Morgan James - Promise McNeal 01 - Quiet the Dead

by Morgan James

  I did not love that smell and didn’t love the idea of Hubert waltzing back and forth on my side of the fence. I would not even be able to sit on the back porch and not smell him. Daniel tried to come to my rescue. “Now, Fletcher,” he consoled, “it’s for sure Promise didn’t know Hubert was part of her property purchase, and you know she can’t possibly manage a buck goat as big as him. Why, if he took a mind, he could pure tee stomp her into the ground.”

  Enloe narrowed his eyes at Daniel. “So what are you saying, Daniel, you want me to keep Hubert for free on a permanent basis?”

  Daniel rubbed his chin, thinking. “Well, how about this,” he countered. “I’ve got cows and that means good steaks. How about we settle on me keeping you in steaks and you keeping Hubert?”

  I turned to Daniel in amazement; I couldn’t believe he was letting this crafty old buzzard take advantage of him. In the first place, Hubert couldn’t possibly eat enough grass to amount to a lifetime of free steaks; and in the second place, Enloe had already admitted the goat kept his pasture cut down so he didn’t have to mow it. Lastly, I was not sure I wanted to be obligated to Daniel over Hubert. “Wait a minute, Daniel,” I said. “Maybe we need to talk about this.”

  “That’s for certain,” added Enloe, his smile showing a mouth full of stained but original teeth. “Steaks are nice; except that’s not rightly what I had in mind.”

  Now what was coming, I wondered? He walked over to the fence and made a clicking noise a couple of times. Hubert shuffled over closer to where we stood, engulfing us in his goat smell, and Enloe produced a couple of pieces of carrots from his pocket. That sly old fox, I thought, he knew all along I was coming over here about the goat; he was ready for us. “And what was it you had in mind, Mr. Enloe?” I asked.

  Enloe patted Hubert lovingly on the neck, as the goat crunched his treats. “Well, here’s my idea on the subject, Miz Promise.” He hesitated, making sure he had our full attention. “You get yourself a nanny goat; and time and again, we let them be together over here in my pasture. Come spring old Hubert will make sure you have a baby or two. That way, Hubert gets over his loneliness, you have yourself a fine doe and baby, and we both get milk.”

  I blurted out, “Milk! You want me to milk a goat so I can share the milk with you? I don’t have the first idea of how to even care for a goat, much less milk one! I’d do better to take Hubert back over to my side and sell him for glue, or dog food, or whatever one does with old goats.”

  “I figured you for a selfish city woman,” Enloe shot back with indignation. “Before you get your knickers all in a twist, know I meant to milk your nanny for you and share the milk with you. You buy her, feed her real good on sweet feed and molasses, and course pay any vet bills that might come up, and I’ll see to the milking.”

  I turned to Daniel for his opinion, knowing that Enloe had probably just shamed me into agreeing to his proposal. “Sounds like it may be a fair trade to me, Promise,” Daniel offered. “A nanny in your pasture would keep you from having to pay to have it mowed, and sweet goat milk is fine drinking, even more digestible than cows milk to some folks, so I understand.”

  As I was processing Daniel’s remarks, a brown UPS truck turned into Enloe’s drive and stopped just short of where we were discussing the prospects of Hubert’s love life. The young driver exited with two medium-sized boxes. “Afternoon Mr. Enloe. You want these on the porch like usual?”

  “That’ll do. Thank you kindly.” Enloe replied.

  After the driver stacked the boxes near the front door, he called out again. “Got anything going out today?”

  “Not today. Big load Monday probably, after the weekend bids close,” was Enloe’s response. The driver waved his understanding and sped out, scudding dust from the drive in our direction.

  Enloe coughed. “Damn fool kids don’t know how to drive!”

  The UPS truck and its packages peaked my curiosity about the man Susan thought was so far behind the times he still used an outhouse. “Mr. Enloe, is that a satellite Internet dish on your roof?”

  Enloe turned and briefly looked up. “Course that’s what it is! What else would it be? The Star Ship Enterprise? You think an old man like me can’t learn to use a computer and the Internet? Well, I tell you what,” He held up his right hand. “Even with my missing finger parts, I was learning an old standup typewriter in Korea, in nineteen and fifty, compliments of the United States Army. Learning to type didn’t make me no sissy either, I tell you that. And I’ll tell you another thing, learning a trade in Korea was a damn sight better than staying here being nothing but a tripper my whole life. Anyway, I expect I was banging away on a typewriter while you was a baby still sucking a bottle.”

