The Book of Joby

by Ferrari, Mark J.

  “Goddamn it, Joby! You were out there ’cause of him! What the hell were you s’posed to do? Stand in front of the fuckin’ truck?”

  Joby stopped struggling and lay facedown, crying into the grass. Ben loosened his hold, but didn’t let him up. After a moment, Joby’s crying tapered off, and he mumbled something Ben didn’t catch.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  Joby rolled over and stared up at him like a man already hanged. “The wages of sin is death,” he said without inflection.

  Ben could make no sense of it at first. Then he understood, and his anger flared white hot. “That’s fuckin’ bullshit!” he yelled. “Fuck Father Richter, Joby! I wish I’d never mentioned church to you! I wish I’d never gone myself!”

  “No!” Joby moaned. “He was right, and I ignored him! He told me what would happen if I—”

  “I’ve been drunk lots of times!” Ben shouted him down. “I got drunk in junior high sometimes! Nobody died! Everybody does it, Joby, and nobody dies!” He grabbed Joby’s arms again, as if he might somehow force him to listen.

  “Someone did die,” Joby whispered. His eyes glazed even further. “It’s different for you, Ben. . . . It always has been.”

  Ben was relieved to see Mr. Thompson, one of the school counselors, hurrying across the lawn, but when he got there, Joby wouldn’t speak, so Ben explained as best he could.

  “Joby,” Mr. Thompson said calmly, “Ben is right. This wasn’t your fault. In fact, your good sense in refusing to ride with him has saved us all from twice the grief. I can’t tell you how grateful I am—how grateful we all are.”

  Joby remained silent, looking at the sky as if none of them were there. Ben felt his own eyes burning, wondering whether it would be good or bad for Joby to see him cry.

  “Joby, let’s go somewhere and talk, okay?” Mr. Thompson said.

  Joby looked at him for the first time, then nodded slightly, as if movement itself were painful for him.

  “Ben, thank you,” Mr. Thompson said. “You can let him up now.”

  Ben got up, and reached down to give Joby a hand.

  But as Joby reached his feet, he tore from Ben’s grasp and bolted down the sidewalk away from school. Ben and Mr. Thompson were after him instantly, but Joby’s speed seemed almost supernatural. Thompson soon fell away and ran back toward school. After three blocks, Ben started losing ground. Half a block later he gave up and turned back toward school himself. He’d get Laura, and they’d go find Joby together. He had a few ideas where Joby might go, and Joby wouldn’t run from Laura . . . he hoped.

  “Absolutely not,” Lucifer barked. “I don’t care how you do it, just get him down from there. I win nothing if he dies now.”

  Lucifer had canceled all appointments to stand over the viewing bowl and direct his team via the office obelisk. The moment Joby had stopped to loiter on the overpass, he’d gone to the obsidian pillar and contacted Malcephalon.

  “No! Suicide will not begin to satisfy the wager’s terms. . . .

  “Yes, that’s fine. . . .

  “No. Eventually, he’s got to be working for us, and he might be of no use whatsoever mad. I want him down, and sane, and I want it now! Must I be clearer? . . .

  “Good. Now take care of it.”

  Joby didn’t know how long he’d watched the freeway traffic rush below him. For some time, only one thought had occupied his mind: The wages of sin is death.

  But why Lindwald’s? he thought at last. Joby was the sinner. Fornication, drunkenness, murder, all in one weekend. Why should Jamie have been the one to pay?

  He remembered Lindwald flinching from his touch after Lucy Beeker’s birthday mission . . . recalled the scars exposed on Lindwald’s back after he and Ben had beaten him for being a “demon.” Lindwald had paid over and over for Joby’s mistakes. “Let’s go celebrate life,” he heard Jamie laugh again. “Your life!”

  “My life,” Joby whispered dolefully. Just a quick climb over the railing, a single mindless jump. . . . People might grieve, but they’d get over it and go on with their lives.

  Only . . . even now, in the middle of this desolation, he knew they wouldn’t.

