The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Once they pulled out on the highway, the man said, “Mister, I do appreciate this. My poor feet are ’bout wore out.”
“Been having trouble getting rides, huh?”
“I’ve did more walking than riding, I can tell you that.”
“Yeah,” Carl said, “I don’t understand people who won’t pick up strangers. That should be a good thing, helping someone out.”
“You sound like you a Christian,” the man said.
Sandy choked back a laugh, but Carl ignored her. “In some ways, I suppose,” he told the man. “But I have to admit, I don’t follow it quite as close as I used to.”
The man nodded and stared out the window. “It’s hard to live a good life,” he said. “It seems like the Devil don’t ever let up.”
“What’s your name, honey?” Sandy asked. Carl glanced at her and smiled, then reached over and touched her leg. He’d been afraid, after the way he fucked up last night, that she was going to be a first-class bitch the rest of the trip.
“Roy,” the man said, “Roy Laferty.”
“So what’s in West Virginia, Roy?” she said.
“Going home to see my little girl.”
“That’s nice,” Sandy said. “When did you see her last?”
Roy thought for a minute. Lord, he’d never felt so tired. “It’s been seventeen years almost.” Riding in the car was making him sleepy. He hated to be impolite, but as hard as he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
“What you been doing away from home that long?” Carl said. After waiting for a minute or so for the man to answer, he turned around and looked in the backseat. “Shit, he’s passed out,” he told Sandy.
“Just let him be for now,” she said. “And as far as me actually fucking him, you can forget that. He smells worse than you do.”
“All right, all right,” Carl said, pulling the Georgia highway map out of the glove box. Thirty minutes later, he pointed at an exit ramp, told Sandy to take it. They drove two or three miles down a dusty clay road, eventually found a pull-off littered with party trash and a busted-up piano. “This is gonna have to do,” Carl said, stepping out of the car. He opened the hitcher’s door and shook his shoulder. “Hey there, buddy,” he said, “come on, I want to show you something.”
A couple of minutes later, Roy found himself in a stand of tall loblolly pines. The ground underneath them was carpeted with dry, brown needles. He couldn’t recall exactly how long he had been traveling, maybe three days. He hadn’t had much luck with rides, and he had walked until his feet were raw with blisters. Though he didn’t think he could take another step, he didn’t want to stop moving either. He wondered if the animals had gotten to Theodore yet. Then he saw that the woman was taking her clothes off, and that confused him. He looked around for the car he’d been riding in and saw the fat man pointing a pistol at him. There was a black camera hanging from his neck by a cord, an unlit cigar stuck between his thick lips. Maybe he was dreaming, Roy thought, but, damn, it seemed so real. He could smell the sap seeping from the trees in the heat. He saw the woman get down on a red plaid blanket, like the kind people might use for a picnic, and then the man said something that woke him up. “What?” Roy asked.
“I said I’m giving you a good thing here,” Carl repeated. “She likes lanky ol’ studs like you.”
“What’s going on here, mister?” Roy said.
Carl heaved a sigh. “Jesus Christ, man, pay attention. Like I said, you’re gonna fuck my wife, and I’m going to take some pictures, that’s all.”
“Your wife?” Roy said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Here I thought you was a good feller.”
“Just shut up and get that welfare suit off,” Carl said.
Looking over at Sandy, Roy held his hands out. “Lady,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I promised myself when Theodore died that I was gonna live right from now on, and I intend to stick to that.”
“Oh, come on, sweetie,” Sandy said. “We’ll just take a few pictures and then the big dumb bastard will leave us alone.”
“Woman, look at me. I been run through the ringer. Hell, I don’t even know half the places I been. Do you really want these hands touching you?”
“You sonofabitch, you’re going to do what I say,” Carl said.
Roy shook his head. “No, mister. The last woman I was with was a bird, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. Theodore was afraid of her, so I didn’t let on, but Priscilla, she really was a flamingo.”
