The Heavenly Table (42 page)

61

W
HEN THE BAKERY
opened, Cob was the first customer in the door. He’d been waiting across the street for over an hour. “So it’s you again,” Mrs. Mannheim said in an agitated voice. Last night, within minutes of finally nodding off, she’d been startled awake by a dream in which one of the Von Kennels’ sons had been arrested in a train station in Syracuse for possession of a pound of Wiener schnitzel that his mother had given him to eat on the journey. Greta Von Kennel was her closest friend, and Mrs. Mannheim hadn’t slept another wink worrying about it. Now she had a ferocious headache.

“I’ll take some more of those doughnuts,” Cob said.

“Oh, you will, will you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Same as yesterday.”

Mrs. Mannheim stared out the front window for a moment with bloodshot eyes, wondering what sort of trap was being laid for her. Her first impulse was to tell the fat oaf to get lost, but then maybe that’s what they wanted her to do. Perhaps there was some law or town statute about refusing a customer service that she didn’t know about. Her head felt as if it might explode. Just how low those people would go in their efforts to crush her was anybody’s guess. She wouldn’t put anything past them, especially that cane-twirling insurance salesman. No, she decided, just treat him fairly, and they won’t have anything to work with. She went ahead and counted out a dozen, set the bag on the counter. She watched Cob pick them up and casually start out the door. The woman shook her head in amazement. “Where you think you’re going?” she shrilled.

He stopped and looked back at her. “I got to meet the sanitation inspector.”

Oh, she thought, so he wasn’t afraid to admit it, he really was in cahoots with those city boys. Granted, Mrs. Cone’s boy had always seemed harmless enough, but the crooks had probably promised him a promotion if he played along, served as the middleman. Either that, or they’d dug up some dirt on him and were using it as blackmail. She’d heard rumors that he had a cock the length of a French baguette, and it was hard to tell what sort of depravity something like that might lead to. She stared at Cob, her eyes blazing now. The audacity of this fat bastard, grinning at her just like he did when he attempted to trick her up yesterday. “What about some money for the doughnuts?” she said.

“Well, I thought they was…I thought they was
on de house.
Wasn’t that what ye said?”

The woman began to tremble as she felt the headache erupt into a full-scale migraine. “If you leave here without paying, I swear to God I’m calling the police.”

Cob hurriedly reached in his pocket for the five-dollar bill he still had and handed it to her, then started back out the door. “Hold on!” she screamed.

“What?” he said. “Ain’t that enough?” The mention of police, as well as the woman’s behavior, had him spooked. What did she have against him? What had he done? He should have asked Cane what “on de house” meant; maybe that was the problem.

She threw the money at him, then pounded her fist on the counter, even though the noise felt like someone was driving a nail through her head. Just then, Ludwig, hearing the commotion, came into the room from the back, where the ovens were located. “Gertrude, what are you doing?” He looked over at Cob standing by the door, a frightened look on his face. It was obvious that the young man was a bit touched. Or, at the very least, slow. She should have realized that; half of her family was mentally handicapped in one way or another; and Ludwig was growing increasingly concerned about his wife. For weeks now she had been going on about secret plots being hatched against them. Last week, she’d even burst into a tirade about the Lewis Family being agents of the Midwest Anti-Germanic Coalition. The Midwest Anti-Germanic Coalition! He’d checked with some of his cronies at the chess club, and according to them, there was no such thing. And the Lewis Family? Men so besotted with skanks and booze that he doubted if they’d be able to find Germany on a map! Why couldn’t she see just how lucky they were to be living here, thousands of miles away from the war?

“Ludwig, he’s tryin’ to set me up,” she said. “Make it look like I cheated him.”

The baker looked down at the money on the floor, and picked it up. “Is this yours?” he asked the chubby boy in the bibs.

“It’s…it’s…for the doughnuts,” Cob stuttered.

“Here,” said Ludwig, handing it back to him. “Go ahead and keep it.”

“But—”

“No worries, my friend. The doughnuts are on the house today.”

