The Book of Joby

by Ferrari, Mark J.

  “Oh . . . I was just remembering some tide pools I saw once when I was not much older than Joby. I found a huge starfish there—at least twenty legs.”

  “That’s a sun star!” Joby exclaimed. “Did you see the little tubes it crawls on?”

  “I don’t think so.” Her expression softened further. “But there were lots of beautiful shells and it was so sunny and warm. You’d have loved it there, Joby.”

  “Where was it?” Joby enthused. “Let’s go there!”

  “It was at a little town called Taubolt,” she said. “But it’s much too far away. I’m sure there are lots of closer tide pools.”

  Of course, Frank thought. Where her father had grown up. He’d never been there, but Miriam had mentioned it from time to time. He could see she’d like to go there . . . and it had been a long winter, and he knew he hadn’t been easy to get along with. Watching her bemused expression, Frank felt its echo spreading across his own face.

  “Want to go see the beach where your grandpa grew up, Joby?” he said, smiling at Miriam.

  “Yeah!” Joby exclaimed. “That’d be cool!”

  “Oh, Frank,” Miriam said. “We’d just end up driving all day!”

  “I wanna go,” Joby pressed. “Did you live there, Mom?”

  “No, dear. Your grandpa left Taubolt a long time before he met your grandma. We only went that once, on vacation, and I don’t even remember how to get there.”

  “Well, it’s on the coast, so it can’t be that hard to find,” Frank said, rising to get a map. “Gotta be on the coast highway somewhere. Let’s see how far.”

  A moment later he was back, spreading a California road map on the dinner table. He traced the wavy red line of Highway I north from San Francisco, reading the names of each town along the way, but his finger reached the Oregon border without ever finding Taubolt. “I guess it’s too small to list,” he conceded.

  “It wasn’t much of a town,” Miriam said, turning to clear the dishes with nearly concealed disappointment. “Out in the middle of nowhere. It might not even be there anymore.”

  “A whole town can’t just go away!” Joby protested. “We should look for it!”

  “It’s Joby’s birthday, Miriam,” Frank said, following her into the kitchen with his own load of dishes. “If that’s what he wants, let’s just drive up the coast and find it. Whadaya think?”

  “I think Joby won’t want to spend his whole birthday in the car.”

  “We’ll make a weekend of it then. I can take Friday off. Nobody’s going to say I haven’t been working hard enough.” He turned to Joby, who had followed them in with the salad bowl. “Mind if we celebrate your birthday all weekend, sport?”

  “Heck no!” He beamed.

  “Well.” Miriam laughed, kissing her husband lightly. “As long as you both remember it wasn’t my fault if this turns out to be a wild-goose chase.”

  “All right!” Joby cheered. “Can I bring Benjamin, Dad?”

  “Whatever you want, son. It’s your birthday, so you’re the king.”

  “I’m the king!” Joby shouted, thrusting his fists in the air.

  “You asked to see me, Williamson,” Lucifer said without looking up from the huge open book on his desk. “Be quick about it. I’ve a lot on my plate.”

  Williamson schooled his resentment once again. In the months since he’d found Lucifer’s damned ace, the bastard had never said so much as “thanks.” Damned if you didn’t, and damned if you did. That’s how it seemed to work around here.

  “Sir, I’ve been doing the research you requested . . . on the boy’s background, and while there’s nothing remarkable about any of his other relations, it does seem that the child’s maternal grandfather came out of nowhere.”

  “What?”

  Finally something more than bland disregard.

  “The man has no verifiable past before marrying the boy’s grandmother, Sir. No apparent lineage, and his birth certificate, high school diploma, and credit records are all fake. They list his place of origin as Taubolt, California, but no such place exists. I’ve checked every map and atlas—every reference of any kind. I’ve had your own angels employ supernatural means of finding it, Sir, and there simply isn’t any such place.”

  “So?” Lucifer shrugged scornfully. “He used forged documents to hide his past. An encouraging discovery, certainly, but not very useful until we know why. Is that all you’ve got to show for so much time?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Just find out where the fakes were made, Williamson. Need I guide you through every task you’re given? Where there’s a forgery, there’s a forger—and that person would undoubtedly be one of ours, wouldn’t he!”

