1929
THE ONLY ROAD NORTH from Rocky Mount slashed back and forth in a series of switchbacks across a steep mountain called Grassy Hill. Over the summit the road continued north through Burnt Chimney, running along the bottoms of the hollows, crisscrossing streams and winding on into the rugged settlement of Boone’s Mill. This small set of hills separated Franklin and Roanoke counties, the county line running along a thin branch of Blackwater Creek. Thirty miles after crossing the creek you would reach the city of Roanoke, the central hub of southern Virginia.
This branch of Blackwater Creek was called Maggodee Creek, a local term that once referred to the profusion of maggots that inhabited its waters. Like the main trunks of Blackwater Creek, the water carried a dark, maroon tint caused by the many chestnut trees that grew along the banks and dropped their spiny seed husks into the water which bled out their color over time. The bridge over Maggodee Creek was a simple four-post affair, planked boards laid crosswise, the width of a single car. Deep woods of chestnut, gum, and pine spread on either side.
About two hundred yards south of the bridge toward Rocky Mount, a small filling station stood in a niche in the wood just off the road. That winter when Forrest left the hospital he bought the station from Lou Webb and took up residence in the upstairs rooms. Forrest’s suppliers and contacts followed and within days cars were lining up and he was running his operation out of the filling station. The blockaders could blaze through Rocky Mount, over Grassy Hill, stop at the station and pick up and drop off and make the run to Roanoke, crossing over the county line in mere minutes. The demand for liquor was steadily increasing and at night the still fires winked across the mountainsides like fireflies. In the winter the heat trails sent plumes of still vapor rising in thin strings from every hollow and hill.
There was no sign on the station, but from then on, even long after Forrest’s eventual death, it was known as either the Blackwater Station, Burnt Chimney station, or the Bondurant station.
When he got out of the hospital Forrest removed his stake from the County Line, selling the restaurant cheap to Hal Childress. Forrest also bought a mobile sawmill setup: donkey-engine-powered band saw, a long portable cutting shed, blades, tools, and hand-cutting supplies. After hiring local hands he began to operate a contract sawmilling operation, moving around the county and processing stands of hardwood and pine, his days and nights split between the sawmill camp and the Blackwater station. Behind the station the mountain swelled up and a dozen yards up this hill Forrest built a stone storage shed with a heavy chestnut door bound with iron with a large padlock on the handle. He kept the key on a short chain around his neck, the key hanging in the bony hollow just below his Adam’s apple.
A few weeks after the incident at the County Line, Maggie appeared at the Blackwater station, manning the small grill there. The upstairs apartment had three rooms and a narrow water closet with plumbing. Forrest set it up with some old furniture, castoffs mostly. When Maggie arrived with her valise, wearing a scarlet dress with ribbons of gold, Forrest turned without a word and led her upstairs. He put the iron-framed single bed in one room with most of the decent furniture and put a straw tick for himself in the other room. Maggie’s room had an oval gilt-edged mirror mounted on the back of a chest of drawers made of stained black walnut that Forrest’s grandfather built. In the sitting room there was a lumpy old couch covered with a sheet that faced the front window looking out over the road and down toward Maggodee Creek, the cracked and chipped castoffs of his mother’s old china stacked on the kitchen shelves.
Forrest hired a young man from Boone’s Mill named Everett Dillon to run the petrol pumps. Everett was a quiet man in his twenties, dark-faced with a thick shock of black hair who kept his head down, worked hard, and never asked a question about anything. He had a girl up on the mountain having a baby and he needed the steady money. Maggie worked the counter grill like she did at the County Line, though no one bought food at the Blackwater station, so mostly she leaned against the grill, smoking and watching the road through the window. There were regular card games at the station, mostly after hours, and the fuel business was steady, but mostly men wandered in from all over the county and from areas to the north, seeking liquor.
In the mornings Forrest made breakfast and coffee downstairs while Maggie sat on the edge of the bed and brushed her long hair in front of the mirror. Forrest had the radio from the County Line and in the evenings they sat on the couch looking over the road and smoked cigarettes, listening to the broadcasts from Wheeling or Richmond. When Forrest was sleeping at the sawmill camp Maggie sat on the couch and listened to the radio by herself. Later she would sit in her bed smoking and flipping through the Sears catalog. Sometimes Forrest would come home late when she was already asleep, and when she woke in the morning to the smell of bacon and coffee she knew that he was there.
Maggie hadn’t said a word to anyone about leaving the County Line, what happened that night, or anything about moving in with Forrest at the Blackwater station. Forrest never once mentioned her to anyone, and nobody ever brought it up, even his brothers.
Hal often thought of Maggie as he stood in the County Line Restaurant during business hours, pouring drinks and wiping down the bar, a new woman working the grill. The old man for many years afterward found himself wishing to see her out of the corner of his eye, her long form leaning against the grill. Sometimes at the restaurant Hal and other men would talk about the night when Forrest got cut. Hal told them how Forrest laid that man out with the iron knuckles and then nearly kicked the other man to death in the snow, and how Forrest gave him a five spot and told him to go on home, how Hal, Maggie, and Jefferson all left, and Forrest was alone when the men attacked him in the lot and left him for dead in the snow. Over time Hal began to embellish certain things, adding details that seemed to fit the conclusion: a flashed knife, Hal and Jefferson wading into a fray of struggling bodies, Forrest knocking men comatose with clubbing blows, more men waiting in the parking lot, long coats and fancy cars, Northerners perhaps. Forrest standing in the dark doorway, empty-handed and blood smeared on his face, daring them all to come on. The story grew and changed and after some time nobody believed the old man and the story remained shrouded in speculation.
Forrest also never told anyone about what happened to him that night. There was no police investigation. Men eventually got around to it in the presence of Jack and Howard: How in the hell that man get twelve miles through the mountains, in a foot of snow, to the hospital in Rocky Mount, with his goddamn throat slit wide open? The brothers merely shrugged as there was no way to know such a thing.
DID YOU GET ’EM? Jack asked his brother as he lay in the hospital.
No, Forrest said.
What you gonna do?
Forrest’s facial expression was placidly neutral above the puckered wound on his neck, purple scabbed and heavily stitched with black thread. A glass of tepid water stood on the bedside table. In the hallway a patient was pleading hoarsely with a nurse for the use of a phone. Forrest’s eyes gazed at some spot beyond the ceiling, and Jack felt moved by the sudden plaintive sight of his brother struck low. His visage reminded Jack of their grandfather, a haggard veteran of the Civil War. In his dim memories the old man sat stiffly on the edge of his bed and whittled small knots of wood.
I’ll hold them down myself, Jack said. I want to be there.
Forrest smiled, lips parted over bare teeth, the corners of his bristling scar drawing up like some kind of second mouth, a ghastly double smile.
I’ll call on you, Jack, Forrest said. And they’ll wish they were dead before we’re done.
Jack felt in a nauseous rush how his brother’s life would be eventually hacked off at the root like an old stump, and how until then Forrest would live in violence and pain and never rise from it.
Nothing can kill us.