Sometimes Being Sold Out Is Worth the Price
I.
Joe Dell, sitting on a basswood stump, looked at the dirty handkerchief, now bloody, that he had wrapped just below his left knee where a timber saw had cut him wide and to the bone. He hadn’t felt it, knew only when he looked down. There was a lot of blood and he was light-headed. A backdraw buck with the saw. The gang boss looked at his leg and told him to go home and come back when he could work. No work meant no pay and a leaner month or more ahead. The rest of the gang looked away. No use inviting bad luck.
He took the makings of a cigarette from his shirt pocket and rolled it, wishing he had his pipe, his hands trembling slightly. The match was easier than the rolling. He would grind salt into the cut and sew it up when he got home. Timber cutting had done him and the boss wouldn’t have any trouble finding another man—more men than work. He took a deep drag of a poorly rolled cigarette that burned unevenly in a run. It would be getting dark in an hour or so and his jack mule was skittish after sundown. The gang would work until they couldn’t see. He picked up his ax and rucksack and crow hopped to the jack with blood squishing in his boot. It had been a warm day in the sun for the Cold Moon and he had worked solidly clearing timber for a new field. He knew he was done with the field unless it needed harvest hands next fall.
The winter twilight was begging the sun as he rode three miles east across the bar land to Angel City, bypassing the abandoned shack he had claimed in the river camp. The cut was serious, but he worried more over lost wages, due only two days pay. The jack was impatient in Angel City while he bought salt and a needle with thread, a reduction in his now worrisome worth. The store clerk looked away as he counted out the change and worried there would be blood on the floor.
Liberated, the mule headed directly to the camp and into the lean-to shed attached to the west wall of his tar paper shack. Joe closed the post gate behind the mule and hobbled inside, dropping his ax and rucksack on the cottonwood plank floor. He lit the oil lamp, started a fire in the small wood stove he used for heat and cooking, and put a pot of water from the hand pump on to boil the needle and thread. He would clean the wound with salt and hot water and stitch it up. He had watched the Army doctors in Allerey.
While the water heated he pulled off the bloody rag and lowered his trousers. The cut was ragged and raw. He took a handful of salt and ground it into the cut. He didn’t have laudanum, but he did have moonshine and took two hard swallows from a mason jar against the burn. The salt and whiskey combination made his eyes water. He bit into a piece of old harness leather from the lean-to when he sewed the cut together with distant hands, blood and tears glistening rivulets in the lamp’s yellow light.
When it was done, he shuffled to the porch step and sat to smoke, his leg stiff with stitches that puckered his skin beneath carefully torn strips of ticking cloth, bulky under his trousers. A waxing moon was rising over the loess hills that marked the east range of the Missouri River Valley. He felt weak and knew it was from blood loss. The night was cold; he was glad to have his Army overcoat, well worn wool from that cold as a witch’s teat winter in France. His breath rose in clouds lighter than the smoke he exhaled from a cigarette. The moonlight made his breath white as bone against the darkness.
The jack was restless in the lean-to and he wondered if he should risk tearing the stitches to calm the mule with feed and brushing. He would be running low on feed soon. Getting up tenderly, he thought he needed a walking stick. Tomorrow he would make one out of a hickory sapling. When he was done tending the mule, he sat again to smoke and felt his leg; blood had seeped through the bandages to his trousers. His hands tingled when he pinched tobacco into paper.
Should switch to the pipe.
He had found the pipe at the hospital in abandoned effects from trenches where childhood died. He believed the pipe was ivory, yellowed with use. During the day he rolled cigarettes, but liked the pipe at night. It was a comfort in France after supper and his duties in the AEF camp. He flipped away the cigarette, its glow a blemish in the darkness.
Need to check the stitches.
Inside, he draped the overcoat on the back of his only chair, peeled down his trousers, and sat at the wobbly table. He turned up the oil lamp. The bandages were stuck to the cut and he pulled them away grimly, dropping them to the floor to boil and use again. Two of the stitches had pulled enough to bleed and the cut was partly open. Tearing more strips from bed ticking, he wrapped his leg methodically, not wanting to do any more sewing. He finished the bandage and stood to pull up his trousers and put more wood in the firebox to hold back the cold for the night. Dizziness staggered him and he held the back of the chair until his head was clear. If he fell, he might not be able to get up.
