The Wettest County in the World (9 page)

T
HAT SAME MORNING
Howard Bondurant was walking down a small ravine on Turkeycock Mountain carrying a length of copper pipe on his shoulder. The pipe was stoppered at both ends, packed tight with sand. There was a small dirt clearing with a chestnut stump in the center, shoulder-high, stripped of all bark, a steel rail spike hammered at a sharp angle about a foot from the base. Howard stepped from the woods into the white light of the clearing and stopped for a moment, blinked, snapped out three heavy sneezes. He could feel the last knots of last night’s drink leaving him, the hard transpiration process. He wedged the end of the pipe under the rail spike and getting to his knees he began to bend it around the stump.

A
S A BOY
Howard had fought men older than himself and beat them soundly, once as a teenager taking on two Shively brothers, both hard, violent men in their thirties, and thrashing them both. He relished the spasmodic wrench of farm labor, and could toss hay bales from a loft like empty packing crates. Sometimes while in the barn moving hay or in his father’s tobacco field he would stop listening to the world and just work, concentrating on the basic repetition of movements, the strain and crack of his muscles. Every so often the perfect cycle of motion and strength was found and it was better than effortless, and the sweetness of the moment rang in delicious ripples through his body. And when Howard stopped, his back muscles shaking, his hands bloody, someone shouting his name, he felt like he had moved through a hundred years of time.

Lately Howard watched the world move by with terrifying momentum. At the sawmill camp at night Howard’s body ached with weariness. Whenever he closed his eyes he’d see the moving lights and the fast mountains, the blurred trees. Howard had the same feeling on the troop ship as he sailed between continents, from one horror to another. The vast spaces of slate-gray water, the ship like an island in a rushing stream. It now seemed to Howard as if he ought to take a big handful of something, like roots or mountain rock, to keep from spinning off into the sky.

Their first child didn’t live a month. It seemed clear that something was wrong, since the first day Howard saw the baby and stroked his cheeks with his rough fingers. They named him Granville Thomas after Howard’s father.

When the second baby came they silently decided they would not name the baby girl until it was clear she would survive. She was stricken the same as the first, barely strong enough to breathe, her tiny rib cage heaving with effort, the almost translucent skin of her fingers like a newt, the blood vessels visible and streaked blue, the eyes capped with crust and tears. The baby wouldn’t stop crying for a week straight and the doctor said there was nothing to be done except continue the vitamin treatment and hope that she gained weight and strength. After this next run he would buy some good cloth for Lucy and a box of dry formula, some fresh laying hens, corn meal, and seed vegetables. Then there were the doctor’s bills and the money he owed Forrest, and the note on the cabin.

Howard thought of the cabin in the valley of hollyhocks and sweet-briar, bordered by stands of oak and locust trees that ran down to the foot of Smith Mountain, Lucy holding the baby every hour of the day and most of the night, moving through the house like a sleepwalker, the baby at her chest. Howard would come into the kitchen at night and find her at the table with the baby in her arms, no light on, slumped over, exhausted and weeping. The baby had lived now three times as long as Granville Thomas Jr., but they would not name her. The ax they laid under the bed to ease childbirth, old mountain magic, remained there, now forgotten by them both, covered in a light frosting of red dust.

T
HAT MORNING
Jack was coming through the deep ravines on the western edge of Smith Mountain, riding one of his father’s draft horses, a beefy Suffolk Punch the color of blood. In front of him on the saddle he trundled sacks of sugar and corn. The sky through the trees was overcast and the humidity put a bluish haze over the mountains. The corn and sugar Jack carried was bought on credit against his wages from the sawmill camp. Howard was going to collect his wages and hold them for him until the load was sold. If everything went well, in a few nights Jack would make more money than working several months cutting boards at the sawmill.

Howard had spots deep in the folded face of the mountain, excellent access to fresh springwater, nearly impenetrable scrub brush and thick leaf cover to obscure the smoke, and he made excellent liquor, doubled and twisted carefully, enjoyed mostly by local people who asked for it specifically at the Blackwater station. The county was full of small-timers clustered around tiny stills, all working sporadically and for small stakes; Jack and Howard and maybe a few others could put together a massive set of stills on Turkeycock and flood the county with liquor. If Howard would let him organize his stills, Jack thought, with Forrest handling the distribution like he did for various other syndicates, we could settle this whole damn thing. Most of the distribution ran through Forrest, so why not the production? With Forrest’s connections they could just make the long runs themselves, convoys of cars through Rocky Mount and up Grassy Hill and into Roanoke, up the Shenandoah to Harrisonburg, New Market, even Washington, D.C. His brothers seemed intent on excluding him from a full partnership, relegating him to an occasional hand. So Jack had to cobble together his budding industry from whatever was available.

Jack leaned off the saddle to wrestle with his burning feet, clawing at them through the dusty leather of his boots. They could all make enough to buy whatever land they wanted. Maybe pay off the note on his father’s store and clear out if they wanted, head up to Roanoke or Richmond and live like gentlemen in a brick house on a street with gaslights. Ride around town in the new car that he deserved, a Duesenberg or Packard, something with real flash. At least a damn Model A roadster with a four-cylinder flat head. He saw himself striding down the street in Rocky Mount with his new boots and camel-hair coat, black gloves and pressed shirt, his new roadster at the curb, gleaming in the sun.

The cicadas screamed in the trees overhead as the horse lurched up the hill. He could hear the Mitchell twins arguing before he could see them. In the clearing the stench of cooking mash was strong, and light wisps of smoke were drifting out of the windows of the cabin, the door, and various chinks and cracks in the logs. Radio music drifted across the clearing.

The fools set the damn place on fire, Jack thought, looking at the cabin.

