Them Holler Boys (A Southern Outlaw Series Book 1)

by Girty Thompson

  The holler boys ran around with their compact extinguishers trying their best to put the fires out that were getting harder to extinguish. JJ drove the truck around, covering as much of it that he could before the pump ran out of the foam spray. He sped the truck back over to the filling station and tapped his foot as he waited for the pump to fill the tank for him to go back at it again.

  “What happened?” Charles Brown asked, running up beside JJ.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t working tonight. The explosion or whatever it was rocked my house over in the holler,” JJ replied.

  “Anyone have any idea who all is down in those shafts?” Mr. Brown demanded.

  “As I said, I just got here. Now, before you piss me off, you better go around and start asking people that were working here tonight those questions,” JJ retorted as the pump signaled the tank was full.

  JJ hit the switch, and the pump retracted. He ran around to the side of the truck to jump up in the seat and get back to doing what he was doing.

  “What are you doing with that fire truck? Water won’t extinguish this! You are wasting time and resources,” Mr. Brown huffed.

  “For your information, this is a special formula foam spray that extinguishes gas, natural gas, and oil fires. Don’t tell me it doesn’t do shit when I just sprayed a whole tank on this place and took care of most of the fire. Now, get the fuck out of my face so I can finish putting these God damned fires out,” JJ shouted as he popped the clutch and lurched from the garage.

  JJ drove the truck around the mines at least one hundred times, constantly stopping to refill the tank until every fire topside had been extinguished. He parked the fire truck and looked around for his father. It was rather odd he hadn’t shown up yet. Surely, someone had called him or alerted him to the fact that there was an explosion here. JJ glanced at his watch to check the time. It was ten o’clock. It had been well over three hours since the warnings sounded. JJ scanned the crowd to see who all was there that worked at the mine so he could ask who the night-shift watchman was for the night. His eyes ran across Mr. Brown standing in the growing crowd. He gritted his teeth and trudged toward the man he had cussed just an hour or two beforehand.

  “Mr. Brown, did you find anything out?” JJ asked.

  “I haven’t found out a single thing. I don’t know who was managing tonight. I don’t know who was here. I don’t even know if anyone was down there when it went up,” Mr. Brown replied.

  JJ fished my cell phone out of his pocket and maneuvered to the call screen, where he pushed the speed dial button to call his father. It rang like three times before it went to voicemail. He didn’t like the feel of it all. He turned around, scanning the crowd to see if he saw anyone that may know what happened or who the fuck was working tonight. JJ finally recognized a face and ran over to Buddy, standing in the middle of the crowd.

  “Buddy, do you know where my father is? I can’t get in touch with him,” JJ asked.

  “Um,” Buddy stammered, looking off around him and to his feet.

  “Spit it out, you stupid fuck. Where is my father?!” JJ demanded, grabbing Buddy up in fistfuls by the shirt.

  Buddy didn’t even look at JJ as he pointed to the entrance of the mines that led down into the caverns and tunnels.

  “No,” JJ mumbled as he released his grip on Buddy’s shirt.

  “Bob called out. His wife is in labor. So, your dad took the night’s watch for him,” Buddy whimpered. “Him and about fifty other men were down there…”

  JJ sank to his knees in front of where the mine’s railroad tracks ended. This couldn’t be it. This was not how his father died. He was supposed to go out in a blaze of bullets and shells. Why didn’t he tell him that he needed help tonight with the mines? It felt as if the breath had been knocked from his lungs as he tried to breathe in gasps fighting the lump back in his throat. What caused the mines to go up? This explosion was too large to have hit an accidental pocket of gas. It looked as if every gas pocket down there had been triggered at once looking at the rubble of the fallout above ground.

  “Come on, boy. We need to get you home,” Mr. Brown quietly said as JJ came back to reality.

  JJ glanced around at the faces that stood in the crowd. He saw anger, pity, sadness, and fear washed over every face that stood there. People wanted answers as to who was down there, and he had no clue how to give them that answer. The building with the punch in cards had burned to the ground when the mine blew up.