He banked the fire and headed to his bunk against the east wall, a corn husk mattress on ticking atop metal frame springs. Spreading the overcoat for a blanket and cradling his head in a rolled up Army blanket he used for a pillow, he listened to the night. A westerly picked up and snow would surely blow in from Nebraska. Cracks in the tar paper walls embraced the wind and the lamp flickered as it tickled the ceiling planks with small shadows. He put his hand under the blanket roll and pulled out the YMCA pocket Bible he had signed with his pledge in New York just before shipping out to France. He hadn’t read it for a while, but thought now about Job and riffled the pages.
At least Job had something to start with.
He read while his leg pulsed sullenly and dry plains snow covered the camp, closing the book only when pre-dawn light overshadowed the lamp. Hungry and needing to relieve himself, he got out of his bunk stiffly and put a pot of coffee and a pan of canned beans on the stove before going to the jakes behind the shack. The coffee and beans were bubbling when he got back. He poured coffee into his tin cup and took the pan of beans to the porch to eat, spooning them quickly before they got cold. He had not eaten since noon yesterday. The snow had stopped and the wind had laid, leaving brittle cold in the lungs. When he finished the beans, he scrubbed the pot and spoon with snow and took them inside. He tended the jack with feed and a bucket of water from the yard pump with slow deliberation. Great clouds blew from the mule’s nostrils as it switched his tail and stamped the frozen dirt. The camp breathed stillness in the snow making all his movements seem loud. Finished with his chores, he went back to the porch to smoke over more coffee, pulling the overcoat collar close.
The bare cottonwoods and willows that marked the river’s edge stood starker vigil in the snow, sentries to the borders of land and water. Sitting on the porch step, his leg stretched out, he compared his situation to Job. He could be laid up for a good while and his leg was mostly numb below the cut, nerves disconnected by an indifferent swipe of luck. He had a little money from wages and a remnant of his discharge pay four months earlier, but not much else, his only possessions in a steamer trunk at the foot of his bunk. He had enough food for a week—a sack of oatmeal, canned beans, and tinned meat—before he would have to make a frugal trip to Angel City. Maybe he could ration it. He needed a week off the leg, anyway. Coffee and tobacco were another story; he was low on both, three, four days at most. Feed for the mule was a problem; forage was nearly gone for the winter and what remained was either far ranged along the river or owned. Buying and hauling bushels of feed on the mule was not something he thought he could do any time soon.
Good on stove wood. Need Hills Brothers and Prince Albert.
At noon the sun was a colorless disk casting blank light over the camp. Most were staying in from the cold, coming out only for wood. Smoke lingered in a fragrant pall across the camp. He had coffee with a splash of ‘shine at the table not wanting to think about selling the mule, but it might come to that if he couldn’t get work. Winter was a hard time to look for work. He’d had only scant wages to prepare, not counting on his leg.
Dammit!
“Joe Dell!”
He got up and opened the door, shuffling onto the porch. It was Freddie Vasquez in a red flannel shirt and wearing what looked like a new barn coat. Freddie spread his hands and looked at Joe. He remained a respectful distance from the shack as camp custom required until invited.
“Heard about your bad luck,” Freddie said.
Joe nodded. He had known Freddie since they were boys at Angel School, Freddie making it through fifth grade while Joe went the limit of eighth. Freddie handled freight at Angel Depot and made moonshine somewhere on the river. His mother was Otoe and his father a Mexican said to have been killed on White Cloud Reservation for being a witch. An uncle lived in the camp and he grew up there, the only place he had ever known.
“Think the bone got nicked,” Joe said. “Can’t feel anything below my knee.”
Freddie grimaced and pulled a mason jar out of his coat pocket.
“Sounds like you could use this, then,” Freddie said.
“C’mon in.”
Inside, Joe sat on the steamer truck, ceding the chair to Freddie, his guest. Freddie set the ‘shine on the table.
“You need anything?” Freddie asked.
“Not yet,” Joe replied.
Freddie nodded. He hadn’t expected Joe to ask for anything.
“How long you think you’ll be laid up?”
“Don’t know.”
Freddie nodded again. “No way to tell,” he said, half to himself. “What about your jack?”
