Excerpt from "Raise a Holler" by Jason Stuart
Reviewed in the Dew Book Review Section today, November 18th.
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Chapter 1
Culloden County, Mississippi -- 1967
I
Hank Grady reckoned
he had rather live in a hole in the ground than hear his daddy spit any more
Jesus at him. Actually, Coffee Holler pretty much was a hole in the ground. A
great big hole that ten or twelve families could all live round the edge of and
still not be yelling distance from another. It was good for farming, but Hank’s
daddy was no farmer. Josiah had a far higher calling.
All Hank wanted was
to be at least halfway like a normal boy.
Last night Josiah had to “take out the rod” on him again for asking for
a pair of blue jeans. Just for asking. Blue jean pants weren’t fit for anyone
but them hippy agitators and no good white trash. Hank wasn’t sure how far
above the latter he really was, but dared not argue the point.
It was the summer
of the Great Liberation: Free Speech, Ban the Bomb, Burn the Bra and End
Containment Policy--whatever that meant. One of the biggest rallies below the
Mason-Dixon was happening not twenty miles south of him and Hank sat on his
front porch reading the Psalms (the rest of his punishment) and trying to get
comfortable as he couldn’t lean up against anything; the welts on his back were
still too painful. He was sick of the
Psalms. He was sick of the
Proverbs. He was sick of The Word,
in general.
“When you finish
your lessons, I need you to get on over to the Karmichaels’ and pick a few
bushels of peas for their tithe; Sammy didn’t have no money again this month so
I’m goan let him by with peas. Don’t
slack around, neither. I want them
peas. Your mama’ll make ‘em up for
dinner.”
“Well, can I take
the car, then, at least?” Hank asked.
Josiah scowled at
his son as though he was set arm-in-arm with Lucifer. “You are the shame of me, Henry,” he said,
and every time it came out more like Hanry. “It never did hurt a boy to
do a little walking. ‘Sides, I’m taking the Buick on over to Jim Rayham’s to
see about a hog.”
Hank wondered
briefly where it had gone so wrong between him and the old man. Mostly it was
the preaching. Once, they had been good allies. Hank had learned quick to drive
the car at barely ten years as Josiah found it useful for someone else to drive
him around to see to his fold. That way he could focus on the leading of the
spirit and not on the highway. Hank got the job by default as he was the only
one available. Women, of course, should never drive cars. Nor wear pants for
that matter. One cannot preach against a sin if he harbors it in his own
household. Such was the Josiah Grady motto.
Hank watched his
father walk away humming to himself. As
soon as the Buick was out of sight, the good book was tossed aside and Hank was
in a dead sprint toward the woodline, his freshly-pressed blue button-down shirt
quickly unbuttoned and flapping behind him in the wind. He knew he was in for another tanning for
shirking but this one, he decided, would be worth it. He might not come home for a day or two.
The woods behind
the Grady house ran all the way nearly to Witch Creek Swamp. They were thick with oaks and pines mixed in
together, creating a strange landscape of green and brown every fall. Right
now, though, it was high summer and Culloden County was trapped in a heat
suffocating enough to knock a grown man down.
Hank poured sweat from every part of his body as he eased through the
woods, pitching rocks at squirrels and whistling Hank Williams songs and
thinking about cream pies and root beer.
“Damn, son. I can see them welts all the way through that
undershirt,” Billy Parker called out from the old treehouse above Hank. “Y’asked for jeans again, didn’t you?”
“Leave off it,
Billy,” Hank said. “You got anything to
eat? All mama fixed today was chitlins
and eggplant and I hate that shit.”
“No. I’m broke. I
quit my job again,” Billy said. Billy
jumped down from the treehouse, his knees hitting dirt, and brushed himself
off.