  “We will deal with all of this tomorrow,” Mr. Brown assured. “Let’s get you home. The authorities are here with the fire department to finish putting these fires out. There’s nothing we can do right now until they get them extinguished down there.”

  JJ wrestled his arm from Mr. Brown’s grasp.

  “Let me fucking go!” JJ shouted.

  “Come on, boy. Let’s go home!” Mr. Brown emphasized.

  “You’re not my fucking dad, old man!” JJ shouted as he shoved past Mr. Brown to the Gator.

  JJ jumped into the seat, flicked the ignition on, and spun around, leaving dust clouds in his wake as he tore off through the trails back to his house. He beat the steering wheel of the Side by Side as he tore through the dark of the night. He hadn’t even realized it had turned black outside with the mines lit up like Christmas from the fires. He got back to his house quicker than he made it out to the mines, it seemed. It was all downhill, after all, so that most likely factored into how quick he got back home.

  JJ sat in the Gator’s seat in front of his house. It really was his house now. Everything was now his. He stared into the darkened rooms and thought of every night that he went to bed without talking to his father or even telling his father he loved him. In fact, it had been since his mother was alive that he could remember telling him he loved him at all. He looked down at his watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He looked to the house and stared for a moment once more before he got out of the Gator and walked to the garage.

  A car screeched to a stop, and JJ looked over his shoulder to see who it was. Charlie stepped out of his 1980s Cadillac. JJ rolled his eyes and continued to walk to the garage.

  “I know what you’re doing, boy,” Charlie hollered. “My daughter challenged you to a race. Either you win, or you die on purpose, right? Planning to go over that mountain.”

  “What’s it to you, old man?” JJ spat. “I ain’t got nothing better to do.”

  “Don’t tell me that line of bullshit. Your daddy bragged about you all up and down this holler, saying how his son was going to an Ivy League school on the west coast. You were getting out of this life, and Paul wanted that,” Charlie yelled, walking up to JJ and jerking him around to face him. “You got a chance to make something of yourself, Jackson Alexander.”

  “That’s not my name,” JJ replied, shaking his arm loose.

  “There’s a lot of things you don’t know that your daddy was going to tell you someday when he felt the time was right,” Charlie replied. “One of them was the truth about your name and the truth about that night with your mama.”

  “Don’t bring my mama into this,” JJ seethed, poking Charlie in the chest. “That’s water under the bridge.”

  “Even so, your daddy wanted what’s best for you. Not this life, and he told me to make sure you got it if anything happened to him before your graduation,” Charlie replied. “We may have had bad blood between us, but we’re the kings of this holler, and we take care of everyone here.”

  “What do you want, Charlie? Do you want me to leave?” JJ asked.

  “Yes, I want you to leave and go to California and get that degree and make your life worth something, boy!” Charlie hollered.

  “Fine, I will! Just let me alone tonight!” JJ yelled, kicking a trash can across the driveway.

  “I just have one request,” Charlie said. “And then I will let you be.”

  “What’s that?” JJ asked.

  “Take Lynne with you,” Charlie pleaded. “She won’t survive this
life being a woman, and she deserves so much better than any of these punk gangsters can give her. Take her with you.”

  “She won’t leave with me,” JJ replied. “I’ve tried.”

  “Try harder,” Charlie prodded. “Get her to go because once I am gone, there’s no one left to protect her but herself.”

  “She won’t leave her family,” JJ replied. “She won’t leave you, or her mama, especially them holler boys she runs around with.”

  “Make her go then,” Charlie stated. “Force her. Get her out of here before she ends up raped or dead in a ditch.”

  “She’ll hate me,” JJ replied. “Or worse, she’ll just come back.”

  Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “I know you’re right. That girl is as stubborn as me with the mind of her mama. But, please, just try.”

