Wynn in Doubt (12 page)

Eby’s eyes are small and drawn, like the man’s behind us, but they’re a clear, vibrant blue. “You ain’t got to talk so loud, son. I can hear you just fine.” His voice is wheezy and gnarled by age.

Oliver looks over his shoulder at the other man, who grins and chews on a piece of straw. Eby waves him off.

“Don’t you mind him. Mason likes to have his fun with strange folk.”

I lean toward the old man. “We were told you may’ve worked with the Craig brothers during the twenties and thirties?”

He nods and rocks against the back of his seat. “Oh yes, I worked on the stills out in the woods just over yonder.” He nods to the forest behind the trash heap. “’Bout fourteen when they gave me my first job. I was skinny, see, so I could fit inside the stills to clean ’em up and fix the holes the animals would make when they was trying to get at the mash.”

“Did you know all of them?” I remove the article from my pocket, anticipating his answer.

“Oh yes. There was four brothers and a bunch of local boys they brought on as their business took off.”

“What about women? Did you know any of the women in their operation?”

Eby nods in a slow, exaggerated fashion. “Sure did. There weren’t many of them that hung around long. Them boys was too wild to make good husbands.”

I unfold the article and offer it to him. “The woman in this article, did you know her?”

Mason, who I presume is the great-grandson Carlan mentioned, speaks up. “He can’t read so good anymore ’cuz of the cathterax.”

Oliver cuts across us, leaning forward to speak directly to Eby. “Her name was Lola Harrison. She was arrested with Michael in 1931, in a sting operation by federal agents.”

Eby rocks in his seat and closes his eyes.

And I wait.

Mason grunts or laughs, I can’t tell which. “Told you. His mind comes and goes.”

I reach over and take Eby’s arthritic hand. His skin is warm and papery. I rub my thumb across his knuckles. “Please. Anything you can remember would be so helpful.”

He shakes his head, and my shoulders sag in disappointment, but he opens his eyes. “That weren’t her name. Her name was Lola LaBelle. She was a showgirl from Louisville, the prettiest woman I ever saw.”

Oliver straightens and smiles at me. I squeeze Eby’s hand tighter. “Are you sure? Are you sure it was the same woman?”

“Oh yes. She was Michael’s girl. He brought her to town in his brother’s green Duesenberg convertible. She wore a sequin dress and a feathered hat. Every man in town stopped what he was doin’ to have a look at her. I recall thinkin’ she must’ve been prettier than Helen of Troy.”

I hang on every word, edging forward in my seat. “What else can you tell me about her?”

Eby bounces our joined hands on his knee. His blue polyester pants ride high on his waist as though the man, rather than the pants, has shrunk. “Well, let’s see. He brought her to town ’round about 1928. I was eighteen and distillin’ by that time. The Craigs had the biggest moonshine operation for more than a hundred miles. Michael and Jimmy handled the sales. The rest of us brewed the corn whiskey.”

I don’t know why, but my eyes sting. I bite my lip and try to keep from making a fool of myself.

“She was a showgirl from some dance hall or club up in Louisville. Michael did some business there and his brother Patrick, we called him Patty Cake, told me the instant Michael set eyes on her, he was in love.”

I let my eyes close as a sigh passes through my lips. I hadn’t realized until now how desperately I wanted, or needed, her story to be a happy one. “Mr. White, do you know how long she’d been a showgirl?” I ask.

Eby mashes his gums together. “Don’t know ’bout that. Just know one day Michael showed up with her, and they was inseparable ever since.”

Oliver rests his elbows on his knees. “The man at the Craig house didn’t know about Lola. Do you know why? If she and Michael were in love, it seems odd she wouldn’t have factored into the Craig story somehow.”

Eby smiles at Oliver, and I can see the affection he had for these people on his face. “Only us in the operation knew anything about Michael and Lola. He was a widower, see, and at that time folks around town wouldn’t have taken kindly to a newly widowed man shackin’ up with a dancer from the big city.”

Some of my excitement ebbs away. Lola had to keep hiding. “But he loved her?”

“Oh yes. He loved her more than any man loved a woman before or after. That much I can tell you.”

“What did she do for them, as far as the business was concerned?” Oliver asks.

Eby absently squeezes my fingers and continues to rock back and forth. “She worked the books some and kept house with Cecelia.”

“Daniell’s wife?” I ask.

