Bull Mountain(20)

Delray pulled down tight on the twine in his hands. Ernest tied it off, picked up the bale, and tossed it toward Cooper a little harder than he should have. Cooper caught it and slung it into the bed of the truck. “If you got something to say, Ernest, spit it out.”

It looked like Ernest had a lot to say but wouldn’t get a chance to right then. He squinted at something in the distance over Cooper’s shoulder, and Cooper turned to look as well. One rider. Horseback. Nobody rode horses wild-west-style on the mountain anymore but a fella named Horace Williams, one of the old-timers that lived out by Johnson’s Gap. All three men watched the rider approach in the heat.

“What are you doing out here, Horace?” Cooper helped the old man off the horse.

“We might have us a problem out by the Gap.”

“What problem?”

“Well, me and my boy Melvin was out riding through there a few days ago and we saw one of the old stills running.”

“Which one?”

“The big one way off the pass. The one Rye used for the peach he’d run into Tennessee.”

Cooper took off his hat and used it to rub the sweat off his forehead. “I shut that one down.”

“Yes, sir. We knew that. That’s why I come to tell you.”

“And do I even need to ask who was running it?” Cooper asked the question as if he already knew the answer. Delray and Ernest were all ears.

Horace hung a toothless smile on his face. “It was Valentine. That colored fella Rye was so fond of. Him and a few of his kin. It looked like they were casing up a load to reopen Rye’s old route.” It made a little more sense to Cooper now why this old-timer would want to ride way out here in the heat to give up a neighbor. Rye’s Negro friends were never that popular up here in the first place, and without him around to say any different, old-timers like Horace were itching to see them get run off.

“Didn’t you already tell him he couldn’t do that?” Horace said.

Cooper had. Rye’s sudden disappearance had solved the timber issue but opened up a lot of new problems regarding how to transition out of shine and into weed. Rye was always the go-between for the family and the people living on the mountain. He knew how to talk to people. Cooper would rather not talk to anyone about anything, but he was running things now, so that wasn’t an option. Albert Valentine was one of those problems. Rye had promised him a piece of the shine business once the timber deal was in place. Cooper wasn’t having it. “I told that old bastard that I wasn’t having no Negro run my deddy’s Georgia Peach off this mountain. Even if it was a Negro my brother fancied.”

“Well, Coop,” Horace said, clearly happy to be the messenger, “I reckon he thinks he can do whatever he wants, ’cause he sure is crating up a ton.”

Cooper worked at an itch in his beard and took the chewed-up stem from his mouth. After a moment he pointed it at Delray and Ernest. “You two go down to the Gap with Horace and bring Valentine to me.” Delray dropped the twine and sheathed his knife. Ernest finished tying off his bale and threw it at Cooper hard like the last one. This time Cooper knocked it to the ground. He took off his hat again and put his face inches from Ernest’s. Ernest was a big man with nearly a hundred pounds on Cooper, but he shrank back all the same. “You got a problem, Ernest? Here’s your chance to vent, but I’m not taking any more of your f*ckin’ attitude.”

Ernest met Cooper’s stare. “Why don’t you just give it to him?”

“Give what to who?”

“Give Old Man Val the still. The route. All of it.”

“Why the hell should I do that?”

“It’s the way Rye wanted it.”

Cooper felt the twinge of something mean run up his back, and the left side of his face tightened up. “Rye’s dead,” he said with a low rumble.

“And don’t we all know it.”

Cooper backed away from Ernest and turned toward the truck. He could feel the heat rising under his skin and took a deep breath through his nose. Delray fumbled for the right thing to say to lighten the moment but fell short and just stood slack-jawed.

“Rye showed his people respect. He didn’t work us like dogs in the heat, and he didn’t call us women for wanting to take a minute’s rest.”

“Shut the hell up, Ernest,” Delray said. Cooper said nothing. He just stood with his back to the men, staring at the main house.

“Or what, Delray? Am I suppose to be scared of him just ’cause he’s the boss? Nobody was scared of Rye.”

“And look what that got him,” Delray said, and regretted it immediately. It just slipped out. Cooper turned around.

“What do you mean, Delray?” he said.

“Hell, Coop, I didn’t mean nothing.”

Cooper took a few steps toward the two men. Delray took a step back and Ernest moved to the side.

“I’m not sure what you’re implying there.” Cooper stared at Delray hard enough to knock him down.

“I ain’t implying anything, Coop, I mean, come on, we all know what happened.”

Ernest stepped farther away from Delray. He was going to get them both killed. Standing up to the boss about fair treatment was one thing, but accusing him of killing his brother was something else altogether. Rye was killed in a hunting accident. That was the official story, and whether anyone chose to believe it or not, you didn’t question it. Not to the man’s face, anyway. Cooper and his son had tried their best to save Rye’s life that day. They grieved his death for months. Cooper depended on that truth to be the only truth.