Chapter Seven

The Devil came to Adelia’s house after sunset, when she had just cooked up her small supper of collards and fatback. A sweet potato pie cooled on the window sill, destined for the mouth of her ten-year-old grandson Malik. He would visit tomorrow, along with his mother Renna. Renna was Adelia’s youngest and wildest daughter, but Malik was as sweet as saltwater taffy, with none of his mother’s attitude or stubbornness.

And Malik loved sweet potato pie more than just about anything.

Adelia dipped out collard greens into a chipped bowl with a faded floral design. She sat down at the kitchen table, where she could watch the television in the living room. She liked to watch the game show channel, where they reran all the good old shows from the 70s, like Joker’s Wild and the original Family Feud with Richard Dawson.

She added one drop of hot sauce to her greens and stirred it in. As she folded her hands to say the blessing, she heard the squeak of the screen door on her front porch. She had the front and back doors and all the windows open to catch the evening breeze, since her aging little house had no air conditioning.

The screen door squeak meant someone was coming inside, and they hadn’t bothered knocking or announcing themselves.

Footsteps approached her through the dark dining room. Adelia couldn’t see anything through the folded wooden dressing screen that served as divider between kitchen and dining room.

“Who’s there?” she called.

The wooden screen clattered as it folded aside, and the intruder smiled as he stepped into Adelia’s kitchen. He was a young white man, with black hair and strange gray eyes the color of rainclouds. He had a couple days’ stubble on his face. She didn’t recognize him, so he wasn’t from around town. He wore a wide grin that unsettled her.

“Get out of my house!” Adelia pushed herself to her feet.

“I will,” he said. “But I’m hungry.” He crossed to the kitchen window, sniffing. “That’s sweet potato pie, isn’t it?” He leaned over the orange pie and took a deep sniff, closing his eyes. “It’s got cinnamon, doesn’t it? And brown sugar. I can smell it. They didn’t serve nothing like this in Bent River.”

Adelia eased over to the fridge and picked up her broom. It was old but solid, cut from hickory. If she could crack him across the back of the head, he’d be out. Or, at least, he’d be slowed down enough that she could hit him a few more times.

She stepped toward him and raised the broom handle above her head.

He opened his eyes.

“Oh, no,” he said. He jumped toward her. She swung the broom, but he caught it easily in his hand and snatched it away. He hurled it like a spear into the dining room. Adelia backed away, but he grabbed both her hands.

That was when Adelia saw he was the Devil.

When she was a little girl in Grand Coteau, long before she moved down to this little village in East Baton Rouge parish, her idea of the Devil came from two places. One was the fiery Sunday sermons of Reverend Desmarais, since her parents took her to Opelousas every week for church. The other was Mr. Grosvenor, an old white man who lived across town. She wasn’t too sure what he did for a living, but he had a big house behind a tall, spiked iron fence, and behind that fence lived a huge albino canine with pink eyes and long teeth that it bared at everyone who passed. It was rumored to have a particular taste for children.

Sometimes you could see Mr. Grosvenor walking the dog, Loki, around town, or driving his big black Cadillac with the dog growling at pedestrians from the back seat. Mr. Grosvenor usually wore a white hat and white suit, with sunglasses, and sometimes carried a gold-handled cane. Everyone was afraid of him. Eventually, Adelia understood people feared him because he was the biggest landlord in town, and most people were behind on their rents. When she was little, though—three or four years old—she thought Mr. Grosvenor really was the Devil.

When this young man grabbed her hands, Adelia immediately saw his true nature. He was like Mr. Grosvenor, the boogeyman of her childhood. In her mind, she could sense the big white dog circling her house, waiting to leap in her window. She could almost hear its heavy footsteps and its snarls through the thin walls.

“I need a couple of things,” the Devil said.

“You can’t have my soul,” Adelia said. “That belongs to Jesus Almighty, Praise His Name.”

“I want the keys to that Chrysler out front,” the Devil said. “And I want that sweet potato pie. I don’t give a damn about your soul. People don’t have souls.”

“The Devil is deceptive,” Adelia said. “He knows his time upon this Earth is short, that the powers vested in him are temporary, and the New Coming of Almighty Jesus will cleanse us of the Devil’s foul works—”

“Shut up!” the Devil yelled. For a moment, Adelia could almost see the great craggy horns sprout from his forehead and the scaly red skin of his true face. “Don’t you talk Bible to me, or I’ll leave you dead instead of just robbed. You hear me?”

Adelia closed her mouth and nodded her head. The fear was taking over, filling her veins like cold water. She had always been a bold, outspoken woman, but now she was as quiet as a mouse in a tiger cage.

His face appeared normal now, no horns or scales waiting to burst out, but Adelia understood his diabolical nature.

He opened her kitchen drawers until he found a fork. Then he began shoveling the sweet potato pie into his mouth, not even bothering to cut it into slices. “This is really good,” he said through a mushy orange mouthful. “Really amazing.”

Adelia said nothing. Flattery was one of the Devil’s tools, she knew. She couldn’t stop shaking, and she felt like she might wet herself. In her mind, she prayed to Almighty Jesus to surround her with a protective ring of angel fire. She kept her eyes on her shoes, occasionally glancing up at him as he wolfed down the pie.

When he’d eaten nearly the entire thing, he dropped it on the floor, along with the fork.

“The car keys,” he said.

She pointed to her purse, sitting in one of the kitchen table chairs. The Devil picked it up and dug through it. He took out her car keys and cash.

“You only have twelve dollars?” he asked.

She nodded.

“That’s pathetic.” He threw the money down on the table. “Keep it.”

“Thank you,” Adelia said, then immediately chastised herself inside her mind. She should never show gratitude to Satan. The Lord wouldn’t care for that.

He walked out her front door. She heard the old brown Chrysler chug to life and wheeze its way out of her gravel driveway, and then it drove off into the night.

Adelia sat down at the kitchen table, folded her hands, and began praying out loud to the Almighty.