MALOCCHIO

by

Eliot Fintushel

 

 am a perfect pacifist, but I once gave Joe Galucci the Evil Eye.  It was the summer before I entered college, and I was working for Mandrake & Kinsey Seed Company (now defunct).  As I sat beside Joe figuring out how many nasturtiums and portulacas to send to the Spend-'N'-Saves of Jasper, Illinois, I whistled discordant sections of Le Sacre du Printemps.  I tightened my lips for strange oboe solos that only he and I could hear.

"You know, Joe," I'd coo, "every day young people are dying suddenly of unknown causes."  Then more whistling.

One time Joe called his mother at coffee break.  Meyer, my only friend there, overheard.  "Malocchio, Mama!" Joe whispered, and Meyer duly reported.  He asked her to prepare the herbal unguent she would rub into his scalp to ward off my killing gaze.  "I'll come right home from work.  Don't tell Pop.  Have it ready, okay?"

The bastard did his Spend-'N'-Saves faster than I did‑-it's a wonder the efficiency that a lack of grey matter can engender‑-and he bragged to me about it constantly.  Worse, he had leered at Helen Wojtczak the day she had met me for lunch; he'd even had the nerve to come up and introduce himself to her, sidling between us as if I didn't exist.

Downstairs at the vending machines‑-Sara Lee crumbcakes, hot chocolate, java, Beechies, Life Savers‑-Joe would jawjack with the regulars, happily among remedial readers who knew batting averages and car models (male) or what lovers hung off what cliffs on which soaps (female).  They laughed, flirted, backslapped, and sneaked out at lunch for a beer at Slim's.  I couldn't go there; I was seventeen, a year shy of legal.  Joe was eighteen.

"Hey Al," he japed as he scooped a roll of tropical‑flavored Life Savers from the maw of the candy machine, "you'll never be in with the in-crowd, you know that?  Never."  Suddenly, my quarters felt like brass knucks in the palm of my hand.  I clenched.  I unclenched.

"Don't be mean, Joe," someone scolded.  The in‑crowd laughed as I pocketed my knucks and slinked back to my baloney sandwich and chess with Meyer.  Forget the Beechies.  Pax in terra.

When Joe was in the mood, he liked to slap me.  Working beside me at the same long table, looking up numbers on the same charts, he would cuff me on the back of the head, and when I turned to look, he'd be smirking in his tote sheets.  Our supervisor never saw a thing.

Myself, I wasn't brought up to be violent.  I'd just give Joe a look.  Or whistle.

I think that's why the Imp came to me, empowered me‑-instead of a Joe Galucci.  When you abstain from things, like me from fisticuffs, it creates a kind of potential somewhere in your brain, an unresolved energy that actuates as Imps and Poltergeists and suchlike.  That's how I figure it.

The Imp sneaked up on me while I snoozed in a toilet stall‑-my quarter‑to‑noon ritual.  I heard him before I saw him: "That Galucci's an imbecile, ain't he?"

"Meyer, is that you?"  I woke so suddenly it took me a moment to remember what I was doing sitting on a toilet with my pants up.

"No, I ain't Meyer."  It had a voice like a gutted muffler.  "Come on out.  I got a offer to make you."

I unlatched the stall door.  I pushed it open, slipped out, then fell back against it‑-and whistled.

The Imp winced.  "Cut that out!"  He was three feet tall and shaped like a clove of garlic.  His features were splits in the garlic paper.  His eyes were cracks with tiny star anise stuck in them.  His crack of a mouth had a pimento peeking out for a tongue.  "I hate that.  I can't stand that high‑pitched ruckus."

His clothes: pissed-on, smoke-stained drapery, from the pompon at the point of his cap to the one at the tip of each slipper.  Two ruffled fins snug to the lunule of his piddling bod served for arms, I gathered.  What hands he had, if any, were in his pockets.

"Don't upchuck, prithee," he said.  "Faint if you like ‑-some do.  Help you jetsam old Galooch, is what I'm good for‑-if you ain't too chickenshit to let me."  He slug-slimed nearer on those slick crescent dogs‑-a neat performance, Disney on ice except for the condom dispenser upstage left.

"What . . . what are you?"

"Deep!" he said.  "Take me to Slim's for a gin and tonic, why don'tcha, and I'll draw you a picture."  Exactly like magic, the buzzer sounded for lunch.  My mind at that point was as lucid as a shovelful of slush.  I closed my mouth and led the thing to Slim's.

