Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

“You aimin’ on gittin’ a divorce?”

  “Just as soon as I can!”

  A hundred things must of run through his head, quick and flashing. The place was hers. She’d heired it from Mister Rowe, and she’d never had a joint deed made. It was hers, out and out. Rady’d never thought about trouble with her, and he’d never worried about the deed. What a woman owned, her man owned with her. But here it was. And Rady had to have the place if he was going to get out of the jam he’d got himself in. He’d be ruined if he lost it. And if she got a divorce … well, he figured he’d lost it.

  He pulled himself up out of the chair and went over to her. He tried to put his arms around her. “Cordy …” he said, trying to hold onto her and turn her so’s he could talk to her. “Cordy …”

  But if he meant to say he was sorry, if he meant to try to hold her with what had once held her, it was too late. It was too much water over the dam, and it was all gone. With all the strength she had she twisted loose from him and slapped him across the face so hard he rocked back on his heels. “So help me, I’ll kill you if you try to touch me again,” she hissed at him.

  Looking at her he had the notion she looked a heap like she did the first time he ever saw her, her face carved and white and still and her eyes full of hate and fury, the pupils widening with her hate. Even her hair hung like it did then, black and soft like a little girl’s, around her face. There was no misdoubting her. She was through and Rady knew it. So he turned around and walked out of the room and out of the house and off the place. He never saw her again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  That was the begining of the end. Miz Rowe left and in time got her divorce. But even before she got the divorce she had the law on Rady and had him put off the place. It was her way of striking back. And it was a good way. He lost his hay and his corn and a good part of his stock. It forced his hand and he had to commence selling.

  He sold the lumber first, but what he got for it didn’t even pay out the contracts. For the contracts had been made high, and he had to sell mighty low. Then he sold the mill, for less than half what he’d paid for the whole set-up. But it was clear and he paid off his contracts with that money. Not a dime, though, did he have left over.

  She put the place up for sale and Rady tried to buy it. With no money he went to the bank and slapped a mortgage on Annie’s place and tried to bid it in. But the bank wouldn’t let him have enough to handle the deal and he had to see it go to a stranger. Fellow from over on the pike.

  Me and Junie moved back to our place, and Rady moved over to Annie’s house again. He oughtn’t to of kept the mortgage money when he couldn’t buy in Miz Rowe’s place, of course. But he was about crazy trying to save what he could of his stock. He had too many to run on Annie’s place, so he had to sell some, and he never got back his buying price for them, and still owed plenty. So he hung onto the money to try to feed them and run what he had until he could get a better price.

  He put in a big crop of corn and more tobacco than common that spring. He worked day and night like a man devil-chased, pulling out of this corner only to get into that one. But he never gave up. He never quit trying. Like a bulldog hanging on, he kept trying. He sweated and he cussed and he got as thin as a rail and as tough as shoe leather. I got real uneasy about him. “Rady,” I said to him one day, “you’re killin’ yer fool self. The world’ll still turn if you lose ever’thing you got, but if you ain’t here to see it, it shore won’t do you no good fer it to be turnin’.”

  He just shook his head. “I’ll be here,” he said, “an’ I’ll lick it. I’m goin’ to seed me another pasture come fall, an’ I’ll git me ten more head of stock.”

  There wasn’t no use arguing with him. He was the way he was. He had to keep trying. Me, I wasn’t in no danger of losing my place, but we’d had to pull in our belts a right smart. I had to lay out most of our cash to get us through until market time. But everybody was having a rough time as far as I could see. And we weren’t the only ones had mush and milk for supper, I reckon. But we had a roof over our heads, and there was always something to eat, and the fish never quit biting. I allow it’d pass in time, and there was no use frashing myself about it.

  I disremember the exact time, but I know it was early in the summer that Flary had her young’un. The Pringles had moved back down to old man Crewel’s and glad to get there. Flary had gone with them, naturally. I recollect I had stopped by Rady’s to borrow the use of his grindstone. My scythe had gone dull on me. “Use it an’ welcome,” he said. “I’ll pour fer you.”