“Don’t know.”
Freddie drew a breath and Joe knew he was getting to the point of the visit.
“Want to hire out the jack a little?”
Joe was listening.
Freddie talked faster, “Hear me out. You know what I do, it’s no secret. I need a way to pack corn and such to the stills.”
Joe nodded, “What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t need it all the time. Probably a couple nights a week.”
Joe nodded and rubbed his chin.
Need a shave.
“Why don’t you use a truck?”
“Too obvious.”
“A pack mule ain’t?”
Freddie ignored the question and said, “Dollar a day plus feed.”
That’ll keep the mule.
“Done. When?”
“I want you too, two dollars a day.”
“What for?”
“I need a hand. Getting to be too much for just me and my uncle. I know you.”
Joe said nothing while he looked at the floor.
Three dollars a day with the mule. Timber gang pays one.
“Don’t look like there’s anything better to do,” Joe said.
They shook and Freddie left saying he would need the jack the day after tomorrow. Joe nodded and closed the door. He stretched out on his bunk. Freddie was no muleteer and the jack would be leary of the dark. There was no telling how that would end up.
Guess I’ll have to go.
It was bright moon darkness when Freddie came for the mule. Joe was standing on the porch in his overcoat and a flap hat holding a hickory walking stick. Freddie looked puzzled.
“I’m going with you. The jack can be funny.”
“Your leg?”
“I’ll make it.”
Freddie took the lead and Joe rode the mule, stick across his thighs. The Cold Moon was earning its name; frost lay thick and frozen grass crinkled underfoot. They crossed the bar land to a stand of timber near where Angel Creek met the Missouri River cradling its ice from farther north. Closely scattered in the trees three pot stills were watched by an old man Joe assumed was Freddie’s uncle, who kept away from the firelight and never looked directly at Joe. Freddie had some panniers for the mule and he put jars of ‘shine in them using dead grass and leaves as packing.
Nodding to Joe, Freddie called to his uncle, “I’ll be back.”
“Where to?” Joe asked quietly.
“Depot,” Freddie answered. “I have a key. Stationmaster sells it to railroad crews, passengers, and the upstanding citizens of Angel City. Sends a few jars to St. Joe, too.”
Joe grunted and twitched the jack towards Angel City.
At the depot, Joe waited while Freddie unlocked the freight door and went inside. He came out pulling an iron rimmed freight cart stacked with two boxes of a dozen mason jars, two sacks of flaked corn, a sack each of barley, oats, yeast, and sugar.
“This is what I have tonight,” Freddie said.
Joe eased from the mule and said, “Okay.”
They unloaded the panniers, Joe handing jars to Freddie who went inside to store them in a tack bin. The mule did not want to take the new load and shuddered sideways. Joe held the halter in both hands while Freddie got the sacks into the panniers and tied the two boxes on top with twine.
Not too obvious.
The walk back to the stills was slow with Joe setting the pace. The stick was good for his stiff-legged gait and the moon showed a path across the bar to the timber stand. Joe, weak, sat on a log while Freddie and his uncle unloaded the boxes and panniers, leaving the oats, and stacked everything under a low brush arbor near the stills. The mule was straining in circles to get at the oats. Freddie came over to the log and held out his hand with three silver dollars.
“This is for tonight,” he said.
Joe took the silver and said nothing.
“I’ll need you again in a couple of days,” he continued, “Go home: You look bad.”
Joe stood and took the mule’s halter, steadying himself to mount. He pulled up, swinging his right leg over the panniers. Freddie handed up the stick and Joe turned the jack to home and let it have its head, a fair pace to the lean-to. After feed, water, and brushing down, Joe went inside to stoke his fire, put coffee on to boil, and open a tin of bully beef. He was worn and stretched on his bunk to eat and wait for the coffee. His leg throbbing from the night’s work, he pulled a mason jar from under the bunk and took a long sip. He had a splash with his coffee later while he smoked at the table. Reaching into his overcoat on the back of the chair, he took out the silver dollars. There would be more if Freddie was as good as his word, easy money compared to field and timber work. He went outside for more wood from the cord braced between two trees near the jakes. After banking the fire, Joe slept into the afternoon as the sun faded behind the Nebraska hills leaving dark caverns on the Missouri.
