Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

“You look thirsty,” Pollard said. He’d been sitting on the steps pondering the notice that had been stuck inside his door this morning, informing him that the city was hereby fining him three dollars every week until he emptied his outhouse, or at least took it down to an “acceptable level.” Just like the fucking shit scooper had threatened.

“You got that right,” Sugar replied.

“You looking for a job?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about tendin’ bar.”

Pollard laughed. “Don’t worry, business is bad enough without me lettin’ a nigger take over.” He tore the notice into little pieces and tossed them in the air. “No, what I’m lookin’ for is someone to clean out the jake in the back. You take her down four feet, I’ll give you two dollars and a pint.”

Within seconds of hearing the offer, Sugar could already taste the liquor on his parched tongue. A pint! By God, he’d down it in one long drink. And two dollars! That would buy two more. As far as food went, why, he could worry about that later. “Let me see it,” he said.

Pollard led him around the side of the building. “There it is,” he said, pointing at an outhouse at the edge of the alley, made of rough slabs with a rickety door hanging a little cockeyed from leather straps.

Sugar opened the door and the stench brought tears to his eyes. A cloud of flies emerged into the sunlight, as if even they couldn’t stand the smell anymore. He held his breath and looked inside. The contents were bubbling up over the top of the hole, like a volcano ready to erupt. Just as he was on the verge of telling the man no, he thought of the pint again. “How would I go about it?” he asked, once he stepped away from the door.

“Ye’d have to dip it out,” Pollard said. “It’s easy. The lid lifts up. I usually do it myself, but I hurt my back the other day.” He pointed to a dented tin bucket lying near the back door of the bar. “You can use that.”

“But where would I put it?” Sugar asked. “That’d be quite a pile by the time I got done.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pollard said, “what do you want me to do, hold your hand, too?” He looked around, then nodded toward the well-kept yard that belonged to the Grady bitch on the other side of the alley. “Just toss it over the fence there.”

“Two dollars and a pint, right?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Could I have a snort ’fore I get started?”

“Ha!” Pollard said. “I might be dumb, but I ain’t plumb dumb. I’ll pay ye when you finish the job.”

For the next three hours, Sugar dipped shit from the hole with the leaky bucket and carried it across the alley, dumped it over the other side of the fence. By the time he finished, there was a pile of waste standing four feet high in Mrs. Grady’s backyard, the edge of it sliding slowly toward the meticulously maintained plot bordered with seashells and white pebbles that contained her prizewinning rosebushes. He was just getting ready to knock on the back door of the bar to ask for his pay when a policeman sped up the alley in a car and stopped. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the cop asked in a sharp voice.

“Just got done cleanin’ out that jake,” Sugar explained. The thin coat of excrement that covered his clothes and hands and arms was already beginning to harden in the sunlit air.

“No, I mean why the fuck are you dumping it in Mrs. Grady’s yard?” the cop said. His name was Lester Wallingford, and his father was the chief of police in Meade. He and his brother, Luther, were the only two full-time employees on the force, and in their sibling rivalry to outdo each other, they were apt to arrest people for little more than spitting on the sidewalk, especially if one of the ten cells in the jail happened to be empty.

Sugar looked over at the pile, then noticed for the first time a tall woman with long, iron-gray hair in braids and a fringed shawl about her shoulders watching them from a window on the second floor of the house. “I’m just doing what the man told me to do,” he said to Lester.

“What man?”

“The barkeep in there.”

“Who? Pollard?”

“I don’t know his name. He just told me he’d give me two dollars to clean out his jake, said to put it over the fence there.”

Lester got out of the car and pounded on the back door of the Blind Owl. A minute or so later, Pollard opened it and stuck his head out. “Can I help ye?” he said in a casual tone, an innocent look on his meaty face.

“Did you hire this man to empty your shithouse?”

Pollard squinted past the policeman at the black man standing behind him, and his brow furrowed as if he were puzzled. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” he said. “I’ve never seen this fucker before in my life.”

It took Sugar a moment to realize what was happening, but when he caught on, he kicked at the bucket and yelled, “That’s a lie, you sonofabitch!”

“Now settle down,” Lester told Sugar. “You don’t want to be talkin’ to white folks like that.” He turned back and regarded Pollard suspiciously. “You tellin’ me this man just took it upon himself to dip out your crapper?”

Pollard shrugged. “I guess he musta. I don’t know why, though. Maybe he’s one of them perverts. I’ve heard some of them get their jollies rollin’ around in it. Like I said, I’ve never seen him before.”

“He’s lying, Officer,” Sugar yelled. “He promised me two dollars and a pint of whiskey for doing this!”

“What’s this about a pint?” Lester said. “You didn’t say nothing about that before.”

“See?” Pollard said. “He’s makin’ it up as he goes along. Christ, you ought to know how them fuckers are when they get caught.”

Screaming another obscenity, Sugar kicked the bucket again, and Lester drew his revolver. “I’m tellin’ you for the last time,” he warned, “settle down.”

“But you surely don’t believe him, do ye?” Sugar said.

Glancing over, Lester saw that Mrs. Grady was still watching from her window. She was bound to cause trouble if he didn’t make an arrest, and, though he figured Pollard was lying through his teeth, he couldn’t prove it. “Well, unless you got a paper or something saying that he hired you,” he said, “I don’t have no—” Just then, Sugar saw the barkeep wink, and he went crazy, lunging past the cop and trying to jerk the door open to get at the dirty bastard. “That’s it!” Lester yelled, sticking the barrel of his gun in the black man’s face. “You’re goin’ to jail.” He clapped a set of tarnished handcuffs on Sugar’s wrists and shoved him toward the car.

“You ain’t gonna allow him to sit his ass on your seats like that, are ye?” Pollard said. “Covered in shit like he is?”

The lawman thought for a minute, then said to his prisoner, “You’ll have to stand on the running board.” They both heard Pollard start chuckling, and Sugar turned to stare at him, his eyeballs bulging with hate. He didn’t know how long he’d stick around this cow town, but he vowed right then and there that the last thing he would do before he left was burn this motherfucker’s bar down. When they arrived at the jail, the cop made him empty his pockets in the parking lot out back. “What’s this for?” Lester asked, pointing at the razor. Sugar shrugged. “Shaving.” Not in the mood to waste any more time messing around with a penniless vagrant when he could be out looking for real lawbreakers, Lester didn’t bother questioning him any further about it, even though the man didn’t look like he’d done much grooming as of late. He was, however, concerned about the smell from Pollard’s shitter causing trouble among the other jailbirds, simply because it would give them something new to whine about, so he allowed Sugar a couple of minutes to wash off in a bucket of water before leading him down the hall toward the cells. As they passed a bulletin board on which was pinned a copy of the Jewett Gang wanted poster, he said to the cop, “Those dirty dogs held me up the other day.”