The Tilted World: A Novel

by Tom Franklin

  The ribs arrived and Ingersoll and Dixie Clay ate while Ham told his tale, which took four times as long, no need for him to rush as this was his second rack of the day, he said, mouth bracketed by grease-glistening muttonchops.

  “Well, I’ve told some wild ones,” he began, snapping the napkin from his collar and wiping it over his mouth, “some that even I didn’t believe,” and Ingersoll settled into his chair in a satisfied way, his leg electric against Dixie Clay’s, touching hip to ankle. Willy was asleep across her lap and her sling arm rested over his rib cage, rising and falling with his breath.

  “Yes, sir,” Ham said, now wiping his forehead with the napkin. “Talk about your yarns—”

  “Is Jesse dead?” Dixie Clay interrupted.

  Ham looked up surprised, and his big jaw seemed to reattach itself to his cranium and he reddened a little, not an easy feat; he’d obviously forgotten that Jesse was more than just the bad guy who had it coming.

  She sat rigid, her eyes intense.

  “I’m sorry. He is. Jesse’s dead.”

  She’d been clenching Ingersoll’s hand and now let go, brought her fingers to her forehead. Ingersoll suddenly worried that she might have been hoping for other news. Dixie Clay said nothing. When at last she tilted her face up from the basket of her fingers, there were no tears on her freckled cheeks.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I think so. I think so. It’s strange. I mean—I’m sure I’ll be sad at some point, but right now, I feel . . . I mostly feel . . . relief.”

  Ingersoll wasn’t sure what to do but the answer came when she reached beneath the table and grabbed his hand again. That was a thing he could do.

  Ham had looked off, as if trying to allow some privacy. But it was Ham that Dixie Clay addressed.

  “He wasn’t always a bad fellow,” she said.

  Ham nodded.

  “He used to be different. When I met him . . .” she said, trailing off. Some diner from a back table touched her shoulder to get by and she scooted her chair in. Then she sighed. “But who he became. At the end. I’m glad that person is dead. I”—she lifted her eyes to the window—“I might have killed him myself, given the chance.”

  The men nodded. If she had more to say, they would listen. But she did not. “Tell it,” she said to Ham. “Tell the story.”

  He looked at her and she inclined her head. “What happened is this,” he began, leaning forward. “When the shooting starts, Ingersoll goes for the sniper, him being the better shot, or at least that was his reputation, though in this case his reputation seems a bit unfounded. But me, I’m chasing after Jesse, who I outstrip by a foot in height but he’s running faster than a scalded dog.

  “When we hear the explosion we both turn. Jesse says, ‘Oh shit,’ pardon me, miss, but oh shit is right. For here comes the river where the street used to be. It kind of starts at the top of the levee, and like a big paw, it just scoops out the town. By then Jesse and I have forgotten who’s chasing who and we’re just sprinting balls out and ahead of us the road curves up a bit and there’s a church, so we run in there, of all things. Inside the doors, Jesse makes a sharp turn toward the bell tower—we’d both eyed it as we’d run up—and I follow him up those dinky wooden stairs, turning and turning, and when I’m about halfway up I hear the flood coming down on the church and then I’m feeling it, the wall of water crashes against the church doors. I’m knocked to the floor, and the whole belfry sways like a tower made of blocks. I scramble my way to the top just a few steps behind Jesse and then push through to the landing and we look out toward the river and it’s all river, there’s no place that ain’t river. I can’t even get my bearings for a second, I mean there’s hardly any landmarks left. Jesse’s ducked beneath one bell to watch and me beneath the other—the bells were bonging by themselves—and we lean out the casements heaving and watch the whole town break into pieces, houses and people screaming by. And then another section of the levee goes and water topples towards us and we can feel it rush into the church like the Holy Spirit himself and it hits the far wall and the tower gives a spasm and with a roar the huge slab of wall behind the crucifix just falls flat out like a child’s gingerbread house, sending up a giant wave in all directions, and we see the pews backhanded through the opening, and I think we’re goners.

  “We hang on, though. Jesse hangs on to his bellpull, and I hang on to mine. Neither one of us has a gun anymore. I think we weren’t even worried about each other, we had a bigger enemy, if you know what I mean. We keep feeling the church . . . adjust . . . below us. The whole tower would shiver and dust come down.”

