The Whiskey Baron (25 page)

He shook beads of sweat off his face, said, “Here’s a question for you. If I’m digging up your son as part of some grand design, the game of some great clockmaker, what does that make my actions?
Do I actually have any choice in the matter? Seems to me we either have our freedom or our meaning, but we can’t have both.”

By this time runnels of tears streaked the widow’s face. Dirt clung to her damp skin. She propped herself up with her arms and watched compliantly as he continued to dig. “Why are you here?” she said, her voice like worn-out sandpaper, her resolve crumbled to dust. “Why won’t you leave?”

“And where is that clockmaker, anyway? We call him our father, but I’d never thank my own father for giving me this life, any more than Evelyn would thank me. We’re all of us alone here, out of dust and unto dust, and our days pass away under the wrath of that malignant creator who set us here to suffer, to chase after—”

He stopped and, as though knocking to gain entrance, he beat the shovel against the lid of the coffin.

“This is what it’s about,” he said. “All cause and all design result in the power of our hands to do whatever work we may.”

She sat by and silently watched as he scooped dirt from her son’s grave and uncovered the pine coffin, the outer layer of the wood already decayed from the unrelenting earth. The coffin was made from hewn wood, nailed tightly together, and his boot thunked against it as he stepped into the grave. Ma is dead, pa is dead, but the mountain and the mountain’s shadow still remained. He pried up the lid with the shovel, and the wood creaked and splintered beneath him. Inside, the boy was nothing more than bones, the cloth of his blue suit ripped and ragged and eaten through by worms. Beneath the bones lay three mason jars, each stuffed with cash. Tull reached for the jars and held one over his head. The fire of the sun at high noon shone down on his grinning, maniacal face, and at that moment a shadow fell across the land as a lone cloud winked over the sun, black in the chiaroscuro of the sky.

O
ut of ideas and restless at the station, Chambers paid another visit to Widow Coleman. He knocked on her door in late afternoon, and at first no one answered him. Then the door opened and her harried face peered out at him through the crack in the door. Her eyes were bloodshot and a tangle of matted hair hung in her face. The absolute image of the grotesque. Beyond her lay only darkness.

“Ma’am.”

“What you want? You find him yet?”

“No ma’am, but we’re looking. Have you not heard from him?”

“I ain’t since he left here. You just missed Larthan Tull.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Grave robbing.”

“Come again?”

She stared at him a moment. “You all want the same thing. To find Mary Jane.”

“Maybe you could step out and we could set here on the porch?”

She opened the door and strode out to the nearest rocker without looking at him. She walked like she’d been shot in the back, like each step sent a tremor across her body. In the light of day she looked a decade older than even a few days ago. The mills aged a body quick, but something was deeply wrong with her.

He walked around to the far rocker, sat down next to her, and said, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“I can’t help you, Sheriff.”

“I’m the one trying to help you.”

“I’m just fine here.” She clasped her hands in front of her face and gazed off toward the tree line across her farm. She bit her knuckles and rocked violently. The rocker’s runners drummed against the porch boards.

“I know I’ve never been good news for your family, Mrs. Coleman, but I want to help you.”

She kept rocking. “Why is it men think they can help? You never let a person just be.”

“You sound like my wife.”

“I’m sure she knows what she’s talking about. You sure don’t seem to be listening to her.”

“I try.”

“You think you try? I highly doubt it.” The widow was shaking now, like Chambers was the one who came in and took Mary Jane out of her life, like he was just here to harass her like Larthan Tull, whatever she’d meant by her grave robbing comment. True, Chambers had done more than enough damage when he’d shot her son back then, and he believed that gave her the right to be angry with him forever. But did it give her the right to comment on his marriage? To say he wasn’t trying hard enough with Alma?

He said, “Don’t you want me to try to bring Mary Jane in before Larthan finds him?”

She slowed on the rocker and seemed to calm down, which made him even more nervous. Emotions weren’t like a light bulb. You didn’t turn them on and off with a switch. They lurked, and often they came back more dangerous than before, like a reformed drunk who hits the bottle again.

“It don’t matter now,” she said. “Larthan’s only after one thing, and he got it from Mary Jane, so he’ll leave me alone.”

“What thing?”

