The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [73]
As soon as the fire died down, the mosquitoes would dive in again, drive Theodore crazy. They didn’t bother Roy at all, and the cripple wished he had blood like that. He woke one night with them buzzing in his ears, still sitting in his wheelchair, the guitar lying on the ground in front of him. Roy was curled up like a dog on the other side of the ashes. They had been camping in the same spot for two weeks. Little piles of Theodore’s stool and vomit were scattered over the dead grass. “Lord, we may have to think about moving,” Roy had said that evening when he got back from the store down the road. He fanned his hand in front of his face. “Gettin’ mighty ripe around here.” That had been a few hours ago, in the heat of the day. But now a cool breeze, smelling faintly of the salt water forty miles away, brushed against the leaves of the trees above Theodore’s head. He leaned over and picked up the wine jug at his feet. He took a drink and capped the bottle and looked at the stars set against the black sky like the tiny chips of a shattered mirror. They reminded him of the glitter that Flapjack used to brush on his eyelids. Up around Chattahoochee one evening, he and Roy had sneaked back into the carnival just for a few minutes, a year or so after the incident with the little boy. No, the hot dog vendor told them, Flapjack wasn’t with them anymore. We were set up right outside this redneck town in Arkansas, and one night he just disappeared. Hell, we were halfway across the state the next day before anyone noticed him missing. The boss said he’d show up eventually, but he never did. You boys know how ol’ Bradford is, all business. He said Flapjack was starting to lose his funny anyway.
Theodore was so tired, so sick of it all. “We had some good times though, didn’t we, Roy?” he said out loud, but the man on the ground didn’t move. He took another drink and set the bottle on his lap. “Good times,” he repeated in a low voice. The stars blurred and faded from his sight. He dreamed of Flapjack in his clown suit and bare churches lit with smoky lanterns and loud honky-tonks with sawdust floors, and then a gentle ocean was lapping at his feet. He could feel it, the cool water. He smiled and pushed himself forward and began floating out to sea, farther than he had ever been before. He wasn’t afraid; God was calling him home, and soon his legs would work again. But in the morning, he awoke on the hard ground, disappointed that he was still alive. He reached down and felt his pants. He’d pissed himself again. Roy had already taken off for the orchard. He lay with the side of his face pressed against the dirt. He stared at a mound of his fly-covered shit a few feet away and tried to slip back into sleep, back to the water.
32
EMMA AND ARVIN WERE STANDING in front of the meat case in the grocery store in Lewisburg. It was the end of the month, and the old woman didn’t have much money, but the new preacher was arriving on Saturday. The congregation was having a potluck supper for him and his wife at the church. “You think chicken livers would be all right?” she asked after some more calculations in her head. The organs were cheapest.
“Why wouldn’t they be?” Arvin said. He would have agreed with anything by then; even pig snouts would have been fine with him. The old woman had been staring at the trays of bloody meat for twenty minutes.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Everyone says they like the way I do ’em, but—”
“All right,” Arvin said, “get them all a big steak then.”
“Pshaw,” she said. “You know I can’t afford nothing like that.”
“Then chicken livers it is,” he said, motioning for the butcher in the white apron.