The Whiskey Baron (24 page)

When he got home that night—Thursday—Evelyn was in her room. He sat on the porch with a cigar and watched the light fade from the sky. September was already beginning to cast its autumn shadow even though the days still boiled. Wouldn’t be long before
the leaves fired up and then browned, those sad afternoons where the sun seems to be in a perpetual state of setting. Last days, the husk of life.

Around the corner on Main, a junkyard Model T was parked with the engine off. Tull couldn’t see the face of the driver who sat smoking, his arm out the window, newsboy covering his eyes. There would come a time indeed.

When Evelyn came out and said, “Bye Daddy, I’m off for a while,” he knew. He puffed his cigar and watched her stroll around the corner. She glanced back before slipping into the passenger seat of the Model T, and together the two of them drove off. He stubbed the cigar on the porch and drove down to the Hillside to check on business.

A light glimmered inside the tavern, a warm beacon in the cooling night. He slid down the hill from the road and banged on the door. A moment later Tommy Cope let him in. The teenager had been a fixture here for some time, and Tull thought perhaps he might not have to look for a new barkeep after all, so long as the kid had some manner of judgment and discretion. The bar was empty for now—it was early yet—but Tull asked anyway, “How’s business?”

“Slow,” Tommy said as he returned to his station behind the bar.

“I see that.”

Tommy poured him a tumbler of whiskey, and Tull drained it.

“Leave me the bottle,” he said.

Tommy nodded.

After swigging another shot, Tull said, “You know the Hopewell family?”

“I do. Me and Quinn were in the same class at school. Matter of fact, his daddy’s been coming in here lately.”

“That a fact.”

“Strange, too. Lester told me the man hadn’t had a drink since the start of Prohibition, but he’s been here regularly. Plays pool like a pro.”

“Trouble at home will drive a man to drink,” Tull said, and he poured himself another shot. “Quinn’s been seeing Evelyn lately.”

Tommy’s face whitened.

“Though I reckon you heard about that.”

“Seems I might have heard something about it.”

“I guess word travels fast on the mill hill.”

“That it does.”

“Goddamn Hopewells. What a family for her to get mixed up in.”

Tull drained the last of the bottle, and Tommy cleared the jar. “You want another’n?”

“Yeah, one for the road.”

Tommy handed another across the bar, the lid still on.

“I’ll see you, Tommy.”

Tull headed back for the house. The liquor had gone to his head already. He’d drunk more of it—and faster—than usual, and the road blurred in front of him. He parked on his lawn and stumbled up to his porch and fell into the rocker. Crickets hummed nearby, a steady pulse to measure the irregular clocking of time. He unscrewed the lid from the mason jar and sipped at the whiskey and waited for Evelyn.

Past midnight, a car parked at the end of York Street and dimmed its headlights. Tull debated marching up to the car and starting something here and now, but before he found the energy to stand, the passenger door opened and Evelyn got out. When she reached the porch she started.

“Oh. Daddy. I thought you’d gone to bed by now.”

“I had some business, so I thought I’d wait up.” His voice sounded hollow to his ears, as if he were under water. The mason jar sat on the porch, half empty, and she must have seen it, too. “Have a seat,” he said.

She sat.

“Where were you tonight?”

“Out with some friends.”

“Which friends?”

“Barbara and Helen Ann.”

“Barbara and Helen Ann.”

“Yes sir.”

“Who drove?”

“What?”

“Who was driving the car you just got out of? That junky Model T with the dirty boy in the driver’s seat.”

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “He was just giving me a ride.”

“The Hopewell boy.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’ve told you before, that family’s trouble.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then it shouldn’t be anything for you to stay away from him.”

“Daddy.”

“Don’t let me see you with that boy again. I know you’ve been sneaking off with him. I didn’t know he had a car, or at least that’s the first I’ve seen of it. But you keep that up, he’s going to be trouble.”

“Goodnight, Daddy.” She stood up to go.

He slurred, “You have choices.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Choices,” he said again, clearer now, and he leaned forward until he fell from the rocker. There against the rough wood, he whispered, “You don’t have to.”

