Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  The man could go to work for Tom at some big still. There were two or three thousand-gallon stills at work constantly, all through the prohibition times, in some of the mountain counties, stills quite safe from capture... there was an immense market for the moon among workingmen in all of the industrial towns of the Middle West... the great coal mining regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, Southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.... North Carolina moon, Tennessee moon, North Georgia moon... train loads of sugar and containers were being shipped into Tom’s territory... the old slow method of making the moon from grain was out... the raw alcohol could be extracted from sugar quickly... just enough grain was used to give the raw stuff some slight flavor. It was fighting liquor, man-stabbing liquor, gal-gitting liquor.

  It went out of the mountain country in great convoys. It was good business. A man could be quite safe working for Tom but more and more Tom had cut down the earnings. There were men working about stills, hauling in sugar and containers... after all they did face the possibility of arrest, of going to jail... it was known and felt that, if the pinch came, it would be the little man who would be thrown to the dogs... there were men doing such work for a dollar and a half, for two dollars a day.

  The mountain man who spoke to Kit was some such fellow. He had been an independent maker. Now he was one of Tom’s men, working at one of Tom’s stills. He had been cautious. “I am not speaking for myself. Although I have a wife and five kids, I’m not kicking.”

  There was the suggestion... the new federal man, leader of the new crowd of federal men come into the mountain country, was said to be foxy. He was a small man, sharp and shrewd, and the mountain man, talking with Kit, had heard he couldn’t be fixed.

  The man kept assuring her of his own loyalty to Tom’s gang... he was being shrewd and cagey but, he said, he liked the chance to talk about it all to some one he knew was also loyal and as he talked Kit had the feeling that he might himself be a federal man or that he had made an arrangement with them, had agreed to work with them.

  She was however a little torn, a little puzzled. In the beginning during the organization of Tom’s crowd there had been a generous distribution of the swag taken. Men of Tom’s crowd always went about with money in their pockets. Cars were bought, mountain women got new store clothes, children of mountain men got shoes.

  But there had been this change. Tom was taking always a bigger and bigger cut. More and more he was ruling by terror. It might be, Kit thought, as the mountain man talked, always declaring his own loyalty, that he had been sent to her by the new leader of the federals...

  Or he might have been sent by Tom himself. “He’d like to get something on me,” she thought.

  There were these thoughts, questions in her mind, that night when she went to Kate’s. Could she question Kate, would Kate talk? She had felt a liking for herself in Kate. When the mountain man had talked to her he had spoken guardedly of a certain man. “I am not sure about this. I’ve only heard.”

  It was the man Steve Wyagle, known as Shorty, the city gun-man, the one Kit had seen sitting with other men in Kate’s house that time she first came to Kate’s with Gordon.

  There was a whisper going about that he was planning to try at least to elbow his way into Tom’s place in the organization and might even be playing in with the new federal men. If they got Tom, broke up his crowd, Steve could organize a new crowd.

  If the new federal man got Tom and a few of his followers he would perhaps be satisfied. He would have made a reputation for himself with the government, would have pulled off a big stroke. He would be sent away to work in some other section of the country. It would be time then for a new man to step into Tom’s shoes, build up a new organization. Promises no doubt made. “You see what Tom’s doing. He’s keeping it all.

  “If we get rid of him we can all make money again.”

  Kit at that time had never seen the new federal man who had evidently created a new force within Tom’s crowd, the force of fear, of suspicion. He had got men within the organization into a new mood. They had begun to look at each other with eyes into which had crept suspicion. “Is he one of us, or is he a federal man, working inside the organization, getting evidence that may send me to prison for years? Or is he in with Steve Wyagle?”

  Steve Wyagle was a tough one, a killer. Kit had never seen the new federal man when she went to Kate that night but later he did speak to her.

  There was one time when she had returned to the town and the hotel where she had lived with Gordon. She had spent the night there and in the morning was getting into her car, in the street before the hotel, when the man stepped over to her car and spoke to her.

  For some reason she was at once on her guard, knew who the man was. He spoke to her softly, smiling up at her, a rather small, slender, neatly dressed man, he was with a diamond pin in his tie. She noticed that he wore rings on the fingers of both hands.

  “Mrs. Halsey,” he said, raising his hat and smiling and —

  “Well,” she replied. “If I am Mrs. Halsey what do you want of me?”

  He leaned over toward her and spoke quickly, a little stream of words flowing through thin lips, she staring at him. “I think you know who I am.” He smiled.

  “You had better be very very careful. You had better come to see me, or you could phone.” He took a card from his pocket and laid it beside her on the seat of the car. “There’s my name and my telephone number.

  “You had better see me soon. The game’s up,” he said, still smiling, still speaking softly. He had curious gray eyes, very pale, and there were little brown spots on the eye balls. “You go to hell,” Kit said to him as she drove away, speaking boldly enough but in her also he had created fear. There had been three or four men lounging about the front of the hotel. They might have been some of Tom’s crowd. The federal man might have got them, frightened them into working with him, helping him gather evidence... promise of immunity when the big break came. He might have said to them, “See. You watch this.” The whole conversation with herself, to men standing even a few feet away, might have seemed friendly.

