The Heavenly Table

by Donald Ray Pollock

  “Shoot, we don’t have no car. Do we, Theodore?” the older boy said. “Heck, we don’t even have a bicycle.”

  The quiet one glanced up quickly at the man in the lavender shirt, then back down at his feet. He shook his head.

  “What, two studs like you don’t have a car? I find that mighty hard to believe,” Chimney said.

  “No, it’s true, ain’t it, Theodore?”

  “Well, you ever rode in one?” Chimney said.

  “No,” the boy said. “We used to have a mule, but he got sick last year and Pap had to put him down.”

  Chimney looked up and down the short street. A few clapboard houses, the store, a post office, a granary. An old lady in a black dress and bonnet hanging out wash on a line. A three-legged dog sniffing around a stump. Christ, what a sad little place. Here the days would seem like weeks, and a stranger passing through would be talked about for months, maybe years. Even thinking about it made his eyes heavy. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If your wives don’t care, I’ll take ye all a ride.”

  The bigger boy laughed. “We don’t have no wives.”

  “Ah, so you’re still waiting on the right girl to come along.”

  “We don’t even like ’em, do we, Theodore?”

  “Well, that’ll change,” Chimney said. “You just wait and see.”

  “What about you?” the bigger boy asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Where’s your wife?”

  “Oh, well,” Chimney said with a grin, “we’re still courting.” He stuck the crank in the engine and gave it three turns. “How about it? I’ll drive ye up the road and back.”

  The boys looked wide-eyed at each other, then scrambled into the backseat as Chimney started the Ford. He pulled out of the store lot and drove west for several miles until they came to the outskirts of another burg called Bainbridge, then turned the car around in the middle of the dirt road. When he got back to the store, the boys climbed out reluctantly. They thanked him, and he started to pull out of the lot, but then stopped and waved them back. “Almost forgot,” he said. He pulled out some money and handed them each a five-dollar bill.

  “What’s this for?” the older boy asked, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Chimney said. “I might need a favor someday, and this way you’ll owe me.”

  “But we don’t even know your name, mister.”

  Chimney started to say Hollis Stubbs, but then he hesitated. For some reason, lying to these two didn’t feel right. They would be deceived enough in the next few years without him feeding them more bullshit. And after all, what would it hurt, telling them who he really was? He was leaving for Canada tomorrow, and would never see this place again. It would be something they could tell their kids about someday, about how they once took a ride with the famous outlaw Chimney Jewett. “If’n I tell ye, can you keep a secret?”

  “Sho we can. Me and Theodore keep secrets all the time, don’t we, Theodore?”

  Chimney looked over at the other boy, saw him nod his head solemnly. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the store clerk with his nose pressed up against the door glass watching them. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. “It’s Bill,” he said. “Bill Bucket.”

  63

  SERGEANT MALONE WAS called to Captain Fisher’s office right after mid-morning drills. On his way in, he passed First Lieutenant Waller coming out with a devious smile on his smoothly shaven face. “So what’s this about Lieutenant Bovard not showing up this morning?” Fisher asked, just before he spat a stream of tobacco juice into a large brass spittoon he kept beside his desk.

  “I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Malone said, still standing at attention.

  “Waller just told me you two are thick as thieves.”

  “That’s not true, sir. I had a couple of drinks with him once or twice, that’s all.”

