the Moonshine War (1969) (15 page)

"I was saying--there's Caswell's."

Dr. Taulbee studied the place. "They ain't much for farming, are they?"

"Not a blind man and anybody drinks as much as Boyd does."

"You tell me," Dr. Taulbee said, "becaus
e l
ittle Dual could be wrong about Boyd Caswell. Dual thinks anybody was at Eddyville is a first-class citizen."

"Boyd took us to Worthman's still last night," Long said. "I guess he's been there enough times he can find it drunk or sober."

Dr. Taulbee propped one hand against the dashboard as they turned into the yard. "Well he's in it now, isn't he?"

"The cars are in the barn if you're wondering." Long drove past the side of the house and pulled up in back as Dual Meaders came out the screen door in his shirt sleeves and shoulder holster, his hands deep in his pants' pockets.

"Bless his heart." Dr. Taulbee grinned and yelled out, "Hey, boy!"

Dual came over to the car and pulled a hand out of his pocket to open Dr. Taulbee's door, giving him his slight, closemouthed smile. "We're all in there waitin' on you," he said.

The old man at the kitchen table looked up with sightless eyes, with milk and wet crumbs in the thin stubble of his beard. He held a piece of corn bread soaking in a bowl of Pet Milk, the tips of his fingers in the milk covering the bread, as if hiding it from whoever was coming in the screen door.

Across the table Boyd Caswell's head raised with closed eyes that opened halfway, bleary, before his chin dropped to his chest again, as if he were staring down the front of his overalls. A quart jar of moonshine, almost empty, was on the table in front of him.

Dual's eyes shifted to Dr. Taulbee. "You recognize Boyd now you see him?"

"I sure do," Dr. Taulbee answered. "Though I'd forgot what a beauty he is."

"Boyd's resting after a hard night," Dual said. "This here is his daddy." Dual stared at the old man for a moment. "Daddy, you're losing all your pone in your milk. You ought to have Boyd fetch you a spoon."

The twelve men Dual had sent for were in the front room, sitting and standing around, some of them smoking cigarettes, patient and solemn, waiting expectantly, until Dr. Taulbee stepped in flashing his friendly smile, raising a hand in greeting and saying, "Well looky at all the good old boys are here. Boys, I heard you done it last night like genuine federal Prohibition revenue agents, yes, sir," Dr. Taulbee knew most of them and went around shaking hands and slapping shoulders and saying goddamn, you all are going to enjoy your trip, I guarantee, with fun and prizes for everybody. Dr. Taulbee loosened them up and told them to make themselves at home, while Frank Long unrolled his map of Broke-Leg County and thumb-tacked it to the wall.

Long stood by the map, waiting for everybody to settle down and look his way. He recognized half the men in the room; he had pictures of them in his binder. They were stick-up and strong-arm men and ex-convicts, now in the bootleg whiskey business. Every man here was armed; two of them ha
d b
rought Thompson machine guns. Frank Long was not afraid of any of them individually. But the dozen of them and Dual Meaders and Dr. Taulbee, all staring at him now, made him aware of himself standing in front of them, not part of them but with them, and he wanted to get this over with and get out as quick as he could.

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 hav
e s
neaked 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 stoo
d b
ack 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, the
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et 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 if 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 decid
e w
hether 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.