On a warm spring
night in the Appalachian highlands, a slight breeze ruffled the sugar
maples as scudding clouds played across the silver face of the moon.
Two figures transited a clearing, fetching up against a wooded copse
of smaller trees and underbrush. The sweet reverie of the evening was
thus broken:
“Consarn it,
Luke! I tol’ ya that thicket weren’t no place fer th’ still!
Cain’t hardly see nuthin’!”
“Well, dagnabbit,
Bobby Lee, it ain’t supposed to be out in plain sight, ya ninny,”
replied his companion, hands on hips in irritation. “Git the durned
flashlight!”
“Well, shoot, yuh
don’t have to get all miffy,” Bobby Lee muttered as he pawed
through his rucksack for the forgotten flashlight, accompanied by
peevish snorts and whatnot from Luke. The torch was retrieved. A
click; a curse; a rattle; a click: light. The light swung toward the
trees, the beam illuminating…trees.
After a moment of
stunned silence, Bobby Lee gawped, “Shoot! Luke, whar’s thet
still? Weren’t it right thar in them trees? We come up th’ wrong
hill, d’ye reckon?”
“Dang, Bobby Lee,
yuh mortal igno-ramus, cain’t you see thet still done been
stole?” Luke snapped with absolutely no pun intended. He
indicated a shiny coil of wire lying in a portion of the copse that
appeared to have been recently trodden. “Must be them durn
Hilliards from over the holler.”
“Well, shoot,
Luke, whatcha think it’s the Hilliards fer? You know them
no-account Balls been talkin’ trash ever since they ol’ coonhound
fetched up and died,” Bobby Lee offered. “I ain’t never pisened
no dawg,” he finished, in an unconvincing mumble.
“Well, we cain’t
get nuthin’ done standin’ here jawin’ about it,” Luke pointed
out. “Let’s see if there ain’t tar tracks er somethin’ we can
foller.”
So the two sleuths
tramped about the area, and before long, Bobby Lee espied some
tar—er, tire, imprints, which caused our heroes much
excitement.
“Luke! Git on over
here, now! I found ‘em! Them’s the tar prints o’ them what
stole the still! Ah kin tell ‘cause they’s deeper in the dirt
then our tar marks, accountin’ fer the extra weight o’ the still
in the back o’ they truck,” Bobby Lee concluded, feeling mighty
smart. Luke inspected the prints and grinned widely with his
remaining teeth.
“Well, now, Bobby
Lee,” he opined, “Thet were a right sharp piece o’ detective
work you done, and I do believe ah kin do one mahself: I bet I kin
tell ya jes’zackly whose truck it was done keeried off thet still.”
“Knock y’self
out,” Bobby Lee obliged.
“It was ‘em
Barnetts, live up on th’ hill,” Luke stated, then upon viewing
Bobby Lee’s skeptical expression, continued, by way of explanation,
“Yuh know how Ol’ Man Barnett drives thet ol’ truck with the
busted-out mirrors?”
“Yeah,”
concurred Bobby Lee, “Ever’body knows he’s too durn cheap to
get ‘em fixed—he won’t pay fer nuthin’ but keep that ol’
thing runnin’. But whut’s yer point? You cain’t look at tar
tracks and see no busted mirrors!”
“Keep yer
britches on. Muh point was thet Ol’ Man Barnett is so cheap, he
don’t wanna buy proper tars fer his vee-hicle neither. He won’t
never shell out the money fer a whole set o’ tars, so whut he does
is: he buys two new ones and puts ‘em on the front and back o’
the right haind side, and he rides ‘em bald tars onna lef’ hand
side.”
“Whut the hell’s
he do thet fer?” from a perplexed Bobby Lee.
“Okay, yuh know
how them Barnetts live up a top o’ thet there hill? Well, when the
ol’ man’s drivin’ up the mountain, his bald tars is on
the outside, cuz it don’t matter none. But when he’s got to go
down, he’s got his good tars on the outside, fer traction,
like.”
“Thass a cheap
ol’ man,” Bobby Lee observed, then continued admiringly, “but
durned if it don’t make sense.”
And sure enough,
the tire imprints on the ground before them displayed, quite clearly,
a healthy tread on one side of the vehicle, whereas clearly the other
set of tires were as bald as Willard Scott. So, our heroes, having
discerned their target, headed that way in triumph, shotguns at the
ready, prepared to make their righteous bust.
