The Wettest County in the World

by Matt Bondurant

  Then Anderson came across an article from December of 1928 concerning the assault at the County Line. Attacked by unknown individuals at closing…a serious neck wound…Forrest Bondurant, who is expected to survive his injuries, made it to the Rocky Mount Hospital under his own power…no leads at this time. Maybe he could come at this from another side.

  Anderson got directions to the County Line Restaurant and headed out after supper. As he piloted his car through the rolling hills of Franklin County he felt the old indignation rising up like sap in his chest. The crumbling barns, muddy yards of children, decaying fences, and battered houses. At the filling stations glassy-eyed men sat on warped porches. He knew that inside, a few older farmers held their cracked palms toward the cold, empty stove, the woman behind the counter, her jaw set in a hard line.

  The lot was nearly empty, the building dark, and Anderson was afraid it was already closed. A convenient location, Anderson thought, sitting astride the county line, easy access out of the jurisdiction of pursuing deputies. Just like the Blackwater station. He sat in his car for a few minutes. I can put that Sharpe story away in my sleep, Anderson thought, so I might as well pursue what seems to have the most potential.

  Man got his head cut off with a razor.

  His hands on the steering wheel tingled and he felt the draft down his spine. What are you doing, man? Work fast.

  A black man stepped out the door carrying two bags of trash in his hands, a white apron around his midsection, a cigarette hanging on his lip. He tossed the trash into a burn barrel at the edge of the lot and splashed some kerosene on top. Jefferson Deshazo stood with his hands on his hips, staring into the barrel, then flipped his cigarette in. When the flames rose he turned and fixed Anderson with a deliberate stare. Anderson got out of the car and Jefferson turned to watch the golden flames licking the rim of the barrel.

  Anderson introduced himself to the man who worked the counter. Hal Childress still kept his thin hair combed over his round pate, but in the intervening years he had aged, tottered over some kind of zenith of his life. When Anderson brought up that night Hal rolled out the tale he had repeated many nights to various men. It was a story he never seemed to tire of telling, and he went into it for Anderson with great relish. Throughout Anderson nodded in what he figured was a polite manner and pieced together the images in his mind. It was quite a story, he thought, but he wasn’t sure if he believed it.

  So, Anderson said, most folks think he walked all the way to Rocky Mount?

  Yep.

  When did Maggie leave?

  Don’t know. Sometime before.

  After some prodding Hal told Anderson that he had known Maggie since she was a kid in Henry County. She was a teenager when she was shipped off to Carolina to work in the textile mills. A few years later her father got drunk and hitched up his plow team on a rainy night and when the team slipped into a deep hollow the back-band strap hooked around his legs and he was dragged down into the gully with the kicking mules. They found him in the morning, tangled in the harness, crushed under his broken and dying animals. Maggie needed work to pay the note on her father’s house, and Hal fixed her up at the County Line. Forrest came along later and bought the restaurant and just kept them all on.

  That’s a tough-luck story, Anderson said.

  None too tough around here, Hal said.

  Hal frowned and scrubbed an errant spot on the counter with a towel.

  She’s a special girl, Maggie.

  Hal worked the spot with the towel, working in circular patterns. Anderson waited for him to continue but the man just kept scrubbing.

  How’s that?

  Hal sighed and turned away, slinging the towel over his shoulder.

  Well, let’s just say she was a good woman and nice to work with.

  You see her around?

  Ain’t seen her in years, Hal said.

  Hal kept his back to Anderson and wiped his face with his shirtsleeve. This man is affected, Anderson thought. Well, I’ll be.

  If you ain’t buying, mister, Hal said, then I got work to do.

  AT THE BLACKWATER STATION the next day Anderson ordered a cheese sandwich from Maggie and sat at the counter as she fried up some bread. She wore a shimmering violet dress, tailored at the waist, pearl buttons down the back. The place was empty save for Everett Dillon out front working the pumps, disappearing around the side of the building and reappearing whenever someone drove up. Anderson pulled on his orange soda and watched the window. The white light of midday was barely cut by the thin curtains and the room was warm. Footsteps creaked across the ceiling. Someone else is here, Anderson thought. He rolled up his sleeves and smoked a cigarette as his sandwich bubbled, Maggie absentmindedly patting it with a spatula.

