If you live in the South, then you immediately recognize that there is another player involved in this Jesse Helms-William Weld-Richard Lugar struggle over the soul of the Republican Party. That player is the devil. He occupies a much different place in Southern life than he does in the rest of the country. He is a living presence here, not just a concept. I have no idea how he got here; for that information you'll have to consult the works of William Faulkner or Billy Bob Thornton. But, as Jesse Helms knows, he is here, and as a neighbor he takes a little getting used to.

True, the devil does have his fun side. Night life in the South is marvelously seedy and there is a very palpable sense of sin. The biker bars are rougher, the gay bars are gayer (the South is the home of drag), the nudie bars are nudie-er. And ah, the parking lot of a Southern bar on a muggy Saturday night. That truly is the devil's playground. With any luck you'll find drugs, prostitution, gambling and firecrackers, not to mention the town's leading minister and a county commissioner or two.

That is the best thing about sin in the South: the devil still makes you do it. When Jimmy Swaggart made his famous confession on TV, Northerners saw the ruined shell of a man, his life destroyed by addictive behaviors. Southerners saw a minor slip that should be all cleaned up by next week. You're allowed a slip every now and then. The South is the only place left where you can get drunk regularly and not be considered an alcoholic.

But some of the devil's little schemes are not as entertaining as televanangelism. The South -- and here, as a Southerner by birth and heritage, I'm defining the South as anywhere they automatically serve grits with your eggs -- certainly is the land of strange crimes. People are always disappearing and then being found six months later in the woods by a hound dog, all decomposed. And there is a serious devil-worshiping problem among the young. Just yesterday a group of teen-agers were put on probation for listening to Marilyn Manson and then going out and turning over tombstones.