  He straddled the horse and commenced pedaling, pouring the water at the same time in a steady, slow trickle. I laid the blade against the stone. Putting an edge on a blade is a thing requires care and concentration. The stone has got to turn just so. The water has got to trickle just right. And the man handling the blade has got to take care what he’s doing. We got a perfect edge on that scythe, and then we set down in the shade and talked awhile. Rady had commenced chewing instead of smoking so much. Cheaper, I reckon. And he had a plug of Old Mule would of bit the tongue off the original mule!

  “Reckon you’ve heared,” he said after a while, “Flary’s had her kid.”

  “No,” I says, “when?”

  “Last week.”

  “You seen it?”

  He nodded. “Hit’s a boy.” And then he grinned from ear to ear. “Dammed if the little sunovabitch don’t look exactly like Pa!”

  I like to of swallowed my plug!

  When I told Junie she kind of snorted. “Hit jist goes to show,” she said, “the truth’ll stand when the world’s on fire!”

  Just what truth she had in mind wasn’t very clear to me.

  That fall corn dropped to three cents and tobacco went to seven. Nobody had ever heard of such prices! You couldn’t even make your haul bill to market It was the bottom dropped out It was the end of everything known and counted on. A man didn’t know what to do or where to turn. Everybody was scared and uneasy. Nobody had any idea of how to make out, except just to keep on the best way he could.

  Except Rady. He came over one day right after dinner. “Git yer gun,” he says, “let’s see if we kin skeer up a squirrel or two.”

  Even the squirrels were scarcer than hen’s teeth. Looked like they knew it was a bad time for any of them to show, folks needing stuff to eat like they did. We didn’t get any squirrels, but we didn’t, to say, do much squirrel hunting. When we got over in the holler Rady laid his gun up beside a tree and set down. “Listen,” he says, “Fm goin’ to lose my place an’ ever’thing I got if I don’t do somethin’ an’ do it quick. I can’t even pay the interest on that mortgage, an’ you know they ain’t goin’ to wait long on me.”

  “Rady, I ain’t got a dime …” I was commencing to say.

  But he cut me short. “I ain’t tryin’ to borry. Look, I ain’t sellin’ my corn fer no three cents. I got a better idee what to do with it. Want to come in with me?”

  I didn’t like the idea of selling my corn for three cents, either, and I had sixyoung’uns now to feed. “Reckon we could make anything?”

  “More’n we kin make sellin’ on the market. I already talked to Duke an’ he’s willin’. An’ he’s got some sheet copper we kin make a drum out of, an’ he knows where he kin git some copper tubin’. We all got corn, an’ I reckon between us we kin rake up enough cash to buy the first batch of sugar. You willin’?”

  I figured a minute. It was chancey, no doubts, but not too much. Folks around the ridge always did allow it was a man’s business what he did with his corn, or his time. Wouldn’t be but little chance of getting caught, I figured. Worst was I’d have to keep it from Junie, but maybe she’d think I was fishing and hunting a heap.

  “I’m willin’,” I told him, then.

  So we built us a still over on Little Lost Creek. Good place for it. Backed up against a hill on a little arm of land, and with plenty of good creek water handy. Rady made the drum, and we got some copper tubing
for the worm. Never took long, and inside of a couple of weeks we’d run off our first batch. Making moonshine is pretty simple, actually. Anybody could do it. You make up a mash with corn meal, fresh ground is better, and sugar. Scald it and add your creek water and leave it alone till it ferments. Then you get beer, and you dip it into the cooker, put your cap on and commence distilling. You don’t want to have too hot a fire or you’ll scorch your beer. When you draw it off you got likker. Some guys sell the singlings, but we never. We always run ours through twice, and if I do say so myself, we made a powerfully good moonshine.

  And there never was times yet so hard that men couldn’t find the money to buy a jug of likker. We did good, right from the start. And it felt fine to have a little cash jingling in our pockets again. We ran off a batch every week, and sold it as fast as we made it. Our county being dry we never had to worry about federal men. It was the county men we had to watch, and we knew most of them.

