Now a major motion picture: LAWLESS - A Novel by Matt Bondurant

7/31/2019 Now a major motion picture: LAWLESS - A Novel by Matt Bondurant

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Praise for

Lawless(previously published as The Wettest County in the World )

Bondurant is a nimble writer. . . . [His] prose is lyrical when the whiskeyfloods in, but also when the blood flows out. . . . Who can deny the powerof a narrative so deeply rooted in childhood imaginings, when a mildand quiet grandfather hung those brass knuckles on the wall?

The New York Times Book Review

[An] utterly engaging fable of bootlegging, revenge and remorse . . .Bondurant will be compared to Cormac McCarthy. Its warranted:Both have a gift for describing brutality so clearly that we see beautyin the honesty.

Mens Journal

[An] engrossing novel . . . Part family history, part fiction . . .[Bondurant is] wonderful at evoking historical atmospherethe elab-orate stills camouflaged in the woods, the music, the drunken gather-ings that explode into shattering violence.

Entertainment Weekly

There is blood. There is whiskey. There is the scent of gunpowder and

gasoline hanging above the space through which the Bondurants pass,unrepentant, robed in their own greed. Its a dark, flinty reimaginationof what a memoirand your grandfathers storiescan be.

Esquire

Whether fiction or biography, it succeeds in delivering a pungentslice of Americana, a portrait of a place and an era and a way of lifethat is part romantic, part viscerally violent, part metaphorical, allwrapped in a kind of rural poetry.

The Boston Globe


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Foreword

by John Hillcoat

I HAVE ALWAYS wanted to make a Gangster movie. And yet, like allthe classic genres, they need to somehow be reinvented and made freshagain. I discussed this in each meeting I had with producers acrossAmerica, and that special feeling they bring of being wholly trans-ported into another time and place. The Red Wagon Productionsteam had remembered our conversation, took it to heart, and one day,out of the blue, presented me with The Wettest County in the World.Reading this book opened a window, and like my favorite movies, Iwas completely immersed in its world, arrested by its imagery, intrigu-

ing characters, superb detail, and dialogue. It had a vivid reality to it,one that was fresh and that you could not shake. Fortunately, my long-term collaborator and dear friend Nick Cave likewise connected to thebook and set upon the task of creating a screenplay.

Books are often expansive, able to go into great detail and nuancewhile making leaps in time and character that are frequently impossi-ble in film, but to translate them into a movie under a couple of

hours long requires them to be seriously boiled down. In this case, wedecided to focus on the core story of the brothers, their relationshipsand their journey and to leave out the entire story of Sherwood Ander-sons reporting at the time. Instead we wanted to hone in and explore


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the ideas of the myths of immortality and the cycles of time, the transi-tion from one age to another and the rupture, violence, and brutalitythat often accompanies such transitions. For me the material takes themost iconic and arguably greatest American genres, the Western andthe Gangster, and explores where one (the Western) ends and theother (the Gangster) begins.

The story of the Bondurant brothers arises out of the Western leg-ends such as the Daltons and the Jameses and portrays the next gener-ation of country outlawsthe men and women who gave birth to thebig-time urban mobsters like Capone by supplying the Prohibitioncities with their illegal liquor. The novel transposes the elements of theearly Gangster movie to the backwoods moonshine world. The Bon-durant family struggles hard, and through the telling of their story,Matt Bondurant has brought the enduring moonshiner icon to life inan authentic, gritty, and exciting way. Nick and I wanted to tell thestory about the little guys out back, the foot soldiers and the workerbees who propped up the urban criminal empire, like a behind-the-scenes view of the lower ranks that supported a ruthless machinerelentlessly pursuing the American dream in what became crimesfirst major gold rush.

There is something quintessentially American about this story.American history is steeped in stories of liquor, taxes, and freedom. In1768 John Hancock was accused of unloading illegal liquor from hisship Liberty in Boston. The incident proved to be a major event in the

coming American Revolution, and Hancock became one of the found-ing fathers of America. The battle over taxes on liquor and thedebate on its ill-moral effects escalated, reaching its peak with Prohibi-tion, when the largest crime wave in history was unleashed. And itwas during this time that Franklin County, Virginia, became knownas the wettest county in the world, manufacturing the largest vol-ume of illegal liquor. Like much of the country, it became lawless. To

this day, one can draw parallels to more recent crime waves basedupon the demand of outlawed substances.

