The Moonshine War Page 11

  He pointed out Marlett and traced the highway line east into the hills, to the spur roads that led to the areas he had circled and marked with a capital letter to indicate Worthman, Stamper, Blackwell, and Martin. He drew a line through the Wand then pointed to the S for Stamper. That was the next place they'd hit, tomorrow night, unless Son Martin contacted him before then. Next, if Son didn't move, they'd hit the Blackwell place. That should do it, Long told them. By then there'd be enough pressure on Son he'd have to give up his whiskey.

  They stared at the map, for a while, until one of them said, "It seems to me a long way round the mountain. Introduce me to this Son Martin, I'll make him tell anything you want to know."

  Dual Meaders said, "Jesus, yes. You shoot in the knee, he'll tell."

  Another man said, "What you do, you take his pants down and hold a razor over his business. I mean to tell you, you can learn anything you want."

  Everybody thought that was pretty good. Dr. Taulbee made a face, an expression of awful pain and seemed to be saying, "Wh00000."

  "They's some good ways," the first man said. "I like to slip on this leather glove and punch 'em around a little first, have some fun."

  Frank Long waited while they laughed and talked among themselves, offering sure-fire ways of getting a man to talk. Finally, when there was a lull, he said, "We're going to hit his neighbors. We get to the man through his neighbors. That's the way I want it and that's the way it's going to be. You're playing you're federal agents and for a while these hillbillies are going to believe it; but once you start torturing people or killing without any reason, that old man sheriff or the newspaper or somebody is going to get on the phone to Frankfort and that'll be all for the fun and prizes."

  Dr. Taulbee was grinning as he rolled a cigar in the corner of his mouth, wetting it before he bit off the tip. "Frank," he said across the room, "don't worry about it, all right? They just having a little sport with you, boy, that's all."

  "I want it understood what we're doing." "We're with you, boy, don't worry." "They're supposed to act like federal U. S.

  officers."

  "They will."

  "If Frankfort hears and wants to know who they are, I say they're deputies hired by the sheriff."

  "That's good thinking, Frank."

  "But they make this a shoot-up with them goddamn Thompsons, we're done."

  "I believe it, Frank," Dr. Taulbee said. "that's why we're doing it your way."

  "No shooting unless the stiller shoots at us first."

  "Right."

  "No shooting at the stiller's house, where you're liable to hit one of his family."

  "No, sir, we don't want any of that." Dr. Taulbee waited, then lighted his cigar and went up to Frank Long and took him by the arm, saying, "Come on, Frank, I'll walk you out to your car."

  In the kitchen Boyd Caswell was still sleeping, snoring now, but the old man was gone. Outside they saw him walking toward the privy, his withered face raised to the sun.

  "It's a terrible thing to be old and poor," Dr. Taulbee said thoughtfully, blowing out a thin stream of cigar smoke. "But Frank"--turning to Long now--"we ain't ever going to become a pathetic creature like that, are we?"

  "I don't aim to."

  "No, sir, not if we can get that load and sell it at five dollars a fifth. What'd we say that was? A hundred and twenty-two thousand five hundred dollars. A third for you and a third for me and a third for labor and bottles. Forty thousand dollars each. Which is no bad start on keeping out of the poorhouse, is it?"

  "If we can pull it."

  "If we can pull it?" Dr. Taulbee seemed amazed. "What's this pulling we got to do? Frank, all we need is to trust each other and lead a clean life and we shall get our reward."

  Dr. Taulbee let his grin form and gave Long a shove. "Now go on, get out of here, and see if Son's been looking for you."

  Dual Meaders came out to stand next to Dr. Taulbee as Long turned around and drove out of the yard.

  His gaze following the car, Dr. Taulbee said, "We're going to have trouble with that boy."

  "How come?" asked Dual.

  "He's starting to eat his own insides." "He is?"

  "He's getting nervous. He's starting to make rules. We don't need any of that."

  "I don't see we need any of him," Dual said.

  Dr. Taulbee seemed pleasantly surprised as he looked at Dual. "Goddarn," he said. "Isn't that something, both of us thinking the very same thing."

  Chapter Eight.

