Sometimes the want is so bad you think you can trick the devil. You know you gotta step right up, bold as soda glass, run your finger across that pearled glint of devilteeth. Gotta be quick, before devil takes a bite. Blues man on the record player, he makes it sound easy. Smooth like honey and whisky, like Old Scratch himself is holed-up there at the crossroads, waiting just for you, saying that’s right, sweet girl, devil just dying for a taste of your particular itch. But you know it ain’t that easy. Might lose more’n a finger, you ain’t quick enough. Lying blues man still picking that guitar with all ten of his fingers.
Still.
On a fevered Kansas night when the air hugs close, and the men’re working late to bring in the wheat, and the other night shift waitress is swaying her hips to contraband music in the back room; that’s the kind of night you don’t care if it’s easy. The kind of night you’re willing to go toe to toe with a man or a husband or a devil. The kind of night you might curl like tobacco smoke, etch yourself into the grooves of a record that can be played somewhere else, anywhere else. You know there’s a catch, every deal has one, devil grinning soul or ride, darlin’, your choice, but maybe your particular trick is you don’t mind that hitch-hiking devil riding shotgun when you sway with that pretty little waitress in the back room; maybe you want a lick of devilsong smoke-soft in your whisper— you’re coming with me, ain’t you, sweet girl? You know you gotta be quick, when you’re toe to toe at the crossroads. You gotta be bolder than glass.
Hear Myna Chang read her piece.
Myna Chang is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank). Her writing has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Norton’s Flash Fiction America. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. Find her at MynaChang.com.