Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  “Where are you? I need you.”

  From the elm branches, I watched until the sad one emerged and made her way towards the tiny houses past the mercado. She still had much to learn, this one. She might never have enough time alone with her tears to do so.

  Chapter 17

  Matchsticks & Rosary Beads

  Not much is known of Billy Purgatory's time in the army, but what is known is that Billy excelled at breaking things, and blowing stuff up, and he worked out some of his issues by employing the time-tested techniques of berserker rage and friendly fire.

  When the little episode in San Martier broke out he'd been Special Forces trained and the brass hadn't really figured out a way to kick him out just yet.

  So, off Billy went.

  What went on down there involved a monster and not one of the usual South American dictator variety. The Pentagon had read his file and knew his Pop, but that old war dog stuff only went so far. Purgatory, Jr. was a loose cannon, and after this job they figured the boy would have enough of adventures and move on to a career in janitorial services or maybe something involving dangerous chemical food additives.

  Lucinda Drew Haas had played it cool with Billy for a long time. Being a major's daughter, she had grown up around cocksure idiots just like Billy. She'd seen many danger boys who were out to prove one thing or another and if proving killed them in the process - well, that just made for a better story.

  Lucinda had been brought up a lady: she had a coming out debutant party on her sweet sixteen, she studied Russian literature, and she was an accomplished equestrian.

  She knew better than to get involved with a man as unstable as the twenty-three-year-old, self-proclaimed daredevil, Billy.

  So it was quite a shock to Lucinda that night when she found herself riding shotgun in Billy's Oldsmobile '98 heading from North Carolina to Las Vegas.

  The music of The Murder City Devils played at a comfortable volume from the green Oldsmobile 98 parked at the phone booth on the side of the interstate. The music really should have been louder. It was oddly elevator currently, and Billy actually picked up a little underlying riff that is normally lost in the death rattle of it all.

  The Olds' engine rumbled softly, more something Billy could feel than hear. It was just like someone had taken his normal life and cranked it down a bit - none of the chaos was abandoned but the intensity was momentarily tossed into the drunk tank and left alone to sleep it off.

  Lucinda Drew was listening to her father yell at her over the phone while she tied her blondeness into a ponytail. She had a match between her teeth in the way that a normal girl would be subconsciously nesting a bobby pin. Billy watched her body defy the hot wind off the highway here in the borderland just before nightfall. Cradling the phone and then deciding it was too much all at once and letting it slide off her shoulder and gallows swing. She was focused on tying her hair, and watching her, Billy still couldn't tell what she'd eventually found in the glove box to accomplish that.

  She'd missed a strand of hair and the wind had it and couldn't let it go. It was just like that first day he'd seen her, sitting on her father's front porch steps during her winter break, hair pulled back and wearing jeans and a snowman sweater. The very definition of dressed down. No make-up and no care in the world save whatever it was she was reading.

  She seemed really above her surroundings that day when he brought the major's car back from the motor pool after he'd stayed up all night previous taking some invisible ‘ping’ noise out of existence that his superior, her father, swore he could hear. He'd set the keys down on the steps beside her, and she never fully lifted her eyes from the page.

  She'd crinkled her nose like his smell had offended her. He wore an olive green mechanics jump stained in motor oil and grease and probably beer. As he self-consciously sniffed the air, he was pretty sure she could smell beer. She never focused on him though. She might have seen his scuffed up black boots while turning a page.

  Lucinda had that strand of blonde she always missed in her way. She brushed it out of her face and that's when she raised her head just enough so Billy caught a glimpse of blue eyes, but not enough that their gaze fully connected. It was enough for him, though, and he should have started moving before she opened her mouth but he didn't.

  “Get out of here before the major gets home. You smell like cheap beer.”

  She was already back in the book before he started marching off. Much too late, he'd given away that he was interested, because she was a girl and they know these things and he knew enough about girls to know that.

  Then Christmas came and went and Lucinda Drew was long gone and Billy forgot about her.

  Mostly.

  And now, summer had just begun on the side of the road, and Lucinda was done with her hair and done with listening to the orders from her father, the major, and she told him that she loved him and hung up the pay phone. She kept the matchstick in her teeth because she'd eventually smoke, want to see it ignite or maybe toss it out the window. Now, as always, everything depended on her mood, and currently it was quite random and not near as Zen as the volume of Billy's music or the straight path of the road which split the desert in half.

  She'd tied her hair with rosary beads.

  “You want me to take you back?” Billy questioned her, sincerely.

  She walked past the door as if she didn't hear him, but he knew that she had, of course. She heard everything but answered very little on nights like this. She moved down the highway like she was about to start hitching for rides but she wasn't focused on the road at all. She was looking at the stars, and she wanted to see them a lot better than she could under the truck stop lights.

  “Lucinda, I'll take you back.”

  She vanished for only a moment in the dark, but Billy could still see the light cast off the blonde as it swung with her step. He'd never been into long blonde hair and wasn't sure why he was so fascinated with it now. She didn't belong out here with him. She was due back in school in three days and Billy wasn't naive enough to imagine as rebellious as she projected now that she wouldn't be out of the borderland and back on firm ground by Monday.

