The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [53]
“It ain’t a bad gun,” Arvin said. “You just got to know how to shoot it.” It was the first time the old man had ridiculed the pistol in quite a while.
Earskell laid down the implement catalog he’d been peering through all morning and pulled his penknife out of his pocket. “Well, go fetch us something to put ’em in, and I’ll help you clean ’em.”
Arvin pulled the skins off the squirrels while the old man held them by their front legs. They gutted the carcasses on a sheet of newspaper and cut the heads and feet off and laid the bloody meat in a pan of salted water. After they finished, Arvin folded up the mess in the paper and carried it out to the edge of the yard. Earskell waited until he came back up on the porch, then pulled a pint out of his pocket and took a drink. Emma had asked him to talk to the boy. She was at her wit’s end after hearing about the latest incident. He wiped his mouth and said, “Played cards over at Elder Stubb’s garage last night.”
“So did you win?”
“No, not really,” Earskell said. He stretched his legs out, looked down at his battered shoes. He was going to have to try mending them again. “Saw Carl Dinwoodie there.”
“Yeah?”
“He wasn’t none too happy.”
Arvin sat down on the other side of his great-uncle in a creaky cast-off kitchen chair held together with baling wire. He studied the gray woods across the road and chewed at the inside of his mouth for a minute. “He pissed off about Gene?” he asked. It had been over a week since he’d bagged the sonofabitch.
“A little maybe, but I think he’s more ticked off about the hospital bill he’s gonna have to pay.” Earskell looked down at the squirrels floating in the pan. “So what happened?”
Though Arvin didn’t ever see the point of offering up any details to his grandmother for beating the shit out of someone, mostly because he didn’t want to upset her, he knew the old man wouldn’t be satisfied with anything other than the facts. “He’s been teasing Lenora, him and a couple of his candy-ass buddies,” he said. “Calling her names, shit like that. So I fixed his wagon for him.”
“What about the others?”
“Them, too.”
Earskell heaved a long sigh, scratched at the whiskers on his neck. “You think maybe you should have held back just a little bit? Boy, I understand what you’re saying, but still, you can’t go sending people to the hospital over some name-calling. Puttin’ a couple knots on his head is one thing, but from what I hear, you hurt him pretty bad.”
“I don’t like bullies.”
“Jesus Christ, Arvin, you going to meet lots of people you might not take a liking to.”
“Maybe so, but I bet he won’t pick on Lenora anymore.”
“Look, I want you to do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“Stick that Luger away in a drawer and forget about it for now.”
“Why?”
“Handguns ain’t made for hunting. They’re for killin’ people.”
“But I didn’t shoot the bastard,” Arvin said. “I beat him up.”
“Yeah, I know. This time anyway.”
“What about them squirrels? I hit every one of them in the head. You can’t do that with no shotgun.”
“Just put it up for a while, okay? Use the rifle if you want to go after some game.”
The boy studied the floor of the porch for a moment, then looked up at the old man with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “He get mouthy with you?”
“You mean Carl?” Earskell asked. “No, he knows better than that.” He didn’t see any sense in telling Arvin that he had drawn a royal flush on the last and biggest pot of the night, or that he had folded so that Carl could take the money home with two pissy pair. Though he knew it had been the right thing to do, it still made him half sick thinking about it. There must have been two hundred dollars in that kitty. He just hoped the boy’s doctor got a chunk of it.
22
ARVIN WAS LEANING AGAINST THE ROUGH RAIL of the porch late on a clear Saturday night in March looking at the stars hanging over the hills in all their distant mystery and solemn