The Heavenly Table (28 page)

“I ain’t got no money,” Sugar remembered telling the man.

“Sho you ain’t,” the old man said, nodding his head and grinning, his toothless gums a wet pink that made Sugar queasy all over again. “Spent it all last night, I expect. I ’member when—”

“Can I have a drink or not?”

“Sho you can,” the old man said. “Got a well right there.”

There was a rat swimming around on top of the water when Sugar lifted the wooden top, and the old man scooped it out with a shovel and started beating it to death; and watching him go after it like he did, yipping and bashing and pounding on it like he was getting back at every dirty bastard who had ever done him wrong, made Sugar think about the white woman again. It wasn’t his fault he had gone crazy on her; shit, she would still be alive if Flora hadn’t kicked him out. She was the one to blame, her and that goddamn baby-faced nigger she was fucking. He watched the old man pick up the bloody gob by the tail and fling it over into a neighbor’s yard, and then he got down on his knees and washed the whore’s smell off his face and drank until his belly felt like it was going to burst. A few minutes later, he was on his way out of town, heading for Kentucky.

That had been just yesterday morning, and now here he was standing in the middle of a lonely road miles away from the old man’s well and staring down at his hat sieved with bullets and flat as a pancake. Insects buzzed madly in the weeds and a bird called out weakly in the heat. He almost wished he had taken the farmer up on his offer. A dollar a day wasn’t much, but at least he’d still have his bowler. He began moving again, feeling the most awful pity for himself. As far back as he could remember, there hadn’t been a day when he wasn’t yearning for something he didn’t have. And that wore a man down after so many years, fighting that feeling day after day without any letup. Why couldn’t he ever be satisfied? Why did he keep fucking up? Suddenly he stopped and looked up into the sky. “Lawd,” he sobbed, “please, Lawd, I don’t want to live like this no more. I’m not a-lyin’ this time, I swear. I just want to see my folks now. You help ol’ Sugar through this one and I promise you…” He searched his mind for what he could pledge, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be. “I promise you…” he began again, but then he stopped. He had nothing of his own to offer. Even the little bit of money in his pocket was somebody else’s. A murdered woman’s, no less. He was nothing but a bum, a goddamn, worthless bum. Not once in his life had he ever done anything worthwhile. Wiping at his eyes, he took a deep breath to steady himself and continued on.

Before he was around the next curve the cravings kicked in again, and he beat his head with his fists until his nose and lips were bleeding and his clothes soaked with sweat. Exhausted, he dropped his arms to his sides and cast a hopeless look down the empty road. He was completely and utterly alone. “Lawd, ol’ Sugar…” he started to implore again, but then he realized, with a start, what he needed to do to make a clean break from his old life. It was so clear to him now, what he had to pledge. He
did
have a proper name, had been baptized with it in Finfish Creek when he was but three months old. And from this day forward, he was going to use it again. George. George Milford. Sugar was just some fool nickname a dirty whore had cursed him with, but no more. His pace quickened as the idea took hold. “What’s your name?” he asked himself in a strained, high-pitched voice. “George,” he answered in his own deep baritone, “George Milford.” He repeated this a number of times, letting it wrap around him, the old name salvaged from the past and the saving grace it would surely bring him in the future. He should have been in jail awaiting the hangman’s noose, or, if not that, lying with a bullet in his head back there in that field. But no, the Lord had kept him safe, been keeping him safe all along. Then he stopped and watched openmouthed as the most beautiful sunset he could ever recall unfurled like a richly colored carpet across the sky. He had been staring at it for several minutes before he noticed, off in one corner, a swatch of the golden shore that his mother used to talk about all the time. Dropping to his knees, he was just getting ready to sing the Great Redeemer’s praises when a hornet as big around as his thumb smacked him in the face and drove a black stinger deep into the fleshy tip of his nose; and before he could catch himself, he was clawing at his stinking skin again and screaming curses at Flora and all the other dirty motherfuckers who had ever done him wrong and begging the Devil for just enough liquor—a drop, a spit, a spoonful—to make his pain, his endless, endless pain, go away, if only for the time it took to get around the next bend.

