The Soul Buyer

When I was at Ole Miss, I met a man who bought souls….

The sign the Soul Buyer had arrived was the bartender carrying a chair to the one table that did not have one.

“He’s here again”, I said.

“Who?”, said Bob

“The man who buys souls”.

It was Friday night in Oxford, Mississippi, home of Ole Miss, in what passed for a dive bar/British Pub in the American South. The bar was called Abby’s Irish Rose, the Abby being a collection of hotel rooms upstairs housing eccentrics, stoners, poets and broke students who paid their rent weekly or were evicted. Even paying was no guarantee of occupancy. One afternoon the landlord decided the bar needed more room and knocked down the termite ridden wall of one of the hotel rooms. The occupant, returning later, was confronted with a large group of people drinking on his bed and reading his books. He sat on the floor next to his bed  repeatedly saying “I live here” to the new occupants.

The British Pub décor was purchased years earlier by Merrell, the owner, on a trip to Europe. He asked a random girl at the pub from Ireland to marry him one drunken London night and to remember the moment he purchased as many items that the publican would sell him. Thus a collection of pub tables, dart boards, bar games and pewter mugs arrived in Oxford, Mississippi. The girl did not arrive having sobered up and deciding it was better to remain single in London than married in the other Oxford.  Of all the items, the mugs were the most popular with patrons since they beat out beer bottles in any bar fight and the main attraction of the Rose was the fights.

It was for the fights Bob and arrived early on Friday nights for a corner table which was the closest thing to ringside. Corners were safest in the Rose, nothing could come up behind you, you had a pub table in front too heavy for a frat boy to heave and an unobstructed view of the night’s fight card. On Fridays there were a few girls and boys playing baby roulette, but the crowd was mostly frat boy beer drinkers.

For those not familiar with the American College Greek system, fraternities are all-male enclaves on college campuses. They reside in large mansions, often with 40 plus bedrooms and have  membership dues higher than tuition. In these residences they would engage in all of the things Animal House made famous while the framed pictures of previous classes – known as composites – looked on. Non-Greek students, aka independents,  were invisible to the frat boy. Crossing campus an independent seldom had eye recognition from a frat boy and if you were so bold as to wish a frat boy good morning, you might get a stare, but more likely “the cut”. The cut being a look of disdain that was practiced each morning in the mirror.  In the Greek run Ole Miss yearbook, each fraternity had two pages in the college annual, one showing their social activities, the other the composite with each of their names underneath. Independents were featured on a half-page in the yearbook section entitled “dorm life”.

Bob and I were at the Rose to observe frat boys in their native costume and environment  and enjoy their displays of dominance – a “Gorillas in the Mist” moment. We both had an interest in numbers, I was majoring in accounting and would be a CPA. Bob was studying actuarial science as part of his goal for a career selling life insurance.  To the disinterested party, frat boys are a uniformly khaki clad and button down beer drinking mob. To us, it was anthropology, statistics and fight prediction all in one. We also had a monetary motive, we hoped if we could create a model to predict one behavior, fights, that the same model could be used for others. We had chosen Greeks because they were easy to identify. One fraternity might differentiate with web belts and top sider boat shoes, while another group sported black leather Bass Wejun loafers. There was one who had ribbon watch bands and ones that had cotton web ones. Those who favored the Duckhead over the Polo Pony or alligator logo. There was even a distinction in what kind of penny loafer: beef roll or smooth. It was important to be able to identify which species the frat boy was because bar fight cards don’t have starting bells and we were specialists in fight prediction. A topsider clad foot trodden on a leather Bass Wejun might just elicit a sorry if the fraternities were allies, while the same foot on top of a Wejun whose owner had a ribbon watch band might cause immediate punches. Just like baseball fans who are statisticians, we kept records too. However, the cloak of invisibility of being independent on campus continued to the Rose, no frat boy even noticed us. We sat in the open scribbling on our sheets and commenting on the fights. We had given most of them championship wrestling style names: Lizard Kicker, Chin Biter, Eye Poker, so even if someone did read our fight sheets they wouldn’t understand.

The soul buyer arrived the previous month. The basic uniform of the frat boy at Ole Miss was a starched button down, Khaki pants and loafers, and that is how he was clad. But for some reason, he did not look quite right. It was as if someone had sent him a written description of how people dressed, and he had completed the outfit by going to a tailor. He was a minor character, not a fighter, and not of primary interest. In between fight predictions Bob and I tried to decipher exactly what was wrong with his look, it was like all the pieces were correct, but were incorrect in some odd way. Bob wondered if instead of the Mississippi requirement of “percent”, 100% cotton since this was the state’s export, that perhaps there was a linen, silk or gasp – polyester – blend in his clothes. The second thing that puzzled us was age, he was somewhere between graduate student and married with kids, but whether that was 26 or 40 we could not tell. Older men in the Rose were a sideshow for us: there were Othellos looking for Lolita; the occasional shy homosexual who balanced a need for sex with the possibility of being beat and the over 40 ladies praying for studs with beer goggles. We were discussing which one was he when I saw him open his bag, remove six Ole Miss yearbooks and place them on the left side of the table in front of him. He then put a black fountain pen on top of the yearbooks. Over time we listed other items in his kit: a stack of envelopes, a black leather book,  a mirror and a receipt book. Later the bartender would bring him a pitcher of beer and a stack of cups.

