The Heavenly Table (26 page)

The man dove to the ground as if dodging a bullet, the comb still stuck in his hair. He lay there for a minute, a fearful look on his face, then slowly raised his head. He spotted the farmer in baggy bibs and a sweat-soaked linen shirt walking up through the field toward him, gripping a corn knife in one hand.

“Hidy,” Ellsworth said, once he had cleared the ditch that ran alongside the road. “Didn’t mean to scare ye.”

“I ain’t scared,” the man said defensively, as he stood and dusted off his pants. “Just careful is all.” His Christian name was George Milford, but a woman he had once shacked up with in Detroit had dubbed him Sugar because she thought his sperm tasted like taffy, and that’s what he had gone by ever since. He was running from a crime he had committed in Mansfield, Ohio, three days ago, and was on his way to Kentucky to see his family. He hadn’t seen any of them in over ten years. Pulling the comb from his hair, he slid it into his back pocket, then put his bowler back on. “What you want?”

Ellsworth hesitated. It had just occurred to him that he should probably talk to Eula first before offering the man a job, but it was a good twenty-five-minute walk back to the house from here, and he couldn’t expect a stranger to wait around while he went seeking his wife’s permission. However, if he let this one get away there might not be another, at least not in time to do him any good with the harvest. Already it was the first day of October. He had to admit that he’d taken on more than he could handle. Hoping to make back some of the money he had lost last fall, he had rented two extra fields off the widow, but he hadn’t planned on Eddie not being around to help. “I was wonderin’ if you might be lookin’ for some work?” he said to the black man.

Sugar spit out the stem of a weed he’d been chewing on. Though he wasn’t interested in a job, never had been, for that matter, he had discovered that while most white people tolerated colored folks, to a degree anyway, especially if they found themselves alone with one, damn near all of them looked upon a black man who wouldn’t work with the utmost suspicion and contempt. Sugar shrugged and looked down into the field. “Might be,” he told Ellsworth, but no sooner had those words popped out of his mouth than he wondered why he’d said them. Fuck the white bastard. There wasn’t another soul around that he could see, and he had his razor in his pocket. Why worry about him? “But then again, I might not be.”

“Well, which is it?”

“Depends.”

Ellsworth blinked several times, then took a rag from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. Hell, he thought, this boy is as smart-alecky as those damn gatekeepers back at Camp Pritchard. “Where ye headed for anyway?” he asked. “They ain’t nothing down this way.”

“They is if you keep walking,” Sugar said. “It will take you clear to the river.”

“What river?” Ellsworth asked. He turned and looked down the road. He hadn’t been any farther south than Waverly in all the years he had lived. Almost everything he knew about the world lay to the east, toward Meade, and that had always been more than enough for him.

“Why, the Ohio,” Sugar said. “You never been there? Shoot, it ain’t but forty miles from here.”

Ellsworth shook his head. Of course, he had heard of the Ohio, but he had never imagined it as being within walking distance. “Never had no need.”

“It’s a big river, let me tell ye,” Sugar said. “A man ought to see it before he dies.”

“What makes you think I’m a-dying?” Ellsworth asked. He had heard once, over at Parker’s store, that some coloreds, specifically those born at the stroke of midnight, could see into the future, and he wondered if this man might be one of them.

“I didn’t mean you in particular,” Sugar said. “Anybody is who I meant.” He reached into his pocket and laid his hand on his razor. For a second, he weighed the pros and cons of robbing the dumb hillbilly, but then took another look at the long, wooden-handled corn knife he held in his hand and decided against it. The farmer was a stout-looking fucker for his age; and even if he did have any cash, it would be buried in a tin can somewhere or stuck up a cow’s ass. All of these country fools were the same when it came to hoarding their pennies.

“Oh,” Ellsworth said. He coughed and cleared his throat, then wiped at his mouth with the rag. “Well, you want the job or not?”

“How much you pay?”

“A dollar for a good day’s work,” Ellsworth said. “Plus’n a good breakfast.” He thought about throwing in a jar of wine every evening, but realized that might backfire on him, especially if the man turned out to be anything like Eddie or his Uncle Peanut.

