The Wettest County in the World

by Matt Bondurant

  They loaded up without incident and crept along the feeder roads at the base of the mountain. The air was crisp and still, the sun vague behind a haze of clouds, the roads untracked. They had to use snow chains until they reached the hard road, and to Jack the crackling, tinkling noise of the chains was unbearable. They crawled around Fork Mountain and got on the hard road near Sydnorsville. The road was lightly tracked, the macadam visible through the ruts, and the four men quickly got out and took off their snow chains, a difficult process with numb, wet fingers that required them to unhook the chains, then roll the cars off them, then stop to pick up the chains again. A few minutes later they set off, Jack in the lead. He pushed the Dodge up to forty, the tires spinning in the slushy ruts.

  In another ten minutes they were on the gentle slope into Rocky Mount, Grassy Hill looming. Forrest directly behind, then Everett Dillon, then Howard in the rear. Jack noticed Howard had a jar in his lap when they left but he seemed solid. They were staying in a tight bunch and Jack pushed the speed up to fifty as they hit the cleared roads of downtown. They hammered down Main Street, passing the tobacco warehouse, its doors open and dark, a smokestack steaming. Two men in the doorway, a pair of idling cars in the lot, and as Jack passed he saw the two men quickly chuck away their cigarettes.

  Here we go, Jack said to himself, and pressed the gas.

  They were going sixty, the convoy stretching out a bit as Everett and Howard struggled to keep up, flashing by the courthouse, men standing on the steps, a few people struggling through the drifts along the sidewalks, turning to watch them pass, and Jack had the urge to hold his hat out the window in a grand gesture, perhaps shout something. On the north edge of town the roads were not cleared and Jack was soon up to his hubs and slowing as he lost traction. He stopped the Dodge and stepped out into the middle of the road and squinted down 33 back into town. The hazy morning sunlight and the contrasting snow glare made two indeterminate swaths of white-gray, and he shaded his eyes and squinted. Nothing seemed to be moving.

  Chains, Forrest shouted, make it quick!

  All four men set to putting on their snow chains. Kneeling in the snow Jack struggled with the chains, laying them out flat, then scrambling into the car to drive onto them. Howard was the last to finish, and as Jack watched his brother through the back window he saw a vibrating smudge coming from town, separating itself from the gray buildings and snowdrifts.

  C’mon, Howard, c’mon!

  Then Howard was up and in the car and Jack pulled out, the chains biting through the snow and the convoy lurched forward into the stands of pine that surrounded Grassy Hill. Before the first switchback, when they would bend into the pines, Jack craned his head out the window and looked back. Two cars had stopped at the same spot, and the drivers were kneeling at their tires, putting on chains. Jack brought the convoy up to thirty and after ten minutes they crested the hill without incident. The road down the northeastern slope was straight and nearly clear, the morning sunlight working on the snow, and Jack stopped again and leaped out of the car.

  Mostly clear, he called to Forrest. Get the chains off and we’ll be faster down the hill.

  Forrest nodded and relayed the message to Everett and Howard who stopped behind him.

  Who is that comin’ on? Jack shouted.

  Hodges, Forrest said. Some others.

  Jack struggled to loose the chains, his blood pounding in his ears. They must have been expecting them to come through. His coat was constricting him so he shucked it off and threw it on top of the stacked five-gallon cans. There was a growing whine and groan of cars coming up the switchbacks and Jack scrabbled, his brogans slipping on the road, and jumped into his car to pull it forward. When he got out again he saw that he hadn’t pulled forward far enough and part of the chain was still pinned under the wheel, the hooks wrapped around the axle. He sat in the slush and pulled at the chain with both hands, hoping to jerk it out from under the wheel. There was a roar of engines and Forrest’s car pulled up beside him.

  Jack! Let’s go!

  Then Howard was standing beside him, bending, taking the wheel hub in his hands, then with a moan straightening and lifting, the hub rising to the top of the springs, the wheel coming an inch off the ground.

  Get it off, Howard breathed.

  Jack slipped down next to his brother’s feet and worked his hands under the wheel, feeling for the chains. The hot engine smoked, the smell of oil and axle grease filling his head. He found the hooks and slipped them off, inching back out from under the car. When Jack cleared the wheel he slapped at Howard’s leg and Howard released the car and it sank back on the road.

