Moonshine, Coal, and Hope

by Richard Allen Evans

  “I hate to ask. But I don’t want to start a marriage on her money or Elmer’s,” Hill said.

  Ed held up a huge right hand.

  “How much you need?” He asked.

  “It would just be a loan and I’ll pay you back quick as I can. I’ll sign a note,” Hill said.

  “You’ll shit. You’ve been with me from the get—go. Anything you get, you’ve already earned. No loans and no damn notes. Now, whaddya need?” Ed asked.

  “I figure a thousand dollars would do it. The Jenkins place is up for sale. House, barn, and ten good acres,” Hill said.

  “Tell you what, I’ll give you two thousand just in case the house or barn has a leak,” Ed said.

  “I don’t know what to say Ed,” Hill said.

  “You don’t need to say anything. Let’s go see if Mae’s broke the news to Lucy yet,” Ed said.

  ***

  Three days later, Jeff Milner sat behind his desk at his office in Crystal Springs. Lee and Russell sat in the office with him, each smoking cigarettes. Jeff picked up the earpiece on the second ring and held the cylinder— shaped object to his ear. He spoke onto the mouthpiece in his left hand.

  “Jefferson Milner,” he said.

  “Uh, I’ve got bad news dad. We can’t but the newspaper here,” Joe said.

  Jeff’s fingers gripped the telephone in his left hand so hard his knuckles turned white.

  “What do you mean ‘we can’t buy it’?” He asked

  “Exactly that. Someone bought the newspaper in Silver Point two days ago. I also heard the new owner also bought newspapers in Harlan and Middlesboro,” Joe explained.

  “Who bought it?” Jeff asked.

  “The fella’s name is Elkins. Ed Elkins. He owns Elkins Dairy and a bank in Silver Point,” Joe said.

  “I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he a moonshiner?” Jeff asked as Lee’s head jerked toward his father.

  “Nobody’s ever been able to prove it,” Joe said.

  “Then maybe it’s time we introduced this Elkins fella to a little Milner persuasion,” Jeff said as he looked to a now wide—eyed Lee.

  “Dad if you’re thinking of using Lee, a lot of people claim Elkins was the one who gave Lee the beating,” Joe said.

  “I’ve heard the rumors too but I have confidence in your brother and the rest of you. We need to put this man in his place so he’ll know where he stands on the food chain,” Jeff said.

  “What do you have in mind?” Joe asked.

  “When you get back to Crystal Springs we’ll talk. Hurry home,” Jeff said as he placed the earpiece on the side of the telephone.

  Lee looked to him.

  “Let me take care of him,” he said with an almost growl.

  “I don’t want him killed — not yet anyway. I want to make an example of him. I want the miners and everybody else to know who runs the show in this part of the state. Before we’re through with this Elkins guy, he’ll beg you to kill him Lee,” Jeff said as both grinned.

  ***

  In 1924, March saw winter one day and spring the next in Southeastern Kentucky. The sun shone brightly and the remnants of a three-inch snowfall gradually melted away from the rusty tin roof on Elmer’s house.

  Though he now had more money than he could have ever imagined, Elmer still preferred his simple lifestyle — no telephone, no silly radio, and no wish for electricity. A roof that didn’t leak much and a good outhouse suited Elmer just fine.

  Being a Wednesday, Mae had already been by his place to make sure he had plenty of food and firewood.

  Ed would drop by later as he usually did to talk with him and let him know about any new stills or problems they might be facing. He also dropped off a bag of cash each week. Elmer always squirreled it away in a safe place.

  He didn’t care if Ed owned a bank or not. Banks got robbed — a carefully hidden hole dug in his root cellar didn’t.

  He walked back from the outhouse feeling a couple of pounds lighter than he did when he left the house a few minutes earlier.

  “Damn hard-boiled eggs,” he muttered to himself as walked back toward the house.

  Elmer caught sight of a movement on his porch. He stopped and placed his hand inside the right pocket of his overalls. Elmer carried a Navy Colt .32 revolver at all times. With his hand on the pistol, he eased around his house to the front porch. It was empty and the house was quiet save for the sound of melting snow dripping from the roof.