  Fisher cast a skeptical look Malone’s way, then rang the spittoon again. Due to the country’s backward isolationist policies, most of his military career had been impatiently spent behind a desk, but last winter he’d finally seen some action, having been given the opportunity to serve as the chief interrogations officer with the 7th Calvary in Mexico during Pershing’s search for Pancho Villa. However, though the experience had been revelatory in many ways, and he’d never felt more alive than when he was down there, he was now having problems adjusting to being back stateside. He had begun to doubt even the most casual comment, and something as innocent as “Looks like rain today” might propel him on a weeklong witch hunt. In Mexico, fearful that he’d be sent back home if he failed to get results, he had occasionally gone a bit overboard; and the handle of his service revolver had five neat notches in it to mark the number of suspected sympathizers he had executed after his rather brief questionings failed to turn up any useful information about Villa’s whereabouts. To Fisher’s way of thinking, even if he was lucky, a man would still only experience war two or three times in his sixty or seventy trips around the sun, and he wasn’t about to waste any of the precious minutes allotted to him for combat with prolonged questioning of prisoners, especially those who babbled in a language he couldn’t make heads or tails of. No, when in doubt, the quickest and most efficient way to get at the truth was with a gun, but, as he had to keep reminding himself, the shit he’d pulled down in Chihuahua wouldn’t fly here. “Has he ever said anything about a man named Lucas Charles?” he asked the sergeant, as he opened a leather pouch and squeezed together a quid the size of a golf ball, tucked it in his jaw alongside the one he was already working on. “Some homo that runs one of the theaters in town?”

  Malone rubbed at his face while trying to decide how to answer the question. He’d heard the rumors about the lieutenant, but what did playing grab-ass with some funny boy have to do with anything? There probably wasn’t a man on the entire base who wasn’t a sick fucker in some way or another. “Look, sir,” he finally said, “I know he’s my superior, and I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but Lieutenant Waller’s worse than an old woman for spreadin’ gossip.”

  Fisher smiled a little then, baring his brown, ground-down teeth. “You mean he’s a liar?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d go so far—”

  “That’s all right, Sergeant,” Fisher said. “I had him pegged as a little deceiver from the get-go. Believe me, that backstabber wouldn’t have lasted five minutes down in Mexico. Someone, and I’m not saying who, mind you, would have put a hole in his head the first time he let his guard down to eat one of those goddamn tacos the old women were always trying to bribe us with.” He leaned back in his chair, stared at his boots for a moment. “But, that being said, I’m going to ask you one more time. Any idea where your buddy might be?”

  “No, sir, but I don’t think he’s gone AWOL. I’ve seen a few deserters in my time, and he just don’t strike me as the type.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Malone looked over at a tapestry hanging on the captain’s wall, burros and adobe huts and a couple of cacti, evidently a memento from the Mexican campaign. He recalled the way the lieutenant had paid attention to him the other night in the Blind Owl when he went into one of his trances and couldn’t stop talking. As if he couldn’t get enough. He was the first man who didn’t seem repulsed by Malone’s descriptions of the carnage at the Front. Hell, from the way his face lit up, you’d have thought he was listening to someone talk about a beautiful woman instead of overripe, headless corpses and rats the size of beagle dogs. “From everything I’ve heard him say, he’s keen as hell to get to France.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Yesterday around dinnertime. Mentioned something about going to the officers’ club. That’s really all I know.”

  Fisher bent down with a rag, wiped a speck of dust off the toe of one of his boots. “The general’s already on my ass about this. Though there’s been three other men skip out in the last two weeks, he’s the first officer,
and that doesn’t look good. We even talked about draggin’ that goddamn Franks out of that hospital where he’s hiding and putting one through his other eye, just to serve as an example, but there’s too many legal complications in the States. That’s what I liked about Mexico. A man could buy himself out of any kind of trouble down there with a sack of flour and a blanket.”

  “I see, sir.”

  The captain stopped talking and chewed away like a cow with a cud for a minute or two, then swallowed. “I’m going to give you an assignment, Sergeant Malone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to take a patrol into town every night until we get this cowardly bullshit stopped. You won’t answer to anybody but me. Pick out some men you think you can trust, say, ten or so. Be easy with the citizens, that is, if you can, but any soldiers you catch committing even the slightest infractions, I give you my permission to rough ’em up a little before you haul them to the brig. Understand?”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “One more thing,” Fisher said. “A little piece of advice I’ve learned along the way you might want to remember.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you happen to kill anybody, make sure they got a gun on ’em before the asshole authorities show up. That’ll save you a lot of headaches in the long run.”

