Deputy Watson is Truscott Parr’s cousin, the dimmest in a family of notable dimwits. Parr hired him after being harangued by his widowed aunt for months, finally deciding that having an incompetent deputy hanging around the station was less bothersome than listening to a meddlesome relative on the telephone three or four times a week.
Watson is at the station alone on Monday morning, drinking coffee while cleaning his fingernails with a jackknife and reading the Police Gazette. He’s at a desk by the front windows, his feet up, hat tilted back. When Ava Flagg walks in, he tosses the magazine aside and jumps to his feet.
“Miss Ava Flagg,” he says.
“Hello, Turtle,” Ava says.
Deputy Watson cringes. He’s been called Turtle since grade school, a nod to his plodding manner, in spite of his protests against the moniker. He stares at Ava; she wears a felt hat and a summer dress that shows her legs. She looks like an angel.
“What brings you down here, Miss Ava? Has there been some malfeasance in your neck of the woods?” Deputy Watson had moments before been reading in the Gazette of some instances of malfeasance. He has a habit of appropriating.
“I hear you have Bobby Barlow locked up back there,” Ava says.
“He’s here,” Watson says. “The chief and I picked him up Saturday night on a robbery charge.”
“You didn’t exactly pick him up,” Ava says. “I was there watching.”
“You was there?” Watson asks. “At the races?”
Ava nods. “What’s the bail?”
“I didn’t know you was a fan of the car races,” Watson says. “Might I accompany you there sometime?”
“You may not,” Ava says. “What’s the bail on Barlow?”
Watson’s face falls at the rejection but he nonetheless begins to rummage under the counter for the paperwork. “Not altogether certain what the chief done with it.”
“What’s the charge again?” Ava asked.
“Him and this woman are supposed to have robbed a gas station over to Stony Point, a month or two ago. They didn’t get but a few dollars.” Watson continues to look through the paperwork.
“I wouldn’t expect too high a bail for a minor crime such as that,” Ava says.
Deputy Watson gives up on the counter search and heads for a rolltop desk in the corner where he begins to open and close drawers. Ava presses him.
“What would you say a typical bail would be in a situation like this, Deputy?”
“Well, Chief Parr sets the bails.”
“I didn’t ask you who set them,” Ava says. “Looks to me like the Chief has left you in charge here today. Which means he trusts you to handle whatever needs handling. Wouldn’t you agree, Deputy?”
“Oh, I can handle the job,” Watson assures her.
“I admire a man with confidence.” Ava pulls out all stops now. “I might even have a change of heart and attend the car races with a man like that.”
That particular lie has the desired effect. Watson’s search for the paperwork comes to an immediate halt and he approaches the counter where Ava stands.
“Chief Parr is the justice of the peace, and so he is the one to set bail,” he says. “But since he has left me in charge, I see no reason why I can’t do it.” He pauses, doing some figures in his head. “For a seven-dollar robbery, I suspect two hundred dollars would be a fair bail.”
Ava flinches. She’d been burning her own money and family money since they’d started cooking moonshine. There had been corn to buy, and sugar and yeast. A doctor for Jodie and money for the tow truck. A lot of cash going out and not an Indian head nickel coming in. Ava has a hundred and twenty-three dollars in her pocket at the moment, the last of her savings.
“That’s sounds a might high for robbing a gas station,” she tells the deputy. “For a seven-dollar robbery, I figure fifty dollars is about right.”
Deputy Watson, flush with thoughts of escorting Ava to the races some night in the near future, is amenable to that figure. Ava pressures him to get something down on paper, eager to get it done before Chief Parr shows up. Watson manages to find the proper form and Ava helps him fill it out after she notices him having trouble spelling the name Bobby. When it’s done, she counts the money out onto the counter. The deputy carries it over and deposits it in a wall safe, then returns to stand before Ava, grinning like a lovesick schoolboy.
“Well?” she says.
“What?”
“You going to fetch the man?”
“Oh, right,” Watson says.
Moments later he leads the prisoner out from the back. Bobby stops short when he sees Ava.
“You paid my bail?”
“Let’s go,” Ava says.
Bobby regards her quizzically for another moment, then turns to Deputy Watson. “Give me the keys to my car.”
“I don’t know,” Watson says. “The vehicle has been.. .what do you call it.. .pounded?”
“Impounded,” Ava says.
Bobby steps closer to the deputy. “Give me the keys, Watson.”
“I best wait for the Chief on that.”
“Give him the goddamn keys, Turtle,” Ava snaps.
Watson goes back to the rolltop and produces the keys and hands them to Bobby before turning to Ava.
“I will see you soon, Miss Ava,” the deputy says. “When would you like to go to the races?”
“I think we should wait,” Ava says.
Watson hesitates. “Well.. .wait until when?”
“I don’t know.. .’til hell freezes over?”
Outside she and Bobby walk around the building. It had rained overnight and there are puddles on the street and sidewalk. Ava sidesteps the deepest holes, striding along with purpose, not speaking. Bobby follows her.
“What in the hell is going on here?” he asks. “Why would you post my bail? You’re not sweet on me, Ava Flagg?”
“Hardly.”
Bobby smiles. For the first time in two days, his headache has disappeared. “Don’t seem to me like you’re too sweet on the deputy neither.”
Ava snorts in response. They round the corner of the building. Morgan’s Nash is parked in the alley, alongside Bobby’s coupe.
“Get in your car and follow me,” Ava says.
“Follow you where?”
“Flagg’s Hollow,” Ava says. “You’re coming to work for my family.”
Bobby stops walking. “Hold on now, girl. I appreciate the bail money and I swear I will pay you back but I got no desire to go into the molasses business.”
“Just do as I say,” Ava tells him.
“Why?”
