Between the Lies Read online

  Recalling his first run-in with Sheriff Earl Brewster did nothing to encourage Hick. Though years had passed, it still stung like it happened yesterday—Brewster’s delighted picking-apart of the rookie sheriff’s case. Everyone knew that Mule and Hoyt Smith were guilty as sin, but Brewster went out of his way to see they were not charged. They were kin and with Brewster blood came before justice. Hick understood Brewster had a complete disregard for truth—this was not news. But why the rush to jail anyone? Why was he in such a hurry to grab the first person he could find, someone not even physically capable of committing the crime in question?

  As he pondered these thoughts, the door flew open and Jake’s feet pounded across the bedroom floor while Maggie’s voice was heard calling, “Jacob Prescott Blackburn, you stay out of there!”

  The little boy paid no heed as he climbed onto the bed and peered into his father’s face. “Daddy’s awake?”

  Hick pulled him close in a bear hug. “Yes, Jake. Daddy’s awake.”

  Maggie came to the door. “Sorry, Hickory.”

  “It’s time I got up.” Hick picked the boy off and set him in the middle of the bed. He threw back the covers. “What time did they wake you?”

  Maggie wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “Not long ago.”

  First thing in the morning and Maggie looked like she’d already put in a long day. “Is Mourning coming home today?” Hick asked.

  Maggie nodded. “She’ll probably go back and forth between here and Eben’s for another few weeks.” Mourning’s brothers, Eben and Jed, had gone to fight the war in Korea. Eben Delaney had returned, married, and recently welcomed his first child. Jed Delaney returned in a box and was buried in the National Cemetery in St. Louis. Mourning had gone to Eben’s house two weeks earlier to help with the baby.

  Hick stretched and walked to the kitchen. He poured a cup of coffee and glanced out the window. The sun was bright, glinting off the tin roof of the empty chicken coop. A red wasp, its thin legs dangling, buzzed at the top of the window, trying to escape. It appeared to be the start of one of those days where the heat stuck to you like a wet blanket, wrapping you up until your energy drained out. His mind wandered as he sipped his coffee and stared out across the yard. How was Thaddeus doing after another night in jail? Would his family agree to a guilty plea? How had Brewster taken the news that Hick Blackburn had stopped by the Broken Creek station. Brewster did not tolerate doubt or questioning and Hick’s experience in dealing with the older man told him it wouldn’t be long before a confrontation. So be it. He sighed, put the coffee cup into the sink, and went to dress for work.

  The new uniform was a size larger than last year’s. Age and marriage were filling out his slender frame, but he still looked young for the job. With his youthful face and slight build, men like Brewster seemed to think they could intimidate him by throwing their weight around. After the war, Hick found there wasn’t much that could intimidate him, yet he knew his appearance did little to discourage people from trying.

  He put his hat on and walked back into the kitchen. “I’m going on to work. You need anything?”

  She spooned another helping of oatmeal into the boy’s bowls and shook her head. “No, we’re fine.” She put the pot back on the stove and turned to him. “I hate you tanglin’ with Brewster. Just be careful. I’m worried.”

  He crossed the room and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Don’t be. Everything will be alright.” He kissed the tousled heads of his sons and walked onto the porch, lighting a cigarette as he went. Taking a long draw, he watched the smoke as it evaporated into the sunshine. The trees were still, breathless, the grass beneath them brown and brittle, the sandy earth consuming the sparse blades. Even the birds seemed to move slower than usual in the already oppressive morning heat, their beaks open, their sides heaving with rapid breaths. He hesitated. Why not go back inside and have breakfast with Maggie and the boys? Why the hurry to get to work? Because work was always waiting no matter what, he supposed. Because he needed to provide for his growing family. Because he could escape into other people’s problems and forget about his own ghosts. He straightened his shoulders and headed to the car.

  Adam’s normally cheerful face was grim as Hick entered the station. He slurped his coffee and regarded Hick. “Well?”

  Hick hung his hat and shrugged. “There’s something off about—”

  The door to the station opened behind Hick and a nervous Royal Adkins stepped inside. Shocked to see the young man in Cherokee Crossing, Hick stared at him.