  Ham covered a belch with the back of his hand. “And after a while we realize that if the church was going to fall, it would have fallen. There are a couple other buildings—the police station, the city hall, the McLain—that haven’t fallen either. Jesse gets all shrewdlike and says, ‘Ham, since the moment’s got so quiet here, and a fellow can take stock, I expect that means we’re to survive.’

  “I let on how I expect the same thing.

  “He says, ‘In that case, it seems to me that you are the only person standing between me and my escape.’

  “I let on how that was the case.”

  Ham creaked in his chair, crossing his legs. “Then Jesse reaches into his pocket and I think he’s got some kind of pistol but what he draws out is a half-pint of Black Lightning. So what do I do, Ing?”

  “Bottoms up,” Ingersoll said.

  “Indeedy-o. Bottoms up. Finest whiskey known to man,” he said, with a wink for Dixie Clay. “So, we drink a spell, passing the bottle back and forth like we’re on holiday, like our belfry don’t resemble the mast of the Titanic. And finally, Jesse says, ‘Ham, I wish to offer you a bribe.’ ”

  The waitress came over with coffee and said, “Let me top you off, Ham,” and he thanked her with barely a hitch in his story.

  “ ‘If I make it out of here,’ Jesse says, ‘I’m to be staked by New Orleans bankers in a run for governor, and I expect their confidence in me will be rewarded. Governor Holliver. Has a ring to it, don’t it,’ he says, and does that little finger flick on his mustache tips.” Ham’s fingers had risen to scratch his sideburns meditatively, as if he were considering the value of adding a mustache to his arsenal. “I let on that it makes a pretty epithet, and Jesse takes the bottle from me and toasts himself, ‘Governor Holliver,’ he says, and drains it. Then he throws the bottle overboard and we watch it splash about where the cemetery used to be. He continues, ‘And when I’m governor, I’ll need me some good men. I had an uncle who was gonna be my second in command. But now I have a suspicion the position has reopened.’ ”

  “Shit,” said Ingersoll.

  Ham went on. “And before I can say no, Jesse doubles down. Brings out this giant roll of rubber-banded hundred-dollar bills. ‘That,’ he says, handing it to me, ‘is a token of my good faith.’

  “ ‘Holy Mother of God,’ I say.

  “ ‘Then we have a deal?’ Jesse asks, and slings an arm over my shoulders.

  “I look at him sideways and I say, ‘You blew up your town, your family, maybe my partner. Our deal is this, Governor: if I live, I’ll spend the rest of my days hunting you down. You will die screaming like a stuck pig. I’ll see to it.’ ”

  Dixie Clay squeezed Ingersoll’s fingers.

  “So about then the church gives a great moan. I shake off his arm to lean out the casement and look. And that’s when he sticks me. Sticks me with some little knife he’s got squirreled away, and as he does I feel his hand yanking on my calf, and he’s trying to tump me overboard, but I got a hundred pounds on him easy. He stuck me good in the side but didn’t get nothing but fat.” Here Ham swiveled his back to them and grabbed his shirt at the shoulder seam and gathered the fabric until it revealed a bandage the size of a dollar bill between thick tufts of orange hair. “So I turn around and we star
e at each other. Both of us know it’s over. He looks at me kind of sad with those funny-colored eyes, then here he comes one last time, with that bitty knife, and I just let him run himself right out the opening and he bounces once on the roof of the church and sails into the river and I watch him go down beneath the surface and he doesn’t come up.”

  Dixie Clay sucked in her breath and gave a little shiver. No one said anything then. The waitress cleared the table and that was when the men reached for the toothpicks while Dixie Clay adjusted Willy on her knees.

  “Anyway,” Ham continued after a while, “I spent the night curled up in the bell tower, and the next morning hitched a canoe ride with some coloreds and a truculent hog to a tug that took us all to Greenville.”

  “Where you been staying?” Ingersoll wanted to know.

  “At—at a house on Blanton Street.”

  “I hope you gave Madame LeLoup my regards,” said Dixie Clay with a raised eyebrow.

  Ham grinned. “Didn’t know you were familiar with the cathouse.”

  “She serves the best whiskey known to man.”

  “Thought it tasted familiar.” The waitress appeared with her coffeepot half tilted, circling for an empty mug, but they were truly done. “You can just put it on my tab,” Ham told her.