Carl laughed and threw his cigar down. Jesus Christ, what a mess. “Okay, looks like we got us a fruitcake.”
Sandy stood up and started pulling her clothes back on. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.
Just as Roy turned and watched her start to walk toward the car sitting out by the road, he felt the barrel of the gun press against the side of his head. “Don’t even think about running,” Carl told him.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Roy said. “My runnin’ days are over with.” He raised his eyes and searched out a small patch of blue sky visible through the dense, green branches of the pines. A white wisp of a cloud drifted by. That’s what dying will be like, he told himself. Just floating up in the air. Nothing bad about that. He smiled a little. “I don’t reckon you’re gonna let me back in the car, are you?”
“You got that right,” Carl said. He started to squeeze the trigger.
“Just one thing,” Roy said, his voice filled with urgency.
“What’s that?”
“Her name’s Lenora.”
“Who the fuck you talking about?”
“My little girl,” Roy said.
46
IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE, but the crazy bastard in the dirty suit was carrying almost a hundred dollars in his pocket. They ate barbecue and coleslaw at a pig shack in a colored section of Knoxville, and that night they stayed in a Holiday Inn in Johnson City, Tennessee. As usual, Sandy took her sweet time the next morning. By the time she announced that she was ready to go, Carl was sinking into a foul mood. Except for the photos of the boy in Kentucky, most of the others he had taken this time out were slop. Nothing had turned out right. He had sat up all night dwelling on it in a chair by the third-floor window, looking down on the parking lot and rolling a dog dick cigar between his fingers until it fell apart. He kept considering signs, maybe something he had missed. But nothing stood out, except for Sandy’s mostly piss-poor attitude and the ex-con who got away. He swore he’d never hunt in the South again.
They entered southern West Virginia around noon. “Look, we still got the rest of today,” he said. “If there’s any fucking way possible, I want to shoot another roll of film before we get home, something good.” They had pulled into a rest stop so he could check the oil in the car.
“Go ahead,” Sandy said. “There’s all kinds of pictures out there.” She pointed out the window. “See, there’s a bluebird just landed in that tree.”
“Funny,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
She put the car into gear. “I don’t care what you do, Carl, but I want to sleep in my own bed tonight.”
“Good enough,” he said.
Over the next four or five hours, they didn’t come across a single hitchhiker. The closer they got to Ohio, the more agitated Carl became. He kept telling Sandy to slow down, made her stop and stretch her legs and drink coffee a couple of times just to keep his hopes alive a little while longer. By the time they drove through Charleston and headed toward Point Pleasant, he was filled with disappointment and doubt. Maybe the ex-con really was a sign. If so, Carl thought, it could mean only one thing: they should quit while they were ahead. That’s what he was thinking, as they approached the long line of traffic waiting to go over the silver metal bridge that would take them into Ohio. Then he saw the handsome, dark-haired boy with the gym bag standing on the walkway seven or eight car lengths up ahead. He leaned forward, breathed in the car exhaust and the stink from the river. The traffic moved a few feet
“Do you see that?” Carl said.
“But what about your fucking rules? Shit, we’re heading back into Ohio.”
Carl kept his eyes on the boy, prayed that nobody offered him a ride before they got close enough to pick him up. “Let’s just see where’s he’s going. Hell, that can’t hurt nothing, can it?”
Sandy took off her sunglasses, gave the boy a closer look. She knew Carl well enough to know that it wasn’t going to stop with just giving him a ride, but from what she could see, he was maybe nicer than anything they’d ever come across before. And there certainly hadn’t been any angels this trip. “I guess not,” she said.
“But I need you to do some talking, okay? Give him that smile of yours, make him want it. I hate to point it out, but you been dropping the ball this trip. I can’t do it alone.”
“Sure, Carl,” she said. “Anything you say. Hell, I’ll offer to suck him off as soon as he plops his ass down in the backseat. That ought to do it.”
