The Heavenly Table(61)

Wesley twitched a little, but stayed at attention. “Well, sort of, sir.”

“At ease, Private.”

As the soldier bent down to pick up the letter, the lieutenant sneaked another quick glance, then turned and walked away. So what if Wesley had a girlfriend? As Lucas had told him the other night, half the men he’d f*cked over the years wore a wedding ring. Though most of them endured marriage only because it provided a cover-up for their deviant behavior, hating every minute of it, there were some who actually got a thrill out of living a double life. “Think about it,” Lucas said. “Sucking a prick one day, knocking up the wife the next. It’s like walking a tightrope that never ends, knowing that one little slipup could ruin you forever.”

By the time he arrived at the mess hall, most of the men had finished eating, and Bovard settled for just a cup of coffee. “I’m telling you, fatso, that’s a bargain,” he heard First Lieutenant Waller say to a chubby gunnery officer. “Four dollars a shot for a pretty little wench that speaks French? You can’t beat that with a stick.” With his black curly hair and pencil mustache and endless talk of sex, Waller had quickly established a reputation around camp as a master fornicator, and quite a few inexperienced men sought out his advice before they made their first trip to the Whore Barn. He claimed to know every crack and crevasse of every working girl within a thirty-mile radius of Meade.

“Yeah, but you could choke it with your hand,” another lieutenant joked.

“Ha!” Waller said. “No doubt in my mind, Bryant. You probably try to strangle that snake of yours to death every night, don’t you?”

“Why would I do that?” Bryant said. “Just hang out at the Majestic long enough and that ol’ boy that runs the place will do it for you.”

“Isn’t he a friend of yours, Bovard?” Waller asked, winking at a couple of other officers sitting across from him.

“Who are you talking about?”

“The funny boy that runs the theater uptown.”

“Oh, him,” Bovard said, trying to act casual. “No, I’ve talked to him a time or two, but I wouldn’t call him a friend. I can’t even recall his name now.”

“Snyder here says he tried to grab his cock in the men’s room last night.”

Bovard’s stomach did a flip, but his face remained calm. “Good Lord,” he said. “You mean intentionally?”

“Hell, yes,” Snyder said. “He had his hands all over me. I’ll give him this, though, the little bastard can take a punch. I must have hit him seven or eight times before he stayed down.” He raised his fists up for them all to see the red abrasions on them.

“Looks like you nailed him pretty good,” Bovard said weakly.

“Did he ever try any of that stuff with you?” Waller asked. Several men at the next table laughed.

“What stuff?” Bovard said.

“You know, that queer stuff?”

“Certainly not!”

“Well, maybe he thought Snyder was another one of his kind,” said an aide named Hurley who worked for Major Willows.

“It’s an abomination,” said Second Lieutenant Elkins, a teetotaler since birth and head of Camp Pritchard’s newly formed Morality Committee. He saw this as an opportunity to let everyone know where the organization stood in regard to faggots and dykes. Granted, only one other man, a little Bible-thumper from Ironton, had showed up at the first meeting, but, as his mentor, the clap doctor Eisner, later reminded him, it takes only a single spark to start a fire.

“I never thought I’d say this, but for once I agree with you, Elkins,” Waller said. “Goddamn queers. If they’re not going to hang ’em, they ought to at least round them up and stick ’em on an island out in the ocean somewhere away from decent folks. What do you think, Bovard?”

“Well,” the lieutenant said, as he sat down at the table and recalled the opiated fantasy he’d had about Wesley the other night, “it sounds to me like you might have hit upon the perfect solution.”





36


ELLSWORTH WAS CUTTING corn in a field he rented off Clyde Ferguson’s widow when he saw a colored man sporting a light gray bowler hat sauntering down the dirt road. He stopped working and watched the man pause and remove his hat, then proceed to pull a broad-toothed comb through his black, wiry hair. He wore a pair of threadbare pinstripe trousers and a faded yellow shirt. Recalling the black man he had seen working in the field that day outside Meade, Ellsworth decided to look upon the stranger’s appearance as a good omen, though he was a bit concerned about the primping. One that liked bright colors and carried a comb was likely to be damn near useless when it came to getting blisters on his hands; and it was a known fact that you could hypnotize some of them with a mirror, although he reckoned you could do that with any fool who thought himself pretty, no matter what the color of his skin might be. He looked around at all the corn that still needed cutting. The way things were going, there would be snow on the ground before he finished. “Yo!” he yelled to the passerby. “Yo!”

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.