The Wettest County in the World (18 page)

Howard stepped over a three-strand barbed fence and strode down the hill toward a tobacco barn that stood up on a knob in the field like an island. The Herefords parted before him, some breaking into a heavy run, wild-eyed and snorting. The tobacco barn was built in the standard style of tobacco barns of the day and for fifty more years after, so common in that part of the county: tall and narrow, maybe thirty by twenty-five feet, chinked chestnut logs that would last forever, cross-tied and sealed with red-mud paste and a ribbed metal roof that quickly tarnished and took on a deep rust color. The barn was built upon a base of field rocks stacked tight with a fire pit in the back and two separate rock flues under the floor to circulate the smoke and heat to dry the hanging tobacco. The pine-board door was closed with a loop of wire and a stick, a broad fieldstone laid to provide a step. Inside the empty barn the smell of tobacco was penetrating, a keening, dry smell that went straight to your brain.

Howard stood for a moment in the dusty barn, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. The wind sang on the metal roof and a few cattle complained outside. His overalls were blasted with sawdust and his long boots muddy from crossing the creek. He was tired and his arms sore to the bone; he’d been chaining logs to the mule teams and working a crosscut saw all day. In another few weeks the camp would shut down for the winter and Howard knew he would be up on the mountain, with or without his brothers. He hadn’t been home in over a week now. At quitting time he set down the heavy saw, wiped his hands on his overalls, and walked away from the camp while the rest of the men were having supper and came straight through the valley, walking the three miles along the creek and skirting the lake, to this field. Just beyond the next hill lay his house, his wife and daughter.

Holding his hands out in the dark Howard walked to the opposite wall of the tobacco barn. He found the pile of burlap bags and brittle piles of tobacco leaves and shifting around in them for a bit he found a two-quart jar with a metal lid. By the weight of it he could tell it was nearly full, and holding it up close to his face he could almost see the beads on the edge of the glass as he swirled it around, the clear liquid sloshing quietly. The pungent, sweet smell of rotten corn rose over his face. Howard stood there in the dark barn, holding the jar in his hand to his chest, breathing, listening to the wind against the roof, thinking about the pistol he had seen this morning pointed at his brother and the way the gunshot rang out in the clearing. The lurching panic in his throat and the familiar rage building in his arms. His youngest brother staring at him, waiting for him to do something. Standing in the open sunlight with a line of other men, watching the pointed gun barrel.

Howard opened the jar and took a deep swallow, then put his face in the crook of his arm and sobbed briefly.

Outside the cattle sighed, giving up the afternoon to the long grass field and the eye of the smooth lake.

L
UCY SAT IN
the kitchen holding the baby. An oil lamp flickered weakly on the table. A pot of collards simmered on the stove and filled the close room with the dull scent of cooking greens and fatback. Howard emptied his pockets with some things he pilfered from the lumber camp: a hunk of sausage, a butt of soft pork, a small bag of tough biscuits. Lucy watched him closely, holding the nuzzling baby to her breast, hoping to get her to nurse. Howard knew she was watching him for signs of drunkenness, but he felt so tired that he didn’t much care.

I hear everything is closing up, Lucy said. The revenuers shuttin’ Forrest down.

Where’d you hear that? Howard asked.

Around.

Lucy shifted the baby on her chest. Howard was annoyed that such a thing was being discussed, here in his home with his wife. The new system had made people bold: Wives and neighbors talked, everyone seemed to know everyone’s business now. I guess it don’t matter, Howard thought, if there’s nothing to be afraid of in knowing. When the law is running the liquor, who’s to arrest you?

It ain’t always, Howard said, the way people say it is.

So they ain’t shutting you down?

Howard took the folded dollar bills from his pocket and slapped them on the table.

This look like we shut down?

Lucy pulled the pile of money across the table and sorted through it, counting with one hand. The baby was quiet and looked almost pink, a good change from the dark-red-faced squawling creature that had inhabited their house. She seemed to sleep contentedly on Lucy’s chest. His wife looked worse, Howard thought, peaked and washed-out, like she was draining color, like it was transferring to their daughter.

This ain’t gonna do it, Lucy said.

I know it.

We need the money, Lucy said. You know it. We got a new set of due bills and the receipts from your father’s store…if he means to make us pay up.

We’ll pay up.

So you and your brothers got something going?

Don’t you worry ’bout it.

Oh, I gotta worry ’bout it, Lucy said. Someone has to around here.

I’m going out for a bit, Howard said.

