Them Holler Boys (A Southern Outlaw Series Book 1)

by Girty Thompson

  Them Holler Boys

  A Southern Outlaw Series

  Girty Thompson

  Dark Moon Rising Publications | Virginia

  Dark Moon Rising Publications

  70 Foxwood Drive

  Rocky Mount, Virginia 24151

  Tel: (540) 257-2861

  ***Note to readers: Whereas Sycamore Holler is a real place and the drug problems in the state are very much real that are mentioned in this book, any and all characters and events are works of fiction including but not limited to the depiction of Sycamore Holler itself.***

  Copyright © 2020 by Girty Thompson

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2020 by Dark Moon Rising Publications

  ISBN: 978-1-945987-82-3

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed

  “Attention: Permissions Coordinator.”

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  |Them Holler Boys

  Chapter One

  Sycamore Holler was a small, little piss pot in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia. Jackson didn’t even understand what the allure of the place was to his daddy when he took up residence in this podunk area, but he had no choice but to follow his daddy to the ends of the earth. They had traveled state to state, stopping briefly in the holler for the summer and then packing up shop by the time it was school time. The holler was filled with uneducated, backwoods white trash, and he wanted nothing to do with it at all. They had come from a reputable southern family, and New Orleans ways couldn’t be swayed by the hicks and inbreds thriving in this circle jerk hillbilly hell. All he wanted was to get out as soon as he got in.

  Jackson Jay, oftentimes called JJ, knew what his family business had been since he was a toddler. JJ’s family was one of the most prominent families south of the Mason-Dixon line. His surname went back generations to one of the founding families of the New World when America was settled. Now, his daddy was one of the wealthiest southern men on the East Coast. Why he chose to come to bum fucked Egypt, West Virginia was beyond anything JJ could think of. However, JJ knew it was about more than just buying out the mines and peddling coal for money. Secrets run deeper than veins in the south when it comes to family business. On the outside, everything looks hunky-dory and perfectly normal; however, deep in the family circle is the answer to how they have so much money.

  His dad was the leader of the Southern Mafia with ties all around the world for his underground network of drugs, guns, and women. His dad had made his millions off the backs of migrant workers, illegal immigrants, hookers, and stupid hicks that had nothing better to do than to tote a gun for a living. He had men in every city of every state south of D.C. JJ knew one day this whole franchise would be his and then his son’s after that, but for right now, he just wanted to live like every other eighteen year old.

  College was on his plate for business administration. Even if he had to run this underground network of crime and be a mafia boss of the south, he still wanted his own business that he could solely call his. He just had to get through the schools in this hellhole and run to the furthest college on the West Coast he could find, that came as close to Ivy League as it would get. If he wanted to truly be Ivy League, he would have to settle for an East Coast school and that just wasn’t happening. JJ wasn’t dumb, but actually quite gifted with knowledge and would easily graduate valedictorian from both high school and college. He was sharp as a tack and bright as a bulb, at least that is what his mama used to tell him.

  JJ’s mama was the picturesque of what being a southern belle meant; God rest her soul. She had been a beauty queen, winning the beauty pageant in her teen years. She was quiet and reserved, but her face could cut glass with the stern, southern pout she always carried. JJ’s dad had never been around that much since he was a wanted man most of the time, so JJ’s mama was the one that raised him to be the gentleman that he is. He had all the best private school tutors, piano lessons, anything his heart could dream of. But happiness does not last forever, and no matter how much you love someone, it does not save them from the sweet arms of death. JJ never fully forgave his dad for what happened to his mother. Had he not been wrapped up in this mafia shit, things wouldn’t have gone down the way they did.

  Fate had its way, and his mama took her last blood-soaked breath in front of him at the mere age of nine. His dad was gone as usual doing God knows what in God knows which city with God knows who when the men came busting through the French doors of their plantation farmhouse. They were dragged from their beds, hands tied behind their back, bound by their feet, and gagged with an AK-47 pointed at their chests. They asked his mother question after question about where her husband was, but she didn’t know. She was lucky to get phone calls from him while he was on the road. JJ watched as they beat her, had their way with her, and then put a bullet in her chest, leaving her to bleed out on the floor beside him while they ransacked the house. With her dying breath, she told JJ to never follow the path his daddy wanted for him.

  After the men had left, JJ spent hours trying to wrestle free from the ropes, afraid the men would return to put a bullet in his head. He finally freed himself and ran to a phone to dial the local sheriff. When they got there, they found JJ lying curled up in a ball beside his mama, colder than a winter’s night. It took them a while to track down his dad, but the local sheriff was on his payroll and knew exactly where he was. However, getting him to answer the phone was the issue. JJ sat quietly on the front porch steps until the sun was at high noon. That was when his dad finally showed up. He paid him no mind as he pushed through the wall of cops to see what had been done to his wife—the screams of rage filled the plantation’s acres with empty threats amid the air.

