The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [91]
And these two who just picked him up, another couple of losers. The woman seemed to think she was sexy or something, the way she kept smiling at him in the mirror and licking her lips, but just looking at her gave him the willies. There was a ripe, fishy smell coming from somewhere in the car, and he figured it had to be her. He could tell the fat man was dying to suck his dick, the way he kept turning around in the front seat and asking stupid questions so he could take another look at his crotch. They hadn’t gone but five or six miles when Jamie decided that, if he got the chance, he was going to steal their car. Even this piece of junk would be better than hitchhiking. The man who picked him up last night, stiff black hat, long white fingers, had scared the shit out of him, talking about gangs of rabid rednecks and tribes of half-starved hoboes and the awful things they did to sweet, young waifs they caught out on the road. After relating a number of stories he had heard—boys buried alive, tamped down headfirst into tight holes like fence posts, others turned into a gooey mulligan stew seasoned with wild onions and windfall apples—the man had offered good money and a night in a nice motel for a special kind of party, one that involved a bag of cotton balls and a funnel in some way, but for the first time since he had left home, Jamie turned the good money down, could see the maid finding him the next morning hollowed out like a Beggar’s Night pumpkin in the bathtub. These two here were like Ma and Pa Kettle compared to that crazy bastard.
Still, it surprised him when the woman turned off the highway and the man asked him straight out if he would be interested in fucking his wife while he took a few photographs. He hadn’t seen that one coming, but he played it cool. Jamie wasn’t really into women, especially ugly ones; but if he could talk the fat man into taking his clothes off too, stealing the car should be a piece of cake. He’d never had his own set of wheels before. He told the man, sure, he was interested, that is, if they were willing to pay for it. He looked past the man out the windshield smeared with the guts of dead insects. They were on a gravel road now. The woman had slowed down to a crawl and was evidently looking for a place to park.
“I thought your kind believed in that free love shit,” the man said. “That’s what Walter Cronkite said on the news the other night.”
“A boy’s still got to make a living, right?” Jamie said.
“I guess that’s fair enough. How’s twenty bucks sound?” The woman put the car in park and shut off the engine. They were sitting at the edge of a soybean field.
“Heck, I’ll take you both on for twenty dollars,” Jamie said with a smile.
“Both of us?” The fat man turned and looked at him with cold, gray eyes. “It sounds like you think I’m pretty.” The woman gave a little giggle.
Jamie shrugged. He wondered if they would still be laughing when he drove away in their car. “I’ve had worse,” he said.
“Oh, I doubt that,” the man said, shoving his car door open.
43
“YOU ONLY BROUGHT THE ONE SHIRT?” Sandy asked him. They