The Heavenly Table Page 8
The room was dark, and he’d already laid a quarter on the bar before he realized to his surprise that he was the only customer in the place. The keep set a glass of warm beer and a shot down in front of the farmer, then went to the other end of the bar and reached his hand down into a gallon jar. All the while Ellsworth sat there, the man stood silently looking out the window at the street with a scowl on his face, crunching pig’s feet and spitting the gristle out on the floor. Not a single word was said. His name was Frank Pollard, and he had been a hateful bully for as long as anyone could remember. He had grown up believing that he was something special, and the discovery, around the time of his fourteenth birthday, that this was not the case had ruined him for any sort of happiness that didn’t involve making other people miserable. Pollard’s father had left him a little house and twelve acres when he passed ten years ago, but the son despised country life even more than people, and so he sold the place the morning of the old man’s funeral and moved to Meade that afternoon. He bought the Blind Owl three days later. He slept on a cot in the back room, and barely made enough to keep the bills paid—nobody in their right mind would have ever hired Pollard to run a business of any kind—but he didn’t care. He’d discovered the first week he owned the joint that it was perfect for attracting the kind of scum he could feel superior to, which was a feeling he needed much more than any amount of money. Drunks were weak-minded and careless and apt to let their emotions get the best of them. He loved to goad them into saying something stupid or taking a swing at him so that he had an excuse to take them out back in the alley and beat them senseless; and for many years that had been enough.
13
UNBEKNOWN TO COB, his brothers had already decided his fate and theirs by the time they sat down that evening and proceeded to eat up everything in the shack: a quarter of a hog and several dozen mealy potatoes and a partial bag of buggy flour and two rusty cans of peaches they found in Pearl’s winter coat. Using Bloody Bill as inspiration, the plan they’d quickly put together while Cob was out fetching a bucket of water involved stealing three of the Major’s horses, then riding to Farleigh, the nearest town, and robbing the bank there. After that, they would head north to Canada and start over. Cane wasn’t sure—hell, he’d never even been inside a bank before—but he guessed the haul would be worth a few thousand dollars at the very least. But for it to work, they needed to leave tonight, before Tardweller discovered that Pearl was dead and they lost what Bloody Bill called “the element of surprise.” On all of these things, Cane and Chimney had been in total agreement.
However, deciding how to deal with Cob had been a different story. Chimney believed that, because of his thickheaded nature and his obsession with all that heavenly table bullshit, he would prove to be a liability when it came to taking a bank, or even stealing a goddamn horse for that matter. As dumb as he was, he might get killed, or even get one of them killed. “He’d be better off with some farmer,” Chimney said. “Hell, he wouldn’t mind, long as they feed him. We could even send for him once we get to where we’re going.”
Cane realized, of course, that what Chimney said made sense, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t leave either of them behind. Though he had never mentioned it, not once in all the years they’d been together, Lucille had called him to her bedside when she was sick and made him promise to look after his brothers. “Especially Cob,” she had said. “He’s always going to be slow.” It was just a day or two before she passed, and as far as he knew, it was the last thing she ever said to anyone. “We can’t do that,” he told Chimney. “For Christ’s sakes, he ain’t some dog you can kick out when you get tired of takin’ care of him. He’s our brother.”
Yearning to get started, Chimney decided it best not to press the issue, at least for now. Besides, he figured Cane would realize his mistake the first time Cob fucked up. “Well, if you say so, but how the hell you going to talk him into it?” he asked. “He’s not gonna like it, you know that.”
Cane got down on one knee in front of the fireplace and lit some kindling under a couple of pine logs, then replied, “The first thing we do is get his belly full.”
And that they had, even holding themselves back, as hungry as they were, so that Cob could have more. When all that remained was a greasy potato or two, Cane casually suggested that they take an inventory of their inheritance.
“Inheritance?” Cob said. “What’s that?”
“Everything Pap’s left us.”
“Why ye want to do that?” Cob asked a little suspiciously. He already had a vague feeling that something was up. Why else would they have let him have a whole can of peaches to himself? And nearly half the pork that was left?
“Just to see what kind of shape we’re in, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
Lighting the lantern, they laid everything they owned out on a blanket: a 12-gauge shotgun with a busted stock and three slightly damp shells, seven dollars in gold pieces along with the change from Pearl’s pocket, their mother’s Bible and The Life and Times of Bloody Bill Bucket, a nearly full bottle of Morning Dew whiskey that Pearl kept strictly for medicinal purposes, a straight razor, two pots and one blackened skillet, their bedrolls and a cracked mirror, a hammer, a butcher knife, four plates and three tin cups, their coats, and a pencil stub.
