Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  “But that’s why people want to live here, it’s a beautiful place, and that’s why I want to build houses here.” Rowland’s voice was a pained plea, as though he really wanted her to be on his side, to cheer for his team.

  “I know,” Greer said as understandingly as she would to a child being told he couldn’t have an overly expensive toy. “But when you build the kind of neighborhoods that you are constructing here, then it isn’t the same place anymore. You must understand that some people, many people, don’t want to turn the hills into packed suburbs, they don’t want their quiet streets to be clogged through ways, they don’t want their stars to be replaced by streetlights.”

  She was thinking that this was it, she was probably blowing it for Sterling as well as herself, but to her complete surprise, Rowland sighed deeply and nodded. “I understand that. I guess I just wish people would let other people share what they have.”

  Greer could have laughed, if it hadn’t been so frustrating. “I don’t think it’s the sharing so much as the taking .” She watched him think about that and then said, “Tell you what, I’ll do what I can to let people know that you’re a nice guy and you’re willing to talk with them about their concerns. Is that fair?”

  She saw the glint of intelligence in his eye and recognized for the first time the man who was capable of building a gigantic company from nothing. “Fair,” he said. Then he leaned in and said mischievously, “But I’m gonna win you over, ’cause I like you, and me and Susan want to stay in this neighborhood for a good long time.” Then with a glance around he whispered, “And we plan to build a home for ourselves up on the top of that hill, and we hope you and your boyfriend will come and spend some time with us there.”

  Greer didn’t tell him that Reading had already given her that information. And she was now openly amazed at his charisma when it was turned on her. “I’m sure we’ll be delighted. And here, if I’m not mistaken, is the man you wanted to see.”

  Beyond the glass, Sterling had just pulled his pickup truck into a space in front of his office. Spotting Greer waving at him, he got out of the cab and came toward the salon.

  Rowland gave Greer a last wink and then went out to meet Sterling, who let his eyes linger on Greer’s through the huge windows before he turned his attention to Rowland Hughs, and she felt a thrill go through her. As she watched the two men walk out of her view, she wondered again about Rowland. Was he authentic in his protestations of handing out the American dream, or were there undetectable machinations going on behind that schoolboy facade?

  She sighed. Sometimes, she thought, even being psychic couldn’t help her fathom the myriad of thoughts, experiences, and motivations that added up to create even one single human being.

  Chapter 16

  The afternoon heat was almost unendurable. Both Joshua and Simon paused frequently to gulp greedily from their water bottles or refill the quickly melting ice that they had wrapped in bandannas and fastened around their necks. Digging the holes twice the size of the gallon containers took far more effort than they had expected. The ground was loose and crumbly on the steep abbreviated hillside, but it was also filled with large rocks that seemed to always be in the exact spot where Sterling had placed a marker.

  They labored on without comment or discourse. For Joshua’s part, it was both too hot and he couldn’t think of anything to say. Simon seemed to be naturally reticent when it came to communication, and this morning when Joshua had picked him up on Foothill Boulevard, he had looked the worse for wear. Joshua suspected that he had spent the previous evening celebrating his release with an excess of mind-altering substances and an absence of sleep.

  Nonetheless, Simon had shown up and he had worked steadily throughout the day. Both Sterling and Joshua had posed tentative questions about Simon’s family and living arrangements during the drive to the new housing site, but they had been detoured with noncommittal answers. The most they had gotten out of him was that he lived with an aunt.

  Balancing himself precariously on the steeply banked ground, Joshua raised a pointed shovel and thrust downward. He heard the metal connect with stone and felt the contact shudder up his arms into his shoulders. “Damn,” he grunted, and began to use the shovel to explore the extent and size of the obstruction. In about five minutes he had it uncovered, but it was too big to move on his own. He put the shovel down and picked up a crowbar that he used to break up the harder ground, wedging it under the uphill side of the stone, which was roughly as big as a rolled-up sleeping bag.

  “Simon!” Joshua called out after a couple of fruitless efforts with the bar. “Can you help me? I think we can roll this baby down out of the way.”

