The Devil All the Time (23 page)

So it was debatable, keeping Cynthia. Sometimes he would glance over at her and, for a second or two, not even be able to recall her name. Gaped open and numb from his many experiments, what had once been fresh and tight was a faded memory now, and so, too, was
the excitement she used to arouse in him. His biggest problem with Cynthia, though, was that she no longer believed in Jesus. Preston could abide just about anything but not that. He needed for a woman to believe that she was doing wrong when she lay with him, that she was in imminent danger of going to hell. How could he get turned on by someone who didn’t understand the desperate battle raging between good and evil, purity and lust? Every time he fucked some young girl, Preston felt guilty, felt as if he was drowning in it, at least for a long minute or two. To him, such emotion proved that he still had a chance of going to heaven, regardless of how corrupt and cruel he might be, that is, if he repented his wretched, whoring ways before he took his last breath. It all came down to a matter of timing, which, of course, made things all that much more exciting. Cynthia, though, didn’t seem to care one way or another. Nowadays, fucking her was like sticking his staff in a greasy, soulless doughnut.

But you take that Laferty girl, Preston thought, turning another page in the psychology book and rubbing his half-hard cock through his pajamas, Lord, that girl was a believer. He’d been watching her closely in church the past two Sundays. True, she wasn’t much to look at, but he’d had worse down in Nashville when he volunteered that month at the poor house. He reached over and took a saltine from a pack on the coffee table, crammed it in his mouth. He let it lie on his tongue like a host and melt, turn into a soggy, tasteless glob. Yes, Miss Lenora Laferty would do for now, at least until he could get his hands on one of the Reaster girls. He’d put a smile on that sad, crimped face of hers once he got that faded dress off. According to the church gossips, at one time her father had been a preacher around this county, but then—at least the way they told it—he’d murdered the girl’s mother and disappeared. Left poor little Lenora just a babe with the old lady who’d gotten so tore up about those chicken livers. This girl, he predicted, was going to be so easy.

He swallowed the cracker, and a little spark of happiness suddenly swept through his body, ran from the top of his blond head down his legs and into his toes. Thank God, thank God, his mother had decided all those years ago that he was going to be a preacher. All
the fresh young meat a man could stand if he played his cards right. The old bag had curled his hair every morning and taught him good hygiene and made him practice his facial expressions in the mirror. She’d studied the Bible with him every night and drove him around to different churches and kept him in nice clothes. Preston had never played baseball, but he could cry on cue; he’d never been in a fist-fight, but he could recite the book of Revelation in his sleep. So, yes, goddamn it, he’d do what she had asked, help out her sick, sad-sack brother-in-law for a while, live in this shit hole of a house, and even pretend to like it. He’d show her his “mettle,” by God. And then, when Albert got back on his feet, he’d ask her for the money. He’d probably have to deceive her, feed her some bullshit story, but he’d feel at least a pang of guilt, so that was all right. Anything to get to the West Coast. It was his new obsession. He’d been hearing stuff on the news lately. There was something going on out there that he needed to witness. Free love and runaway girls living in the streets with flowers stuck in their matted hair. Easy pickings for a man blessed with his abilities.

Preston marked his place in the book with his uncle’s old tobacco sack and closed the book. Five Brothers? Jesus, what sort of person would put their faith in something like that? He’d nearly laughed in Albert’s face when the old man told him it had the power to heal. He looked over at Cynthia, half asleep now, a string of drool hanging from her chin. He snapped his fingers and her eyes popped open. She frowned and tried to shut her eyes again, but it was impossible. She did her best to resist, but then got up from her chair and knelt at the side of the couch. Preston pulled down his pajama bottoms, spread his fat, hairy legs a bit. As she began to swallow him, he said a little prayer to himself: Lord, just give me six months in California, then I’ll come home and fly right, settle down with a flock of good people, I swear on my mother’s grave. He pushed Cynthia’s head down farther, heard her begin to gag and choke. Then her throat muscles relaxed and she quit fighting it. He held her there until her face turned scarlet and then purple from lack of air. He liked it that way, he surely did. Look at her go.

