Читать книгу Glory Boys - Harry Bingham - Страница 16

Hennessey finished speaking.

It was gone midnight. Outside, a few dogs howled, a few birds called, the breeze set up a low murmur that ran from tree-top to tree-top. Abe’s blue eyes, the brightest thing in a dingy room, had been fixed on his companion for the past hour and a half. Hennessey had smoked twelve cigarettes, Abe just one. Though the pint bottle of whiskey stood within easy reach of both men, it was still nearly full. Abe hadn’t even finished his first glass.

There was a long silence which extended beyond the two men out into the whispering night beyond.

‘That’s a hell of a story, Hennessey.’

‘You can call me Hen. Everyone does.’

The story was this.

Four or five years back, Independence was like every town the length and breadth of America. It wasn’t too good, it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too rich, it wasn’t too poor. The sheriff was busy now and again, but so was the preacher. Folks made money, they made love, they made merry, they made out.

Then, in the early days of 1921, things began to change. At first, it was nothing so extraordinary. A big block of land down in the river bottom was sold to out-of-towners. Up the hill in Independence, people laughed. The land down by the river was marshy and prone to flooding, pretty near useless for farming. There were jokes made about cows learning to swim, about harvesting corn from a rowboat.

But the laughter died. Construction crews were brought in. The land was drained. The river was contained behind concrete walls. Houses and villas were thrown up: big, lavish affairs with oil-fired generators, electric lights, air conditioning, indoor bathrooms, one for every bedroom. That part of it was exciting – unsettling maybe, but exciting.

Then people began to arrive. The houses became occupied, the villas filled up.

‘There’s gambling down there,’ said Hennessey. ‘Blackjack, poker, craps, roulette, the lot. And booze too, of course.’

‘Gambling? It’s hardly Palm Beach down there, Hen.’

‘Different type of customer. Palm Beach is for rich guys on vacation. They take a swim, they take the air, they take in a casino. Marion ain’t like that. It’s for serious gamblers. Folk who like the fact that there are no cops in shouting distance. The town is run by hoods, for sure, but I’d say that their clients were mostly just as rough.’

Abe thought again about the view of Marion from the air. There was a single-track rail spur linking the town to the coastal express line and a single-track dirt road heading out towards Brunswick. Neither route looked like it carried a lot of traffic.

‘Marion’s tough to get to, isn’t it?’

The storekeeper nodded. ‘They run a kind of buggy service out to the railroad and back. But hard-to-get-to is part of their pitch. They attract the kind of folks who don’t get on with cops.’

‘And they haven’t been the best of neighbours, right?’

The question had made Hennessey reach for another cigarette, which he lit before answering. ‘I guess we didn’t make a great first impression. Certain parties up here in Independence feel mighty strongly about old John Barleycorn and the whole Prohibition thing. Those parties called the cops, the county government, the County Gazette, generally made a bit of a noise.’

‘And?’

‘The cops came, took a look, said far as they were concerned Marion was full of law-abiding citizens going about their law-abiding business. They told us to shut up.’

‘And?’

‘And that night a couple of cars came up from Marion full of goons and Tommy guns. They shot us up. They weren’t really trying to kill anyone, just trying to let us know how they felt about things. We had four people hurt, plenty of damage to property. So then a bunch of people made a complaint not just to the county but to the state Capitol in Atlanta.’ The storekeeper dragged on his cigarette until a quarter-inch glowed red on the tip. He stared at it as if it held an answer to all the problems of the world. ‘The cops never came. The letters never got answered. But the folk who’d signed those letters had their houses torched, shots fired at them, livestock shot dead in the field, crops burned. Two men were beaten so badly they could hardly see.’

Abe looked intently at the storekeeper. ‘The house behind the store has a new front, Hen.’

‘Yes, I was lucky. I got to the fire before it had done too much damage. I don’t give a damn for Prohibition. I don’t see why federal government should meddle in county business. But then again, I don’t like the idea that some goons could go buy themselves the laws they wanted. I don’t like the way they take out their guns at the first sign of trouble.’

‘And now?’

‘They want us gone. That sound crazy? But it’s true. They just plain don’t want us as neighbours. Course they got jobs down there. Poor folks’ jobs. Would be coloured jobs, ’cept we never had too many coloureds round here. Cleaning floors, mending roads, that type of thing. But aside from that, they want us gone. It’s little things, but it’s all the time. Farmers wake up, find somebody’s fired their hayrick. Houghton here gets his place smashed up ’bout once a year. Me, I’ve had my own problems. If anybody even whispers about resisting, it isn’t long before they’re jumped on and beaten to a pulp. We’ve had one person blinded, six hurt so bad they can’t walk without help, and one very brave man killed. And people are leaving. There are easier places to live, easier places to make a buck. They want us gone, Captain. They’re killing the town.’

Silence filled the room. The breeze outside had fallen almost silent and the thumping beat of the electricity generators down in Marion could be heard.

‘That’s one heck of a story, Hen.’

The older man nodded, reached for his pack of cigarettes and found it empty. ‘The hell with it,’ he said, flinging the pack away from him.

‘Sounds like you don’t plan on quitting.’

Hennessey made a gesture with his hands, which could have meant just about anything. ‘I have a steel plate on my door and bars over my windows. I have a gun in the shop and another one by my bed. I’ve stayed because I don’t like quitting, but not everyone feels that way. No reason why they should.’

Abe blew out. ‘Sheez, Hen… Listen, tell me more about the booze.’

‘What’s to say? You want a drink, I’d say the bars in Marion were pretty nicely stocked.’

‘I didn’t mean that. The way you tell the story, the gambling came first and the booze came second. I don’t figure it like that.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Think about it. If you wanted to make money out of gambling there are plenty of places you could pick. Marion doesn’t look like the most obvious choice. On the other hand, if you were thinking of making money from booze, then Marion looks like a million-dollar bet. It’s connected to the sea by a few miles of river. The coast is quiet and open. It’s as close as you want to Bimini and the other islands. The local coastguard has its hands full trying to keep booze out of Miami and Jacksonville. How much time will they spare trying to keep it out of Marion?’

Hennessey nodded. ‘Yeah, they bring it in all right. They’ve got a big shed on the river. But still, how much can one bunch of hoods and gamblers drink?’

‘There’s a rail line. A spur running right down to the coastal express.’

‘Yeah. Twenty, thirty years ago some folks from the north found kaolin upriver from here. They built a rail line, then the kaolin ran out and the business folded. But the line’s still there.’

‘I don’t think Marion drinks all the booze it brings in.’

‘They load it onto the railroad, you think? Could be. I wouldn’t say no. Hell, who knows what goes on in a goon’s mind?’

Abe didn’t answer that. Still lying on the bed, he stretched like a cat, right down to his toes. Then he rolled over, reached for his glass of whiskey and swallowed what remained.

‘What I’m wondering,’ he said, ‘is what goes on in a storekeeper’s mind. And specifically, why a storekeeper should go to a lot of trouble to tell a beat-up pilot a lot of things that aren’t any of his business.’

Hennessey picked up the whiskey bottle, thought about pouring himself another glass, but thought better of it and set it back on the table. He looked suddenly old, tired and unshaven. When he spoke his voice had none of its earlier guile or subtlety.

‘We need your help,’ he said. ‘We need you to save us. You’re all there is.’