The Rock Hole

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  A fox squirrel overhead decided it didn’t like the two strangers moving through the woods. The sudden ruckus caused by its scolding gave them away, and Ned couldn’t wait any longer. When the moonshiners looked up at the sound, Ned drew his revolver and stepped to the clearing’s edge, partially protected by a large tree trunk.

  “Throw up your hands, boys!”

  The younger man reacted with surprising speed. He dropped an armload of wood and bolted toward the woods. A massive arm shot out from the shadows and clotheslined him, only yards from a successful escape. His feet rose head-high and he hit the ground with a solid thump, lying there without moving.

  Big John stepped into the firelight and pointed his shotgun at the heavyset man on the crate. “You wanna run too?”

  “Naw, and I’m proud I didn’t. Ned hollered to set still, so I did.” He casually leaned over to place the lantern on the ground and rested his hands on his knees.

  “Keep ’em where I can see them, Tommy.” Ned recognized the experienced bootlegger. Without marketable skills, Tommy spent most of his life in and out of trouble with the law.

  After satisfying himself that everything was under control, John knelt to handcuff Tommy. Ned holstered his pistol and cuffed Tommy’s hands behind his back. “Ain’t that Doak’s boy laying there?”

  Tommy shifted a chew from one cheek to the other. “Yep.”

  “Well, they favor. He should have sense enough not to run.”

  “Doak always told us to run if y’all showed up, but I knew better. I figured you’d shoot.”

  “Might have, but he was too close to John there. Y’all are under arrest.”

  “I figgered. It’s a shame, too. We got this still working good.”

  “Smells like it.” Ned walked around the area, making sure no one else was hiding nearby. He kicked a scattering of wood chips and nudged a crate of whiskey with the toe of his shoe.

  In the distance, a siren grew in volume.

  Disgusted, Ned picked up his ax from where he’d leaned it against the tree and raked the fire out from under the boiler. “Glad we got in here when we did. Those idiots would have warned y’all in another minute. When he gets here I oughta beat the whey out of him for running a siren on a dirt road. John, we’ll let Griffin’s hotshot load up all this whiskey, if he don’t get lost on the way.”

  John finished securing the still groggy youngster and joined Ned, handing him a razor sharp skinning knife. “He had this stuck in his belt.”

  “Y’all been poaching deer too?” The hilt was dark with what Ned knew from experience was blood.

  Tommy shrugged disconsolately. “Camp meat. The boy there likes to trap, too, down there near the creek. He makes a little extra money from possum and coon hides. We ain’t been hungry here, but I reckon we’ll have to get used to fried baloney now.”

  A tingle began along Ned’s back. “Well, you won’t get anything else because you’ve fallen in with bad company. You need to find another partner. Doak ain’t nothing but trouble.”

  John found an empty bucket and filled it from a fifty-five-gallon barrel of water. When he drowned the scattered fire, smoke and steam filled the clearing, stinging their eyes. They kicked dirt over the blackened wood until it was completely out.

  “This is the part I like.” Ned hefted the ax and smiled at the boiler. Tommy watched them glumly.

  As he chopped large holes in the metal to let the steaming contents spill onto the ground, Ned couldn’t help but wonder if he’d stumbled onto the individual responsible for the long string of animal mutilations in the area.

  Chapter Four

  The streets of Chisum, Texas, bustled with Saturday business.

  With his ten-year-old grandson, Top, settled on the front row of the Grand Theater with an R.C. cola and popcorn, Constable Parker stepped from the darkness of the movie house into the bright sunshine. Beside the ticket booth, he adjusted the Colt 32.20 pistol in the worn hand-tooled leather holster on his belt. Some days he carried the heavier Colt .38, but the smaller caliber usually felt a little dressier when he went to town.

  When he could see without squinting, Ned ambled down the hot street and around the corner. Sweat bloomed under the arms of his blue dress shirt, and the black slacks absorbed the sidewalk’s heat.

  The streets of Chisum bustled with Saturday business. In direct contrast, a familiar covey of loafers visited in the shade of crepe myrtles hanging heavy with blooms in the light summer breeze, not far from the statue of a confederate soldier peering south.

