Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller

by Malone, David Lee

  “I ain’t got no idea,” Snake said. He was having a good time fishing and could care less what was happening in the sky.

  “You remember when Joe Jenkins barn burned a couple of years ago?” Glenn asked, craning his neck to get a better look, “Damned if it don’t remind me of the way that made the sky look.”

  Glenn, realizing what he had just said, turned around to face me and see if I was thinking the same thing.

  “Somebody’s house or barn is on fire,” I exclaimed as an undisputed fact, and picked up my oar and started rowing. Glenn did the same and Snake just held on.

  A fire at night can be deceiving when viewed from a distance. It’s usually farther away than it appears. Once we were out of the water and back on higher ground, we could see that this one appeared close. We jumped in Roscoe’s old truck, which for all intents and purposes belonged to Glenn now, and started driving. Snake was more worried about making sure our fish were in the cooler and secure than some old fire that would probably turn out to be somebody burning a big brush pile or something. Snake had burned plenty of brush piles being in the pulp-wood business and had seen the sky aglow at night many times like this. He thought we were making too much of it and should have kept on fishing.

  We passed Mack Simpson’s house and knew we were getting close. Could it be J.F. Baxter’s house? We drove on and saw that Mr. Baxter’s house was also safe, but we had to be almost right on top of it. We could make out the smoke swirling around now. The smoke was circling around and looked a lot like the tornado that had come through three years earlier. It had to be just right up the road, maybe the next house…….. Panic gripped me and I felt like somebody had put their hands around my neck and was choking me. Snake was silent, hoping he was wrong and that it was the woods down in the pasture or something else close by.

  The driveway was blocked with cars that had driven there from nearby houses. A siren could be heard coming in the distance. It was the old fire engine from the volunteer fire department. The old fire engine only had a top speed of about 40 miles an hour. By the time you called in a fire and they had gathered up enough volunteers to man the engine, whatever you had was most likely gone, unless you had a really slow fire.

  The William’s house was completely engulfed in flames and the fire had even spread to the little well house that was about twenty feet off to the side. Snake didn’t utter a word to anybody, but just took off in a dead run toward the blazes.

  “Snake, come back here!” I yelled. “That house could collapse any minute.”

  Mack Simpson saw him out of the corner of his eye and just threw his wiry body in front of him, diving and cutting him off at the knees.

  Snake jumped up, addled but undeterred, and started toward the house again yelling, “Frank, Frank!!”

  I thought Snake was overreacting because Frank usually didn’t come in until bedtime, always out fishing, or hunting, or doing something. Even if he’d been home he would have seen the fire when it started and gotten out in plenty of time.

  “Snake, don’t get any closer,” I heard my daddy say.

  “Frank’s in there, Mr. George. I gotta git ’im out!” Snake cried hysterically.

  Just as Snake had gone as far as the heat from the flames would let him go and had turned around to escape the terrible heat, the house let out a whining moan as if it had finally given up the fight. The sound pierced the night air as the roof collapsed into the rest of the house forcing the front outside wall to fall outward and land almost directly on top of Snake.

  I ran as hard as I could, the heat from the flames almost unbearable, toward where Snake had fallen. Just as I reached him, someone grabbed me and at the same time got hold of Snake’s leg and drug us both away from the deadly flames that were what I imagined hell must be like. It was Daddy. Daddy was a fairly stout man anyway, but apparently adrenalin had taken over and given him the kind of strength I’d read about where somebody had a kid trapped under a car and had lifted it off him. Daddy had carried me under his left arm while dragging Snake with his right. I weighed about one-forty and Snake probably one-sixty. Daddy took off his shirt and started flailing away at Snake’s burning clothes, then rolled him over several times until the flame was extinguished.

  Snake lay on the ground, sobbing and trying to get back to his feet, but he was in too much pain. He kept calling Frank’s name and then, probably from shock, started calling for his Momma and Daddy. We loaded him up in Glenn’s brother, Cob’s, car. He had a hopped up Ford Mustang that was faster than a phone call and Daddy jumped in the back seat with them to rush Snake to the hospital at Fort Kane. One of Sheriff White’s deputies had arrived minutes before and he pulled out in front of them, siren wailing and lights flashing, giving them an escort. Cob passed the deputy less than a mile up Long Hollow road.

  It turned out that Frank had been in the house just like Snake was trying desperately to tell us. Not that it would have mattered. We couldn’t have gotten to him, and even if we could, he would have already been consumed by the horrific flames. It seems Frank had gone to bed early because he had hired out to help Otis Driskell in his sawmill the next morning.

  It didn’t take me long after the initial shock of the fire and trying to keep Snake from burning alive for me to come to what I believed to be a foregone conclusion. This fire and Frank’s death had the Bullard name written all over it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I had attended almost as many funerals in the last six weeks than in my first fourteen years combined, and that was saying a lot considering how folks from Long Hollow, or anywhere in the south for that matter, love a good funeral. The burns Snake had gotten were not all that bad, though he was still wrapped up like a mummy at Frank’s funeral. Georgia had attended Frank’s funeral and had actually stayed a while this time, going to our house after it was over and eating with us and occasionally giving Snake a hug, forgetting about his burns. He would let out a muffled moan each time, trying his best to stifle it, because he craved the affection from the only family he had left. I guess her asshole of a husband didn’t feel that their money was at much risk anymore since Snake was the only one of the family left alive. There was still no one who knew anything about how to contact Virginia. I’m sure Georgia did, but she wasn’t telling.

