Quest for Treasure, Second Place Winner: Neu-Faustus: the tale of Congressman Eric Wilder as told, f
While he stood at the end of her wedding reception’s receiving line, Eric was constantly overwhelmed by how painful it was for him, that the day his daughter had finally gotten married had come. Despite how happy he was for her happiest day Eric knew that he wouldn’t get to see all the great things he had expected from this new family. She had finished law school, spent time in the Peace Corps, and offered so much of her free time to worthy causes. Eric knew that she would be very happy with this new husband of hers, but behind his feigned smile he knew his time was coming. Eric’s wife, Anne, couldn’t tell that he wasn’t enjoying himself. She hardly noticed as the couple greeted and thanked the crowds that came to the wedding, the crowds that came to offer best wishes and kind gifts. His newly married daughter, Rebecca, was doing to the same thing with her husband only a few feet away from her parents. She looked serene in her white dress, content next to her new partner, and grateful for her friends and loved ones who came to congratulate her. Watching all of this, Eric couldn’t decide if he loved it, or not.
This event was a larger affair that either family was used too. Congressman Eric Wilder didn’t want to have invited so many people to the party, nor did his daughter or son in law. This could not be avoided, though, for someone who had to worry about running for re-election every two years. Eric had already secured a few hefty pledges to his war chest besides the copious gifts that his daughter had received. She had already received more blenders than one could use if he owned a series of smoothie chains. As he looked down the line Eric saw plenty of campaign supporters, and most of them would have check’s to the ‘Congressman Wilder’s Re-election Campaign’ in their vest pockets. As he looked down this line, Eric stroked his beard and felt weary, wondering if the night would have to drag on, and at the same time felt a little desperate for that night to never end.
He and his wife bid one couple a lovely evening, and he stepped away for a moment to grab some water. Anne would be okay on her own for half a second, Eric thought, justifying his moment away from the tortures he was suffering. It would be so hard for him to stick in this line, he thought as he took a huge gulp of water. After everyone came though, the wedding party would only be able to mingle around for about twenty minutes or so, Eric thought, quickly trying to run the schedule through his mind. So, however long this line lasts, add twenty minutes, we’ll give a few toasts to my only daughter, I’ll lead her on a dance, and after that I’m done for.
After he had finished off his water Eric started making his way back to his wife. Walking towards her and the spot he had been expected to be at he saw she was talking to someone he didn’t know. He ought to know someone that had been invited. Perhaps the groom’s family had invited whoever this was, Eric thought. As he looked at him, though, Eric suspected that this stranger might not have been the groom’s guest. The suit was well cut and sewn, was certainly made of wool (instead of the polyester garb most of the groom’s family’s guests wore), and the tie-pocket square combo was too apt for that other crowd. As he approached, Eric ran the full gamut of this survey, from the wingtips of the stranger’s shoes to the Windsor knot of his tie.
Looking at his face, Eric realized who this was, recognized exactly who this was.
The Devil.
“Congressman Wilder,” said The Devil, even though they both knew that Eric already remembered who this was. “How long has it been? I can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen you.” The two of them knew exactly how long it’s been since they had seen each other. This act was necessary for the crowd, for Eric’s wife and daughter’s benefit, and so that Satan could pull him out of the reception line. “Let’s step out for a second, yes? I have something very serious I need to talk to you about.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly,” Eric said, desperate to stay where he was, to not make any more deals or agreements with him, let alone interact with him. He had been very uncomfortable standing here and acting like everything had been going fine. This was the moment that his hens had come home to roost. “We really ought to greet all these guests, accept the folks that came to wish my daughter well.”
“Sweetheart, I could tell you didn’t want to be here,” said Anne. “Go ahead, I can hold the fort. You’re still an elected official, right? You really should dedicate some time to a constituent, a concerned citizen. Go on.”
“I love you, dear,” said Eric. He made sure to look directly in her eyes while he said that. Others had told him that they had found it endearing that he had done that, that he had dedicated his full attention to her while he said that. This time, though, Eric thought it would be the last time he could look at her. She was talking to whoever was next in line, wasn’t really concerned about whatever it was that Eric was doing.
As they walked away, made their way to a quiet room, Satan says, “it’s almost time, yes?”
The line wasn’t as long as he thought it was.
“Well, it appears so,” replied Eric, trying to remember, think of the most important things that he should have resolved, trying to think of all the things that needed to be prepared for his future widow, his daughter’s needs.