We took a booth.  Nobody ID'ed me‑-the Imp winked.  He ordered us gin and tonics.

"Hey!  Who's the chicky?"  Galucci sidled by with his Neanderthal pals.  "Hubba hubba!"  A couple of them winked or blew kisses.  The Imp smiled sweetly.  They laughed and bellied up to the bar for their lunch.

"They see you as a girl!" I said.

"Deep," he said.  "I'm gonna enjoy doing business with you."  The drinks came, and he swallowed them both, swizzle sticks and all.  "Call me Buck.  I'm an Imp.  I seen what you been laying on Joe there, the Evil Eye and that.  'Amateurish stuff,' I tell myself, 'but the kid's got potential.'  You got potential, Al.  I'm interested in taking you on."

"Taking me on?"

"Thing is‑-and this is my loss leader, I'm gonna tell you this much strictly gratis‑-thing is, to give a good Evil Eye, you gotta know the guy you're eyeballing.  Every human soul is bound by exactly three knots.  You gotta see two of a guy's particular knots before you can give 'im an effective Evil Eye."

"Knots?"

"Want another drinky?"  He called out an order for another two gin and tonics.  "Okay.  I'll give you a f'rexample.  You.  Knot Number One: you always gotta think you're smarter than everybody else, but you actually got the IQ of a turnip, no offence.  Knot Number Two: even though you are among the horniest bipeds on Planet Earth‑-this is Planet Earth, right?‑-you're gonna die a virgin."

He looked up and smacked his lips.  The waitress, than whom I was smarter, and whom I was dying, per impossibile, to deflower, spun Buck's tumblers onto the table.  He threw them down his throat, insinkerated the swizzle sticks in his tiny maw, and washed it all down with three or four cardboard coasters that said "Bass Ale" in red and blue.  "Them are two of your three knots.  Tough luck, kid, but every human's got 'em.  Wretched race!  Imps rule.  Cheers!"  He chomped down the glasses.

"Imps rule," I muttered, my heart dark within me.  I thought, (1) I do not just imagine that I'm smarter than other people; I am smarter.  I can't help that.  (2) Horny, yes!  But I am not going to die a virgin.  Matter of fact, I am practically up to second base with Helen Wojtczak, and there are still seven weeks before I leave for college.

So I voiced my thought #3: "Those aren't my knots, Buck."

He smiled a petite cedilla of a smile, fading even as it appeared.  "Sure, sure!  I musta been thinking of somebody else.  That's it!  I was thinking of somebody else, Al.  You got me dead to rights, buddy!  I can't get one past you!  But anyways, you see what I mean.  If you wanna do a proper Evil Eye on that Galucci sap, you gotta find out his knots, see?"

"What's my third one?" I said.

"Damn me if you ain't a Einstein and Solomon rolled into one, kid!  'What's my third!'  You knock me out.  Flat cold!  What a horse trader!  Tell you what.  You go case Galucci.  Figger his knots, see?  Throw him a genuine pro malocchio.  Prove yourself.  Then I'll give you free access to my entire brain.  Introductory offer.  One time only . . . Hey, beautiful, two more gin'n'tonics!"

"Wait a minute.  I don't want to actually hurt anyone, you know."

He guffawed pulverized glass onto the tablecloth.  "You crack me up, Al.  Drink my gins.  I gotta take a powder.  When you done your homework, you know where to find me."

"I mean it.  I'm not interested.  I don't hate him, Buck.  I don't hate anybody."

A circumflex of a smile.  An umlaut of a twinkle.  Buck vanished.

The waitress brought me the two drinks and the tab.  I smiled my irresistably sexy smile.  She grimaced and departed.  I looked at the bill.  It was my lunch and bus money.

 

hat evening I played chess with Meyer up by the reservoir.  We squatted between the fluted columns of the Water Authority, right in the middle of the compass engraved on the portico, me at E, Meyer at W.  It was rosy twilight, and from up there on Weber's Hill we could have watched the city skyline darkle, if we had cared to look past our pawns and pieces.

"You're nuts, Al,"‑-casually sliding his rook along my first rank‑-"but as for the two knots, I gotta say, it rings true.  Check."

"Stupid move."  I took his rook.

"Check," he said, moving in from the Queen's side.

