Donald Pollock - The Devil All the Time

“Oh, shit, Pamela, that didn’t mean anything.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “She told Mother about it.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get away.”

“That little bitch,” Teagardin cursed. “I hardly touched her.”

“That ain’t the way she tells it,” Pamela said. She looked toward the road nervously.

“What did she say exactly?”

“Believe me, Preston, she told everything. She got scared because the bleeding won’t stop.” The girl pointed her finger at him. “You better hope you didn’t do something so she can’t have kids.”

“Shit,” Teagardin said. He got out of the car and paced back and forth for several minutes, his hands clasped behind his back like a general in his tent planning a counterattack. He took a silk handkerchief out of his pants pocket and patted his mouth. “What do you think your old lady will do?” he finally said.

“Well, knowing her, after she takes Beth Ann to the hospital, the first thing she’ll do is call the fucking sheriff. And just so you know, he’s my mom’s cousin.”

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.