The two of them found a quiet room, a calm place for them to sit down and have a discussion before, to resolve some problems. It was a coatroom. The ballroom where the party was happening wasn’t far away at all.
Several years ago, when Rebecca was still in her mother’s arms, Eric died. He didn’t die though. The Devil had used his ‘death’ as a chance to grab a new follower, a new acolyte.
One thing that everyone knew and loved about Congressman Wilder was that he loved bicycling. If he wasn’t able to ride his bike for a couple of hours every two or three days he started to get punchy. Eric relied on endorphin's, fueled his body with exercise. When he went four or five days without riding a bike, Anne used to hit him in the head and demand that he leave and only come back to the house once he had spent some time riding, at least for a few hours. For them it was the key to a happy marriage, to a happy workday.
One day was different.
One of the hills, a part of the path that he rode habitually, was a steep hill. This was close to the end of his ride. The first two-thirds of his favorite ride were uphill; Eric knocked around on the top of the hill for a while, and finished off with a huge drop that would arrive near his house. As he was coming down that abrupt hill that day, he wasn’t able to stop quickly enough to avoid a car that was crossing. He ran into it. The car stopped as soon as it hit him, but Eric went over its’ top. It was astounding how far he had bounced, how many times he had folded his body, and how much skin was rubbed off, once he had landed, of course.
The first thing he could remember seeing after he saw that he couldn’t stop in time was a plain white room, ten foot square, give or take. There weren’t any chairs, nor blood or anything. It was just a room. Eric spent a few moments trying to figure out where he was, but before he could know for sure two men walked into the room. One was dressed all in white, had a thick flowing beard and a bald head. The other was also dressed in white, but was clean-shaven and had thick, flowing locks.
The shaved one started, saying, “Eric, you’re dead.”
“What?” Eric yelled. Looking around the room he felt his legs, torso, and arms for wounds and damage. He remembered the fall, but wasn’t sure what had happened.
“Don’t scare him like that,” scolded the bearded man next to the shaved one. “He’s scared, he doesn’t know what’s going on. I’m sure you find this enjoyable, but I’m getting tired of it. Seriously. You really shouldn’t start things off with that one. Look, I know why you’re here, but do you have to be?”
“I’m dead?” asked Eric, not sure what he was talking about. He didn’t really care about the argument the two were having.
“I’m really sorry,” said the one with the beard. “There are some …”
“You don’t have to be,” said the other, interrupting the beard.
“Hey!”
“What? I don’t want to die! How do I not die?” asked Eric.
“Don’t listen to him. Look, my name is Peter and I can tell you exactly what you should do. First things first, do not listen to him.” But this beard interjected: “Listen to me, and you don’t have to die. We said ‘you’re dead’ but that doesn’t mean you’re completely dead. If that’s what you want, I’ll set it up so you don’t have to die.”
“Eric, I’m not kidding. Don’t listen to him.”
“No, I think I will. I don’t want to die. My little girl is only a few months old. I want to see her all grown up. I can’t die.”
“Great! Peter, get out of here,” he said, pushing him out of the room. “Eric, what do you want? You want to see your daughter all grown up?”
“Yes,” said Eric.
“So, I’ll make a deal with you. We’ve already established that you want to watch your daughter grow up. I can do that. I’ll even set it up so that you can have a great life while you watch over her. Anything you set out to accomplish, it’s done. But, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I’ve made sure to that. I just need you to do something for me.”
“What do you want?” Eric asked, not sure if this deal was too good to be true.
“I need you to follow and aide me. You need to renounce God and Christ and the Virgin Mary, the whole nine yards.”
Eric suddenly realized with whom he was talking: “You’re The Devil.”
“As I live and breath,” he said, extending a handshake.
This was too much, too quickly for Eric to compress, to resolve.
He weighed out the options, took time to decide on this deal that he was about to make. The downsides we’re obvious and drastic. On the upside, though, Eric could see his daughter grow up and spend time with his wife, Anne.
“Fine,” he said, taking that handshake.
“Great. Sign here,” said Satan, releasing their handshake and producing a thick pad of paper.
“What? A signature?”
“Yup. Here’s a pen.”
Eric looked at this pad of paper. There were about five ‘sign here’ tabs throughout the thicket. The text looked like a mix between English, Latin, and Old French, but Eric wasn’t sure if there was also a section of Aramaic in there too as he flipped through.
