The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [49]
Arvin unwrapped the cloth carefully. The only gun his father had kept at home was a .22 rifle, and Willard never allowed him to touch it, let alone shoot it. Earskell, on the other hand, had handed the boy a 16-gauge Remington and took him to the woods just three or four weeks after he came to live with them. “In this house, you better know how to handle a gun unless you want to starve to death,” the old man had told him.
“But I don’t want to shoot anything,” Arvin said that day, when Earskell stopped and pointed out two gray squirrels jumping back and forth on some branches high in a hickory tree.
“Didn’t I see you eatin’ a pork chop this morning?”
“Yeah.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody had to kill that hog and butcher it, didn’t they?”
“I guess so.”
Earskell lifted his own shotgun then and fired. One of the squirrels fell to the ground, and the old man started toward it. “Just try not to tear ’em up too bad,” he said over his shoulder. “You want to have something left to put in the pan.”
The coat of oil made the Luger shine like new in the wavering light cast from the kerosene lamps hanging at both ends of the room. “I never did hear him talk about it,” Arvin said, lifting the gun up by the grip and pointing it toward the window. “About being in the service, I mean.” There had been quite a few things his mother had warned him about when it came to his father, and asking questions about what he had seen in the war was high on the list.
“Yeah, I know,” Earskell said. “I remember when he got back, I wanted him to tell me about the Japs, but anytime I brought it up, he’d start in about your mother again.” He finished the rabbit and laid the bone on his plate. “Hell, I don’t think he even knew her name at the time. Just saw her waiting tables in some eatin’ place when he was coming home.”
“The Wooden Spoon,” Arvin said. “He took me there once after she got sick.”
“I think he saw some rough things over on them islands,” the old man said. He looked around for a rag, then wiped his hands on the front of his overalls. “I never did find out if they ate their dead or not.”
Arvin bit his lip and swallowed hard. “This is the best present I ever got.”
Just then, Emma entered the kitchen carrying a plain yellow cake in a small pan. A single candle was planted in the middle of it. Lenora followed behind dressed in the long blue dress and bonnet that she usually wore only to church. She held a box of matches in one hand and her cracked leather Bible in the other. “What’s that?” Emma said when she saw Arvin holding the Luger.
“That’s Willard’s gun he give me,” Earskell said. “I figured it was time to pass it on to the boy.”
“Oh, my,” Emma said. She set the cake down on the table and grabbed up the hem of her checkered apron to wipe back a tear. Seeing the gun reminded her once again of her son and the promise she’d failed to keep all those years ago. Sometimes she couldn’t help but wonder if they would all still be alive today if she had only convinced Willard to stay here and marry Helen.
Everyone was silent for a moment, almost as if they knew what the old woman was thinking. Then Lenora struck a match and said in a singsong voice, “Happy birthday, Arvin.” She lit the candle, the same one they had used to celebrate her fourteenth birthday a few months ago.
“It ain’t much use for anything,” Earskell went on, ignoring the cake and nodding at the gun. “You got to be right up on something to hit it.”
“Go ahead, Arvin,” Lenora said.
“Might as well throw a rock,” the old man joked.
“Arvin?”
“The shotgun will do you more good.”
“Make your wish before the candle burns out,” Emma said.
“Them’s nine-millimeter shells,” Earskell pointed out. “Banner don’t carry them at