The Whiskey Baron (7 page)

“I believe that story has made its way across town and back a few times,” Joe said.

“Made it all the way to Columbia, matter of fact.”

“I can tell you this,” Joe said. “Mary Jane didn’t have anything to do with shooting anybody. I know that bartender said he done it, but he’s not a killer.”

“I’m not saying he is,” Chambers said. “All I have to go on is what Depot told me, but before I can clear or accuse anybody, I need to get a hold of Mary Jane. You have any idea where he might be?”

“Naw,” Joe said. He crossed his arms as if to dare Chambers to contradict him. The old man sitting next to him lit a cigarette. White-haired farmer: Chambers had met him only one time before. He thought they may have called him Happy, but like his son-in-law, the man looked anything but.

“When was the last time you saw Mary Jane?” Chambers asked.

“I’d say it’s been a couple weeks. He’s kept right busy, out at Widow Coleman’s farm. You been out there yet?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“She didn’t know where he was at.”

“Well hell’s bells, Sheriff, my brother’s done took off.”

“So it seems.”

The boys came into the kitchen and the older one said, “We’re going down to the creek for a while.”

The younger one added, “Tommy and the gang are going swimming at the dock.”

“It is hot out there,” Joe said.

“I feel like I’m about to fry,” the older boy said. Chambers couldn’t remember the boys’ names either. He’d always been good with names and had done well with all but the youngest generation. He knew just about everyone over twenty years old in the county, but now there were just too many younguns for him.

“You know, I saw you hanging back to chat up the Tull girl after church.”

“Daddy, that was nothing.”

“Maybe so, but she’s not one to go off sparking on a Sunday afternoon.”

“I hear you.”

“She’s not the kind of girl you want to get in trouble with. Especially now.”

“I hear you,” the older said again, and turned away. The younger looked over at the sheriff, seemed like he wanted to say something more, but he followed his brother out.

“She’s not one of us,” Joe called. He looked at Chambers and said, “My oldest has taken a liking to Evelyn Tull.”

“She is pretty.”

“Pretty dangerous.”

“That too.”

“What are we going to do about Mary Jane?” Joe asked.

Susannah came in and leaned against the wall and waited for Chambers to answer.

“I don’t know. I trust y’all haven’t seen him, but if you do, call me. I know he’s kin, but it’ll be safer for everyone if you don’t try to harbor him.”

“Mary Jane wouldn’t come here and ask that of us,” Joe said.

“Well, if he does. I’m sure Larthan would love a word with him as well, and he doesn’t have what you’d consider a high regard for the law.” Chambers took a breath and said, “I’ve taken enough of your time. You know anyone else he might be staying with?”

Joe shook his head.

“Ma’am,” Chambers said, nodding at Susannah. He put on his hat and headed for the door. Joe followed, and the grandfather sat at the table, still not saying a word, nor looking up at the sheriff. Some folks sure were strange.

A
s the brothers headed down the hill toward the Broad River, waves of heat in the air blurred the roads and the mill and even the village houses. Above them, always, the mill’s smokestacks clawed their way above the treeline and towered over the village, red bricks hot as a stovetop, like embers of coal. The Catawba and Broad rivers bracketed Castle County. Lazy, wide, and brown, they flowed south out of North Carolina and became the Tigris and Euphrates of the South Carolina textile boom. Cotton mills lined their banks like the beginnings of civilization, the first weak and stumbling steps of progress. Just outside of town, there was a spot near the trestle, a clearing in the pines on the banks of the Broad River, out of sight from everyone, where kids went to get into trouble, a good place to drink whiskey, a good place to spark.

Out of sight of the house, Quinn said, “Just hang out with us for
a while. Then you can tell them you got tired, or that I went off with the gang.”

“What’d y’all talk about after church?”

“I told her the riverbank near Coleman’s farm was a good place to watch a sunset.”

“She’s coming?”

“Hell yeah she’s coming.”

“Even after what happened at the Hillside?”

“That don’t have nothing to do with me or her. Or you.”

“What about Mary Jane?”

“That don’t concern us either. You were right at dinner. Maybe Daddy doesn’t want to admit it, but Mary Jane’s a schemer. He could have cooked up something. Probably thought he saw a way to get a good supply of free liquor. Maybe things didn’t work out, and, well.”

“You don’t think her father had anything to do with it?”

“That could be too. I don’t know. But she’s not making a thing of her father, so I’m not either.”

