The Heavenly Table(98)

As usual, backstage the Lewis Family—Barney, Marcus, Rufus, Stanley, and Wendell—was having another crisis. Fame and women, coupled with jealousy and vast quantities of alcohol, had slowly dissolved the familial bond among the five brothers, and now it seemed as if every performance was preempted by another demand from this one or that one. Tonight, Barney was refusing to go on unless Marcus admitted that not only had he drugged and molested Barney’s latest girlfriend, a burned-out torch singer named Dolly whom he’d picked up working in a five-and-dime in Pomeroy on the way over to Meade, but that he’d also given her a dose of crabs, which she had subsequently passed on to Barney. After much shouting and cursing and threatening, a fed-up Rufus jammed a derringer against the rapist brother’s head, and the truth spilled out in a torrent, followed by an apology, one of seven or eight that Marcus had already made that week; and Stanley signaled the stage manager that they were ready to roll. They then each took a small hit from a treasured jug of moonshine that was all that remained of their granddaddy’s last batch before he died, and then smacked each other in the balls, a ritual they had begun with their very first show back in Nitro, West Virginia, on April 3, 1909, and had continued right up to the present day, even though three of them now suffered terribly from hernias.

As they came out onto the stage, the orchestra burst into a bouncy piece of circus music, and the audience clapped wildly. For at least five minutes, Cane calculated, they ran around in a circle, five roly-poly f*ckers with matching pencil mustaches, pinching each other on the ass and stealing each other’s hats while making goofy faces. Then the music slowed down, and they stopped and stood in a row with their hands over their hearts and began singing. Their repertoire included a couple of patriotic anthems, a medley of old pastoral favorites, and a rollicking version of “The Old Brown Nag.” Cob poked Cane in the arm. “That’s one of Mr. Fiddler’s favorite songs,” he yelled over the music. Finally, a trumpeter stood up in the orchestra pit and blasted an ear-shattering note, and the monkey, the one and only Mr. Bentley, dropped from the ceiling and began chasing the bozos around in a f*cking circle again. Cob stood up in his seat openmouthed to get a better look, and the people behind him started hissing and yelling, and Cane had to threaten to leave in order to get him to settle down. Then Mr. Bentley disappeared for a minute, only to come back out again wearing a butler’s uniform and carrying a white towel over his arm. Grinning maniacally with his big yellow teeth, he walked along the edge of the stage bowing to the audience one minute, then bending over the next to shake his red ass at them. This went on for quite a while until some soldiers up front grew bored and started pelting the chimp with apple cores and bottle caps and pellets of popcorn. No sooner had Cob said, “They better not hurt him,” than a peanut struck the beast in the eye, and Mr. Bentley screamed and leaped over the orchestra pit into the row of army boys. Before Cane could stop him, Cob jumped out of his seat and started down the aisle. By then, several members of the Lewis Family were trying to pull Mr. Bentley off a private before something bad happened, like a repeat of the incident at the fair in Indiana last fall when he bit a man’s ear off. Fortunately, everything was more or less under control by the time Cob got to the front. The orchestra broke into an extended version of “Danny Boy,” and everyone returned to their seats and enjoyed the rest of the performance, which to Cob’s delight was just more of the same, though now, just to be on the safe side, Rufus, the stoutest of the brothers, kept Mr. Bentley restrained with a leash around his furry neck. Still, every time he passed by in front of the group who had insulted him earlier, he gave them a look of pure, unadulterated hatred, and several, not trusting the strap or the fat buffoon holding it, got up and left the building.

Later, on their way back to the hotel, while listening to Cob rail about the abuse the poor monkey had suffered, Cane saw the girl from the bookstore walk by with a dapper man in a nice suit holding her arm. He felt a little regret, thinking about how flustered he’d been in her presence, and he wondered if he could have been the one escorting her tonight if he had just spoken up. He stayed up half the night with Richard III, making his way slowly through Act Three and most of Four. Occasionally he paused to take a sip of whiskey and look a word up in the Webster’s. The hotel was old and creaky with the past, and for some reason the noises kept unnerving him. Finally, he got up with his pistol and looked up and down the empty hallway. Closing the door, he turned out the lamp and went over to the window. He could hear the sound of footsteps somewhere down the street. The church bell chimed twice. He stood looking out for a long time, thinking again of how far they had come, and how far they had yet to go.





57


THAT SAME EVENING, a frustrated and demoralized Bovard took a cab into Meade with the sole intention of getting plastered. Not only had his dream of dying with Wesley by his side been ruined, but even worse, rumors were now floating around that the 343rd might not ship out until next spring. What if the war ended before he got there? The prospect of sitting around uselessly in Ohio for five or six more months while great battles were being waged just a weeklong ocean voyage away was too depressing for words; and the thought that he might be cheated out of his destiny was weighing heavily on his mind when the driver dropped him off in front of the Candlelight.

He had just started in on his sixth scotch and was bemoaning his predicament to Forrester, the bartender, when the Lewis Family, still sweaty from their performance and accompanied by several females, came in and commandeered three tables at the rear of the room. All of the tension and animosity they had felt toward one another before the show had been forgotten, and within minutes their earsplitting laughter and swinish behavior had shattered the quiet, sophisticated atmosphere that had always been, at least for Bovard, the Candlelight’s main attraction in the first place. By the time the troupe ordered their second round, all of the other patrons had hurriedly paid their tabs and slipped out the door. Bovard turned and watched in disgust as one of the Lewises forced his tongue down the throat of one of the women. Now, it is a fact that a man will sometimes go to great lengths, even risk life and limb, to defend the sanctity of his favorite drinking hole; and so, when it finally became obvious that Forrester wasn’t going to do anything to restore order, the lieutenant decided it was up to him. Adjusting his officer’s cap, he staggered back to their corner, and, after giving them a thorough dressing-down that ended with a long quote from Horace, threatened to beat them all into bloody pulps unless they started acting decently. Within seconds, three of them, including one of the females, were pointing derringers at his head, and the bartender had his arms pinned behind his back and was gently but firmly escorting him to the door. “Sorry, sir,” Forrester said softly in his ear, “I don’t like ’em any more than you do, but they’ll spend more tonight than we usually take in all week.”