  As she walked away, Ingersoll asked, “You got a tab?”

  “Sure do, sunshine. They’ve got too much livestock on the levee, been butchering five hogs a day at the levee kitchen. Ate me several hogs’ worth of ribs the last two days, waiting for you to turn your sorry ass up. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d a started worrying.” He said it with that humorous thrust of his jaw, but his eyes betrayed that he’d been worried.

  Ingersoll slung out his arm and lightly punched Ham’s bicep, then tossed his toothpick into the ashtray. “What now?” he asked. He truly hadn’t thought beyond this point and felt weary about having to.

  “Been thinking on that. Turned it over, once or twice, during my night in the bell tower. You know,” Ham said, weaving his toothpick between his knuckles, “I just might be getting a little old to go chasing bootleggers.”

  Ingersoll sat straighter. Ham looked the same as when they’d fought in the trenches nine years ago, his hair not thinning. In fact, his new hat looked like a champagne cork about to blow.

  “Prohibition is about tuckered out, don’t you reckon?” Ham turned to Dixie Clay and she nodded. “Besides”—he turned back to Ingersoll—“it won’t be any fun without you to boss around.”

  There was silence then for a moment. Ingersoll asked, “So, New Orleans?”

  “Naw, I ain’t going to New Orleans. Figure I’ve seen enough of the Mississip to last me a lifetime. Several lifetimes.”

  “What then?”

  “Fixing to head home for a spell,” Ham said, and then “Kentucky,” for Dixie Clay’s benefit. “Used to be a redheaded arithmetic teacher there, always threatened to civilize me. Prettier than a glob of butter melting on a stack of wheat cakes. I wonder if I shouldn’t give her a chance.”

  “Worth a shot,” Ingersoll offered.

  “And if that don’t work out, I might could mosey over to D.C., that’s the District of Columbia for you unsophisticates, see about some cushy government job, you know, get soft riding my keister around in a Packard. Yep, it’s horsepower, not horses, from here on out for ole Ham.”

  “D.C.,” Ingersoll mused. “I could picture you there.”

  “And surely I’m due a nice severance package from Hoover, our next president, on account of my grief and all.”

  Dixie Clay and Ingersoll looked at each other, and she took the bait. “Your grief ?”

  “Yep, my grief, on account of my partner, my eight years’ partner, ole Dead-Eye Orphan Teddy Ingersoll, being washed away in the flood. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Did you now?” Ingersoll asked.

  “I did. I shorely did. The ’27 crevasse at Hobnob Landing; I was there, you know.”

  “Were you now?”

  “Same as I’m sitting here! Same as I live and breathe. Lost my partner, right after he put together what that no-good Jesse Holliver was up to, ablowin’ the levee with stolen government TNT—a big whole tidal wave swept Ing seaward, him ascreamin’, ‘I never did appreciate you enough, Ham’—those were his last words, they were—Ingersoll’s untimely death a double shame, really, as he probably woulda gotten some kinda pretty medal for that piece of detective work to go along with his bronze from the war. So his chest wouldn’t be all lopsided, you know. And to make matters worse, right after that fella Holliver was snatched into the mouth of Jonah’s whale, I saw that pretty little Holliver filly swept clean away. Tragedy, that. She was just about to succumb to my charms, too.”

  “Was she now?” This from Dixie Clay, cocking her head.

  “Indeed, indeed. She thought the sun come up just to hear ole Ham crow.”

  Dixie Clay smiled and ran her palm over Willy’s downy head.

  The conversation ceased, the lighthearted tone too hard to maintain, perhaps, and probably everyone was thinking the same thing. What Ham had worked out. Death and rebirth. So that’s how easy it could be.

  Though there was one more thing. Dixie Clay cleared her throat, then said, “About the two revenuers.” She was still running her hand over Willy’s head. “The ones you were supposed to find. You’re not gonna find ’em, Ham, I’m pretty sure.” She lifted her eyes. “I was there with Jesse and—”

  Ham held a large pink palm in the air. “Well, I reckon that’s a story I don’t need to know, being that everyone involved was washed away.”

  She swallowed, and they were quiet again.

  “Here,” Ham said abruptly, slapping an obscene spool of rubber-banded hundreds on the table. “You dry those bills out, they’ll still work.”

