Donald Pollock - The Devil All the Time

It was “All You Can Eat Fish” day. “Be right back,” Sandy told him, as she hurried past with another plate piled high with perch for Doc Leedom. “I got something to tell you.” The foot doctor came in every Friday and tried to kill himself with fried fish. It was the only time he ever stopped at the diner. All you could eat anything, he told his patients, was the dumbest idea a restaurant owner could ever come up with.

She grabbed the coffeepot, poured Bodecker a cup. “That fat ol’ sonofabitch is running my legs off,” she whispered.

Bodecker turned and watched the doctor cram a long piece of breaded fish into his mouth and swallow. “Heck, he don’t even chew it, does he?”

“And he can do it all goddamn day,” she said.

“So what’s going on?”

She pushed back a loose lock of hair. “Well, I figured I should tell you before you hear it from someone else.”

This was it, he thought, one in the oven, another worry to pour on his ulcer. Probably doesn’t even know the daddy’s name. “You ain’t in trouble, are you?” he said.

“What? You mean pregnant?” She lit a cigarette. “Jesus, Lee. You never give me a break.”

“Okay, what is it then?”

She blew a smoke ring over his head and winked. “I got myself engaged.”

“You mean to be married?”

“Well, yeah,” she said with a little laugh. “What other kind is there?”

“I’ll be damned. What’s his name?”

“Carl. Carl Henderson.”

“Henderson,” Bodecker repeated, as he poured some cream in his coffee from a tiny metal pitcher. “He one of them you went to school with? That bunch over off Plug Run?”

“Oh, shit, Lee,” she said, “them boys are half retarded, you know that. Carl ain’t even from around here. He grew up on the south side of Columbus.”

“What’s he do? For a living, I mean.”

“He’s a photographer.”

“Oh, so he’s got one of those studios?”

She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and shook her head. “Not right now,” she said. “A setup like that don’t come cheap.”

“Well, how does he make his money then?”

She rolled her eyes, let out a sigh. “Don’t worry, he gets by.”

“In other words, he ain’t working.”

“I seen his camera and everything.”

“Shit, Sandy, Florence has got a camera, but I sure wouldn’t call her a photographer.” He looked back into the kitchen, where the grill cook was standing at an open refrigerator with his T-shirt pulled up, trying to get cooled off. He couldn’t help but wonder if Henry had ever fucked her. People said he was hung like a Shetland pony. “Where in the hell did you meet this guy?”

“Right over there,” Sandy said, pointing at a table in the corner.

“How long ago was that?”

“Last week,” she said. “Don’t worry, Lee. He’s a nice guy.” Within a month they were married.

Two hours later, he was back at the jail. He had a bottle of whiskey in a brown paper bag. The shoe box of photographs and the rolls of film were in the trunk of his cruiser. He locked the door to his office and poured himself a drink in a coffee cup. It was the first one he’d had in over a year, but he couldn’t say that he enjoyed it. Florence called just as he was getting ready to have another. “I heard what happened,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I know I should have.”

“So it’s true? Sandy’s dead?”

“Her and that no-good sonofabitch both.”

“My God, it’s hard to believe. Weren’t they on vacation?”

“I believe Carl was a lot worse than I ever gave him credit for.”

“You don’t sound right, Lee. Why don’t you come on home?”

“I still got some work to do. Might be at it all night, the way things look.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“No,” he said, looking at the bottle sitting on the desk, “not really.”

“Lee?”

“Yeah, Flo.”

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

ARVIN SAW THE NEWSPAPER IN THE RACK outside the doughnut shop when he went to get some coffee the next morning. He bought a copy and took it back to his room and read that the local sheriff’s sister and husband had been found murdered. They were returning from a vacation in Virginia Beach. There was no mention of a suspect, but there was a photo of Sheriff Lee Bodecker alongside the story. Arvin recognized him as the same man who was on duty the night his father killed himself. Goddamn, he whispered. Hurriedly, he packed his stuff and started out the door. He stopped and went back inside. Taking the Calvary picture down off the wall, he wrapped it in the newspaper and stuck it in his bag.

Arvin began walking west on Main Street. At the edge of town, a logging truck headed for Bainbridge picked him up and dropped him off at the corner of Route 50 and Blaine Highway. On foot, he crossed Paint Creek at Schott’s Bridge, and an hour later, he arrived at the edge of Knockemstiff. Except for a couple of new ranch-style houses standing in what had once been a cornfield, everything looked pretty much as he remembered it. He walked a bit farther, and then dropped over the small hill in the middle of the holler. Maude’s store still sat on the corner, and behind it was the same camper that had been there eight years ago. He was glad to see it.

The storekeeper was sitting on a stool behind the candy case when he went inside. It was still the same Hank, just a little older now, a little more frazzled. “Howdy,” he said, looking down at Arvin’s gym bag.

The boy nodded, set the bag on the concrete floor. He slid the door open on top of the pop case, searched out a bottle of root beer. He opened it and took a long drink.

Hank lit a cigarette and said, “You look like you been traveling.”

“Yeah,” Arvin said, leaning against the cooler.

“Where you headed?”

“Not sure exactly. There used to be a house on top of the hill behind here some lawyer owned. You know the one I’m talkin’ about?”

“Sure, I do. Up on the Mitchell Flats.”

“I used to live there.” As soon as he said it, Arvin wished he could take it back.

Hank studied him for a moment, then said, “I’ll be damned. You’re that Russell boy, ain’t you?”

“Yeah,” Arvin said. “I thought I’d just stop and see the old place again.”

“Son, I hate to tell you, but that house burned down a couple year ago. They think some kids did it. Wasn’t nobody ever lived there after you and your folks. That lawyer’s wife and her buck boyfriend went to prison for killing him, and as far as I know, it’s been tied up in court ever since.”

A wave of disappointment swept over Arvin. “Is there anything left of it at all?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Just the foundation mostly. I think maybe the barn’s still there, part of it anyway. Place is all growed up now.”

Arvin stared out the big plate-glass window up toward the church while he finished the pop. He thought about the day his father ran the hunter down in the mud. After everything that had happened the last couple of days, it didn’t seem like such a good memory now. He laid some saltines on the counter and asked for two slices of bologna and cheese. He bought a pack of Camels and a box of matches and another bottle of pop. “Well,” he said, when the storekeeper finished putting the groceries in a sack, “I figure I’ll walk on up there anyway. Heck, I come this far. Is it still okay to go up through the woods behind here?”

“Yeah, just cut across Clarence’s pasture. He won’t say nothing.”

Arvin put the sack in his gym bag. From where he stood, he could see the top of the Wagners’ old house. “There a girl named Janey Wagner still live around here?” he asked.