  “What happened here, boy,” his dad hissed, shaking him by the shoulders. “Why didn’t you protect yo’r mama?” His broad, southern accent echoed in JJ’s mind, quite similar to that of his mother that laid dead in the foyer.

  JJ looked up at his dad through tear-soaked eyelashes and stared him down.

  “This is all yer fault,” JJ replied quietly. “Had I been a man, I could’ve protected my mama, but you left ‘er here with a boy. You should’ve been the one dead in there on the floor. They wanted you!”

  JJ’s father backhanded him sending him sprawling down the steps. JJ stood up and wiped the blood trickling from his mouth onto his already bloodstained long-sleeved shirt. He stood there, staring his father down in cold blood.

  “Well, what are ya waiting for?” JJ yelled at his dad. “Hit me again!”

  He walked closer to his father, wild-eyed, while his father stood motionless and confused.

  “Come on, Pops. Hit me again. And again. And again. That’s what they did while I was tied up. They hit her and then they hit me. So, hit me again!” JJ screamed. “Punish me f
’r not being man enough to keep ‘er alive!”

  “Paul,” the sheriff called out. “They need you inside.”

  JJ’s father went to walk away when JJ grabbed his arm and jerked him back.

  “I said, hit me!” he yelled through tears. “Hit me!”

  Paul pried his arm from JJ’s grasp and walked off inside without looking back. That was the way it stayed between them. Cold. Hatred. Resentment. They hardly saw each other. JJ had a nanny until he was old enough to stay alone after training with a weapons specialist and many different fighting trainers. But even then, JJ was never left at home alone and spent the rest of his young and teenage years moving around the south with his dad. JJ never spent longer than a year in a school in any given state when he traveled with his father. He had no friends, which also meant he had no enemies other than those of his father. When they moved to Sycamore Holler, it was JJ’s last year in school, and freedom was so close that it could be tasted.

  Other than his occasional summer vacation there, he had never spent enough time to make any friends, not that any of them wanted to be his friend. They all kept their distance from him and kept him on the outside of things. He wasn’t born and raised in the holler, so the boys there made sure he knew just that. He would never be a holler boy and he didn’t want to be one anyway.

  ***

  Paul ran the coal mines harder than any owner that came before him. They were on the verge of shutting the railroads down, which threatened the livelihood of the mines as well. They had been threatening it for years prior to Paul taking over and he paid just enough money to keep them from hitting the termination button. Paul had owned the mines for close to ten years, and the profits had slowly begun to trickle down to pocket change compared to the other businesses he owned throughout the south. The only sound business move was to live there and oversee the production of the company. If it was going to amount to anything, he had to be there to see it through. If it had no future, he planned to close the doors of the mines forever, allow the railroads to shut down, and use the property for something else.

  Paul watched as JJ squandered away all his free time studying and playing in books instead of taking an interest in any of the businesses that he owned, and it infuriated Paul. One day, his empire was going to pass to the poor excuse of a man he called his son. He knew he had plans to escape this life and go off to college. Paul knew a good education, and a degree in business administration was a sound executed plan his son wanted to do. However, he needed to stick to the family business as well and learn more about the men that worked for him and the way Paul ran business affairs, sorted contracts, and laid down the law of the land. Hell, JJ didn’t even know that his real last name wasn’t Jay. That was his mother’s last name, and they gave it to him to keep him safe out in the world. If people knew his real last name, they would know exactly whose son he was. The Alexanders were a well-known group of mobsters.

  Paul’s next decision with his son wasn’t the best one he could have made, but it was necessary. He knew JJ would hate and despise him for the rest of his life afterward, but it didn’t matter to Paul because business was business. JJ needed to be exposed to it. So, Paul had JJ start work in the coal mines. He wasn’t underground where he could die, but he was close enough managing it for Paul. JJ didn’t have a social life, so there wasn’t much of a sacrifice, making him take hours to learn the ins and out of why it would or why it wouldn’t be financially advisable to keep it going.

  When Paul purchased the mines, there was resistance from the locals that lived in the holler and worked the mines. There wasn’t much else to do here in this tiny spot in West Virginia for work other than this mine. Mining had been in some of their families for generations, and it was all they knew how to do. He bought the mines from a local family that couldn’t keep up with the expanding economy. The Browns and their intermarried families had been working the mines for as long as they had been open, all the way through the 1800s. Charles Brown and Paul met on several occasions to discuss stipulations and the changes that would overtake the mines. Paul and Charles went way back, unknowingly to those around them. They had actually grown up together in the holler and were really close friends at one point in their lives.

  To the Browns, the mines were more than just a business. Family worked there. The people they helped around the holler worked there. It was all there was to do, that was until tragedy struck. The deciding factor of selling the mine had been when their oldest son was nearly killed when a rockslide happened on the upper level of the mines. It took them nearly two days to get him out of the rubble, and many thought that he would be dead when they pulled his body out. However, he was ripe as an apple and walked out without the need to be carried. The rockslide had broken a bone in his neck even though it wasn’t a noticeable injury at the time they pulled him out of the rocks. It would be many years before he realized why he had neck problems.