  “No harm meant,” I offered, “I was just thinking of subscribing to the satellite Internet service and wondered how you like it?”

  “I like it fine,” he said with finality. “Now speaking of milk and bottles, what about my offer on Hubert?”

  I was determined not to be bullied into a commitment. “Mr. Enloe, you are right. I don’t know anything about goats. Give me a week or so to think about it, I’ll come back to you with an answer. Can you live with that, Mr. Enloe?”

  “How about a week from Sunday? Even a city girl like you should be able to learn something about goats by then.”

  I wanted to tell him I had earned a Ph D., on my own, while I was a ‘city girl’, could use the public library, and was published in several respectable journals, thank you very much. However, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t act out my childish notion. Instead, we shook hands on our agreement, with Enloe careful to offer me his good left hand, and Daniel and I headed back through the pine thicket. As soon as we were out of earshot Daniel began to laugh. “Lord, oh Lord, Fletcher Enloe is a piece of work!”

  “That’s one way to describe him. Extortionist would be another.”

  Daniel laughed again. “Don’t know as I’d go that far. Maybe he’s just an old man trying to get by.”

  I stopped, hands on hips. “Get by? Please. Don’t even go there. Fletcher Enloe is far from a helpless old man trying to get by. I’ve got twenty bucks that says he has the satellite internet and UPS making regular stops at his house because Fletcher Enloe is buying and selling all kinds of stuff on EBay, and doing very well at it.”

  Daniel looked surprised. “What on earth would make you jump to that conclusion?”

  “I’m not jumping to conclusions. One,” I raised my right hand and extended my thumb. “Enloe told you he quit cows, and was busy with something else. Two:” I extended my forefinger. “He was very defensive when I asked about the satellite Internet service, and even more defensive about his typing skills. Three:” A third finger jointed the other two. “Enloe told the UPS guy he would have packages going out after the weekend bids closed. That is a pretty obvious clue. My next to the last finger went up. “And four: well, actually I don’t have a four, but I know that’s what he’s doing. I feel it somewhere along my spine, and the tingle goes all the way to the top of my head. Dead sure. Call it intuition if you like, but it never lies to me.”

  Daniel shook his head in amusement. “You mean you are never wrong?”

  Immediately wishing I’d not spewed out the anger Enloe fueled by making such a pompous statement, I had to think about how to respond to Daniel. “Of course I can be wrong. I’m not perfect. All I’m saying is that Fletcher Enloe’s pastime seems obvious to me.”

  We continued to make our way through the last of the pines and onto open grass. “Well, fair enough,” he finally responded, “Susan says you are a one in a million smart lady. I’m gonna go with that. Are you buying a nanny goat?”

  “I might. I haven’t decided yet,” I answered, a little too sharply. We climbed the few steps to my back porch in silence. Enloe’s attitude burned inside my gut, but that was no reason to be rude. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Daniel. I just hate being manipulated, and that’s exactly what Enloe is doing. I mean, don’t you think he
is a little overly concerned with Hubert’s love life?”

  Daniel grinned. “Well, it is a fact Fletcher does seem to have Hubert’s happiness to heart. Maybe, as one old goat to another, Fletcher can sympathize with Hubert’s loneliness. You know, Fletcher’s wife passed on with cancer not too long back.”

  “Oh, you know I believe Susan did say something about his wife dying last year, and that they were married over sixty years?”

  “Yep. Married about the time I was born.”

  I could not even imagine spending sixty years with the same person. Sometimes it was hard to abide my own company, let alone another’s. And Fletcher Enloe? His wife must have been a saint to put up with his crotchety personality. Still, he probably was lonely. “Some compassionate counselor I am. I’ll eat a little crow next time I see him, and try to be more understanding.” Daniel nodded his approval. My mind jumped to another question. “Daniel, Fletcher Enloe said something about being a tripper before he went to Korea. What’s a ‘tripper’?”