“S’right. Cecelia was the town beauty. I remember Jimmy and I worryin’ that she’d be jealous over Lola. Lola made any woman standing beside her look dumpy in comparison. But they became the best of friends. They used to sing when they was stringing up the laundry. We’d hide in the trees and listen. It was the closest to a lullaby most of us ever got.”

“So Lola wasn’t running whiskey?”

Eby’s gums show as he smiles, his eyes focused on some point in the woods, though I don’t think he’s seeing so much as remembering. “Michael wouldn’t hear of it. He liked to keep her out of the business. He wanted her safe.”

Oliver eyes the article in my hands. “But, Mr. White, if Lola wasn’t helping them move the alcohol, why was she with Michael the night he was arrested?”

Eby turns his head to look at me. His eyes are so blue, it’s as if they’ve refused to grow old with the rest of his body.

“Eby?” I encourage him, patting his hand.

“You know, I never did get to say good-bye.”

I wait, knowing he’ll get there on his own.

“She left the keys in the ignition. The car still smelled like her perfume when I got in hours later.”

“What car?” I ask.

“The one she stole from me when she went to warn Michael about Daniell.”

ten

Oliver perches on the very edge of his chair. “Daniell? The oldest brother?”

“Yes sir.” Eby bounces his knee up and down. “It was Cecelia told Lola ’bout Daniell and the law. I reckon he shouldn’t have hit her as hard as he did when he took to the drink. At some point her loyalties shifted from her husband to her friend.”

I place my other hand atop the one Eby grips tightly. “Mr. White, are you saying Daniell somehow betrayed his brothers?”

“Oh yes. See, Daniell, being the oldest, felt his place was at the head of the table. But Michael was the smart one. He figured out how to hide the stills, which roads to take to avoid detection, how to keep the money flowin’ in. Daniell resented Michael for them things. I don’t know if it was the ’shine or the jealousy that finally got to him, but Daniell gave up his brothers to the lawman. He led him to the stills hidden so deep in camouflage you wouldn’t have known they was there until you fell inside.”

I rub my thumb across the newsprint and stare down at Lola’s bowed head, then Michael’s effervescent smile. He looks like the cat that caught the canary, and I know, instinctively, the next piece of the story. “Michael already knew. Didn’t he? About what Daniell had done.”

Eby rocks my hand back and forth. “Michael was a smart man. He knew his brother’s nature and that it was only a matter of time before Daniell betrayed him. But Lola was terrified somethin’ would happen and Michael’d be killed. I begged her not to go. She kissed me on the cheek and I was so flustered, I didn’t notice my keys was missin’ until I heard the engine turn. By then, it was too late to do anything more than watch her drive away.”

Oliver pushes a hand through his hair. “Wow, that’s quite a story.”

Eby hums in agreement, incapable of sitting still for more than two seconds.

“Do you know what happened to Michael’s brothers?”

He slides his jaw back and forth a few times. “Well, let’s see. Patty Cake was caught at the still site. Michael had warned him something might happen and sent him out there to get rid of any remaining liquor and mash. Patty was sent down to Atlanta for six months or so. There wasn’t any ’shine by the time the sheriff’s deputies showed up, so they couldn’t get him on more than a few charges, the worst being ownership of the stills themselves.”

“Why were the stills empty?” Oliver asks.

Eby raises his hand to point at Oliver, the fingers too stiff to point on their own. “The gangster from Chicago.”

My eyes meet Oliver’s. Eby’s story is so fantastical, it’s hard to process. “A gangster?”

“S’right.” He nods his head. There’s a rhythm to this story, as though he’s told it many times. “Michael made a deal to sell near all the alcohol we had. About twenty or so barrels parceled out in bottles and crates. I reckon after he met Lola, the outlaw life didn’t suit him so well. He wanted to get married and start over somewhere new. Least, that was always my opinion of it.”

“But”—I don’t need to look down. I know the words held between my fingers nearly verbatim—“Michael was caught with only a dozen bottles of alcohol.”

Eby’s face lights up. He smiles and laughs, remembering. “I would’ve paid ten dollars to see the looks on their faces when they run him down. All those men, and they never found more than a few bottles of dusty moonshine.”

His happiness is infectious. It warms me. “So where did the whiskey go?”

Eby closes his eyes again. I wonder if it helps him remember. “It was Jimmy, the youngest of the brothers. When Michael took the Model T in one direction, Jimmy set off with a flatbed truck in another. And that’s when Michael, in a fit of genius”—he stops to look at me, and I see the awe in his eyes, all these years later—“had him switch to the milk truck.”

