October 8, 1945
Woody was released from the hospital after a week. By then, he’d been up talking to the other patients more than in his own bed. The doctor said a boy his age had a way of healing faster than most.
Ben was there when the sheriff came to talk to Woody the day after he got shot, but Woody acted like he’d never mentioned any person’s name. Even when Ben asked about Coy, Woody shrugged and said he must have been out of his head. He knew some Coys but none that would shoot him. At least not on purpose. So if he thought any of those Coys shot him, it must have been an accident. To Ben’s ears, it didn’t sound as if Woody was lying outright, but he did appear to be skirting the truth.
Ben waited. He’d have plenty of time to question Woody once he had him alone with no other ears bent their direction to listen.
Francine had been to see Becca, but Ben was at the hospital when she came. Once Ma knew Woody was going to pull through, she came on home and let Ben go down to check on him. She claimed too much work to do before winter to spend hours sitting idle at the hospital. Not when Woody had all those nurses to see to him.
She, along with everybody else, was ready to pass off the shooting as an accident the way Woody claimed. Ben didn’t swallow his story, but at the same time he wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. He had loaded his father’s pistol, but the very feel of the gun brought back too many hard memories. He had come home glad to leave the war behind. He didn’t want to be part of an ongoing war here in the mountains. Even so, he couldn’t hide from the truth, whatever that was. Nor could Woody.
On the ride home from the hospital, Woody chattered like a nervous squirrel, filling the truck cab with words that didn’t matter. Ben knew men like that in the army. Men who talked about every silly thing to keep from thinking about what might happen on the morrow. Or telling what happened yesterday.
Ben stopped him as they started down Thousandstick Mountain. “Quit blabbering just to hear your voice in your ears and tell me what happened at the sorghum stir-off.”
“About all I know is I got shot.” Woody spoke fast. “I imagine it was an accident.”
“Or you imagine it wasn’t.” Ben didn’t frown at Woody. He was determined to keep an even keel no matter what the boy had to tell him. “Try the truth instead of imagining.”
Woody stared out the window. “I didn’t do nothing wrong, Ben.”
“I haven’t said you did. But I need to know what’s going on so I won’t have to be worried about you getting shot again. Is there worry that might happen?” Ben tightened his grip on the steering wheel as he waited for Woody’s answer.
“Can’t really say, seeing as how I didn’t expect it to happen the first time.”
“So who’s Coy? Was he playing with a gun and it just fired without any intent the way you’re trying to make out the shooting happened?”
“No sir. I reckon he aimed to shoot me, but after I pondered it some, I’m of the mind he didn’t aim to kill me dead. Coy’s a right fair shot.” Woody rubbed his hands up and down his thighs.
“This Coy a friend of yours?”
“Was back when he went to school. Then his pa let him quit after the fifth grade. Coy wasn’t much for book learning anyhow, but he could hit a baseball a mile.”
Ben blew out a breath. “I get the feeling you don’t hold any hard feelings against this Coy. Not sure that makes sense.”
“Well, it’s like this. I figure I can hunt Coy up and we can straighten out the misunderstanding.”
“What misunderstanding?”
“Coy’s pa has a still up on Whistler’s Ridge. I stumbled upon it some months ago. I didn’t think anybody saw me ’cause once I saw what was up, I kept my head down. It can be chancy around them stills, but somebody must have seen me around about those parts.” Woody moistened his lips and looked out the window as they started through Hyden. “I don’t reckon you want to stop at the store to get a soft drink. I’m mighty thirsty.”
Without a word, Ben pulled into a parking spot. “You stay put,” he told Woody when the boy started to pull up on the door handle.
“You act like I done something wrong by getting shot.”
“Stay put,” Ben repeated with no give in his voice. He didn’t look back at Woody as he went into the store. The boy better know enough to do as he was told. Even so, Ben was relieved when he came out of the store with two drinks and a bunch of bananas to carry home and Woody hadn’t climbed out of the truck.
He waited until they were headed out of town and Woody had downed part of the cola before he pushed him to tell more. “All right. You came across the still. I’m assuming that’s the Caudills’ still that Granny Em told me was raided.”