  He looked at the front door. It was closed. Hesitating, Elmer stepped up on the porch and walked to the door. He went inside. A man was sitting in his rocking chair by the pot—belly stove.

  “Nice place you have here,” the stranger said.

  “I like it. Who the hell are you?” Elmer asked.

  “I’m a friend of your nephew. And I’d feel a whole better if you took your hand out of your pocket,” the man said.

  “And he means real slow,” said another man who stepped out of the kitchen with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun aimed at his chest.

  He was a tall, thin man with a large hawk—like nose and narrow gray eyes. His blonde hair was slicked back with pomade and he wore a cheap brown suit and a matching overcoat.

  Elmer pulled his hand from his pocket empty.

  “What do you want?” Elmer asked.

  The stranger in the rocker smiled.

  “We want you to relay a message to your nephew,” he said.

  Elmer’s eyes narrowed.

  “And what’s the message?” He asked.

  “That you don’t fuck with Lee James Milner,” he said coldly.

  Elmer cocked his head and smiled. The smile turned to a chuckle and the chuckle into outright laughter. Lee smoldered as his face grew dark with crimson.

  “So you’re the feller that took the ass whuppin’,” Elmer howled as Lee’s face twitched.

  He lunged at the old man and slammed him against the wall. Lee smiled as he heard air escape from Elmer’s lungs. He then started punching Elmer repeatedly as the heavy blows landed with enough force to his ribs and head to keep him pinned to the wall.

  “You’re gonna kill him,” the man with the shotgun said.

  Lee kept punching.

  “That’s — unnnh — the general idea Charlie,” he grunted.

  As Lee tired, Elmer’s unconscious body slipped to the floor. Lee stepped back, breathing heavily and smiling.

  “Dammit! Is he still breathin’? You didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout killin’ nobody! We was only supposed to scare an old man!” Said Charlie Jason.

  “Relax Charlie. Your pay’s the same. Shit! He’s still breathin’,” Lee said as he pulled a knife from his pocket.

  “This is just murder Lee! Just like when you shot that moonshiner in the back! Your daddy’s gonna have a shit hemorrhage over this!” Charlie said with wide eyes.

  “I’m gonna drag him outside. Bust a coupla of lamps and burn this shithole down. And don’t worry about my father. This was his idea,” Lee said.

  “What are you gonna do?” Charlie asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. You just do what I’m tellin’ you,” Lee said as he opened the door and grabbed the battered body to drag outside.

  Charlie did as he was told and started breaking lamps and pouring oil all over the floors and wall. After he broke the fourth lamp, he picked up a piece of firewood and dipped the end in some of the oil. He opened the stove and lit the wood. Charlie then tossed the flaming the torch across the room.

  Flames climbed the wall as Charlie closed the door behind and hurried off of the porch. He looked at Lee who stood over the bleeding body of an old dead man. The blade of the knife in Lee’s right hand dripped with blood.

  The old man was prone on his back. His throat had been slit from ear to ear and there was a gaping hole in the center of his chest.

  Charlie looked to Lee again and saw something that made him start to throw up immediately. In his left hand, Lee held the old man’s heart.

  As Charlie wretched,
flames shot out of the windows of the house. Lee casually tossed the still warm heart into the fully engulfed house.

  “Message sent,” Lee said.

  As Elmer’s house burned, five Elkins Dairy trucks made its way to Middlesboro. They were each loaded with moonshine. Their destination was a garage on 20th Street where two larger trucks and their drivers waited for them. The two trucks were scheduled to leave for Chicago as soon as the liquor was off—loaded from the dairy trucks.

  Each of the dairy trucks had a driver and an extra man in the cab to help with the unloading and loading of the product. Young Willie Webb drove the third truck. His job was to carry the daily payment back to his boss, Hill, who ordinarily would be the one in the third truck.

  The 17-year old was thrilled at the trust placed in him and his passenger, Ernie Kelly, knew it.

  Where Willie was a skinny kid, Ernie was a burly veteran of the Great War. He lived through the battles in France and survived the Spanish influenza outbreak on his transport ship, thanks largely to his old friend John Fulton.

