The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [82]
Stepping back up on the metal bucket, she put the noose around her neck and tightened it. A trickle of sweat ran down her face, and she caught herself thinking that she should do this out in the sunlight, in the warm summer air, maybe even wait another day or two. Perhaps Preston would change his mind. That’s what she would do, she thought. He couldn’t have meant what he said. He was upset, that’s all. She started to loosen the noose and the lard bucket began to wobble. Then her foot slipped and the bucket rolled away and left her dangling in the air. She had dropped only a few inches, not nearly enough to break her neck clean. She could almost touch her toes to the floor, just another inch or so. Kicking her legs, she grabbed hold of the rope, tried her best to raise herself up to the beam, but she didn’t have enough strength. She tried to yell out, but the choking sounds wouldn’t carry beyond the shed door. As the rope slowly squeezed her windpipe shut, she became more frantic, clawing at her neck with her fingernails. Her face turned purple. She was vaguely aware of urine running down her legs. The blood vessels in her eyes began to burst, and everything got darker and darker. No, she thought, no. I can have this baby, God. I can just leave this place, go away like my daddy did. I can just disappear.
37
A WEEK OR SO AFTER THE FUNERAL, Tick Thompson, the new sheriff of Greenbrier County, was waiting at Arvin’s car when the boy got off work. “I need to talk to you, Arvin,” the lawman said. “It’s about Lenora.” He had been one of the men who helped carry her body out of the smokehouse after Earskell saw the door unlatched and found her. He’d been called to a few suicides over the years, mostly men, though, blowing their brains out over some woman or a bad business deal, never a young girl hanging herself. When he’d asked, right after the ambulance pulled away that evening, Emma and the boy both said she had actually seemed happier lately. There was something about it that didn’t add up. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep all week.
Arvin tossed his lunch bucket in the front seat of the Bel Air. “What about her?”
“I figured it might be best to tell you instead of your grandmother. From what I hear, she’s not taking things too good.”
“Tell me what?”
The sheriff took his hat off, held it in his hands. He waited until a couple of other men walked by and got in their vehicles, then cleared his throat. “Well, hell, I don’t know how to say it, Arvin, other than just say it. Did you know Lenora was carrying a baby?”
Arvin stared at him for a long minute, a puzzled look on his face. “That’s bullshit,” he finally said. “Some sonofabitch is lying.”
“I know how you must feel, I really do, but I just came from the coroner’s office. Though ol’ Dudley might be a drunk, he ain’t no liar. Near as he can figure it, she was about three months along.”
The boy turned away from the sheriff and reached in his back pocket for a dirty rag, wiped his eyes. “Jesus,” he said, struggling to keep his upper lip from quivering.
“Do you think your grandmother knew?”
Shaking his head, Arvin took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, then said, “Sheriff, my grandma would die if she heard that.”
“Well, did Lenora have a boyfriend, someone she was seeing?” the sheriff asked.
Arvin thought about the night, just a few weeks ago, when Emma had asked that same question. “None that I know of. Hell, she was the most religious person I ever