The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [6]
“I got an ulcer,” the bus driver said.
“You didn’t miss nothing.”
“I don’t know,” the bus driver said. “I sure would have liked to got me a medal. Maybe a couple of them. I figure I could have killed enough of those Kraut bastards for two anyway. I’m pretty quick with my hands.”
Looking at the back of the bus driver’s head, Willard thought about the conversation he’d had with the gloomy young priest on board the ship after he confessed that he’d shot the marine to put him out of his misery. The priest was sick of all the death he’d seen, all the prayers he’d said over rows of dead soldiers and piles of body parts. He told Willard that if even half of history was true, then the only thing this depraved and corrupt world was good for was preparing you for the next. “Did you know,” Willard said to the driver, “that the Romans used to gut donkeys and sew Christians up alive inside the carcasses and leave them out in the sun to rot?” The priest had been full of such stories.
“What the hell’s that got to do with a medal?”
“Just think about it. You’re trussed up like a turkey in a pan with just your head sticking out a dead donkey’s ass; and then the maggots eating away at you until you see the glory.”
The bus driver frowned, gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Friend, I don’t see what you’re getting at. I was talking about coming home with a big medal pinned to your chest. Did these Roman fellers give out medals to them people before they stuck ’em in the donkeys? Is that what you mean?”
Willard didn’t know what he meant. According to the priest, only God could figure out the ways of men. He licked his dry lips, thought about the whiskey in his pack. “What I’m saying is that when it comes right down to it, everybody suffers in the end,” Willard said.
“Well,” the bus driver said, “I’d liked to have my medal before then. Heck, I got a wife at home who goes nuts every time she sees one. Talk about suffering. I worry myself sick anytime I’m out on the road she’s gonna take off with a purple heart.”
Willard leaned forward and the driver felt the soldier’s hot breath on the back of his fat neck, smelled the whiskey fumes and the stale traces of a cheap lunch. “You think Miller Jones would give a shit if his old lady was out fucking around on him?” Willard said. “Buddy, he’d trade places with you any goddamn day.”
“Who the hell is Miller Jones?”
Willard looked out the window as the hazy top of Greenbrier Mountain started to appear in the distance. His hands were trembling, his brow shiny with sweat. “Just some poor bastard who went and fought in that war they cheated you out of, that’s all.”
WILLARD WAS JUST GETTING READY to break down and crack open one of the pints when his uncle Earskell pulled up in his rattly Ford in front of the Greyhound station in Lewisburg at the corner of Washington and Court. He had been sitting on a bench outside for almost three hours, nursing a cold coffee in a paper cup and watching people walk by the Pioneer Drugstore. He was ashamed of the way he’d talked to the bus driver, sorry that he’d brought up the marine’s name like he did; and he vowed that, though he would never forget him, he’d never mention Gunnery Sergeant Miller Jones to anyone again. Once they were on the road, he reached into his duffel and handed Earskell one of the pints along with a German Luger. He’d traded a Japanese ceremonial sword for the pistol at the base in Maryland right before he got discharged. “That’s supposed to be the gun Hitler used to blow his brains out,” Willard said, trying to hold back a grin.
“Bullshit,” Earskell said.
Willard laughed. “What? You think the guy lied to me?”
“Ha!” the old man said. He twisted the cap off the bottle, took a long pull, then shuddered. “Lord, this is good stuff.”
“Drink up. I got three more in my kit.” Willard opened another pint and lit a cigarette. He stuck his arm out the window. “How’s my mother doing?”
“Well, I gotta say, when they sent Junior Carver’s body back, she went a little off in the head there for a while. But she seems pretty good now.” Earskell