The Heavenly Table(86)

“Horse,” Chimney said.

“Horse!” Triplett laughed. “No wonder you have to pay for it. Ain’t no young modern woman wants to be seen on a horse these days.”

“I don’t know how to drive,” Chimney said.

“Shoot, there’s nothing to it. I can show ye everything you need to know in a couple hours.”

“How much?”

“Well, depends on what you want.”

“Which one’s the fastest?”

“That’d be the Packard. It’ll go sixty miles an hour on good road. I could let you have it for two thousand, including the tax. She’s the same as brand-new.”

“No,” Chimney said, shaking his head, “I can’t afford nothin’ like that.”

“Well, how much can ye afford?”

The boy looked around, then pointed at a black Ford touring car. “How much for that one?”

Triplett rubbed his chin. A man from Clarksburg had traded it in two weeks ago, complaining that it was cold-natured, but he hadn’t had time to check out the problem yet. “That one I could let go for two-fifty. She’s got a few miles on her, but she’s been taken good care of.”

“And you can show me how to drive it?”

“Sure, I’ll take ye out today if you want.”

They went into the office and Chimney counted out the money. The man started scribbling in a receipt book. “What’s your name?”

“Hollis Stubbs.”

“How do ye spell that?”

“I don’t know. Nobody ever showed me.”

Triplett made a guess at it, then handed over the receipt. “Always keep this with you so you got proof you own it.” Then he shucked off the coveralls and put on a pair of goggles and a long duster. “I’ll show you how to start it first,” he told Chimney. He proceeded to explain pulling out the choke lever and priming the engine with the crank, then setting the throttle and the spark advance before giving it one more crank to fire it up. He went through the whole procedure twice, the first time slowly, the second time quickly. The car started up fine both times, and he wondered, first, if the man from Clarksburg knew what the f*ck he was talking about, and second, if he should have charged the boy a little more for it. “Think ye got it?” he said.

“I think so,” Chimney said.

“Good,” Triplett said, hopping in on the driver’s side. “Once we get out of town, I’ll put you behind the wheel.”

—

BACK AT THE McCarthy, Cane was sitting in the room trying to make sense out of the first act of Richard III when he glanced out the window and saw two men drive by in a black automobile. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, as he was telling Cob again to take it easy on the doughnuts, that he realized the dandy sitting in the passenger’s seat wearing the purplish shirt had been their little brother.





51


AS SOON AS he finished helping Malone run the men through a drill on gas defense that afternoon, Lieutenant Bovard headed for the infirmary. A nurse in white showed him to the curtained-off area where an anesthetized Wesley was recuperating from his surgery. Other than a white bandage taped over the left side of his face, a cut on his chin and a small bruise on his forehead seemed to be his only other injuries. Pulling up a metal chair, the lieutenant sat down beside the bed. He heard, coming from down the hall, the evangelizing voice of the clap doctor warning another group of new recruits about the connections between syphilis germs and prostitutes and contaminated toilet seats. “Blindness, insanity, and death!” Eisner yelled as he finished the sermon. “Abstinence, gentlemen, that’s the only way you’ll survive!”

Eventually, Wesley opened his right eye and looked over, saw his lieutenant. In a voice a bit slurry with painkillers, he said slowly, “First darn time I was ever drunk in my life and look what happened.”

“Just so you know,” Bovard said, “I heard they arrested the man who attacked you.”

“Aw, I should have left him alone, him being a preacher and all, but he just kept on about…Heck, I can’t remember now. Something to do with the war, I think.”

“Has anyone been around to talk to you yet?”

“No, sir, I ain’t heard nothing other than I lost my eye.”

Bovard felt he should say something encouraging, but what could that possibly be? Disappointment filled the room. No chance for a glorious death now, the poor kid. He imagined Wesley going back to whatever dismal farm or hamlet he had come from once he was released from the brig. “I’ll ask ol’ Lloyd Beavers about hiring you on at the granary,” his father would tell him; and a few months later he’d marry some wide-hipped local girl, sealing his fate forever, though, of course, the boy wouldn’t think of it like that, at least not for the first couple of weeks. Bovard, however, could see it all: a month or two of wedded bliss wiped out in seconds by the first serious spat over something as trivial as a burned meatloaf; and then the years passing by one after another, the struggle to make ends meet, the burden of a passel of brats to feed and clothe, the inevitable decline. A lifetime after the war has ended, Wesley sitting on his stoop, his black hair turned gray, worn out with niggling worries and constant back pain and the same old same old. He clutches a brown bottle of home brew in his knotty, arthritic hand. He looks toward the horizon, the quiet evening surrounding him in a lonesome, regretful sadness. His children now gone, his wife suffering from yet another ailment. He hears her inside the house, moving about slowly, muttering to herself. His hand reaches up and touches the black eye patch. Back when it happened, everyone had said he was lucky that he didn’t have to go fight. But now, looking around his tiny square of yard at the clumps of dead grass and the old, weather-cracked tire swing hanging in the tree, he…