“The revenuers found it and I can’t imagine they coulda done that without somebody pointing the way. Whistler’s Ridge is not easy to get to. You know where I’m meaning.”
“I do. Pa and I used to squirrel hunt up that way now and again.”
“A fire took out some of the trees back a few years and now it’s growed up with every kind of bush until it’s hard going.”
“Why were you there?”
Woody shrugged. “I don’t know. Just seems like after Pa died that I couldn’t get no rest unless I was moving.”
“So was Coy or his father arrested?”
“Nope. The way I heard it, they got wind of the raid in time to make themselves scarce, but not in time to move their operation. Reckon that upset ’em some.”
“They were breaking the law,” Ben said.
“Don’t look at me that way. I wasn’t making moonshine. I just happened on where it was being made. Gave that place a wide berth after that.”
“But they still thought you told.”
“That’s the part I haven’t figured out. Why they would think that.”
“Shorty Johnson.” Ben shot a look over at Woody as he said the trader’s name.
“Oh.” Woody ran his finger around the top of his soda bottle. Then he took a drink and swallowed. “That could be it.”
“What’s it?”
“Shorty will do ’bout anything for a dollar and some folks say the Feds are willing to pay to hunt down the stills.”
“For a kid, you know an awful lot about stuff you shouldn’t know about.” Ben frowned as he stared out at the road.
“I’m fifteen, Ben.” Woody sounded insulted. “I could go work in the mines if Ma would let me.”
“No.” The word almost exploded out of Ben. He pulled in a breath to calm down. “No mines. You’re going to school and make something of yourself. If you don’t get killed dead first.”
“That’s what Ma says too. ’Cept that part about getting killed dead.”
“What do you have to do with Shorty Johnson?”
“No more’n anybody else. Shorty buys stuff sometimes. He’s big on marbles. Collects them. Now and again, I come across an aggie marble or two that was lost who knows when in the school yard. And then sometimes if a feller takes time to look, he can snag a pretty agate rock in the creeks. Shorty’ll buy those too, but I ain’t never told him nothing ’bout stills. I got more sense than that.”
Woody finished off his drink. “Ev’rybody knows that Shorty ain’t one to be trusted, and no way was I wanting trouble with the Caudills. Coy’s pa is a mean one and I hear tell his grandpa is even meaner.”
Ben turned the truck down into the creek and hit a rock that bounced Woody up off the seat. He groaned and grabbed his chest.
“Sorry.” Ben looked over at Woody, who still had a grimace on his face. “You okay?”
“It’s a mite sore. Doctor said it would be for a spell. Don’t know how much work I’ll be able to do for a while.”
“None. No horseback riding either or walking to who knows where to find trouble. You’re going to attend to your school books for a while.”
“Aww, Ben. I can’t stay shut up in the house all the time.”
“You can sit on the porch.”
“Well, maybe Nurse Howard will come see me.” Woody grinned and gave Ben a sideways look. “That’ll get us all singing and feeling better. Even you.”
“We’re not talking about Nurse Howard. We’re talking about you. So explain why you didn’t tell the sheriff all this.”
“You’ve been gone from the mountains too long.” Woody jiggled the soda bottle up and down on his leg. “You must’ve forgot how it is. The sheriff takes Coy in, then it’ll be Coy’s pa who comes after me next. Better to let it be an accident. Besides, I didn’t want to get Coy in trouble. Like I said, we’re practically friends.”
“He shot you.” Ben couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.
“If I know anything, I know it was his pa that made him. Like I said, he didn’t shoot to kill me dead.”
“You might have bled to death if Nurse Howard hadn’t been there.”
“Then I reckon it’s lucky for me that you’re half stuck on her and asked her along.” Woody grinned over at Ben.
Ben didn’t smile back. “We’re not through with this. But your trading days with Shorty Johnson are over.”
“Good thing you got this truck first. And them dogs. Nurse Francine really likes that Sarge.”
“Nurse Howard to you.” Ben kept his voice stern. “And to me too as far as that goes. That was a slip of the tongue that won’t happen again.”
“I don’t see why not. I think she’s a mighty fine woman. If I weren’t already in love with Jeralene, I might ask her to wait till I got a little older.”
