After Sunday’s service, the Flagg family has lunch at the big house on the hill. Afterward they sit outside on the porch and talk, while Ezra and Rachel’s children play in the yard. Morgan’s guitar leans against the railing. Ava stands with her hip against the newel post.
“That was a fine sermon, father,” Rachel says.
Jedediah is lighting his pipe. “I have always found Corinthians to be a source of comfort, in good times and bad.”
“I believe it’s important to give people hope in times such as these,” Rachel says. “I think the worshippers today felt that.”
“All twelve of them,” Ava points out.
“Now daughter,” Jedediah admonishes. “It’s not the size of the congregation, it’s the heart of the congregation that matters. We need to keep in mind that our troubles are temporary.” He puffs away at the pipe a moment, stoking it before continuing. “Many years ago, I had a distant cousin, a reprobate and unabashed heathen he was, but he had a saying I admired nonetheless. He would say—tough times don’t last, tough people do.”
Morgan reaches for his guitar and plays a couple of chords. “Tough times, tough times, come again no more,” he sings.
“Must everything be a joke?” Ezra asks.
“What do you know about jokes?” Morgan replies. “You’ve never told a joke in your life.”
Ava smiles, listening. She is watching down the road, toward the colored church, which is just now getting out, people scattering to the four winds, some on foot, others in buggies behind horses and mules. A few drive cars. The congregation is large, forty or fifty people. Maybe folks who have less in life are more inclined to seek spiritual comfort.
Ava is waiting for Luther Briscoe to emerge and then she sees him, wearing the same suit and hat as a few days earlier. He passes the time of day with some fellow parishioners before making his way along the dusty road, heading north into the hollow. Ava comes down the steps and intercepts him at the intersection below the Flagg house.
“Good Sabbath, Mr. Briscoe.”
Luther regards her warily. “Good Sabbath to you, child.”
“How was your trip to Johnson City?”
“Oh,” Luther replies just as slowly. “It was fine. Just fine.”
“And Angeline? How is she doing?”
“She’s doing real good,” Luther says. “Real good.”
Ava is of the opinion that people who have a habit of repeating themselves are quite often not being entirely honest, as if they are convinced they can make a falsehood true by mere repetition.
“Did I hear that she’s working for a dentist up there?”
“She is,” Luther says. “She is working for a dentist.”
Ava slips a forefinger into the corner of her mouth and pulls it back. “I have a troublesome tooth here in the back. I wonder if I should consider going up to Johnson City to see this fellow Angeline works for.”
She has succeeded in making the old man uncomfortable. He removes his hat as he glances over to the Flagg house, where the family is relaxing on the porch yet.
“Well now, he is a colored man—” he begins.
“I have no problem with that,” Ava assures him. “As long as he’s a skilled practitioner of the dental arts.”
Luther takes a few moments. “The thing is—she is no longer working for him. She has taken a position elsewhere.”
“And where is that?”
A family in an ancient chaise pulled by a brindle mule comes down the road. Ava and Luther step out of the way to allow them to pass, the reins slapping along the mule’s withers, the leathers creaking on the shafts.
“She’s working for a harness company,” Luther says then.
Ava attempts to hide her smile. “A harness company? That’s a step down from a dentist, isn’t it?”
Now Luther, seeing his escape, feigns indignation. “There is dignity in all work, young lady. I should think that your father would have taught you that. Good day.”
Ava, having heard all she needs to, lets him go.
The following Saturday she and Morgan sit parked in his Nash a half mile from the Flagg house, hidden in a stand of cedar trees that had been planted by Jedediah years earlier for a wind break. Shortly past ten o’clock they see Luther approaching the Flagg house on foot. He talks briefly with Jedediah, who is hoeing his vegetable garden, and then disappears behind the molasses plant. Moments later, the Model T truck comes rumbling out from behind the factory, heading down into Darkytown.
“Where the hell is he going?” Ava asks.
“His house?” Morgan guesses. “Maybe he forgot something.”
Whatever Luther is doing, he does it fairly quick. After a few minutes, the truck reappears and heads their way. They stay in the trees until he passes and then give him a quarter mile lead before pulling out to follow. Luther would know Morgan’s coupe by sight but there is no reason for him to think he is being followed. Morgan himself doesn’t believe there is much of a reason to be doing it.