  Hodges’s car crested the hill, another close behind, churning a wake of snow. Jack could see the dark shapes of the drivers hunched over the wheel. They were a hundred yards away and closing fast.

  Go, go! Jack yelled to Forrest. We’ll catch up!

  Forrest nodded and started down the hill, Everett close behind. Howard was rubbing his hands in the snow, his palms sliced open and bloody. He turned to the two cars steaming toward them, then back to his younger brother and waved Jack on.

  Be right behind you!

  Jack put his car in gear and began down the hill, Forrest and Everett disappearing down the slope. He watched Howard get in his car, Hodges slowing just behind him. A man opened the passenger door and stood on the running board, aiming a pistol. There was a puff of smoke and then a loud thwack as the bullet crashed into the back of Jack’s car. When Jack looked back he saw Howard grinning at him through the windshield like some kind of lunatic.

  Don’t do it, Howard. Don’t!

  Howard put his car in reverse and gunned the engine, popped the clutch, and shot backward. Hodges wrenched the wheel to avoid it but Howard turned into him. The man on the running board was aiming another shot, clinging to the swinging door as the car swerved. Howard smashed into Hodges’s right front fender, crushing the wheel, the man on the running board flung forward like a rag doll against the open door and then whipped backward into the snow. The second car, brakes locked up, slid into Hodges, pushing the back end of his car into the ditch.

  Oh damn, Jack thought, and slowed his car. Hodges struggled with his door, and the driver of the second car, whom Jack could see was another deputy, Hodges’s son, staggered out of his car, his hands to his face, blood running through his fingers. Howard tried to pull forward, his tires spinning in the snow. The man who was flung off the running board was on his knees in the snowbank by the ditch, digging through the drifts with his hands. Jefferson Richards.

  Then a wrench of metal and Howard’s car inched forward, went sideways, then caught and came on up the road. Richards found his pistol and came charging through the knee-deep snow, his face a mask of fury, leveling the pistol at Howard’s car. Jack scrunched low in his seat and punched the gas. Pock. Pock. Jack gathered speed down the hill, going forty, sixty, the burning smell of brakes. A last look back: Howard floundering in a flurry of white, his car sideways, churning. He will make it, Jack thought. He will make it.

  MAGGIE WAS SITTING on the bed in the upstairs room when she heard the cars whining down the hill. She walked barefoot to the window that overlooked the road. The sound grew, the gears changing, then Maggie saw the two cars charging down the road, Forrest and Everett. As they passed, Forrest slowed almost imperceptibly, a slight turn of the head in her direction, then he was gone. A third car, Jack’s Dodge, came soon after, the engine racing and Jack hooked over the wheel, his windows open. Then it was quiet. Maggie looked up the road, where it went up and over Grassy Hill. She lit a cigarette and pulled a chair to the window, pulling the heavy drapes close together to cut the draft. Not a sound from either direction. The heavy cloth allowed a diffused rim of winter light that she traced with her hand.

  A car came roaring back from the north and pulled into the station lot. Everett parked the Chevrolet, jumped out, ran to his own car, and gunned out of the lot heading south toward Rocky Mount. Then another motor, coming do
wn the mountain, and she couldn’t help parting the curtains to look. A 1928 pine-green Ford with Howard at the wheel, the back end crumpled, the rear window shattered, Howard’s bulky form filling the car, his face so intent on the road it seemed to Maggie that he was willing the car through the snow toward Maggodee Creek.

  After the car disappeared around the bend Maggie went to her room and sat before the mirror, working a comb through her hair, over and over. When the gunshots came floating through the trees Maggie crawled into the bed, pulling the sheets up to her chin, and closed her eyes.

  JACK CAUGHT UP with Forrest and Everett as they slowed before the Maggodee Creek bridge. The thick stands of pine opened up in a rough egg-shaped clearing around the bridge, the hills on either side humped like shoulders. Forrest stopped about thirty yards from the bridge and Everett and Jack pulled up behind. A car was parked blocking the one-lane wooden bridge, Henry Abshire and Charley Rakes standing by the front. Another car behind had two men sitting inside, the engine running. The creek rippled as the dark waters passed over stone, a crust of ice on the edges.