  “Deputy Adkins, to what do we owe this pleasure?”

  Royal removed his hat and nodded toward Adam. “Morning, Deputy. Morning, Sheriff.”

  Hick indicated Adam and said, “Deputy Adkins, this is Deputy Kinion.”

  Royal stepped forward and extended his hand to Adam. “Royal Adkins. Pleased to meet you.”

  “What brings you to Cherokee Crossing today?” Hick asked.

  Royal looked at Adam and hesitated. Catching his glance, Hick assured him. “Adam’s my brother-in-law. You can say anything in front of him. Something wrong?”

  Adkins gripped the brim of his hat, turning it around and around in his hands. He turned and looked out the front window.

  Hick and Adam exchanged a glance and Hick turned back to Adkins and waved toward the empty chair next to his desk. “Why don’t you have a seat, and tell us what’s on your mind. You didn’t drive all this way for nothing.”

  Royal sank into the offered chair and put a stick of gum into his mouth. He looked at his feet and then back toward the front door. “Sheriff,” he began finally, “I been thinking a lot on what you said yesterday. I mentioned it to Brewster and he got madder’an a wet hen. He told me to put all your foolishness out of my mind and to concentrate on nabbing mail box bashers and outhouse tippers and leave the lawin’ to him.” He looked up and added, “I ain’t bright and I own it, but there’s something ain’t right about this case and it’s got me riled. I don’t cotton being involved in wrongdoing.”

  Adam leaned forward. “What do you mean something’s not right?”

  Royal looked toward Adam and a momentary glint of suspicion flickered in his eyes. Then, he licked his lips and started in again. “It’s just this … I got to thinking about what the sheriff here was saying. About how hard it’d be for Thad to learn to drive that truck in one night. So I went out and climbed in it. I reckoned it’d be tough but pretty much figured Brewster had it right, until …” Adkins stopped talking and cracked his knuckles.

  “Until what?” Hick prompted.

  “It’s like this, Sheriff,” Royal said, shifting forward in the chair. “There was a jar of hooch in that truck, rolled right up under the seat. It was corn liquor, and I know where it come from. Willie Taylor’s been making moonshine in Broken Creek as long as I can remember and I know he’s got a particular jar he uses no one else in town has.”

  “Could the boy have been drinking” Adam asked.

  “No, sir. Miss Burton’s young’uns toe the line.”

  “Well, what about the farmer, Sutton?” Hick asked, sitting on the edge of his desk.

  “Grover Sutton is Pentecost and a deacon,” Royal answered with a firm shake of his head. “He wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

  Hick and Adam’s eyes met. “Did you tell the sheriff?” Adam asked.

  Royal nodded. “He told me to forget it. Said I never seen that jar and just to forget all about it.” Royal looked at Hick. “How am I supposed to do that? I sit in that jail with Thad all day long. Brewster says Thad’s fine and not to worry about him, but I heard him crying last night when he thought I was asleep. He ain’t fine at all. He’s scared. I’ve known him since he was a little boy. His mama done up our clothes for years and he’d run the basket of ’em to us when she was done. He would never take anything extra when we offered and his mama taught him right from wrong. The Burtons is good people. I reckon I can believe Thad might have borrowed a truck to go for a ride and got too scared
to tell us he ran over that hobo. He’s just a kid and sometimes kids do dumb things. But there ain’t no way he’d drink hooch.” He shook his head. “I hate to think poorly of Uncle Earl.”

  “Uncle?” Hick asked.

  Royal shrugged. “Hell, Earl Brewster’s related to most everybody in town.”

  Adam caught Hick’s eye and shook his head. Things did not bode well for Thaddeus Burton.

  Royal looked at Hick. “I pondered it and pondered it, but I just don’t know what to do.” He turned his hat in his hand again.

  “What do you want to do?” Hick asked.

  Royal sat thinking a moment. “I reckon I want to do right.”

  5

  Saturday, July 17, 1954

  Hick met Royal Adkins outside of Broken Creek later that evening and followed the deputy to a deserted dirt road. He pulled his car onto the grass and shut off the engine. Dusk crept through the dense trees and cast long shadows in front of him. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw nothing behind him but a long, brown line of road unbroken by any structure or sign of civilization. Peering into the woods, it was impossible to make out anything through the gloom. Lightning bugs rose from the ground, luminous and spectral. They were the only signs of life in the shrub.

