The Heavenly Table(111)
“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 f*cked 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 f*cking 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.
68
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, after the Lewis Family finished their encore and took their final bow, Cane and Cob exited the Majestic just in time to see throngs of people heading down Second Street toward the center of town as if in a hurry. Falling in behind them, Cob started talking about Mr. Bentley, about how he wished he could buy him and set him free in an apple orchard somewhere. “Or maybe we could take him to Canada with us,” he said, looking over to see how his brother reacted.