  How’s business?

  Maggie flipped his sandwich onto a blue plate, dug into a pot of stewed greens with a spoon, dropped a hunk next to the sandwich, and slid the plate in front of him. He bit into his sandwich. It was hot and the cheese buttery and crisp.

  Maggie stepped off to the side and leaned on the grill. Anderson noticed that she had a towel draped so it wouldn’t stain her dress. She lit a cigarette and eyed the window.

  Is Forrest around? he asked.

  Nope.

  Coming back anytime soon?

  Couldn’t tell you.

  Anderson polished off the sandwich in four bites.

  You ever talk to Hal, Anderson said, over there at the County Line?

  She turned and eyed him coolly, smoke billowing from her nostrils. That got her attention, Anderson thought.

  I was just over there yesterday, Anderson said. Mentioned you used to work there.

  She cocked her head at him, a slight line of concern in her brow. He found himself immediately confessing.

  I want to know about that night, he said, what happened there. When Forrest was cut.

  Why?

  Because I’m a writer, he said.

  Newspaper?

  Yes and no. I write books. Look, I’m just interested in what happened.

  Maggie stubbed out her cigarette. The footsteps upstairs seemed to be pacing back and forth, covering the width of the room in an even pattern.

  What kind of car do you drive? Maggie asked.

  What?

  She nodded toward the window.

  What kind of car. Do you drive.

  I got a ’33 Dodge.

  She shrugged and folded her arms.

  What? he said. What does that have to do with it?

  I like to drive, Maggie said. I like to drive nice cars. I thought maybe you had a car I wanted to drive.

  If I did, you would tell me about that night at the County Line?

  Maybe.

  Are you serious?

  She looked at him with such a condescending look that Anderson felt humiliated. He stood up, his stool scraping and falling to the floor.

  Say, what’s the deal here? he demanded.

  The footsteps overhead suddenly stopped. They all stood quietly for a few moments. Anderson reached for his hat. As he dropped a dollar on the counter Maggie smirked and turned away in a swirl of violet and lace.

  He found himself standing out in the lot by the petrol pumps, holding his empty pop bottle, his hand on the car door. The heat was intense and his car hot to the touch.

  What am I doing? He’s there.

  Anderson heard a low sound, an undercurrent of something happening down in the hollow next to the station, a tumbled mess of creeper vine and strangled oaks, some kind of dull reverberations coming from the deep gully. He left his empty pop bottle on the hood of the car and walked over and stepped down into the hollow. After his eyes adjusted to the shade he saw that the hollow was half full of discarded five-gallon cans, piles of them, hundreds, thousands perhaps, warping and thumping in the heat.

  THE NEXT EVENING at Sunday supper Sherwood Anderson stood tensely in the yard, hat in his hand, watching his fellow boarders gathering on the back porch for a before-meal smoke. Through
the windows Anderson could see the matron piling the sideboard with large cuts of pork shoulder and heaps of hot corn. She moved rapidly, drawing in and out of the lighted window, returning with steaming platters and then leaving again without an upward glance. The black maid placed a ceramic pitcher of milk on the table, wiping her hands on her starched apron, pausing in the lit frame to admire the set table. The men on the porch smoking and stretching, salesmen with yellowed collars, hard-sided cases of samples. They were ready to talk well enough. He clenched his fists as he thought of these rocking, yawning fools, buffing the toes of their shoes with a jacket cuff, joking with the matron and quietly cursing the country yokels who ignored their goods of sale. The ambassadors of the new America, the captains of capitalism. Peddling their cheaply manufactured wares while the craftsman stands alone in his garret, up to his knees in wood chips and no understudy, all the young men moving out of the towns and into the urban meat grinder. The love of the trade, the value of the craft: all going, all gone.

