Judgment Days

When I said that “One Thin Dime” was my first professionally published story, I left out the fact that I did have one story published before then, in about 2009, in the Yale Graduate School’s literary journal, Palimpsest. They didn’t pay me, or ask me to sign a contract, so I figure they won’t squawk if I publish it again here. So: bonus story!

On Saturday, May 14, at eleven-fifteen in the morning, the Devil appeared in five churches at once.

In Gloria, Maryland, in a little white church set in the middle of a quilt of early green cornfields, she was a barefoot little girl in a denim jumper, maybe eight years old, her feet and elbows turned to rust by tumbling through the southern clay. She decided that she should be called Princess.

In Williams, Massachusetts, in a brick church with blue-and-purple stained-glass windows that stood by a millstream (where, two hundred years before, three witches had been drowned), she was a short, pale college student whose glasses had obviously been chosen by her mother, and whose black T-shirt and leather skirt had obviously not. Her name would be Cate. If anyone asked, she would say it was short for Hecate.

In Brooklyn, New York, in an old cathedral where the paint was peeling from the saints’ stigmata, she was an old, old woman whose skin, far too dry, and whose flesh, far too thin, said “Cancer” as clearly as if they had spoken aloud. She wore a hospital gown, hospital slippers, and a plastic hospital bracelet that said her name was Mrs. Eumenides.

In Hard River, West Virginia, in a creaking gray meeting house that perched on a ledge over a played-out mine, she was, for variety, a 300-pound Hell’s Angel with a week’s worth of beard and two weeks’ worth of body odor, a bandanna, jeans, and no shirt. She called himself The Big Pig.

And in End Harbor, Maine, in a respectable hilltop church that looked out over its little fishing village and out over fifty miles of the gray Atlantic Ocean, she was a woman lost somewhere between forty and sixty. Her red dress and red hair seemed to be dusted with a layer of pale ash, and there were a thousand miles of scotch and cigarettes in her voice. She would call herself Lily. She had always liked the name.

In each church, she sat and looked around lazily, waiting for someone to come in. When someone did, in each place, she would make small talk for a while, and then, in each place, she would ask the same question:  “Do you believe in the Devil?”

In Gloria, Maryland, Donald Bryant stopped sweeping and took off his cap to fan his face. Not even noon, not even halfway through May: it was going to be a long, hot summer. And he was a big man, who could sweat through his work shirt in an hour flat. But the little girl just sat up on the pew and looked at him coolly, letting her question hang in the air. She wouldn’t say her name, so he just called her Princess.

“You mean like it is in the movies, Princess?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “No,” she groaned. “That’s all stupid. I mean for real.”

“Don’t you think that’s sort’a scary stuff for a little bit like you to be thinking about?”

“I am older than I look.” Her eyes darkened like a stormy sky, and the temperature in the church dropped five degrees. Donald stopped fanning himself.

“I’m just afraid of you having bad dreams, that’s all. Say, your Daddy know you’re here?”

Princess smiled. “Of course he does.”

In Williams, Massachusetts, Susan Rosskam leaned against a pew across the aisle from ‘Cate. The question reminded her of her seminary days, when she was one of a dozen young, liberal, middle-class, blonde-haired women who talked nervously about God and casually about changing the world. It was the sort of question she’d always wanted to ask her own professors, but had ended up talking about pastoral psychology and social justice instead. She had assumed at first that ‘Cate was a student at the college up the hill, and that she had come in to ask for a little divine help with her exams… but she doubted that the Devil would concern himself with a math final.

“Why do you ask?” she said at last.

‘Cate shrugged sullenly.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No.” She kept staring up with dark eyes, until Susan finally had to look away, up at the marble altar with its simple golden cross.

“I guess… I guess I’d have to say no.”

“But isn’t that part of your job?” ‘Cate asked. “I mean, you are a priest, right?”

“Yes. But not all priests believe exactly the same thing.”

“Huh. I thought that was the whole point of being a priest.”

In Brooklyn, New York, Father Mike Cortez said, “Of course.” He held his rosary by a single bead, holding his place among the “Hail Mary’s” with two fingers, and he turned to the old woman in the pew behind him. The heat from her fever hit his face like a draft from an open oven. She must be burning up, he thought. “Do you?”

“Of course,” she said, and smiled, showing yellow teeth so long they must have been dentures.

