Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

Now he was getting somewhere, Chimney thought. Then the barber turned him in the chair, and he saw an automobile drive past the window. “They a place around here sells cars?” he asked.

“Jesus, what’d ye do? Rob a bank?”

“What’s that ’sposed to mean?” Chimney said, laying his hand on the butt of the little Remington stuck in his pants.

“Well, first you asking about buyin’ whores, and now automobiles. Sounds like he’s got money to spend, don’t it, Jim?”

“I don’t know,” the old man muttered. It was obvious that the crack about his daughter had hurt his feelings.

“Oh, don’t be mad, Jim,” the barber said. “I was just kiddin’ about Nancy. You know that.”

“Well.”

“Besides, it shouldn’t be nothing to you anyway. Hell, I’m the one stuck with her now.”

“Clarence, you shouldn’t talk like that. Nancy’s all right.”

“Best place to go look at cars is Triplett’s,” the barber said, turning back to Chimney. “Just make a left when you leave and another left at the first street. You’ll see his lot a couple blocks down. I’d go with ye and buy one myself, but that all right bitch I’m married to keeps me in the poorhouse. Ain’t that right, Jim?”

Chimney got out of the chair and studied himself in the mirror for a moment, then paid the man. Picking up his bundle of new clothes, he walked back to the hotel and took a hot bath. As he soaped himself up, he thought about the barber and his wife, wondered if she was really as bad as he’d let on. She must be, otherwise why would the bald-headed father-in-law put up with such insults? Christ, the slut was probably bent over a chair getting fucked by someone right now. His hand went down between his legs as he tried to imagine what she felt like. By the time he finished, he had water splashed all over the floor around the tub. He hurriedly dried off, then put on his new clothes and went down the stairs and out the door onto the street. The weather was fine, the sky a soft, cloudless blue. Walking past the hotel where Cane and Cob were staying, he entered a joint called the McAdams. It was the first time he’d ever been in a bar, but he sat down on a stool and nonchalantly ordered a beer and a steak sandwich like he’d hung out in them all his life. He made small talk with the keep while he ate, then went on down the street looking for the car lot.

Chimney knew absolutely nothing when it came to automobiles, but there were at least a dozen parked on the gravel of various years and models. He was walking around looking them over when a man in a pair of greasy coveralls came out of a garage and introduced himself as Tom Triplett. “You looking for a car?”

“Could be,” Chimney said. “Ain’t decided yet.”

“Well, take your time,” the man said. “It’s probably the most important purchase you’ll make in your lifetime. You from around here?”

“No,” Chimney said.

“What brings you to Meade?” Triplett asked, wondering, as he looked at the customer’s clothes, if he might be a carny, or another one of those entertainers the fruitcake over at the Majestic was always bringing in. Most of the acts he’d seen there over the years weren’t worth the quarter admission fee, though he would admit that goddamn bunch called the Lewis Family did put on a hell of a show once they got wound up.

“Oh, nothing much. Thought maybe I’d buy me a whore.”

Triplett didn’t bat an eye. Ever since the pimp and his women appeared out of nowhere a few weeks ago, half the men in Meade had whores on their mind, one way or another. He didn’t approve of them for the most part, but that most part was because Blackie kept sending his bodyguard over with IOUs for services they had provided to his son, Jeffrey. “Buy ye one of these and you won’t have to pay for it,” he told Chimney.

“What do ye mean?”

“Hell, son, ain’t nothing gets a woman hotter than ridin’ around in a nice car.”

“That right?” Chimney said.

“As God is my witness,” Triplett said. “Why, my boy, Jeffrey, he…” The salesman felt his stomach begin to fizz, and he clapped his mouth shut. Talking about his son would just set his ulcer on fire again. The lazy sonofabitch had slithered home again this morning past dawn, all scratched to hell and stinking drunk, looking like an animal that should be shot and put out of its misery. He’d fuck anything with two legs. “Take this car, for example,” Triplett said to Chimney, pointing at a shiny red Packard. “Why, I guarantee you, you drive this car uptown tonight, you’ll have to fight the women off. Let me ask ye something. How is it ye get around now?”

“Horse,” Chimney said.

“Horse!” Triplett laughed. “No wonder you have to pay for it. Ain’t no young modern woman wants to be seen on a horse these days.”

“I don’t know how to drive,” Chimney said.

“Shoot, there’s nothing to it. I can show ye everything you need to know in a couple hours.”

“How much?”

“Well, depends on what you want.”

“Which one’s the fastest?”

“That’d be the Packard. It’ll go sixty miles an hour on good road. I could let you have it for two thousand, including the tax. She’s the same as brand-new.”

“No,” Chimney said, shaking his head, “I can’t afford nothin’ like that.”

“Well, how much can ye afford?”

The boy looked around, then pointed at a black Ford touring car. “How much for that one?”

Triplett rubbed his chin. A man from Clarksburg had traded it in two weeks ago, complaining that it was cold-natured, but he hadn’t had time to check out the problem yet. “That one I could let go for two-fifty. She’s got a few miles on her, but she’s been taken good care of.”

“And you can show me how to drive it?”

“Sure, I’ll take ye out today if you want.”

They went into the office and Chimney counted out the money. The man started scribbling in a receipt book. “What’s your name?”

“Hollis Stubbs.”

“How do ye spell that?”

“I don’t know. Nobody ever showed me.”

Triplett made a guess at it, then handed over the receipt. “Always keep this with you so you got proof you own it.” Then he shucked off the coveralls and put on a pair of goggles and a long duster. “I’ll show you how to start it first,” he told Chimney. He proceeded to explain pulling out the choke lever and priming the engine with the crank, then setting the throttle and the spark advance before giving it one more crank to fire it up. He went through the whole procedure twice, the first time slowly, the second time quickly. The car started up fine both times, and he wondered, first, if the man from Clarksburg knew what the fuck he was talking about, and second, if he should have charged the boy a little more for it. “Think ye got it?” he said.

“I think so,” Chimney said.

“Good,” Triplett said, hopping in on the driver’s side. “Once we get out of town, I’ll put you behind the wheel.”

—

BACK AT THE McCarthy, Cane was sitting in the room trying to make sense out of the first act of Richard III when he glanced out the window and saw two men drive by in a black automobile. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, as he was telling Cob again to take it easy on the doughnuts, that he realized the dandy sitting in the passenger’s seat wearing the purplish shirt had been their little brother.

AS SOON AS he finished helping Malone run the men through a drill on gas defense that afternoon, Lieutenant Bovard headed for the infirmary. A nurse in white showed him to the curtained-off area where an anesthetized Wesley was recuperating from his surgery. Other than a white bandage taped over the left side of his face, a cut on his chin and a small bruise on his forehead seemed to be his only other injuries. Pulling up a metal chair, the lieutenant sat down beside the bed. He heard, coming from down the hall, the evangelizing voice of the clap doctor warning another group of new recruits about the connections between syphilis germs and prostitutes and contaminated toilet seats. “Blindness, insanity, and death!” Eisner yelled as he finished the sermon. “Abstinence, gentlemen, that’s the only way you’ll survive!”