The Moonshine War Page 7

  Dual wasn't laughing; he wasn't smiling either. He said, "That's right." He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, looked inside closely as he fingered the bills, and dropped two twenties and a five on the table. "You owe me a dollar," he said.

  The young man let his smile fade, then smiled again with an effort, shaking his head and looking beyond Dual Meaders now toward Dr. Taulbee and Miley Mitchell. Raising his voice to a pleasant tone he said, "Is your friend serious?"

  Dr. Taulbee took a bite of salmon croquette and rested his fork momentarily on the edge of his plate. "He's serious. If there's one thing you can say about him, he's serious."

  "But you can't just come in and tell a person you want to buy his clothes--" The young man was appealing to Dr. Taulbee. "You just don't do it."

  "You wouldn't think so," Dr. Taulbee said, buttering a slice of bread and folding it in half to take a bite.

  Miley glanced over at the table and went back to her salmon croquettes. They were pretty good; a lot better than she thought they would be.

  "I can't take off my suit. Right here." "Why can't you?" Dual asked him.

  "I mean why should I? You can't just come in here and take anything you want."

  "I'm paying for the suit, ain't I?"

  "But I don't want to sell it!"

  "Mister, do you believe I care what you want? Take off the suit yourself so I won't have to do it and maybe tear it," Dual said.

  The young man's wife wasn't laughing now. She seemed afraid to move and her face was white. She said in a low voice, but loud enough for Dual to hear, "Urban, call the police. Ask the lady to call."

  The Four Star woman was watching from behind the counter, holding the two iced teas. The young man looked at her now, a glimmer of hope in his expression. He said, "Are you going to stand for this going on in your place? You allow anybody to come in here and threaten your customers?"

  "I work here," the woman said. "I don't own it or anything. The owner is Mr. James C. Baxter, but he ain't here right now."

  The young man's wife said, "Well, will you please call the police?"

  "I don't know--" The woman stood rigid holding the iced teas. "I don't know what's going on here. I don't know if it's a joke or what."

  "He's threatening my husband!"

  "Well, I don't know what he's doing. I was to call, I wouldn't know what to tell them."

  "Ruth," the young man said, "never mind. Let's forget it. Let's just leave. Are you ready?" He was keeping his voice low and controlled, doing a fair job of acting natural.

  Dual Meaders let the young man push his chair back and stand up before he reached inside his coat and came out with a .38 revolver. The gun looked heavy in Dual's slender hand; his wrist bent with the weight of it so that the barrel pointed low on the young man.

  "I'll put a hole in your suit," Dual said, "if you don't start taking it off.

  The young man opened his mouth, but not to speak. The gun barrel and Dual's expression held him wordless. He couldn't believe this was happening; except that the skinny, pale-looking fellow was pointing a gun at him and it was the realest thing he had ever seen in his life. He didn't want to look at his wife. He was afraid she might say the wrong thing and make the fellow mad. The fellow seemed calm, even patient, but that was it, he was too calm: his face was like a dead man's face with the eyes open, a skeleton man who was too small to wear the suit in the first place. It wouldn't even fit him. If he asked the fellow to try it on he'd see for himself. But if the fellow took it wrong, thought he was calling him a squirt, God, there was no telling what he might do. That's why the young man from Cincinnati looked straight ahead and took off his coat without saying a word.

  When he hesitated, Dual said, "Now the pants. Hey, what size shoe you wear?"

  "Nine B."

  "Too big. Keep your shoes and them garters. Jesus Christ, I don't want no garters. The tie's all right. I'll take that and you don't have to pay me the dollar change." Then, studying the young man as he undressed, Dual said, "Take everything off, right down to your skin."

  "What?"

  "Come on, take off the drawers and the undershirt."

  The young man pleaded, "There's no need. You don't want my underwear," and forced himself to smile.

  "Please--" his wife said.

  Dual's eyes moved to the woman. "Don't you like to look at him with no clothes on?"

  "Please," she said again. "Take the suit and let us go."

  Now Dual's eyes shifted to the young man. "You better step out of those drawers, mister."

