The Wettest County in the World

by Matt Bondurant

  He was thinking of the old still, one he’d run with Jamison and some others years before, tucked into another fold up on Turkeycock. The mash was already working up a good steam, all the supplies paid for by Forrest, including another car.

  I could head up to my mother’s, Lucy said. They’d take me and her in.

  No, Howard said. Ain’t gonna do that.

  If the weather held, in a few days they would run four cars up to Roanoke County and to Floyd Carter’s gang, who guaranteed them five a gallon. His cut would see them through the winter. The thought of it exhausted Howard as he bent to his bowl of tomatoes, though at the same time he knew that he would go on. He would finish this meal, sleep like a dead man, and the next morning he would go out and do it all again. Lucy slid a plate of ramps to him on the table. Howard eyed the onions steaming on the plate, their strong odor burning in his sinuses.

  You need to eat ’em, Lucy said. Purify the blood.

  Howard grunted and turned back to his tomatoes.

  Lord knows, Lucy said, you sure need some purifying. The stuff you put in you. It’s a miracle you alive.

  Howard forked the ramps into his mouth, contemplating the fine hairs on Lucy’s forearms, the way she smoothed them with her hand. He thought of the wood chopping, the deep taproots they hacked off, roots that tunneled deep into the interior of things. The locust larvae clinging to the roots, fat and white like grubs, sucking the moisture from the pulpy flesh. They stayed under there for a dozen years and more, waiting for the right moment. To cling to a root in the moist darkness, no sound but the beating of your own heart, waiting for that silent signal to rise. True enough, he thought, I oughta be dead.

  Maybe that’s the problem, Lucy said.

  She fiddled with the mad stone that hung on a cord around her neck, a smooth flat stone that Howard found in the belly of a deer. It would protect her from poison and dog bites and Howard liked the pearly opalescence of it, the way it lay flat against her collarbone. The baby gurgled contentedly.

  Maybe, Lucy said, all that stuff you puttin’ in youself is the reason why our children is born the way they is.

  Here it is, Howard thought, she finally said it. He had a flare of rage and his fingers gripped the table. He could shatter it with his hands or flip it like a coin across the room. He began to play it out in his mind, the way it would go. Lucy saw the look on his face and quickly got up, backing away, holding the baby with both hands. Howard looked at his hands, his knuckles torn and scabbed from wood cutting and the log-rolling game.

  Hell, he thought, what is the goddamn point, anyway?

  I can’t break myself. No matter how hard I try.

  FORREST SET the valise on the counter between them.

  What’s that? Maggie said.

  The money. I want you to take it.

  Maggie lit a cigarette.

  What am I gonna do with it?

  Don’t know. Whatever you want.

  She seemed to consider this for a moment, then reached over and unbuckled the valise. Forrest wanted to reach out and take hold of her wrists but he didn’t. She looked at the stacked bills inside for a moment, then closed the valise.

  Let me ask you something first, Forrest said. All right? And I’ll need an answer.

  Maggie stared at him for a moment, her eyes narrowing, a tight smile on her lips.

  I ain’t for sale. You might just get it for free.

  It ain’t that. Somethin’ else.

  Her face hardened and she turned to walk back into the kitchen. Forrest reached for her elbow, brushing her with his fingers. When he touched her she froze.

  Please, he said. I got to know what happened.

  Nothing, she said.

  Maggie stood at the kitchen door, arms folded, her back to him.

  What? Look at me.

  Forrest suddenly wanted forgiveness from this woman for everything he had done in his life.

  I’m sorry, he said. I was the one that brought that trouble in here.

  No, she said. That don’t matter none. It weren’t you.

  Either way. Look at me.

  She turned to face him.

  I just gotta know.

  Not a damn thing, she said, her voice low and measured. Now you know. Not a goddamn one of ’em, she said, ever did a damn thing to me.

  He heard her footsteps clomping up the stairs, across the floor, and the groan of the bedsprings. Forrest walked over to the radio by the front window and turned the knob. It crackled to life and he scanned the static as he gazed out the window down the road that led across Maggodee Creek.