“A milk truck?” Oliver interjects, his tone full of wonder over Eby’s story.

The old man’s toothless grin reveals only darkness behind thin lips. “That boy drove more than three hundred miles without so much as a fly hitting the windshield to stop him.”

So that’s what Michael Craig was so happy about in the newspaper photograph. He’d just pulled the rug out from under his brother Daniell’s betrayal. I don’t know if it’s out of solidarity with my great-grandmother, but knowing Michael got the better of his brother and the police fills me with a sense of victory.

“It’s an amazing story. Was Jimmy ever caught?”

Eby shrugs his thin shoulders. “Don’t know, don’t think so. But he was never around after that. Folks said he stayed in Chicago. Maybe even went to work for that gangster they was involved with. I missed him, though. No one could make you laugh like Jimmy Craig.”

“We heard he was a bit of a prankster,” Oliver says.

Eby chuckles and nods but doesn’t respond.

We sit quietly a few moments, each lost in our own thoughts. I go over the story in my mind. Michael Craig was in love with my great-grandmother. So much, he was possibly considering leaving behind the business he’d built to start over with her. She got caught up in things when she tried protecting him from Daniell’s disloyalty.

“Mr. White, do you know where Lola went? What happened to her?”

He squeezes my fingers. “The sheriff’s deputy held her a little less than a day. They weren’t interested in a woman that knew nothing ’bout the business. It was the brothers they were after, and without the liquor, well, they had a hard enough time making the charges stick to the boys. Lola must’ve walked back to where she’d left the car to warn Michael, then driven home. I found it there the next morning. But she was gone. That’s all I know.”

I try to be grateful for all he’s given me, but I wish there was more.

Oliver breaks the silence. “What happened to Daniell?”

Since the moment he stepped from the trailer, Eby’s tone and expressions have been light, almost playful. At the mention of Daniell, his mood turns. “He died, ’bout a year after it all happened. Got drunk and shot himself. They ruled it an accident, but I’m not sure. It’s a big thing, giving up your family.”

His hand no longer pulls jauntily against mine, but lies limp on the armrest of his chair. I wish Oliver hadn’t asked. “What about his wife?”

The youth I saw in Eby’s eyes fades. “He beat her awful. She hadn’t had time to take the girls and run before he was back at the house, drinkin’, cussin’, screamin’, lookin’ for someone to blame. He’d made a deal, see? Him and that son-of-a-bitch Fed. Daniell would turn against his brothers, no jail time, and he’d get a cut of the money.”

“Not this again.” Oliver and I both jump. It’s a testament to the power of Eby’s storytelling that we forgot about the man with the shotgun behind us. “Go on and tell ’em ’bout the money. That’s what they came here for.”

I look between Mason and Eby, confused. “What money?”

Mason swats at the air in our direction, seemingly bored with the story he’s probably heard a thousand times.

When Eby speaks again, his voice is quiet, lulled away by memory. “Daniell told ’em where to look for Michael, and then he went to collect the money hisself. Only, when he showed up for the handoff, no one was there. And he took it out on that poor woman because he thought, somehow, she’d taken it. Next day, Cece and the girls run off. She couldn’t stay after that. He would’ve killed her eventually. She knew it. We all did.”

Eby squeezes my fingers and leans forward. His eyes are round and bright. “It weren’t Cece. It was Lola. Lola stole that money. I’m sure of it.”

“Lola? But why . . .” I let the sentence fall and look to Oliver. He’s just as lost as I am.

Eby relaxes into the chair and closes his eyes. His hand is slack in my grip, though he continues to move his head back and forth in slow, short movements. Birds and bugs carry on around us. I let my hand slide out from under the old man’s and sit back in my own chair. Oliver taps a finger against his mouth. His eyes stay trained on me. I’m trying to process everything we’ve learned, but it’s confusing. I feel like I know more and less about Lola’s story, all at the same time. She ran away and became a showgirl before ending up here, the mistress of a moonshiner. And now Eby’s saying she stole something. Her story’s turning out to be bigger than I could’ve imagined.

“Mr. White?” Oliver lays a hand on the old man’s knee.

“He gets like this.” Mason scratches at his neck beard. “You had him going pretty good there. Most I’ve heard him talk in months.”

“Do you know more about this stolen money?” Oliver asks.

“Can’t grow up ’round this place and not hear the legend.”

I look at Eby, but his eyes remain closed, so I turn and face Mason. “Can you tell us?”