  “Hello, men.”

  “Hidy, Ned.”

  “Hello, Willie, how’s your mama ’n ’em?”

  “They’re fine. Come by and see her when you get the chance. It’d tickle her to hug your neck.”

  “I will. I could use a few of her teacakes.”

  He climbed the flight of steep granite steps leading up to the brass-trimmed glass doors. Townspeople on official business passed Ned, recognizing the familiar constable elected more than two generations before, only six years after Bonnie and Clyde passed through town on their way to soak up several ounces of lead near Shreveport.

  His footfalls echoed against the foyer’s tiny black and white tiles. Deciding not to take the granite stairs worn by generations of feet, he stepped aboard the creaky elevator and waited for Jules to take them to the third floor.

  Jules had served as the elevator man since before anyone could remember. Proud of his job, he arrived at work every day in a freshly laundered, paper-thin white shirt and a threadbare suit coat so worn that it shined.

  “Afternoon, Mister Ned.” The elderly black man attempted to rise from the tall wooden stool Ned gave him years earlier when he noticed the old man spent the entire day standing in the elevator’s corner. It pained Ned to see a man of such advanced age resting against the wall.

  By his own estimation, Jules was some years past his hundredth birthday. He once told Ned that his mama was born a slave on a plantation in southern Mississippi and he’d hit the ground about the time the Civil War began.

  “Howdy Jules. Keep your seat. How’s Lily?”

  “Tolerable well.” Jules looked up from the floor and nodded his gray head. He didn’t often make eye contact with the white folks, but he felt comfortable with Ned. “She’s home cookin’ sweet tater pie ’cause it’s her birthday.” He closed the sliding door by hand and then slid the accordion safety door into place before pushing the button. The elevator groaned and jerked upward, cables rattling overhead.

  “Tell her happy birthday. She must be treating you right. You look good.”

  “Yessir. She’s a good ’un. I don’t know why she took up with me, but I’m right proud she did.”

  Jules had outlived several wives of lesser constitution. He was particularly proud of his new wife because she knew how to cook a proper sweet potato pie.

  “How many wives does this make for you now?”

  “Eleven, I ’spect.” Jules laughed and shook his head. “Hope nothin’ happens to this ’un, ’cause I don’t want to go to Glory with a dozen women awaitin’ on me up there. Heaven oughta give a man some peace and quiet, if he’s earned it.”

  They chuckled at the thought of a dozen wives to keep a man company. Jules kept his eyes on the lights and when they reached the fourth floor, he opened the metal safety gate, and then the door. He held out a hand to stop Ned for a moment while he carefully adjusted the elevator by hand to even it with the floor.

  “Step off now, Mr. Ned. I’ll be waitin’ on you.”

  “See you in a minute.”

  “Tell Mr. O.C. hidy for me.” There was no other reason for Ned to visit the fourth floor on a day when they weren’t having court.

  “I will.”

  Judge O.C. Rains glowered through brushy white eyebrows when Ned walked into the stifling office without knocking. Despite his rolled up shirtsleeves and loosened tie, O.C. sweated profusely in the sweltering office, trying to catch up on the mountain of ever-growing
paperwork.

  The windows in his office gaped wide to capture even the smallest breeze. The ceiling fan’s weak assistance did little to move the air.

  Instead of the heat, it was the flies that were driving O.C. crazy. In an effort to save taxpayer monies, the city council refused to pay for screens on the public building, and flies buzzed in and out without impediment. O.C. kept a flyswatter close at hand and killed over a dozen that lit on his paperwork that morning.

  Ned closed the office’s frosted glass door with a bang, rattling the large pane of frosted glass.

  “Just feel free to walk right in, Ned. There ain’t no need to knock or anything.” O.C. slapped his wire swatter at a particularly annoying bluebottle fly.

  Ned didn’t bother to answer. He threw his hat on the wooden desk and reached up to click on the dented metal outlet fan sitting atop O.C.’s filing cabinet.

  “That won’t do more than blow hot air. I’d have already turned it on myself if I thought it’d do any good.”

