Yellow Mama E zine

Two Mules

C. Inanen

          Driving for “Boss” Hodges was a good job. In 1930 Alabama there were plenty of men who’d have been grateful to get it. Unemployed coal miners who’d been laid off when the Great Depression really took hold in the fall of 1929 were among them. Cotton farmers who’d been having a progressively harder time making money on small farms could be added to that list too. Cotton prices had been on the decline since 1921 and by 1930 an awful lot of farmers had lost their farms as a result. It takes something out of a man when his means of making his livelihood is taken away from him.
         The whole nation was reeling from the Depression and from the Wall Street crash of 1929. 1/3 of the country’s value had simply disappeared in two months. Banks and other businesses closed their doors, many of them to never reopen. But the sale of illicit alcohol in Birmingham Alabama was still going strong and that’s what Boss Hodges did.
          So I was kept not just employed but busy running down to Mobile to pick up loads of booze which had been smuggled into the USA from Mexico and Cuba. The importation, production, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages had been outlawed in 1919 by the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That opened the door for people like Boss Hodges, who didn’t mind operating outside of the law to make fortunes. When I was released from prison I was determined to get my share of that so I went out and stole a Ford AA 1-1/2 ton truck and got into the trucking business. That’s how I started working for Boss Hodges.
          Of course it wasn’t a job for the squeamish or the faint of heart. Even setting aside the fact I was breaking the law, sometimes there was an element of danger involved too, like today, for example. Carl, a bruiser that also worked for Boss Hodges, Raymond and me were crammed into the cab of my truck, on our way to bust a still. Carl, a former football player and boxer was about two axe-handles wide, or it seemed that way anyway. I was jammed against the driver’s door, sitting at an angle. Carl’s beefy shoulder was pressed up against me as he sat stolidly in the middle. Raymond sat by himself to the right. He was tall and skinny and he had a Browning Automatic Rifle, a BAR grounded on the floor of the truck, its barrel pointed toward the ceiling, like an infantryman going into combat. Nobody wanted to crowd Raymond’s space. He was that kind of guy. Always dressed immaculately, he drove a maroon Packard roadster and was a stone cold killer.
           “Right along in here somewhere we turn to the right,” Carl told me. He knew where the still was. The Crosby brothers were operating a still outside of Birmingham in what Boss Hodges considered his territory. They had been warned several times but the warnings hadn’t taken. This trip was going to be more than a warning.
          I slowed down. That AA was a good truck but its top speed was only about 45 mph. It was a 1928 model and had a worm gear rear differential. The newer ones had a ring and pinion and were faster. The only other thing I could complain about was the manual windshield wiper. If you wanted to wipe the window in the rain you had to turn a knob by hand. A man just doesn’t have enough hands to steer, shift and wipe all at the same time.
           “There it is,” Carl pointed. It was a dirt road cut into the scrub pines and underbrush. Pretty narrow, when I made the turn bushes and tree limbs scraped the sides of the truck.
“Are you sure?” I asked him. It didn’t seem as if this road saw much traffic, certainly not trucks of this size.
           “Pretty sure,” Carl told me. “I’ve been here before.” Raymond didn’t say anything. He was kind of a spooky guy. If you don’t know what a BAR is, it’s a machine gun. It costs more than a new car and fires about 600 .30-06 rifle cartridges a minute, any one of which can kill you. Sometimes they’re mounted on bipods but Raymond liked to fire his from the hip. The dang thing weighs about 16 pounds.
          I pulled into a farm yard. At least there would be room to turn around. I’d begun to worry about that. The house wasn’t very big, two stories straight up and down. It was dwarfed by the barn and a corn crib. A sad looking Model T was parked near the corn crib. Two mules grazed placidly side by side on the other side of a fence, tails swishing now and then, fending off flies.
          “Nice pair of mules,” Carl remarked as I swung through the turn.
          “Pull right up to the house,” Raymond ordered after we saw the layout of the place.
           I cranked the wheel hard and nosed the AA right up to the door of the house. With the long wheelbase that truck wasn’t very maneuverable. Raymond said, “This here’s good,” when we were about 15 feet away. I hit the brakes and we came to a stop. “Get out,” Raymond told us. I opened my door and reached down under the seat, blindly trying to find my old thumb-buster Colt revolver. Carl already has his Colt .45 automatic in his right fist. Stepping down off the running board he followed me out. Raymond got out the other side.
          A dark haired man appeared through the doorway. He carried a double barrel break-open shotgun dangling negligently as he opened it. He raised it when he spoke. “What you want?” he asked. Raymond’s BAR let off a heavy, resonant continuous fire burst. Bits of the house, splinters from the door and the pansies outside the doorway flew through the air about knee high from the left to the right and then back again. The dark haired man fell as if he’d been kicked, right through the line of fire.
