by Borne Wilder
Jeremiel had watched the system the Boss had put in place, for thousands of years, it was fair and it worked, the one problem he had, was the ability man had to barter with his soul. From what he had observed over the years, mankind was not intelligent enough to be trusted with a decision concerning something of that value. However, there was no reason to speak out about his thoughts or feelings, for he knew, like every other angel, that there was a reason for everything and if the Boss felt he had left enough bread crumbs for humans to follow, then he did.
Gathering souls wasn’t Jeremiel’s only job, as a matter of fact, it took up little of his time, relatively speaking, most walked into the light on their own, much of Jeremiel’s existence, since humans had been created, had been spent fighting alongside them in times of war. He’d fought Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Romans, Germans, Philistines, Moabites, in fact, if the name ended in ‘ite,’ he more than likely had fought and killed them. But, because of his moderate, passive nature, the other archangels didn’t really see him as a warrior, he was the nice guy among them, but when it came time to pick a fighting partner, time to get bloody up to the elbows, he was always chosen first. Michael once calculated that as far as killing humans went, Jeremiel had killed more than all the other archangels combined. “Jerry has filled the Valley of the Kings, knee deep in blood.” was how he had put it. It was nothing he was proud of, he just did his work, whatever that work may be, with passion.
***
Alice watched Charlie and Ron from the back door; she wasn’t going to humiliate herself by chasing them out into the yard. She would wait until they drove off in their car and report their sorry asses for a DUI. Perhaps then, she could arrange a prisoner exchange, the coin for their freedom.
Peeking out windows is contagious in Alice and Martha’s families, once one of them has peered through a blind, or pulled back a curtain, one by one the rest of the family will assemble at the windows and glean their share of neighborly information, a habit that had first formed with Nolte but had spread to them and then on to their husbands and children. It wasn’t fences that made good neighbors; it was the amount of shit you could dig up on one another.
“Wouldja looka there?” chuckled, RJ, “It’s one of them trolls off the Wizard of Oz.”
Alice opened the back door a crack, just wide enough for her mouth to poke through. “Junior, Junior-Junior! Quit playing with those hotdogs and get in here. She had seen the cops cutting across the lawn and wanted no interaction between Junior and law enforcement, they had nothing to hide, but one look at Junior would give cops probable cause to think they did. Besides, she had to get Junior-Junior inside before he saw the midget, he’d been hounding Santa for an elf, ever since he was six years old. If she didn’t get the kid’s attention before the midget did, she was sure he would go out and try to touch it.
“You know,” RJ whispered, “I’ve heard that if you rub one of those little guys on the head, it brings you luck. I’ve always wanted to try one out before fishin’.”
“It’s the sins of the father that makes them small like that; at some point, that little guy’s daddy did something perverse and unholy.” Martha chimed in.
“I reckon so, but I’d still like to try my luck fishin’ with one.”
Junior and Junior-Junior immediately took up positions at windows upon entering the house, never asking what was to be seen; only knowing they had a duty to perform. They had just pulled back their section of curtain, when Baal erupted in a flash of light.
“Goddamn! That little feller exploded!”
“Watch your mouth RJ; you will not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“What the hell happened to that little guy?”
“Looked like a lightning strike.”
“Are you really that stupid, Junior? There isn’t a cloud in the sky.” Alice was still pissed about Junior’s earlier beer bottle stupidity in front of the brothers, now he was compounding it with asinine observations.
“Hey Junior, you ever been fishin’ with a troll?”
“No, but I heard they’re good luck.”
Alice was pissed when the cops let Charlie and Ron go, the cheap bourbon fumes coming off Ron were almost visible. She had thought about pointing it out to the officers, to ensure they were taken into custody, but the thought of rapist black women with brooms popped into her head. For all she knew, those two might be the detectives investigating her involvement in Nolte’s murder. The doctor had assured Martha that it had been a heart attack, but that very well could be a ruse to smoke Alice out. Scolding herself, Alice wondered, where all this guilt had been hiding when she had tried to find some to feel?
“Is that my elf, Mamma?”
“Looky there, the troll is bouncing around the cars, kinda reminds me of the circus.” RJ was beside himself, with what could only be described as childlike fascination. He was also feeling lucky. “What do you say we do a little fishing tonight, Junior?”
***
Baal ran to each automobile in the driveway, leaping up and down at the passenger side windows. It took several leaps at each car to locate the ignition and to check it for keys. He was careful not to touch the vehicles in case alarms had been set. He had no further desire for human contact. Though he was quite sure the simpletons in the house knew what he was up to, he had seen them peeking through the curtains, however, he saw no need to alert the neighbors and draw their unwanted attention, also. His driver was nowhere to be seen, so decided against calling out for him. He thought the man useless, anyway.
The automobiles contained no keys; the motorcycle was completely unfeasible; his only hope remained in a big brute of a contraption decorated with large confederate flag and a bumper sticker which stated, ‘It was better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.’ The height of the vehicle had been modified so that Baal could almost walk beneath it without bumping his head. Leaping up to look in the window was impossible and the door handle was at least two cubits higher than his reach. Baal tried to jump outside of time and back into the huge automobile, but his work restrictions held him in place.
