The Heavenly Table (41 page)

“Can she talk?”

“I’m twelve,” Matilda spoke up.

“You awful tiny for twelve,” Blackie said.

“She don’t eat much,” her mother said.

“You sure about this? You don’t even know me.”

Her mother fell back onto the dirty, sweat-soaked pillow. “Don’t matter,” she wheezed. “Even you’d be better than stickin’ her in some orphanage.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Blackie said. “At least there—”

“I do,” her mother cut in. “I was raised in one.”

The pimp thought it over for a minute, then said, “Well, what the fuck. I reckon.”

Her mother took several deep gulps of air, then said, “Thank God. If I was in better shape, I’d…” She began weeping, and Blackie turned and looked out the window until she was finished. Wiping her eyes, she asked, “How many girls ye got now?”

“Three,” he said. “But the one’s not workin’ out. Can’t get her to take a bath. If’n ye didn’t know better, you’d think she had the rabies.”

It was the last time Matilda ever saw her mother. Two days after Blackie took her back to his camp, they packed up and moved to another part of the state. She had to give him credit; he had waited until she was almost fourteen before he turned her out. Her first customer was a rich boy whose daddy wanted him to have a little practice breaking in a virgin, so he’d know how to go about it when he married. “He paid three hundred dollars for my cherry,” she told Chimney. “Now I’m lucky to make five a day, once Blackie gets his share.” Leaning across the bed, she blew out the candle on the nightstand, then she reached for his hand in the dark and pulled him down onto the bed.

He was putting his boots on when he saw the cab pull in. The driver was delivering Blackie a newspaper and a box of pastries from Mannheim’s Bakery, as he did every morning. Chimney finished buttoning his pants and rushed out to catch a ride before he left. “Good Lord,” the cabbie said, “you’re still here?”

“Yep,” Chimney said, climbing into the car.

“Hey,” Blackie said to the driver, “hold on a minute. I got something for you.” The pimp went over to the campfire and laid the deliveries down on a stump. Then he took a knife from his pocket and unwrapped what was left of a roll of honey loaf. He cut off a thick slice and handed it to the cabbie. “You ever try this?”

“What is it?” the man said, taking a cautious sniff at the greasy meat.

“That ol’ bologna salesman called it honey loaf. It ain’t bad.”

The cabbie laid it on the seat next to him. “I better wait till my stomach settles down a little before I eat anything June Easter is selling. I appreciate it, though.”

“What’d ye do, get on a toot last night?” Blackie asked.

“Aw, I drank some rotgut my cheap-ass cousin brought over to the house. I should have known better. My ulcers, they can’t take it anymore.”

“You need to coat ’em with grease,” Blackie said. “That’s what my daddy always did. Gravy, butter, lard, whale’s blubber, you name it, he tried it.”

“Yeah, that worked for me, too, up until a couple years ago,” the cabbie said. “If I had any sense, I wouldn’t drink nothin’ but beer from here on out.” Then he put the car in gear and started down the lane.

Chimney sat in the backseat looking out at the tree-covered hills shining here and there with silvery frost, mist lying like smoke in the low places between them. He’d never noticed before how pretty the land was around here. Riding in the open car, the morning air was cold, and he shivered, reminded himself to buy a decent coat before they got to Canada. Then he smiled. There had been a moment last night with Matilda when he thought he was happier than he had ever been in his life; and if he could have a minute like that even once a week, he reckoned he’d be satisfied. Suddenly, the thought of all those men sticking their dicks inside her this weekend—she had told him that Friday and Saturday nights, when most of the soldiers got their passes, were her busy times—made him half sick. But then he caught hold of himself as they passed over the bridge, and tried to look at things realistically. Christ Almighty, she was a whore, and that’s how girls like that make their money. And was that any worse than being a killer and a thief, when it came right down to it? The question puzzled him. He was still debating it with himself when the cabbie said, “Which one did you screw? The yeller-haired one?”

“No,” Chimney said. “I was with Matilda.”

“Matilda?” the cabbie said. “Oh, you mean the skinny little bitch. The one they call Cock Gobbler.”

“I don’t know,” Chimney answered, his face turning red.

“Me, I like ’em with a little more meat on their bones.”

