The Devil All the Time (26 page)

Four hours later, about fifty miles outside of Charleston, West Virginia, the Bel Air began making a thumping noise underneath. He managed to get off the highway and into a filling station lot before the transmission went out completely. He got down on his hands and knees and watched the last of the fluid drip from the casing. “Motherfucker,” he said. Just as he started to get up, a thin man in baggy blue coveralls came out and asked if he needed any help. “Not unless you got a transmission you can put in this thing,” Arvin said.

“She went out on ye, huh?”

“It’s shot,” Arvin said.

“Where you headed?”

“Michigan.”

“You welcome to use the phone if you want to call someone,” the man said.

“Ain’t no one to call.” As soon as he said it, Arvin realized how true that statement really was. He thought for a minute. Though he
hated the thought of giving the Bel Air up, he had to keep moving. He was going to have to make a sacrifice. He turned to the man and tried to smile. “How much would you give me for her?” he asked. The man glanced at the car and shook his head. “I got no use for it.”

“The engine’s good. I just changed the points and plugs a couple days ago.”

The man began walking the Chevy, kicking the tires, checking for putty. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin.

“How about fifty bucks?” Arvin said.

“It ain’t hot, is it?”

“The title’s in my name.”

“I’ll give you thirty.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“Sonny, I got five kids at home,” the man said.

“Okay, it’s yours,” Arvin said. “Just let me get my stuff.” He watched the man go back inside the station. He took his bag out of the trunk and then sat down in the car one last time. The day he’d bought it, he and Earskell had burned up a whole tank of gas riding around, drove clear over to Beckley and back. He had a sudden feeling that he was going to lose a lot more before this was over. Reaching under the dash, he got the Luger, stuck it in his waistband. Then he took the title and a box of shells from the glove compartment. When he went inside, the man laid the thirty dollars on the counter. Arvin signed the title and dated it, then put the money in his wallet. He bought a Zagnut and a bottle of RC Cola. It was the first he’d eaten or drunk since the coffee that morning in his grandmother’s kitchen. He looked out the window at the endless stream of cars going by on the highway while he chewed on the candy bar. “You ever hitchhike?” he asked the man.

39

ROY FINISHED PICKING ORANGES THAT DAY
around five o’clock and collected his pay, which was thirteen dollars. He went to the store at the intersection and bought half a pound of pickle loaf and half a pound of cheese and a loaf of rye bread and two packs of Chesterfields and three fifths of White Port. It was nice getting paid every day. He felt like a rich man walking back to the spot where he and Theodore were camping. The boss was the best one he’d ever had, and Roy had been picking steady for three weeks. The man had told him today that there was maybe only another four or five days of work left. Theodore would be glad to hear that. He wanted to get back to the ocean awful bad. They had put away almost a hundred dollars in the last month, more money than they had had in a long, long time. Their plan was to buy some decent clothes and start preaching again. Roy thought they could find a couple of suits at the Goodwill for maybe ten or twelve bucks. Theodore couldn’t play the guitar like he used to, but they could get along all right.

Roy crossed a drainage ditch and headed for their campsite under a small stand of stunted magnolia trees. He saw Theodore asleep on the ground next to his wheelchair, his guitar lying beside him. Roy shook his head and pulled out one of the bottles of wine and a pack of the smokes. He sat down on a stump and took a drink before he lit a cigarette. He had killed half the fifth before he finally noticed that the cripple’s face was crawling with ants. Rushing to his side, Roy rolled him over on his back. “Theodore? Hey, come on, buddy, wake up,” Roy pleaded, shaking him and slapping at the bugs. “Theodore?”

As soon as he tried to lift the man, Roy knew that he was dead, but he still struggled for fifteen minutes to get him back up in the wheelchair. He began pushing him through the sandy soil toward the
highway, but went only a few feet before he stopped. The authorities would ask a lot of questions, he thought, as he watched a fancy car pass by in the distance. He looked around at the campsite. Maybe it would be better just to stay here. Theodore loved the ocean, but he liked the shade, too. And this grove of trees was as much a home as anything they’d had since their days with Bradford Amusements.

Roy sat down on the ground beside the wheelchair. They had done a lot of bad things over the years, and he spent the next several hours praying for the cripple’s soul. He hoped someone would do the same for him when it came his time. Around sundown, he finally got up and fixed himself a sandwich. He ate part of it and tossed the rest in the weeds. Halfway through another cigarette, it dawned on him that he didn’t have to run anymore. He could go back home now, turn himself in. They could do whatever they wanted to, as long as he got to see Lenora one more time. Theodore had never been able to understand that, how Roy could miss somebody he didn’t really know. It was true that he could barely recall what his little girl’s face had looked like, but even so, he had wondered a thousand times how her life had turned out. By the time he finished the smoke, he was already rehearsing some words he would say to her.

That night, he got drunk with his old friend one last time. He built a fire and talked to Theodore like he was still alive, told the same stories over again, the ones about Flapjack, and the Flamingo Lady, and the Zit-Eater, and all those other lost souls they had run into on the road. Several times he caught himself waiting on Theodore to laugh or add something that he’d forgotten. After a few hours, there were no more tales to tell, and Roy felt lonelier than he had ever felt in his life. “Hell of a long way from Coal Creek, ain’t it, boy?” was the last thing he said before he lay down on his blanket.

He woke right before dawn. He wet a rag with some water from the gallon jug they always kept tied to the back of the wheelchair. He wiped the grime off Theodore’s face and combed his hair, pressed his eyes shut with his thumb. There was a splash of wine left in the last bottle and he set it in the cripple’s lap, placed his ragged straw hat on his head. Then Roy wrapped his few belongings in a blanket and
stood with his hand on the dead man’s shoulder. He closed his eyes and said a few more words. He realized that he would never preach again, but that was all right. He’d never been much good at it anyway. Most people just wanted to hear the cripple play. “I wish you was going with me, Theodore,” Roy said. By the time he managed to catch a ride, he was already two miles down the road.

40

THANK GOD, JULY WAS COMING TO AN END
. Carl could hardly wait to get out on the road again. He hauled the two jars filled with Sandy’s tips to the bank and turned it into paper money, then spent the next few days leading up to the vacation buying supplies—two new outfits and some frilly underwear from JC Penney for Sandy, a gallon of motor oil, spare spark plugs, a hacksaw he found on sale and bought on a whim, fifty feet of rope, a set of road maps of the southern states from the AAA office, two cartons of Salem, and a dozen dog dicks. By the time he finished shopping and had a mechanic put a set of brake pads on the car, they were down to $134, but that would take them far. Hell, he thought, as he sat at the kitchen table and counted again, they could live like kings for a week on this much money. He recalled the summer two years ago, when they had left Meade with $40. It was potted meat and stale chips and siphoned gas and sleeping in the sweltering car the whole way, but they had managed to stay out sixteen days with the money they scrounged off the models. Compared to that, they were in fine shape this 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.

41

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.”