The Heavenly Table

67

JUST AS THE still slightly baffled waiter at Goldman’s was handing Cane his change from a hundred-dollar bill, Chimney walked out of a florist’s shop called Charley’s with a dozen red roses just shipped in from Florida by train, and laid them on the front seat of the Ford. A man who’d come to the Whore Barn last night bearing a single wilted carnation for Peaches had given him the idea. By this time, he had gone from thinking he would offhandedly offer Matilda a way out of whoring to figuring this was the most important night of his life, and he wanted to make the best impression possible. He tried not to worry, but he was growing more apprehensive by the minute. What if she refused him? How should he react? And what if the pimp wouldn’t let her go? What then? He started the car, wondering as he turned the crank if he should put the top up, then decided he could do that later. Distracted by all the questions and doubts running through his head, he nearly collided with a couple of soldiers on horseback while making a U-turn in the street. Ignoring their curses, he continued south down Paint Street toward the Whore Barn, but then, just as he got to the paper mill, he decided he better have a drink to settle his nerves before going any farther. The only bar around was the Blind Owl, that dismal joint he and Cane had stopped at right after meeting Matilda for the first time, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he was going to hang out there all evening. He pulled the Ford over and shut off the engine, sat for a minute going over the speech again that he planned to dazzle her with once they were alone in the tent. The sun was beginning to set when he got out of the car and went inside. The place was empty, and only one coal-oil lamp was lit to lessen the gloom. Even it was doing little but sputtering blackish fumes. He was just sitting down on a stool when the keep came out of the back room with a sullen look on his face. “A shot and a beer,” Chimney said, pushing his derby back on his head and resting his skinny arms on top of the bar.

“Only if ye got fifty cents,” Pollard said.

“Don’t worry, I got the money.”

“You know how many times I’ve heard that shit?”

Reaching in his pocket, Chimney brought out a twenty-dollar gold piece and slapped it down on the bar. Pollard stared at it for a moment, then drew a beer from a tap and poured two skinny fingers of whiskey in a glass he’d rinsed in his mop bucket a couple of hours ago. He should have locked up, he thought. After pulling off one of the lieutenant’s ears with a pair of tongs — goddamn, he didn’t think it would ever come loose! — he had just decided to snip the other one off with a pair of wire cutters when he heard the front door squeak open; and now he felt a bit put-upon by this sonofabitch, the same as if he’d been a normal person interrupted in the middle of making love to a woman he’d just met out catting around, but whose husband was due home by nightfall.

Chimney overlooked the bartender’s surly attitude; he recalled the fucker had acted the same way the last time he was in here. Instead, he sipped the beer and studied himself in the mirror. He’d always known that he wasn’t what the women called handsome — God knows, the fucking newspapers had made that clear enough — but he thought if he gained some weight and grew a mustache, maybe he’d look good enough for a whore to love. Once they got to Canada and quit all the running, maybe he’d even buy a set of those Indian clubs he’d seen in a store window uptown, start building up his muscles. He figured there wasn’t anything a man couldn’t do in life if he put his mind to it and didn’t allow silly everyday shit to distract him.

Pollard wiped his hands on a wet rag and made the boy’s change. He stared at his tan duster, the purple shirt, the striped pants, the hat cocked back at a jaunty angle. If he didn’t already have one chained up in the back, he’d love to work on this little bastard stinking of shaving lotion and store soap. Another goddamn ladies’ man. Images of the shopgirl laughing at him flickered in his head like a picture show, and it suddenly occurred to him that there was no reason he couldn’t do two at the same time. Let this one watch while he made the other skirt-sniffer small enough to fit into a bucket. Who knew? It might be nice to have an audience.

“Looks like things is kinda slow,” Chimney said.

Pollard ignored the remark and looked out the window. “That Ford out there, does that belong to you?” he asked Chimney.

“Yeah, it’s mine.”

“How much it cost ye?”

“I forget.”

“Well, you better keep an eye on it,” Pollard said. “Lot of thieves around here since they opened that goddamn army base.”

“He be a sorry sonofabitch whoever tries to steal from me.”

“Is that right?” the bartender said, suddenly lighting up. “You talk mighty big for someone your size.”

“I ain’t afraid to fight, if that’s what you mean,” Chimney said.

“Well, then, tell me what you’d do to them.”

Glancing up from his whiskey, Chimney took note of the hateful glare in the barkeep’s eyes. Tardweller had looked much the same that day he held him by the shirt collar and booted his ass in front of those women like someone would do to a little kid. As Chimney remembered the greatest embarrassment of his life, his heart started beating faster, his hands began to sweat. He was right on the verge of telling Pollard to step outside when he thought about Matilda. Within a couple of hours, if everything went as he hoped, he would have her all to himself, and there wasn’t any way he was going to allow this fat bastard to fuck that up. “Ah, just give me another one,” he said, pushing his whiskey glass forward.