  64

  EULA WAS IN the kitchen baking an apple pie, and Ellsworth was sitting on the porch smoking his pipe, when Sykes, the constable from Pike County who had dragged him off to jail over the cattle scam, drove into the yard. The farmer raised up in his rocker. Whenever the law shows up at your door uninvited, it can’t be good; and his immediate thought was that Eddie was in trouble. “Shit,” he muttered to himself, hoping Eula hadn’t heard the car pull in. Ever since those boys had left the other day, she had been unusually quiet, and whenever she did say anything, she was either wondering again why Eddie hadn’t written them a letter yet, or recalling another one of the compliments Junior had paid her. Ellsworth hurried toward the car before the lawman could get out. He noticed that an old man with a long beard sat in the backseat, just like he himself had last fall.

  To his surprise, Sykes told him that they’d caught the man who took his money last year. “Tried to pull the same thing on ol’ Stanley Starling over in Beaver,” he said, “but he was a little sharper than you were. Had him tied up and waiting on us when we got there. You don’t ever want to mess with Stanley. They say he could read and write before he was even born. Well, anyway, we got the bastard, but he done spent your money, I’m afraid. Calls himself Oren Malloy, but I’d bet a dollar that’s not his real name.” Then he sniffed the air. “Is that apple pie I smell?”

  “Might be,” Ellsworth said.

  “Apple’s always been one of my favorites,” Sykes said, glancing toward the house.

  Ellsworth ignored the hint, recalling that when he was locked up in the constable’s jail, on false charges no less, he had been given nothing to eat all that miserable day but a dab of cold okra spooned up from a common pot that a trustee carried along the row of cells. Instead, he asked in a low voice if by any chance he’d seen his son in Waverly. “Name’s Eddie. I heard a while back he might be runnin’ around down there with some young girl named Spit something or other and an old man plays a harp.”

  “Lord Christ,” Sykes said, “is that your boy? The one that was with ye when I had ye in the jail last year?”

  Ellsworth nodded. “Only got the one.”

  “Why, he surely has changed a bunch since then,” the sheriff said. “I didn’t even recognize him.”

  “So you have seen him?”

  “Oh, yeah. In fact, I took him and the old man down to the Ohio River the other day and dropped ’em off by the bridge. The girl slipped away before I could catch her, or I’d have got rid of her ass, too. That man, that’s Johnny Marks you’re talkin’ about. A damn drunk if ever there was one. What in the world’s your boy doin’ hanging around with him?”

  “I don’t know. He just took off one day, never said a word to his poor mother or me, either one.”

  “Well,” Sykes said, “I been in this business long enough to know that people sometimes do things that can’t be explained.”

  “What’d he do?” Ellsworth said.

  “Your boy? Oh, nothing much. Mostly, the store owners got to complaining about the racket they was making downtown. Johnny’s always thought of himself as a musician, but he couldn’t play a tune if his life depended on it. Far as your boy goes, he’s pretty much got a tin ear, too, though he’s not a bad dancer when he gets juiced up a little. Anyway, I hauled ’em off to give ’em a fresh start, so to speak. Just like I’m doing with this one here,” he said, hooking a thumb at the passenger in the back. “Only I’m a-takin’ this one to Meade. Just between you and me, I got to scatter ’em out a little bit, so my associates don’t get wise to it. But, heck, I can’t afford to feed every no-account that shows up in Pike County. That’s the reason I be up this way.”

  “He a music man, too?” Ellsworth asked, taking another look at the man in the backseat.

  “No, I caught him in Warren Gaston’s lumberyard after closing. Had the gall to tell me he was just following a bird that flew through there, but I figure it was more like he was snoopin’ around for something to stick in his pocket. Can’t hardly blame him, though. If I was in his shape, I’d probably take up stealing, too. Hell, he don’t even own a pair of shoes.”

  “A bird?” Ellsworth said. He stepped a little closer, saw that the old man was clothed in what appeared to be a robe. He had a far-off look in his eyes, and was picking something out of his beard.

  “Yep. That’s what he pointed to when I came up behind him, anyway. I called his bluff, though.”

  “What’d ye mean?”

  “I shot that thing so full of holes there weren’t enough feathers left to fill a thimble.”

  “What kind of bird?”

  “Oh, it was just a little white one. I got to say I never saw one like it before.”

