“Next thing, we need to break her in,” Bobby says.
It’s Friday suppertime, inside the molasses plant turned distillery. Morgan and Ava have been watching as Bobby set the timing and adjusted the carbs on the rebuilt engine, freshly installed in the Ford sedan and running now like a Swiss timepiece. Tiger Thompson provided a Buick transmission to back up the flathead. The airplane seat from the wrecked Sopwith is bolted in place and two headlights, rescued from a REO truck parked in the weeds behind Uncle Stan’s barn, are now clamped to the sedan’s rear bumper. A toggle switch on the dashboard controls the lights.
“How do you do that?” Morgan asks. “Break her in.”
“Gotta put some miles on her,” Bobby says. “But we need this here vehicle to remain incognito, as we say in the service. So I’ll be driving it at night.”
“Driving it where?” Ava asks.
“Thought I might take a run down to Charlotte, show old Tiger the fruits of his labor. You want to come along?”
“Nope,” Ava says.
“What about you, Morgan?” Bobby asks. “Fancy a trip to the city?”
“My group is playing at the roadhouse tonight,” Morgan says. “How long to—what do you call it—break her in?”
“Charlotte and back a couple times ought to do it,” Bobby says. “Tiger might want to take her for a spin.”
“You saying the car will be ready to run a shipment of moonshine to Johnson City tomorrow night?” Ava asks.
“The car will be ready,” Bobby says. “The driver won’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m racing my coupe over to the Hollow.”
“You’re working for us,” Ava reminds him.
“After a fashion,” Bobby says. “I told you before—I’m a race-car driver first and a moonshiner second. Not only that but I’ve been a Flagg family employee for nigh on to two weeks now and I’m every bit as broke today as when I arrived.”
“You’re working on contingency,” Ava reminds him. “That was made clear to you from the start.”
“Contingency,” Bobby says. “Every time somebody throws a big word at me, I feel like my pocket’s being picked.”
“You figure to make your fortune driving around in Boss Harvey’s hay field?” Ava asks.
“Nope, but I might pick up some cigarette money, which is more than I’m making here,” Bobby replies. “Besides, I want one more race under my belt before I head to Bristol next week.”
“What’s in Bristol?” Morgan asks.
“They got a real track over there,” Bobby says. “Half-mile oval, with banked turns.”
“Whatever the hell that might mean,” Ava interjects. “I don’t care about Bristol, nor Boss Harvey nor none of it. Luther’s got a man in Johnson City waiting on fifty gallons. You’re claiming that this car will get it there. I want to know when.”
“My dance card is wide open for Sunday night,” Bobby says. “If that pleases you.”
Ava frowns. “Run liquor on a Sunday?”
Bobby scoffs. “You figure God’s okay with it one day and not the next?”
Morgan laughs. “He has a point, sister.”
“I suppose so,” Ava says reluctantly.
“Then Sunday it is,” Bobby says. “Now if we got that straightened out, I’m going to idle this sedan down to Charlotte and back.” He smiles at Ava. “Sure you don’t want to tag along?”
“As sure as God made little green apples.”
Saturday afternoon Bobby picks up Myrna Lee from the drugstore. She’s waiting out front for him when he pulls up in the coupe, wearing sunglasses and her drugstore uniform and carrying a paper bag. When she opens the door and hops in, her hem raises, showing a little leg and the flash of a white slip.
“I got us a couple of sandwiches from yesterday,” she says. “Still good.”
Bobby finds first gear and pulls onto the street. “I ain’t precious,” he says. “Day-old is fine by me. We going to your place?”
“No,” she says. “Boone’s there and he’s in a foul mood.”
“Well shit,” Bobby says. “I was looking forward to...relaxing some.. .over lunch.”
“I know you and your relaxing,” Myrna Lee says. “Why can’t we just go somewhere and have a nice lunch? If all you want to do is screw me, then you can let me off right here.”
“Now, now. ..I never knew you to be opposed to a little slap and tickle.”
“I’m not,” she tells him. “I thoroughly enjoy the slap and the tickle. But there are more things in life than sex, Bobby Barlow.”
“Oh, I know,” Bobby says. “There’s cars, for instance.”
She rolls her eyes and sighs. “You are impossible.”
Bobby smiles. “Nothing is impossible. What do you say we take a drive out to the lake?”
