The Heavenly Table

by Donald Ray Pollock

  “You might as well come with us,” a voice behind him said.

  Sugar passed the paper back. Just as he was getting ready to reply that, providing the poster was even legitimate in the first place, only an ass-kissing Uncle Tom would volunteer to go off and fight a war started by a bunch of rich white motherfuckers clear on the other side of the ocean, he saw one of the men tip the bottle up. “I sure could use a drink,” he said instead.

  “Give him a taste, Malcolm.”

  Sugar took a long pull and handed it back. He wiped his mouth just as the whiskey exploded in his belly. A warm, tingling sensation spread over his entire body, from the bottoms of his sore feet to the top of his bruised head, and he immediately wanted more. “Any place around here to get a jug?” he asked.

  A squat, husky man wearing a frayed straw boater pointed across the road to a narrow, windowless hut tacked on the side of the store. “Jenksie over there will fix you up if’n you got the money,” he said.

  “You ain’t from around here, are ye?” another asked.

  “No,” Sugar replied, “I’m comin’ from Detroit.”

  “Detroit? What you doin’ in Shadesville then?”

  “Oh, I just stopped by to see some people, but they all gone.”

  “What people?”

  “The Milfords.”

  “The Milfords? Why, that was ol’ Susie’s name, wasn’t it?” Several of them chuckled.

  “Lord, I damn near forgot about her,” another said.

  “Not me,” a light-skinned boy with greenish eyes said. “That girl could suck a—”

  “That’s my sister you’re talkin’ about,” Sugar said, raising his voice and placing his hand on the razor in his pocket.

  “Oh,” the boy said.

  “Well,” said another.

  They all looked away or down at the ground for a minute, then someone said, “Here ye go,” and handed Sugar the bottle again. He forgot about his sister and stayed with them for a while longer, but they didn’t pass their liquor around fast enough to suit him. Walking over to the little shed, he tapped on the door and a sweaty, sickly-looking man wearing nothing but a soiled pair of yellow trousers let him in. The man sat down on a wooden crate before he asked Sugar what he wanted. It was dark inside the room. There was something alive inside the crate, moving around in a tight circle, but Sugar couldn’t make out what it was. He bought a couple of pints of Old Rose and that left him with a dollar. Avoiding the volunteers, he sneaked around the corner and down the road to his homeplace and sat under a dead apple tree in the backyard. From time to time, he uncapped one of the bottles and took a sip, then screwed the cap back on tightly. He felt guilty about breaking his promise to the Lord, who had obviously saved him once again, this time from drowning back there at the bridge, but he swore that he would never get drunk again, not after this one last time. Who could blame him really? Coming all the way back here just to find his mother dead, and his brothers and sisters gone. What the hell was he going to do now?

  He emptied the pint of whiskey and began on the other, willing himself to slow down and make it last. Eventually, he began thinking about Flora. My God, what an ass. Though he had known quite a few women who would go along with getting fucked in the ol’ ham flower if they were high enough or forced to or paid extra, Flora was the only one who actually requested it from time to time. His hand drifted down to his crotch and he started rubbing himself, but it was useless; the more he thought about what he had lost, the more despondent and limp-dicked he became. Jesus, he would probably never meet another woman like her again. A picture of that skinny young buck ramming it into her from behind rose up in his mind. He tortured himself with it for a minute, to the point where he could hear Flora moaning and the bed squeaking. “I’ll go back and kill ’em both,” he said out loud. “Cut their goddamn heads off.” He would start back tonight, he told himself. There, it was settled. But then, just as he was draining the last few drops from the second pint, another idea occurred to him, something so simple he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it long before now. He would return to Detroit all right, but not to murder anybody. Why take a chance on getting hanged over that old slut and her baby-faced punk? Instead, he would do as he’d always done, find himself a new puss, and he knew exactly which one he was going after. Flora had a friend named Mary or Margaret or something like that who had just bought a little house a couple of doors down from the laundry that Flora managed. She wasn’t much to look at, a scrawny, meek little thing with wire-rimmed spectacles, from what he could remember, but he didn’t give a damn. He’d fuck a snake if that’s what it took to get back at Flora. He could already see himself sitting on the front porch of his new house with a cup of coffee when the bitch walked by on her way to work. And besides, in all honesty, he really didn’t know any other way to live except off some woman. Just look at all the shit that had happened to him in the few days he’d been out on his own.

  Excited by his new plan, Sugar hurried back to Jenksie’s and spent the last of his money on another jug. With any luck, he figured he could be back in Detroit in three or four days, probably be married by the end of next week. He staggered north past the men still gathered in front of the post office. By that time the sun was beginning to set over the big horse farm to the west that the white family named Montclair had owned since before his granddaddy was born. A few of the men hooted and catcalled when they saw him trip over his feet at the edge of town, and he cursed them and waved his razor in the air. Two or three started after him, but when he took off running, they stopped and threw rocks at him until he disappeared between two hills. He had only gone a mile or so when he curled up under a maple tree and uncapped the bottle. The next morning, he awoke more guilt-ridden and miserable than ever, with an army of red ants crawling over him. The plan that had burned so brilliantly in his mind just a few hours ago was barely smoldering now, and Detroit seemed like a million miles away. By the time he arrived back at the bridge that evening, Captain and his posse were gone. All that was left to indicate they had been there at all was a greasy forgotten skillet and a few discarded jugs. Searching madly among them, he found one corked with a chaw of tobacco, two inches of whiskey left in the bottom of it. He pulled out the slimy plug and tipped up the bottle with trembling hands, and as soon as his frayed nerves settled down a little, he crossed the bridge back over into Ohio.

