Copper Kettle

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Grandpa says the men who drive out from Roanoke will pay two, sometimes three dollars a gallon for his good drinking whiskey. Two gallons a day, that there is four dollars and near twice what you’d get at the mill and you don’t have to do no work. Just mix the mash, tend the fire, and find you a place to sit under a shade tree and wait. On a good week, Big Tom turns out ’bout ten or maybe even twelve gallons. That’s way better money.”

  “Ten is a stretch, Abel. Twelve is a brag. Yep it’s way better and riskier. Listen, I ain’t thinking of stopping that enterprise. I just don’t want to be in on it, see. Them Federal men have Colt six-shooters on their belts and that means they expect they might have to use them and are willing to ’cause the law is on their side. Any shooting back jumps the crime a mile. Well sir, like I say, I seen enough guns to last me a lifetime. I’m figuring on signing on at the sawmill and that’s it.”

  Chapter Three

  Jesse crossed the mill yard past men hauling lumber and trucks loaded with logs for sawing. The whine of the saw and the clap of new cut boards onto the carrier nearly drowned out anybody who might want to speak. Up close to the steam engines that drove the equipment, it even made thinking a chore. He tapped on the office building door and stepped in. The sour odor of new-sawn wood filled the air, even indoors. It was a smell one got used to when you worked as a sawyer and some said they missed it when they left for the day. Most folks didn’t buy that, but agreed it was a whole lot pleasanter than slopping pigs or stirring mash.

  Serena Barker with her starched shirtwaist and straw hat, presented a proper, one might say prim, presence behind a big oak desk inside the sawmill office. She had the benefit of a full nine years at the schoolhouse and had taught herself the intricacies of the Remington typewriting machine and single-entry bookkeeping. Because of that and because everyone agreed she was a “looker,” she’d landed a job as a secretary/bookkeeper down at the mill. The pay wasn’t as much as the mill hands’, of course, but a dollar and a half a day seemed a pretty fair wage for a woman. After all, it was 1920 and the boom that the war brought had turned into a post-war bust. That, in its turn, had thrown a lot of men out of work so nobody was complaining, least of all Serena.

  “Well, look at what the coon dog done dragged out of the tree,” Serena said and gave Jesse a big, slightly crooked-toothed grin. “What brings the hero of Meuse-Argonne to Anderson’s Mill? Not too many German soldiers hanging around here.”

  “How-do, Serena. It’s a good thing there ain’t. They like to scare me to death.”

  “I don’t believe that, Jesse Sutherlin. What I hear is, they catch your name and scatter like chickens when a hawk flies by.”

  “All rumors. As to why I am here, they are saying up on the mountain that R.G. is hiring. I’m here to sign on.”

  “My, my, look at you. Farming not good enough for you?”

  “Farming is just fine, Serena, but the land don’t want to cooperate. A man will die of starvation on what that hillside produces in a year. They call it rock farming cause they’re the only things that turn up in the field. Anyway I ate all the Jonny Ash Cake I care to. No, I need something steady.”

  “Hearth baking not your thing either? Well, you’re right. Mister Anderson is hiring and he’d probably be happy to have you, but he isn’t here right now. He had to run over to Roanoke for some supplies, he said. I think he just wanted an excuse to drive his new car.”

  “He bought a new car?”

  “Yeah. Business is pretty good and he went and got himself a Piedmont Touring car. He went all the way to Lynchburg to get it. He drove it back the same day.”

  “Didn’t he have an old Ford, a T model? What happened to that?”

  “It’s parked out back. He said he’d sell it to anyone with twenty-five dollars, cash money.”

  “That much for that broke down old flivver? It’s eleven years old at least. Who’d want it and where’s a man to find twenty-five dollars these days?”

  “You work for him a week and a half and you do.”

  “And in the meantime I don’t eat. No thank you.”

  “Whyn’t you sit a spell and wait? He’s been gone for a while. Unless he’s got a whole lot of visiting to do, he should be back pretty soon.”

  “Well, thank you. I will do just that. So, how’re you getting along now that you are a working woman?”

  “I am just fine. I guess you are weary of talking about the war, but I have to ask, is it true the German soldiers eat babies?”

  “Where’d you hear that? Lordy, they spread some pretty tall tales winding us up to go to war. Truth is I guess the Germans say the same kind of things about us. All meadow muffins, Serena. My experience with them fellows is they are just like us only they talk funny. Blood is just as red, put on their pants one leg at a time. Hell, sorry, my language turned a bit to the rough side in the Army. Anyway, we captured us a handful of them soldaten and one of them spoke a little American. You know something? He didn’t have any more idea why he was at war than we did. We all had a laugh at that, I tell you.”

  “Really? I thought they was monsters and it was our patriotic duty to kill ever last one of them. They tried to get the Mexicans to come over the border, and all.”