Howard, Lucy said. There’s only so much liquor to drink.

She rocked the baby gently.

It’ll never be enough, she said.

I’ve got plenty set aside, he said.

Lucy stared at him, her eyes saucers of limpid blue, the baby nestling at her neck. Howard looked out the front window. On the porch the luna moths clustered, throwing their furry bodies against the window glass.

One day, she said, that jar’ll be empty and nothing you can do about it.

Not if I can help it.

Oh, Howard, Lucy said, how much liquor is there in this county? In the world?

Might try to find out, Howard said, and stepped out.

Later that night Howard would stand in a bar of pale light from the window outside of his home and watch his wife feeding his daughter. He would make some money and he would give it to her and then he would be on his way; that was the arrangement they had made. When Howard looked at the wispy blond head of his daughter lying against his wife, there rose up in him a long, low note that wasn’t about tenderness or affection. He fingered the crumpled bills in the pocket of his overalls.

Plenty times, Howard thought to himself, I had a wad of money in my pocket to choke a mule but I’ll be damned if it ever made a hint of difference anyhow.

T
HAT WINTER
F
ORREST
arranged for a shipment of heavy-gauge copper and several hundred feet of copper tubing for the new submarine stills, an investment that took a significant chunk of his savings. Jack and Howard went to Rocky Mount to pick it up from the rail yard in the morning, the rails and gravel covered in a veneer of ice. After a packet of money changed hands a gritty trainman in coveralls led them to a boxcar and threw it open. Inside there were copper sheets stacked four feet high and dozens of bundles of copper tubing. Enough to build fifty stills with worms and caps.

All this here our load? Jack said.

The trainman wheezed into a soiled handkerchief.

Shit, son. You think you the only boys makin’ in this county?

The trainman threw open another boxcar that was stacked eight feet high with sacks of sugar and boxes of cake yeast.

Seems to me, the trainman said, in a few months this here whole county’ll be floatin’ in it!

As they unloaded the materials raggedy men sifted out of open boxcars like smoke, disappearing into the woods. At one end of the yard a dozen men squatted around a small campfire warming themselves. The trainman spat angrily, shifting his quid.

Shit, he said. Y’all unload. Got business to attend to.

He slipped a fat teardrop-shaped leather sap off his belt loop and advanced on the men, who began to stand and gather their bundles.

H
OWARD BROUGHT
in Cundiff and Jack brought Cricket Pate, and through the months of January and February they hammered out four three-hundred-gallon stills and fashioned solid caps and worms. They worked in a shed near Howard’s cabin with a makeshift forge and bellows, stripped to the waist, and at the end of the day the tin walls of the shed glowed with heat. Howard’s spot on Turkeycock was clearly the best location and they set about readying the camp for expansion, clearing more brush and trees and setting up a thick blind on the open side of the mountain to block light and vapor. Cundiff rigged up a set of hollow steel rings that fed a mixture of gas and air through a tire pump that he claimed would give them a more even temperature and less heat trail.

In the late spring of 1930 Jack turned twenty years old and moved back to his father’s house temporarily to help with the tobacco crop. Howard and Forrest came by the farm during the sucker pulling and worming, and they would help with the eventual leaf picking and curing. The project was slowed while the brothers worked the fields, though some afternoons when they had time Howard and Jack went up on Turkeycock and helped Cundiff and Cricket with the stills. There was nothing to be done and Jack knew it; though it was only three acres it was the best strip of bottomland their father had and the money was vital to their father’s ability to continue to pay his notes and keep the store running. Business was down drastically this year, road traffic reduced to itinerants and the wandering jobless. Several of his suppliers of trade goods collapsed or disappeared altogether and the shelves at the store were sparsely furnished. Granville normally gave his sons a cut from the tobacco crop, enough to make up for the lost work or wages from the sawmill, but they all knew it wouldn’t be coming this year.

Jack found it strange to lie in the old rope bed he used to share with his brother, the slow creaking of the hemp ropes, the way the wind sang on the roof, his sister Emmy cooking and cleaning and spending afternoons by the window in their mother’s old chair. It seemed to Jack as if his sister was determined to forgo youth altogether and head straight into middle age. She misses Mother, sure enough, he thought, and her sisters too. Thinking of Emmy and her misery since that time made his eyes water as he pulled suckers through the long afternoons in the field. Jack suddenly felt guilty for his return to the world. How often had he thought of Belva May and Era in the last few years? His mother? How had he come to move along so easily while Emmy remained in mourning? He straightened up in his row of tobacco and wiped his face with his sleeve.