  Even though Paul purchased the mines from them, he had made promises to keep it running just for the families that were still working it without any other trades to go to if it closed. Not to mention, their dealings didn’t stop there. The Browns were knee-deep in illegal activities just as Paul was with his underground mafia network. The Browns became a trusted family, and some of them were drug and gun mules for Paul. Paul reciprocated by muling their drugs and moonshine throughout the south as well. Their families went together like fried chicken and collard greens. However, every great partnership always has a fallacy, and Paul fucked them over years ago while living in NOLA on a deal that would have carried them for years had it went through. Charlie Brown never forgave him.

  When you hear the words bad blood in West Virginia, everyone thinks of the Hatfields and McCoys, but the shadiness that was exchanged between the Browns and the Alexanders made that hundred-year-old dispute look like small potatoes. Paul ended up firing any worker on the spot when he first took over the mines that had ties to the Browns, be it blood, friend, or even foe. Anyone that breathed their names was fired on the spot because knowing them was enough to turn Paul’s blood to boil.

  The feud was also a determining factor in who JJ was allowed to be friends with. Charlie’s daughter Lynne was out of the question along with the boys she ran around with. JJ would just roll his eyes whenever Paul would start bitching and moaning about who he could and couldn’t be friends with and to steer clear of Lynne and all the yada yadas he tuned out when they rode by the Browns’ house in the holler. What his daddy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt, right?

  ***

  “Hey!” Lynne whispered, hissing through the screen window. “JJ? You awake?”

  JJ sat up, groggily from his bed. He picked his phone up to see what time it was. His eyes were blurry, and he rubbed them so they would adjust to waking up—one o’clock in the morning.

  “Jesus, Lynne. It’s one in the morning. Hell no, I wasn’t awake,” JJ mumbled. “I feel like I just went to sleep.”

  “I need someone to ride with me over to Groundhog Holler,” Lynne continued. “I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Why don’t you take one of your boys with you?” JJ asked, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he flopped his head back on his pillow.

  “Jesse has practice tomorrow, and he is the only one I would trust going with me,” Lynne replied. “Pleaaaase, JJ!” she begged.

  “Dammit,” JJ huffed.

  JJ tossed the covers back and sat up on the side of his bed. He stretched his arms out and stood, cracking his back to wake up.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs in a few. Let me get dressed and slip out without waking up Dad,” he whispered.

  JJ started to get dressed as Lynne moved away from the window.

  “And don’t be making loud noises!” JJ hissed quietly, pulling his shirt down.

  JJ pulled his boots on after getting his jeans up and buckled. He quietly opened his bedroom door and listened for any signs of life. The house was dead quiet. He walked as softly as he could so the stai
rs wouldn’t squeak when he descended. He got to where his dad’s room was in the house and peeked through the cracked door. His dad wasn’t even home. He must be pulling a late night at the mines.

  JJ would have been the last person his father ever suspected of being friendly with the Browns’ daughter, Lynne. Honestly, he never expected a friendship to blossom between the two of them. There were times as he grew up during those summer days in the holler that he would walk the holler. Some of those times had been with Lynne at his side, catching frogs in the creek or lightning bugs in a mason jar. She was your average tomboy girl with cowboy boots and a skirt to match. That skirt didn’t stop her from pummeling the shit out of the boys that fucked with her, though. She took care of her own without JJ having to intervene most of the time. It was those times that Lynne would cross her arms and stomp her foot, mad that he had done something for her, yelling at him, “I can take care of myself,” that made him smile. She thought she was so badass when most of it was a front.

  JJ was older now. They weren’t kids anymore and being around one another was even more spiteful to their parents than before. So, they passed their time slipping off together whenever they could. Besides, there was hardly anything to do around Sycamore other than work at the mines or go to school, and JJ had grown bored of both of those things. There was no challenge in school for him. He aced everything with flying colors to the point he didn’t even have to study for tests. It bothered him because he didn’t feel as if the school was adequate enough to teach him and prepare him for an Ivy League school.

  He and Lynne began to strike up conversation in study hall with one another, getting to know the teenage version of themselves once JJ had officially moved to the holler. The one thing they both had in common was fast cars and freedom. It was one of the few times they could talk without being eyed for talking because of the bad blood between their daddies. They were in school, and it was kind of expected for interaction. However, most of the time, when they talked or hung out with each other was when no one was around. They would meet up near the creek up close to the mines just like when they were little, but instead of gigging, they would sit under the stars watching for meteor showers, comets, and just plain old star gazing. Nights like those really drove JJ mad. He could feel himself losing it when he was around her. Everything melted. There were no walls. There were no bricks. It was just an open room that she rocked in a rocking chair as he told her everything. He told her his fears, his wishes, his desires. He told her about everything he wanted, except for one thing. He could never tell her how much he wanted her and especially how much he loved her.