Country Dark

by Chris Offutt

  “Figured that.”

  Another minute passed. The sound of the dogs diminished, then picked up, rolling in waves across the earth, the low-pitched moan of the hounds steady beneath the other dogs. The quick sharp cries of a terrier echoed back from the end of the ridge. A cloud slid across the sun and the air cooled a little more.

  “I ain’t planning on killing nobody on my own front porch,” Beanpole said. “I wouldn’t do my wife that way.”

  “Then how about you take that gun you got and put it on the table.”

  “Can you see it?”

  “No, but it’s there, ain’t it.”

  Beanpole removed the Colt revolver from a deep pocket and placed it on his wife’s tin-topped table, barrel aimed at the woods.

  “I seen a man get beat to death with a ball-peen hammer,” he said. “You want me to throw my tools in the creek, too?”

  “I don’t see no hammer.”

  Tucker climbed the steps and sat in a wooden chair. He slouched to access his pistol, the back rail pressing into his shoulder blades. Beanpole eased into the other chair.

  “You satisfied?” Beanpole said.

  “No,” Tucker said. “You made a mistake.”

  “I made maybe a thousand.”

  “You give your pistol up too quick. That means you got another gun handy. My opinion it’s a shotgun right inside that door.”

  “Could be a belly gun.”

  “I seen a man carry one of them two-shot derringers hanging on a string inside his shirt. They ain’t got a safety. Old boy shot hisself in the peter.”

  “Shoot it off or just a little nick?”

  “I never asked.”

  “I ain’t packing no belly gun,” Beanpole said.

  “I don’t reckon you could get at it if you had one. You’d get shot three or four times before you could dig it out.”

  “That a joke?”

  “Yup.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Nope. They a shotgun in that doorway?”

  “Yup.”

  Tucker lit a Lucky. He’d worked for Beanpole longer than any of the other drivers. Tucker knew all the routes, drop-offs and pick-ups, the patrol schedule of bent lawmen, where to hide, what doctor and mechanic to turn to, and everybody’s names. He could send Beanpole to prison. Every day Tucker walked the earth made him more of a threat. He suddenly thought of something else—maybe Beanpole got trapped by the Feds and this whole porch visit was an elaborate ruse to turn him in.

  “You working with the tax agents?” he said.

  “Hell, no,” Beanpole said.

  “Then what is it you’re wanting?”

  “You and me, we got us a problem. Two of them.”

  Tucker pinched the fire off the cigarette end, bent it in half, and tucked it in his pocket. Later he’d transfer it to a coffee can full of old butts for emergency use when he ran out of store-bought and had to roll his own. He shifted his body, moving his hand closer to the pistol. Tucker didn’t have any problems and didn’t know what Beanpole was talking about.

  “Thing is,” Beanpole said, “you know I got that bootlegger.”

  “On the county line.”

  “Beer. Half pints of government whiskey. Pints of wine.”

  “Wyatt still running it?”

  “Yes, he does. Steady money, regular as Little Liver pills. Not like shine which is up and down and all over the place.”

  “You ain’t had no problem with me.”

  “You’re the best I got,” Beanpole said. “I mean the money itself is up and down. I don’t know from week to week how much liquor them stillers will make. They spill it or bust the jars. Sometimes they drink it up and shoot each other.”

  “I know it. Had them to not show up for a load more than once.”

  “That’s right. Many’s the time you had to fool around up in Ohio waiting on getting paid or getting your car worked on or something.”

  “I ain’t never fooled around.”

  “Didn’t mean it that way, Tucker. What I’m trying to say, I don’t always know how much or when the shine money’s coming. May as well say which way a bird’ll fly off a fence. Then there’s gasoline which ain’t getting cheaper. Sugar, cornmeal, yeast, malt. Payoffs to all and sundry. Helping out men to keep them working—take care of somebody’s doctor bill or put school clothes on a man’s kids. I got to give money to every politician and preacher in six counties. You want to know how I got this fat? All I do is visit folks to keep business going smooth, and every time I see somebody I got to set down and eat with them. They’s times I ate four or five full meals a day.”

