Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

And who in their right mind would walk forty miles to see some water? Ellsworth swiped at a fly buzzing around his head and looked across the road to the woods. Maybe the boy had just let on that he was going to the river. Perhaps he was hiding over there in the trees right now, watching him. He had heard they could be sneaky like that, slip up behind you and lift your pocketbook right out of your pants without you feeling a thing. He walked back down into the field and reached into a groundhog hole for the jar of wine he had hidden there yesterday. He took a long drink, reminded himself to lock the doors tonight in case the spying bastard followed him home. Setting the jar back in the hole, he started cutting on another row of corn. Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes, dripped off his nose. By God, he would show that boy what he meant by a good day’s work. He hesitated a moment, then began to sing.

THAT EVENING, JUST as Sugar decided he had walked far enough for one day, three grimy, unshaven men came around a bend in the road on horses and reined to a stop a few feet in front of him. Two of them wore cowboy hats and overalls while the third’s attire consisted of a dusty frock coat and black trousers. A bloody piece of a white shirt was tied around the thigh of the heaviest one. Rifles protruded from their saddles and pistols hung from holsters belted around their waists. They looked to Sugar as if they had accidently stepped out of some bygone era and were searching for a way back to where they belonged. It wouldn’t have been the first time that someone ended up trapped in a time that didn’t quite suit them. He’d lived for a while with a woman who started coming home every night from her job in a millinery and dressing up like an Egyptian princess. Figuring she was just bored, he put up with the crazy costume for a while, but when she began praying to crocodiles and talking about him escorting her into the Underworld, he’d decided it was time to shag ass.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Chimney said. “What we got here?”

“Gentlemen,” Sugar said, nervously tipping his bowler. He swallowed and tried not to stare at their guns. He thought of his razor, but what use would it do to pull it out? These men would have him dead before he could even snap it open.

“Where ye going, boy?” Chimney asked.

“Headed for the river,” Sugar said.

“The Ohio?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s quite a ways on foot.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Anything up this road?”

“Not much unless you like lookin’ at cows and chickens.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sugar.”

“You hear that, boys? His ol’ mama thought he was so sweet she named him Sugar.”

“That ain’t my real name,” Sugar said quickly. Although it didn’t make any goddamn difference what these bastards thought of him, he still didn’t want them to think that his mother didn’t have the sense to give him a proper name. “It’s just the one I go by.”

“Well, if I was you, I’d start looking for a new one,” Chimney said. “Makes ye sound like a pony.” He leaned over his saddle and spat, then looked up and down the road. “I bet you got some ol’ gal down there on the river, don’t ye? That’s why you got that fancy hat on.”

“No,” Sugar said, “just going to see my people is all.”

“Come on,” Cane said. “We don’t have time for this.” It was their third day in Ohio, and for the most part they were still riding at night. This morning they had made it as far as Buchanan, and, just before dawn, ended up in a soggy marsh filled with rotten logs. The rib cage of a deer had rested on a small ferny island rising up in the middle of the foul-smelling morass. After breakfasting on Chimney’s last two strands of licorice, they’d spread their blankets on a thick bed of pokeweed and nightshade and settled down as best they could. They had endured it until late afternoon, but finally agreed, though there were still several hours of daylight left, that even getting killed or raped by a posse would be better than the torture being inflicted upon them by the hordes of late-season mosquitoes and black gnats swarming over their stinking skin. They were as worn-out and miserable as they had ever been, and Cane was more determined than ever to find somewhere clean and safe to rest up for a couple of days.

“I don’t know, I surely do like that hat,” Chimney said.

“Well, then, buy ye one,” Cane said. “They probably sell lids like that everywhere.”

“Not that one, they don’t.”

Cane let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Then just take the goddamn thing.”

“No, I got a better idea,” Chimney said. Pulling the Lee-Enfield from a leather scabbard tied with rawhide to his saddle, he ratcheted a shell into the chamber and looked at Sugar. “Here’s the way it’s gonna work. I’m a-goin’ to let you make a run for it. And if I can knock that hat off your head, then it’s all mine, understand? And if I can’t, well, it’s yours to go on wearing down to the river or wherever the fuck it is you’re really going.”

“Brother, why would ye want that thing?” Cob asked, the first words he had uttered in hours. “It looks like something ye’d take a shit in.”

“Ha!” Cane said. “That’s a good one.”

“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, Cob, but maybe I will. Be mine to do with as I please, right?”

Sugar jerked the bowler off his head and attempted to hand it up to Chimney. “Here, mister, I don’t want it anyway. It’s all yours for the keeping, free of charge.”

“There,” Cane said. “It’s settled.”

“No, it’s not,” Chimney said. He scratched his chin and looked about, then pointed at a woods on the other side of a field overgrown with wild roses and goldenrod and white-flowered asters. “See them trees over there?” he said to the black man. “You put the hat back on and run that way. I promise ye I’ll count to thirty before I cut loose.”

“Please, mister,” Sugar said, “they no need to do this. I don’t even want—”

“Better get to moving, boy. One, two, three…”

Sugar looked around wildly, then leaped off the side of the road down into the pasture and started running for the tree line, his arms pumping like pistons and his legs stepping high and the sticker bushes ripping at his flesh.

“But this don’t make no sense,” Cob said. “He tried to give it to ye.”

Ignoring his brother, Chimney kept counting, but at twenty he stopped and settled the rifle on his shoulder. Even after the bowler fell off the black man’s head, he seemed intent on shooting. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. But just as he started to squeeze the trigger, a loud blast went off beside him and his horse lurched sideways, causing his own shot to fly harmlessly into the sky. He watched his target dive into some tall weeds. “What the fuck?”

Cane put his pistol back in his holster. “Don’t ever pull no stunt like that again. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Jesus, no sense in gettin’ so excited. I was just going to scare him a little, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Cane said, “I bet you were. Well, hurry up, it’ll be dark before long.”

“Hurry up what?” said Chimney.

“Go find that hat.”

“Shit, you think I really wanted that goddamn thing?”

“I don’t care if you did or not,” Cane said. “Get your ass down there.”

A few minutes later, as they sat watching Chimney in the field cursing and flailing at the weeds, Cob said to Cane, “I bet that feller’s mad that he lost his hat. Ye could tell he was proud of it.”

“Yeah, he probably was. Hard to say how long he had to save up for that thing.”