The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Teagardin placed his hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “But you haven’t said anything about us, right?”
“You think I’m crazy? I’d rather die first.”
Teagardin let go of her and leaned against the car. He looked out over the field before them. He wondered why nobody was farming it anymore. He imagined an old two-story house in ruins, some rusted pieces of antique machinery sitting in the weeds, maybe a hand-dug well of cool, clean water, covered over with rotten boards. Just for a moment, he pictured himself fixing the place back up, settling down to a simple life, preaching on Sundays and working the farm with callused hands through the week, reading good books out on the porch in the evenings after a nice supper, some tender babes playing in the shaded yard. He heard the girl say she was leaving, and when he finally turned to look, she was gone. Then he considered the possibility that perhaps Pamela was lying to him, trying to scare him into keeping off her little sister. He wouldn’t put anything past her, but if what she said was true, he had only an hour or two at best to pack and get out of Greenbrier County. He was just getting ready to start the car when he heard a voice say, “You ain’t much of a preacher, are you?”
Teagardin looked up and saw the Russell boy standing right outside the door of the car pointing a pistol of some kind at him. He’d never owned a gun, and the only thing he knew about them was that they usually caused trouble. The boy looked bigger up close. Not an ounce of fat on him, he noticed, dark hair, green eyes. He wondered what Cynthia would think of him. Though he knew it was ridiculous, with all the young pussy he was getting, he felt a pang of jealousy just then. It was sad to realize that he’d never look anything like this boy. “What the hell are you doing?” the preacher said.
“Been watching you screw that Reaster girl that just left. And if you try to start that car, I’m gonna blow your fucking hand off.”
Teagardin let go of the ignition key. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy. I didn’t touch her. All we did was talk.”
“Maybe not today, but you been plowing her pretty steady.”
“What? You been spying on me?” Maybe the boy was one of those voyeurs, he thought, recalling the term from his collection of nudist magazines.
“I know every fuckin’ move you’ve made for the last two weeks.”
Teagardin looked out the windshield toward the big oak at the end of the lane. He wondered if it could be true. In his head, he counted the number of times he’d been here with Pamela over the last couple of weeks. At least six. That was bad enough, but at the same time he felt a little relieved. At least the boy hadn’t seen him banging his sister. Hard to tell what the crazy hillbilly might have done. “It ain’t what it looks like,” he said.
“What is it then?” Arvin asked. He flipped the safety off the gun.
Teagardin started to explain that the little slut wouldn’t leave him alone, but then he reminded himself to be careful with his words. He considered the possibility that maybe this hoodlum had a crush on Pamela. Perhaps that’s what this was all about. Jealousy. He tried to recall what Shakespeare had written about it, but the words wouldn’t come to him. “Say, ain’t you Mrs. Russell’s grandson?” the preacher asked. He looked down at the clock on the dash. He could have been halfway home by now. Rivulets of greasy sweat began to run down his pink, clean-shaven face.
“That’s right,” Arvin said. “And Lenora Laferty was my sister.”
Teagardin turned his head slowly, his eyes focused on the boy’s belt buckle. Arvin could almost see the wheels spinning inside his head, watched him swallow several times. “That was a shame, what that poor girl did,” the preacher said. “I pray for her soul every night.”
“You pray for the baby’s, too?”
“Now you got it all wrong there, my friend. I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”
“Do with what?”
The man squirmed around in the car’s tight seat, glanced at the German Luger. “She came to me, said she wanted to make a confession, told me she was with child. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
Arvin took a step back and said, “I’ll bet you did, you fat sonofabitch.” Then he fired three shots, blew out the tires on the driver’s side and put the last one through the back door.
“Stop!” Teagardin yelled. “Stop, goddamn it!” He threw his hands up.
“No more lies,” Arvin said, moving forward and jamming the pistol against the preacher’s temple. “I know you was the one got her that way.”
Teagardin jerked his head away from the gun. “Okay,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I swear, I was going to take care of everything, I really was, and then … and then the next thing I know she’d done herself in. She was crazy.”
“No,” Arvin said, “she was just lonely.” He pressed the barrel against the back of Teagardin’s head. “But don’t worry, I ain’t gonna make you suffer like she did.”
“Now hold on here, goddamn it. Jesus Christ, man, you wouldn’t kill a preacher, would you?”
“You ain’t no preacher, you worthless piece of shit,” Arvin said.
Teagardin began crying, true tears running down his face for the first time since he was a little boy. “Let me pray first,” he sobbed. He started to put his hands together.
“I already did it for you,” Arvin said. “Put in one of them special requests you fuckers are always talking about, asked Him to send you straight to hell.”