“Because five minutes ago you were locked up and now you’re not.”
Bobby follows her. Whether it is from obedience or curiosity or the fact that someone who looks like Ava Flagg has instructed him to do so, he can’t say.
But he follows her.
Morgan and Luther are working in the plant. They have a large vat of mash cooking and another vat in the distilling stage. The youngster Cal is monitoring the drip-drip of the finished product into the jugs.
Ava and Bobby enter though the side door. Ava gives Bobby the lead and purposefully hangs back to allow him to take in the situation, a picture being worth a thousand words, as she’s been told. Bobby has a long look around as he lights a cigarette. Closing his Zippo with a snap, he turns to Ava and smiles.
“Seems like you Flaggs have moved on from molasses.”
“Can’t get nothing past you.”
Morgan approaches, wiping his hands on a towel. “Hello, Bobby. I hear you’re coming to work for us.”
“You heard wrong,” Bobby says. “I know how to drink liquor but the only time I ever made it I near poisoned half the 2nd division.”
“Who said anything about you making liquor?” Morgan asks. “Come on.”
He goes out the back door, with Ava at his heels. Bobby follows again. Following Flaggs seems to be the order of the day. Behind the building, the two damaged double-T Fords are parked. Bobby looks at the vehicles a long moment and then at Ava and Morgan, who are watching him silently.
“So what’s the lowdown here?” Bobby asks. “You bailed me out of jail so I could fix these old trucks?”
“Not exactly,” Morgan says. “We have come to realize that these old trucks are not the solution to our problems.”
“And what problems are you referring to?” Bobby asks. “Seems as you both take your own sweet time to get the cow into the barn.”
Morgan nods toward the plant. “We’ve obviously gone into the moonshine business. You are the first outsider to know about it and we’re counting on you to keep it quiet. Right now we can produce good quality busthead in suitable quantities. Problem is— so far we’ve been losing most of it.”
“Losing it how?”
“To our competitors and other sundry thieves,” Morgan says. “They’re a damn sight meaner than us and the cars they drive are a damn sight faster. So we’re outgunned from every direction.”
Ava indicates the worst of the trucks. “Boone Saunders’s boys run this one off the road near Hickory Creek a week ago. The colored boy driving looks worse than the truck. Broken arm and fifty-some stitches in his head.”
Hearing the name Saunders, Bobby reacts. He takes a moment. “Boone’s men take the booze?”
“Of course they took the booze,” Ava said. “Do you know anything about the man?”
“I know a little,” Bobby admits. “I know enough I wouldn’t send a colored boy to bootleg in Boone’s backyard.”
“In hindsight, we’re all geniuses,” Ava tells him.
Bobby is only half listening. He’s looking past her now, to where Jedediah stands. He must have come around the corner of the building while they were talking. He wears his broad-brimmed Sunday hat and has the stem of his pipe clenched in his teeth. He watches Bobby openly, as if taking his measure.
“Now here comes the parson,” Bobby says. “Don’t tell me y’all brought me here to save my soul.”
Jedediah takes the pipe from his mouth and approaches. “I don’t believe we’re equipped to take on a chore that size.”
Bobby laughs. “At least somebody in the family has a sense of humor.”
“We haven’t had much to laugh about of late,” Morgan says.
“That’s where you come in,” Ava tells Bobby. “It’s pretty obvious that these tired trucks are not up to the job. We’re lucky to get twenty-five miles an hour out of them.”
Bobby comes slowly to his conclusions. “Now we’re getting down to it. You wouldn’t be of a mind to suggest that I give you my coupe, for getting me out of jail? Truscott Parr told me the very same thing just yesterday. I told him what he could do with that offer. As a gentleman I will rephrase it for you, Miss Ava—but suffice it to say you’re not getting my car.”
“We don’t want your car,” Ava says.
“Good thing, cuz like I said, you’re not getting it.” Bobby pauses a moment, trying to figure the angles. “What then?”
“Your skills,” Morgan says. “We need you to build us a delivery vehicle every bit as fast as that Ford of yours. With springs and shock absorbers and whatnot that can handle these mountain roads at high speeds.”
Jedediah has been hanging back but now he comes near. “Whatever talents the Lord deprived you of in the common sense department, He made up for in the mechanical gifts He bestowed on you.”
“You insult me and praise me all in one sentence,” Bobby says. “So you figure this is the Lord’s work, do you, Parson—selling mountain dew?”
“He moves in mysterious ways,” Jedediah replies.
“We have heard that your employment at Charley Walker’s garage is about to come to an end,” Ava mentions.
Bobby nods. “Yeah. Bill Charters started back today. Sounds as if you Flaggs have me under surveillance.”
“It’s a small town,” Morgan reminds him. “Can we assume you are currently seeking employment?”
“Not so sure about that,” Bobby says. “I consider myself a race-car driver these days.” He pauses a moment. “Not a bootlegger.”
“You getting rich racing against those silly farm boys over at Boss Harvey’s pasture, are you?” Ava asks.
“Not so you’d notice,” Bobby admits.
Ava shrugs. “I suppose you could always supplement your income by robbing more gas stations. But isn’t that what landed you in the jailhouse to begin with?”
Bobby, knowing full well that she’s the cat to his mouse, makes no reply to this.
“Then again, you’re not in the jailhouse at this particular moment,” Ava points out. “But I suppose you could be again. I suspect Truscott Parr isn’t going to be too happy when he hears how I convinced that puddn’head Turtle Watson to set bail. I suspect Truscott Parr might be more than happy to offer me a refund and take you back into his loving arms.”
As threats go, this one isn’t even remotely veiled.
“You’ve got some hard bark on you for a woman,” Bobby tells Ava.
“These days a woman needs a hard bark,” Ava replies.