  Every time he’d set his hand to the railing, his mind had filled with vivid, awful images of what his death would do to everyone he had cared for: Laura, Ben, his mom and dad. Though he’d lost any fear of hurting himself, he could find no way to live or die without hurting all those others so terribly . . . so permanently. There seemed no way to make anything better, but it seemed he would be forced to live anyway, just to keep from making things worse.

  Drained of feeling altogether, he wandered off the overpass at last, and, like a wounded animal driven by instinct toward its den, finally found himself at home. Relieved to find his mother’s car gone, he unlocked the door and went inside, fearing he had little time before she’d return.

  In his room, he pulled some clothes into a bag, then, hardly able to think, scrabbled through his shelves and desk drawers for anything else he might need until, buried in the very back of his bottom drawer, he came across a thin book bound in royal blue, its cover decorated with a golden sunburst in a field of stars. Beneath that was his Treasury of Arthurian Tales, stored there, out of sight and out of mind, since childhood. He sat numbly on his bed, and began to flip vacantly backward through the small blue book.

  It was filled with large, childish writing, smudged in pencil. “Taubolt.” “Taubolt.” “Taubolt.” The name appeared again and again across the last few pages. Then, “A knight must practice.” He felt blood rush to his face, and flipped quickly to the front of the book. “Drink a lot of beauty, Sir Joby. Feed your—” He flipped that page so hard, it tore, wanting to close it altogether, but he couldn’t seem to stop flipping through its pages, as if the answer to all this might still be hidden somewhere between all the things he was trying not to read . . . until his eyes caught a single heading, and his fingers froze.

  Ideas for beating Lindwald.

  He was on his feet, running from the house, madly down the street without a plan, oblivious of the books still clutched in his straining hands. He ran and ran, trying to outdistance the torrent of memory: childhood dreams of Arthur; candles in the darkness; reconciliation of enemies, comfort to the suffering, help for the weak; candles burning by the hundreds, off into the night. . . . The knight. . . . The knight of God! “Ha!” he shouted, hardly able to bear his own scorn. What an ass! If he ran forever, he might not make it all any worse! . . . That was the brightest dream left him.

  He ended up in a field, doubled over in the grass, vomiting a single plea, over and over, until his raw sobs mocked the raven’s voice: “Forgive me! Forgive me!”

  There was no answer in the silence, and, in time, he ceased to speak at all, but merely sat and stared as sunset came and he realized, with dull surprise, where he was.

  The tournament field.

  He got up, still clutching his two small talismans of childhood, went slowly to the clearing’s edge, swung his arm back, and threw them as hard as he could into the trees.

  Across the field, concealed in knee-high grass and weeds, a glossy tortoise-shell cat stood stock-still, watching, with strange dark eyes, as Joby shuffled miserably away. When the boy was gone, the cat turned to mew mournfully at a cricket perched atop a long tendril of vetch beside him.

  “He begs for forgiveness he does not need,” the cat mewed in frustration. “Why does he not think to beg for help, My Lord?”

  “Lucifer’s creature spoke truly before he was destroyed,” the Cricket chirruped softly. “Joby has been well trained to think only of his debt to others. And in any case, he can hardly have guessed that you were here to beg help directly from, Gabe.”

  “But he has many years of religious instruction now, Master. Why should it not occur to him to call upon one of us?”

  “Oh, he’ll call upon Me,” the Creator sighed. “But Lucifer’s terms forbid Me from answering. As for you and all My other servants, Gabe, I sadl
y suspect that for Joby you are precisely that, and nothing more: ‘religious instruction.’ He may have been taught all your names, but it will not occur to him that any of you are actually there watching, except, perhaps, to judge and condemn.”

  “Then how can he ask any of us for help at all?” Gabe asked, greatly distressed. “He cannot. It is not fair!”

  “Nonetheless, it is the deal I agreed to,” the Creator chirruped gravely.

  “He will want those books back someday,” Gabriel mewed in agitation. “They contain a portion of his heart. . . . Surely it would not violate the wager’s terms if I retrieved them so that they can be returned, should he think to ask it someday?”

  “That’s for you to say, Gabe.”

  “Me!” the cat complained. “Since when is it my place to define Your will, Lord?”