“What else?”

“Money.”

“Mary Jane buried a pile of it with my boy, fool that he was, and Larthan came over and dug it up.” She clenched her jaw and stared at him with a murderous fire in her eyes. “He dug up my boy. Mary Jane never had the right. None of y’all did.”

“Where is Larthan now? I need to find him.”

“Probably gone off to Charlotte. That’s where you’ll find Mary Jane, if you really want to bring him in. He’s off trying to make a deal with Aunt Lou, and don’t even know he ain’t got his money to trade with any longer.”

She stared back off across the field to the edge of the woods, where the family plot lay, and raised her hand to clench the front of her dress to her heart.

Chambers got up to go, said, “I got to send a wire to Charlotte.”

“You do what you have to,” she said, turning back to face him. “Just don’t bring Mary Jane back here. He ain’t welcome any longer.”

She resumed her rocking, furiously, the toes of her feet rising in unison and dropping as her shoulders hunched forward with each rock. She said, “You ought to go home to your wife and forget about all this.”

Rather than reply, he got into the car and headed back to town. Things were falling into place: the murder at the Hillside a product of competition between Hopewell and Tull, both jockeying for some kind of business with Aunt Lou in Charlotte. Chambers had never met Aunt Lou, but her reputation was well known. Why any man such as Mary Jane Hopewell would want to get involved with her was beyond his comprehension, but if something was going down, others needed to know about it. It was about two now, and he figured they had about a day to get something organized.

At the station, he got on the phone with the sheriff’s office in Charlotte, and had to leave a message with the deputy: “You make sure you tell him, something’s about to go down with Aunt Lou.”

“I’ll tell him,” the kid said.

“I mean it.”

“I said I’d tell him,” the deputy said, and hung up.

Chambers then called Agent Jeffreys. The Columbia office gave him the number of a boardinghouse in Castle.

“Something’s going on,” Chambers said when he finally got ahold of the agent.

“Can you meet us at the diner on Third Street?”

“I’ll be there in five.” He hung up the phone and gazed at his desk. Paperwork piled high in the box, all his menial duties on hold while he roamed around town chasing after bootleggers. Maybe this was it. Maybe it would all be over within a week. He would be plenty glad for Larthan Tull and Mary Jane Hopewell to be sent down to the federal penitentiary in Columbia, leave Castle to its good citizens. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out the bottle of whiskey Tull had brought the other day. He unscrewed the cap and drank straight from the bottle. He set the open bottle in the drawer, out of sight in case someone walked back to his office. Then he pulled his gun out of his holster, spun the chamber, and returned the weapon to its place on his hip. He took another sip of the whiskey. The liquor bit at his throat and warmed his chest, and he wondered what would become of the whiskey trade if Larthan Tull were sent to prison. Would that be it? Would the county dry up, their problems solved? He kindly doubted it. Doing away with the supply doesn’t do a thing to the demand. Before long some upstart would be storing liquor in his hencoop. He took one last swig of the whiskey before closing the bottle back in the drawer and moving on to the diner.

The agents were waiting for him, side by side in a booth, still in their transparent black suits.

“Fellas,” he said. He sat. Haggard, run-down, feeling like maybe the widow was right. Time to pass off the case to these boys, let them do what they would with Larthan Tull. He needed to spend some time with his wife. Go ahead and retire. Clean up this last mess and move on. He’d done his duty. The next man could carry on.

“What’s the story, Furman?” Jeffreys asked.

“I don’t know if there is one, but I believe something bad is about to happen.”

The waitress came over.

“Hey, Birdie,” he said to her.

“Sheriff. What’re you having?”

“Just coffee.”

“Just coffee? You ought to get you some eggs.”

“How’s your dad doing?” he asked.

When she was gone he said to the agents, “Her momma poisoned herself about two months ago.”

“You don’t say,” O’Connor said.

“I went to school with both of them. I think George beamed all his life that he was married to a woman named Pearl. Happiest couple I ever knew. Not a mean bone in either of em’s body. But then he got a heart condition last year, and they just sort of stopped coming out. Sad news, what happened to Pearl.”

“You ask him if he poisoned her himself?” O’Connor asked.

“Hell no. George wouldn’t do such a thing.”