Cob left and headed for the bench uptown to meet Jasper. He sat down and dug his hand into the greasy sack, pulled out a doughnut. What the hell had happened back there? First they didn’t want his money, and then they did, and then they didn’t again. How could you make money selling doughnuts like that? Why, they’d be out of business real quick if they kept that up. Then he wondered if maybe the five-dollar bill Cane had given him was counterfeit. A banker once tried to pass off fake money to Bloody Bill, and it hadn’t turned out good for him, not good at all. By the time the outlaw got through dragging him up and down the streets behind his horse, there wasn’t enough skin left on his hide to make a pocketbook. That might explain why the woman didn’t want it. But still, if that was the case, why did they give him the doughnuts anyway? He was thinking these thoughts when he looked up and saw Jasper coming around the corner, right on time. Maybe he would know, but first, Cob wanted to tell him about Mr. Bentley.

62

A
FTER THE ALTERCATION
with the cabdriver, Chimney had a sweet roll and a glass of milk at White’s Luncheonette, then went to the hotel and asked the clerk for his key. He stumbled weak-kneed up the stairs to his room. Locking the door, he laid his pistol on the nightstand and stripped off his clothes. He fell onto the bed, intending to sleep the rest of the morning away, but within a few minutes, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Matilda as a little girl lying on a corncob mattress with a bunch of dog turds. Finally, he gave up. He splashed some water on his face and put his clothes back on, then went downstairs and out to the Ford. He started it without a hitch and drove out into the country west of town. He ended up in a little burg called Bourneville. He bought some cheese and crackers and two bottles of warm beer at a general store and asked the man behind the counter if he could leave his automobile parked there for a while. He walked along the border of a field planted in winter wheat until he came to a creek. Taking out the Remington, he fired off a few rounds, reloaded it. Then he sat down on the bank and ate his lunch while watching the water roll by, thinking about what Matilda had told him last night. He’d never met anyone before who’d had it rougher growing up than he and his brothers, and for some reason, maybe because she was a girl, that bothered him. What would happen to her when she got older and the men didn’t want her anymore? She told him last night that the only reason Esther, the fat one, was still working was because she’d do things nobody else would do. He opened the other beer and drank it fast, then tossed the bottle into the water. What if he asked her to come with them to Canada? Tell her he’d take care of her, that…that he was offering her…shit…offering her an opportunity, a chance to quit whoring. Be honest with her, so she’d know what she was in for. Sure, Cane would pitch a bitch, but he knew his brother well enough to know he wouldn’t hurt her, no matter how much she knew about them. He stood up and stretched, then started back up through the field. Wouldn’t hurt to ask, he thought, and if she turned him down, well, at least he’d have tried to come to her rescue.

As he approached the store lot, he saw two dirty-faced boys looking at the Ford, though standing back at a respectful distance. One appeared to be around eleven, the other nine or so. They were weed-thin and barefoot, dressed in patched overalls and frayed, homespun shirts. They reminded Chimney of him and his brothers when they were that age. “You ain’t thinking about stealin’ my car, are ye?” he said, as he walked up behind them.

They both whirled around when they heard his voice, then the bigger one said, “No, mister. We was just lookin’ at it.” The other didn’t say anything, just looked shyly at the ground.

“This here’s what they call a Tin Lizzie,” Chimney said. “What kind do you drive?”

“Shoot, we don’t have no car. Do we, Theodore?” the older boy said. “Heck, we don’t even have a bicycle.”

The quiet one glanced up quickly at the man in the lavender shirt, then back down at his feet. He shook his head.

“What, two studs like you don’t have a car? I find that mighty hard to believe,” Chimney said.

“No, it’s true, ain’t it, Theodore?”

“Well, you ever rode in one?” Chimney said.

“No,” the boy said. “We used to have a mule, but he got sick last year and Pap had to put him down.”

Chimney looked up and down the short street. A few clapboard houses, the store, a post office, a granary. An old lady in a black dress and bonnet hanging out wash on a line. A three-legged dog sniffing around a stump. Christ, what a sad little place. Here the days would seem like weeks, and a stranger passing through would be talked about for months, maybe years. Even thinking about it made his eyes heavy. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If your wives don’t care, I’ll take ye all a ride.”

The bigger boy laughed. “We don’t have no wives.”

“Ah, so you’re still waiting on the right girl to come along.”

