Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

Luckily, the slug that tore into Cob’s thigh hadn’t hit an artery or the bone, but because of the constant jostling from the horse, he kept losing blood, and eventually his boot was overflowing with it. He became so woozy he couldn’t keep his eyes open, but whenever they stopped to rest, the posse from Russell appeared in the distance; and they had to tie him to the saddle to keep him from falling off. By the time they came across an abandoned farm the following afternoon, his brothers were beginning to worry they might lose him. “Well,” Cane said, as he looked at the overgrown yard around the house, “this might be the end of it.”

“How you figure?” Chimney asked.

“We can’t ride no more till he gets better, so if they track us here, we’re fucked.”

Leaning over the horn of his saddle, Chimney spat and then said, “Well, I don’t know who those ol’ boys are back there, but I don’t figure they can shoot any better than we can.”

“Maybe, but there must be fifteen of them in that pack.”

“So?” Chimney said. “That many don’t even amount to one box of shells.”

Cane shook his head and started to climb off his horse. “You’re quite the optimist, ain’t ye?”

“What’s that? One of them words you got out of your dictionary?”

“Means someone who’s always lookin’ on the bright side of things.”

“Well, might as well, the way I figure it,” Chimney said. “A man gets to thinkin’ he’s beat, he just as well hang it up. Besides, they’ll be enough of that doom and gloom shit when we’re dead.”

They loosened Cob from the saddle and eased him down, then packed him to the house, through tall patches of milkweed and broomstraw and past a few blighted stalks of corn growing out of the top of an ancient rubbish pile. Thick vines infested with tiny brown spiders draped across the front of the rotting porch, and Chimney hacked a path to the door with one of the machetes. Kicking it open, he watched a long black snake slither across the rough pine floor in the summer shadows and disappear through a crack in one of the walls, leaving a winding imprint of itself in the soft dust. He spread a blanket near a fireplace made of clay bricks, and they carried Cob inside and laid him down. “I’ll take care of the horses,” he told Cane. He found a large black pot in the kitchen, covered with a lid and half full of a dried-up lump that had probably once been a soup or perhaps a stew. After banging out the mess on top of a rough pine counter, he carried it back outside. He tethered the animals in the shell of an old lean-to and unsaddled them and began hauling guns and supplies into the house. Then he walked about the property until he discovered a caved-in well, hidden in a thicket of wild roses. Even though it was dark by the time he finished cutting a way to it through the briars, he carried water to the horses in the pot, and by the time he came back inside the house, it was long after midnight. In the light from a candle stub, he watched Cane pour some whiskey into the bullet hole in Cob’s leg and then wrap it in a fresh bandage. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

“Hard to say,” Cane said. “At least the bleeding’s stopped for now. That’s the main thing.” He stood up and took a drink from the whiskey bottle, then passed it to Chimney.

“What about the bullet?”

“It’ll have to stay. We start diggin’ around for it, we might make things worse.”

“Well, I don’t reckon it matters much. Hell, Bloody Bill carried fifteen or twenty around inside him, and it didn’t hurt him any.”

Cane was quiet for a moment, then said, “You do know somebody just made him up, right?” It was a question he’d thought of asking several times over the last couple of weeks, whenever his brother spoke of Bloody Bill as if he were a real person, but he’d kept putting it off, partly because he feared what Chimney’s answer might be, and partly because he wasn’t sure it made any difference in the long run anyway.

“Course I do,” Chimney replied, handing the bottle back. “I’m not that fuckin’ stupid. Still don’t mean it can’t be true. The ol’ boy that wrote the book had to get his ideas somewhere.” He sat down and leaned his back against the wall, looked over at Cob passed out flat on his back on the floor, breathing loudly through his mouth. “You and me was lucky, wasn’t we?”

“What, that we didn’t get shot?”

“No,” Chimney said, “that we weren’t born like him. I mean, hell, even if he lives, he don’t have much to look forward to, does he?”

“I don’t know,” Cane said. “Before the old man died, he was probably the happiest one of us.”

“Only thing that proves is how dumb he is.”

Cane shook his head and took another drink, then capped the bottle. He debated if he should remind Chimney that the only reason they were in this predicament in the first place was because he’d insisted on stealing a few cans of beans instead of paying for them, but decided that keeping the peace was more important right now. And besides, if Cob lived through the night, tomorrow Chimney would probably be bragging on him for being such a tough bastard. “Well, what about you?” Cane asked. “What is it you look forward to if we get away with this?”

“Me?” Chimney said. “I’m gonna drink and fuck and carry on for ten or fifteen years, then meet me some nice girl and settle down. Maybe have a couple brats.”

“Ten or fifteen years?”

“Sure,” Chimney said. “Shit, I’m only seventeen.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“How about you?”

Cane hesitated. He was sure his brother wouldn’t understand what he looked upon as a life worth having, but what did it matter? Hell, they could all be dead tomorrow, and all of their dreams gone with them. Pulling a cigar from his pocket, he lit it, then said, “I remember one night we was walkin’ through this town with Pap. I think it was in Tennessee. I was maybe fifteen, I reckon. Cold, rainy ol’ night. We were hungry as hell, been on the move all day. We passed by this big house that was all lit up inside, and I saw a man leaned back in an easy chair with his feet propped up by a fire. And on the wall behind him was more books than I ever imagined there was in the world. Rows of ’em. Then some woman came into the room and—”

“What’d he do then?” Chimney asked. “I bet he fucked her, didn’t he?”

“No, it wasn’t like that.”

“So was she too old or ugly or what?”

“Like I said, it wasn’t like that,” repeated Cane, regretting now that he’d even mentioned it in the first place.

“What the fuck?” Chimney said. “A bunch of books and some puss walkin’ in on ye? That’s as crazy as Cob and his heavenly table horseshit. I don’t know about you sometimes, brother.” He moved over to the empty window frame and peered out at the dark tree line across from the house. “Better go ahead and get ye some sleep. Sounds like you need it. I’ll keep the first watch.”

Cob came to the next morning, a bit surprised that he wasn’t still on his horse. He tried to raise up, but he’d never felt this tired in his life. He saw Cane sitting on a warped and splintered wood floor covered with dust and grit and purplish balls of coon scat, his back leaned against the wall, reading one of the newspapers Chimney had taken from the store. A small pile of feathers from where a bird had been eaten by some animal lay over by the entrance to the other room. “Where are we?” he asked.

Cane looked up. “Some old house we found.” He set the paper aside and picked up a canteen.

“So them men quit chasin’ us?”

“Maybe,” Cane said. “We ain’t sure yet.” He held the canteen to Cob’s lips with one hand and lifted his head with the other.