The Devil All the Time

by Donald Ray Pollock

He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973 to 2005.

I lived there in 1987 and smelled the stench of the paper mill from time to time. It is not a scent you forget.

Arvin didn’t know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time.

Four hundred or so people lived in Knockemstiff in 1957, nearly all of them connected by blood through one godforsaken calamity or another, be it lust or necessity or just plain ignorance.

The way she saw it, too much religion could be as bad as too little, maybe even worse; but moderation was just not in her husband’s nature.

Jesus, Willard thought, rich people did fine and dandy as long as things were going their way, but the minute the shit hit the fan, they fell apart like paper dolls left out in the rain.

The storekeeper was a sad, worn-out-looking fucker, even though the deputy figured they were roughly the same age. Some people were born just so they could be buried;

Looking across the room, he rested his eyes on a cheap framed picture hanging on the wall, a flowers-and-fruit piece of shit that nobody would ever remember, not one person who ever slept in this stinking room. It served no purpose that he could think of, other than to remind a person that the world was a sorry-ass place to be stuck living in.

He could smell the Ohio River several blocks before he saw its greasy, blue-gray surface.