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“I don’t know. She might could wait. She likes me.” Woody tried a laugh that ended in a sharp pulled-in breath. “That laughing muscle still ain’t doing so good. But I guess you’re right. I was being silly. But fact is, most all Mrs. Breckinridge’s brought-in nurses don’t appear to be the marrying kind.”
“They probably go back to wherever they’re from and get married after they leave here.” Ben didn’t like thinking about that for Francine.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Then could be you should try to convince Nurse Howard she don’t need to head back to Ohio. Tell her the mountains are a fine place to find a feller.”
“I’m not telling her any such thing and I better not hear you saying anything like that to her either.”
He’d called Woody silly, but he was the one who was silly. Forgetting to guard his heart the way Granny Em said he should. But he didn’t have time to worry about that now. He had to figure out what to do about Woody. It didn’t seem right to let somebody get away with shooting the boy. Not right at all. Mountain code or not. What about law and order? Maybe Woody was right. Maybe he had been gone too long.
That night his mother followed him out to the cornfield where Ben was picking corn by the full moon.
“Your pa always liked picking corn by the harvest moon. Said the leaves weren’t near so scratchy. I helped him some before you children came along. And I reckon you recall spending some nights picking with him too.”
“I do.” He pitched an ear into the barrel on the sled hooked to their mule. “Good times.”
“Your pa prayed for you ev’ry morning and ev’ry night whilst you were over there till the day he died.” Ma pulled off an ear of corn and shucked it. “He was proud of you.”
“I sometimes wondered if I’d make it home, but I never thought about him not being here if I did.” Ben moved down the row. His father always said steady was the best way to work.
“Things happen as the Lord wills.” She pitched the corn in the barrel. “Ain’t no use fighting agin what’s meant to be. You were meant to come home and Woodrow was meant to go on to meet the Lord.”
Ben stopped and looked at his mother. “Do you believe everything that happens is meant to be?”
She shucked another ear of corn and ran her fingers over the kernels as if she were counting them before she threw it in the barrel. At last she looked up at Ben. The moonlight softened her wrinkles, and it wasn’t hard for him to imagine what she looked like back in her newlywed days as she and his pa worked together.
“You’re thinkin’ ’bout Woody.”
“Him and others.” He had too many images of wounded and dying boys in his head. He couldn’t imagine the war as part of God’s plan. Or Woody getting shot either.
His mother let her arms drop down by her side without reaching for another ear of corn as she stared down the row away from Ben. Finally she pulled in a breath and turned back to Ben. “Your pa was better at knowing answers from the Scripture. Me, I can’t answer for the Lord. I learnt a long time back to accept whatever comes my way. Best savor the good and bear up under the bad. There ain’t no changin’ none of it.”
“But we ought to try to change the bad. We fought a war to change the bad.”
He could see his mother’s smile in the moonlight. “True enough, but it’s time for peace now.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t do anything about what happened to Woody?”
“I’m sayin’ let the sheriff handle it. If’n any handlin’ needs doing. Your pa never believed in takin’ the law into his own hands.” She looked over toward the sled where Ben had laid the pistol. “No need to go hunting the bad.”
Ben grabbed another ear of corn off the stalk. “Turn the other cheek. Is that what you’re saying? What about an eye for an eye? The Bible says that too.”
“So it does. The Lord also says vengeance is mine. And a man reaps what he sows.” She stepped across the row and put her hand on his arm. “Just give it some time, son. Woody is gonna be all right.”
“He could have died. If Nurse Howard hadn’t been there, he might have.”
“If you hadn’t been there, he might have. But he didn’t.” She reached and got another ear of corn. She looked over at him as she pulled it free of the shucks. “That Nurse Howard is a pretty woman.”
“She is.”
His mother pitched the corn in the barrel and then studied him without saying anything.
He stopped and looked at her. “If you’ve got something to say, best go on and say it.”
“She ain’t mountain.”
“No, ma’am, she’s not.” He turned away from his mother then to pull more ears off the cornstalks, working faster up the row. After a couple of minutes, she turned and walked back toward the house.