How could Gabriel put a restriction on his restrictions? That it could detect his intentions were not entirely work related seemed preposterous, yet displayed brilliant foresight on the part of the angel.
With the sensation of the anomalies in the shekel fading, he ran to the garage. Bully, another automobile! Stumbling over the refuse stacked in piles around the garage, he made his way to the white convertible. On tip toes, he peeked over the edge of the door. No keys again.
Against the back wall of Nolte’s garage, Baal saw a five-foot painter’s ladder. Running toward it, he stepped on a glass bottle that sent him reeling across the floor, tearing his tailor made suit on a crate of oily milk bottles. Someone was going to pay in pain for the damages caused to his attire, he promised himself, as he struggled to his feet and brushed off dust and debris.
A missing rubber footy on one of the ladder’s legs caused it to screech like fingers on a chalkboard as Baal drug it across the concrete floor of the garage. With time pushing him, he leaned it against the truck with care and picked up his walking stick, he tucked it under his arm and strategized his assent. Kicking the footy-less leg of the ladder a few times, in order to ensure a steady climb, he ascended the ladder on shaky legs.
“Bully!” he said aloud. The keys were in the ashtray; at least some keys were in the ashtray. Carefully he lifted the handle on the door and opened it slowly, careful not to dislodge himself from the ladder. Baal appraised the distance from the ladder to the seat, cursing Gabriel. Any attempt to leap the distance would result in certain injury; being locked in human form, put him at an enormous disadvantage. Deciding the distance to be too great, he tossed his walking stick onto the seat and climbed back down the ladder. He repositioned it directly against the seat of the truck and once again attempted to climb into the monster. He was already sweating profusely when he met his next obstacle; once again, his damnable legs we
re the issue, the same reason he had to employ drivers.
From a sitting position, he could just see over the top of the dash, but his feet barely went past the edge of the seat, even scooting as close to the steering mechanism as he dared, his feet dangled impotently in the air above the foot controls. He glanced around the yard and street for his driver James, he could definitely be of assistance. Baal could not see him, nor sense his presence; the coward must have bolted at the first sign of trouble. The man had ruined any chance at a favorable letter of recommendation from Baal.
Snatching his walking stick from the seat, he poked frantically at the foot controls. It would have to do; he was running out of time.
Using his thumb and index finger, Baal daintily extracted the keys from the ashtray and held them up so that he might apply a few puffs of air, to dislodge any filth that might be clinging to them. Satisfied they were clean enough for use; he began to try them one after another in the ignition. The fourth key turned and gave the engine a bump. Though he couldn’t see the road directly in front of the vehicle, he felt he had enough visibility to navigate the monstrosity without killing anyone. Partially convinced that his walking stick plan would work and left with no other option, he twisted the key in the ignition and the beast roared to life.
A large burly fellow came running out of the house. “Hey, motherfucker, get your ass outta my truck!” The man slipped on what appeared to be frankfurter laying on the drive and stumbled into the grass.
Quickly placing the lever on the steering column in reverse, Baal poked at the petrol control with his stick. The great monster jumped and lurched backward, crashing into the car parked behind him. An alarm went off. The door of the truck slammed hard on the ladder, crushing it and lodging it firmly in the door. Laying his walking stick on the seat beside him, Baal grabbed the wheel in both hands and pulled down hard on the left side until it stopped turning. Placing the lever in D and grabbing his stick from the seat and poked hard at the accelerator. Once again there was the sound of the ladder being crushed as the beast jumped forward. Holding down on the wheel he jabbed at the accelerator. Each jab caused the truck to jump, which caused his stick to pump up and down on the pedal, which caused the truck to jump even more.
The burly man that had run out of the house stood helpless, watching his truck hop across the lawn toward the street, tearing out great chunks of sod with every leap. The big tires chirped as they made contact with the street and pipes roared, as his baby took off down the street with a step ladder hanging out of her door.
Bully! Baal could still feel the soul anomalies trapped in the coin. After dealing with several billion, one acquired a sense for matters concerning souls. We appear to be heading south, he told himself as he kicked at the remains of the ladder caught in the door, trying to dislodge it. It was going to be hard to get down, but the infernal racket it was causing, was more insufferable than James’ heartbeat.
12
Sympathy for the Devil was on the radio as they crossed the Texas state line. Nolte was moaning along with it, tossing in a word here and there, he always sounded like a drunken wino when he sang, mixing words with tin-eared groans, that the average passerby might mistake for someone in the throes of an agonizing death. ‘Hope you guess my name’, appeared to be the only part of the song he really knew.
Nolte was a whistle while you work kind of guy when the work was going his way, but a tool slinging fount of profanity, when it wasn’t. Things seemed to be going his way in that particular moment. He had torn a hole in the plastic lining of his diaper and was using the absorbent cotton lining to plug the bullet hole in his chest. Each tuft of faux cotton was prudently rolled into balls, approximately the same diameter of the entrance wound, and carefully poked into the bullet hole with the nail of his pinky. Nolte had always known his pinky nail would come in handy someday.