  “You mean like that one there?” Ellsworth said, nodding at a small ivory-colored bird that had just landed on the hood of the automobile.

  Sykes sat silent for a minute, chewing his bottom lip, watching the bird preen itself. “That sure looks like it, but…but there’s no way in hell that’s the same one. Can’t be.” He mumbled something else that Ellsworth couldn’t hear, then pulled his service revolver from his holster and leaned out over the car door. He squinted and aimed carefully, his mouth shut tight in a determined grimace, then popped off two rounds fast. The bird burst into nothingness, leaving only a tiny splatter of shit on the hood ornament, and a single feather floating through the air. Sykes looked back at his prisoner and grinned. “I hope that wasn’t another one of your buddies,” he said, but the old man just kept on calmly combing his fingers through his beard.

  Right after that, the constable left, and Ellsworth walked back to the porch, sat down heavily in his rocker. Eula, who had heard the car pull up and was standing inside the parlor watching, came out and said, “What in the world was that all about?”

  “He stopped to tell me they caught the man who stole our money.”

  “Did he give you any of it back?”

  “Nope. It’s gone for good.”

  “I figured as much. Why’d he shoot that bird?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellsworth said, shaking his head. “Crazy, I guess. Claimed it and that ol’ boy in the backseat were going around stealing stuff. Something like that anyway.”

  “That don’t make no sense. A bird?”

  “Like I said, I think he’s crazy.”

  “So that’s all he had to say?”

  “That was it,” Ellsworth said, and she turned and went back into the house. Jesus, he didn’t know how much longer he could hide the truth about their son, or even why he still felt the need to do it. Each lie begat another, and the only purpose they served was to postpone the inevitable, because sooner or later it wa
s all going to come out. He should have been straight with her from the beginning, told her that Eddie wasn’t in the military the same day he’d found out himself. Now, however, thanks to Sykes, telling her would be twice as hard. A public nuisance dumped out along the Ohio River with some old drunk who sounded a lot like Uncle Peanut! No, he couldn’t do it, not today anyway. Maybe tomorrow, he told himself, after breakfast. But then, just as Eula stepped out on the porch and handed him a piece of pie on a plate, he looked up to see a bird, the color of new snow, fly from one of the oak trees in the front yard. He watched in amazement as it headed east along the road toward Meade, the same route the constable had taken, and suddenly, for a short time anyway, all the little worries and doubts and fears that ruled his life melted away, seemed to take flight along with the bird. “Sit down,” he said to Eula. “There’s something I need to tell ye.”

  65

  WHEN LESTER WALLINGFORD explained to his father why they had Sugar locked up, the police chief made a sour face and said, “How much shit we talkin’ about?” His nervous system was giving him fits, as it always was immediately after returning from a trip to see his mistress in Washington Court House, a former queen of the Highland County Bell Festival who seemed determined to suck the very lifeblood out of him with her demands. Neither of his sons nor his wife knew about the affair, but he was finding it harder and harder to keep it that way.

  Lester held his hand in the air. “Maybe yay high, that much around.”

  “He from around here?”

  “No, he claims he’s from Detroit, but I’d say he’s just a tramp from the looks of him.”

  “No money then?”

  “Only thing he had in his pockets was a razor and a couple of walnuts.”

  “Mrs. Grady’s, huh?”

  The son nodded. “She’s already called three times this morning. Wants him and Pollard both put in prison. She’s recommending five-year sentences, says she’ll get her brother-in-law to fix it up.” Mrs. Grady’s niece was married to a judge in Pickaway County, and she had used his influence several times to get her way when the law in Ross County seemed a bit reluctant to grant her wishes. Egbert Sterling, an amateur horticulturist who had beaten her out of first place for two consecutive years in the local flower show, was the latest victim of her wrath, and was now serving a six-month sentence for assault on a Pickaway County law clerk, even though the man had several witnesses testify at the trial that he was spreading lime in his garden at the time of the alleged attack. “She also told me to let you know that, from what she hears, Washington Court House is a regular Sodom and Gomorrah these days,” he said. “I think maybe she’s gone a little simple.”