The Heavenly Table

43

CHIMNEY WENT AT the corn cutting like a maniac, the promise of good times and women propelling him to get the job over and done with so they could leave. “That cousin of yours might not be the friendliest man in the world,” Ellsworth said to Cane, “but damn, he ain’t afraid of work, is he?” They were standing under a locust tree at the edge of the field, taking a break and watching him attack another row. Chimney wasn’t any bigger than Eddie, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Hell, Ellsworth thought, he didn’t even think Tuck Taylor could keep up with this one.

“No, sir, he ain’t,” Cane said. He looked down at the raw place the handle of the machete had rubbed into the meaty part of his right hand between the thumb and fingers, and grinned a little to himself. One thing for sure, there wouldn’t be a lawman or reporter in the country expecting to find the Jewett Gang harvesting a cornfield in southern Ohio. He wished he knew what the papers were saying about them. It had been a week since he’d seen a new one.

“No wonder he’s so skinny. How old is he anyway?”

“Hollis? Oh, he’s around eighteen,” Cane said a little warily. He took another drink of water from the jug and set it down on the ground, figured it best to change the subject. “Yeah,” he went on, “won’t be long and we’ll have this field whipped.”

“And a couple days ago I was ready to give up,” Ellsworth said. “If it hadn’t been for lettin’ Eula down, I probably would have. Makes a difference, havin’ a wife.”

“I expect so,” Cane said, recalling the way Pearl had gone off the rails after Lucille died. “What do ye think you’d have done if you hadn’t married?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess if I hadn’t met her, I’d have probably drunk myself to death. Had an uncle do that. But she keeps me in line. What about you? You got a woman?”

“Uh, no, sir,” Cane said. “Not yet anyway.” Christ, he hadn’t even kissed a girl, let alone done anything else with one. He thought about the newspaper article he had read about the ones who had been coming forth in little towns all over the South, extolling his romantic charms, the gentlemanly way he treated them, each claiming to be his one and only sweetheart. “A twentieth-century Lothario,” the reporter had called him.

“Well, you’re still young, but take my advice and don’t wait as long as I did to get hitched. I was thirty-four, and I wish to Christ I’d done it sooner.”

“Why’s that?”

“I guess I would have liked for her to’ve known me when I was at my best. Heck, when I was your age or thereabouts I screwed some gal seven times in one night, but by the time I met Eula, I couldn’t have done that for a thousand dollars.” Ellsworth thought about the time he was walking home from a church revival one rainy, windblown evening and saw Mrs. Sproat standing out in her yard under a pawpaw tree with an old slicker draped over her head, as if she were waiting just for him. He was nineteen at the time, living with his mother, trying to make a living for them on the fifteen acres his father had left them when he died. Mrs. Sproat asked him if he’d like to come in a spell to get out of the wet, and he, never having been in such a situation before, thought she just wanted to talk, her being a widow woman and probably feeling lonely on such a miserable evening. They hadn’t been inside the house more than two minutes when she started stripping off her long black dress. It scared the bejesus out of him, but he didn’t turn away from it. Though she was flabby and gray and a few years past her prime, it was all he could do to keep up with her. He’d shoot a load in her and roll over to get his breath; and she would lie there for a spell, and then start back up on him again with her hands and her lips and by the time the first cock crowed the next morning, he was so weak he couldn’t have split a bean pod open. He washed up good the next evening and went back to have another go at her, thinking that she considered him quite the stud, but when he presented himself at her door, she acted as if she didn’t even know him. He knew something wasn’t right, and so he went up the road a ways and circled around. It wasn’t fifteen minutes before he saw Gene Humbolt, a married man with five little ones at home, tie his coonhound to a fence post and sneak in the back. Ellsworth remembered that he’d hurt all the way home that night, but then woke up the next morning happy that he’d had his turn with her and glad that it was over with.

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind,” Cane said.

“Yes, sir,” Ellsworth said, watching Chimney start another row and still thinking about all the ways Mrs. Sproat had kept him going. “A few years makes a big difference in a man, I’ll tell ye that. Don’t matter who he is. So whatever you want to do, you best go ahead and do it before it’s too late.”