The Wettest County in the World (3 page)

A
T THE
Rocky Mount Hospital Anderson produced a bottle of whiskey from his coat and offered it to the man with the mutilated groin. A foolish gesture perhaps but he didn’t know what else to do. The man’s eyes flickered on the bottle and his lip curled in a sneer of contempt.

Is it money? Anderson asked. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?

He sat at their bedside for almost an hour. The moaning man with the broken legs lapsed into unconsciousness and slept fitfully, his hands twitching under the sheets. Nurses came into the ward to tend to other patients and Anderson watched them squeaking down the row of beds, their crisp uniforms crackling like paper. After a while Anderson unscrewed the bottle of Canadian and had a bolt himself, the hot whiskey catching him by surprise and he coughed sharply, drawing looks from others in the ward.

Later Anderson walked the corridors and asked some nurses and doctors about what was reported in the papers and got nothing but shrugs and nervous smiles. Nobody at the hospital wanted to say anything. He sat beside the two men for another hour and read
The Roanoke Times,
sipping a paper cup of whiskey. When he finished the paper Anderson stood in the door to the ward with a cigarette and watched the two men, both of them now unconscious, their sheets soaked with sweat. Anderson felt his own damp jacket, his mouth dry as ash. He had drunk nearly a third of the bottle and yet felt completely sober. His trouser cuffs were stained with red clay, and he could feel the grit of it on his hands.

A
S HE TRAVELED
through Franklin County over the previous few months on his long, meandering drives, Sherwood Anderson habitually stopped at farms, pulling onto rutted roads wherever he spotted men working in the fields. He walked with lean farm boys through the wide rows of tobacco in the dead of July, the sharp green of the drooping leaves, waist high and spreading wide in the sun. The boys and men said little, unwrapping their dinner, sandwiches of cold pork and biscuit, gulping at their food as they sat in a shady spot under the withered elms. Their eyes flitted across Anderson from time to time but mostly they seemed to be staring at something far, far off, their faces, necks, and arms burned deep from the sun. The earth cracked like a puzzle, the fine dust of that clay getting into everything, and by the day’s end, standing on the sloped floor of his rented room in Rocky Mount, or back at Ripshin, he invariably found the red grains inside his shoes, in his socks, his pockets, in the corners of his eyes. Along the roads large swaths of clay on road cuts exposed like open wounds. When families sat down to eat supper freshly scrubbed from the fields they still carried the grit in the fine lines of their eyes and wrists, and it clung to the vegetables, it was baked deep into the hoecakes and corn bread, it lived in the crispy skin of the chicken, the blood of the pork.

Anderson marveled at the stoic endurance of these people, their masterful silence and complete allegiance to utility in all things. Barns were constructed from castoffs, old signboards and discarded pulp-wood. Ax handles were filled with half a dozen tightening wedges; rusted plows hammered back into shape until they snapped, then to be reheated at the makeshift forge and hammered again; the pump handle a length of copper pipe; vehicles cannibalized and rebuilt, each permutation carrying the original further from the initial purpose and appearance. The detritus of their efforts lay rotting in the hollow below the house, a ravine of rusted muck. Even then, in the evening the old farmer would peruse his personal junkyard and wonder if he could get that old tie-rod to fit his thresher hub. It was a never-ending battle to make do with what you already had, and when things gave out they literally exploded into red dust.

A
NDERSON WAS LEAVING
the hospital when an orderly in the hall motioned for him to follow. Now what? Anderson thought. He was tired and the slight tang of a daytime hangover was coming on. The orderly led Anderson down another hall and eventually stopped at a door, holding out his hand, his oily face impassive and dead-eyed, and when Anderson gave him the whiskey he swirled the bottle around, eyeing the level, shrugged, and tucked it into his back pocket and extended his hand again. Anderson laid a dollar on his horny palm, and the orderly led him into a dim storeroom filled floor to ceiling with shelves stacked with shimmering jars of various sizes. The orderly pulled a cord for the light.

This were delivered to those boys the day after they was admitted, the orderly said, pulling a cloth off a half-gallon mason jar.

Just in a paper sack, he said, no note or nothin’.

Anderson looked and tried to understand what he was seeing.

That there is what you call white lightnin’, the orderly said. Mountain licka.