“We don’t even like ’em, do we, Theodore?”

“Well, that’ll change,” Chimney said. “You just wait and see.”

“What about you?” the bigger boy asked.

“What about me?”

“Where’s your wife?”

“Oh, well,” Chimney said with a grin, “we’re still courting.” He stuck the crank in the engine and gave it three turns. “How about it? I’ll drive ye up the road and back.”

The boys looked wide-eyed at each other, then scrambled into the backseat as Chimney started the Ford. He pulled out of the store lot and drove west for several miles until they came to the outskirts of another burg called Bainbridge, then turned the car around in the middle of the dirt road. When he got back to the store, the boys climbed out reluctantly. They thanked him, and he started to pull out of the lot, but then stopped and waved them back. “Almost forgot,” he said. He pulled out some money and handed them each a five-dollar bill.

“What’s this for?” the older boy asked, a puzzled look on his face.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chimney said. “I might need a favor someday, and this way you’ll owe me.”

“But we don’t even know your name, mister.”

Chimney started to say Hollis Stubbs, but then he hesitated. For some reason, lying to these two didn’t feel right. They would be deceived enough in the next few years without him feeding them more bullshit. And after all, what would it hurt, telling them who he really was? He was leaving for Canada tomorrow, and would never see this place again. It would be something they could tell their kids about someday, about how they once took a ride with the famous outlaw Chimney Jewett. “If’n I tell ye, can you keep a secret?”

“Sho we can. Me and Theodore keep secrets all the time, don’t we, Theodore?”

Chimney looked over at the other boy, saw him nod his head solemnly. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the store clerk with his nose pressed up against the door glass watching them. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. “It’s Bill,” he said. “Bill Bucket.”

63

S
ERGEANT
M
ALONE WAS
called to Captain Fisher’s office right after mid-morning drills. On his way in, he passed First Lieutenant Waller coming out with a devious smile on his smoothly shaven face. “So what’s this about Lieutenant Bovard not showing up this morning?” Fisher asked, just before he spat a stream of tobacco juice into a large brass spittoon he kept beside his desk.

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir,” Malone said, still standing at attention.

“Waller just told me you two are thick as thieves.”

“That’s not true, sir. I had a couple of drinks with him once or twice, that’s all.”

Fisher cast a skeptical look Malone’s way, then rang the spittoon again. Due to the country’s backward isolationist policies, most of his military career had been impatiently spent behind a desk, but last winter he’d finally seen some action, having been given the opportunity to serve as the chief interrogations officer with the 7th Calvary in Mexico during Pershing’s search for Pancho Villa. However, though the experience had been revelatory in many ways, and he’d never felt more alive than when he was down there, he was now having problems adjusting to being back stateside. He had begun to doubt even the most casual comment, and something as innocent as “Looks like rain today” might propel him on a weeklong witch hunt. In Mexico, fearful that he’d be sent back home if he failed to get results, he had occasionally gone a bit overboard; and the handle of his service revolver had five neat notches in it to mark the number of suspected sympathizers he had executed after his rather brief questionings failed to turn up any useful information about Villa’s whereabouts. To Fisher’s way of thinking, even if he was lucky, a man would still only experience war two or three times in his sixty or seventy trips around the sun, and he wasn’t about to waste any of the precious minutes allotted to him for combat with prolonged questioning of prisoners, especially those who babbled in a language he couldn’t make heads or tails of. No, when in doubt, the quickest and most efficient way to get at the truth was with a gun, but, as he had to keep reminding himself, the shit he’d pulled down in Chihuahua wouldn’t fly here. “Has he ever said anything about a man named Lucas Charles?” he asked the sergeant, as he opened a leather pouch and squeezed together a quid the size of a golf ball, tucked it in his jaw alongside the one he was already working on. “Some homo that runs one of the theaters in town?”

Malone rubbed at his face while trying to decide how to answer the question. He’d heard the rumors about the lieutenant, but what did playing grab-ass with some funny boy have to do with anything? There probably wasn’t a man on the entire base who wasn’t a sick fucker in some way or another. “Look, sir,” he finally said, “I know he’s my superior, and I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but Lieutenant Waller’s worse than an old woman for spreadin’ gossip.”