He did not dream of Job.
II.
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, the timber boss came by and paid off Joe. Two dollars.
“Don’t need you back,” he said.
“Didn’t figure you would,” Joe said.
More men than work.
“Heard you was with Freddie Vasquez the other night.”
Joe said nothing.
“He makes good whiskey. Hope he don’t get caught,” the boss said as he left in the moonlit night. Snow stirred behind him as he walked out to his truck.
Joe sat at the table and filled his pipe. When it was drawing well, he poured ‘shine into his cup and sipped. Winter in the camp was lean, as lean as the people who lived there; barren years had worn them. He was thinner than he was in the Army, field and timber work had hardened him. He was not an overly big man, but he could hold his own. His face was indistinct, features not yet in final form. The gouges and scratches on his hands left from timber work were healing unmolested.
Christmas Eve.
He remembered last Christmas in France and scoffed.
Nothing this year unless you count Freddie’s whiskey.
France was different; the Red Cross package yielded two pairs of socks, two packs of cigarettes, two cans of Prince Albert, and a box of raisins. He wrote a letter about it, saying it was more than a lot of children would have. It was more than he ever had. Like most in the camp, Christmas would not be for him. Not much Christmas in Angel City either beyond a candy give-away. Corn prices had dropped by half after the War. Some had borrowed heavily against the price and notes were coming due. There would be auctions ahead.
Job.
He thought about the Army and France, staring at the lamplight, smoking his pipe, and sipping whiskey. He’d liked the Army at first, enlisting in the American Expeditionary Force, eager for comrades and conquests. After swearing his oath at the Courthouse, he went by train to Kansas and Fort Leavenworth. Most on the train had been drafted and many were desperate about leaving home. Some cried. He didn’t understand—happy to be on his way from Angel City and working mule teams. After Fort Leavenworth, he was sent to Fort Smith for a miserable Arkansas month before arriving at Fort Jefferson in St. Louis. He thought the cemetery overlooking the merging of the Missouri and the Mississippi was beautiful.
Won’t be buried there.
By the time he embarked for France from New York, he had seen more than he thought he ever would, eager to see the war. He was denied; the ship arrived in Marseille barely two weeks before the Armistice. After the AEF became the inglorious Army of Occupation, he was billeted with Sanitation Squad 23 at Allerey Base Hospital delivering supplies by muleback and keeping inventory. There was no conquest and comrades became fickle. The days of everybody being his friend were over. Boxing matches relieved frustration with bloody noses. A ten day pass to Paris left him dead broke and vowing to renew his pledge. He finished his whiskey and reached for the jar.
Hell of a place.
Christmas morning was deadly clear to his eyes and it took two pots of coffee to move him into the day. He decided to walk the quarter mile to the river to watch the ice. A few people were out and nodded in clouds of breath. The sun gave little warmth in the Cold Moon and the Wolf Moon would follow suit.
Clear as a bell, cold as hell.
The camp was not laid out in town fashion; a ramshackle path served as a main street connecting shacks. Tarpaper, clapboard, and tin were in equal favor for building. Most in the camp were descendants of the Otoes who had once owned the river valley. Now reduced by the Platte Purchase, they subsisted on fishing, hunting, and field labor for dubious wages. Some were growing old and winter was a hard time to be old in the camp. Most of the young were gone, although a few, like Freddie, remained to care for relatives or die of whiskey or both. It would not be many years before the camp was extinct, a local curiosity until it was turned into a field. Joe knew his throwing in with Freddie was known to all, but silence was ingrained in the camp where all minded their own business of survival and only the improper or unwary would mention it.
Standing on the river bank, he watched the river ice with envy as it headed south even though the end was in it. Across the river, the Nebraska hills were white with bare trees outlined in raw testament to the harshness of the place. Panes of ice cracked in sunlit eddies along the bank.
He stayed a long time, eyes beyond the river and hills.
III.
Freddie came by late Christmas afternoon with tobacco, coffee, and more whiskey.
“Merry Christmas,” Freddie greeted.
“You too. Coffee?”
“Please.”
After sipping coffee with whiskey and talking about nothing in particular, Freddie got to the point of his visit.
“I need you and the jack tomorrow,” Freddie said over coffee.
Joe nodded. “Same thing?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be here,” Joe said.