She opened the front door and left him there on the porch.

“I mean it,” he called, and in response she shut the door softly behind her.

He lay on the porch and listened to the continued chirring of the crickets.

A fly landed on his neck, and when it bit him, he moaned and swatted it away. Another bit his ankle where his pants leg had rolled up. This was undignified, he knew, but he’d been here before. He shifted and rested his head on his arm and slept.

Overnight he had a dream, and on Friday morning woke at dawn knowing where Mary Jane’s money was hidden.

“You damned depraved son of a bitch,” he said, and he went back to sleep.

When he woke later in the morning, he couldn’t believe how he’d missed it. Mary Jane had the money. He was wanted by the law, so he could only spend a little bit of it on the run or risk getting caught. And he had to know men would be after him. The law, sure, but he would know too that Tull would come for him as well. He would know there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it out of those backwoods alive. He had a family, and he had his mistress, and of course he would want to take care of the widow should something happen to him. He would owe her that, at least.

So. He wouldn’t have the money on him.

Tull had sent a few boys out to shake down the widow once again after he’d spoken with her. They’d ransacked her house, same as he’d done, pried up floorboards and ripped out walls, kicked the dog for good measure, but they hadn’t found a dime. They’d combed the grounds for fresh cut marks, but in all the acres they hadn’t seen a lick of evidence that a hole had been dug. Well, they’d found what seemed to be remains of one hole, but they’d dismissed it, because what kind of man would do that? Tull knew. The same kind of man who was desperate enough to rip off Larthan Tull in the first place, and audacious enough to go on the lam rather than simply pay what was owed. He must have known Tull would kill him either way, but still.

Tull had reconciled himself to the spectacle Depot had created when he’d shot Ernest and Lee that night. Not at all what Tull had meant when he’d said the men would need to be dealt with—he’d envisioned sealing their feet in cinder blocks and dropping them into the Broad River—but if you were going to drop the bodies in the street, at least get them all at once. Mary Jane was a louse, a scoundrel, a drunk, and an inept businessman who maybe did deserve a public bullet through the heart, but Depot was now a dead man for his ineptitude in letting Mary Jane go.

Tull went inside, where his daughter was already up and scrambling eggs. Coffee boiled on the stove. She kept her back to him.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“You slept in.” She scraped the skillet, tossed the eggs.

“I’ve got some business to take care of this morning. Might take me all day.” He wanted to apologize, to make some kind of amends for last night, but he had only hazy memories of the night before. Instead, he said, “How far does the apple fall from the tree in that family?”

“What?”

“The Hopewell boy. I know his people. His uncle’s a drunk, slower than molasses in January, and his daddy’s an all-around fool, from what I hear. I was just wondering about that boy’s mental acuity.”

She slammed the skillet into the stove, pulled biscuits out of the oven.

“I got to get on,” he said.

He grabbed a biscuit, forked some egg into the middle, and set out for the widow’s farm.

September this year was a dry, hot, dusty, weary month full of ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes. All the dogs in town stopped every few steps to scratch their bellies, and many of the children did the same. They’d be going back to school soon, but until they did they all hung out around the downtown diner, and all of them looked the same nowadays, dirty, smug, lively, and small. Tull drove across the railroad tracks, down the dirt road to the widow’s farmhouse, and parked in the yard. Without bothering to summon her, he marched in a surefooted line to the barn, and when the door caught against the dirt, he kicked it in. He grabbed a rusted shovel from the wall and walked to where the woods began. The Coleman family plot. Three graves of small children who never saw their tenth birthdays, a few more graves of old relatives long forgotten, nary a headstone reminder, just small rock plates.