He would appear to drink a beer, though the level of the cup never changed. He would just sit there, observing like we did, until his first arrival. It might be an hour before someone came, or right when he sat down, but there was always a first one. We had watched so long we knew the routine. A frat boy would detach himself from the crowd and speak with him.  The ritual never varied: after a brief discussion he would remove one of the annuals from the stack, turn to the page of his fraternity and find his name. He would place his finger over the boy’s picture in the composite, look at him to confirm and with the other hand pull his leather book out of his briefcase. He would close the annual and put it on top of the stack. In the leather book he would print the name and push it toward the frat boy to countersign. That task completed, he wrote the boy’s name and fraternity on the receipt and handed him an envelope which contained one of three amounts $216, $190 or $161. The envelopes were blank, but by watching where he put his hand in the briefcase, and by overhearing the conversations of the recipients, we were able to ascertain the amounts since they were in different areas. The black leather book was always in the same briefcase pocket.  Conformation of the amounts were by direct observation. Frat Boys had become so used to the invisible independent that they would go our corner and count it oblivious to the two us sitting at the table right below them.

The invisibility of us to frat boys was not unusual. You could sit next to one the entire semester, even share notes or homework assignments,  only to receive a cutting glance if you dared to say hello crossing campus. What was unusual with the buyer, with the exception of the frat boy in front of him, was he was more invisible than we were. No one ever seemed to notice his presence. Frat Boys occasionally made accidental eye contact with us; we never saw them even acknowledge the buyer.

How it became known he purchased the souls of fraternity boys was unknown. We assumed it was word of mouth, though we never saw anyone gesture toward him. He only purchased fraternity boy souls, he was not interested in any others, and only the souls of full members – no pledges. His nightly departure was unnoticed. We would glance at to table and see it was vacated.

Our initial interest in him was not he was buying souls but how the money he provided impacted the fight card. On dollar-beer-night a round for the frat was around $50, with plenty of soul selling cash left over for at least two more. Sold souls meant more fights, so we appreciated his enterprise. We added a column to the spreadsheet noting when he was present, and number of envelopes issued. We titled it “The Buyer”.

Over time we noticed quirks. He had a mirror in his briefcase that he would check throughout the night. We knew so because of the telltale reflection of light we would see on the ceiling. What kind of man checks his appearance in the mirror?  His shoes weren’t right either, it wasn’t they were wrong, it was they were always new. The soles were pristine as if he had just taken them out of the box before entering.

Like any good statisticians, we reviewed our data. We noticed a pattern in his buying. It was always in multiples of three. Some nights it was three or six souls, mostly nine – but never more than that. We wondered if he had a budget or a quota. As to his buying, we could not figure the variation in payment. Why were some souls worth more than others? We wondered if it was like a used car, was there some defect that made some souls worth less? We knew there were three sections in his briefcase, and the amounts, so over time we knew based on where his hand went who got what. We thought perhaps one fraternity initiation ritual might damn souls to hell more than another, but we determined payment amounts were not fraternity specific. We wondered if it was based on religion, were Baptists more valuable than Episcopalians? Bob went to the Episcopal church and noted two of the souls he could confirm were the lowest price, but so was a Baptist, so that theory was disproven too. He paid top dollar one night for a Unitarian which were rare in Mississippi, but whether it was rarity, a quota or something else we were unable to ascertain.

Over time, the buyer became a source of bedtime conversation, a Hardy Boy mystery. In our bunk bed Bob shared his theory it was a long term investment. This of course was tainted by his own desire to be a life insurance salesman with an ever-growing commission stream, “The frat boy sells his soul at 21, when he is 41 he wants it back. The soul buyer anticipates this, buys a copy of the Ole Miss alumni directory, and sends out solicitation letters,” he explained. I was skeptical and asked how many drunken frat boys would even remember much of the transaction. We had already witnessed at the Rose girls screaming about pregnancy, venereal disease or turds in the bed to blank faced frat boys who looked unsure who the girl was. Would a soul buyer be any different? I shared my hypothesis that this guy worked for a group of creepy old perverts who thought the soul of a young man was a substitute for having a real one in their bed. I crafted a scenario of old perverts, surrounded by copies of receipts for souls, masturbating furiously to yearbook photos. Bob shot that one down stating he hadn’t noticed the annual pages were sticky, as they would be if they were meat whacking creeps.

Then one night Bob said, “What if he is the devil?”