“What are you going to do?”

“That ain’t for me to tell right now.”

The road leveled out near the church and angled into the highway. The railroad tracks sliced through the landscape and arrowed south toward the river and the widow’s farm. They neared where the tracks crossed the highway, and Evelyn stood waiting, still in her Sunday dress and holding a blanket.

When the boys approached, she said, “I told Daddy I had some errands to run this afternoon. He’s got business all day, so he won’t worry as long as I’m home in bed before he gets done, but don’t go telling people I was sneaking around with you, troublemaker. Hi, Willie.”

“Hello.”

“Don’t worry,” Quinn said. “He’s the only one who knows. I told everyone we were meeting Tommy Cope at the river.”

“You better tell Tommy to back you up,” she said, laughing.

“That boy? He don’t know where he is in the present, much less where he’s been.”

“I didn’t realize he did anything but play pool at the Hillside,” she said.

They walked down the tracks. Oaks and pines rose up around them. Heat sizzled on the metal rails, and the woods and the rocks drank up the late afternoon sun, warmed their feet through their shoes.

Quinn said, “I think I’d be in more trouble if people found out. Your Daddy’d come after me.”

“Oh he would not.”

“You know what the rumor is about the Hillside, right?”

“I heard about the men that got shot last night.”

“You know why?”

“No one knows.”

“Some say our uncle shot them, but some folks think your father might have done it.”

Evelyn stopped. “Do you believe that? That my father’s a killer?”

“It’s possible.”

She hung her head, and Quinn put his hand on her arm. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, I didn’t mean nothing. That’s just what some folks is saying.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Folks. In church. Listen, they’re all full of it. Let’s not talk about this anymore. It’s not important.”

The two of them walked ahead slowly. Willie moved into the shaded woods, and his feet chopped at the leaves, stirred the rich humus, and evoked the smell of acorns and sap. Orange sunlight fired through the tree limbs and created a mosaic of sun and shade at his feet, lit up brown leaves on the ground, muscadines and ivy and brambles. Lowhanging limbs of a chinaberry tree, a patch of wild irises. Then the ground fell on a slope away from the tracks. He followed Quinn and Evelyn down the hill to the river. The trestle to the right towered across the water, with its patchwork of rusty beams and angles. The other side of the tracks belonged to Widow Coleman, wherever she was. South of the tracks, county land spread downstate toward Columbia, nothing but cow pastures and pine-woods between here and the capital city. In a patch of clear land by the river, the grass was low and soft and protected by shade from nearby oaks. When they reached the clearing they saw a man in the river, bearded and naked and doing a lopsided backstroke with his
member bobbing out of the water with each stroke. The three of them stopped and stared. “Well damn,” Quinn said. “I didn’t think anybody would be out here.”

The man caught sight of them and jerked up in a spasm. Water splashed as he flopped over to hide his member in the darkness of the river, and he shook his head and gurgled. “Hey, y’all,” he said.

“Mary Jane?”

“Hey, boys.”

His shoulder was wounded, Willie saw. A dark purple stain of a bruise covered his arm and chest, and in the meat of his shoulder ragged chunks of flesh appeared to have been cut out.

The three of them approached the river, where their uncle Mary Jane treaded water.

“Ma’am,” he said.

Just then Evelyn seemed to realize what an awkward position she was in, and she turned and started to walk back the way they came.

“Let me get my britches on, y’all don’t have to go.”

Mary Jane splashed out of the river and scrambled up the bank, dripping like a wet dog. He swayed to and fro as he put on a pair of shorts and said, “OK, y’all, I’m dressed.”

“Maybe we should come back some other time,” Evelyn said.

“Hey, hey,” Mary Jane said. “Don’t back up on my account. I was just taking a dip. Stick around.”

Quinn took the blanket from Evelyn, whispered to her, “It’s OK.” He unrolled the blanket in the clearing, and Mary Jane came up with his shirt thrown over his wounded shoulder.

“Whew, uncle, what you been drinking?”

Mary Jane stopped a few feet away.

“What’d you do, raid the widow’s liquor stash?”

As Quinn and Willie laughed, their uncle grinned and looked at Evelyn, and when he caught her eye he quit grinning and looked back toward the riverbank. Everyone seemed to notice at once the two square gallon cans resting in some tall grasses on the riverbank. Bootleggers carted moonshine in those cans, and while everyone knew Widow Coleman kept a low supply of homebrew on her land, she wasn’t a bootlegger.