  “You know I am not allowed to speak on any matter touching the wager. You are the wager’s official witness and arbiter, are you not? Who should know better?”

  Gabe batted the grass with his tail in agitation. He had never had to guess his Master’s will. A moment later, where the cat had been, a young man stood, with dark eyes and lovely copper features framed in curly locks as black as night. He walked resolutely toward the thicket of trees where Joby’s books had vanished, but came back moments later empty-handed.

  “They are gone!” Gabe said quietly to the cricket. “I searched quite carefully! Where can they have gone?”

  “The world is full of mystery, Gabe,” the cricket chirruped back. “Dryer lint, for instance.”

  “What?” Gabe asked.

  “Does anyone ever see it on the clothes when they go in?” the cricket mused. “Do the clothes seem much smaller when you take them out? . . . Of course,” the cricket chirruped pensively, “clothes do shrink sometimes, but that hardly seems to account for all the sheets of it left over in the end.”

  “My Lord, forgive me, but . . . I haven’t the slightest idea what You’re talking about. What happened to Joby’s books?”

  “There’s another mystery, Gabe. Shall we head back? I’ve a sudden hankering for cards. Care to join Me in a game of poker?”

  “Cards, My Lord? . . . Now?”

  “If not now, when?” the cricket chirped.

  Their fruitless search ended where it had begun: at the school parking lot. Ben stared wearily through the windshield, his hands still on the wheel, trying to think of someplace they might have missed, while Laura sat in like silence beside him. They had combed the grid of streets around campus first, then gone to the tournament field and half a dozen less and less likely places after that. They’d even gone out to St. Albee’s, where Ben had derived some small, cold pleasure from the look on Richter’s face as he learned of the disastrous fruit all his guilt-mongering had produced.

  They’d found Mrs. Peterson a tearful wreck at Joby’s home. After Mr. Thompson’s call that morning, she’d spent a few panicked hours waiting there, then gone to church to pray for Joby’s safety, only to come back and discover he’d been home while she was out. Ben and Laura had stayed with her until Joby’s dad had arrived.

  As Ben tried in vain to think of some stone unturned, Laura began to cry again.

  “Hey,” he crooned, sliding an arm across her shoulder. “Joby’s okay. He’s just gone somewhere to sort things out.”

  “I’ve made such a mess of everything,” she moaned, swiping at her running nose. “I’ve driven him completely away just when he needs me most.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Ben insisted.

  Laura just cried even harder, burying her face in his shoulder, soaking his sleeve with her tears.

  While they’d been searching for Joby, she had told Ben all about seducing Joby after prom, and how horrified she’d been afterward at what she’d done. He’d been tempted several times to tell her of the marriage plans Joby had confided in him that morning, but he knew those were not his to tell, and certainly not under these circumstances. What unbelievably sucky timing.

  “I wanted him to love me, Ben,” she wept. “I wanted us to stay together. But I . . .” For a moment she simply shook with sobs. “I didn’t want to trick him into anything!”

  “Shhhh,” Ben said, hugging her even tighter. “He loves you, Laura. He told me so. When we got to school this morning, he said he was going to . . . to go find you and talk.” His hand came up to wipe Laura’s tears away. He kissed her cheek where they had been, then kissed the top of her head. She looked up at him, so near, so hurt, so desperate for comfort . . . and somehow, it was her lips that his brushed next. She looked startled, but did not protest or pull away. Instead, she seemed to hold her breath, gazing at him uncertainly when he leaned back at last. Ben knew what he had done was wrong, but Joby had left Laura here with no one to turn to except . . . except . . . Laura leaned up and kissed him again, as if testing some confusing, utterly unexpected hypothesis.

  “Well, screw me blind! Looky here!”

  Laura jumped convulsively in Ben’s arms as he whirled around, slamming his arm painfully on the steering wheel. Johnny Mayhew’s face was practically pressed against the driver’s window.

  “King Joby’s girl, frenchin’ his best friend. That’s sweet!” Mayhew crowed.

  Ben was so horrified—both at what he’d done and at Mayhew’s sudden appearance—that, for a moment, he couldn’t even move.