“Why would the devil come to a bar Oxford, Mississippi when there are whole cities and nations of souls that are easier to gather up?” I retorted. “Besides, he is paying the price of four textbooks. You get a fiddle of gold or something similar from the devil”, I said.

“Charlie Daniels songs are not scripture”, Bob replied “The devil cannot give bags of gold for every soul, it would get ridiculous rather quickly. Palaces and slave girls everywhere. Besides, inflation would kick in and nobody would be tempted by money”

I thought about that. I said, “So you are saying giving intensive music lessons to Robert Johnson at the Crossroads in the Delta was the devil’s way of hedging against inflation and getting us to listen to Devil Blues music?”

“No,” said Bob, “but we are almost a straight line from over there , and maybe the Buyer and that white man at the crossroads are one in the same”

“I doubt it” I said, “that was a major marketing coup for Ole Nick. Why would he be hanging out in the Rose after that?”

Bob was quiet, which meant he was thinking of his summer job. He had spent a whole summer working at the National Indemnity Life Insurance Company and everything since then became an insurance topic. I was thinking he had gone to sleep when he said “Leads”.

“What?”, I asked.

Bob continued, “It is all about leads. Hear me out. It isn’t The Devil, just a devil. They probably have the whole thing by territories, North Mississippi for example. The devil that gave Robert Johnson the power to play the guitar was inundated with leads – good leads. All sorts of folks are willing to trade their souls for miracles. He is probably a VP of sales in hell. But he burned up all the good leads. There just isn’t much in this territory and there is probably a sales quota”.

“And the Buyer?” I asked,  wondering where the world of insurance would take us.

“You get a territory and a quota. When I start out, I’m supposed to go through my high school yearbooks and call everyone to talk about life insurance. I’m hoping for Tupelo, but I probably will get Ponotoc”, Bob said. I was silent, Ponotoc was where folks still rode mules to the drive-in in the 1980s, a dismal place for sales.

“But why frat boys?” I asked. “It is all date rape, ass branding, public drunkenness and brawling anyhow. If anything, leaving them alone to their own devices would guarantee a down escalator ride.”

I heard the bunk bed creak, it does this when Bob puts his feet on the ceiling, he claims the rush of blood made him think better. I was thinking if there were enough insurance leads in Ponotoc to buy groceries when he spoke,

“He is a fuck up. Probably looking at his third strike. We had them in the office this summer. About his age, assigned to savings account insurance…a shit job. You get sent there after you fail to improve sales in two assigned territories”

“I don’t know about that”, I said, “I like that my savings account is insured.”

“Oh, nothing important like that. When you open a passbook account with a minimum balance of $1500, they provide you with one free year of term insurance. After that, an agent has to call to collect the next year’s premium and try to convert you to Whole Life. They never convert, and it sometimes took 10 calls to get  the $19.95 term premium. There is a big chalk board on the wall with everyone’s names and total. At the end of the month they have this ceremony where the guy with the lowest number gets his name erased and fired in front of everybody.”

I was wondering how you got fired from hell and where you went if you did. Though Bob’s workplace sounded pretty much like hell too. I decided to get him off the subject of insurance.

“The varying payments”, I asked. “Shouldn’t he be just passing out the same amount? It seems it is at his discretion.  I don’t think they would let a screw-up decide what each soul is worth” . I was positive I had won this round.  Bob was silent for a while. The varying payments were our mystery, one as an accounting major I had puzzled over as much as Bob had as an actuarial science major on the value of the souls. I thought he had gone to sleep when almost in a shout he said. “Actuarial science”

“Are you insane?” I asked.

“It is a simple solution”, said Bob.  “The payment is based on how long you live. That’s why we couldn’t figure it out. It isn’t religion, or fraternity, or behavior – it’s the age you die. He is paying based on that. He doesn’t make the decision, the table does, but his table has no risk, he already knows your death date”

“I never knew Episcopalians believed in predestination. However, the amount. seems rather low”, I said.

Bob continued, “It is probably a required minimum. Remember when Jacob gave Esau a plate of stew for his inheritance? They don’t want a repeat of that. If you don’t have rules it would be just a free cup of coffee for your soul.”

I remained silent, wondering if Bob or the Buyer were crazier. However, to cut Bob off before he dug himself any deeper, and because I was growing tired of the daily life insurance lecture, I decided to inject some accounting.

“Not to burst your supernatural bubble, but’s let’s look at my pervert theory. You have cash and a receipt book. I don’t recall anywhere in the Bible where it talks about the devils accounting department or his bank. He is either a pervert, or an agent for perverts” I said triumphantly.

“I thought about that”, said Bob. “Remember in Dr. Wood’s class last week when he was talking about bread and circuses? You said after class there had to be a lot of accounting for that. It probably is the same thing for hell, one big bureaucracy with all sorts of rules and punishments for infractions.”

“You are saying there are rows of demons doing double entry bookkeeping? Good night” I said.

