And the Devil Said, Wait by Jenni Wiltz

I met the devil when I was seven years old.  He came to me in the shape of a bony brown mutt with a long face and two missing teeth.  I pet him, called him a nice boy, and turned to go inside.  He cleared his throat and said, “Wait…”

That was all it took.  I was his.  I would have done anything for a dog that talked.

From that moment on, the devil followed me like a game show host.  He carried a long, skinny microphone with him, sometimes in his mouth and sometimes shoved between his toes.  When he wanted me to say something, he held it up, careful to keep the cord away from my clumsy feet.

One day, he followed me home from the twisty-slide park and sat down on my driveway.  I had grass stains on my pants and was trying to figure out if my mom would notice.  “What do you think?” I asked.  “Am I busted?”

“Assuredly,” he said.

My fingers dug into the scruff at his neck.  “Someone needs to brush you.  You’re all tangled.”

“I’ll get right on it,” he said.  “But first, I’d like to hear what’s bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me.”

The dog dropped the microphone and flapped his cheeks. “You know I can make it all go away, don’t you? All you have to do is tell me what happened.”

“Maybe there’s something.”

“I knew it.” The devil picked up the microphone and held the fleecy foam cover to my lips.  “A little louder, please.”

“It wasn’t fair,” I said.

His black dog lips curled just like a person’s.  “I know, darling.  Now tell me why.”

I looked over my shoulder at the living room window.  I got in trouble if I didn’t tell Mom as soon as I got back from the park.

“I’m waiting,” the devil said. “She’s not.”

I didn’t believe him. My mom was always waiting, but this was important. “There are these pencils.”

“Pencils?”

“Not the yellow ones you have to walk to the front of the class to sharpen.”

The devil blinked.  “You mean there are other kinds?”

“They have twelve little pencil tips inside.  When you wear one down, you just pull it out, stick it down the hole in the top of the pencil, and it pushes another sharp one out at the bottom.”

“So you’re lazy,” the devil said.  “You don’t want to sharpen your pencil.”

I shook my head.  “You don’t get it. These pencils come in different colors, and they each have a different fruit on them.  The purple one has blackberry, the red one has strawberry, the orange one has peach, and the yellow one has lemon.  Now do you get it?”

“I’m a bit slow,” the devil confessed.

“They cost me two months’ allowance.”  I told the devil about the student store in the cafeteria, where you could spend your allowance on clicky pens, stickers, tiny staplers, and glue sticks.  “I put them in my desk at school. I even made sure to hide them behind the yellow ones.  For the first week, I just left them there so I could see how pretty they were.  I didn’t want to use them because then they wouldn’t be sharp anymore.  I have to have things perfect.”

“I know the type,” the devil said.  Then he narrowed his eyes, yellow and round like popcorn kernels.  “Is that all you have to say?”

“Do you know about time tests?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then there’s more.  Mr. Goodman makes us do these tests.  It’s a whole page of multiplication.  You get two minutes to do it and you can’t miss any.  If all your answers are right, you get to move up to the next level.”

“And what level are you?”

“Linus.  I passed Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Pigpen.  I still have to do Sally, Peppermint Patty, and Snoopy.  If you pass Snoopy, you can retire.”

“I see,” the devil said.  “You need all those freshly tipped pencil points so you can complete your test in the allotted time without having to lose fifteen seconds to sharpen your pencil.  So I was right.  It really is about sharpening after all.”

“No, you still don’t get it.”  I wondered how to explain this to a dog.  “Do dogs have things they collect?”

A string of drool hung from his right jowl.  “Some dogs do.”

“Are you one of them?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, wagging his tail.  “I collect people.”

“Then you should understand.”

“But are you collecting the tests or the pencils?”

“I collect everything,” I said.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Someone stole my pencils.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.  But you’re a dog.  You can sniff them out, right?”

“I can do many things,” the dog said, laying his ears flat against his head.

“I want you to find out who stole my pencils.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”  The devil got up and shook himself, flinging drool and dog hair all over.  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

I licked my lips.  Grown-ups only asked questions when they already knew the answer or when there was something they wanted you to say.  I didn’t know what the devil wanted. “Can you repeat the question?”

“Is there anything else you want from me, love?”  He pressed the microphone up against my lips.

I thought about the thief, and how he or she must have known my pencils were there.  If they had reached inside my desk just looking for something to write with, they would have emerged with one of my decoy Ticonderogas—not all four of my brand new pencils.  “Yes,” I said.  “I want you to punish them.”

*

The devil was gone for a week.  I thought he would come back faster than that, but the thief must have been slippery and see-through, like the ghosts on Scooby-Doo.  When I saw him again, I was home after school.  He stood in the backyard outside my bedroom window, fogging it up with his hot dog breath.  He carried the microphone in his mouth.

