Bull Mountain (7 page)

From a safer distance, Clayton watched his brother get comfortable against
a tree stump and close his eyes. Hal looked rested and content as the burning man’s screams became something else. Something unnatural. Clayton would never forget that sound. He wondered if Hal could even hear it at all, or if all he heard were the hornets.

CHAPTER

S
IMON
H
OLLY

2015

1.

Agent Holly shoved his key in the lock and tried to remember the last time, if ever, he’d stayed in a motel room that still issued keys to its patrons. Not those flimsy plastic key
cards with the magnetic strip, but real, straight-up cut metal keys. As soon as he opened the door to room six of the Waymore Valley Motor Inn, the smell of powdered dollar-store potpourri and stale cigarette smoke rushed his face. It was strangely comforting. As were the bland mother-of-pearl walls and the dim electric-yellow light. This was the kind of thing he was used to. All the fresh mountain
air and wide-open spaces were foreign and intimidating. Being out in the open country made him feel like, at any time, he could lose his footing and spin right off the planet. The tight space felt better. More controlled.

Holly unzipped the black government-issue duffel and took out his cell phone. He’d purposely left it behind before the sit-down with Clayton Burroughs. No distractions. The
phone showed multiple missed calls from the same three numbers within the space of four hours. One was his girlfriend, Clare; one had a government prefix; and one had a North Georgia area code. Calling any of the three back was going to be the equivalent of sticking an ice pick through his left eye. He tossed the phone on the end table and fished a prescription pill bottle out of the duffel, a
special cocktail of ten-milligram hydrocodone tablets and twenty-milligram diazepam. He shook out the pills and washed them down with tap water from the sink. His hands were still a little shaky. He’d done his best to keep them still during his meeting with the sheriff, but today was a long time coming, and to be honest, he was surprised he’d handled it so coolly. Holly was pretty sure he’d sold the
right play to the sheriff, even if he’d had to consume a year’s worth of fat and carbs at that ridiculous pool-hall diner to do it.

How do these people eat that shit every day?
he thought. He needed a gym, and a shower, but he settled for three fingers of bourbon from a plastic traveler’s bottle to give the pills a swift kick in the ass. The burn of the whiskey felt good. He sank down into
a chair next to the bed and let the chemicals work their magic. It was the only thing making this next part bearable. It was time to roll up his sleeves and start calling people back.

He grabbed the cell phone and punched in a number. A pocket-sized faux-leather King James Bible with gold trim sat on the desk. Holly toyed with it while the phone rang. When the person on the other end picked
up, he reached out and slid the Bible into the trash.

2.

“Jessup,” the voice on the line said.

“Henry, it’s Simon.”

“Simon, where the hell are you? You dropped off the grid, and you got people around here crabby. I don’t like these people when they’re crabby. You know that.”

“I’m in Georgia.”

“And why in God’s name are you in Georgia?”

“I’m working a case.”

“You’re
supposed to be working a case in Jacksonville, Florida.”

“Same case.”

The silence on the line told Holly that his partner, Henry Jessup, was trying to connect the dots before asking a stupid question. He asked anyway.

“When am I going to be briefed on how what you’re doing in the Peach State connects to Wilcombe? What do I tell Jennings?”

The pills were doing their job. Holly felt
the tension ease in his neck and shoulders.

“Tell him anything you want, Henry. I’m the AIC on this, and the last time I checked, the ATF was a federal agency, meaning I can follow a lead anywhere in the continental United States. I’m tracking down a major supplier of dope in the Georgia Mountains that ties directly to the guns in Florida, and the money—and Wilcombe.”

“You
are
the AIC
on this, but you work in conjunction with me and the federal government. There are rules here you have to follow. This isn’t some Podunk local operation in southern Alabama. This Wilcombe thing you’re so hot about is the only reason Jennings vouched to get you in here, and already you’re pulling this cowboy shit. This is the kind of thing he’s waiting on to fry your ass and take the case for himself.”

“Fuck him. He’s a suit. He has no idea how it works out here.”

“He’s your boss. And he doesn’t trust you. You move too far outside the lines on this and he’s going to bust you back down to a beat cop. Me, too, probably.”

“What can I tell you, Henry? I’m just doing my job.”

“Well, then do it by the book. Jennings and them are going to want to be briefed on this, Simon. Stop the radio
silence and the freelancer shit. You shouldn’t be up there alone. I should be there.”

“Henry, you worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough.”