“Jesus, you got a filthy mouth on you.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “But I just want to get this over with.”
47
IT SEEMED THAT THERE MUST BE a wreck up ahead, as slow as the traffic was moving. Arvin had just made up his mind to walk across the bridge when the car pulled up and the fat man asked him if he needed a ride. After selling the Bel Air, he’d walked out to the highway and caught a lift through Charleston with a fertilizer salesman—rumpled white shirt, gravy-stained tie, the stink of last night’s alcohol seeping from his big pores—on his way to a feed and seed convention in Indianapolis. The salesman let him off on Route 35 at Nitro; and a few minutes later, he got another ride with a colored family in a pickup truck that took him to the edge of Point Pleasant. He sat in the back with a dozen baskets of tomatoes and green beans. The black man pointed the way to the bridge, and Arvin began walking. He could smell the Ohio River several blocks before he saw its greasy, blue-gray surface. A clock on a bank said 5:47. He could hardly believe that a person could travel so fast with just his thumb.
When he got in the black station wagon, the woman behind the wheel looked back at him and smiled. It seemed like she was almost happy to see him. Their names were Carl and Sandy, the fat man told him. “Where you going?” Carl asked.
“Meade, Ohio,” Arvin said. “Ever hear of it?”
“We—” Sandy began to say.
“Sure,” Carl interrupted. “If I’m not mistaken, I think it’s a paper mill town.” He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked over at the woman. “In fact, we’re going right by there this trip, ain’t we, babe?” This had to be a sign, Carl thought, picking up a fine-looking boy like this who was headed for Meade clear down here among the river rats.
“Yeah,” she said. The traffic started moving again. The holdup was an accident on the Ohio side, two crumpled cars and a scattering of broken glass on the pavement. An ambulance turned its siren on and pulled out in front of them, barely avoiding a collision. A policeman blew a whistle, held his hand up for Sandy to stop.
“Jesus Christ, be careful,” Carl said, shifting in his seat.
“Do you want to drive?” Sandy said, hitting the brakes too hard. They sat there for another few minutes while a man in coveralls hurriedly swept up glass. Sandy adjusted her rearview, took another look at the boy. She was so glad that she had gotten to take a bath this morning. She’d still be nice and clean for him. When she reached in her purse for a fresh pack of cigarettes, her hand brushed against the pistol. As she watched the man finish the cleanup, she fantasized about killing Carl and taking off with the boy. He was probably only six or seven years younger than she was. She could make something like that work. Maybe even have a couple of kids. Then she closed the purse and started peeling the pack of Salems open. She’d never do it, of course, but it was still nice to think about.
“What’s your name, honey?” she asked the boy, after the policeman waved them on through.
Arvin allowed himself a sigh of relief. He thought for sure the woman was going to get them pulled over. He looked at her again. She was rail thin and dirty-looking. Her face was caked with too much makeup, and her teeth were stained a dark yellow from too many years of cigarettes and neglect. A strong odor of sweat and filth was coming from the front seat, and he figured both of them were in bad need of a bath. “Billy Burns,” he told her. That was the fertilizer salesman’s name.
“That’s a nice name,” she said. “Where you coming from?”
“Tennessee.”
“So what you going to Meade for?” Carl asked.
“Oh, just visiting, that’s all.”
“You got family there?”
“No,” Arvin said. “But I used to live there a long time ago.”
“Probably ain’t changed much,” Carl said. “Most of them little towns never do.”
“Where is it you all live?” Arvin asked.
“We’re from Fort Wayne. Been on vacation down in Florida. We like to meet new people, don’t we, hon?”
“We sure do,” Sandy said.
