The Heavenly Table(73)

“Come over here, boy,” a rough voice commanded. There were at least a dozen men around the fire, and they all carried weapons of some sort, including a crossbow and an antique blunderbuss left over from the Pilgrim days. His chances of surviving a run for it, he calculated, were next to nil. He straightened up and walked over to them slowly. Saddles and bedrolls and other gear were scattered here and there. The smell of meat sizzling in a skillet wafted through the air, and he became aware of just how empty and worn-out his body had become in the week or so since Flora had kicked him out. This evening he had dined on a moldy melon and a handful of dried peas. His eyes searched out the bottle, and he watched a brown-toothed country boy stick the neck of it halfway down his throat and guzzle like he was drinking springwater.

“Where ye comin’ from?” an older man with a beard asked. He was barefoot and seated on a stool by the fire. An antique hat of some sort, adorned with a couple of long, dirty feathers, sat upon his head at a cocky angle.

“Across the way there,” Sugar answered nervously, pointing back toward Ohio.

“Where ye headed?”

“Shadesville. It’s over by—”

“We know where f*ckin’ Shadesville is, nigger,” another man said.

“What was ye doin’ in Ohio?” the bearded man asked.

“Working,” Sugar said.

“Thieving’s more like it, Captain,” said a fattish boy named Bill Dolly. He had the soft, hairless skin and flushed, jiggling jowls of a child. The biggest disappointment of his life so far had been, in fact, his life so far; and like so many other white do-nothings, luckless simpletons, and paranoid crackpots, he was convinced that somehow the black race was the root cause of all his miserable failures. “I ain’t never seen one that didn’t like to steal.”

“What the hell happened to yer nose? Was ye in a fight?”

“No,” Sugar said. “A bee stung me.”

“Come closer,” Captain said. “Hayfield, show him that poster.”

As Sugar stepped into the full light of the fire, a man with a metal hook for a hand unfolded a dirty leaflet with his teeth and held it up to him. Though the drawings on the paper were crudely rendered at best, he immediately recognized the three cowboys he had encountered along the road. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Sugar said. He could make out only a few of the words, but he’d seen enough wanted posters in Detroit to figure out that someone was offering $5,500 for the bastards, dead or alive.

“What?” Captain said. “You saw them?”

“I sure did,” Sugar said. “They stole my hat and tried to kill me.” He took another look at the poster, then added, “Took all my money, too.”

Some of the men began talking excitedly among themselves and Captain raised his hand to silence them. “When?” he asked.

“Two days ago.”

“He’s a-lying, Captain,” Dolly said. “Them Jewetts don’t try to kill anyone. Shit, they even shot down one of them aeroplanes.” Several standing near him concurred with vague mumblings.

“No,” Sugar protested. “I swear.”

“Where would this have been?” Captain said.

“Outside a town called Meade. ’Bout forty mile or so north of here.”

“But that don’t make no sense,” a voice in the shadows said. “Why in the hell would someone want a nigger’s hat?”

“It was a nice hat,” Sugar said defensively.

“Lawd God, those sonsofbitches must be worse than we thought,” another said.

“Don’t believe it, boys,” said Dolly. “A nigger will lie when the truth fits better. They can’t help it. It’s in their blood.”

“I ain’t a-lying, I swear.”

“But just supposing,” said another man, a tobacco farmer by the name of Cloyd Atkins, “what he’s saying is true. Why, if’n it is, and they’re in Ohio, there’s no way we’ll ever catch them now.”

“I swear,” Sugar said. “They was the men on your paper.”

“Goddamn, Hershel, my wife’s gonna kill me if I come back empty-handed again,” a sour-smelling hog farmer in tattered bibs said under his breath to a lanky, hollow-eyed man standing beside him. He had followed Captain into action twice before after being promised a big payday, and twice he had returned to his wretched hovel poorer than when he left it.

A young man with a flat nose and hollowed cheeks that had been ravaged by the pox asked, trying to make his nasally voice sound as serious and respectful as possible, “What do you want us to do with him, sir?” He had been sitting on the log all evening spit-shining Captain’s boots and trimming the old man’s thick yellow toenails with a paring knife in an effort to gain favor, and he saw this as still yet another opportunity to demonstrate his undying allegiance.

The bearded leader glanced over at Sugar one more time, then returned his gaze to the fire, as if studying the crackling flames for an answer. Unfortunately, the nigger’s claim was liable to sabotage the rest of the outing if something wasn’t done to defuse it. Captain had convinced his men yesterday morning that the Jewett Gang would attempt to cross over the bridge any hour now, and they had been having a fine time drinking whiskey and telling tales, which, in his opinion, were two of the very best ways a man could spend his days. He didn’t really care one way or another if they caught the bandits, but he hated like hell to see the party come to an end or his authority be questioned. How he had come by this authority in the first place was a bit of a mystery, though he had allowed some to believe that he had been involved in the capture of several high-ranking chiefs during the last of the Indian Wars out west. In truth, he had never traveled any farther in that direction than Decatur, Illinois, his entire life, and had never seen a full-blooded redskin other than one he met doing a war dance on a table in a roadhouse somewhere in the Smoky Mountains for a free drink, let alone kill one with his bare teeth, which was how he had decided he was going to end the story he was telling just before the nigger showed up. Now, unless he thought of something fast, his hold over the men would be gone, except for maybe Bill Dolly and the pedicurist and one or two others. “Tie the lyin’ piece of shit up and throw him in the river,” he finally said.