After that, they sat silently for a while, resting with their backs leaned against the wall. Cob still didn’t understand the purpose of dragging all their junk out into the center of the room, but it didn’t matter; he felt more contented than he had in a long time. No wonder people had a big supper after a funeral. It occurred to him that this was what he would feel like all the time once he got to heaven. An image of Willie the Whale stuffed to the gills with crawdads floated through his head, and he yawned. Though there was still a little light left outside, the smoke that lingered in the shack from the cook fire, along with the shadows cast across the room by the sputtering lamp, created the illusion in his mind of it being later than it really was. He reached over for the last potato in the skillet and stuck it in his mouth, then said with a sigh, “Well, fellers, if we’re gonna get any work done tomorrow, we better be gettin’ some sleep.”
Cane looked over at Chimney and winked, then pointed at the trash heap that was their earthly possessions. “Just look at that,” he said. “You ever seen such a sad sight? We been working like dogs our whole lives and I bet the poorest cracker sonofabitch in Georgia’s got more in his poke than we do.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cob said. “Like Pap always said, it could be worse.”
“Maybe,” Cane replied, “but I’d hate to think what that would be like.” He reached for the whiskey bottle and twisted off the cap. “Well, at least we got our bellies full for once.”
“We sure did,” Cob said. “Lord, I’m about to bust.”
“And just think, people like that damn Tardweller eat like this every day,” said Chimney.
Cane took a sip from the bottle, then said, “I reckon we could, too, if we put our minds to it.”
“How do ye figure that?” Cob said. “Shoot, we don’t even have enough flour left over for biscuits in the morning. I’ll tell ye one thing, it’s gonna be a long day in the field tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s something we need to talk about,” Cane said. He passed the bottle to Chimney, and then proceeded to explain their intentions. Though he started out aiming to be honest, his own desire to escape, which, after all, was dependent on convincing Cob the plan was a good idea, soon took over, and he ended up greatly minimizing the risks and embellishing the rewards instead. The more he went on, the better it sounded, and by the time he was finished, half the people in the country would probably have been clamoring to join up with them. He ended his spiel, sounding more coldhearted than he meant to, by saying, “Look, we’re not gonna force you to do anything you don’t want to do. As far as I’m concerned, you your own man now. But you need to understand, me and Chimney’s leavin’ out of here tonight.”
“Well?” Chimney said impatiently.
“I ain’t smart enough to be no outlaw.”
“You won’t get no argument from—” Chimney started to say.
“Don’t worry,” Cane broke in. “I’ll watch out for ye.”
Cob scratched his head and tried to think. A sudden urge to sleep came over him, and he fought to suppress another yawn. Oh, how he wanted to just lie down and forget about everything, wake up in the morning and go chop some more brush. Why couldn’t things stay the same? He had always done whatever was required of him, never once questioning or complaining, but nobody had ever asked him to give up his soul before. Why, there probably wasn’t a second went by that the ol’ Devil didn’t make Bloody Bill regret what he’d done. Still, what choice did he have? He couldn’t imagine a life without his brothers any more than he could imagine being his own man. They had never been apart, not for a single night. And that wasn’t the only thing troubling him; now that they’d had their big feed, all that was left to eat was the rat that ran around in the shack at night, and he’d be a hard one to catch. Cob rubbed his hands roughly over his face. “Shoot, I got no idy what to do,” he finally said.
“Stick with us,” Cane said, and after a moment’s hesitation, Cob agreed with a nod of his head, though it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it.
“Okay, at least we got that shit out of the way,” Chimney said, taking another hit off the bottle.
“But why Farleigh?” Cob said. “They some bad people in that town. Don’t you remember what they did the last time we went through there?”
“Sure, I do,” Cane said. “I reckon I remember everything about that goddamn place.” The year before, when they were looking for work, a man gutting a turtle under a railroad trestle had told them about a farmer named Tardweller on the other side of Farleigh who might be hiring. It was a Sunday and they were on their way to talk to him. Just a hundred yards or so before the rutted clay road turned into a smooth graveled street, they passed a corpse hanging from an elm tree, a white man with a piece of cardboard pinned to his bloody long johns that said RAPEST. Some citizens loitering around a fountain in the square, admiring someone’s new automobile, told them to keep moving when Pearl asked if they might get a sup of water. He commenced to preaching to them about charity and the life in the world to come and the heavenly table, and somebody in the crowd bounced a rock off his forehead. By the time they made it out of there, even the women gathered in front of the brick church were hurling stones at them.
“That was a sight, wasn’t it?” Chimney said. “The way they’d clipped that ol’ boy’s pecker off?”
“I ain’t a-killin’ nobody, though,” said Cob.
“You won’t have to,” Cane assured him. “If there’s any trouble, me and Chimney will take care of it. I promise ye.”
