“See you boys,” Goat said. Putting his back into it, he swung the wagon in a tight circle with Ralphie pushing. As they headed down the trail, Goat glanced back in time to see Luther’s silhouette raise a hand just before the tarp dropped, blacking out the lanterns’ glow. With the wagon loaded, going downhill was a lot quieter. The wheels squeaked less, and the heavy load made Ralphie concentrate more on steadying the wagon and less on talking.
Halfway down the mountain, Ralphie finally spoke in a whisper. “I don’t want to cross Cassidy Lane.”
“We aren’t,” Goat answered. “And there won’t be any trouble.”
The words were still in the air when a distant gunshot cracked the night. Goat’s first thought was that a pocket of sap in a log had popped in the flames at the still, but even as he thought this, the whole mountaintop erupted in a flurry of gunfire. The first gun was joined by the deep booming of shotguns and the long burps of a tommy gun on rock and roll, something straight from Nam. A mad minute. Dumping all of your ammo into a kill zone. Pure insanity firing until the wood stocks smoked and the barrels sizzled.
Goat turned the wagon and ran it off the path. Ralphie stood unmoving on the trail. Goat grabbed the teenager’s shirt and yanked Ralphie over and down to the ground with him.
“A raid?” Ralphie gasped. Their faces were so close that Goat smelled the sweat beading on the young man’s upper lip.
Goat shook his head. Neither the police nor the Revenuers did a raid like this. Sure they’d shoot you, but they wouldn’t gun you down. The gunfire rose to a crescendo; then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped, leaving only the echoes bouncing back and forth in the hills.
Ralphie said, “We have to go back. We gotta help.”
Goat shook his head. He knew the reality of killing. Up on the hill, armed men were doing the business of murder.
“We got . . .” The words died. Ralphie’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
“They’re dead,” Goat said harshly. “They’re all dead and we can’t help a bit. What we gotta do is get off this mountain.” Pulling Ralphie in his wake, Goat slipped back onto the trail.
In the heavy summer air, gun smoke drifted down the hill like a mist, the smell bringing an adrenaline dump and a rush of memories. Thumping helicopter blades beating the air as they dropped into an LZ. Orange muzzle flashes and the steady climb of an M16 on full auto during a firefight.
With Ralphie in tow, Goat moved quickly down the path, his eyes scanning for the irregular shape of a human. His ears strained to hear the snap of twigs or the racking of a gun. At the bottom of the hill, they paused to catch their breath.
The night was silent. Even the running water in the creek was holding its breath. No animals hooted or scurried.
Without speaking a word, Goat and Ralphie shared the same knowledge.
The four men they had just left were dead.
Chapter 2
Goat drove alone, the moonlight ticking through the trees, blackness and a milky slash alternating across the GTO’s hood. White. Black. White. Black.
Goat and Ralphie had slipped down the hill to where the GTO was hidden. With the headlights off, they made their getaway by creeping down the winding road until they hit the main road, where Goat snapped on the lights and sped away. After making Ralphie promise not to tell a soul what had happened, Goat dropped his cousin off at the mouth of his holler.
Leaning down into the car, Ralphie asked, “Was it like that . . .over there?”
Goat knew what he meant. Vietnam. “Some. And sometimes worse.”
Without a word, Ralphie closed the GTO’s door and trudged into the darkness.
And Goat drove the night away. The slash of the moon’s bone light and the ink of dark night played out across his windshield.
Black.
White.
The windshield awash in light.
Awash in darkness.
As the GTO’s tires rolled along eating up the miles, the wheels in Goat’s head ate up time. He thought of Luther, not as the man he’d seen just a few hours ago, but as the boy he’d met in a schoolyard wearing hand-me- down clothes and a serious look in his eyes. Goat thought of how Luther’s daddy had helped him out, schooling him on making shine and teaching him how to handle a car with a full load. Goat’s own father had died in the mine when a slate of coal broke free and crushed him, so Luther’s dad helped fill a gap that Goat needed filled as a boy. Then there were the memories of the recent past in Southeast Asia; Goat knew the country had taken part of his soul. Driving, Goat let his mind ramble and bounce about as night gave way to morning.
At daybreak, he pulled into a filling station on a mountain road. As he pumped gas, the road rumbled like a freight train, and he shielded his eyes as a line of big coal trucks thundered down the road in convoy. The trucks were placarded for the Blue Diamond Mine. Luther’s employer. Each truck had a driver and a passenger, and the passengers all had rifles poking out the truck windows. Bell County was one incident away from a full-blown coal war. Goat watched the trucks roll past, but his mind was elsewhere, had latched onto a memory. During the Tet offensive, Goat had found himself fighting alongside a unit of MPs. During one of the lulls, he had talked to the lieutenant, a Yankee from Boston named Cuddy, who said he was going to be an investigator. Goat didn’t understand much about investigating, and John Cuddy had simplified it for him — you ask questions to find answers, but mainly you kick stuff around, hoping to stir things up.
Goat planned on stirring things up.
Chapter 3
Goat didn’t want to go back. He had enough visions of dead men in his head, and he didn’t want any more. Steeling himself, he went up the hill. The Radio Flyer was still half on the trail, half off in the weeds, just as he’d left it. Pausing, Goat put a hand on the cases of whiskey and used the tail of his shirt to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Looking up the hill, he saw the green tarp hanging from a tree and flapping in the breeze. His mouth was dry, his throat constricted. Taking a deep breath, he left the Radio Flyer and slowly walked up the trail, keeping his eye on the edge of the swaying tarp.
Up close, he saw the tarp had been shredded by bullets. It was splashed with brown stains drying sticky, and flies congregated over the blood. The two old men with their well-worn white shirts lay next to their stools. One had fallen right and one had fallen left. One was facedown, and the other on his back with his arm thrown over his head. The still was riddled with bullet holes, and the stack of finished moonshine was toppled over, glass and cardboard scattered on the ground. The raw scent of fermenting mash, the smell of moonshine from smashed mason jars, was overpowered by the copper tang of spilled blood.
Luther and his daddy were farther away from the still. Luther was on his back, arms splayed, a single gunshot in his forehead.
Tears burned Goat’s cheeks.
Luther’s daddy was a few yards back down the hill, facedown, one arm stretched out toward his son.
Goat knelt in the open space between Luther’s body and the old man’s. Flies buzzed incessantly, but it was no match for the buzzing in his mind. A sob came from his chest, popping out of his mouth like an air bubble. He drove his fingers into the dirt and rocks and leaves, pushing his anger into the ground. Grinding his teeth. Following the sob came a long moan that turned into a primal scream. He shouted until his lungs hurt and he could no longer make a sound. His outburst scattered a flock of crows in the trees, their black ragged wings flapping as they dove and cawed through the valley.
Silence returned.
Goat pushed the rage back into the dark box in his chest. Calmly, he stood and surveyed the killing ground. Instead of seeing the sunlight streaming through the trees, Goat imagined the scene as it had been the night before. Darkness. Lanterns lighting the still operation.
Luther and his daddy were at the far edge of the light, almost into the trees. Luther heard the killers come. He went to check it out. His father followed. Goat remembered hearing the shot that at the time he’d mistaken for a
