“You felt sorry for Mrs. Plummer, so you got your drink of water, your directions into town, and left her alone. Then you met Mila Driscoll. It could be surmised that you felt no compassion for her.” He let the implication sink in, then nodded toward the bunk. “Don’t let your supper get cold.”

Fifteen

Wallace Johnson had been born with a pair of jug ears like none other. Not only did they exemplify the term, they sat low on his head and were pointy on top. This manifestation of a problematic gene pool had made him a target for torment by his passel of siblings, by his mother when she got on one of her infamous tears, and by his classmates during all six years of his schooling.

He dropped out at the age of twelve and went into the family business, for which limited literacy wasn’t a drawback.

By the time Wally had reached his late teens, the ridicule he’d suffered in his youth hadn’t made him timid and fainthearted as one might expect. Instead he was arrogant, aggressive, and meaner than hell.

Somewhere along the way, he had learned to wiggle his ears, making them even more notable. Nowadays, when teased, he used this talent to distract from his reaching for brass knuckles, which he then vigorously applied to the individual who’d insulted him.

One of Gert’s whores, who was relatively new to Lefty’s and didn’t hail from the area, was unaware of Wally Johnson’s reputation for a short temper and violent bent.

She was fully aware of it now.

Which was why Gert had left her husband to tend to a middling crowd and had taken back roads out into the countryside to where two clear-running, spring-fed creeks converged, making it an ideal spot for one of the Johnson family’s distilleries.

Wally was the family member assigned to operate and protect this particular still. Sometimes a kid cousin helped out with heavy lifting or needed repairs, but Wally preferred to work alone.

He lived in a lean-to tucked beneath a shelf of limestone, which helped shelter him from the elements. The geological configuration also hid the fire required to keep the sour mash cooking at a low boil, thus making the still unlikely to be detected. Wally’s great-granddaddy Hiram had chosen the location for just that reason. The still had been producing corn liquor uninterrupted for decades.

When she was still a distance away, Gert rolled her Model T to a halt and blinked her headlights twice, slowly, then three times in rapid succession, signaling that she was a customer and not a hostile competitor or the law.

Wally emerged from his lean-to, cradling a rifle in the crook of his elbow, but, having recognized Gert’s vehicle, motioned her forward. She drove up to within yards of where he stood, stopped, and climbed out.

She motioned toward the still. “Why ain’t you cookin’ tonight?”

“Didn’t have a mind to,” Wally replied. “You bring my money?”

She planted her hands on her broad hips. “Dammit, Wally, I’m as pissed off at you as I can be at a person, and that’s sayin’ somethin’.”

“What for?”

“What for? I’ll tell you what for. Thanks to you, I got a whore who’s out of commission.”

“You told me to do something that’d guarantee getting Doc Driscoll out to the roadhouse, and that’s what I did. Saw him arrive myself.”

“I told you to rough up the girl a little. You broke her arm, her jaw’s out of whack, and her eye’s all swole up and ain’t sittin’ right.”

“She told me she’d as soon fuck a bat as me. Which I reminded her of, she said.”

Gert gave a snort. “You’ve heard worse.”

He held out his hand, palm up. “Twenty bucks, Gert.”

“I ought to subtract what her ruint appearance will cost me in lost revenue.” She looked over at his stockpile of moonshine. “But, because I’m a forgivin’ person, I’ll take a jar for the road, and we’ll call it even.”

He cursed her under his breath, but went over to a straw-lined crate, lifted out a mason jar of white lightning, and brought it back to her. She screwed off the lid and took a swallow. “You’re one ugly son of a bitch, Wally, but you do make good ’shine.”

“Twenty bucks.” He held out his hand again.

Gert screwed the lid back onto the mason jar and tucked it in her left armpit, then reached into the pocket of her dress, took out a pistol, and shot Wally in the forehead. She bent over his supine form, stuck the bore of the pistol into one of his ears, and fired again.

As she was getting back into her car, she muttered, “Pissant cost me a week’s worth of work out of that girl.”

Sixteen

Shortly after noon the next day, Harold came to Thatcher’s cell.

Tags: Sandra Brown Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net