Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley Page B

breathing evened and he began to snore, and I knew it was real sleep this time, not the exhausted unconsciousness. I felt better. I got up from the chair, my joints creaking as if I were as old as he, and concocted a stew of venison and beans and carrots in his old iron pot, and set it to simmer. I was hungry now, but I would wait. I mixed another toddy, my hand perhaps a shade too liberal in the darkness. I sat down again and drank.
    “I recall the night I met him,” he had said. “It musta been near fifty year ago now, but I recollect it clear. It was in the back room a Hawley’s store, halfways through a Saturday night. Back in them days, there was always a card game at Hawley’s on a Saturday. I ’member this here night I wasn’t playin’ on accounta the night ’fore that I took the train up to Sulphur Springs to see this gal, lived back in the mountains, and wouldn’t nothin’ satisfy her ceptin’ I bring her on back into town to walk around awhile, an’ I had to buy her dinner, an’ then I had to take her on home again on the train, an’ after I done all that, she wouldn’t do nothin’ ’sides kiss me. Plus which, I was clean outa money, an’ I had to walk back down. It wasn’t but eight mile, but I tell you, I never went to see that gal again—she was knock-kneed an’ cross-eyed, anyways. Way I heard it, she ended up married to a fella that worked cook on the B&O. Light-skinned fella. She left on to everybody that he wasn’t colored at all, he was an Eyetalian. Whatever he was, he ended up with that gal; an’ welcome, far as I’s concerned.
    “So anyways, I wasn’t playin’ that night, on accounta not havin’ any money. Josh was playin’, though, you better believe that. Onliest thing he loved bettern whiskey an’ women was cards. He had the best pack a coon dogs in the County, but you couldn’t get him to run ’em if there was a card game goin’ inside a twenty mile. I forget who all else was playin’, bunch a the reglar fellas. They was playin’ an’ gettin’ along, an’ all the sudden in walks Mose.
    “Course, didn’t none of us know it was Mose; hadn’t none of us never put eyes to him before. But that ain’t to say we didn’t know who Mose was. Pretty damn near the whole County knowed who he was, even if he wasn’t nothin’ but twenty, twenty-one year old. Hadn’t nobody seen him, but they sure as taxes heard of him. Don’t know ’xactly when it begun; somebody—an’ didn’t nobody recall who—come into town talkin’ ’bout some young boy up in the mountains, callin’ hisself Moses Washington an’ makin’ moonshine that was strongern horse piss an’ smoothern a bunny’s butt. There wasn’t no Prohibition then—a man could drink ’thout the government blowin’ snot in his jug—an’ the truth was, the tax on liquor wasn’t all that high, but there’s lotsa folks ’round here that’d sooner sip on home brew than swim in store-bought. Anyways, this here boy was sposed to be makin’ whiskey so fast he’da drowned hisself if it hadn’ta been that he was sellin’ it fastern he was cookin’ it. I tell you, the way they talked about this boy, they had him livin’ up in some damn holla somewheres in some damn mansion with a whole stable a half-time hillbillies tendin’ his fires an’ cookin’ his corn, while all he done was try an’ keep the greenbacks from cuttin’ off his air. That an’ shoot government agents.
    “That was how Mose’s reputation really got goin’. A couple a government fellas come sniffin’ an’ they caught the tail end a some whispers about Mose, an’ they followed them whispers up into the hills, an’ that was all anybody ever heard of ’em. A couple other fellas come lookin’ for the first two, an’ they went up in the hills, an’ didn’t nobody see them no more, neither. Then four of ’em come, an’ two of ’em went up in the hills, an’ the other two waited in town. The two that went up never come down,