Feast for Thieves

by Marcus Brotherton

  Deuce Gibbons heard it at his house and shop south of town. He quit working odd jobs for Oris Floyd and began his own construction company to take advantage of all the additional building projects going on in the area. He enjoyed his time on the deacon board and seldom visited the Sugar House anymore, except when a good fight was expected to break out.

  The widow Mert Cahoon heard the bell over at her new apartment in town. In addition to her secretary duties, she was still selling her canning and quilts. Still working her mail route, and still driving the school bus. And she was still secretary of the church. That was for certain. Most days when I saw her at the office she greeted me with a smile. Right after she told me I was late—and late again!—that is.

  They heard the bell at the new casino and tavern and hotel and restaurant. The monstrosity was nearly built and set to open next October. Oh, they had their supporters and their detractors. On one hand, folks said change was good for business. On the other, folks said a business like that was nothing needed in this state. But the monstrosity was happening like it or not, and there was no way of stopping it, and that made Mayor Oris Floyd exceptionally happy, which worked out to everyone’s advantage all around.

  They heard the bell at the jailhouse where Deputy Roy was still convinced I was an evil influence on the town.

  They heard it at the laundry mat and lumberyard.

  They heard it at the livery and feed store, and Oris Floyd could even hear it far up at his house northeast of town.

  I rang that bell and I felt at home. This was my job, my calling, and I finished ringing the bell just as the sheriff showed up.

  “You ready for this, Rowdy?” he said.

  “I am.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go face the day of your reckoning.”

  Well, in the evening after the day of my trial, they held a party for me at the Pine Oak Café so the town’s folks could stop by and say hello, shake hands all around, and celebrate the verdict. My trial was exceedingly short—far shorter than expected—and when the gavel fell, my sentencing was done right on the spot, and it turned out to be a grand total of one year’s probation. That was it.

  There was no question of my guilt—at least to a few of those charges. They could have put me in the chair and set it to fry, or at least thrown me away for thirty years, but after all the evidence from the facts and witnesses got legally sorted through, all I received in the end was the Texas State judicial system’s equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Now it may have been due to the extenuating circumstances surrounding the first crime, or because I was an unwilling accomplice for the second crime, or because I was the fella who returned the stolen money from both bank jobs, but I reckon I’ll never ascertain why my judge proved so lenient. When a man receives such mercy, I suspect there’s far more that goes on behind the scenes than can ever be told.

  Augusta Wayman cooked up a real buffet spread for the party. She held nothing back and the theme was all the food folks in Texas like to eat. The first table was laden with appetizers. There were armadillo eggs and beef tacos, black bean dip and broiled brunch grapefruit. There were thick cheese enchilada puffs and a big bowl of smoky cocktail links with corn dip. Another bowl contained spicy marinated shrimp flown in that morning from the Gulf coast, and another bowl held mushroom rolls. And that was just for starters.

  Another table was solely devoted to beef main courses. There was beef chili and cowboy brisket and flank steak with pineapple salsa. Next to that sat a platter of grilled flank steaks and alongside of that was a plate of tamale-and-frito-pie, and there were barbecued spareribs and barbecued burgers and then came the chicken.

  Oh, there were barbecue wings and hot-and-spicy wings and chicken and dumplings and turkey potpie. There was skillet chicken and lime chicken burritos and honey barbecue baked chicken and plain old fried chicken and hash. There were salsas and pickles, relishes and salads, sauces and marinades, and soups and stews. After that came dessert.

  There was but one dessert.

  Augusta called it Peach-Lime Cornmeal Shortcake, and she described the ingredients in the same easygoing motion as she lay down plateful after plateful to all who came near. “Four cups fresh peaches—canned if it’s all you can muster.” She dabbed her forehead with the corner of a serving towel. “One tablespoon fresh lime juice. One cup cold heavy cream.” The shortcake flaked in all the right places, still warm from the oven. The peaches dripped over the side, serious in their syrup. Another layer of fruit followed underneath with cream so buttery everyone who ate it swore it came straight from the cow that morning. Another solid foundation of shortcake held it in place from the bottom up, and when I ate mine I cleaned my plate and sat back and loosened my belt. I’d arrived in the culinary sweet spot, and I didn’t want to ever leave.