“You’d probably enjoy fucking a hog then,” Chimney said.

“What’d you say?”

“I said you look like a pig-fucker.”

The cabbie narrowed his red-veined eyes and slowed the car down just as they hit the business district. “You got a smart mouth on you, don’t ye, bub?”

Chimney rested his hand on the little Remington .22 he had in his pocket. “Just shut up and drive.”

“You don’t tell me what to do in my own cab, you little shit,” the man said.

The boy looked around at all the people on the sidewalks. He hated to leave the sonofabitch off the hook, but now was not a good time to be losing his temper. There was too much at stake, he reminded himself. Besides, what did it matter what this dried-up bastard thought of anything? You could tell by looking at him that he was on his last legs, him and his goddamn ulcers. “Just let me out here,” he said, ignoring the cabbie’s glare. He let loose of the gun and dug two dollars out of his pocket, dropped them on top of the greasy slice of meat lying on the front seat.

59

J
ASPER WAS ON
his way to the bench hoping to meet up with Junior when he passed by the jail and saw Lester Wallingford tacking a new wanted poster to the billboard by the front door. Having once been instrumental in bringing a pickpocket to justice after he had seen the man’s mug on a flyer, he now made it a habit to stop by at least once a week to check out new criminals. “Who they lookin’ for now?” Jasper asked.

“Still hunting for them Jewetts,” the policeman told him. “Jacked the reward up some more. They’re thinking they might be in Ohio now. I’ll tell you what, those bastards come through Meade, ol’ Lester here will be a rich man.”

Jasper didn’t say anything. He was studying the drawing on the poster. Funny how that one looked like Junior. He’d have to tell him about that when he saw him. He read over the long list of crimes they had committed: included were arson, robbery, kidnapping, rape, murder, and several others that he had never heard of. What the hell was “bestiality”? Or “necrophilia”? He looked again at the drawings. My God, he had to say, the one on the end really was Junior all over again. But, shoot, it couldn’t be. That boy wouldn’t hurt a fly. Still, the more he looked at the poster, the more the other one favored Junior’s brother, too. He had seen them standing in line in front of the Majestic last night waiting to buy tickets. But what about—

“What’s wrong, Cone?” Lester said. “You look like you seen a ghost.”

“Nothing. Just got a lot on my mind.”

“Only thing you got on your mind is shithouses.”

“You don’t know me,” Jasper said. “You don’t know nothing about me.”

“I know you like to watch women takin’ a whiz. That’s what I know.”

Because Jasper spent so many sleepless hours walking the streets late at night, he knew more about the cop than the cop would ever know about him, including the fact that he almost always ended up at Lucas Charles’s little room above the Majestic whenever he closed down the Mecca Bar. Jasper was right on the cusp of asking Lester if his father knew about his relationship with the theater manager when he realized such information might be put to a better use later. Instead, he pretended to storm away, but then stopped and waited at the corner. As soon as the cop disappeared, he hurried back to the billboard and tore the poster off, stuck it inside his jacket. Making his way to the park, he sat down on a rock near the pond to study it. The Jewett Gang? Surely there had to be a mistake. But then how could there be another person walking around who looked identical to Junior? Or Cob, or whatever his name was. And where was the third brother? Had he gotten killed or run off? He thought back for a minute, trying to recall everything Junior had told him about himself, and then he realized that he didn’t know anything. Hell, he had done almost all the talking; Junior just nodded his head once in a while and ate doughnuts.

Jasper folded the poster carefully and put it in his pocket. He watched a small flock of geese glide in and land on the water with a flapping of wings. Before you knew it, the snow would be falling, and another year would have passed without him having his own indoor facilities. But then he thought about what had been on his mind when he opened his eyes this morning. Not the usual, not porcelain commodes or claw-foot bathtubs or running Sandy Saunders out of town or the mass of hair between Mrs. Arnold’s legs. No, he had been thinking about meeting up with Junior, having him to talk to while he did his job. Bagshaw, the dump keeper, as nutty as he might be with his doll baby and rotten produce, was right. Jasper was looking forward to it, to seeing his friend. His friend. He said it aloud. “He’s my friend.” Except for Itchy, he had never had anyone he could call that, unless you counted his uncle the broom maker, and he wasn’t all that sure a blood relative counted. True, a man could have a mighty fine water closet with $5,500—Christ Almighty, he could have one in every room of the house and still have money left over—but how much was a friend worth? You couldn’t put a price on that, no matter how hard people tried. He got up and started out of the park, his measuring wand balanced on his shoulder. Sure, lots of people would give up a buddy for a lot less than indoor plumbing, or the chance to run a comb through Mrs. Arnold’s pubic hair. Sure, they would. But Jasper wasn’t one of them. No, sir, he wasn’t. He stopped and took the poster out of his pocket, looked at it one more time. Then he balled it up and threw it in the pond, watched two of the geese start swimming toward it.

