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Andrea sprawled, her head on the belly of a pale young woman with delicate bones and her feet on a moonfaced youngster who appeared to be still in the throes of Felicity's laughter.

Chapter Thirty-five

Wherein Ben Redman meets the devil. The Shades' bus is on the road, and Major Notz intercepts the travelers
.

Ben Redman woke up in the still-empty club when the first daylight came through the open door. He had dreamt that he was traveling in a car toward Andrea. His old girlfriend Felicity was there, too. He thought about asking the Nag Hammadi text what he should do, but he already knew. He had to travel in a car to find the women in his dream. The lack of a precise destination was not an impediment, since chance, like the oracle of the book, was going to take him where he needed to go.

With the satchel of books slung over his shoulder, Ben extended his thumb to the road. Almost immediately, he got a ride from the devil. Or so the red-haired, one-eyed man with two curvy horns, driving a vintage Oldsmobile, claimed.

“Where to, boy? The name's Mephistopheles,” he said, winking.

The devil always winks—this had been one of Rabbi Zvetai's first lessons, and Ben, like the rest of his classmates, spent many hours practicing facial rigidity so as not to inadvertently wink. Mephistopheles winked more than once.

“Did you see them bonfires New Year's Eve?” (Wink.) “Them Cajuns was burning boats and log houses on the levee all night.” (Wink.) “Everybody and their mama was there. Biggest party you ever did see. They fried anything with juicy meat in the whole swamp.” (Wink.)

The devil was loquacious, so Ben didn't get a word in edgewise.

“It's my very, very favorite season, and today is Epiphany, my very favorite day. Gifts to the newborn. Got a trunk full of them.”

Ben managed to enquire why Christ's holy days were his favorite.

“Why?” The devil winked indignantly. “For one, when the spirit of partyin' takes hold of a certain number of people, everybody else be gettin' the urge. I be the chief proponent for these human foolishnesses: joy, enthusiasm, happiness, contentment, lust by licking, sucking, and fucking, singing loud, masturbating in the shower, eating meat raw and cooked, sucking marrow out of bones, dancing, bending people in shapes they didn't even suspect they could be bent in, using individuals and groups as toys in games of pure childish mindlessness, traveling without any money, pushing tourists into canals, running Christ for president, feeding canaries to alligators …”

The devil's list was very long, and the longer he went on, the more articulate he became, dropping the friendly rube effect that had characterized his earlier speech. All these symptoms Ben recognized from his lessons. He closed his eyes and heard many delightful sounds behind the devil's soothing litany—the sea at Carmel beach, the seals at the New Orleans zoo, the chimes of Andrea's voice. The devil is pure comfort, thought Ben. If I didn't have this odd idea that I must serve God, I'd really love to hang out with him.

“Look in the backseat,” said the devil. “I have some CDs there.”

The devil's CDs were an odd mixture—some Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, the Temptations, Sonny Boy Williamson, Johnny Cash, the Sex Pistols.

“What, no Rolling Stones?” Ben asked, almost winking himself.

“I hate clichés,” said the devil. “I like music by people I helped personally, like Frank …”

Ben slipped
The Very Good Years
in the CD player, and Sinatra accompanied them the rest of the way.

“Do you really know everything?” asked Ben.

“Well, yeah, but it's a big bore. I prefer to keep myself in the dark.”

Ben contemplated the awesome proposition of willful ignorance. Keeping oneself in the dark was a bigger deal than knowing everything. How can one not know what one knows? It's just not possible.

“The upcoming fight between good and evil,” Ben wanted to know, “is there going to be a winner?”

“I hope not,” said the devil. “If goodness wins, everyone will be filled with ennui. If evil prevails, it will be the same. Have to keep people on edge.”

“Will humanity survive the battle?”

“Of course. Most people will hide. The earth is full of fissures, crevasses, hollows, caves, nooks, crannies, closets, and shelters. I know because I put them there myself.”

Ben felt suddenly starstruck. “What is your favorite pastime?”

“Words. I like to start talking, and then I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say next.”

How very different from our theological procedures, marveled Ben. We direct everything toward God, leaving nothing to chance. The devil just starts something and keeps going without any idea of where or why.

