The Heavenly Table

by Donald Ray Pollock

  “She said that?”

  “Her exact words.”

  Chief Wallingford sat down at his desk and swallowed a handful of aspirins, then poured a good inch of Sir Alistair’s Stomach Soother into a cup of coffee. He thought for a minute, not so much about Mrs. Grady, but about something his mistress had said that morning, about how if he didn’t leave his wife, she was going to make things rough on him. After he had moved heaven and earth to cover her worthless baby brother’s gambling debts! His only option was to go out to the Whore Barn tomorrow, see if he could squeeze a little bit more out of the pimp. A piece of jewelry would keep her happy for a couple more weeks anyway, maybe even longer if it was gaudy enough. Why had he ever gotten involved with the highfalutin bitch in the first place? He’d known as soon as he slipped his cock into her that he was doomed. It had always been his nature to feel a bit depressed after he got his gun off, but with Marjorie Flagstaff, he’d actually heard a death knell ring in his head the moment he’d rolled off of her. And now the old bitch Grady had found out. Goddamn it to hell. He’d be at her beck and call every minute of every day for who knew how long.

  “Dad?” Lester said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Wallingford said. “Take a wheelbarrow and a shovel down there and have him clean her yard up, then turn him loose.”

  “What about Mrs. Grady? She’s gonna—”

  “Jesus, Lester, I can’t keep a man in jail just because she’s got a bug up her ass.”

  “Well, where do you want me to have him put it?”

  “Goddamn it, boy, I don’t know. Have him dump it in the creek.”

  “The creek? Hell, I eat fish out of there.”

  “So? Won’t be no worse than what the paper mill puts in it. And you keep an eye on him until he’s finished, too, unless you want to do it.”

  “What about Pollard?”

  “It’s too early in the mornin’ to be thinking about that lowlife.”

  “But it’s almost three o’clock,” Lester said.

  “Son, just let me drink my coffee, will ye?”

  Lester found a cart with wobbly wheels and a shovel buried under a pile of unclaimed stolen property in the shed behind the jail, then went in and took Sugar out of his cell. He had the prisoner push the cart back to the scene of the crime while he followed behind in the police car. “You get that yard cleaned up, and you’re a free man.”

  “I don’t see why—” Sugar started to say, but the look on the cop’s blank face told him he’d be wasting his breath arguing. “Where you want me to put it?”

  The policeman pointed down the alley to the creek bank. “You’ll have to take it down there, dump it in the water.” Then he took out his pocket watch and checked the time. “Now look, I got things to do tonight, so let’s get moving. I don’t want to see nothin’ but elbows and assholes, understand?” Then he leaned back in the front seat of the car and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

  At four o’clock, Sugar upended the last load of waste into Paint Creek. He’d kept waiting for Pollard to come around, so he could sling a shovelful in his face, but he never showed up. After waking Lester, he took the cart and the shovel back to the jail and hosed them off before he was officially released. Sugar stuck his razor in his pocket and tossed the nuts away, then headed for the colored section of town where he’d bought his bowler, thinking he might run into the whore with the wart on her lip again. If possible, he wanted to find someone to shack up with for a couple of days, so he could rebuild his strength before he proceeded on to Detroit. Walking down an alley, he happened to see the old man who had given him the drink of water just a few days ago. He was sitting on the ground at the edge of his garden with a sad look on his wizened, charcoal gray face. Of course, Sugar didn’t know, and if he had, he wouldn’t have given a damn, but the old man had just dug up the last of his turnips, a yearly event that always brought him much pain. It meant that cold weather was right around the corner; and within a few more weeks, he’d be shut up tight in two cramped rooms with his old woman until the spring thaw. Imagine, he’d told his daughter the last time she came down from Lima for a visit, being trapped in a coffin with your worst enemy. That’s what the winters were like for them now. By the middle of February, they’d both have murder on their minds. Sugar kept on walking; and the old man got up and went around the yard looking for a rat to beat on, but he couldn’t find one.

  66

  THE CHURCH BELLS chimed six o’clock just as Chimney headed into the park to meet up with his brothers. As he approached them seated on the bench, he saw, to his consternation, that Cob was wearing a pair of goggles just like the ones he carried in the pocket of his duster. “What the fuck?” he said to Cane. “You bought him those just to piss me off.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Cane said. “He got ’em on his own. I wasn’t nowhere around.” It was true. Cob was already gone when he woke up this morning, even though Cane had told him yesterday not to leave again without letting him know first. His first thought was to go on the hunt of him, but then he figured what the hell. Chances were he was with his inspector buddy, and if he wanted to spend his last day here poking around in outhouses, that was his business. Looking forward to a little time of his own, Cane had taken a hot bath, then eaten a leisurely breakfast at the Mount Logan Café. He was finishing his waffles when the well-dressed man who had been with the girl from the bookstore last night walked in and sat down at the counter. Cane watched Sandy order a cup of coffee, then complain to the waitress in an acidy tone that it was cold. As Cane walked out of the diner, an urgent need to see the girl one more time before they headed for Canada suddenly came over him. He began walking toward the bookstore. He would ask for her address, he vowed right before he got to the door, write her a letter once they were settled. But to his disappointment, she wasn’t working. Instead, there was a palsied, half-blind gentleman in her place, sitting behind the counter with a woolen scarf wrapped around his thin, wrinkled neck, reading a yellowed pamphlet with a magnifying glass. Cane figured he must be the father she’d mentioned, though he seemed rather ancient to have a daughter her age. He ended up buying a copy of The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, though he didn’t know for sure what an “essay” even was, and then walked back to the McCarthy to find out. As far as the girl went, by midday he realized how stupid he had been going back there again. What the hell had he been thinking? There was no way a woman like her would ever be interested in someone like him. Even he knew that the suit he was wearing didn’t fit right.