“But you ain’t answered me yet,” Pollard said. “What would ye do to him, someone who stole your car? Why, for that matter, what would ye do if I was to reach over and slap that stupid hat off your head? I bet ye wouldn’t do a damn thing, would ye?”

“Like I said, just give me another drink.”

“Two dollars.”

“It was fifty cents ten minutes ago.”

“That was before I knew what you were,” Pollard said.

Chimney stared straight ahead as he reached into his pocket for the money and laid it on the counter. He had been willing to let a little bit slide, but this fat cocksucker was going too far. “There,” he said. “There’s your damn two dollars.” The lamp flared for a second, then dimmed again. He thought again of Tardweller, of how good it had felt to split his head open in the barn that night. Pushing the duster back, he rested his hand on the Smith & Wesson tucked inside his belt. “So you think you know what I am, huh?” he suddenly said, just as Pollard started to pour the whiskey.

“Sure, I do,” Pollard replied, a maniacal grin spreading across his face. “I know what all ye pussies are like.” The hell with it, he thought. Why worry about waiting on the right time for this puny piece of shit. He’d lay him over his knee and break his spine first, then roll him like a wagon wheel to the back room. Tossing the drink to the floor, he walked quickly around the bar to the front door, slid the lock bolt in with a loud bang. “You’re fucked now, boy.”

“One of us is, that’s for sure,” Chimney said, watching in the splotchy mirror as the barkeep started to come toward him with his fist raised and his teeth shining yellow in the lamplight. Then he pulled the hammer back on the gun and spun around on the bar stool.

“Why, you little turd, I’ll stick that goddamn thing up—”

Two orange blasts exploded in the low-ceilinged room, the first bullet making a deep, puckered crevasse in Pollard’s forehead, two inches or so above the bridge of his wide nose, and the second breaking his collarbone. His mouth gaped open and a shocked expression crossed over his greasy, unshaven face. He tottered back, the sound of his heavy shoes clomping on the floor; and then, as if in slow motion, the top half of his body crashed through the front window and he landed on his back on the wooden walkway outside. Before the gunshots had even stopped reverberating in his ears, Chimney had dashed around the end of the bar for the wooden cash box. He stuffed the few dollars into his pants pocket, grabbed two nearly full bottles of whiskey, a Golden Wedding and a Sunny Brook. Unbolting the door, he stepped outside and looked down at Pollard, blood dripping out of his ears, his eyes staring blankly at the darkening sky above him. “Goddamn you,” Chimney said angrily, kicking him with his boot. “Why couldn’t ye just leave it alone?” Then he stepped off the porch and tossed the pistol and the liquor onto the seat beside Matilda’s roses.

He was still trying to get the Ford started when he heard the sharp clacking of horse’s hooves on the brick cobblestones. Looking back, he saw a group of soldiers racing toward him, their service revolvers drawn and a big man with a black mustache leading the charge. In the three days he’d owned the car, the engine had failed to ignite several times, and the only thing he knew to do whenever that happened was to start the whole process over again. But that took at least a couple of minutes, and the men weren’t more than half a block away. “Goddamn piece of junk,” he said, throwing the crank down. He sat down in the front seat just as the clatter of the horses’ hooves stopped, and all he could hear was the sound of their panting, a saddle creaking. He uncapped the fifth of Golden Wedding, and then, as the soldiers lined up behind him, he took a pull and reached over for the pistol. This probably was going to be the most important night of his life after all, he thought, just not in the way he had planned on.

He heard one of the soldiers say, “Put your hands up where we can see ’em.” He looked toward the bridge, remembering a cocksure lawman using the same line on Bloody Bill when he thought he and his posse had him cornered in a corncrib. He smiled to himself. The sonofabitch had emerged from that mess without a scratch after killing every one of them. But he wasn’t Bloody Bill, and this wasn’t some fucking book. He went over his options in his head, either get shot now or hang later; and found both of them to be lacking in any sort of hope. He wondered what Cane would do if he were here. He’d play it smart, probably surrender, and then try to figure out a way to escape later on. Taking another quick slug from the bottle, he heard the soldier repeat the order. His skin tingled, and his hands began to tremble. He glanced down at the flowers. Well, at least he had known a woman first. But, damn, he wished…He wished more than anything that he could have found out what Matilda’s answer might have been. It would have been nice, knowing some pretty girl wanted to be with him, was willing to travel clear to some other country by his side. “This is your last warning,” the man called out.