“Are you okay, señora? Do you need some help?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Eumenides, and she smiled, showing her long yellow teeth.

“Do you need me to call a doctor for you?”

“No, thank you.”

“Do you…” He swallowed. “Do you need the last rites?”

The old woman laughed, with a sound like radio static. “No, no. I just need someone to talk to. And you look like a fine young man.”

In Hard River, West Virginia, Mabel Gantry bit back a pert answer concerning the smell of brimstone and pretended to arrange the flowers on the communion table. She had to breathe through her mouth to keep from smelling the huge biker who sat in the front row and grinned at her, but she had determined to stay until he left, in case he was planning some mischief. She could feel him looking at her, and wished she hadn’t worn her white dress with the ivy flowers that crawled up and down her skinny frame, and invited his eyes to do the same.

The Big Pig, as she had instantly labeled him in her mind, leaned back in his folding chair. “I hope I’m not offending, lady. I’m really asking. It’s serious.”

“It certainly is,” Mabel snapped. “More than you could possibly know.”

“Try me. I know about some serious stuff.”

“I don’t doubt it, by the look of you.”

“Good.” The Big Pig crunched something to death between his teeth.  “Then we must have plenty to talk about.”

And in End Harbor, Maine, Father Robert Mackelroy sat on the chancel steps and rested his chin in his hand. He listened to the seagulls, and felt Lily’s eyes warming his face. He let his head slip, his fingers running into his graying hair, then sat up. She was still staring frankly at him, an unlit cigarette dangling from her fingers.

“I wish I could say yes,” he said.

Lily leaned forward. “Now that’s interesting,” she said, her voice purring in her throat. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it would make a lot of things easier. There would be someone, one big someone, to blame.”

“Hmm. Blame for what?”

“Wars. Stupidity. Child abuse.” He shrugged. “Light beer. Everything bad.”

Lily laughed pleasantly. “But you don’t blame the Devil for any of that.”

“No.” Robert half-smiled, but the lines on his face hardened. “We seem to manage that sort of thing just fine on our own.”

“Yes,” said Lily. “So you do.”

Gloria, Maryland:

“So what does the Devil look like?” Princess demanded, bouncing on her knees on the pew.

Donald started sweeping again while he thought it over. “Well… He’s got horns. And he’s all red, like paint…”

“No-no-no-no-no!” she chanted. “That’s all stupid movies again. I mean, what does he really look like?”

“Well…” Donald had a sudden thought. “You know what the boogeyman looks like?”

“Of course I do.”

“So you tell me.”

The little girl bit her lip and looked at the ceiling. “Big eyes. Big teeth. Big hands. Green hair.”

Donald finished sweeping with one last push. “Devil looks the same way.” Princess stuck her tongue out at him.

Williams, Massachusetts:

‘Cate hugged her knees and started rocking back and forth a little. “But doesn’t Jesus talk about the Devil?”

“Well, yes.” Susan sat down; she had always enjoyed this kind of freshman debate. “But everyone believed in the Devil back then. Maybe Jesus was just talking in a way he knew people would understand.”

“So if there isn’t any real Devil, then what was he talking about?”

“I think the Devil is just a way to make it easier to talk about evil. It’s easier to resist evil in yourself if you can imagine it has a face.”

“What kind of face?”

“Oh, you know. Horns, fangs, mustache, the little goatee. The usual.”

‘Cate stopped rocking, tilted her head, and smiled for the first time. “What makes you think the Devil is a man?”

Brooklyn, New York:

“Have you ever seen the Devil?” Mrs. Eumenides asked.

“Yes, I have.” Father Cortez’s fingers were starting to ache from pinching his rosary bead so long, but the old woman sat so still, as if she were afraid her bones would crumble, that he didn’t want to move.

“Will you tell me about it?”

“I see him every time I open up the newspaper. Everything’s going to hell so fast, it’s like it was planned. When my father came here, he worked hard, but he got by. Now, the time’s coming when I see my people work two and three jobs and not even make the rent.”

“And that’s the Devil’s work.” Her voice was sad, and kind.

Father Cortez nodded. With pulpit-thumping rhythm, he said, “This is not the way the world is supposed to be.”

Mrs. Eumenides looked around at the plaster saints. All of their faces were tilted up to the ceiling, but only half of them still had their eyes. “That depends on whom you ask,” she said.

