The Book of Joby

by Ferrari, Mark J.

  “Why was she involved, Joby?”

  “She stood up to Jamie when he tried to fight me.”

  “Why didn’t you stand up for yourself, son?”

  “What? . . . Dad, I—”

  “Has someone been telling you it’s wrong to fight?” His father was still smiling, but the smile seemed strained now. “Do they tell you that at church?”

  “No,” Joby said, feeling worried. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell what it was. “Well, sometimes. But that’s not—”

  “They’re wrong, Joby.” His father’s smile had vanished completely. He was definitely angry, and as he leaned closer to Joby, the sweet smell on his breath got stronger. “It’s never okay to be a bully, son, but sometimes a man needs to stand up for himself, and then it’s not just okay to fight. It’s right. It’s good. Next time this bastard picks on you, you just flatten him. Understand? No son of mine needs little girls taking his falls.”

  Joby wanted to tell his dad that Jamie and him were friends now; that Laura was proud of him; that Jamie wasn’t a bastard. But he didn’t dare speak. His father was mad at him, and he didn’t know what it was safe to say.

  “I’m not mad at you, Joby,” his father said, sounding sad. He reached out to stroke Joby’s hair again. “I just want you to be proud of yourself.”

  “I must say, Kallaystra, your versatility never ceases to amaze me.”

  “You flatter me, Bright One, but I rather enjoy bartending, really. The Filling Station has such a wonderfully distressed clientele, and I’m such a good listener, you know.” She smiled thoughtfully. “The boy’s father is rather charming really, by their standards, and very good looking.” She giggled seductively, and Lucifer laughed as well. “The friction between him and the child’s mother should ignite very nicely any time now. The boy’s sudden interest in religion works greatly to our advantage in this as well.”

  “Indeed,” Lucifer replied. “Williamson tells me your priest has Joby struggling with pride already. Imagine! Only nine!” he chortled. “What a precocious boy.”

  “I knew you’d be pleased.”

  “Oh yes. In fact, I’m especially happy about Richter’s admirable concern for . . . physical purity.” He chuckled softly. “Given our progress with Joby’s father, Richter’s paranoia provides some delicious opportunities to up the volume of Joby’s little conundrum, wouldn’t you say? Damned at home if he doesn’t want a woman, damned at church if he does. That’s always been one of my favorite recipes.”

  “Bright One, the boy is only nine,” Kallaystra said. “Isn’t that a bit early to be thinking about sex?”

  “The most fruitful seeds are planted well before the thaw, Kallaystra. How far ahead do you suppose the Enemy has planned?”

  Her skepticism vanished in a grim nod. “Too true, Bright One. I’ll begin tilling the soil immediately.”

  They were interrupted by a soft chime.

  “That will be Williamson.” Lucifer frowned. “He’s overdue for one of his dreary reports.”

  When he’d placed his hand against the dark obelisk beside the door, however, his startled expression told Kallaystra that the message must be anything but dreary.

  “Forgive me, Kallaystra,” he blurted out. “I think he may have found it!”

  Lucifer vanished before she could ask who “he,” or what “it” was.

  Laura had wisely left the meeting so that the knights could talk freely, and Bobby Lehan was now vehemently expressing his objections to Benjamin’s proposal.

  “I never saw you stand up to Lindwald, Bobby,” Benjamin rebutted. “She’s been brave as any of us a whole bunch of times, and I say it’s stupid she can’t be a knight.”

  “He’s right,” said Tony Esquivel. “Look how much she gets hurt all the time. She’s plenty tough to be a knight.”

  “You’re just on her side ’cause she got you in, Tony!” Johnny Mayhew sneered.

  “Tony’s in same as you,” Joby objected, “ ’cause he passed the tests, and we all wanted him.”

  “Yeah, Johnny!” Duane said. “Don’t be a jerk to Tony just ’cause you’re—”

  “Shut up, Duane!” Johnny pouted. “You been kissin’ up to her ever since you knocked her outta that tree. If it weren’t for you, none of this’d be happening!”

  “What’s your problem, Mayhew?” Joby asked. “Laura done something to you?”

