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The Devil and Mr. Feathersmith
By Klaus D. Haisch
CHAPTER 7
Wish #7
Mr. Feathersmith has been in jail for a month, awaiting his hearing. He has declined a trial by jury, and will instead plead his case to a judge.
Hecate was released from jail the same day he was arrested,;they never pressed any charges against him.
One good thing happened to Feathersmith during his incarceration. Joanna Gibbons, a good churchgoer, had taken the lessons in the Gospels to heart, specifically. . .
Matthew 25:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 40 . . . Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
. . . and used to visit all the prisoners on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes she would tell them about the Sunday morning sermon she heard at church, or bring them news about their families (if their families didn’t visit), or maybe pass out some homemade brownies she’d baked. She would even sing for them if they requested it, which the prisoners seldom did.
However, there was one prisoner she took special interest in – it was “love at first sight” when Joanna and Feathersmith saw each other. They fell madly in love with each other.
Joanna came to visit him every day. And now, after almost a month, Joanna wants to marry him.
Bill Feathersmith wants to propose to her; however, he is putting off asking her to marry him until after he finds out what kind of sentence the judge will give him.
Joanna is due to visit him in a few minutes.
Just then, Miss Devlin appears in his jail cell.
Miss Devlin: “Now that you’re incarcerated in jail, you wouldn’t call on me, so I decided to visit you.”
Mr. Feathersmith shakes his head; he can’t believe his bad luck that she appeared again; he was hoping that by not calling on her he might avoid her. “What hope is there for me, now?” he asks. “How can God forgive me for how I’ve messed up my life, and Joanna’s, and all the other people I’ve hurt?”
Miss Devlin: “You’d done many bad things in your life, Mr. Feathersmith. IF you’d gotten on your knees and prayed, and begged God for forgiveness, He would have forgiven you. However, you’ve signed a Deal with the Devil, and now there is no saving your soul.”
Mr. Feathersmith thinks she might be lying.
Miss Devlin: “But, that is not why I am here. As per our Contract,” she pulls out the document, “you still have to make your 7th wish. There is a time limit. Every time you came back to 1963, or, as now, you stayed back in 1910 for one month, you have to make the next wish.” She smiles wickedly, “Consider wishes like eggs – they have an expiration date.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “What if I don’t make the 7th wish?”
Miss Devlin: “Read the fine print in the Contract. I’ve kept my part of the bargain, even if you choose not to make all 7 wishes. I’ve kept my part, as long as I fulfill every wish you do make.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “What if I make a wish you can’t fulfill?”
Miss Devlin laughs him to scorn. “Ha, ha, ha. Mr. Feathersmith, you’d win. But Hell will freeze over before that ever happens. In fact, you could wish that Hell freezes over, and I would make it happen – just to get your soul.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “What if my wish was to send you to the moon?”
Miss Devlin: “I’d come back faster than the speed of light, and be back here in less than a second.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “What if I wished to send you to the Andromeda Galaxy, 2 million light-years away? You’d be gone for a hundred years, and I’d be dead before you got back.”
Miss Devlin: “Ha, ha, ha. I could go to the Andromeda Galaxy, or the furthest galaxy in the Universe, and be back in a micro-second.”
They hear footsteps approaching, as the warden escorts Joanna to Feathersmith’s cell.
Mr. Feathersmith tells Miss Devlin, “I want to talk to Joanna – alone.”
Miss Devlin: “Very well. But no stalling. You’ve got 20 minutes. At the end of that time, you either make your 7th and final wish, or forfeit your wish by refusing to make it. Either way – I get your soul.” She disappears before the warden can see her.
Joanna is admitted to his cell. The warden tells her, “You’ve got 30 minutes, then you’ll have to leave.”
As soon as the prison door is slammed shut, Bill and Joanna embrace. Then they have a long talk, putting their minds together to try to think up a solution.
When the 20 minutes are up, Miss Devlin appears. Joanna is shocked to see her materialize, but Feathersmith is used to the sight.
Miss Devlin: “Are you ready to make your 7th wish?”
Mr. Feathersmith looks at Joanna, she nods back at him, and squeezes his hand. He replies, “I am indeed,” and he smiles.