Hard River, West Virginia:

The Big Pig began cracking his knuckles one by one. “See, lady, maybe you want to take me as an example. You can tell I ain’t your kind of people, and you sure as hell don’t want to talk to me, but you ain’t leavin’, either. So I figure you’re stayin’ ‘cause you’re afraid I’m gonna bust the place up soon as you turn your back, right? Which I ain’t, but just for example. Does that make me something like the Devil?”

“I wouldn’t flatter yourself,” Mabel said, and began to rearrange her gladiolas for the third time.

“Sure, sure. But that still leaves the question, right? So what does the Devil do all day?”

Mabel tried to think of a hymn to hum so she could ignore him better.

“Aw, come on. I know you’ve got opinions on the subject you’re just dyin’ to share.”

“Fine.” She put her hands on her hips and hoped that her eyes were “flashing like diamonds,” like they said in the romance novels. “I think the Devil is that little voice that says it’s okay to get drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, it’s okay to get an abortion, it’s okay to beat up your wife, it’s okay to not read the Bible, it’s okay to do whatever you want because no one’s really watching. That’s the Devil’s voice.”

The Big Pig grinned. “Now we’re gettin’ somewhere. ‘Least now we got our terms defined.”

End Harbor, Maine:

“What about hurricanes?” Lily asked, gesturing expansively at the sky with her cigarette. She and Robert had moved out onto the steps of the church so she could smoke. “Floods and droughts, that sort of thing?”

“What about them ?”

“Aren’t they considered ‘evil’, theologically? Part of a corrupt and fallen world ­- for which, of course, the Devil is to blame?”

“Well, a lot of people do think that.”

Lily looked at Robert with a smile that flushed his cheeks, despite the cool sea breeze. “But you don’t.”

“No.” Robert shook his head.  “I…  Sometimes I watch the storms blowing in, out of the water, and maybe someone is never going to come home because of it. And when those clouds are sitting out there, they look low, and stupid, and vicious…  But they’re just air and water. There’s no spirit. And evil definitely has spirit.”

For a while, they both watched the little white clouds that drifted lazily over the bay, casting their shadows over the water. “Besides,” Robert said, “if you read the Old Testament, whenever there’s a storm or a drought or a flood, it’s always God who does it.”

Gloria, Maryland:

Princess suddenly clapped her hands. “What about Noah’s Flood?”

Donald kept polishing the backs of the pews. “What about it?”

Princess walked her hands along the wood just in front of his rag, leaving fingerprints that were erased a moment later. “I thought God was supposed to be all good, but that was just mean.”

“Well, the people were being wicked, remember? And-”

“But-but-but! What about all the birds, and the kittens, and the puppies?”

“So that’s what Noah’s Ark was for-”

“But that’s just two of each! Does that mean that all but two of the puppies in the whole world were evil puppies?”

“Well…” Donald had stopped polishing, and now he stared off into the middle distance, out the open door, over the soybean fields. “Maybe…”

“And what about the babies?” Princess asked coldly. “What did all the babies do to make God mad?”

Williams, Massachusetts:

Susan shook her head. “Now, what you have to understand is that that’s a very old story, and, actually-”

“Does that mean it’s not true?” ‘Cate had stood up, and was pacing back and forth in front of the altar rail.

“No, it just means that people thought different things about God back then, so-”

‘Cate stopped right in front of Susan. “But it’s in the Bible now.”

“Yes…” Susan noticed for the first time that ‘Cate’s eyes were black, like oily water.

“But what?”

“But some of it is wrong.”  Susan’s voice cracked on the last word.

‘Cate thought about that for a while. Then she blinked – for the first time, it seemed. “Why are you even a priest?” she said.

Brooklyn, New York:

“Do you think God would ever want to do that again?” Mrs. Eumenides’ voice was as soft as butterflies’ wings, and the light coming through the faded stained glass windows was dying. The sun’s going behind a cloud, Father Cortez thought, and shivered.

“But He wouldn’t,” he said. “He made the covenant with us. He made a promise. The rainbow is His sign that He will never do that again.”

“Yes,” she said. “But do you think he might want to?”

The daylight kept fading and fading. A sudden wind swept a cloud of leaves and paper down the aisle. Father Cortez hurried to close the doors. Outside, the day had grown so dark so quickly that the streetlights had begun to flicker on.