  “With all due respect, Sir, I have made every effort to trace the forgeries, and can say with complete confidence that they have no more past than he did.”

  “Then where did they come from? They can hardly have burst fully notarized from the head of Zeus! You’ve just been lazy!”

  “I shall scour our lists more carefully, Sir,” as if he hadn’t done so five times already. But he knew that any other reply would have seen him spitted and basting ’til dinnertime—every dinnertime for eternity.

  “Do,” Lucifer said shortly. “And let me know when you’ve discovered something useful. Until then, get out.”

  They left just after lunch on Friday. Ben and Joby provided running commentary on every sight from the backseat of the Petersons’ Land Cruiser as they left familiar dry grassy hills for East Bay cities, the bridge, and San Francisco’s rolling skyline. When the ocean itself came into view, the boys threw themselves at the west window, yelling their heads off. But after three more hours of winding coastal highway, the novelty had worn off, and they were both reduced to sleepy silence.

  Near five o’clock, they stopped for dinner at a fish place that sold seashells and carved redwood curios. Having all but lost hope, they asked the waitress if she’d ever heard of Taubolt, and cheered loudly when she said she had. She wasn’t sure, but thought it might be just a few more hours up the coast.

  “A few more hours!” Benjamin and Joby groaned in unison, sliding together off the leatherette seats and under the table like gunslingers who’d been shot.

  For an hour and a half after leaving the diner they saw virtually no sign of humanity along the two-lane rural highway. The road grew extremely windy, and once, as they passed an immense outcrop of pale stone wrapped in dark glossy shrubs, Joby suddenly felt dizzy, and asked his father to pull over. After a moment on his feet, however, Joby suddenly felt better than he could ever remember feeling—as if some greasy syrup had been taken from his bloodstream, or a sack of stones lifted from his shoulders. When he mentioned it, his dad told him it was the effect of clean sea air.

  Near sunset, they finally saw a weathered, hand-painted sign that read TAUBOLT—2 MILES. They all cheered again, and the boys leaned forward, searching for some glimpse of their long-awaited goal. Beside the road, sheep grazed in fields high with mustard flowers and wild grass already going gold. Long windbreaks of immense cypress trees marched across the landscape like bent old men leaning away from the sea. A worn but charming Victorian farmhouse went by on their right, its large yard lush with vegetable and flower gardens. They came over a low rise, past a ruined barn covered in blackberries and climbing rose, and there it was, spread atop a long headland in the distance.

  Joby gasped.

  Graceful stands of pine and cypress, weathered and sculpted by salt and storm, stood nearly black against the green-gold fields and the glittering sea beyond. In the bay between themselves and Taubolt, mammoth stacks of rock thrust up out of the water, their heads bent back above the mist, as if gazing at the sky in prayer. Seals basked in the last light of day on dark rock shelves, and long lines of pelicans skimmed the troughs between huge swells moving ponderously toward shore. A subtle movement in the sky drew Joby’s gaze up to find some large hawk hanging nearly motionless above the river mouth, waiting for its di
nner to swim by below. Rising at the center of all this was a rambling collage of old Victorian facades, steeples, water towers, and gabled roofs.

  “Oh!” Miriam softly exclaimed. “It’s just the way I remember!”

  Joby almost blurted out, me too. He had never forgotten the view before him. It was all just as it had been in his dream, except that, where the walls and roofs and spires of Camelot should have been, stood only the rustic silhouette of Taubolt. He stared and stared, hardly able to breathe, not knowing what to think.

  As the highway crossed a river running into the bay, Joby saw the broad gray beach he remembered. Well-formed waves stood up and filled with light, like walls of brilliant jade, then tumbled down in creamy gouts of pure white foam, rolling in to spread across the sand before hissing back into the bay. High atop dark cliffs over the beach, a giant old cypress spread its shadowed arms out into the air. He and Arthur had watched this very beach astride their horses from beneath that very tree.

  “Hey, sport,” his father said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. “You’re pretty quiet back there. Not sick again, are you?”

