Read The Heavenly Table for Free Online

it.”
    “Lean over here,” the man said. He put his ear against Pearl’s and held his breath. From a distance, they looked like two spent lovers watching the water pass by. A blue-winged dragonfly hovered above their gray heads, then darted off into a bunch of brown cattails. “Mercy,” the hermit said, after listening to the buzzing inside Pearl’s head for several minutes, “sounds like you gettin’ ready to hatch you a star in there.”
    “You think it will ever go away?”
    “Oh, I expect so,” the man said. “That’s the one good thing about this here life. Nothin’ in it lasts for long.” Then he glanced over at the bird in the cypress tree and reached for his staff. “Well, it’s been nice talkin’ to ye, brother, but I see my little friend is ready to go. Who knows? Maybe one of these days we’ll have us some wings, too.” Just as he stood, a loud commotion erupted down at the water and Cane whooped and slung a large catfish up onto the bank. The man shook his head as he watched it flop around in the mud. “Best you tell them to throw that thing back in,” he said to Pearl.
    “I can’t do that, mister. That’s their supper.”
    “Mark my word,” the man said, “you let them eat that cat, before long them boys will be wantin’ everything the easy way.” Then he stepped down into the river and started to make his way across. At its deepest point, the water rose above his chest, and his beard suddenly popped up to float along in front of his face like a buoy. A mass of insects scurried to the top of the nest of whiskers to keep from drowning, and Pearl watched as the white bird swooped down from the tree and began plucking them off one by one and placing them on the hermit’s outstretched tongue.

    No sooner had the man disappeared into the tree line than the sizzle in Pearl’s head sputtered to a stop, never to start up again. He entered briefly into a complete and profound silence, and in that glorious moment, he began to see God in a new light. If life was going to be hard, at least the hermit had provided a good reason for it, even a great one. From then on, Pearl seemed to intentionally follow the road that promised the most misery, and the only thing that brought him satisfaction was the worst that could happen. Hoping to replicate that perfect moment again, he plugged his ears with sawdust and clay and chewing tobacco and pebbles and chunks of wood, but the outside world always managed to seep through. He even considered piercing the thin tympanums with a thorn, but he worried that God might look upon such a selfish act as the desecration of a holy temple. Slowly, after countless failed experiments, he came to realize that he wouldn’t know the great silence again until he went down into his grave. That moment by the Foggy River had been just a preview of the eternal peace to come if he stayed the course and didn’t weaken. “I will be redeemed,” he kept repeating to himself. He wished for it more than anything, more than food or land or love, or even life itself.

6
    E DDIE STILL WASN’T back the next morning when Eula came into the kitchen and found Ellsworth standing by the counter drinking his fourth dipper of water. Her eyes were puffy and she was still in her nightdress, a shapeless gray sack she had slept in as long as he could remember. She handed him five dollars for the store. “Whatever you do, don’t lose it,” she said. “It’s all we got left.”
    He nodded his throbbing head ever so slightly, then took another gulp. His pipes hadn’t felt this dried-out in years. After carrying the five gallons of wine over to the barn, he had stayed up trying to finish off what was left in the barrels. By the time he’d lurched and groped his way back up the stairs, it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. Looking down at the money in his hand, the old guilty ache started up again, and he thought back on all the years it had taken Eula to save the thousand dollars