  I got me a new span of mules and got Junie another cow. Duke, who hadn’t never married, bought himself a second-hand car. Rady paid off the interest on his mortgage and figured he could hold onto the rest of his stock another year. Flary littered again, with twins, and Rady moved her out of her pa’s house into a little cabin down in the holler. Wasn’t much of a place. Just an old log shack, one of the first built in the settlement, and it looked about ready to cave in. But it was handy to him. He knew in reason he wasn’t the only one visited the cabin. Of a Saturday night used to be a right smart gathering down there. But I reckon Rady always had first call.

  We did fine for about a year. But just when you least expect it in things like that, there’s a slip sometimes, and the slip came for us when an ornery, low-lifed deputy decided to get smart. It was election year, and he was up for sheriff and wanted to make a showing. He pulled a fast raid on us late one evening. Him and three more men. Caught all three of us at the still. We heard them, and scattered, but there was a gunfight. All three of us were hid behind the rocks on the hillside back of the still, and all three of us were shooting. Which of us killed the deputy I don’t to this day know. Could of been any of us. But one thing is sure, one of us did. I saw him drop. But with me and Rady and Duke all firing, and firing fast, there was no way of knowing who got him.

  They caught Duke and me, but Rady got away. They took us into the jail, and all I could think about was Junie and the young’uns. She’d be worried to death, I knew. I got the jailer to promise to mail her a letter and I set down and wrote her. Wasn’t any use me telling her I was sorry. It was too late for that, and besides I wasn’t sorry for nothing but getting caught and having to leave her by herself. I knew we were up for a stiff rap, on account of the deputy being killed. But I knew, too, they couldn’t prove it on either one of us, and the most we could get would be manslaughter. That was enough, though. I was glad there was a little money to help Junie out while I was gone.

  I hadn’t much more than got my letter wrote when the door clanged open and they brought Rady in. You could of knocked me over with a feather “How’d they find you?” I said.

  He set down on the bunk and rolled himself a cigarette. “Didn’t,” he said. “I give myself up.”

  “You damned fool’ I yelled at him, “what’d you want to do that fer? You had it made!”

  He kind of grinned. “I didn’t want you boys to have no fun I wasn’t in on.”

  How do you like that? The gall of the guy! The nerve, the guts He got away clean and he knew neither Duke nor me would talk. He didn’t have to come in and give himself up. He could of stayed clear. They’d of settled for me and Duke. They didn’t have nothing on Rady. He was as clean as a blowed nose. But, man, it made me feel fine! Old Rady wasn’t going to let us take the rap by ourselves. He was in on it and he was going the whole trip. And he went. A little further than we did.

  Because he was trying to get us off cheap, he told that the still was his and said we just worked for him. It didn’t hold water, for we weren’t having it that way, but he did have more in it than we did, and that came out at the trial, and made him what they called the responsible party. He got twenty years. Me and Duke each got ten.

  I served two years and nine months and then got paroled. It was the longest two years and nine months of my life You got to do time behind bars to know what it’s like. There’s no way I could tell you. But to a man used to roaming free, used to being his own master, used to space and high skies and woods and creeks and fields and pastures, it’s pure hell. It’s like a wild animal being caged, and you get so crazy sometimes just to walk beyond walls and gates and people that you feel like you can’t stand it another minute. I know why guys go berserk and kill to get out. I felt like it myself more than once. I was sure glad to get out of that place!

  Junie was waiting at the gate when I got out. And of course she peeled the hide off my back first thing. But Jesus Christ, I didn’t even care It felt so good to be hearing her laying me out I could of listened to her all day Right in the middle she got her tongue all tangled up though, and commenced crying, and then she kind of fell all over me, hugging and kissing and crying all mixed up together. “Hush up, Junie,” I says, “we’re wastin’ time You know how long I been doin’ without? A even thousand nights Let’s git on home an’ commence makin’ another young’un!”

  That made her haul up and stick her nose in the air. “Makin’ young’uns! Makin’ moonshine! Makin’ trouble! That’s all a man’s good fer! You’re comin’ home with me an’ commence makin’ a crop, that’s what you’re goin’ to make!”

  And right then I never even minded the idea A tobacco crop sounded plumb nice to me!

