Barking Man by Madison Smartt Bell Page A

light behind her, her legs showed through the fabric. They were very slightly bowed, and her shoulders were rather big for a woman, her hands strong. She had a little trouble with arthritis, but not so much she couldn’t work. Her features were flat, her skin strong and wrinkly like elephant hide. A few long white hairs flew away from her chin. The rest of her hair was thick and gray, and she hacked if off herself in a rough helmet shape and peered out from underneath its visor. Her right eye was green, her left pale blue and troubled by an unusual sort of tic. Over five or so minutes the eyelid would lower, imperceptibly and inexorably closing itself till it was fully shut, and then quite suddenly fly back open in a startled blue awakening. Because of this, some said that Mackie Loudon had the evil eye, and others thought she was a witch, which was not true, although she did hold colloquy with demons.
    Before the fireplace in the parlor was a five-foot length of a big walnut log, out of which Mackie Loudon was carving a great head of Medusa. For a workstand she used a stone sculpture she’d forgotten, mostly a flat-topped limestone rock with an ill-defined head and arm of Sisyphus just visible underneath it. She stood on a rotting embroidered ottoman to reach the top of the section of wood, and took her chisels from the mantelpiece where they were lined. The front windows had not been washed in years and what light came through was weak and dingy, but she could see as much as she required to. Her chisels were ordered from New York and each was sharp enough to shave with. She didn’t often need to use her mallets; wherever she touched her scoop to its surface the walnut curled away like butter. She carved, the strange eye opened and closed on its offbeat rhythm and the murmur and mutter of her demons soothed her like a song.
    There were two of them, Eliel and Azazael. Each made occasional inconsistent protestations of being good, or evil. Often they quarreled, with each other or with her, and at other times they would cooperate in the interlocking way of opposites. Eliel reported himself to be the spirit of air and Azazael the spirit of darkness. Sometimes they would exchange these roles, or sometimes both would compete to occupy one or the other. They laid conflicting claims to powers of memory and magic, though Mackie Loudon could always point out that there was little enough in the real world they’d ever accomplished on their own.
    Azazael was usually hostile to Medusa. You don’t know what you’re getting into , he said. You’re not sure yourself just what you’re calling up, or why .
    “The one sure thing is you’re a gloomy devil,” Mackie Loudon said. But she said it with affection, being so much in control this morning that the demonic bickering was as pleasant to her as a choir. “You’ve always got the wrong idea,” she said to Azazael. “You’re my unnecessary demon.” She moved the chisel and another pale peel of the outer wood came falling away from its dark core.
    Mackie Loudon was headed home from a foraging expedition, her shoulders pulled down by the two plastic shopping bags that swung low from the end of her arms. Her head was lowered also and she scanned the pavement ahead of her for anything of interest that might be likely to appear. A couple of feet above the nape of her neck, Eliel and Azazael invisibly whirled around each other, swooping and darting like barn swallows at evening. They were having one of the witless arguments to which immaterial beings are prone, about whether or not it was really raining. It was plain enough to Mackie Loudon that it was raining, but not hard enough for her to bother stopping to take out the extra plastic bag she carried to tie around her head when it was raining hard. There were only a few fat raindrops splattering down, spaced far apart on the sidewalk.
    She had almost come to the line of people shuffling into the matinee at the President Theater