Transforming a book into a movie means physicalizing itfromthe landscape to the charactersthrough the visualization within the


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location, production design, costumes, props, and so on. Forrest repre-sented for us the quiet loner, the rugged working-class individualmaking a stand, making it on his own terms with his own harsh codeof ethics, like the new immigrants protecting their families and com-munities against the general malaise of corruption and organizedgreed that melts away both money and individuality. He became boththe matriarch and patriarch of his family, while Jack ambitiously pur-sued the American dream. The cast then literally took on the appear-ances and voices of these characters. The other key to bringing thebook to life on the screen was capturing, as Matt Bondurant does in thenovel, the powerful counterpoint of violence and the highly roman-tic, sexually charged energy between Jack and Bertha and betweenMaggie and Forrest. The juxtaposition of these elements adds a ten-sion and scope to both the novel and the movie.

Finally, we wanted to capitalize upon the mythic allure of the back-woods life that the book captures so beautifullythe raw music, thedry humor, and the undiluted grit of the Southern rebel character. Wewanted to draw out the dynamic mix of blues and country music, aswell as the jumble of religious sects, the moonshine blockading thatinvented one of the countrys most popular sports (NASCAR racing),and the crime waves and the resulting exhaustive wars on illegal sub-stances. The Bondurants visceral battle with immortality echoes as farback as The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Bondurants, after surviving somuch, understandably felt immortal, invincible, like America itself

once had. In the end by a simple twist of fate, we are reminded that nomortal is invincible, and as history shows, no nation or empire iseither. But Matt Bondurants noveland I hope our moviecan per-haps offer these brothers a small sliver of immortality once again.

Foreword

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In one county (Franklin) it is claimed 99 people out of 100 are making, or have some connection with,illicit liquor.

Official Records of the National Commission on LawObservance and Enforcement 1935, Vol. 4, p. 1075

What is the wettest section in the U.S.A., the place where during prohibition and since, the most illicit liquor has been made? The extreme wet spot, per number of people, isnt New York or Chicago . . . thespot that fairly dripped illicit liquor, and kept right on dripping it after prohibition ended . . . is FranklinCounty, Virginia.

Sherwood Anderson, Liberty magazine, 1935

Cruelty, like breadfruit and pineapples, is a product,I believe, of the South.

Sherwood Anderson, A Story Tellers Story


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Prelude

1918

T HE BRINDLED SOW stood in the corner, glowering at the boy. JackBondurant hefted a bolt-action .22 rifle with a deep blue octagon bar-rel, the stock chewed and splintered from brush and river-stone. Hechambered a round, walked over to the sow and put the end of thebarrel about a foot from a pink eye and squeezed the trigger. Acrossthe yard his father and brother were tamping damp earth in thetobacco pit under the barn.

There was a crack and a slanting spray of blood and the great bulkof the sow shivered, the rifle falling into the muck, Jack leaping over

the rails of the pen as the sow charged, a smear of blood on her fore-head and a patch of glistening bone. The sow trotted around the pen,then backed into the corner. Jack retrieved his rifle through theboards, scrubbing off the muck with his shirtsleeve. He spat andworked the bolt action and reentered the pen and kneeling down infront of the sow, sighted the barrel down the length of her snout. Hehooked the trigger again, crack, and the sow reared up slightly on its

stubby back legs. On her forehead there was another slice of chippedbone, the blood spreading darkly into the pink eye. The shoats in thenext pen set up a braying squeal and horned their snouts between the


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M a t t B o n d u r a n t

boards, ears flattened. Jack chambered another round, placed the bar-rel against the sows head and fired. The bullet burrowed under theskin of her skull like a tunneling rodent, pulling back rippled foldsover her eye. Jack squatted, watching the old sow pick herself up andcircle on unsteady legs. He gripped the hacked stock of the rifle androcked slowly on his heels, his feet burning in his boots. He squeezedhis eyes and stifled a sob that erupted from his stomach.