  “Well, maybe. I didn’t run into any Mexicans there or here, did you? No you didn’t because, see, war is the business of rich old men in top hats up there in New York City getting fat on the profits they make selling stuff. You know, we found boxes of chemicals in a German redoubt that had U.S. of A. labels on them. We were told we wasn’t to say nothing and they disappeared that night. But you know what I think? I think some Jasper up north was playing both sides and he’s got American blood on his hands.”

  “That’s awful. Is it true?”

  “True as I’m sitting here admiring the rose among the thorns.”

  Serena blushed. “When did you decide to be a poet, Jesse Sutherlin?”

  “The minute I laid eyes on you.”

  “Oh, you hush, now.”

  The door crashed open and a breathless Abel Sutherlin burst through. “Jesse, you got to come quick. Solomon’s been shot dead. Sorry, hi there, Serena. Jesse, we got to go.”

  “Shot. When? How?”

  “I don’t know. Big Tom went up to his…” Abel looked at Serena. She smiled and nodded. “He went to the creek where he keeps his…tools—”

  “You mean his still, don’t you?” Serena said.

  Yeah, yeah. How’d you…never mind. Anyway, Big Tom sent me down here to fetch you and say we should all get on up there to his place and figure out what to do.”

  “What to do? You get on Mister Anderson’s telephone that’s sitting right over there on Serena’s desk and call the sheriff is what you do.”

  “I asked him that already. I asked if we should fetch the police. Grandpa says no. He says we can handle this our own selves like we always do.”

  “And ‘like we always do’ is a very bad idea. Serena, I am really sorry, but I got to run. Will you tell R.G. that I was here and if he’s got a job open, that I’m the man to fill it?”

  “I can do that. He’ll still want to talk to you, though.”

  “I’ll be back, I promise. Come on Abel, let’s get up on the mountain ’fore somebody gets up on their high horse and does something stupid.”

  Chapter Four

  Abel and Jesse were the last to arrive at Big Tom McAdoo’s cabin. “Cabin” did not do the place justice. True, it had started out, as many domiciles in the area had, as a log cabin. Over the years it had been added to, expanded, and improved. If it hadn’t become the biggest house on the mountain it would be a close second. The folks on the other side claimed Garland Lebrun had it beat a mile. All pig slop, of course. That house looked like a tool shed next to Big Tom’s, and everybody knew it. Tom McAdoo’s house had the further distinction of having had the dirt floor replaced with re
al planking. The boards squeaked and shifted when you walked on them, but by mountain standards and with a hand-braided rag rug thrown here and there, the floor looked almost decadent.

  Men sat or stood in Big Tom’s front room, some in front of the small windows that blocked what little light might otherwise have managed to filter in. They shuffled their feet and grumbled and were clearly angry and ready to make a move. They only needed a signal and they would charge out, track down, and kill whoever it was they were convinced had shot their kinsman. An informal consensus deemed that the only people or person likely to have done it would be one of the Lebruns. That family had been at odds with Big Tom’s clan for as long as anyone could remember. Some thought the enmity stretched clear back to the Revolutionary War—maybe before that. Certainly they had been feuding for as long as either family could remember being on the mountain and that was a long, long time. Except for the duration of the Civil War, when both sides had rallied to the “Stars and Bars,” a cause to which they all subscribed, the east side of the mountain and the west had never got along, even though over the years, the families had intermarried here and there, and probably had more in common than either would admit.

  Big Tom was in full voice when they entered. “It seems pretty much a done thing,” he said. “It had to have been one of the Lebruns. The way I see it, they found out where it was and Solomon must have caught them busting up my still and tried to stop them. They got into a tussle and they shot him in the back like the cowards they are, and that’s that.”

  Jesse surveyed the gathering. In his lieutenant’s uniform, he’d been a commanding presence. Among his relations and in a worn homespun shirt and overalls, not so much. Still, he had their respect.

  “Big Tom, you don’t know that. It sounds right, but there’s no evidence that it went that way. If we all go out Lebrun-hunting, a whole lot of folks is going to be hurt or killed. I say call the sheriff and let him sort this out.”

  “Now, Jesse, you know good and well, we don’t cotton to no flatland lawman coming up here.”

  Jesse opened his mouth to respond, But his cousin spoke up. Anse McAdoo shook his fist at Jesse. “I’m surprised that this old war hero is turning out to be such a rabbit. Everybody in this room knows who shot Solomon. We need to get on over to the other side of the mountain and hold them to account for what they done. What are you feared of, Jesse?”

  “The only thing scares me is when some cork brain gets to mouthing off about something he don’t know diddly-squat about. What possible reason can anyone have for not letting the law do its business?”

  “You been away playing soldier too long, Cousin. You done forgot who you are.”

  “I ain’t forgot nothing, sonny.”

  “No police. They won’t look for a killer until after they bust up our stills,” Big Tom said.

  “Okay, we ask the preacher to look into it.”

  “That old hen couldn’t find the privy with a map.”

