The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [85]
Arvin counted the money he had managed to put back over the last couple of years. He had $315 in the coffee can under his bed. He drove over to Slot Machine’s after Sunday dinner and bought a fifth of whiskey, spent the evening drinking with Earskell on the porch. “You sure are good to me, boy,” the old man said. Arvin had to swallow several times to keep from crying. He thought about tomorrow. This was the last time they would ever share a bottle.
It was a beautiful evening, cooler than it had been for several months. He went inside and got Emma, and she sat with them for a while with her Bible and a glass of ice tea. She hadn’t been back to the Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified since the night that Lenora died. “I think fall’s going to come early this year,” she said, marking her place in the book with a bony finger and gazing out across the road at the leaves already beginning to turn rust-colored. “We’re going to have to start thinking about getting some wood in before long, ain’t we, Arvin?”
He looked over at her. She was still staring at the trees on the hillside. “Yeah,” he said. “Be cold before you know it.” He hated himself for deceiving her, pretending everything was going to be all right. He wanted so much to be able to tell them goodbye, but they would be better off not knowing anything if the law came hunting for him. That night, after they went to bed, he packed some clothes in a gym bag and put it in the trunk of his car. He leaned on the porch railing and listened to the faint rumble of a coal train over the next swath of hills heading north. Going back inside, he stuck a hundred dollars in the tin box that Emma kept her needles and thread in. He didn’t sleep any that night, and in the morning he just drank some coffee for breakfast.
He had been sitting in the blind for two hours when the Reaster girl came hurrying across the field, maybe fifteen minutes early. She appeared worried, kept looking at her wristwatch. When Teagardin showed up, easing his car down the rutted road slowly, she didn’t jump in like she had always done in the past. Instead, she stood a few feet away and waited for him to shut the engine off. “Well, get in, honey,” Arvin heard the preacher say. “I got a full sack for you.”
“I ain’t staying,” she said. “We got problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were supposed to keep your hands off my sister,” the girl said.
“Oh, shit, Pamela, that didn’t mean anything.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “She told Mother about it.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get away.”
“That little bitch,” Teagardin cursed. “I hardly touched her.”
“That ain’t the way she tells it,” Pamela said. She looked toward the road nervously.
“What did she say exactly?”
“Believe me, Preston, she told everything. She got scared because the bleeding won’t stop.” The girl pointed her finger at him. “You better hope you didn’t do something so she can’t have kids.”
“Shit,” Teagardin said. He got out of the car and paced back and forth for several minutes, his hands clasped behind his back like a general in his tent planning a counterattack. He took a silk handkerchief out of his pants pocket and patted his mouth. “What do you think your old lady will do?” he finally said.
“Well, knowing her, after she takes Beth Ann to the hospital, the first thing she’ll do is call the fucking sheriff. And just so you know, he’s my mom’s cousin.”
Teagardin placed his hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “But you haven’t said anything about us, right?”
“You think I’m crazy? I’d rather die first.”
Teagardin let go of her and leaned against the car. He looked out over the field before them. He wondered why nobody was farming it anymore. He imagined an old two-story house in ruins, some rusted pieces of antique machinery sitting in the weeds, maybe a hand-dug well of cool, clean water, covered over with rotten boards. Just for a moment, he pictured himself fixing the place back up, settling down to a simple life, preaching on Sundays