  Forrest got out of his car and walked back to Jack, standing by his window.

  Howard?

  Said he was coming, Jack said. He wrecked Hodges and the other, put them in the ditch.

  Did you see him get away?

  Last I saw it looked like he was pulling away, Jack said. Richards was there, shooting, but I don’t think he got ’im.

  Forrest straightened and looked over to Abshire and Rakes. Rakes, leaning on the hood of their car, smiled and gave him a tight little wave. Abshire scowled and looked away.

  Can you talk to them? Jack said. Think they’ll let us by?

  Maybe.

  What about Howard?

  He’ll catch up, Forrest said. Do you have the gun?

  Jack grabbed his coat off the seat and pulled the pistol out of the pocket. It was a .38 with a squeeze-handle safety mechanism, a gun Forrest loaned him.

  Get out and put your coat on, Forrest said.

  Forrest slipped a pistol out of his pocket and held it along his thigh.

  Don’t do anything, he said, until I say.

  As Forrest approached the bridge the other two men exited their cars, one cradling a Thompson across his body, the other holding a shotgun. Jack had never seen them before. Rakes said something to these men and slipped his coat back over his holster and put his hands on his hips. Abshire threw down his cigarette and walked out to meet Forrest. Jack walked up to Everett’s window.

  Listen, Jack said, if something happens, you turn this car around and get back to the station. Just leave the car there and split. Okay?

  Everett nodded, his hands gripping the steering wheel.

  ABSHIRE AND FORREST exchanged words, then Abshire turned and walked back to the bridge, shaking his head. Forrest turned and signaled Jack to put his gun away, so Jack put it in his coat pocket, his hand resting on it. Rakes nodded to the two men behind him and came striding across the clearing toward Forrest, walking right past him, heading toward the line of cars. The pistol felt slippery in Jack’s hand and he squeezed the handle safety a few times to get the feel. He noticed that his camel-hair coat was smeared wet with wheel grease and road dirt. Where the hell is Howard? Rakes came up and looked in back of Forrest’s car, then up to Everett’s car.

  What you got in there, boy, he said.

  Nothin’, Jack said. Just some groceries for the station.

  Rakes straightened.

  Wudn’t asking you.

  Well, I’m telling you, Jack said, he ain’t got nothin’.

  That so?

  Rakes eyed the lump of blanket in the backseat covering the stack of five-gallon cans.

  Whadya know, Rakes said, I guess he don’t have anything.

  Then he moved on to Jack’s car, wiping away the frost on the back window and peering inside. The wide expanse of the small clearing seemed oppressive to Jack, and he squeezed the handle of the pistol and tried to keep his breath. Forrest must have fixed it; they would let them by. Easy, he thought. Rakes won’t do anything, not like this.

  But you, Rakes said, you do, don’t you?

  Then Rakes turned and walked back across the clearing to his car and sat in the front seat. Abshire came out to talk with Forrest again, and the other two men flanked their car with rifles propped butt-end on their hips. Jack walked up to where Forrest was standing talking with Abshire.

  You can let them all through, Forrest was saying, as easy as you can let one.

  We’ll need to take the other two, Abshire said.

  We can’t do that, Jack said.

  Abshire eyed Jack and tugged his collar up around his ears.

  Listen, son, Abshire said, let’s make it easy. The one car doesn’t have anything, so that one can go. And keep those damn pistols out of sight!

  You can’t have the other cars, Forrest said.

  The worry on his brother’s face made Jack nervy and he fingered the pistol in his pocket. The clearing was still and rapidly warming, nearing noon.

  Go on over to the cars, Forrest said. Tell Everett head back and go home.

  We need all of them, Jack said. They can’t take any.

  What? Abshire said. We ain’t afraid of you, son. You boys gotta take your medicine.

  Forrest stepped between them.

  Listen, Henry, he said calmly. Somebody is gonna die unless you let us across this bridge.

  Don’t be a fool, Abshire said.

  Forrest turned to Jack.

  Git back to the car and tell Everett to get on.

  Jack walked back and told Everett to turn around and head back to the station. There goes four hundred dollars, Jack thought, as Everett turned the car around and left the clearing. Where was Howard? If they negotiated something and Howard showed up it could all go to hell. But if things got sticky he would sure like to have Howard at his back.