The twins passed a jar back and forth on the warped porch. Both were shirtless, round bellies hanging over their belt lines, their skin burned a deep rust color. Cal and Eddie were impossible to distinguish, and most people in the county gave up trying and the twins assumed a sort of plural existence. They had the same bright, flawless smile and blond hair as their older brother Danny. When Jack whistled they turned to him in surprise and bounded off the porch and across the clearing to clap him on the back and proffer the jar. Jack waved it away, wiping the sweat that poured off his face with his shirt-tail.

Hey there Jackie, one twin said, how’s things?

Good to see you, said the other.

Where’s Cricket? Jack said.

Up in the house.

Cal or Eddie gestured to the smoking cabin with the jar, sloshing a bit on the ground.

Gimme that, you big dummy, the other said. Can’t be trusted with a damn thing.

Say Jackie, the first twin said, you know the singer Vernon Dalhart?

Ain’t he a Negro? asked the other.

He ain’t right? He’s a white man who just sings like that, ain’t he?

Jack stared at the white smoke drifting from every orifice of the cabin. The radio broadcast was playing a hard-driving fiddle reel. This house wasn’t exactly in a remote location. At least a dozen other mountain homesteads were up on this side of the mountain.

What the hell is going on with the house? Jack said. Is it on fire?

Naw, that there is just the still.

Can’t you smell it?

Yeah, Jack said, I can smell it all the way across the county. Has he got the still in the house?

Oh yeah, you gotta see it.

It ain’t just
in
the house.

They tied the horse in a shady spot and left the sacks in the clearing and following the twins Jack went up the steps and into the smoke-filled doorway.

Damn, Jack said. Smoke’s kinda thick, ain’t it?

Naw, you get used to it.

So, is Dalhart a Negro or ain’t he?

The house was modestly furnished with rough wood furniture, sanded floors. Jack crouched down to get out of the rising smoke and held his arm over his mouth. A steady knocking sound was coming through the floor. The pungent odor of hot mash was intense, the sickly-sweet smell of starches leeching sugar, the germinated corn festering, yeast enzymes taking hold. What was most surprising to Jack was that the house actually looked lived-in, as if someone was still there. There was a sideboard with a few dishes displayed, an open larder with canned goods on the shelves, a rocking chair draped with a quilt.

Whose house is this? Jack coughed.

Aunt Winnie.

Old family relation.

She’s gone down to Carolina to visit family, won’t be back till next month.

Half blind and crazy anyway.

The twins opened a trapdoor and a thick gust of moist white smoke billowed out. They groped their way down the stairs toward a flickering orange glow. A row of empty barrels, the insides covered with calcifying mash, stood at the foot of the stairs. Cricket Pate was squatting by a twenty-gallon teapot still, feeding the brick furnace lumps of coal. He had a way of squatting when he worked, his bony ass nearly touching the floor, thin knees up around his shoulders. Cricket squatted when he ate, when he worked, and the joke was he squatted even when he slept; he only stood when he was taking a shit. The floor was covered with grain sacks, sugar bags, spilled corn, extra wood scraps left over from the mash boxes. Cricket turned and grinned at Jack, a broad jack-o’-lantern smile, his face blackened with soot. The thumper keg pegged out a steady beat as the condenser steamed and the hot liquor hit the cold pipes. Cricket unfolded his beanpole body and shook Jack’s hand enthusiastically.

You gonna like this, Jack, he said. This is something we got going here.

What? The goddamned still in the cellar?

That ain’t the half of it. Just wait here a second till I get this run finished off.

Well, I’m waiting outside, whatever it is.

Sure, Cricket said. He turned to the twins.

Ain’t you two supposed to be on lookout?

Well, yeah.

And we seen Jack coming.

Well, Cricket said, get back out there. Remember the sign?

Sure.

Cal or Eddie pulled out a rusty revolver from his pant pocket and waved it over his head, mimicking firing off a few rounds.

Two quick shots.

We got it.

Jesus, Jack said. I’m getting out in the air.

You got the sugar, Jack? Cricket called out to him.

Yeah, outside.

Toss ’em down in a minute, will ya?

Jack made his way up the stairs and out the door. The twins came tumbling out after.

Have a taste, Jack.

Yeah, you gotta sample the product.

This gonna make us a bundle.

Standing in the yard Jack took a grimacing sip from the jar.

Tastes like twigs and fly spit, he said, handing it back.

Jack sat on the pine needles a safe distance from the smoking house. The twins sat down Indian style and took out tobacco and rolling papers. Jack swirled the jar around and watched the bead. The bubbles formed iridescent balls that shimmered as they rose, then thinning out to tiny grains of light, at least 120 proof. Decent enough, Jack thought, even if it did taste like hell. They could water it down, put a bit of color in it, some charcoal, iodine, or a bit of bark, and sell it as blended whiskey. Cricket had a knack for making do without essential procedures or ingredients and more than once they made a run of corn whiskey from a muddy cattle creek, liquor that ran brown not because they put any tobacco or bark in it to provide the smoky whiskey color, but rather the heavy clay sediment in the water they made it with, distilled only once halfheartedly in a patched tin can, an old radiator for a cooling coil sitting in a tin bucket, the liquor strained through Cricket’s filthy felt hat. Still the thirst for liquor was so great that men came and bought it. Sometimes they only got a small wad of bills, maybe ten dollars for the whole mess.

Ain’t you boys supposed to be on watch duty? Jack said.

Hell, Jack, with you here?

What would old Pete Hodges do anyhow?

You think he’s gonna arrest
you,
Jack?

Hell. I’d love to see that.

The other twin nodded in agreement and they both tugged thoughtfully on their cigarettes.

Jack looked at the smoldering house. He took a big slug from the jar and then lay back on the pine needles, his hands behind his head, and gazed at the arching trees and sluggish clouds.