The Wettest County in the World (10 page)

H
OWARD DECIDED
he would stay away from the cabin in Penhook. He would go up on the mountain and make enough money and that would be it. He would work the lumber camp for another season, save his wages and his cut from the tobacco crop, stay away from the card games and drink, and in the winter he would be home again and perhaps the baby would be stronger then and the crying ended. They would get current on the house debt and get out from under it. It was easy to convince himself that it was the best thing to do.

That afternoon Talmedge Jamison would come down from Rocky Mount with the still cap, corn, and barley, the yeast in a packet already at the camp, the mash boxes built and waiting. They could get the mash started tomorrow and if the weather held and if they could get some sugar or molasses, in two days they could run it. Talmedge would take it up to Roanoke in his DeSoto in a caravan with some others he knew, men from Shootin’ Creek and Burning Bag, men with big cars with powerful engines to climb the hills, drapes over the windows to hide the jars and cans, men with guns who drove hard and deadly fast.

Howard had never made a blockade run and didn’t plan to. If the local sheriffs or Alcohol Tax Unit caught you at a still they cut it up and if you couldn’t get away they brought you in and you might do a few weeks or more but that was it. Long-range transporting was a different issue: high-speed chases, accidents, and gunfire. It wasn’t Franklin County that you had to worry about. Local law enforcement wouldn’t pursue a convoy rolling hard through the county; most often they looked the other way, especially if you dropped a few dollars. But ATU men were known for their tenacity and resistance to bribes and if you got caught with a big load going out of the county or in Roanoke you were dealing with people you didn’t know, unlike the local sheriffs, and then you had trouble. Then there were the roving bands of hijackers, desperate men from deep in the mountains or even gangs from up north looking to take a load of free liquor from country rubes. It was the world outside of Snow Creek and Franklin County that presented the unknown variable. Be dammed if I die in a car, Howard thought. Take my chances on my feet.

When Howard finished he had a tight worm coil with nearly ten turns, three feet high, just slightly smaller than the circumference of a barrel: a perfect condenser. Men had different theories about how many turns a coil needed to produce the best run, but generally more turns meant more surface area for condensation and cleaner liquor. Howard pulled out the stoppers and rotated the coil around to drain out the sand packed inside. When copper was hard to get men in the hills would use electrical tubing, radiators, lead pipes, iron, anything that would hold water. He’d seen men running liquor through an old rusted-out Model T radiator, using water from a bottomland creek that was regularly washed out with manure, straining the run through old sackcloth, using nothing but sugar and a bit of corn. A radiator actually made a superior coil, the delicate tubing wound like threads in the block, condensing the liquor off steam along a hundred turns and passageways rather than the dozen or so you could get from a good bent copper coil. But the insides of radiators leeched lead into the liquor. When the demand was high and the money available, men would make it out of sugar water and color it with tobacco juice. Quality liquor was too slow. Who cares if some Yankee went blind? There had been times when Howard had drank such liquor, often called popskull, sugarhead, or rotgut, but normally only when there was nothing else at hand.

Howard slipped the coil over his shoulder and started back through the woods. He licked his lips and thought of a drink. Howard had discovered what every drinking man knows: that quality liquor can make time stop. For a few hours the world comes rushing back, the fields roll under your feet, your hand locks steady around the handle, your back like a piston again, the mountains rise up and form a sparkling crown around you. Anyone could tell it was no way to live, this daily illusion, a phantasm of possibility, followed by blind retching, churning gut, bleary mornings, black heartsickness. But it was better than nothing.

He would pay his debts to his brothers and that would be it. Jack would understand and give him time. His younger brother always seemed to believe in him, always loyal. He thought then he ought to tell Jack about what he had seen during the war. He ought to tell Jack about the ocean and how it moved, how small it made you feel, how it shrank your world into a single droplet. Howard stood beside a tall elm and rested a moment, one hand on the mottled trunk. He closed his eyes and confronted his latest humiliation: that his little brother knew he was drunk in a ditch at the foot of Turkeycock Mountain when Forrest got his throat cut. Howard knew that this was something that hung inside his youngest brother’s chest like a rusted knife.