“Why? It can’t have been that bad. Leastways you get to have a job,” Hank
said. “Daddy won’t let me get one, but I
can sure as hell buck hay all day for Sissy Walter so Daddy can take Momma
horse-riding like he’s some kinda fine gentleman. And somebody can’t pay his tithe, I get to go
slave away in a field collecting daddy some free groceries. Man, I ain’t never gonna get no car.”
“You done got your
khakis dirty. Gonna get a beating for that, you know,” Billy said.
“I don’t care
anymore,” Hank said. “I done got beat so
much I don’t really feel it no more. He
thinks I’m gonna start preaching in his damn church next year. Fat chance.
Worst thing he could ever do is let me in front of them folks and say
whatever I’m a mind to. I’d let him have
it. I’d let all them shitasses have it.”
Billy didn’t know
why, but he liked Hank. Most people
didn’t, though not particularly because of anything Hank had ever done. Josiah had a slightly better time of it than
most anybody in the Liberty community.
He lorded his position over everyone, too. He had never been too timid to call out one
of his congregation for one sin or another.
Guilt was his weapon against everyone and if alluding to some fellow’s
adultery or other could gain him an extra dollar or two in the collection
plate, then that was what he would do.
Hank was guilty through association. Showing up to school in
fresh-pressed khakis and a tie when everyone else did good to have a
half-shredded old pair of jeans on his butt didn’t help Hank a whole lot,
neither.
But Billy did like
Hank. He could be funny if given half a
chance. Plus, Billy felt sorry for
him. They lived across the woods from
each other and Billy was the only one who actually saw what it was like for
Hank. Hank’s daddy kept him half-starved
even though he could have fed him as much as he wanted. And the way he beat him down on every single
thing Hank ever liked or wanted, even though Hank didn’t look it in school,
Billy figured him to be the poorest kid he knew.
“Come on, Hank,”
Billy said. “I think my daddy might have
left a few biscuits at home. Plus I know
where he keeps his sippin’ whisky and we ain’t got shit else to do today; we might
as well get drunk.”
Billy Parker lived
in a two-room cabin back off TVA Road.
His mother died two years prior from snakebite. It was just him and his daddy now and they
were neither one the cleanest of folks.
Hank loved Billy’s house, though.
Maybe just because it was the exact opposite of his house. Hank’s ma, Ruth-Ann, kept it spotless and
switched him at least half as often as Josiah beat him if he didn’t keep his
things picked up. Not that he had many things he could strew around.
Billy poured each
of them a short glass of whisky as Hank snatched up Billy’s Daddy’s copy of Cherokee
Bob and started thumbing through it in a hurry. Seeing as Josiah allowed
Hank to read from one book and one book only at his own house, Hank rarely had
a shot at reading anything else. Hank actually loved to read, though. He wasn’t
sure if it was because he genuinely cared about books or just that he wasn’t
allowed. Either way, he wanted them. He had managed to train himself to burn
through text as quick as possible, sometimes able to read whole books on the
fly, if they were short enough. He’d long since ate up the piddling few at his
school. He looked most forward to his haircuts where he could usually finish
every magazine on the shelf before his number was up and that was the only
method Hank had for staying up on the world outside his own backyard.
Hank took his book
and went out and sat on the porch. He
leaned against a post and watched an old van creeping up the drive.
“Hold on,
somebody’s coming,” Hank yelled back.
Billy walked out and handed down the whisky. “Who is that?
Truck looks funky.”
The old van was
rusted down and cluttered with stickers and old advertisements for pots and
plows and various whatnots. It gave a
quiet, steady hum as it rolled up to the house.
Regardless what the outside looked like, Hank could tell what was under
the hood was in fine shape.
“Howdy boys!” the
man said climbing out of the seat. A big
black raven lighted on top of the van as the man got out. “You fellers’ ma or
daddy around?” He was tall, with a
scruffy white beard, an old gray suit and a crisp, blue fedora hat on his head.
Both boys gave a
long, blank stare. Finally, Billy
said, “No, my daddy ain’t here. Ain’t got no ma. What you need?”