  “Looks like Joby’s havin’ a pretty rough day,” Mayhew sneered. “Not as bad as Lindwald’s, though. Yer just the kinda friends that murdering son of a bitch deserves.”

  Suddenly blind with rage, Ben was out of the car in a tangle of fumbling fists and flailing limbs, but Mayhew had already fled, stopping only once halfway across the lawn to turn and jeer, “I’m gonna tell ’im, Ben! I’m gonna show ’im there’s karma out there after all!”

  Joby sat vacantly adjusting the sleeves of his robe, the tilt of his cap, waiting for them to call him to the podium to make his little speech. He just wished the ceremony done with. His pointless years of high school, his childhood in this town, his life with these people; he wanted it to end.

  Having suffered terrible nightmares where Jamie’s horrible parents shouted accusations at him over his friend’s open grave, Joby hadn’t found the courage to attend the funeral. When Johnny Mayhew had come later to accuse him of being a fake friend to Lindwald and gloat about Ben and Laura’s betrayal, Joby had only taken Johnny’s news as bitter confirmation of his own failure. To think that only hours after he’d told Ben he meant to marry her . . . But what did that matter now? Joby wasn’t worthy of her. They must both have seen that. He wasn’t even safe for her. He wasn’t safe for anyone.

  Even now, two months later, neither she nor Ben had talked with him about any of it. Two weeks earlier, as Joby had entered the hallway to the music room after school to get some books he’d left, he’d overheard them around the corner. Laura had been in tears—groaning that if Joby knew it would destroy him, and that she’d never dreamed this could happen to her. Ben had agreed that telling Joby would only make things worse. Joby hadn’t had to guess what it was they didn’t want him to know. He had just snuck quietly away again, wanting to spare them all yet another painful scene. As the weeks had passed, they had all treated each other more and more like cordial strangers.

  He could still see Ben’s closed face earlier this evening, as they’d lined up for their graduation procession.

  “You’ll stay in touch, right?” Ben had asked, as if Joby were a distant relative, or a business associate.

  “Sure.” He had smiled just as politely. “I’m just going to Berkeley, not the moon. I hear they’ve put up phone lines to Colorado now.”

  That had been it. Laura hadn’t spoken to him at all that night, just smiled from her place near the front of their line. Joby hadn’t been able to keep himself from thinking of the three of them together as kids, out at the tournament field, at his house or Ben’s . . . at Roundtable meetings in the grammar school library. . . .

  “An
d now,” the principal announced, “I invite our class valedictorian, Joby Peterson, to the podium to share his thoughts on behalf of the graduating class.”

  Joby stood to polite applause and went up to mouth the words his adviser had helped him craft. He saw his parents sitting side by side, clapping with embarrassing enthusiasm. His brief tantrum after Jamie’s death seemed to have brought them a little closer. The only good anyone had to show for that ordeal.

  Placing the text of his speech on the podium, Joby fought an impulse to run off the stage completely. He had never been shy about talking before an audience. But this . . . it seemed too sickening . . . too lonely, somehow, to end his life here with one last big lie. But, what choice did he have? . . . What choice had he ever had?

  “Parents, faculty, and fellow graduates,” he began at last. “As we go out tonight into a wider world, I am compelled to ask one question: What is it that we hope to achieve? Just the next in a long series of rote steps toward acceptable membership in society? Just a job? A house? More income than the Joneses?”

  He swept the audience with his eyes as he’d been coached to do, seeing nothing.

  “I hope, rather, that each of us goes out into the world tonight searching for some way to leave this planet a better place than it was when we arrived.”

  Or at least not damage it more than we already have, scoffed some ugly voice at the back of his mind.

  “Tonight,” Joby hurried on, “I hope we might resolve to forego some measure of wealth in pursuit of human wholeness and well-being. We must be ready to struggle harder for resolution of our conflicts than for victory over our opponents. We must be prepared to—”

  Fake our way through an entire lifetime! cackled his tormenting mental auditor. Joby grabbed the glass of water left for him on the podium, and he took several long swallows to cover his dismay.

  “We must be prepared to find solutions to our problems, rather than just people to punish for them.”