“Yea, I’ve had a few folks in the past trick me. If something’s not written down I’ve learned that it can be really hard to enforce,” said Satan, shaking the pen he offered to Eric, enticing him to grab it. “Come on. Let’s get you ‘live’, yes?”
Signing a contract seemed much more drastic than shaking his hand. I’ve already agreed, though, thought Eric. He took it, signed on the first tab, then the second, flipped to the third, then the fourth and fifth.
“Excellent,” Satan said, as soon as he finished the fifth signature. He snapped a finger, and the pen Eric held disappeared in a puffed cloud, as did the huge contract. “This is good, for both of us. Now, brace yourself.”
“For what?” Eric asked.
“The defibrillator.”
“Wait, I’ll tell you what I want.”
“Yea, you’ve already signed that away.”
That was true, thought Eric. “I think I know that, but I want to make something clear. I want to live long enough to see my daughter get married.”
“Oh?”
“Yea,” he said, feeling the first pains of the defibrillator. They coursed from his toes to his fingernails. It was tingling a bit right now, but he could feel it start increasing. “I just want to live long enough to give her a dance for her wedding reception. Can we rely on an oral agreement, since I assume it’s not in the contract.”
The defibrillation pains were increasing.
“A dance?” Satan asked, mulling it over in his head. Tossing it around in his head, he made up his mind. “Yea, I think I can do that.”
“Done,” Eric said.
The next thing he knew, he was on the road feeling the burns on his chest from the defibrillator, the hot sun on his skin, and road rash all over his back. Eric couldn’t really remember the path the ambulance took him to the hospital, his graft surgery to fix up his road rash, or the weeks of recovery he spent in the rehab clinic. He did remember, however, the agreement he made.
Throughout the next few years Eric spent as much time as possible with his daughter. While she was at school, though, he made it necessary to be at work. It almost seemed compulsive for his coworkers, seemed like he was one-upping them. His success was uncanny; no one was able to explain how many people he could talk to, how many people he could convince to donate to whichever cause it was that he was working for. Those donations and successes only increased once Eric ran for Congress. He knew, though, how it was that he had so much ‘luck’. Eric knew and remembered the agreement that he had made. He knew what it was that fed to his successes, be they financial or, eventually, congressional.
He took the exact opposite tilt to his family life. He and Anne spent so much of their free time with little Rebecca. Anne wasn’t so sure what it was that possessed him to push Rebecca so much. He made sure that she knew she couldn’t get married until she had a bachelor’s degree. But that demand soon grew to include her having worked as in the Peace Corps or having volunteered at such-and-such-clinic and any other number of demands. Eventually, the two agreed that law school would be the final hurdle. These requirements, though, were incredibly selfish. Eric didn’t want to see her grow up. He knew that he would eventually have to say goodbye, that he’d have to leave her alone, that he would return his soul to The Devil.
So when his daughter came home gushing about this wonderful guy she had met, with whom she had gone on so many dates Eric didn’t know what to do. Even though he had done everything he could to avoid this, he had to feign excitement. This broke his heart, but couldn’t bring himself to sabotage this relationship. He loved his daughter too much.
The moment has come, it seems, thought Eric as he and Satan sat in the coatroom near Rebecca’s reception.
“Listen, I’ve still got a few moments,” said Eric. “She’s been married, so I guess it’s time. We made an oral agreement after I signed that paper, though. You remember?”
“Remind me.”
“That I dance with Rebecca, that we’d have just one father/daughter dance, just one last dance.”
“We can do that, if you want,” said Satan. “I have a better offer.” Eric was afraid to ask, but did anyways.
“I need a favor. Do you remember this?” Satan asked, placing the contract that Eric had signed on the table between them. “There’s going to be a bill introduced in congress. It’s a new law that bans alcohol in the US.”
“Yea, I’ve heard of that,” said Eric. “It didn’t work out well the first time, did it? I know it passed the Senate, but,” “I know. I saw to it that it passed the senate. I’m welcome. I want it to pass congress.”
“BUT, it’s dead on arrival in congress. And, I’m sure it’ll get vetoed by the president.”
Satan balked at Eric’s little disputes, Eric’s little gripes about my new idea. “I don’t want you to worry about the president’s veto. I don’t want you to worry about how it used to work in the US. I don’t want you to worry about what benefits I’m going to take out of this. You’re my follower, yes? I told you what I want. Do it.”