But alas, it was
not to be. For, upon gaining ingress to the property of the
aforementioned Mr. Barnett, Luke and Bobby Lee found said Barnett,
accompanied by a retinue of rather sizeable nephews, holding forth in
the dirt yard of his abode. As the pair drove up, they could see that
the old man was quite agitated.
“Hell-fahr!
Wait’ll I git my hands on them varmints whut stole ol’ Bessie;
I’ll whup ‘em sideways,” expressed the old man to his posse,
who were standing about with expressions which ran the gamut of
emotions from bored patience to patient boredom. They clearly had
been giving audience to the old man’s frustrations for quite some
time. When Luke’s dusty pickup rattled onto the property, this new
development in their evening garnered immediate attention.
“Appears to be
some commotion in th’ yard,” observed Luke, squinting through the
window of the pickup.
“Bout to be a lot
more commotion,” Bobby Lee commented, patting the stock of his
.30-gauge.
“Hold yer water,
dagnabbit! There’s too many of ‘em boys. Mebbe this is a good
time fer finesse.”
“Finesse mah butt
crack,” Bobby Lee muttered, but he left the firearm in the gun
rack. They approached the Barnetts, but before they could utter a
word, Old Man Barnett fixed one accusing eye on each of his visitors
(he’d been like that since birth), demanding in a screech, “You
boys wouldn’ta happen to have recently ack-quired a truck, would
ya?”
“We already got a
truck,” Luke declared, returning Barnett’s right eye’s
suspicious stare in spades. “We seem to be missing a still.”
“Whut you lookin’
here, fer??” grunted one of the towering nephews.
“The still done
got stole in yore truck, Barnett!” blurted Bobby Lee—not a
master of the “finesse” concept—at Barnett’s left eye.
“Well, ain’t
that rich,” cackled Barnett, “Mebbe if ye find out who stole my
dang truck, ya might find yore dang still!”
Luke and Bobby Lee
were suspicious of this new information, but Barnett offered to show
them around the place in order to prove that the truck was no longer
present. He waved toward a dilapidated lean-to beside the barn, which
served as a makeshift carport for the missing vehicle. “We was out
at the hog sale with Chappie Smith in his flatbed, and when we come
back I noticed some varmint’d swiped mah Bessie. If ye reckon ye
might find some sorta clue here, knock y’self out,” Barnett
snarked.
Luke observed the
oil stains on the ground that did seem to confirm that a vehicle had
been kept there. He poked around a bit in the hay that was strewn in
the area while Bobby Lee grumbled darkly about all the nearby places
you might hide a truck with a still in it. After a few minutes, he
stopped and picked up a piece of crockery that had been lying hidden.
He inspected it with great scrutiny, then his grizzled face beamed
with the light of realization.
“Royal Dalton,”
he nodded to himself.
“I b’lieve
that’s Franciscanware, actually,” Bobby Lee volunteered.
Luke emitted a
long-suffering sigh and explained, “Not Royal Doulton, ya nit;
Royal Dalton. He sells odds and ends of fine china up at th’
flea market. I’m bettin’ this bit fell outta his pocket or pants
cuff or somethin’.”
“Balls o’
hellfire!” declared Barnett. “Chappie an’ me done seen his
sorry hide up at th’ hog sale, but he wuz on his way out in a big
hurry—he knew there wouldn’t be nobody home! Shoot, I knew he wuz
still ate up over the fack that I wouldn’t buy any more o’ them
dang Majolica pitchers!”
So Luke and Bobby
Lee led the caravan of Barnetts to the doorstep of Royal Dalton, whom
they caught red-handed and red-nosed, passed out on a mattress in
front of his doublewide and reeking of moonshine. The still was still
in the bed of the truck, both of which were discovered by our
intrepid search party, under a suspiciously truck-shaped tarp.
Needless to say,
Mr. Dalton was whupped soundly by the aggrieved parties, all of whom
swore they’d never trusted his sorry hide, knowing full well they’d
be back at his flea market booth the next time they had an eye on the
newest item in the Spode Christmas Tree service.
In Possum Hollow,
all’s well that ends well.
Image courtesy of Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/moon-at-night-moonlight-full-moon-54671/
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