Mary Jane coughed, said, “I had a few nips this afternoon, you know how it is.”

“Yeah I do,” Quinn said.

“The widow sent me down here. She wanted me to pour out all her liquor. Said she didn’t want anymore to do with it.”

“You got any left?”

“Naw, it’s all gone.”

He grinned again, and Quinn and Evelyn stared at him. Since no one else was going to ask, Willie said, “What happened to your shoulder?”

They all kind of laughed nervously, and Mary Jane said, “You might have heard something bad happened at the Hillside last night.”

“Folks said you killed two men.”

Mary Jane scowled. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

Willie shrugged. Quinn and Evelyn didn’t move.

“Jesus, boys, you know your uncle Mary Jane. You know I might have a few bad habits here and there, but damn. No, me and those two fellas were in a bit of trouble, and someone decided the trouble was deep enough that we were better off dead. Took a hunk out of me, and I’m lucky to have gotten away with just that.” Mary Jane ran his tongue back and forth across his lower lip a few times. Willie’s eyes flickered from his brother to his uncle and back. It seemed like there was some communication going on below the surface that Willie wasn’t aware of, and he couldn’t figure out what was actually going on. Then his uncle said, “Were y’all here to swim? Why don’t you and me go get in the water and leave these lovebirds alone for a while?”

Willie followed Mary Jane to the river, removed his shirt and shoes and waded in. The water was cool and clear and speckled with sunlight that passed through the trees. Brown sand at his feet stirred and clouded the water as he waded further, until he tumbled over and the whir of the water and the rustle of the trees in the wind fell silent, the world vanished. When he came up, he shook his head. Mary Jane, now in his britches, couldn’t do much but wade through the water, but he played along as Willie splashed around in the water. On the riverbank, Quinn and Evelyn lay on the blanket. She seemed to be crying, and Quinn had his hand on her shoulder. Willie knew
her father had a reputation, that he made liquor and ran an illegal business, and he knew Quinn here with Evelyn was more dangerous than just going against their father’s word. But there was so much he didn’t understand. Who shot the men last night, and why? What was Mary Jane going to do now? His uncle tossed him around in the water for a while, and eventually he said, “All right, boy, it’s time for me to move on. Don’t listen to any rumors you hear about me.”

“I won’t.”

Mary Jane looked at Quinn and Evelyn on the riverbank, said, “That boy’s getting into some trouble there.”

“That’s what Daddy says.”

“You need to steer clear of her father. He’s going to be looking for me, too. I’ve got to go away for a while to take care of some business, so while I’m gone you just stay away from him.”

Mary Jane wiped water out of his hair and waded onto the river-bank. He put on his shirt and shoes and waved to Quinn. Then he picked up the canisters and shuffled away. As his uncle left, Willie thought he could hear liquid sloshing in the tin.

L
arthan Tull wanted to find Mary Jane Hopewell. The man had crossed a line with his liquor project out on the Coleman farm, and it was a line Tull was surprised to see him cross. What did he think he was going to accomplish out there, run Tull out of business and make easy money and hole up with Abigail Coleman and live a happy family life? That’s not how this worked. This was business, cutthroat and violent. If you didn’t go into it with clear eyes, a stone heart, and a thick roll of cash, you should go back to sweeping up cinders in the cotton mill and leave the real work to the men.

Out beyond the Hillside, toward the Bell village, the widow owned a good tract of land south of Highway 9. Riverfront property, but her house was inland to where you couldn’t see the Broad. A tributary or two ran like veins through her land, and it was those tributaries that caused the problem. For years, Tull had been buying
leftover corn from area farmers, who for their part knew what for, even if Tull offered them the pretense of needing it for corn syrup for his soda factory. Back before the husband had died, the Colemans had produced more corn than most farmers out here, and lately, ever since she’d taken Ernest Jones into her house and Mary Jane into her bed, the widow had been growing more corn than husband and wife ever had. But Tull guessed old Mary Jane thought he could do better on his own, cut out the middleman, and sell some shine directly. Tull had known about it longer than Mary Jane knew he’d known, but he’d let it go on because the bulk of Tull’s income came from Aunt Lou, then from the Hillside. Mary Jane couldn’t compete with either of those, and if he wanted to have some boys down from the mill hill for a few drinks on the farm, well, it made folks happy and gave them the illusion of choice in the market. Little fish, big fish.