The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [61]
“It’s just something to do, baby,” Sandy said. “Takes my mind off things, you know?” He nodded, gently worked his fingers into the soft soles of her feet. “That’s the spot,” she said, stretching out her legs. Then, after she finished the beer and a last cigarette, he scooped her skinny body up and carried her giggling down the hallway and into the bedroom. He hadn’t heard her laugh in weeks. He would keep her warm tonight, that was the least he could do. It was nearly four in the morning, and somehow, with lots of luck and little regret, they had made it through another long winter day.
26
A FEW DAYS LATER, CARL DROVE SANDY TO WORK, told her he needed to get out of the apartment for a while. It had snowed several inches the night before, and that morning the sun finally managed to break through the thick, gray bank of clouds that had hovered over Ohio like some dismal, unrelenting curse for the past several weeks. Everything in Meade, even the paper mill smokestack, was sparkling and white. “Want to come in for a minute?” she asked when he pulled up in front of the Tecumseh. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
Carl looked around at the cars in the slushy parking lot. He was surprised it was so crowded in the middle of the day. He’d kept himself shut up in the apartment for so long that he didn’t think he could tolerate that many people his first time back out in the real world since before Christmas. “Ah, I think I’ll pass,” he said. “I figured I’d just ride around for a while, try to get home before dark.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, opening her car door. “Just don’t forget to pick me up tonight.”
As soon as she went inside, Carl headed straight back to the apartment on Watt Street. He sat staring out the kitchen window until the sun went down, then walked out to the car. He stuck his camera in the dash and the pistol under the seat. There was half a tank of gas in the station wagon and five dollars in his wallet that he’d taken from their travel money jar. He promised himself he wasn’t going to do anything, just drive around town a little and pretend. Sometimes, though, he wished he hadn’t ever made up those goddamn rules. Hell, around here, he could probably kill a hick every night if he wanted to. “But that’s why you got the rules in the first goddamn place, Carl,” he told himself as he started down the street. “So you don’t fuck everything up.”
As he passed by the White Cow Diner on High Street, he saw his brother-in-law standing beside his cruiser at the edge of the parking lot talking to someone sitting behind the wheel of a shiny black Lincoln. They appeared to be arguing, the way Bodecker was slinging his arms around. Carl slowed down and watched them in his rearview as long as he could. He thought about something that Sandy had said one night a couple of weeks ago, that her brother was going to end up in prison if he didn’t stop hanging around guys like Tater Brown and Bobo McDaniels. “Who the hell are they?” he had asked. He was sitting at the kitchen table unwrapping one of the cheeseburgers she had brought him from work. Someone had taken a bite out of one corner of it. He scraped the diced onion off with his penknife.
“They run everything from Circleville clear down to Portsmouth,” she told him. “Everything that’s illegal anyway.”
“Right,” Carl said. “And how do you happen to know this?” She was always coming home with another bullshit story some drunk had fed her. Last week she had talked to someone who was in on the Kennedy assassination. Sometimes it irritated the shit out of Carl that she could be so gullible, but then again, he knew that was probably one of the main reasons she had stuck with him all this time.
“Well, because this guy stopped in the bar today right after Juanita left and handed me an envelope to give to Lee.” She lit a cigarette and blew some smoke toward the stained ceiling. “It was plumb full of money, and it wasn’t all singles, either.