“Meet me at the stills about dark.”
“Okay.”
The next day was overcast and more snow would follow the north wind into the camp. Joe put the halter and panniers on the mule and led it out of the lean-to into the nearing night with a handful of oats to calm it. He pulled himself onto the mule and twitched it toward the stills with the stick. The mule didn’t move. Joe sighed; it was going to be a long, stubborn night.
Two days and three more silver dollars later, he rode the jack into Angel City for supplies that he put in a pannier. He also bought two pairs of socks, two packs of cigarettes, two cans of Prince Albert, and a box of raisins. The store clerk wrapped everything in brown paper and tied it up with white string. When he got home, he put the package in the steamer trunk.
Something for Job.
Impatient to heal, he fretted as he clumped around the shack. Freddie’s money was good, but moving moonshine for pieces of silver troubled his pledge. He didn’t feel good about whiskey in the camp; it was bad enough without it, but, like silence, ingrained. It could not come to a good end. Ways out of the camp were scant. Some, like Freddie, adjusted the world to fit the camp; others simply had no sense of anything else. He wondered if Job had any sense.
Probably not. Me neither.
Work was tending stills and learning to make whiskey. Freddie had a reputation for good whiskey and sold all he could make. The quality of Freddie’s whiskey was in precise measuring and consistency—seven gallons of boiled and strained water, ten pounds of corn, two pounds of barley, and three pounds of sugar. Joe learned to throw away the foreshots, put aside the heads, jar the heart, and use the tail in the next run. Sampling was expected and Freddie’s white lightning was worthy of its name.
Keeping the fires going was easy work. Freddie’s uncle cut wood and stacked it between trees until Joe could do it. As the leg healed and he did more of the work, the old man came only when they were stocking the depot. It suited Joe; he was back in the timber for two dollars a day. Three dollars if he used the mule, which he usually did to haul wood. In the camp people grew accustomed to him and his mule. It was the sense of the camp that he fit.
Tending the stills was good for reading his pocket Bible and thinking. He wondered how one thing could be bad and not be bad at the same time. The cut was bad, but Freddie brought him here to heal and paid him better than anyone else. Whiskey was bad for some and not others. Stills were illegal and ignored by upstanding citizens without worry. Angel City was only a mile and a half from the camp, but the distance was too far even for Freddie to be more than a tolerated inconvenience to propriety. What would happen without Freddie and the whiskey money he used to keep the camp going? Bad for good? Whiskey turned to money. He carved two small sticks that he tied together with twine for a cross necklace. No use inviting bad luck.
Jesus!
A spark from one of the fires had caught in some leaves and the fire was running to the brush arbor. Joe kicked leaves and stamped the fire, smoke choking him, burning his eyes, saturating him. The leaves smoldered and threatened more fires. When he had it all out, the stills were burning low and his lungs were raw. Scorched dirt was covered in fine black soot that plumed underfoot. He banked the fires under the stills and sat on a log and took a long pull of ‘shine, gaping at the disaster that might have been.
When Freddie came to relieve him, he said nothing about the burn, but touching the cross said, “There’s churches in Angel City.”
IV.
Joe Dell did not have Sunday clothes. Everything he owned down to his hobnail Army boots was shabby and worn. He hadn’t known how ragged he looked in Angel City. With thirty dollars for his work, he could afford new clothes.
In Angel City, Joe looped the halter around a post in front of the General Merchandise. He nodded to the storekeeper and, taking his time, inspected the clothing. It was his first time shopping for anything beyond necessities since before the War. He bought a newsboy flat cap, an overcoat, a pair of work gloves, two pairs of underwear and trousers with suspenders, three shirts, four pairs of socks, a pair of durable brogans, and two cans of Prince Albert with papers. He counted out the silver while the clerk wrapped everything except the brogans.
Joe put the package under his arm, picked up the shoes, and asked, “What’s the best church here?”
The storekeeper was surprised and said, “Well, I don’t know about best, but there’s Baptist, Lutheran, and Father Gwinn every other Sunday.”
“Who’s Father Gwinn?”
“Priest from St Joe. Has Mass here every other Sunday in the depot. Rides the train up and back.”
Depot.
“When’s he here next?”
“Not this Sunday, next one.”