“Name’s Shockley,
Boys, Baxton Shockley. Y’all can call me
Baxton,” he said pulling out a tall, black cane with a big brass ball at the
grabbing end. He had a big scar under his left eye and Hank couldn’t quite
figure if the eye itself was glass or not.
“Hey, I know you,”
Hank called out. “You’re that feller
sells firecrackers.”
“That’s right,
among other things. Glad you remember
me, boys.”
“We don’t need no
firecrackers,” Billy said.
“Well, boys. I could tell that from looking at you. You both stink of broke. Course, I can’t see as to what two fine
young‘uns like you is doing wasting away a whole good summer dawdling around
and drinking up your daddy’s whisky.
Y’ought to be out making you a little spending money.”
“Easy for you to
say, Mister,” Billy said. “Don’t nobody
want to hire no kid to do no job that pays nothing. Not around here noway.”
“That’s why you say
to hell with ‘em, like I did. Hell, boys
I was no older’n you when I set out on my own.
Sold six stray mules to a farmer back then name of John Paulson. O’ course, them was days when they was stray
mules ambling around the country. Not
likely to be any now, though, I reckon.
But I reckon they’s plenty other things worth a sight more.”
“Yeah, like what?”
Hank said, unconvinced.
“Like gold,
maybe.” Never know what you find up in
them hills on the Okatooga, or up round Boon in them old mines.”
“I sure ain’t no
miner,” Hank said.
“Not to mention
they’s a fortune in bootleg whisky just a sitting up under Culloden Mountain.”
Hank’s eyes lifted
at that.
“Since when?”
“Since a good
while, boys. Been settin’ there since
the old days when they ran whisky all through this county. Whole gang of ‘em. Got run out by the revenuers, back in ’38 or
so. Left a huge pile of whisky, dope and
what have you just a lying about somewhere up in them cracks. Folks went looking for it a time or two, but
ain’t nobody ever found it yet.”
“Probly cause it
ain’t there,” Billy said “Them boys
wouldn’t just leave it all sitting there.”
“Would if’n they’s
all sent-up or shot-up,” Baxton said.
“Anyways. Probly a sight of
whisky money stashed up there, I’d reckon.
Feller’d make himself rich right quick if he stumbled into that mess.
Yessir. Just giving you a shot at something. Might as well go have a look. What
else you got to do today?”
Hank and Billy just
looked at each other. Billy took a sip of his whisky and sat down, apparently
done with his interest in this Baxton Shockley.
“Well, anyways, I’m
goan ease on down the road,” Baxton said. “Tell your pa I came round. Might be up this way again a day or two.”
“Yes, sir,” Billy
mumbled in response. Baxton climbed back
in his van and crept back down the drive and was quickly out of sight.
“What a coot,”
Billy added at length.
Hank sat and
thought on what Baxton said. He knew
from listening to his father gripe on about everything that kept him bothered,
which was ample, that there had been a bunch of old boys running whisky and
wine up and down all through Culloden County back during the Prohibition. Even
after Prohibition was let up, folks had for some reason always voted to keep
the county dry which was why Billy’s papa had to cook his bathtub white
lightning. Hank thought the taste was piss-awful, but it got the job done in a
hurry. It did seem to make some sense that something might be lying
around prime for picking in the hills. And if not, there was always the nice
looking girls at the lake in the summertime. Their daddies’d keep Hank and
Billy at arm’s length but looking was free, back then.
“I say we go for
it,” Hank said.
“What?”
“Well, like he
said, what the shit else we got to do today?” Hank asked.
“Not drive
forty-eight miles to the ass-other end of the county to get lost in some damn
cave looking for a bunch of bullshit that ain’t there.”
“Aw, quit whining,
and let’s just stinking go,” Hank said.
“Sides, at least it’ll keep me away from my daddy for a while. You forget, I’ve still got a blistering
coming when he gets home and don’t find them peas.”
Jason Stuart
http://www.jasonstuart.net