the Moonshine War (1969) (6 page)

"I don't know. A Ford, I think. He stopped me on the street."

Son looked around as she came over to stand close to him. He smiled a little and said, "Well, sure he would."

"He was in the dining room just before I left. Mr. Baylor came in and they talked for quite a while."

"Have you talked to Frank?"

"No. Only when he registered last night and a few minutes ago."

"Did he tell you he knew me?"

"I heard that this morning. When you were in the Army."

"We weren't good friends, but sometimes we'd go out and have some drinks." Son shook his head, thinking about it. "I've drunk too much with people before, but I never told anybody but him. Kay, why do you suppose I told him?"

"I don't know. I guess because you trusted him."

"I didn't have any reason to. You know, I don't think I even liked him especially. But I told him, the only person I ever told."

"You told me."

"You already knew about it. Like everybody around here."

"But I never thought about it," Kay said.

"It didn't mean anything to me until now." Son half turned from the window, "Listen
,
why don't we get a little more comfortable." "What if he comes?"

He touched her hip and slid his arm around her waist. "What if he does?"

"Should I answer the door?"

"We won't worry about it this minute." Son could feel the satin slip beneath her blouse and the edge of her ribs beneath the slippery feeling of the satin. Close to his shoulder her brown eyes were watching him, trusting him, and he could feel her breast and hip pressed against his side, the grown woman with the innocent little girl expression. He said, "If you want to take off your shoes or anything, I'll pour us a couple."

She nodded slowly. "Just a weak one. It might make me feel better."

"That's what I was thinking."

"There's a bottle of ginger ale in the icebox."

Son nuzzled her ear and brushed his mouth across her cheek. "There isn't anything we have to worry about. Not anything." He heard her breath come out softly, then kissed her, holding his hand gently against her face.

In the kitchen Son poured whiskey into two glasses, adding ice-cold ginger ale to Kay's. He drank most of the whiskey in his own glass and half-filled it again. Now Son washed his face and hands at the sink and, with a wet hand, slicked his hair down to the side. Drying off with the dish towel he decided to have another pull. This one he took directly from the quart jar. It tasted better out of the jar; it was a strange thing but it was true. Already he could feel the warmth of the whiskey inside him. He felt good.

All morning he'd felt more alive and sure of himself than he'd felt in a long time. He would probably tell Kay or she would notice it. But if she asked him why, he wasn't sure he could explain it.

Frank Long was the cause. (Tell her that.)

Because if Frank hadn't walked in out of the dark, Son was sure he would still be smiling with his mouth closed and being nice to people when he didn't want to be. Bud Blackwell might be partly responsible. Bud had started in on John W. Martin whiskey and it had got Son up on the edge. But it was seeing Frank Long that got him to wipe the dumb smile off his face once and for all and say it out loud.

He felt good because now there wasn't anything bottled up inside him, making him afraid to open his mouth. He had admitted to Frank Long in the presence of more than twenty men that his dad had ran off the whiskey and put it away. They might have known or suspected it before; that didn't count. Now it was official. Admitting it was telling them straight it was a fact and they might as well quit playing with each other. He had the whiskey and they didn't and that's the way it was. They could fool around if they wanted, but if anybody got serious or got close he'd blow them off with a 12-gauge. Son hadn't said all that last night, but admitting the fact of the whiskey was like saying it and he would tell it again to Frank and to as many revenue agents as Frank cared to bring. They could all go home or to hell or hang around here and try Son Martin out; it didn't matter which.

That was the way he felt now, one o'clock Sunday afternoon, picking up two whiskey drinks in the kitchen of Kay's house and taking them into the bedroom.

She had drawn the shade and was standin
g i
n her slip, holding the edge of the shade inches from the window, looking outside. When Son was next to her she said, "I don't see any sign of him." She took the drink and sipped it, holding the glass with both hands, looking up at Son's face.

He said, "Don't think about him. All right?" "I can't help it."

"He's not going to bother us."

"It's just--feeling him out there."

"He's probably gone away."

"I hope so."

"Listen, why don't we hurry up and finish these?"

He liked her in a slip. He liked her in a slip knowing there was nothing beneath the smooth cloth but her body. He liked pulling the slip up over her hips and seeing her a little bit at a time. He liked it especially this time of day, the house silent and the sunlight flat against the window shade.

He was aware of the quiet afternoon bedroom and was aware of his brown arm and hard sucked-in belly and was aware of the woman nakedness of her pale skin and dark hair, aware that she was with and around him but also down in alone somewhere behind tightly closed eyes, seeing whatever she was feeling or thinking. He closed his eyes and was aware of a prickle of sweat across his shoulders and after he was down in there with her somewhere holding on and not aware of anything but being where he was at that moment with his eyes closed tight and trying to make it last, unti
l f
inally it was quieter in the room than it had been quiet before.

Close to him, almost whispering, Kay said, "Hold me."

"What am I doing?"

"I mean hold me."

"Like that?"

"Yes, That's better."

"My arm wasn't right."

"Hold me tighter."

"How about right there?"

"Just hold me."

"You smell good."

"Tighter."

"I don't want to hurt you."

She worked her body tightly against his and lay still.

"I want to hold you, and be held by you every night. Pretty soon we'll be able to."

There was silence. Son opened his eyes, his face against her cheek, his gaze on the sunlight framed in the window. "Pretty soon," he said.

"Maybe in just a few weeks. Let's start thinking about it," she said. "See if we can set a date."

