The Heavenly Table (40 page)

As they came out onto the stage, the orchestra burst into a bouncy piece of circus music, and the audience clapped wildly. For at least five minutes, Cane calculated, they ran around in a circle, five roly-poly fuckers with matching pencil mustaches, pinching each other on the ass and stealing each other’s hats while making goofy faces. Then the music slowed down, and they stopped and stood in a row with their hands over their hearts and began singing. Their repertoire included a couple of patriotic anthems, a medley of old pastoral favorites, and a rollicking version of “The Old Brown Nag.” Cob poked Cane in the arm. “That’s one of Mr. Fiddler’s favorite songs,” he yelled over the music. Finally, a trumpeter stood up in the orchestra pit and blasted an ear-shattering note, and the monkey, the one and only Mr. Bentley, dropped from the ceiling and began chasing the bozos around in a fucking circle again. Cob stood up in his seat openmouthed to get a better look, and the people behind him started hissing and yelling, and Cane had to threaten to leave in order to get him to settle down. Then Mr. Bentley disappeared for a minute, only to come back out again wearing a butler’s uniform and carrying a white towel over his arm. Grinning maniacally with his big yellow teeth, he walked along the edge of the stage bowing to the audience one minute, then bending over the next to shake his red ass at them. This went on for quite a while until some soldiers up front grew bored and started pelting the chimp with apple cores and bottle caps and pellets of popcorn. No sooner had Cob said, “They better not hurt him,” than a peanut struck the beast in the eye, and Mr. Bentley screamed and leaped over the orchestra pit into the row of army boys. Before Cane could stop him, Cob jumped out of his seat and started down the aisle. By then, several members of the Lewis Family were trying to pull Mr. Bentley off a private before something bad happened, like a repeat of the incident at the fair in Indiana last fall when he bit a man’s ear off. Fortunately, everything was more or less under control by the time Cob got to the front. The orchestra broke into an extended version of “Danny Boy,” and everyone returned to their seats and enjoyed the rest of the performance, which to Cob’s delight was just more of the same, though now, just to be on the safe side, Rufus, the stoutest of the brothers, kept Mr. Bentley restrained with a leash around his furry neck. Still, every time he passed by in front of the group who had insulted him earlier, he gave them a look of pure, unadulterated hatred, and several, not trusting the strap or the fat buffoon holding it, got up and left the building.

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

T
HAT 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

C
HIMNEY 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.”