I didn’t say anything else that night but sat in bed staring at the bottom of Bob’s bunk trying to recall what just wasn’t right with the stranger. Bob was right, something was missing but he wasn’t a devil. I just couldn’t figure out what.

The next night was fight night. We were early to our corner table. Dixie Week, the annual spring fest was going on. Folks were coming in with guests who usually did not frequent the Rose but already being drunk from Dixie Week parties decided to give it a try. The Buyer arrived and sat in his usual place, sipping on a beer whose level never changed. I was studying what he was wearing and turned to Bob to discuss it, and then my mind went blank. I looked back, made note of what he was wearing, and then when I started to discuss it with Bob, forgot. Instead of a third time, I asked Bob “Discretely look at the stranger then turn back to me and discuss what he is wearing”. Bob turned twice to me, looked back a third time before I said, “The same thing happened to me”.

The Frat Boys had been drinking in the sun all day at Dixie Week, so we had a good card. There had been some warmup shoving matches, including an audible kick to the balls. The Buyer seemed to be doing well too, three or four “rounds all around” had been financed by his largess already and we were anticipating a beer fueled rematch of Nut-Knocker against Eye-Poke when we heard the crash. A coed had jumped on one of the wooden tables to dance-preen and it had broken in two. Unusual because it had been built of 2x4s and she wasn’t a big girl. She fell into the crowd which caused a chain reaction of domino-frat boys that ended with the Buyer’s table. I looked up just to see his table turn over and the Buyer disappear under a pile of Khaki clad frat boys. Like a watermelon seed his leather book shot out of the pile and I watched it slide across the floor towards our table. I picked it up.

I did not see the Buyer until I looked down, he was getting up off the floor, but no one noticed. All eyes were on the coed whose boobs had almost popped out with her fall. The Buyer first looked surprised, almost bemused, and then had a look that looked like panic. I walked over and handed him the book.

It was our first and last conversation.

“You could have taken it”, he said.

“It doesn’t belong to me”

“I’d can give you a reward”, he replied.

“No, all I am doing is returning it.”

He looked at me, then the remains of table which had now been stacked against the wall. The frat boys were lifting her up on another table. He smiled ruefully, “The Carpenter likes practical jokes.” He looked concerned, then worried…. it was as if he suddenly remembered something.

“No one touches the book unless your name is in the book.”

“Yes?” I said.

“You don’t understand, it is a rule” he said.

I turned to leave.

He said “Stop”. At least I thought he said it, it was like a great shout, yet glancing around no one else seemed to hear it. I realized Bob might be right, this could be the Devil.  He looked angry, upset, determined and afraid. This was a relief; his fear showed I wasn’t dealing with Ole Nick himself but someone junior. Still dangerous, how much I wasn’t sure, but he seemed concerned about a royal ass branding, or lake of fire lap swimming or whatever passes for punishment down there. He was trying to figure out how I was going to make that not happen and I was not looking forward to him shouting in my head again. He had wanted to give me a reward or payment to get me in the receipt book. This would not have solved his problem, just complicated it, but obviously he lacked bookkeeping knowledge. He was in my territory now, accounting, and they probably didn’t spend a lot of time on double entry bookkeeping in demon school.

Suddenly, I did understand. The book was an accounting control. The book was a ledger and a counter, the number of people that touched it had to equal the number of names in it. He obviously never took an accounting classes, and the knowledge of this was my way out. “You are out of balance” I said. He looked at me curiously, so I continued,  “It is a simple inventory problem. They will take inventory when you turn the book in, check it against your receipt book and cash. Everything will balance, chances are no one will even look at the counter. I did accounting  at Western Auto this summer, that is a retail store, we never looked at the cash register sales counter unless the drawer was off.” He looked unsure, and whether he was The Devil, or a devil, I wondered who was doing the books down there. Not that I wanted him for a client, and I certainly didn’t want him shouting in my head again. I continued.

“Look, I’ll explain it the same way Professor Perry explained it to our class. There is a myth that accountants balance to the penny. You don’t spend $500 in billable hours looking for a $10 mistake, you write it off. The same for inventory, most firms have stuff on inventory they cannot find. Managers just wait a few years, or until a change in of who is in charge, and just write it off. No one is going to find this mistake unless you point it out.” Which wasn’t entirely true, and also in a grey area of fraud, but Satan wasn’t my employer.

He looked relieved and much older. I now saw why he had the mirror, he had to check his look to make sure he looked as he did, not as he was. He was staring at me as one would a talking baboon.  Curious, but skeptical, at what it had to say. He was silent, as if trying to make a decision. Then he had the look, that moment between a thought and action, the slight smile of the knowing what one will do. I guess he made us all in his image.

 “I want to tell you something” he said leaning close to me. “The last words you will utter are…” And he told me. Then he was gone. I turned back to the table and Bob was holding the Buyer’s fountain pen – the second casualty of the Carpenter’s practical joke.

“Look what I found, “ he said. I pointed toward the door, and he ran that way to return it.

