Donald Pollock - The Devil All the 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 first hunt, the summer after they killed the sex fiend in Colorado. It wasn’t one of his best, but it was good for someone who was still learning. It reminded Carl of one of those paintings of Mary with the baby Jesus, the way Sandy was looking down at the model with a sweet, innocent look on her face, a look that he’d been able to catch a couple of times that first year or two, but then was gone forever. And the boy? The way he remembered it, they had gone five days without a single hitcher. They were broke and arguing with each other, Sandy wanting to go home and him insisting that they keep on. Then they came around a bend on some potholed two-lane just below Chicago and there he was with his thumb out, like a gift straight out of heaven. He was a big cutup, that boy, full of fun and dumb jokes, and if Carl peered hard enough at the picture, he could still see that orneriness in his face. And every time he looked at it, he was also reminded that he could never find another girl to work with who would be as good as Sandy.

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.

“Shit, you had all week to do that,” she said.

“I’m telling you, girl, you better watch it.”

At the Texaco on Main Street, Carl got out and started filling the can. When the high, sharp sound of a siren cut through the air, he nearly jumped out in front of a Mustang leaving the pumps. Turning around, he saw Bodecker sitting in his cruiser behind the station wagon. The sheriff shut the siren off and got out of the car laughing. “Damn, Carl,” he said, “I hope you didn’t make a mess in your pants.” He glanced in their car as he walked past, saw their stuff piled up in the back. “You all taking a trip?”

Sandy opened the door and stepped out. “Going on vacation,” she said.

“Where to?” Bodecker asked.

“Virginia Beach,” Carl said. He felt something wet and looked down, saw that he’d soaked one of his shoes with gasoline.

“I thought you went there last year,” Bodecker said. He wondered if his sister had started up whoring again. If so, she was evidently being more careful about it. He hadn’t heard any complaints about her since the woman’s phone call last summer.

Carl glanced over at Sandy, then said, “Yeah, we like it there.”

“I been thinking about taking me a little respite,” Bodecker said. “So it’s a good place to go, huh?”

“It’s nice,” Sandy said.

“What is it you like about it?”

She looked back toward Carl for help, but he was already bent over the can again, topping it off. His pants were hanging low, and she hoped Lee didn’t notice the crack of his white ass showing. “It’s just nice, that’s all.”

Bodecker pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket. “How long you gonna be gone?” he said.

Sandy crossed her arms in front of herself and gave him a dirty look. “Why all the fuckin’ questions?” Her head was starting to pound again. She should have never mixed beer with the vodka.

“No reason, sis,” he said. “Just curious.”

She stared at him for a minute. She tried to imagine the look on his smug face if she told him the truth. “About two weeks,” she said.

They stood and watched Carl tighten the cap on the gas can. When he went inside the station to pay, Bodecker pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and snorted, “Vacation.”

“Knock it off, Lee. What we do is our own business.”

JAMIE JOHANSEN WAS THE FIRST OF HIS KIND that they ever picked up, hair down to his shoulders, a set of thin gold hoops hanging from his earlobes. That’s what the woman told him as soon as he got in their filthy car, like it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Jamie had run away from home in Massachusetts the year before, which was also the last time he’d been to a barbershop. He didn’t consider himself a hippie — the few whom he’d met on the streets acted retarded — but what the fuck? Let her think what she wanted. For the past six months, he’d been living with a family of transvestites in a run-down, cat-infested house in Philadelphia. He had finally split when two of the older sisters decided Jamie needed to share more of the money he was making in the bus station restroom over on Clark Street. Fuck these hags, Jamie figured. Just a bunch of losers in bad makeup and cheap wigs. He’d go to Miami and find himself a rich old fag who would be thrilled just to play with his long, beautiful hair and show him off on the beach. He looked out the car window at a sign that said something about Lexington. He couldn’t even remember how he had ended up in Kentucky. Who the fuck goes to Kentucky?

And these two who just picked him up, another couple of losers. The woman seemed to think she was sexy or something, the way she kept smiling at him in the mirror and licking her lips, but just looking at her gave him the willies. There was a ripe, fishy smell coming from somewhere in the car, and he figured it had to be her. He could tell the fat man was dying to suck his dick, the way he kept turning around in the front seat and asking stupid questions so he could take another look at his crotch. They hadn’t gone but five or six miles when Jamie decided that, if he got the chance, he was going to steal their car. Even this piece of junk would be better than hitchhiking. The man who picked him up last night, stiff black hat, long white fingers, had scared the shit out of him, talking about gangs of rabid rednecks and tribes of half-starved hoboes and the awful things they did to sweet, young waifs they caught out on the road. After relating a number of stories he had heard — boys buried alive, tamped down headfirst into tight holes like fence posts, others turned into a gooey mulligan stew seasoned with wild onions and windfall apples — the man had offered good money and a night in a nice motel for a special kind of party, one that involved a bag of cotton balls and a funnel in some way, but for the first time since he had left home, Jamie turned the good money down, could see the maid finding him the next morning hollowed out like a Beggar’s Night pumpkin in the bathtub. These two here were like Ma and Pa Kettle compared to that crazy bastard.