  Arley Stamper's place was raided the evening of June 18, 1931. Arley said later it was right at dusk. He saw the cars coming up his road and the first thing he did, he got his children and his old woman down on the floor and cocked his Winchester. The cars didn't show any headlights, they came sneaking in black against the trees. But how could they have sneaked past his oldest boy who'd been down by the gravel road to watch and was to give the signal? The signal being three shots. Three shots and you'd know there was hell in the air. But there were the cars driving into the yard. The men got out and they had his oldest boy with them, walking him to the house on his tiptoes with his arm bent behind his back. They had seen him and drew down on him before he could give the signal. There was nothing to do then but drop the Winchester and put your hands in the air, Arley Stamper said.

  Yes, he had recognized Frank Long. The others he had never seen around here before and swore he had never sold any of them moonshine. He'd of recognized their clothes. One of them was dressed in overalls, but his hat was pulled down over his eyes and he wore a neckerchief over his nose and mouth like a bank robber. This one led them off to where the still used to be, off where the yard path went into the thicket.

  Where it used to be, Arley said, because he'd moved the still. When they came back they acted sore and Frank Long asked him where the still was now. Arley Stamper said, what still? Then one of them, a big man, the one holding his boy and wearing one leather glove on his right hand, turned his boy around and hit him as hard as he could in the face. Frank Long said, don't you know what still I'm talking about? The one you moved. Arley Stamper said, oh, that still; and took them to it. They stood back and one boy used a tommy gun to shoot the outfit apart so it could never be repaired. It was something to hear that gun go off, but it was an awful sight what it did to the still and the mash barrels.

  No, they didn't arrest Arley--like they hadn't arrested any of the Worthmans, which was a strange thing. No, Arley said, they went on up the holler and he figured they were going to his brother Lee Roy's place.

  Mr. Baylor found Lee Roy Stamper at the doctor's house in Marlett, Lee Roy clenching his teeth while the doctor closed the gash in his right arm with seventeen catgut stitches. Lee Roy said he'd put his arm through a window trying to get the son of a bitch open. But outside the doctor's house, Lee Roy admitted that wasn't the way it happened at all.

  He had heard the gunfire down at Arley's and knew they would be up to his place next; so he and his wife Mary Lou's brother, R. D. Bowers, grabbed a shotgun and a high-powered rifle and got over to the still which he'd located in a gully section they had dug out and covered over with brush and vines. These federal boys had to come across a pasture field to reach them, Lee Roy said, so he and R. D. Bowers figured they would let go with warning shots to let these fellows know if they fooled around with Lee Roy Stamper they'd get their moldboards cleaned. Well, they let go, firing three shots over their heads and, God Almighty, it was like opening the door on a furnace, the fire that came back at them--bullets sniping through the brush leaves and clanging into the copper still, blowing up the mash barrels and the flake stand. When they dove for cover, Lee Roy said, he landed in a mess of broken glass and was laying there bleeding when the federal boys appeared on the edge of the gully pointing their guns at them. One of them said, well, according to the rules we can shoot these two, they fired on us. But another one, who sounded like he was in charge, told him to get a car over here and start loading moonshine. No, Lee Roy wasn't sure i
f it was Frank Long. No, he hadn't seen anybody with a neckerchief over his face that looked like a bank robber. Hell, the whole bunch of them looked like bank robbers. His brother-in-law, R. D. Bowers, got scratched up some and found a big wood sliver in his hip that was so deep it was like it had been shot into him. R. D. didn't say a word; he went home and nobody had talked to him since.

  That Friday, June 19, Lowell Holbrook spent the morning looking for Mr. Baylor. He wasn't at his office in the courthouse; nobody was except the girl on the switchboard. He wasn't at his house. He wasn't anywhere having coffee. When Lowell went back to the courthouse, just before noon, E. J. Royce was on the telephone. Lowell waited, trying to decide whether or not he should tell Mr. Royce what he'd learned about the friend of Frank Long's staying at the hotel, this Dr. Taulbee. E. J. Royce hung up and reached for his hat. Lowell asked him if Mr. Baylor was around. No, he was out on official business. Lowell asked him if he had a minute to listen to something that might be important, or at least seemed awful strange, this man who was supposed to be a doctor but been to the state penitentiary. E. J. Royce said he would have to tell him some other time. There had been a bad accident out on the highway.

