I tell him the son of Jesus thought it was the suicide demon.
“She doesn’t know shit. She thinks everything is suicide. Every time we do deliverance everybody has suicide. She’s always knee-deep in suicide.” He scratches his skin, yellow like wax in the streetlight; like maybe it could come off and get stuck under his nails. “When the Destroyer came after me,” he adds, “it was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The waitress says they’re closing. A janitor sweeps the floor with her eyes closed. We take our drinks outside to a small iron table chained to other tables overlooking an alley. Yellow umbrellas bloom from their centers. The streetlights leave only a small circle of black above us, faint with stars.
“It was hard for you to come here, wasn’t it. I know.”
“Why do you think that?”
“There’s something,” he said. “Following you.” He pointed at the space behind me. “I saw it on you when you arrived. It’s from talking to Brian’s sister April. It transferred. I’ve been trying to get through to you. I check up on you every month or so.”
The janitor stops to look at us through the window.
“You still don’t know why you met me, do you.”
“Did you know they used to shoot people with PTSD?” I say. “These young guys in the trenches.”
“You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
He starts speaking in metaphors without context. I don’t know what he’s saying. “There’s a broke-down train,” he says. “Okay, now get it from point A to point B.”
“I don’t know,” I keep saying. “I don’t know.”
“You still don’t know why you met me, do you.” He shakes his head. “Tell me what you thought of me when we met. You think I was a dumb, crazy guy? Is that what you thought? You can tell me. Tell me everything. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. First tell me, why did you meet me?”
“Are you worried?”
“Simple question.”
He says it as if he wants to take all of me, arrange it on a table, and look at my organs in harsh light.
“I knew you were demonically tormented,” he repeats. “You laughed when I told you about the demons. I knew your generational curse line was very strong. Some occult shit in there. Oh, and I don’t know, I can’t explain it. I guess I figured you were a man-hater or something. It seemed like you never even wanted to talk to me. I felt bad for you. I felt very bad, in fact, because I knew it would take you a long time to learn what this all meant.”
He sucked his straw black with Coke. “I’ve told you the intimate details of my life. The things I’d never tell anyone else. You never tell me anything about your life.”
I’m drawing shapes in my notebook and trying not to look at him.
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
He’s silent and hunched with his head up like a turtle. “Have you figured out your objective?” he says. “Have you figured out why you met me?”
“There are demons,” I say, hoping that’s the answer he wants.
“That’s a little obvious by now.”
He drags his fingers from his cheekbones to his chin the way someone might remove a mask.
“You don’t understand any of this,” he says. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. You went and saw that gal. I warned you. I said this thing is going to come after you. You’re kinda fucked right now, but I can help you.”
I’m writing down what he says in my notebook until it’s darkened by the shadow of his hand. He pulls my pen from my fingers. He closes my notebook. He takes it. He hides it in his lap. “This has nothing to do with the goddamned book,” he says.
The headlights of a passing car catch Caleb’s face, and his eyes stay wide and motionless in its glare. He waits until it passes. “I’m frustrated with your rational background. You ask too many questions. You see everything too logically. This is freaking spiritual warfare.”
He spreads his legs and sinks between them.
“You’re my subject.” This word quiets him.
“What?” He leans back, deflated, as if someone took a pin to him and some air seeped out.
“Give me my pen.”
“You’ve never trusted me. You’ve never trusted Caleb. All this time and you’ve never trusted Caleb.”
“I got in your truck. I drove with you to a trailer in Portal.”
He shakes his head. “I want you to figure out why you met me.”
I tell him he clearly has an answer to this question and that he should just tell me.
“Will you let me pray,” he says.
“Why?”
“I can help you,” he says. “Take my hand.”
I flex my hand into a ball and set it in his open palm. Then I pull it away. “I don’t want to.” His eyeballs move beneath closed lids like things turning over in the womb.
He stands up, heads into the street, and starts jogging. He stops before the railroad tracks beneath a streetlight. In the solitary yellow glow, he raises his arms. He could be a demon now himself.
“What?” I shout.
“Nothing,” he says. He jogs back. “Just wait.”
A long stream of prayers comes from his mouth. The streets are wide and sleek and black like rivers. A moaning rises from the distance. The wind is coming, coming down from across the agricultural fields sour with the smells of opossum and corn rot.
“What’s happening?” I say.
I have the sensation that we’re lying down, or that the world is moving and we’re standing still. Bits of trash scrape the asphalt and gather by the tracks. A gathering of cups and soda cans swirls and rises like a tower.
One by one the streetlights darken.
I lean toward the dark.
“Power outage?”
“They’re here.” He drums his hands on the table.
“Who?”
“The whole fucking army is here.” He reaches his arms above his head and opens them like a ballerina.
“What does that mean?”
He describes something from a war movie I’ve never seen, a movie where horses die and men are blown apart in trenches and the air is full of screaming.
A figure darts between bushes across the street.
“Wait,” he says. He recognizes my stare. He recognizes it as his own. “You see them, don’t you? That’s what I asked,” he says. “That’s what I prayed. I want you to see them. Just a little.”
