The Devil All the Time (28 page)

“Like I said,” Sandy told him, “don’t lie to me no more. We get caught, it’s my ass in the sling just as much as yours.”

Carl thought again about the blanks he’d stuck in her gun, but decided it would be better not to say anything about that. They would be home soon, and he could replace them without her ever knowing. “Ain’t nobody gonna catch us,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you probably didn’t think one would ever get away, either.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “that won’t ever happen again.”

They drove around Atlanta and stopped in a place called Roswell for gas. They had twenty-four dollars and some change to get home on. Just as Carl was getting back in the station wagon after paying the cashier, a gaunt man in a worn black suit timidly approached. “You wouldn’t be headin’ north by any chance, would you?” he asked. Carl went ahead and picked his cigar up out of the ashtray before he turned to look the man over. The suit was several sizes too big. The cuffs of the pants were turned up several times to keep them from dragging on the ground. He could see a little paper price tag still attached to the sleeve of the coat. The man was packing a flimsy bedroll; and though he could have easily passed for sixty, Carl figured the wayfarer at least a few years younger than that. For some reason, he reminded Carl of a preacher, one of the real ones that you seldom run into anymore: not one of those greedy, sweet-smelling bastards just out to take people’s money and make a fat fucking living off God, but a man who truly believed in the teachings of Jesus. On second thought, that was probably taking things a bit too far; the old boy was probably just another bum.

“Might be,” Carl said. He looked over at Sandy for some indication that she was on board, but she just shrugged and put her sunglasses back on. “Where you going?”

“Coal Creek, West Virginia.”

Carl thought about the one who got away last night. That big-dicked sonofabitch was going to leave a bad taste in his mouth for a long time. “Aw, hell, why not?” he told the man. “Get in the back.”

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, then stopped again. Somebody behind them in the line honked his horn. The boy turned and looked back toward the end of the line, his eyes squinting in the sun.

“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.