Then Parker put his pencil down and said, looking at the farmer and shaking his head, “Ells, you need to quit gettin’ all your news off that jackass out there and start talkin’ to us regular folks once in a while. Shit, he probably don’t even know where Germany is.”
The Singletons got a kick out of that, and Ellsworth’s sunburned face turned an even deeper shade of red as he stood by the counter and listened to them hoot and cackle. He had always been at least vaguely aware of his limitations, but the thought of being bested in anything, even worldly affairs he had never heard of, by a pair of yahoos who had never, as far as anybody knew, done an honest day’s work in their lives, was almost more than he could stand. He had wanted to inquire about Eddie, ask if anyone had spotted him around, but figured that would just open up the door to another insult and so he let it go. However, on the way back home, nodding to himself and occasionally spitting great wads of phlegm that stuck like glue to Buck’s wide, sweaty rump, Ellsworth put two and two together in his own slow way. Somehow, Eddie had heard about that army camp.
“Why do you think that?” Eula asked when he told her that afternoon what he figured Eddie might be up to. She was bent over the kitchen table rolling a cylinder of dumpling dough back and forth while a pot of water heated on the stove.
“I don’t know,” Ellsworth said. “I just got a feeling.”
Eula dabbed at the sweat on her face with her apron, then looked over at the sacks of salt and sugar he had set on the counter. Being a bit more realistic than her husband ever was when it came to their son, she had a hard time seeing Eddie as the type to voluntarily join something as strict and harsh as she imagined the military was, but then again, stranger things had happened, like the time Uncle Peanut got saved over in Jimmy Beulah’s shanty and didn’t touch a drop for nearly six months. “So where in the world is Germany anyway?” she said, as she picked up a knife and started cutting the round tube of yellow dough into half-inch pieces.
Ellsworth’s face reddened again. He had no idea, but, still smarting from the abuse hurled at him earlier at the store, there was no way he was going to admit it. Going to the water bucket, he drew himself a drink, then sipped slowly while considering various responses. Finally, trying to sound both as nonchalant and convincing as possible, he said, “Hell’s fire, Eula, even ol’ Buck probably knows where Germany is.”
“I don’t,” she said.
Holy Christ on a cross, Ellsworth thought, the woman could be a sister to that damn bunch over at the store. “Well, fetch me a map,” he said, “and I’ll show ye.”
“Map? Ells, you know we don’t have no—” Then Eula stopped and turned to look at him. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You don’t know, either, do ye?”
Ellsworth took a deep breath. Though he had never, not once, struck Eula in all the time they had been married, he now fought the urge to throw the dipper at her head. He had listened to more than a few of his neighbors, usually after they’d had a drink or two in the back room of Parker’s store, brag about beating their wives for some infraction or other, and he had always looked upon such men as cowards and bullies. But standing there in the hot kitchen with the past days and weeks and months of frustrations and setbacks simmering inside him, he could almost understand why some of them yielded to it. He took another drink of water and thought longingly of the jugs of wine hidden in the hayloft. No, he and Eula had been through too much together to allow a little thing like geography drive him to do something he would regret for the rest of his life. And so, without another word, he hung the dipper back on the bucket and headed out to the barn.
7
BY THE TIME they ended up working for Major Tardweller, Pearl’s sons figured their father had racked up enough hardships for them all to sit at the head of the goddamn heavenly table he had been blabbering about for the past three years. Just a couple of days after Cane advised that they cut back their biscuit ration, they discovered that the cache of potatoes they had buried in the ground to last them the rest of the summer was full of rot. They had woken up that morning to rain, and it being a Sunday anyway, Pearl had decided they would take the day off from clearing the swamp. It was the first break they’d had in several weeks. For a few minutes, the old man stood watching as the others sorted the bad from the good. “How does it look?” he finally asked.
“Like we’re gonna go hungry,” Cane replied.
“Well, they’s worse things. Remember that ol’ boy I met on the Foggy River? Shoot, he didn’t eat nothin’ but tadpoles and bugs and he seemed to be doin’ all right. If’n he can do it, I reckon we can, too.”
“It might come to that ’fore it’s over with,” said Cane.
“No need to worry,” Pearl said. “The Lord will give us our reward someday.”
“I ain’t eatin’ no goddamn tadpoles,” Chimney muttered.