The jar full of clear liquid and a grayish mass with loose tendrils, bulbous, mottled, a slight tincture of blood like a phantasm. A pair of irregular spheres, suspended like dead eyes.

And that’d be that boy’s tackle floatin’ in there, the orderly said, the man’s gonads.

Anderson blanched, the sour whiskey rising in his throat.

J
ACK AND
H
OWARD
B
ONDURANT
stood on the corner outside the Whitehead General Store in Rocky Mount. Nearly six o’clock and the streets were clearing out, everyone settling down to their supper. Howard’s muddy boots stretched over the curb, a sack of meal over his shoulder steadied with one hand. In the other hand he had a burlap sack containing a side of salted bacon. Howard’s face was reddened from the cold March wind blowing in from the mountain. After the war Howard quickly put on weight and now at twenty-eight years old had packed a dense layer of muscle and fat on his massive frame, his chest broad and arms like uncut hams.

A gut-rusted Ford truck gunned up the street and drew up at the curb, exhaust rattling like a machine gun. Danny Mitchell stuck his head out the window.

You comin’? Danny said.

What took so damn long? Howard said.

Danny grinned. He had a miraculous set of white teeth, evenly set with fresh pink gums.

Howard set the bacon and meal in the truck bed and climbed into the cab.

What ’bout the County Line? Jack said. You gonna be there tonight?

Yeah, Howard said, and you ain’t.

Jack spit on the curb. He wore a wool driving cap and his trousers were tucked into his knee-high boots, laced up tight.

Howard rapped on the dashboard and Danny floored the engine and the Model A clattered down East Court Street. Jack watched the truck as it jolted down the hill, hands jammed in his pockets. No damn direction or vision, Jack thought. When the truck was out of sight Jack tucked his hat down tight and started jogging lightly up the sidewalk into town.

D
ANNY
M
ITCHELL
took the truck out of gear and let it coast down the hill. Between his legs he held a jar with a metal screw-top lid. He steered the shuddering truck with his knees and took a deep drink, his eyes watching the road through the glass jar. In a minute they were outside Rocky Mount and heading south on 33.

Have a taste, Danny said.

Danny offered the jar to Howard, who took it in his broad palm, holding it up to the light. The liquid was clear at the top, a viscous brown swirl at the bottom. Howard shook the jar and beads the size of birdshot rose wavering and lurching, a thick mushroom of disturbed murk, swelling like an eruption, dislodging small bits of twigs, bark, and dirt that rose and drifted like fog.

This here’s made with tadpoles and swampwater, Howard said.

Danny bayed like a hound at the windshield.

That there is East Lake corn, he shouted. The best there is! Carolina mule.

Howard sniffed the murky liquid that slopped onto his hand as the truck left the hard road and the tires settled into the worn dirt ruts that ran through the hills toward Snow Creek. He took a mouthful and ran it over his tongue, his throat constricting and something almost solid lurched in his chest, like something alive, bringing salt to his eyes, and as he swallowed all the solids in his head cavities liquefied and snot ran freely from his nostrils.

This the worst damn whiskey that I ever put a lip on.

Hell, Danny said, you jus’ be careful. It’ll get
on
you. Wake up with your liver in yo’ sock.

Howard settled back into the seat and jammed his legs into the cramped footwell. In his pocket Howard had four dollars and thirty-five cents, all the money he had in the world. The rest of his money was in the corn, malt, rye, and molasses at the still up on Turkeycock Mountain. In three days, after they ran all ten mash boxes, they’d have 120 gallons of good liquor. They should get at least two dollars a gallon, and after supplies and splitting with Danny and Cundiff, he’d have nearly a hundred dollars to take home to Lucy and the baby. Then there were his debts: He owed Forrest sixty dollars, his father at least forty from due bills at the store. The whiskey slowly melted in Howard’s stomach and he felt it settle there in the base of his spine. The sunlight came across the windshield and the trees swam overhead in great funnels of spiny black, amber, and cornflower yellow. Beside him Danny spat and wrestled with the wheel, hands and elbows clamped to it. A miasma of odors filled the cab, the strongest being the reek of the driver, a foul combination of crotch rot, toe jam, tobacco, hog shit, and soured saliva.