T
HE RUN WAS
finished overnight and the next morning when Jack rolled out of his bedroll he saw Cricket squatting on the porch and smoking a cigarette. A few wisps of smoke still drifted from the house as if it were lightly steaming, the way a sweaty man’s head will steam in the winter. Cricket’s face was still blackened, and when Jack approached he showed his rotted teeth and clasped Jack’s hand.

Come see what we got here, he said, and led Jack into the house.

Cricket and the twins had run the liquor directly into an old water-heater tank they’d sealed up. Using some extra copper piping they hooked the tank into the house’s well-water lines. Aunt Winnie had a gravity pump set up to bring in water from a cistern in the basement, piped in from a deep well just behind the house. Upstairs in the bathroom she had a water closet with a flush toilet and a water basin with hot and cold taps. The hot-water tank had a sixty-gallon capacity, and over the last few days they’d just about topped it off.

See, Cricket said, this here is how it’ll work.

They were standing in the upstairs water closet. Outside the twins were still sleeping, lying together in the sun like barn cats. Jack’s head pinged a bit from the whiskey he had consumed, just enough to knock him out, his last memories from the night before of the twins rolling around the small fire, wrestling and shouting, someone’s pant leg catching fire followed by sobbing and then deep snores. The bathroom had a pull-chain toilet scarred with iron stains, and a shallow basin of tin nearly rusted through at the seams. On the wall hung a crudely painted landscape, a set of hills, a fence line, what might have been a cow or a horse.

Aunt Winnie did that, Cricket said, nodding to the picture.

You don’t say.

What happens is, Cricket said, man comes in for some liquor, brings his own container.

Cricket brandished a glass pint bottle.

Everythin’ seems normal, Cricket said, just a nice little mountain house here, us fellows here watching the place, whatever. Well, at some point, after sittin’ a spell, the man asks if he may use the water closet, and we say yes, ’cause he already done paid. And we say, try the hot water, it’s real nice, or something like that. So he comes in here.

Cricket held the open bottle under the hot-water tap, and turned the valve. A few squeaky turns, a dull rumble in the wall, and then some murky gray water followed by a thin stream of steaming whiskey. Cricket filled the pint bottle, turned the tap off, and corked the bottle triumphantly.

Man tucks his bottle away, Cricket said, and out he goes.

Hell, Cricket, Jack said, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.

Cricket looked at the stained sink. He swished the pint bottle around a bit, then stuck it in his back pocket. Jack walked back outside onto the porch. At the edge of the clearing one of the twins squatted with his pants down, straining like a dog, one hand on a tree trunk. The other stood a few feet way, seemingly unsure of what to do with himself while his partner was so engaged. Jack knew that Cricket and the twins wanted his help particularly because his presence would keep the sheriffs away and keep the thing orderly as far as customers were concerned.

C’mon, Jackie, Cricket said from the doorway. It’ll go. Just wait.

The twins watched him expectantly, one with his pants around his ankles.

Guess we’d better go get some customers, said Jack. Damn, Mitchell, pull up your pants. Nobody’ll buy any liquor with your goddamn gonads hanging out.

I
T WASN’T LONG
before men started to show up. The Mitchells spent the morning driving Cricket’s Pierce-Arrow and dropping the word at various filling stations in Sontag, Penhook, and Burnt Chimney. By four o’clock they had a dozen men shuffling around the dusty parlor, a few in the yard, talking in low tones, bottles sticking out of their pant pockets, each waiting their turn to use the washroom. Fifty cents a glass, a dollar a pint. A few men brought demijohns and Jack calculated the price accordingly as he sat in the rocking chair on the porch and collected money. Cricket squatted just outside the washroom door, grinning and sipping from a jar. Thin streams of smoke drifted between the floorboards and the smell of mash was overpowering in the house. The twins were posted down the road as lookouts. Jack didn’t know what they were looking for, as many of the men who wandered up the road afoot or on horseback and in various jalopies could’ve been anyone.