  Ingersoll shook his head, though it was true that on the boat to the sheriff’s, he’d totted up how much these ribs would eat into his remaining four damp dollars.

  “Oh, don’t be an idiot,” Ham said. “It’s hers, after all, she cooked the damn whiskey.”

  Ingersoll looked at Dixie Clay, and she pursed her lips and gave a tiny shrug. She had cooked the damn whiskey. Ingersoll looked back at the roll yet felt powerless to reach out. Finally Ham backhanded it across the table where it skidded to Ingersoll’s fist. He uncurled his fingers and drummed them once on the roll and then picked it up and straightened his leg to push it into the pocket of his dungarees. He gave Ham a nod.

  Broken vows and broken laws and blood and desertion and money—all that he’d needed to come to pass had come to pass. They were free to go.

  The waitress came over with the coffeepot but they shook their heads. “We’re quittin’, sugar,” Ham told her.

  “Alrighty, I put it on your tab, Ham.”

  “Thank you kindly. By the way, I don’t suppose you’d fancy a trip to Kentucky, run barefoot through the bluegrass with a big tipper like Ham Johnson?”

  “And give up all this?” Her gesture took in the ramshackle room, the displaced customers, the ribs on pulleys.

  “You got a point.”

  “Hey, I been meaning to ask. Where’s the name Ham come from?”

  Ingersoll sat back in his chair and reached out to squeeze Dixie Clay’s knee, then turned, already grinning, to Ham.

  But Ham’s gray eyes were serious. “Ham,” he said. He turned to Ingersoll. “It stands for Abraham.”

  The waitress nodded and moved on, yet the men sat regarding each other. “Abraham,” Ingersoll said softly. He smiled and shook his head, a confused gesture, inadequate to convey all that sloshed in his heart.

  Finally Ham slapped the table with his huge hands and the silverware jumped and the three rose.

  There was nothing more to do then. Where before the men had hugged, now they shook hands, but there was so much in their
grasp and in their eyes that it did not seem a lessening.

  Dixie Clay stuck out her hand, and Ham stuck out his hand, and then she seemed to think better of it and raised on tiptoes to kiss Ham’s cheek, the whole exchange a little awkward, but it got the job done.

  Then Ingersoll placed his palm on Dixie Clay’s neck and took Willy onto his shoulder, and they turned away and descended the steps. Just before Ingersoll’s head passed below the floor, he looked back to see Ham, who was facing away, thick legs crossed, gazing toward the window, the late-afternoon light making the air seem solid with the dust of the centuries.

  Epilogue

  Hobnob was ninety miles and three days behind them. They were in Arkansas now, the farthest west Dixie Clay had ever been. Each step the horse took became its own extremity, its own frontier. This was the farthest west she’d gone. No, this was. This.

  When they’d left Greenville, they could have boated across the flat Delta to Greenwood, the beginning of the hills, fifty miles and four hours away, or so people said. Instead, Ingersoll turned the boat west. They crossed the river, if you could still call it a river when it was ninety miles wide.

  They knew they were boating over places where houses and farms used to be. It was houseless, farmless. Treeless. Then, westward, a few trees, like broccoli dipped in batter halfway up. Then signs of houses—concrete steps, a brick chimney. Then a copse of woods, logjam that had trapped, like the mesh pocket in a pool table, a bank of school lockers, a pair of dead calico ponies hitched to a wagon, a planing mill saw, a mailbox, a sign reading TALLULAH’S, WORLD’S BEST CATFISH. Apocalyptic, this landscape they boated through. No need to worry about trampling anyone’s cotton, river had seen to that. No need to hop fences, river had seen to that. River had seen and seen. They began to pass humps of dry ground. Prosthetic leg sticking up out of the mud. Bloated carcass of a donkey beside a bloated Bible, as if he’d been reading the events of the end time when they befell him. Wild dogs circling a tree, snagged high in its branches a coop filled with dead chickens, rattling because of the buzzards that hopped and thrust their beaks in to pull out bloody cords of meat. They passed a hill with strange white arcs cresting the mud. Like baby’s teeth pushing through gums, said Dixie Clay. But Ingersoll shook his head. Gravestones, he said; a cemetery. Though where the church was now, God only knew.