The Heavenly Table

61

WHEN THE BAKERY opened, Cob was the first customer in the door. He’d been waiting across the street for over an hour. “So it’s you again,” Mrs. Mannheim said in an agitated voice. Last night, within minutes of finally nodding off, she’d been startled awake by a dream in which one of the Von Kennels’ sons had been arrested in a train station in Syracuse for possession of a pound of Wiener schnitzel that his mother had given him to eat on the journey. Greta Von Kennel was her closest friend, and Mrs. Mannheim hadn’t slept another wink worrying about it. Now she had a ferocious headache.

“I’ll take some more of those doughnuts,” Cob said.

“Oh, you will, will you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Same as yesterday.”

Mrs. Mannheim stared out the front window for a moment with bloodshot eyes, wondering what sort of trap was being laid for her. Her first impulse was to tell the fat oaf to get lost, but then maybe that’s what they wanted her to do. Perhaps there was some law or town statute about refusing a customer service that she didn’t know about. Her head felt as if it might explode. Just how low those people would go in their efforts to crush her was anybody’s guess. She wouldn’t put anything past them, especially that cane-twirling insurance salesman. No, she decided, just treat him fairly, and they won’t have anything to work with. She went ahead and counted out a dozen, set the bag on the counter. She watched Cob pick them up and casually start out the door. The woman shook her head in amazement. “Where you think you’re going?” she shrilled.

He stopped and looked back at her. “I got to meet the sanitation inspector.”

Oh, she thought, so he wasn’t afraid to admit it, he really was in cahoots with those city boys. Granted, Mrs. Cone’s boy had always seemed harmless enough, but the crooks had probably promised him a promotion if he played along, served as the middleman. Either that, or they’d dug up some dirt on him and were using it as blackmail. She’d heard rumors that he had a cock the length of a French baguette, and it was hard to tell what sort of depravity something like that might lead to. She stared at Cob, her eyes blazing now. The audacity of this fat bastard, grinning at her just like he did when he attempted to trick her up yesterday. “What about some money for the doughnuts?” she said.

“Well, I thought they was…I thought they was on de house. Wasn’t that what ye said?”

The woman began to tremble as she felt the headache erupt into a full-scale migraine. “If you leave here without paying, I swear to God I’m calling the police.”

Cob hurriedly reached in his pocket for the five-dollar bill he still had and handed it to her, then started back out the door. “Hold on!” she screamed.

“What?” he said. “Ain’t that enough?” The mention of police, as well as the woman’s behavior, had him spooked. What did she have against him? What had he done? He should have asked Cane what “on de house” meant; maybe that was the problem.

She threw the money at him, then pounded her fist on the counter, even though the noise felt like someone was driving a nail through her head. Just then, Ludwig, hearing the commotion, came into the room from the back, where the ovens were located. “Gertrude, what are you doing?” He looked over at Cob standing by the door, a frightened look on his face. It was obvious that the young man was a bit touched. Or, at the very least, slow. She should have realized that; half of her family was mentally handicapped in one way or another; and Ludwig was growing increasingly concerned about his wife. For weeks now she had been going on about secret plots being hatched against them. Last week, she’d even burst into a tirade about the Lewis Family being agents of the Midwest Anti-Germanic Coalition. The Midwest Anti-Germanic Coalition! He’d checked with some of his cronies at the chess club, and according to them, there was no such thing. And the Lewis Family? Men so besotted with skanks and booze that he doubted if they’d be able to find Germany on a map! Why couldn’t she see just how lucky they were to be living here, thousands of miles away from the war?

“Ludwig, he’s tryin’ to set me up,” she said. “Make it look like I cheated him.”

The baker looked down at the money on the floor, and picked it up. “Is this yours?” he asked the chubby boy in the bibs.

“It’s…it’s…for the doughnuts,” Cob stuttered.

“Here,” said Ludwig, handing it back to him. “Go ahead and keep it.”

“But—”

“No worries, my friend. The doughnuts are on the house today.”

Cob left and headed for the bench uptown to meet Jasper. He sat down and dug his hand into the greasy sack, pulled out a doughnut. What the hell had happened back there? First they didn’t want his money, and then they did, and then they didn’t again. How could you make money selling doughnuts like that? Why, they’d be out of business real quick if they kept that up. Then he wondered if maybe the five-dollar bill Cane had given him was counterfeit. A banker once tried to pass off fake money to Bloody Bill, and it hadn’t turned out good for him, not good at all. By the time the outlaw got through dragging him up and down the streets behind his horse, there wasn’t enough skin left on his hide to make a pocketbook. That might explain why the woman didn’t want it. But still, if that was the case, why did they give him the doughnuts anyway? He was thinking these thoughts when he looked up and saw Jasper coming around the corner, right on time. Maybe he would know, but first, Cob wanted to tell him about Mr. Bentley.