  As I patted my belly and wished I could fit in another piece, I reflected back on the trial, how more than twenty men from the town of Cut Eye testified on my behalf. They said that through my leadership and by the influence of the Word of God and the power of the Spirit, they’d become better men. More than fifteen gals testified on my behalf too, even the three elderly ladies from the church who insisted—under oath—that I was still preaching heresy. But they’d gotten accustomed to my strange ways of ministering and wanted me back in the pulpit as soon as possible, they did.

  My year’s probation would need to be served in close proximity to a jailhouse and a lawman, insisted the judge. That meant each week I needed to check in with the jailhouse, and only with a lawman’s permission could I travel more than a hundred miles away from my hometown. Halligan Barker stepped right up and volunteered to be my probation officer. We would keep right on meeting each week as part of my continued job functions, he explained to the judge.

  Later, when I asked Halligan what my continued job function was going to be, he said, “Exactly what you’re doing now, of course. What’d you expect? It ain’t easy to hire a new preacher in Texas.”

  At the party, Gummer called everyone together and announced that he had a gift for me. He knew all along I wasn’t going to fry, and so he’d been working on it in his spare time. It was parked right out in front, and he took me outside with the crowd of townsfolk following along behind.

  Gummer’s gift was another DUKW. He had bought it cheap at a surplus auction, and the huge, green, six-wheel-drive vehicle was as ugly as the day was long and exactly like the other DUKW I drove—except for one thing. Gummer had sawed off the trailer hitch.

  “So you cannot haul any more large German guns,” he said in his clipped accent, and everybody laughed at the trouble I’d seen.

  Well, I didn’t want to travel more than a hundred miles away from Cut Eye anyway, even if I had the chance. Since I wasn’t going to jail for the rest of my life, that meant that Sunny could come and live with me at the parsonage if she wanted to.

  Emma and Gummer and I worked out a plan. We agreed it was good for my daughter to be around other children, particularly if they were Hackathorns, so she’d eat breakfast with me and then spend the rest of each day with Emma and the gang while I worked. We’d eat dinner together again at the café, Sunny and me, and then she’d sleep each night in the front room in the parsonage, the one with the cots and crib in it. Although I was taking the crib out and putting it in storage. For now, anyway. A man never knew what the future might hold forth.

  Sunny liked that idea real fine, she told me, in words as clear as any child ever spoke. She was looking forward to beginning kindergarten in the fall. And on the evening I asked her about coming to live with me, she asked, “Why would I live with my uncle?” So I explained some things to her, enough for now. And when she found out I was her real daddy she hugged me tight for a long, long time.

  EPILOGUE

  Early one morning near the end of May 1947, two months after my trial, Bobbie and I drove in her jeep east along the Grayson-Gregg Road, which lies a couple miles south of town off of Highway 2.

  The sun was not yet up an
d the road turns into gravel before long. Few folks ever travel this direction. I slowed the jeep to 20 and kept a sharp lookout for any deep ruts that were made in last spring’s heavy rainstorm, the storm that filled the river with rage and began the trajectory of my change from incorrigible paratrooper to country preacher, seemingly so long ago now.

  Bobbie talked while I drove, and I gave the occasional grunt of affirmation. She chatted about nothing and everything—it seemed more monologue than conversation—and all the while she kept looking to her right, far away from me, southward out over the cool fields of prickly pear cacti that dot the rolling hills of the lower Edward Plateau.

  Tucked in the back of the jeep was a picnic breakfast hand-packed the evening before and sent our direction with love from Augusta Wayman. It seemed everyone in town was urging me to strike the right mood and say something while I still had the chance, anything that might prompt Bobbie to change her mind about leaving. Course, they knew it was hopeless. They all knew Bobbie feared Jesus, and they were learning to respect the ways of a mysterious God, just like I was learning, particularly when God seems to be directing two folks together or keeping them apart.