  Dr. Taulbee used a doubled piece of bread to push the last of his salmon croquettes onto the fork. He glanced over at the young man, then at Miley, and put the salmon in his mouth. "You're not looking," he said.

  Miley's head turned to study the young man, briefly. "What's there to look at?" She was eating her salad, wiping the side of the bowl with a piece of bread. "They don't have enough mayonnaise in the dressing," she said.

  "Do you like that outfit she's wearing?" "Who?"

  "The guy's wife."

  Miley looked over at the couple again. "It's all right. I don't wear much brown."

  "It might look good on you."

  Miley shrugged. "Maybe. I think it's too small though."

  Dr. Taulbee straightened in the booth, raising his head. "Dual," he said, "we'll take that dress too."

  The young man's wife stared and hesitated as long as she could and said, oh please, and finally began to cry. Her husband put his hand on her shoulder and pulled down the zipper in back and helped her off with the dress.

  "Pink teddies," Dr. Taulbee said. "I like teddies on a shapely woman."

  "She's not much," Miley said.

  "Well, we don't know for sure."

  Dr. Taulbee straightened again. "Dual, we might as well see the whole show."

  The woman pleaded until Dual turned the revolver on her and her husband again patted her shoulder and stood close to her. The woman pulled the straps from her shoulders, peeling the silk undergarment down and stepped out.

  Miley was finishing her salad. "I told you," she said.

  "No, they're not too bad."

  "Are we going to have dessert?"

  Dr. Taulbee continued to stare at the woman. "Ten, twelve pounds she'd be all right."

  "I wouldn't mind ice cream or pudding," Miley said.

  Dr: Taulbee touched his mouth with his napkin. "I think we'd better get along." He looked over at the Four Star woman holding the glasses of iced tea. "Miss, if you'll bring us a check please." Dr. Taulbee got up; starting for the door he paused to look at the couple standing naked by their table, the woman huddled close to her husband and sobbing. "Honey," Dr. Taulbee said, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. I've seen women get by just fine with a whole lot less than you got."

  Dual paid the check. By the time he was outside with the suit over his arm, squinting in the sun glare and waiting for a truck to pass before he could cross the highway, Dr. Taulbee and Miley had reached the La Salle and were getting in. The car had been moved from the canopy of the filling station and stood off to the side in the hot sun. Another car was next to the line of three pumps and the filling station man was standing with one foot on the car's rear fender, holding the gasoline hose--the same one that had said to Dual Meaders, "right in front of your nose."

  Dual approached the first pump, at the front fender of the car. He didn't pay any attention to the filling station man, though he noticed the guy in the driver's seat of the car watching him--an old guy, a farmer. Dual took out his pocketknife and slashed it through the pump hose as the guy watched. Then he gave the guy a look and walked off toward the La Salle. Dr. Taulbee would get sore if he had to wait too long.

  Dual Meaders gave himself the gabardine suit as a birthday present. He turned twenty-five the day he drove Dr. Taulbee and Miley from Louisville across the state to Marlett. Dual had never been over in this hill country before. He was originally from Memphis, Tennessee; had left home when he was four
teen and had been back only once since--and then by accident, because some hobos had robbed him and thrown him off the freight as it was passing through Memphis. That's what he had intended to do, pass through, but they pushed him out of the boxcar near Chickasaw Gardens and he picked cinders out of his face and hands for a week. (There were still spots on the heels of his hands where the gravel had been ground into the skin.)

  Not long after that, when he was eighteen years old, Dual was charged and convicted in Kentucky of assault with the intent to commit bodily harm, after he had poured gasoline on a sleeping hobo and set him afire.