“I was thinking,” he says as they drove, “seeing as this is going to be an exercise in futility, why don’t we keep on after Johnson City and head over to Nashville? The Grand Ole Opry is on tonight.”
Ava wears a tweed cap and one of Morgan’s jackets, a leather aviator’s coat from the Great War that had once belonged to their uncle. She fancies herself to be traveling incognito, like a spy in the French countryside during the war. Following an elderly colored man across North Carolina isn’t quite the same but she has always had a fertile imagination.
“We won’t be going to Nashville today,” she says. “And why do you think this is a futile effort?”
“I still say he’s got himself a woman somewhere and there’s nothing to this,” Morgan replies.
“Then why wouldn’t he say that, instead of making up tales of his daughter and harness companies?” Ava asks. “He’s a widower; he’s allowed a woman friend.”
Morgan thinks about it. “Maybe he’s getting horizontal with the woman and he doesn’t want Father to know. Our father is a preacher, you’ll recall.”
Ava laughs. “Getting horizontal with the woman? Is that what you just said?”
“I was trying to be delicate,” Morgan says. “What would you call it, sister? What do they call it in Chicago?”
Ava props her feet up on the dash. “Oh, in Chicago we would never speak of such carnal matters in polite company.”
“You are full of beans right up to your ears,” Morgan tells her.
Ava laughs again. They drive in silence for a time. Up ahead, the Model T is chugging along, barely making twenty-five miles an hour. It will be a long drive to Johnson City.
“You feel like something’s changing, brother?” Ava asks. “Changing where?” Morgan replies.
“Well, in the world.”
“Not really, other than everybody’s broke. And hungry.”
“I don’t mean that,” Ava says. “That’s just economics. But it seems like something new is happening out there. The music’s different. Books are different. Take Henry Miller. Have you read his books?”
“His books are banned.”
Ava gives him a look, her eyebrows raised.
“What?” Morgan demands. “You’ve read them? What’s in there that folks are so excited about?”
“People getting horizontal, for one thing,” Ava says.
“How did you ever get your hands on them?”
“Come on,” Ava admonishes. “You want people to get their hands on a thing, just tell them they’re not allowed to have it.”
Morgan drives along, his mind now completely focused on Henry Miller. “You didn’t bring those books home with you?”
“Of course I did.”
“Better not let Father find them.”
Ava smiles, shaking her head. “All those things we’re not supposed to be talking about and reading about, Father and Mother did. If they didn’t, you and I wouldn’t be here having this conversation.” She gives her brother a look. “And before you even ask— yes, you can read the books. Might be a good education for you.”
“I’m educated,” Morgan protests.
“You’ll be better educated after reading Tropic of Cancer.”
“There are those who claim that book is immoral.” Morgan smiles and gives her a look. “Aren’t you concerned it might corrupt me? You know—destroy my faith in human nature?”
Ava takes a cigarette from her purse and lights it. “Sometimes I think you have too much faith in human nature.”
“I hope that’s not even possible,” Morgan says. “Then again, maybe it’s required that I have too much, seeing as you have too little.”
Ava exhales, blowing smoke into the air. “Just drive, brother.”
Johnson City is a large town, built hard on the banks of Boone Creek. Just west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it had started out as a railway depot, one that impractically featured two rail lines of different gauges. During the Civil War the town had been renamed Haynesville, after the Confederate general Landon Haynes, whose claims to fame included selling diseased hogs to the local citizenry, stealing corn and shooting in the leg a local preacher who dared to criticize him. When the North prevailed, Haynes was swept into the dustbin of history and the name went back to Johnson City.
It is shortly past noon when Morgan points the Nash down into the valley where the town is situated, trailing Luther Briscoe by a quarter mile. It is overcast and a stubborn mist hangs over the creek.
“You know Charlie Bowman is from here?” Morgan says.
“I did not,” Ava admits. “Nor do I know who that is.”
“Only the best fiddle player between here and anywhere,” Morgan says. “He was one of the main players in the Johnson City Sessions, put on right here by Columbia Records, out of New York City.”