  “She’s . . . This is not a club for girls!” Johnny sputtered. “Girls can’t be knights!”

  “Yes they can!” Benjamin beamed. “I got proof!” He lifted a volume of the encyclopedia from the table in front of him. “I asked Mrs. Escobedo, and she—”

  “Mrs. Escobedo!” Johnny scoffed. “What does she know about being a knight?”

  “Johnny, shut up and listen!” Joby insisted.

  “Mrs. Escobedo showed me this,” Benjamin said, glaring at Johnny Mayhew. He opened to a marked page, and, to Johnny’s clear consternation, began reading the entry on Joan of Arc.

  High up near the ceiling, two moths lay flat against the wall, watching the Roundtable’s proceedings in mothy silence. The larger insect was white with huge gray eyes, the smaller one, dark brown with bright black ones.

  “Is he not a joy to behold, My Lord?” The stream of thought passing between Gabriel and his Lord was filled with affection for Joby. “Look at how proud he is of Benjamin.”

  “And of the girl,” the white moth agreed. “The three of them have become quite the little trio, haven’t they.”

  “In truth,” Gabriel replied, “they often remind me of the very ones they imitate. She is much like Guinevere, and Arthur would certainly have taken a shine to Joby. Benjamin is so like Lancelot that, were his coloring darker, I’d—”

  Gabe saw his Master’s wings quiver slightly, and sensed the soft puff of pheromones that passed for a smile among moths. Suddenly, the pieces fell together, causing his dark wings to flutter involuntarily.

  “Surely . . .” the dusky moth broadcast in the mental equivalent of a gasp, “You can’t mean—They’re not really—”

  “I did promise them a second chance,” the white moth replied. “Remember?”

  “But . . . now? I do not mean to question You, Lord, of course, but isn’t this contest challenging enough without throwing that knot into it as well?”

  “I promised them,” the Creator insisted. “And if Lucifer should win, I’ll never have another chance to keep that promise.”

  For a moment, Gabriel was struck speechless—even for a moth. “My Lord,” his mind whispered at last, “surely You do not anticipate defeat!”

  “Perhaps He does,” came a sardonic mental voice from just behind them.

  Both moths fluttered up and turned to land again facing the large, shiny black spider that had snuck up on them from above.

  “Two moths out alone should be more careful,” the spider admonished. “What if I’d been hungry and failed to realize who you were in time?”

  “You’d have found yourself in the arms of a six-inch praying mantis,” Gabriel blurted out, “getting your head chewed off!”

  “Gabe,” the Creator sighed, folding His wings calmly behind Him. “Your goat.”

  Gabe was too busy wondering how on earth the Creator had let Lucifer surprise them to puzzle out what goats had to do with anything.

  The spider turned its many glassy eyes toward the escalating debate below. “So that’s Your hidden ace,” it said dryly. Its palps did that little dance that passed for laughter among spiders. “Was this the best You could do? Dust off a proven failure, and trot him back out for the most crucial wager in human history?”

  “Arthur was hardly a failure, Lucifer,” the Creator replied. “If memory serves Me, you lost that wager, not I.”

  “On a technicality,” the spider sneered. “And, if he didn’t fail, technically, he certainly didn’t succeed. In my book, that’s virtually the same thing. Two adulterous traitors, and an incestuous infanticide,” he said, dripping wi
th disdain. “To these you give ‘second chances’—but not to me.”

  “They were sorry, Lucifer,” the white moth replied.

  “Sorry?” Lucifer murmured. “When I’m in charge, sorry won’t be nearly good enough.” He turned his back on them then, and sidled up a strand of web toward the crack he’d come from. “I’d love to stay and gloat,” he broadcast back with a mental grin, “but now that I’ve glimpsed the rather pathetic card up Your sleeve, I have adjustments to make.”

  In the room below, Laura was being escorted back into the library by her grinning champion, Sir Benjamin. Everyone was clapping, except for Johnny Mayhew, who left the room. But Joby didn’t seem to care about that. He just smiled at his two best friends with obvious pride and affection, clapping louder than anyone as they took their seats beside him at the table.

