The Wettest County in the World

by Matt Bondurant

Jack nodded, gripping the Bible in his lap.

  When we got to the hospital, Forrest said, I got out and walked in.

  Why didn’t you just tell ’em?

  Forrest let out a dry chuckle that turned into a hacking cough. When it settled he smiled at the ceiling, pleased with himself.

  Hell, Forrest said. I thought I was dead.

  Well, Jack said. I guess I have something to tell you too.

  Chapter 31

  SEPTEMBER 1934

  IT WAS CLOSE to midnight when the heavy knock came at Jack’s door. Bertha was asleep in the bed, the baby dozing by her side, blowing small iridescent bubbles of saliva with his steady breathing. Jack was lying there in the dark, listening to the sound of their lungs filling. The knock was strong, and for a moment Jack remembered the sound of George Brodie’s anguished midnight visit. He had wished many times that they had never answered.

  He shot up in bed, Bertha clutching his arm.

  Lord, Jack!

  The baby coughed and whined.

  Jack slipped on his trousers. The .22 was on the rack over the fireplace. The creaking of feet on the porch floorboards. The door bolt was sound and Jack stood to the side to catch a peek through the window. A tall figure in a long coat and hat stood facing the closed door. Forrest. Jack lit the oil lamp and opened the door. Behind Forrest, Jack could make out the bulky form of Howard standing in the dark yard.

  You were right, Forrest said. We know where they are.

  Once the call is answered, Jack thought as he struggled into his coat, it can’t ever be made right again.

  IN FORREST’S ’32 V8 Ford driving north Howard sighed and took a jar from the floorboard, spun the lid off, and flicked it out the window into the rushing night. He pulled on it a few times, heavy, desperate swallows that brought water to his eyes. A shotgun lay angled across his lap, and on the seat a box of shells. As he drove Forrest took a pistol from under the seat and without looking handed it back to Jack. It was his .38 with the squeeze-grip trigger.

  Don’t take it out, Forrest said to the windshield, unless you plan on using it. You throw it on someone you best empty it.

  Jack slipped the gun into his coat pocket and a surge of bile gripped his chest like a vise. Howard passed back a jar and Jack took a couple big gulps and felt it loosen his chest and bowels. He wiped his forehead on his coat sleeve and the deep smear of sweat surprised him. The car quickly filled with the sour scent of men perspiring. Watching the back of Forrest’s head Jack knew that there wasn’t anything he could refuse his brother. At the same time, he felt like there needed to be some kind of signal that it was his time. He wasn’t ready. The car rattled over the rutted road, the headlights stabbing out trees around the bend. Howard’s face was placid, his eyes half closed, and this gave Jack some comfort.

  They drove west across the county for nearly an hour and stopped at a filling station on the eastern edge of Franklin County, near Calloway, a place Jack had never been before. Though it was already past midnight there were eight cars parked in the lot and in the upstairs room there was a light shining through thin curtains. Forrest swung the car smartly around to the back of the building with the headlights off.

  They could hear music and laughter from the upstairs window. Jack tried to pick out the tune but couldn’t place it. In the front passenger seat Howard held the shotgun, one hand around the cold, greasy barrel and the other loosely on the trigger guard, tapping it lightly to the tune. Jack passed the jar back up to him and he took another deep drink before passing it to Forrest.

  The dusty shaft of light from the upper window wavered as men passed before it, flashing shapes over the windshield and the trees beyond. Jack felt the sky lift over his head and knew that it was opening up, like a smooth road cut through the mountains, the way easy and straight. Howard seemed to settle in his seat. Forrest watched the door of the station.

  JACK THOUGHT of candlelight, the warm stove, his sisters winding his fingers with string, their quiet, secret language. His mother holding him tight while outside in the cold a bonfire blazed. His sisters lying side by side on the floor in a neat row, his mother’s face covered with a quilt.

  Dragged himself near ten miles through the snow with his throat cut.

  Howard was thinking about something Jack said one night around the fire at the lumber camp: Forrest would never die by another man’s hand. They were drunk and it was late, the deep woods black and open like a field, and sometimes around the small sphere of fire Jack felt like making statements that matched his grand sense of the world.

