the door and down the driveway with a cold greasy biscuit in his mouth and another in his pocket. Running toward his brother’s car Jack felt the urge to whinny like a colt and he would bound down the dirt path past the livestock barn, passing through the long rows of peas, beans, and cabbage, summer vines rotting in their furrows. In the car the silhouette of Forrest’s hooked nose and fedora lined down the road, the flared fenders of the car squatting over the tires, weighed low by sixty gallons of liquor. Making local deliveries with Forrest meant dollars in his pocket, and being seen in Rocky Mount with his brother always made Jack fill out his jacket a bit more.
Jack would hop into the back of the car, nestling tight in a niche left in the stacked five-gallon metal cans and crates of half-gallon jars, his forearms across the sloshing liquor, holding it steady as Forrest pushed the stocky four-cylinder Ford up the hard road. Along the way they stopped off at various farmhouses, Jack scooting up and around to the back of the house to drop the cans on the back porch. In Rocky Mount they hit nearly half of the houses and business locations, Jack running through spattered alleys to leave jars on the back windowsill of an office; stamping up flights of stairs and knocking on doors in cramped, slanted apartment buildings, the residents answering the door to find a jar sitting on the floor in the echoing hallway; deliveries around the courthouse, the police station; they delivered to church parsonages, to lawyers, to judges, to city-council members.
Then they would head north up Grassy Hill and go westward into Burnt Chimney and Boone’s Mill, stopping at a little crossroads where a cross-eyed man at a filling station stood under the porch, a rifle leaning against the wall, a car idling in the lot, unloading thirty gallons without a word. Then east to Smith Mountain Lake and dropping off the rest at a filling station run by a man named Hatcher, a group of men waiting in cars and trucks, the squared Nash Victoria Six, long Studebakers, supercharged Packards, the ubiquitous Model A’s, the hubs riding high over the wheels, the springs tuned tall and tight to handle the weight. Men standing quietly, some with pistols sticking out of their beltbands or casually thrust in pockets. In a car idling in the parking lot Sheriff Hodges and his son Henry, a deputy, sat sipping hot coffee out of a metal thermos.
Sometimes there would be a small paper packet on the back stoop when Jack dropped off a can and he would bring this to Forrest who would put it in his shirt pocket. In all the times he went out with Forrest he never saw anyone handling money. The open rush of it worked in Jack’s blood; waiting at the corner in downtown Rocky Mount, men and women out on the morning streets and Jack in his brushed boots, cap at a sly angle, a five-gallon can in each hand, his long arms knotty and taut with the weight. He enjoyed the way people glanced over him without seeing him, how all kinds of people struggled unnaturally to avert their gaze. How young women’s eyes widened for a moment just before they looked to their hands folded on cotton smocks and pleated shirtfronts. Jack could tell that they felt his presence like a dark field, an invisible weight moving through them like charged wind. He relished each moment and relived them in his dreams.
T HAT MORNING Forrest never came. The road was a smooth white drift; no one had traveled down it since the snowfall and Jack figured his brother was unable to leave the restaurant. After standing by the window for an hour he gave up and sat down to a sullen breakfast. Emmy served Granville his biscuits and apple butter, then brought hot coffee, fried eggs, and a steaming bowl of hominy with cracklings. By the time she joined them, Granville and Jack were nearly finished bolting the grub. Jack saw Emmy smirking in her coffee and he wondered if she was glad that Forrest failed to show. Why the
Jack would hop into the back of the car, nestling tight in a niche left in the stacked five-gallon metal cans and crates of half-gallon jars, his forearms across the sloshing liquor, holding it steady as Forrest pushed the stocky four-cylinder Ford up the hard road. Along the way they stopped off at various farmhouses, Jack scooting up and around to the back of the house to drop the cans on the back porch. In Rocky Mount they hit nearly half of the houses and business locations, Jack running through spattered alleys to leave jars on the back windowsill of an office; stamping up flights of stairs and knocking on doors in cramped, slanted apartment buildings, the residents answering the door to find a jar sitting on the floor in the echoing hallway; deliveries around the courthouse, the police station; they delivered to church parsonages, to lawyers, to judges, to city-council members.
Then they would head north up Grassy Hill and go westward into Burnt Chimney and Boone’s Mill, stopping at a little crossroads where a cross-eyed man at a filling station stood under the porch, a rifle leaning against the wall, a car idling in the lot, unloading thirty gallons without a word. Then east to Smith Mountain Lake and dropping off the rest at a filling station run by a man named Hatcher, a group of men waiting in cars and trucks, the squared Nash Victoria Six, long Studebakers, supercharged Packards, the ubiquitous Model A’s, the hubs riding high over the wheels, the springs tuned tall and tight to handle the weight. Men standing quietly, some with pistols sticking out of their beltbands or casually thrust in pockets. In a car idling in the parking lot Sheriff Hodges and his son Henry, a deputy, sat sipping hot coffee out of a metal thermos.
Sometimes there would be a small paper packet on the back stoop when Jack dropped off a can and he would bring this to Forrest who would put it in his shirt pocket. In all the times he went out with Forrest he never saw anyone handling money. The open rush of it worked in Jack’s blood; waiting at the corner in downtown Rocky Mount, men and women out on the morning streets and Jack in his brushed boots, cap at a sly angle, a five-gallon can in each hand, his long arms knotty and taut with the weight. He enjoyed the way people glanced over him without seeing him, how all kinds of people struggled unnaturally to avert their gaze. How young women’s eyes widened for a moment just before they looked to their hands folded on cotton smocks and pleated shirtfronts. Jack could tell that they felt his presence like a dark field, an invisible weight moving through them like charged wind. He relished each moment and relived them in his dreams.
T HAT MORNING Forrest never came. The road was a smooth white drift; no one had traveled down it since the snowfall and Jack figured his brother was unable to leave the restaurant. After standing by the window for an hour he gave up and sat down to a sullen breakfast. Emmy served Granville his biscuits and apple butter, then brought hot coffee, fried eggs, and a steaming bowl of hominy with cracklings. By the time she joined them, Granville and Jack were nearly finished bolting the grub. Jack saw Emmy smirking in her coffee and he wondered if she was glad that Forrest failed to show. Why the
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