Having built the lecture into a roaring crescendo, the great author Cleford Crowninshield III rolled up to conclude his remarks with a simple, irrefutable hypothesis: “ergo, it is proven – Q.E.D. – that the Devil is alive in the South!”
The crowd ate it up like fresh buttermilk biscuits with extra heapings of grape jelly, with applause and aplomb, as if served by the “help” on a silver platter. Through rapturous applause, they relished the author’s conclusion, identifying in it an evangelical vindication for their collective memories of Southern horror: running out of gas and moonlight on the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge in 1971 – tripping over invisible air at a Cherokee burial mound in 1983 – photographing technicolor ghosts on plantation porches in 1992.
A riotous applause, as if to say, the South had more Devil because it had had more Slavery and more “Believers” – more weight on both sides of the see-saw. The applause eventually faded and after a long droning queue to get books and ephemera signed, I was the last attendee in the bookstore. When the author realized I had nothing for him to sign, he stood up and sighed a breath of relief.
“Do you really believe what you said up there… that the Devil is… alive in the south?”
“Why yes, certainly! I have been to 49 states… and examined American Literature from Bartolome De Las Casas’ 1516 polemic – Memorial de Remedios para las Indias – all the way to The Da Vinci Code… It is my not-so-humble opinion, as well as that of the late William Faulkner, that the Devil does in fact reside in the South.”
“Well,” I readied my hand, knowing throughout the lecture that it held 52 cards and more importantly, four aces: “have you ever been to Maine?”
Bud’s was neither empty nor full, quiet nor loud. It was thoroughly average in all regards and made for a perfectly neutral place for me to invite the great icon of American literature for a drink. It had no discernable name, just an ancient Budweiser sign out front, and thus the locals all called it Bud’s. The great author – Cleford Crowninshield III – had never been to Maine and, much to my luck, had an inherent vice for cheap beer and an almost unfathomable hatred of the omnipresent, omniscient gas station wine they were serving at his reception (as noted by his purple tongue-in-cheek commentary that “Yellow Tail, Barefoot and Cupcake were his three biggest fans” and claim that they have found there way into every reading and reception he has thrown in the last 15 years – “a Bud sounds great.”
We talked about his latest book – Mellow Othello – his upbringing in rural West Virginia – my theory on why I only set the alarm clock to odd numbers – his theory on the mental makeup of people who buy strawberries – my story about a time I saw a baby singing Pavoratti, standing proudly while being pushed by her mom in a shopping cart, 130 dB at a minimum – his theory on the Budweiser / Banana Laffy Taffy flavor continuum – and finally – having swapped out beer for whisky – and then whisky for cask strength scotch, the strongest spirit in the bar – then and only then did we talk about Maine.
“So tell me… why not Maine? I would imagine a man in your position…”
“You know, usually when people ask I say ‘it’s simple, the only thing that scares me more than the devil lives in Maine’ and then they look at me all shock and awe and I let the pause linger… just a moment too long… and say ‘my ex-wife’” – I surprised myself with a fake laugh – “but truth be told, I’ve never been married,” Cleford let out a sigh. “Quite simply, I’ve never been to Maine because I’ve never been invited there. In fact, my agent says there is no documented sale of any of my more than 27 published works in the whole state. Maine is for me a personal anti-record, and one that I intentionally maine-tain.”
Another laugh, this time some real parts blended with fake.
I noticed the other patrons of the bar had a different glint than before – the hour was approaching eleven and the nine-to-five folks had discretely traded bar stools with the objectively more gnashed, late night regulars who would be there until close. The bar was no more or less empty than it had been, but the air felt heavier and there was a discernible increase in the attention being paid to us. Cleford, for his part, did not seem to notice the increasingly shady nature of the establishment.
“Do you think you would recognize the Devil if you saw him?” I quickly followed up.
“Absolutely…” he waited a second, his certainty turning to doubt, “not.”
I could tell the question took him by surprise and threw more bait on the hook.
“Even if you were seated directly next to him?”
“A roaring lion… an Angel of Night… a nachash (or serpent)… these are just some of the many ways the Bible’s prophets described Him. Now would I recognize Satan if he was a moth flying around my living room? For all I know, the Devil is serving us liquor at this very moment… for all I know the devil is sitting directly across…”
“What if I told you, the Devil lives in Maine?” I damned his thoughts midstream.
“I would say… let me take a piss before you ruin my life’s work.”
Cleford stood up – a small 6’2 clad in a room of wide bodies – and swam through inquiring stares on his way to the bathroom. In his absence, I was left unguarded in the small parlor room. With my back against the wall and few discrete options as to where to avert my eyes, I looked at my wristwatch and decided to work my way to the bar for one last drink before we really got to Maine.
“Say… these gentlemen here been asking me about you two,” she said in a voice so sweet it reminded me of the Budweiser / Banana Laffy Taffy continuum. “They” – she gestured to her left and her right and behind me “were wondering what two go-to-do fellas like yous are doin’ in Bud’s talking about the Devil. And so I tolds them – that gentleman with yous is the author who wrote the book they turned into the movie with Tom Hanks. I recognize him from the back cover – let’s just says” she winked not once but twice, “he’s my-kinda-man.”