  Forrest thinks, Jack said, that the world is all one thing, but he’s wrong.

  I’ve seen it, he said, what lies beneath the earth, and it’s a terrible and beautiful thing.

  Howard enjoyed listening to him struggle with the words, Jack’s eyes laced with such sincerity that it was difficult to look away.

  Howard felt a dull ache in his ribs and he shifted in the seat. He thought of Lucy and his daughter, growing and becoming an agile creature in the woods. He would stay away from the card games and put some money away and maybe next year get a job up in Martinsville at the textile plant. Things would change for him. The world outside the window blurred. The car felt like a promontory by which the rest of the hills and trees and clouds passed with terrifying speed. Howard took another drink, looked through the muddy windshield, and saw the far distance, the land beyond this one, and holding the shotgun across his lap he thought he must feel like the ancient oaks deep in the forest, looking over the canopy into the sun with their toes buried deep into the heart of the earth. It would hold.

  AFTER AN HOUR men began to file out of the front of the filling station, some talking and laughing as they went to their cars, others quiet with their hats pulled low and the shuffling gait of men who had lost money. The noise from the upstairs window grew quiet, just the sound of the crackling radio and the occasional grunt of furniture on the floorboards. When only two cars remained in the front lot Forrest nodded to Howard and the three men got out of the car. Howard slipped the shotgun under his long coat and patted his pockets, feeling for the extra shells. Forrest checked the load in his pistol, glancing at the upper window.

  You set, Jack? Forrest said through his teeth.

  He spun the cylinder of his pistol.

  This will be quick, so stay close.

  Jack nodded. His heart throbbed in his chest as they rounded the building toward the front.

  Howard will go in hard, Forrest whispered. He will take the first man, you come in quick with that pistol out and throw it on the second man good. No mistake, right up against his eyeball, you hear? He moves wrong, you squeeze and keep squeezin’.

  Jack put his hand on the slick wooden grip of the pistol in his pocket. Was it too slippery? Could he swing it out and point it true? It was quiet and Jack watched the white space of the open door, the plank stairs going up. His underclothes were soaked through with sweat and his crotch itched with damp heat.

  The radio tune wavered in the light wind and for a moment became clear and Jack found it. Bertha played it often at home on the banjolin, singing softly to his son, her voice as true as Sarah Carter’s:

  The storms are on the ocean

  The heavens may cease to be.

  This world may lose its motion, love

  If I prove false to thee.

  His brothers silently mounted the steps of the porch. They stood in the doorway, Howard with the shotgun at his hip pointed up the stairs, ducking his head under to look up, Forrest gazing at Jack with a blank look. Three simple steps but he could not make his feet climb. He was rooted, as if the ground had shifted and pinched his legs in place. Jack knew Forrest was watching him and waiting, and he fumbled with the slippery pistol in his pocket, as if he were looking for something, a flash of light, a remembered song, and he gestured helplessly.

  After a moment Forrest flicked his head back toward the car. Howard glanced back, just for a second, then Jack watched his brothers ascend
the stairs.

  Jack got behind the wheel and took the pistol out of his pocket. The entire weapon was slick with his body grease and he tossed it onto the seat, disgusted. There was a sharp crunching of gravel and Jack saw a man burst out of the front of the station, running from the front door to a car. Jack fumbled for the pistol and pointed it awkwardly through the windshield. The running man had no coat and hat and he didn’t look back as he struggled into his car and tried to start it, the starter motor squealing several times; then the car fired up and spun out of the lot into the road and Jack looked back up to the upstairs window. Jack could make out Forrest’s voice speaking low and straight and a chair or table was thrown to the ground and the sounds of a quick, desperate struggle. It was quiet again for a few moments and then a powerful, sharp sound that Jack took to be the discharge of a shotgun, but as it echoed out over the lot it was clear it was the high, strangled scream of a man. Jack felt his eyes bulging in his face and he cursed and slapped the wheel.

  Good God! he thought. God…what is it?

