The Devil All the Time Read Online Free

midnight when he and Earskell parked the Ford at the bottom of the hill and climbed the path to the small log house. When he came through the door, she carried on for quite a while, grabbing onto him and soaking the front of his uniform with her tears. He watched over her shoulder as his uncle slipped into the kitchen. Her hair had turned gray since Willard had seen her last. “I’d ask you to get down with me and thank Jesus,” she said, wiping the tears from her face with the hem of her apron, “but I can smell liquor on your breath.”
    Willard nodded. He’d been brought up to believe that you never talked to God when you were under the influence. A man needed to be sincere with the Master at all times in case he was ever really in need. Even Willard’s father, Tom Russell, a moonshiner who’d been hounded by bad luck and trouble right up to the day he died of a diseased liver in a Parkersburg jail, ascribed to that belief. No matter how desperate the situation—and his old man had been caught in plenty of those—he wouldn’t ask for help from on High if he had even a spoonful in him.
    “Well, come on back to the kitchen,” Emma said. “You can eat and I’ll put on some coffee. I made you a meat loaf.”
    By three in the morning, he and Earskell had killed four pints along with a cupful of shine and were working on the last bottle of store-bought. Willard’s head was fuzzy, and he was having a hard time putting his words together, though evidently he’d mentioned to his mother the waitress he’d seen in the diner. “What was that you asked me?” he said to her.
    “That girl you was talkin’ about,” she said. “What is it you like about her?” She was pouring him another cup of boiling coffee from a pan. Though his tongue was numb, he was sure he’d already burned it more than once. A kerosene lamp hanging from a beam in the ceiling lit the room. His mother’s wide shadow wavered on the wall.He spilled some coffee on the oilcloth that covered the table. Emma shook her head and reached behind her for a dishrag.
    “Everything,” he said. “You should see her.”
    Emma figured it was just the whiskey talking, but her son’s announcement that he’d met a woman still made her uneasy. Mildred Carver, as good a Christian woman as ever there was in Coal Creek, had prayed for her Junior every day, but they’d still sent him home in a box. Right after she heard that the pallbearers doubted that there was even anything in the casket, as light as it was, Emma started looking for a sign that would tell her what to do to guarantee Willard’s safety. She was still searching when Helen Hatton’s family burned up in a house fire, leaving the poor girl all alone. Two days later, after much deliberation, Emma got down on her knees and promised God that if He would bring her son home alive, she’d make sure that he married Helen and took care of her. But now, standing in the kitchen looking at his dark, wavy hair and chiseled features, she realized she’d been crazy to ever pledge such a thing. Helen wore a dirty bonnet tied under her square chin, and her long, horsey face was the spitting image of her grandmother Rachel’s, considered by many the homeliest woman who ever walked the ridges of Greenbrier County. At the time, Emma hadn’t considered what might happen if she couldn’t keep her promise. If only she had been blessed with an ugly son, she thought. God had some funny ideas when it came to letting people know He was displeased.
    “Looks ain’t everything,” Emma said.
    “Who says?”
    “Shut up, Earskell,” Emma said. “What’s that girl’s name again?”
    Willard shrugged. He squinted at the picture of Jesus carrying the cross that hung above the door. Ever since entering the kitchen, he had avoided looking at it, for fear of ruining his homecoming with more thoughts of Miller Jones. But now, just for a moment, he gave himself over to the image. The picture had been there as long as he