“Are you really the devil?” Ben was starting to worry.

“Are you really Ben Redman?” asked the devil. “Mardi Gras is coming up in a few weeks. Everybody will be someone else. Ask me then if I'm really the devil. Maybe I'll be God for Mardi Gras.”

They had just passed the town of Grosse Tête. In the sky, a flock of ducks changed formation behind the leader, turning north. The leafless willows allowed for glimpses of the vast swamp that stretched all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The swamp water was red and rusty. They crossed over the Vermillion River and Bayou Teche. Rusty oil derricks bobbed up and down like monks doing their prostrations. The oil beneath them signaled the beginning of the salt domes. The land swelled imperceptibly at first, then bubbled up into hills that rose suddenly from the swamp.

“Here they are, beneath us, the domes of salt, my domes of salt, my sparkling crystal balls.”

According to the devil, the huge salt balls left over after the evaporation of the ocean that covered North America were his property. In fact, that whole ocean had been his property until God saw fit to hurl a flaming meteorite at it. All that was left were these balls of salt that were very dear to him, family jewels of some sort. An oil company drilled through the crown of some of the domes a couple of decades before. A freshwater lake invaded and ate the salt. Two of the remaining ones contained the U.S. petroleum reserve and the Akzo salt mine. The third and fourth were being currently occupied by entities that caused him grave doubts. That's where they were headed now.

“Why is salt so precious to you?” asked Ben.

“Why? Why?” sputtered the devil. “You ask why? Because God's world is bland and tasteless without salt. Because people are just meat without salt. Because those poor souls Jesus called the salt of the earth are mine. Every time you put salt on your potatoes you pray to me! There is salt in your tears! Every time you cry you pray to me! All your tears are mine! That's why.”

Ben didn't want to get the devil too worked up. So far he had been most congenial.

The Shades' bus crossed the Vermillion River a few moments after the devil's Oldsmobile. Felicity lay with her eyes closed, listening to the Shades sing silly songs and play dozens.

After I did my tricks

I went to the lady doctor.

I was her fellatrix

And she was my proctor.

And: “Hey, you so loose you have a dick tattooed between your tits!”

“Yeah, and you got ‘Pay as You Enter' writ above your bush!”

Which may have been true, for all Felicity knew. But God, did she enjoy silliness! There wasn't enough left in the world to fill a thimble. When they passed a pasture full of grazing sheep, Felicity pointed them out to her playmates.

“Look, Shades, look at the sheep!”

Screaming with delight, the shades waved at the animals they'd never seen before.

Felicity had brought some fruit along, and distributed some mangoes to the happy shades. They bit into them and, juice dribbling down their chins, they reveled in the strange new taste. Whatever else I might do in this life, thought Felicity, will be both forgiven and less significant than this. I have given the innocents sheep and mangoes.

Andrea had seen many sheep but she had never eaten a mango. She delighted in it like a Shade.

“Are there sheep in heaven?” a shade asked.

“Of course,” Felicity reassured her, “or else the angels would bugger each other.”

They came upon some machines lopping off the tops of cypresses from the elevated highway, so they had to stop.

“They are cutting off the cedars of Louisiana!” exclaimed Andrea.

The Shades crowded at the windows of the bus and made faces at the men in the machines. Some of the men laughed, but others gave them the finger. In any case, they had no intention of letting the bus pass.

Felicity stepped out of the bus, followed in close order by the disheveled passengers, and gestured to one of the hard hats standing by the biggest machine. He turned to her.

“How long …” is all she was able to say before she saw his face. What she had taken for a foreman was a four-foot gnome with a hairy pig snout and burning yellow eyes. He had small, pointed ears and tufts of red bristles coming out of them. From his mouth, a long thin tongue shot out about three feet, launching a fire red spitball in Felicity's direction. She stepped aside just in time. It landed at her feet and burned with a sizzle through a pile of leaves.

Felicity looked up at the other workers in the machines and saw that under their hard hats they were all monsters of some sort.