  JJ nodded. Charlie returned to his car and drove up the holler back to his house. JJ unlocked the door to his garage with his hide-a-key and flipped the light switch on. He walked over to the car that was covered in the center of the garage and tore the slipcover back from the car. Beneath the cover sat his baby, a 1969 Dodge Hemi Charger, baby blue with white pinstripes down the center and body lines. He reached under the car and swiped the hidden key from under it, climbed into the driver’s seat, and shut the door. He rubbed his hands across the steering wheel. It had been a while since he had been behind the wheel of the car. The last time his dad had to bail him out of jail in Macon, Georgia, for street racing. His hands tightened around the steering wheel as he gripped back his emotions.

  JJ shoved the key into the ignition and turned the car over. It roared to life with a deafening hum as it loped at idle. He punched his garage door button, and it rolled up as he drove his car out under it. He clicked the button again, and it slid back into place. He pressed the gas, and gravels spun as he tore down the holler’s road. He slowed down once he hit the train tracks, but as soon as his back tires hit the pavement on the other side, they were squealing on top of the hardtop of the main road. He buried the needle on the speedometer as he took each curve with a drift heading to the end of Route 1. He knew what Lynne’s idea was. They were racing down Spruce Mountain. Most people don’t have the balls to do it because of Dead Man’s Curve rolling you.

  JJ rolled up to the end of Route 1, where everyone sat gathered bullshitting. As he screeched the car to a stop, everyone silently watched him get out of the car and walk over to Lynne. Lynne stood there, uneasy.

  “You ready to do this?” he asked as he peered around her at her Nova.

  “I didn’t think you were going to show,” she said through a strained smile.

  “I got nothing better to do tonight,” JJ remarked back.

  Silence hung in the air around them all as Lynne stared heatedly at JJ trying to convey a message that he was blatantly ignoring.

  “Hey, man. Want a beer?” Jesse asked, breaking the quiet air.

  “You know he don’t drink, Jesse,” Lynne giggled nervously.

  “Who died and made you my daddy?” JJ asked. “I drink if I want to. Tonight, I might want to.”

  “No, Jesse. He don’t need to drink and drive,” Lynne protested abruptly.

  Jesse stood there holding the beer in his hand not knowing who to listen to. If he gave JJ the beer, he would catch hell from Lynne. If he didn’t give JJ the beer, JJ might beat his ass.

  “I sure would like a beer, Jesse,” JJ replied, holding his hand up to catch the Bud Light he expected Jesse to toss.

  Jesse stared at the beer and then looked back at JJ and was about to agree with Lynne. However, he ended up not having to make the decision at all when JR yanked the beer from his hand.

  “Here you go, JJ” JR announced as he tossed the beer through the air into JJ’s open hand.

  “Thank you, JR!” JJ exclaimed as he cracked the beer and took a swig. “Keep ‘em coming too.”

  “Want some bud? Coke? Lortab?” Cameron asked, holding up different bags with pot, pills, and cocaine as he completely ignored the death glare from Lynne.

  “No, he don’t!” Lynne grunted, flaring her nostrils and grinting her eyes at Jesse. “I don’t think this is a good idea tonight,” Lynne said, watching JJ shotgun another beer after tossing his empty can to the ground.

  “Oh, the fun is just beginning. Don’t tell me you’re backing down now, Lynne Brown. I didn’t think you were a pussy when it came to bets,” he jeered as he caught another beer from the air and shotgunned it too. “How about that bud?” JJ asked, wiping the beer from around his mouth that had spilled out.

  Cameron passed JJ a blunt, and he took a long draw off of it, held it, and then blew the smoke up in the air, coughing and sputtering as the guys around him whooped and hollered. He hit it again and then passed it off to the next hand stretched out to grab it in rotation.

  “Since when do you smoke weed?!” Lynne asked irate and irritated.

  “Ain’t that what the holler life is all about? Living young, wild, and free. Smoking weed, bumping crank. Getting drunk and racing our cars down Spruce Mountain? I mean, that’s what I thought,” JJ replied, shrugging his shoulders. “I thought you wanted me to fit in around her better than what I was. Get to know your boys. Be friends with them. Smoke dope with them. I mean, hasn’t that always been one of the reasons you don’t think we could ever work?”