  Tucker nodded. He’d never heard Beanpole go on this way, and figured he was building up to something. His body relaxed a little. Whatever Beanpole had in mind, it wasn’t shooting Tucker. Maybe he just needed to run his mouth. He’d known men to do that, like opening a valve, but Beanpole never made any kind of move without plenty of forethought. Tucker smoked and waited.

  “What I’m getting at,” Beanpole said, “is the bootlegger income is all I got for reliable. I know exactly what the cost is and how much I’ll get back. That’s the money behind everything else. Like motor oil in an engine. And the engine runs it all.”

  “I’d say it’s more like gas.”

  “What?”

  “The bootlegger money you’re bragging on is the fuel, not the grease.”

  “You’re right,” Beanpole said. “Damned if you ain’t. And that’s the problem. I got to keep that bootlegger up or the whole thing will fall apart. It finances the whole kit and kaboodle.”

  “Ain’t got nothing to do with me,” Tucker said.

  “I know that. I damn sure do. You ain’t stole no cash. People get along with you. You handle yourself good when things get out of hand. And you ain’t never spent one night in jail. Right?”

  Tucker nodded.

  “I know around here, no,” Beanpole said. “But I ain’t for sure about up in Ohio and Michigan. Could be you got locked up and kept it to yourself.”

  “Nope.”

  “Or before. When you was in the service?”

  “They didn’t have no jail where I was at in Korea. What in the hell are you getting at? I’m tired of waiting and listening to you crying.”

  Beanpole tipped his rocker forward, the wood creaking. A stray poplar leaf, already brittle and yellow, blew across the yard. The dogs were a distant din. Initial conversation had gone well—he had Tucker’s attention, which was the goal. Beanpole liked him personally and respected the hardships of his life. All those messed-up kids offered cover and plenty of built-in sympathy. Rhonda was as good a runner’s wife as any—closemouthed, tough as hickory, and loyal to the bone.

  “My problem,” Beanpole said, “is this. Every two or three years, some politician gets a wild hare up his ass and sets about making it rough on bootleggers. Now it’s my turn in the barrel.”

  “County or state?”

  “State this time. A lawyer fixing to run for office. Trying to make a name for hisself.”

  “I thought you bribed all them bastards off.”

  “He’s a young feller. I can’t buy him till he gets elected. He shuts down my bootlegger, he shuts down all of us—you and everybody else.”

  “Close up a couple of weeks,” Tucker said. “You done that before.”

  “That’s the plan all right. But this lawyer, he wants a big show to get his picture in the papers.”

  “All them dumb-asses want that.”

  “He’s aiming to raid it. A buddy in the state police told me the exact day and time. They’ll put the man on trial and send him away.”

  “Wyatt?”

  “No, it can’t be Wyatt. He’s done went twice. They’ll keep his ass till he’s dead. I got to put another man in Wyatt’s place when the raid comes.”

  “Well,” Tucker said, “there’s Joe-Eddie.”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Joe-Eddie’s setting in t
he Mount Sterling jailhouse over some kind of shoot-out with three men.”

  “Three?”

  “He was mixed up with a woman and shot her husband first. Then the husband’s brother. And the brother-in-law.”

  “Any hurt bad?”

  “No, didn’t kill a one, but he damn sure never let up on them. He won’t get out of jail till after the raid.”

  “Why not?”

  “He shot that whole damn family up,” Beanpole said. “They’re keeping him in to protect him. They done arrested one brother and two cousins trying to shoot him through the jail windows.”

  “Ol’ Joe-Eddie. He’s all right when he’s asleep.”

  Tucker grinned and they chuckled together, watching a wasp crawl headfirst down a porch post. Beanpole shifted the rocker and lifted his boot and the wasp flew east straight as a rope.

  “Old boy up to Ohio,” Tucker said, “told me something might work for you. Said he put a woman up on a raid to get arrested. She wore a nice dress to court, had her hair and nails did. The judge liked her. Time served, a fine, and out the door she went.”