“Yea, I’m about to die. Why would I …”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Congressman Wilder,” said Satan, interrupting. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to do what I tell you, and you can have this contract. I don’t care what you do with it. There’s only one copy, so if I were you I’d burn it; if you burn it, it’s as if it never existed.”
Not really sure what was happening, Eric asked, “What does that mean?”
“That means it’s as if you never met me. Well, you would come out the winner in this deal, since I got you elected and gave you all that help over the years, things like that. That dance with your girl that bargained for wouldn’t be the end. After you agree to this, I’m willing to let everything between us to fall away.”
This deal may have seemed like the best of both worlds for Eric. His latest polling numbers suggested that he’d get re-elected, as did his sizable war chest. Checking his watch and looking through the door he’s sitting behind, noticing that he would be dancing with Rebecca sooner than later, Eric realized that it didn’t matter his dance would only be with his daughter a few minutes away. His final moments, all of a sudden, seemed light-years away than they had been.
Illegal alcohol, though, was a really bad idea, thought Eric. He could only think of a few people who would benefit from that, not one of which was a constituent. Pulling and tugging, trying to get this idea to work out ‘ok’ in his head, he just couldn’t figure out how to make this idea work, how to justify it around his district. Beside the personal benefits, he really couldn’t figure one good thing about this idea.
“Well, what do you think?” asked Satan, starting to get impatient as Eric spent too much time thinking.
Eric closed his eyes, tried to force himself to do the opposite of what he decided. He couldn’t.
“No,” Eric said, pushing the contract across the little table back to The Devil.
“Uh, ‘no’ what?” Satan asked.
“I’m not going to get that passed.”
“Well, I’ve got others,” said The Devil. “You understand what’s going to happen once I leave with this paper, right? Without getting what I want?”
Eric starred against the wall across wall for longer that either them felt comfortable, snapped back to paying attention, and nodded.
“Have a good evening, ok?”
“I’ll see you, ok?” Satan said, mocking. He snapped his fingers and Eric saw his contract disappear. He snapped his fingers again and, in a puff of smoke, completely disappeared.
Letting the past few minutes sink in, Eric sat there, in the coatroom, resting, realizing what it was that he had just done. Still sure that he had just made the right decision, Eric slowly rose, crossed the room, and made his way towards the party he had left. He tried to think of a valid excuse to tell his wife about why he was away for so long, but she didn’t really ask. It turns out that their only daughter’s wedding was a good enough distraction to keep Anne from noticing that Eric had spent so much time away from the party.
“Ah, sweetie, you’re here. They’re about to call you up for a dance with Rebecca.”
“What?” he asked, not sure what she had asked him.
“It’s just about time!” she said, exasperated. “It’s almost time for you to dance with Rebecca.”
He nodded, sat down at her table, and seemed to daze past everything that was happening around him. Finally, the DJ called him up to invite his daughter to dance. Before he knew what was going on, he and Rebecca were dancing in the center of the giant room, and all eyes were on them. He was holding on to her as tight as he possibly could, and she was resting on his chest completely. After a moment of their dance he noticed that Rebecca was talking. “I love you, sweetie,” he told her, not sure it was the last thing he was going to tell her, or if it was the right thing to say, the right response.
“I know,” she said. “You and mom have been so good to me, and I’m so glad you guys could accept Mike. It would’ve killed me if I couldn’t have you all here, that you couldn’t bring me to the altar; you know, give me away.”
“It would’ve killed me, too. I just want you to know that I’ll always love you, ok?”
Eric noticed that Mike was standing a few feet away, asking for his chance to dance with his new bride. Eric took this as a signal that his last moment with his girl, his beloved daughter, needed to end. He stopped the dance, gave her the longest and hardest hug that he had ever given, and bid her adieu.
“No worries, Dad,” Rebecca said. “I’ll be around you guys often enough.”
He let her go and gave Mike a handshake. The two shared some quick words, shook hands, and Eric let him take his bride for a dance. As Eric walked back to the table his wife was at, he couldn’t see through his tears that everyone around them was crying. He sat with his wife for as long as his heart could bear it. Excusing himself from the table, Eric stood up and made his way back to the coatroom in which he had been talking with Satan. He walked in, sat back in the chair that he had been sitting on for so long, and waited.
As Satan walked into the room, it wasn’t as long as he thought it needed to be.
