The Heavenly Table (6 page)

“Well, then…well, then…” Cob stammered.

“Well, then what?” Chimney said.

Cob furrowed his brow, tried to think of a response. As he did so, he squeezed a large squishy potato into a hard glob the size of a walnut. Just as he was ready to give up, his eyes landed on the shovel the Major had loaned them the other day, and he suddenly remembered his little brother’s one weakness. “What about Penelope?” he said. “You just gonna take off and leave her behind, too?”

Cane snorted, trying to stifle a laugh, and Chimney’s face flushed with blood. He started to reach for a rock that was half-buried in the bottom of the hole, but then stopped himself. It wasn’t Cob’s fault that he had brought up the bitch’s name; it was his own for being so goddamn stupid in the first place. From time to time, Tardweller had borrowed Pearl’s youngest to groom his horses and clean out the stables. Because he was the only one ever sent for, Chimney had started to believe that the squire looked upon him with favor. He had even gotten it into his head that the man’s daughter, Penelope, a shapely but spoiled fifteen-year-old with strawberry blond hair and icy green eyes, was developing romantic feelings for him; and he had foolishly bragged to his brothers that he spent most of his time in the barn romancing her on a pile of feed sacks while they slaved away in the fields. For a few weeks, Penelope was all he thought about; and he ceased dreaming of gun battles and wild pussy and began fantasizing wedding bells and undying love.

But then one afternoon near the end of May, as he loaded manure from one of the stalls into a wheelbarrow, he overheard the girl complaining to her father that she’d rather see anybody, even a nigger, handling her horse than that ugly piece of white trash who was always hanging around spying on her. “Oh, don’t you worry about that little inbred bastard,” the Major had told her. “They’s not a one of them Jewetts got the grit to mess with one of mine. I could work ’em to death and that dumb ol’ daddy of theirs would still pucker up and kiss my ass like I done give him the keys to the kingdom. No, sweetheart, that boy even think of touchin’ you, he’ll be one sorry sonofabitch.” Just then, two of Penelope’s girlfriends arrived, and she retreated to the front porch to sip ice tea with them, and Tardweller lay down under a shade tree in the front yard to take his afternoon nap. However, he couldn’t shake off the thought of the Jewett boy ogling his daughter. It kept circling around in his mind until soon he was in a rage. He finally got to his feet and stomped across the yard. When he entered the barn, he found Chimney currying one of the horses. Tardweller was a big man, and he grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck and dragged him outside with ease, kicking his ass several times with the toe of his boot and making a big show of running him off in front of the ladies. “I ever catch you around my house again, I’ll cut the nuts right off ye,” he had yelled as Chimney broke loose and ran.

Straightening up from the potato pile, Chimney looked toward the thinning woods on the far side of the cotton patch. Even after almost three months, he could still hear those women laughing at him. He’d been too ashamed to tell his brothers what had happened, though he was sure Cane knew there had never been any fucking or anything else going on between him and Penelope. Only he and Cob were dumb enough to believe something like that could ever happen. And what the Major said was true. Tomorrow, they would be back over there in the swamp killing themselves for damn near nothing. The keys to the fuckin’ kingdom, all right. Hell, they still owed the mutton-chopped tyrant for the hog they were eating on. He ignored Cob’s question, and instead glanced over at Cane. “What about it, brother? You had enough yet?”

Wiping some sweat from his brow, Cane looked toward the cabin. They’d had this discussion a hundred times or more since they’d first come across the Bloody Bill book, and it was always the same, Cob afraid of changing anything and Chimney burning to change it all. Of course, Chimney was right, nothing was ever going to get any better as long as they stayed with Pearl. And though Cane knew the book was fictitious, sometimes it still seemed closer to the truth than anything he had read in his mother’s Bible. According to Charles Foster Winthrop III, the world was an unjust, despicable place lorded over by a select pack of the rich and ruthless, and the only way for a poor man to get ahead was to ignore the laws that they enforced on everybody but themselves. And from what Cane had seen in his twenty-three years of barely surviving, how could he disagree? Of course, he couldn’t go along with rape or murder, but, he had to admit, the idea of robbing a bank did possess a certain appeal. Just a few minutes of daring could possibly change their lives forever. Still, out of some old-fashioned loyalty or deep-seated superstition he was unable to shake, Cane was loath to desert their dotty old father. To do so might curse him and his brothers for the rest of their lives. No, it would be better just to wait it out. He watched Pearl stumble on the two steps leading up to the door of the shack. “Ain’t no reason to get in a hurry now,” he told Chimney. “You best stick with me and Cob. Our day’s comin’ soon enough.”