  She looked at the stars just long enough for her eyes to adjust to them, making sure they were still up there.

  “He said he's going to kill you, Billy Purgatory.”

  Billy nodded. He'd heard that one before.

  “Guess my military career is over.”

  She came walking back. Every time he saw her it was like the very first time, and he really hated that feeling. He really hated to get so excited about anything or anybody. The only things that ever consistently came back were those which he wanted to stay away.

  Things he pleaded to stay away, the same old chains rattling in the attic, restless ghosts searching for a grave.

  “We're so close, Billy. We're not turning back.”

  Billy opened the door to get in, not sure if she wanted him to drive her on or talk her out of it.

  “You read that in the stars, Lucinda?”

  “To hell with the stars.” Lucinda laughed. “I was looking for the lights of Las Vegas. They say you can you can see them from space.”

  She climbed in with him and pointed down the highway.

  “That way,” she commanded. “Tonight the stars are following me.”

  Then the world restarted. She turned up Murder City, and the engine could no longer be tamed, and she spit the match out the window as the desert went dark again.

  The sign said Las Vegas 111 miles, Billy Purgatory was twenty-three years old, and tonight she would be the only light he followed.

  II

  Billy and Lucinda had a bottle of red and sat facing one another in the doorway of a balcony three levels above the Vegas strip. For the longest time they just stared at the lights blink because it was exhilarating and overwhelming and it's not something either of them had ever seen before. Even Lucinda, who went to school in New York City and was intimately familiar with all
of the wonders to be had in that place was mystified. Nothing really prepares you for the devil's arcade that is Las Vegas.

  Lucinda stood after her second glass and walked to the railing and peered out so far into the space above the chaos Billy became uneasy. Not that she was going to jump to her death or anything, but he got the feeling that she was desperately trying to press her face against the invisible store window of reality. As if she wanted to get much closer to life than she had ever allowed herself, but hadn't built up the courage yet to jump that rail.

  Lucinda's heels did lift off the ground, which was a start. This entire bizarre carnival of a road trip was more about that and less about him, but Billy wasn't letting it ruin his time with her because he knew she at least liked him enough to endanger his life by putting him directly on the warpath of her father's rage. He felt like if she wasn't even a little into him, she wouldn't have put his face on that sort of wanted poster. What little she knew about his life, anyway.

  Billy didn't really know anything about her either. Normally that would make him cautious, but not tonight and not this weekend. Maybe later his infatuation would turn to gushy awkwardness. Maybe hers too, and that would be sad but it's near inevitable. Leading to disappointment and embarrassment and that utterly lost emotional wasteland where you can't believe you thought more idealistically about another.

  Never would that pessimistic realism live in this room though, not for the hours or days this interlude was going to last. She was too pretty and much too real at the moment to waste any time in regards to the everyday bullshit that bubbles up and overtakes the purity of the captivating circling whirlwind that was going on right then in that room. Billy and Lucinda let their minds believe the magic trick because at first you don't have a reason to look for the dove up the sleeve.

  The best times are the uncertain ones and the spontaneous ones. The feeling that the other wants you to act a certain way, but you don't, and it catches both of you off guard and makes you realize that it was destined to be this way. It could never be any other way, no matter what.

  Time is what always ruins no matter what. Time shaves naive happiness to splintered clarity and it sends the magician packing. Cherubs leave you and go flitting off in search of new lonely fools who'll pretend angelic giggling glitter piss from above is really the warm rain before amore's eternal sunbeam shines. Of course, we know better, but ignorance equates the true expiration date on the milk carton of love.

  Lucinda left, walking into the room and her form went back to black. They'd felt it best not to turn on any lights in the apartment they were borrowing. Neither of them had the money to rent a fancy hotel, and nobody had come home yet to ask them to leave. Lucinda had helped him pick the lock, and that was the fourth time in six hours they'd almost kissed.

  But who was counting.

  Billy grabbed the bottle and followed her into the dark when he heard music. Actual music, not the death metal he listened to.

  “It's Miles Davis,” Lucinda said. “Birth Of The Cool.”

  He realized she'd pulled the rosary bead ponytail down, and he kissed her in spite of the blonde hair, and Miles Davis became the only jazz musician whose music he'd ever pay any attention to.

  When Billy woke up the next morning, the turntable was still spinning but Miles had long since parted way with the needle.

  Lucinda was gone, of course.

  Billy Purgatory stared at the empty spot of the living room floor where they had danced. The sunlight cut in and shot a red prism across that floor from the one glass of wine they'd left to the bottle. The rosary beads were orphaned at his feet as neither Lucinda nor Billy needed them any longer, but he pocketed them regardless.

  Billy left his watch and a twenty-dollar bill on the granite countertop so he and whoever would be even for the wine and the Miles Davis record he tucked under his arm.

