The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

soldier was going home to see his mother before the army shipped him off to Germany or that new place called Vietnam, Carl couldn’t recall which now. He didn’t give a damn if he was named after some crazy sonofabitch in the New Testament, or that his girlfriend had made him promise to wear her class ring around his neck until he returned from overseas. Knowing stuff like that only complicated things later on; and so Carl found it easier to ignore the small talk, let Sandy handle all the dumb questions, the pitter-patter bullshit. She was good at it, flirting and flapping her jaws, putting them at ease. They had both come a long way since they’d first met, her, a lonely, scrawny stick of a girl waiting tables at the Wooden Spoon in Meade, eighteen years old and taking shit off customers in hopes of a quarter tip. And him? Not much better, a flabby-faced mama’s boy who had just lost his mother, with no future or friends except for what a camera might bring. He’d had no idea, as he walked into the Wooden Spoon that first night away from home, of what that meant or what to do next. The only thing he had known for sure, as he sat in the booth watching the skinny waitress finish wiping the tables off before turning out the lights, was that he needed, more than anything else in the world, to take her picture. They had been together ever since.
    Of course, there were also things that Carl needed to say to the hitchhikers, but that could usually wait until after they parked the car. “Take a look at this,” he’d begin, when he pulled the camera out of the glove box, a Leica M3 35mm, and held it up for the man to see. “Cost four hundred new, but I got it for damn near nothing.” And thoughthe sexy smile never left Sandy’s lips, she couldn’t help but feel a little bitter every time he bragged about it. She didn’t know why she had followed Carl into this life, wouldn’t even try to put such a thing into mere words, but she did know that that damn camera had never been a bargain, that it was going to cost them plenty in the end. Then she’d hear him ask the next model, in a voice that sounded almost like he was joking, “So, how would you like to have your picture took with a good-looking woman?” Even after all this time, it still amazed her that grown-up men could be so easy.
    After they carried and dragged the army boy’s naked body a few yards into the woods and rolled it under some bushes heavy with purple berries, they went through his clothes and duffel bag and found nearly three hundred dollars tucked away in a pair of clean white socks. That was more money than Sandy made in a month. “The lying little weasel,” Carl said. “Remember me asking him for some gas money?” He swiped at a cloud of insects gathered around his sweaty, red face, stuck the wad of bills in his pants pocket. A pistol with a long pitted barrel lay beside him on the ground next to the camera. “Like my old mother used to say,” he went on, “you can’t trust any of them.”
    “Who?” Sandy said.
    “Them goddamn redheads,” he said. “Hell, they’ll spit out a lie even when the truth fits better. They just can’t help it. It’s something got fucked up in their evolution.”
    Up on the main road a car with a burned-out muffler went by slowly, and Carl cocked his head and listened to the pop-pop sound until it faded away. Then he looked over at Sandy kneeling beside him, studied her face for a moment in the gray dusk. “Here, clean yourself off,” he said, handing her the boy’s T-shirt, still damp with his sweat. He pointed at her chin. “You got some splatter right there. That skinny bastard was full as a tick.”
    After wiping the shirt over her face, Sandy tossed it on top of the green duffel and stood up. She buttoned her blouse with shaky hands, brushed the dirt and bits of dead leaf off her legs. Walking to the car, she bent down and examined herself in the side mirror, then reachedthrough the window and