  THE NEXT MORNING Forrest eyed the snow through the upstairs window as he slipped on his heavy socks, dungarees, wool shirt. The woods across the road from the filling station were dead still, the sifting snow falling straight down and piling neatly along the crooked fingers of birch and oak trees. Small drifts gathered on the windowsill. The weather would make things more difficult, Forrest thought, particularly the driving. They would need snow chains and shovels.

  Downstairs the kitchen was black and cold and smelled of bacon grease and smoke. He lit the grill and started coffee before shrugging on his heavy car coat and stepping outside to clear off the fuel pumps and check the gauges. He thought of the storage shed behind the station, bare now save for empty five-gallon cans and crates of jars. Everett Dillon’s face, blank as a clear sky when Forrest handed him the money. He accepted the deal immediately. He must believe that I can protect him, Forrest thought.

  During the winter nearly anyone in the southern reaches of Virginia and northwest Carolina who was making cold-weather booze came through Franklin County to unload their wares. They were mostly scrawny, desperate mountain men, blue in the face, an unruly, stinking lot of spitting fools. Most came by Forrest’s Blackwater station because they knew they would get a good price without trouble. Forrest was a known, stable quantity, a poor man’s only real lasting wish. But it had been weeks since he’d had a run through, dropping off or picking up. He knew it was Carter Lee. They had destroyed the stills and locked him down, and now, Forrest thought, they would simply wait him out.

  The cold intermittent touch of snow on his face reminded him of that night at the County Line, which for some reason always brought him a comforting feeling. He had been afraid as he knelt there in the parking lot, he was afraid of dying, and this thought made him want to go back to his bedroom and lie on the narrow cot with his blankets pulled up to his chin. They would have to go through with it. Once disorder was introduced to the world it could not be undone.

  Walking back into the station he searched himself for a possible change, something that was different. Shouldn’t something like that change a man? Forrest sliced some bread and cracked eggs on the steaming grill and worked the spatula around the bubbling edges. He had the same wants and needs, the world as a whole looked the same. His feet still got cold in his boots, his eyes ached when he did the books in low light, he still stood in dark rooms for hours while others slept, his mind refusing to rest.

  There was a rustle of cloth and bare feet on the floor and then Maggie appeared beside him. She took a cup down from the cupboard and poured herself coffee. She gave him a thin smile, her dark eyes smudged with sleeplessness. Forrest slid an egg and some buttered toast onto a chipped plate and handed it to her. Maggie stood by the window overlooking the road, chewing on her toast. Forrest watched her face as she took in the snowfall and felt his heart seize in his chest.

  What’re you doing? Forrest asked.

  Eatin’ ice cream, Maggie said.

  She took a bite of toast and smiled.

  Forrest had the sudden urge to take her in his arms and bury his face in her hair. It was unlike anything he had felt before. He drank his coffee and watched her some more and wondered to himself just how foolish he really was. He wondered if this was the end of it, or if there was more, and just what it would take for him to learn.

  PART 3

  The reader should bear in mind that Kit
Brandon was and is a real person, a living American woman. How much of her real story can be told? You, sitting and reading this book, have also a story, a history. How much of that could be told? How much do we writers dare let ourselves go in the making of portraits? How close can we keep to truth? How much do we dare try to be true historians?

  Sherwood Anderson, Kit Brandon

  Neither of us—Hemingway or I—could have touched, ridiculed, his work itself. But we had made his style look ridiculous; and by that time, after Dark Laughter, when he had reached the point where he should have stopped writing, he had to defend that style at all costs because he too must have known by then in his heart that there was nothing else left.

  William Faulkner, “Sherwood Anderson: An Appreciation”

  Courtroom exchange during grand-jury investigation between Forrest Bondurant and defense attorney Timberlake: Defense attorney Timberlake: You and your brother Jack Bondurant were both armed, weren’t you? Bondurant: Yes, sir. Timberlake: And you covered the officers with your pistols while Everett Dillon made off with one of the liquor cars, didn’t you? Bondurant: No, sir. We never touched our pistols. Timberlake: You told [deputies] Rakes and Abshire that “somebody is going to die” unless they let you go across the bridge, didn’t you?

