Free After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones Page A

went with her into those dark places. Well, I’d already been, but I toured them through—the life, the times, the legend—and then passed a photocopied story out for next week. For this week.
    The story was “The Man in the Black Suit.” It was about a nine-year-old kid a century ago, just out fishing one day, then encountering the devil, barely getting away. It had some resonance to it, but no real gore. What I planned to tell the group was that how it worked was it was taking this kids’ blind faith—America’s stubborn Christianity—and making it real all at once. So, really, the story was a confirmation, a celebration. The old man who had been the boy, the old man writing this down in his diary, he was one of the lucky ones, the ones who never had to doubt if angels and demons were real. He knew.
    So, the study question, it was going to be which is better, to know or not to know?
    And, yes, of course Jeremy was nine that day I picked him up from third grade. He was a year older than his classmates—I’d taught in China for a year, when there were no jobs here—but his age didn’t mean anything to him yet. And now he was probably going to be two years behind. But alive. That’s the epithet I kept tagging onto everything: but alive. As in, this could all be worse. I should be thankful for whatever fell on me next.
    Since my shift started at nine, we usually met at six, dinnertime. Each week a different person would bring a casserole, pass out the plates. This week it was Lew’s turn. He was retired Air Force, said he’d taken a stack of paperbacks with him on both tours. That he was the only one in his bunkhouse who would stay awake reading.
    He brought chicken dumplings in a crock pot.
    Aside from him, and Marcy—she of the bank—there was Drake, a straight-laced city planner, the one who’d told us about the community center; there was Evelyn, who always brought her crocheting to do but hardly ever said anything; and Jackie and her daughter Gwen, a junior in high school, there very much against her will for a taste of what literature was going to be like in college.
    In the flyer, I’d of course mentioned my background.
    So, we were a healthy group of bookworms. A good mix of backgrounds and ages, anyway, if not very diverse.
    When the dumplings were gone and adequately praised, we put our plates under our chairs and dove into King.
    Because it was his night—for food, but you could tell he felt responsible for the discussion as well—Lew pinched his jeans up his thighs, leaned forward like telling us a secret, and said that he hoped none of the ladies took a fright to this particular story.
    Evelyn tittered, her needles flashing, and I got the sense that one of these nights Lew was going to ask her for coffee afterwards, and she was going to suggest the perfect place.
    “Scared me,” Drake said.
    He was still wearing his tie from the day’s work. Not loosed or anything.
    “Me too,” I lied, just to not leave him hanging.
    While King had stories that were terrifying, this one was, in comparison, safe. By burying the eight-year-old’s story in the frame of an old man’s journal, it was locating the devil in another time, another place. One far, far from us.
    Jackie elbowed her daughter just enough to get her to talk: “You could tell right away who he was. From the eyes.”
    “Those eyes,” Jackie said, seconding her daughter’s motion.
    “How did he see out of them?” Lew said, leaning back, crossing his arms.
    I nodded, was liking this.
    The good thing about voluntary book discussions is that I don’t have to play dentist. Getting people to talk’s not like pulling teeth.
    “Because they were—because there were flames in his eye sockets, right?” Marcy said.
    We all nodded, as if seeing the devil again as King had drawn him: tall, neatly dressed in a black suit. Subtle claws at the ends of his fingertips. Instead of eyes, just orange flickering flames. And a mouth that could open