O’Connor looked at Jeffreys, shrugged. “All kinds of meanness out there,” he said.

“Good God, fellas,” Chambers said. “I know there’s meanness, but there’s also decency. I don’t know who your neighbors are, but here most folks are genuine Christians. They want to do what’s right, work hard, and be left alone.”

“Hence a man like Larthan comes to power.”

“Basic principle of economics,” Jeffreys said.

“He’s just serving the needs of the community,” O’Connor went on. “Free enterprise. Giving people what they want.”

“Your invisible hand at work.”

“Come on, Furman,” O’Connor said. “Haven’t you read your Adam Smith?”

“Larthan’s not selling meanness here. He’s selling whiskey.”

“There’s a difference?”

“I believe so.”

“That’s mighty innocent of you,” Jeffreys said. “Seems like your town is getting away from you.”

“The world’s passing us all by,” O’Connor said.

“Tell us what’s going on.”

“Thanks, Birdie,” Chambers said when she set his coffee in front of him.

He turned back to the agents again. “I don’t know if anything is happening, I could be imagining things. But I was out at Widow Coleman’s house today.”

He told them what she’d told him, Tull digging up the cash, a potential meeting between Mary Jane and Aunt Lou.

“That’s it, Furman?” Jeffreys said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“It’s still conjecture.”

“She told you Mary Jane’s likely to be cutting a deal with Aunt Lou—”

“Trying to.”

“Trying to cut a deal with Aunt Lou.”

“But she wouldn’t go for it,” O’Connor said. “Even if Mary Jane had the money, Larthan’s her best supplier, and she’s too good a businessman to disrupt that.”

“Mary Jane doesn’t know that,” Chambers said.

“Then he’s a fool. But how does that help us?”

“Do you think Larthan would go up there to meet with them?” Jeffreys asked.

O’Connor scoffed. “Why would he do that?”

As the agents discussed between themselves the potentials and what-ifs, Chambers sipped his coffee. When his eggs came he peppered them and hunched over his plate.

Jeffreys said, “We still don’t know when he meets with her, or how supplies get there.”

“Furman, you found out anything more about that?” O’Connor asked. “Who runs his liquor up there? Where do they go?”

“Mary Jane used to run for him, and the boys who got shot. I don’t know who’s doing it now.”

“What do you recommend, then?” O’Connor asked.

Chambers buttered his toast, ate half a slice, decided he’d had enough. “Hell, I don’t know. I believe something’s going down soon, but I can’t say what or when or where.” He pulled some change out of his wallet, left it on the table for Birdie, and said, “I’ll leave you fellas to it.”

“Where you going?”

“To get some rest.”

“You look like you could use it,” Jeffreys said.

“We’ll call you if we find out anything,” O’Connor said.

Outside Chambers stood on the pavement for some time, contemplating what to do next. He considered taking the widow’s advice and going home to his wife, but instead he drove out into the wilderness, way past the Bell and on into the woods. He turned off the highway and onto a dirt road at a crossroads, and the dirt road soon became rutted and washed out, a mere logging road so that his cruiser soon reached the place where it could go no farther, the log of a poplar lying across the road. He got out and sat on the log, the wood a hundred years old, thick and hard and covered in lichen.

The sky was the color of a peach, the evening sun a gentle reminder of time lost. He’d been alive long enough to see this land get developed, from a mere outpost to a proper town. The railroad ushered it all in, the machine like a god, coughing up smoke and clanking along its rails, arms pushing the wheels, its body a serpent, as if man were still in the garden, bringing about his own fall in modern times. What was his fruit this time around? Whiskey came to mind, the root of the knowledge of good and evil. Castle County like the land of Canaan, the Broad River our River Jordan. A Civil War at home, a Great War overseas. Skyscrapers in cities and a multitude of tongues across the land. How long before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Stoking a campfire at night was enough to bring about thoughts of brimstone raining down as fire. The dying sun in the west. Blood running through the streets and the end of days. Chambers mourned the world he was leaving, although he had no children to leave it to. Perhaps that would be a blessing when the sons of other men went off to some other war, or came up against something no man could understand. On that day, the Chambers line would be a memory at best, the blood turned to dust and ash in a burning land.