I just had taught a demon how to commit acts of fraud against Ole Nick and was wondering what the consequences for that might be. I was pondering if they shared an accounting department with heaven since the number of souls was finite and had to be a debit or credit when Bob came back.

“Did you find him?”

“Yes”

“I guess we will see him next week.”

“No”

“What?” I said.

“He told me when I would see him again, but it won’t be next week”, said Bob.

The crowd was winding down, the coed danced on a new table, her mating call of “I’m sooo drunk” stimulating cheers from the crowd. There wouldn’t be any more fights tonight. Bob and I packed up and walked back to campus. We were down to our last weeks in college. Bob was going to start insurance training; I had an offer with an accounting firm. This would be one of our final walks together and adulthood was looming.

On our walk back to campus, I remember the smell of sweet olive and that quiet that seems unique to Southern towns, you can hear sound of your footsteps on the sidewalk. We talked of the night’s fights and previous nights in an attempt to forget the Buyer. It succeeded, the way laughter fills cars leaving a funeral, and soon we were laughing so hard someone yelled from a window for us to shut up. We walked across campus and vowed to return yearly but knew that it too would fade away like out times at the Rose.

The next week the graduation seating was being placed for parents in the Grove, the park in the center of campus. Bob and I were driving to the Cavalier Shop in Bruce, Mississippi , a 25-minute drive, to buy our first office suits. The owner, Rex, had dressed generations of Ole Miss students for their first jobs and his store would be called an outlet today. During the drive Bob brought up the Buyer, a subject we had both avoided since the night we last saw him. “I wonder where he got his clothes, I’ll ask Rex if he knew him”. I told Bob asking Rex if he had dressed a devil, or The Devil, would mean he would be fitting him for a strait jacket instead of a pinstripe. However, not wanting to be lumped in the same crazy story, and seeing he was still bothered, I asked him what was wrong. “He gave me the date I was going to die; I’d like to know if anyone else knows something about him,” said Bob.  I said I would visit the Rose the next day to see what I would find out about the buyer from the owner as I parked the car, and we went in to buy our first office wear.

I decided to pay the Rose a visit, not on the crowded Friday night but at the 3 PM opening on Wednesday. The owner Merrill Williams was in the corner. We had talked before, he was researching Admiral Coligny and the French Hugonauts, it was unclear as to why,  most thought for a play or novel. What was clear is he liked to start drinking early which was a benefit of owning a bar. Merrill was known to despise everyone with his tenants and bar patrons at the top of his list. One of the reasons his business was dwindling was his constant barrage of insults, which became more venemous  with each sip he took. The bartender kept him supplied, but cigarettes were an issue. They came from a vending machine owned by the local tobacco distributor, and since he chain-smoked Kools, he was perpetually searching, and yelling for change. In anticipation of his needs I purchased two packs at the gas station and on entering I placed them on his table. He looked up, glanced at me and said ,“Business Major what do you want?”. We had a conversation the previous month about books we both had read. He was surprised at my major, especially after I told him I had studied in Europe, but I told him I planned to eat after graduation.

“I want to ask you about someone”, I said.

“The girl with the big tits and 100 watt smile, out of your league. I don’t recall you saying your family owned acres of Delta land” he continued, “Your kind should aspire for a girl that wants to be a stewardess for a regional airline, like Southern Airways. The vibration of the props will keep the cellulite off her ass, and you don’t have to worry about losing her to someone successful because only people like you ride that airline. You can keep the picture of her in stewardess uniform bedside so you can look at it instead of her when you fuck her monthly while your spawn bang on the door. ” He was launching into a tirade about women who say, “they used to be a cheerleader” and a need for elementary schools to call cheerleading something different so they could be prosecuted for fraud when I saw my chance to break in.

“No, someone else. The mysterious stranger,” I said using Mark Twain’s name for someone similar the buyer.

He looked up, was it anger, surprise, alcohol or something else? “Normally I’d tell you to go to hell and ban you from here. But a business major who not only read Twain but can make a reference that means something else is an anomaly. Besides, you aren’t in a fraternity and those are the only ones, or in one case parents, discretely asking. But before I answer your question Business Major, you have to answer mine. A correct answer gets a reply. Who wrote ‘something wicked this way comes’?”

“Unfair”, I replied. “There are at least two answers. Ray Bradbury or Shakespeare”

He stared at me a long time through the haze of cigarette smoke.

“He told me and my roommate something ”, I said.

He laughed. “Join the club. He told me my research,” he gestured to the piles of paper, “would make me rich and famous. When you see me dining at Sardi’s, or on a red carpet you can ask me again. Now go away business major, I’ve got to research French Court shoe styles before I’m too drunk. I’ve decided all frogs are foot fetishists”.

I went back to the dorm and told Bob the stranger told Merrill he was going to be a multi-millionaire with his French history research.

“Maybe he was working for perverts”, said Bob.

