Donald Pollock - The Devil All the Time

AT THE TOP OF THE FLATS, ARVIN STARTED SOUTH. The brush was thicker now along the edge of the woods, but it took him only a couple of minutes to find the deer path that he and his father had walked on their way to the prayer log. He could see the metal roof of the barn, and he hurried on. The house was gone, just like the storekeeper had said. He set his bag down and walked in where the back door used to be. He continued on through the kitchen and down the hall to the room where his mother had died. He kicked at black cinders and charred pieces of lumber, hoping to find some relic of hers or one of the little treasures he had kept in his bedroom window. But except for a rusty doorknob and his memories, there was nothing left. Some empty beer bottles were arranged in a neat row on one corner of the rock foundation where someone had sat and drank for an evening.

The barn was nothing now but a shell. All the wood siding had been torn off. The roof was rusted through in spots, the red paint faded and peeled away by the weather. Arvin stepped inside out of the sun, and there in a corner lay the feed bucket in which Willard had once carried his precious blood. He moved it over to a spot near the front and used it as a seat while he ate his lunch. He watched a red-tailed hawk make lazy circles in the sky. Then he took out the photograph of the woman with the dead man. Why would people do something like this? And how, he wondered again, did her bullet miss him when she wasn’t more than five or six feet away? In the quiet, he could hear his father’s voice: “There’s a sign here, son. Better pay attention.” He put the picture in his pocket and hid the bucket behind a bale of moldy straw. Then he started back across the field.

He found the deer path again and soon arrived at the clearing that Willard had worked so hard on. It was mostly grown over now with snakeroot and wild fern, but the prayer log was still there. Five of the crosses stood as well, streaked a dull red with rust from the nails. The other four lay on the ground, orange-flowered trumpet vines curled around them. His heart caught just for a second when he saw some of the remains of the dog still hanging from the first cross his father had ever raised. He leaned against a tree, thought about the days leading up to his mother’s death, how Willard wanted so much for her to live. He would have done anything for her; fuck the blood and the stink and the insects and the heat. Anything, Arvin said to himself. And suddenly he realized, as he stood once again in his father’s church, that Willard had needed to go wherever Charlotte went, so that he could keep on looking after her. All these years, Arvin had despised him for what he’d done, as if he didn’t give a damn what happened to his boy after she died. Then he thought about the ride back from the cemetery, and Willard’s talk about visiting Emma in Coal Creek. It had never occurred to him before, but that was as close as his father could get to telling him that he was leaving, too, and that he was sorry. “Maybe stay for a while,” Willard had said that day. “You’ll like it there.”

He wiped some tears from his eyes and set his gym bag down on top of the log, then walked around and knelt at the dog’s cross. He moved away some dead leaves. The skull was half buried in loam, the small hole from the.22 rifle still visible between the empty eye sockets. He found the moldy collar, a small clump of hair still stuck to the leather around the rusty metal buckle. “You were a good dog, Jack,” he said. He gathered up all the remains he could find on the ground — the thin ribs, the hipbones, a single paw — and pulled off the brittle pieces still attached to the cross. He laid them gently in a small pile. With the sharp end of a tree branch and his hands, he dug a hole in the moist, black dirt at the foot of the cross. He went down a foot or so, arranged everything carefully in the bottom of the grave. Then he went over to his bag and got the painting of the crucifixion that he’d taken from the motel and hung it on one of the nails in the cross.

Going back to the other side of the log, he knelt down in the place where he had once prayed next to his father. He pulled the Luger out of his jeans and set it on top of the log. The air was thick and dead with the heat and humidity. He looked at Jesus hanging from the cross and closed his eyes. He tried his best to picture God, but his thoughts kept wandering. He finally gave up, found it easier to imagine his parents looking down on him instead. It seemed as if his entire life, everything he’d ever seen or said or done, had led up to this moment: alone at last with the ghosts of his childhood. He began to pray, the first time since his mother had died. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered several times. After a couple of minutes, a sudden gust of wind came down off the hill behind him, and some of the bones still hanging in the trees began to knock together like wind chimes.

BODECKER TURNED ONTO THE DIRT LANE that led back to the house where the Russells used to live, his cruiser rocking gently in the ruts. He cocked his revolver and laid it on the seat. He eased slowly over flimsy saplings and tall clumps of horseweeds, coming to a stop about fifty yards from where the house had once stood. He could just make out the top of the rock foundation above the Johnson grass. The little that remained of the barn was another forty yards to the left. Maybe he would buy the property once this fucking mess was over with, he thought. He could build another house, plant an orchard. Let Matthews have the damn job of sheriff. Florence would like that. She was a worrier, that woman. He reached under the seat and got the pint, took a drink. He would have to do something about Tater, but that wouldn’t be too difficult.

Then again, the Russell boy might be just the thing he needed to win another election. Someone who would kill a preacher for getting some young pussy had to have a screw loose, no matter what that hick cop in West Virginia said. It would be easy to make the punk out to be a cold-blooded maniac; and people will vote for a hero every time. He took another hit off the pint and stuck it under the seat. “Better worry about that stuff later,” Bodecker said out loud. Right now he had a job to do. Even if he didn’t run for office again, he couldn’t bear the thought of everyone knowing the truth about Sandy. He couldn’t put it into words, what she’d been doing in some of those pictures.

Once out of the car, he holstered his revolver and reached in the rear for the shotgun. He tossed his hat in the front. His stomach was churning from the hangover, and he felt like shit. He flicked the safety off the shotgun and started walking slowly up the driveway. He stopped several times and listened, then moved on. It was quiet, just a few birds chirping. At the barn, he stood in the shade, looked out past the remains of the house. He licked his lips and wished he had another drink. A wasp flew about his head, and he smacked it down with his hand, crushed it with the heel of his boot. After a few minutes, he proceeded across the field, staying close to the tree line. He walked through patches of dry milkweed and nettles and burdock. He tried to recall how far he had followed the boy that night before they came to the path that led to where his daddy had bled out. He looked back toward the barn, but he couldn’t remember. He should have brought Howser with him, he thought. That fucker loved to hunt.

He was just beginning to think he must have passed it by when he came upon some trampled-down weeds. His heart revved up just a little, and he wiped the sweat from his eyes. Bending down, he peered past the weeds and brush into the woods, saw the outline of the old deer path just a few feet in. He looked back over his shoulder and saw three black crows swoop low across the field cawing. He ducked under some blackberry brambles and took a few steps, and he was on the trail. Taking a deep breath, he started slowly down the hill, his shotgun at the ready. He could feel himself shaking inside with both fear and excitement, the same as when he’d killed those two men for Tater. He hoped this one would be as easy.