  When he crossed the street, the sunshine made him think about the skateboard he'd entombed in the hallway closet of his father's old house when he'd locked the place down before leaving for the army. He almost pointed the green Oldsmobile that direction when he tried to decide which part of Las Vegas Boulevard he'd drive out of here. He ultimately picked the fastest way and was thankful for the desert sun and that he had plenty of daylight left. He didn't want to be there when the neon lights came back on without her.

  III

  New Yorkers were annoyed having to walk around Lucinda Drew as she stood there half-emerged from the subway stairs. Then, inevitably, they'd look up and see the man standing at sidewalk level with the scar across his face and the black army coat and they would decide to leave their words about the situation to themselves. Lucinda did eventually make her way up the stairs to Billy Purgatory.

  It had been thirteen months since Vegas.

  “I didn't run,” he said to her. “I went back to face my medicine. Your old man and I are even now.”

  “He never mentioned it.”

  “I bet you never asked. It's alright, though. What squared us is a thing nobody talks about.”

  “What are you doing here, Billy?”

  “I wanted to see you again, that's all.”

  “Seeing…” Lucinda found herself staring at her shoes and not being able to finish her sentence.

  Billy tried to finish it for her. “I figured you were seeing…”

  “He asked me to get engaged.”

  “I knew it'd be like this.”

  “…and you came anyway?” Lucinda looked up, wouldn't let herself grin.

  Billy turned then and took a step away from Lucinda to intermingle with the angry sidewalk dwellers, but he couldn't get lost in them fast enough.

  “So that's it then?” She couldn't fathom this being the entire exchange as she yelled down the sidewalk at Billy, “You're here, want to see Time's Square?”

  “We already saw Vegas.” He'd stopped and turned back to her and she was already moving towards him. “Lucinda, I just had to know. Now I do.”

  “What could you possibly know of any importance in the ten words we've thrown at one another on the sidewalk?” She was actually getting angry now and didn't understand quite why.

  “I had to make sure you were real.” The ridiculousness of the statement was cancelled by the mix of troubled seriousness in his eyes.

  “Of course I'm real.” Lucinda couldn't believe she'd entertained such a ridiculous question from him, much less answered it.

  He nodded. “I know.”

  Lucinda let her engagement ring slip off her finger and fall into her coat pocket. “I haven't given him an answer yet.”

  Chapter 18

  Sarah, My Only Friend

  So far as I knew, I was the last. I told myself that, but knew that my sisters most likely remained and continued to birth foul machinations into the night. Mannequins of a sort, golems - a sketchy representation of that which our Father's legions had once been. I knew better than to believe they would ever choose the path that I had, but in my best moments - my quiet moments, I was able to rid my mind of them. To fall into that place where I truly felt alone and free of them. It was a blessing, this ever-after obscurity. If I could only blend and bend and weave enough magic silk around new skin then perhaps I'd one night be far enough from them and what I had been that it wouldn't matter anymore. If I've ever wanted anything completely born of truth and purity it was that very thing at that very moment. To vanish.

  I didn't do half bad at just being Anastasia.

  University was its own compact globe, and if I stayed in its borderland and didn't venture too far off the campus, then, I had talked myself into the fact, I would never have to face what I was. That I didn't truly belong with my father's people any longer (or with anyone anywhere). I was a child of that portion of the map that held this warning:

  Danger: There be monsters here!

  It was no problem to move about my new homeland at night. Humans at this age rarely sleep. Always in motion by night, sleeping away a good portion of the mornin
g. It was a pattern that mirrored my own very well. I can remember sitting in their classrooms, at first just showing up at random to see what it was they were trying so hard to learn that made this such a crucial time waster for them - four years or more is a lifetime when you're as short lived as they.

  While my kind are rarely immortal, we can continue on for hundreds of years. Humans are lucky if they make it a half century the way they poison themselves. This was always one of the arguments made to the weaker of my peers if they ever felt any remorse for how we treated mankind. If that speech didn't work, the pointing out that humans have no regard for their own existence, then you didn't get a second lesson. We taught you the meaning of mortality first hand and moved on.

  I found no issue in assuming one's identity when I actually enrolled. I was tested, surpassed their limited expectations, and was given a room, cheap books filled with lies their scholars had scuttled together, and was allowed to sign up for anything that interested me at the time (that is, after my academic advisor and I had come to a little ‘understanding’).

  I dealt with them in groups very well, but one on one I always had difficulty. Those who ran the university kept insisting that I share my room with another. They paired us female with female, and every term there would be a new one standing in my room smiling and chattering. This was the most draining part, how they rarely respected silence.

  I'd blacked the window and pushed my bed to the wall containing it and dared them or anyone to inquire about the darkness. For whatever reason, none ever did. I suppose they're more intuitive than I give them credit for. Most of them avoided me after that initial awkward first night, and I was happy to just ignore them. When they were intoxicated, they'd sometimes extend that hand of friendship and beg me to go out with them and their friends, but I avoided their night gatherings. It was too easy to fall out of my peaceful Zen at their parties. Their males were easily excited to the point of inappropriateness, and that would just make me excited in my own way, and before I knew what was happening I was stuffing another of them into a furnace.