  If anybody in the room had a nodding acquaintance with Shakespeare and Julius Caesar which, of course, no one did, Anse McAddo would have been compared to Cassius. Lean and hungry, that was Anse. He’d been shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. “I’ve had enough of this pussy footing around. Are we going to settle this with the Lebruns or are we going to listen to this man who must have had all the grit knocked out of him by them Frenchies? I bet he must’ve spent all his fighting time over there in a bawdy house.”

  “I spent all my time over there in a muddy trench with bad food and death around every damned corner. It ain’t that I lost my grit, Anse, I lost my taste for killing someone just because I could.”

  “Well, I say you’ve come back an old woman and there’s the end to it.”

  “Judas Priest, I come home having survived shelling by Big Bertha, mortar rounds, Mauser bullets, trench fever, mustard gas, cooties, typhus, dysentery, mud, and gore, and I have to sit here and be assaulted with cow flop thrown at me by this pup? I ain’t having it, Grandpa. You tell your boy over there to shut his mouth or I’ll shut it for him.”

  Anse stood and balled his fists. “You and your soldiering. You think ’cause you got yourself a medal and fancy uniform you’re better’n the rest of us. Well, it ain’t true. I could have gone over there if I had wanted. Ain’t nothing so special about that.”

  “But you didn’t, did you? You disappeared in the woods ’til everybody left, the way I hear it.”

  Big Tom banged his fist down on the table. “That’s enough, Jesse. And you sit down, Anse. You ain’t got no complaint here except you don’t like standing in your cousin’s shadow. You need to move off and make your own way, you hear? Anyway, we need to sort out who kilt Solomon. We get done with that and then you can try out your wings on Jesse, but if I were you, I’d think twice ’fore I took that on.”

  Anse glowered at his grandfather and sat. “This ain’t over.”

  Jesse took a breath, shook his head to clear it and turned back to continue his thought. “Look, I don’t know who shot old Solomon. He’s my cousin, too. Ain’t that right? Me and him spent time in French mud together getting shot at. What we shared over there can’t be put to a measure and it made us closer than cousins—more like brothers. That’s the way it goes when you share a war. I will be the first one in line to see whoever killed him hanging from a gallows, but the one thing I learned sitting in the mud in France, and that is, things ain’t always what they seem. That’s all I’m saying. We just don’t rightly know who pulled the trigger and until we do, I say wait. Why is everybody so fired up to go out shooting? It’s not glorious, I tell you. It’s mean. By damn, we lost about twelve thousand men over there in less than a year fighting folks who had no more idea why they was there than we did. Some duke or something got killed by one of his own and the next thing you know submarines are sinking liners and we are off to fight a war that had nothing to do with Buffalo Mountain, the State of Virginia, or the U. S. of A. I’m saying let’s just all of us sit back a minute and think this thing through.”

  “Come on, Jesse, you know as well as the rest of us, it had to be the Lebruns. They been after us for years.”

  “I do know that. I know they’re sneaky, and dishonest, and would cheat their own grandma if they got a chance. On the other hand, I know they ain’t stupid. Killing one of us could only mean we’d sit down, like we are doing right this very minute, and decide to kill one or two of them. I just don’t think they’d do that. They know as sure as Sunday comes after Saturday, that if they did, we’d be on them like flies on horse shit. Would a Lebrun kill one of us in a shootout if they thought they were threatened? Sure they would and so would we. Would they shoot you in the back at one of those? They would if they could. But cold blooded murder? No, it don’t make sense. Like I said, they ain’t stupid and they are not interested in getting shot any more than we are.”

  Men murmured and shot angry looks at Jesse. They didn’t like to think that Jesse might have called them cork-brained and, anyway, their blood was up and they were dead set on doing something, even if it was the wrong thing. Uncle Bob Knox stood and signaled for silence.

  “I hear what Jesse is saying. I ain’t saying I agree with him, no sir, but he has a point. Think a minute. Them Lebruns ain’t going nowhere. We can shoot them as easy tomorrow or the next day as today. So, I say give Jesse a chance to work this out his way. If he can’t get that done in, say, four days, then we go get us some Lebruns.”

  Men started to argue and shout. Big Tom heaved his bulk from his chair. “Everybody hush up. Here’s what we do. First, Jesse, I ain’t having no police on my place. They take one look at that still and figure, rightly, it ain’t the only one hereabouts, we none of us will see daylight except between bars for six months, give or take, and whoever shot Solomon will get off scot free. So, second, Jesse, if you can sort this out your way, fine. It will give me more time to clean my brand-spanking new r
epeating rifle. That’s it. It’s on your head, Jesse. You have yourself four days.”

  Chapter Five

  Solomon’s body had been carried to his mother’s house hours earlier. An attempt had been made to set the still and the keg back on their bases, although it would be days, maybe a week, before Big Tom would have it working again. Most of the contents of the thump keg and kettle had washed down the creek. Jesse surveyed the scene and tried to reconstruct what it might have looked like before all that had been done.

  “Where was Solomon lying, exactly?”