MORE SECRETS
I recollected the day I offered to help Miz Henry tote her groceries home. She done refused and got snappish with me. Was them groceries headed for Jane Louise’s house, too?
As Miz Henry started up the path, I traipsed after her, keeping far back so’s she wouldn’t see me or hear leaves crunching under my feet. I lost sight of her at the point where the trail towards our old house cut off. Something inside me made me think that was where she went. So I headed that way, too.
When the trees thinned out a mite, and I knew I was close to the clearing where the house was, I heard voices. Angry voices. I hung back and listened.
Miz Henry hollered about someone stealing her money, and a man’s voice answered back.
“If there was money behind that sign, it was from illegal means,” the voice said. “You planning to report me to the sheriff?” The voice was a familiar one, and it prickled my skin. Mr. Grayson!
I peeked one eye from behind a tree trunk. Mr. Grayson and Miz Henry was on the porch of our old house. Grayson tapped the toe of his shoe against the For Sale or Rent sign. “You been supplying miners with illegal moonshine. I could tell Putney.”
“You cain’t prove none of that,” Miz Henry shot back. “None of them miners’ll speak a word against me.”
“But I can raise questions about miners who got rowdy and lawless under the influence of your brew.” Was he talking about Daddy? Mr. Grayson’s words was icy cold, and I near-about felt sorry for Miz Henry.
“My ’shine ain’t the only brew in Smoke Ridge,” Miz Henry argued.
“No,” the icy tone said back, “but it’s the brew that got a man shot last year.”
“You’re crazy!” Miz Henry’s voice was angry, but there was something else in her words. Was it fear? Did Mr. Grayson really know that her moonshine got a man shot?
“Most folks think Bud Heckathorn was killed in the fight between miners and deputies down near Evarts last year,” Mr. Grayson said. He was talking about Jane Louise’s daddy.
Miz Henry looked nervous.
“There was a shootout for sure,” Mr. Grayson went on. “Union sympathizers and riled miners bushwhacked deputies. Men were killed. But Bud Heckathorn wasn’t one of them.”
“I hear he got caught in the crossfire,” Myrtle said.
“He did, did he? That’s not what I heard.”
“I don’t know what ya think ya know, but it’s best for his kinfolk to believe that’s what happened.”
“You mean instead of knowing Bud was shot robbing a grocery store in Evarts? He wasn’t with the mobs that robbed so many of them, but one night he tried it on his own. A night when a store clerk was standing guard with a gun.”
“Hard Times kin make a man go against his raising,” Miz Henry said. “Bud waren’t a bad sort.”
“Not until he got tanked up on your moonshine. Drink can make a man mean, make him take dangerous chances. The store clerk got scared after he killed Bud. He and someone else moved the body away from the store. Being shot the same day as the ambush of the deputies was Providence.”
“Bunk!” Myrtle said.
“You were part of covering up what really happened. To make sure your own illegal activities weren’t blamed for it. I think the law calls it … collusion.”
I didn’t know what Mr. Grayson’s big word meant, but it seemed to scare Miz Henry. Was he right about how Jane Louise’s daddy got kilt? I knew firsthand what Myrtle Henry’s moonshine could do to a man. Taking food to a family might ease a guilty conscience.