  Ernie carried a Model 1911 Colt .45 semi—automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. He didn’t anticipate trouble but kept his right hand free to reach for his weapon just the same.

  The trucks followed a winding, narrow road across Fonde Mountain to get to Middlesboro. After the caravan crested the mountain the lead truck abruptly stopped.

  Willie slammed on the brakes causing Ernie to jerk forward into the windshield.

  “Damn son! You tryin’ to kill me?” He asked angrily as Willie pointed to the stationary vehicles in front of them.”

  “That son of a bitch Nolan just come to a dead stop,” he said, pointing to the first truck.

  Frowning, Ernie looked from Willie to the lead vehicle. His expression changed from anger to concern.

  “I don’t like this,” Ernie said as he scanned the wooded hills outside his window.

  A bullet pinged into the hood of the truck from the woods.

  “Out!” Ernie yelled as he pushed Willie out of the driver’s side.

  Willie hit the ground with a thud. He looked to complain and saw a stranger with a shotgun leveled at him. Before Willie could react, a loud report rang out and the stranger’s head exploded in blood as Ernie bounded from the truck.

  Another man with a shotgun came from the right and Ernie dropped him too with a shot to the center of the chest. He didn’t see the gunman behind him who fired a shotgun blast into his back. It pushed him forward on top of Willie, who was too scared to speak or move. Ernie slid the pistol into Willie’s hand.

  “Run kid,” he gasped.

  Willie saw the gunman coming for him. He raised the .45 and fired. The gun jerked violently in his hand and the sound was deafening. The gunman tumbled backward as blood exploded from his chest.

  Willie didn’t take the time to stare as he scrambled off the side of the road and down the embankment, running, falling, rolling, and up and running again. Buckshot and bullets whistled around him. A few pellets burned into his left shoulder as he hurried into the heavily wooded area. Willie hurt all over. The buckshot hurt but so did the briar scratches and bruises he incurred during his escape.

  He could hear what he imagined war would sound like — constant gunfire and explosions rocked the mountainside. Willie kept running until he got to the bottom of the mountain and found a farmhouse in the distance.

  ***

  Mae and Lucy sat in the parlor talking about the upcoming wedding. Lucy would be the maid of honor and Ed would be best man.

  “You know, with both of y’all in the weddin’ it might give Ed some ideas,” Mae said with a playful grin.

  Lucy just shook her head and smiled softly. Her dark eyes did not reflect any humor.

  “I’ve learned one thing: If Ed don’t come up with the idea, he won’t use it. Besides, we’re both happy. If we ever got married it might spoil things,” she said.

  Mae frowned.

  “You don’t really believe that. One of these days my cousin will wake up and realize what he’s got and see that he don’t want to lose it,” Mae said.

  Lucy started to answer but stopped.

  “Did you hear that?” She asked.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Mae said as a Lucy stood up and walked toward the window.

  “It came from the direction of the barn,” Lucy said as she pulled the curtains back and looked to the barn. Mae joined her.

  “There!” Lucy yelled as she spotted a man running from the barn through the field behind it. He was running for the county road across the creek on the back side of the Elkins property. She started out and Mae grabbed her.

  “There might be more than one,” she said.

  Lucy found the Remington 12 gauge pump shotgun over the fireplace.

  “Ed keeps a .38 in the right hand desk drawer,” Lucy said, nodding to the roll top desk in the corner.

  Mae walked over and retrieved it.

  “I’m ready,” she said as they walked out the door toward the barn. Off in the distance to the east, pillars of black smoke hung in the sky. Both noticed it but walked on silently.

  “Let me go first. If there’s somebody else in there, use that cannon. We’ll find out who they are later,” Mae said as Lucy nodded.

  Lucy was scared but this wasn’t as bad as the night her father died. When a drunken family friend came over to check on her and her mother. The bastard wound up beating her mother half to death and raping her. He was a foreman with the Milner Coal Company and to call the sheriff or to complain to management would have been a waste of time.

  She knew fear but she also learned to protect herself.

