The Big Rock Candy Mountain

by Wallace Stegner

  “Yeah,” Bo said. “Well, I guess I can get rid of it.”

  Through hands cupped to light the cigarette Heimie watched him. “Running it on down?”

  “I didn’t say,” Bo said. “I could spare you two or three cases if you wanted them. Probably I’ll be making another trip before Christmas. Let me know what you want and I’ll bring it then.”

  “How soon’ll that be? The rush might start quicker than we expect.”

  Leaning over, Bo dropped the cigar butt in a spittoon. “I could get it to you within two weeks.”

  Heimie frowned, tapping his fingers on the counter. He looked at himself in the mirror and took off his hat to smooth his beetle-shell hair. “Two weeks is pretty late,” he said.

  “That’s as quick as I can make it.”

  “Well,” Heimie said, “we might have to draw on somebody else. I thought you’d have some plain stuff this trip.”

  “Send somebody up,” Bo said contemptuously. “Somebody that always gets knocked over at the line, with a lot of your hooch aboard.”

  Heimie shrugged. “Maybe two weeks will do. But I’ll give you a tip about running that Scotch south.”

  “I didn’t say I was running it anywhere.”

  “Just the same,” Heimie said, “I know damn well you didn’t think you could sell a whole load of White Horse and Haig and Haig in this burg.” He smiled and tapped a finger on Bo’s chest. “If you do go south, stay away from Sheridan,” he said. “They’re getting tough as hell around there. Prohis at all the bridges and ferries, stopping every suspicious car. Friend of mine was knocked over down there last week with a new Marmon and a thousand dollar load.”

  “Well,” Bo said, “I guess we’ll let the guys around Sheridan worry about that.” He slid off the stool. “Do you think you can move two or three Scotch, or shall I unload them myself?”

  Motioning to the waiter, Heimie slid a half dollar down the counter and stood up, tightening the overcoat across his chest. He walked to the door with Bo, his head bent. “What’s it going to come at?”

  “It’s up. Cost me eight dollars a case more at Govenlock this time. I’ll have to pass that on.”

  “That would make it sixty-two,” Heimie said. He stood picking his teeth, looking down across the shoulder of the wooden Indian. A boy of twelve or so, standing on tiptoe before the eyepiece of one of the “Adults Only” slot machines, jerked his head away and pretended to be interested in the window full of pipes and razor blades and tins of tobacco.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Heimie said. “You take a lot of chances running it on down. You get a better price, sure, but with Wyoming hot you take chances. What about making a deal for the whole load?”

  “I’ve got other customers I have to take care of,” Bo said. “I thought you couldn’t sell Scotch in this town anyway.”

  “Little water’ll do wonders to the price of Scotch,” Heimie said. “Brings it down where pikers can buy it.”

  “That’ll lose you customers, too, in the long run.” Bo reached out another cigar and bit off the end. “No, I guess I better stick with the arrangements I already made.”

  “I’ll take the whole load,” Heimie said. “That saves you a lot of trouble. I’ll take the whole load at the old price, fifty-four a case.”

  “I’d be a sucker,” Bo said. “I can sell it for seventy-five in wholesale lots.”

  “Not here in town.”

  “What does that matter? I can sell it for that—got it sold.”

  “Well, I can’t pay any price like that,” Heimie said. “I can’t get that selling it by the bottle.”

  That, Bo knew, was a lie. Heimie had been getting seven and eight a bottle for watered Scotch for six months, ever since people’s stored-up liquor had begun to run out. And at Christmas time he’d hike the price.

  “I might make it sixty,” Heimie said. “But I wouldn’t stand ‘to make anything much. Customers kick like steers even at the old price.”

  “We’d better let it slide,” Bo said. “You can have the three cases if you want.”

  “Fifty-four?”

  “Sixty-two. I can’t absorb that eight-buck raise.”

  Heimie considered. “All right. Can you bring them over to the house tonight?”

  “Can’t you come after them?”

  “I’m tied up. Got to see a guy from Kalispell out at the tourist park. Matter of fact, you might be interested in what’s in the wind.”