  I had told Daddy, and he had in turn told Sheriff White, about the Bullard’s threats to run Snake and Frank off. Daddy had heard them too, as well as the sheriff, but you couldn’t arrest somebody for making threats or starting rumors. The special investigator from Montgomery had been to the scene twice and said that he wasn’t ruling arson out yet. He was supposed to come back again the next day and bring in another expert on accelerants. This guy had a dog that was supposed to be able to sniff them out. If the dog could sniff out lowlife, white trash, bastards that were good for nothing but stirring up trouble, it would make a beeline straight to the Bullard’s front door. The Bullards had been awful quiet since the fire according to Aunt Lena, who always had her finger on the pulse of the community, and to me that made them look even more suspicious.

  *****

  Sheriff White was sitting at his desk looking over some papers that had to be served. Law suits, judgments, wage garnishments, the list went on and on. He was trying to divide them up as evenly as possible to distribute to his deputies to be served. The office was as quiet as an empty funeral parlor. Kate was out to lunch, most of the deputies were out and the ones that weren’t were hiding out somewhere. The phone rang and made him jump, almost spilling the coffee he’d just poured.

  “Sheriff’s Office,” he answered, clearing his throat. There was silence on the other end and just as he started to hang up, a muffled voice came across the line.

  “I have information on the fire at the William’s house,” the voice said.

  “Yes, ah….good, who’s this callin’?”

  “I know who’s responsible for settin’ the fire. If the investigator is lookin’ for signs of gasoline or diesel fuel he won’t find
it. The accelerant was moonshine whiskey. Distilled locally at a still you probably know about, Sheriff.” It was unmistakably a woman’s voice.

  The sheriff sat there for a few seconds, waiting for the disguised voice to continue. Nothing but silence.

  “Well, where is this still that you think I know so much about?” Sheriff White was wondering who could possibly have this information. Could it be the person responsible for setting the fire? Maybe they wanted to play a twisted game of cat and mouse. It was most likely a prank. They got prank calls all the time, usually on a daily basis.

  The mystery woman spoke again, “It’s the still near Horton’s Spring, Sheriff, and don’t pretend you don’t know. I’m no fool. You also know about the large amount of marijuana they handle every month. Your voters might not care that you let an occasional still continue to operate. But pot, now that’s a different animal. They won’t tolerate dope in their county. They’re too ignorant to know that alcohol has killed a lot more people than pot has. Most of them don’t know anything about marijuana, and people fear what they don’t know about.”

  “How do you know it’s them?” the sheriff asked, digging deep into his subconscious to try and recognize the voice.

  “Don’t matter. I just know. Go to the scene of the fire and you’ll find one of the half gallon bottles they had to leave behind when the fire spread faster than they expected it to. Nobody else uses that kind of bottle and they’re hard to find. It’s sort of their trade mark, but of course you already know that.”

  The sheriff heard a sudden click and knew the woman had hung up.

  Who was that and how do they know? The sheriff closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes and thought hard about something he may have done to piss somebody off. Of course when you’re the sheriff, you will inevitably make a few people mad. You just have to make sure it’s not the wrong ones.

  Anybody who knew anything about moonshine in a hundred mile radius knew about the Bullard’s special half gallon bottles. Jake Bullard had been buying them from some company in Illinois for years. He had even bought a large shipment of them and had them stored just in case they ever discontinued them or went out of business. So the bottles were fairly common knowledge that anyone could find out. The marijuana was a different story. It wasn’t like the Bullards sold a bag here and there to local people. They were big-time distributors for some heavy hitters that didn’t play games. Jake Bullard didn’t even let his big mouthed sons know anything about that enterprise. They were too stupid and he didn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut. His oldest son James was the only exception. He was just like his old man and was all business. Freddy, Bruce and Boyd had been spoiled rotten from the money their daddy had always given them to keep them out of his hair. They hadn’t inherited any of their fathers business acumen. They were consumers, not producers, and had turned out to be a thorn in their daddy’s side. Jake had always tried to be very low key but the way his sons had been spending money lately was starting to look suspicious. He knew he was going to have to rein them in or suffer the consequences.

  The sheriff got up and quickly walked to his car. He had to hurry before the arson investigator brought in the so-called expert that was due in that afternoon. He couldn’t let them find the bottle, if there really was one.

  *****

  There was no one at the charred remains of the William’s house when he pulled up into the rutty, chert driveway. He ducked under the crime scene tape and walked up to the house, looking around to make sure nobody was watching, which when he thought about it was foolish. He was the sheriff, and this was a crime scene. But he was paranoid. He couldn’t let the investigators find anything that might lead them to the Bullards, if they were in fact the ones who started the fire. If the Bullards ever went down, so would he.

