The Light

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees Asked the Lord above Have mercy, now save a poor boy, if you please

• Robert Johnson Crossroad Blues

This is the story of how I sold my whole soul to the devil. I’m a salesman myself, so I didn’t make it easy on him. I used to think that I was the best salesman in the world, but that turned out to be wrong. I sure was one of the best though. When I first started out, I was with a soap company in Louisiana doing door to door. I sold cleaning products all over the state. They would send me out and pay expenses, and I could do a hundred dollars business in a day for them.

It was dandy, and no one was better at it than me. I got offers from all over, and I kept moving to bigger and bigger companies. I’d drive back to back and criss-cross the whole south in under a month. It helped that I loved driving, taking turns, making choices, and going in whatever direction that I pleased. My favorite thing was to drive all night in the dark. It’s like the glow of your headlights is making the road appear in front of you and you can go anywhere you want. The choice is all yours.

I was such a snappy dresser then. I would have Asian silk shirts and linen flown in from Europe, and anyone who saw me knew I meant business. People would see me speed past them on the road in my fancy clothes and they would wish that they could be just like me. I had a sense that would lead me to where all the best sales would be. Some folks would go all day and not make a single sale. They would ask me what my secret was, but I always told them I didn’t have any secret but luck. It was like I could smell it in the air when I was driving, smell the scent of folks’ money ready to be spent. I would go to places where towns are growing, or towns are drying up. Sometimes people spend the most money when they don’t have anything to lose.

That was before the Federal took over the new highway system. Back then half the trick of doing door to door was knowing what roads would get you there, but it was more than that. You had to know roads sure, but you also had to know cities. Who lived where; what did they want; how much could they spend; and who were they trying to fit in with. Most of all you just had to have the sense for it. You had to know just how to pitch when you saw how old the house was, the plants out front, the car they had.

Every little thing had to tell you how to sell something. You had to be able to hear the emptiness in people, to plant the seeds of doubt that eat away at their happiness. You can make a man buy a thing if he’s scared, or if he’s foolish, and sometimes if he’s just lonely and wants to make a friend out of ya. If you really want to make a tough sale, you have to make a man feel important; more important than anyone in the whole world.

I fancy myself a bit of a scholar and I’ll tell you something that you probably didn’t know. Before they came in and started laying highways in the South there were just the old roads the states and counties maintained. Some roads were paved alright, and some were just ruts through the dirt.

Well, all those state roads were built on the trade and season routes the Indians used to take long before we were here. But the Indians didn’t make those roads. They found them. Way back, all those trade routes were just paths animals wore in the land, before even the Indians were here. The highways all follow the paths that the beasts of the wild made long before there was man. Human beings are just bigger, faster, smarter animals, wanting to do the things animals have done for a thousand years. More than anything it was knowing that about folks that made me such a great salesman.

The first time I met the devil I had heard that there was a new subdivision, with lots of new folks taking out a mortgage and looking for things to buy on installment. On my way there I passed a big house with towers in a crossroads by a field. The house had every sign on it that the folks inside were about to buy something from me so I went up and knocked on the door. “Door’s open,” yelled a voice from inside. “Come right on in.” The house was real fancy on the inside with lots of electric lights, but that didn’t account for how bright it was in the house.

It was so bright it hurt my eyes. The light was almost too much to bear. The devil was sitting in an easy chair like he’d been waiting for me and he bid me to sit across from him. He was the kind of guy you felt like you already knew just from looking at him. He looked real familiar. You kept wanting to say he was someone you had met before, that you had met him a thousand times. The devil was so slick I just knew that the fellow was a salesman, but beyond that, I knew that he was the only salesman I had ever met who was better than me. It made you hungry for more than you had, and could ever have just to look at him.

The devil pitched me a new job with him. To hear him tell it, I was too good a salesman for what I was selling, too good a salesman for any product in the whole world. Any product except for what he sold. He told me I’d have luxury and comforts and fame if all I did was work for him and give him my soul. Now just because that devil was a better salesman than me didn’t mean that I was just going to lie down and roll over for him, so I pitched him one back. Half of my soul for half of the rewards he had to offer.

I’m a smart enough guy to know that even half a soul won’t do the devil any good at all. He smiled that smile of his that made you feel okay no matter who you were or what you were doing and agreed. I signed his paper and was on my way in the big red sporty car that he had waiting for me in the garage. It was a beautiful car, all curves and waves, and it was shiny like a red apple. “If you ever want to part with that other half of your soul,” he told me, “whistle at a crossroads and I’ll be right along.”

I went past the spot where I first met the devil lots of times after that. There wasn’t anything there those times except a burned down farm with a skinny flea-bit dog and greasy birds gobbling seeds out of the dirt. I enjoyed working for the devil. I always stayed in the nicest hotels around and drove the fanciest car anyone had ever seen. I could afford the most expensive clothes and it seemed like everyone in the whole world wanted to be my friend.

The funny thing about it was that I could never seem to remember things right. I remembered all the places that I had gone and all of the houses I had visited. I especially remembered all the nice restaurants and hotels and prominent people I knew, but I could never quite remember my customers. I knew that there were lots of them and that I always had lots of sales by the end of each day. The odd thing was, I could only seem to remember those sales.

After a whole lot of years of working for the devil, I found all of the memories that I was missing. My deal with the devil must have run up because I woke up in a hotel at a crossroads, and it sure wasn’t a nice one. My head hurt. There was a bottle of booze next to my wallet and both were empty. A hundred memories came rushing back into my head in one second and I threw up. Mostly I remembered telling people that whatever they were doing was okay, and teaching them to forget. I remembered telling boozers they were funny and everyone liked them.

I remembered telling orphans to run away because no one could ever want them. I remembered telling sick and old folks to give up. I remembered going up to married people and telling them they were smarter, better looking, and far too good for the person they were married to. I remembered a hundred things that made me want to die. Things I could never imagine I would do. One of the worst things of all I could remember was taking little children by the hand, teaching them to trust me, and then telling them that no one and nothing could ever love them. I couldn’t stand to have those memories in my head for another instant. I went out and whistled for the devil that very second and signed away the other half of my soul.

I kept working for the devil until I was really old. I was famous across the country by that time and I had all the wealth and luxury that I could ever dream of. It seemed like the devil was going to let me live forever because of what a good job I did, even if I was getting so old and so tired. One night as I was lying down to go to sleep on a big feather bed on the top floor of a hotel, it started to get real bright. The light was so bright it hurt my eyes. The light kept getting brighter and brighter, even after it was almost too bright to bear.