The Heavenly Table by Pollock Donald Ray

Author:Pollock, Donald Ray [Pollock, Donald Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Crime
ISBN: 9780385541299
Amazon: 0385541295
Goodreads: 27245902
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2016-07-12T07:00:00+00:00

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AS THE JEWETT Gang slept along the weedy bank of a dried-up stream near Otway, Ohio, a geologist named Arthur Vaughn, originally from New Haven, Connecticut, and now working as a surveyor for a Pennsylvania mining company that was buying up tracts of land all over Kentucky, came across what appeared to be just another deserted homestead, the third in less than a week. For Arthur, each of these places had its own particular sadness—and this one was no exception, as he looked to the right and saw the weather-beaten remains of a little girl’s cob doll protruding from a waste heap—but they also shared a common loneliness, more akin to a long-forgotten graveyard than a spot where people had once lived and worked and loved. However, as he led his pack mule up closer to the house, he realized from the look of the slashed vines around the tumbledown porch that someone else had been here recently. Perhaps this place wasn’t abandoned after all. “Hello,” he called out several times, but got no response. He shaded his eyes with his felt hat and peered through the open doorway. He could see a book lying on the floor near the fireplace. Arthur had brought a copy of Huckleberry Finn with him when he started this assignment, but he had finished it over a week ago and was starving for something new to read. He studied the stomped path through the weeds leading away from the porch to a crude shed. “Hello,” he yelled again. “Anybody home?” He waited a minute, then tied the mule to a termite-riddled post and stepped cautiously inside the house.

When he turned the book over and saw the title, he said, under his breath, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Then he let out a little laugh. It was one of those trashy dime novels that he and his brother, William, bedridden with the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, used to read on the sly when they were young. In fact, of all the books that Arthur had sneaked into the sickroom, this had been his brother’s favorite. He swatted the book against his leg, then stood in the middle of the hot room contemplating what remained of the tasteless artwork on the torn and faded cover. A sinister-looking desperado draped in a poncho stood defiantly in the middle of a desert, pointing two pistols the size of cannons at some shadowy figures approaching on horseback in the distance. “The Life and Times of Bloody Bill Bucket,” Arthur said aloud, trying to imitate the overly dramatic voice his brother had sometimes used jokingly when it was his turn to read. “By Charles Foster Winthrop the Third.” Because the doctors had warned their parents that William should avoid all manner of excitement, they had to keep the book hidden behind a loose piece of molding in the closet. And when his brother finally choked to death on his own blood, Arthur had managed to slip it into his coffin without anybody knowing.

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