The Heavenly Table

41

THE SUN WAS coming through the loft door when Cane and Chimney finally woke up, a little stiff from having slept so long. They could hear Eula’s chickens scratching and clucking below them. Climbing down the ladder, they discovered that Cob was gone. “See?” Chimney said. “I told you. You got to watch the fat-ass every minute.”

“He must be in the house,” Cane said.

“Yeah,” Chimney said, “probably spillin’ his guts.”

“Nah, he’s sharper than you give him credit for. Come on, I’ll show ye.”

They found Cob at the kitchen table stuffing grits and eggs into his mouth. Eula was sitting across from him drinking a cup of coffee. “Good mornin’, Tom,” he said. “Mornin’, Hollis.”

“Just give me a minute and I’ll get your breakfast,” Eula said, getting up and going to the stove.

“How did ye sleep, Tom?” Cob asked.

“Like a rock.”

“What about you, Cousin Hollis?”

“Pretty good, I reckon.”

“How’s the leg feelin’ this morning, Junior?” Cane said.

“A lot better than yesterday, I’ll tell you that. Miss Eula’s a regular nurse.”

Chimney looked into the parlor. “Where’s the ol’…where’s Mr. Fiddler?”

“Oh, he’s been gone a couple hours,” Eula said, as she cracked some eggs into a bowl.

“Gone?” Chimney asked, shooting a look toward Cane. “Where’d he go?”

“Down the road a ways. He’s wantin’ to get another five acres of corn cut today.”

“By himself?” Cane said.

Eula shrugged. “Well, with Eddie gone, he don’t have much choice.”

“That’s a hard job for one man.”

“I know,” she said. “You saw him last night. Couldn’t hardly stay awake.”

An hour later, as they sat on the front porch sipping coffee and staring out upon the road, Cane suddenly said to Chimney, “I think we should help that old man with his crop.” From inside the house, they heard Eula ask “Junior” if he wanted another biscuit.

“Oh, no, not me, brother. I’ve already told ye, my days of slavin’ in a field are over with.”

Putting down his cup, Cane reached over and grabbed hold of Chimney’s hands. “Look at these,” he said, turning the palms up. “Soft as a banker’s.”

“So?”

“Shit, you don’t want to get like one of them bastards, do ye?”

“Forget it,” Chimney said, jerking his hands away. “We’re payin’ them good money to stay here. And besides, I thought we was supposed to be resting up.”

“What about this,” Cane said, glancing around to make sure Eula wasn’t within hearing distance. “We give him a couple good days and then we’ll take off for this Meade he was talking about and get you a woman. That’ll work, won’t it?”

“But why should we even give a shit? Heck, sounds to me like his own boy bailed on him.”

“I don’t know. They just sort of remind me of what Mother and Pap might have been like if she had lived. You don’t remember them like I do. Things were different back when she was around.”

“Jesus, talk about gettin’ soft.”

Cane shook his head, then stood up. “All right, you stay here and have a little tea party with Junior and Miss Eula. I’ll go help the old man.”

“Fuck,” Chimney said with a sigh. Chopping corn didn’t go along with his idea of the outlaw life, but sitting around on a porch in a goddamn rocking chair didn’t, either. At least it would give him something to do until they got to town. “I’ll give him the rest of today and two more, but that’s it.”

“That’s plenty. We can get a lot of work done in that amount of time.”

“But then we go to this Meade town and have some fun.”

“Fair enough,” Cane said. He turned and started to walk toward the barn.

“Hold up a minute,” Chimney said. “What about guns? We’ll be pretty much right out in plain sight.”

Cane paused. His brother had a point. If the law caught them in the open without any horses or weapons, they’d be fucked. “Well, what about them Remington.22s we got?” he said. “We could carry them in our pockets.”

“Shit,” Chimney scoffed, “one of them little things won’t stop nothing.”

“Aw, hell, as good a shot as you are, you could just knock their eyeballs out.”

Chimney gave a little snort. “Now you’re braggin’ on me. You want this bad, don’t ye?”

“Come on,” Cane said. “Let’s see if we can find a stone or somethin’ to sharpen those machetes with.”

That afternoon Ellsworth came back to the house for his dinner, and when he finished, they followed him back to the field with their cutters and another roll of twine. For the rest of the day, they took turns chopping the dry stalks right at the ground while the other two gathered them up and tied them into shocks. The sun was going down when Ellsworth finally got them to quit. As they walked back to the house looking forward to supper, he tried in his fumbling way to tell them the joke he’d heard about the queer in the pickle patch, and it surprised him when they laughed. He wanted to ask them what it meant, but he didn’t. Cane and Chimney dumped buckets of water on their heads and ate on the front porch, then gathered up Cob from the kitchen and went to the barn. As Ellsworth told Eula that night after they had gone to bed, “I never saw two men work so hard in my life.” His voice was still a little hoarse.

“It’s a miracle,” she said, looking up at the dark ceiling, his hands resting on her stomach. “How much things have turned around in just one day.”

“You figure?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I hope so.”

They lay there for a moment counting their blessings, and then he said, “I almost forgot. How did Junior do?”

“Oh, he’s a good boy,” Eula said. “He sure does love to eat, I’ll tell you that. You know what he told me after you all left this afternoon?”

“No,” Ellsworth said. “What?”

“He told me that sitting in my kitchen was better than being at the heavenly table. I have to say, that’s about the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in a long time.” Though she’d tried to get him to stay off his bad leg, the boy had followed her around like a loyal dog. Her life was, for the most part, a solitary one, and she had to admit it felt nice having someone to talk to through the day. At times he seemed to get a little confused when she asked him questions or said his name, a bit like her mother used to do when she was having one of her spells, but not quite the same, either. With Junior, it was more like he was trying to keep a story straight that someone had taught him. Or maybe a lie. She thought for a moment, debating whether or not to bring it up, then turned and whispered so low she could barely hear herself, “Ells, what do you figure them boys have been up to?”

But Ellsworth didn’t respond. He had closed his eyes and already taken the fall that he took every night on his way to sleep. Most times it was either off one of the slate cliffs over on Copperas Mountain or from the sharply pitched roof of Jarvis Thacker’s three-story house, the biggest one in the township, but tonight it was into a black pit that seemed to have opened up at the bottom of the cellar steps just as he was heading for one of the wine barrels. Often the vividness of the plunge jerked him back to wakefulness for a minute or two, but not tonight. Trying to keep up with the two young men had worn him to a frazzle. Within a few minutes, he was dreaming that he was back in the cornfield swinging his knife while the colored boy who had passed through yesterday morning sat silently on a white-faced cow, watching him. He was wearing a metal pot on his head, and Ellsworth was singing a song at the top of his voice. Somehow he knew the words, even though it was one that he’d never heard before.