34

ONE DAY ON HER WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL
, Lenora stopped at the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified. The front door was opened wide and Preacher Teagardin’s ratty English sports car—a gift from his mother when he’d first gone off to Heavenly Reach—was sitting in the shade, same as yesterday and the day before. It was a warm afternoon in the middle of May. She had ducked Arvin, watched from inside the schoolhouse until he gave up waiting and left without her. She stepped inside the church and let her eyes adjust to the gloom. The new preacher was sitting on one of the benches halfway down the aisle. It looked as if he was praying. She waited until she heard him say, “Amen,” and then she began moving slowly forward.

Teagardin felt her presence behind him. He had been waiting patiently on Lenora for three weeks now. He’d come to the church nearly every day and opened the door around the time the school let out. Most days he saw her ride past in that piece-of-shit Bel Air with that half brother or whatever he was, but once or twice he’d seen her walking home by herself. He heard her soft steps on the rough wood floor. He could smell her Juicy Fruit breath as she got closer; he had the nose of a bloodhound when it came to young women and their different odors. “Who is it?” he said, raising his head.

“It’s Lenora Laferty, Preacher Teagardin.”

He crossed himself and turned to her with a smile. “Well, what a surprise,” he said. Then he peered at her more closely. “Girl, you look like you been crying.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Just some kids at school. They like to tease.”

He looked past her for a moment, searching for a suitable
response. “I suspect they just jealous,” he said. “Envy tends to bring out the worst in people, especially the young ones.”

“I doubt if that’s it,” she said.

“How old are you, Lenora?”

“Almost seventeen.”

“I remember when I was that age,” he said. “There I was, full of the Lord, and the other kids making fun of me day and night. It was awful, the horrible notions that ran through my head.”

She nodded and sat down on the bench across from him. “What did you do about it?” she asked.

He ignored her question, appeared to be deep in thought. “Yes, that was a rough time,” he finally said with a long sigh. “Thank God it’s over.” Then he smiled again. “You got anywhere you have to be for the next couple hours?”

“No, not really,” she said.

Teagardin stood up, took hold of her hand. “Well, then, I think it’s about time you and me take a ride.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER
, they were parked on an old farm lane that he’d been checking out ever since his arrival in Coal Creek. It had once led to some hay fields a mile or so off the main road, but the land was now overgrown with Johnson grass and thick brush. His tire tracks were the only ones he’d seen on it for the past two weeks. It was a safe spot to bring someone. When he shut the car off, he said a little prayer, then laid his warm, meaty hand on Lenora’s knee and told her just what she wanted to hear. Hell, every one of them wanted to hear pretty much the same thing anyway, even the ones full of Jesus. He wished that she had resisted a little bit more, but she was easy, just like he had predicted. Even so, as many times as he’d done this, all the time he was peeling her clothes off, he could hear every bird, every insect, every animal that moved in the woods for what seemed like miles. It was always like that the first time with a new one.

When he finished, Preston reached down and grabbed her gray, dingy panties lying on the floorboard. He wiped the blood off himself and handed them to her. He swatted at a fly buzzing around his
crotch, then tugged up his brown slacks and buttoned his white shirt as he watched her struggle back into her long dress. “You ain’t gonna tell no one, are you?” he said. Already, he wished he’d stayed home and read his psychology book, maybe even attempted cutting the grass with the push mower Albert had sent over after Cynthia stepped on a black snake curled up in front of the outhouse. Unfortunately, he had never been one of those men adept at physical labor. Just thinking about shoving that mower around and around that rocky yard made him feel a little nauseous.

“No,” she said. “I’d never do that. I promise.”

“That’s good. Some people might not understand. And I sincerely believe that a person’s relationship with their preacher should be a private thing.”

“Did you mean what you said?” she asked him bashfully.

He struggled to recall which bullshit line he had used on her. “Well, sure I did.” His throat was parched. Maybe he’d drive over to Lewisburg and have a cold beer to celebrate busting open another virgin. “By the time we get done,” he said, “them boys at your school won’t be able to take their eyes off you. It just takes some breaking in for some girls, that’s all. But I can tell you one of them that just gets prettier as they get older. You should thank the Lord for that. Yep, you got some sweet years ahead of you, Miss Lenora Laferty.”