  “I don’t want no dirt in my eyes,” Cob explained to Chimney. He had showed up at the hotel around four o’clock wearing the goggles and limping badly again from all the walking he and Jasper had done.

  Chimney shook his head, but didn’t say anything. He had too many other things on his mind right now to even give a damn. All afternoon, he’d been planning what he was going to say to Matilda, had probably recited the little speech twenty times by the time he left the hotel room. He was prepared to offer Blackie all the money he had on him—$316.00—for her freedom, but just in case the pimp caused any trouble, he was taking his Smith & Wesson tonight instead of the Remington. He had the duster buttoned so that Cane wouldn’t notice the bulge of it in his pants.

  “We all set for in the morning?” Cane said.

  “Just tell me the time and the place.”

  “I’m thinkin’ we should get an early start. Let’s figure you pick us up around daylight at the entrance to the park.”

  “What about the horses?”

  “We’ll just leave ’em. Couldn’t get nothing much out of them anyway.”

  “Shit, I still got to get my rifle,” Chimney said. “I damn near forgot about it.”

  “Well, do that ’fore you pick us up.”

  Chimney nodded and started to leave, then stopped and looked back at them. He thought of the two boys he’d met earlier today in Bourneville, and it occurred to him that neither of his brothers had ridden in the Ford yet. Oh, well, by the
time they got to Canada, they’d probably be sick of bouncing around in it. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  “We’re gonna try us some lobster,” Cane said, “and then go back to see that monkey again.”

  “Mr. Bentley,” Cob said.

  “Lobster? What’s that?”

  “It’s sort of like a crawdad, only bigger,” Cane explained. “Cob saw a bunch of ’em yesterday in a water tank in the window at a place uptown, and they reminded him of Willie the Whale. Remember him?”

  “Who could forget anybody that goddamn stupid?”

  “I bet ye I can eat four or five of ’em, no problem,” Cob said.

  “So I expect you’re headed back out to see the girls?” Cane asked.

  “Just the one,” Chimney said. “Just the one.” Then he turned and walked away before any more questions were asked.

  Twenty minutes later, Cane and Cob passed by a group of soldiers on horseback gathered around the front of the courthouse. Wondering what they were up to, Cane stopped his brother and casually lit a cigar, listened to a man with a thick black mustache tell the others that their main objective was to find a Lieutenant Bovard. Apparently, he’d been missing since sometime yesterday. Satisfied that the patrol had nothing to do with them, the brothers walked on and entered Goldman’s Restaurant, advertised in the window as THE PREMIER DINING EXPERIENCE IN SOUTHERN OHIO. A man in a slightly frayed tuxedo sat at an out-of-tune piano, sipping from a paper bag and picking out melancholy notes like might be played by a guilt-ridden ax murderer in the wee hours. After debating whether or not to even acknowledge the two’s presence, a waiter in a white coat led them to a table under the chandelier in the middle of the room, then rather disdainfully placed leather-bound menus in their hands. Though Curtis Skiver had grown up the son of a penniless wheelwright in nearby Massieville, his years serving as head maître d’ at Goldman’s had gradually caused him to forget his roots, and he absolutely detested waiting on hicks nowadays. Besides being ignorant of the most basic table etiquette, they ordered the cheapest item on the menu and never left a tip. However, when the one in the cheap suit asked for eight lobsters, along with boiled potatoes and slaw, an entire plate of macaroons, and the most expensive bottle of champagne on the list, he perked up a bit. Perhaps Mr. Goldman was onto something after all. Curtis had thought it ridiculous when his boss had him order two dozen of the lowly crustaceans from Boston, but the old man (he was always bragging that he was an innovator, a man ahead of his time, though for what reason, Curtis had never been able to figure out) had boldly claimed that with the right marketing, lobster could be turned from a food looked upon as fit only for the lower classes into a delicacy sought after by the rich. And though the waiter insisted that the pair show him proof up front that they could pay for such an expensive spread, to his credit he subsequently took it upon himself to show them how to crack the shells and dig out the meat and dip it into the special sauce that Goldman hoped to someday peddle in groceries all over America.

