Straightening up from the potato pile, Chimney looked toward the thinning woods on the far side of the cotton patch. Even after almost three months, he could still hear those women laughing at him. He’d been too ashamed to tell his brothers what had happened, though he was sure Cane knew there had never been any fucking or anything else going on between him and Penelope. Only he and Cob were dumb enough to believe something like that could ever happen. And what the Major said was true. Tomorrow, they would be back over there in the swamp killing themselves for damn near nothing. The keys to the fuckin’ kingdom, all right. Hell, they still owed the mutton-chopped tyrant for the hog they were eating on. He ignored Cob’s question, and instead glanced over at Cane. “What about it, brother? You had enough yet?”
Wiping some sweat from his brow, Cane looked toward the cabin. They’d had this discussion a hundred times or more since they’d first come across the Bloody Bill book, and it was always the same, Cob afraid of changing anything and Chimney burning to change it all. Of course, Chimney was right, nothing was ever going to get any better as long as they stayed with Pearl. And though Cane knew the book was fictitious, sometimes it still seemed closer to the truth than anything he had read in his mother’s Bible. According to Charles Foster Winthrop III, the world was an unjust, despicable place lorded over by a select pack of the rich and ruthless, and the only way for a poor man to get ahead was to ignore the laws that they enforced on everybody but themselves. And from what Cane had seen in his twenty-three years of barely surviving, how could he disagree? Of course, he couldn’t go along with rape or murder, but, he had to admit, the idea of robbing a bank did possess a certain appeal. Just a few minutes of daring could possibly change their lives forever. Still, out of some old-fashioned loyalty or deep-seated superstition he was unable to shake, Cane was loath to desert their dotty old father. To do so might curse him and his brothers for the rest of their lives. No, it would be better just to wait it out. He watched Pearl stumble on the two steps leading up to the door of the shack. “Ain’t no reason to get in a hurry now,” he told Chimney. “You best stick with me and Cob. Our day’s comin’ soon enough.”
“You mean for the heavenly table?” Cob asked.
“Well, not exactly,” Cane said in a patient voice, “but don’t worry. You’ll get there one of these days.”
Chimney let out an exasperated groan. “Jesus Christ, you’re startin’ to sound like Pap.” Standing up, he wiped his hands on the front of his pants. “All right then,” he said, “I’ll give it a little longer.” He started off toward the water bucket sitting in the shade of the tulip tree, then stopped in his tracks. Cane and Cob watched him tilt his head and stare for a moment at the blanched and cloudless sky, his wet rag of a shirt clinging to his bony back. The only sound to be heard was Pearl’s faint whistling inside the cabin. Chimney spat in the dust and shook his head. “The heavenly table,” he said loudly over his shoulder as he began walking again. “Pork chops thick as a bull’s cock, beefsteaks the size of wagon wheels, buttered biscuits as hot and fluffy as the tits on…”
Cane smiled to himself and reached down. He picked up another potato and looked it over, then placed it on top of the good pile.
8