  Lynne stepped in closer to JJ and asked, “What are you doing? Why are you talking like this in front of everyone?”

  “You don’t think they know? Everyone in the damn holler knew about us. Our daddies had their suspicions but never had the proof. Well, they almost didn’t have the proof. Right, Jesse?” JJ asked as he took the blunt again from Kyle and took another draw off it.

  “I don’t know what yer talkin’ about,” Jesse murmured, scowling at JJ.

  “Sure, you do,” JJ laughed. “It was your cousin running around telling everybody! And then it was you and I standing in that garage explaining it all to Charlie as he held me at gunpoint. Maybe you should lay off the pot, bud.”

  The whole group fell silent as all eyes trained on Jesse, JJ, and Lynne. Jesse laughed and shook his head nervously.

  “Maybe you should lay off the pot, JJ,” Jesse replied, running his hand through his hair as his anxiety began to climb.

  “Jesse what is he talking about?” Lynne whispered.

  “Ain’t no need in whispering,” JJ declared. “All these boys were standing there when your daddy held mine at gunpoint until we told Charlie where you got your black eye. Because that bullshit gun popping you in the eye while squirrel hunting story sure as hell didn’t cut it for him.”

  “Why are you doing this, JJ” Jesse asked.

  “Why do you talk different depending on who you are talking to?” JJ asked Jesse. “DO you think if you spoke like you had some sense around these boys they wouldn’t like you? Or Lynne wouldn’t like you since you sound educated?”

  “Fuck you,” Jesse replied angrily. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know you’re running from this hellhole like I am and that’s why you applied to WVU just so you could get out of this life before it killed you like Daryl got killed,” JJ snapped back.

  “Nobody is supposed to talk about that!” Lynne hissed.

  “Yea, just like no one is supposed to talk about us sneaking around with one another too, right?” JJ asked.

  “Shut your mouth!” Lynne demanded.

  “Lynne! It’s ok! They all know anyway! Tell me, Mike. Before tonight, had you ever heard of me and Lynne sneaking around the holler together?” JJ asked.

  “Man, don’t pull me into your bullshit drama,” Mike replied, waving JJ off.

  JJ grabbed him by the shirt. “Tell us!” JJ demanded.

  “What the fuck man!?” Mike replied. “Yes. Yes, we all knew, and none of us breathed a word to Charlie or Paul.”

  “How did you know?” JJ asked, pushing Mike away and dropping his hold on his shirt.

  “Well one, Daryl was running h
is mouth. But really, we had known for months with you two sneaking off with one another all the time. We all warned Daryl to shut his trap, or we would shut it for him. Dumb fuck got what he deserved. Heard he took a bullet in the head from running that mouth and snitching to the cops about Charlie’s operation,” Mike spat.

  “Snitches get stitches,” Kevin laughed.

  “And end up in ditches,” Nick replied, joining in.

  “Fuck that, feed them to the fishes,” Tuck laughed.

  “Oh, he got fed to them fishes,” JJ laughed. “Heard he floated all the way to the gorge.”

  Jesse stood quietly as Lynne glared at JJ. She didn’t understand what was going on in his head right now. She knew what toll this night might have taken, but to air their secrets out like this in front of everyone was out of character for even JJ.

  “See, Lynne. Everybody knows about us. Our daddies knew and didn’t care anymore. Why are we fighting it? The holler ain’t fighting it no more,” JJ murmured, turning around and facing her. “Are you too scared of your daddy? Scared of anything? Because I can take care of that problem. I can march right up to him and tell him what’s going down. If you love me, this is your chance. Love me now. Tell me,” JJ begged, stepping closer to Lynne. “Because right now, I’m drowning in the darkness. It’s swallowing me up,” he whispered into her ear. “Runaway with me. Love me. Be with me. Escape this outlaw life with me because if you don’t, I won’t ever come back. I won’t look back. I will sew my heart up after you rip it out, and I will never let another woman in.”