"Kay"--Son paused--"why all of a sudden?"

She opened her eyes and moved her head so she could look at him. "Because all of a sudden we don't have to stay in Marlett. There's nothing keeping us now. We can be married and live anywhere we want."

"We can get married and live up at my place, but you say you won't do it."

"Because if we set up housekeeping here, we'll stay here, I know it. I don't want to grow a little vegetable garden and watch you make illegal whiskey. I want to leave here while we have a chance before you think of some reason to stay."

"I've got the same reason I've always had. Maybe I'm dumb or something, but what's changed?"

She frowned, puzzled. "They've found your dad's whiskey."

"Nobody's found it."

"They know you've got it. Once they take the whiskey, there isn't any reason for you to sit up there in your hollow like an old mountaineer. You've said it yourself, the sooner you can leave Marlett, the better."

"Kay, nobody's found the whiskey. I'm going to sell it and make the money, and then we're going to leave here and buy good farmland or a business somewhere, I don't know which or where we're going. All I know right now is they don't have any idea where that whiskey is located. They've looked, but in eight years nobody's found it."

Kay pushed herself up on one elbow. "Son, this isn't a game any more you play with your neighbors. Frank Long is a federal officer."

"You're sure built. Look at them things."

"Honey, if you don't tell them where it is they can make it hard for you and send you to prison."

"They can do that quicker if I do tell them."

"But you didn't make it, your father did."

"That doesn't mean anything. He made it, but I got it. Thing is, they have to prove I got it." Son smiled a little. "They have to find it--Frank Long does. That's one man, and I don't know as he's any better at it than Bud Blackwell or your cousin Virgil or some of the other boys."

"I don't know why you don't see it." She was concerned, worried, and now a hint of anger crept into her voice. "You're dealing with the federal government, not just one man. He'll bring all the officers he needs and if they don't find it they can sit up in the hills forever and watch you, and you won't ever be able to sell the whiskey yourself. Don't you see that?"

"I see a man named Frank Long," Son said. "He's the only one I see and as yet I don't know what he has in mind. I mean I don't know if he's out looking for the government or just for Frank Long, and that makes a difference."

Kay said, "What if we went away for a while--a month or maybe even longer, go somewhere and then come back and see--" She stopped. Son had pressed a finger to his lips. He was looking at her but listening to something else, she could tell. Kay heard the sound then, through the living room and outside: someone on the front porch.

Son rolled away from her, off the bed. He felt funny walking out of the room without a stitch of clothes on. He sucked in his stomach and moved carefully, feeling Kay watching him. Son waited in the front room, listening, before he walked over to the front window. He didn'
t s
ee anyone on the porch or in the yard but, as he waited, listening, he heard a car engine start, beyond the stand of cedars. A moment later the sound faded to nothing down the road. Son walked back to the bedroom.

Kay was sitting up in bed, holding the sheet in front of her. "Was it him?"

"I didn't see anybody."

"What if he was looking in the window?" Son stepped into his pants. "He might have learned a new trick or two."

Chapter
Four.

Before Son was all the way through Marlett, heading out the highway in his pickup truck, he knew Frank Long was following him--a black Ford coupe hanging back there, keeping its distance. If it wasn't Frank Long he didn't know who it was, so he'd take for granted it was Frank and maybe play with him a little bit--get him tensed up maybe and wondering what the hell was going on, get off alone and see how he handled himself.

Son left the highway at the county road pointing to Broke-Leg Creek, held back to see the Ford coupe make the turn after him, then was sure he was going to be followed wherever he went. That was fine with Son. He drove past the road that led up through the hollow to his place, went about two miles past i
t a
nd turned off on a road that skirted the edge of an old worn-out pasture and led back into the woods, narrowing in the dimness and looking more like a trail than
. A
road. His dad had used this road sometimes to haul in his corn and sugar, but it had not been used much in the past few years. Weeds grew tall down the spine of the road and brush closed in on both sides to scrape against the body of the pickup truck. Maybe Frank would be irritated, getting his car all scratched up. That, too, was fine with Son. He hoped to get Frank Long irritated.

Finally the road climbed up through dogwood and yellow pine and came out into the sunlight on the ridge that looked down over the Martin property: the pasture and the barn and sheds and the gray-weathered house, little squares way, way down below. Son's pickup bumped along in low gear, passing the place where Mr. Baylor had waited with his deputies the evening before, following the ridge trail through trees and clearings, until Son decided this was about far enough back and away from everything. He got out of the pickup and stood squinting in the sunlight, waiting only a couple of minutes before the Ford coupe came bumping along and pulled up next to him.

Frank Long's elbow stuck out the window. He said, "Well, here we are."

Son nodded. "Here we are." He watched Frank open the door and come stiffly out of the car and then press his hands against th
e s
mall of his back and arch his body as he looked out over the land.

"It's a nice view," Long said. "But it don't compare to that cozy little setup you got back of town. That I'd say was about it for a Sunday afternoon--truck hid in a shed, jar of moonshine in the kitchen. Where was you, Son? I peered in, I didn't see nobody stirring anywhere. You all must have been down in the cellar putting up preserves." Frank Long grinned. "You helping that nice lady with her canning?"

Son grinned with him. "You aren't any little sneak, are you? You're a big tall skinny sneak. Grown man peeks in windows--what else you like to watch, Frank?"

"Being a little sneaky is part of my job, so I know what boys like you are up to."

"I'll tell you, Frank, anything you want to know."