Our departure was a handshake in the parking lot at the end of finals since we decided two weeks of additional salary was more beneficial than wearing a cap and gown. We headed north and east for 16 hour drives to corporate training programs – swearing to stay in touch.

“In touch” over the years meant an occasional Christmas card when the Ole Miss Alumni Directory was updated, about every five years.

I was surprised to receive a note from Bob and it not being Christmas. He had transferred to the Gulf Coast and said we should get together. I called him and we met for lunch at a restaurant on the beach. We laughed as much then as we did all those years ago. I had driven over from New Orleans, about a two hour drive, and was making noises about getting back before dark. I was doing the requisite “we need to do this more often” when he suddenly got serious. “There is a reason I got in touch now. Let’s take a walk”, said Bob. As we started down the seawall to the beach he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the Buyer and what he last said to me. That date is three months away”.

Over the years I had rationalized the Buyer’s actions and put him back in the pervert column. I was about to voice this when Bob said, “He sent me a message.”

“What?  He has an email? Phone?”

“No, on the plane”, said Bob.

“You sat next to him?”

“No”, said Bob, stopping and pulling a sheet of folded newspaper of his wallet. He passed it to me. “This is what he sent. It was in the airplane magazine pocket, the Washington Post, it was folded open to this page”

There was the Washington Post obituary with a picture of Merrill Williams Jr., the former owner of Abby’s Irish Rose. An obituary. I tried to think of any mini-series, or bestselling book, but pulled a blank. Then I read why he was so famous that he was featured in the Washington Post. His life had gone down after the Rose. He had been a minimum wage paralegal working for tobacco firm. His passion for the obscure had not faded and in his spare time he had gone through old files to find that the tobacco companies knew for decades their product killed their customers.  He had sold his research and stolen documents to the attorneys that crafted the tobacco settlement.  His research on a tobacco company, not French Hugonauts with foot fetishes, had made him famous and rich. The Soul Buyer had been correct.

I looked at Bob, “So the Buyer was right one time, and I’m not even sure about that. Saying your research will make you famous sounds more like a horoscope writing than prophecy. I prefer to think he works for masturbating perverts”

Bob countered, “In less than  three months we will know whose right. Remember when I told you that night he wasn’t coming back but I would see him again? The date he gave me is in 78 days – he said that is when I would die.”

“You can’t let an obituary you found on an airplane bother you like this. You don’t have any proof except my conversation with Merrill years ago and he was drunk, ” I said.

“I do have it, “ said Bob. “He left his calling card – he always purchased in multiples of three, but his favorite was 9. Merrill’s death was November 18, age 72. Seven plus two is nine. 18 divided by two is nine. That is three nines. Look at it upside down.”

“Ok, but that is could be a coincidence”, I said.

Bob continued, “The tobacco settlement date was 1998 That is two nines, and 1 plus 8 = 9. Three nines again”

I was surprised at the 999/666 and recalled the buyer always carried a mirror. However, I could not accept it. “I doubt demons run around tagging stuff with upside down Marks of the Beast. But since you do believe that, what did you decide to do with this information?”, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“I’ve been buying term life insurance all year. Any organization I can find that offers term insurance for joining, I’m in. Every magazine and newspaper ad for term I buy. Everything life insurance policy I can find for cheap I buy. My wife and kids will be fine.”

I was silent. How does one answer a statement concerning a friend’s belief his death is imminent, so he is bingeing on life insurance? But he did it for me.

“I didn’t ask you to lunch to tell you about my imminent death, it is something more important than that. He told me the date of my death. I’ve prepared for it; I’ve got my family taken care of. But he told me he would be seeing me on that date. I keep wondering what unforgivable sin I will do right before I die.”, he said.

“If it will make you feel better, spend the entire day praying . I always was told if you prayed for forgiveness you got a clean slate. There is even a subplot in a Mark Twain story about that, I think it was a bartender”, I said.

“You really need to stick to one book concerning salvation and Twain was an atheist. I’ve thought of monk roleplay for that day. The wife and kids are going to her mom’s the day before, I told her I’d drive over after I  had my sales meeting. I’ll be home alone. I’ve gotten rid of all the porn; questionable movies and the liquor cabinet has a lock on it. I’ll unplug the modem and put it in a bucket of water so there will be no accidental Internet sin. I’m set, but you cannot beat the devil, especially one who sees in future.” Bob said.

I thought I’d try some humor to get him off this track, “How about the front door? Maybe the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses are right and if you don’t answer and convert it will be nothing but laps in the Lake of Fire. But if I was the Devil, I’d send both, so even if one of them are right you still have coin toss odds. I’ve heard Ole Nick loves gambling, so even if you pick the right one you have the wager of sin”. However, Bob took it as a constructive suggestion.

“I’ll put on headphones and listen to Gregorian chants, or Christian music all day,  that way I cannot hear the door. And I won’t open it in case they stuck a Watchtower in the handle. I’ll ignore the mail and paper too. If they see mail and paper in the yard maybe they will assume nobody’s home and not knock,” he said.