“No,” Teagardin said, right before the gun went off. A fragment of the bullet came out right above his nose and landed with a ping on the dashboard. His big body pitched forward, and his face banged against the steering wheel. His left foot kicked the brake pedal a couple of times. Arvin waited until he stopped moving, then reached inside and picked the sticky shell fragment up off the dash and threw it into the weeds. He regretted shooting those other rounds off now, but there wasn’t time to dig around for them. He hurriedly scattered the blind that he’d built and picked up the can he’d used for his cigarette butts. In five minutes, he was back at his car. He tossed the butt can in the ditch. As he stuck the German Luger up under the dash, he suddenly thought of Teagardin’s young wife. She was probably sitting over in their little house right now, waiting for him to get home, the same as Emma would be doing for him tonight. He leaned back in the seat and shut his eyes for a moment, tried to think of other things. He started the engine and drove out to the end of Ragged Ridge, made a left toward Route 60. The way he had it figured, he could be in Meade, Ohio, sometime tonight if he didn’t stop. He hadn’t planned any further ahead than that.
Four hours later, about fifty miles outside of Charleston, West Virginia, the Bel Air began making a thumping noise underneath. He managed to get off the highway and into a filling station lot before the transmission went out completely. He got down on his hands and knees and watched the last of the fluid drip from the casing. “Motherfucker,” he said. Just as he started to get up, a thin man in baggy blue coveralls came out and asked if he needed any help. “Not unless you got a transmission you can put in this thing,” Arvin said.
“She went out on ye, huh?”
“It’s shot,” Arvin said.
“Where you headed?”
“Michigan.”
“You welcome to use the phone if you want to call someone,” the man said.
“Ain’t no one to call.” As soon as he said it, Arvin realized how true that statement really was. He thought for a minute. Though he hated the thought of giving the Bel Air up, he had to keep moving. He was going to have to make a sacrifice. He turned to the man and tried to smile. “How much would you give me for her?” he asked. The man glanced at the car and shook his head. “I got no use for it.”
“The engine’s good. I just changed the points and plugs a couple days ago.”
The man began walking the Chevy, kicking the tires, checking for putty. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin.
“How ab
“It ain’t hot, is it?”
“The title’s in my name.”
“I’ll give you thirty.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“Sonny, I got five kids at home,” the man said.
“Okay, it’s yours,” Arvin said. “Just let me get my stuff.” He watched the man go back inside the station. He took his bag out of the trunk and then sat down in the car one last time. The day he’d bought it, he and Earskell had burned up a whole tank of gas riding around, drove clear over to Beckley and back. He had a sudden feeling that he was going to lose a lot more before this was over. Reaching under the dash, he got the Luger, stuck it in his waistband. Then he took the title and a box of shells from the glove compartment. When he went inside, the man laid the thirty dollars on the counter. Arvin signed the title and dated it, then put the money in his wallet. He bought a Zagnut and a bottle of RC Cola. It was the first he’d eaten or drunk since the coffee that morning in his grandmother’s kitchen. He looked out the window at the endless stream of cars going by on the highway while he chewed on the candy bar. “You ever hitchhike?” he asked the man.
39
ROY FINISHED PICKING ORANGES THAT DAY around five o’clock and collected his pay, which was thirteen dollars. He went to the store at the intersection and bought half a pound of pickle loaf and half a pound of cheese and a loaf of rye bread and two packs of Chesterfields and three fifths of White Port. It was nice getting paid every day. He felt like a rich man walking back to the spot where he and Theodore were camping. The boss was the best one he’d ever had, and Roy had been picking steady for three weeks. The man had told him today that there was maybe only another four or five days of work left. Theodore would be glad to hear that. He wanted to get back to the ocean awful bad. They had put away almost a hundred dollars in the last month, more money than they had had in a long, long time. Their plan was to buy some decent clothes and start preaching again. Roy thought they could find a couple of suits at the Goodwill for maybe ten or twelve bucks. Theodore couldn’t play the guitar like he used to, but they could get along all right.
Roy crossed a drainage ditch and headed for their campsite under a small stand of stunted magnolia trees. He saw Theodore asleep on the ground next to his wheelchair, his guitar lying beside him. Roy shook his head and pulled out one of the bottles of wine and a pack of the smokes. He sat down on a stump and took a drink before he lit a cigarette. He had killed half the fifth before he finally noticed that the cripple’s face was crawling with ants. Rushing to his side, Roy rolled him over on his back. “Theodore? Hey, come on, buddy, wake up,” Roy pleaded, shaking him and slapping at the bugs. “Theodore?”
As soon as he tried to lift the man, Roy knew that he was dead, but he still struggled for fifteen minutes to get him back up in the wheelchair. He began pushing him through the sandy soil toward the highway, but went only a few feet before he stopped. The authorities would ask a lot of questions, he thought, as he watched a fancy car pass by in the distance. He looked around at the campsite. Maybe it would be better just to stay here. Theodore loved the ocean, but he liked the shade, too. And this grove of trees was as much a home as anything they’d had since their days with Bradford Amusements.
