Later, on their way back to the hotel, while listening to Cob rail about the abuse the poor monkey had suffered, Cane saw the girl from the bookstore walk by with a dapper man in a nice suit holding her arm. He felt a little regret, thinking about how flustered he’d been in her presence, and he wondered if he could have been the one escorting her tonight if he had just spoken up. He stayed up half the night with Richard III, making his way slowly through Act Three and most of Four. Occasionally he paused to take a sip of whiskey and look a word up in the Webster’s. The hotel was old and creaky with the past, and for some reason the noises kept unnerving him. Finally, he got up with his pistol and looked up and down the empty hallway. Closing the door, he turned out the lamp and went over to the window. He could hear the sound of footsteps somewhere down the street. The church bell chimed twice. He stood looking out for a long time, thinking again of how far they had come, and how far they had yet to go.
57
THAT SAME EVENING, a frustrated and demoralized Bovard took a cab into Meade with the sole intention of getting plastered. Not only had his dream of dying with Wesley by his side been ruined, but even worse, rumors were now floating around that the 343rd might not ship out until next spring. What if the war ended before he got there? The prospect of sitting around uselessly in Ohio for five or six more months while great battles were being waged just a weeklong ocean voyage away was too depressing for words; and the thought that he might be cheated out of his destiny was weighing heavily on his mind when the driver dropped him off in front of the Candlelight.
He had just started in on his sixth scotch and was bemoaning his predicament to Forrester, the bartender, when the Lewis Family, still sweaty from their performance and accompanied by several females, came in and commandeered three tables at the rear of the room. All of the tension and animosity they had felt toward one another before the show had been forgotten, and within minutes their earsplitting laughter and swinish behavior had shattered the quiet, sophisticated atmosphere that had always been, at least for Bovard, the Candlelight’s main attraction in the first place. By the time the troupe ordered their second round, all of the other patrons had hurriedly paid their tabs and slipped out the door. Bovard turned and watched in disgust as one of the Lewises forced his tongue down the throat of one of the women. Now, it is a fact that a man will sometimes go to great lengths, even risk life and limb, to defend the sanctity of his favorite drinking hole; and so, when it finally became obvious that Forrester wasn’t going to do anything to restore order, the lieutenant decided it was up to him. Adjusting his officer’s cap, he staggered back to their corner, and, after giving them a thorough dressing-down that ended with a long quote from Horace, threatened to beat them all into bloody pulps unless they started acting decently. Within seconds, three of them, including one of the females, were pointing derringers at his head, and the bartender had his arms pinned behind his back and was gently but firmly escorting him to the door. “Sorry, sir,” Forrester said softly in his ear, “I don’t like ’em any more than you do, but they’ll spend more tonight than we usually take in all week.”
For a while, he walked aimlessly around town, sipping from a flask and trying to imagine the monument his parents would erect in his honor in the family plot when they received word of his death at the Front. That is, goddamn it to hell, if he ever got there! Eventually, he ended up down near the paper mill. He had just started to head back uptown when he spotted a light still on in the Blind Owl. Hoping Malone might be there, blotto and reliving all his old horrors again, he cut across the street and entered.
To his disappointment, there was no sign of the sergeant; the only customers were a shabby, middle-aged couple arguing at a table by the door. He ordered a whiskey and beer, and Pollard served him without a word, as usual. Probably because he was drunk and in a foul mood, Bovard pictured the barkeep, with his wide nose, his broad sloping forehead, and his flabby, hairy body, as a direct descendant of the chimpanzee he’d seen performing with that family of simpletons the other night over at the Majestic. He had read newspaper articles about the search in certain parts of the world for a suspected missing link; well shit, folks, here it is tending bar in Meade, Ohio. Bovard giggled to himself and sloshed his drink down the front of his uniform as Pollard tromped back to the other side of the room. Recalling the chimp then led him to thoughts of Lucas. Maybe he’d stop by the theater on his way back to the camp, see what he was up to. And he’d go visit Wesley tomorrow in the infirmary; he felt a twinge of guilt about leaving him so abruptly yesterday morning, without even saying goodbye. It was certainly no way for an officer to behave, no matter how much of a mess the boy had made of things.
Lost as he was in his own thoughts, Bovard didn’t hear the squabbling couple get up and leave, nor notice Pollard walk over and lock the front door. He picked up his beer mug to take a drink, and that’s when he saw in the mirror the barkeep standing close behind him. He didn’t even have time to blink before he was hit squarely in the temple with a fist twice the size of a normal man’s. A bright blast of light filled his head as he tumbled off the bar stool, and he vaguely felt his shoulder smack the wood floor. Then nothing.