  Simon looked up from his own section of the planting, dropped his shovel, and made his way slowly across to Joshua, sending miniature avalanches down the slope with each step. He stood across from Joshua without speaking and looked down at the metal bar, which had left an impression in the earth. “Not gonna work,” he said. “You need leverage.” A naughty smile flickered across his face. “Trust me, I know how to use a crowbar.” Joshua didn’t ask. Simon turned and looked around. Just up the hill there was a stone the size of a loaf of bread that Joshua had removed from his last hole. Simon clambered up to it, heaved it into his arms like a football, and came back. After digging out a space for the rock, he placed it under the pry bar, and then he and Joshua threw their combined weight on the bar. The small boulder rocked once and then flipped and slid several feet down the hill, coming to rest just above another flag.

  “Good spot for it. I think we’ll work it into the landscape,” Joshua said with a wry smile to Simon. “I mean, unless you think we should carry it back up to the top.”

  Simon stared blankly at the two-hundred-pound mass for a moment, and just when Joshua thought that the sarcasm had been lost on him, he said, “I think it looks sweet right there.”

  Joshua’s smile deepened. “That spot needed a focal point.”

  Simon was nodding knowingly. “It’s been bugging me all day. Now it looks cool.”

  Pleased, the two young men both took a moment to straighten their aching spines, first stretching and then resting a moment as they stared out at the view.

  Although he didn’t understand squeezing fifteen gigantic houses onto such a small amount of land, Joshua had to admit that the spot was a nice one. Across the street was state-owned open land. Rocks and shrubs sloped quickly down to a seasonal riverbed, completely dry now and punctuated with cottonwood trees and the occasional sycamore. On the far side, the hills rose suddenly, creating a dramatic view of exposed rock and silver greens.

  Faded signs, some covered with graffiti, proclaimed the area a sensitive wildlife habitat. There were restrictions on entry: no motorized vehicles, no dumping, and so forth. Directly across the street, an abandoned sofa sat next to a pile of yard cuttings and discarded planting trays. From their slightly higher vantage point, Joshua could see the tracks of motocross bikes and all-terrain vehicles intersecting each other in a patchwork pattern of loops and crisscrosses.

  As he studied the landscape, his experienced eye caught a movement in the shrubbery at the edge of the riverbed. At first he thought it was a small deer, maybe a doe; it was the right color, but it didn’t move like a deer. It moved in a jerky, almost clumsy way. The animal came out of the shade of the shrubbery and headed straight across the rocky ground toward the street. It was a dog, a light brown dog with no collar. Even from fifty feet away, Joshua could see the animal’s ribs and the way it carried its head in a low, furtive manner, kept its tail tucked between its legs.

  “Ah, man,” Joshua moaned. “Not another one. Shit.” Simon followed his look and spotted the emaciated dog. His face remained expressionless as Joshua went on to explain. “People ditch their pets up here. I’ve already picked up four and taken them to the Humane Society.”

  Simon said nothing, just watched the dog’s progress toward the road. It didn’t seem to have noticed them. From the road above, b
eyond a long, arching curve, Joshua could hear an approaching car. At first, the sound of the engine washed over him like so much background noise, but as it grew more prominent, fear crept into him. He watched the dog’s gangly trot toward the road and computed it with the approaching noise of hot, heavy steel. The car appeared around the curve; the dog was fifteen feet from the road. Under his breath, Joshua said, “Stop.”

  But neither the car nor the dog even slowed down or indeed seemed to have noticed the other. The car was going fast, way too fast, but nine out of ten cars did on this open road.

  “Stop! Go back!” Joshua shouted at the dog, hoping to frighten it, to get its attention and arrest its forward motion, which was a beeline for death. But the dog didn’t seem to hear—perhaps it couldn’t. Turning toward the car, Joshua began to wave his arms furiously. The driver only accelerated when he hit the straightaway. Joshua started forward, well aware that he was too far from the road to stop the impending collision. Unable to look away, he saw the dog hop the curb, the distance closing. He screamed out at the car, “Slow down, you stupid bastard!”