          He immediately began to moan. “That’s Luther Crosby,” Carl told me. “Get his shotgun. Larry must be around here somewhere.” Luther had made the mistake of thinking we were going to talk about this. He didn’t know that the time for talking had done passed him by. I bent down and grasped the shotgun barrel, pulling it away from him when a plain looking woman appeared fearfully in the doorway.
          “Oh Luther,” she wailed. “What have they done?” Luther wasn’t saying anything, just moaning and groaning. He was bleeding a bit, though. That was obvious.
          The driver’s side window of the AA exploded in a cascade of glass, immediately followed by the sound of a high-powered rifle shot. By now both mules had their heads up and they skittered away about 20’ then stopped and looked toward the barn, cautious witnesses. That shot must have missed Carl by inches. He was right quick about getting himself tucked in front of the rear tires on the driver’s side, crouching down under the truck bed. Being out in the open the way I was, I glanced back at the doorway as I ran toward the front of the truck to shelter. The woman was on her knees cradling Luther Crosby’s head. She was no threat to me, not right at the moment anyway.
          Carl returned fire. First one and then a second shot sounded. I don’t know where the bullets went. I know where the next rifle shot went, though. One of the dual tires on the rear axle began to hiss as the air escaped. I examined the shotgun and found it had a cracked stock but otherwise appeared serviceable. It was a Sears and Roebuck. I took aim at the crack between the two sliding halves of the barn door and pulled the forward trigger. It kicked back a bit and a hole about the size of one of Carl’s fists appeared in the right hand door. That got me a little bit of attention. The shooter in the barn stuck his rifle barrel out from between the doors and took a shot in my direction. I glanced back at the house and the woman was dragging Luther Crosby through the door.
           That was when the BAR opened up again. A long, stuttering, protracted burst came from underneath the truck. Wood splinters flew from the barn doors. They danced from the impact of those .30-06 bullets. The barrel of the rifle inside dropped to the ground. Raymond stopped firing for a moment. He was probably changing box magazines. The next thing I knew he was walking across the farm yard, firing again, now from the hip as he walked. This time the cyclic rate was slower. It was likely he was firing with the selector lever in the “F” position for the reduced rate. Say what you want about Raymond it took some nerve to walk across that farmyard in clear view of everyone the way he did. He had some nerve.
           When he got to the doors he put his shoulder to one of them and slid it part way open. There on the ground between them was the body of a second man, the shooter. He gave it a kick. He used his foot to flip the rifle about 6’ away and then he stepped over the body and walked into the barn.
           My ears were ringing from the weapons fire, particularly the shotgun blast. I shouted, “You OK, Carl?”
           Emerging from his cover in front of the rear wheels he told me, “Okey-dokey” as he started walking toward the barn. “That was Larry. I think that’s all of them.” The mules reappeared as I crossed the farm yard myself, still side by side, watching inquisitively now that the gunfire had stopped. The door to the house was closed now.
          Carl stopped in the doorway to the barn and rifled the corpse’s pockets. He took out a tin of tobacco, looked at it and tossed it away. When he pulled out a roll of bills he kept that, putting the money in his own pocket. I collected the rifle and followed him inside the barn.
          You can tell a lot about a moonshiner by looking at his still. One that’s neat and tidy, well put together, the fella that owns it probably makes pretty good whisky. This one wasn’t like that. It was patched and had a leak at the bottom of the pot. It looked as if it had been leaking for a while. There were probably some drunk mice running around here. I could hear the mash bubbling. It was working. The best stills are all copper. This one was made of copper, stainless steel, even galvanized pipe and iron. I’ve been told you can tell who made a run of whisky by how it tastes but I sure can’t do that. Maybe some people can. Carl and I stood side by side looking at it for a while. “Let’s go in the house and see if we can find some more money,” he told me.
          “There’s a woman in there,” I mentioned to him.
          “Probably Luther’s wife,” he replied. “Plain looking woman with short hair?”
          “Seemed so,” I agreed.
          “Luther’s wife,” he stated. As we turned to go to the house Raymond climbed up the ladder to the hayloft. It was just a series of boards nailed to the wall.
          When we got to the house the door was locked. Carl didn’t knock, he just kicked it in. It took three kicks and then swung open. The woman cringed fearfully in a corner of the kitchen. Her eyes followed us nervously, apprehensively, as we came in. “Don’t hurt me,” she pleaded.             “Please don’t hurt me.” Carl searched the body that lay on the floor. Luther Crosby had died wearing a pair of Duck Head overalls. Those are good ones. He found another roll of bills in the right hand pocket and collected that one, too.
         “Is there anyone else here?” he asked the woman.
          She nodded tearfully and told him, “Just my daddy. He’s bedridden upstairs. Please don’t kill him too.”
           “We’ll see,” Carl replied. I just stood there. “You got any other money?” he asked her.
           “No,” she told him. “That’s all we’ve got.”