  Cane and Cob were still sitting at the table with white napkins tucked into their shirts when Sugar walked by the window and casually glanced inside. Perhaps because he was so weak from hunger—the only thing he had eaten in several days was a bowl of soup in the jail made from carrot scrapings and potato peelings—it took him a moment to realize that he was looking right at two of the bastards who had shot the hell out of his beloved bowler, two of the same men pictured on the wanted poster that the pack of white motherfuckers down at the river showed him right before they tossed him over the bridge like a sack of garbage, and on that other flyer he’d seen hanging inside the jail just today. They looked different—for one thing, the cowpoke shit was gone—but he was almost positive it was them. He went across the street and hunkered down in the doorway of an empty storefront and waited, wondering where the skinny one might be. Thirty minutes ticked by before they came out of the restaurant chewing on toothpicks. The fat one was limping, and Sugar remembered the rag wrapped around his leg. It was them, no doubt about it. He followed them around the corner to a theater, watched them stand in line to buy tickets and then go inside. Not sure yet how to proceed, he stood down the street half a block and waited. Fifty-five hundred dollars, that’s what the poster had said. He smiled to himself. After all the torment and trouble he’d been through in the past week, things were finally starting to look up.

  67

  JUST AS THE still slightly baffled waiter at Goldman’s was handing Cane his change from a hundred-dollar bill, Chimney walked out of a florist’s shop called Charley’s with a dozen red roses just shipped in from Florida by train, and laid them on the front seat of the Ford. A man who’d come to the Whore Barn last night bearing a single wilted carnation for Peaches had given him the idea. By this time, he had gone from thinking he would offhandedly offer Matilda a way out of whoring to figuring this was the most important night of his life, and he wanted to make the best impression possible. He tried not to worry, but he was growing more apprehensive by the minute. What if she refused him? How should he react? And what if the pimp wouldn’t let her go? What then? He started the car, wondering as he turned the crank if he should put the top up, then decided he could do that later. Distracted by all the questions and doubts running through his head, he nearly collided with a couple of soldiers on horseback while making a U-turn in the street. Ignoring their curses, he continued south down Paint Street toward the Whore Barn, but then, just as he got to the paper mill, he decided he better have a drink to settle his nerves before going any farther. The only bar around was the Blind Owl, that dismal joint he and Cane had stopped at right after meeting Matilda for the first time, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he was going to hang out there all evening. He pulled the Ford over and shut off the engine, sat for a minute going over the speech again that he planned to dazzle her with once they were alone in the tent. The sun was beginning to set when he got out of the car and went inside. The place was empty, and only one coal-oil lamp was lit to lessen the gloom. Even it was doing little but sputtering blackish fumes. He was just sitting down on a stool when the keep came out of the back room with a sullen look on his face. “A shot and a beer,” Chimney said, pushing his derby back on his head and resting his skinny arms on top of the bar.

  “Only if ye got fifty cents,” Pollard said.

  “Don’t worry, I got the money.”

  “You know how many times I’ve heard that shit?”

  Reaching in his pocket, Chimney brought out a twenty-dollar gold piece and slapped it down on the bar. Pollard stared at it for a moment, then drew a beer from a tap and poured two skinny fingers of whiskey in a glass he’d rinsed in his mop bucket a couple of hours ago. He should have locked up, he thought. After pulling off one of the lieutenant’s ears with a pair of tongs—goddamn, he didn’t think it would ever come loose!—he had just decided to snip the other one off with a pair of wire cutters when he heard the front door squeak open; and now he felt a bit put-upon by this sonofabitch, the same as if he’d been a normal person interrupted in the middle of making love to a woman he’d just met out catting around, but whose husband was due home by nightfall.

  Chimney overlooked the bartender’s surly attitude; he recalled the fucker had acted the same way the last time he was in here. Instead, he sipped the beer and studied himself in the mirror. He’d always known that he wasn’t what the women called handsome—God knows, the fucking newspapers had made that clear enough—but he thought if he gained some weight and grew a mustache, maybe he’d look good enough for a whore to love. Once they got to Canada and quit all the running, maybe he’d even buy a set of those Indian clubs he’d seen in a store window uptown, start building up his muscles. He figured there wasn’t anything a man couldn’t do in life if he put his mind to it and didn’t allow silly everyday shit to distract him.

  Pollard wiped his hands on a wet rag and made the boy’s change. He stared at his tan duster, the purple shirt, the striped pants, the hat cocked back at a
jaunty angle. If he didn’t already have one chained up in the back, he’d love to work on this little bastard stinking of shaving lotion and store soap. Another goddamn ladies’ man. Images of the shopgirl laughing at him flickered in his head like a picture show, and it suddenly occurred to him that there was no reason he couldn’t do two at the same time. Let this one watch while he made the other skirt-sniffer small enough to fit into a bucket. Who knew? It might be nice to have an audience.

  “Looks like things is kinda slow,” Chimney said.

  Pollard ignored the remark and looked out the window. “That Ford out there, does that belong to you?” he asked Chimney.

  “Yeah, it’s mine.”

  “How much it cost ye?”

  “I forget.”

  “Well, you better keep an eye on it,” Pollard said. “Lot of thieves around here since they opened that goddamn army base.”

  “He be a sorry sonofabitch whoever tries to steal from me.”

  “Is that right?” the bartender said, suddenly lighting up. “You talk mighty big for someone your size.”

  “I ain’t afraid to fight, if that’s what you mean,” Chimney said.

  “Well, then, tell me what you’d do to them.”