The lake is really a large spring-fed pond that feeds into Cub Creek, south of town. Bobby parks the coupe on the firm sand, then retrieves a blanket from the back of the car and spreads it out for them to picnic on. Along with the chicken salad sandwiches, Myrna Lee brought sodas and a cookie for each of them. She removes her sunglasses to unpack the food and that’s when Bobby sees her eye.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Hell,” Myrna Lee says, putting the glasses back on. She’d forgotten she even had the shiner. “Boone came home nasty last night and just got nastier. Wanted something to eat and when I didn’t have it on the table fast enough, he delivered me a smack.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Myrna Lee shrugs her indifference. “Just when he started to calm down, Val came home and got him going again.”
“Going about what?”
“Something to do with this big bootlegger over to Knoxville,” Myrna Lee says. “Daddy says the man is lowballing him. Worse than that, he’s been buying shine from somebody else around here and Daddy don’t know who. He’s looking to find out. Val’s blood was up. He wants to kill this Knoxville character but Daddy keeps telling him no.”
“Who is the Knoxville character?”
“Name of Otto Marx,” Myrna Lee says. “Supposed to be the Al Capone of Tennessee.”
“I’ve heard of Otto Marx,” Bobby says. “Tell Val they got Capone for tax evasion. He ought to try that on this Otto mug.”
“Very funny, Bobby. I’m not telling Val nothing.” Myrna Lee has a sip of soda. “So now they’re determined to find out who’s been cooking shine and selling it up to Knoxville. Undermining them, is the word Daddy used. Top shelf liquor too apparently, which don’t make Boone and Val any happier, let me tell you.”
Bobby thinks about it. The day she bailed him out of jail, Ava Flagg told him that they’d lost a shipment of liquor to some big cheese in Knoxville. And the Flagg moonshine was indeed top shelf. She didn’t mention the name Otto Marx, probably because she was afraid it might scare Bobby off. She might have been right in that. Even in backwoods North Carolina, people knew about Otto Marx. Bobby has heard enough to be more than wary.
“You got any idea who it is, might be cooking around here?” Myrna Lee asks.
“Sure,” Bobby says. “Give me a pen and paper and I’ll jot down two or three hundred names. Making shine is the national pastime in these counties, babe.”
“Yeah, but how many are selling it to this Otto fellow?”
“Maybe Otto Marx didn’t buy it,” Bobby says. “Maybe he just took it.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Just a guess.”
But Bobby decides to leave it alone. He couldn’t say for sure that the liquor Otto Marx had confiscated from the Flaggs was the same stuff that now had Boone Saunders in a snit. And Bobby wouldn’t tell Myrna Lee about it even if he could. He and Myrna Lee had a lot of fun together, in and out of bed, but at the end of the day, family was family, especially in these hills and hollows. Boone is Myrna Lee’s daddy, and he would surely not be a particularly forgiving daddy if he suspected anyone in his family of being disloyal.
Bobby drains his soda and then stands and walks over to the water’s edge, where he kneels and picks out a handful of flat stones. He begins to skip them across the water. Myrna Lee watches from the blanket for a while then removes her shoes and ankle socks and comes over to wade in the shallows.
“Lookit this,” Bobby says. “A perfect stone. I bet I can make this one skip ten times. Wanna bet?”
“What are we betting?”
Bobby thinks. “Kisses. Ten skips, I get ten kisses. A kiss for every skip.”
“How is that a bet?” she demands. “What do I get if I win?”
“Then you get ten kisses.”
“Sounds to me like this game is rigged.”
“For certain it is,” Bobby laughs and he tosses the stone, skipping it six times. He grabs Myrna Lee around the waist. “That’s six kisses.”
She complies. “Just your good fortune that I happen to enjoy kissing you, Bobby Barlow.”
They kiss for a while, standing along the shore. As they stand there a pair of trumpeter swans swoop in and land on the lake. Myrna Lee sees them and squeals.
“Look!” she says. “Lovebirds, just like us!”
Bobby glances over. “If you say so.”
“Oh you,” she says. “You ain’t got a romantic bone in your body. I suppose if I was a carburetor or a radiator, you might write a poem about me.”
“I just might. Not sure that I know any words that rhyme with carburetor.”
She cuffs him sharply across the head and then kisses him again. “All right, I need to be getting back. I take more than an hour and old man Sutherland is like to pitch a fit. Saturday afternoons can be busy at the counter, even in these tight times.”
“What does he pay you, that old fart?”
“Thirty-five cents an hour,” she says.
“That’s brutal, that is.”