  The scream continued on for a full minute, starting higher then dropping and becoming clotted. The sound crowded Jack’s mind and he stared through the windshield trying to focus on the red dirt and gravel in the headlights, the tall pines along the road. Howard was stepping off the porch, shotgun in one hand and a small paper sack in the other. He walked to the car and got in the back, setting the sack on the seat beside him, and Jack could see that the sack was wet and stained at the bottom. Howard broke the shotgun and checked the load, then pulled his coat around him and leaned back. Howard’s eyes looked bright and watery but his body seemed relaxed and he said nothing.

  Forrest walked slowly in front of the headlights and around to the passenger side. Sounds of ragged sobbing rang out across the lot, the awful sound of a grown man weeping. Standing outside of the car Forrest bent down and picked up some dirt and rubbed his hands together quickly, like you might do on a cold morning in the field. He got into the car and nodded to Jack who pulled into the road and headed east, going slowly at first because the night seemed so impossibly dark and the lights of the car a single straw of color. He heard the rattle of Howard opening a jar in the back. The breath of his brothers filled the car and Jack could smell the corn whiskey mixed with another scent, the heady, sweet smell of birthing cattle in a winter barn or the steaming scalding trough when a hog was gutted and lowered. Howard flipped the jar lid out the window and off into the woods and Jack pushed the throttle and drove faster into the dark mountains.

  Chapter 32

  OCTOBER 12, 1934

  GRANVILLE BONDURANT STOOD behind the counter of his store working over the day’s receipts. A half-dozen old-timers from Snow Creek loitered about the stove, having a chew and griping about the weather. Granville had swept the floor and covered the flour and grain bins with sackcloth, the stove fire banked to a dull glow. The day had grown cold as evening fell, the ground damp from sporadic rains, and there was talk among the men of an early frost that night. The main topic of discussion was the murder of Deputy Jefferson Richards the night before, shot to death in gruesome fashion on the road near Antioch Brethren Church, just a week before he was due to testify.

  Carter Lee cleanin’ up the mess, a bearded fellow said, scratching his neck.

  Loose ends, said another. Lotta lead for one man.

  A car in the lot crunching in the gravel, and Granville raised his head, wiping the receipts with his hand to clear the pencil dust. A moment later a broad man in an overcoat lurched through the lot. The door was flung open, bringing a damp draft whistling along the floor of the shop; the men murmured and looked at Charley Rakes stepping through the doorway. His coat was open at the front and his tie askew, his fedora pulled low. Rakes stopped and surveyed the store quickly before marching up to the stove and throwing back his coat and holding out his hands. He stunk of whiskey and sweat and the old men around the stove hummed and shifted in their slouched poses.

  Need a few sticks here, Rakes said. This damn thing is cold!

  We shuttin’ down, Granville said. Can I get you somethin’, son?

  Rakes glared at him, his eyes wild under the brim of his hat.

  Need fuel.

  Pumps’re shut down.

  Turn ’em on then!

  Granville pushed his receipts into a stack on the counter and rested his hands on either side. He looked at Rakes, who swayed slightly, his coat hanging open.

  What do you want, Charley?

  Rakes looked wildly about, then turned back to Granville. He reached behind his back, pulled a pistol from the waistband of his pants, and pointed it at Granville’s chest.

  I want you to know something, Rakes said.

  He turned and waved his gun around the room.

  All of you. All of you need to know something.

  Now take it easy, Charley, one of the old men said. We know that things are a bit—

  You don’t know a damn thing! Rakes roared. Everybody thinks they know somethin’ but they don’t!

  Rakes turned back to Granville, his arm halfway up, the pistol gripped savagely in his hand. He seemed to tire suddenly, his round, red face going slack and he took a step back and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his coat. A light rain pattered on the roof and window, and the men at the stove shuffled their feet. Rakes hung his head for a moment.

  You oughta go home, Charley, Granville said.

  Rakes wiped his face and regripped his pistol, bringing his arm up so it pointed at Granville’s throat.

  Why? You think I oughta be hidin’ somewheres, that it?

  He turned and addressed the other men.

  What about you? he demanded.

