Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  William swished the corn liquor about in the jar and turned his eyes back to the boy at work in the field—but his mind did not return to anything so trivial as a farmhand’s money, or the minor irritations often caused by a headstrong and disobedient daughter. He now ran one of the largest and most profitable bootlegging operations in his part of the state. In the more than seven years since Prohibition had come into effect, the government’s efforts to stop the sale, transportation, and production of alcoholic beverages in the United States had taken his small liquor sideline and had turned it into big business. He was now clearing more money from the bootlegging than he did from cotton production or from any other of the legitimate businesses he operated in the County. Liquor was money these days—just ask the speakeasy operators, the owners of the low-class smoke joints, the bootleggers, the gangsters running the liquor business up North, the revenue agents, the Southern country sheriffs. Liquor was big business and big money, and William would have a share of that business, and of its profits—but William Whitley was no fool. Only a fool nowadays would be involved in the direct stilling of liquor, and in the transportation or the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States now in the 1920’s. The Volstead Act and the Prohibition laws made that dangerous, and the revenuers, though ill-funded and often inept, could make powerful enemies once they were on to a bootlegger—but William did not consider himself a bootlegger. He was a businessman involved in the liquor trade. He had men to do the stilling, men to run the liquor across the County line hidden beneath the false beds of trucks, men to handle the sale of the whiskey to the owners of the speakeasies and the smoke joints, or to other men who would only cut and re-bottle and bootleg the liquor on to someone else. In the past years, William’s eldest son, Bill, had taken on more and more of the business side of the operation, until now William was only rarely involved with the bootlegging at all—but even Bill was little involved in the direct operations of the liquor trade. There were other men to take that risk, men who were well paid for the chances they took, men like Franklin Bates, and the farmhand Gilbert Baskin.

  Tall, thick-necked, absolutely bald, with massive hands and massive arms and massive shoulders, Franklin Bates had killed at least one man in the past; William knew that, for Bates himself had told him that upon coming to the place years before. William had no idea where the man had come from, and only the barest idea as to why he had left there, but still he trusted Bates completely. The man had no family and no friends, no woman except for the hours in which he needed one, no conscience, and it seemed no regrets. He did his work and was paid well for it—he belonged to William, just as surely as did the massive house or the cotton fields or the liquor stills that made him only more money. Through the years Bates had served him well, keeping peace on Whitley land and in much of Endicott County, seeing to it no one crossed William, and seeing to it that those who did often lived to long regret their actions. Together with Gilbert Baskin, he had made the stilling operation one of the largest in that part of the state, one of the most profitable, and one of the busiest, as well as one of the most despised.

  Gilbert Baskin had not been on the Whitley place as long as had Franklin Bates or many other of the farmhands, but he had long since proven himself more valuable in many ways than men who had been on the place years longer. He had a liking for money and little conscience as to how he earned it, as well as a talent for getting any job done quickly and in the least-obtrusive way possible. William had started Baskin out years before hauling liquor across the County line for sale, but had soon moved him into other phases of the operation—purchasing supplies, sugar, jars, and sheets of copper in Buntain and even up in Columbus; taking corn or malt to the mill to have it ground for use in the mash; helping in the actual stilling and cutting of the liquor, and in the important preparation of the corn mash the whiskey was distilled from; as well as delivering the product out of the County to the seldom-spoken men who William did not trust, men who had made him only richer in past years.

  Baskin had been one of the few men ever allowed close to the whiskey-making itself, the old man handling the actual stilling having refused to allow but few men through the years close to his operations. Old Tate had been making corn liquor on Whitley land for as long as William could remember, and he was a cantankerous old fool William knew he had to humor whether he liked it or not. The man was of indeterminable age, and he was one of the best of the old moonshiners still left alive, having made whiskey through most of the years of his life. He had survived war with the Yankees and life with at least four wives that William knew of, as well as the fathering of a brood of twenty-three children, all grown, many dead now—Tate had little left of his life but the whiskey-making, and it was something he took pride in. He would allow no popskull to leave his stills so long as he lived, and he would allow no man close to the operations unless he could trust him to uphold the quality of the ’shine he had been making for so many years. He had at last grudgingly accepted Gilbert Baskin. He accepted few others.

  Baskin had proven himself valuable time and again through the years, especially in the searching out and elimination of the stilling operations of other moonshiners in the area, threatening many into halting production, reporting others to the sheriff or to revenue agents, as well as in cashing in on the customers then left without a source of supply. William knew that without Gilbert Baskin he would never have been in the position he was in now in the liquor trade; his operation would not have been so big or so lucrative—he might even have gone the way of the many bootleggers he had forced out of the business over the years. But it seemed now that Gilbert’s usefulness had come to an end. Gilbert Baskin had become a liability, and liabilities were something William knew were better done without. Something better gotten rid of.