  God no, it was no accident, Bob Cronin said. It's no accident when they shoot off your back tires and you go in the ditch and almost kill yourself.

  When E. J. Royce got to the scene, there were cars parked along the shoulder of the road and people looking at the platform Feed & Seed truck that was tilted over and wedged against the inside bank of the drainage ditch.

  Bob Cronin, age seventeen, employed by Marlett Feed & Seed, had gone out about eleven with a load of deliveries to make east of town. He was carrying rolls of bob wire, he said, and hundred-pound bags of clover seed--what was left of them. God, look at the mess to clean up.

  Driving along he had seen this car up ahead parked to the left side, pointing toward town. Passing the car he had slowed up to see if it was anybody he knew, but it was three men he had never seen before, in suits. One of them was out behind the car like he was taking a leak. As Bob Cronin drove by, this one shouted something at him. Bob said he thought the man was yelling hi or making some funny remark; so Bob had waved his arm out the window and kept going. Well, actually he had given the fellow a sign out the window with his middle finger, but not meaning anything really insulting by it. The next thing he knew the car was coming up fast behind him and a fellow was leaning out the window firing a pistol at him. Bob had thought, oh my God, they must be highway patrolmen, and right away put on the brakes and started to shift down his gears. They came right up behind him, still firing and the next thing he knew he was in the ditch. When he got out, he was so scared he didn't say a word. The three of them were out of the car and one was holding a Thompson machine gun. Not him, but a littler one with a tan suit said, where are you taking that corn meal? To whose still? Bob Cronin told them it wasn't corn, it was clover seed. The one in the tan suit didn't say anything for a minute. Bob Cronin said he just looked at him, not blinking or moving a muscle in his face. A horsefly buzzed past his face and circled him and buzzed around his hair, but he still didn't move. Then he took the machine gun from the other one and fired it from ten feet away into the hundred-pound sacks, ripping them to shreds and blowing seed all over the truck and the highway. The he picked up a handful of it and said, yeah, it's clover seed all right. That was all he said, yeah, it's clover seed. They got in the car and U-turned and headed for Marlett. Bob Cronin said he heard the highway patrol had tough boys, but God, he didn't know they were that tough. One thing though, they hadn't given him a ticket.

  Saturday, June 20, was the longest day of Mr. Baylor's seventy-three-year-old life. It was Cow Day and it seemed like half the people in the county were in town to buy a raffle ticket, then walk around figuring how to stretch four bits or a dollar bill along five blocks of store windows.

  He hoped no boys were caught swiping candy or combs over at Kress's. He hoped Boyd Caswell stayed home and didn't weave down the street looking to pick a fight. He almost wished he might start coughing and spitting and have to go home for his wife to rub his chest with Mentholatum and stay in bed a few days. Mr. Baylor had on his desk the unofficial eyewitness accounts as told by Mr. Henry Worthman, Arley Stamper, Lee Roy Stamper, his brother-in-law R. D. Bowers, and young Bob Cronin, and he'd be a son of a bitch if he knew what he was going to do about them. Only Bob Cronin seemed within the law. (Marlett Feed & Seed wanted to know who these officers were, so they could claim damages, taking it to Frankfort if they had to.) The rest of them were moonshiners and, by law, deserved to be raided and prosecuted. He had warned them, told them to cease operating. If they didn't, then it was their funeral. That was the trouble, it was going to be somebody's funeral before it was through.

  There wasn't any mention of the raids in the Marlett Tribune. Because it was a weekly and they'd gone to press yesterday. But next week the accounts would be on the front page and Mr. Baylor's phone would ring all day Saturday and they'd be lined up out in the hall: newspaper people from other towns; friends wanting to know was anybody hurt; friends wanting to know where they were supposed to buy it now; temperance ladies saying it was about time somebody did something.

  You've got a week before the dam breaks, Mr. Baylor told himself. Rest your mind.

