The Devil All the Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

fallout from the atomic bombs unleashed to win the war.
    “I wanted to tell you first because I know you been worried about me,” Helen said. It was the first time Emma had ever seen her without a bonnet on her head.
    “Tell me what, Helen?”
    “Roy asked me to marry him,” she said. “He said God give him a sign we was meant for each other.”
    Standing in the doorway with Willard’s letter in her hand, Emma thought about the promise she’d been unable to keep. She’d been dreading a violent accident, or some horrible disease, but this was good news. Maybe things were going to turn out all right after all. She felt her eyes start to blur with tears. “Where you all going to live?” she asked, unable to think of anything else to say.
    “Oh, Roy’s got a place behind the gas station in Topperville,” Helen said. “Theodore, he’ll be staying with us. At least for a little while.”
    “That’s the one in the wheelchair?”
    “Yes’m,” Helen said. “They been together a long time.”
    Emma stepped out onto the porch and hugged the girl. She smelled faintly of Ivory soap, as if she’d had a bath recently. “You want to come in and sit for a while?”
    “No, I got to go,” Helen said. “Roy’s waiting on me.” Emma looked past her down over the hill. A dung-colored car shaped like a turtle was sitting in the pull-off behind Earskell’s old Ford. “He’s preaching over in Millersburg tonight, where them people got their eyes carved out. We been out gathering spiders all morning. Thank God, with the way this weather’s been, they’re still pretty easy to find.”
    “You be careful, Helen,” Emma said.
    “Oh, don’t worry,” the girl said, as she started down off the porch, “they ain’t too bad once you get used to them.”

3
    IN THE SPRING OF 1948, Emma got word from Ohio that she was finally a grandmother; Willard’s wife had given birth to a healthy baby boy named Arvin Eugene. By then, the old woman was satisfied that God had forgiven her for her brief loss of trust. It had been nearly three years, and nothing bad had happened. A month later, she was still thanking the Lord that her grandson hadn’t been born blind and pinheaded like Edith Maxwell’s three children over on Spud Run when Helen showed up at her door with an announcement of her own. It was one of the few times Emma had seen her since the girl married Roy and switched to the church over in Topperville. “I wanted to stop by and let you know,” Helen said. Her arms and legs were pale and thin, but her belly was swollen big with a baby.
    “My goodness gracious,” Emma said, opening the screen door. “Come on in, honey, and rest awhile.” It was late in the day, and gray-blue shadows covered the weedy yard. A chicken clucked quietly under the porch.
    “I can’t right now.”
    “Oh, don’t be in such a hurry. Let me fix you something to eat,” the old woman said. “We haven’t talked in ages.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Russell, but maybe some other time. I got to get back.”
    “Is Roy preaching tonight?”
    “No,” Helen said. “He ain’t preached in a couple of months now. Didn’t you hear? One of them spiders bit him real bad. His head puffed up big as a pumpkin. It was awful. He couldn’t open his eyes for a week or better.”
    “Well,” the old woman said, “maybe he can get on with the power company. Someone said they was hiring. They supposed to be running the electric through here before long.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so,” Helen said. “Roy ain’t give up preaching, he’s just waiting for a message.”
    “A message?”
    “He ain’t sent one in a while, and it’s got Roy worried.”
    “Who ain’t sent one?”
    “Why, the Lord, Mrs. Russell,” Helen said. “He’s the only one Roy listens to.” She started to step down off the porch.
    “Helen?”
    The girl stopped and turned around. “Yes’m?”
    Emma hesitated, not quite knowing what to say. She looked past the girl, down the