  The men tucked their chins into their collars and looked to the stove as if it still provided some heat.

  Rakes kicked over a stool. Not satisfied with this, he grabbed the rim of a grain barrel and pulled it over. A fog of flour dust quickly rose, billowing like smoke and the men around the stove began to mumble. Rakes looked at his pants, one leg covered in flour, and cursed with a sincere vengeance. The pistol still in his hand he stepped to the counter and seized the receipts and books and swept them all to the floor. Granville stepped back from the counter and stood quietly, his face impassive. Rakes then cleared the rest of the counter, sweeping his arms across and pushing canned goods, chewing gum, tobacco onto the floor with a clatter.

  I ain’t afraid, Rakes roared at the room. I ain’t afraid of got-damned Carter Lee!

  He whirled and pointed his gun once more at Granville.

  And I ain’t afraid of your got-damned no ’count boys, neither!

  Rakes was breathing hard and he wiped at his face.

  To hell with all you!

  He clamped down his hat and waving his hands through the flour-filled air banged through the door. The men coughed and slapped at their coats and pants.

  Howard stepped from the storeroom doorway and passed silently through the white cloud. Granville stood behind the counter, his eyes on the floor as his son passed. If the other men in the room saw Howard follow Rakes out, they made no indication.

  THE RAIN STOPPED and the skies went black. Later Charley Rakes pulled into the dirt drive of his house. A light was burning in the window of the small cabin and his dogs set to barking in the back. Rakes slammed the car door. He pulled a flat bottle from his coat pocket and took a slug, wiping his mouth and face with his coat sleeve. On one side of the house the hill sloped steeply down into woods, carved at the bottom by a narrow branch of Blackwater Creek. A light flickered along the edge of the woods. Rakes stared hard as it wavered, yellow. A candle burning on the edge of his woods.

  Rakes whipped his head around, spinning in place, his house, the car, the woods, his breath steaming around him. He put the bottle in his pocket and pulled out his pistol and walked around the side of the house down the slope to the fence line. He scanned the woods but the darkness was vast and complete, save the small circle of golden light. The candle was set
on a fence post, the wax piling around its base. Rakes stood there for a few moments, the pistol stretched out, listening. His dogs picked up his scent and stopped barking. The creek gurgled down below and in the woods was the tick and patter of rainwater. Rakes took out the flat bottle again and pulled the cork out with his teeth. He drained the last of the whiskey, a shudder going through his body, and he glanced around again, the lights of the house, the dark sky, the sloping hill that led around to the back of the house. He chuckled for a moment, then seemed to choke, doubling over, the back of his hand to his mouth. He gagged, spit, and coughed into the wet grass. He heaved the empty bottle into the dark woods.

  After a while he leaned forward and blew out the flickering candle. In that last moment of light, before the darkness closed in, he saw Howard rise up out of the trees. He tried to scream but Howard already had him by the throat.

  Howard heaved him over the fence and slammed him to the ground, pinning his gun hand under a knee. He kept a hand around Rakes’s windpipe and peeled his fingers off the pistol stock and tossed it into the woods. Rakes gurgled and his face went scarlet to purple, clutching Howard’s arm, kicking legs in the wet leaves. Howard looked at him for a moment, studying his face, before dragging him down the hill by his neck.

  In the tight pit of the valley a three-foot stream ran clear and cold and Howard flung Rakes into the stream on his back. The streambed was a mix of smooth rock and clay, about a foot deep, and Rakes shrieked as his body hit the water, his face going under and then coming up, spitting and gasping. The dogs began howling again and Rakes looked wildly up at the black shape looming over him. Howard shook his head for a moment, as if clearing some memory, his breath in a steady plume like an engine fire.

  Oh, God! Rakes sputtered. Oh, God no please!

  Howard straddled Rakes’s midsection and using both hands on his neck pushed him under the water. Rakes clawed at Howard’s face but Howard simply turned away. His mouth tightened as he watched Rakes’s wild eyes and twisting face under the clear water. The dark seemed to close in around him and he felt a sudden blankness fall over him and he raised his head to watch the night move through the trees.