[2013] My Brother's Destroyer by Clayton Lindemuth

Author:Clayton Lindemuth [Lindemuth, Clayton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780615938240
Amazon: B00HE2TA7G
Barnesnoble: B00HE2TA7G
Goodreads: 20645765
Publisher: Hardgrave Enterprises
Published: 2013-12-16T07:00:00+00:00

*

Judge Omar Bradley Hickory’s no slouch. Been up there fifteen minute and found two men guilty. Another’s back in jail, pending word on his sanity, and the other two’s out a thousand bucks each, and got to go to the anonymous alcoholics, and do a hundred hours community service. Hickory looks like a grade-school textbook picture of the abolitionist John Brown—white hair and a scowl built into his forehead. I heard cowboy boots clonk when he come in.

Only thing is, when these other fellas stood and lied to the judge, I didn’t feel hardly a thing. Couldn’t scope they eyes on account they heads was turned, but I’d have thought me being sober as a skunk and sitting right next em, I’d have felt sparks.

Bailiff says my name and the defender says, “Guilty, Judge.”

“Creighton. Says here you run a still out of Gleason.”

“That’s right. Say, Judge? You remember Lou Creighton?”

“No. He kin of yours?”

“Uncle.”

“He a stiller, too?”

“If he was, he’d be a good one. Mostly he just tells stories.”

“Stories, huh?”

“You ever hear the one ’bout Mabel Kinney? Down Old Fort?”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Well this old girl could still. Had her an operation size of the Daniel Distillery, all in her tobacco barn. Everyone drank likker here to Boston preferred the Kinney label—and she charged double.”

“I’ve heard of Kinney.”

“She was in the barn bossing orders—and I can tell all this because you law fellers put her in jail and she died there, so I ain’t breaking the code—well she was in the barn snapping orders and she was supposed to be a right bitch about t’bakka.”

“This is pertinent to the proceedings, of course?”

“If you like your likker stories, it sure as hell is.”

“Do I look bemused, Mister Creighton?”

“Well, I don’t know. If you look that way all the time, I’d say no.”

Hickory smiles flat. “You were saying she was a right bitch.”

“So one of her boys has a mouth of chaw and he don’t think she’s looking. He lets a spit loose on a floorboard knot-hole, in the corner where he always does. Mabel Kinney sees this big ol’ string of goop out his mouth, and comes stomping over. Says the habit’s disgusting and foul and if any of that spit ever got in the whiskey mash, it’d be the end of her.”

“This a true story?”

“Well I don’t got to say that fella with the chaw was Uncle Lou. Surprised he didn’t mention it hisself.”

“Go on. Lou spat on the floor.”

“Mabel lit into him—beating, pulling hair, pushing and shoving. Lou was a firecracker ’bout my size. Way he tells it, he’s about to lay into her, since she was more man’n woman anyway, and he blurted out, ‘I’ll spit my whole chaw in that whiskey mash, and you won’t do a damn thing ’bout it.’ He shoves loose, starts edging to the vat. Mabel looks at the rafters like for God to intervene, and sees old t’bakka leaves hanging from the beams. She goes pale as piss and hollers, ‘Eu-fucking-reka!’ She bosses Lou and some other kid up there to fetch down them t’bakka leaves.

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