When Jack looked up his older brother Forrest was there in thepen. A lean teenager with a permanent smirk, his blond hair dustedwith red dirt from the tobacco pit, Forrest straddled the sow and satdown on her back, pulling her snout high with his forearm. As thesows back arched the white folded flesh of her neck stretched tight.Reaching around with the other hand Forrest brought a long boningknife across her throat in a short rip of skin and metal. The blood camein a hot gush on the muddy straw and the sows whine bubbled, the jetof lung air spraying from the open neck. Her body quivered and thenwent limp in Forrests hands, tiny front legs dangling, body bent like adead fish.

The next moment their father was there with the heavy chain andthey used the tackle to hoist the carcass up to drain, Jacks father set-ting a metal bucket under the swaying body. Hot blood smoked in thecalcified winter air. Jack crouched on the ground like a muddy toad,cradling the rifle and watching the stream of crimson like liquid fire.He was eight years old.

T HAT NEXT SUMMER the Spanish Lady Flu epidemic swept throughthe southeastern states, finding its way into the deepest hollows andmountain ridges of Franklin County. The county went into self-imposed quarantine. Generations of families had known the ancientperiodical ravages of sweeping illness like diphtheria, influenza,

smallpox, and the certain knowledge of deaths deliberate visitationground all activity to a standstill as families huddled together in theirhomes. Jacks father, Granville Bondurant, closed up his vacant gen-eral store, itinerant mendicants and blasted road-men his only occa-


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sional customers. Families relied on the saved stores of food stockpiledin root cellars, cool springhouses. The Brodies who lived across thebroad hill stopped coming down the dirt road by the house, as did theDeshazos, a black family that lived a half mile off. The pews of SnowCreek Baptist Church stood cockeyed empty and hooded crows roostedin the crude lectern.

The Bondurant family was prepared with plenty of dry goods fromthe store and Jacks mother had enough canned vegetables and meat tolast them through the fall and winter. The family stayed close to thefarm. It was a glorious time for Jack because it meant his older sistersBelva May and Era and his brother Forrest were around all the time,hanging about the house in the mornings, spending the long afternoonand evening in the family room by the stove. In those days Jacks fatherwas what men called a cut-up, a man who grinned brightly throughhis thick beard in the evenings when his children rode his bouncingknee like a bucking horse or when he stood by the hot stove with othermen at the store, quick with a wisecrack, his short white apron cleanand starched. He didnt drink liquor, went to church regular, and stilllaughed a dozen times a day.

Forrest had a secondhand bicycle and in the afternoons Jack chasedhis brother down the wide field in front of the house, along the crum-bling banks of the creek, laughing in the golden afternoons, the fieldsof purple clover at sunset, a haze of velvet across the rolling hills. Afterdinner his sisters clustered on the coarse rug in front of the stove, knit-

ting and talking, Belva May and Era tying Jacks hands and feet withyarn, conspiring as Jack struggled, the girls laughing and speakingtheir own private language. His younger sister Emmy, the closest tohis own age, clung to their mother, shadowing her through thekitchen and sitting in her lap in the rocker by the window. Emmy hadan innocent air, nave and quick to bawl, and so Jack was often left toentertain himself alone in the barns, long fields, wooded stretches, and

the muddy branch of Snow Creek that ran through his parents farm.In the evening his father Granville grinning through his beard, feet onthe stove, their mother rocking by the window endlessly smokinghand-rolled cigarettes, blowing long plumes of smoke and watching


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the road for the rare traveler and for her oldest son, Howard, who wasdue to return from the war in Europe.

Jacks oldest brother Howard spent most of 1919 on an army troopship, first crossing the Atlantic from England and then anchored inNorfolk harbor in quarantine. Influenza was rampant on the ship,nearly half the men consumed with it on the voyage across, the deck lit-tered with gaunt men in stretchers hacking and moaning into the scrapsof cloth laid over their faces. At night Howard slept on a high stack of onion crates in an attempt to get space on the crowded ship and awayfrom the red-eyed coughing devils, weary officers wading through thecrowds with flailing canes, the reeling sick that clung to the rails. As hetried to sleep, struggling through the massive stink of onions, Howardtried to think of the hills and valleys of home, the smell of deep clay, thefoaming loam of a freshly plowed field, the hollyhocks and honeysucklealong Snow Creek. But in his dreams the black sickness spread throughhis body and across the water and across the hills and into everyone heknew, and when he opened his eyes in the morning there was the horrorof men dying in their own filth.