“How do you like them apples, you sonofabitch?” Pollard said in a low, taunting voice. “Let’s hear ye laugh at me now.” He turned out the lamps and grabbed hold of the lieutenant’s boots and dragged him through the door that led to the back room. He went through his pockets and found some identification papers and a set of keys and thirty-four dollars in his wallet, along with two cigars in a leather case. Then he chained his arms and legs to the floor and stuffed a filthy rag in his mouth that he had used to wipe up some stains left by the late carpenter. Sitting down in a straight-backed chair, he lit one of the cigars and studied his latest victim. The soldier was tall, slim, and handsome. To Pollard, he looked like a ladies’ man, something he had never had a chance to be. Never had he been to a sweethearts’ dance, or had sexy words whispered in his ear, or slipped his finger up some panting girl’s hot gash. Hell, he’d never even been kissed by anyone other than his mother. He thought about the only time in his life that he’d ever dared to ask a woman out, some stupid shopgirl in Jackson. He was eighteen years old, and so scared he thought for sure he’d piss his pants. But he told himself she’d be crazy to turn him down; after all, she wasn’t any prize catch herself, with her double chin and the muddy brown birthmark on her forehead and the way her nose was squashed to one side. He had stood in the back of the shop on a Saturday evening for over an hour, sopped with nervous sweat and pretending to look at little trinkets while waiting on the place to empty out, and when it finally did, he marched to the counter on rubbery legs, feeling as if he was going to faint. Eager to seal the deal and get it over with, he blurted it all out in a rush, his invitation to go with him to a horseshoe-pitching tournament over in McArthur. Oh, how she had howled. Laughed so hard she choked on some sick, spat it in a wastebasket right in front of him. He’d run out the door and down an alley, knocked over an old bum who was picking through somebody’s trash. With the girl’s shrill laughter still ringing in his head, he had kicked the fucker’s ribs in, and it had felt so damn good just to hurt somebody else. Like this did. Then he leaned over and ground the stogie out on the palm of Bovard’s right hand.
58
CHIMNEY AWAKENED THE next morning with his arm around Matilda. It was the first time he’d ever woken up beside a woman, and he figured he’d remember this moment for the rest of his life, no matter how many more times it happened. He lay there for a minute, then got out of the bed. He put his clothes on and peeked through the flap, saw to his chagrin that the pimp and his man were sitting by the campfire drinking coffee and chuckling about something. To hell with them, he thought. Besides, he didn’t need to feel embarrassed; he had paid for it. Forty dollars for all night. The last time he had left the tent, to take a leak in the latrine out back, everything was shut down. It must have been four in the morning. The pimp was wrapped in
a blanket in the front seat of his car, and the bodyguard lay snoring in the bed of the wagon. The other two tents were dark, and as he walked by the one the French model slept in, he heard her mutter something about a rubber man. When he got back to Matilda’s tent, he saw to his disappointment that she had put on a nightgown. He tried to think of something to say, but he didn’t know anything about love talk, and so he asked her how she started whoring.
“It’s a long story,” she said, “and it’s late.”
“How about if I give you ten dollars?” Chimney said. “Would you tell me then?”
Raising up on one elbow, she looked at him. “Why would you want to know anything about me?” she asked.
He reached into his pants lying at the foot of the bed and laid a ten on the nightstand beside her. “Just tell me,” he said.
Sitting up in the bed, she pushed her hair back out of her eyes. “Well, it’s your money,” she said. She was born in West Virginia, and her father died from the black lung when she was eight, leaving her mother with seven kids and a twenty-dollar gold piece. A week after his funeral, she packed their two bags and headed north to find work in a cathouse where nobody knew her. By the time Matilda turned twelve, all of her siblings were gone—either dead or in jail or married off—and her mother was sick with cancer. The last place she ever worked, in Fort Wayne, kicked her out when the clients began to complain about her bad smell and lack of enthusiasm, and they ended up in Louisville. When they first walked into the tiny one-room house her mother had rented down by the canning factories, Matilda remembered her saying, as she glanced around at the black mold on the walls and the ossified pile of gray dog shit lying on top of the ripped mattress, “So this is what the end of the line looks like.” Within a week, she couldn’t get out of bed anymore. It took all her strength to get from the bed to the chamber pot, and even then she only made it half the time. By chance, she heard about a pimp named Blackie who was doing business out of a wagon on the edge of town, and she gave a colored girl who lived across the street one of her last dollars to go fetch him.
When Blackie finally arrived the next morning, her mother had begged him, “You got to take my girl for me.”
He looked down at the kid scrunched up in the corner of the filthy room. “She’s too young,” he said dismissively.
“Bullshit,” her mother said. “I had my first chap when I wasn’t much older than her. I never heard of a pimp that let something like that bother him.”
