The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [92]
“Yeah,” Carl said.
“Okay, we’re gonna have to do some laundry,” she said.
“Why?”
“You stink, that’s why.”
They came across a Laundromat in a small town in South Carolina a couple of hours later. Sandy made him take the shirt off. She carried a grocery bag of dirty clothes in and put them in a washer. He sat on a bench out front, watching the occasional car drive past and chewing on a cigar, his saggy tits nearly hanging to his fishy-white paunch. Sandy came out and sat on the other end of the bench and hid behind her sunglasses. Her blouse was plastered to her back with sweat. She rested her head against the building and shut her eyes.
“What we did was the best thing that could have happened to him,” Carl said.
Jesus, Sandy thought, he’s still talking about that fucker with the mouth harp. He had been yapping about him all morning. “I’ve already heard it,” she said.
“I’m just saying, for one, he couldn’t sing worth a shit. And he had, what, maybe three fucking teeth in his head? You ever look at them country music stars? Those people got expensive teeth. No, they would have laughed him right out of town, and then he would have went home and knocked up some old cow and been tied down by a bunch of brats, and that would have been the end of it.”
“The end of what?” Sandy said.
“The end of his dream, that’s what. Maybe he couldn’t see it last night, but I did that boy a big favor. He died with that dream still alive in his head.”
“Jesus, Carl, what the hell’s got into you?” She heard the washer stop and stood up, held out her hand. “Give me a quarter for the dryer.”
He handed her some change, then bent down and untied his shoes, kicked them off. He wasn’t wearing any socks. He was down to his trousers now. Taking his pocketknife out, he started cleaning his toenails. Two young boys, maybe nine or ten years old, came speeding around the corner on bicycles just as he smeared a gob of gray gunk on the seat of the bench. They both waved to him and smiled when he looked up. Just for a second, they made him wish, as they flew by pumping their legs and laughing as if they didn’t have a care in the world, that he was somebody else.
44
ON THEIR TWELFTH DAY OUT, ONE GOT AWAY. That had never happened before. He was an ex-con named Danny Murdock, the fourth model they had picked up this trip. On his right forearm, he had a tattoo of two scaly serpents wrapped around a tombstone that Carl imagined doing something special with once they had him down. They had been riding around all afternoon drinking beer and sharing a jumbo bag of pork rinds and getting him relaxed. They found a spot to park along a long, narrow lake just a mile or so inside the Sumter National Forest. As soon as Sandy shut the engine off, Danny flung the door open and got out of the car. He stretched and yawned, then started ambling toward the water, shucking off his clothes as he went. “What are you doing?” Carl yelled.
Danny tossed his shirt on the ground and turned to look back at them. “Hey, I got no problem giving your old lady the cock, but let me get cleaned up first,” he said, jerking his underwear down. “I’m warning you, though, ol’ buddy, I get past the used part, she ain’t gonna be happy with your ass no more.”
“Boy, he’s got a mouth on him, don’t he?” Sandy said, as she walked around the front of the station wagon. She leaned against the fender and watched the man jump into the water.
Carl set the camera on the hood and smiled. “Not for long, he ain’t.” They shared another beer and watched him swim, arms pumping and feet kicking, out to the middle of the lake and then roll over on his back.
“I gotta say, that looks like fun,” Sandy said. She kicked off her sandals and spread the blanket