The Heavenly Table

by Donald Ray Pollock

  34

  AS THE JEWETT Gang slept along the weedy bank of a dried-up stream near Otway, Ohio, a geologist named Arthur Vaughn, originally from New Haven, Connecticut, and now working as a surveyor for a Pennsylvania mining company that was buying up tracts of land all over Kentucky, came across what appeared to be just another deserted homestead, the third in less than a week. For Arthur, each of these places had its own particular sadness—and this one was no exception, as he looked to the right and saw the weather-beaten remains of a little girl’s cob doll protruding from a waste heap—but they also shared a common loneliness, more akin to a long-forgotten graveyard than a spot where people had once lived and worked and loved. However, as he led his pack mule up closer to the house, he realized from the look of the slashed vines around the tumbledown porch that someone else had been here recently. Perhaps this place wasn’t abandoned after all. “Hello,” he called out several times, but got no response. He shaded his eyes with his felt hat and peered through the open doorway. He could see a book lying on the floor near the fireplace. Arthur had brought a copy of Huckleberry Finn with him when he started this assignment, but he had finished it over a week ago and was starving for something new to read. He studied the stomped path through the weeds leading away from the porch to a crude shed. “Hello,” he yelled again. “Anybody home?” He waited a minute, then tied the mule to a termite-riddled post and stepped cautiously inside the house.

  When he turned the book over and saw the title, he said, under his breath, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Then he let out a little laugh. It was one of those trashy dime novels that he and his brother, William, bedridden with the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, used to read on the sly when they were young. In fact, of all the books that Arthur had sneaked into the sickroom, this had been his brother’s favorite. He swatted the book against his leg, then stood in the middle of the hot room contemplating what remained of the tasteless artwork on the torn and faded cover. A sinister-looking desperado draped in a poncho stood defiantly in the middle of a desert, pointing two pistols the size of cannons at some shadowy figures approaching on horseback in the distance. “The Life and Times of Bloody Bill Bucket,” Arthur said aloud, trying to imitate the overly dramatic voice his brother had sometimes used jokingly when it was his turn to read. “By Charles Foster Winthrop the Third.” Because the doctors had warned their parents that William should avoid all manner of excitement, they had to keep the book hidden behind a loose piece of molding in the closet. And when his brother finally choked to death on his own blood, Arthur had managed to slip it into his coffin without anybody knowing.

  He leafed through it, skimmed a few vaguely remembered paragraphs. It was obvious from the smudged fingerprints and dog-eared pages that it had been pored over a number of times. Looking about the room, he saw a couple of bloody dressings tossed in the corner, some empty bean cans in the fireplace, three different sets of boot tracks in the dust. Jesus, he thought, what the hell had went on here? And how did this book, this moldy, crumbling relic from his own familial past, ever end up in an abandoned hovel in the backwoods of Kentucky? For some reason, he suddenly recalled a conversation he’d had with his father last year when he was home for a visit. “Mark my word, Arthur,” the old man had told him, “before long there won’t be a spot on the globe that hasn’t been infected with this progress they keep on about.”

  “But what’s wrong with that?” Arthur had said. It was a bright but chilly day right after Thanksgiving. They were sitting in the library and he was staring at his brother’s portrait hanging on the wall. By then, William had been dead ten years. Arthur took a sip of the warm wine the maid had brought in and reminded himself to visit the grave before he left the city.

  “Because, son,” his father had said, lifting his beloved copy of Plato—the leather cover cracked from age and the spine broken from a thousand hours of examination—from the table by his chair, and waving it about like a call to arms, “in another hundred years, everything we deem worthwhile, over three thousand years of thought and tradition and learning, won’t be considered any more important than what some tribe of dark-skinned savages has to say about a spirit they believe lives in a damn seashell. Don’t you see? Everything will be looked upon as equal when really it’s not.”