“Just give me a couple of days. Let me see where this takes me and I’ll let you know the play when I have it figured out.”

“Have you called Clare?”

“Not yet.”

“She’s called me worried about you. She said you’re not answering her calls,
either. She thinks you’re in Florida.”

“Jesus, Henry, what are you, my mom? I’ll call her when I get a chance.”

“I don’t like lying for you, Simon. It’s getting to be a habit.”

“Look, Henry. I am following a lead, you’ll just have to trust me on it.”

“Whatever you say, partner. Just don’t leave me with my dick in my hands. As soon as you know something, I know something, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“All right, man. Be careful around those rednecks and call your woman.”

“Right.”

“Seriously, Simon. Be careful.”

Holly hung up. He poured another glass of bourbon and hit redial on the missed local call. A male voice picked up on the first ring.

“Goddamn, Holly, I’m freaking out here.”

“I told you not to call me on this phone.”

“Don’t worry, chief,
I’m on a burner. I was just calling to tell you I got a team ready for this thing. We’re—”

“Stop,” Holly said. “Stop right there. I told you not to call me on this phone, and you did. That means you can’t follow simple directions. If you can’t follow orders, then I can’t use you. If I can’t use you, then I’ll have to dispose of you. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I hear you, but—”

“No, just stop talking. Be where I told you to be, and do what I tell you to do. If that doesn’t work for you, then the deal is off.”

“Roger that, boss. I get it.”

“Do you? Are you sure? Because if you don’t, I’ll find someone else that does, and you—you they find with your hands tied, your arms broken, floating ass-up in the river. Are we clear on this?”

“Crystal.”

“Good.”

Holly slapped the phone closed and hammered back the bourbon. What was it the sheriff had said earlier about finding good help?

“The pickin’s are slim.”

Indeed.

Two calls down and a good buzz. He contemplated calling Clare back but decided against it. He tossed the phone back on the table and picked up his wallet. Behind the two neatly creased twenties and Uncle Sam’s credit card
was a small photograph of a brown-haired woman barely into her twenties, sitting in the grass with a small boy—a toddler. Holly held the picture, careful of the worn edges, and laid it where the Bible had been. There wasn’t a day that went by that Holly didn’t take a minute to stare at the woman and the boy in that photograph.

The woman who wasn’t Clare.

CHAPTER

C
OOPER
B
URROUGHS

1950

1.

“Tie those last few off and load them on the truck.” Cooper wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Take a few minutes if you need to, but I ain’t looking to be out here all day.”
Cutting and baling marijuana could be exhausting work and the process took up most of the sticky, humid summer months, but Cooper knew he paid well, and his men knew they weren’t going to do anything the man himself wouldn’t do. Still, the heat of a Georgia summer could wilt a man’s back and cook his brains. Delray and Ernest had been humping it since sunup and it looked like they hadn’t made a dent
in the day’s workload.

“Damn, Cooper, we ain’t never gonna get all this done. It’s hot as the devil’s balls out here, and I done sweat out every bit of water in me. We could use a break.”

“The only thing you’re sweating out is last night’s liquor, Delray. So that makes your problem your own. If you’re still looking to get paid, then you need to get the rest of those buds baled and packed
before I lose it to the sun.”

“I don’t mind working, Coop, but goddamn, man, take it easy.”

Cooper dropped the tightly cinched bundle of tacky green plants to the ground and wiped his brow again. “How much money did you make last year taking it easy?”

“Last year I was running the stills over on the southern side.”

“I didn’t ask what you did, Delray. I asked how much you made.”

“I reckon you and Rye always done me pretty good.”

Cooper pulled a thin stem of cannabis out of the bunch at his feet and popped it in his mouth. The casual mention of his dead brother didn’t go unnoticed. He shook it off. “Well, I reckon you made about half all year of what I paid you the last three months.”

Delray shifted his lips over to one side of his face as he thought on that.

“Well, don’t go trying to do the math,” Cooper said. “I don’t want your brain fryin’ any more than it has to before we get this truck loaded. Just get yourself some water and stop all your bitchin’ before I get a couple of womenfolk out here to show you up.” Cooper looked up toward the truck and called for his son. “Gareth?”

Cooper’s boy looked down from where he was positioned in the truck
bed, straightening the bales as they were tossed in. “Yes, Deddy?”

“Get up there to the main house and bring these sissies a pitcher of tea. Plenty of ice.”