  As though he were giving her instruction.

  He could have stepped back to them. There were so many men in Tom’s crowd Kit had never seen. He could have addressed them... “You see. She also is working in with us.”

  Kit was furious after the incident. It hadn’t happened that night when she went to Kate, but already she had had the conversation with the mountain man.

  Did she want to warn Kate, warn Tom through Kate? Her relationship with the older woman was a curious one. The two women had never talked to each other. It is likely that the same loneliness, the persistent hunger for some kind of real companionship in life that had driven Kit into the absurd embrace with the clerk she had found in the movie theatre had also driven her to Kate. She had never had a real woman friend or a man friend. There had been too many nights spent alone, on lonely roads, in lonely hotel rooms, always lying low... secrecy had become more and more necessary as she had become better known, since her name had been played up in newspapers. Once she had the beginning of a kind of friendship with Tom Halsey. He had, at least partially, taken her into his confidence. It might be that if she warned Kate and Tom through Kate, the friendship could be re-established. There was a kind of persistent admiration for Tom. She thought afterwards it might have been rather romantic. “Perhaps I only wanted a man I could feel was a man.”

  “Hell. What the hell, Tom? Come out of it.” Kit had got, naturally had to get, being in the work she was, having to deal with sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, with the men of Tom’s crowd she did meet, a new and bolder front. She felt that she would not be afraid to face Tom, have it out with him...

  “I’m a woman and you’re a man. Let’s forget it. Sure I ran out on you in the matter of having a kid by your lousy son. I lied to you about that but I’ve sure been a good workman for you.

  “If you’re so crazy about having a grandson, to carry on the Halsey
name, on the money we are all making for you in this racket, you know, Tom, respectable Halseys, associating with the best people, the very kind of people who buy the stuff we run out to them...

  “Why not tell Gordon to get a divorce? I won’t put a straw in his way. Tell him to get some other skirt. Tell him to get a gentle soft one, not another like me.”

  It might be that the trouble with Tom was that he had it in his head that in the end she would try to hold him up. He was getting more and more crazy about money, constantly getting more greedy. It was also an old American story, the man who by being bold, daring or crafty had got a million and who, having got it, wanted two and having two wanted five, ten, twenty million.

  Kit went softly over to the kitchen door of Kate’s house and knocked. She had got herself into an exalted mood, hoping that Tom might be at the house, that she could have it out with him. When she had knocked... the car in which she had arrived was parked out of sight from the house... she stepped away from the door and stood in a spot where in the moonlight she could be clearly seen from a window.

  It was for her one of those times... all people have them... a resolution made... you are prepared to assert yourself, have your say... it is all thought out.

  And then — whiff — it doesn’t work out.

  Kit stood in the yard at the back of Kate’s house until Kate came to the kitchen door and the two women went into the kitchen. It was time for a settlement between them... so and so much money to come to Kit and she got it. There had been a light turned on for a moment and then it was again turned off. Kit stepped out of the house and Kate stood in the doorway. She was a curiously stern looking figure standing there, Kit quite close, so that she could see the heavy hard-seeming lines of the older woman’s face. Kate was a tall gaunt woman. How hard her eyes seemed. Kit hesitated.

  Again she spoke. What had gone wrong with her? She had suddenly the feeling that her voice had gone wrong. She had intended to ask a question, quite casually, but being suddenly uncertain, her voice became sharp and demanding.

  “Is Tom Halsey in there?” She pointed. She could see the tall form of the woman Kate stiffen.

  “I want to see him. I’ve got to see him. I think he’s in there. You tell him to come out here. I’ve got something to say to him.”

  It was all wrong, wrong. Kit had intended to take Kate into her confidence, tell her about the conversation with the mountain man, about the new leader of the federal men who had come into Tom’s territory determined to get Tom.

  She had intended to take advantage of the opportunity to get closer to Kate and through her perhaps to re-establish her old relationship with Tom, and her own stupidity had spoiled everything.

  She had made a demand. There had been, in the tones in which she had addressed Kate, something like a threat. Kate did not answer for a moment and then she spoke softly.

  “When Tom Halsey wants to see you I guess he’ll send you word,” she said in her low even voice, and without more words stepped back into her kitchen and closed the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TOM HALSEY DID send Kit word. At that time Kit had been taking with her a certain young man... sometimes when running single loads of expensive liquor into some Middle Western industrial town or city, sometimes when acting as pilot for convoys of cars, taking perhaps a big shipment of moon out of the mountain country and into the coal mining districts of West Virginia or southern Ohio. The young man was in reality just a boy.

  He was a college boy, from one of the older Virginia colleges... it was during the college vacation time that he came to work, as a driver, for Tom’s crowd and he was sent to Kit.

  She was to teach him, put him through his paces, teach him the trick of acting as pilot for convoys of cars, the roads, stations, almost always in a barn on some lonely farm, where liquor was stored. He was a gray-eyed, slender, eager young fellow, not physically very strong and at once, after he came to her, Kit took a fancy to him.