  Ned sat in the only chair not stacked full of law books or papers. He didn’t pay any attention to the walls covered with diplomas and photographs of O.C. with several famous politicians, generals, and presidents.

  “I’m glad you’re here, though. A good constable oughta make a fair hand at using a flyswatter. You can help me kill some of these flies. They’re worrying the piss out of me today.”

  “I didn’t come here to kill flies, but it looks like you’re doing a pretty fair job without my help.” Ned nearly smiled at the scattering of insect corpses on the polished oak floor. “I’m here because I’ve got a crow to pick with you.”

  O.C. sighed and pitched the flyswatter onto the stacks of papers on his desk. He’d been dreading Ned’s visit all week. The wooden chair groaned when he leaned backward. “All right. Go to pickin’.”

  “How come you piddled around and let Doak Looney out of jail? I had him dead to rights with whiskey in the trunk of his car.”

  “I turned him loose because I didn’t have enough evidence to hold him for making whiskey. You know as well as I do one little ol’ gallon don’t make him guilty of running a still.”

  “I know he was guilty of carryin’ white lighting. The still was his and we both know it. The sorry son-of-a-bitch was heading into Oklahoma with it when I pulled him over. Only trouble was most of it got broke.”

  “He wasn’t at the still. He was in the ditch. You don’t have any proof that he’s making whiskey in your precinct, and by law I can’t hold him in jail for just having one gallon of the stuff in his car. If that was the case you’d have to arrest half the county and a right smart number of my own lawmen. Hell, Hank Willis most likely smells like whiskey right now, and he’s one of my best deputies. You get Doak with a whole load in his trunk next time, or find the still with him standing there puttin’ fire under it, and I’ll put him in the pen. But until then I can’t keep the man.”

  “Then you oughta shoot two or three of those sorry deputies of yours and get me some decent help so I can catch the son of a bitch.”

  “Yep, I ought to, but shells ain’t cheap.”

  “Well, I tell you what, the next time I pull Doak Looney over to check him out you can bet his trunk will be packed tight.”

  “It better be packed with his own whiskey.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying he’d better be guilty on his own.”

  Ned felt his neck redden. “Goddammit, O.C., the man’s been making whiskey every day since he was in grade school! He’s even teaching his boy to run shine. I know for sure he hauled a load across the river to Hugo last month because he stopped back by the Ranchhouse and got cut up some by Frank Lightfoot boys. He wasn’t healed good when we brought him to jail.”

  The population of Hugo in southeastern Oklahoma leaned heavily toward Indians, mostly Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee; remnant scraps of the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Nations. Frank Lightfoot had been in trouble with the law since he was big enough to walk. Both Ned and O.C. agreed that Lightfoot needed killing, but unfortunately, it hadn’t happened yet.

  O.C. picked up the swatter and slapped at a fly a little harder than necessary. He and Ned had been having the same arguments for the past twenty years. It was their way to clear the air. “They shoulda cut his damn throat, but it don’t make any difference. When Doak needed a lawyer he called Cal Philips over here with a pocket full of money. I had to let him go, and that’s it.”

  “Cal Philips is as crooked as Doak.”

  “You’re right, and it galls me to know Doak is back out free and clear, but I had to set a low bond. Any judge can charge Doak Looney with possession of moonshine, but there’s no way in the world we could convict him of running a still or transporting whiskey with intent to sell unless he’s caught red-handed with a whole trunk load and not one…single…gallon.”

  “He’s selling whiskey to Sugar Bear across the tracks.” Ned habitually rubbed his bald head. “Then he’s turning around and selling it in that raggedy-ass juke joint not far from Frog Flats. We both know it. John Washington told me he suspicioned what they were doing, and we’re probably going over there tomorrow night to see.”

  “You hear what I say.” O.C. waved the flyswatter at Ned to emphasize his point.

  “I heard you.”

  They scowled at each other for a while and Ned watched a fly light on O.C.’s thinning white hair. It made him feel better. They sat in silence for a good five minutes.

  “I can’t stand Doak Looney.” Ned picked up his hat to leave.