  It was a fine summer night, almost cool, the clouds blue-black, rolling from the east. Death in the Woods, the dogs feeding on the body of the old woman. The animal hunger of man; this is something D. H. Lawrence knew well and captured artfully and without mercy. Dreiser, the master. At what cost are our ordinary, everlasting animal hungers fed?

  In his room Anderson sat on the edge of the bed, eyeing his desk and the stack of notes there. He finished his drink and lay back, suddenly bone-tired.

  Something loomed far above him, a sense of great weight, and he quickly opened his eyes. He put his hands to his face and felt his lined cheeks, the sagging jowl of his neck. There was a time I cut quite the figure, he thought. When he closed his eyes it came again, this shape looming above him; it’s dark mass like the end of light.

  Chapter 27

  1930

  FORREST WATCHED his younger brother step out of the white farmhouse. As he walked toward the car Jack pulled on a wool cap, yanking the brim low, his soft leather boots laced high, the brass eyelets buffed. Forrest turned from his brother and stared out over the fields pocked with brittle clover and cut cornstalks. In the valleys a sodden affair; the plants dried out by drought now lay floating in puddles of muddy ice.

  Forrest’s legs were jackknifed in the wheel well, his knees cradling the steering wheel. In the afternoon light the ragged white scar across his neck glowed. Jack climbed in the car, moving aside a heavy revolver wrapped in an oil-stained cloth and a paper sack of canned beans, salt pork wrapped in wax paper, a hunk of baloney, a few large onions, potatoes, and two loaves of bread. Forrest gunned the engine and the car lurched down the drive.

  TIGHT IN A NOTCH on the western ridge of Turkeycock Mountain a thin wisp of smoke rose through the still-dense tree cover. Above the ridge a stream ran fast down a series of exposed granite steps and into a small pool. The clear water was channeled through copper pipes down a small rise through a dense patch of trees into a small clearing bordered with heavy bramble and thick rolls of blackberry and pokeweed bushes, draining into the tops of oak barrels sitting on foundations of stacked brick.

  Howard stood watching the water filling the condenser barrel. He stuck a couple thick fingers into the water and lightly tapped the coiled loop of copper tubing that spiraled into the darkness at the bottom of the barrel. The trees shook in the cold breeze that came down the mountain and Howard swayed with the wind, the soles of his muddy boots leaving the ground just slightly at the toes. A short silo-shaped cap daubed with a crust of baked mud sat on a squat blackened whiskey still, a contraption of ancient vintage, the ground around it blasted with soot and ash like some half-emerged knob of the earth’s burning core. The still bore the distinct V-shaped notches of revenuer ax blows, patched over several times. Behind the still a dozen mash boxes stood in two rows, half of them containing a roiling mixture of corn mash, rye, and malt. Piles of firewood, spare boards, shovels, grain bags, sugar bags, and empty cans littered the ground with patches of snow clumped in muddy waddles.

  A man’s voice sang out in the distance and Howard stopped tapping the worm with his finger. He stepped lightly over to a wheelbarrow covered with burlap and retrieved an over-under shotgun and broke it open to check the load. A faint chilling mist from the waterfall drifted through the camp. Howard saw two men coming across the side of the mountain from the east, along a faint path that wound along the cliff face. Howard’s large features slid into a grin and he stood up and walked across the hill toward his brothers.

  EARLIER THAT AFTERNOON Forrest stood in a tobacco barn in Snow Creek and handed Henry Abshire a small packet of bills. Abshire looked exhausted, his face worn and eyes heavy.

  I’ll do what I can, Abshire said.

  I’m not paying for try.

  Hell, Forrest, Abshire said. You owe us back pay…if people found out I was even here with you? Well, it just ain’t that easy. You know they gunnin’ for you now.

  Don’t give a damn, Forrest said. Just doin’ same as always.

  Well, then why you comin’ to me now?

  This is different, Forrest said. This ain’t for me.

  Forrest patted Abshire’s shirt pocket where he tucked the money.

  You just take care of your end and we’ll handle the rest.

  I can’t promise you anything, Abshire said.

  I can promise you, Forrest said, if anyone tries to stop us, somebody will be hurt.