Miss Devlin: “I hope it’s a good one.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “Oh, it’s a beaut. Perfectly worded.”
Miss Devlin: “Your last wish, #6, had 124 words in it (if you count the numbers as one word each), but it did you no good. I imagine with Joanna phrasing it, it will have over 1,000 words in it.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “No, this wish only has 2 words in it.”
Miss Devlin: “Well, ’brevity is the soul of wit’ they say. Go ahead.”
Mr. Feathersmith: “Here is my wish – GET LOST!”
Miss Devlin: “What? How can I? I know the entire Universe like the palm of my hand. (ugh) I can travel fantastic distances in the tiniest fraction of a second. . . (agh) I feel like a machine being short-circuited. (ooh) I . . . can’t grant. . . your wish. CURSES!”
And with that, Miss Devlin disappears in a puff of sulfurous smoke, and the Contract falls to the floor. The words “NULL AND VOID” appear across the Contract, in big, bold, capital red letters. Then the Contract bursts into flames, turns to ashes, and a wind scatters the ashes.
The clouds depart, a ray of sunlight shines down on Mr. Feathersmith’s face through the bars of the jail window, and the word “Forgiven” echoes down from Heaven. Birds twitter a happy tune.
Feathersmith: “But, Joanna, how can I be forgiven? All the terrible things I did in life.”
Joanna: “Don’t you see, my darling? You are 22 years old again. That former life is all gone, like a bad dream. Erased. You never did those things. Your life is whatever you make it. Your life – yours to relive, the way you want. You’ve been given a 2nd chance at life.”
In the meantime, Miss Devlin has been sent back to Hell. She is now having a conversation with Old Scratch himself.
Lucifer: “You have failed again, Miss Devlin! I would demote you, but you are already down to ‘Demon apprentice 23rd Class,’ and you can’t go any lower! You couldn’t even get Feathersmith’s soul, and that should have been an easy one! He was so greedy, and eager to sell his soul.”
Miss Devlin: “But, I. . . ”
Lucifer: “You felt sorry for him. Let’s face it – you are not EVIL enough. So, I am kicking you out of Hell.”
Miss Devlin: “But, who will take me? . . . ” (poof)
The Universe can be a big, lonely place if you have nowhere to call home. Suddenly, Miss Devlin appears before the Pearly Gates.
“We will take you, Miss Devlin,” a heavenly voice says.
“Oh, thank you,” says Miss Devlin.
“But, due to your past, you must start at the very bottom – you will be ’Guardian Angel apprentice 23rd Class’.”
“Oh, goody!” Miss Devlin beams. “From now on, I will work real hard saving souls, to ‘earn my wings’.”
But, even though Heaven forgave Feathersmith, the courts were another matter. Mr. Feathersmith had to appear before a judge, who neither believed his story (“I didn’t rob Fort Knox – the Devil did it”), nor that Feathersmith was insane (his lawyer tried the “innocent by reason of insanity” plea), and he sentenced him to 53 years in prison.
“53 years?” Feathersmith gulps. “I’ll relive my entire life – in prison. When 1963 comes around, I’ll be an old man, again – only this time, I’ll be broke, having spent my entire life in prison, and without the woman I love.”
Joanna: “I’ll wait for you, Bill.”
Feathersmith: “You’ll. . . wait for me?”
Joanna: “Yes, Bill, my beloved. Even if I have to wait 53 years for you.”
The one bit of good news for Bill Feathersmith was that he was being sent to the State Prison in Indianapolis, which was run by a fair warden.
The warden told Joanna: “Prison isn’t so bad. Remember, we don’t put men in prison to punish them, but to rehabilitate them. In fact, when I walk around the city, and see unemployed men, hungry men with no jobs, lining up for a charity meal at a soup kitchen, I often think: many’s the men that would benefit from a couple of years in my prison, it would do them good.
“They’d have good, hard work to give them a sense of purpose, a sense of working for a living. And 3 square meals a day. Many is the man that’s put on 20 pounds by eating our prison food. Yes, plenty of hard labor and plenty of good food – it rehabilitates their minds, and strengthens their bodies.”