Roy sat down on the ground beside the wheelchair. They had done a lot of bad things over the years, and he spent the next several hours praying for the cripple’s soul. He hoped someone would do the same for him when it came his time. Around sundown, he finally got up and fixed himself a sandwich. He ate part of it and tossed the rest in the weeds. Halfway through another cigarette, it dawned on him that he didn’t have to run anymore. He could go back home now, turn himself in. They could do whatever they wanted to, as long as he got to see Lenora one more time. Theodore had never been able to understand that, how Roy could miss somebody he didn’t really know. It was true that he could barely recall what his little girl’s face had looked like, but even so, he had wondered a thousand times how her life had turned out. By the time he finished the smoke, he was already rehearsing some words he would say to her.
That night, he got drunk with his old friend one last time. He built a fire and talked to Theodore like he was still alive, told the same stories over again, the ones about Flapjack, and the Flamingo Lady, and the Zit-Eater, and all those other lost souls they had run into on the road. Several times he caught himself waiting on Theodore to laugh or add something that he’d forgotten. After a few hours, there were no more tales to tell, and Roy felt lonelier than he had ever felt in his life. “Hell of a long way from Coal Creek, ain’t it, boy?” was the last thing he said before he lay down on his blanket.
He woke right before dawn. He wet a rag with some water from the gallon jug they always kept tied to the back of the wheelchair. He wiped the grime off Theodore’s face and combed his hair, pressed his eyes shut with his thumb. There was a splash of wine left in the last bottle and he set it in the cripple’s lap, placed his ragged straw hat on his head. Then Roy wrapped his few belongings in a blanket and stood with his hand on the dead man’s shoulder. He closed his eyes and said a few more words. He realized that he would never preach again, but that was all right. He’d never been much good at it anyway. Most people just wanted to hear the cripple play. “I wish you was going with me, Theodore,” Roy said. By the time he managed to catch a ride, he was already two miles down the road.
40
THANK GOD, JULY WAS COMING TO AN END. Carl could hardly wait to get out on the road again. He hauled the two jars filled with Sandy’s tips to the bank and turned it into paper money, then spent the next few days leading up to the vacation buying supplies—two new outfits and some frilly underwear from JC Penney for Sandy, a gallon of motor oil, spare spark plugs, a hacksaw he found on sale and bought on a whim, fifty feet of rope, a set of road maps of the southern states from the AAA office, two cartons of Salem, and a dozen dog dicks. By the time he finished shopping and had a mechanic put a set of brake pads on the car, they were down to $134, but that would take them far. Hell, he thought, as he sat at the kitchen table and counted again, they could live like kings for a week on this much money. He recalled the summer two years ago, when they had left Meade with $40. It was potted meat and stale chips and siphoned gas and sleeping in the sweltering car the whole way, but they had managed to stay out sixteen days with the money they scrounged off the models. Compared to that, they were in fine shape this time.
Still, there was something bothering him. He’d been looking through his photos one evening, trying to get pumped up for the hunt, when he came across one of Sandy holding on to last summer’s army boy. He’d been vaguely aware that she hadn’t acted quite the same since he had killed that one, like he had taken something precious from her that night. But in the picture he held in his hand was a look of disgust and disappointment in her face that he hadn’t noticed before. As he sat there staring at it, he began to wish that he’d never bought her that gun. There was also the business with the waitress at the White Cow. Sandy had started asking him where he went in the evenings while she was at work, and though she had never come right out and accused him of anything, he was beginning to wonder if she might have heard something. The waitress didn’t act as friendly as she used to, either. He was probably just being paranoid, but it was hard enough handling the models without having to worry about the bait turning on him, too. The next day, he paid a visit to the hardware store in Central Center. That night after she went to bed, he unloaded her pistol—she’d started carrying it in her purse—and replaced the hollow points with blanks. The more he thought about it, the less he could imagine a situation in which she would have to fire it anyway.
One of the last things he did in preparation for the trip was make a new print of his favorite photograph. He folded it and put it in his wallet. Sandy didn’t know, but he always carried a copy when they went back out. It was a picture of her cradling the head of a model in her lap, one they had worked with on their f
41
IT WAS A HOT SUNDAY MORNING, the first of August, and Carl’s shirt was already soaked with sweat. He sat in the kitchen staring at the grimy woodwork and the coat of rancid grease on the wall behind the stove. He checked his watch, saw that it was noon. They should have been on the road four hours ago, but Sandy had come home stinking of booze last night, barging through the door with an ugly look on her red face and going on and on about this being the last trip for her. It had taken her all morning to get straightened up. When they walked outside to get in the car, she stopped and fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “I’m still sick.”
“We got to stop and fill the gas can before we leave town,” he said, ignoring her. He’d decided while waiting on her to get ready that he wasn’t going to let her ruin the trip. If need be, he’d get rough with her once they got away from Ross County and that nosy fucking brother of hers.