35

AT THE END OF MAY, ARVIN GRADUATED
from Coal Creek High School, along with nine other seniors. The following Monday, he went to work for a construction crew that was putting a new coat of blacktop on the Greenbrier County stretch of Route 60. A neighbor across the knob named Clifford Baker had gotten him on. He and Arvin’s father used to raise hell together before the war, and Baker figured the boy deserved a break as much as anyone. It was a good-paying job, nearly union wages, and though he was designated a laborer, supposedly the worst job on the crew, Earskell had worked Arvin harder in the garden patch behind the house. The day he got his first check, he picked up two fifths of good whiskey from Slot Machine for the old man, ordered Emma a ringer washer from the Sears catalog, and bought Lenora a new dress for church at Mayfair’s, the priciest store in three counties.

While the girl was trying to find something that fit, Emma said, “My Lord, I hadn’t noticed before, but you sure are starting to fill out.” Lenora turned back to the mirror and smiled. She had always been straight up and down, no hips, no chest. Last winter, someone had taped a picture from
Life
magazine of a heap of concentration camp victims to her locker, wrote in ink, “Lenora Laferty,” with an arrow pointing to the third corpse from the left. If it hadn’t been for Arvin, she wouldn’t have even bothered to take the picture down. But she was finally starting to look like a woman, just like Preacher Teagardin had promised. She was meeting him three, four, sometimes five afternoons a week now. She felt bad every time they did it, but she couldn’t tell him no. It was the first time she had ever realized just how powerful sin could be. No wonder it was so hard for people to get into heaven. Each time they met, Preston had something new he
wanted to try. Yesterday, he’d brought a tube of his wife’s lipstick. “I know it sounds silly, with what we been doing,” she said timidly, “but I don’t think a woman should paint her face. You ain’t mad, are you?”

“Well, heck no, darling, that’s all right,” he told her. “Shoot, I admire your beliefs. I wish that wife of mine loved Jesus like you do.” Then he grinned and pushed her dress up, hooked his thumb over the top of her panties and pulled them down. “Besides, I was thinking about painting something else anyway.”

ONE EVENING, AS SHE WASHED THE SUPPER DISHES
, Emma looked out the window and saw Lenora coming out of the woods across the road from the house. They had waited on her a few minutes, then went ahead and ate. “That girl sure is spending a lot of time in them woods lately,” the old woman said. Arvin was leaned back in his chair drinking the last of the coffee and watching Earskell try to roll a smoke. The old man was bent over the table, a look of intense concentration on his lined face. Arvin watched his fingers tremble, wondered if his great-uncle was beginning to slip a little.

“Knowing her,” Arvin said, “she’s probably out talkin’ to butterflies.”

Emma watched the girl scramble up the bank toward the porch. She looked like she had been running, the way her face was flushed. The old woman had noticed a big change in the girl the last few weeks. One day she was happy, the next day filled with despair. A lot of girls went a little crazy for a while when the blood started flowing, Emma reasoned, but Lenora had gone through all that two years ago. She still saw her studying her Bible, though; and she seemed to love going to church more than she ever did, even though Preacher Teagardin couldn’t hold a candle to Albert Sykes when it came to giving a good sermon. At times, Emma wondered if the man really cared at all about preaching the Gospel, the way he kept losing his train of thought, like he had other things on his mind. There she was, she realized, getting all stirred up about those chicken livers again. She would have to pray on it again tonight when she went to bed. She turned and looked at Arvin. “You don’t figure she might have her a beau, do you?”

“Who? Lenora?” he said, and then rolled his eyes as if it was one of the most ridiculous things he’d ever heard. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, Grandma.” He glanced over and saw that Earskell had made a mess of his cigarette, was just sitting there with his mouth open, staring at the makings on the table. Reaching over for the little sack of tobacco and the papers, the boy began rolling the old man a new one.