  He watched Deputy Adkins get out of the car in front of him. Nothing in the young man’s demeanor gave him cause for alarm and, yet, to join him voluntarily, at such a secluded spot could be dangerous. Sheriff Earl Brewster’s reputation for ruthlessness did nothing to calm his apprehension.

  “This the place?” Hick asked, climbing from his car.

  “Yeah. I usually find ’em down here in the bottomlands.”

  The two men stepped into the tree line. The sand was soft and slick beneath Hick’s shoes, and stagnant, musty smells wafted up from puddles of black, sandy water. Because of the season’s unusual dryness, underbrush and saplings grew thick in places where the river sometimes ran. They stepped over fallen trees, gravel bars, and debris in the sunken wetlands and made their way through a muddy trickle that stubbornly stayed wet even in the drought.

  Darkness fell as Hick picked his way around logs and branches. Stumbling, he looked down and realized, in that brief moment, he had lost sight of Deputy Adkins. He stopped and scanned the darkness and was surprised to hear the sound of a pistol being cocked very near his ear.

  “Well, well, what we got here?” a voice behind him said.

  Hick’s heart jumped, and his breath caught in his throat. In the light of the waning moon he could make out two shadows. Raising his hands he began, “My name is Sheriff Hick Blackburn and I’m from—”

  Royal Adkins interrupted him. “Now Dewey, why you treating my friend like that?”

  “You know this fella, Adkins?”

  “Yep. He’s just who he said he is, and I asked him to come out here with me. Now put that thing down afore you hurt somebody.”

  The man called Dewey stepped out of the shadows and put away his gun. He was thin and dark and had a face that had seen a lot of hard years and harder work. He looked Hick up and down and smiled, showing spaces where teeth used to be. “Sorry ’bout the gun. We thought you might be a revenuer.”

  “Where’s Willie’s still?” Royal asked. “We need to talk to him.”

  “He’s down closer to the river now,” another voice said, and in the darkness Hick saw a younger man with light hair and eyes that gleamed against his dark skin. “Getting so water ain’t easy to come by.”

  “I reckon that’s right, Dink” Royal agreed.

  “What you wanting with Willie anyways?” asked Dewey. “It’s worrisome you coming out here tonight and with a sheriff. We ain’t had no trouble with the law in years and we’d better not be starting.”

  “Just a couple of questions,” Royal said. “Ya’ll ain’t in no bind. We’re just trying to find something out about another matter entire.”

  Dewey and Dink exchanged glances and then Dewey shrugged. “Well, come on. Willie ain’t feudin’ with you.”

  As Hick and Royal trailed behind the men, Hick asked, “Your moonshiners always this hospitable to the law?”

  “Willie and Sheriff Brewster ain’t the best of friends, but I get along with ’em just fine. I don’t see no point bothering ’em. They don’t mean no harm. They just sell moonshine at the juke joint and use it for they own selves.”

  Dewey turned around and smiled. “We like to keep it on hand for malaria and the croup.”

  Hick nodded, smacking a mosquito whining near his ear, and followed deeper into the woods.

  The familiar night sounds began to swell. The whistling sounds of peepers and the chirping of crickets joined the high-pitched buzzing of toads and the occasional trumpet of a bullfrog. From the tree tops came the mournful cry of a screech owl.

  After what Hick judged to be a little more than a mile, he began to smell the acrid scent of burning wood and the tang of fermentation.

  “We’re getting close,” Royal told him. “The air has a wang to it.”

  They climbed a small rise and off in the distance, beside a stagnant piece of swamp water that reflected the light of the moon, Hick saw a brightly burning fire and the shadow of a man throwing wood upon it.

  Dewey cupped his hand around his mouth and sang out with the rhythmic cry of a barred owl. The shadow stopped feeding the fire abruptly and stood up. He answered back and Dewey said, “Come on. He’s expecting us.”

