The Heavenly Table(74)
Before Sugar could make a break for it, three of the men grabbed him and another secured his hands behind his back with a piece of cord. Everyone but Captain then gathered round and marched him out onto the bridge. The one in the lead carried a torch and didn’t stop until he came to a place in the tunnel where several side boards had been removed. “Over here,” he said.
“Wait, fellers,” Sugar pleaded. “I swear to God on a stack of—”
“Hell, I can’t see a damn thing,” someone said, sticking his head through the gap and peering over the side. “You sure we out far enough for him to hit the water?”
“What difference does it make? He’ll be dead either way. If he don’t drown, the f*ckin’ fall will kill him.”
“Captain specifically said in the river,” the toenail-trimmer pointed out.
“On a stack of Bibles,” the black man cried, “I swear—”
“Shut that sonofabitch up,” someone said, and a hard, bony fist popped out of the dark, smashing Sugar’s nose and making him see stars.
“Maybe we should castrate him first,” Bill Dolly suggested. “That’s how it’s done in certain circles.”
“There was nothing in the order about cutting his—” the toenail-trimmer started to say.
“No, let’s just get it over with,” the one with the lantern interrupted, and two men picked Sugar up and roughly shoved him headfirst through the opening. “I want to see how that story turns out ol’ Cap was telling.”
“Please, misters, please,” Sugar cried, as he dangled in the air. “I can’t swim.”
“Most niggers can’t,” he heard someone say, just as the men let go of his legs and he hurtled downward through the darkness.
“That’ll teach the black bastard,” Dolly said after they heard the splash.
As the men headed back to the campfire, Cloyd Atkins said to no one in particular, “But what if he was tellin’ the truth? I mean, if’n those Jewetts already got by us, we might as well—”
“Don’t worry about it,” another with ginger-colored hair said sharply. His name was Tom Fleming, and three weeks ago he had lost everything he owned, including his wife, with one roll of the dice in a stables outside of Lexington. The way he saw it now, his entire future depended on getting a cut of that Jewett reward money.
“Yeah,” Cloyd said, “but I got crops that—”
“Like I said, don’t worry about it,” Fleming repeated. “I’ve drunk whiskey with Captain a long time now. He’ll figure things out.”
“Look, Cloyd,” the man with the lantern said, “you think a man who f*cked Geronimo in the ass is ever gonna be played the fool by those stupid Jewett brothers?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call them stupid exactly, Jim. I mean, they’ve been on the run for quite a while now and nobody’s—”
“They stole a nigger’s hat, didn’t they?” Fleming said angrily.
“But that don’t make sense. If they took his hat, then that means that boy really did see—”
Without another word, Fleming pulled his pistol out and jammed it under Cloyd’s chin. “You shut up about it right now or I’ll blow your goddamn head off and toss you over the side, too. Understand?”
The tobacco farmer tried to nod his head in agreement, but it was impossible with the gun barrel pressed against his throat. He cast a desperate look toward the man gripping the lantern and swallowed. “Sure, Tom, sure.”
“Ain’t no one going to ruin my chances of getting back my property, you hear me?”
“Yeah, Tom. Whatever you say.”
“You’re goddamn right,” Fleming said. “I’ll get her back if it’s the last thing I do.”
43
CHIMNEY WENT AT the corn cutting like a maniac, the promise of good times and women propelling him to get the job over and done with so they could leave. “That cousin of yours might not be the friendliest man in the world,” Ellsworth said to Cane, “but damn, he ain’t afraid of work, is he?” They were standing under a locust tree at the edge of the field, taking a break and watching him attack another row. Chimney wasn’t any bigger than Eddie, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Hell, Ellsworth thought, he didn’t even think Tuck Taylor could keep up with this one.
“No, sir, he ain’t,” Cane said. He looked down at the raw place the handle of the machete had rubbed into the meaty part of his right hand between the thumb and fingers, and grinned a little to himself. One thing for sure, there wouldn’t be a lawman or reporter in the country expecting to find the Jewett Gang harvesting a cornfield in southern Ohio. He wished he knew what the papers were saying about them. It had been a week since he’d seen a new one.
“No wonder he’s so skinny. How old is he anyway?”
“Hollis? Oh, he’s around eighteen,” Cane said a little warily. He took another drink of water from the jug and set it down on the ground, figured it best to change the subject. “Yeah,” he went on, “won’t be long and we’ll have this field whipped.”
“And a couple days ago I was ready to give up,” Ellsworth said. “If it hadn’t been for lettin’ Eula down, I probably would have. Makes a difference, havin’ a wife.”