  Two o'clock that afternoon the editor-publisher of the Marlett Tribune came over for the facts. Mr. Baylor let him read the as-told-by eyewitness accounts.

  At two-thirty a man from the Corbin newspaper called the office.

  At ten to three the manager of the Kress store called; he had this boy in his office caught stealing a black leather wrist band and a dollar-ninety-five key case, a good one.

  At three-twenty a man named McClendon, who bought a farm east of town just a year ago; came in dirty and worn-out, his face bruised and swollen, to tell how Prohibition agents had burned his barn to the ground.

  It had happened early in the morning before sunup. He hadn't heard the cars drive up, hadn't seen them till these men broke his door down and dragged him outside and started asking him where his still was.

  Mr. Baylor knew McClendon had never operated a still, though he had been on a couple of Saturday night moonshine parties, including the one two weeks ago at Son Martin's place. So he asked McClendon if he had recognized Frank Long. No; and he hadn't noticed a man with a neckerchief over his face either. They kept asking him where the still was; then one of them, with a glove on, started hitting him. They asked him if he had any moonshine. He told them part of a half-gallon jar out in the barn, but that was all. They laughed when he said that, and one of them said, that's where Caz said he's supposed to keep it, in the barn.

  They looked all through the barn and when they didn't find more than the half jar, this little fellow lit a cigarette and threw the match in the hay. When they were sure it was caught good, they took McClendon outside to watch his barn burn down, his wife and children watching from the house. While they were standing there, the little fellow said, next time we come, Mr. Blackwell, we want to see your still. The man said to them, Blackwell? My name isn't Blackwell, it's McClendon. The Blackwells live three miles from here. The little fellow shook his head and said, no wonder he didn't have any shine in his barn.

  Mr. Baylor was pretty tired by now. He told the man to keep quiet about what happened; because if they wanted to, they could send him to Atlanta on the strength of his having that half jar. It's a shame, Mr. Baylor told him, but Jesus don't go writing to your congressman about it, get busy on a new barn.

  When McClendon had gone Mr. Baylor took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, seeing little white spots floating around in the dark. He'd pull the shade and try to take a nap for ten or fifteen minutes.

  At quarter to five the phone woke him up. Lowell Holbrook, calling from the hotel, said Bud Blackwell had shot and killed a man out in the street not five minutes ago.

  Bud Blackwell and Virgil Worthman came to town that Saturday afternoon with lo
aded .38s and twenty-four jars of moonshine. They parked the pickup truck back of Marlett Feed & Seed where the farmers would drive in to load their supplies. By four o'clock Bud and Virgil had sold out their stock and drunk a quart of the stuff between them.

  Virgil had gone to get something to eat, but Bud was still back of the store when Mr. McClendon came out and started loading building supplies into his truck. Bud asked him if he was going into the contracting business. Mr. McClendon told him no, but he would be willing to build the Blackwells a new barn for a good price. Bud said they didn't need a new barn and Mr. McClendon said not to be too sure if he had not been home all day. After Mr. McClendon told him about the men coming and thinking it was the Blackwell place, Bud began to curse and swear that if he saw any of them he would teach them to fool around with a Blackwell. Well, Mr. McClendon said, he thought he saw one of them over in front of the hotel as he came by. Mr. McClendon followed Bud through the feed store out to the street. They walked down to a cafe where Bud went in and got Virgil Worthman; then they walked on toward the hotel where, from across the street, Mr. McClendon pointed out the car parked in front and the man sitting behind the wheel. The man was one of them who'd burned down his barn, Mr. McClendon said.

  Lowell Holbrook told Mr. Baylor about the shooting, as he had seen the whole thing from the front door of the hotel.

  About a half hour before, two men had come into the lobby: the one who was about to be shot and another one, whom Lowell had seen before, a short guy in a suit that was too big for him. The short guy went up the stairs to the second floor, probably to see Frank Long. The other one waited in the lobby for about fifteen minutes, then went outside and got in the car. He was sitting there when Bud Blackwell and Virgil Worthman came across the street and walked up to the car.

  Lowell didn't hear what was said. Bud Blackwell was close to the car door, between this car and the one angle-parked next to it.