  Arthur had known well enough not to argue. The old man had practiced law for forty years and had never lost a case, as far as his son knew. Still, the future was coming, whether people liked it or not. Granted, the state of Kentucky certainly wasn’t some South Sea island filled with savages cut off from the rest of the world, but this house felt just as isolated and backward as he imagined a place could be, which was maybe why finding this particular book here was such a surprise. Taking one last look around, he wondered again about the cast-off bandages. Then he shoved the book in his pocket and stepped outside.

  He was headed into the woods when he noticed sunlight glinting off something in a briar patch on the other side of the house. Dropping the mule’s lead, he held his arms aloft and made his way through the tall weeds toward it. As he got closer, he began to smell the rot, could hear the flies buzzing. He covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, then pushed forward a few more feet. To his horror, he saw two large crows pecking away in short bursts at a man’s upturned face. Arthur lurched back, then stopped himself. What had initially caught his attention was a pair of spectacles hanging from one of the man’s ears and shining in the bright light. His swollen limbs had turned a bluish-green color and were about to burst through the seams of his ragged clothes. A clot of maggots boiled forth from a hole in his chest and dripped like raindrops into a muddy well of water right below him. Pulling a .32-caliber Iver Johnson pistol from his pocket that he used to kill snakes with, Arthur cast another look around the perimeter of the property before firing a shot into the air to scare the birds away.

  His heart pounding, he watched them flap through the air and land on the roof of the house. Then he turned and stumbled to the mule, waving the gun about wildly. Grabbing the rope, he began tugging and cursing the goddamn dumb beast to get moving, his only thought to flee from this haunted, godforsaken place as fast as possible. And though the crows were already sated, they waited patiently until the intruder disappeared into the trees, then flew back to the briar patch to tear away some more of the softer parts the clerk had left to offer.

  35

  ON HIS WAY to lunch in the officers’ mess, Bovard came around the corner of a building lost in thought and almost tripped over Wesley Franks seated on the ground reading a letter. The lieutenant had learned yesterday that Dr. Lattimore, his adviser at Kenyon, had dropped over dead from an aneurysm a couple of weeks ago, and he’d just realized this morning that the many times the man had brushed up against him when they were alone together in his office were not as “accidental” as he’d claimed. He couldn’t believe how naive he’d been. Clearly, the old classicist had wanted to fuck him. Had it been so apparent that he was homosexual? Even before he knew himself? “Pardon me, Private,” Bovard said, as Wesley dropped the pages and scrambled to stand up and salute.

  “My fault, sir,” the private said.

  “A letter from home?”

  The boy stared straight ahead. “Yes, sir.”

  Bovard let his eyes wander for a moment over the slim body. Though it didn’t make a big difference in the way he imagined he and Wesley might die together, it was nice to know that at least he could read. He wondered if he should offer to loan him the copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse that his parents had sent him the other day. Accompanying the book was a note in which his father informed him that they had gone to Elizabeth’s wedding in New York, and that she sent her regards. It sounded almost like an apology, the way it was worded, as if the old man were afraid his son might look upon their attendance as a betrayal; and Bovard reminded himself to write and reassure them that he was more content than he’d ever been, that he had no ill feelings whatsoever toward the money-gru
bbing bitch. If they only knew how happy he was not to be stuck in that life anymore. He looked down at the letter on the ground near Wesley’s feet, two sheets of paper covered with a large, childish scrawl, and suddenly realized this was the perfect opportunity to ask a question that had been on his mind ever since he’d first laid eyes on the boy. “Fiancée?”

  Wesley twitched a little, but stayed at attention. “Well, sort of, sir.”

  “At ease, Private.”

  As the soldier bent down to pick up the letter, the lieutenant sneaked another quick glance, then turned and walked away. So what if Wesley had a girlfriend? As Lucas had told him the other night, half the men he’d fucked over the years wore a wedding ring. Though most of them endured marriage only because it provided a cover-up for their deviant behavior, hating every minute of it, there were some who actually got a thrill out of living a double life. “Think about it,” Lucas said. “Sucking a prick one day, knocking up the wife the next. It’s like walking a tightrope that never ends, knowing that one little slipup could ruin you forever.”