  Bo waited, but Heimie apparently was not going to say what was in the wind, so Bo shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be over around nine.”

  As he went down the street he cursed Heimie’s deviousness. He might just as well have said in the beginning that he wanted the whole load—at a cut price, on credit!—instead of beating around the bush with bear stories about Wyoming being hot, and maybe they’d have to draw on somebody else for stuff. At the same time, there was just enough possibility that Wyoming was hot so that it would pay to be careful. There was only one decent road south unless you went clear over into Dakota and then down. And ever since the Federals got organized they had been making trouble. It might be a good idea to go clear around Sheridan, at that.

  Then he thought of having to unload the whole car, just to take three cases over to that damned lazy Heimie. If it wasn’t for the certainty that Heimie would stool on anybody who told him off, he would have liked to back out even on the three cases.

  He unloaded, put the rear cushion in, threw three sacks of sand in the back end along with Heimie’s three cases, to bring the built-up springs down, and went in to lunch. While they were eating the dummy arrived over the shoulder of a grinning delivery boy. “Just put her on the couch,” Bo said. He went into the hall and called Elsa. “Here’s your dummy,” he said.

  “My what?”

  “Your dummy. Come on in here.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” she said. “I haven’t ordered anything.” She came into the room and stopped. “Now what?”

  “Look,” Bo said, boxing his ankles and scuffing his toe. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, so I didn’t say anything about it before, but this girl wants to ride down to Nebraska with me.”

  “Take that silly look off your face and tell me,” Elsa said.

  “No fooling. She wants a ride. Only she hasn’t got any clothes to wear.”

  Elsa laughed. “Where did you get this thing?”

  “This is camouflage,” Bo said. “It’s too easy to spot a car with one man in it, travelling fast. Henriette here is coming along to look after me.”

  “But anyone could tell in a minute...”

  “Put a veil on her. Just seeing us go by, nobody is going to spot her.”

  “You’re like a little kid playing detective,” Elsa said. “I’ll bet anything you’re doing this because it tickles your funny bone. You’ll be talking to her all the way down.”

  “Why not?” he said. “Put some classy duds on her and she’ll be worth talking to.”

  “Well, I’ll see.”

  She went upstairs, and in a few minutes came down with an armful of clothes. “She’ll have to wear hand-me-downs,” she said. “I’m not giving away any of my good clothes to a girl no better than she should be.”

  “She’ll need an overcoat.”

  “I can fix that all right.”

  She dressed the dummy quickly, while he stood watching. “No underwear?” he said. He whistled, wagging his head. “How about the veil?”

  “I’ll have to cobble one.”

  She found a small black hat and dug out of the sewing machine some black net. When she had the dummy veiled and pushed back on the couch Bo cackled. “That’s the goods,” he said. “Put her behind sidecurtains and guys’ll be flirting with her.”

  Elsa looked at him and shook her head. “For a man in a dangerous business, you try more fool kid tricks than anyone I ever saw,” she said.

  At nine that night he pulled up in front of the house Heimie
and his outfit had rented the month before. It was an old house that had formerly had some connection with a silver smelter. The two-hundred-foot stack, all that still stood of the smelter, soared out of the bottom of the lot close to the river.

  Bo sat in the car, in the shadow of the overgrown lilac bushes, looking the place over. It was a good house, way off the main track. The only thing Heiinie would have to watch would be kids prowling around in the summertime. But it was extra good as far as the smell was concerned. Heimie had never said he was running a still, but it was plain enough.

  His feet crunched in broken glass and rubbish in the path. The house was completely dark. When he tapped with the heavy brass knocker the noise echoed inside. He waited.

  “Who is it?” a voice said through the door.

  “Mason.”

  The bolt was shot, and the door opened. “You got the stuff here?” the man inside said.

  “In the car.”

  “Just a minute, I’ll help you.” The man stepped back and shut the basement door, from which a little light and a strong smell of mash came up. “Heimie said you’d be along,” he said, coming out on the porch. “He wants you to wait till he gets back.”

