Free The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock Page A

figuring he might as well lay it on as thick as possible. “You don’t want to be a-fightin’ along someone like that, do you? Hell, he’s as liable to shoot the wrong man as the right one. Believe me, fellers, he ain’t fit to be in your army.”
    “Mister,” Crank said, “if being stupid kept men out of the army, there wouldn’t be enough left in Camp Pritchard to wash the dishes in the chow hall.”
    “Don’t listen to the bookkeeper,” Ballard told the farmer. “He’s just pissed because—”
    Throwing up his hands in frustration, Ellsworth said, “What if I talked to the boss?”
    Both the privates laughed, but before either could make another smart remark, Corporal Zimmerman silenced them with an upraised hand. He had allowed this foolishness to go on too long and he needed to reinforce his authority. Turning to Ellsworth, he began speaking slowly, as if he were talking to someone who had just awoken from a long coma. Zimmerman had discovered, over the course of manning the gate eight hours a day for the past couple of weeks, that many people, soldiers and private citizens alike, have a hard time taking no for an answer. They’re like little children who have been spared the rod and trust that, by yowling long enough and loud enough, they will eventually get their way. He was convinced that any parent who didn’t beat their offspring within an inch of their lives at least once a week was doing the world a great disservice, and he was thankful now that his own father had followed that line of thinking. Sure, it might have hurt at the time, but if it hadn’t been for his old man’s leather strap, Zimmerman thought, he might have turned out like that sniveling whiner Crank, or, God forbid, that mouthy, fatheaded Ballard. “Now,” he told Ellsworth, as he finished explaining the situation in short declarative sentences that even a cretin might understand, “the best thing for you to do is go back home. Don’t worry, you’ll see your son in a year or two.” He held up one finger, then another, in front of the farmer’s face.

    Ellsworth’s eyes widened. “A year or two!” he sputtered. Why, he couldn’t imagine it taking more than a few weeks to kill every human being on the planet if you had someone overseeing things who knew what they were doing. But then again, with the government in charge, it might go on forever without anything to show for it. There was no way he was going to get Eddie back. He realized that now. “What’s this war about anyway?” he asked.
    The soldiers glanced at one another uneasily. In all their hours of manning the gate, and answering a thousand questions, nobody had ever asked them that one before. “It’s complicated,” Zimmerman said.
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Some bastard shot some other bastard,” Crank said. “Over around Russia somewhere.”
    “That’s pretty much the crack of it, from what I hear,” Ballard chimed in.
    “You mean the crux of it.”
    “Actually,” Zimmerman said, “it started in Austria. I ought to know. I’ve still got family living there.”
    “I’ll bet you do,” Ballard said snidely. “I’ll bet ol’ Australia’s full of your kind.”
    Crank rolled his eyes. “He said Austria, not Australia.”
    “Well, if that’s the reason they started this war, the politicians must be clear out of their minds,” Ellsworth said, raising his voice. “Either that, or they’re a-lyin’ to ye.”
    The soldiers all stared silently at the farmer for a moment. Regardless of how they felt about each other, they all believed, deep down, that there was nothing nobler than being a courageous patriot defending his country against the savage Germanic hordes. Even Crank, as much as he missed his parents and French toast on Sunday mornings and his peaceful bedchamber overlooking the sugar maple in the backyard, would have agreed with that if push came to shove. “Sir, you could be arrested for that kind of talk,” Zimmerman finally