  At mile thirty Bobbie whapped me with the back of her hand on my accelerator knee and nodded ahead toward the distance.

  “There,” she said. “Just over that rise. Up ahead is what I wanted you to see, Rowdy. Stop the car and we’ll walk the last bit.”

  The sun’s rays were coloring the skies of the eastern horizon now, straight in the direction we were driving, and I pulled the jeep over, switched off the headlights, and pulled the key out of the ignition. She reached up to the red ribbon in the back of her hair to make sure it wasn’t mussed, then brought her hands down and smoothed the pleats of her dress.

  She was wearing this blue-checked country job that looked mighty swell on her willowy frame. The dress tapered around her waist, and she was keeping the skirt of the dress tucked underneath her legs to keep it from billowing in the breeze of the open jeep. She fluffed out the skirt, then sat perfectly still until I remembered my manners and shuffled around the front of the jeep and over to her side, gave her my hand, and helped her out.

  Not like the girl ever needed help from me, I thought. I’d come to know this girl as a true sassafras, that she was, a right capable and free-thinking girl. Yet she didn’t let go of my hand when we started walking away from the jeep neither, and I certainly didn’t let go of hers. Bobbie’s hand felt warm and small inside mine, and I wondered how long it might be before she remembered her propensity toward independence and let go. I decided to speak first, while I still had a shot, and cleared my throat.

  “Mert wants to know if you’re still bound to go to Haiti and be a missionary.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched for Bobbie’s reaction. She was still looking far off to the right, far off away from me, and she said simply, “So, Mert wants to know, does she?”

  We walked a few more steps and I cleared my throat again and added, “Well, she’s not the only one.”

  Oh, for ever so many years I’ve always been so confident with the opposite gender. I’ve never been the fella to clear his throat before speaking, never been the one to mince at words. But with Miss Bobbie, and what I needed to lay on the line this morning, all was different. Sure, I knew the plan. I knew it well. I’d been thinking it through, wandering around it, scratching my head and pondering if anything might be different. But it was no use.

  When the spring was over in a few short days the girl was still headed off to language school in Dallas for all of next year. Her particular course of study began earlier than most—at the start of June, not the start of fall—so as to stretch in a longer frame of studying. The university was a fourteen-hour drive away, maybe more like sixteen, and surely we were bound to see each other at holidays when she came home, but it wouldn’t be much.

  Worse yet was when that next year was over her plans were now set more firmly than ever. Those plans involved a train ride from Texas to Florida, and from Florida a boat ride south to Port-au-Prince where she was already contracted to work as a nanny in an orphanage. That was another year of her being away. Maybe two, if they liked her work and extended the contract, which they was sure to do. Dang her competence. Worst of all yet was that it might even be more time away—maybe a lifetime. Going to Haiti for an indeterminate stretch of time was what God was laying on Bobbie’s heart to do, and I wasn’t one to fight against God no more.

  “So … uh,” I said, “what I’m asking directly is that when you reckon your time in the orphanage is over … uh, whenever that is … if things might change for you then.”

  “Well,” Bobbie said—and here she glanced my direction, then quickly looked the other way again, out to the fields, far away from me. “I guess any plans can change.”

  Oh, she was a sassafras. A real sassafras. We were silent for another ten paces and we’d nearly crested the hill when Bobbie let go of my hand and stopped abruptly.

  “The surprise is just over there,” she said. “I should have brought something to tie your sight with. You need to close your eyes the rest of the way, Rowdy—promise me you’ll keep your eyes shut tight until I say when. Promise. Okay?”

  I inhaled sharply. I knew no man who hankers for surprises. But I nodded anyway and in faith scrunched tight my eyes. She grabbed hold of my hand again to guide me the last steps. Together we walked to the top of the hill.