On the end a wooden cross marked the final grave, the widow’s son, the soil dark and still loose on top. He planted the shovel in the earth, stomped it deep, and plowed. The earth upturned easily. The smell of humus and decaying leaves rose to his nostrils, but he continued to dig. Heat smothered him and jaundiced the nearby grass, and although he dug in the shade a sweat broke out on his forehead by the third scoop. The wood of the shovel’s handle slipped in his damp hands. Indian summer, the muggy preamble to the annual harvest. A flash of his own youth, quiet and sullen and working with the old man in the womb of the mountains, where sunrise gave way to sunset with no real day in between. As Tull cut the shovel into the soft ground, sweat darkened his clothes and dripped to the earth. He hadn’t dug very deep when a door slammed in the house and the widow came running across the yard in a blue and white checkered dress, yelling for him to get off her land, go on, get out of here, he ain’t got the right.

She clawed at his arms, tried to rend the shovel from his hands, but he heaved her back. She fell to the ground, and beneath her sour look he could see fear.

“It’s here, ain’t it?” he said, and he returned to digging.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m going to find it, Mrs. Coleman.”

“Leave my boy alone. Haven’t you done enough? Can’t you let him rest in peace?”

She stood and tried once again to wrench the shovel from his grasp. Again, he struck her down. He blinked to keep himself in the here and now, and then he knelt and pinned the shovel to her neck. “I’m not the one you should be asking these questions to,” he said.

She spat tobacco juice at him. He watched it arc and land on her dress between her legs. “I didn’t choose for my boy to die,” she said.

“None of us chooses death,” he replied. “I’ve been running from the grave since I was fifteen years old, but there’s no accounting for when choices we make lead to results other than what we intended.”

As he spoke, his heart thumped deep in his chest and he felt short of breath, like he’d been running full speed the past thirty years and had only now paused to take the measure of himself, only to find his body hadn’t caught up. He still held the shovel to her neck, and for a moment he considered bearing down until she choked to death. She met his eyes without fear. What would be the use? He rose and pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket, struck a match on his boot, and sucked at the flames until the cigarette was lit. She remained in the dirt at his feet.

He went on, “Intentions are meaningless, Mrs. Coleman. Incentives are everything. You ought to know that by now.”

“Where was the incentive in all this?”

“Isn’t it always money? That’s the only thing we’re running around here for, isn’t it? Money or power? If you’re lucky, the fates line up and you can have them both.” He resumed his digging. The cigarette dangled from his lips.

“I don’t have any money,” she said. “Look at how I live. I sold half our farm to pay my bills.”

“And you sold your crops to me when the market wouldn’t pay enough.”

“That’s right.”

“But it still wasn’t enough, so dear Mary Jane decided to sell his whiskey.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Now fate has brought me to this moment, to what’s buried here with your son.” These were simple lessons his old man never learned, his father always believing some almighty would bring rain if only he prayed hard enough, if only he’d repent. But to cede to the supernatural, to deny accountability and wait for grace to save you—that was foolishness and it did more than one hopeless farmer in. Aloud he said, “Poor choices, is all, and now fate is directing its own course. I am your fate, Mrs. Coleman.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “There’s no cause.”

He stopped. “Cause? A cause assumes a reason, and if you want to discuss reasons, we can talk about greed. Otherwise, there is no reason. There is no cause. We can’t just operate according to the will of another, or else what would that make us? My daughter and I, we’re grappling with these same issues. What would it do to my self, to my soul, to give up to some cause?”

“What are you talking about?” the widow asked.

But he was no longer listening to her. “I suppose they only tell you so much at the Baptist church: Jesus will return, so give your life to Christ. That is all ye need to know. They’d have you separate reason from religion, but it wasn’t always that way. Our religious men used to think about the world. This soil, this earth, what it means to be flesh. But you can bet Christ actually will come again before these backwoods Christians ever accept he was just a man.”

His mind continued spiraling in on itself. The father abandoned his son in the flesh. The son left to toil and suffer for the whims of the holy spirit. Tull’s father was built like a boulder, and like the towering mountains themselves, he humbled a stringy boy just trying to make his way in the world, a boy long off that farm now. Ma was dead. Pa was dead. Little Larthan was the mountain now, never to reconcile with them. Empires rose and fell around you in half a lifetime, and still you continued to dig for that ever unredeemable something, that lost piece of your soul.