“Aww, it ain’t nothin’ more than a fairy story.” He slaps one knee, then stands, the shotgun hanging loosely in his grip. “Y’all want somethin’ to drink?”

Oliver and I exchange unsure glances.

“Don’t worry yourselves. It ain’t rotgut, it’s apple pie. Just had a new batch ready last week.”

We stand and follow him cautiously around the back of the trailer. Oliver keeps his hand on my hip. “Mason, is it?” he asks.

“S’right.” He sets the shotgun against a tree stump. He doesn’t verify our names. “Here.” He holds out a jar full of orange-colored liquid. “Drink this.”

Oliver pulls a face as he sniffs the jar. “Stuff’s pretty potent. What’s the proof?”

“’Bout a hundred an’ ninety.” Mason unscrews the lid on his own jar and takes a drink, then wipes his mouth with the back of a dirty hand. “Go on,” he says, motioning to us. “It ain’t going to take the white off ya teeth.”

Oliver sips slowly and swallows hard. “Whoa.” He raises his eyebrows in my direction. His voice is strained. “Weren’t you saying something about us finding moonshine on this trip?” He offers me a drink, throwing down the gauntlet. Or, in this case, apple-flavored white lightning.

I take it. For me, holding illicit alcohol behind a junky old trailer is doing something. The liquor tastes of apple and cinnamon, but as I swallow, the burn of grain alcohol sends hot vapor through my chest. I breathe it out, blinking back tears. Oliver kisses the top of my head, and Mason nods his approval.

“It’s good, ain’t it? My daddy’s recipe.”

As the initial shock wanes, the aftertaste is sweet and pleasant. I take another sip. “It’s strong, but yeah, good.”

“You be careful with that now.” Alcohol sloshes up the sides of Mason’s jar. “It’ll sneak up on ya.”

Oliver takes another drink before trying to hand the moonshine back. Mason waves him away.

“Nah, that’s a gift. I figure you deserve that much for visitin’ with the old man. We don’t get much company no more.” He hands a lid to Oliver, who screws it tightly to the jar.

“He’s your great-grandfather, right?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Have you heard that story before? About the Craig brothers?”

Mason nods. “Heard it a million times.” His smile ages him. He has two missing teeth, and lines are already forming around his eyes, though he can’t be more than five years older than Oliver and me. “There’s always people searchin’ these woods for the money.”

Oliver rotates his wrist, and the alcohol in the glass jar swirls. “Where’d it come from?”

“Their final score, the one he was tellin’ you ’bout. Eby says the plan was for Daniell to go and meet the money men, and once the alcohol was delivered safe in Chicago, they was to pay him for the score, here in Kentucky. They was doin’ it to confuse the lawmen workin’ the case in both states. Only, Michael knew about his brother and changed the plan. Daniell was left waitin’ while Michael and Patrick was hauled off to jail. He figured he’d been set up, and somebody else had gotten there first, taken the money and hid it. That’s when he went home and beat on his wife. Only, no one seemed to know where that missin’ money got off to. Not then, not now. Hell, it might never have existed at all.”

“Then why does your grandfather think Lola took it?” I ask.

Mason spits on the ground and lifts one shoulder. “Don’t know for sure. Somethin’ ’bout protecting Cecelia.”

Oliver cuts in. “Daniell’s wife.”

He nods and looks toward the trees. I can tell he’s tired of the story and that we won’t get much more out of him.

“One more question,” Oliver says. I look at him. He squints at Mason, an undeniable energy in his eyes. “Why do people think the money is in the woods?” he asks.

This puts a smile on Mason’s face. “’Cause that’s where the stills is at.”

“The ones owned by the Craigs?” I ask. “They’re still standing?”

Mason takes another drink. “Not so much standing as fallen over, but yeah, they’re still out there.”

Oliver squeezes my shoulder. I look at him, but his eyes are on Mason. “Can you take us there?”

Mason laughs and points at Oliver’s chest. “See, I knew you two was out here lookin’ for that money.” He turns and we follow.

I take Oliver’s hand, my body thrumming with excitement. Mason steps through a small space between two trees on the other side of the driveway, and disappears.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Oliver asks.

I look over at Eby. He may be sleeping. I’m not sure, but there’s a smile on his face. I wonder if it’s for Lola. I nod and follow Mason’s path. I have serious reservations about going into the backwoods of Kentucky with a man who would wear cutoff jean shorts in 2014, but we’ve come this far . . .