One morning in the hay barn across the road from the house, Jack dug around and found a large burlap sack and set about filling it with a mixture of dirt, straw, and clay. Granville was across the yard burning trash in a barrel, fanning the murky flames with his hat. The sun worked its way over Turkeycock Mountain and flooded the yard and the road beside with light. The spring had been dry and the summer looked to be even drier. On Sunday churches across Franklin County were packed with tobacco farmers. In the kitchen Emmy rinsed her hands and arms after doing the breakfast dishes in the sink, the cold well water splashing on her white skin.

When the bag was full enough Jack tied the end securely with some twine and tossing a length of rope over a rafter hung it level with his head, a swaying, lumpy mass of burlap, bits of straw sticking out, streaming dust. Jack assumed a boxing pose like he’d seen in pictures and poked at the bag as it swung at him. He began to hit harder, stopping the momentum of the swinging bag as it came at him. After one shot his knuckles popped and Jack swore and grabbed his hand, massaging his fingers.

There was a crunch of gravel on the road and Howard came into the barn. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he carried a spool of baling twine under his arm. Jack stopped the swaying bag. Howard gave him a quizzical look for a moment, then stepped to the bag and poked it with his beefy fingers, prodding the worn burlap. He looked at his little brother and grinned.

Regular Jimmy Braddock, Howard said.

Hell.

Let’s fix it up a bit.

Howard untied the rope and brought the bag down. Using the spade he broke up some hard clay and filled the bag deeper until it took a cylindrical shape, the dirt packed down hard. Then he took some spare burlap and tore it into strips.

Fellas in the army showed me this, Howard said.

He took Jack’s hand and wrapped the strips of burlap around it and between his fingers, pulling it tight.

So’s you don’t bust your hands, Howard said.

When Jack’s hands were well wrapped Howard stepped back and nodded and Jack pawed at the bag a bit, embarrassed to do it in front of his brother. He threw some jabs with his right.

Here, Howard said, quit foolin’ with that stance. You gotta twist your body with it. And you gotta lead with the left first, save the right.

Howard shot a couple of straight left jabs into the bag.

Jack tried some left-right combinations. Howard grabbed the bag to stop it from swinging.

Other thing you need is a good hook, he said. Most fellas will throw everything real wide, which will leave them open.

He feigned a few wide, looping haymakers.

You gotta throw your hooks short and tight. Dip the shoulder.

Howard squared before the bag and dipped his left shoulder slightly.

Then hook it hard, he said.

He ripped a short hook into the midsection of the bag.

Now, he said, you do that after he’s thrown something. It’s gonna be a right hand, you see, ’cause most is right-handed. He throws the right hand…

Howard dipped slightly and moved his head to the side.…and then when he misses he will be wide open for the hook.

Howard fired two quick hooks into the bag.

Jack set his feet and practiced his jabs, right cross, and left hook. Howard watched with his arms folded.

You plan on whippin’ somebody?

Nah, Jack said. Just messin’ around.

Howard picked up his spool of baling line. He wiped his forehead on his shirtsleeve and squinted in the sunlight.

Never does turn out like you think, Howard said. When the first swing happens everything is new an’ nothin’ is the way you thought.

All right, Jack said.

I’ll tell you what, Howard said, you only need to know one thing. Something ol’ Forrest knows. That’s you gotta hit first, hit with everythin’ you got, and then keep hittin’ until the man is down, and then you hit him some
more.

Jack nodded.

Many men, Howard said, like the
idea
of fightin’ but very few likes to get hit. You can make a man wanna quit real quick with that first shot. A good straight left into the nose bone and most will let it be. A man who
likes
to get hit is the one to watch out for.

Looking at his brother then Jack realized that he never considered Howard much of a sentient being, never considered that he ever had a real thought or plan about anything. He had always thought of him as some kind of machine or animal, reacting to the world in an instinctual manner. This thought alarmed and embarrassed him.

Too damn dry, Howard said, kicking at the dirt.

Then Howard strode through the back of the barn and out into the field. The bag creaked as it swayed slightly. Jack tried to imagine the face of someone on the burlap, first the smirking, laughing face of Wingfield, and went after his nose with his right hand, stepping into his punches. Then he saw the face of Charley Rakes, his egg-shaped head, reaching out and holding Jack by the shoulders. Give me another shot like that, Jack thought. He tucked his fists to his chin and fired a series of tight jabs.