39

W
HEN
E
LLSWORTH FINALLY
came in from the field, Eula didn’t say anything about seeing a colored boy lurking about, and so he decided not to mention his encounter with the one on the road. He was glad now that he hadn’t hired him. It would have been just another thing for her to worry about. Even so, harvesting corn by hand was hard work even for a young man, and Ellsworth, being convinced all day that the lazy bastard was watching him from the woods, was completely gutted from trying to show him how it was done. Not only that, his voice was shot to hell from all the singing he had done. Once he’d gotten started, he found that he couldn’t stop, and he must have sung “The Old Brown Nag” a hundred times. “What’s wrong?” Eula asked. “You catchin’ a cold?”

“No,” he squeaked softly. “Just wore out is all.”

“A summer cold,” she said. “They the hardest to get rid of.”

“I done told ye, I ain’t sick.”

“Well, you sure sound like it,” she said. “Good thing you don’t have to sing for your supper.”

After a meal of cornbread and beans and sliced tomatoes, they went out on the porch to sit a bit before bedtime. The day was quickly coming to an end, and the shadows cast across the yard became a little longer with each passing minute. As she had done every evening for the past few days, Eula wondered aloud why they hadn’t heard from Eddie yet. “You’d almost think he’s done forgot about us.”

“No,” Ellsworth said softly, “I don’t think that’s it. Like I told ye before, I imagine he’s been too busy.” He shifted uncomfortably in his rocking chair, and a feeling of disgust crept over him. He knew that the right thing to do was just go ahead and tell her the truth about Eddie, but whenever he got the chance, he balked. He couldn’t figure it out, unless maybe he’d covered for the boy so much he couldn’t break the habit now; and every day he kept it up, the harder it was not to do it.

“How about a hot cup of water with honey?” she asked. “That’ll soothe your throat some.”

“No,” Ellsworth said, “just let me rest here a minute.” He stretched out his legs and closed his eyes, felt a cool breeze ruffle his sparse hair. He heard Eula get up from her chair and enter the house. Right before he faded off, he heard the door open again, smelled the cup of coffee she’d brought back with her.

Unbeknown to the Fiddlers, the Jewetts had been watching the farmhouse from across the road for the last thirty minutes. This was just the sort of quiet, out-of-the-way place Cane had been looking for ever since they’d entered Ohio. They hadn’t had more than a couple of hours’ sleep at a time since they’d left the dead grocer in the rain four days ago, and though Cob’s leg didn’t seem to be getting any worse, it wasn’t getting any better, either. And by this point the horses didn’t have another canter left in them, so outrunning the law or anyone else was out of the question. Unless they got some rest soon, they’d never make it to Canada, he was sure of that. “Well, what do you think?” Chimney finally asked.

Holding up his hand for him to be quiet, Cane studied the old people sitting on the porch awhile longer before making a decision. “Well, we won’t know till we try,” he finally said. He turned and looked at Cob. “What’s your name?”

Cob thought for a second, then said, “Junior. Junior Bradford.”

“That’s right,” Cane said. He looked over at Chimney. “Hollis, you let me do all the talking.”

Ellsworth was slumped over in his rocking chair when Eula awakened him with a shake. When he first opened his eyes, he thought he must be dreaming. Before him were three men, red-eyed and sweaty and caked with dust, mounted on horses. Rearing up in the chair, the farmer rubbed violently at his face, then said, “What the hell?”

“Howdy,” Cane said. “Sorry if we scared ye.”

Ellsworth’s eyes shifted back and forth as he took a hard look at each of the three in the dusk. “That’s all right,” he replied. “Didn’t hear you ride up is all.”

“Pardon?” Cane said.

“He’s got a cold,” Eula said.

“Jesus,” Ellsworth muttered under his breath. He turned and hacked up a ball of grit, spit it over the railing. “What can I do for ye?” he said, raising his voice with effort.

“Well, my brother here, he’s got a hurt leg, and we’re needin’ a place to rest up a day or two.”

Ellsworth glanced over at the chubby one, a friendly-looking boy with a smile on his round face, a filthy piece of cloth wrapped around his thigh. “What did he do to it?” he asked.

Cane shook his head. “Just a dumb accident. Playing around with a gun and it went off.”

“That sounds like something Eddie would do,” Eula said.

“Where ye headed?” Ellsworth said. “Going to join the army in Meade, I bet.”

“Well, no,” Cane said. “We’re headed for—”

“Why not?” Eula said. “That’s what our boy done, and he ain’t but sixteen.”