A fool idea to make a run in winter, Howard thought. They’d have to keep the mash warm all night and through the next day, a tricky thing to do with simple pit fires and no device to measure temperature other than fingers. Then he’d have to borrow Danny’s truck tonight to get back down to the County Line Restaurant to help Forrest. It was part of the arrangement for the new loan: Forrest needed backup for a big sale to some men from Shootin’ Creek set to go off around midnight. It would take Howard at least an hour to get to the restaurant in the dark, so he figured he’d get the still hot, the mash boxes set, and head out and let Cundiff and Danny handle it through the night.

Danny looked over to him and grinned. Well damn, Howard thought, Danny ain’t such a bad fella anyway. He took another slug from the jar and passed it back. Howard sneezed three times in quick succession.

I’ll tell you what Danny-boy, Howard said. We gonna need to stop off somewheres and get a better pop o’ whiskey. That shit ain’t fit to slop hogs.

J
ACK RAN ALONG
East Court Street, dodging the stray pedestrians who slouched off with their late-afternoon purchases. He stayed off the muddy streets, rutted with tire tracks and mule dung. Downtown Rocky Mount was lined with a few blocks of shops bordered by rooming houses and apartments, two hotels and a strip of agricultural-supply warehouses, and the streets were perpetually littered with animal refuse and farming scrap. As Jack neared the Little Hub Restaurant he slowed to a walk and pulling off his cap fluffed it and set it back on his blond head at the appropriate angle. He gave his weathered boots another look over, flicking away some street mud, smoothing his britches and coat. He had a fine sheen to him in the plate glass of the colored barbershop and he felt erect and indomitable. Jack paused in front of Slone’s Haberdashery and inspected the burgundy calfskin boots with brass eyelets in the display. He scratched the top of his foot with the sole of his other boot. My first two dollars free and clear, Jack thought. The creamy yellow insides of the boots looked smooth and he imagined they felt like soft butter. Inside the store a man in a fur-trimmed ankle-length coat stood at the counter making a purchase. Jack eyed the brand-new Dual Cowl Duesenberg Phaeton angled at the curb. The two-tone paint job gleamed deep blue-black in the afternoon light, a fine spray of red mud on the running boards and white-walls. He had never seen one in Franklin County before, only in advertisements. That car cost more than ten goddamn Fords, Jack thought, maybe more.

When Jack reached the restaurant he found his friend Cricket Pate at the counter, drinking a cup of coffee and eating a doughnut.

Hey Cricket, Jack said. You finished stuffin’ your gullet?

Yeah, Cricket said. Let’s get on.

Cricket crammed the doughnut into his mouth and the two young men set off down the street to Cricket’s ramshackle Series 80 Pierce-Arrow coupe.

Lemee drive, Jack said.

Jack fired down the street in the rattling heap, Cricket shaking his head and holding on to the frayed ceiling.

C’mon, Jack, he said. Ain’t no reason to bust us up.

Cricket Pate was an old classmate of Jack’s from the Snow Creek school, though Cricket was three years older and didn’t stay in past the third grade. A reedy kid with awkward bowed knees from childhood malnutrition—a case of the rickets that made him walk like he was straddling a fence. Cricket had been living on Smith Mountain since his mother died when he was fourteen; he never knew his father. He’d shoot squirrel and run trotlines for mud cats in the lake under the mountain, sometimes picking up slop work during harvesting season. He was married at seventeen to a red-haired strumpet from Sontag and divorced the next year. Cricket was famous around the county for his inventive on-the-spot fixes for farm equipment; it was said that with a bit of spit and twine he could get your tractor or thresher up and running in a slap. And since he was fourteen Cricket made liquor up on the mountain, small batches of rotgut and jimmylegs, whatever he could scrape up.

Relax, Jack said. I can drive anything.

As he drove out of town to the south Jack worked his boots off and scratched his feet, careful to set his boots on the seat and out of the crusty mix of mud and leaves in the footwells, working the clutch with his bare feet. The two young men had the remnants of a cracked old still lined with mud daub on Smith Mountain, but no worm or cap and no money to stake the ingredients. Jack was hoping to get Howard to take him and Cricket on but he couldn’t get his oldest brother to even courtesy the subject. Jack thought for a moment about heading west over to the County Line Restaurant, to see if Forrest needed some help; perhaps Forrest would lend him the money. But he knew that his brother wouldn’t take to it: He never did. Besides, Cricket had to get back across to Smith Mountain by dark and Jack promised him if he took him into town he would get Howard to take them on as partners for a run. He knew Cricket had spent his last nickel to get a cup of coffee and doughnut while Jack talked to his brother. They drove down the darkening road in silence, Jack slowing now as he took the turns, turning the wheel easy with his palms. Cricket hadn’t asked how it went and Jack figured he didn’t have to tell him.