  Dual had thought this was pretty funny and had even cracked a smile in the courtroom when the prosecuting attorney described to the jury the old man running down the street screaming. The old man lived, though he spent two months in the hospital. Good--Dual didn't have any use for hobos since the time he was robbed and thrown off the freight train and he admitted he was out to get them. What he got was three years in Eddyville and Dr. Taulbee as a cellmate during the last year of his sentence. They got along all right. Dual liked Dr. Taulbee because even though the man was educated and a dentist he did not act biggety or think he was better than anybody else. He didn't act tough and he wasn't a fighter, but if a con got mean with him, Dr. Taulbee could usually quiet the man by talking to him. Only once did a con cause him real trouble. The con told him he wanted a sack of tobacco and cigarette paper every day or else he'd break Dr. Taulbee's arms, both of them. Dr. Taulbee gave the man what he wanted until Dual got the tin knife made in the metal shop and, on a rainy afternoon in the yard when a bunch of them were huddled in a doorway, slipped the tin knife into the con's side. Dr. Taulbee didn't have any trouble from then on. After he was released from Eddyville he wrote to Dual and told him to look him up. Five months later Dual was out, working for the doctor and having one hell of a good time.

  Boy, things happened fast; and it seemed everything had a reason. If he hadn't been sent to Eddyville, he'd never have met Dr. Taulbee. If he hadn't been thrown off the freight train and got them cinders in his hands, he wouldn't have poured gasoline on the bum and lit him up. Hell, and if he hadn't been riding the rails, he wouldn't have been thrown off. Take it back all the way. If he hadn't killed that boy with the rock, he wouldn't have run away from home. (The fat son of a bitch was way bigger than he was and had been picking on him and beating him up all during the school year. So one day coming home Dual had got up on the garage roof with the rock that must have weighed twenty-five pounds and, when the fat boy came along the alley, Dual dropped it on his head.) So if he hadn't dropped the rock, he wouldn't be working for Dr. Taulbee.

  He sure liked working for him. It was a good easy job with plenty of excitement and all the booze and babes he wanted. What he liked especially was the .38 Smith & Wesson. God it felt good holstered there under his arm: blue steel and a hard hickory grip and with it he could do just about anything he wanted. It was sure better than a heavy rock or a wavy tin knife.

  Dual said to the rearview mirror, "This Frank Long is supposed to be at the hotel?"

  As Dr. Taulbee looked up Miley stirred, her head resting against his shoulder, her eyes closed. "That's what he said."

  "Marlett ain't very far now." Now Dual's eyes were on the uneven blacktop beyond the dark dusty oval hood of the La Salle. "The Caswell place is supposed to be up back of town. He said turn at the cemetery and keep going, you can't miss it, a two-story house, was painted white one time."

  "You told me," Dr. Taulbee said, sitting patiently and looking out at the rolling green countryside.

  "You remember Caswell at Eddyville?"

  "The name more than the face."

  "Boyd Caswell. It was something, I remembered him being from Marlett. You said we're going to Marlett, I thought of Boyd Caswell right away. You know what he said when I called him?"

  "I think you told me that also," Dr. Taulbee said.

  "He said, 'Jesus H. Christ, come on. There ain't nobody here but me and my old daddy and he's half deaf and full blind.' "

  "We'll see how blind he is," Dr. Taulbee said. Dual looked up at the rearview mirror. "Caz says it, it's a fact."

  "You said he was in for armed robbery?"

  "Sure, but me and him was friends. I mean if you can't trust Caz, you can't trust anybody."

  "Now you're talking," Dr. Taulbee said. "Say that every night before you go to bed."

  "What I was wondering--if we shouldn't stay there awhile, get the lay of the land before we see this Frank Long."

  Dual held his gaze on the road and the voice behind him said, "No, we'll talk to Long first. We want to see whether he's real or wasting our time."

  "Or setting a trap."

  "Or that," Dr. Taulbee agreed.

  "How do you tell?"

  "You don't. You get something on him." "What if he's playing square?"

  "You still get something on him."

  "I don't know." Dual shook his head. "I don't believe I remember this one."

  "I remember him," Dr. Taulbee said. "I remember two different times meeting that boy and both times thinking to myself, If you went looking to buy yourself a Prohibition agent you'd find this boy sitting on the counter."

  "He never came to you before this?"

  "No, not till his telephone call the other day." "It could still be a trap he's setting for us to walk into."

  "Don't forget it either," Dr. Taulbee said. "Let's think about it in silence so this little girl can get her rest."

  Dual straightened up to look at Dr. Taulbee in the mirror. "She sleeping?" Miley was cuddled against him with his arm around her now.

