trembling. “If they find out you saw, I . . . I don’t know what they’ll do to me. Please! Please don’t tell anyone!”
“Lindwald!” Lucifer murmured, impressed despite himself. “What happened to that stupid lump I’ve put up with all these centuries?”
Lindwald broke down utterly then, and it was all Lucifer could do not to applaud the performance. To think that such theatrical genius had lain dormant under that clumsy shell for so many centuries, waiting for sufficient fear to bring it forth! Lucifer was chagrined by a sudden suspicion that he’d grown too lax over the eons.
“Oh no,” Joby whispered. “Benjamin . . . He . . . What if he’s not . . . Benjamin, I’ve done something terrible.” He stepped closer to Jamie, and said, “We had no idea what you were going through. Why didn’t you tell somebody? A teacher, or—”
“My folks’d kill me!” Jamie blurted. “I ain’t kiddin’! Promise me you won’t say nothin’ to no one! Please!”
“We won’t tell,” Joby assured him. “We promise. Don’t we, Benjamin?”
“Yeah,” Benjamin said, beginning to look genuinely ashamed. “I promise.”
“Jamie, if we’d known what was going on . . .,” Joby began. “I mean—”
“Oh yesss!” Lucifer breathed, bending closer to the bowl. “Do the noble thing, my little paragon! Reach out to the darkness.”
“I mean . . .,” Joby hesitated. “We don’t have to be enemies. If you want . . . we could be friends, I guess.”
“YES!” Lucifer shouted. He looked up and spread his arms in exultation, allowing the angelic radiance he so seldom revealed to blaze around him as if a hundred suns had suddenly risen in his office! What luck!
“I know how bad I’d feel,” Lucifer heard Joby say, “if my parents—”
“Well they don’t, do they!” he heard Lindwald growl, oozing scorn and wounded pride now that he had Joby where he wanted him.
Lucifer’s radiance vanished instantly as he bent in alarm over the viewing bowl again and realized in horror that the unmitigated ass didn’t begin to comprehend the strategic value of what he’d accomplished! In a roil of panicked fury, Lucifer literally flew to the gleaming obelisk beside his office door, slammed his hand against it, and shouted, “Accept his offer, you worthless sack of excrement!”
He raced back to the viewing bowl to see Lindwald look appalled, then confused, then turn to Joby with an expression of abashed contrition, and ask, “You mean it?”
“Course I do,” Joby assured him.
Lucifer released a huge sigh of relief.
“Nobody ever . . . Who’d wanna be friends with me?”
“Stop pushin’ everyone around,” Joby told him, “and you could have all kinds of friends—couldn’t he, Benjamin?”
“Well,” Benjamin conceded, “I guess . . . if he’d start actin’ like he wants friends.”
“I do want friends,” Jamie mumbled. “You ain’t gonna tell no one. About my folks. Right?”
“We promise,” Joby said, sticking out his hand. “Shake on it?”
Lindwald took his hand with a timid smile, then turned and held his hand out to Benjamin, who, after a moment’s hesitation, shook it too.
Lucifer stared thoughtfully at the bowl as they left together, Lindwald wearing Benjamin’s coat to cover his back. Joby’s marvelous capacity for rage could be just the handle he’d been looking for, once he knew how to leverage it without tripping the wrong wires. And Lindwald! What an act! Perhaps he’d try turning up the heat on Williamson now too. Who knew what marvelous potential lurked just below the surface there as well? In fact, perhaps he’d been too kind to everyone in Hell.
Frank was in the locker room after a particularly satisfying round of racquet-ball. Karl wandered in a moment later, wearing a conspiratorial grin. The two of them had pretty well slaughtered Mike and Phillip.
Then Jack Stives came around the corner, and Frank’s good mood went straight to hell. Stives was a tall, muscular man with the ego and manners of a rutting ram. His son, Tommy, was in Joby’s class at school, and, like his father, always spoiling for a fight. Years before, after a few of their boys’ early quarrels, Jack and Frank had run afoul of each other. That had been before Joby had learned to handle himself, of course. Tommy left Joby alone now.
“Hey! Frank!” Stives exclaimed as he headed for his locker. “Funny I should run into you! I was just hearin’ about your boy from my Tommy not half an hour ago!”
“No kidding.” Frank grinned back, carefully casual.
“Seems he’s become quite an item at school these days!” Jack said. “I hear his little club’s gettin’ rave reviews. What’s it called?” He grimaced, trying to remember.
“The Roundtable.” Frank smiled. “Yeah, Joby talks about it all the time.”
