the Moonshine War (1969) (5 page)

"I'm sorry to hear that," Long said easily. "You know I can call on you to help me if I want. I got authority to use you and all the deputies I need."

"You see how many you get."

"Well, I don't know." Long drew on the cigar and exhaled the smoke in a long slow stream. "I was thinking I'd get me some of the stillers to help me."

Mr. Baylor stared at him. "Like the Black-wells and the Stampers maybe?"

"Anybody operating stills."

"I want to be there when you ask them."

"Mister," Long said, "I'm not going to ask. I'm going to tell them. They help me find Son's whiskey or I start busting their stills."

"You got a short memory from last night. Once Son told why you'd come, there was some of them would have shot you full of holes and put you under." Mr. Baylor straightened and was silent as Lila Holbrook placed his breakfast in front of him. He wasn't sure now he wanted it; he'd already eaten breakfast at home. He saw Frank Long looking up and smiling and shaking his head when Lila aske
d i
f he cared for anything else. As she moved away, Mr. Baylor said, "You think about it, you'll recall I got you out of there last night. If I hadn't been there they'd have shot you or run you off in the woods nekked and that's a fact."

"They saw my gun," Long said. "If a man had drawn a pistol they'd have seen it again."

"Well, a cocky boy like you, I guess you could bust stills all by yourself."

"Or call Frankfort for help," Long said.

"Tell me something." Mr. Baylor was looking him straight in the eye again. "What do you get out of this? You get a five-dollar-a-month raise? Or they see what a sweet boy you are, they make you state Prohibition director?"

"That'd be something, wouldn't it?"

"Or, you've done your arithmetic and you see a hundred and fifty thirty-gallon barrels, that's--"

"Forty-five hundred gallons," Long said.

"At five bucks a gallon." Mr. Baylor paused, staring across the table at him. "Twenty-two thousand dollars. That right?"

"A little more."

"And the bootlegger he could make, I reckon a hundred and twenty-something thousand. That the figure you get?"

Long shook his head. "Not if I capture it. Poured on the ground, the figure comes to zero."

"Would it please you to see that?" Mr. Baylor asked. "What I mean to say, what is it makes you happy about doing this job?"

"I don't get anything more out of it than my pay."

"Then you must want to see some good boys without a means of making a living and watch their little children go hungry. You want to take food off their table and see them get cholera and rickets. Is that it? Listen, I'll tell you something, boy, they used to farm, every one of them, but on the night of May 30, four years ago, it started to rain--"

"Jesus, I know about the floods."

"Goddamn-it, I said it started to rain, I mean rain like it never rained before, all night it never stopped. The creeks overrun and filled the hollers and washed out timber and crops and livestock and roads and houses that had stood a hundred years. Now you can replace those things, but it also peeled away all the topsoil and that you don't replace. You don't grow a market crop on limestone either, or in wore-out pasture fields. So you grow a little corn for stilling and buy whatever other grain you need and pray God some drunken boy don't come along and shoot holes in your cooker. I'm saying, without stills some people around here would starve to death."

Frank Long was looking past Mr. Baylor's left shoulder, through the wide opening of the doorway into the lobby. He said, "That Mrs. Lyons is a good-looking woman, isn't she?"

Mr. Baylor leaned into the table; he moved aside the cold eggs he didn't want anyway. "Did you listen to what I was telling you?"

"Something about it raining," Long said.

"Mister, excuse me, will you?" He got up and left the dining room.

Lowell Holbrook was in the lobby emptying ash trays and picking up the Sunday paper from chairs. He'd traded shifts with the day bellboy so the boy could go somewhere. If Lowell hadn't traded he wouldn't be standing in the lobby with Frank Long coming toward him. He didn't know what to do. He didn't want to talk to the man because he was afraid he'd be nervous and maybe say the wrong thing. But it was too late to pretend he hadn't seen Mr. Long looking this way and raising his head as a sign he wanted him.

Frank Long didn't wait but came over to him. "Didn't I see Mrs. Lyons a minute ago?" "She left," Lowell said.

"What do you mean she left?"

"I guess she wasn't feeling good. She went home a little early."

"Doesn't she live in the hotel?"

"No, sir. She did for a while. Then she rented herself a little house." Damn--he hadn't wanted to say sir. It just slipped out.

"You say rented herself. Don't she live with her husband?"

"No, sir." There it was again. "I guess her husband's dead."

"That's too bad," Mr. Long said. He turned without another word and walked out. Lowell moved over to the door and saw him get in his car.

Now what was he up to?

Talking to him hadn't been so bad. Except the calling him sir. Earlier that morning Lowell had called Mr. Baylor from the office when no one was there and told him about the BAR rifle in Frank Long's suitcase and the man saying he used it for hunting.

"I reckon he does," Mr. Baylor had said. "Wouldn't a gun like that be against the law?" "Not if you are the law yourself."

Mr. Baylor had told him then that Frank Long was a federal man. "Everybody will know it soon' enough," Mr. Baylor had said. "But, Lowell, they don't have to know anything about that gun. All right?"

From the hotel entrance Lowell watched Frank Long drive off down the street, the same way Mrs. Lyons had gone. He thought about the BAR rifle again, upstairs in the room. He pictured himself going up to 205, opening the door with a passkey, and walking out with the whole suitcase.

Then what would he do with it?

There he'd be coming down the stairs as Frank Long walked into the lobby and looked up at him.

No, sir, there were things that were exciting to think about, but nobody with a brain in his head would ever do them in real life.

