Everything But the Truth by Steve Peek

Author:Steve Peek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, humor, great depression, roaring twenties, humor romance, rags to riches, american 1920s, womens humour, womens equalty
Publisher: Steve Peek

Chapter Seven

Jedidiah Crosses Widow Knighten

Jed knew he was too old, too slow, and too morally indifferent to fight a Whiskey War for the revenuers. It didn’t matter to him personally one way or the other whether people made or drank their own liquor. He even acknowledged how moonshining helped the economy for the poor people in the county. On one side of the ledger, it was as American as a business endeavor could be. He who made the best whiskey and sold it at a fair price came out on top—free enterprise at its simplest.

On the other side of the ledger, no matter how many good reasons existed, it was against the law, both state and federal. Jed’s adult existence came from his job with the postal service and the recent appointment as a US marshal. There was no getting around it. Both jobs called for him to swear an oath. Jed took his word seriously.

When US Treasury Agent Oliver Arceneaux stepped out of his new Ford Model T Depot Hack, Jed knew the agent brought with him a load of trouble.

The vehicle was essentially a Model T truck with an open wooden frame and a roof overhead. It provided seating for two upfront and had two benches opposite each other along the truck bedsides.

A telegraph reached Marshal Jedidiah Wheeler, ordering him to meet Agent Arceneaux under the Talladega River bridge on County Road Four on the afternoon of July 6, 1924. It ended with the instruction, “Tell no one.”

Jed arrived just before noon. He parked his car off the road and sat under the bridge, watching the Talladega River gurgle over and around stones.

Other lawmen arrived. In all, marshals from the four counties surrounding Jed’s own Cherokee County were present. Sheriffs from Etowah, Calhoun, and Cleburne Counties were there. The sheriffs from Dekalb and his own county were conspicuously absent. Like everyone else in Cherokee County, Jed knew Sheriff Lawrence Pickens had his fingers in every moonshiner’s till.

Agent Arceneaux, or Ollie, as he asked to be called, was one of those large, portly men who moved much faster and more lightly than anyone suspected. A clean-shaven face and head, along with a waxed, copper-colored handlebar mustache, gave him the appearance of a circus strongman painted on a poster.

His mission was to lead these fellow keepers of the law in the destruction of illegal distilling operations and the arrest of the stills’ owners and operators. His two-phased plan called for local law enforcement to provide him with information about moonshine operations in their counties and to help him infiltrate the distribution of these illegal beverages. Phase two would involve raids to destroy stills and arrest their owners and operators.

His agents had spent the past two years executing phase one.

The men at this meeting under the County Road Four bridge were to inform no one of the mission; the missing sheriffs were high on the list of those not to be told. These sheriffs were not to be made aware of anything as they were under investigation and might soon find themselves in Federal court.

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