“It’s just a person,” I say.
“I can see you in the spirit realm,” he says. “I can see you right now. It’s amazing. You know who you are? You’re fucking Joan of Arc.” He talks like a general who’s already imagined the slaughter and the victory.
“You need to hold my hand,” he says. “The only way to defeat this army is to do it together. You can’t do this alone. I can’t either.”
His hand is there, calling to me, dark from the sun in Afghanistan.
“I don’t want to hold your hand.”
“They will hurt you if you let them. You’re letting them hurt you. Don’t let them hurt you. Please, hold my hand.” He breathes with the delicate throbbing stress of a small animal. “Join me,” he says. “Please, join my army.”
He quiets to let his words settle and arrange themselves. A moth flickers by his head like a small, loose flame.
“You think Afghanistan is scary? You think a fucking IED is scary? Rockets? Dead guys everywhere? It’s nothing compared to this war. This war is much, much worse.” His fingers wave me in. “Take my hand. There’s no good way out. Take my hand,” he says. “Join my army.”
I try to imagine what he sees: the army dying in waves on flat, burning fields.
“I know what you’ve been going through with the enemy,” he says. “You’re the skinny guy with an AK-47 and you’re getting pummeled by a huge army. You’re getting shot in the face. You’re wounded. There’s fire all around you. You’re on the ground, limping. Don’t you th
ink it would be better to gather an army? Resupply. Move under the cover of darkness?”
Now he’s pacing back and forth, gesticulating like a deposed king in a tragic play.
“We both have weapons. If we put them together, we’ll at least have a chance against the enemy. You’re taking some serious fire. I’d love to put up some cover for you. I’ll cover your back if you cover mine.”
Finally I take his hand and he quiets. He whispers to God in the dark. An oily twist of hair on his forehead curls like a hook. He releases. “Now,” he says. “I have to pee.”
We stand to leave. As we approach the car his hand flutters in front of mine. “Give me your cup.” I set it in his hand and he throws it in a garbage can’s open mouth.
“See,” he says. “I’m a gentleman.”
• • •
Caleb is staying with his mother and I’m staying at a hotel. He’ll drop me off. “Father,” he says, “show us the hotels.”
Father shows us dead ends, neighborhoods thick with two-story homes, and the parking lot at Taco Bell. I nod off, forehead smashed to the window. He flicks my shoulder and I jerk awake in the parking lot of a Best Western.
Blue pool light shimmers up the hotel walls. There’s the faint sound of a late-night swimmer. The murmur of television from an open window. The asphalt sparkles around us, same as the sky.
He asks if I’m afraid. I say I don’t really know. He investigates shadows between cars. He insists on walking to the desk with me. He says it’s following me.
“What brings you to Missouri?” the receptionist asks. Caleb stands spiderlike by the brochure rack. It’s an absurd question at the moment. My troubled laugh begins. First as a shiver. Then it spreads to Caleb. The receptionist watches. “Missouri” is all I manage to say, laughing. “Missouri.” The credit card hovers in midswipe. “All right,” she says. “You don’t have to tell.”
I say good night to Caleb. He slips back into the Lexus, merges into traffic on Interstate 70.
Rooms leak the sounds of television, people chatting, beds creaking. A long arm of light drapes over the bed in my room. I bolt the door and stand near the television. I turn all the lights on and the shadows deepen. I know I won’t be able to sleep. Caleb’s words are churning. I’m looking behind me, under the bed, in the closet. I stay in the bathroom. Red veins bloom in my eyes like coral growths. I run the water. My mouth foams with toothpaste.
I’m annoyed with Caleb, and I write him a message to let him know. I tell him that now I feel like I’m being followed. I want him to know my fear, to see what he’s done. My phone rings. It vibrates diagonally across the carpet like a mouse. It’s him. I pick it up and before I can say hello, he says, “Is it human or beast?”
“You don’t need to call,” I tell him.
“I’m coming,” he says.
“Please, don’t. Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m coming,” he says.
I step out of the bathroom and look at the door. I still have the phone pressed to my ear. I hear the sound of a car engine. The sound of tires. “It’s too late,” he says. “I’ve already turned around.” He stays on the line, noting passing objects: ramp, exit, parking lot, entrance, floor, door, door, door. Then, I’m here.
The eyehole darkens.
I let him in. The metal bolt catches quick as a bite. I release it. He steps inside swinging his lowered head to the left and to the right, like a bull releasing himself from unwanted reins. “Where is it?”
I point at the clock. It’s one forty-six in the morning.
“Fancy that,” he says, and he takes a bow at the clock’s hard truth.
“You planned that.”
“No way.”
Caleb strides across the carpet. “What’s the first thing you do when the enemy enters? You make yourself at home. Take your shoes off. Stay a while.”
The room has two beds. He sits on one and I on the other. He twirls a loose string on the comforter. A long mirror hangs on the wall between us.
“I’m here. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” His grin twists like smoke. Take your jacket off. Lean back. Relax.”
Suddenly he leaps into the air and falls vertically onto the bed, landing with a gentle, fluttering bounce. He poses the way a woman might in want of portrait: elbow bent, palm flat to hoist a heavy, smiling head. Legs are stacked and curved. Toes, pointed.