“Now I have heard of New York City,” Ava says.
“You got listening to that jazz music in Chicago and forgot about your own. Jimmie Rodgers was better than all those jazz singers put together.”
“That is a matter of opinion, brother,” Ava says, thinking about Theodore. “Watch him now, he’s turning off.”
Up ahead, Luther pokes along in the Model T. He hasn’t noticed the Nash coupe following him from a distance, but then again he has no reason to think he’d be followed. When he gets to Johnson City, he turns onto Watauga Avenue, leading to the town’s commercial district. There is a succession of retail concerns along the street, including a hardware store and millinery and a movie theater showing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. When Luther reaches a derelict hotel called The Tennessee Arms, he turns into a laneway beside the building.
There is an alley behind the hotel, running parallel to the street, and all along the rear of the stores there. There are loading docks behind each place of business, built mainly of stout piers and wide planking. Luther backs the truck up to the dock attached to the hotel, a rickety platform with narrow steps along one side. He gets out and climbs up to knock on a heavy wooden door. A moment later Bones Pettifog emerges. Bones is over six feet tall and skinny as a snake, with a thick mop of hair and copper bracelets on each wrist designed to drive out the rheumatism, or so he believed.
“Brother Luther,” he says.
“Hello Bones.” Luther says. “How the accommodation business treating you?”
“Could be better.” Bones fishes Zig-Zag papers from his vest pocket and begins to fashion a cigarette. “Truth of the matter is, I ain’t hardly making squat renting out these rooms at four dollars a night. Now, if I was to have access to more of a particular beverage, might just be a different story.”
“I brung five gallons,” Luther says.
“I’ll take your five gallons,” Bones tells him. “You know that. What I’m saying is, I could sell twice that every week. Maybe three, four times that. You surely got a special way with that old corn, Luther.”
Luther climbs into the back of the truck and pulls back a heavy tarpaulin to reveal the jugs of moonshine packed in burlap to avoid breakage. He hands the bottles one by one to Bones, who deposits them inside the door of the hotel. As Luther folds up the tarp to place it in the box of the truck, Bones pulls money from his pocket and begins to count it out.
“Like I said, brother Luther, if you could see your way to increase production, it would make me happier than a puppy with two peckers.”
“I done told you,” Luther said, “I ain’t got but a little still in a lean-to in the hills out back of my house. Ain’t nobody suspicioned me because I keep it little. I get to buying more corn and more sugar and pretty soon I’m sitting in the crowbar hotel, and you, Bones, are as dry as them Israelites out in the desert.”
Bones hands over the cash. “Well, there’s a market here if you ever need it. You got to learn to think big, Luther. Where would Henry Ford be if he didn’t think big?”
Luther smiles. “When I see the commonalities between a rich white man making automobiles and a poor colored man cooking busthead, then you and I will sit in the shade and talk turkey.”
Luther tucks the money in his pants and gets into the truck. Driving out of the alley, he doesn’t notice the Nash coupe, with Ava and Morgan slumped down low inside, parked behind a coal wagon fifty yards away.
The diner is called Mabel’s Good Eats and is located a few miles outside Johnson City, beside the two-lane blacktop on the way back to Wilkesboro. It’s a colored roadhouse, with a long plank counter and tables inside and a barbecue pit out back.
Luther sits at a corner table. He’d enjoyed a meal of pork chops and collard greens and is now eating blueberry pie à la mode with coffee. The place is busy and Luther is focused on his dessert; he doesn’t notice that two white people have entered. Everybody else in the place takes note and are staring. It’s a rare occurrence for white people to come inside.
“How’s the pie, Luther?” Ava asks, approaching the table.
Luther looks up at her and at Morgan, his eyes widening like a little boy who has just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He could insist all day long he wasn’t stealing cookies, but he was going to have trouble explaining his hand in the jar.
“Pie’s good,” Luther replies. “Yes, ma’am.” He glances around, clearly wondering how the two of them happen to be there. It is as if they had dropped from the sky.
Now Ava sits down across from him and Morgan follows suit. Luther reaches for his coffee cup and takes a nervous sip.
“And Angeline?” Ava asks. “How is she?”