  6

  ( Taubolt )

  Joby reveled in the warm spring air that caressed his arms and played through his hair as he biked home from that confining compound for the last time until the unimaginably distant month of September. School was finally over, which meant not only three months of freedom, but the final count-down to his birthday too! In three days he would be ten years old! Double digits at last! And as if all that weren’t enough, Mrs. Nelson had given him a letter for his parents, which, from her smile, he knew must say something good. Joby hadn’t felt this happy since Christmas, when he’d gone into the living room to find his brand-new bike beside the tree, metal-flake red, with twenty-one gears!

  His old bike had gone to Jamie Lindwald when they’d let him into the Roundtable in March. Jamie had never talked again about what his parents had done to him, and Joby had known better than to ask. But Jamie had gone without a shirt out at the tournament field recently, and no trace remained of the ugly scars Joby and Benjamin had seen.

  By now the Roundtable was completely famous. There were sixth-graders who wanted to be knights! Even teachers came quietly to Joby, Ben, or Laura with suggestions about who could use a lift or a helping hand. Johnny Mayhew had come back to the Roundtable eventually, despite Laura’s knighthood, and become fast friends with Jamie. All in all, it had been an amazing year. Joby pumped his bike pedals fiercely, howling like a wolf, and laughing at the sun, unable to contain the giddy joy that powered through his body. He was free! Free at last!

  “Hit me,” said the Creator.

  “Again?” Gabe exclaimed. “You must be over by now.”

  “We’re gambling,” the Creator chided. “Pressing My luck’s the whole point.”

  Gabriel dealt his Master a sixth card, and the Creator laid His hand down, revealing a ten, a two, a four, a three, and two aces, “Twenty-one,” He grinned, “again.”

  Gabe shook his head in amazement. “I must confess, Lord, it’s reassuring to see Your luck run so strong.”

  “You don’t, you know.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Have to confess.”

  Gabriel looked confused.

  “Never mind,” the Creator said.

  “Lucifer’s done nothing for months!” Gabriel murmured. “It’s making me rather nervous. What can he be up to?”

  “Little Joby could teach you a thing or two about keeping your goat, Gabe.”

  “My what, Lord?”

  “Your goat. You seem so anxious lately.”

  “Master,” Gabriel dared at last to ask, “did we not betray Your ‘hidden ace’ to Lucifer?”

  “Is that what’s been eating you?” The Creator smiled. “Well, you needn’t have worried. There is no silver bullet concealed anywhere in Joby. There never was. So we can hardly have betrayed it to Lucifer, can we.”

  “But . . . I thought—I mean, Lucifer clearly thought . . .”

  “If I were hiding aces, Gabe, I wouldn’t hide them in Joby anyway.” He picked up the cards and began to shuffle them. “First place that old boar would look, isn’t it?”

  “Then . . . forgive me, Lord, but, the child does seem terribly vulnerable. If there’s nothing more waiting in reserve, how can You be certain Lucifer won’t win?”

  “Of course he might win, Gabe. The fellow’s an ass, but he’s not an idiot. In fact,” the Creator sighed, “I’d say he’s already got the game he’s been playing with poor Joby pretty well sewn up.”

  Gabriel could not hide his shock. “You think he’s won, Lord?”

  “Lucifer often wins the games he plays,” the Creator mused soberly. “You know that, Gabe. Thank heaven he so rarely plays the right ones.”

  Gabriel had not been the only one puzzling over the Creator’s game since that afternoon in the library. Realizing later that sneaking up on his “omniscient” foe had been far too easy, Lucifer’s gloating had quickly turned to apprehension. The Creator must have wanted to be overheard, which could mean only one thing: there must be a trap hidden somewhere in this discovery, waiting to snap shut on Lucifer’s overconfident fingers, just as it had so many times before. Well, he wasn’t falling for it this time.

  That these children, though unaware of it themselves, were Camelot’s tragic trio returned to the wheel was undoubtedly true. Tricky as He might be, the Creator did not lie outright. Not ever. But Lucifer’s oppressor had never had any qualms about withholding the truth. So what hadn’t He let slip? Lucifer had no intention of rushing blindly ahead until he knew. Beyond Williamson’s surveillance, and Lindwald’s carefully monitored infiltration, Lucifer had called all activity to an immediate halt.

