The Heavenly Table

66

THE CHURCH BELLS chimed six o’clock just as Chimney headed into the park to meet up with his brothers. As he approached them seated on the bench, he saw, to his consternation, that Cob was wearing a pair of goggles just like the ones he carried in the pocket of his duster. “What the fuck?” he said to Cane. “You bought him those just to piss me off.”

“No, I didn’t,” Cane said. “He got ’em on his own. I wasn’t nowhere around.” It was true. Cob was already gone when he woke up this morning, even though Cane had told him yesterday not to leave again without letting him know first. His first thought was to go on the hunt of him, but then he figured what the hell. Chances were he was with his inspector buddy, and if he wanted to spend his last day here poking around in outhouses, that was his business. Looking forward to a little time of his own, Cane had taken a hot bath, then eaten a leisurely breakfast at the Mount Logan Café. He was finishing his waffles when the well-dressed man who had been with the girl from the bookstore last night walked in and sat down at the counter. Cane watched Sandy order a cup of coffee, then complain to the waitress in an acidy tone that it was cold. As Cane walked out of the diner, an urgent need to see the girl one more time before they headed for Canada suddenly came over him. He began walking toward the bookstore. He would ask for her address, he vowed right before he got to the door, write her a letter once they were settled. But to his disappointment, she wasn’t working. Instead, there was a palsied, half-blind gentleman in her place, sitting behind the counter with a woolen scarf wrapped around his thin, wrinkled neck, reading a yellowed pamphlet with a magnifying glass. Cane figured he must be the father she’d mentioned, though he seemed rather ancient to have a daughter her age. He ended up buying a copy of The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, though he didn’t know for sure what an “essay” even was, and then walked back to the McCarthy to find out. As far as the girl went, by midday he realized how stupid he had been going back there again. What the hell had he been thinking? There was no way a woman like her would ever be interested in someone like him. Even he knew that the suit he was wearing didn’t fit right.

“I don’t want no dirt in my eyes,” Cob explained to Chimney. He had showed up at the hotel around four o’clock wearing the goggles and limping badly again from all the walking he and Jasper had done.

Chimney shook his head, but didn’t say anything. He had too many other things on his mind right now to even give a damn. All afternoon, he’d been planning what he was going to say to Matilda, had probably recited the little speech twenty times by the time he left the hotel room. He was prepared to offer Blackie all the money he had on him—$316.00—for her freedom, but just in case the pimp caused any trouble, he was taking his Smith & Wesson tonight instead of the Remington. He had the duster buttoned so that Cane wouldn’t notice the bulge of it in his pants.

“We all set for in the morning?” Cane said.

“Just tell me the time and the place.”

“I’m thinkin’ we should get an early start. Let’s figure you pick us up around daylight at the entrance to the park.”

“What about the horses?”

“We’ll just leave ’em. Couldn’t get nothing much out of them anyway.”

“Shit, I still got to get my rifle,” Chimney said. “I damn near forgot about it.”

“Well, do that ’fore you pick us up.”

Chimney nodded and started to leave, then stopped and looked back at them. He thought of the two boys he’d met earlier today in Bourneville, and it occurred to him that neither of his brothers had ridden in the Ford yet. Oh, well, by the time they got to Canada, they’d probably be sick of bouncing around in it. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

“We’re gonna try us some lobster,” Cane said, “and then go back to see that monkey again.”

“Mr. Bentley,” Cob said.

“Lobster? What’s that?”

“It’s sort of like a crawdad, only bigger,” Cane explained. “Cob saw a bunch of ’em yesterday in a water tank in the window at a place uptown, and they reminded him of Willie the Whale. Remember him?”

“Who could forget anybody that goddamn stupid?”

“I bet ye I can eat four or five of ’em, no problem,” Cob said.

“So I expect you’re headed back out to see the girls?” Cane asked.

“Just the one,” Chimney said. “Just the one.” Then he turned and walked away before any more questions were asked.

Twenty minutes later, Cane and Cob passed by a group of soldiers on horseback gathered around the front of the courthouse. Wondering what they were up to, Cane stopped his brother and casually lit a cigar, listened to a man with a thick black mustache tell the others that their main objective was to find a Lieutenant Bovard. Apparently, he’d been missing since sometime yesterday. Satisfied that the patrol had nothing to do with them, the brothers walked on and entered Goldman’s Restaurant, advertised in the window as THE PREMIER DINING EXPERIENCE IN SOUTHERN OHIO. A man in a slightly frayed tuxedo sat at an out-of-tune piano, sipping from a paper bag and picking out melancholy notes like might be played by a guilt-ridden ax murderer in the wee hours. After debating whether or not to even acknowledge the two’s presence, a waiter in a white coat led them to a table under the chandelier in the middle of the room, then rather disdainfully placed leather-bound menus in their hands. Though Curtis Skiver had grown up the son of a penniless wheelwright in nearby Massieville, his years serving as head maître d’ at Goldman’s had gradually caused him to forget his roots, and he absolutely detested waiting on hicks nowadays. Besides being ignorant of the most basic table etiquette, they ordered the cheapest item on the menu and never left a tip. However, when the one in the cheap suit asked for eight lobsters, along with boiled potatoes and slaw, an entire plate of macaroons, and the most expensive bottle of champagne on the list, he perked up a bit. Perhaps Mr. Goldman was onto something after all. Curtis had thought it ridiculous when his boss had him order two dozen of the lowly crustaceans from Boston, but the old man (he was always bragging that he was an innovator, a man ahead of his time, though for what reason, Curtis had never been able to figure out) had boldly claimed that with the right marketing, lobster could be turned from a food looked upon as fit only for the lower classes into a delicacy sought after by the rich. And though the waiter insisted that the pair show him proof up front that they could pay for such an expensive spread, to his credit he subsequently took it upon himself to show them how to crack the shells and dig out the meat and dip it into the special sauce that Goldman hoped to someday peddle in groceries all over America.

Cane and Cob were still sitting at the table with white napkins tucked into their shirts when Sugar walked by the window and casually glanced inside. Perhaps because he was so weak from hunger — the only thing he had eaten in several days was a bowl of soup in the jail made from carrot scrapings and potato peelings — it took him a moment to realize that he was looking right at two of the bastards who had shot the hell out of his beloved bowler, two of the same men pictured on the wanted poster that the pack of white motherfuckers down at the river showed him right before they tossed him over the bridge like a sack of garbage, and on that other flyer he’d seen hanging inside the jail just today. They looked different — for one thing, the cowpoke shit was gone — but he was almost positive it was them. He went across the street and hunkered down in the doorway of an empty storefront and waited, wondering where the skinny one might be. Thirty minutes ticked by before they came out of the restaurant chewing on toothpicks. The fat one was limping, and Sugar remembered the rag wrapped around his leg. It was them, no doubt about it. He followed them around the corner to a theater, watched them stand in line to buy tickets and then go inside. Not sure yet how to proceed, he stood down the street half a block and waited. Fifty-five hundred dollars, that’s what the poster had said. He smiled to himself. After all the torment and trouble he’d been through in the past week, things were finally starting to look up.