  He had known it was coming for some time now; Baskin was just too fond of his liquor and his women, just too free with his money and his talk. William had known—but still that had not lessened the surprise he had felt when Sheriff Hill had come by the house that morning not long after J.C. Cooper had left, come by with what had amounted to a quiet and friendly warning. Baskin was spending money too freely, running his mouth too often, drinking too openly, and annoying good, decent girls from nice families throughout the County—people were starting to talk, to speculate, to wonder about things that should not be wondered about. Gilbert Baskin had too much money for a farmhand, and too free access to liquor for anyone—he had made himself a danger to the entire bootlegging operation, a danger to the Whitleys’ good name, and a danger to William himself.

  But Gilbert Baskin was a danger to no one anymore.

  As soon as the sheriff had left, William had called in the two people he trusted most, his eldest son, Bill, and Franklin Bates—Gilbert Baskin had been driven to the depot and put on a train bound for Montgomery, and told, rather convincingly William was certain, that if he were ever to show his face in Endicott County again, he would not live long enough to see the other side of the County line.

  Now that danger was passed. Gilbert Baskin had left the County, and the talk would soon die down—but that left another problem. There would have to be someone to take Baskin’s place, someone to go for supplies and run liquor and do the dirty jobs not fit for Bill or even for Franklin Bates to do. Bootlegging liquor was not the safest or most certain of professions, and the men on the front line were the ones who accepted all the risks—there were the revenuers and the other bootleggers, and the hard feeling from deals gone sour and deals long past; there were men William had forced out of the business, and men eager to grow in the business, and men who bought the liquor but who no man could trust. William could not risk his son or a man with the proven value of Franklin Bates—and, yet, running liquor took a certain kind of man, a man with little to lose, a man with a liking for money and with little conscience as to how he might earn it; and a man with the courage to do what he had to do, no matter what that might be, to get the job done.<
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  William took another drink of the corn liquor and wiped at his mouth with the back of one hand, his eyes never leaving the young man at work in the field—Janson Sanders could be that sort of man. Unlike Gilbert, Sanders had little to do with anyone else on the place other than Mattie Ruth and Titus Coates, and, on occasion, to William’s dislike, William’s own son, Stan. He stayed on Whitley land and went into town only rarely; he had few, if any, friends, and no woman it seemed he might go talking too much to in a moment of passion. If the boy drank, it was not so anyone would notice, and he seemed to run his mouth very little—and, best of all, he had exhibited a liking for money, and a willingness to do whatever it took to earn it, and yet still did not spend it too freely or too openly. The boy was strong, and he seemed to be smart enough—but it did not take brains to drive a truck load of bootleg whiskey across the County line, or to know when to keep his mouth shut. The boy could very well prove himself as capable as Gilbert had been in driving a truck and in hauling ’shine out for sale, and even in other things he might be called on to do in the future. Right now all William needed was someone to bring supplies in and to handle runs of corn liquor over the County line to the speakeasies and the smoke joints and the bootleg distributors William rarely dealt with personally. Janson Sanders very well could be that man—but, first, William had to be certain. Too much was riding on the choice: William’s reputation, his good name, the profits from the stilling, the safety of the entire whiskey-making operation. The boy would have to be tested, proven. If he could prove himself, all well and good. If not—

  If not, Janson Sanders would regret the day he had ever come to Endicott County. He would regret that day for a very long time indeed.

  The quiet of late afternoon settled in over Whitley land hours later that day, bringing with it a slight chill in the air of winter trying to hold on into the new spring of late April. The smell of wood smoke filled the air, and the odors of cooking and good food from the nearby kitchen as Janson unloaded firewood near the Whitley’s back veranda, stacking it into high, symmetrical piles to dry at easy access from the wide steps, or from the covered walkway that led to the separate kitchen standing at a distance from the rear of the house.

  Stan Whitley sat nearby on the wide board steps that led up to the center of the walkway, talking, as it seemed to Janson he had been doing for hours. The boy had come out to where he had been cutting firewood earlier in the afternoon in the heavily-wooded area bordering the Whitley cotton fields, and had ridden back to the big house on the wagon seat beside him, talking, it seemed, almost without stop—but it was a familiar sound, the boy’s voice droning on, changing in pitch and timbre, his hands moving as he talked, the late-afternoon sun glinting off the round lenses of his eyeglasses as he moved and spoke and then sat down again.

  Janson halfheartedly listened to him as he worked, fond of him in a big-brotherly sort of way that he had never felt toward anyone before in all his life, though he could still never quite forget the boy was a Whitley. He still did not know how they had ever become friends in the first place, for he was five years Stan’s senior in age, and many years his junior in book learning and education—but they were friends, friends as Janson had known but few times in his life. It seemed almost as if the boy looked up to him, almost as if he saw no difference between them, though Stan wore fancy clothes and expensive shoes and shirts that would have cost Janson several weeks worth of wages. Stan often came out to the old lean-to room off the barn where Janson lived in the hours after supper was finished at the big house, where they would sit and talk for hours until the boy would have to go home to do schoolwork or to go to bed; or Janson would teach him to carve or to make baskets from white oak splits, and Stan would tell him stories about places and things that Janson would never even dream to see. Usually he enjoyed the boy’s company, enjoyed the way he could use words to make them say more than the words themselves were—but today he was distracted, his mind on things other than conversation as he unloaded the wagonload of firewood that Mrs. Whitley had already paid him cash money to cut and to bring to the house.

