The Whiskey Baron (21 page)

“I got a plan for the Parham boy,” Quinn said.

Willie turned off the running picture show in his mind, looked over at his brother.

Quinn wiped his hands on a rag, leaned against the driver’s side door, and propped his foot on the runner. He lit a cigarette. “We’ll get him Monday,” he said. “This is what I need you to do.”

W
est along Highway 9, Chambers drove past the Bell and into the open piedmont farmlands. Trees in the wilderness guarded the south, and to the north was nothing but stretches of fields, cattle, corn. He turned onto a dirt road and headed north to his brother’s house, the house where they’d grown up. It was a single-story beige stucco with a slate-colored roof, crumbling barns and proud magnolias in the yard, pastureland beyond, the grass yellowed and spools of hay baled in a checked pattern across the field. From a distance he could see his brother sawing a piece of wood next to a swing in the side yard. Hunched over, determined. After their daddy had died, James had been the one to stay and take care of Momma, and he’d somehow never found his way to leaving. Liked it here, Chambers guessed, and he could understand that. Some days Chambers wished to change places with his brother, though if he
did that he figured he would see sides to this life he couldn’t from the outside. He drove the cruiser down the gravel drive and parked by a holly bush.

James hadn’t quit sawing even to look and see who was visiting. He stopped when the board was in two pieces, and only then did he look over at Chambers. He squinted through thick glasses, grabbed both pieces of wood he’d just cut, and leaned them upright against the swing’s supporting posts. “Furman,” he said.

“Hey, James.”

James went back to work, propped another board on the sawhorses, began cutting, the zzzzt, zzzzt, zzzzt of the sawblade the only noise save for Furman’s own breathing.

“What are you doing here?”

“Been awhile. Thought I’d come for a visit.”

“I heard about all the trouble in town. I bet Alma’s not taking kindly to your working all hours.”

“She wants me to retire. I might look into opening a bait shop or something down on the coast, when all this is over.”

James put the saw down. “Just like that?”

“What more can I do? People are blaming me for all this violence. They were perfectly happy to let Larthan lie, but with bodies in the street and feds in town.”

“You can’t fight that. You step down, someone else’ll come up and learn the same lesson. They’ll keep electing someone else, hoping things will get back to the way they used to be, but there’s no going back. Maybe times were never that good. Just people wishing, is all.”

“It’s time I let someone else bear that cross,” Chambers said.

James turned back to the wood and picked up the saw again.

“What are you making?”

“Need me a new rocking chair on the front porch.”

“Something wrong with the one you’ve got?”

“Nothing wrong with it, except it’s the only one.”

“You getting greedy?”

“I need two, in case I get company.”

“That’s nice of you, little brother.”

“I wasn’t talking about you. Billy Henderson just died the other
month, and his widow’s up there by herself. I invited her over any time she feels like she needs some company.”

Chambers nodded. “I remember her.”

James studied the board he’d just cut. “She’s nice, and it gets lonesome out here.”

“I remember,” Chambers said. And he did. The smell of honeysuckle and ripe earth brought him back to the time of his youth, when he lived out here in the yellowed country, the wind combing the landscape, the pines and cedars creating soft beds of needles in the forest. Home is what it was, and he missed it. A part of his soul was left here, sundered from the rest of him that had moved on. He used to climb a magnolia tree in the side yard. That tree was gone now, but others had replaced it. They looked so small now, so fragile, when in his mind’s eye they were giant fortresses where he would escape as a quiet eight-year-old. He would ascend to their peaks and survey the land, the cattle and the horses, the corn and the garden. As the sun began to set, he could already tell it was getting dark earlier even though it was only early September. Lonesome times, always had been. When he was a boy in those magnolias, the evening sun stung his eyes and made him crave sleep. Now as an old man, the sun was almost unbearably sad, the color of nectarines over the piedmont. So much time lost out here, a whole way of life gone.

“You want some tea?” James offered. “I’ve got a fresh pitcher.”

“That’d be nice.”

“Set on the swing there, and I’ll bring you some.”

