When Devils Sing(44)
The devil went
Down
Down
Down
Down to Georgia
The devil went
Down
Down
Down
And never left
They say
You meet the devil
At the crossroads
Down in Georgia
When there ain’t no options left
The tale was an old Carrion legend. It warned that, in Southwest Georgia, there was not one devil but three. They were known as brothers, each one more wicked than the one that came before.
There’s the devil you know
The devil you don’t
The devil you wish you’d never met
Years ago, Ajay taught Neera the song as a music lesson but also as a cautionary tale.
“The three devils are as cunning as they are cruel,” Ajay had told her one hazy summer afternoon, leaned over the body of his Yamaha guitar. “They each prey on desperate people, offering them the one thing they want most.”
With a child-sized guitar in her lap, Neera, five and wide-eyed, gulped. Intrigued, she had asked, “Really? Could they give me a pet tiger? One that can talk?”
Ajay smirked, ruffling her long black hair. “The brothers can only give what’s already in your heart.” Then, Neera remembered clearly—how her uncle’s face had turned serious. His playful brown eyes went dark. “Nothing in this world is given freely, Neera. There is always a cost. Never forget that.”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice. “I won’t.”
Light returned to Ajay’s eyes, warm and comforting. “But you know what to say if any devils ever come around with an offer, don’t you?”
Neera smiled, nodding quickly. “I say no, thank you,” she recited proudly, puffing her chest.
“That’s right,” Ajay said, strumming the song’s melancholy tune with a grin. “That’s all the devil needs to hear. No, thank you.”
Be careful of the devils
Down in Georgia
There ain’t no coming back
From the pact
In the Waffle House bathroom, Neera nudged the trash can with her shoe, finding the rest of the lyrics scribbled onto the wall. All the way down the words went, written to the place where the wall molding met the dirty tiled floor.
But then, she noticed something else. Scrawled beside the familiar song were three crude drawings, childlike in their depictions.
A cicada.
A snake.
A crow.
Neera ran her hand over the drawings, her calloused fingertips lingering on the crow. She’d seen the corvid three times since her confrontation with Wiley at the Chevron. Sitting on the fence around the Colonial’s pool. Perched on the hood of the Nissan in the late afternoon. Hovering above her on the low-hanging power line. She had no proof it was the same bird each time, only a feeling. A sense of familiarity as the black eyes of the crow tracked her every step.
A life-changing decision loomed over Neera as the Cicada’s Song approached.
ISAIAH
A HALF-EATEN WAFFLE and rubbery blanched eggs sat between Neera and Isaiah.
After initial pleasantries and half-assed catching up, there was little among them in the way of conversation. Neera kept fidgeting, glancing behind Isaiah at something he couldn’t see. But Isaiah was no better.
He heaved a heavy sigh, deciding to focus on the only thing he had an ounce of control over—repairing his friendship with Neera. “So … how’d the audition go?”
Neera swirled a spoon in a cup of black coffee. “To be honest, kind of terrible.”
“How do you mean?”
Neera shrugged. “Grant Langley was there. The Blue Mountain Records guy. Made me think I wasn’t worth getting onstage. Like I wasn’t enough. But he’s letting me perform on Thursday, so … we’ll see.”
Isaiah frowned. “Don’t let him get to you. I know you’ll do—”
“Stop.” Neera cut him off, no longer swirling the coffee, then set the spoon on the table with a clang. Meeting Isaiah’s gaze, she said, “Don’t do that.”
Isaiah blinked. “Do what?”
“Pretend,” Neera said bluntly. “You’re pretending right now, I can tell.”
Isaiah was taken aback. He was so accustomed to bland politeness and people always talking around their words, that Neera’s bluntness threw him off. “How exactly am I pretending?”
“Honestly, I don’t think you would’ve reached out if it weren’t for the fire,” Neera said. “We’ve barely spoken in three years. I just feel like you’re bullshitting to smooth things over between us.”
Isaiah opened his mouth to argue but stopped himself. Neera wasn’t exactly wrong. He truly had missed their friendship, but was there anything left to return to? The Neera Singh he once knew no longer existed. “I just wanted to try.”
“I’m not sure there’s a point.”
Isaiah glanced around the brightly lit Waffle House, his eyes eventually lingering on the window nearest them. The early-morning sun painted this side of Carrion in a bright shade of pink. A crow circled overhead, like a vulture. He then saw past the parking lot, to the peanut field across the road, how it stretched for miles until it hit the pine forest. That’s all Isaiah saw, flatness in every direction.