The D
Thomas J. Davis
The Devil Likes To Sing
Copyright © 2014 Thomas J. Davis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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Cascade Books
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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-953-5
EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-150-5
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Davis, Thomas J. (Thomas Jeffery), 1958–
The devil likes to sing / Thomas J. Davis
vi + 138 p. ; 23 cm.
ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-953-5
1. Devil—fiction. 2. Good and evil—fiction. 3. Devil in literature. 4. Temptation—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
PS3616.O63 D38 2014
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
My thanks to those who encouraged me along the way—friends who patiently listened to me talk about the “devil” book (and especially Philip Goff, who always laughed at the right places) and readers whose positive words kept me going.
“The devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
1 Peter 5:8
“The devil . . . is a liar and the father of lies.”
John 8:44
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee . . .
John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book I, 106–12)
He [Satan] stood upon the waves a Twenty seven fold mighty Demon
Gorgeous & beautiful: . . .
William Blake, Milton (Book the Second)
1
The devil likes to sing. That surprised me. And he’s funny. Not always a laugh-out-loud funny, but funny nonetheless, a “I know what you’re saying, man” kind of funny. The first time I heard him say “Honest to God,” I looked at him in shock. He gave a sly smile, almost self-deprecating, but not quite, and said, “Ooops.” Then in that angelic tenor voice (if I’d ever thought the devil might sing I’d have imagined him a low-register bass) he sang, “When a man is honest, he’s a liar; but what Satan says, it’s sure as fire; true as earth, strong as iron; the devil, man, he’s no liar.”
He had a million songs like that, but he didn’t really have a songwriter’s gift. He’s more of a cover man. On some of those, he could blow you away, especially on the sad songs. Or Germanic opera—his tenor could make your spine tingle. His favorite was Wagner because of the Ring cycle, especially Siegfried. The devil loves all things related to the Norse vision of the world: tragic, fatalistic, grim.
I never really figured out when he first started to shadow me. I’d felt a presence for a while, like someone stood looking over my shoulder all the time. Then one day he just appeared—and I wasn’t surprised. That was the kicker. It’s almost as if, before that day when he stood (sat, really) before me, I knew he was there. Looking back on it, I should have freaked out. But I didn’t. Even now it seems that that whole period was too normal, wrongfully normal—how can the devil be shadowing your every step and that seem normal? But that’s how it felt.
Our first talk—and the first time I really saw him—came as I had finished 101 Good Things about Labor Day. I know that because Jill had left me just before I completed the book—if you can call it a book—and one of the first things I talked to the devil about was Jill. When people asked how Jill and I split up, I always answered, “Happened over Labor Day.” A private joke.
I’d always wanted to be a serious writer. Friends would laugh and say they’d rather be like me—a rich writer. But what they meant was a rich hack.
I’d spent two years too many pursuing a doctorate in the history of theology. I’d done the course work, pulled through the five killer doctoral examinations, and I’d done all right. But I could never pull off the thesis.
I tried. I even got three chapters finished. But my committee crucified me, so to speak, at the oral examination. At the University of Chicago Divinity School, at least when I was there, the oral came half way through the dissertation to catch any real problems. Apparently my work was problematic. But I kept plugging away for another two years, trying to walk a tightrope for my committee—a rather old-fashioned church historian, a postmodernist (or maybe he was a post-postmodernist; I was never clear on this as I kept my intellectual head firmly buried in the sands of the fourth and fifth centuries), and a feminist theologian. What a committee, with me constantly teetering along on a tightrope, like I was in the middle of a Leon Russell song. What could I have been thinking? I should have known better. And writing on St. Augustine, of all people. God, I was naive!
So, I turned my part-time job into a full-time one: I wrote abstracts for an index to theological periodical literature. I’d grown to love Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago sits, so I stayed, just like so many poor bastards who never finished their PhDs but still loved the idea of being—in an almost mystical sense—an educated person in an educated environment. Or maybe they were just like me—too lazy to move, too ashamed to go back home with nothing to show for seven years of work and tens of thousands of dollars spent.
I met Jill where we worked; she was a librarian by training and a computer specialist by the necessities of employment, meaning that her two courses in computer applications made her the most qualified person in the office to keep the systems up and running. So, through trial and error and too few continuing education events at company cost, she struggled to manage the computer systems we used to put out our product.
We were an odd pair; me from Tennessee, a little town called Harriman, just off I-40. My family, for a couple of generations, worked at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility. I used to hear my grandfathers on both sides of the family joke about what they called the flashlight benefit—that is, they never need to buy flashlights because they all glowed in the dark. The joke lost its punch as one family member after another died of cancer.
Jill came from the Dells area in Wisconsin; her family had made its money catering to tourists. Her mom ran the miniature golf park and her dad ran a fleet of “ducks,” those odd amphibious military vehicles that looked like tanks but could navigate through water as well. Great for a quick survey of the scenery.
Besides being “duck” runners, Jill’s family was Catholic.