  “Open,” she said.

  On the other side lay an ocean of coreopsis blooms as far as the eye could see—that brash yellow flower that looks like a black-eyed Susan. Everywhere I looked was carpeted with bright and golden yellow; a sprinkling of red gaillardia mixed in with the blooms, and scattered underneath were smudges of green prairie grass. With the sun coming up, everything was haphazard and crazy and untamed and stunning, and I marveled at how such a sight of beauty ever grew in the desert. There must have been a spring nearby to water this one particular field and provide it with so much color. I looked at the field a long, long time, and then I looked at Bobbie.

  She was already looking at me.

  I closed my eyes and pulled her close and breathed her in. Both her hands were held up around my chest and she clenched her hands and gave me a little pound with her fists, her body tense in my arms. Then she settled down and settled in, and she wrapped her arms around me in return.

  This time I kissed her first. I didn’t know if a girl like Bobbie Barker could ever truly love a man like me, even changed as I was, but this time she didn’t slap me nor turn away, but instead kissed me right back. All this kissing made me more certain things would work out one day between this girl and me. I would marry her when the time was right. I just didn’t know when.

  “I’m still going away,” she murmured in the midst of my mouth.

  “I know,” was all I said.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Meet the man who inspired the character of Reverend Rowdy

  Over the past six years, I’ve interviewed World War II veterans for various nonfiction projects, mostly related to the Band of Brothers (E Co, 506th PIR, 101st A/B), the elite group of paratroopers who jumped into Normandy and fought their way through Europe.

  During the process, I discovered the story of a man named Wayne “Skinny” Sisk. Not much is known about him and he’s deceased now, although he’s mentioned a few times in historian Stephen Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers. I attempted to contact Mr. Sisk’s relatives but was never able to track them down. Nor is anyone in Easy Company still in contact with them that I know.

  From talking with other veterans who knew him, I learned that Skinny Sisk was generally thought of as “Easy Company’s best yet most incorrigible paratrooper.” It isn’t known exactly how he was incorrigible, but we know that Skinny had a genuinely warm streak through him as well.

  We know he was well liked because, a few years back, I wrote a book about Shifty Powers, the sharpshooter in the company. Shifty was the warmheart
ed family man whom everyone in the company loved and respected, and Shifty’s son in real life today is named Wayne, in Skinny Sisk’s honor. So if Shifty Powers thought well of Skinny Sisk, then Skinny Sisk was genuinely a good-hearted guy, incorrigible as he may have been.

  From Ambrose’s book, we also know that Skinny was one of the first privates in Easy Company who trained at Camp Toccoa. Skinny had a good sense of humor and broke the tension during the flight to Normandy by asking the men in his plane, “Does anybody here want to buy a good watch?” (which brought a roar of laughter to the men). Once, while on the march on the Cotentin Peninsula, the men traversed by the body of a dead man whose hand was sticking out in the air, and Skinny shook hands with the corpse. While on a special mission in Austria immediately after the war’s end, Skinny helped track down and execute a high-ranking German officer.

  Ambrose recorded that after the war Skinny had a hard time shaking his war memories. Skinny turned to alcohol, that generation’s drug of choice, and was often seen drunk and hungover.

  Then in 1949, Skinny experienced a genuine spiritual conversion when his four-year-old niece shared the gospel with him. Skinny repented, chose to follow Jesus, and was later ordained into pastoral ministry. He wrote to his commander, Dick Winters, “I haven’t whipped but one man since, and he needed it.”

  The Reverend Skinny Sisk lived and ministered in West Virginia. He died in 1999.

  The example of Skinny Sisk inspired the creation of this novel’s main character, Rowdy Slater. Every other detail about Rowdy’s life has been fictionalized, including the company he fought with, and none of the specifics of Skinny’s life were used in this novel. Other than the mention of Colonel Robert Sink as commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, every other character, plot line, and conversation in the book is purely fictitious.