Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

He followed Eula to the kitchen. Pouring herself the last of the coffee in the pot, she sat down and looked up at him standing in the doorway. “Now I know I’m just an old woman, and it’s none of my business what kind of trouble you’re all in, but—”

“We’re not in—”

“Let me finish,” Eula said. “But that boy a-sittin’ out there on the porch with a bullet still in his leg don’t need to be a part of it. I been around Junior enough these last couple days to know that much. So maybe you should quit doin’ whatever it was that got him hurt, and just get to wherever you’re going.” Then she picked up her cup to take a sip, but her lip began to quiver, and she set it back down. She appeared about to cry, and Cane was touched that she could have such feelings for his brother.

He started to reassure her that everything would turn out fine, but suddenly, as he looked over at the kitten curled up in a tight ball on its bed of rags in the corner, that didn’t seem quite good enough. He owed her more than that. “His real name’s Cob,” he said, and then turned and walked back out to the porch.

They rode away an hour later with Ellsworth standing in the yard waving goodbye. Cob was still whining about staying one more day, but within a few minutes he was asleep, slumped in the saddle, his round head bobbing over the pommel. It was after midnight when they passed through Nipgen. Not a single light burned anywhere. A lone dog was howling somewhere far off in the hills. “So what’s the plan when we get there?” Chimney asked as they left the little burg.

“Well, one thing’s for sure, we can’t all ride in together,” Cane began. “I’ll keep Cob with me and you’ll be on your own. Need to stable the horses, get some new clothes. We’ll stay in different hotels, pick some place to meet now and then.”

“Sounds good,” Chimney said. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, you think you could learn how to drive an automobile?”

“What?” Chimney said.

“I been thinkin’ on it, and it just makes sense. The more we change things, the less chance of gettin’ caught.”

“Hell, yes, I could. I can’t imagine there’s a whole lot to it.”

“Well, then, once you get to town and get settled, you start lookin’ around, see if you can buy one. Just make sure it’s big enough to haul all three of us.”

“But what about the horses?”

“We’ll figure that out later.”

“Jesus,” Chimney said, shaking his head and grinning, “did ye ever think a few weeks ago that we’d ever be buying an automobile?”

Cane shifted in his saddle and looked back to make sure Cob was still behind them. “No,” he said, “I couldn’t have imagined any of this, no matter how hard I tried.”

BOVARD WAS ON his way to breakfast when Malone caught up with him and informed him that Private Franks had been injured in a barroom brawl sometime yesterday evening and was now in the infirmary. Instead of going into town and being tempted to stop by the Majestic to see Lucas, the lieutenant had stayed in his quarters last night with a pot of tea and read over Thucydides’s account of the first invasion of Attica in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Unfortunately, stirring images of charging an impenetrable German bunker with a group of loyal young lads following behind him kept slipping in and preventing him from generating anything close to the enthusiasm he usually felt for his favorite historian of ancient Greece, and he had finally turned out the lamp in order to better succumb to his fantasies. Still, it was the first morning in a week or more when he hadn’t woken up benumbed with a hangover, and if nothing else, he felt well rested. “In the infirmary?” he said to Malone. “How bad did he get hurt?”

“They say he lost an eye.”

“Good Lord!” Bovard said, looking a bit startled. “Are you sure it was Wesley? I mean Private Franks?”

Malone nodded. “Oh, yes, sir, it was him all right.”

Bovard thought he detected a slight note of self-satisfaction in the sergeant’s voice, and it took him a moment to realize the reason for it. Just two days ago, he had told Malone that he had chosen Wesley to be his groom. The sergeant had questioned his choice, said that the boy seemed a bit too immature for such a responsibility. “What about Cooper?” he had suggested. “He’s the best I’ve seen with the horses.” Even though he’d already made up his mind, Bovard had been careful with his reply. He didn’t want Malone to think he didn’t value his opinion. But Cooper, a pudgy, bucktoothed dullard with jugged ears and a perpetual heat rash, was a veritable ogre compared to the dark-eyed and smooth-skinned Wesley. Just the type of beautiful young man, the lieutenant liked to imagine, that fought and died for honor and glory on the sun-drenched Grecian plains twenty-five hundred years ago. He couldn’t help it. Even after all his initial dissatisfactions with the caliber of the recruits, and his subsequent acceptance that he was going to be stuck fighting alongside well-meaning but uncouth farm boys and law clerks and shopkeepers, he was still loath to completely surrender certain noble ideals about men and war that he knew the sergeant would never understand. Besides, what did it matter as long as he kept his sentiments to himself? Or if the boy was any good with horses or not? The cavalry would soon be a thing of the past; modern, mechanized warfare had taken care of that. In the first few months of the conflict, thousands of unfortunate bastards had already proven that charging a machine-gun nest on horseback was tantamount to suicide. By the time they arrived in Europe, the majority of the animals would be relegated to hauling boxes of supplies and pulling artillery. “But I don’t understand,” Bovard said to Malone. “What was he doing in town in the first place? Wasn’t he scheduled for guard duty last night?”

“Well, that’s the worst part,” the sergeant said. “He left his post without tellin’ anyone. I know it’s no excuse, but a couple of his buddies said he got a Dear John letter yesterday.”

“How did it happen?” Bovard asked.

“Probably the same way it always happens,” the sergeant said. “She found her some new meat once he—”

“No,” Bovard said quickly. “I mean the eye. How did he lose it?”

“Oh, that,” Malone said. “Well, from what I heard, he was in a saloon and some preacher started spouting off about the war being nothing but a moneymaker for the fat cats. One thing led to another, and Franks took a swing at him. Before it was over, he had a piece of glass in his eye. Broken bottle, I suspect.”

Bovard took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Have they arrested the man who did it?”

“I believe so.”

Just then, First Lieutenants Waller and Bryant appeared on their way to the dining hall. Bovard waited until they passed on by, then said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it now. I just wish he’d come and talked to one of us before he did something so stupid.”

“Ah, sir, he’s not the first man to fuck his life up over a letter from home.”

“No, I suppose not,” Bovard said, thinking of the anguish he’d felt upon first receiving his last one from Elizabeth.

“Over at the Front, I saw a dozen or more go to the firing squad over that silly horseshit. People can get downright crazy when it comes to gettin’ dumped.”

“Christ, you don’t think they’ll execute him, do you?”

“No, sir, not over here, but I imagine they’ll make it rough on him for a while, then send him home with a dishonorable.”

“I suppose I better go see him this afternoon, write up a report,” Bovard said. He started to turn away toward the dining hall. He hated to think what that obnoxious loudmouth Waller would say about this. Ever since Lucas’s name had come up during lunch that day, the sonofabitch had been needling him in pissy little ways. Bovard had been thinking a lot about a story Malone had told him that involved some soldiers who had murdered their commanding officer and made it look like he had stepped on a land mine. Five months ago he would have never dreamed of doing such a thing, but if Waller kept it up, well, who knew what might happen once they got to France? “Sir, you still need a groom,” he heard the sergeant say.