“Well it sounds like you answered your own question dear… what would these folks do without you?” I just smiled.
“These ones are from the house and on the house,” she brushed a few flies away from the bar mat and poured a nondescript, thick-as-molasses spirit into two plastic saucers with ice.
Cleburn met me at the bar and asked – “what are we drinking to?”
“Fact and fiction” I hoisted a saucer. The spirit went down slower than liquor. In fact, it took about ten seconds for it to drip from cup to bottom of my stomach. He pulled a cigarette case from his breast pocket and we made our way onto the street and decided to have a little walk around the town promenade even though it was well past midnight.
“It happened about ten years ago. A colleague of mine was heading to the altar and, despite having no date or mutual friends attending, I decided – what the hell – I’ve been to 49 states and never Maine – I could use a little fresh air. Mind you this acquaintance of mine had few acquaintances of his own, and he himself had never been to Maine.” We crossed the street, following the flow of the town square with no particular destination.
“He told me he had secured me a spot at the lodge and that all I had to do was show up, so I flew into Boston and took the last Nor’easter there. I should’ve known something was up when the train emptied out in Portsmouth… when the attendant never came to stamp my ticket… when the last hour we moved through fog so thick I could see nothing other than my own reflection in the empty cabin.”
I took a pull from my cigarette, unaware it had gone out. Clefard handed me his lighter and said nothing more. I could sense the author in him had started to take over. He had already begun looking for holes in my story. Does the train really stop in Portsmouth that late at night? I handed him back the lighter and knew there would be few if any comments from him until the story had been told.
“When I walked out at Old Orchard Beach, the fog had abated some and hung on the corners of the parking lot like the vignette of ancient daguerreotype. There was not a single car in the parking lot and the train quickly departed without blowing its whistle. In fact, now that I think back on it, I’m not even sure they closed the train doors heading back. I was spooked but assured myself, being surrounded by nothing was a million times safer than the city I had just come from, but in the city I had never felt so… afraid.”
“Yes, fear and danger have less in common than we assume,” he pointed to a cockroach dancing on a manhole.
“Just me, a suitcase and a Snickers walking into the unknown. The sound of my rolling suitcase on the cobblestones sounded like a broken muscle car reverberating through the crisp cold air. I convinced myself that someone was going to pop out of the alley and shoot me with a harpoon – that the roar of my 6 cylinder suitcase had turned me into a bonafide harpoon magnet. So I ate the Snickers and carried my bag with both hands towards the shore and into the fog. It took me forever to find my hotel given how many letters the sign had lost over the years – Wi L o te l – and after finally finding a door – walked into a room covered in wood colors raw and unmellowed.”
“Raw and unmellowed, very Arthur Miller of you”
“Anyways, the attendant was off duty and had left my key on the desk. I went to my room and opened my journal and wrote – ‘a tired man sees no ghosts’ and I meant it.”
“Haaa…” Cleford let out a bellowing laugh. “A tired man sees no ghosts, how raw and unmellowed. And a drunk man? One who has drinketh Bud’s molasses? What see he?” he changed his loud tone for a more subdued serious tenor: “You know… the first story I ever wrote – fiction, mind you – was about an 18 year old from a picture perfect family who enters a college fraternity only to discover that he sees ghost everytime he gets drunk. Eternity Fraternity.”
“Never published?”
“It was cheap pulp. I’m sure my agent will sell it when I’m dead – that tricenarian bastard,” Clefard scoffed and then readjusted his vest and jacket in one concise movement. “So… you found shelter from the storm.”
“Sort of…while I slept on the raw and unmellowed wood bed, the fog deserted the beach and found its way into my skull cavity – presumably through my nose and my ears. No matter how much water, how much tea, I woke up bearingless. I still knew who I was – who was President and who should be President – but my cognition – directions – balance – kaput!”
“Like an earth compass on the moon?”
“Like a sundial on the sun.”
The notion made me suddenly aware of the time. We had walked quite a ways from Bud’s and the bookstore, but there was still sidewalk ahead and a story to be told.
“Anyways – I say this only to set a realistic understanding of the events that followed. The wedding started at 6pm sharp – with a ceremony at the lighthouse followed by a reception at an old bunker that had once been part of the Harbor Defenses of Portland. It was a beautiful location and the bride had told all her guests to bring flags so there were flags of all shapes and sizes twinkling in the setting sun as empty cruise ships made their way out to the cold seas behind us. It was a short ceremony and if the groom noticed me in the aisle in the second to back row, he made no signs of showing it.”
I continued, “needless to say – I started drinking at the bar – red wine mostly and made my way to my assigned seat at table 7 – relieved to see my name on the list as it was the first explicit sign I was indeed meant to be there. Table 7 was a mismodge of characters – there were two small children around the age of six, two teenagers, two octogenarians, myself and a man in his fifties who was equally uncoupled and seemingly restive. Resigned to our fate as seatmates, we started talking and hit it off immediately, much like you and I tonight.”