“You’re back,” I said, wondering where he plugged that thing in.  The cord ran all the way through my backyard and disappeared under the fence.

“I know who took your pencils.”  He sat down and put the microphone in his right paw.  He used his other paw to tap the top of the microphone.  “Is this thing on?”

“Who took my pencils?  I missed three on my time test today.”

“That was careless of you,” the devil said, shaking his head. “I thought you might want to see the culprit for yourself. Would that cheer you up?”

The culprit.  I didn’t know what that meant, but there was a girl in my class whose last name was Culver.  That was close enough.  “So it was Melissa?”

“Do you have another guess?”

“You said you were going to show me.”

The dog shook the microphone back and forth.  “I never said I was going to show you.  I said I thought you might want me to.  Words, darling, very important things.  Try to keep up.  Do you have another guess?”

I thought about the girls in my class:  Bhavana, the strange Indian girl who always smelled like onions.  Monica, the chubby girl whose plump cheeks made her look like she had a cantaloupe in her mouth.  Tina, the girl who wore purple overalls with a rainbow-striped Health-tex shirt three times a week.  They weren’t very smart, but they weren’t mean, either.  “First, tell me if it was a girl.”

“I can’t do that, darling,” he said.

On Scooby-Doo, there were two or three possibilities for the bad guy. I always picked the wrong one, but this time, it was real life. I had to be more careful.  “It wasn’t a girl in my class, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” the devil answered, pulling back the microphone.

“I bet it wasn’t a boy either,” I said, pretty sure the ones in my class didn’t want a pink strawberry pencil.

“You are correct, love.”

That left Mr. Goodman or Jesse, the blue-smocked janitor who cleaned the classrooms once we were gone.  I should have known, I thought.  Only a grown-up would take something that meant so much to a kid.  “So which one of them did it?  Mr. Goodman or the janitor?”

But the dog just sneezed.  One of his ears turned inside out, and the pink swirly parts reminded me of a shell my mom had on her bookcase.  He shook his head and said, “You tell me who did it, love.”

“But you said you’d find out who it was.”

“And I did, just like you asked me to. But you said nothing about telling you what I found out.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Life’s not fair, sweetheart. Look at me, I’m a dog.  I eat things people throw away.”

“I eat hamburgers,” I said.

He held up his nose and sniffed the air.  “Not tonight you don’t.”

I groaned.  The whole day could be ruined by the choices Mom made in the kitchen.  Sometimes they were good, like macaroni and cheese.  Sometimes they were bad, like tuna chip casserole.  “What do you smell?”

“Meatloaf.”

This was bad.  “With onions?”

“Yessiree,” the devil said, tail thumping the ground.

“Why does she do that?”

“People like onions.”

“Not me.”  I stomped my foot.  If we were having onions for dinner and the dog wasn’t going to tell me who the thief was, I didn’t have a lot to look forward to for the rest of the evening.  “I want to know who stole my pencils.”

“You think about it tonight.  We can discuss it tomorrow.”

“We can discuss it now,” I said, the way my mom did when my dad said he didn’t want to help pick out new wallpaper.

That’s when my mom whistled for dinner.  She whistled, from the kitchen, loud as the school bell.  Then we all had to come running from wherever we were, just so we wouldn’t have to hear that sound again.

“Soup’s on,” the devil said.  He laughed, and it sounded like he was hissing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m the dog, but you’re the one being summoned to your dinner by a whistle.  In ten years, my dear, you will call this irony.”

And that was when I knew—the devil didn’t know what he was talking about.  “I hate ironing,” I said, even though I’d never done it.

*

That night, I watched game shows with my mom and flipped through a dinosaur book I got at the library.  At eight-thirty, I put my pajamas on and brushed my teeth, swallowing the toothpaste like I always did.  Mom tucked me into bed with Mr. Tudball, my teddy bear.  I told Mr. Tudball what was happening, and we talked about who had more to gain by taking my pencils.

Neither of us could figure out what Mr. Goodman would do with more pencils.  He had a mug full of crayons and another full of pens and pencils on top of his desk.  Why did he need mine?  But then again, his collection would be the perfect place to hide the pencils he’d stolen from me.

I didn’t know much about Jesse.  He had a fluffy black beard and moustache.  He always wore a Rams jersey under his smock and he spoke Spanish with some of the kids.  He lifted trashcans as if they weighed nothing, and I wondered if he was strong for a grown-up or if they could all do that.  Maybe he tipped over my desk the way he tipped over trashcans and picked up my pencils when they fell to the floor.

“Then he should have put them back,” Mr. Tudball said.

*

The next day, the devil found me while I was riding my bike.  He ran up next to me and barked six times.  “I see you,” I said.