“You mean for the heavenly table?” Cob asked.

“Well, not exactly,” Cane said in a patient voice, “but don’t worry. You’ll get there one of these days.”

Chimney let out an exasperated groan. “Jesus Christ, you’re startin’ to sound like Pap.” Standing up, he wiped his hands on the front of his pants. “All right then,” he said, “I’ll give it a little longer.” He started off toward the water bucket sitting in the shade of the tulip tree, then stopped in his tracks. Cane and Cob watched him tilt his head and stare for a moment at the blanched and cloudless sky, his wet rag of a shirt clinging to his bony back. The only sound to be heard was Pearl’s faint whistling inside the cabin. Chimney spat in the dust and shook his head. “The heavenly table,” he said loudly over his shoulder as he began walking again. “Pork chops thick as a bull’s cock, beefsteaks the size of wagon wheels, buttered biscuits as hot and fluffy as the tits on…”

Cane smiled to himself and reached down. He picked up another potato and looked it over, then placed it on top of the good pile.

8

T
HE DAY AFTER
returning from Parker’s store, Ellsworth hitched up the wagon around noon and started down the road toward Meade. He had made up his mind during the night. It had occurred to him, as he lay in bed digesting his supper and wondering how many miles away Germany might be, that he also had no idea what the war was even about. He rolled over in bed and stared out the window into the darkness on the other side of the rippled pane. He had once shucked corn with an old man named Garnet Quick who had lost an ear in the War Between the States, the one they fought over freeing the slaves, and Ellsworth had harbored a sneaking suspicion ever since he’d talked to the man that a war could get started over the least little thing. And if the fight wasn’t worth fighting, he had reasoned, as he lay there listening to Eula call out to Pickles in her sleep, then how could he sit by without raising a finger and allow his only son to take a chance on getting maimed or even killed?

By that evening, Ellsworth was standing on a hill overlooking the army camp splayed out north of the town on the other side of the Scioto River. It was much larger than he’d expected, as big as most cities, he reckoned, and for the first time all day, he began to have doubts that he could get Eddie back even if he did find him. Ellsworth had been to Meade a few times in his life, and though he had been confident when he left home, he had forgotten about the lonely, insecure feeling that always came over him when he was among a crowd of complete strangers. Now, staring across at the huge camp, still under construction but already filled with hundreds of soldiers and trucks and horses—even a flying machine, only the second one the farmer had ever seen in his life, circling like a buzzard above it all—he grew nervous. There were forces at work down there along the river that would intimidate almost anybody. And not just there, either. Why, just a couple of hours ago, he had seen a woman dressed in men’s trousers driving a Ford Coupe out along the Huntington Pike all by herself. As he watched the airplane make one more pass over the camp and then land on a flat strip of ground outlined in whitewash, Ellsworth rubbed his chin and recalled standing around the stove in Parker’s store one night last winter and someone, maybe Tick Osborne, saying that these were what people called “modern times.” Most of those gathered there were in agreement that the world now seemed head over heels in love with what the tycoons and politicians kept referring to as “progress,” but before they could begin arguing the pros and cons of exactly what that was going to mean in the long run, Jimmy Beulah spoke up and said, “ ‘End times’ is more like it.” Then he spat on the stove, and Kermit Saunders passed him a bottle and said, “Amen,” and the only sound you could hear in the store after that was the crackle of Jimmy’s spit on the black metal lid.