“Yessir.” Gareth hopped off the truck and made his way into the house.

Delray pulled down tight on the twine in his hands. Ernest tied it off, picked up the bale, and tossed it toward Cooper a little harder than he should have.
Cooper caught it and slung it into the bed of the truck. “If you got something to say, Ernest, spit it out.”

It looked like Ernest had a lot to say but wouldn’t get a chance to right then. He squinted at something in the distance over Cooper’s shoulder, and Cooper turned to look as well. One rider. Horseback. Nobody rode horses wild-west-style on the mountain anymore but a fella named Horace
Williams, one of the old-timers that lived out by Johnson’s Gap. All three men watched the rider approach in the heat.

“What are you doing out here, Horace?” Cooper helped the old man off the horse.

“We might have us a problem out by the Gap.”

“What problem?”

“Well, me and my boy Melvin was out riding through there a few days ago and we saw one of the old stills running.”

“Which one?”

“The big one way off the pass. The one Rye used for the peach he’d run into Tennessee.”

Cooper took off his hat and used it to rub the sweat off his forehead. “I shut that one down.”

“Yes, sir. We knew that. That’s why I come to tell you.”

“And do I even need to ask who was running it?” Cooper asked the question as if he already knew the answer. Delray and Ernest were
all ears.

Horace hung a toothless smile on his face. “It was Valentine. That colored fella Rye was so fond of. Him and a few of his kin. It looked like they were casing up a load to reopen Rye’s old route.” It made a little more sense to Cooper now why this old-timer would want to ride way out here in the heat to give up a neighbor. Rye’s Negro friends were never that popular up here in the
first place, and without him around to say any different, old-timers like Horace were itching to see them get run off.

“Didn’t you already tell him he couldn’t do that?” Horace said.

Cooper had. Rye’s sudden disappearance had solved the timber issue but opened up a lot of new problems regarding how to transition out of shine and into weed. Rye was always the go-between for the family and
the people living on the mountain. He knew how to talk to people. Cooper would rather not talk to anyone about anything, but he was running things now, so that wasn’t an option. Albert Valentine was one of those problems. Rye had promised him a piece of the shine business once the timber deal was in place. Cooper wasn’t having it. “I told that old bastard that I wasn’t having no Negro run my deddy’s
Georgia Peach off this mountain. Even if it was a Negro my brother fancied.”

“Well, Coop,” Horace said, clearly happy to be the messenger, “I reckon he thinks he can do whatever he wants, ’cause he sure is crating up a ton.”

Cooper worked at an itch in his beard and took the chewed-up stem from his mouth. After a moment he pointed it at Delray and Ernest. “You two go down to the Gap with
Horace and bring Valentine to me.” Delray dropped the twine and sheathed his knife. Ernest finished tying off his bale and threw it at Cooper hard like the last one. This time Cooper knocked it to the ground. He took off his hat again and put his face inches from Ernest’s. Ernest was a big man with nearly a hundred pounds on Cooper, but he shrank back all the same. “You got a problem, Ernest? Here’s
your chance to vent, but I’m not taking any more of your fuckin’ attitude.”

Ernest met Cooper’s stare. “Why don’t you just give it to him?”

“Give what to who?”

“Give Old Man Val the still. The route. All of it.”

“Why the hell should I do that?”

“It’s the way Rye wanted it.”

Cooper felt the twinge of something mean run up his back, and the left side of his face tightened
up. “Rye’s dead,” he said with a low rumble.

“And don’t we all know it.”

Cooper backed away from Ernest and turned toward the truck. He could feel the heat rising under his skin and took a deep breath through his nose. Delray fumbled for the right thing to say to lighten the moment but fell short and just stood slack-jawed.

“Rye showed his people respect. He didn’t work us like dogs
in the heat, and he didn’t call us women for wanting to take a minute’s rest.”

“Shut the hell up, Ernest,” Delray said. Cooper said nothing. He just stood with his back to the men, staring at the main house.

“Or what, Delray? Am I suppose to be scared of him just ’cause he’s the boss? Nobody was scared of Rye.”

“And look what that got him,” Delray said, and regretted it immediately.
It just slipped out. Cooper turned around.

“What do you mean, Delray?” he said.

“Hell, Coop, I didn’t mean nothing.”

Cooper took a few steps toward the two men. Delray took a step back and Ernest moved to the side.

“I’m not sure what you’re implying there.” Cooper stared at Delray hard enough to knock him down.

