The Heavenly Table(32)

“Yeah, Earl,” Leonard said, fighting to suppress a smile, “I reckon he might.”

“We’ll be damn lucky if he don’t fire the both of us,” the sheriff said. By this time, sweat was running down his face, dripping onto the desk. In his seventeen years of being Gilbert’s lawman, he’d never had to deal with anything this bad before, and he was already thinking the worst. If it ended up that he had to kill himself, he swore to God he’d take Leonard with him. And that goddamn pogo stick, too, while he was at it. He holstered the pistol and thrust the shotgun into the banker’s hands, then grabbed a rifle from the rack and turned toward the door. “Well, come on, boy, let’s go. Thanks to your sorry ass, they done got a good start on us.”

“You go on ahead,” Leonard said.

“What?”

“I need to go home and change first. Do you realize how much this suit cost?”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Cotter said, shaking his head. “We got us some robbers to catch.”

—

STAYING OFF THE main road, the Jewetts rode north for several hours before finally stopping in a thicket to give the horses a rest. Cane opened the green cloth bag the bank manager had provided them with and counted the money while they finished eating the rest of Tardweller’s ham. “Three hundred and fifty-four dollars,” he finally said.

Though Cob had never been able to comprehend exactly how numbers worked—three hundred and fifty-four didn’t mean any more to him than a million—he detected disappointment in his brother’s voice. But if the old boy at the bank wasn’t upset, then why should they be? Heck, he had been one of the nicest fellers they had ever met. He swallowed a piece of meat and said, “Well, heck, that ain’t bad.”

“Shit, that ain’t nothing but chickenfeed,” Chimney said. “Especially once you go to splittin’ it three ways. Why, a good whore probably costs two or three dollars.”

Cane began putting the money back in the bag. “I got a feeling that fancy boy pulled one over on us,” he said.

“How do ye figure?”

“Things just seemed a little too easy in there. Hell, he seemed almost glad to see us. I’m bettin’ he had the biggest part of it hid somewhere else.”

“I knew I should’ve killed the bastard,” Chimney spat.

“Fuck, that won’t work. How’s he gonna tell us where the money is if he’s dead?” Cane wiped some sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and squinted up at the huge yellow sun bearing down on them. In less than twenty-four hours they had become murderers, horse thieves, and bank robbers, and all they had to show for it was three hundred dollars? Christ Almighty, he’d planned on that safe being stuffed with more money than they could carry away.

“Yeah,” Chimney said, “I see what you mean. Just need to scare ’em a little. Like when Bloody Bill chopped that ol’ boy’s fingers off that claimed he couldn’t open the safe.”

“Well, maybe not quite…”

“But I thought we only had to rob the one?” Cob said. “Wasn’t that the—”

“I made a mistake,” said Cane.

“Don’t you worry,” Chimney went on. “Next bank we come across, I’ll have the boss man squeezin’ silver dollars out of his ass by the time I’m done with him.”

—

A COUPLE OF hours later, as they made their way through a thorny brake in single file, Cob turned in his saddle and looked back at Chimney. “Can I ask ye something?” he said.

“What’s that?”

“If’n one of them whores you talk about is worth two or three dollars, how much ye figure a good ham cost?”

“Oh, probably about the same, I reckon. They wouldn’t be much difference between a whore and a ham.”

“Well, then,” Cob said, “how many of them could we buy with the money we got?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”

“Whew,” Cob exclaimed. “That sounds like a lot.”

“Yeah, it’d take a day or two to f*ck that many.”

“No, I mean, that’s a lot of hams, ain’t it?”

Chimney laughed. “You’re goddamn right it is. Why, if ye was to eat that many hams, ye’d probably turn into a pig yourself.”

“Oh, that’d be fine with me,” Cob said. “All they do is lay around in the mud all day while somebody feeds ’em horseweeds and slop. Shoot, what more could a feller want out of life than that?”





18


ALONG WITH THE establishment of the army camp at Meade that summer came a vast array of people from all over hoping to reap monetary gain from it, including a pimp who called himself Blackie Beeler, but whose real name was Philo Wilkinson. After making a number of inquiries, he finally found a place to set up business half a mile or so outside of town on the Huntington Pike. A house would have been preferable, but there wasn’t a single empty room left to rent by the time he and his girls arrived; and so the long leaky pole barn that had once sheltered Virgil Brandon’s goat herd was the best he could do. The retired farmer agreed to let the pimp have it for three dollars a week along with the understanding that he was entitled to a free piece of Esther, the fat one, whenever he felt the need. Hers was the body type he’d been raised on and the one that he still preferred. Why risk filleting your dick on a bag of bones when you could dip into something as soft and fluffy as a cloud? Virgil’s late wife had weighed three hundred pounds, and he still missed the way she’d made the bed roll like an ocean every time she attempted to turn over in her sleep.