The Heavenly Table

54

SHORTLY AFTER NINE o’clock that morning, Cane had awakened to find Cob missing. He shaved and washed up hurriedly and threw his clothes on, then spent the next two hours walking up and down the streets looking for him and regretting he’d ever drank that pint of whiskey last night. The last thing he remembered was Richard III limping along a gloomy corridor talking crazy shit to himself. What the hell would they do if Cob got lost, or, God forbid, got himself arrested for some trivial offense? Would he be able to keep his story straight? Cane was headed back to the McCarthy to see if his brother might have returned when he came upon a bookstore he had passed by earlier. Fuck it, he thought, ten minutes wouldn’t make much difference one way or another. A bell rang when he opened the door, but he didn’t see anyone behind the counter. He was looking through the shelves when a pretty, dark-haired woman by the name of Susannah Chapman came out of the back and asked if he needed any help finding something. Cane glanced at her, then quickly returned his gaze to the shelves. His throat constricted a little as he realized he was probably standing as close to a real lady as he ever had in his life, but after a moment, he managed to ask, in a slightly hoarse voice, “You wouldn’t happen to have one called The Life and Times of Bloody Bill Bucket, would ye?”

“No,” Susannah said, “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that one. Is it something new?” It sounded trashy to her, and her father made it a point not to carry such books, which was a noble idea, but also an impractical one when it came to doing business in a factory town like Meade. Most people here weren’t interested in expanding their minds or learning something new or reading the classics; they just wanted to be entertained a little in between another boring supper and another dead sleep.

“No, it’s pretty old, I think.” He turned and looked around the shop. “Nice place ye got here.” The smell of so many books combined with her perfume was more intoxicating than any whiskey he’d ever tasted.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s my father’s store. I just help out sometimes.”

“Ye got anything you’d recommend?”

“Well, what do you like?”

He shrugged. “Stories, I guess. Just started this one called Richard the Third.”

“Oh, I love Shakespeare,” she said. “ ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for—’ ” She broke off then, putting her hand to her mouth and looking slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I guess I got a little carried away. I almost gave away the ending.” Even though he had a thick Southern accent and a cheap suit, Susannah noticed that the customer was quite handsome in a rough, manly sort of way. She would have never thought by looking at him that he had any interest in Elizabethan drama, or, for that matter, that he’d ever read anything other than newspapers and maybe a cheap thriller or two. Her current suitor, Sandy Saunders, was the exact opposite of everything this man seemed to be. An insurance salesman for Mutual of Omaha, Sandy spent almost every dime he made from his commissions on the latest fashions and playing big-shot at the Candlelight Supper Club with a couple of his chums on the city council. Anytime he took her out on a date, it seemed as if his main objective was to stick her fingers in his mouth, which she thought was sweet the first time he did it, but had since turned creepy. Though he was attractive enough, his looks had never transcended the boyish stage and now, at thirty, were already starting to fade due to his constant carousing. Too, he was somewhat erratic, and could get angry over the most ridiculous things. For example, he’d been nursing a resentment against the mayor and the city engineer ever since they’d hired Jasper Cone to look over the town’s outhouses. Then, a couple of weeks ago, he shut up about them and began focusing all his rage on Jasper instead, saying the most cruel and hateful things about the pathetic little man. Still, that wasn’t what stopped her from fully committing herself to Sandy. Books were her greatest passion, and she could never get serious about a man who didn’t read, let alone marry one. To do so, she felt, would be like hitching her star to a fence post that just happened to breathe air and draw a paycheck. In the two years he had been courting her, he had yet to finish Treasure Island, which was the book he’d bought when he came in the shop to ask her out the first time. She sensed the customer watching her as she glided her fingers along a shelf, and it made her tingle slightly. Had Sandy ever aroused such a feeling in her? No, she thought regretfully, no matter how hard he sucked on her fingers. She pulled out two leather-backed volumes: a slightly scuffed but tight copy of Great Expectations and a pristine Collected Stories of Edgar Allan Poe. “Try these,” she told Cane, “and if you don’t like them, you can bring them back.”

He glanced at them and nodded (he would have accepted anything she handed him, even a cookbook written in Italian or a walking guide to Great Britain), then followed her to the front of the store, watching her hips slightly sway as she walked. Pulling out a wad of cash, he laid a twenty on the counter, and she began wrapping the books in a sheet of white paper. He glanced around the store again, trying to build up the courage to ask her out to dinner. Wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers, he realized that he was more nervous than he’d been when he and his brothers walked into their first bank back in Farleigh. Just then he saw Cob limping by the window. Christ, looked for him all morning, and now he shows up. “I’m much obliged,” he told her, snatching the parcel out of her hands.

“Wait. What about your change?”

“Keep it,” he said as he hurried out the door.

“Goddamn it, where have you been?” he asked Cob when he caught up with him. “I thought something happened.”

“No, I was just with the sanitation inspector.”

“Who?”

“Some guy I met this morning when I sittin’ on a bench eatin’ doughnuts.”

Cane waited until some people passed by, then pulled Cob by the shirtsleeve into an alley. “What did you tell him your name was?” he said urgently.

“Junior Bradford.”

“What else?”

“Nothing. He did most of the talking. His name’s Jasper.”

“So what is he again?”

“The sani…the sanitation inspector.”

“What the hell’s that? Is he some kind of lawman?”

“No, I don’t think so. He goes around trying to catch people doin’ their business in other people’s wells.”

“Are you sure?” Cane said. It sounded a bit unbelievable to him; maybe someone had just figured out how gullible his brother was and decided to pull his leg.

“Yeah, I was with him all morning. He’s a nice feller.”

“Christ, who in the hell would take a shit in somebody’s drinking water?”

“I don’t know, but there must be a lot of them doin’ it, the way he talks.”

“And that’s a job, what he does?”

“I guess so,” Cob said. “He seems to think it is anyway. You ain’t mad at me, are ye?”

Cane sighed and shook his head. “No, but next time don’t leave without telling me where you’re going first. I been looking all over for you. Remember, we got to be careful.”

“He wants me to go with him again tomorrow. Is that all right?”

“What, to look in more privies? Why would you want to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Cob said with a shrug. “He said we was friends. Besides, what else am I gonna do?”

Cane’s stomach growled. Looking down the street, he saw a sign hanging over a door that said WHITE’S LUNCHEONETTE. He’d been half sick all morning from the liquor he drank last night, but now he felt ravenous. “You had anything to eat?”

“Just the doughnuts,” Cob said. He wanted to ask why the lady would give them away for free, and what “on de house” meant, but his brother already seemed a little upset. Maybe later, he thought.

“Well, let’s go get something.”

“Did you have a good time out at that whore shed last night?” Cob asked as they started walking toward the diner.

“Ah, not really,” Cane said, wishing he’d had enough nerve to ask the bookstore lady her name. “But Chimney sure did.”