July 1911
Well, Bill Feathersmith has spent a year in prison. Every day, he got up, put on his shoes, and worked a 12-hour day on the rock pile. His hands got rough and calloused. But he learned the meaning of hard, honest labor. His muscles got hard, and his back was strong.
His prison food was plain fare: meat and potatoes, bread, sometimes pasta, and fruits and vegetables (like tomatoes, green beans and corn) that other inmates grew in the prison garden, even occasional hand-churned ice cream, thanks to their cow Bessie. The meals were nourishing, and there was plenty of food; the plates were filled to overflowing, and prisoners could ask for seconds (not like most other prisons). Bill Feathersmith packed on 20 pounds – mostly muscle, but some around his waist, too.
Bill Feathersmith no longer dreamed up schemes to cheat and swindle his fellow man. He was a hard-working inmate, paying his debt to society.
Joanna had moved to Indianapolis, a few days after Feathersmith was sent there, so she could be near her beloved Bill. She had gotten a job in Indy giving piano and voice lessons (if you can believe that) to children. Well, she didn’t earn much money, but enough to get along. :-) And, every day Joanna would visit Bill Feathersmith, for the allotted 30 minutes. They had gotten married on Christmas Day, 1910, and ever since then they were allowed conjugal visits once a week (those were 1-hour visits). ;-)
Bill Feathersmith was a model prisoner. They said, with time off for good behavior, he’d be up for parole in only 25 years.
Then, on Wednesday, July 19, 1911, the most violent criminal in the prison, Mad Dog Bert Kramer, had a gang member “on the outside” smuggle a gun and 200 bullets into prison. Mad Dog Bert took a dozen unarmed civilian workers (the kitchen and library staff) hostage. He threatened to “shoot one hostage every hour” unless the warden agreed to release him and the 4 incarcerated members of his gang.
Since Feathersmith was a fellow convict, he managed to get right up next to Mad Dog Bert. And then Feathersmith flattened him with his mighty left arm. As Bert lay on the floor, he aimed his gun at Feathersmith – but a split second before he could fire, Feathersmith clobbered him into unconsciousness.
When the Governor of Indiana heard about Feathersmith’s heroics, how he had risked his own life to save the hostages, the Governor declared that Mr. Feathersmith “was fully rehabilitated” and granted him a full pardon. He was released the same day.
As Bill Feathersmith walked out the prison doors, and shook hands with the warden and all the guards (they all wished him good luck), Joanna came running up and jumped into his arms.
Yes, they were poor as church mice. Bill Feathersmith would get a job as a plain, ordinary worker. (At least he wouldn’t have to worry about having a criminal record; the Governor completely expunged his record.)
Bill: “Joanna, I don’t have a penny to my name, but I feel like I’m the richest guy in the world, because I have you.”
Joanna: “And I feel like the richest woman in the world, because I have your last name. (sigh) I’m MRS. Feathersmith.”
The love birds walk hand-in-hand.
Bill: “And, I’m going to be a good provider for you – and our dozen kids.”
Joanna: “That’s one of the many things I really love about you, Bill. You’re so motivated. You’re a real self-starter.”
Bill: “Hmmm. . . I like that, a ‘self-starter’. That gives me an idea for an invention. I think I’ll call it the ‘Feathersmith gilhooky machine’. I think maybe I’ll go back to college and study engineering. Noble profession – being a draftsman or a blueprint man. I’ll be a builder, a designer, a bringer. We might even bring up the oil that’s on the land your daddy and Dietrich own.
“Come on, dear, we have a lot of living to do. We have – our whole lifetimes in front of us. How wonderful.”
THE BEGINNING
Would you like to tell Klaus how much you enjoyed his version of this story? He’s an Albert fan, too. Drop him a line at Kdhaisch@AOL.com.
Would you like to write a comedy scene or a script for Albert? Feel free to contribute your ideas. Contact Sandra Grabman at srgrabman@cableone.net.
Spotlights & Shadows: The
Albert Salmi Story, by Sandra Grabman, is available through
these on-line booksellers:
BearManor Media
Cover Out
Amazon US
Amazon Kindle
