The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock [96]
“You got that right,” Carl said. He started to squeeze the trigger.
“Just one thing,” Roy said, his voice filled with urgency.
“What’s that?”
“Her name’s Lenora.”
“Who the fuck you talking about?”
“My little girl,” Roy said.
46
IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE, but the crazy bastard in the dirty suit was carrying almost a hundred dollars in his pocket. They ate barbecue and coleslaw at a pig shack in a colored section of Knoxville, and that night they stayed in a Holiday Inn in Johnson City, Tennessee. As usual, Sandy took her sweet time the next morning. By the time she announced that she was ready to go, Carl was sinking into a foul mood. Except for the photos of the boy in Kentucky, most of the others he had taken this time out were slop. Nothing had turned out right. He had sat up all night dwelling on it in a chair by the third-floor window, looking down on the parking lot and rolling a dog dick cigar between his fingers until it fell apart. He kept considering signs, maybe something he had missed. But nothing stood out, except for Sandy’s mostly piss-poor attitude and the ex-con who got away. He swore he’d never hunt in the South again.
They entered southern West Virginia around noon. “Look, we still got the rest of today,” he said. “If there’s any fucking way possible, I want to shoot another roll of film before we get home, something good.” They had pulled into a rest stop so he could check the oil in the car.
“Go ahead,” Sandy said. “There’s all kinds of pictures out there.” She pointed out the window. “See, there’s a bluebird just landed in that tree.”
“Funny,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
She put the car into gear. “I don’t care what you do, Carl, but I want to sleep in my own bed tonight.”
“Good enough,” he said.
Over the next four or five hours, they didn’t come across a single hitchhiker. The closer they got to Ohio, the more agitated Carl became. He kept telling Sandy to slow down, made her stop and stretch her legs and drink coffee a couple of times just to keep his hopes alive a little while longer. By the time they drove through Charleston and headed toward Point Pleasant, he was filled with disappointment and doubt. Maybe the ex-con really was a sign. If so, Carl thought, it could mean only one thing: they should quit while they were ahead. That’s what he was thinking, as they approached the long line of traffic waiting to go over the silver metal bridge that would take them into Ohio. Then he saw the handsome, dark-haired boy with the gym bag standing on the walkway seven or eight car lengths up ahead. He leaned forward, breathed in the car exhaust and the stink from the river. The traffic moved a few feet, then stopped again. Somebody behind them in the line honked his horn. The boy turned and looked back toward the end of the line, his eyes squinting in the sun.
“Do you see that?” Carl said.
“But what about your fucking rules? Shit, we’re heading back into Ohio.”
Carl kept his eyes on the boy, prayed that nobody offered him a ride before they got close enough to pick him up. “Let’s just see where’s he’s going. Hell, that can’t hurt nothing, can it?”
Sandy took off her sunglasses, gave the boy a closer look. She knew Carl well enough to know that it wasn’t going to stop with just giving him a ride, but from what she could see, he was maybe nicer than anything they’d ever come across before. And there certainly hadn’t been any angels this trip. “I guess not,” she said.
“But I need you to do some talking, okay? Give him that smile of yours, make him want it. I hate to point it out, but you been dropping the ball this trip. I can’t do it alone.”
“Sure, Carl,” she said. “Anything you say. Hell, I’ll offer to suck him off as soon as he plops his ass down in the backseat. That ought