“She’s fine,” Luther says. “Just fine. I, um, I told her you were asking after her.”
“That’s nice of you,” Ava says. “You know, I should get her address from you. I might stop and see her one day. Who knows that I might find myself in need of some good quality harness? I assume they make a good harness where she works?”
“I expect they do. Surely.”
“What was the name of the company again?”
Luther shakes his head. The ice cream is melting on his pie, dripping off the wedge and pooling on the plate alongside. “I don’t recall at the moment,” he says. “Um, might it be the Johnson City Harness Company?”
The waitress has been hanging back, watching Ava and Morgan arrive. Seeing them sit down, she approaches now.
“Would y’all like to order something?”
“Pie seems to be the thing,” Morgan says.
“Blueberry?”
“Blueberry will do,” Morgan says. “We’ve heard good things about it.”
As the waitress walks away, Luther shovels the last of his own pie into his maw, gulps down his coffee and gets to his feet, putting his hat on. “I’d best be getting back. Parson be waiting on that truck, I expect.”
“I doubt he’s too concerned about the truck, Luther,” Ava says.
“I best be getting back anyway.”
“How’s the moonshine business these days, Luther?” Ava asks.
“What’s that?”
Ava repeats the question slowly, enunciating each syllable. “I said—how is the moonshine business these days?”
“I have no idea in the world,” Luther replies. “Now I surely got to be going.”
“Sit down,” Ava tells him.
Luther sits, although he is not happy about it in the least. He removes his hat and holds it in his hands. “I should be getting that truck back.”
“In due time,” Ava says. “First, we’re going to clarify a few things. Angeline lives in Richmond, which is, I would hazard a guess, about four hundred miles from where we’re sitting right now. That’s quite a commute for a woman who is allegedly working for the Johnson City Harness Company these days. Wouldn’t you say?”
Luther drops his gaze to the oil cloth tabletop and says nothing.
Ava goes on. “Not only that, but a short time ago you sold five gallons of something to that beanpole behind that old hotel on Watauga Avenue. I can’t say for certain what was in those jugs, but I suspect it wasn’t mountain spring water.”
Luther keeps his eyes on the table. His nostrils are flared and he is stewing now, growing resentful.
“These is hard times, young lady,” he says after a bit. “Hard times.”
“We are well aware of that,” Ava says. “This thing called the Depression affects everyone.”
“Some more than others,” Luther tells her. “Ain’t everybody living in a fine brick house on a hill.”
“I lost my job, same as you,” Ava says. “The only difference between you and me is that I’m not bootlegging and lying about it.”
Now Luther looks up at her. “All due respect, Miss Ava—that ain’t the only difference between you and me.”
He reaches her with that remark. She knows it is accurate, of course, and in truth she admires him for having the gumption to point it out. Most people spend their lives thinking thoughts but never speaking them. Of course, there are those who go overboard in the other direction in that regard; whatever enters their head comes out of their mouth. But Luther Briscoe is not one of them.
The waitress arrives with the pie and coffee. Ava waits until she’s gone before turning back to Luther.
“Point taken,” she says. “But here’s the sticky part of it all. We don’t give a hoot in hell if you want to brew a little white lightning and sell it off. But you’re driving a Flagg company truck. If the law catches up to you, I suspect they might just seize the truck and keep it.”
Luther nods his head slowly. “I suppose I ain’t never thought of that. But ain’t nobody watching me and my five gallons.”
Morgan speaks around a mouth full of pie. “They’re not watching you until they are.”
Luther exhales heavily. “I expect you might be right. Well then, I guess I need to find another way. Or just quit my doings.” He pauses. “That make you happy?”
“Don’t act like making us happy is high on your list of priorities, Luther,” Ava says. “You lied and you did it for yourself. Don’t play the victim once you’re caught in it.”
Luther watches her a long moment, his eyes hooded. It seems he has more to say but decides to refrain. “Can I go now?”
“You can go,” she tells him.
Luther stands and puts his hat on once again. Ava watches him, her mind working. He is nearly to the door when she calls out to him.
Luther turns. “Ma’am?”
“What’s a gallon of moonshine fetch these days?”