Bull Mountain(47)

Darby drained his cup, suffered the burn, and poured another. Val picked up the jug and took a swig directly from it. No reaction, like he was drinking water.

“That shit they’re makin’ up here ain’t just a drug. It’s evil, plain and simple. Your deddy was the toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever known, and as soon as your brothers brought that shit up here, it killed him.”

“The drugs didn’t kill him, Val.”

“The hell they didn’t.”

“Cricket told me your daddy died in a fire,” Darby said.

Clayton scratched at his beard. “That’s the story Halford would have everyone believe, but the truth is he blew himself up learning how to cook that shit. You’d think the high-and-mighty king of Bull Mountain wouldn’t go out like some lowly city tweeker, but in the end, that’s exactly how it went down.”

“You should have more respect, little Burroughs. He was your father, and despite his failings, he only did as his deddy did before him. You want to put that anger on somebody, you put it on your grandfather. That’s where this family went wrong. Nobody deserves to die like your deddy did. He died screaming. You ever see somebody burn to death?”

Clayton had.

“It was your grandfather let loose the demons on this mountain, and there ain’t no putting that genie back in the bottle. Never was. Not then, not now.”

“Wilcombe had a little something to do with it.” Again Clayton put that name out there to see the reaction he’d get. This time he got one. Val put the jug down.

“How do you know that name?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I know everything about what Hal’s got going on in Florida. I know my father partnered with those people and Hal is keeping it going. Feds are ready to march on this mountain and burn it all down, along with all the people on it—people I don’t want to see get caught up in the crossfire, if you get my meaning. I’m up here on damage control, hoping to save some lives, and nobody wants to f*cking listen.”

“You ain’t gotta cuss me, boy.”

“Sorry, Val. It’s just frustrating. I’m not ready to write this place off. Katie keeps telling me it’s a lost cause, Hal just wants to kick my ass, and now you don’t even want to hear how all this might end peacefully.”

Val reached two enormous hands out and grabbed the side of Clayton’s rocker, stilling it. “You listen up, boy. You need to go back down to that little lady of yours and listen to what she has to say. Live your life in that valley, policing decent folk. Nothing up here will ever end peacefully. I’ve come to terms with that, and anybody making a home here has as well. You need to stay away from here and count yourself lucky that what your granddeddy did to your deddy and brothers didn’t take on you. That’s the peaceful ending you’re looking for. You surviving all this mess. You and Kate growing old together and having a baby, the good Lord willin’. That’s the best ending I can think of. If it’s time for Bull Mountain to pay for its sins by way of these federal agents, then so be it. You just stay clear. It’s time, and believe me when I tell you, all us sons-a-bitches that walked this road, we deserve it.” Val spoke that last part quietly, remorsefully, and into his lap.

Clayton stared off into the thick expanse of forest that surrounded Val’s home. After a minute or so of listening to the trees sway in the warm wind, it was Darby who broke the silence. “If the feds know everything, like locations and key players,” he said, “then why don’t they just send in some kinda stealth team to take them all out without a big show?”

“Because that’s not how things work up here,” Clayton said. “You can’t sneak up on the man who has spent his life in the woods sneaking up on things. They’ve tried it before. People died and nothing changed.”

“So go home, boy,” Val said, as if suddenly validated by Clayton’s own words. “Go home and stop this foolishness. Stop thinkin’ you can right something that was born wrong.”

Clayton rolled the red plastic cup between his palms and snorted out a dry, humorless laugh. He held up the cup in a toast. “To being born wrong,” he said, and drank the cup empty without waiting for a response. It stung the split in his lip but went down welcome and easy.

2.

“Drop me at Lucky’s.”

“But this is your vehicle, sir.”

Clayton said nothing, and Darby was done arguing. “Lucky’s it is.”

Lucky’s was the kind of place that took on a different tone depending on where the sun was positioned in relation to the Earth. During the day, a cantankerous old man named Hollis “Lucky” Peterman and his equally disgruntled brother, Harvey, served biscuits and gravy and the best cornmeal flapjacks in the state to the deer hunters and working folk of Waymore Valley. But in the evening, Harvey’s daughter, Nicole, poured bourbon cocktails and pitchers of Bud Light from behind the bar. Lucky’s had a built-in crowd, mostly because Lucky’s was the only bar in the Valley. Clayton half-stumbled out of the Bronco under the influence of Val’s apple-pie moonshine. He grabbed the frame of the car door, steadied himself, and slammed it shut.

And that’s how it happens, he thought. One drink, on a particularly bad day, and a year’s sobriety blown to hell like it never happened. Clayton was sure, by night’s end, he’d be a smoker again, too, but these revelations weren’t enough to keep him from walking into the bar. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his clouded mind and made for the front door. The place was jumping. Old-school Hank Williams Jr. belted out from the jukebox: “. . . and I get whiskey bent and hell bound.” It set the tone with an appropriate anthem for the night. Nicole looked as beautiful as ever slinging liquor behind the bar. Most of the women in Waymore wore clothes they cut from patterns or bought from the discount stores that peppered the countryside, but Nicole was a different type. She wore high heels with her blue jeans. She shopped at the outlet malls down in Buford and Commerce. Tonight Nicole wore a shiny black sequined top that sparkled under the bar lights and dark blue jeans tight enough to keep a man Clayton’s age looking straight ahead, in fear of feeling like a dirty old man. Clayton spied an open seat at the end of the bar and slipped in, barely aware of the foul mood, or the shame, he was toting in with him. He eased onto the bar stool and took in a deep lungful of secondhand smoke. It smelled bad and good. He took off his hat and laid it on the bar, accidentally nudging the arm of a large gentleman to his left.