  “When’ll he be here?”

  “He ought to be along pretty quick.”

  They took a case apiece inside, and Bo went back for the third. The man locked the door and took Bo’s arm. “Come on down here.”

  He led Bo down the basement steps, the light brightening as they went, the mash smell thickening. The furnace, like a great octopus, hid the source of the light. When they got around it Bo saw a row of oak kegs, two oak barrels with boards across them to form a table, two men sitting against the wall with glasses in their hands. The light came over a low partition, where the still must be.

  One of the men, the small dark one, made a motion with his glass. “Hi,” he said. The other slouched back against the wall and barely nodded. He had a heavy-jawed face with a smudge of black beard, and he looked tough. The one who had brought him downstairs, now that he saw him in the light, he recognized. Beans McGovern, a small-time thug.

  “Got it snug down here,” Bo said, and shook off his overcoat.

  “Furnace makes it nice,” McGovern said. “Have a drink?”

  “Thanks.”

  “This is Joe Underwood,” McGovern said, waving at the heavy-jawed man. “Used to work out of Butte. This is Blackie Holmes. Bo Mason.” He poured a glass from a jug and handed it across the boards.

  Underwood was watching Bo steadily. He had a slight cast in one eye. Bo was instantaneously reminded of the cop who had been killed in Little Chi a week before. This was the kind of cookie that might have done that sort of job. At best he was a bouncer. At worst he might be a hatchet man.

  “Heimie tells me you just been north,” McGovern said. He squatted on a keg and tipped it back carefully against the wall.

  Bo nodded.

  “Still doing the old land office business in Govenlock?”

  “They got a warehouse big as a freight yard,” Bo said. “And their ideas are getting as big as the warehouse. Hiked the price of Scotch eight bucks a case this time.”

  “There wasn’t any raise last time I was up there,” Underwood said. He spoke flatly, without lifting his voice or changing his, position against the wall, but there was a challenge there, a hard deliberate will to pick a fight. The thought that he might be in a trap, that Heimie might have fixed all this up, made Bo slow to answer. He sipped his drink, getting a look all around through half-closed eyes over the rim of the glass. He moved a little so that his back was to the furnace. “When were you up there last?” he said.

  “Ten days ago.”

  “They raised it on the first, they said.”

  “I hadn’t heard about it from anybody else,” Underwood said.

  Bo deliberately drained his glass and put it down. “Then you haven’t been talking to the people that know.”

  McGovern cut in. “Heimie says you’re slick at getting back and forth.”

  “I manage to make a few trips,” Bo said.

  “Sixteen loads without a knock-over,” McGovern said. “You must have all the cops fixed.”

  “I was talking with a prohi that works the Chinook territory,” Underwood’s flat voice said. “He was telling me he chased a guy a month or so ago, so close he could hear the guy banging over the bumps up ahead, running without lights, and then all of a sudden the guy vanished. The prohi tried every crossroad for ten miles up and down, no go. Just evaporated.”

  Bo looked at him steadily. This bird knew something. His tone, however, had got less nasty since McGovern had cut in a minute ago. Still it wasn’t good. Something was behind that first tone, and behind this little probing, apparently aimless, conversation. “That was me,” Bo said. “That sonofabitch cost me three cases in breakage.”

  Blackie Holmes squirmed his back against the wall. “What did you do, take a disappearing powder?”

  “I missed a bridge,” Bo said. “I was loaded so heavy behind I just sailed out flat as an airplane and lit in the bottom on all four wheels. Blew out every tire. So I sat there while the prohi ran up and down a. while, and then I came in on the rims.”

  McGovern wagged his head and spat at the base of the furnace. “Lucky!” he said.

  “That was the one time,” Bo said, his eyes steady on Underwood, “when I took advice about a road. From a guy at the warehouse in Govenlock. He wouldn’t be a friend of your prohi friend from Chinook, would he?” ,

  He held Underwood’s eye, or tried to, but Underwood had the advantage of the slight cast. It was hard to tell whether he was looking at you or past you. “I don’t keep track of any prohi’s friends,” Underwood said.