  “Dad,” Joby began, not sure what to say, “could we go out there first?” He pointed at the headlands’ western edge. “I . . . I wanna see the sunset.”

  “The sunset!” his dad replied. “That’s a great idea, Joby, but how ’bout tomorrow? We’ve got to find somewhere to stay right now.”

  “No! Dad, please! It won’t be the same tomorrow. I . . . I know it won’t.”

  “My goodness, Miriam,” his father teased uncertainly. “Our son has developed quite the aesthetic streak, hasn’t he? Do you remember if there’s any place to stay here?”

  “We stayed at an inn when my father brought us. . . . Oh! Frank, I think this is where we turn.”

  They left the highway, and wound toward town, passing a quaint red barn with white trim and an old-fashioned windmill pump, then found themselves headed west past a row of beautifully preserved gingerbread cottages. Lovely English gardens bloomed behind white picket fences as houses gave way to shop fronts, and they saw the inn, brightly lit and obviously open. Feeling assured of a place to stay, they acquiesced to Joby’s wish, and continued west toward the headlands’ far end. The street ended well before the land did, so they parked and wandered out across the grassy headland on foot.

  The distant boom and sigh of surf was mixed with the musical bark of seals, the strident cry of seabirds, and, from somewhere, the measured tolling of a bell. A warm evening breeze carried scents of iodine and sea salt, wood smoke and dry wayside herbs, cedar bark and weathered stone—all just as it had been in Joby’s dream.

  Moments later, as they stood together on the cliff tops, gazing out to sea, Joby was barely surprised to see one small band of fog poised above the farthest horizon, its edges burning like molten gold, while elusive rays of peach and salmon, powder blue and palest yellow stretched briefly up into the lavender sky.

  “Isn’t it beautiful!” Miriam sighed, and Arthur’s words came back to Joby’s mind as suddenly and clearly as if he had just spoken them.

  . . . I look most keenly for whatever beauty may be near at hand, and drink as deeply as I can. . . . Feed your heart, Joby. . . . Trust your heart.

  “It had better be urgent,” Lucifer warned, one hand to the obelisk in his office. Glyster, or Gizzard, or whatever his name, was suddenly silent.

  “Speak up, man!” Lucifer snapped. “I’ve got things to attend to, and your attention should be on the boy.” He had recruited this oaf to watch Joby whenever Williamson’s new research took him from that task. Now Lucifer was having second thoughts about his choice of a stand-in.

  “I . . . I’ve, um. Well,” the damned soul stammered. “I seem to have lost him, Sir.”

  “Come again?” Lucifer was suddenly very still. “Lost who?”

  “The . . . the boy, Sir.” His excuses tumbled out in a desperate rush. “I was right on top of him, Sir! Right on his back! One moment he was there—or, I mean, I was there, and then, I was somewhere else, and he was gone! Just vanished right into nowhere! All of them! Even the car! Honest, Sir!”

  “You’re not telling me you’ve lost track of the boy you were sent to watch?”

  Silence.

  “Come to my office immediately, Glister.”

  “It’s Glazer, Sir.”

  “NOW!”

  Vanished, indeed! Lucifer thought, suppressing an urge to vaporize this pustule on arrival. The idiot hadn’t even guts enough to admit he’d fallen asleep at his post!

  The jaundiced fool popped up, clearly braced for a blow. Lucifer took another deep breath. Mustn’t scare him senseless until all the important facts were harvested.

  “Where did this alleged vanishing act occur, Glazer? You mentioned a car.”

  “Yes, Sir. They were driving up the coast on vacation. Then they all vanished, Sir. Just vanished!” He gave an annoying little shrug. “In a flash, you might say.”

  “You might, huh?” Lucifer mused through clenched teeth. “Where were they going on this vacation, Glazer?”

  “To the beach, Sir.” Despite his obvious fear, Glazer seemed to find the concept amusing somehow. “Going to see crabs, Sir, and gather shells.” He performed that infuriating shrug again and added, “Someplace I never heard of. Towbolt, I think.”