"Dumb," I said.  I took his other rook.  "He was a million miles off.  You're nearly as smart as me, Meyer‑-I know that.  And as for the virgin thing . . . here comes Helen."

"Checkmate," he said.  I hadn't seen the knight move.  I was beat after walking home from Mandrake & Kinsey's.  I never lost to Meyer unless I was half‑asleep.  Besides, I'd been thinking about Helen.  "Anyway, Al, don't do anything stupid.  The summer's half over, you're going to NYU, and Joe's gonna be an office clerk for the rest of his life.  Just ignore him.  Lay off the Stravinski.  You don't really hate him, do you?"

"Of course not!  I don't hate anybody, Meyer.  But what if you could really give somebody the Evil Eye?  Wouldn't the experiment be worth it?"

"No.  Here she comes.  Two's company, buddy.  See ya!"  He scooped the chesspieces into his satchel, folded the board under his arm, and ran off.

I galloped down the sunset side of Weber Hill to Helen.  She was beautiful.  She made a blue work shirt and cutoffs look like Cinderella's gown.  Her frizzy blond hair floated like a halo above a Boticelli angel's face.  Her nose was a little bigger than Venus's maybe, but I like them that way.  Helen Wojtczak had been the queen of my dreams since I almost kissed her at New Year's, and she almost let me.

We walked together up the stone steps of the Water Authority, crossed north, northwest, west northwest, and I kissed her.  "Don't," she said.

I knitted my brows.  Helen squeezed my hand with a sisterliness I found alarming, and led me to the circular walk around the reservoir.

"I have something to tell you."  She stared down into our long shadows.

"I have something to tell you."  It was motel night, I'd decided.  I wanted to make a liar out of Buck the Imp as soon as possible.

"Al, there's somebody else."

I dropped her hand.  I stopped walking.  I looked out across the reservoir, through the chain link fence to the fountain spraying antibacterially in the waning light.  "Who?"

"It doesn't matter who, Al."

"Yes it does.  Tell me who."

"A guy you work with.  Remember the day I met you for lunch . . . ?"

 

 knew you'd come round, Al my boy.  Now, to find two of Galucci's knots‑-and mind you, I could tell 'em to you, one, two, but it wouldn't do you no damn good, because you gotta see 'em for yourself‑-to find two of them knots of his‑-and they're double squares, believe you me, solid as a frigging Gordian‑-you just watch him, savvy?  Down in the bushes and tight to the windows, watch his life, Al.  Shadow the jerk.  Where he tightens up‑-that's your baby!  You'll see them knots, four days max . . . How about we get some more of them gin'n'tonics at Slim's?"

"No thanks, Buck‑-what's in this for you?"

"For me?  I'm like a big league scout, champ.  You'll be a feather in my cap, see?"

"What league is that?"

"Do you hate this Galucci's guts or not?"  He crinkled his little face.  The pale epithelium puckered, split, and curled like wood shavings.  Where they parted, a crimson inner skin showed through.

"I hate him, all right."

"Then waddaya care about leagues, huh?  I'll tell you everything-plus when Galooch goes down."  The lunch buzzer sounded.  Buck chose a new way to disappear.  He collapsed into his own body like a custard pie falling in.  His hat funneled down his cranium.  His head went down his throat, the throat down his torso, and so on to the pair of pompons at the tips of his feet.  The feet imploded, sucking in the pompons with a pop!  All that remained was a faint sulfurous odor.  Also, the condom machine was gone.

On the way home from work, on the No. 66 bus, Meyer tried to console me about Helen.  Plenty of fish in the sea, he said.  No skin off my teeth, I said, honest, but I couldn't play chess that night‑-some homework to do.

"You think I'm stupid, don't you, Al?  I know what you're up to.  You're doing what the damned Imp told you to do.  You're shadowing Joe."  He shook his head and moved to another seat.

I stayed on the bus past Meyer's stop, past mine, and all the way to midtown.  From there I transfered to the one that would take me across the tracks to Joe Galucci's neighborhood.

The first knot was easy.  I could hear the ruckus halfway down the block.  People on the street looked embarrassed.  Mothers hurried their children past the Galuccis' house.  Neighbors shut their windows.

Not me.  I made straight for Joe's.  Down in the bushes, tight to the windows, I watched Joe Galucci's life.

