The Heavenly Table

55

THAT AFTERNOON, A tree buyer for the paper mill named Nesbert Motley let Sugar out of his automobile at the bridge on the south side of town. Motley was coming back from making an offer on a pristine stand of hardwood down below Buchanan when he came around a curve and damn near ran over the black man standing in the middle of the road. He didn’t mind at all giving him a ride — some of the best days of his boyhood over in Lancaster had been spent in the company of a colored boy named Smoky Hansberry — but he was a little hesitant about being seen uptown with somebody so ragged and wild-looking. And what if he later caused trouble? It was true that Sugar looked like he was at the end of his rope. He hadn’t had a bite of food except walnuts or a drink of anything but water in three days; the loose sole of one of his shoes flapped with every step he took, and he’d had to tie a piece of ivy around his pants to keep them from falling to the ground. Probably the only thing still keeping him upright was his determination to get back to Detroit and start sweet-talking Flora’s friend.

Sugar was walking past the reeking, rackety mill wondering why someone would ever voluntarily stick around such a place when he saw a big man in front of a bar motioning him over. Sugar hesitated a moment, then crossed the street and stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. “You want something?” he asked the man.

“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.”

“Sure they did,” Lester said.

“No, really, they did. Took my hat.”

Lester shook his head. “Whatever you say, pal.” It was common knowledge among lawmen that when it came to criminal types, the more miserable and luckless they were, the more grandiose and numerous their lies and fantasies. Did this fucker really think that he’d believe the most notorious band of outlaws to emerge since the James Gang would bother stealing a hat that a colored boy wore, especially one who used a goddamn vine to hold his pants up?

In the cell across from Sugar’s was a country preacher by the name of Jimmy Beulah. He was dressed in a pair of baggy dress pants with a wrinkled white shirt buttoned tight around his neck. After a while, Sugar asked him, “What they got you in here for? Stealin’ from the collection plate?”

“Attempted murder,” Beulah replied blandly, brushing away one of the many flies that had followed the new prisoner in. “What about yourself?”

The man’s answer took him a little by surprise, but Sugar figured he was probably trying to bullshit him, maybe scare him into giving up his supper or something. But even if he was, and the fucker turned out to be no more than a public nuisance or a petty thief, Sugar still wasn’t about to admit that he was behind bars simply for cleaning out a sonofabitch’s shithouse and being played the fool. He hemmed and hawed around a bit, mostly cursing the cop, and then, instead of answering the question, asked the preacher another: “Who’d ye try to kill?”

“According to them, it was some soldier,” Beulah said. “To be honest, I don’t really remember.”

“Oh,” Sugar said. Jesus, he thought, maybe he wasn’t lying after all. “Why not?”

“I get like that when I drink,” Beulah answered. “Why, I even forget the End Times is a-comin’ if I get enough in me.”

“End Times,” Sugar repeated. “My mother used to talk about them.”

“She was a God-fearin’ woman, your mother?”

“All her life,” Sugar said, recalling the number of times that he’d heard her in the other room of the house praying for his soul, fervently at first, but then, as he got older, not so much. He realized suddenly that he’d been the one who had worn her out, and that she’d been right to shut the door on him.

“Remind me again,” Beulah said. “What is it you’re in here for?”

Sugar spent a silent minute retracing the events of the last week or so in his mind. He thought again about Flora and her fucking boyfriend, and the bloody white woman on the kitchen floor, and the promise he had made to God on the roadside after he found his bowler shot to pieces, the promise he had broken the first chance he got. And he knew that as soon as he got out of here, he’d break another if he made one, and continue to do so until one disaster or another finished him off for good. He saw the preacher looking at him, waiting for a reply. But instead of giving him one, he rolled over in his bunk and went to sleep.