Four quarters and a bowl of mush, Sugar thought. A man who would trade even one day of his short time on earth for that might as well crawl into a cave and be done with it. Still, why not have a little fun with the cheap-ass motherfucker before he headed off? “Last man I worked for,” Sugar said, “he paid three dollars a day.”

“Three dollars!”

“Yes, sir, he did. And he fed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, too. Me and another boy didn’t have no arms. Sausages and flapjacks and pork chops and mashed taters and corn on the cob. Then on Sundays we laid under a shade tree in his front yard and et on a big ol’ chicken his old lady fried up for us. And like I said, the other boy, he had both his arms cut off, so I did most of the work. Couldn’t even wipe his own ass. Had to have the farmer do it for him. Lord, though, that boy could sing. He could coax a woman into anything.”

“Holy Christ in a manger, I do that I might as well burn the damn field down.”

“Pretty women, too,” Sugar went on. “Not no dogs. And I mean anything. Why, he spent most of his time laying in the barn trying to think up new stuff for them to do. They flocked to him like hens to a rooster. Don’t seem right, does it?” Then he turned and started on down the road without another word, a toothy grin spreading across his face.

Ellsworth stood in the dust for a while and waited on the man to come back, thinking that no matter what he had said, it would be one rich colored boy who would turn down a dollar a day, but Sugar just kept walking until he disappeared over the next rise. He had a hard time believing there was a farmer somewhere who could afford to pay a single man anything close to three greenbacks a day, or feed pork chops and whole chickens to his help. Nor keep a crippled songbird around whose only job was to chase whores all day! He began to worry that this might be another symptom of these modern times, paying a man more than he’d ever be worth, and perhaps even paying him for nothing at all. Why, if he could find someone who would treat him that good, he might chop off his own arms and hire himself out for regular wages.

And who in their right mind would walk forty miles to see some water? Ellsworth swiped at a fly buzzing around his head and looked across the road to the woods. Maybe the boy had just let on that he was going to the river. Perhaps he was hiding over there in the trees right now, watching him. He had heard they could be sneaky like that, slip up behind you and lift your pocketbook right out of your pants without you feeling a thing. He walked back down into the field and reached into a groundhog hole for the jar of wine he had hidden there yesterday. He took a long drink, reminded himself to lock the doors tonight in case the spying bastard followed him home. Setting the jar back in the hole, he started cutting on another row of corn. Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes, dripped off his nose. By God, he would show that boy what he meant by a good day’s work. He hesitated a moment, then began to sing.

37

T
HAT EVENING, JUST
as Sugar decided he had walked far enough for one day, three grimy, unshaven men came around a bend in the road on horses and reined to a stop a few feet in front of him. Two of them wore cowboy hats and overalls while the third’s attire consisted of a dusty frock coat and black trousers. A bloody piece of a white shirt was tied around the thigh of the heaviest one. Rifles protruded from their saddles and pistols hung from holsters belted around their waists. They looked to Sugar as if they had accidently stepped out of some bygone era and were searching for a way back to where they belonged. It wouldn’t have been the first time that someone ended up trapped in a time that didn’t quite suit them. He’d lived for a while with a woman who started coming home every night from her job in a millinery and dressing up like an Egyptian princess. Figuring she was just bored, he put up with the crazy costume for a while, but when she began praying to crocodiles and talking about him escorting her into the Underworld, he’d decided it was time to shag ass.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Chimney said. “What we got here?”

“Gentlemen,” Sugar said, nervously tipping his bowler. He swallowed and tried not to stare at their guns. He thought of his razor, but what use would it do to pull it out? These men would have him dead before he could even snap it open.

“Where ye going, boy?” Chimney asked.

“Headed for the river,” Sugar said.

“The Ohio?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s quite a ways on foot.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Anything up this road?”

“Not much unless you like lookin’ at cows and chickens.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sugar.”

“You hear that, boys? His ol’ mama thought he was so sweet she named him Sugar.”

“That ain’t my real name,” Sugar said quickly. Although it didn’t make any goddamn difference what these bastards thought of him, he still didn’t want them to think that his mother didn’t have the sense to give him a proper name. “It’s just the one I go by.”

