Visitation

OH, IT WAS one of those glorious days. The wind swishing around outside warm as spit, the sun rubbing its huge buttery face against the windows. Urla was upstairs making the bed, flipping the sheets up and up catching bellyfuls of air, watching them settle, then whoop up again. Not the way you’d make a bed, I’m sure. Never mind, Urla had time – elastic minutes, double-decker hours, days long as the Lord’s nose. She had time and she meant to spend it, splash it around, but whoop what was that? That shadow falling, like a leaf spiralling down, slipping the length of the sheers, slowly with a faint hisss.

Must investigate, Urla was like that, curious as a kid, so she marched around to the other side of the bed and whoa, hang on, it can’t be. But it was. Crumpled, curled up foetal on the floor, charred to a crisp like something long forgotten on the barbecue: a devil. Just a small one mind you, peewee league, about the size of a squirrel or a Ken doll. But a devil most definitely with those tiny horns and shredded bat’s wings and that spade-ended tail limp as a piece of burnt string.

Urla crossed herself, though she needn’t have. The thing looked pathetic, really. Pain was etched claw-deep on its scorched face and its wee tongue lolled out pink as a kitten’s (without that grimace, it might have been a downright handsome devil, too). Urla’s heart, easily stoked, began to warm. Poor creature. She was tempted to touch it, give it an experimental pinch to see if it was still kicking. Devils are supposed to be immortal, aren’t they? Urla sighed. What’s the world coming to, she couldn’t help but wonder, when this sort of thing starts dropping out of the sky like scat. Thank goodness she’d had the rug Scotchgarded. She supposed it might be a fallen angel, a stray Beelzebub, or some kamikaze fiend on an aborted mission. Divine mischief or debris, how can you tell? What did she know, anyway? Verne had been a hell-raiser all right, but as far as the real thing goes, go ask Gracie, her mother-in-law, she was a regular demonologist, knew all about devils and their devious ways. Religion! Her tongue wagged non-stop when she got on that subject. Not that she was talking to Urla any more. Nope, ever since Verne passed on, absolute silence (praise be for some things!).

Urla hunkered down for a better look. Her hand drifted forward, she was a tactile person, after all. “Gol, Url,” her friends liked to tease, “you’d hug just about anything.” Not that this little dickens here was all that tempting with its black reptilian skin. And, she had to consider, it might be carrying some deadly disease, might be crawling with infernal vermin. It might be radioactive, for goodness’ sakes, or rabid. A co-worker, some satanic comrade, might have given it the fatal bite. She didn’t imagine their hygiene was up to much down there. Nor their manners. Tempers would flare in that incinerating heat. Perhaps a dose of Lysol was in order, Urla thought, a light misting over the corpse. But was it dead or alive, she hadn’t settled that question yet.

Urla cocked her head and let her ear hover over the devil like a spaceship, zooming in close, hoping to pick up some signal, a muted psychic chatter, a whisper of evil. Nothing, not a sound. Though that smell, coiling around her face like steam, crawling up into her nostril, phew, that took her back a decade or two. Hair oil, pimple cream, lemon gin, laid rubber – a malodorous concoction. Distilled in human form it could only add up to one thing, a teenage boy. Didn’t Verne use to smell like that with her wrapped around him close as skin as they ripped up the back roads in his dad’s car, two drinking kissing fools, Christ they had fun. He was crazy about her. Times he was just plain crazy. Like when she went out with Bud Lawson over to the show in Espanola and Verne followed them, got his hands around Bud’s skinny neck in the drug store parking lot and she screamed. He loved her so much. Called her “kitten” and “cupcake” when they were first married. Boy, did that change. And fast. Before she knew it, she was getting “cow” and “elephant” and “stupid bitch.” Then he started taking those swipes at her. Fooling around, a slap here, a kick there, like he was trying to knock the fat off her ass, trying to punch it back into her face the way you punch down bread dough.