  T. Keister Greer, The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935

  There is a great black bell without a tongue, swinging silently in the darkness. It swings and swings, making a great arch and I await silent and frightened. Now it stops and descends slowly. I am terrified. Can nothing stop the great descending iron bell?

  Sherwood Anderson, A Story Teller’s Story

  Chapter 26

  1935

  AS THE SUMMER wore into June, Sherwood Anderson could see the wear on the faces of the farmers kicking at the red clay that gathered along the sides of buildings like snowdrifts. Walking uptown on Main Street in Rocky Mount, the stools at the drugstore, the lunch counters, the dry-goods store, all empty.

  Be chewin’ on shoe leather before it’s out, an old-timer said standing by the statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the city hall, chewing on his pipe, just like we did back in ’30, the worst in a decade or I’m a dead man standin’ here. Before him in the sunlight, a couple of middle-aged men with hands in pockets, dusty shoes. Won’t be the last time, neither. The sky clear blue and the sun relentless. Driving along the road Anderson saw men standing in withered fields, hands on their hips.

  The salesmen around the table at the boardinghouse occasionally talked of the drought but they didn’t seem to mind too much. The optimism of the salesmen was annoying and seemed to Anderson an egregious display of false hope. The fat-necked men still smoked their cigars and laughed hard, faces going purple, Slide that pie back down here please, don’t mind if I do! They had business plenty up the road. They discussed the drought with a speculative optimism that made Anderson’s face burn. Be a boon for one trade, a round man in a porkpie declaimed one night after dinner, them shiners doin’ a serious trade, I’ll tell you what! Made sense enough, Anderson thought. For a couple of dollars you could stay blind for a week; a few dollars more, maybe even just sit the whole thing out altogether.

  The newspaper clippings indicated that the drought of 1930 was similarly punishing, and it was clear that those who lived by tobacco would turn to other means. The Roanoke Times printed several reports on the incident at Maggodee Creek Bridge and the shooting of the Bondurant brothers, though no mention was made of the motives of the brothers or how they ended so obviously at odds with the local law enforcement. If the conspiracy rumors were true, the brothers must have been trying to skirt the racket. So what would lead them to take such a heavily laden caravan, four cars full of booze, through the snow in December? Why did the local sheriffs seem so willing to gun them all down?

  At night in his bed Anderson listened to the caravans of cars blasting down Main Street to East Church and the hard road 33 heading north up Grassy Hill. The roaring of engines, first the pilot car, then the line of sedans going sixty, seventy miles an hour right past the courthouse. Occasionally a sheriff’s car was in pursuit, but not often. Anderson got used to the sound and nobody seemed to pay much mind. When he closed his eyes he could see the distinct shift in the darkness. Some great thing, swaying, descending. It would not be stopped. The nameless terror rolled up and Anderson groped for the water glass of whiskey beside his bed.

  AT THE ROCKY MOUNT jail Tom C. Cundiff glowered in his cell, hunkered over his bunk, fingering his ears. Anderson brought him some tobacco and put a few questions to him. In the next cell a thin black man sat on the floor with his back to the bars, his woolly head flecked with dust and leaves and he seemed not to notice Anderson or care. Cundiff met his queries with grunts and the grind of his jaws working the tobacco quid. The only reaction Anderson could get was when Carter Lee’s name was introduced; Cundiff spat hard and glared at him, his small, close-set eyes burning.

  Man’s a goddamn crook and a liar, he said. You put that in your papers.

  Are you saying that he is guilty?

  Hell yeah, he’s guilty.

  Of what?

  More things than I can count. Puttin’ me in here for one. Takin’ granny fees.

  Bribes?

  Yep. He ran the whole scheme from day one. The whole county payin’ out to ’im.