 

ext day Buck debriefed me by the bathroom sink.  "His father's a drunk, right?" I said.

"And . . . ?"

"He beats Joe's mother.  I heard her cry.  I heard him yell."

"And . . . ?"  Buck plumbed a hole I took to be a nostril and produced a small diamond.  He examined it briefly, then flicked it onto the floor, where it turned to a dustball and skittered away.

"And‑-what?" I said.

"What about Joe?"

"Joe shouted at his father.  He tried to break it up.  There were a few slaps and broken dishes; then Mr. Galucci stomped out.  I listened by the back window‑-Joe tried to get his mother to leave the bum.  Joe and his mom were both crying.

"His father beats her up all the time, Buck.  Joe's desperate to stop it."

"He can't," Buck crowed.  "That's the knot.  He wants to save her, but he never will, because she don't wanna be saved.  It's a beaut, ain't it?  That's Number One."

"I think it's kind of sad."

"Don't give me that crap!"  Buck started undulating, bottom to top, and each time the wave reached the tip of his conical hat, a puff of smoke came out.  "You want me to tell you what he did after you left?  Her initials are Helen Wojtczak . . . "

"That bastard!"

"Exactly.  He took the pot with all your ante sittin' there, Al.  He shot the moon."

"Yeah, well, I'll euchre him!"

"That's the spirit!  One more knot to go!"  Just like a Cocteau movie, Buck dissolved into the mirror over the sink, gooey black-and-white rippling surface and all.  I saw him dwindle into that strange world where there was a league in which I was about to be a rookie.

The lunch buzzer sounded.  I had a big appetite.

 

'll beat you at chess."  Meyer sidled in next to me on the No. 66 bus and fished out his wallet chess set‑-tiny, flat leather pieces in a square of slots.

"Dream on," I said, and I pushed the king's pawn.

"Galucci looks bad.  He was quiet today.  Did you do it, Al?  Did you give him the eye?"

"No.  I'm gonna, though, as soon as I figure out one of his other knots."

"He's got a date with Helen at the main library at six.  I heard him on the phone‑-watch your queen, Al."

"I am watching my queen.  You watch your queen . . . The library?  What would Galucci do at a library?"

"Back issues of The Auto Trader‑-who knows? . . . There it goes: you lost it, Al."  He slid a rook pawn next to my queen.  My queen had nowhere left to go.

"I don't wanna play any more."  I slapped the chess set closed.  "I have to think about something."

Meyer frowned.  "You wanna know what your third knot is, Al?"

"No, I don't.  How would you know, anyway?"

"I know."  He got up and stood by the rear door until his stop.  I stayed on till the library.

I spotted them in Business and Finance.  I slipped among the shelves and cleared a view between the SATRAPY-TORT and XYZ volumes of a legal encyclopedia.  They sat at a table by a window overlooking the river.  She was more beautiful than ever, the way girls get when they're next to another guy, as if the guy were a kleig light shining right on her.

I could see her dimpled knees under the table, pressed against Galucci's.  The way I was feeling, I could have impregnated Helen all the way from Philosophy, Religion and Education, fifty yards distant.  And I could have decked Joe from Geography and History on the next floor.

He was wearing glasses.  I'd never seen him wear glasses.  He stared into a thick book and jotted down notes in a spiral pad next to it.  Helen talked, turned pages for him, and stroked his hair.  At one point he slammed the book shut, pulled off his glasses, and marched to the window in a huff.  Helen followed him.  She slid her arm around his waist.  He laid his head on her shoulder.  They disappeared into an aisle that connected to Sports and Recreation.

I sneaked up to their table to see what Joe had been squinting at‑-Principles of Accountancy by Warren and Beasley.

 

hat's Number Two!"  Buck straddled the transom, trimming his fingers‑-his fingers, not his nails‑-trimming them to the middle joint of their seven.  For the Imp, this was nonchalance.  I watched the fingertips fall to the floor where they dried and curled in seconds, like a time-lapse film of desiccating carrots.  "He ain't up to accountancy.  Not enough smarts.  He'll die feeling like a failure on account of he'll never get the hang of double entries.  Wretched race!  Imps rule."  Snip!  Snip!

"Poor bastard!"

"Tell me again what they was doing in Sports and Recreation . . . ?"

It was burned into my memory: Helen and Joe like DNA strands‑-God forbid!‑-double-helixing between bound volumes of Sports Illustrated.  "Right!" I said.  "Malocchio!"