“It’s not that we don’t want to,” Cane said carefully. From what he’d read in the newspapers, he knew that many people weren’t taking this war business lightly. In fact, they had become quite nuts about it, going around kicking dachshunds to death, making ninety-year-old Americans with German-sounding names get down on their knees in the streets and kiss the American flag, calling sauerkraut Liberty cabbage and hamburger Salisbury steak. Searching factories and mines for terrorists, and taverns for hidden hordes of pretzels. And if they happened to have a family member in uniform, they were often twice as zealous when it came to sniffing out slackers and potential traitors. Maybe, Cane thought, they figured it wouldn’t hurt so much if their son got his ass blown off as long as there was a good chance the neighbor’s boy would suffer the same fate. There were few things in the world that put all people, regardless of education or wealth or place in society, on equal footing, but heartache was one of them. “It’s just…it’s just that…” He turned and looked at Cob, then back at the farmer and his wife. “Mind if I get down?”

“Go ahead,” Ellsworth said.

Cane eased off his horse and stepped up to the porch. “Thing is,” he whispered, leaning toward the couple, “my brother there ain’t right in the head, so someone’s got to watch over him all the time. It’s not his fault, he was born that way, but there’s no way they’d take him in the army. As ye can see, he can’t even handle a gun.”

“Oh, my,” Eula said, looking over at Cob. Because of her poor dead mother, she had always harbored a soft spot in her heart for the mentally challenged. And she knew how difficult it was to keep one safe. No matter how closely Eula and her father watched over her, Josephine had always found some way to slip out of the house at night. “Well, it’s good of you to take care of him. Not a lot of young men would do that.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“And who’s the other one?” Ellsworth said.

Cane glanced back at Chimney, then said, barely able to suppress a smile, “That’s our cousin, Hollis. He’s not quite playin’ with a full deck, either, but he ain’t as bad off as Junior.” He straightened up and looked over at the barn. “So you farm?”

“I try to,” Ellsworth said.

“It can be a hard life sometimes.”

“You ever done it?”

“Sure,” Cane said. “It’s all we’ve ever done.”

“Where would that be?” Ellsworth asked.

“Georgia mostly. Then Pap died a while back, and we lost the land.”

“How’d you come to lose it?”

“Back taxes mostly,” Cane said. “That’s why we’re going to Canada. We got an uncle lives up there.”

“Canada? That’s quite a ways off, ain’t it?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I just know we got to keep heading north.”

Ellsworth settled back and nodded approvingly. At least the boy was honest. He figured that owning up that you didn’t know the location of Canada was just as embarrassing as admitting that you didn’t know the whereabouts of Germany. And having your farm taken away because of back taxes was as bad as losing your life savings to a checkered-suited con man. Maybe even worse. He reckoned they might have quite a bit in common.

“Them your horses?” Ellsworth asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s their names?”

“How’s that?”

“Their names. Even my old mule’s got a name.”

“Right,” Cane said slowly, a slight hesitation in his voice. Of all the questions someone might ask, the old man wanted to know the names of the horses? Shit, Cob was the only one who’d ever called his anything other than “horse,” and he gave his a different handle damn near every day. “Well, this one—”

“Thunder, Lightning, and Hurricane,” Chimney said quickly, pointing to each.

“Buck’s what I call my mule,” said Ellsworth.

Chimney nodded. “That’s a good name for one. We used to have—”

“We can pay,” Cane cut in, trying to get the conversation back on track before his brother said something stupid.

“What?” Eula asked, coming forward in her chair. “What’d you say?”

“I said we can pay.”

“Boys, I hate to turn you down,” Ellsworth started to say, “but we—”

“Hold on a minute,” Eula said, lightly touching his arm to shut him up. All the time Ellsworth had been dozing, she’d been worrying again about how they were going to make it. Everything was tied up in the corn, but, as he kept telling her, with the summer having been so dry, they’d be lucky to get forty bushels an acre. And that was if he could get it all put up by himself. Though she was proud of Eddie for enlisting in the military, he surely couldn’t have picked a worse time. They didn’t even have a calf to sell this year. Perhaps the strangers’ arrival was some sort of sign that the Good Lord hadn’t entirely forsaken them. After all, when was the last time anybody rode in and actually offered them money instead of taking it? Never. “How much?” she asked.