  “Not a bad idea. You got a woman in mind?”

  Tucker fired up a cigarette. He saw in his mind a map of the main road and the creek, ridges and hollers, and all the houses. He examined each family in turn, counting the potential women likely to go along with getting paid for jail. Most were unsuitable—too churchy or had kids. Some were too old and others too young. About a quarter were married to men with criminal records.

  “My opinion,” Tucker said, “they ain’t nobody but them three Branham sisters, live up Lick Fork.”

  “Oldest got married here lately.”

  “Candy? Who’d marry her?”

  “I don’t know,” Beanpole said. “I don’t even know which one it was.”

  “Candy’s got them ears goes to a point, and black-headed.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one got married. Might have moved to Elliott County.”

  “There’s Gloria,” Tucker said.

  “She can’t count her titties twice and come up with the same number.”

  “That’ll make the law go easy.”

  “Maybe so. But she won’t be able to keep her story straight. She’ll mess it up every time she tells it till she lets out the whole deal.”

  “That leaves Loretta. I know her, she’s the smartest of the bunch.”

  “No,” Beanpole said. “Something’s wrong with her.”

  “Like what?”

  “Brain attack, my wife thinks,” Beanpole said. “Can’t hardly get around. Talking funny. Drooling. Part of her face don’t work right. Ain’t no judge will believe she was bootlegging.”

  Tucker could see where this was headed and didn’t like it. The more worthless gibble-gabble they did, the more time he had to prepare a response to what was coming. Tucker was the only man working for Beanpole who hadn’t been arrested, and now it appeared to be a liability.

  “You said they was two problems,” Tucker said.

  “Yep. This here’s mine. The other’s yours.”

  “I don’t reckon.”

  “Few months back a man got killed over in Salt Lick.”

  “Joe-Eddie again?”

  “No. Somebody stabbed a man in front of that diner with the windows.”

  “Didn’t hear nothing on it,” Tucker said.

  “He’s some kind of bigwig in Frankfort. They got the law all over it.”

  “Still yet, they do?”

  “They quit for a while,” Beanpole said. “But they’re back on it. State police now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Somebody seen a car.”

  “Did they?”

  “Listen a minute, Tucker. I got me a pet cop over there. The car they’re talking about sounds a lot like your run-car. Now my cop, he made sure and didn’t put that down on any report he turned in back when it happened. But the state boys, they went around talking to everybody again. The same man, he told them about the car. This time they got paperwork on it. They’re hunting that car and pretty soon they’ll find it.”

  “A man seen my car over there?”

  “That’s what they’re saying, yes.”

  “Not a woman, but a man.”

  “No, not no woman.”

  “Pay him off,” Tucker said.

  “Done tried. This feller, he’s a deacon and a Democrat. His wife’s got some kind of sick dog needs walking on a leash every night. He seen the car. Color, make, model, and county plate. All a match to yours.”

  Tucker stopped rocking, stopped looking at the woods and the sky, stopped hearing the dogs. It wasn’t the woman who was talking and that was good. But the rest of it wasn’t any good. Tucker could threaten the man but that might make it worse. No telling what kind of son-of-a-bitch went out of the evening with a dog on a rope.

  “I ain’t saying you done it,” Beanpole said. “Nobody is. But right now they’re hunting that car.”

  “Reckon they are.”

  “They ain’t no easy path to chop out here, Tuck.”

  “Ain’t that always the way of it.”

  “My wife says the good Lord laid out a rough road for all of us, and we just got to take it and keep taking it and it’ll get better one of these days.”

  “Uh-huh. One of these days ain’t coming fast enough.”

  “Sometimes we got to help things along. I don’t mean help the Lord, you understand. I mean just lay out a route down that rough road He put in front of us.”

  “Us?” Tucker said. “I ain’t heard nothing about no us. I heard a bunch of horseshit about a raid, and a bigger bunch of horseshit about a car. They’s a lot of cars in the world.”