  For a moment Lucifer simply gaped. Then, “Taubolt! They were going to Taubolt, and it just never occurred to you to inform me until now?”

  “Going to the beach to pick up seashells, Sir? Why would I bother you with something like—”

  “Bye now,” Lucifer said, almost merrily, and Glazer was gone—in a flash, you might say. With fragile calm, Lucifer laid his hand back upon the obelisk, and said, “Williamson. Come.”

  The fellow was there instantly.

  “Sir?”

  “I’ve got a riddle for you, Williamson. If a damned soul screams forever in a void where there’s no one to hear him, does he make a sound?”

  Completely terrified, Williamson stammered, “I . . . I imagine so, Sir.”

  “Yes.” Lucifer nodded. “I hope so too.” He turned and walked away. “Here’s another one. If a supposedly competent researcher, with all the resources of Hell at his disposal, is unable to find a beach town in California called Taubolt, how can a mere mortal family, with no resources to speak of, trot blithely off to vacation there?”

  “Sir? . . . I . . . I don’t under—”

  “I just terminated your stand-in, Williamson, because he managed to lose track of Joby Peterson and his entire family on their way to vacation in—get this, Williamson—Taubolt . . . . Now, stop me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that if they can find Taubolt,” he rounded on Williamson again and shouted, “we should be able to!” He took a deep breath, regathered his self-control, and said, “Am I missing something?”

  “Sir,” Williamson replied, sweating artillery shells, “I truly cannot think of any natural explanation for this.”

  No natural explanation. It was all Lucifer could do not to slap his own forehead. Had they actually vanished? Literally? Lucifer had assumed Grizzled was lying, or at least exaggerating, but . . . if it were true! He rather regretted incinerating the fellow before checking more carefully.

  “Exactly, Williamson. No natural explanation—once again, you’ve confirmed my own suspicions precisely.” He walked to his desk, and whipped out a pen and sheet of paper. “I have an errand for you.” He scribbled a few lines on the stationery, paused to think, then scribbled a few more, signed it, sealed it with wax from the candle on his desk, and held the note out to his trembling researcher. “I want you to deliver this letter to a certain member of the enemy camp.”

  “To whom, Sir?” Williamson asked nervously, coming to take the letter.

  “Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel?” Williamson choked. “The Arch—”

  “Yes, you little coward, the Creator’s right-hand boy,” Lucifer sneered. “He’s not going to bite your
head off while you’re about my business. Wait for an answer, and bring it to me immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, but, Sir. . . . I can hardly just waltz into Heaven. Where am I supposed to—”

  “Just run to any trendy coffeehouse on this abysmal planet and yell his name!” Lucifer snapped irritably. “Better yet, yell ‘cheat.’” He grinned. “That may bring him even faster.” Lucifer turned away and said, “Why aren’t you gone yet? Just because I’ve got forever, doesn’t mean I can spend it all waiting for you.”

  When Williamson vanished, Lucifer closed his eyes and fortified himself for an unpleasant necessity. He had to be absolutely certain that Joby had truly vanished from the earth, and, sadly, the task was too important to delegate.

  He gathered his awareness, then let it spread from the flawless order of his own domain out into the Creator’s squalid slum of a planet, searching for Joby. The more deeply he was forced to delve, the more his angelic mind recoiled in rage and loathing from all the filth and imperfection it encountered. When he finally yanked his awareness back to safety, Lucifer stood gasping, as if burst from some putrid pool just shy of drowning. Nothing filled him with more rage than knowing Heaven blamed him for all of that!

  Nonetheless, Joby was truly not to be found.

  “Got you at last, Master!” Lucifer breathed. “Explain Your way out of this.”

  Benjamin woke in the blue-gray hour just before sunrise and turned to find Joby sitting by their window, staring out over Taubolt’s roofs, just as he’d been doing the night before. When his parents had left them, Joby had sworn to Benjamin that this was where Arthur had taken him in his dream! Benjamin trusted Joby more than anyone except his own parents, but he still didn’t know what to make of such a strange claim.

  “It’s not even morning yet.” Benjamin yawned. “Why are you up?”