the Moonshine War (1969) (10 page)

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 hi
s n
apkin. "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 fourteen 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 wa
s t
hree 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 o
n h
im 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 u
s t
o 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 tha
t h
e 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.