Sure she put on some weight after losing the baby, it wasn’t her fault. Talk about demonic, Verne had a mean streak in him, a wide ugly one that cut straight through his heart. Gracie couldn’t see it, naturally. He was nearly perfect as far as she was concerned, so she set to work on Urla. Why didn’t Urla lose a few pounds, at least try to make herself pretty for him, a little will power (and prayer) was all it took, she’d be steadier on her feet for one thing, wouldn’t keep falling down and bumping into things. How else could she possibly be getting those black eyes and bruises the size of saucers floating up her arm? Urla let her see them too, she didn’t try to hide anything. Gracie’s no fool – she knew what was going on. Once she even confided to Urla that Verne was having a “spiritual problem.” Wasn’t that a good one, a real thigh-slapper. Yeah, he was having a spiritual problem and it came out of a bottle like a genie. Urla even knew its name, Captain Morgan, swashbuckling in, dressed to the nines, flashier than the Holy Ghost, just dying to hit her with a revelation.

That one night Verne came home, pissed to the gills as usual, and pulled her out of bed, dragged her down the stairs into the kitchen, she was still half-asleep, dreaming, hallucinating, something weird going on in her head to account for the enormous hands that suddenly appeared through the ceiling like the kind you see in old religious movies reaching down from heaven. Lovely hands, strong and fatherly, uncalloused, well-manicured, smelling of Old Spice, each one the size of a man. Amazing. Well maybe she was getting tipsy on that blood cocktail sliding down her throat, Verne ramming her head into the fridge, a vile mix of words spewing out of his mouth. The hands looked real enough, though, and when they fluttered open like wings Urla saw plain and simple that she was going to die. This was it. Verne had finally done it. These heavenly hooks had come to get her, to deliver her soul from the swollen bag of pain that was her body, to cradle it like a newborn child. She was ready too, she wanted to go. But you know what? She had it figured wrong. What did the monstrous hands do but begin to applaud Verne, urging him on, clapping thunderbolts, it was deafening. Then bedamned if they didn’t ball up into fists and fall on Urla, pounding and pounding, driving her like a nail through the jeezly floor.

Oh, why not, she went ahead and placed a tentative finger on the devil, testing it the way you might a warming pot of soup. Somehow she didn’t expect it to have such solidity – a cold sad fact. The tip of her finger retained a darkish smudge, like she’d been stubbing out butts in an ashtray.

Urla frowned. Her mind was working like a Singer trying to stitch this thing together. Fear didn’t enter into it. She wasn’t about to start screeching like some women she knew might. All the same, she hoped this wasn’t the start of something, dishes leaping off the counter, poltergeists cleaving the curtains like buzzsaws. She had no intention of putting up with that kind of nonsense, thank you very much.

Disposal was obviously going to be a problem. How exactly did a person get rid of one of these anyway? Flush it down the toilet and you’d plug the works. Put it out with the garbage? Somehow that didn’t seem right. Besides, somebody might find it, wouldn’t that be a laugh? She could just pick it up by the tail like a dead rat and bury it in the garden. Sure, might as well pour in toxic waste. That’d be the end of her prize petunias.

Why her, was what Urla really wanted to know. It must mean something. She knew that meaning was attached like a price tag to most things. Might be some sort of omen. Might, and this thought suddenly elbowed its way into view, might be meant to make her feel guilty, stir up her conscience. Hell, if that was the case, let it rain devils, let it pour.

When Verne drowned himself was she sorry? Hardly, are you kidding? So she helped him along. That’s what a good wife is for, right? To lend a helping hand. Right. So she placed that helping hand smack on his chest and pushed, down, way down into the water. He was having a bath. It was easy as pie, he was half-corked anyway. Didn’t his eyes bug out, though? He must have been surprised. Urla could feel his heart leaping like a fish into her palm, faster and faster, then slower and slower. He was trying to say something to her but all that came out of his mouth were bubbles, sweet nothings, zeros – add them up and you had the sum total of all he’d ever said to her, really.

She baptized him all right. Gave him a whole new life, somewhere else. He should be grateful. She was.

Naturally the police asked a few questions about the accident. People weren’t blind; they could figure it out for themselves. They knew Urla had already served a life sentence. She’d done her time.

And you’d better believe it, Urla thought, finally gathering the cindery Lucifer into her arms and rising up, her old knees cracking, she’d work it out, she’d manage. It was like anything else in life, wasn’t it? A person simply found a place for things like this. They made them fit.

Amen.