“You see, I have a rather… parochial… anarchistic – background and am kind of like a… historical… detective for hire so when the conversation starts with Solutrean and segues to Wabanki, I start to think and pick up on things and start to really notice the letters in each word and how language – spoken – is our fate, moving us magnitudes faster than the annual speed of the Mother Earth, moving us quickly to the edges of…”
“Reality.”
“Exactly.. the conversation at Table 7 was the edge of reality… first it was the salad.”
“The salad. Of course.”
“Yes, well you see, the gentleman next to me was spouting some very… how do i say.. unique perspectives on the history of the Northeast… well, Maine in particular. He claimed to have come into possession of a four-dimension map – time, being the fourth dimension – that told of an unspeakable fifth-dimension evil no man could comprehend. The evil moved through time and space like a pendulum but never making it past the White Mountains in the West and the ocean just east of Cape Elizabeth. The evil wreaks havoc on both man and beast wherever it travels – and it moves fast enough it can be in two parts of the state in the same hour – and it never stops moving unless…” I had never told the story nor played it back chronologically and the words escaped faster than I could pronounce them.
“Unless what?”
“The Salad!”
“The Salad!” Cleford let out an honest to God laugh. Here he was, the guy who wrote the book that they made into a movie with Tom Hanks, on the second month of his book tour talking about the Salad in the late-night, middle-of-nowhere West Virginia air.
“Yes, the Salad is when I realized where the pendulum swung – and how to… It started with the olives. We were talking about the bunker from the War – the War before that – and I believe the War before that – when I got an olive just like the others but with a pit. Mind you olives are my favorite food, I know immediately when they are pitted and not. Fortunately, I had been eating with my best manners and, as such, taking rather mild mannered bites, so I returned the pit to my napkin, made sure my tooth was there with my tongue and returned to the conversation. Nothing out of the ordinary, but not the kind of thing you forget either.”
“The Salad!” Cleford was now incredulous and I realized at some point in our conversation, the sidewalk had ended and we had walked just far enough from the edge of town that our horizon had become nothing but a moonlit silhouette. Time to wrap it up, I thought.
“So I return to the salad and the conversation, and he turns to me and says “what’s the matter, did you get a pit?” and I said “yes indeed,” and he said nothing and I took another bite of olive and it too had a pit and I took the pit out with my hand and it was a tooth and he looked at me incredulously and said nothing. I dabbed around my mouth with the white napkin but there was no blood. I had to know for sure though and ate another olive. To my sheer horror, I found another tooth – a fat molar with a bifurcated root. And another tooth – an oversized canine with a worn gold filling. Covered in Italian Dressing.”
“That is…” Cleford sighed and looked as if he might be sick. He burped and gagged a bit and I helped him over to a cinder block Fireworks stand that was not currently loaded… “disgusting.”
“By the time I looked up from the third tooth, the man had already begun to make his departure alone towards the boardwalk. I felt the morning fog fill my head again and my way over to seating arrangements, finding only 7 names at the table of 7. Who was the 8th man? The man I had been talking to. I had to know.”
“Now as I was walking out” I started to remember the adrenaline, as if seeing the great author’s despair had increased my vigor, “I walked right by my acquaintance and… just me and him… and his eyes just went right through me… not the slightest recognition on his face of not only myself, but any physical matter approaching him at a distance of two feet away. But I continued on, seeing the ember of a cigarette of the Eighth Man. It started as a crawl and then faster and I broke into a full sprint to get my arms around it and stop the pendulum swing and meet some answers and so I tackled him and we got into a fist fight and he burned my right eye with his cigarette and I pulled out a knife and we slipped down the rocks into the water – ocean water turning hot blood cold – and he told me ‘you just stabbed the devil’ and I laughed joys of pride, knowing I had ended fifth-dimension suffering beyond human comprehension” I looked around to make sure no one was watching. Cleborne was still crumpled at the waist. His slow heaving slowly picking up momentum, woozy air bursting out of his diaphragm, he looked at me in textbook horror.
”But the Eight Man grabbed me by the neck and said ‘I guess that makes you the devil now’ and pushed himself off me and into the sea. And just like that…”
Cleborne vomited abruptly and keeled over. I gave him a hand back up but he struggled to regain his poise. It was time for the punchline. I moved my hand to the worn, sticky blade on my hip. I knew it would all be over any second – that preeminent scholar on all things lucifer, the man who spent day-in-day-out researching me, the only threat to my benevolence, would never make it to Maine. Cleburn looked me in the eyes and knew it was time.
“Italian Dressing?” he laughed maniacally.
His soon-to-be last words caught me by such surprise and I froze up. Instinctively, I put my right hand into my mouth to feel for my teeth. Were they all there? And in the instant, I felt it crash down into my nape, my scapula, my lungs. My trashcan of life had officially been dumped into the garbage truck hopper. Death was Peterbilt 520 covered in shit and Cleburne Crestinshield III was now the devil and as I lay dying he crumples over and says “Italian Dressing was actually invented in Massachusetts” and throws up again.