“It will be a strange and disgraceful day unto this world,” he finally said, “when I ask a gut-bucket nigger guitar player for advice on autoMO-bile mechanics, or for anything else except a tune now and again.” He had eyes like he’d been shot twice in the face. “And furthermore, I am the Lord of Darkness and the Father of Lies, and if I want to drive my 1936 Hudson Terraplane, with its six-cylinder seventy-horsepower engine, out into the middle of some loblolly and shoot out its tires and rip up its seats and piss down its radiator hole, why, I will do it and do it again seven more times afore breakfast, and the voice that will stop me will not be yourn. You hearing me, John?”

“Ain’t my business,” I said. Like always, I was waiting to see how it was.

“That’s right, John, it ain’t your business,” the devil said. “Nothing I do is any of your business, John, but everything you do is mine. I was there the night you took that fatal drink, John. I saw you fold when your gut bent double on you, and I saw the shine of your blood coming up. I saw that whore you and Jar Head was squabbling over doing business at your funeral. It was a sorry-ass death of a sorry-ass man, John, and I had a big old time with it.”

The hound dogs had laid back down, so I stretched out and rested my feet on one of them. It rolled its eyes up at me like its feelings was hurt.

“I’d like to see old Jar Head one more time,” I said. “If he’ll be along directly, I’ll wait here and meet his train.”

“Jar Head’s plumb out of your reach now, John,” the devil said, still whittling. “I’d like to show you around your new home this afternoon. Come take a tour with me.”

“I had to drive fifteen miles to get to that jook joint in the first place,” I said, “and then come I don’t know how far on the train to Hell and past it. I’ve done enough traveling for one day.”

“Come with me, John.”

“I thank you, but I’ll just stay here.”