  Janson got an armload of wood from the back of the wagon and jumped down into the newly greening grass that grew there in the yard, grass that was so carefully tended and looked after, and that Mrs. Whitley had already paid him twice to cut with the wooden-handled push mower that was kept in the storage shed out behind the kitchen. He carried the wood toward the stack he had already begun near the covered walkway, hearing Stan continue on, as he had been doing for much of the past hour, about the sister who had been sent off to school up in Atlanta in hopes that it might somehow turn her into more of a lady. He already knew from Stan that the girl was now being sent home in disgrace, having been caught cheating on some kind of test up at that fancy school—rich folks, Janson thought, still only half paying attention to what the boy was saying. Elise Whitley had all the money in the world; she would never have to work even one day in all her life, or worry about where the next day’s bed or meal was coming from. She could have anything in the world she wanted—all she had to do was go to school and try to learn to act like a lady. But she had been caught cheating on a test instead, when her only work in life was book learning and looking pretty and getting an education that most other people would be grateful for—rich folks, Janson thought again, growing irritated at the idea of someone who so easily had so much, but who appreciated it so very little.

  But the girl was a Whitley, he reminded himself, and he could expect nothing less from a Whitley. None of them seemed grateful for the life they had, though they each of them had the world. Stan was the only one of the lot he could even abide, except for Mrs. Whitley, of course, who he reasoned was not really a Whitley anyway, for she had only married into the family. She often gave him extra work to do when he was free of the farm chores that earned his wages and took up most of his time, paying him in cash money for cutting firewood or mowing the lawn, weeding spring flower beds or painting a fence, or doing whatever else she might find that wanted doing. She seemed a fine lady, gentle spoken, with usually some bit of fancy needlework or prissy sewing in her hands—and she paid in cash, which was rare among the farm folk who usually hired him. Janson could little abide her husband, and he often found himself wondering how someone like William Whitley had managed to marry so fine a lady as Mrs. Whitley—but it was the Whitleys’ oldest son that he liked even less.

  Bill Whitley plainly rubbed Janson the wrong way, and it was clear Janson had the same effect on him, for the two had almost come to blows several times already in the months he had been on the place. The man liked power, and he also liked to abuse that power—there was something not quite right about Bill Whitley; what that was, Janson could not put a finger on, but he despised the man, and knew without question that the feeling was more than mutually shared. There seemed to be very little of Mrs. Whitley in her eldest son, and a great deal of his father—but there was something more, and it was that something that made Janson wary of the man, cautious, more cautious than he was even with Whitley himself.

  Whitley’s second son, Alfred, was little like either of his parents, or even his older brother. He was very near to Janson’s age, but, to Janson, Alfred Whitley seemed so much younger, often even younger than did Stan. He was a slick-hair, fascinated with the gangster news on the radio, blaring loud jazz music through the open front parlor windows in the rare times when he was at home. He drove his motor car too fast, and dressed purposefully like a fop, in his blue serge suits and wide trousers, with a gold watch chain always hanging out of his vest pocket, and his hair slicked back and shining with Glostora—he had even come home drunk, so Stan had said, on several occasions, to his mother’s utter horror and his father’s absolute disapproval. Janson knew that Alfred Whitley played at being a man, trying very hard to act as he thought a man should act, dress as he thought a man should dress, behave as he believed a modern man should behave, without ever having taken the time t
o really understand what that behavior should be. He often made a loud and deliberate show of temper and rebellion, and seemed always into one scrape or another, always hiding from some girl’s father or angry older brother. Alfred was a boy, spoiled, self-willed, with everything he had wanted all his life, and, though Janson had not met or even seen Elise Whitley as of yet, he knew she had to be very much the same as her brother Alfred. The things he had already heard about her left little doubt—and Janson did not like spoiled children, even pretty ones, as he had heard Elise Whitley to be.

  He started back to the wagon for another armload of wood, still paying little attention to what Stan was saying—there were many more important things on his mind than the troubles a spoiled rich girl could manage to get herself into. There was the wood to finish unloading, and a quick supper to cook and eat before he went on to other work that had to be done this evening—work that was now causing a growing uneasiness within him.

  William Whitley had approached him earlier in the day just as he and the other hands at work in the fields had taken their dinner breaks for the sandwiches of cold pork sausage or pressed meat, or biscuits and ham, or cold fried chicken they had brought with them earlier to the fields to eat. Janson had just sat down to himself beneath a tree at the edge of the field he had been plowing, uncovering the dinner bucket he had left there earlier in the day, and opening the lid on the pint jar of buttermilk he had left in the shade to remain cool through the morning, when Whitley had walked up, a big cigar in his mouth, and had stood staring down at him.