  “A tripper. Haven’t heard that word in a long time, except back in the sixties when the flower children used it to mean someone who did LSD and all that shit—excuse me; I try not to cuss in front of ladies. Course Fletcher wasn’t meaning LSD.”

  “You are excused, Daniel. I do my own share of cussing. What did Enloe mean?”

  “He was talking about moonshine. The men who hauled shine from the bootleggers who made it on to the middlemen, who sold it, were called trippers. Lots of wild boys like Fletcher would load the liquor in cars like his ‘39 Ford, with the engine modified for speed, and head on down the mountains to mostly city areas. Those cars would get up over a hundred miles an hour. They’d hull the car out, remove the back seat for extra space, take off everything they didn’t need to run fast, and make trips to places like Asheville, Greenville, or Atlanta to deliver the shine. That’s how hot rods came to be; it was the trippers who had the best rods. Some of them got famous racing their cars on dirt tracks around here, or Charlotte, and even down at Lakewood in Atlanta. Anyway, the boys with the fast cars would make a moonshine delivery trip, you see; that’s where the word tripper came from, I reckon. Fletcher and his brothers were known to be some of the best drivers around, carried on a family tradition that started back in the twenties. Not a one of them ever got caught. I’ve heard tell it was an accident with his Ford engine block that cost Fletcher his two fingers. I’ve never asked him.”

  I smiled at Daniel’s enthusiasm for the illegal whiskey business. “You seem to know an awful lot about Fletcher Enloe’s hot rod, and the business of moonshine.”

  Daniel blew out a short breath of air to dismiss my implication. “Me? I work for the government, remember,” he replied. “All I have is the history that’s passed along on the subject, plus Fletcher drives his restored rod in the July 4th parade every year. I’ve been admiring that ruby red beauty since I was a little kid, along with every other boy in the county. He keeps it under cover in his garage out behind the house. He’d probably show it to you, if you asked.”

  “No, thanks,” I answered, “Hot rods are a guy thing.” Still, I was curious. “Daniel, Enloe said he stopped being a tripper during the Korean War, in the early fifties. I thought moonshine as a business went out years before that, when Prohibition was repealed.”

  “Oh, no,” Daniel corrected me. “Atlanta was the moonshine consumption capitol of the South until way on into the 1970’s. I hear you can still buy homemade liquor down there any day of the week. Course, avoiding paying taxes on homemade whiskey has been a cultural sideline in these mountains since the 1700’s. Even Sheriff Mac was busy busting up stills around here until just recently, till young jacks like the Goddard twins figured marijuana was a bigger cash crop than corn liquor. And now we have to worry about every crazy-ass no-count criminal cooking meth up here. Ain’t that a sorry state of affairs? I don’t hold with supplying, or using, drugs; and those meth folks make me want to bring back public hangings; but to tell you the truth, I can’t see much harm in letting a man make and sell a little corn whiskey on his own. Why, it’s like the government telling you to pay taxes on your homemade fig jam!”

  Daniel’s speech certainly gave me something to think about. I realized Enloe was right. I was a city girl, and had a lot to learn about the ways of my new adopted home; though, I could not for the life of me see that evading a federal tax on whiskey was in any way related to my jam making. I decided to let Daniel’s observation pass. At least he agreed with me that the Goddard twins were criminals.

  Back in the house, I thanked Daniel for going with me to call on Fletcher Enloe. Having him along probably saved me the embarrassment of losing my temper anymore than I did. And truly I was glad he went with me. As unpleasant as I found Fletcher Enloe, going over there together eased Daniel and I into a more comfortable place with one another. After all, I reminded myself, Daniel is Susan’s father. Susan has become my friend. Why not Daniel? Friend, I repeated to myself. That’s all I’m looking for, and all I’m going to find.

  I poured us fresh ice teas, and we sat on the porch in a couple of old rocking chairs. The late afternoon was cooling and I buttoned my sweater against the chill. Thin spines of white clouds washed across the mountaintops, and a gathering west wind played with the tall grass in the pasture, laying it down in places like a low sea tide. If I squinted my eyes just a little, I could imagine a couple of goats grazing knee deep in green. It was a peaceful and comforting thought. Maybe I would allow Fletcher Enloe to blackmail me into raising a goat, or two. After all, I’d already made the leap to being responsible for something other than myself when I brought home the cat family; surely a nanny goat and her baby wouldn’t be so very different.