“I got a thing against men who make money off little girls.”
“Well, maybe she could clean up or run errands or what have ye. She’s a good worker.”
“Look, maybe you’re jumpin’ the gun here,” Blackie had said. “Hell, you might snap out of it in a day or two.”
“Sure, I’ll be back to screwin’ fifteen or twenty a night before you know it,” she panted between efforts to catch her breath.
Blackie sighed and ran a hand through his shiny, perfumed hair. “Jesus, don’t ye have somewhere else you could send her? What about family?”
“They’re all gone,” she said.
“How old are ye, girl?”
“She’s ten, maybe eleven,” her mother said. “I can’t recall exactly.”
“Can she talk?”
“I’m twelve,” Matilda spoke up.
“You awful tiny for twelve,” Blackie said.
“She don’t eat much,” her mother said.
“You sure about this? You don’t even know me.”
Her mother fell back onto the dirty, sweat-soaked pillow. “Don’t matter,” she wheezed. “Even you’d be better than stickin’ her in some orphanage.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Blackie said. “At least there—”
“I do,” her mother cut in. “I was raised in one.”
The pimp thought it over for a minute, then said, “Well, what the fuck. I reckon.”
Her mother took several deep gulps of air, then said, “Thank God. If I was in better shape, I’d…” She began weeping, and Blackie turned and looked out the window until she was finished. Wiping her eyes, she asked, “How many girls ye got now?”
“Three,” he said. “But the one’s not workin’ out. Can’t get her to take a bath. If’n ye didn’t know better, you’d think she had the rabies.”
It was the last time Matilda ever saw her mother. Two days after Blackie took her back to his camp, they packed up and moved to another part of the state. She had to give him credit; he had waited until she was almost fourteen before he turned her out. Her first customer was a rich boy whose daddy wanted him to have a little practice breaking in a virgin, so he’d know how to go about it when he married. “He paid three hundred dollars for my cherry,” she told Chimney. “Now I’m lucky to make five a day, once Blackie gets his share.” Leaning across the bed, she blew out the candle on the nightstand, then she reached for his hand in the dark and pulled him down onto the bed.
He was putting his boots on when he saw the cab pull in. The driver was delivering Blackie a newspaper and a box of pastries from Mannheim’s Bakery, as he did every morning. Chimney finished buttoning his pants and rushed out to catch a ride before he left. “Good Lord,” the cabbie said, “you’re still here?”
“Yep,” Chimney said, climbing into the car.
“Hey,” Blackie said to the driver, “hold on a minute. I got something for you.” The pimp went over to the campfire and laid the deliveries down on a stump. Then he took a knife from his pocket and unwrapped what was left of a roll of honey loaf. He cut off a thick slice and handed it to the cabbie. “You ever try this?”
“What is it?” the man said, taking a cautious sniff at the greasy meat.
“That ol’ bologna salesman called it honey loaf. It ain’t bad.”
The cabbie laid it on the seat next to him. “I better wait till my stomach settles down a little before I eat anything June Easter is selling. I appreciate it, though.”
“What’d ye do, get on a toot last night?” Blackie asked.
“Aw, I drank some rotgut my cheap-ass cousin brought over to the house. I should have known better. My ulcers, they can’t take it anymore.”
“You need to coat ’em with grease,” Blackie said. “That’s what my daddy always did. Gravy, butter, lard, whale’s blubber, you name it, he tried it.”
“Yeah, that worked for me, too, up until a couple years ago,” the cabbie said. “If I had any sense, I wouldn’t drink nothin’ but beer from here on out.” Then he put the car in gear and started down the lane.
Chimney sat in the backseat looking out at the tree-covered hills shining here and there with silvery frost, mist lying like smoke in the low places between them. He’d never noticed before how pretty the land was around here. Riding in the open car, the morning air was cold, and he shivered, reminded himself to buy a decent coat before they got to Canada. Then he smiled. There had been a moment last night with Matilda when he thought he was happier than he had ever been in his life; and if he could have a minute like that even once a week, he reckoned he’d be satisfied. Suddenly, the thought of all those men sticking their dicks inside her this weekend—she had told him that Friday and Saturday nights, when most of the soldiers got their passes, were her busy times—made him half sick. But then he caught hold of himself as they passed over the bridge, and tried to look at things realistically. Christ Almighty, she was a whore, and that’s how girls like that make their money. And was that any worse than being a killer and a thief, when it came right down to it? The question puzzled him. He was still debating it with himself when the cabbie said, “Which one did you screw? The yeller-haired one?”
“No,” Chimney said. “I was with Matilda.”
The Heavenly Table Page 32