  47

  ON THE EVENING of the third full day at the Fiddlers’, with the corn all cut and standing in neat shocks in the fields, and the wound in Cob’s leg healing over nicely thanks to Eula’s poultices, Chimney told Cane it was time to go. They were washing off at the well before supper. Cane agreed, though he did so a little reluctantly. For the first time since they’d fled Tardweller’s barn, he had seen Cob genuinely happy, and he hated to see that come to an end. But a promise was a promise, and Chimney had more than fulfilled his part of the bargain. Too, though the days were still warm, the nights were now cool and crisp. He didn’t know much about Canada, but he suspected they should probably try to get there before winter hit. “I’ll tell ’em after we get done eating,” he said.

  “However you want to do it,” Chimney said. “Long as we go.”

  They had one of the best meals of their lives that evening—fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and apple pie—and then they all went out to sit on the porch just as the sun was setting. Chimney walked over to the barn and brought back the last of their whiskey to share with Ellsworth, and Eula even allowed him to splash a drop in her coffee. He figured he’d give Cane a few more minutes, but if he didn’t say anything by the time the yard turned dark, he’d tell them himself.

  “He’s lucky, you know,” Eula said, nodding at Cob’s leg. Then she launched into a story about a Blosser boy just down the road who had died from an infected rat bite two years ago. Just a little nip on the finger, and within a couple of days, his arm turned green with poison. His parents sent for a Doctor Hamm in Meade and he sawed i
t off, but it was too late by then. “You could hear the mother cryin’ and screamin’ clear up here when he took his last breath,” Ellsworth added, taking another sip from his cup. The boy’s parents asked the doctor to sew it back on before they buried him, Eula went on, so that he wouldn’t be a cripple when he got to heaven, but then they couldn’t find it.

  “What do ye mean, they couldn’t find it?” Cane said.

  Eula shook her head. “Just that,” she said. “The doctor, he’d laid it off to the side of the bed in Mrs. Blosser’s roaster pan and it just disappeared into thin air.”

  “You mean like a ghost?” Cob asked.

  “Could be.”

  “We used to have us some ghosts down where—” Cob started to say.

  “Maybe a dog got it,” Chimney cut in. “Hell, a dog will eat anything.”

  “Well, they did have one,” Ellsworth said, “a little feisty thing. I think they called it Leo or something like that. But he wouldn’t have been big enough to carry off something the size of an arm.”

  “It’s a mystery,” Eula said, nodding her head.

  “They was a worthless bunch,” Ellsworth went on, “especially the old man. He didn’t do nothing but sit on the porch all day while his wife waited on him hand and foot. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have stolen it himself.”

  “Why would he do that?” Cob asked.

  “Well, I figure with her makin’ such a big fuss over the boy dying and all, he got jealous. That’s the way he was, always had to be the center of attention.”

  “Ells, now you know—”

  It was then that Cane coughed, and Eula stopped talking and looked over. When he stood up and announced that they’d be leaving tonight, Ellsworth said, “Why don’t ye wait till tomorrow? You boys got to be wore out, as much work as ye done.”

  “Yeah,” Cob agreed. “We can go tomorrow.”

  “Well, we’d like to make it to Meade by morning,” Cane said.

  “But, heck, one more day—”

  “Ells,” Eula said, “leave it be.” She got out of her chair and went into the house. In the kitchen, she lit the oil lamp and started to rid the table, but couldn’t stop thinking about how Junior had said that morning that he wished he could live here forever, then picked up Josephine and kissed her on top of the head. Granted, she hadn’t expected them to stay any longer than necessary, but she also hadn’t expected that she’d start worrying about any of them, either. She thought for a minute, staring at the floor with her lips pursed. No, she had to say something. If she didn’t, she’d regret it, just like she regretted keeping silent about Eddie until it was too late. She placed a stack of dirty plates in the sink and went back to the front door. “Tom,” she said, “would you mind comin’ in here a minute?” Cane glanced over at Ellsworth, but all the old man did was shrug his shoulders.

  He followed Eula to the kitchen. Pouring herself the last of the coffee in the pot, she sat down and looked up at him standing in the doorway. “Now I know I’m just an old woman, and it’s none of my business what kind of trouble you’re all in, but—”

  “We’re not in—”

  “Let me finish,” Eula said. “But that boy a-sittin’ out there on the porch with a bullet still in his leg don’t need to be a part of it. I been around Junior enough these last couple days to know that much. So maybe you should quit doin’ whatever it was that got him hurt, and just get to wherever you’re going.” Then she picked up her cup to take a sip, but her lip began to quiver, and she set it back down. She appeared about to cry, and Cane was touched that she could have such feelings for his brother.