N
EARING DARK
and trudging up Turkeycock Mountain, Danny working his way through the brush and jimsonweed with his hands, one holding the nearly empty jar, cursing the bluestone protrusions and roots and the cold. Howard a few paces behind, off to the side a dozen yards so as not to create the hint of a trail, shouldering the meal and bacon. The trees hung in stark relief against the dark blue sky, coal black like negative images, leafless and spindled. Howard found himself wishing for the warmth and cover of leaves.

After a short plateau the two men walked through a copse of birch trees, and then on the eastern side of the mountain again and into a dense thicket of pine and gum that stood against the side of an exposed rock face nearly forty feet high. Firelight flickered at the base of the rock and Howard grimaced at the thought of how it would look from down in the valley; the square rock face lit up like a rising planet on the side of the mountain. But nobody would come up here, even if they knew.
Especially
if they knew. One of the easiest ways to end up with a faceful of birdshot was to creep up on an active moonshine camp at night. Danny began to call out toward the light, a series of high repeated whoops.

Tom C. Cundiff sat on a log staring into the fire, a shotgun over his knees. He wore a scuffed bowler pulled low, a wool scarf tight around his neck. He was a wiry man with oversized facial features, his eyes broadly apart on his face and his limbs oddly stunted. The still sat in the shadows behind Cundiff, a hulking mass of dark metal. The camp was littered with firewood, splintered boards, cans of blackstrap molasses, and empty tins of potted meat and cracker wrappers. Howard walked over to the mash boxes they had hammered together the week before, four feet deep and three across, the outside seams sealed with clay mud. The blood pounded in his temples and he felt the liquor thrumming in his body. His nose ran freely and he wiped it on the sleeve of his coat. They would need extra wood for the slow-burning furnaces to keep the mash warm through the night. Cundiff hadn’t done this like he should, which meant there was something worrying his tragic, bent mind, but Howard also felt that rooted deep in the blue-eyed madness of Cundiff was a trickle of intelligence and compromise. Cundiff was the perfect partner in many ways: He could mix up a solid mash, determine the pressure by “whoppin’ the cap” with his fingertips, measure the bead and proof at a glance. He had been up on the mountain for four days now and it looked like he hadn’t slept in all that time. Most important, he kept his mouth shut.

Sure, Howard thought as he uncovered the mash boxes, he wants me there to back him up when he makes a big sale. Forrest wouldn’t even give him a cut of the deal; he’d just say he’d take it off what Howard owed him already. Howard picked up a jar from their previous run and shook it in the firelight to check the bead. Heavy bubbles the size of marbles settled on the surface of the liquid; 150 proof at least. Cundiff could watch the cooking mash through the night, and when he finally succumbed to exhaustion and went down, Danny would take his turn through the next day until Howard got back.

Howard sent Danny off to gather more firewood and taking up a plank he stirred the mash boxes, checking under the cap of malt, dipping his finger and tasting the still beer. Before the light was gone completely they needed to get the first batch in the still, the mash already snowballing, the foaming, lumpy expression of fermentation that came to the surface and eventually overflowed the mash box. Cundiff rose from the fire and together they dragged the long half tube of beaten metal up to the run that they had diverted from a spring draining down the mountainside, and set up the flue that would carry a good stream of fresh water down to the cooling barrel that held the coil.

An hour later they got the first mash box of beer into the still and Howard opened a fresh jar of corn whiskey, sending the metal lid spinning off into the darkening woods with a flick of his fingers. The three men sat by the fire splitting off the jar, wordless, the first sip like swallowing hot ash and then the rest strangely cool, like a refreshing drink from a spring, the three of them staring into the glowing coals, their numb throats working convulsively. When Danny finished off the jar he dashed the dregs into the fire and they exploded in blue light.