"That's my boy!  Just dig into him with them lovely weepers of yours.  The knots are like landmarks on a bombadier's map."  Snip!

For the first time in weeks, I was at my desk when lunchtime came.  Joe moped beside me.  He hadn't struck me for days.  You could almost take him for a human being sitting there dragging a pencil across the order forms.

I figured it was time to elicit some of Galucci's ill-will, just to remind me what I was in it for: "Hey, Galooch!  How's the CPA today?"

He half smiled.  For a moment I thought he was going to cry.  Then the buzzer sounded for lunch.  He just sat there as everyone else filed out.  "Joe," I said, "aren't you going to Slim's with your friends?"

"They ain't my friends.  Nobody gives a flying petootie about me, Al.  I'm sick of playing the game."

And there it was‑-Knot Number Three.  He wasn't in with the in-crowd.

 

hen I went out onto the loading dock for a smoke after lunch, Buck was there, sucking the air from the tires of parked cars.  He'd balloon up like a blood pressure band and his little feet would start to levitate while he French kissed a valve.  Then he'd let go and jet around the parking lot, insanely laughing.

After four or five cars, he slid over to the loading dock and sat down next to me.  He clicked valve caps palm to palm as if they were a rosary.  "So, are we ready for action or what?"

I watched my cigarette smoulder.  "I found the third knot . . . "

Buck backfired.  Black smoke billowed from his pores.  "You dumb human!  Damn your race!  Two, I told you!  Two!"

"But I couldn't help it, Buck.  It was right there . . . "

"Don't tell me!  I don't wanna hear it!"  He stuffed his fingers into his ears all the way up to the fourth joint.  The valve caps tumbled.  "I know all about it, damn it!  I know everybody's knots, you dumb human!  Imps rule!  Just clam up!  Go do the malocchio, is all!  Don't think about it, Al!  Do it now!"

"I can't go through with it, Buck."

"You what?"  He stopped hiccuping.  "I knew it!  Damn your race!"  His eyes widened like little missile silos.  The sulfur smell intensified.  The air between us seemed to yellow.

"Listen, Buck.  I appreciate all your help, but now that I really know Joe, now that I see his three knots, I can't hate him anymore.  I don't want to give him the Evil Eye, Buck."

A thin stream of black smoke issued from the pompon at the peak of Buck's hat.  "You know what happens to people who get the Evil Eye?  Things go wrong, Al, things that are nobody's fault, see?  Little things can make a big difference, Al.  Half a second crossing the street.  The wrong knob on a stove top.  You catch my drift, Al?  Look . . . "

Buck leveled his gaze at a pigeon gliding down toward the loading dock.  It fluttered erratically, then slammed into a concrete pier and dropped straight down, its neck broken.

"Y'see," Buck said, "that can happen to humans too.  It could happen to you, Al, if you ain't careful‑-say, if you rubbed me the wrong way or something.  Not that you'd be that stupid."

"Jesus, Buck, don't you ever feel sorry for anybody?  Don't Imps have knots?"

"Yeah, but just one, not three, and nobody ever finds out.  Ever.  Imps rule.  Galucci gets malocchioed, or you do.  Think about it, Al.  I'll see you after."

I butted my smoke and shoved through the bumpered double doors into the shipping room.  Meyer was there.  His chessboard dangled by a corner from one hand.  The pieces littered the floor at his feet.  "I saw him.  I heard everything.  I can't believe it.  He's an Imp!  He's really an Imp!"  The chessboard fell.

"Yeah, so now what?"  I walked past him toward the corridor and the vending machines.

"Wait up!"  He ran after me, leaving the chess pieces where they lay.  He grabbed my shoulder.  "Imps don't rule, Al.  You got him!  Don't you see that?  He's completely helpless!"

"You're nuts, Meyer.  If I don't do what he wants, he'll do a malocchio on me.  I'll end up like the pigeon.  What am I supposed to do‑-get Joe Galucci's mother to rub oil in my hair?  I've got to give Joe the Evil Eye, and that's that."  I pulled my shoulder from under Meyer's hand.

He stepped in front of me and blocked my way.  I could hear people chattering by the vending machines now.  I looked past Meyer to see if I could spot Joe.

"Don't you get it, Al?  Don't you know why he wouldn't let you tell him about Joe's third knot?"