  When Everett was gone Rakes came over and headed for Jack’s car while Abshire and Forrest stood by the bridge, talking.

  We gonna have to take these cars, Rakes said. You boys can walk on back to the station from here.

  As he walked around to the driver’s side of Jack’s car, Jack ducked through the window and snatched the keys out of the ignition. Rakes whipped out his pistol, covering Jack with it as he came back around the hood of the car to the road.

  You’re acting might smart, Rakes said.

  I reckon, Jack said, I can take the keys out of my own car.

  Now, I told you, Rakes said, we gotta have that car.

  Jack held the keys in his hand, unsure of what to do. The keys were in his right hand, the same side as the gun in his pocket. He would never be able to draw quickly enough.

  Just then Howard came barreling into the clearing, the green Ford fishtailing and overcorrecting, and he slid to a stop a few feet behind Jack’s car. Jack had never been so relieved to see his brother in his life. The trunk was stove in and from the stench you could tell that some of the crushed cans were leaking liquor. A swirl of steam rose from the back end of the car. Howard was breathing hard, his eyes mere slits.

  Now gimme those damn keys, Rakes said.

  I’ll offer him a bit more money, Jack thought. The seventy dollars in his front pocket.

  Look, Jack said, I gotta little somethin’ here for you in my pocket.

  He started to reach for it and Rakes cocked the hammer.

  Are you reachin’ for something, boy?

  I got seventy dollars here, Jack said.

  I think you reaching for a gun, Rakes said.

  Jack saw him close an eye and sight him down the barrel and he raised both of his hands in the air, flinching away at the last moment as Rakes fired.

  Wait!

  The bullet hit Jack in the side just under the arm. It felt like a hammer blow and twisted his torso around, his feet swiveling in the snow. He never heard the initial pistol report, but rather the continuing echo that sounded like it came from a long way off. He cried o
ut:

  Forrest!

  Jack fell on his stomach and elbows, his head still up, no real pain but the feeling of warmth under his armpit and spreading into his chest. He could see Forrest start toward him, his arms pumping, Abshire following, his gun out. Forrest charged to him, his teeth set in a grimace, his hand in his pocket rooting for his pistol. Rakes turned, crouching, and shot Forrest at a distance of about twenty yards. But Forrest kept coming, pistol out, and Jack thought, well damned if it all ain’t true after all.

  Then Rakes went to one knee, stretching out his arm, and shot again, and Forrest suddenly doubled over at the waist, took another few steps, then stumbled down to his knees, his hand clenched at his belly, his head down.

  Howard lurched from his car, jacket flying under his arms. Rakes was standing over Forrest, who knelt in the snow with his knees apart, sitting on his heels, hands folded at his gut, motionless.

  Oh, yeah, Rakes said, you that goddamned hard-boiled son of a bitch, ain’t you!

  Then he turned and sighted his pistol at Howard, who froze, one hand on the open car door. Rakes cocked the hammer.

  Jack wanted to rise but knew that he wouldn’t, even if he possessed the strength to, even if he had all the strength of the known world.

  Abshire came up and chopped Rakes’s arm down just as he shot again at Howard, the round discharging into the snow in a flush of white.

  Jack felt a hot spasm down his ribs and across his chest and he rolled to one side. A dark stain was spreading across his jacket and his left arm flopped onto the ground, numb. He stared at his fingers, the dirty sleeve, as if they were things not of himself. Then a shiver went through him and he lay his head back and watched the sky shrink to a pinprick of black.

  Chapter 29

  JACK’S EYES felt like iron and his mouth was so dry he had a flash of terror: Someone had stuffed him full of clay; he was being drowned like Cricket Pate. He shifted his body and felt his torso encased, something wound around his chest, his hips and buttocks on sheets, the feel of them on the tops of his hands. He was in a bed. The relief brought a rush of sweat to his face. He struggled to open his eyes again. There was a ring of dark shapes around him. Low lamplight, the ripple of white bedding stretched over his body, the peaks of his feet. He wriggled his toes. A dark shape unfolded itself from the corner to his right and loomed over his bed.