  “Me, neither.”

  “And that slack-jawed idiot keeps cranking out the kids.”

  Silence again. O.C. interlocked his fingers over his stomach and rocked back and forth in his creaking chair, staring at the ceiling.

  “I have something else to talk to you about.” Ned glanced at the door to see if it was shut.

  “What?”

  “Isaac Reader found Cody’s bird dog in his corn field. It was tortured and might-near skint. I’m worrying myself to death over it.”

  “No reason to worry over a dog.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t be a dog or a cat or a possum next time.”

  O.C. raised his eyebrows in question.

  “You remember a couple of years ago somebody was shooting folks’ dogs and barn cats when they caught them away from home. Then there were a couple of weeks when I got calls on somebody shooting cows and horses in their pastures.”

  “Now I remember. But they quit after a while, even though you didn’t catch whoever was doing it.”

  “Right. I thought we were done with it, and I reckon we were through for a while. Now I believe he’s back.” Ned pulled a crumpled envelope out of his coat pocket and passed it over to O.C. The faint odor of decay still lingered on the newspaper advertisement. “Take a look at this.”

  With two fingers, O.C. pulled the newspaper clipping out of the envelope and spread it on the scarred desk in front of him. He waved at half a dozen flies that were immediately attracted to the odor. “You don’t think he’ll go to killing people now, do you?”

  “I don’t think anything yet, except this is cranking up a notch. He’s liable to do anything.”

  “And you don’t have any idy who it is?”

  “Naw. Not much to go on except footprints, clippings and dead animals.”

  Law work in Lamar County usually amounted to whiskey stills, minor theft, drunks and family disputes, with an occasional act of amorous rage thrown in for good measure with some husband, wife or boyfriend getting worked over with an ax handle. Brutality wasn’t new ground for either man, but neither had seen anything like the methodical cruelty of torturing and burning animals alive.

  Ned watched flies bang softly against the glass transom above the door. “I’m gonna kick around a little bit, and see if any of the other boys have run onto anything like this. I’m taking Top to the rodeo tonight, too. I might hear something there. I’ll try to find Bi
g John in a day or two to see if he’s heard anything from his people.”

  The almost mythical deputy operated virtually without oversight south of the tracks.

  “Let me know what John says.” O.C. studied the stained advertisement centered on his desk and wondering how anyone could be mean to animals and kids. “He may have heard something. It’s liable to be one of his people and they’re not talking.”

  “I will. How’s Catherine doing?”

  O.C.’s wife Catherine was chronically ill with a variety of maladies. “Purty good. She had a spell Wednesday night and I had to call Miss Sweet. She came over and set with her for a while. I don’t know what she gave Catherine, something to swaller and a poultice, but she got easy toward morning.”

  Miss Sweet was one of John Washington’s elderly aunts. Her daddy nicknamed his twin girls Sweet Cakes and Sugar Pie. But through the years, they became Sweet and Sugar. Both round and friendly grandmothers did a right smart amount of doctoring when anyone called. They mostly ministered to the colored folks on the south side of the tracks, folks who had more faith in them and their home remedies than in doctors and their expensive medicines. But Ned and O.C. had known them since they were kids. They knew their remedies worked.

  “Catherine has some trouble breathing sometimes, doesn’t she?’

  “Yep. She has a little touch of the asthma. I think there’s something down deep in her chest, but she won’t let me take her to Doc Townsend. She says its nothing, but I don’t believe she knows what she’s talking about.”

  “Maybe I’ll talk to Miss Sweet and see if she can help Top. He has the worst case of asthma I’ve ever seen. He’ll probably have some trouble since he’s moved up here with us, especially around ginning time.”

  Most people wanted to call the boy Cotton, for his thick mop of white hair, but he was named after his great-uncle, Texas Orrin Parker and shortened to Top.

  “He’s a keeper. Bring him by when you get the chance. One morning here pretty soon we’ll go catch us a mess of catfish.”

  Ned’s black dress shoes squeaked as he stood and shifted his weight. “Sounds like a good idea. You going to the rodeo tonight? They’ve got the fairgrounds open, too.”