He emptied the pint of whiskey and began on the other, willing himself to slow down and make it last. Eventually, he began thinking about Flora. My God, what an ass. Though he had known quite a few women who would go along with getting fucked in the ol’ ham flower if they were high enough or forced to or paid extra, Flora was the only one who actually requested it from time to time. His hand drifted down to his crotch and he started rubbing himself, but it was useless; the more he thought about what he had lost, the more despondent and limp-dicked he became. Jesus, he would probably never meet another woman like her again. A picture of that skinny young buck ramming it into her from behind rose up in his mind. He tortured himself with it for a minute, to the point where he could hear Flora moaning and the bed squeaking. “I’ll go back and kill ’em both,” he said out loud. “Cut their goddamn heads off.” He would start back tonight, he told himself. There, it was settled. But then, just as he was draining the last few drops from the second pint, another idea occurred to him, something so simple he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it long before now. He would return to Detroit all right, but not to murder anybody. Why take a chance on getting hanged over that old slut and her baby-faced punk? Instead, he would do as he’d always done, find himself a new puss, and he knew exactly which one he was going after. Flora had a friend named Mary or Margaret or something like that who had just bought a little house a couple of doors down from the laundry that Flora managed. She wasn’t much to look at, a scrawny, meek little thing with wire-rimmed spectacles, from what he could remember, but he didn’t give a damn. He’d fuck a snake if that’s what it took to get back at Flora. He could already see himself sitting on the front porch of his new house with a cup of coffee when the bitch walked by on her way to work. And besides, in all honesty, he really didn’t know any other way to live except off some woman. Just look at all the shit that had happened to him in the few days he’d been out on his own.
Excited by his new plan, Sugar hurried back to Jenksie’s and spent the last of his money on another jug. With any luck, he figured he could be back in Detroit in three or four days, probably be married by the end of next week. He staggered north past the men still gathered in front of the post office. By that time the sun was beginning to set over the big horse farm to the west that the white family named Montclair had owned since before his granddaddy was born. A few of the men hooted and catcalled when they saw him trip over his feet at the edge of town, and he cursed them and waved his razor in the air. Two or three started after him, but when he took off running, they stopped and threw rocks at him until he disappeared between two hills. He had only gone a mile or so when he curled up under a maple tree and uncapped the bottle. The next morning, he awoke more guilt-ridden and miserable than ever, with an army of red ants crawling over him. The plan that had burned so brilliantly in his mind just a few hours ago was barely smoldering now, and Detroit seemed like a million miles away. By the time he arrived back at the bridge that evening, Captain and his posse were gone. All that was left to indicate they had been there at all was a greasy forgotten skillet and a few discarded jugs. Searching madly among them, he found one corked with a chaw of tobacco, two inches of whiskey left in the bottom of it. He pulled out the slimy plug and tipped up the bottle with trembling hands, and as soon as his frayed nerves settled down a little, he crossed the bridge back over into Ohio.
47
ON THE EVENING of the third full day at the Fiddlers’, with the corn all cut and standing in neat shocks in the fields, and the wound in Cob’s leg healing over nicely thanks to Eula’s poultices, Chimney told Cane it was time to go. They were washing off at the well before supper. Cane agreed, though he did so a little reluctantly. For the first time since they’d fled Tardweller’s barn, he had seen Cob genuinely happy, and he hated to see that come to an end. But a promise was a promise, and Chimney had more than fulfilled his part of the bargain. Too, though the days were still warm, the nights were now cool and crisp. He didn’t know much about Canada, but he suspected they should probably try to get there before winter hit. “I’ll tell ’em after we get done eating,” he said.
“However you want to do it,” Chimney said. “Long as we go.”
They had one of the best meals of their lives that evening—fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and apple pie—and then they all went out to sit on the porch just as the sun was setting. Chimney walked over to the barn and brought back the last of their whiskey to share with Ellsworth, and Eula even allowed him to splash a drop in her coffee. He figured he’d give Cane a few more minutes, but if he didn’t say anything by the time the yard turned dark, he’d tell them himself.
“He’s lucky, you know,” Eula said, nodding at Cob’s leg. Then she launched into a story about a Blosser boy just down the road who had died from an infected rat bite two years ago. Just a little nip on the finger, and within a couple of days, his arm turned green with poison. His parents sent for a Doctor Hamm in Meade and he sawed it off, but it was too late by then. “You could hear the mother cryin’ and screamin’ clear up here when he took his last breath,” Ellsworth added, taking another sip from his cup. The boy’s parents asked the doctor to sew it back on before they buried him, Eula went on, so that he wouldn’t be a cripple when he got to heaven, but then they couldn’t find it.
“What do ye mean, they couldn’t find it?” Cane said.
Eula shook her head. “Just that,” she said. “The doctor, he’d laid it off to the side of the bed in Mrs. Blosser’s roaster pan and it just disappeared into thin air.”
“You mean like a ghost?” Cob asked.
“Could be.”
“We used to have us some ghosts down where—” Cob started to say.
“Maybe a dog got it,” Chimney cut in. “Hell, a dog will eat anything.”
“Well, they did have one,” Ellsworth said, “a little feisty thing. I think they called it Leo or something like that. But he wouldn’t have been big enough to carry off something the size of an arm.”
“It’s a mystery,” Eula said, nodding her head.
“They was a worthless bunch,” Ellsworth went on, “especially the old man. He didn’t do nothing but sit on the porch all day while his wife waited on him hand and foot. I wouldn’t have put it past him to have stolen it himself.”
“Why would he do that?” Cob asked.
“Well, I figure with her makin’ such a big fuss over the boy dying and all, he got jealous. That’s the way he was, always had to be the center of attention.”