Frank Long spotted Mrs. Lyons before she wa
s t
hree blocks from the hotel. There, looking a
t t
he drugstore window, then moving along t
o t
he corner and into the noon sunshine, her dark hair taking on a glint of light: she looked fresh and probably smelled nice, took soapy baths with something in the water like perfume. A good-looking woman with a soft, warm body. Yes, sir, Frank Long decided. He watched her until she was in the next block, then gave the car some gas, got up to her, and swung in close to the curb.

"Mrs. Lyons?" He waited for her to look over. "Hop in, I'll give you a lift."

She didn't recognize him immediately. As she did she said, "Oh, I'm almost there, thank you."

"I don't see any houses along this street."

"The next street where you see the church? I live just up the hill back of there. Say"--now she put a little hint of surprise in the soft, southern-gentlewoman tone of her voice--"how do you know where I'm going?"

"I understand you're not feeling so good."

"I'm just tired I think."

"Then get in, I'll take you."

"Thank you--but I think the fresh air and sunshine will do me more good than anything."

Frank Long grinned at her. "It ain't going to make you look any better than you do."

"Well, thank you very much." Kay Lyons nodded politely and smiled, then let the smile fade as she turned away from him and continued on, hearing the car engine idling at the curb. She wasn't going to look back; not yet. She took her time and didn't glance over her shoulde
r u
ntil she reached the corner. He was still sitting in the car.

Still there as she turned the corner and crossed the street diagonally toward the Baptist Church and walked up the road past the churchyard and the fenced-in cemetery. She knew he was going to follow her, in the car or on foot, to see where she lived. There was nothing she could do about it. If he came to her house and knocked on the door she wouldn't answer. She was tired of smiling and being polite to salesmen and railroad agents and timber buyers in their muddy high-laced shoes: ten hours a day at the hotel, being bright and efficient. If she didn't smile or get a little sparkle in her eyes or make herself laugh--if she just acted natural--they say, "What's the matter with her?"

Kay had the feeling her life was slipping by, leaving no more than a few fading pictures in her mind. She saw herself as a little girl, little Kay Worthman, shy and skinny and scared to death of her cousin Virgil. She saw a pretty girl in high school, her hair marvelled into tight curls, honor student, and secretary of her graduating class. She saw the bright, neatly dressed young lady with the good position in the hotel office, assistant to the manager when she met Alvin Lyons, who came through Marlett once a month with his sample case of drugs and pharmaceuticals. She had dated Alvin Lyons whenever he came to town: thirteen dates with him before they became engaged and eleven more before she married Alvin in the
Old Regular Baptist Church and left Marlett as Kay Lyons.

The next five years were fading pictures of her life in Louisville:

The red brick duplex on the street of two-family houses; she saw the house in the fall, when it was raining.

The garage that was empty all week with Alvin on the road.

The library books on the coffee table and the bedstand.

The movie theater three blocks from the house; the Ritz it was called.

Alvin coming home with his sample case late Friday evening, the tired smile and the kiss before he took off his hat and coat.

Alvin studying his correspondence course in business every Saturday afternoon at the dining-room table.

Alvin leaving the house every Monday morning before it was light; leaving it the last time.

Finding him in the tightly closed darkness of the garage, lying beneath the car's rumbling exhaust pipe, his body wedged against the double doors.

The last picture of Alvin Lyons was clear and perhaps it would never fade. Kay would see him lying on the oil-stained cement and sometimes she would want to shake him until his eyes opened and say to him, "Why did you do it? Why did you let me think everything was going to be all right? Why did you let me give you six years and then kill yourself?"

She was back where she had started, as bright and efficient as before, now manager of the hotel.

But she was also thirty-one years old and she didn't want to be bright and efficient in the service of others or the manager of a county seat hotel. She wanted to be herself and not have to concern herself with people. She wanted someone to take care of her, someone who was as sensitive and perceptive as she was, someone she could rely on and trust and know would always be there. It seemed so simple. She just wanted everything to be right.

The house she had rented for thirty-five dollars a month wasn't at all right. It was dismal inside and smelled old and the floors creaked. The only good points, it was a comfortable walk from the business district and it was private: a tiny one-bedroom place that had once been a tenant farmhouse, sheltered by cedars and overlooking rolling pasture fields out of the back windows.

Crossing the ditch to the front yard, Kay looked back the way she had come, far down the empty gravel road to the cemetery and the red-brick church standing on the corner. There was no sign of him. Soon though, she was sure, a car would drive slowly past the house. The car would turn around and come back and this time would stop.

Kay let herself in the front door. She did not seem outwardly surprised or startled to see Son Martin in the easy chair, but as she closed th
e d
oor behind her she said, "God, you scared me. I didn't see your truck."

Son had lowered the newspaper and was looking at her from the chair. "It's in the shed. Hey, you're early, aren't you?"

"You were behind the paper," Kay said, "I don't know why, I had a funny feeling you were going to be someone else."

"How many keys to this place did you give out?"

"I mean it. It was an awful feeling." "Listen, I brought most of a quart jar--if you want something to relax."

"He followed me," Kay said. "Frank Long."

She stared at Son until he got up from the chair and moved to the front window. Looking out, holding open the curtain, he said, "I guess you know who he is and about last night."

"In the lobby this morning," Kay said, "people were talking about it who don't even know you."

"By now I bet it's a good story." Son leaned close to the glass pane to see down the road.

"They say he got Mr. Baylor and his men to help raid your still."

"I don't see a car."

"He's there," Kay said, "somewhere. He wanted to give me a ride."

"What kind of a car was it?"