Donald Pollock - The Heavenly Table

Pulling into the dusty lot of Parker’s store, he set the brake on the wagon and climbed down. He recalled that the last time he had been here the ground was still frozen. Ever since the cattle ruse, he had avoided people as much as possible, hoping none of his neighbors found out about it. As he pushed the screen door open, he saw the two bachelor brothers named Ovid and Augustus Singleton leaned over a checkerboard set atop a stack of wooden crates. It was rumored that they ate from the same plate and still slept together in the same bed they had been born in some fifty-odd years ago. They spent the majority of their days riding around the neighboring townships in a squeaky black carriage pulled by a pair of bony, dilapidated nags, searching through trash piles and abandoned houses for junk to sell, and as far as Ellsworth was concerned, they were as worthless as teats on a tater. He nodded to them stiffly, then turned and waited for Parker to finish tallying some numbers on a piece of cardboard. He hadn’t even placed his order yet when the storekeeper mentioned the army training camp the government was building on the edge of Meade, the county seat fifteen miles to the east. “Why they doing that?” Ellsworth asked.

“ ’Cause of the war,” Parker said. In all the years Ellsworth had known the storekeeper, he had never seen him without something stuck in his mouth, and today he was sucking on what appeared to be a pink rubber eraser, but could just as easily have been the tongue of some small animal. He took off the green eyeshade he wore and scratched at his head. A few flakes of dandruff floated down onto the counter.

“What war?” Ellsworth said.

Behind him, Ovid spoke up. “Hell, Fiddler, the country declared war on Germany back in April. You didn’t know that?”

“Well, I knew they was fightin’ going on somewhere, but I didn’t know we was in on it.”

“Sure we are,” Augustus said. “A couple of them Baker boys have already signed up.”

Then Parker put his pencil down and said, looking at the farmer and shaking his head, “Ells, you need to quit gettin’ all your news off that jackass out there and start talkin’ to us regular folks once in a while. Shit, he probably don’t even know where Germany is.”

The Singletons got a kick out of that, and Ellsworth’s sunburned face turned an even deeper shade of red as he stood by the counter and listened to them hoot and cackle. He had always been at least vaguely aware of his limitations, but the thought of being bested in anything, even worldly affairs he had never heard of, by a pair of yahoos who had never, as far as anybody knew, done an honest day’s work in their lives, was almost more than he could stand. He had wanted to inquire about Eddie, ask if anyone had spotted him around, but figured that would just open up the door to another insult and so he let it go. However, on the way back home, nodding to himself and occasionally spitting great wads of phlegm that stuck like glue to Buck’s wide, sweaty rump, Ellsworth put two and two together in his own slow way. Somehow, Eddie had heard about that army camp.

“Why do you think that?” Eula asked when he told her that afternoon what he figured Eddie might be up to. She was bent over the kitchen table rolling a cylinder of dumpling dough back and forth while a pot of water heated on the stove.

“I don’t know,” Ellsworth said. “I just got a feeling.”

Eula dabbed at the sweat on her face with her apron, then looked over at the sacks of salt and sugar he had set on the counter. Being a bit more realistic than her husband ever was when it came to their son, she had a hard time seeing Eddie as the type to voluntarily join something as strict and harsh as she imagined the military was, but then again, stranger things had happened, like the time Uncle Peanut got saved over in Jimmy Beulah’s shanty and didn’t touch a drop for nearly six months. “So where in the world is Germany anyway?” she said, as she picked up a knife and started cutting the round tube of yellow dough into half-inch pieces.

Ellsworth’s face reddened again. He had no idea, but, still smarting from the abuse hurled at him earlier at the store, there was no way he was going to admit it. Going to the water bucket, he drew himself a drink, then sipped slowly while considering various responses. Finally, trying to sound both as nonchalant and convincing as possible, he said, “Hell’s fire, Eula, even ol’ Buck probably knows where Germany is.”

“I don’t,” she said.

Holy Christ on a cross, Ellsworth thought, the woman could be a sister to that damn bunch over at the store. “Well, fetch me a map,” he said, “and I’ll show ye.”

“Map? Ells, you know we don’t have no—” Then Eula stopped and turned to look at him. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You don’t know, either, do ye?”

Ellsworth took a deep breath. Though he had never, not once, struck Eula in all the time they had been married, he now fought the urge to throw the dipper at her head. He had listened to more than a few of his neighbors, usually after they’d had a drink or two in the back room of Parker’s store, brag about beating their wives for some infraction or other, and he had always looked upon such men as cowards and bullies. But standing there in the hot kitchen with the past days and weeks and months of frustrations and setbacks simmering inside him, he could almost understand why some of them yielded to it. He took another drink of water and thought longingly of the jugs of wine hidden in the hayloft. No, he and Eula had been through too much together to allow a little thing like geography drive him to do something he would regret for the rest of his life. And so, without another word, he hung the dipper back on the bucket and headed out to the barn.

BY THE TIME they ended up working for Major Tardweller, Pearl’s sons figured their father had racked up enough hardships for them all to sit at the head of the goddamn heavenly table he had been blabbering about for the past three years. Just a couple of days after Cane advised that they cut back their biscuit ration, they discovered that the cache of potatoes they had buried in the ground to last them the rest of the summer was full of rot. They had woken up that morning to rain, and it being a Sunday anyway, Pearl had decided they would take the day off from clearing the swamp. It was the first break they’d had in several weeks. For a few minutes, the old man stood watching as the others sorted the bad from the good. “How does it look?” he finally asked.

“Like we’re gonna go hungry,” Cane replied.

“Well, they’s worse things. Remember that ol’ boy I met on the Foggy River? Shoot, he didn’t eat nothin’ but tadpoles and bugs and he seemed to be doin’ all right. If’n he can do it, I reckon we can, too.”

“It might come to that ’fore it’s over with,” said Cane.

“No need to worry,” Pearl said. “The Lord will give us our reward someday.”

“I ain’t eatin’ no goddamn tadpoles,” Chimney muttered.

“What say?”

After taking a deep breath to steady himself, Chimney replied in a loud voice, “I said I’d gobble down frog shit and thistles if that’s what it takes to stay on His good side.”

“That’s right,” Pearl said, nodding his head. “As would I.” Then he pulled up his pants and tightened his belt another notch before walking away, whistling the first few notes of some half-forgotten hymn that Lucille used to sing to herself.

“Me, too,” Cob said after the old man was out of earshot. “Why, I’d eat me a pile of rocks if that’s what it took.” Ever since he had first heard Pearl describe heaven as some sort of celestial banquet hall where the food was piled high forever and you just helped yourself whenever you took a notion, Cob had become obsessed with gaining entry to it. The only other thing that had impressed him as much in all his nineteen years was Willy the Whale, a huge retarded oaf they had once seen in a stall at a county fair in Hancock County. Said to have been discovered living on pinecones and bat guano in a cave in the Smoky Mountains, Willy was so fat he used a woman’s petticoat for a napkin. His manager was taking bets that he could eat half a hogshead of raw crawdads in an hour. Though they were supposed to be alive, anyone could see that a good three or four inches of dead ones were floating around on top of the greasy brown water. It wasn’t until that day, when he saw the manager, with just a minute to go, cram the last of the bottom-feeders down Willy’s throat with a long wooden spatula as if he were priming a cannon, that Cob realized such a thing as a truly full belly was even possible anywhere else but in the Promised Land. And although something crucial had burst inside Willy and he died right in front of the crowd while the wagers were being collected, Cob was still a little upset that Cane hadn’t let him audition for the job when the carny came around later looking for someone with a healthy appetite to fill in for the evening show.