“There’s a storm coming,” he said.

“Yes,” the old woman said. Her back was to the door, but somehow Father Cortez felt her eyes were still watching him. “But whose?”

Hard River, West Virginia:

“And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt;for all flesh had corrupted his way upon earth,” Mabel declaimed, as the trees rustled in the wind outside.

“Genesis six-eleven, gotcha.” The Big Pig leaned forward, and his eyes seemed to grow into ice-blue moons. “So that’s the little babies, too, huh?”

Mabel refused to stammer. “It says all flesh. Aren’t babies flesh too?”

“Yes, ma’ am, they are. But what did they do to get corrupt?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t need to know.”

Lightning cracked over the valley, and Mabel squeaked. The Big Pig grinned.  His eyes and teeth were bright in the stormy gloom.  “Just got to trust him, I guess.”

“That’s right.”

His grin vanished in the next flash of lightning. “I wouldn’t.”

End Harbor, Maine:

“There’s a storm coming,” Robert said. There was a darkness on the southern horizon: a squall line coming up the coast.

“No,” said Lily. “It won’t come here.”

Robert turned to explain to her the weather patterns of coastal Maine, but stopped. She was watching the faraway storm. She was lost in it. Robert waited. He could already feel the wind turning, pouring northeast out of the ugly bruise that was rising in the southern sky.

“…Suppose…” said Lily. “Suppose there is a Devil. And suppose being the Devil means that whatever God wants, she wants to stop. That means, when God wanted to destroy the world, all except for one pet He happened to like… then she tried to save it. All the bad people, and all the good people, and all the babies, and all the animals, not just two of each. And maybe,” she laughed, “maybe she tried to save the unicorns, too.”

She turned to Robert, and there was an old sadness in her smile. “But even if she’s the Devil, the Big Number Two in all creation, she isn’t God. He is. And all the doors of the deep, and all the windows of heaven, are opened, and there’s nothing she can do. So she decides to save one family, just one family. She’ll hold off the whole host of angels and all their swords of fire, if she has to. Just one family. And they’re good people. Don’t believe the press, there were good people, as good as anyone I’ve met recently. Four children – the oldest is eight years old. So she keeps the water off their house. But that’s all she can do. So they have to listen to their neighbors, their friends, their grandparents and aunts and uncles, and cousins… everyone they love in the whole world – and the whole world, too! …Drowning. Terrible, to hear so many people drowning. For forty days! You could go insane, listening to that. Until finally… finally, they beg her to go away. Leave them to the water. Let them go. They beg her.  They’re all crying…  Until she lets them go.  She lets the water in. But she lets it in quickly. At least, for them, it’s quick.”

Lily’s storm-gray eyes looked back out over the sea. She smoked in silence for a while. When she spoke again, it was through clenched teeth:

“And Noah… got drunk.”

Robert watched the tip of her cigarette, its smoke drawing pictures on the air.  He breathed deeply, and could feel the tide turning down in the harbor.  “I suppose,” he said, “that I could sympathize.”

“With Noah,” Lily spat.

“With the Devil,” Robert said. “…If that’s really what the Devil were like.”

Lily smiled, but did not look at him again. “There,” she said. “I told you that storm wouldn’t last.”

Gloria, Maryland:

The rain was passing as quickly as it had come. Princess held Donald’s hand as they stood under the eaves, watching the silver curtain of the storm passing away to the east. They could smell the grass growing in the soaked earth.

“See, Princess?” Donald said. “I told you it would pass on by.” His hand was sweaty, and he was sure he had heard a tornado rumble by overhead.

Princess smiled up at him. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”

“Same here, Princess. Same here.”

Donald patted her hand, then went back into the church to finish the Saturday cleaning. Princess stayed on the steps, looking up into a sky full of breaking clouds.

“There’s the rainbow,” she said.

Williams, Massachusetts:

‘Cate stood in the sunlight, arms open to the raindrops still being brushed from the leaves by the wind. She watched Susan from the corner of her eye. Susan couldn’t see the rainbow that hung over the church behind her.

“When you sign a contract,” ‘Cate said, “it’s usually a good idea to read the fine print.”

“Fine print?” Susan felt slow just watching ‘Cate, who was so restless, waving her hands as if constantly brushing off flies.

