Tereau rolled a cigarette and handed the package of rough-cut string tobacco to Avery.
“Them bootleggers don’t take much chance,” Tereau said. “They’re always moving and they got nobody except the state police to look out for. I got to worry about federal tax agents. They never give up looking for my still. Every month there’s a couple of them wandering around in the marsh trying to find it.”
Avery laughed.
“They almost got me once,” Tereau said. “When I leave the still I run a ball of string around it in a big circle, about a inch off the ground. One day I come back and the string was slack on the ground. I snuck around to the other side and seen one of them tax people hid behind my boiler. I went and got my brother and two cousins and we brung the wagon up close to the still, then I sent my brother down to the tax fellow’s car. It was parked about a mile away on a side road. My brother stuck a match in the horn button to keep the horn blowing, and the tax fellow took off to see what the matter was, and while he was stumbling through the briars we took the still to pieces and loaded it on the wagon and moved the whole outfit to the other side of the marsh.”
“You crazy old man,” Avery said.
“I don’t see no old men around here.” Tereau puffed on the cigarette and flicked it into the fire.
“Why’d you want to come with me, Avery? You ain’t never been one to break the law,” he said.
“Since they took the farm I got nothing else to do. Breaking the law seems like a good enough way to pass the time.”
“If you don’t end up busting rocks on a work gang.”
“They never caught you.”
“That’s because I been at it a long time. My grand-daddy taught me all the tricks when I was a little boy. When he was a young man he sold moon to both the Confederate and Federal army, except he might have added some lye or fertilizer when he sold it to the Yankees. I hope you ain’t planning on making this your life’s work.”
“You’d put me out of business.”
There was a rustle in the bushes, and two men came into the clearing. They were bootleggers who picked up Tereau’s whiskey to run it through the marsh downriver to Morgan City, and eventually to New Orleans and the dry counties in Mississippi. The whiskey was sold for four dollars a gallon at the still and twelve dollars a gallon at the retailers. It was clear and tasted like Scotch, and sometimes coloring was added and the whiskey was sold with a bonded Kentucky label, although its maker had never been out of Louisiana. The bootleggers were sunburned, rawboned men; their hands and faces were smeared with mud and handkerchiefs were tied around their necks to protect them from the mosquitoes; they were dressed in heavy work trousers and denim shirts with battered sweat-soaked straw hats. They were from the Atchafalaya basin, where there is nothing but lowlands, swamps, mud-choked bayous, scrubby timber so thick it is almost impassable in places, and swarming clouds of mosquitoes that can put a man to bed with a fever.
The bootleggers came into the light of the fire. Their names were LeBlanc and Gerard. LeBlanc was the taller of the two, with an old army.45-caliber revolver stuck down in his belt. He was dark and slender, and his eyes were bright in the light. Gerard was thick-necked, unshaved, with heavy shoulders that were slightly stooped; he had long muscular arms and a crablike walk. He cut a slice off his tobacco plug and dropped it into his mouth.
“You all are late tonight,” Tereau said.
“We had to take the long way,” LeBlanc said. “State police is on the river.”
“We’re going to have to change our pickup night. They got it figured when we move our stuff,” Gerard said.
LeBlanc looked at Avery.
“Who’s the boy?” he said.
“He’s all right,” Tereau said.
“What’s your name?”
“Avery Broussard.”
“I reckon Tereau told you it ain’t good to talk about what you see in the marsh at night,” he said.
“He told me.”
“Tereau says he’s all right,” Gerard said.
“Sure he’s all right,” LeBlanc said. “I’m just making sure he understands how we do things down here.”
“He knows,” Tereau said. “Where’s the boat?”
“Down in the willows. We got it covered up good,” Gerard said.
Avery looked at the wild stare in LeBlanc’s eyes.
“There’s too much moonlight. You can see us for a half mile on the river. We had to come down the bayou,” LeBlanc said.
Tereau went to the wagon to get tin cups for their coffee. “I got some rabbit. You want to eat?” he said.
“We ain’t got time. It’s about four hours till dawn. We got to reach Morgan City before daylight,” LeBlanc said.
They sat down on the log while Tereau filled their cups. LeBlanc stretched out his legs and removed the pistol from his belt and placed it on the log.
“Do you use that thing?” Avery said.
“They ain’t nobody around to say I have,” he said. He picked it up and rolled the cylinder across his palm. “I got it in the army.” He snapped the cylinder open into a loading position and snapped it back again. His eyes were hard and distant as he looked into the fire. “They teach you how to shoot real good in the army. I was a B.A.R. man. I could knock down nips at a thousand yards with a Browning.”
Gerard stood up and threw the rest of his coffee into the fire. “We better get moving,” he said. LeBlanc continued to stare ahead with the pistol in his hand. Gerard nudged him with his foot. “Come on, we better move. We still got to load the boat.”
LeBlanc rubbed the oil off the pistol barrel on his trouser leg. He put the gun on half cock and slid it back in his belt. He still had that same hard, distant look in his eyes. He finished his coffee in one swallow and got up and went over to the wagon to count the kegs of whiskey with Tereau.
“Don’t get him talking about the army no more,” Gerard said to Avery. “He ain’t been right since he come back from the war.”
“Did he ever use that gun on anybody?”
“I don’t ask him no questions. He knows his job, and what else he does ain’t my business. The only time I got to watch him is when we have a scrape with the law. Soon as he thinks they’re around he takes out his pistol and puts it on full cock. His eyes get like two pieces of fire when he sees a uniform.”
Avery looked over to the wagon. Tereau was fastening the tailgate after LeBlanc had climbed down from the bed. The mules shuffled in their harness.
“What happened to him in the army?” Avery said.
“He was in the South Pacific about a year. He even got decorated once. Then one day he tried to shoot his commanding officer and deserted. They found him about a month later and put him in the stockade. He went kind of crazy in there. They sent him to a hospital for a while, but it didn’t do no good. They finally give him a medical discharge because there wasn’t nothing else they could do with him.”
Gerard took the coffeepot off the iron stake and poured the coffee over the fire. The coals hissed and spit as the fire died and the clearing darkened except for the light of the moon. He pulled the iron stake out of the ground and kicked dirt over the faintly glowing embers.
“Don’t let LeBlanc worry you,” he said, and went over to the wagon in his slow, crablike walk, his shoulders slightly rounded, with the iron stake and coffeepot in each hand. Avery followed.
“Twenty-five kegs,” LeBlanc said.
“I reckon you want some money,” Gerard said to Tereau.
“I reckon you’re correct, Mister whiskey runner,” Tereau said.
Gerard loosened his shirt and unstrapped a money belt from his waist. He propped one foot on the hub of the wagon wheel and counted out the money on his thigh. He put the bills in a stack and handed them to Tereau and strapped the belt around his waist again.