  Kallaystra had complained rather stridently about lost momentum, but Lucifer had just insisted that allowing the boy and his family this brief hiatus would ultimately work even more to Hell’s advantage. What was more demoralizing, after all, than lost hope resurrected—then dashed—again? Kallaystra had received these reassurances with cool skepticism, as had most of the others. To Lucifer’s satisfaction, she had clearly not failed to betray their “little secret” to nearly everyone in Hell. Flocks of his usually uncooperative demonic siblings had been paying him deferential visits for months now, just to see if there were anything he might need. Each time, Lucifer had mentioned the wager as if reluctant to burden them, but they’d invariably insisted on helping.

  Now, of course, all those recruits were whining about having to cool their heels, but Lucifer would endure such complaint five times over before being rushed into some disastrous blunder. His second shot at Camelot’s charming little trio would wait until all the trip wires had been discerned. This time they’d find no refuge in technicalities.

  Humming softly as she rinsed lettuce and red bell peppers, Miriam glanced up through the kitchen window at a world awash in sunlit greens and blues. There was fruit already swelling on those tiny peach trees Frank had planted two summers before. Once again, she reveled in summer’s arrival.

  Her nightmares had finally ceased just before Christmas, though it had taken her months to trust their absence. Frank seemed less anxious too these days. With the drier weather, construction had begun on the shopping mall, and kudos on Frank’s design were pouring in from both his partners and the client, which made her husband charmingly impossible to live with. Joby’s grades had been better that spring than ever before, and she could not remember the last time she’d had to ask him to pick up his things or do his chores. Thinking back, it was hard to understand now what she’d been so upset about all winter.

  As she laid the salad things out to dry and went to finish dressing the chicken, she heard Joby burst through the front door.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m in here, honey!”

  He came running across the dining room, and into the kitchen. “I got a letter from Mrs. Nelson!” He bounded over and thrust an envelope at her. “It’s for you and Dad.”

  She opened it and scanned the page.

  “Out loud!” Joby protested. “Please,” he quickly amended.

  “ ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Peterson,’ ” she read, “ ‘I just want to say that your son’s unflagging desire to learn and improve this year has
been an example to all of his classmates. His wonderful imagination and delight in life have enlivened our class again and again. His Roundtable club has instilled a sense of excitement about helping others throughout the entire school. My only regret is having to relinquish the privilege of being his teacher next year to Miss Meyer. I have never seen Joby’s like, and I am convinced that Joby will grow up to do great things. You must be very proud. Sincerely, Alice Nelson.’

  “Oh, Joby!” Miriam said, bending down to fold him in her arms. “I am proud of you! Your father will walk on air when he reads this.” She pulled back for a better look at her marvelous child. “I think you’re just perfect!” she said. This seemed to please Joby so much that she said it again, playfully pulling his giggling face around by the ears. “You’re my perfect little boy, Joby!” She kissed his forehead, and let him go.

  “Yahooo!” Joby cheered, running from the kitchen with his book bag. “I’m gonna go wash my hands for dinner! . . . It’s summer!” he shouted. “Yahooooooo!”

  As Miriam’s fine chicken dinner drew to an end, Frank leaned back and asked with studied nonchalance, “So, Joby, given any thought to your birthday plans this year?”

  His son looked up blankly. “Gee. I forgot all about it.” Then he grinned slyly, and Frank couldn’t help laughing.

  “Like hell you did.” Frank chuckled. “Let’s hear it. What are we doing this year?”

  Joby’s smile became gleeful. “I wanna go see the little monsters!”

  Frank was nonplussed, and saw that Miriam looked just as confounded.

  “Tide pools!” Joby said. “Mrs. Nelson says all those animals we studied live right at the beach in tide pools. I wanna go see ’em!”

  Ah! Frank remembered hearing Joby talk about sea creatures before. In fact, he had seen library books about marine life lying around the house all year. His brows climbed slightly. His son, the marine biologist? That’s when he noticed Miriam’s strange smile. “Miriam? What’s that look about?” he asked.