The Devil and Me
The Preacher Boy sits with a cold drink, having just finished a set. His cousins, Stack and Mary, walk into Pearlines, a Louisiana music bar. Much younger than him..
Mary wears a black crop top and tight blue jeans, swirling a lollipop in her mouth. Stack’s yellow sweater hangs loose, twice his size. A gold chain drapes across his chest. Black shades cover their eyes.
They talk. “You don’t have much time,” Stack tells the Preacher Boy.
Stack asks his cousin to play the music without that electric sound. His cousin obliges.
The last time Stack and Mary heard the Preacher Boy play, he stood at the center, enclosed by dancing lovers and friends. He struck each chord from his resonator guitar before the turntables moved through time, tribal drumbeats filling a room spinning on a clairvoyant axis. Stack and Mary danced in close arms, their love forbidden outside the warehouse walls.
Mary wore a beige Roaring Twenties cocktail dress. Stack’s broad shoulders filled out a four-pocket burgundy vest.
Minutes later, Mary’s outfit was covered in blood. She turned Stack into a vampire. The white folks from the outside invaded.
Stack and Mary live in the dark. No more sun.
That night, the Preacher Boy played for the warehouse crowd. He chose the guitar. Satan knocked on his door.
“Hello, Satan,” he said back.
He played. The Preacher’s Boy’s name is Sammy. He lived to carry a note driven by exclusion. His people were told to separate from everyone else.
He named the bar after his first love. She died the night he lived.
Before Stack walks through the black doors, Sammy asks, “Before the sun went down, I think that was the best day of my life. Was it like that for you?”
Stack lifts his sunglasses. He calmly responds, “No doubt about it. That was the last time I saw my brother. The last time I saw the sun. Just for a few hours, I was free.”
Like Sammy, I know there’s a moment in my life tied to a memory—when I was born from a dark time to find my purpose.
It was early 2000. I was kicked to the curb. My underwear and shirts in boxes. Memories of friends stuffed in suitcases. I rushed to leave. The devil quickly approached my home—to take what they deemed an ugly spirit and bury me.
“You could never change,” the fiend told me. I believed what the creature was selling me.
Under the sun, an angel stood for me. When the devil arrived, their fangs were unleashed. They walked toward the creature. Eye to eye, they told them I would survive. Everyone looked curiously, wondering if the creature would rise. Instead, they shouted down the devil. They walked to me, grabbed my hand, and took me away from hell. They turned to me and told me I was destined to live without the fear of their retribution.
That night, we fell asleep in each other’s arms. Might’ve been one of my best days—knowing someone protected me. But when the devil comes for you, it’s hard not to ask why.
Thinking about all of this, I write on my yellow pad on a Sunday morning. The day is grey. The clouds are ready to explode. The tree shuffles. Dogs bark. A bird chirps three times. Then a bigger bird tweets louder. In the distance, one sings harmony. Broken branches lie scattered, half-buried in dirt. A couple in black shirts and blue jeans hold hands. In front of my grey Converse, a raindrop hits and breaks into three. My hair catches a speck of rain. With my hand, I slide the heavens through it.
A bird zips by. Lands. Hops across the paved path. Nearby, a parent’s footsteps. Large and small trees nurture each other. Their roots run beneath the park’s concrete. Twenty-seven benches stretch across the hilltop. The southeast wind hits my back.
My phone lights up. A habit I must break. A message from my student: “I have to miss class. My father died.”
My heart rises into my throat. I need a smoke.
I hope the student tells me one day about his daddy. That they watched sunrises from the hilltop. Conversations at the table about how hard his schoolwork is. Walks to the car talking about the day’s schedule. Silent rides to and from school. A boy learning what it means to be looked after.
In an hour, we have class. Twelve students from eight cities. They will carry conversations with Black and Brown women and men from Florida, New York and South Carolina—who play video games and go on dates, who attend council meetings, who resist when self-indulgence persists.
They are the people I’ve met since the day my daddy left—who accept me when I am mean-to-cruel, impatient-to-intolerant, or when my kindness shines and my generosity commences.
They resisted those who wanted to send them on a Greyhound to disappear. The people who said to leave their guitar at home. To never sing. Instead, they strum to their heartbeats.
They belong to the communities they founded. They invited outsiders in, even when we are destructive by nature. I am one of them.
At school, we teach our students to participate in civil society. To talk to their neighbors. To immerse in the community ambience—the lamp lights, the house arches, the gardens tended to. To listen. Interests exchanged. Lessons from work. The customer whose voice grates on everyone. Music to clean the living room to. Local discounts that stretch the next paycheck.
That’s the life to have.
I sit with the memory of the person who saved me on the 12-boarded bench. Threaded by the imagination of a movie. Ready for my responsibilities. In between, a student of mine lost a parent.
The morning after Preacher Boy went to the church—after the women he loved died and his cousin resurrected to live in the shadow with the woman he loves—his pastor father asked him to drop his instrument
“The music will corrupt you,” he said.
Instead, Sammy gripped the handle harder.
In that moment, I realized I was meant to write about the optimism that rises from my sorrow. For those I’ve met and never saw, I want to tell their stories. I will tell mine. Regardless if the devil’s shadow hangs over me, I was burdened to do so.