His entire life, he had groomed the ends of his fingers obsessively and meticulously on every third day, without fail. Nolte’s manicures would rival that of any Newark mobster, although, since the seventies, he would leave the pinky nail on his right hand long enough to accommodate a generous scoop of cocaine. It didn’t matter that Nolte despised drugs, he found the characters that used them to hold a certain air of rebel mystique; they dared to go against the grain of things and break the rules, he liked that.
In the early seventies, he had worked on the docks of Chicago with a group of black electrical apprentices, who all kept their pinkies trimmed in such a manner. Nolte had always thought the secret statement the niggers were making, to be mighty cool beans and adopted the accessory for his own digit.
“You’re not even bleeding, asshole.” Ron had been watching Nolte, in the rearview for some time, and Nolte’s attention whoring, or lack thereof, was making him nervous. It had taken him a while, with only the dim lighting from the dash, to figure out what the old fart was doing. “If anything, you’re just making it worse.”
“It could start bleeding at any time, Dr. Cupcake, what else did they teach you in medical school?”
Ron turned the radio down. “It’s been a fucking hour, Nolte. If it was going to bleed, it would have bled by now.” Ron shook his head. “You know you’re dead, right? You went tits up. Completely fucking puzzles me how you can shit and piss yourself, and not bleed, but if you were going to bleed, you would have fucking bled!”
“I can’t believe you assholes shot your own father.” Nolte sounded as if his feelings were genuinely hurt, but Ron and Charlie both knew the notion was absurd, Nolte only had two emotions, horny and drunk. If his feelings ever had been hurt, it was probably because he had been too drunk to fuck at some point in his miserable existence, and some barfly had chided his ass over his limp dick. Nolte pointed at the wad of diaper padding sticking out of his chest. “That’s right where my fucking heart is!”
“Yeah, well this asshole prevented you from getting shot a second time,” Ron replied, feeling a momentary smidge of guilt. He had never shot anyone before, but he knew in his heart, if he absolutely had to shoot someone, absolutely had to, he would choose to shoot Nolte.
“Bullshit, you were only trying to stop him from shooting up your fucking car again. You should both be on the Green Mile, you death row lookin’ motherfuckers.” Nolte glanced at the pistol laying on the dash. These twinks couldn’t hold their piss forever and when they stopped, someone was catching a slug. He pushed another wad of cotton into his wound for good measure. Satisfied with his first time at first aid,
Nolte’s demeanor improved. “So, you murderous cocksuckers, where are we headed?”
“We’re looking for a church,” Ron replied. “You ever seen the Exorcist?”
“Is that one of those workout tapes? I do love watching tight-assed pussy bend at the waist.”
“Yeah, we thought we might do a little father-son bonding with you, using an exercise tape, and figured a church would be the only place left on the planet with a working VCR.”
“I do like watching tight-assed pussy crack open like a shotgun, gonna work the ol’ love muscle, is what I’m gonna do. What about you faggots? Every workout tape has at least one homo on it, you two gonna work the ol’ love muscles?”
Neither of them said it, but both of the brothers wished the gunshot had worked, perhaps, silver bullets next time.
The two men and the ghost rode for some time without speaking. Nolte and Charlie were both eyeballing the pistol on the dash; both wanted it for the same reason, to put a hole in the other. Charlie just wanted to see the incredulous look on Nolte’s face again, Nolte wanted to kill Charlie.
After the gunshot and without the radio, the silence was almost overwhelming. The mind numbing Blue Tail Fly marathon, had taken its sweet time getting out of Ron’s head and the quiet was nice, as far as he was concerned, as long as Nolte didn’t go to pickin’ at his diaper again. The soft spot in Ron’s heart, or the part of his heart where Nolte pity leaked from, couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen to the o
ld man once they turned over the coin. Would he blink out of sight for good, be carried off to Hell by demons, or sizzle and flame like a vampire in sunlight?
“Are we there yet?” Nolte asked.
“You start that shit and we will be stopping at a church. I will exorcise you myself, with a Holy Water enema.” Charlie warned, he was pretty sure he was going to have to shoot Nolte again before the night was over; at least he was pretty sure he wanted to. “Tell me how this ‘I Dream of Jeanie’ shit works?” He asked, twisting in his seat to see Nolte better. The old man could lie like the wind, so it was best to face him if you were interested in catching any fragments of the truth. “Where the hell do you go when you blink out?”
“If I blinked into your ass, you’d know, wouldn’t you?” Nolte snapped, quickly scooting out of Charlie’s reach, his son didn’t seem to be able to control his violent tendencies anymore.
Charlie smiled lazily. “Do you think you have enough diaper stuffing to fill another hole?” He twisted further in his seat. “Here’s the way we’re going to play this game. I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer those questions.”
“Uhn gun ask cwustuns uhn yun gun anz cwustuns.” Nolte mocked and fell back into the seat laughing hysterically.
Charlie scratched the spot between his eyebrows and shot a side glance at Ron.
“It’s like talking to a fucking kid, isn’t it?” Ron agreed with Charlie’s unasked question, he tried to keep from smiling; it was kind of funny when Nolte pulled his shit on someone else.