It just slipped out, I don’t even know why, “Wouldn’t that invite burglars? You would either have to shoot or witness to them, not sure what the protocol is. I recall something about converting thieves at the last hour on Calvary,” I said.

He was getting ready to speak when I said, “Look, there has to be some rules to this. If there were not there would be an army of hot hookers hanging around before every guy died. I’m sure if you went about your normal day you would be fine. At 12:01 the next day your only concern will be how to drop all those term policies ”

We walked along the beach silently for a time.

Bob spoke first, “When does sin end?  Does it end when you die, or when you are buried, or afterwards? I’ve given this some thought. All I can think of it is the life insurance policies. I’ve sold life insurance for years; it is based on honesty. You don’t know when you are going to die, the actuary doesn’t know when you are going to die but can make an educated guess given your age. Therefore, you both are taking an honest risk. I’ve eliminated my side of the risk. Am I stealing, is that why he says why he will see me? But if I know I’m going to die, and don’t take care of my family, isn’t that also a sin?”

I replied, “Look neither of us are theologians but I think that rule is clear. Life Insurance pays after you are dead. If your coffin falls out of the back of the hearse and kills somebody you don’t get sent down to hell for it. Besides you are worrying about something that isn’t going to happen.

Let’s assume he really is a devil. The whole thing started when a table made of 2x4s broke under the weight of a skinny drunk girl. I’ll grant that was odd, and his comment ‘The carpenter like to play jokes’ even odder. Since the Devil brought Jesus into it, let’s take it a step further. I’m assuming hell is for those who are refused entry into heaven. While you might be in a grey area concerning your death, it is Jesus’ prank on Old Nick that got you into it, and I’m sure he will intercede.”

“I never thought of that”, said Bob

“You and Jesus can have a laugh about that in heaven” I replied.

We walked on for a while in silence. Bob said, “Why a basement in a bar in Oxford, Mississippi?”

“That I can answer. I visited Oxford the late 1980s and, in the Gin, (another student bar) I ran into an Abby regular. It was named the Abby because an offshoot of the Episcopal Church used to hold services in the basement. I’m thinking they did not deconsecrate it when they closed, and the buyer’s table was where the alter was”.

“Signing the book was on consecrated ground? You have thought about this more than you let on, and why Frat Boys?” Bob said.

“Southern frat boys”, I corrected. “I had to learn enough French to get around for a European client. A slight change in pronunciation can change the meaning of a word and phrase. During their fraternity initiation Bubba is reciting Latin, which French is descended from, in his Delta drawl from a ritual book and the rest are repeating it. They could be chanting ‘Sodomize me Satan’ or similar and don’t even know it.”

We both laughed at that like we did the last night we walked home from the Rose. We walked along in silence for a while, listening to the waves.

“What did he tell you?”, asked Bob.

“He told me what my last words would be”

He stopped and looked at me. “You are doomed,” Bob said.

“What?”, I asked.

“Only you can end your life by saying your last words. Your last act is suicide,” he said shaking his head.

I had never thought of it that way. I was not sure if I even believed any of it. I wanted the Buyer to be an agent for rich perverts, not someone who the Carpenter plays jokes on. Now I saw the Buyer thought he had checkmated me. I’d end up in hell no matter what and he could just slide me onto his inventory sheet. I was trying to process what Bob said when he asked another question.

 “Are you immortal?”

I’d never considered that. I am not a risk taker, hate heights, drive the speed limit. I tried to recall any near-death accidents, but it always seemed luck was with me. But is it luck? I wonder what friends have considered acts of bravery was instead this knowledge. If the Buyer was real, I cannot be suddenly killed. No executions, plane crashes or drownings. I now had a nagging doubt, did I have a Get Out of Jail Free card?

 I said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure how it works. I’ve thought about it over the years, I have to say the words but that only means I still have lungs and a voice box. The rest of me could be gone, or burned like airplane crashes or atomic wars”, I replied.

“At least I know. I’ve got a date, I can plan. You on the other hand are certain to meet him, it is just a question of when. But why did he tell us, and why do I have a date and you don’t?”

I answered, “There must be a set of rules; otherwise, Alter Call at a Billy Graham Crusade would be a mass casualty event. Predestination, the time of your death known at birth, is the only way they can keep things flowing. From his book we know there is paperwork, and whether it is demons or angels keeping them, they have to predict how many will arrive daily. It is like a theme park, they know how many hotel rooms and advance tickets are sold, the ones that just show up at the gate are not significant enough to change the flow”.

I  wasn’t sure this is how it ended, but I certainly didn’t want it to end it in hell.  I asked Bob,  “That night when the wood table split, he said the Carpenter liked to play practical jokes. What happens if the joke isn’t over yet, The Carpenter left us an out? It is the whole parable of the talents, we just have to figure out how to beat him.”