  It was a curious feeling, having the boyish young fellow with her... he was with her on almost every trip she took for two months... something like a mother feeling coming to her... really it was a little absurd, her having the feeling... she was not much older than the boy... she thought of him as a boy, not as a young man. He was a Weathersmythe from one of the eastern, the tidewater counties, of Virginia.

  He talked. There was a shy eager outburst of speech. They went, running a car of expensive stuff through the night, over the mountains, say out of North Carolina and into Ohio. It might be a load of imported stuff, smuggled in somewhere along the North or South Carolina coast... Tom having contracted to get it through. Kit let the boy drive. He was like herself, instinctively a fine driver. His presence broke her loneliness.

  They had delivered a load, in some Ohio industrial town... it might be going into the cellar of some rich manufacturer, such a man as would be strong for law and order... down on all lawlessness in others... and then Kit and the boy lit out, disappeared into the morning blue.

  No load now, no immediate danger of arrest.

  Kit kept wondering about the young boy, her companion. But he wasn’t so young. He might have been a year younger than herself.

  He wanted to talk. He belonged to a family, known, understood to be one of the F. F. V’s.

  Kit got it all out of his talk. He had in him something she herself understood. The danger of the trade into which he had got... his getting in with Tom had come about through an acquaintance with some boot-legger, some man in the college town who sold stuff to the college boys...

  The man passing the word on to Tom. “Yes, we’ll give him a try.” The boy excited by the constant danger of arrest. There were other young fellows of the sort who had worked for Tom but none of them had been sent to Kit.

  She was at first a little suspicious. “Well, we’ll see.” She had that feeling, very strong in her now, growing in her, that Tom wanted to get something on her. She and the young Weathersmythe would be, perhaps for some weeks, constantly together. It might be that Tom was being foxy, trying to get something on Kit as he had on his son’s first wife.

  Making that one hot-foot it off to Reno, a little money pitched to her.... “So that’s that. Good-bye, Miss Skirt.”

  Kit and the boy were alone together night after night. When they had delivered a load they went to some little town, stopping on the way at another town. They had breakfast together at some small town restaurant and Kit sent off a wire, not to Kate but to a business man of the town near which Kate lived.

  The wire would be handed by the business man to a second man who would see that it got to Kate. If you knew how to read it, it would tell you where to find and get word to Kit...

  Another load to be got or a convoy of cars to be piloted.

  Kit was suspicious, not of the boy... he at once won her confidence, even her affection... but of Tom. When they were approaching some little town, where they were to hide out and wait, she dropped the boy at the town’s edge and went on to the hotel. He had his bag and walked in, registering after she had been assigned a room. They were both tired and sleepy and Kit slept until late afternoon.

  She awoke, dressed, had her room put in order and then... this after they had been together for some days... he came to her.

  She had warned him but he came along the hotel corridor and tapped softly on her door. “Come on,” he whispered, “there don’t any one know us here.” He wanted her to go with him to the hotel dining-room or to a restaurant, stood in the doorway to her room, whispering, an eager smile on his young face. He had begun at once to call her Kit and, as his name was Alfred, she called him Alf.

  “Ah, come on, Kit. What the hell? Let’s take a chance. It’s so nice out.” She had explained to him carefully, time and again, that it was better that they not be seen together but he was so eager, standing there in the hallway of the shabby little hotel. His lips trembled with eagerness. “We’ll have something to eat and take a walk. It’ll be dark soon.” She sent hi
m downstairs and went down to join him.

  They walked together in the streets of towns, in quiet residence streets, Kit for the most part silent and curious, while the boy talked. She had told him of the danger of the game into which he had got. “With me, Alf, you see, it doesn’t much matter.” She was trying to make him see his own situation as something different from her own.

  “I haven’t any people, don’t even know where my people are.

  “If I am arrested, thrown into jail... my name getting into the newspapers, you see, it won’t matter.”

  She kept urging him to get out of the game at once, but he protested.

  “You don’t know how it is at home.”

  There was his father, such a stodgy self-important one. An aunt kept house for his father. He described her, a short fat very red-faced woman of fifty-five, a manager, he said. She had inherited some money... really paid the expenses of the house and had paid the boy’s expenses at the Virginia college.

  The boy described the life in his father’s house. His own position there was a curious one, the father, Kit gathered, rather overawed by the aunt, his sister. There had been some money in the family, money coming down from young Alfred’s grandfather but the grandfather had not trusted his son and had left the money to his daughter.

  It was all something new to Kit, a peep into a kind of life of which she knew nothing.

  And so, the Weathersmythes were of the Virginia aristocracy of which she had often heard. For two or three years she had been living her own kind of solitary life, often enough staying in some Virginia town, sometimes at night walking alone in the streets of some such town.

  Houses of the rich and well-to-do among Virginia families passed during some such walk. She might even have stopped some man or woman on a sidewalk. “Can you tell me, please, who lives in that house?” There might be a big old frame house with a wide lawn in front, perhaps girls, young women, no older than herself sitting on a porch in front or coming down a gravel walk to the street.