A moment later James returned with two glasses, and he sat in the rocker next to the swing. They stared over the pasture. The cows were lying down, a sign of rain. It had been a long time since Chambers had needed the rain the way a farmer does, but he remembered the strain a late-summer drought could put on someone who relied on the land. This year had been a blessing overall, and with luck it meant an end to the downturn. Maybe the violence would abate with the next wave of cooling rains. He hoped so. He was still sheriff for a few more months, and he wanted to leave on a note of hope rather than forking over trouble to the next man. Get this mess cleaned up. He relaxed and drank his tea, sweet and cold. The swing rocked gently,
and the two brothers sat in a comfortable silence as the afternoon grew later still. What did they have to say to each other now? Years had passed since they’d been close. James had stayed on the farm and Furman had left. James’s wife had died in childbirth, and Furman’s wife was still alive. James had children spread out across the upstate, and Furman’s boys were buried in Europe. Each man would give up something of what he had for a piece of what the other’s life held.

“Why are you here?” James finally asked.

“I don’t know what to do, James.” He drummed his fingers on the swing. “About all this. I wonder if I got it all wrong, or what I might have done differently.”

“Jesus, Furman, are you listening to yourself? Put Larthan in a corner, the way he’s been putting this county in a corner for years. You’ve been sheriff for long enough now, you ought to know that. You remember a few years ago, when the drought killed everything in the state? You know how hard I prayed for a few drops of rain? And those folks in Washington are telling us how to live without even the first clue of what our lives are like. I could make more money selling my corn to Larthan Tull than I ever could out on the market, and in a time like that he owned me and all the other farmers out here. Had us in a right spot.”

Chambers peered at his brother. He knew farmers sold corn to Tull, but this was the first he’d heard of his own brother mixed up in it. He considered that some of the whiskey he himself drank was born in part from James’s crop. Still reliant on his family, something not even the free market could put an end to.

“Don’t look at me like that. There’s laws from God, there’s laws from man, and there’s the law of the economy, and those things don’t always agree, especially when you’ve got a banker to pay.”

“I know it.”

“No, you don’t know it. You’ve got a steady paycheck, and all you have to do is make sure the rest of us follow the rules someone else makes up. You’ve spent your whole life running away from the truth.”

James rocked furiously and his eyes bore into the landscape as though he weren’t looking at the land at all, but rather watched a reel of the past seventy years of human history pass before him, and he was disgusted by what he saw.

Chambers knocked on the swing, said, “I got to get on.”

“I guess you do.”

He rose and ambled over and got in the cruiser. The sun was falling fast out of the sky, coloring the west pink and casting long shadows from the electric poles and magnolias. He drove toward the sunset like a man seeking the last remains of a life long gone, as though if he could only catch up, he could regain all that he’d lost.

J
oe sat in the kitchen while his boys worked on the car in the yard.

“That boy’s fixing to get himself into some trouble he won’t get out of,” he said.

“There’s only so much you can do,” Susannah said. “You remember what it was like when you and me were courting.”

“But your daddy didn’t run liquor trade. You daddy wasn’t a killer.”

“Quinn knows enough to stay out of real trouble.”

“He doesn’t know enough to recognize real trouble when he’s in it.” Joe stood and said, “I’m going out for a while.”

“Where you going?”

“To town.”

“Maybe you need to think about recognizing trouble yourself.”

He nodded at Willie on his way out and walked on down the road. So much pressure in that house, ever since Abel’s stroke. His
father-in-law lying in bed all day, Joe’s oldest boy off with the bootlegger’s daughter. Years ago, Joe had decided to take some responsibility for his life, to quit drinking and work to support his family, back when Mary Jane was still out honky-tonking every night, spending one night a month in the county lockup. The life of his brother wasn’t one he wished for himself, and was one he feared for Quinn, but in some back corner of his psyche, in some leaky jail cell that housed all the unfettered emotions of a child, he felt envy for Mary Jane. His brother, on the run now, had lived free in spirit while Joe had toiled away in the mill.