"Get out of my way, Meyer."  Through a doorway, I saw Joe's brogues sticking out under a chair by the coke machine.  I pushed Meyer out of my way and walked to the doorway.  Joe looked up.  I looked down.

He slapped me, I thought.  He makes fun of me.  He thinks he's smarter than I am, faster than I am.  He stole my girl.

I hurtled through his eyes.  Everything grew as hazy and dim as the the sun to a deep sea diver.  In the tunnel behind Joe Galucci's eyes, I saw neon figures‑-his drunken father raging, the bruised mother weeping.  I sped in past a phantom Joe Galucci beating his fists against the tunnel wall and tearing incomprehensible pages out of a thick book.  At the tunnel's end was a soft red spot like a target painted on a rifle‑range dummy.

I hesitated.  At my back I heard Meyer's voice‑-"Don't, Al!"‑-and for the briefest moment I saw the third knot: Joe Galucci alone in himself, Joe Galucci blindering himself to his loneliness and despair, aching to blend in with the in‑crowd.  He had fallen behind while they laughed over Seven‑and‑Sevens at Slim's . . .

"What do you want, Al?"  A pained expression crossed Joe's face.

"You got change of a dollar?"  I couldn't do it.

The coke bottle in Joe Galucci's hand boiled over into his lap.  A thick, bubbling, yellow fluid seethed down his legs and onto the floor.  He stood.

"Run, Joe!" I yanked him up by the elbow.  Searing fumes rose from the puddle.  The three or four people who had been grazing at the candy machines stampeded out.  I pushed Joe out along with them‑-he didn't resist.  Meyer stood beside me as the fumes congealed into a child-sized clove of garlic.

"You've had it!" Buck leveled his smoky red eyes at me, and I felt that my world was hemorrhaging.  Everything turned bad and drained away.

"No," Meyer shouted.  "You've had it, Imp!  My friend Al has a temper like nobody's business.  He keeps it on a leash.  He's fooled everybody.  He's even fooled himself.  He thinks he's a pacifist!  He thinks he can't hate.  But you better look out, Mr. Imp!"

Buck staggered backwards.  His face twitched.  He looked at me, then covered his eyes with a freshly defingered paw.  He seemed to cave in as my world swelled back into existence.  "Wretched race!" he spat, but now there was pity in it, as if he perceived the precious eye of a needle through which I could never squeeze, because I was a barren, hateful egotist: my three knots!

Knots or no, I could still whistle.  I remembered how it had made him wince.  I whistled a glissando from as low and loose as I could pucker, sliding up in pitch until the plaster walls and concrete floor of that basement room resonated.  The vending machines and the fluorescents kicked in, and the room became one large tuning fork.  Buck's little face scrunched like a burnt raisin.

"Humans rule!" Meyer crowed.

"Stop it!  Stop it!"  Buck swirled down into the puddle like a tornado in reverse.  The puddle of Buck froze, shattered, and vanished.

 

eyer and I sat together on the No. 66 bus.

"That's the last we'll see of Buck," Meyer sighed.  "We found the Imp's knot, don't you see?  Same as you, Al: to do a malocchio, he has to know his victim, but the more he knows him, the less he wants to hurt him.  It's a razor's edge.  Two knots is just enough to be able to do his dirt.  That's why he got so worked up when you were about to tell him Joe's third."

"Same as with my knots.  He only pretended to know the third one."

"Now you're getting it!"

"I figured that all along, Meyer, you sap."

"When I told Buck your third knot, he was finished.  He didn't have the heart to hurt you any more.  Even Imps have feelings, Al."

"I hope the little shit comes back.  I'll give him something to feel, all right."

Meyer flipped open his pocket chess set and pushed the white king's pawn two spaces forward.  "Better do it quick, before you get to know him."

 

ere's the falling action: I was best man at Joe Galucci's wedding.  God knows what Helen sees in him!  I've been trying to lure her into adultery ever since, but she hasn't bitten yet.  I live alone in the next town, a pillar of the local chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  I work for Meyer, whom I'd still beat regularly at chess, him and all his sons, if the bastards didn't cheat.

I've had no further commerce with Imps.  Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing ever really happened.  After all, those "knots" of mine were complete baloney.  In fact, I'd be one happy fellow if whoever lets the air out of my tires every morning would just lay the hell off.