The Devil All the Time Read Online Free Page B

cradled in the palms of his hands. He carried it with him everywhere. Many of the women around Coal Creek, especially those who still had husbands and sons in the mines, treated it like a religious relic, kissing it whenever they got a chance. It was a fact that Mary Ellen Thompson, on her deathbed, had asked for it to be brought to her instead of the doctor.
    Willard watched his mother talking to a thin woman wearing wire-rim glasses set crooked on her long, slender face, a faded blue bonnet tied under her pointy chin. After a couple of minutes, Emma grabbed the woman’s hand and led her back to where Willard was sitting. “I asked Helen to sit with us,” Emma told her son. He stood up and let them in, and as the girl passed by him, the odor of old sweat made his eyes water. She carried a worn leather Bible, kept her head down when Emma introduced her. Now he understood why his mother had been going on for the last few days about why good looks were not all that important. He would agree that was true in most cases, that the spirit was more important than the flesh, but hell, even his uncle Earskell washed his armpits once in a while.
    Because the church had no bell, Reverend Sykes went to the open door when it was time for the service to start and shouted to those still loitering outside with their cigarettes and gossip and doubts. A small choir, two men and three women, stood up and sang “Sinner, You’d Better Get Ready.” Then Sykes went to the pulpit. He looked out over the crowd, wiped the sweat off his brow with a white handkerchief. There were fifty-eight people sitting on the benches. He’d counted twice. The reverend wasn’t a greedy man, but he was hoping on the basket bringing in maybe three or four dollars tonight. He and his wife had been eating nothing but hardtack and warbled squirrel meat for the past week. “Whew, it’s hot,” he said with a grin. “But it’s bound to get hotter, ain’t that right? Especially for them that ain’t right with the Lord.”
    “Amen,” someone said.
    “Surely is,” said another.
    “Well,” Sykes went on, “we gonna take care of that shortly. They’s two boys from over around Topperville gonna lead the service tonight, and from what everyone tells me, they got a good message.” He glanced at the two strangers sitting in the shadows off to the side of the altar, hidden from the congregation by a frayed black curtain. “Brother Roy and Brother Theodore, get on over here and help us save some lost souls,” he said, motioning them forward with his hand.
    A tall, skinny man stood up and pushed the other, a fat boy in a squeaky wheelchair, out from behind the curtain and near the center of the altar. The one with the good legs wore a baggy black suit and a pair of heavy, broken-down brogans. His brown hair was slicked back with oil, his sunken cheeks pitted and scarred purple from acne. “My name is Roy Laferty,” he said in a quiet voice, “and this here is my cousin, Theodore Daniels.” The cripple nodded and smiled at the crowd. He held a banged-up guitar in his lap and sported a soup-bowl haircut. His overalls were mended with patches cut from a feed sack, and his thin legs were twisted up under him at sharp angles. He had on a dirty white shirt and a brightly flowered tie. Later, Willard said that one looked like the Prince of Darkness and the other like a clown down on his luck.
    In silence Brother Theodore finished tuning a string on his flattop. A few people yawned, and others began whispering among themselves, already fidgety with what seemed to be the beginning of a boring service by a couple of shy and wasted newcomers. Willard wished he’d slipped out to the parking lot and found someone with a jug before things got started. He had never felt comfortable worshipping God around strangers packed together inside a building. “We ain’t passing no basket tonight, folks,” Brother Roy finally said after the cripple nodded that he was ready.