Joe nodded and said “Thanks.”
The Otoe’s Snow Moon earned its name the next few days. Snow and ice covered the river valley from Omaha to St Joe. In Angel City only the depot stayed open to receive freight and passengers braving the winter storm. Tending the stills was painful and Joe stayed close to the fire he had built, leaving its heat only to add wood to the fires. He still wore his old clothes, not wanting to soil his new with woodsmoke and ash. Freddie relieved him around dark and Joe went home to coffee, whiskey, and fresh clothes. He shaved in a tin basin while beans and bully beef heated on the stove. After supper, he took his pipe and read the pocket Bible by lamplight over whiskey and Prince Albert into the smoky haze of the night.
Next morning at the stills, Joe learned Freddie knew Father Gwinn and provided him a jar every other Sunday after Mass. The Baptist and Lutheran pastors also were supplied as needed to subdue any surfeit of temperance sermons. Some parishioners were upstanding citizens, as well.
“You go to Mass?” Joe asked.
“Sure.”
“What’s it like?” Joe’s only experience with church was in a YMCA basement when he got the Bible.
Do they speak in tongues?
Freddie was thoughtful. “It’s like this: There’s two sides. Go with the winner,” he said softly. “I think you’ll like Gwinn. Watch what I do.”
There were more people in the depot on Sunday than Joe thought would be. All were dressed in clothes of little or modest means like his own; two older men from the camp nodded a greeting. Joe followed the Mass, including Eucharist, by mimicking. It gave him an odd feeling. After the Benediction, Joe and Freddie stood outside while Father Gwinn greeted parishioners as they left the depot. Joe pulled his new overcoat closer as Father Gwinn approached, smiling into the biting cold.
Freddie took a jar in a flour sack from under his coat and said, ”The angel’s share, Father.”
V.
The Pink Moon changed life in the camp for the better. Gardens were prepared and sowed with seed from General Merchandise. The willow fish traps were full and smoke racks on sand bars hung with strips of catfish and drum in the spring sun. Dogwood bloomed in its frailty. Morels were hunted to roll in corn meal and fry in lard, a welcome delicacy after the winter. In the lengthening evening people walked and talked, sometimes in Otoe when Joe Dell was around.
Joe made a garden with beans, squash, and sweet corn. He made it three sisters fashion like the Otoe—hills of corn for the beans and squash to climb. The garden grew well on mule dung and by the Sturgeon Moon he was buying only canned beans and tinned meat to eat when he was working. He grew gaunt in the timber heat, muscles stretched across bone in flat bands; tending stills was hot work in summer months.
Prospering by camp measures and mindful of his pledge, Joe began to help Freddie in the camp with cans of beans and fruit, tinned meat, sacks of flour, lard, and sundries, becoming known as “Good Joe.” Freddie bought a second-hand truck, the jack could not haul all the supplies for the stills and the camp. Without pay for the mule, Joe was still earning fair enough for his needs and buying his own feed. After tending the stills, he rode or walked the jack to the river in the evening to ease them both into the darkness just in case.
Freddie needed more stills, his whiskey had more demand than supply running at capacity. He bought two acres of timber land with a spring in Angel Holler for two hundred dollars to get new stills going, another three at least. The land was in a draw that opened to the south on Angel Road, making hauling supplies practical with a truck. The old stills would stay on the bar for Joe and the uncle to tend. The spring was good water and he drove a sand point pipe for a hand pump. He staked out a cabin and lean-to, intending to live there someday, away from the camp.
Three new pots and tubing, one hundred percent copper, were delivered from St. Joe by train to Angel Depot. Freddie and Joe loaded them onto the truck and headed up Angel Road to the draw. There was starting to be a track to the still site. Getting the stills up took some time; they had to be made with some runs before jarring the ‘shine. Breaking in the stills gave time to build the lean-to with lumber salvaged from an abandoned cattle shed up the holler. When it was finished, Freddie stocked it with whiskey makings, jars, and firewood. Joe mused he was in more timber as he worked.
The whiskey was good.
D Bedell is a retired technical editor and writer in the defense industries. He has a BA in Writing from Missouri State University and an MS from the Center for Defense and Strategic Studies. His roots are in the Northwest Missouri River Valley where some of his work is set.