  Hick followed Dewey and Dink as they led the way down onto the sandy bar where the copper still and a huge pile of firewood were partially concealed by boxes and boxes of Atlas jars. It was clear the operation was bigger than Royal let on, but Hick was not concerned with moonshiners.

  Willie Taylor offered a toothless smile and a large, calloused hand. “Howdy Royal,” he said shaking the young man’s hand. “What brings you out to this neck of the woods?”

  Then he turned to Hick. Willie had only one eye and a long shaggy beard. He was smiling, but Hick sensed that beneath his friendly exterior there was a certain brutality that would not hesitate to emerge in the face of danger.

  “This here’s my good friend, Sheriff Hick Blackburn,” Royal said by way of introduction.

  Willie squinted his eye and looked into Hick’s face. Hick could smell alcohol and tobacco on his breath.

  “Sheriff?” he repeated. “Where from?”

  “I’m from Cherokee Crossing,” Hick answered.

  “Cherokee? You’re a long way from home, boy.” Hick nodded in answer and Willie went on. “What you doing out here?”

  “He’s here ’cause I ast him for help,” Royal said.

  Willie’s eye turned from Hick back to Royal. “Help with what?”

  “We was wondering if you’d let us know who you been selling to lately,” Royal answered.

  Willie began to laugh. The laugh grew and turned into a coughing fit that ended with Willie spitting out a wad of something Hick was glad he couldn’t see. “Hell Royal, if I told you that I’d be outta business in a day.”

  “We don’t need names,” Hick said quickly.

  Willie turned again to him, that fierceness Hick sensed flickered a little in his eye. “Talk fast, boy. I don’t know what ya’ll are about but I’m beginning to mistrust it.”

  “What kinds of people do you sell to mainly?” Hick wondered.

  “Kinds?”

  “Do you sell to business folks? Locals? Church-going men?”

  Willie laughed again. “I sell to thirsty folks. Mainly men, though there are some women looking for a drink now and again. Lots of poor folks who can’t afford store-bought.”

  “You sell to colored folks?” Hick asked.

  Willie frowned and squinted his eye. “Don’t do business with darkies,” he said in a voice of contempt. “What’s this all about anyway?”

  “Just trying to figure out how an empty Atlas jar smelling like moonshine ended up in Grover Sutton’s truck the night that vagrant was run down,” Royal explained.

>   “I thought they got the boy what done it.”

  “Just wanting to make sure,” Royal said.

  Willie squinted at Royal. “Brewster know you’re asking questions?”

  Royal swallowed hard and blinked. “No, Willie. To be truthful, he ain’t got no knowledge of it.”

  Willie slapped Royal on the back and howled with laughter. “I like it! I hate that son of a bitch and I wish the devil’d take his soul.” He tossed another log into the flame and then coughed and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Brewster locked up my boy and I won’t see him for three more years. Three years,” he repeated in a cold voice. “I don’t mind iffen my kin git put away for what they done. But Brewster knowed Hap was innocent and he knowed who done it.” He took a tin of snuff from his pocket and put a pinch in his nose. Eyeing Royal, he added, “They was kin of your’n if I recollect.”

  “I don’t know nothing about it, Willie,” Royal said, with a hint of protest. “But you know Uncle Earl … he don’t sit still when family’s involved.”

  Willie’s face grew red with rage and he growled, “Well, what about my family? He ever think of me and mine?”

  “I’m sorry, Willie,” Royal said. “I ain’t saying it’s right. In fact, I know it ain’t right. But what can I do?”

  Willie shook his head and looked Royal up and down. “That bastard’s gonna get what’s coming to him someday and I reckon you’re as much a man as anybody to do it. You’ll figure it out.” He threw more wood on the fire and said, “Iffen you’re wondering if that boy you got there in jail bought ’shine from me, I tell you he didn’t.”

  “What about Grover Sutton?” Hick asked.

  “The deacon? Hell no.”

  “You the only one around using the Atlas jars?” Royal asked.

  Willie’s fierceness returned. “Them’s my mark. Nobody else darst to use ’em ’cause they know them’s my mark. Ain’t none of my people take a jar to somebody else neither ’cause once they had my ’shine they don’t want nobody else’s. Iffen they was an Atlas in that truck then it was my hooch, plain and simple.”