  Duke got out a couple of months after I did, but Rady had to do six years. Six long, long years. I used to think of him up there, knowing how those walls shut him in and kept the sun and the sky and the sight of hills out. Knowing he was eating his heart out like I’d done, and marking off the days on the calendar in his cell. Knowing how slow the days went and how they were all alike, gray and tedious and endless. But he was a good prisoner, and he got every day coming to him for good behavior. He didn’t want to stay any longer than he had to, and the quickest way to get out was to behave himself.

  I wrote to him all along. Told him the news. One piece of news I sure hated to have to tell him. The bank took over his place and Jubal Moore bought it in. Same Jubal Moore whose mule we’d stampeded that night at the tent meeting. But you couldn’t hold it against him. The place was selling, and it went for a little of nothing. It was smart to buy it in. I wished I’d of had the money to get it for Rady.

  He hadn’t anything left to come back to now. Not a thing. And when he’d get out all he’d have was ten dollars and a suit of new clothes. Not even any place to go to, except mine and Junie’s. His old man had disowned him long ago. As if he had anything to disown with!

  Along about the time he was due to get out I wrote him and told him me and Junie would be looking for him. And late one evening he came walking up. I saw him plumb down the road and went to meet him. Same old Rady. Same old grin. Same old rusty hair bushing up. Same spraddling walk. Same shoulders busting out his coat. He didn’t even look much older. Man, I was glad to see him Ever’body was glad to see him. Being penitentiaryed don’t amount to nothing around here.

  “What you aimin’ on doin’, Rady?” they says.

  “Why, I’m aimin’ to farm,” he says back to them. “What you think I’m aimin’ to do?”

  “Allowed mebbe you’d go back to stillin’,” they’d say, kind of joking.

  “Think I’ll stick to farmin’,” he says, laughing with them, “the law’s gittin’ too smart fer a country boy like me.”

  He took a few days to look around and then he came in one morning and said he was moving out. “Where to?” I asked him.

  He grinned at me. “Over at Annie’s place. I’m rentin’.”

  I kind of hated to see him go back over there, but he never seemed to mind. Acted real cheerful about it. I fol
lowed him out to the road when he was leaving. “Let me know if they’s anything I kin do,” I told him.

  He said he would, and then like he’d just thought of it he asked, “You know where Flary an’ the kids is at?”

  “With her folks last I heared,” I told him. “They moved out of the holler several years ago.”

  “She ain’t took up with nobody else?”

  “Well,” I says, “you know Flary. But she ain’t livin’ with nobody regular, fur as I know.”

  “Much obleeged,” he says, and he turned and commenced walking down the road.

  “Rady,” I called after him, and he stopped. “They’s a couple more kids.”

  He grinned. “Reckon they can’t be laid to me. I ain’t good enough to breed long distance.”

  Then he raised the dust behind him round the bend. So it never surprised me much when Junie came busting in mad as a wet hen a day or two later. “You know what that Rady Cromwell’s went an’ done!” she says, blowing her breath between her words and giving me no chance to say a thing before going on. “He’s moved that Flary Pringle back down in the holler! Hit’s a disgrace, that’s what it is! That woman had ort to be run off the ridge!”

  It was a time for keeping your mouth shut, so I said nothing. But I couldn’t help thinking that in a way it was a pity Rady couldn’t marry her. She was stout and a good worker, and she would be a big help to him in the fields. But of course a man with pride couldn’t marry up with a woman like that.

  I went over in a week or two to see how he was getting along. He’d cleaned the weeds and litter from around the place and had mended up the fences. He’d whitewashed the outbuildings and straightened things up a right smart. Inside, the house was might near as bare as a barn, for there wasn’t a stick of Annie’s furniture left. I reckon Jubal Moore had got it along with the place and had moved it out. Rady had a cot in a corner of the fireplace room, and he was cooking on the hearth with a few pots and pans he’d got at the dime store. But it was clean, and his cot was made up fresh. Over by the chimney was his old gittar, and in the corner was his guns, and outside the door was the grandson of his old dog, Drum. He was right back down to scratch.