The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock Page A

inside and the storekeeper slid the top of the metal pop cooler open. “What kind you like?”
    The boy shrugged.
    “Here’s a root beer,” Hank said. “That’s the kind I used to drink.” He handed the boy the bottle of pop and scratched at his day-old beard. “Now your name’s Arvin, ain’t it?”
    “Yes, sir,” the boy said. He set his flashlight down on the counter and took a long drink and then another.
    “Okay, so what makes you think there’s something wrong with your daddy?”
    “His neck,” Arvin said. “He cut himself.”
    “That ain’t blood you got on you, is it?”
    Arvin looked down at his shirt and his hands. “No,” he said. “It’s pie.”
    “Where is your dad?”
    “A little ways from the house,” the boy said. “In the woods.”
    Hank reached under the counter for the phone book. “Now look,” he said, “I don’t mind calling the law for you, but don’t be fooling with me, okay? They don’t take kindly to wild-goose chases.” Just a couple of days ago, Marlene Williams had him call and report another window peeper. It was the fifth time in just two months. The dispatcher had hung up on him.
    “Why would I do that?”
    “No,” Hank said. “I guess you wouldn’t.”
    After he made the call, he and Arvin went out the back door and Hank picked up his beers. They walked around and sat down on the bench in front of the store. A cloud of moths fluttered around the security light that stood over the gas pumps. Hank thought about the beating the boy’s daddy had given Lucas Hayburn last year. Not that he probably didn’t deserve it, but Lucas hadn’t been right since. Just yesterday, he had sat on this bench all morning bent over with a gob of spit hanging from his mouth. Hank opened another beer and lit a smoke. He hesitated a second, then offered the boy one from his pack.
    Arvin shook his head and took another drink of the pop. “They ain’t pitching horseshoes tonight,” he said after a couple of minutes.
    Hank looked up the holler, saw the lights on at the Bull Pen. Four or five cars were parked in the yard. “Must be taking a break,” the storekeeper said, leaning back against the wall of the store andstretching his legs out. He and Mildred had gone to the hog barn over at Platter’s Pasture. She said she liked the rich smell of the pig manure, liked to imagine things a little different than most girls.
    “What is it you like to imagine?” Hank had asked her, a little worry in his voice. For years, he had listened to boys and men talk about getting laid, but not once had any of them said anything about hog shit.
    “That ain’t none of your business what’s in my head,” she told him. Her chin was sharp as a hatchet, her eyes like lusterless gray marbles. Her only redeeming feature was the thing between her legs, which some had said reminded them of a snapping turtle.
    “Okay,” Hank said.
    “Let’s see what you got,” Mildred said, tugging at his zipper and pulling him down in the dirty straw.
    After his miserable performance, she shoved him off and said, “Jesus Christ, I should have just played with myself.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “You just had me worked up. It’ll be better next time.”
    “Ha! I doubt very much they’ll be a next time, Bub,” she said.
    “Well, don’t you at least want a ride home?” he’d asked as he was leaving. It was nearly midnight. The two-room shack she lived in with her parents over in Nipgen was a couple of hours away if she walked it.
    “No, I’m gonna hang around here awhile,” she said. “Maybe someone worth a shit will show up.”
    Hank flipped his cigarette into the gravel lot and took another drink of beer. He liked to tell himself that things had turned out for the best in the end. Although he wasn’t a spiteful person, not at all, he had to admit that he got some satisfaction out of knowing that Mildred was now hooked up with a big-bellied boy named Jimmy Jack who rode an old Harley and kept