The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [22]
The lawyer looked down into his glass. “I’d just go ahead and divorce her, but, goddamn it, the man she’s fucking is black as the ace of spades,” he said. He looked over at Willard then. “For my boy’s sake, I’d rather the town didn’t know about that.”
“Hell, man, what about kicking his ass?” Willard suggested. “Take a shovel to the bastard’s head, he’ll get the message.” Jesus, Willard thought, rich people did fine and dandy as long as things were going their way, but the minute the shit hit the fan, they fell apart like paper dolls left out in the rain.
Dunlap shook his head. “That won’t do any good. She’d just get her another one,” he said. “My wife’s a whore, been one all her life.” The lawyer pulled a cigarette from the case lying on the desk and lit it. “Oh, well, that’s enough of that shit.” He blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Now about that house again. I’ve been thinking. What if I told you there was a way you could own that place free and clear?”
“Ain’t nothing free,” Willard said.
The lawyer smiled slightly. “There’s some truth to that, I guess. But still, would you be interested?” He set his glass on the desk.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Well, neither am I,” Dunlap said, “but how about you call me next week here at the office and maybe we can talk about it. I should have things worked out by then.”
Willard stood up and drained his glass. “That depends,” he said. “I’ll have to see how my wife’s doing.”
Dunlap pointed at the money Willard had laid on the desk. “Go ahead and take that with you,” he said. “Sounds like you might need it.”
“No,” Willard said, “that’s yours. I still want that receipt, though.”
THEY KEPT PRAYING AND SPILLING BLOOD on the log and hanging up twisted, mashed roadkill. All the while, Willard was considering the conversation he’d had with the fat-ass landlord. He’d run it through his head a hundred times, figured Dunlap probably wanted him to kill the black man or the wife or maybe both of them. There wasn’t anything else in the world he could think of that would be worth signing over the land and the house. But he also couldn’t help but wonder why Dunlap would think that he would do something like that; and the only thing Willard could come up with was that the lawyer considered him stupid, was playing him for a fool. He’d make sure his renter’s ass was sitting in jail before the bodies cooled off. For a brief spell, he had thought after talking to Dunlap that maybe there was a chance he could fulfill Charlotte’s dream. But there wasn’t any way they were ever going to own the house. He could see that now.
One day in the middle of August, Charlotte seemed to rally, even ate a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup and held it down. She wanted to sit on the porch that evening, the first time she’d been out in the fresh air for weeks. Willard took a bath and trimmed his beard and combed his hair, while Arvin heated some popcorn on the stove. A breeze blew in from the west and cooled things off a bit. They drank cold 7-Up and watched the stars slowly cross the sky. Arvin sat on the floor next to her rocking chair. “It’s been a rough summer, hasn’t it, Arvin?” Charlotte said, running her bony hand through his dark hair. He was such a sweet, gentle boy. She hoped Willard would realize that when she was gone. That was something they needed to talk about, she reminded herself again. The medicine made her so forgetful.
“But now you’re getting better,” he said. He stuck another handful of popcorn in his mouth. He hadn’t had a hot meal in weeks.
“Yeah, I feel pretty good for a change,” she said, smiling at him.
She finally went to sleep in the rocker around midnight and Willard carried her to bed. In the middle of the night, she woke up thrashing around with the cancer eating another