“Well, if I was you, I’d start looking for a new one,” Chimney said. “Makes ye sound like a pony.” He leaned over his saddle and spat, then looked up and down the road. “I bet you got some ol’ gal down there on the river, don’t ye? That’s why you got that fancy hat on.”

“No,” Sugar said, “just going to see my people is all.”

“Come on,” Cane said. “We don’t have time for this.” It was their third day in Ohio, and for the most part they were still riding at night. This morning they had made it as far as Buchanan, and, just before dawn, ended up in a soggy marsh filled with rotten logs. The rib cage of a deer had rested on a small ferny island rising up in the middle of the foul-smelling morass. After breakfasting on Chimney’s last two strands of licorice, they’d spread their blankets on a thick bed of pokeweed and nightshade and settled down as best they could. They had endured it until late afternoon, but finally agreed, though there were still several hours of daylight left, that even getting killed or raped by a posse would be better than the torture being inflicted upon them by the hordes of late-season mosquitoes and black gnats swarming over their stinking skin. They were as worn-out and miserable as they had ever been, and Cane was more determined than ever to find somewhere clean and safe to rest up for a couple of days.

“I don’t know, I surely do like that hat,” Chimney said.

“Well, then, buy ye one,” Cane said. “They probably sell lids like that everywhere.”

“Not that one, they don’t.”

Cane let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Then just take the goddamn thing.”

“No, I got a better idea,” Chimney said. Pulling the Lee-Enfield from a leather scabbard tied with rawhide to his saddle, he ratcheted a shell into the chamber and looked at Sugar. “Here’s the way it’s gonna work. I’m a-goin’ to let you make a run for it. And if I can knock that hat off your head, then it’s all mine, understand? And if I can’t, well, it’s yours to go on wearing down to the river or wherever the fuck it is you’re really going.”

“Brother, why would ye want that thing?” Cob asked, the first words he had uttered in hours. “It looks like something ye’d take a shit in.”

“Ha!” Cane said. “That’s a good one.”

“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, Cob, but maybe I will. Be mine to do with as I please, right?”

Sugar jerked the bowler off his head and attempted to hand it up to Chimney. “Here, mister, I don’t want it anyway. It’s all yours for the keeping, free of charge.”

“There,” Cane said. “It’s settled.”

“No, it’s not,” Chimney said. He scratched his chin and looked about, then pointed at a woods on the other side of a field overgrown with wild roses and goldenrod and white-flowered asters. “See them trees over there?” he said to the black man. “You put the hat back on and run that way. I promise ye I’ll count to thirty before I cut loose.”

“Please, mister,” Sugar said, “they no need to do this. I don’t even want—”

“Better get to moving, boy. One, two, three…”

Sugar looked around wildly, then leaped off the side of the road down into the pasture and started running for the tree line, his arms pumping like pistons and his legs stepping high and the sticker bushes ripping at his flesh.

“But this don’t make no sense,” Cob said. “He tried to give it to ye.”

Ignoring his brother, Chimney kept counting, but at twenty he stopped and settled the rifle on his shoulder. Even after the bowler fell off the black man’s head, he seemed intent on shooting. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. But just as he started to squeeze the trigger, a loud blast went off beside him and his horse lurched sideways, causing his own shot to fly harmlessly into the sky. He watched his target dive into some tall weeds. “What the fuck?”

Cane put his pistol back in his holster. “Don’t ever pull no stunt like that again. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Jesus, no sense in gettin’ so excited. I was just going to scare him a little, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Cane said, “I bet you were. Well, hurry up, it’ll be dark before long.”

“Hurry up what?” said Chimney.

“Go find that hat.”

“Shit, you think I really wanted that goddamn thing?”

“I don’t care if you did or not,” Cane said. “Get your ass down there.”

A few minutes later, as they sat watching Chimney in the field cursing and flailing at the weeds, Cob said to Cane, “I bet that feller’s mad that he lost his hat. Ye could tell he was proud of it.”

“Yeah, he probably was. Hard to say how long he had to save up for that thing.”

“Wonder why he calls himself Sugar, if that ain’t his real name?” Cob asked. “That seems kind of dumb to me. How’s anybody supposed to know who he really is?”