  Lucy raised the shotgun as Mae walked into the barn. Mae walked slowly as went from stall to stall. All were empty until she got to the last stall, the one where Ed kept a prize bull he had recently purchased. She gasped loud enough for Lucy to hear.

  “What is it?” Lucy asked.

  Mae looked back to her wide-eyed.

  “It’s Ed’s new bull. Somebody killed it and gutted it,” she said.

  Lucy trembled. She felt bile rise in her throat.

  “Why would they kill the bull?” She asked.

  Mae shook her head.

  “Don’t know. I’m guessin’ Ed’s made somebody mad,” she said.

  As if speaking his name would conjure him up, Ed’s car rolled to a stop in front of the house. He had spent the morning the western side of Evans County checking on his stills there while Hill had spent his day in Silver Point waiting for money to be delivered from Middlesboro to stash in the bank vault.

  Ed saw the women and noticed they were armed. He hopped out of the Ford with his Colt Model 1911 drawn. Ed sprinted toward the barn.

  “What’s wrong?” He asked.

  “Somebody killed and gutted your bull,” Mae said.

  “What?” Ed asked and Lucy explained about seeing the man running from the barn.

  “Did you see his face?” Ed asked.

  “He was too far away,” Lucy said.

  Ed holstered his .45 and took the shotgun from Lucy.

  “Let’s go back to the house. I’ll call some of the boys to handle this. From now on, I’ll keep a guard here at the house,” Ed said as they walked back up toward the house.

  “This was a message,” Mae said.

  “I know,” Ed said.

  “Who could you have made that mad?” Lucy asked.

  Ed laughed bitterly.

  “Any number of people,” he said.

  As they stepped up on the wraparound porch, they saw one of the dairy trucks speeding toward the house. Hill was driving. He jumped out of the truck and hurried over to the porch. Still standing in the yard, he looked to the trio a couple feet above him on the porch. Hill was pale. Ed and Mae both knew something was wrong.

  Hill opened his mouth to speak.

  Ed gave him a stern look.

  “What is it?” He asked.

  Hill shook his head.

  “I-I
’ve got some bad news and I hate to be the one to tell you,” Hill said.

  “Well tell us dammit,” Ed said.

  “It’s Elmer...he’s dead,” Hill said as Mae screamed.

  Lucy embraced her tightly as the screams melted into sobs.

  Ed froze. His expression did not change.

  “How?” He asked.

  Hill looked at Mae and shook his head.

  “Ed...I don’t know that I should say right now,” Hill said.

  “Tell me,” Ed growled.

  “Mae, let’s go inside,” Lucy said as she tried to usher her away. Mae shook her head and pulled free of the embrace.

  “Just tell us Hill,” she said as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Hill exhaled sharply.

  “Murdered. Somebody beat him real bad and cut his throat. And...they, uh...cut out his heart,” he said.

  Lucy’s hand flew to her mouth in horror as Mae dropped to her knees. Hill ran up on the porch and fell to his knees next to her. He wrapped his arms around her.

  “And they burned the house. It was still burning when I left,” Hill said as he looked up to Ed, who still hadn’t moved but the color had drained from his face.

  “Coroner been out yet?” Ed asked.

  “Not that I know of but the sheriff and a couple of deputies are there,” Hill said.

  “Stay with them. I’ll be back afterwhile,” Ed said as he walked toward his car.

  “I wanna go,” Mae said.

  “No. He wouldn’t want you to see him like that and it won’t help you a bit either,” Ed said.

  “What’re you gonna do?” Lucy asked.

  “Talk to that sorry ass excuse for a sheriff for starters,” Ed said he opened his car door.

  ***

  Jeff sat in his office and waited impatiently. He couldn’t get any work done because he couldn’t focus. As darkness started to descend on Crystal Springs, Lee walked in.

  “Did you get to the old man,” Jeff asked.

  “Let’s put it this way. We have Ed Elkins’ attention,” Lee said.

  Jeff took out his pipe and packed the bowl with tobacco. He nodded and lit the lit the pipe.

  “Good, good,” he said between puffs.

  Joe walked in. His face was pale and his eyes were wide with shock. He looked at Lee.

  “What did you do?” Joe asked.