“I ain’t implying anything, Coop, I mean, come on, we all know
what happened.”

Ernest stepped farther away from Delray. He was going to get them both killed. Standing up to the boss about fair treatment was one thing, but accusing him of killing his brother was something else altogether. Rye was killed in a hunting accident. That was the official story, and whether anyone chose to believe it or not, you didn’t question it. Not to the man’s face, anyway.
Cooper and his son had tried their best to save Rye’s life that day. They grieved his death for months. Cooper depended on that truth to be the only truth.

Gareth came out of the house with the glass pitcher of tea and a stack of paper cups and held them both up for his father to take. Cooper took the pitcher and held it in his hand like a hammer. Delray tried to get off a last word, right
before Cooper bashed the glass pitcher into his head. The glass shattered and spun Delray down to his knees. A large sliver of glass was wedged into Delray’s skull, and smaller chunks, all shiny and reflective in the sun’s light, stuck out of his cheeks and bottom lip. It looked like his jaw was broken as well, because it just hung there open and loose, disconnected from the rest of his face. Cooper
shoved a booted foot into Delray’s back, forcing him down flat in the dirt, then pulled a nickel-plated Colt Python from the waistband of his trousers. He didn’t thumb the hammer or point it at anyone. He just held it, letting it be known.

“And that . . . is that,” Cooper said. “Ernest, you and Horace get this sack of shit off my mountain, and don’t let me see no more of him.”

Ernest didn’t
try to keep Cooper’s stare this time. He was too scared to even look at him. He grabbed Delray by the shoulders, careful of his ruined jaw, and dragged him toward his truck parked by the tree line, leaving a trail of red mud, iced tea, blood, and broken glass. Gareth helped without having to be asked. Before they reached the trees they heard Cooper call out, “Ernest.”

Ernest turned and looked
back at the truck, where Cooper was already working on the next bale.

“Yeah, boss?”

“After you get Valentine up here, take the rest of the day off. But tomorrow, bring a friend. We’re going to need to catch up.”

“Yessir.”

2.

Gareth came into the main house dirty and tired, his hands caked with dry blood and glass dust. Cooper ran him a tub of water to wash up in and went back
outside to tarp down the load on the truck. It was getting dark and Gareth’s mama would have supper ready soon. Roasted venison, butter beans, and fresh-cut collards were a welcome diversion from the day’s events, but thoughts of supper vanished like steam from a kettle with the sound of trucks coming in from the Western Ridge. Cooper pulled the canvas tarp down tight over the bales of marijuana
buds and tied it off. Gareth appeared on the porch, toweling off his hands, hoping he wouldn’t have to get them dirty again.

“That’s far enough,” Cooper said, and held up a hickory ax handle he kept under the seat of his truck. The first vehicle stopped and Ernest got out with Horace, Albert Valentine, and a few other men Cooper had working the crops. A second truck following swiftly behind
the first carried Valentine’s wife, Mammie, and his young son, Albert Junior. Gareth and Albert Junior were almost the same age and spent most of their summers together swimming and fishing in Bear Creek, or picking wild blackberries or scrounging for pecans for Albert Senior to bake into pies. The old man made the best pies. Cooper loved the old man’s pies.

“Val!” Gareth yelled from the porch,
happy to see the younger boy and oblivious of the trouble his father was in. Albert Junior ran to the porch. Mammie followed after him but kept her eyes on Cooper. Cooper watched the boys briefly before turning his attention to the old man.

“What did I tell you, Albert?” Cooper said.

Valentine held his hat to his chest with both hands. “I know what you told me, Mister Cooper, sir . . .
but, well, it just ain’t right is all.”

“What ain’t right? You making and selling shine off this mountain with my family’s stills against my wishes? Is that what ain’t right?”

Ernest, Horace, and the boys settled in around Cooper and Valentine like a murder of blackbirds.

“It’s like I told you already,” Valentine said. “Rye done gave me the still. He done gave me the route, too. Ask
anybody. Ask the owners of the pool halls down ’round Tennessee, who’s been buyin’. They were expectin’ me. Rye told them to.”

Cooper arched an eyebrow in surprise. “You already been selling?”

“Yessir, and this here is for you.” He motioned to the only other black man in the crowd, who produced a brown paper bag from his pants pocket and handed it to Cooper. Cooper knew the feel of a stack
of cash, so he didn’t bother to open it.

“What is this?”