“Times we’re in, it’s better than no job at all,” Myrna Lee reminds him. “Plus I get tips on top of that. Last week, this gentleman came in, dressed in a fine linen suit and silk tie, and had the hamburger plate, which comes with mashed potatoes and coffee. That gentleman tipped me fifty cents.”
“High cotton, baby.”
“What does old man Walker pay you at the garage?”
“I’m not working there anymore,” Bobby says. “His mechanic came back.”
“What do you do for money now?”
“This and that,” Bobby says.
“This and that ain’t a job,” Myrna Lee tells him.
“Come on, baby. I don’t need a regular job. I’m a race-car driver.”
Back in town, Bobby drops Myrna Lee off in front of the drugstore and watches through the window as she hurries inside to tie her apron on and walk behind the counter. Bobby waits to see if Sutherland dresses Myrna Lee down for being five minutes late. But the owner is not in sight.
While watching for old Sutherland, Bobby suddenly gets the feeling he himself is under scrutiny. He turns to see a yellow Packard sedan parked across the street. Two men lounge outside the car, smoking cigarettes. One is tall and lean and the other has a pockmarked face. They have a long look at Bobby’s stripped-down coupe before walking over.
“You look like a man who knows his way around,” Slim says approaching.
Bobby smiles at the line. So that’s what he looks like? “Something I can do for you boys?”
“We’re just in from Nashville, on business,” Elmer says. “We were admiring your car. Looks like a lot of motor under that hood.”
“It’s an engine,” Bobby says.
“A lot of engine then,” Elmer says.
“This is a sure enough one-horse town,” Slim says. “What do folks do for excitement around here?”
“Same as they do in Nashville, I expect,” Bobby says.
“Well, in Nashville we go to dances and restaurants and the picture show,” Slim says. “And sometimes we’ll take a nip, if one is offered. Would there be anybody around here makes a good corn liquor?”
Bobby gives the two a closer look. They’re overdressed for Wilkesboro. A couple of mugs from some city, probably not Nashville, who think they’re dealing with a dumb hick. Well, let them think it.
“I can tell you boys are strangers,” Bobby says. “Else I’m sure you would know that corn liquor and other spirits are against the law in Wilkes County. Selling and imbibing both.”
“Ain’t you a smart sonofabitch,” Elmer says.
“Why, thank you,” Bobby tells him. “An expert on that, are you?”
“I ought to knock your goddamn teeth down your throat,” Elmer continues.
“For being smart?” Bobby asks. “My mama used to give me hard candy.”
Slim intervenes. “Making and selling moonshine is against the law in most counties,” he says. “And yet damn plentiful at the same time. And we suspect it’s just as plentiful in this little hillbilly town as elsewhere. So who do we see around these parts, if we want to wet our whistle?”
“Can’t help you,” Bobby says. “Looks like you boys are stuck with dry whistles.”
“This goddamn smart mouth,” Elmer says.
Bobby smiles as he hits the starter button and the coupe roars to life. Elmer is still offering threats as Bobby pops the clutch and spins the rear wheels as he drives off.
“You don’t know for sure it’s the same shine,” Val says.
They are sitting in the farmhouse, drinking and waiting for Myrna Lee to come home from work to cook up some supper.
“I know for one hundred per cent certain,” Boone replies. “I’ve been drinking corn liquor since I was in three cornered pants. I can tell a horse from a cow or a dog from a cat. There’s boys who use buckwheat honey in their mix and that’s what I’m tasting. Exact same stuff we took offa that nigger boy driving that old Ford truck that night.”
“You figure he was heading to see Otto Marx?”
“He was heading to see somebody,” Boone says. “But he only had ten jugs. Not sure that quantity would justify a drive all the way to Knoxville in a claptrap T. Who knows who else these boys are selling to?”
“We don’t even know who these boys are,” Val says. “We should have got that nigger’s name. Or at least found out where he lives. You figure it’s niggers cooking this stuff?”
“I suppose anything’s possible,” Boone says. “I knew a woman once taught her cat to play the damn piano. I suppose you could teach a nigger to make moonshine. But I kindly doubt it. That boy was just a sprite. I figure he was only transporting.”
Val laughs. “Or trying to.”
“We don’t know who he was but we do know which direction he was heading,” Boone says. “He was heading west but what does that tell us? Could have been going to Knoxville. But he could have been heading to Johnson City too. Or even Sugar Grove or Hampton. We don’t know. But we do know the road he was driving. As for a vehicle, I suspect whoever he’s working for ain’t about to send out that old truck again, not after last time.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know what as yet,” Boone says. “But I goddamn guarantee I’m going to find out.”