  As he started looking through the blackened hull of what had once been the home of two generations of families, he grew angrier by the minute. Why couldn’t Jake Bullard control those ignorant, redneck sons of his. They were going to ruin everything, and if he didn’t do something about it soon, the boys in Chicago would. After he’d had a chance to think more clearly, he wondered why he was so concerned with finding the moonshine bottle. Given Hugh William’s former status of being an alcoholic and sometimes buying from the Bullards, he didn’t think finding one of their signature bottles would raise any eyebrows anyway. Hell, they may find two or three for that matter. What had him really concerned was the mystery woman who had called him and knew about Jake and James Bullard’s marijuana operation. She sounded like she might have been young, although it was difficult to tell with her voice being muffled the way it was. There was supposedly only one woman that knew about the Bullard’s illicit enterprise, and he knew for a fact it wasn’t her.

  He began going through the house and after a few minutes of picking things up and moving things around, he looked like he had been working all day sweeping chimneys. He was covered in black soot from head to toe. He didn’t see any kind of bottles, jars, or anything like that, other than a few plates and drinking glasses that were all broken. He assumed that if glass bottles got hot enough they would probably explode anyway and that fire was about as hot as any fire could be. The old house was all pine and oak that had been seasoned for over seventy years, and once it started burning it would be the hottest thing this side of hell. He decided he was just being paranoid and making a fool of himself pilfering through this pile of burnt rubble.

  The woman who had called him was a different matter, however. If she was telling the truth, how would she have known there was a bottle left behind, anyway? There were only two ways he could think of. Either one of those idiot boys had gotten drunk and shot off their mouth, which would have been not only possible but damned likely, or the woman had to have been with them. He would have to do some investigating and try and find out what girls Freddy and Bruce had been seeing lately. They changed women about as often as he changed underwear, so it would probably be a challenge. But even if it was a girl that one of them had been messing around with, how would she know about the marijuana? Jake made damn sure he kept those two imbeciles as far away from his dope transactions as possible. On the two days a month the transactions took place he made sure they were gone, even if he had to buy them a new toy of some kind and send them out of town. That was the reason they were spoiled rotten and not worth killing. They were both grown men still acting like teenagers with money to burn and Sheriff White doubted if they’d ever grow up. Why would they as long as Daddy kept footing the bill for them to do whatever they wanted?

  The sheriff decided to go get himself cleaned up and go see Jake Bullard. He probably didn’t know much, if anything, about who his boys were spending time with, and didn’t care as long as they weren’t bothering him. But he had to start somewhere and Jake had to know about the phone call he had gotten. He was going to be one mad son-of-a-bitch when he found out, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jake Bullard was down in his barn, which was nicer than most folks who lived around Long Hollow’s houses. Besides raising cattle and doing some row cropping, which were only fronts and tax write-offs anyway, he raised Tennessee Walking Horses, which was something he truly loved. His barn proved it. Those horses had more luxuries than a lot of people had.

  The sheriff walked in and could hear voices through the closed door of the office Jake had in the barn. The office was larger and nicer than any lawyer or bank president’s office in Putnam County. The sheriff didn’t want to arouse any suspicion with any of Jake’s visitors, so he acted like it was just a social call and opened the door without knocking, like he was there all the time, which he was. He knew Zeke Fowler and Mack Simpson, and of course Jake’s son James was there, and there was another man he didn’t know. They were all sitting around a big table playing stud poker. From the looks of them they had probably been playing almost non-stop since the night before. Jake was famous for his poker games
that would sometimes go on for two or three days at a time.

  “Hey, Andrew,” Jake shouted, laughing, “you here to bust up our game and run us all in.” Gambling of any kind was illegal in Alabama.

  “Well, I ought to,” the sheriff replied, “but I guess I could let you off with a warnin’ this time. Who’s winnin’?”

  “Who in the hell do you think?” Jake answered. “I’m about to git the deed to old Mack’s farm.”

  “You’re gonna play hell,” Mack said in his nasally twang. “He’s been cheatin’ like a son-of-a-bitch, Sheriff. You ought to arrest him, sure ‘nuff.”

  “Well, I know Mack and I know he likes to play cards. But I also know he’s nearly as tight as Old Ray Turner. If he’d lost more than a hundred dollars he’d already be cashed in and gone,” the sheriff chuckled.

  “Pull up a chair, Andrew. We’ll deal you in or you can just watch,” Jake said.

  “I ain’t got time right now or I would. I need to talk to you in private for a minute, Jake.”

  Jake’s countenance changed from one of amusement to concern in an instant. He got up and told the other men to deal him out for a few hands and keep playing. The men were more than happy to oblige because Jake was winning.

  Jake and the sheriff walked out to the squad car and got in, rolled up the windows, cranked it up and turned the air conditioner on. Then, just to make sure they were safe from prying eyes, the sheriff drove down the driveway and onto the road that led to one of Jake’s pastures. They parked under a big red oak tree and both men lit a cigarette.

  “Jake, I got a call this morning from a woman. She told me if I wanted to know who set the William’s house afire, I didn’t need to look no further than them two boys of yours.”

  Jake sat there a minute, looking off into space, then started rubbing his eyes with both hands. “Well, I don’t guess you have any idea who it might have been?”