60

B
OVARD WOKE UP
to find himself lying flat on his back in a dark room with a rag stuffed in his mouth. No matter how hard he tried, all he could move was his head, and he finally realized that he was chained to a floor. He was confused. The last thing he could recall was listening to a couple of drunks bickering in the Blind Owl. The man kept telling the woman she had the face of a bulldog, and she kept comparing his cock to a green bean. Then they’d give each other a big, sloppy kiss—he could still almost hear their puckered lips smacking—before starting their vile insults all over again. But that was all he remembered.

He pushed his tongue around in his mouth under the rag, and discovered, to his shock, that some of his bottom teeth were missing. He twisted his head from side to side. Had he been in a fight? Was he in a hospital? Was this one of Lucas and Caldwell’s crazy games? No, that couldn’t be it. They’d never go this far, no matter how doped up they got. Nothing made any sense, but then slowly, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he became aware that someone else was in the room, sitting on a cot not more than a couple of feet away from him. Jesus Christ, it was that fucking barkeep, holding a jar in his lap. Then he vaguely recalled picking up a beer and seeing him in the mirror. He heard the man cough, then spit, felt a slimy gob of phlegm
splat
on his forehead. He struggled against the chains, but they were so tight he couldn’t even make them rattle. He tried to force the rag out of his mouth with his tongue, but it was useless. Making an angry moaning sound in his throat, he banged the back of his head against the floor, tried to make the bastard understand he better turn him loose right now.

Pollard smiled at his efforts. It was nothing new; they all acted the same, at least at first. Some of them gave up quite easily, others hung on hoping for a way out almost until the end, dreaming of escape: the law rescuing them perhaps, or the man who was doing this to them experiencing a change of heart, and so on and so forth, a hundred different scenarios playing out in their terrified heads. He had wondered about that a lot, why would one man surrender his life so quickly and another never admit defeat, even when he had to know he was beaten? Did it have something to do with the way they’d been raised, or if they believed in God, or if they had a family depending on them? There was really no way of telling, but he had a feeling this one was a fighter, which was the type he preferred. The last one, the carpenter, he was ready to cash in his chips before the first night was over with, and it had been hard to keep things exciting with someone so weak and worthless.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to ye?” he asked the lieutenant. “No, probably not. I doubt if you’ve ever been in any kind of fix like this before. Well, for starters, I’m gonna pull all your teeth out. Don’t worry, I won’t break ’em, I promise. I’ve done it plenty of times before. See, I got quite the collection here.” He held up the jar and shook it. “After that, I usually do something special with the tongue. And, no, no, don’t ask me why I do it. Hell, I don’t know myself really. I think it’s just because I can. Let’s see…Shit, I forgot where I was. Oh, yeah. Then I’ll whittle on ye for a day or two, maybe take your guts out while ye watch. From what I’ve seen in the past, you won’t be in too good a shape by then. And then the last thing I do, I mean after your heart quits beatin’ and all that shit, is saw you into little pieces. Not to eat or anything like that. I tried that once, and I have to say I didn’t care for the taste of it, though I have been thinkin’ lately that maybe I didn’t fix him right. No, just makes you easier to carry when I take ye over to the creek. Won’t nobody know what happened to ye except me. I’ll dump you in the water like fish bait, and you’ll just disappear. But we’ll save all that for later. Right now I hear some customers knockin’ on the door.” Then he set the jar of fangs and grinders down just a couple of inches from Bovard’s head, and left him alone in the dark room, rank with the smell of dead men’s body fluids soaked into the wood floor, to dwell on what he’d said.