“I’ve got less than three months, if you come up with a solution let me know” said Bob.

We started down the beach in silence. It was a 20 minute walk to the car, the sun was sinking, and I was racking my brain for anything I learned in Sunday School that would save us. However, battles with demons is not the usual Sunday School fare. If the Carpenter liked to play practical jokes, the solution would not be from a book the devil was familiar with. Bible study must be a required course in demon college, I recalled a line from Bible study concerning the Devil’s ability to quote scripture. I doubt demons studied accounting; they just recruited from the ranks of souls sent down.

Then it hit me. Why would Satan put an additional control, the counter, on the book? You had the signature and the name, there was no need for a counter. As Dr. Perry said in my accounting class,  you put additional controls in place to prevent something that has happened before. Someone ripped off Satan and got away with it and the counter was a control to stop a second occurrence. The way Heaven and Hell are set up, you are just a Debit or a Credit, there is nothing in between. If free will and civilization have taught us anything, it is you can always beat the books. There isn’t a need for cash in the afterlife, souls are the currency, and the control on the book shows you can get out of hell – because if you steal from Satan you aren’t going to hang around and the only place to go is up. I kept thinking about the Soul Buyer and wondered if Bob was right, he had been a screw up in hell that had been given North Mississippi as a last chance assignment.

When we got near our cars I asked one last question, “You told me one night at Ole Miss about insurance agents who screwed up at the firm you worked for that summer and how they were consigned to a room to cold call until they were fired. I was wondering, did anyone ever get out of that room, go on to be successful?”.

Bob looked surprised, “Yes, there was this one guy, I was sure he was going to be the next guy erased from the board that summer. Suddenly he started selling policies. He kept at it, later  made regional VP. Then a few years ago a routine audit found fraud. They had to go back and look at every policy he sold to see if fraud was involved, it took months. They got rid of him, he lost his insurance license, I don’t know if he went to jail or not. Why?”

“I may have found our out. Any accountant will tell you fraud doesn’t pay because the system eventually catches up with you. One fraud turns into two and soon it snowballs… accounting systems are set up to eventually catch it because the coverup becomes unmanageable. If the Soul Buyer is real, he is going to get caught. Then all his transactions will have to be reviewed”, I said. “Your way out is because they put in controls. Then they added another one, the pen, because fraud happened before with one control. You touching the pen, the second control,  messed up the count. If you find yourself in the wrong place, just hang on, I’ll tell the Carpenter what happened,” I concluded.

As we continued down the beach I realized the Buyer has a problem, not so much with Bob but with me. I wasn’t entirely truthful when I provided him my accounting example all those years back at the Abby. My example to the Demon had been for immaterial inventory, not material – the souls had to balance with heaven. . Eventually someone is going to look for the lost inventory, there is  a counter total and no corresponding soul. The Buyer, probably with another participant, has been juggling the books to balance all these years All I have to do is live long enough for the heaven or hell accounting department to notice.

“ ‘Hey Jesus, I’m new here. I taught a demon how to commit accounting fraud in a bar while he was buying souls but my friend Bob who also helped the demon is a good guy. Could you get him out of hell?’ I think that might send me to a lower level and you down to join me”, said Bob.

I pondered his comment. I wondered when the Soul Buyer was caught what the punishment would be in hell. Going to prison for defrauding Satan is a frighting thought. “The fact that he tipped you off with the newspaper shows he is concerned. He is trying to cover up lose ends, usually an indication someone is asking questions. His frauds are starting to unravel. We just need more to be asking questions. The more the facts get out, the more chances he will get caught sooner ,” I replied. I had worked on earthly fraud cases, this is how it usually went and since he made us in his image, I assumed the same timeline for Hell.

“What are we going to do, run ads in the Daily Brimstone? Get the Apostles to sign a petition? And what about you? If the Buyer is caught as you claim he will be, where do you go? Both sides are going to come looking for you to clean things up. They cannot have you around, ruins the whole game.” he concluded.

We changed the subject and walked back talking about how our lives would have been different if we had married some of the girls we had dated. I was still single, and based on how some prior girlfriends had turned out, was happy with that. We laughed about some twice, or thrice, told tales and I told him I looked forward to seeing him in two months.

I got busy with work and a new relationship. I sent Bob a Christmas card, only to receive a reply with an envelope addressed not in his hand. In neat Ole Miss sorority prose his wife informed me that Bob had passed away from a sudden illness. It was on the day the Soul Buyer said he would see him again.

I wonder even now if it was just a coincidence. Merrill’s research did make him rich, and Bob died on the predicted day, and finding Merrill’s obituary in a plane seat pocket was odd, but three data points don’t make a proof. Folks don’t usually blame “The Carpenter” for mishaps either. As I write this, firm in the conclusion it was all a coincidence, I recall a flight to Europe where we lost both engines but landed safely, and twice I missed bombs in train stations by a few minutes. I prefer to believe I’m lucky, but maybe it is something else.