Suddenly, Ellsworth wished he had followed Eula’s advice and given the boy a couple of more days to come back on his own before he went looking for him. When the sun began to sink in the west, he gathered up an armful of corn husks from the bed of the wagon and dumped them on the ground for the mule, then ate a hunk of fried bread and two turnips for his own supper. He washed it down with water from a gourd jug, and wished he had remembered to bring along a jar of wine to keep him company. Unhitching his suspenders, he took off his shirt and loosened his pants, then lay down with a corn knife at his side. As the darkness settled in, a few stars began to appear above him and an owl hooted its lonely call from a nearby tree. He would make his way, he thought, to the army camp first thing in the morning. He hoped to Christ, if Eddie was there, that he hadn’t sworn any oaths or made his mark on any papers yet. Though Ellsworth didn’t have any proof other than his word, he would argue that the boy had just turned sixteen. That alone should be enough, he figured, though he could also add that Eddie was needed at home to help with the farm. But what if they still wouldn’t turn loose of him? He stared at the kite-shaped outline of Boötes as he tallied up the boy’s defects. All right then, if nothing else worked, he’d swallow his pride and tell them his son was as lazy a drunkard and thief as any in the country, and that an army that would take someone like that must already be on the verge of losing the battle. True, there were plenty of men around who could outdrink the boy ten to one, and, as far as he knew, the only thing Eddie had stolen in his life was that damn magazine from the schoolteacher, but the people running the camp wouldn’t know that. Ellsworth ran these arguments over and over in his head until the lids of his eyes grew heavy as stones, and he finally began to snore along with the mule, both of them dreaming, on that warm and moonless night, of nothing in particular.

He awakened early the next morning and splashed some water on his face, rubbed a bluebell leaf over the few teeth he had left. Unwrapping a piece of linen that contained two hard-boiled eggs, he peeled the shells off with his thumbnail. He ate them slowly while longing for a cup of coffee and gazing over at the army base. Then he watered the mule and started down the hill toward Meade along a dirt lane shaded by box elder and sweet gum. Half an hour later, he came out into the sunlight and the main road. Off in the distance, he saw a black man stripped to the waist and pulling weeds out of a row of beans. Ellsworth wondered how much one like that would cost him if he couldn’t get his son back. A big one, he figured, would charge plenty, but perhaps he could find something smaller—hell, even a sick one could probably outdo Eddie—who would still put in a good day’s work for a fair price.

He had just started up again when he saw what appeared to be a caravan headed toward him, taking up most of the road. In the lead was a motorcar driven by a swarthy, toothsome man dressed in a paisley vest and a frilly white shirt. A jewel big as an eyeball glinted from a ring on one of his hands. Following him was a canvas-covered dray refitted with rubber tires and pulled by four horses. A frightful-looking woman with massive thighs puffed on a cigarillo while holding the reins loosely. Beside her on the cushioned wagon seat was another girl, with a bruised face that reminded Ellsworth of a windfall apple left too long on the ground. She had her skirts hiked up and her skinny legs gaped apart, airing her privates. A few feet behind them was a second man, riding a red roan. He was dressed in dusty black clothes and had two pistols strapped to his thick waist. Glancing back after they passed, Ellsworth saw another woman through an opening in the back of the wagon. She was seated on a wooden chair running a brush through her long yellow hair. Not a one of them had acknowledged the farmer, and he traveled on to Meade listening to the creaking of the leather harness and the steady dull
plop
of the mule’s hooves against the hard-packed road, pondering what in the world such people might be about.

9

T
HE
J
EWETTS WERE
working frantically to finish clearing off the swamp before the offer of the chicken bonus expired. Just that morning, Tardweller had stopped by to remind them they had only two days left. They actually had three, but he was a little pissed off by the progress they had made. He figured if any of them argued about it, he’d just tell them the deal was off. A few hens weren’t anything to him, but he’d bet a couple of his hunting buddies fifty dollars each that they’d never get done in time. Still, no matter how it turned out, he’d definitely gotten his money’s worth out of these idiots. Regular men would have charged him ten times as much and taken twice as long for the work they were doing. Sitting in his canopied buggy, he glanced at Pearl out of the corner of his eye, then casually mentioned that he was on his way to Farleigh to get more ice for his wife and daughter. “Be glad when it cools off some,” he said. “I can’t hardly keep up with ’em, they go through it so fast.”

The Major waited on the old man to say something, but Pearl just slowly nodded. Though even breathing the thick, humid air required extra effort, he hardly broke a sweat anymore. It was as if he were drying up and turning into worm dust himself. He stood beside the buggy and waited to be dismissed while Tardweller watched Cob and Chimney drag some brush to the edge of the clearing. For several minutes, the only sounds to be heard were the steady
chunk, chunk, chunk
of Cane’s ax against a soft pine, and the airy swish of the paper fan the Major was waving at his fat face. “By God,” he finally said to Pearl, “even if ye don’t win them hens, you sure give it a good try.” Then he drove off laughing.