They had collected nearly forty dollars when the old ladies showed up. It was getting darker, and men loitered about the clearing, drinking, a few card games going, and music from the radio was playing through the open door. Jack was sitting on the porch counting the small change when the wizened lady in beaten leather boots came up the steps. She had a couple of other ladies in tow, all of them appearing at least eighty years old.

The Mitchell twins came running through the yard up to the porch, both of them shirtless and sweaty, their faces twisted with fear, crowing in odd, boyish voices.

Aunt Winnie!

Aunt Winnie, what’re you doing here?

Aunt Winnie paused to scrutinize the twins, her ancient face folding up on itself into an escalating fan of wrinkles. She was a statuesque woman with a high shelf of shoulders that bunched about her ears. Her dress looked rough-hewn from standing gingham, with stitches like staples roaming across the heavy fabric. Her hair was whittled down to a patch of thin strands that hung in a swatch, barely reaching her collar.

Who you? she said.

It’s us, they chimed.

Uh-huh, Aunt Winnie said.

Your nephews, one said.

Cal and Eddie, the other said.

Men on the porch and in the yard began to sidle off, looking like they were idly wandering or they had seen something of remote interest out in the yard. The two women behind Aunt Winnie peered at the twins. They were clearly related to her. After glaring at the twins for a moment Aunt Winnie shrugged and stomped up the porch and into the house, the two ladies following.

Nattie’s boys then, Aunt Winnie said. Woman was a crooked liar but that don’t mind.

The twins looked at Jack.

Ain’t
this
a damn fine mess, Jack said.

Men were now streaming out of the house. Jack was slightly drunk, and the euphoric feeling was quickly mutating into a cloudy annoyance. Aunt Winnie trooped directly into her bedroom without seeming to notice anything unusual. The two ladies in tow sat on the couch and after working their dresses around their legs properly took out knitting needles from large bags. Aunt Winnie came out and stood in the door to her room, her hands on her hips.

Aunt Winnie! the twins cried.

Someone ought to get out a bite to eat around here, Aunt Winnie said, for the company.

Jack went into the hallway to the bathroom, where Cricket crouched by the door, jar in hand.

What? Jack said.

Something ain’t right with this liquor, Cricket said, shaking his head sadly.

You better come and see who’s out here, Jack said.

Gotta old boy in there, Cricket said, gesturing with his shoulder.

Well, get him out.

Don’t think I can, Cricket said, smiling weakly.

Jack opened the bathroom door and it swung in a few inches and hit something. Jack forced it with his shoulder until it gave and a man yelled. Two old-timers stood there by the sink, holding jars of whiskey. One of them was a scraggly fellow with a tobacco-stained beard and he had his pants down around his ankles. At least the tap wasn’t running, Jack thought, and closed the door again.

You old fools get the hell out, he hissed through the door. We’re closed!

When he came back into the kitchen Aunt Winnie was opening a giant can of government-surplus beans. The twins, still shirtless and running with sweat, stood there with their mouths open. The other two women knitted while Cricket squatted by the sofa. He was stone drunk. Smoke drifted through the floorboards around Cricket’s feet like he was squatting in a smoldering campfire. Aunt Winnie shot Cricket a nasty look.

I know you, boy, Aunt Winnie said.

Yes’m, Cricket grunted.

His eyes were watery and he swayed in his low crouch.

Backslider, Aunt Winnie said. Why ain’t you been to church like you should?

I done tried, Cricket said.

You ain’t tried enough, Aunt Winnie said.

Cricket looked like he was about to cry. His arms were folded across the tops of his narrow knees. The house was quiet except for Aunt Winnie’s struggles with the can of beans and the creaking floor-boards under Cricket’s rocking feet. The twins stood by the door and looked like they were ready to bolt.