A third of the men in his company died in the six weeks they satfloating there in the harbor in a line with dozens of other ships. Everynight the harbor blazed with the ghostly fires made of the clothing andbelongings of the deceased.

When finally released Howard wandered through the city like ablind man. He quickly got blistering drunk on rotgut liquor and the

next morning burned his service uniform and papers in a trash-strewnlot behind a boardinghouse.

A few days later Howard came off the train in Roanoke like aspecter, the flesh curved into the hollows of bone. Howard was a giantman, broadly built and more than six and a half feet tall and his mas-sive frame was wrapped tight like a ghoulish nightbreed. Granvillecame by the depot to pick him up in early November, the first frost

wilting the creeper along the roadside and Howard never spoke of what happened to him in France or aboard the ship, and no one everasked. For Jack, his oldest brother Howard was a stranger, just someolder boy he happened to be related to, a bulky shape he remembered


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from early mornings as a young child, now a man stomping throughthe house, an angular shadow that crouched at the table and quietlyinhaled his food. Howard kept away from the house most of the time,staying out through the night, and when he returned he reeked of cornliquor and collapsed into his bed like a dead man.

One night in December, toward the end of the epidemic, GeorgeBrodie hammered on the Bondurants front door in the middle of thenight. Jack was tucked under his heavy quilt, swaying lightly on therope bed he shared with Forrest, and when the noise started hisbrother shot up and was out the bedroom door before Jack pried hiseyes open. Brodie kept pounding away on the door until Granvillejerked it open and Jack heard his father curse Goddammit, Brodie! Jackslipped out of the warm bed, the air sharp with cold, and stepping intothe hall he saw George Brodie on his knees, the moonlight shiningover his shaking shoulders, hands covering his face.

Jack had never seen a grown man cry before, and for a moment itstruck his sleep-addled mind that Brodie was sleepwalking like Forrestsometimes did. The Brodies lived a mile away if you came through thenarrow wood trail, more than three if you took the road. Had Brodie gone mad? Brodie raised his head and said something Jack couldntmake out, but he saw the tear streaks on the mans dirty face; he heardthe crack in his voice that was unmistakable to a child. Granvilleturned and said something to Forrest and Jack watched his brotherturn and come back down the hall, shirtless, his skin milky in the hazy

light. Forrest shoved Jack inside and told him to go back to bed andshut the door.

For the next few minutes there was a hurried discussion in the frontroom. Jack heard his mother in the kitchen, the bitter scent of brewingchicory coffee. He lay there, staring into the dark, listening as hard ashe could. Then Forrest saying something and his mothers voice rais-ing a bit, an edge to it: I wont have it, Gran, I wont have it. The sound

of his sister Era crying out. The sound of more weeping that madeJack shudder in the swinging bed. The front door shut, the gleam of an oil lamp under the door winked out, and footsteps padded downthe hall. Then silence.


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Jack lay there for nearly an hour before he understood that Forrest wasnt coming back, that Brodie had borne him off into the night andhis parents had let him do it, and he gripped his blankets and grimlyfought tears until morning.

Granville and Forrest returned late the next afternoon. Jack rushedthe door as they walked up the slope but his mother swept him backwith her arm. She had set out a supper on a small end table out by thetoolshed, chicken, biscuits, and greens covered with cloth napkins, apitcher of water, along with buckets of water, towels, and soap. Jackwatched from the window as Granville and Forrest ate their supperout in the cold, their breath steaming in the yard. After they ate theybuilt a large fire and filled the hog-scalding trough with water andbegan to strip down. His mother kept his sisters in their room but letJack stand there as his father and brother washed themselves with thehot water, dumping buckets of it over their heads, pouring it over theirreddening skin. Jack was astonished at his fathers hairy body, a largeswatch covering his chest, the thickness of his middle, his narrow legsand knobby knees, how he tottered when he walked. His face was setlike granite as he tossed their clothes into the fire. Next to his father,Forrest looked small and frail, hugging himself against the cold, buthe turned and spying Jack gave him a grin that lit the young boysheart on fire.