  By the time he arrived at the mess hall, most of the men had finished eating, and Bovard settled for just a cup of coffee. “I’m telling you, fatso, that’s a bargain,” he heard First Lieutenant Waller say to a chubby gunnery officer. “Four dollars a shot for a pretty little wench that speaks French? You can’t beat that with a stick.” With his black curly hair and pencil mustache and endless talk of sex, Waller had quickly established a reputation around camp as a master fornicator, and quite a few inexperienced men sought out his advice before they made their first trip to the Whore Barn. He claimed to know every crack and crevasse of every working girl within a thirty-mile radius of Meade.

  “Yeah, but you could choke it with your hand,” another lieutenant joked.

  “Ha!” Waller said. “No doubt in my mind, Bryant. You probably try to strangle that snake of yours to death every night, don’t you?”

  “Why would I do that?” Bryant said. “Just hang out at the Majestic long enough and that ol’ boy that runs the place will do it for you.”

  “Isn’t he a friend of yours, Bovard?” Waller asked, winking at a couple of other officers sitting across from him.

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “The funny boy that runs the theater uptown.”

  “Oh, him,” Bovard said, trying to act casual. “No, I’ve talked to him a time or two, but I wouldn’t call him a friend. I can’t even recall his name now.”

  “Snyder here says he tried to grab his cock in the men’s room last night.”

  Bovard’s stomach did a flip, but his face remained calm. “Good Lord,” he said. “You mean intentionally?”

  “Hell, yes,” Snyder said. “He had his hands all over me. I’ll give him this, though, the little bastard can take a punch. I must have hit him seven or eight times before he stayed down.” He raised his fists up for them all to see the red abrasions on them.

  “Looks like you nailed him pretty good,” Bovard said weakly.

  “Did he ever try any of that stuff with you?” Waller asked. Several men at the next table laughed.

  “What stuff?” Bovard said.

  “You know, that queer stuff?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Well, maybe he thought Snyder was another one of his kind,” said an aide named Hurley who worked for Major Willows.

  “It’s an abomination,” said Second Lieutenant Elkins, a teetotaler since birth and head of Camp Pritchard’s newly formed Morality Committee. He saw this as an opportunity to let everyone know where the organization stood in regard to faggots and dykes. Granted, only one other man, a little Bible-thumper from Ironton, had showed up at the first meeting, but, as his mentor, the clap doctor Eisner, later reminded him, it takes only a single spark to start a fire.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but for once I agree with you, Elkins,” Waller said. “Goddamn queers. If they’re not going to hang ’em, they ought to at least round them up and stick ’em on an island out in the ocean somewhere away from decent folks. What do you think, Bovard?”

  “Well,” the lieutenant said, as he sat down at the table and recalled the opiated fantasy he’d had about Wesley the other night, “it sounds to me like you might have hit upon the perfect solution.”

  36

  ELLSWORTH WAS CUTTING corn in a field he rented off Clyde Ferguson’s widow when he saw a colored man sporting a light gray bowler hat sauntering down the dirt road. He stopped working and watched the man pause and remove his hat, then proceed to pull a broad-toothed comb through his black, wiry hair. He wore a pair of threadbare pinstripe trousers and a faded yellow shirt. Recalling the black man he had seen working in the field that day outside Meade, Ellsworth decided to look upon the stranger’s appearance as a good omen, though he was a bit concerned about the primping. One that liked bright colors and carried a comb was likely to be damn near useless when it came to getting blisters on his hands; and it was a known fact that you could hypnotize some of them with a mirror, although he reckoned you could do that with any fool who thought himself pretty, no matter what the color of his skin might be. He looked around at all the corn that still needed cutting. The way things were going, there would be snow on the ground before he finished. “Yo!” he yelled to the passerby. “Yo!”