  And you wouldn’t pay?

  Nope, never did, Cundiff said. Around here it’s Carter Lee’s way and if you don’t like it, you end up here, or worse.

  Or worse? What do you mean?

  Cundiff chuckled and shook his head.

  What do you think?

  Are you sayin’ Carter Lee is guilty of murder?

  He never done it himself, got others for that. But he pulls the strings.

  What about the Bondurant brothers, Anderson said, you work with those men?

  Cundiff’s face went wooden, the old gypsy stare.

  They also refuse to pay? Anderson asked.

  Cundiff hocked the whole quid of tobacco against the wall and stretched out on his back on the bunk.

  That why they were shot down at Maggodee Creek? Anderson asked.

  Cundiff appeared to settle in for a nap. Anderson lit a cigarette and loosened his collar.

  What’s the problem? Anderson asked.

  Cundiff closed his eyes again, relaxing on the cot.

  Is it the Bondurants? Are you afraid of them?

  Cundiff came off the cot like some kind of jungle cat, springing at the bars. Anderson was standing with his hands in his pockets, relaxing on his heels, and the move caught him completely unawares and his mind skipped a beat, his body a few moments behind the thoughts in his brain. Cundiff shot an arm through the bars; his stubby fingers jerked and clawed just a few inches from Anderson’s face, knocking the cigarette out of his mouth.

  You afraid, mister? Whadya think?

  Cundiff was grinning his gap-toothed smile. Anderson took an awkward step back, looking down the hall to the anteroom where the deputy sat, his feet up on a desk just visible through the half-open door. The black prisoner in the next cell was giving him a sympathetic look. Anderson shook another cigarette from his pack with deliberate slowness, trying to look Cundiff in the eye. He lit it and inhaled deeply.

  Something you want to tell me? Anderson said.

  Can’t think of anything directly, Cundiff said.

  Why is everyone afraid of talking about the Bondurants? Just tell me that.

  Tell you what, Cundiff said. Man got his head cut off with a razor. Left for dead, not a spoonful of blood left in ’im, you unnerstan’? And what if I told you this man got up, walked ten miles through a blizzard? What would you say to that?

  I’d say that was quite a story?

  Would you believe it?

  No. I’d say that was a fable. A lie.

  Well, then, Cundiff said, you got nothin’ to be scared of, do you?

  IN THE ANTEROOM the deputy said they were shipping Cundiff off to the county
asylum the next afternoon. He was to be committed, against his will, on the orders of the commonwealth’s attorney. Anderson took a seat on a bench; his knees felt loose and his mouth parched and he dimly wished for a glass of something strong.

  Whadya think, the deputy said, of old Tom C. Cundiff?

  He was grinning and Anderson knew that they thought Cundiff was insane and some kind of big joke.

  He mentioned, Anderson said, something about one of the Bondurant boys getting his throat cut?

  The deputy frowned and took his feet off the desk and examined his nails. There wasn’t much that was clear about that case, he told Anderson. The only witness the surviving victim, who was attacked from behind, and what little information he had, he refused to give. No statements to the police at all.

  Did they ever catch who did it? Anderson asked.

  Nope, the deputy said. You don’t catch men who do those sorts of things. At least the law don’t catch ’em.

  Anderson left the jail block to the echoing sound of Cundiff’s braying laughter.

  Crazy as a bat, I’ll tell you what! the deputy called after him.

  ANDERSON SPENT the next day in the file room of The Roanoke Times filing through reams of articles, searching for anything about names he had: Willie Carter Sharpe, Tom C. Cundiff, the Bondurant boys. The articles about Sharpe flourished through 1930–1931, then faded, then increased in the last few months. She had been caught before on May 12, 1931, in Rocky Mount, and spent three years in the federal prison in Alderson, Virginia. It was said she was seen piloting a convoy a week after she was out of jail. Now that the search was on, the public appetite was whetted for more exploits, and the papers rehashed the stories and speculated on her role in the conspiracy in Franklin County.