Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

“Where’s Chimney?” Cob asked after he had drunk his fill.

“I’m right here,” Chimney said. Swiveling his head to the left, Cob saw his other brother squatted down, looking out the front window. Beside him was the rifle they had stolen from the storekeeper. Other guns had been placed on either side of the door, and a wad of bloody rags was tossed in the corner.

“How long we been here?” Cob said.

“Since last night.”

“Boy, when I first woke up, I thought for sure we was back at the shack on the Major’s place.”

“Yeah,” Cane said, glancing around. “I guess it does have the same ambiance.”

“ Ambiance? I’ve heard that word before, ain’t I?”

“Sure you have,” Cane said. “Remember that line in the book about Bloody Bill? Talkin’ about the sportin’ house? ‘The elegant, subdued ambiance of the gilded room was—’ ”

Then Chimney, still staring out the window, cut in and finished the sentence: “ ‘…suddenly shattered by the forced entry of a lustful, liquor-soaked Bloody Bill, his side-arms rattling in their tooled-leather holsters and his gold tooth gleaming in the light from the candelabras like the rarest of Satan’s jewels.’ ”

“What the heck does ‘gilded’ mean?” Cob asked.

“Well, I think it’s like ‘shiny,’ ” Cane said. Then he remembered the story he’d come across in the paper. “Hey, listen to this.” He commenced to reading aloud about a night watchman in Savannah who claimed that he fired six rounds point-blank into one of the Jewett Gang, the chubby one with the moon head, and watched as the criminal laughed them off as if the bullets weren’t any more lethal than mosquito bites or the good-night kisses of some sweet, innocent child.

“Damn, I wish it were so,” Cob said, craning his neck to look down at his throbbing leg.

“Jesus Christ, we never been within a hundred miles of there our whole lives,” Chimney complained. He walked from his post at the window over to the coffee pot sitting at the edge of the fireplace. Although Cane was usually against risking the smoke of a fire when they had men trailing them, Chimney had let him sleep all night, and he didn’t have the heart to tell him no when he said he’d like a cup of coffee. “And where do they get the rest of that bullshit? Skeeter bites. Fuck, look at him. He’s lucky that ol’ boy back there couldn’t shoot worth a damn or we’d probably be a-plantin’ him right about now.”

After that, they lapsed into silence, listened to the snake slither around inside the walls. Cob dozed off again and Chimney went out to check on the horses. Cane opened the newspaper, and on the third page he found an article about German soldiers roasting young children over a spit for their dinner in some place called Belgium. He shook his head when he finished reading it. At least he and his brothers weren’t the only ones being lied about.

JASPER CAME INTO the Blind Owl right after Pollard opened up and stood by the door with his hand on the handle. “What the fuck do you want?” the bartender asked. He was wiping out some glasses with a rag he’d blown his nose in a few minutes ago, setting them on a shelf under the bar. Unlike the cook who strives to maintain a semblance of cleanliness in his kitchen for the most part, but occasionally can’t resist sticking a dead fly or two in some whiny customer’s meal, Pollard didn’t discriminate; in one way or another, he passed on a taste of his grossness to each and every one of his patrons.

“It’s about your outhouse,” Jasper said. “It’s runnin’ clear over in Mrs. Grady’s yard, it’s so full.”

“Had a couple boys in here last night had the flux,” Pollard replied. “They musta filled it up.”

“That’s what you said last week,” said Jasper.

“So?” Pollard said. “I can’t help it they came back. What do you want me to do, start turning payin’ customers away just cause they got the runs?”

“Well, you got one week to get it cleaned up, or the city’s gonna take action.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“I told ye before, they’re gonna start fining ye,” Jasper said. “Three dollars a week.”

Pollard’s fat face turned crimson and he threw the rag down, started to come around the end of the bar. “I’ll tell ye what, you little bastard, you turn me in, I’ll—”

“Mrs. Grady’s already done that,” Jasper blurted out. “I’m just deliverin’ the message.” Then he fled out the door and sprinted a block down the street before he slowed down. He hadn’t trusted Pollard since the night a few years back when Itchy brought him to the Blind Owl to buy him his first beer, and then proceeded to get loaded himself, as if it were his birthday and not Jasper’s. He’d always felt guilty about leaving the old man there that night, but he could hardly keep his eyes open after finishing off the second mug of First Capital somebody forced upon him; and besides that, within minutes of their arrival, Itchy had started pursuing a gray-haired crone dressed in a long shift sewn together out of a couple of mismatched parlor curtains. The next day, when he didn’t show up to help clean Mrs. Fetter’s johnny out, Jasper went on the hunt of him. Not finding him at home, he walked down to the bar and asked Pollard if he had any idea where he might have gone.

The barkeep had glanced up briefly from the newspaper he was reading, then turned a page. “I think he left with that ol’ hag he was playin’ kissy-face with.”

“Any idy where she lives?”

“No, but from the looks of her, I’d say she lives under a bridge somewhere. Like one of them trolls. Hell, she might be cookin’ him up in a pot right now, though I can’t imagine that ol’ fucker would be very tasty.”

“Well, what time you figure—” Jasper started to ask.

“Jesus Christ, you little shit, I’m not his goddamn babysitter,” Pollard yelled. “Now, unless you want a drink, get the fuck out of here and quit botherin’ me.”

After checking the rest of Itchy’s usual haunts, Jasper had gone back and finished the job at Mrs. Fetter’s. He didn’t have any choice, really; the woman’s daughter was getting married over the weekend, and they had promised that the shithouse would be in tip-top shape for the guests. Just by luck, Paint Street was closed off at the paper mill because of a gas leak, and the only way to get through to the dump with Gyp and the honey wagon was to take the alley that ran behind the Blind Owl. And that’s how he finally found Itchy, an old tarp slung over him and beaten to a pulp just a few feet from the bar’s back door. Jasper had taken him back to his own house, put him to bed in his mother’s old room. Doc Hamm did his best to patch him up, but it was touch and go there for a while. For the entire four days he was unconscious, Jasper never left his side except to feed and water Gyp. And then, on the fifth morning, the old man opened his eyes and asked for a drink of water. He never did remember anything about that night, though Jasper was fairly certain he knew what had happened, and it didn’t have anything to do with a troll camped out under a bridge.

After the sanitation inspector delivered the warning and ran out the door, Pollard locked up and went to the back room to check on the man he’d had chained to the floor next to his cot for the past four days. He’d pried his nose off with a bottle opener an hour ago; and he sat down on the bed and told him it wouldn’t be much longer, that he was going to finish him off with an axe tonight. He went on talking, though he wasn’t sure the man was capable of listening anymore. “You make number seven,” Pollard said. “A lot of people consider that a lucky number, but I bet they’d change their minds if they saw you right now, wouldn’t they?” He lingered awhile longer, eating a can of bully beef while he looked over his work. Then he went back out front, served a few drinks to some winder boys getting primed to start the second shift over at the paper mill.