  The man dove to the ground as if dodging a bullet, the comb still stuck in his hair. He lay there for a minute, a fearful look on his face, then slowly raised his head. He spotted the farmer in baggy bibs and a sweat-soaked linen shirt walking up through the field toward him, gripping a corn knife in one hand.

  “Hidy,” Ellsworth said, once he had cleared the ditch that ran alongside the road. “Didn’t mean to scare ye.”

  “I ain’t scared,” the man said defensively, as he stood and dusted off his pants. “Just careful is all.” His Christian name was George Milford, but a woman he had once shacked up with in Detroit had dubbed him Sugar because she thought his sperm tasted like taffy, and that’s what he had gone by ever since. He was running from a crime he had committed in Mansfield, Ohio, three days ago, and was on his way to Kentucky to see his family. He hadn’t seen any of them in over ten years. Pulling the comb from his hair, he slid it into his back pocket, then put his bowler back on. “What you want?”

  Ellsworth hesitated. It had just occurred to him that he should probably talk to Eula first before offering the man a job, but it was a good twenty-five-minute walk back to the house from here, and he couldn’t expect a stranger to wait around while he went seeking his wife’s permission. However, if he let this one get away there might not be another, at least not in time to do him any good with the harvest. Already it was the first day of October. He had to admit that he’d taken on more than he could handle. Hoping to make back some of the money he had lost last fall, he had rented two extra fields off the widow, but he hadn’t planned on Eddie not being around to help. “I was wonderin’ if you might be lookin’ for some work?” he said to the black man.

  Sugar spit out the stem of a weed he’d been chewing on. Though he wasn’t interested in a job, never had been, for that matter, he had discovered that while most white people tolerated colored folks, to a degree anyway, especially if they found themselves alone with one, damn near all of them looked upon a black man who wouldn’t work with the utmost suspicion and contempt. Sugar shrugged and looked down into the field. “Might be,” he told Ellsworth, but no sooner had those words popped out of his mouth than he wondered why he’d said them. Fuck the white bastard. There wasn’t another soul around that he could see, and he had his razor in his pocket. Why worry about him? “But then again, I might not be.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “Depends.”

  Ellsworth blinked several times, then took a rag from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. Hell, he thought, this boy is as smart-alecky as those damn gatekeepers back at Camp Pritchard. “Where ye headed for anyway?” he asked. “They ain’t nothing dow
n this way.”

  “They is if you keep walking,” Sugar said. “It will take you clear to the river.”

  “What river?” Ellsworth asked. He turned and looked down the road. He hadn’t been any farther south than Waverly in all the years he had lived. Almost everything he knew about the world lay to the east, toward Meade, and that had always been more than enough for him.

  “Why, the Ohio,” Sugar said. “You never been there? Shoot, it ain’t but forty miles from here.”

  Ellsworth shook his head. Of course, he had heard of the Ohio, but he had never imagined it as being within walking distance. “Never had no need.”

  “It’s a big river, let me tell ye,” Sugar said. “A man ought to see it before he dies.”

  “What makes you think I’m a-dying?” Ellsworth asked. He had heard once, over at Parker’s store, that some coloreds, specifically those born at the stroke of midnight, could see into the future, and he wondered if this man might be one of them.

  “I didn’t mean you in particular,” Sugar said. “Anybody is who I meant.” He reached into his pocket and laid his hand on his razor. For a second, he weighed the pros and cons of robbing the dumb hillbilly, but then took another look at the long, wooden-handled corn knife he held in his hand and decided against it. The farmer was a stout-looking fucker for his age; and even if he did have any cash, it would be buried in a tin can somewhere or stuck up a cow’s ass. All of these country fools were the same when it came to hoarding their pennies.

  “Oh,” Ellsworth said. He coughed and cleared his throat, then wiped at his mouth with the rag. “Well, you want the job or not?”