  Another figure streaked into the road, this one from his side of the street. Simon, waving his arms and shouting wildly, ran right into the path of the oncoming automobile. The dog spotted Simon, cringed away, and ran back the other direction. The car’s wheels squealed in protest as the driver finally registered his surroundings and locked up the brakes. All of the breath in Joshua’s chest was sucked out as though by a vacuum, and he was incapable of crying out as he hurled himself down the hill.

  As though the seconds were slowed to a tenth of actual time, Joshua watched the car, a big sedan, go into a slide, the rear end fishtailing first one way and then the other as the driver tried to correct the skid. Simon stood frozen, directly in its path. It seemed to Joshua that the last few feet took an eternity. The bumper was maybe four feet away when Simon’s body moved, launching laterally as though it been hit by an invisible force that propelled him toward the side of the road, where he landed and was blocked from Joshua’s view by the car as it passed by, or possibly over, Simon. Then the car careened another few yards down the road and came to a stop, the wheels smoking, and Joshua could see Simon lying motionless, his body in the street and his head on the concrete curb.

  “Jesus Christ,” Joshua breathed and forced his feet to move faster, to escape the paralysis that was overwhelming him. He hit the street with a jump that covered the last few feet of hillside and rushed across to where Simon lay perfectly still on the hot asphalt. The driver, a large, stocky man in a wife-beater T-shirt and a cowboy hat, was emerging from his car, cursing angrily.

  Joshua ignored him, couldn’t make out what the man was shouting over the pounding in his own ears. He fell to his knees beside Simon. At a glance, he couldn’t see any blood and it didn’t look as though Simon had been crushed anywhere, but his eyes were closed and Joshua saw no signs of breathing.

  “Simon!” he shouted at the inert boy. “Simon, are you okay?” As gently as he could, Joshua reached down and put his hand on Simon’s shoulder. “Simon?” he called more softly.

  Simon’s eyes fluttered open and he sat up fast, looking startled and terrified. He shook off Joshua’s hand and scuttled away from him, like a crab.

  “It’s okay, Simon. It’s me, Joshua. Are you okay?” Joshua asked. Coming to his feet but staying in a crouch, he moved forward cautiously. “Are you hurt?”

  Simon’s face seemed to clear. There was a bruise on his forehead, where he’d hit the curb, and he touched it gingerly with one hand.

  “What the fuck were you doing?” a loud, abrasively aggressive voice said from behind Joshua. “You jumped right in front of my fucking car. You could have killed me!”

  Rage seemed to inflate Joshua into something bigger than his thin, six-foot frame as he rose and turned to face the accuser. Struggling to control himself, Joshua said in a choked voice, “Keep your voice down.”

  “Yeah? And who the fuck are you?” demanded the hefty man. He took a step forward and got right in Joshua’s face, his jaw jutting out. He had the look of a man who had once had a formidable physique that had atrophied and overripened into a mushy version of his former self.

  Joshua felt no fear; his anger was holding him rooted to the spot. “I’m the one who saw you doing close to eighty in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone. I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you.”

  The man blinked puffy lids over small, mean eyes. Joshua was forcibly reminded of every playground bully he’d ever dealt with. This one leaned in even farther, and Joshua could smell liquor on his rancid breath. “You keep out of this, you little piece of shit.”

  It happened before Joshua was even aware that Simon had gotten up. The bully’s ugly face was six inches from his own, and then it was gone, swept sideways with a loud thump and an exhalation of air, but not before it had registered a look of utter surprise. Simon had hit the man hard from the side, running his shoulder into the man’s midsection and knocking him clean to the pavement. Simon was on top of him now, pummeling him with his fists as the bully cringed and tried to cover his face and stomach.

  Regaining his wits, Joshua got behind Simon and grabbed him around the waist, pulling him off. “Cut it out, cut it out,” he kept repeating with growing hysteria. But Simon fought him off, throwing his head back, and Joshua felt a hard whack as Simon’s rock-hard skull made contact with his mouth. The taste of blood and the shock of pain made Joshua stumble backward in surprise.

