The Listener

by Robert McCammon

The Devil can be a flash of lightning, a swallow of bad whiskey, or a rotten apple slowly decaying a basketful of good ones. The Devil can be a belt across the back of a child, or a cardboard box of cheap paperback Bibles swelling up in the hot rear seat of an eight-year-old faded green Oakland two-door sedan held together by rust and wires.

He figured that in this tough old world if a man wanted to live he had to learn to shed his skin like a snake and move from the shadow of one rock to the shadow of another—move, move, always move—because the other snakes were on the move too,

Oh yeah, he could throw the pitch, sure he could. But otherwise he’s got so many bats in his fuckin’ belfry it would scare the shit out of Dracula.

They’re going to make life pay, he thought, because it is time the wheel of fortune favored a man who was thrown away as a baby and never ever had a chance to breathe air that didn’t have the stink of despair in it.