  After a minute Bo took his eyes off him. He had lost the feeling of being in a trap, but he was surer than ever that this Underwood was not only dangerous, but was deliberately making himself look dangerous. It was perfectly possible that Underwood was the stool who was responsible for all the knock-overs at the line. He was in the business, he would have hot tips on who was coming through, and when.

  McGovern raised a hand. “Somebody on the door?” he said.

  He went upstairs fast, his sneakers thudding softly on the treads. Bo heard the door open. Steps came down the stairs, and Heimie appeared around the furnace, ducking his head and shuddering his shoulders together.

  “Jesus, it’s getting cold,” he said. “Hi, Bo. Hi, boys. How’s every little thing?”

  “Can’t kick,” Bo said. Underwood nodded. Holmes raised his glass. Heimie rubbed his hands together, reached up and felt the furnace pipe over his head, stood reaching with both hands against the warm tin. “I just been talking to Bill Burman from Kalispell,” he said. “You remember, I told you this morning I was going to see him.”

  Bo nodded.

  “He’s a bright boy,” Heimie said. “Made me a proposition sounds pretty good.”

  “Better take it then,” Bo said. Heimie took his hands from the pipe, flapping and slapping them from loose wrists. He moved around jerkily, smiling.

  “He’s got a lot of know-how,” he said. “There’s only one way this racket can be made to pay big and keep on paying big. This’ll interest you, Bo.”

  Bo waited. He looked at Underwood, slumped down, almost lying, against the wall, his face in shadow.

  “This is how Bill lays it out,” Heimie said, “and it ain’t bushwah. The Federals are getting tough, and the state and city are beginning to work with ‘em. You can pay off the city and maybe some of the state, but the Federals are hard to get at, and every once in a while they’re going to knock you over. Lose your car, lose your load, pay a big fine. There’s no percentage in it.”

  “Not unless you stay out of their way,” Bo said.

  “Yeah,” said Heimie, “but you can’t. So Bill lays out a proposition for some big-time distribution that’s a honey. We’ve got the connections here, see? Here and in Havre. Bill’s got ‘em in Kalispell and
Helena. That’s four good towns. We can work into Butte later, after we get organized. We have a bunch of guys to bring it in from the line, we have another bunch to truck it around where it’s needed. When one town gets loaded up we drain it off to the others. Take about ten guys, we could supply the whole state with stuff. Anybody gets in a jam, we spring him, hire a lawyer that can play all the cards. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds all right for the guys that don’t take the chances,” Bo said.

  “It’s all right for everybody,” Heimie said. “Look what you get: You get protection in town, and that’ll be foolproof. And if the state or Federals gets hot and you get knocked over, the organization pays your lawyer, pays your fine, sets you up to a new car and puts you back to work. You can’t lose.”

  “How much would a man make?” Bo said. “That’s the angle I’m interested in.”

  “That’d have to be figured out.”

  “It looks like a guy could make about twice as much alone.”

  Heimie put his hands up to the pipe again, took them down to remove his overcoat. He had changed clothes since morning, and the shirt he wore now was whitest silk. When he opened his coat to smooth out his shirttails Bo saw the blue embroidered butterfly on the shirt pocket. “A guy alone could make more,” Heimie said, “until he got knocked over. Then he could lose about five times as much. And it’s a cinch that any man working alone is going to get knocked over oftener than if he works with us.” His eyes strayed over to Underwood, sprawling against the partition, and Underwood met his look.

  Bo sat still, as if considering. They made it clear enough. The threat was doubly underlined. Rising and stretching, Bo smiled into , Heimie’s pale, widow‘s-peaked face. “Yeah,” he said. “It sounds like a good layout. You want me to come in, is that it?”

  “You’d be doing yourself and us both a favor,” Heimie said.

  “When you planning to get going?”

  “Right away. We’ve already got this place for a depot. Bill’s got another in Kalispell. We’ve got everything we need except the organization, and that shouldn’t take long.”