  “You’re right. New cars every day. Half the boys around here are moving up to Detroit to build them. But not that many cars are mixed up with a killing and running shine. And setting in front of your house with everybody knowing who drives it and who he drives for.”

  Tucker pondered Beanpole’s words. The car made him vulnerable and put his family at risk. He didn’t mind getting arrested but not in front of his wife and kids.

  “I’ll get rid of the car,” Tucker said.

  “How? You can’t sell it or trade it. The paper’ll run right back up your backside and you still yet owned it when that man got killed.”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “I already did.”

  “I ain’t going to prison for you.”

  Tucker shifted in his chair, placing the full force of his gaze on Beanpole’s face. Hidden by his leg, he flexed his fingers. If Beanpole intended violence, now would be the time.

  “Listen,” Beanpole said. “Just hear the idea. You’ve knowed me a long time. I ain’t had a plan yet go sideways on me. If you don’t like what I say, we’ll pick at it like crows. All right?”

  “I’ll listen,” Tucker said. “But I ain’t going to prison.”

  “You want anything to drink?”

  “No, damn it, I don’t drink. And I don’t want you going inside where that shotgun’s at. So get your damn talking done. Then I’ll go to the house because I damn sure ain’t going to the pen for you.”

  Tucker slouched and twisted until he was lying in the chair at an angle, his backside barely on the edge of the seat, his legs straight. His hand was two inches from his revolver.

  Beanpole knew that Tucker could draw and shoot faster than taking a breath. He was either-handed as a spider and had a knife somewhere on him, too. Beanpole tipped his head and talked to the ceiling, his voice slow, putting as much soothing emphasis as he could on each word.

  “Say a man was to take over that little bootlegger shack for while. Say that man got picked up in a raid. Why, there’d be all manner of customer to say that same man had been bootlegging there for a year. No way he was in Salt Lick on such-and-such a night. They’d swear it on a stack of Bibles because that’s what they’d get paid to tell. Say that man goes to court. He’s a good man, a family man, never been in no t
rouble, a decorated veteran. Say he’s got young kids to provide for. Because of them, he can’t go north for no factory job.

  “This man has a lawyer that lines all this out. The judge gives him easy time, six or eight months. While he’s inside, the man’s wife gets twenty-five dollars a week. Enough to pay all the bills, the bank loan on the land, ever what the kids need extra. Say on top of that the man’s wife has a car give to her. She needs that car because the other one is gone, nobody knows where to, but it is gone for good. The man does his time and comes home. The day he gets out, he gets a bonus of two thousand dollars cash.

  “This man, he’s in better shape than he is right now. The police are looking for a car that ain’t around no more. And the man’s got an alibi for Salt Lick. He ain’t got nothing to worry about. His family’s took care of and a pot of money is waiting on him.”

  Beanpole’s neck was sore from staring straight up but he didn’t move. He could feel waves of tension emanating from Tucker like ripples around a tree stump snagged in a river.

  “I can’t go to prison,” Tucker said.

  “Nobody wants to.”

  “I mean, I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Rhonda’s pregnant.”

  “Uh-huh,” Beanpole said. “I see how that puts a stopper in things.”

  He stared into the tree line, pretending to think it over. His wife had already told him Rhonda was expecting, and Beanpole had figured out how to use the information to his advantage. He’d long ago learned that the best way to win people over was do them a favor ahead of time. The tricky part was learning what that favor was. In Tucker’s case, it was simple.

  “When’s the baby due?” Beanpole said.

  “Three weeks.”

  “Well then,” Beanpole said. “What in case I make sure that raid don’t happen till after the baby’s born.”

  “You can do that?”

  Beanpole nodded. There was no designated time. He’d lied to make Tucker feel beholden to him.

  “Yes, I can do that,” he said. He rubbed the back of his head. “My neck fat aches from looking up.”

  “What about the car?”

  “What about it?”

  “What’s your big plan to get rid of it?” Tucker said.

  “Run it in the Number Nine mine. It’s the last one they built so it’s the widest. The first tunnel ends at one big drop-off. You can throw a rock in and not hear it hit.”