“Just making sure,” he replied.  “Nice wheels.”

My bike, a hot pink Royce Union, had taken a long time to grow into.  I didn’t have streamers or those fluorescent beads some kids had on their spokes, but I did have a bright pink Snoopy basket on the front.

“Do you have an answer for me, love?”

“Yes,” I said, pushing backward on my pedals to brake.  “But I want to know what happens after I tell you.  Are you going to punish the culprit?”  I pronounced the strange word exactly as he had.

Instead of answering, he sat down and lifted his right back leg.  He nipped at the fur on his forehead with his claws.  “You’ll have to excuse my fleas. I spent last night in the back of a truck.”

“Where’s your microphone?”

“This conversation is off the record.”

Ah-ha, I thought.  So that long cord attached to his record player.  I would never have suspected the devil enjoyed sing-a-long songs.  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“Could you repeat it for me, darling?”

“Are you going to punish the person who took my pencils?”

“Assuredly.  But let’s make a bet first.”

“What kind of bet?”

“If you guess the culprit correctly, I will punish him or her in any way you see fit.  However, if you guess incorrectly, I will punish you in the manner I see fit.  It’s a splendid deal for you, because I know you’ve thought long and hard about your answer.”

My stomach started to tingle the way it did when I had to go to the dentist.  Making this bet was like agreeing to a blind trade with your Garbage Pail Kids, a mistake I only made once.  I lost Luke Puke that way, to a curly-haired boy named Matt.  It was not the way to build a collection.

The dog’s tongue hung over his front teeth.  “Do we have a deal?”

“No.”

“Why not?  Don’t you want the guilty to be punished?  Don’t you want to see justice served?  Think of your pencils,” he said.  “Think of how satisfying it would have been to hold one in your grasp, to write so crisply and cleanly with that sharp new tip, to look down and see those beautiful pastel tubes lined up in a row on your desk, all perfect and all belonging to you.”

He circled my bike, flicking his tail between the spokes of my wheels.  “It’s such a shame to think of your allowance being stolen from you like that.  What did you ever do to harm this person?  Why would they want to keep you from enjoying what’s rightfully yours?”

He stopped and looked me in the eye.  “Wouldn’t you love to have another chance at those time tests with your choice of blackberry, peach, lemon, or strawberry…to smell the fruit fragrance wafting toward you as your sweaty little palm scribbles away?”

There were lots of times in life when grown-ups didn’t pay attention, and lots of times when the crooks on Scooby-Doo didn’t pay attention, but I’d always thought the devil would have done better than all of them.  “No,” I said, putting my feet back on the pedals.

“Where are you going?” The devil raised his dog lips and showed me his pointy front teeth.

“Home.  We’re having tacos for dinner, with no onions in the meat.  Mom promised.”

The dog’s ears flattened against his head.  “But you said you wanted revenge.”

“I do, but you don’t want to help me.”

“Oh, I do!” he whined.  “You have no idea how much I do.”

“Go home.  You don’t belong here.”

“I belong everywhere, sweetheart.”  He set one paw on my front fender and used it to stand on his hind legs, raising his eyes to level of mine.  “You can’t run away from me.”

“And you can’t make me take that bet.”

“Perhaps not.  But you’re on my list now.”

“Get off my bike,” I said, twisting the handlebars to shake him loose.

“I’ll come back for you, little one,” he said softly. “You’ll be more receptive when you’re older.  You’d be surprised what people will agree to when they’re in love.”

I thought about the bad guys on Scooby-Doo and how someone was always smart enough to catch them.  They never got away, not once.  “No,” I said.  “I’ll still be me.”

The devil tilted his head and blinked his yellow eyes.  “I almost believe you, sweetheart. Now, then, just between us.  Why didn’t you take the bet?”

I looked down and saw another burr in the scruff of his neck. This time, I left it there. “I never told you they were scratch-and-sniff pencils.”

He groaned and held a paw to his eyes.  “How careless of me!  It’s embarrassing, really.  I haven’t made a mistake like that since…well, never you mind.”

“Now it’s your turn,” I said, feet on my pedals, ready for a quick getaway.  “I want to hear you say it.  Who really took my pencils?”

The devil curled his lips.  “I did. “But you already knew that, of course.”  Then he trotted down the block, twitching his tail.

I watched him go and breathed a sigh of relief.  It was Scooby-Doo all over again.  I’d been sure it was Mr. Goodman.

# # #

Jenni Wiltz holds an MA in creative writing from California State University, Sacramento. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row app, Gargoyle, the Portland Review, and the Sacramento News & Review. When she’s not writing, she enjoys researching tiaras and running the trails near Folsom Lake. She lives in Pilot Hill, California. Read more here: http://jenniwiltz.com 

Photo: Wyatt Ryan

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