  Simon went after the man on the ground again with renewed frenzy, striking and kicking. His rage—clearly beyond his control—was far more frightening than the minimal damage he was inflicting.

  His eyes watering with pain and his head spinning from the blow, Joshua was barely aware of the sound of another car pulling up and stopping abruptly in the middle of the road, but within seconds, Sterling had appeared, taken hold of Simon, and was effectively restraining him. Though Sterling had pinioned Simon’s arms to his sides, the boy was still trying to kick at the man on the ground while Sterling spoke low and steadily into Simon’s ear.

  After a moment, Sterling had calmed Simon down enough to release him. Wary of being on the receiving end of Simon’s anger again, Joshua moved toward them cautiously and answered Sterling’s queries about what had happened. The man on the ground, realizing that his attacker had been restrained, scrambled up and started shouting again. “I’ll sue you, you little fucker! You’ll go to jail! You can’t assault me and get away with it.”

  Sterling released Simon and stepped directly in front of him. He wasn’t any taller than the sunburned white man before him, but unlike the bully, who was sporting a paunch and flaccid arms, Sterling’s strength emanated from him. His dark-skinned, muscular arms hung loosely but ready by his side, and his gaze was remorseless.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said, his deep voice as strong and steady as steel. “You were speeding, you almost ran over a pedestrian, you’ve obviously been drinking, you verbally assaulted and threatened a minor, who came to the defense of his friend whom you were threatening, and you want to sue somebody? You want to wait around and fill out a police report with liquor on your breath and that story?” Sterling looked pointedly at the expensive car that was still idling in the road, the door open. The bell alerting the driver to the fact that the key had been left in the ignition was chiming out a hollow, pointless note. “I don’t think that even a lawyer with his picture on the back of a bus would take that case. But I’ve got a friend who would love to make mincemeat out of your ass in a court of law. So unless you want to hand over your vehicle-slash-weapon, as well as any cash or property you might have, to this boy, whom you injured with your reckless, drunken driving, I suggest you get back in that car, go home, and take a cold shower, because you need to cool off, sober up, and you stink.”

  The bully was breathing heavily through his nose, his beady eyes narrowed against the brightness and Sterling’s considerable power. He seemed, like a c
onfused, cornered animal, incapable of deciding what to do. He also looked perplexed to be hearing a British accent coming from a black man. Joshua could almost hear the thought process: Them English are white, ain’t they?

  Sterling turned to Simon and said, “How’s the head?” Simon was still glaring at the bully with so much hate that Joshua could almost taste it in the air. A bitter, rancid hate.

  “Any permanent damage?” Sterling asked, his voice taking on a note of fun now. “Do you think it might have affected your ability to reproduce or to work?” He waited while Simon glared. “Simon,” Sterling said pointedly and waited for him to break his malignant stare. “Do you feel that this pointless accident will scar you emotionally? How many fingers do you see?” Sterling waved his hand four inches from Simon’s face, rapidly changing the number of fingers on one hand from two to four to three and back to two. “Speak to me, Simon.” Sterling grabbed Simon’s shoulders dramatically.

  Simon smiled now, finally catching on. “Yeah, all those,” he said venomously, turning a twisted grin back on the bully. “Get the fuck out of here before I find you again.” There was a chill in his words that finished the scenario.

  Trying for the last shot, the bully raised a fist and snarled, “I’ll find you, you little shit. You won’t get away with this!”

  His last line was directed at Sterling, who shrugged and said, “Whatever,” before crossing his meaty arms in a casually unconcerned stance and stood waiting while the man hightailed it back to his car, slammed the door, and lost a good bit more rubber from his tires as he peeled away.

  Now Sterling turned to Simon again. “Are you really okay?” he asked, concerned. Two more cars, these moving at a more conservative speed, came up the road and stopped, the drivers looking confused at the stranded pickup in their path. “Come on,” Sterling ordered. “We’re done working today. Let’s go.”