After being startled at first, Felicity began to laugh, and her laughter became contagious. The Shades gathered behind her started laughing also, and a cloud of laughter floated right up to the strange creatures. They began sputtering one after another, letting out raspy cascades of giggles. As they caught the wave of hilarity, the creatures began to disintegrate. The harder they laughed, the wispier they became, until they vanished, leaving behind only silvery tinkles of sound.

“Remember this, friends,” Felicity said, wiping her eyes. “We seem to have a weapon.”

Ah, thought Andrea, it's a weapon I don't yet know how to use.

Neither Andrea nor the Shades seemed concerned with their destination. Felicity was astonished that they did not ask, and glad. She would have had to tell them, “To the End of the World,” and it would have spoiled the party.

They piled back on the bus and it was a quarter of an hour before anyone could look at Felicity without bursting out laughing. By that time they had reached the rise of the domes.

Shortly after the turn to Armadillo Island, Felicity spotted the major's Humvee parked on the shoulder of the road. The major sat sphynxlike inside, the seams of his white uniform strained by rolls of fat. He was alone in the vehicle. Oh, Uncle, you did come to help me! Felicity was glad. He had not abandoned her.

She pointed him out to Andrea. “Our ally. He is waiting for us.”

They pulled alongside, and Felicity climbed out, followed by Andrea.

“Where is your chauffeur, Major?”

“Get in, Felix.” The major was curt.

Andrea was right behind Felicity. “I'm going with you.”

The Shades tumbled out of the bus and watched, quite bewildered by what looked like their leader's defection to the fat soldier. Felicity reassured them.

“Go on, children. We will see you at Armadillo Island. Remember mangoes and comedy! This man is my friend.”

The Shades were not convinced. They remembered the last time Felicity had gone off in a car with a strange man. That man had not been her friend. They surrounded the Hummer.

The major sat still, but Felicity was embarrassed. “This man is my uncle, really. I'm safe. Tell them, Major.”

Without warning, the major thundered in a commanding voice:

“Scram, munchkins! I am Jupiter and this is my thunderbolt!” He lifted a huge machine gun from the floor at his feet and aimed it at her friends.

Notz had made his point. At Felicity's urging, the reluctant Shades regained the painted bus, which looked sad, as if it had lost its luster. The sad bus drove away with a lurch.

“Jesus, Uncle, are you into scaring children now?” Felicity's reproach was not gentle.

From the backseat, Andrea observed the oddly similar backs of their heads. She knew that they were not blood relatives, but at this moment, their necks held a similar stiffness, poised for battle. The major looked imperial behind the wheel of his Humvee, a wide-hipped machine that reminded Andrea of a turtle. Andrea sensed the affection Felicity had for this man, her protector, cajoling, educating, and raising her “for something special.” Felicity seemed very far from her right now, and Andrea felt a sharp, familiar pain.

The major started up the engine, and they got back on the road. Tanker trucks carrying Louisiana's chemical products barreled by. Liquid petroleum gas. Molten sulfur. Liquid oxygen. Chlorine gas. Train tracks ran parallel to the highway, flashing in and out of the swamp. An egret, neck stretched out, was poised at attention over a dead cypress stump. A row of white cattle egrets perched on a duck blind in Lake Pelba. While machines pushed impatiently forward, nature looked expectant.

This was the time, Felicity thought, that the major needed to answer the question they had always held between them like a secret love child. Felicity had often imagined that the major was not simply a family friend, but her real father.

“Uncle, what was I supposed to be when I grew up? It is critical that I know. I'm not a child anymore.”

But Notz spoke to her exactly as he had when she was a child. “You, my dear, are the princess of salt, my viol. You will grow up to be salt in all our bland jambalaya.”

This went way back. When she was a little girl, Major Notz had told her the story of the Salt Princess. Once upon a time, the world was a sad and dismal place. All the food was white and the people were all random. No one did anything on purpose—everything was left to chance. If it rained, people got wet, caught colds, and died. When they were hungry, they got in lines at food centers and were given tasteless white food—mashed squash, oatmeal, egg whites, turnips. They wore state-issued raincoats and listened to long speeches from evenly spaced loudspeakers in cement squares. Their cement-cubicle houses stood around the cement squares. The temperature inside and outside was always sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.