Just as they passed the sign that marked the Ross County line, Carl looked at his watch. They probably should have stopped before they got this far, but he knew a safe spot nearby where they could take the boy. He’d come across it last winter on one of his drives. Meade was just ten miles away now, and it was after six o’clock. That meant they had only another ninety or so minutes of decent light left. He had never broken any of the major rules before, but he’d already made up his mind. Tonight, he was going to kill a man in Ohio. Shit, if this worked out, he might even do away with that rule altogether. Maybe that’s what this boy was all about, maybe not. There wasn’t enough time to think about it. He shifted in his seat and said, “Billy, my old bladder don’t work like it used to. We’re gonna pull over so I can take a leak, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I just appreciate you givin’ me a ride.”
“There’s a road up here to the right,” Carl said to Sandy.
“How far?” Sandy asked.
“Maybe a mile.”
Arvin leaned over just a little, looked past Carl’s head out the windshield. He didn’t see any indication of a road, and he thought it a bit odd that the man knew there was one up ahead if he wasn’t from around here. Maybe he’s got a map, the boy told himself. He sat back in his seat again and watched the scenery going by. Except for the hills being smaller and more rounded off, it looked a lot like West Virginia. He wondered if anyone had found Teagardin’s body yet.
Sandy turned off Route 35 onto a dirt and gravel road. She drove past a big farm that sat on the corner. After another mile or so, she slowed and asked Carl, “Here?”
“No, keep going,” he said.
Arvin straightened up and looked around. They hadn’t passed another house since the farm. The Luger was pressing against his groin, and he adjusted it a little.
“This looks like a good spot,” Carl finally said, pointing at the vague remains of a driveway that led to a run-down house. It was obvious that the place had been empty for years. The few windows were busted out and the porch was caving in on one end. The front door was standing open, hanging crooked from one hinge. Across the road was a cornfield, the stalks withered and yellow from the hot, droughty weather. As soon as Sandy shut the engine off, Carl opened the glove compartment. He pulled out a fancy-looking camera, held it up for Arvin to see. “Bet you never would have guessed I’m a photographer, would you?” he said.
Arvin shrugged. “Probably not.” He could hear the hum of insects outside the car in the dry weeds. Thousands of them.
“But look, I’m not one of them jackasses that shoot dumb pictures like you see in the newspaper, am I, Sandy?”
“No,” she said, looking back at Arvin, “he’s not. He’s really good.”
“You ever hear of Michelangelo
“Yeah, I think so,” Arvin said. He thought about the time Lenora showed him a painting called Mona Lisa in a book. She had asked him if he thought she looked anything like the pale woman in the picture, and he was glad he’d told her that she was prettier than that.
“Well, I like to think that someday people are gonna look at my photographs and think they’re just as good as anything them guys ever made. The pictures I take, Billy, they’re like art, like you see in a museum. You ever been to a museum?”
“No,” Arvin said. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, maybe you will someday. So how about it?”
“How about what?” Arvin said.
“Why don’t we get out here and you let me take some pictures of you with Sandy?”
“No, mister, I better not. It’s been a long day for me, and I’d just as soon keep moving. I just want to get to Meade.”
“Oh, come on, son, won’t take but a few minutes. How about this? What if she got naked for you?”
Arvin reached for the door handle. “That’s all right,” he said. “I’m just gonna walk back up to the highway. You stay back here and take all the pictures you want.”
“Now wait up, goddamn it,” Carl said. “I didn’t mean to get you all upset. But shit, wasn’t no harm in me asking, was there?” He laid the camera down on the seat and sighed. “All right, just let me take my piss and we’ll get on out of here.”
Carl heaved his big body out of the car, walked around to the back. Sandy took a cigarette from her pack. Looking over, Arvin watched her hands tremble as she tried several times to strike a match. A feeling, one that he couldn’t quite put a name on, suddenly twisted in his gut like a knife. He was already pulling the Luger from the waistband of his overalls when he heard Carl say, “Get out of the car, boy.” The fat man was standing five feet away from the back door pointing a long-barreled pistol at him.
“If it’s money you want,” Arvin said, “I got a little bit.” He eased the safety off the gun. “You can have it.”