  He started to reassure her that everything would turn out fine, but suddenly, as he looked over at the kitten curled up in a tight ball on its bed of rags in the corner, that didn’t seem quite good enough. He owed her more than that. “His real name’s Cob,” he said, and then turned and walked back out to the porch.

  They rode away an hour later with Ellsworth standing in the yard waving goodbye. Cob was still whining about staying one more day, but within a few minutes he was asleep, slumped in the saddle, his round head bobbing over the pommel. It was after midnight when they passed through Nipgen. Not a single light burned anywhere. A lone dog was howling somewhere far off in the hills. “So what’s the plan when we get there?” Chimney asked as they left the little burg.

  “Well, one thing’s for sure, we can’t all ride in together,” Cane began. “I’ll keep Cob with me and you’ll be on your own. Need to stable the horses, get some new clothes. We’ll stay in different hotels, pick some place to meet now and then.”

  “Sounds good,” Chimney said. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, you think you could learn how to drive an automobile?”

  “What?” Chimney said.

  “I been thinkin’ on it, and it just makes sense. The more we change things, the less chance of gettin’ caught.”

  “Hell, yes, I could. I can’t imagine there’s a whole lot to it.”

  “Well, then, once you get to town and get settled, you start lookin’ around, see if you can buy one. Just make sure it’s big enough to haul all three of us.”

  “But what about the horses?”

  “We’ll figure that out later.”

  “Jesus,” Chimney said, shaking his head and grinning, “did ye ever think a few weeks ago that we’d ever be buying an automobile?”

  Cane shifted in his saddle and looked back to make sure Cob was still behind them. “No,” he said, “I couldn’t have imagined any of this, no matter how hard I tried.”

  48

  BOVARD WAS ON his way to breakfast when Malone caught up with him and informed him that Private Franks had been injured in a barroom brawl sometime yesterday evening and was now in the infirmary. Instead of going into town and being tempted to stop by the Majestic to see Lucas, the lieutenant had stayed in his quarters last night with a pot of tea and read over Thucydides’s account of the first invasion of Attica in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Unfortunately, stirring images of charging an impenetrable German bunker with a group of loyal young lads following behind him kept slipping in and preventing him from generating anything close to the enthusiasm he usually felt for his favorite historian of ancient Greece, and he had finally turned out the lamp in order to better succumb to his fantasies. Still, it was the first morning in a week or more when he hadn’t woken up benumbed with a hangover, and if nothing else, he felt well rested. “In the infirmary?” he said to Malone. “How bad did he get hurt?”

  “They say he lost an eye.”

  “Good Lord!” Bovard said, looking a bit startled. “Are you sure it was Wesley? I mean Private Franks?”

  Malone nodded. “Oh, yes, sir, it was him all right.”

  Bovard thought he detected a slight note of self-satisfaction in the sergeant’s voice, and it took him a moment to realize the reason for it. Just two days ago, he had told Malone that he had chosen Wesley to be his groom. The sergeant had questioned his choice, said that the boy seemed a bit too immature for such a responsibility. “What about Cooper?” he had suggested. “He’s the best I’ve seen with the horses.” Even though he’d already made up his mind, Bovard had been careful with his reply. He didn’t want Malone to think he didn’t value his opinion. But Cooper, a pudgy, bucktoothed dullard with jugged ears and a perpetual heat rash, was a veritable ogre compared to the dark-eyed and smooth-skinned Wesley. Just the type of beautiful young man, the lieutenant liked to imagine, that fought and died for honor and glory on the sun-drenched Grecian plains twenty-five hundred years ago. He couldn’t help it. Even after all his initial dissatisfactions with the caliber of the recruits, and his subsequent acceptance that he was going to be stuck fighting alongside well-meaning but uncouth farm boys and law clerks and shopkeepers, he was still loath to completely surrender certain noble ideals about men and war that he knew the sergeant would never understand. Besides, what did it matter as long as he kept his sentiments to himself? Or if the boy was an
y good with horses or not? The cavalry would soon be a thing of the past; modern, mechanized warfare had taken care of that. In the first few months of the conflict, thousands of unfortunate bastards had already proven that charging a machine-gun nest on horseback was tantamount to suicide. By the time they arrived in Europe, the majority of the animals would be relegated to hauling boxes of supplies and pulling artillery. “But I don’t understand,” Bovard said to Malone. “What was he doing in town in the first place? Wasn’t he scheduled for guard duty last night?”

  “Well, that’s the worst part,” the sergeant said. “He left his post without tellin’ anyone. I know it’s no excuse, but a couple of his buddies said he got a Dear John letter yesterday.”

  “How did it happen?” Bovard asked.

  “Probably the same way it always happens,” the sergeant said. “She found her some new meat once he—”

  “No,” Bovard said quickly. “I mean the eye. How did he lose it?”

  “Oh, that,” Malone said. “Well, from what I heard, he was in a saloon and some preacher started spouting off about the war being nothing but a moneymaker for the fat cats. One thing led to another, and Franks took a swing at him. Before it was over, he had a piece of glass in his eye. Broken bottle, I suspect.”