“What was your most recent nightmare?” he asks.
“A bat. But wingless.”
“Good,” he says. “It’s lost power.”
I laugh and he follows. “Okay, you have authority over this thing. You can make it go away.
“Say, ‘Father.’ ”
“Father.”
“Say, ‘I command all things unclean or foul.’ ”
“I command all things unclean or foul.”
“Say, ‘to leave.’ ”
“To leave.”
“Say, ‘in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.’ ”
“In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”
“ ‘Son of the Living God.’ ”
“Son of the Living God.”
I start scratching my neck where the bat touched me in my dream.
“Interesting,” he says, and he jumps to the floor. “You know how to make a dog obedient? You get it on the floor, press your hand against its neck.” Caleb is on the floor demonstrating dog submission, pressing one palm flat on the ground. “That’s what the Destroyer was doing.” Lamplight thickens on his forehead. “Let me pray,” he says.
He wraps his hand around my neck, and his fingers curl like a collar over my throat. It’s time for the killing. But instead he presses the top of my head into his hands, and I just sort of hang there, suspended, like something growing out of him. An act of saving. I wait, playing dead, while he speaks to God.
“Ah, it’s in your ear,” he says, and I fall back like those people on television struck by faith.
Now he’s in the desk chair, tilted back, feet on the bed.
He shoots me a relaxed look like he wants to smoke a cigar, watch football, shoot the shit. Then he pushes his foot against the TV and sends his chair into a quiet spin.
“You’ve been dating someone, haven’t you?”
I tell him I have.
“You know what I think? I think he was a conduit for evil. The demon worked through him. It’s the whole sex before marriage thing. Now you and him are soul ties. They’re hard to break. Took me forever to break my soul tie with Krissy.” He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “That’s how the demon got power over you.”
He mulls over knitted fingers.
“But if you think about it, it’s almost funny. It’s just a stupid little bat.”
“Just a stupid little bat,” I say.
A plane comes into view and blinks on its diagonal journey to the ground.
A rough laugh overtakes him, and then quiets to something faint and grave. Neither of us is sure anymore what’s funny and what isn’t.
“Let me show you what the bat did to you.” And he stands up and comes toward me and uses his arms like wings to pump himself across the room. I keep my limbs close to my body. “Turn around,” he says. And he does what the bat did. He wraps. My head gets pressed sideways into his chest, making it hard to breathe, and I just sort of stay there, stiff in his arms. “I’m not going to let go,” he says. “Join my army.” I feel his breath beating into a single spot on my cheek. “Is this what it was like when the bat came?” Caleb holds me there, humming and rocking, pretending and believing. “This bat,” he says. “He had bundled you up. He was swaying and holding you. He had you all wrapped up tight in his wings. And you know what else? He was singing to you. The bat sang to you. A really sad song. He was singing you a lullaby. It was the most beautiful song in the world. Are you listening to this lullaby? I wonder.”
When the Sirens sang to Odysseus they sang about the truth of how the men suffered at the war in Troy.
; “I won’t let you go,” he says. “I won’t let you go.”
I wiggle away. I’m watching him now like the enemy.
“It’s the saddest song in the world. Listen.” He leans into me and I have to push against him to support his weight. And there it is, his heart, beating, beating, beating—like a song.
He crawls like an insect onto the bed. He looks at me.
Lul-la-by, he says, lul-la-by.
“It’s the saddest song in the world. Listen.”
Kip Jacoby. Sergeant Kip Jacoby. Sergeant Kip A. Jacoby. He lets the words hang in the quiet. He makes me feel the death.
Lullaby. The song that bridges waking and sleep.
A POSTSCRIPT FOR THE IRRITABLE HEART
In March 1969 a Vietnam veteran walked into the Boston VA outpatient clinic and told the psychiatrist on duty that he was convinced his buddies were trying to kill him. He was part of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, and his platoon was under orders to enter the village of My Lai in Northern Vietnam with their guns firing. The village, their commander said, was full of Vietcong. But when the soldiers arrived and the initial smoke cleared, they found elderly men, women, and babies whom they raped, tortured, and executed. Survivors lived by hiding beneath corpses. The veteran didn’t shoot. He threw his gun to the side and watched. The other soldiers knew this about him, and when the killings were over, the soldiers in his platoon turned to him and said that if he ever uttered a word about what happened in My Lai, they’d kill him too. One of the soldiers said they might kill him anyway just in case.
The veteran told the story to social worker Sarah Haley, and it was her first day on the job. Haley accepted the veteran’s story at face value. She had no illusions about war. The fact that war is sometimes women getting gang-raped, their bodies mutilated, infants shot point-blank in their mother’s arms, bodies moaning in piles. Her father was an assassin with the Office of Strategic Services in North Africa during World War II. She grew up on such stories.
But when the rest of the VA staff met to discuss the case, they had already determined a diagnosis. They said the veteran was a paranoid schizophrenic. In other words, they didn’t believe him. No one knew about My Lai—the newspaper reports weren’t out.
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