The Heavenly Table

8

THE DAY AFTER returning from Parker’s store, Ellsworth hitched up the wagon around noon and started down the road toward Meade. He had made up his mind during the night. It had occurred to him, as he lay in bed digesting his supper and wondering how many miles away Germany might be, that he also had no idea what the war was even about. He rolled over in bed and stared out the window into the darkness on the other side of the rippled pane. He had once shucked corn with an old man named Garnet Quick who had lost an ear in the War Between the States, the one they fought over freeing the slaves, and Ellsworth had harbored a sneaking suspicion ever since he’d talked to the man that a war could get started over the least little thing. And if the fight wasn’t worth fighting, he had reasoned, as he lay there listening to Eula call out to Pickles in her sleep, then how could he sit by without raising a finger and allow his only son to take a chance on getting maimed or even killed?

By that evening, Ellsworth was standing on a hill overlooking the army camp splayed out north of the town on the other side of the Scioto River. It was much larger than he’d expected, as big as most cities, he reckoned, and for the first time all day, he began to have doubts that he could get Eddie back even if he did find him. Ellsworth had been to Meade a few times in his life, and though he had been confident when he left home, he had forgotten about the lonely, insecure feeling that always came over him when he was among a crowd of complete strangers. Now, staring across at the huge camp, still under construction but already filled with hundreds of soldiers and trucks and horses — even a flying machine, only the second one the farmer had ever seen in his life, circling like a buzzard above it all — he grew nervous. There were forces at work down there along the river that would intimidate almost anybody. And not just there, either. Why, just a couple of hours ago, he had seen a woman dressed in men’s trousers driving a Ford Coupe out along the Huntington Pike all by herself. As he watched the airplane make one more pass over the camp and then land on a flat strip of ground outlined in whitewash, Ellsworth rubbed his chin and recalled standing around the stove in Parker’s store one night last winter and someone, maybe Tick Osborne, saying that these were what people called “modern times.” Most of those gathered there were in agreement that the world now seemed head over heels in love with what the tycoons and politicians kept referring to as “progress,” but before they could begin arguing the pros and cons of exactly what that was going to mean in the long run, Jimmy Beulah spoke up and said, “ ‘End times’ is more like it.” Then he spat on the stove, and Kermit Saunders passed him a bottle and said, “Amen,” and the only sound you could hear in the store after that was the crackle of Jimmy’s spit on the black metal lid.

Suddenly, Ellsworth wished he had followed Eula’s advice and given the boy a couple of more days to come back on his own before he went looking for him. When the sun began to sink in the west, he gathered up an armful of corn husks from the bed of the wagon and dumped them on the ground for the mule, then ate a hunk of fried bread and two turnips for his own supper. He washed it down with water from a gourd jug, and wished he had remembered to bring along a jar of wine to keep him company. Unhitching his suspenders, he took off his shirt and loosened his pants, then lay down with a corn knife at his side. As the darkness settled in, a few stars began to appear above him and an owl hooted its lonely call from a nearby tree. He would make his way, he thought, to the army camp first thing in the morning. He hoped to Christ, if Eddie was there, that he hadn’t sworn any oaths or made his mark on any papers yet. Though Ellsworth didn’t have any proof other than his word, he would argue that the boy had just turned sixteen. That alone should be enough, he figured, though he could also add that Eddie was needed at home to help with the farm. But what if they still wouldn’t turn loose of him? He stared at the kite-shaped outline of Boötes as he tallied up the boy’s defects. All right then, if nothing else worked, he’d swallow his pride and tell them his son was as lazy a drunkard and thief as any in the country, and that an army that would take someone like that must already be on the verge of losing the battle. True, there were plenty of men around who could outdrink the boy ten to one, and, as far as he knew, the only thing Eddie had stolen in his life was that damn magazine from the schoolteacher, but the people running the camp wouldn’t know that. Ellsworth ran these arguments over and over in his head until the lids of his eyes grew heavy as stones, and he finally began to snore along with the mule, both of them dreaming, on that warm and moonless night, of nothing in particular.

He awakened early the next morning and splashed some water on his face, rubbed a bluebell leaf over the few teeth he had left. Unwrapping a piece of linen that contained two hard-boiled eggs, he peeled the shells off with his thumbnail. He ate them slowly while longing for a cup of coffee and gazing over at the army base. Then he watered the mule and started down the hill toward Meade along a dirt lane shaded by box elder and sweet gum. Half an hour later, he came out into the sunlight and the main road. Off in the distance, he saw a black man stripped to the waist and pulling weeds out of a row of beans. Ellsworth wondered how much one like that would cost him if he couldn’t get his son back. A big one, he figured, would charge plenty, but perhaps he could find something smaller — hell, even a sick one could probably outdo Eddie — who would still put in a good day’s work for a fair price.

He had just started up again when he saw what appeared to be a caravan headed toward him, taking up most of the road. In the lead was a motorcar driven by a swarthy, toothsome man dressed in a paisley vest and a frilly white shirt. A jewel big as an eyeball glinted from a ring on one of his hands. Following him was a canvas-covered dray refitted with rubber tires and pulled by four horses. A frightful-looking woman with massive thighs puffed on a cigarillo while holding the reins loosely. Beside her on the cushioned wagon seat was another girl, with a bruised face that reminded Ellsworth of a windfall apple left too long on the ground. She had her skirts hiked up and her skinny legs gaped apart, airing her privates. A few feet behind them was a second man, riding a red roan. He was dressed in dusty black clothes and had two pistols strapped to his thick waist. Glancing back after they passed, Ellsworth saw another woman through an opening in the back of the wagon. She was seated on a wooden chair running a brush through her long yellow hair. Not a one of them had acknowledged the farmer, and he traveled on to Meade listening to the creaking of the leather harness and the steady dull plop of the mule’s hooves against the hard-packed road, pondering what in the world such people might be about.