14
WITH STILL SEVERAL miles to go before he made it home, Ellsworth came to a pasture that brought back a distant memory. Since he felt the need to take a leak anyway, he stopped the mule and stepped off the wagon onto the dirt road. As he unbuttoned his fly, he looked down into the field, and thought back on an evening when he was a young boy. It was in the early part of the winter and he was with his father. They had spent the day cutting firewood for a widow woman over on Storm Station Road; and they were on their way home, tired and hungry. The old lady had offered them part of her dinner, some moldy bread smeared with lard, and it had bothered his father the rest of the afternoon, trying to decide if he should take a dollar from someone who was obviously even poorer than they were. In the end, he had allowed to Ellsworth that fifty cents was plenty for chopping two ricks of wood, and that’s what he had charged her.
His father was puffing on his pipe and talking about something, probably the weather or what he planned to plant in the spring, Ellsworth couldn’t recall what now. A snow was beginning to fall. In the gray twilight, he had seen a rabbit poke its head out of a burrowed place in the dead brown leaves along the edge of a ditch that ran down the middle of the field. Though nearly forty years had passed since that day, the culvert was still there, still overgrown. Thinking now of that rabbit, all alone on that cold winter night with the snow starting to cover the ground, a sweet and sorrowful feeling overcame him. Of course, he knew that that creature had died long ago, just as his father did a few winters later. But with a swelling in his throat, he wondered, almost desperately it felt like, if he might find some sign of that rabbit were he to go down there and search among the weeds and brambles. His eyes began to water. So many had passed on in his lifetime, and so much had happened or not happened that had taken him further and further away from the boy he was back then. No, he thought, as he wiped his sleeve across his face, he wouldn’t find anything, not a sliver of bone or a shred of fur, not if he hunted for a week. The rabbit was gone forever, and that saddened him in much the same way the stars sometimes did at night, the way they kept shifting in the same abiding patterns, as regular as clockwork, year after year, century after century, regardless of what went on down here on this godforsaken ball of rock and clay, be it young men getting butchered in another war, or some crazy blind man living with a dead bird, or an innocent babe drowning in a rat-infested outhouse, or even some poor shivering rabbit sticking his head out of the weeds to watch a farm boy making his way home with his father.
A couple of hours later, he unhitched Buck from the wagon and led him into the barn. After making sure he had water and feed, Ellsworth climbed into the hayloft and took a couple of pulls from one of the jugs he had hidden there. Then he headed for the house, still half lost in the bittersweet nostalgia brought on by the pasture.
Eula was sitting barefoot on the front steps in the dusk, sucking on a piece of bacon rind and trying not to think about Pickles. In her hand was an orange bloom she’d pulled off the trumpet vine that filled a trellis at the end of the porch. The last day and a half had been the longest time she’d ever spent entirely alone since her marriage, and she had missed having the cat around more than ever. There had been a moment this morning when her grief nearly overwhelmed her, and she had hurt so much she would have almost traded her husband and son both for the chance to spend even just one more hour with Pickles. “So you didn’t find him?” she asked.
Ellsworth stopped and looked up, a little startled by her voice. For a brief moment, he believed she was talking about the rabbit in the ditch, but then he remembered Eddie and the purpose of his trip. “Well, I did and I didn’t,” he said. He wished now he’d gone ahead and bought a broom at the Woolworth’s. Now that he thought about it, Parker would probably charge him twice as much for one.
“Did ye see him?”
“No, they wouldn’t allow it.”
“Who?” she asked. “Who wouldn’t?”
“The army. He’d already signed the papers by the time I got there.”
“So you was right after all.”
“At least we know where he is now,” Ellsworth said. He turned and watched some purple martins darting and pirouetting in the darkening air across the road. “Who knows? Maybe this will be good for him.”
Biting the bacon rind in two, Eula tossed the flower into the yard and started to stand. “Well, go ahead and get washed up while
I put out your supper. Then you can tell me all about it.”
15
IT WAS AFTER midnight when they left the shack and started through the piney woods toward Tardweller’s manse. They had decided to leave most of their belongings behind, and so, besides the two books and their blankets, they carried only Pearl’s old shotgun and his straight razor and the two machetes. A sickly yellow half-moon lit their way. When they arrived at the edge of the yard, they stood in a copse of evergreens and watched for signs of life inside the dark two-story house. Except for the chirping of the crickets and the gurgling of their guts, everything was quiet.
“I ain’t never stole nothing in my life,” Cob said miserably. He wished more than anything that his brothers would change their minds, and just head back to the shack. If they got some sleep, maybe tomorrow they wouldn’t be so gung-ho about turning outlaw. And wait a minute, what about the chicken bonus? Why, he bet they hadn’t even thought of that.
He was just getting ready to mention it when Cane said suddenly, “Come on, let’s go,” and they were hurrying across the open ground to the barn, stooped over like apes. Chimney unlatched the door quietly and pulled it open just enough for them to slip inside. They stood there for a minute while their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then Cane handed Cob the shotgun. “Keep an eye on the house,” he whispered.