  JACK FOLLOWED the finger of car lights coming along the switchbacks of Chestnut Mountain across the valley. Howard squatted on his haunches, poking the fire with a branch. Forrest stood with his arms folded over his chest, his chin low.

  You think, Jack asked him, that Cricket really drowned like they say?

  Nope.

  Then you think Rakes and his crew did it?

  Forrest shook his head.

  Think the man died by his own hand.

  But why?

  Maybe he was afraid.

  Jack thought of his friend, his nervous smile, the crouching figure in the corner, his brutal loyalty.

  Just can’t understand, Jack said, why he would go and do somethin’ like that.

  Guessin’ he had a reason, Forrest said.

  A breeze shifted low to the ground, the brambles and chokecherry bushes rustling, the cool air swirling around his ankles.

  We got no way of understandin’ this world, Forrest said. We got about as much sense of it as that bird there.

  He pointed up at a grackle in the spindled canopy. Forrest regarded the bird, his scar turning pink in the fading light.

  There’s a lot that there bird don’t know, Forrest said. But it don’t change the fact that the world is happening to ’im all the same.

  Jack shivered; his feet were cold. Goddamn brand-new boots, he thought.

  Hell, Howard said, the only difference between Cricket and the rest of us is that he had the guts to do it. We’re just takin’ the long way round.

  After a moment Forrest walked a few yards alongside the diverted stream, looking closely into the water. He fished a length of rope out of the water and following it upstream pulled up a half-gallon jar of clear liquid. Forrest poured the three of them a measure in some tin cups. Jack’s hand shook as he held his cup, and he cursed quietly and spat on the gnarled roots of a maple that bowed out over the hillside.

  Weather stackin’ up, Forrest said. We gotta run it through the night.

  The night stilled and they each stood next to a tree, placing one hand on the bark and lifted the cups of white lightning to their lips. It was well known you wouldn’t ever want to drink straight doubled and twisted corn whiskey without having a hand on something sturdy unless you happened to be standing in the middle of a flat, empty field, in which case you’d better sit down.

  For a moment the three men felt like the mountain was shrinking under their feet. To Jack it seemed the deep intake of breath from the mountain, filling its cavernous lungs buried deep under miles of limestone and basaltic rock, the dripping caves
and endless chambers of shimmering ice, fire, and movement, like he had seen in his dreams. Howard turned his head aside and sneezed three times.

  Pure corn whiskey comes at you like a knifing, Cricket Pate had told Jack once: point first, sharp and hot all the way down. This wasn’t rotgut, the heavily sugared brew that mountain stillers produced for delivery to the bootlegger who would disperse it to the unsuspecting. A shiner’s private stock was made from the purest ingredients, the finest alcohol you could make, its taste and resulting effect unlike anything else in the world. A few ounces and even the hardest backwoods drinker, men who drank a pint or more a day for forty years, even giant men like Howard, felt it deep in their bones, as if something sucked the marrow out and blew in white fire. You opened your eyes again and the angles sharpened on things, the trees and sunlight coming together, the thunderheads to the north rolling with impotent fury; a man curled his hand and felt the steely power in his fingers, the dynamic strength in his legs, the hills shrinking before him, and he was filled with what can only be described as the infinitely possible.

  The three men stood, waiting for the mountain’s gentle exhalation that would drive the wind down the valley and through the night. Jack raised his cup and opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

  Chapter 28

  DECEMBER 19, 1930

  THE SNOW LET UP sometime after dawn and the brothers set out from the base of Turkeycock Mountain in a convoy of four cars. They had Jack’s Dodge roadster, his ’28 Ford, Forrest’s Business Coupe, plus another Chevrolet coach that Forrest had purchased the day before, each car packed tight with between fifty and seventy gallons of white lightning. Howard would drive the ’28 Ford and Everett Dillon the Chevrolet, and they would hit the hard road 33 quickly and blast through Rocky Mount and over Grassy Hill and cross at Maggodee Creek. Most intersections and habitual routes were being watched, and they figured they would take their chances on speed rather than stealth. Floyd Carter and his Midnight Coal Company would pick up the load in a barn outside Roanoke.