“That’s right.” Jack grinned, pulling the sopping shirt off his broad back. “The Roundtable. I knew it was something magical, but I thought it was fairies or something.”
Here we go, Frank thought wearily. He shoved the last of his things into the locker, and reached for his coat. “Good seeing you, Jack. See you later, Karl.”
“Yup. Tommy tells me your boy put up quite a fight today,” Jack said.
Frank stopped, and turned back to face him. “Did he? I haven’t been home yet.”
“Well, I’m only tellin’ you what I heard from Tommy, of course. But he says this kid, Lindfield, threw your boy halfway ’cross the playground this afternoon. Not the first time either, I guess.” Jack shook his head. “Awesome patience your boy’s got. My Tommy’d been all over that clown weeks ago. Anyhow, when your boy still wouldn’t fight him, that little girl, Laura Bayer, the one broke her arm a while back, she steps right in to fight for Joby, and this asshole decks her right in front of everybody! Cast and all! That’s some popular boy you got there, Frank. Little girls throwin’ themselves across the tracks to protect him.” He winked. “Quite the little lady-killer, sounds like to me.”
Karl barked one quick laugh, then looked apologetically at Frank, while Stives looked startled, then beamed, as if just getting his own joke. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t even do that on purpose! Lady-killer!” He guffawed. “Get it, Frank?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Frank said levelly. He gave Karl a reproachful look, and headed for the door, hoping he didn’t look as humiliated as he felt. It was like goddamn Jack “crap-for-brains” Stives had been watching Frank’s damn, sick dreams or something! Protected by little girls, for godsake! Something had to be done, but he knew he’d better cool down first. A drink or two at the Filling Station might do the trick. Then he’d talk to Joby and find out what this was all about.
Trying harder than ever to be more perfect, Joby had finished his science report on sea life the moment he’d come home, then cleaned his room. Dinner was not for half an hour at least, but he’d already washed his hands twice. Now he sat on his bed, clutching his Arthurian tome, and trying to sort things out. The enemy had clearly tricked him into punishing an innocent person. Hadn’t Joby told Benjamin on Sunday that persecuting Jamie was a mistake?
Now Joby couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to have parents who burned lines on his skin when they got mad, or called him a “bastard” in front of strangers. Joby had never thought much before about what other people might be going through. What was it like for Tony to be poor? How did Duane feel, getting picked on so often? How many of his other friends were going through terrible things in secret? In that moment, Joby suddenly discovered his heart’s desire, though not quite how to express it. Recalling Father Crombie’s sermon that first time he’d gone to church with Benjamin, Joby wanted terribly to fix all the sadness and harm that weighed on people like Jamie. Lights in the darkness, Father Crombie had said. The image of candles bloomed in his mind. A circle of tiny lights in the darkness, growing in number,
spreading like a wave, farther and farther in all directions from where he stood willing the darkness away.
There was a knock on Joby’s bedroom door.
“Come in.”
Joby’s dad stuck his head in. “How ya doin’, sport?”
“Okay, Dad. . . . How come you’re home so late?”
“I just had things to take care of after work. Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Joby said. Hadn’t he just said “come in”?
When his dad sat down beside him, there was a funny sweet smell on his breath.
“How’d your day go, Joby?”
“Okay. I wrote a report on sea life.”
“You did, huh.” His father smiled.
“Yeah. For science, we’re studying things that live in the ocean. You should see, Dad! Crabs, and seashells, and sea enemies that shoot little poison darts into anything that touches them! Only they can’t hurt people, ’cause we’re too big—only little fish. And starfish walk on little tubes with suction cups on the end, and when they clamp down almost nothing can move ’em. And you know what, Dad? Up close, they’re like monsters! Last year, Mrs. Baker said monsters are just make-believe, but she’s wrong! They’re just real small!”
His father’s smile widened, and he ran a hand through Joby’s hair, raven black, like his own. “You really like science, huh?”
“Yeah,” Joby said. “I didn’t like plants much. But sea animals are cool.”
“I saw Tommy Stives’s dad at the health club after work today. He said you’ve been having trouble with that boy you fought with back in September. Is that true?”
Coming right out of the blue like that, the question left Joby feeling caught out and ashamed somehow, though his dad didn’t seem mad. He looked down and nodded. “We had a fight after school today . . . but—”
“Jack said Laura Bayer got hit,” his father said before Joby could tell him everything had come out all right.
“Yeah,” Joby said, “but she didn’t get hurt. Well, not too bad. She’s okay now.”
The Book of Joby Page 12