Mary Jane had been trouble since day one. Two years younger than Joe, he seemed to have no boundaries growing up. He played pranks and lied about things he’d done, and their mother had always forgiven him. Their father was a tough farmer, and seemed determined to force his sons to earn his respect. Neither boy had done a good job as children—Joe always sensed his father thought them soft. The man had been born in a war, had served his country and made his living on the farm. Joe fought for his approval, eventually going off to fight in Europe. After his father’s death, all Joe could do was regret never earning the man’s approval. Worse, he was working for Abel, a father-in-law all the more difficult to please. It drove Joe to pack up his family for the Bell, and now here they were, their roles reversed, Abel in need, yet Joe was still unable to provide. Do men ever live up to the figures from the past?

Mary Jane had never sought their father’s approval. He had their mother’s love and undying attention, and he was free from the shame of masculinity. Joe envied his brother that. He’d given up his mother’s affection in a vain effort to be seen as a man, rock-stable, and a part of his adult soul still missed her, the quiet farmwife who went to church and prayed regularly and took care of her family. Not unlike Susannah. Meanwhile, instead of growing up and then chasing after some vestige of his childhood, his brother had simply never grown up to begin with. Never held a steady job, never started a family. Any money he got—whether from painting houses or sharecropping for a season—he spent on liquor and card games, which then led to nights in the crossbar hotel. Mary Jane wasn’t a mean drunk, he
always smiled and told stories, but he’d get behind the wheel of a car or get into the wrong car and end up in some spinster’s flowerbed. Or he’d flirt with the wrong man’s wife and land beaten up in a ditch somewhere. Sheriff Chambers would pick him up and cart him in until he slept it off, and more often than not Joe had to come to town to bail him out. That was some kind of life.

But something had happened to Joe this week, whether it was his brother on the lam or Abel laid up in bed. The life Joe had made for himself was a tight box, and for years he’d always appreciated the order. Ever since he’d begun courting Susannah, Abel had made clear that Joe wouldn’t be getting a free ride, that if he wanted to marry Susannah Washington, he needed to straighten his spine and learn the value of a good spit-shine. The army had taught him the value of keeping on schedule, but it wasn’t until the battles broke out that he actually understood the reason behind the military regimen. Trench warfare was a nasty, brutish thing, and he found anything he could do to structure his days since helped keep his memories at bay. It had taken the eighteenth amendment for him to kick the drink for good, or at least until now. This week all the order around him had come undone. The box constricted his breathing, and he felt pains in his chest that only liquor seemed able to cure, as though the alcohol loosened up something in his body and allowed his blood to flow freely. A few drinks made it easier for him to breathe, and easier for him to sleep. The problems with Mary Jane and Abel and Quinn, they all diminished after a drink. It was dangerous, he knew, but these were dangerous times.

The sun tumbled from its four o’clock perch as he shuffled along Highway 9, a scrim of dust fanning out behind him.

On his way to the Hillside, someone called, “Hey-oh.”

He turned and saw Shorty Bagwell limping behind him.

“Joey Hopewell, what say?”

“Hey, Shorty. When they let you out?”

“Long enough ago for me to develop a thirst.”

“I’m heading that way myself.”

“No fooling? Didn’t know you were a drinker.”

“I’m not, but it’s been a week.”

“Sheriff told me about Mary Jane.”

Joe shook his head.

“I know it,” Shorty said.

The two walked along the dusty road, rocks of red clay crumbling beneath their feet. A slight breeze blew through the tops of the roadside water oaks and pines, but no breeze reached them at ground-level, the air a thick swelter, the day on fire. Neither man spoke while they walked along. It was close to five when they sauntered into the Hillside.

“That you, Shorty?” Depot said when he unbarred the door for them.

“I’m out.”

“I see that.”

Lester and the Kid were playing pool, and Joe bought a jar of whiskey and brought it over. “Well, well,” Lester said. “Two times in one week. You’re starting to take after your brother.”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe it’s in the blood.”

“Hold on,” the Kid said. “I’m about to run the table.”

He leaned over and struck the cue, and the ball bounced over the lip of the table and rolled across the bar.