  "Like a baby," Dr. Taulbee said. "Bless her heart."

  A few minutes later Dual Meaders said, "You are now entering Marlett, Kentucky. Population two thousand one hundred and thirty-two."

  Lowell Holbrook came down the stairs to the lobby and went right to the desk, where Mrs. Lyons was closing the register and putting it on the shelf under the counter.

  He said, "I was sure the girl was with the younger guy; I mean I thought she was his wife. But she had me put her bag in the same room with the older guy." Lowell was frowning, looking at Mrs. Lyons for an explanation. "Is that her father?"

  "Her husband," Kay Lyons said. "Dr. and Mrs. Emmett Taulbee, from Louisville."

  She began going through a stack of mail that must have come in, Lowell decided, while he was upstairs. He said, "Well, the other one can't be her son."

  "Mr. Dual Meaders, also from Louisville." "They staying long?"

  "They didn't say."

  "Well, the younger guy's in 208 and the married ones are in 210. Is that right?"

  "That's fine, Lowell."

  "Mrs. Lyons? The older one, upstairs, he asked me what room Frank Long was in."

  Kay looked up from the letters, holding one in hand. After a moment she said, "Then he must be a friend of theirs."

  "Don't you think it's funny?"

  "No, I don't think so," Kay Lyons said. "Why?"

  "Well, coming in and asking for a Prohibition agent."

  "He could still be a friend."

  "I suppose," Lowell said. Though all afternoon he kept thinking about them: seeing the man with the big toothy smile and the girl looking out the window and the younger one with a tan suit over his arm, like he was going to send it out to have it cleaned, though he never did. He would think about them and wonder if he should tell Mr. Baylor.

  And Mr. Baylor would say, "These birds checked in and asked for Frank Long. Well, now what do you want me to do, put them in jail?"

  That was it, what they done outside of asking for somebody? Frank Long was a Prohibition agent, but he was also a person, with kin anyway, even though he might not have any friends.

  So Lowell didn't tell Mr. Baylor about them. He told himself if Mrs. Lyons wasn't going to worry, he wasn't either. Hell, tomorrow they'd probably be gone and he'd never see them again.

  Lowell found out that was wrong the next morning--when
he saw the three of them walking through the lobby and out the front door with Frank Long. He watched them get into a big car that looked like a La Salle and drive away.

  Chapter Six.

  Son could hear the dogs down in the hollow, far below through the stillness of the trees, the clear, sharp racket of the foxhounds onto something. Son stood on the porch, at the edge of the morning shade, looking out across the yard to where the road came up out of the hollow. Aaron came around from the side of the house and both of them stood listening for a minute.

  When he was sure he had located the sound of the dogs in his mind and could picture them bounding out of the thicket and coming this way, Son looked over at Aaron.

  "There isn't any rabbit would run up the road, is there?"

  "No rabbit I know of," Aaron said. "They chasing a car."

  "Whose car they say it is?"

  The Negro cocked his head. "They don't say whose, only it's a car."

  "I guess one. They're both right together."

  Aaron nodded, looking at Son now. "Jes' one, but maybe full of dudes. You want me to go down a ways?"

  "No, go on up to the still. Hey, Aaron? With a shotgun."

  Aaron came up on the porch, as tall as Son and heavier through the chest and shoulders. "Maybe it jes' a friend come for breakfas'," he said.

  "I didn't invite anybody." Son waited while Aaron went inside and came out with the Remington 12-gauge "Aaron," he said, "somebody comes in and wants to knock the still all to hell, let them do it."

  "I'll be nice."

  "But if somebody shoots at you or you think they're about to, don't hold back."

  "No, sir, I let them make the intentions known."

  "They can have the still if they want it." "Tha's right."

  "But they can't have us."

  Aaron grinned. "Tha's right."

  Son sat down on the top step to wait. He got up and went into the house and came out wearing a dark hat with a funneled brim that he pulled down close to his eyes--the way Frank Long wore his hat--and looked off at Aaron crossing a hump of the meadow, heading for the slope and the house up in the trees. Son sat down on the step again.