  My mind jumped from goats to Fletcher Enloe’s other questions. This business about January McNeal was troubling, to say the least. My father was an only child, I was an only child; my mother’s one sister was the only experience I had with family, except for my son, of course. I’d never even been curious about great grandparents or other distant relatives, and I couldn’t remember my father ever talking about his family. That did seen strange, as I thought about it, the three of us seemed to view ourselves as the beginning, and end, of a family tree. Perhaps because there seemed to be so much ongoing turmoil between my parents, telling old family stories was not one of the bedtime, or anytime, rituals. All their energy seemed to be used up on themselves. Now I wondered, who were these “people” as Enloe called them—these McNeals who ultimately produced my charming, but disappointing father? The only reason I even knew their names was from a McNeal family bible my mother left behind when she died, ten years after my father’s death. Having no one to ask about my relatives, the names remained distant and disconnected to me.

  Daniel broke my reverie. “We’ll get rain tonight,” he said as a matter of fact.

  “Umm. Think so?” I responded absentmindedly.

  Daniel shifted in his chair and turned to face me. “Don’t let Fletcher Enloe get to you. He does love a good joke now and then. He could have been spooking you about your kinfolks living around here. Being named McNeal around here is like being named Smith in a big city, Fletcher’s probably known a lot of McNeals over the years, and likely as not, none are your kin.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said, and offered him a slight smile in gratitude for trying to make me feel better, and for not asking why I wouldn’t be happy to locate distant kinfolks in Perry County. Daniel was right. Enloe had gotten to me. What bothered me most was, if Enloe was telling the truth, and knew something about January McNeal living in Perry County, how could I stumble back to where my great grandfather had lived, and not know it? I’d bragged to Daniel about my intuition. How could that same intuition fail to let me know McNeals had lived here? Well, I guess the sin of pride will turn and bite you every time. I wasn’t as smart as I’d thought. Remembering from the family Bible that my great grandfather was born sometime around eighteen seventy-five, I made a resolution
to do some research. I’d pay a visit to the genealogy records room in the library and look for McNeals living in Perry County around that time. Enloe was right; January is an unusual name for a child; that should make him reasonably easy to locate. And why, I questioned, for the first time in my life, would a mother name a son January?

  “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.”

  …Sherlock Holmes

  9.

  Later that night, the wind picked up and sounded like a droning engine advancing down the valley. Then, true to Daniel’s prediction, it rained hard, pelting down in angry squalls. I slept fitfully, pulling myself out of a dream of a circle of bent old men in long black coats and flat top hats closing in around someone, or something, I could not see. I slept again; then at little after three, I awoke with a start when Mamma Cat jumped up on my bed in a fit of hissing and growling, and then ran back towards the utility room. Danger, she was saying. I lay still, listening, my heart pounding in my chest, trying to hear what she heard; but all I could make out was the rain, blowing now in intermittent gusts against the metal roof.

  Though Mamma had quieted, I knew I should gather my courage and check the house. Hesitantly, I slid from bed in the dark and made my way to the hallway. Nothing there. Careful to stay out of sight from the window to the porch, I eased into the utility room. Mamma Cat was sitting, poised in her basket, ears twitching, staring at the back door. I looked at the door. The deadbolt was thrown, that was good news. I listened again—nothing. With my back against the wall, I reached over to the right of the door frame and flipped the master light switch controlling floodlights on all four corners of the house; then I waited. Through the utility room window I could see the rear porch, bathed in light. I stood against the wall for what seemed like a very long time, long enough I reasoned for any prowler to flee, then went around to check the front door. That deadbolt was secured as well. I tried to convince myself a deer, or raccoon, passing through the yard on the way to the creek had frightened Mamma Cat. Tomorrow, I vowed, I’ll call an electrician and have another master floodlight switch installed in my bedroom, beside the bed. No more stumbling around in the dark to turn on the lights. When I doubled back to the utility room, Mamma was curled up nursing her babies. Just to be cautious, I left the outside lights on, making my yard bright enough to land a B52 bomber. But what did it matter? I knew I probably wouldn’t sleep anyway.