The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [43]
He cleaned himself off and wiped his sweaty hands on his pants. He tore the story out of the magazine and folded it, stuck the pages in his wallet. Whistling a little tune, he wet his comb in the sink and slicked back his thin, graying hair, squeezed a couple of whore bumps on his face. He found the grease monkey talking to Sandy in a low voice inside the garage. He had one skinny leg pressed up against hers. “Jesus Christ, it’s about time,” she said, when she looked up and saw him.
Ignoring her, Carl asked the mechanic, “Did you get it fixed?”
The man stepped away from Sandy, nervously stuck his greasy hands in the pockets of his coveralls. “I think so,” he said. “I filled her up with water, and she’s holdin’ so far.”
“What else did you fill up?” Carl said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Nothing, not a thing, mister.”
“Did you let it run awhile?”
“We ran it for ten minutes,” Sandy said. “While you was back there in the can doing whatever you was doing.”
“All right,” Carl said. “What we owe you?”
The mechanic scratched his head, pulled out his pack of chew. “Oh, I don’t know. Does five bucks sound all right?”
“Five bucks?” Carl said. “Hell, man, the way you been playing around with my ol’ lady? She’s gonna be sore for a week. I’ll be damn lucky if you didn’t knock her up.”
“Four?” the mechanic said.
“Listen to this shit,” Carl said. “You like to take advantage, don’t you?” He glanced over at Sandy and she winked. “Okay, you throw in a couple of bottles of cold pop, I’ll give you two dollars, but that’s my final offer. My wife ain’t just some cheap whore.”
It was late in the evening by the time they drove out of there, and they slept in the car that night along a quiet country road. They shared a can of potted meat, using Carl’s penknife for a spoon; and then Sandy climbed over the backseat and said good night. A short while later, just as he was starting to nod off in the front, a sharp spasm shot through Carl’s guts and he fumbled for the door handle. Bolting from the car, he climbed over a drainage ditch that ran alongside the road. He jerked his pants down just in time, emptied a week’s worth of nerves and junk into the weeds while holding on to the trunk of a pawpaw tree. After he cleaned himself off with some dead leaves, he stood outside the car in the moonlight and read the magazine story one more time. Then he took his lighter out and set it aflame. He decided not to mention it to Sandy. Sometimes she had a big mouth, and he didn’t like to worry about what he might have to do to it on down the road.
15
THE DAY AFTER TALKING TO THE BARMAID at the Tecumseh, Bodecker drove over to the apartment where his sister and her husband lived on the east side of town. For the most part, he didn’t give a damn how Sandy carried on her sorry life, but she wasn’t going to peddle her snatch in Ross County, not as long as he was sheriff. Fucking around on Carl was one thing—hell, he couldn’t blame her for that—but working it for money was something else entirely. Although Hen Matthews would try to shame him with dirt like that come election time, Bodecker was worried about it for other reasons. People are like dogs: once they start digging, they don’t want to stop. First, it would just be that the sheriff had a whore for a sister, but eventually someone would find out about his dealings with Tater Brown; and after that, all the bribes and other shit that had piled up since he had first pinned on a badge. Looking back on it, he should have busted that thieving, pimp sonofabitch when he had a chance. A big arrest like that might have nearly wiped his slate clean. But he’d let his greed get the best of him, and now he was stuck in it for the long haul.
Parked in front of the shabby duplex, he watched