The Heavenly Table(68)

39


WHEN ELLSWORTH FINALLY came in from the field, Eula didn’t say anything about seeing a colored boy lurking about, and so he decided not to mention his encounter with the one on the road. He was glad now that he hadn’t hired him. It would have been just another thing for her to worry about. Even so, harvesting corn by hand was hard work even for a young man, and Ellsworth, being convinced all day that the lazy bastard was watching him from the woods, was completely gutted from trying to show him how it was done. Not only that, his voice was shot to hell from all the singing he had done. Once he’d gotten started, he found that he couldn’t stop, and he must have sung “The Old Brown Nag” a hundred times. “What’s wrong?” Eula asked. “You catchin’ a cold?”

“No,” he squeaked softly. “Just wore out is all.”

“A summer cold,” she said. “They the hardest to get rid of.”

“I done told ye, I ain’t sick.”

“Well, you sure sound like it,” she said. “Good thing you don’t have to sing for your supper.”

After a meal of cornbread and beans and sliced tomatoes, they went out on the porch to sit a bit before bedtime. The day was quickly coming to an end, and the shadows cast across the yard became a little longer with each passing minute. As she had done every evening for the past few days, Eula wondered aloud why they hadn’t heard from Eddie yet. “You’d almost think he’s done forgot about us.”

“No,” Ellsworth said softly, “I don’t think that’s it. Like I told ye before, I imagine he’s been too busy.” He shifted uncomfortably in his rocking chair, and a feeling of disgust crept over him. He knew that the right thing to do was just go ahead and tell her the truth about Eddie, but whenever he got the chance, he balked. He couldn’t figure it out, unless maybe he’d covered for the boy so much he couldn’t break the habit now; and every day he kept it up, the harder it was not to do it.

“How about a hot cup of water with honey?” she asked. “That’ll soothe your throat some.”

“No,” Ellsworth said, “just let me rest here a minute.” He stretched out his legs and closed his eyes, felt a cool breeze ruffle his sparse hair. He heard Eula get up from her chair and enter the house. Right before he faded off, he heard the door open again, smelled the cup of coffee she’d brought back with her.

Unbeknown to the Fiddlers, the Jewetts had been watching the farmhouse from across the road for the last thirty minutes. This was just the sort of quiet, out-of-the-way place Cane had been looking for ever since they’d entered Ohio. They hadn’t had more than a couple of hours’ sleep at a time since they’d left the dead grocer in the rain four days ago, and though Cob’s leg didn’t seem to be getting any worse, it wasn’t getting any better, either. And by this point the horses didn’t have another canter left in them, so outrunning the law or anyone else was out of the question. Unless they got some rest soon, they’d never make it to Canada, he was sure of that. “Well, what do you think?” Chimney finally asked.

Holding up his hand for him to be quiet, Cane studied the old people sitting on the porch awhile longer before making a decision. “Well, we won’t know till we try,” he finally said. He turned and looked at Cob. “What’s your name?”

Cob thought for a second, then said, “Junior. Junior Bradford.”

“That’s right,” Cane said. He looked over at Chimney. “Hollis, you let me do all the talking.”

Ellsworth was slumped over in his rocking chair when Eula awakened him with a shake. When he first opened his eyes, he thought he must be dreaming. Before him were three men, red-eyed and sweaty and caked with dust, mounted on horses. Rearing up in the chair, the farmer rubbed violently at his face, then said, “What the hell?”

“Howdy,” Cane said. “Sorry if we scared ye.”

Ellsworth’s eyes shifted back and forth as he took a hard look at each of the three in the dusk. “That’s all right,” he replied. “Didn’t hear you ride up is all.”

“Pardon?” Cane said.

“He’s got a cold,” Eula said.

“Jesus,” Ellsworth muttered under his breath. He turned and hacked up a ball of grit, spit it over the railing. “What can I do for ye?” he said, raising his voice with effort.

“Well, my brother here, he’s got a hurt leg, and we’re needin’ a place to rest up a day or two.”

Ellsworth glanced over at the chubby one, a friendly-looking boy with a smile on his round face, a filthy piece of cloth wrapped around his thigh. “What did he do to it?” he asked.

Cane shook his head. “Just a dumb accident. Playing around with a gun and it went off.”

“That sounds like something Eddie would do,” Eula said.

“Where ye headed?” Ellsworth said. “Going to join the army in Meade, I bet.”

“Well, no,” Cane said. “We’re headed for—”

“Why not?” Eula said. “That’s what our boy done, and he ain’t but sixteen.”

“It’s not that we don’t want to,” Cane said carefully. From what he’d read in the newspapers, he knew that many people weren’t taking this war business lightly. In fact, they had become quite nuts about it, going around kicking dachshunds to death, making ninety-year-old Americans with German-sounding names get down on their knees in the streets and kiss the American flag, calling sauerkraut Liberty cabbage and hamburger Salisbury steak. Searching factories and mines for terrorists, and taverns for hidden hordes of pretzels. And if they happened to have a family member in uniform, they were often twice as zealous when it came to sniffing out slackers and potential traitors. Maybe, Cane thought, they figured it wouldn’t hurt so much if their son got his ass blown off as long as there was a good chance the neighbor’s boy would suffer the same fate. There were few things in the world that put all people, regardless of education or wealth or place in society, on equal footing, but heartache was one of them. “It’s just…it’s just that…” He turned and looked at Cob, then back at the farmer and his wife. “Mind if I get down?”