           “You got a shovel?” he asked the woman.
           “Yeah,” she replied hesitantly. 
           “Probably have to bury him with that, then,” he told her. Carl is not overly sympathetic with people who cross Boss Hodges. “Let’s take a look upstairs,” he told me. Her sobs renewed.
            Upstairs we found an old man with white hair in bed. The room he was in smelled like sickness. It also smelled like old man. His eyes were alive, though, when we walked in. Carl leveled his handgun toward him. 
           “You goin’ to kill me too?” the invalid asked calmly.
           “You a Crosby?” Carl inquired.
           “Nope,” was the answer, “I’m a Benson, born and raised.” Proud of it, too, apparently.
            “You’ll live then,” Carl told him. “Your daughter’s downstairs. We won’t burn the house down, neither. Got no quarrel with Bensons.” I don’t know if the old man was pleased or disappointed. He didn’t have much time left on this earth either way.
            We went back to the barn. Raymond was in the process of stacking hay bales around the walls of the barn. He’d dropped a pile of them down through the hole in the ceiling that led up to the hayloft. Rare to see, he had also taken off his suit coat. The only other time I’d seen him do that was when he played cards. “There’s a few gallon jugs of ‘shine in the corner there,” he told me. “Might as well take those.” I carried them out to the truck, two at a time. Carl helped. I’ve seen him carry two cases of booze, one underneath each arm but when it came to gallon jugs we both carried two each trip. I tarped the load down. When I was finished you couldn’t tell what was underneath the tarpaulin and that would help to hold the bottles in place.
I was in the process of changing the flat tire on the truck when another round of gunfire came out of the barn. I didn’t count them, of course, they were much too fast but the ammunition for the BAR came forty to a clip. Raymond was shooting up the still. The sound paused and then started again, a good long burst. Both mules, who had been watching the activity in the farmyard with interest, startled again when the BAR began firing.
            I was just finishing up with the tire when Raymond asked me, “You think you can start that T-Model?”
           I glanced at the car. It had been converted to a truck bed at some time in the past. “Maybe,” was all I could say.
          “See if you can pull it in the corn crib,” he told me. The key was in it. The battery didn’t have enough juice to spin the motor over more than two or three times.
            “See if you can crank it over, Carl, otherwise it’s not gonna start,” I told him.
           “Okey-dokey,” he agreed. With me behind the steering wheel he cranked the engine over with the hand crank until it fired up. A small cloud of blue smoke accompanied that and I moved the spark lever and slowly turned the choke off. It was running, a little bit raggedy but running just the same. Carl and I gave each other a grin. I backed it up and drove the few feet into the corn crib.
          “How’s that?” I shouted to Raymond.
          “That’ll do just fine,” he shouted back to me. I shut off the engine. He carried an empty gallon jug in one hand and his BAR in the other as he walked toward me.
            When I got out he casually put three bullets into the gas tank. I’m not so sure myself about the advisability of shooting holes in gas tanks but Raymond did it as a matter of course.               He placed the empty jug underneath to catch the biggest stream, ignoring the other two. He took that jug into the barn when it was mostly full. When I next saw him he was shaking out the last few drops onto Larry Crosby’s body and a stream of glistening gasoline led back into the barn. Casually he lit a farmer’s match on the door of the barn and tossed it onto the body. It blazed right up.
             “Just about ready to go,” he told me. “Start your truck up.”
            While Carl and I climbed up into the truck Raymond walked back to the corn crib and lit another match. That one went into the puddle of gasoline underneath the Model T. It lit off with a minor concussion. Whoosh! He stood there and watched it burn for a moment. I broke the remaining glass out of my window so I didn’t get it in my eyes on the way back.
             Raymond climbed up in the cab with us. “That corn crib will burn good,” he remarked. Dried corn burns hot. It was already blazing merrily and the Model T was fully engulfed in flames. Smoke was pouring out of the barn. “Guess we’re done here,” Raymond said as I backed up and aligned with the narrow lane. The two mules watched.
            “I hope she takes care of those mules,” Carl said, turning his head and looking at them as we drove forward again, on our way out of the Crosby farm.     

 

 

      C. Inanen lives in the Midwest USA. His work has been most recently published in Yellow Mama magazine. During the upcoming months his crime, police procedural, and speculative fiction will appear in the Blue Lake Review, AntipodeanSF, Down in the Dirt, and Straylight Literary Arts Magazine. You can also look for it in the August issue (#117) of Yellow Mama magazine. He is a contributor to The Yard: Crime Blog.   

 

 

     Kevin D. Duncan was born 1958 in Alton, Illinois where he still resides. He has degrees in Political Science, Classics, and Art & Design. He has been freelancing illustration and cartoons for over 25 years. He has done editorial cartoons and editorial illustration for local and regional newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His award-winning work has appeared in numerous small press zines, e-zines, and he has illustrated a few books.