“Sure. Article one, paragraph nine, clause eleven. ‘I will never again send a flood to destroy the earth.’” ‘Cate wrapped her arms around herself, and closed her eyes. “Read the fine print.  Next time, the gloves come off. Next time, He’ll send fire.”

Susan felt as if she were leaning over a deep well. “‘I baptize you with water,’” she murmured. “‘…But one is coming who will baptize you with fire.’”

‘Cate nodded. “The fine print.”

Brooklyn, New York:

Mrs. Eumenides opened her eyes. “I’m sorry, young man. You came in here to talk to God, and ended up talking to me.”

“It’s no problem, really.” Father Cortez checked his watch, and saw that he was still holding his rosary, so tightly that his fingertips had turned white. He put the beads in his pocket and shook out his aching hand.

The old woman smiled with those long teeth again. “Would like to tell me your prayer? I would talk to God for you.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m sure He knows it already.” He crossed himself, backing up the aisle.

“I’m sure He does,” said Mrs. Eumenides. “But what will He do about it?”

Father Cortez stood before the altar, looking up at the Christ crucified, who always looked up to Heaven, never down to him. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“Neither do I,” said the old woman sadly. “Not anymore.”

Hard River, West Virginia:

Mabel Gantry was the only one who recognized her. Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull with the force of the realization. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” she hissed.

When The Big Pig stood up, he was two whole feet taller than Mabel, who held her Bible out in front of her, with the embossed cross on the leather binding pointed right at him.

“All right, all right,” he said. “It ain’t any bad-moon business I’m here on. I was just wanting the conversation.”

“I’ll have no converse with the Devil, you serpent! I cast thee out!”

“Okay, whoa, okay. I’m goin’.”  The Big Pig turned and walked down the aisle.  His footsteps rattled the windowpanes. When he opened the door, his shadow blocked out the light. Mabel’s arm was trembling from holding out her heavy Bible for so long.

The Big Pig looked back once, and Mabel would have sworn that his eyes flashed, not red, but green. “I just hope,” he said. “I just hope He stands by you, the way you stand by Him.”

And then he was gone.

End Harbor, Maine:

Robert walked Lily to her car, a tiny red Audi convertible. She leaned against it, and lit her sixth cigarette.

“You’re a dear man,” she said. “Not many people can listen the way you do.”

“It goes with the job.”

“Ha. You’d be surprised.”

“Anyhow, there’s not many people who can talk the way you do,” he said. “Not around here, at least.”

“No, I wouldn’t imagine so.” She blew smoke up into the clear blue sky, where the wind caught it and played with it until it was gone.

“Where are you off to from here?” Robert asked.

Lily smiled. “There’s something I need to do, down the road. There’s an old friend I need to have a long talk with. I asked him a question once, a while ago, and I think I’m about due for an answer.”

“What was the question?”

Lily looked out over the ocean one last time, out over the waves that had been tumbling against the same rocks for a hundred million years, and sighed. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” she said.

They let the roll of the rising tide talk for a while.

“If you ever happen to pass this way again…” Robert said.

Lily leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I might even do that.” She opened her car door and settled into her seat as lightly as a feather falling.

“I hope you find your friend,” Robert said. “And I hope he answers your question.”

“I hope so, too,” said Lily, and she started her car. “If he does…”

“Yes?”

Robert looked down into the little town where he’d been born. “If he does, will you come back, and tell me what he said?”

Lily’s eyes glittered. “It’s a date,” she said.

And so, in the golden late afternoon of May 14, the Devil left five churches at once.

In Gloria, Maryland, a little girl ran barefoot into the woods and down a winding muddy path that was not on any map.

In Williams, Massachusetts, a pale young woman hopped over a stream (where, two hundred years before, three schoolteachers who had insulted the mayor’s daughter had been drowned as witches).

In Brooklyn, New York, an old, old woman tottered around a corner into a dead-end alley, and opened a door half-hidden behind mountains of garbage bags.

In Hard River, West Virginia, a motorcycle smashed through a guardrail and sailed out into the air over a gorge the locals called the Devil’s Leap.

And in End Harbor, Maine, a little red sports car roared up and over a hill. Dust rose up from the road like smoke for a long time after it was gone.

Despite the headlines in the Weekly World News that month, it was forty days and forty nights before anyone saw the Devil again.

END.