They toweled off, wrapped in blankets and sat by the fire, Forrestevery once in a while glancing toward the house where Jack and his

mother stood in the window. The afternoon began to fade into evening,sparks from the fire swirling in the wind. Jacks mother tensed up, rais-ing her shoulders and rapped sharply on the window with her knuck-les. His mother and father exchanged a long look from across the yardand Jack knew that some essential transaction was occurring. She nod-ded imperceptibly and Granville got up and came toward the house,Forrest following. His mother fumbled with the door, ran across the

porch, and threw herself onto Granville, clutching at his back withboth hands as the blanket slipped from his shoulders. Granville put hisarms around her and rested his cheek on the top of her head, his beardfrosted with breath.


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Forrest walked by his clinched parents and stepping up on theporch, gave Jack a grin and a solid punch in the chest before stridingback into the bedroom with the blankets trailing behind him, his pinkshoulders shining.

That night when they lay in bed Jack asked him what had hap-pened but Forrest said Jack was too young and that hed tell him laterwhen he was older. Jack persisted and Forrest told him that GeorgeBrodie panicked when his youngest daughter began to convulse in herbed, her pillow a smear of bloody spew. His wife was already comatoseand near death. Granville said he would come, and would bring hisoldest daughter Belva May to help. Jacks mother protested. Era wasinconsolable; she threw herself around her sisters neck. Granville wasgoing to insist until Forrest spoke up, saying that he would go insteadof Belva May, and with the smoky oil lantern in hand the two men andthe boy walked back through the woods and over the ridge to thefarm, where Brodies family lay dying.

Then Jack asked if Forrest had the Spanish Lady Flu and Forrestchuckled and said nothing.

Are we going to get sick too? Jack asked. Are we going to die?Forrest was quiet for a moment before turning to Jack in the dark.

The windows were tacked over with quilts for the cold and there wasno light but Jack could tell he was looking at him.

You think anything can kill the old man? Forrest said.Of course not, Jack thought, but didnt say anything. Their father?

The world would stop turning first. He blinked in the darkness. For-rests eyes glimmered like fading coals.

Thats right, Forrest said, as if he heard his thoughts. Nothing can kill us, Forrest said. Well never die.

T HE NEXT MORNING Howard returned to the house, rumpled and

surly. He had spent the night sprawled under a pile of burlap sacksbehind a filling station in Boones Mill, sleeping off a half liter of whitemule. He gulped a cold breakfast of biscuits and ham on the frontporch, wiping his hands on his greasy overalls, Jack sitting quietly


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beside him, drinking in the sour smell of his older brother. Howardstood and gave Jack a good pop on the back of the neck before lumber-ing off to the barn to help Granville with feeding.

A few days later Jacks mother, Forrest, Belva May, and Era were allstricken with the flu. The following days passed quickly. Jack felt likehe was still in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness. Emmyknelt by the water pump, wringing the laundry between her red fin-gers as she rocked back and forth. Granville stood quietly for hours inthe dim hallway like a ghost. Howard sitting awkwardly on the frontstep, long legs angled in front of him, hat in his hands, his slablike faceblank.

On the morning his mother died, Jack stood by his fathers chairand Granville put his hand on his sons shoulder as he gazed out thewindow toward the long road. Howard leaned against the stove, armscrossed over his broad chest, frowning at the floor.

Oh boys, Granville said. Its all gone.Howard raised his head and stared at his father.All the goodness has gone out of the world, Granville said.There were tears on his fathers face and Jacks heart squeezed like a

fist. Though he tried hard not to, he broke down and sobbed on hisfathers shoulder.

Jacks mother died first, then a day later Belva May, followed imme-diately by Era. Forrest lay in bed like a stone for a week, his faceimpassive and leaden, refusing to eat anything. His skin puckered and

turned an impossible shade of blue for a few days, soft and hazy like arobins egg. Then one morning he rose from his bed. Afterward For-rest always retained the knobby aspect of illness, and in certain types of light his skin still had a blue cast to it. When he emerged after thatweek, his body gaunt and wasted, his eyes sunken, to join Granville,Emmy, Howard, and Jack at the breakfast table, it was as if hisstrength had withered and focused itself like a leather strap. Jack

remembers taking a biscuit from the plate, his shaking hand.His mother and sisters laid out on the floor, covered with a quilt.Nobody said anything.


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Chapter 1

1934

SHERWOOD ANDERSON crossed the Franklin County line, threadinghis car over a one-lane bridge that lay in a gentle saddle in the road. Afew hundred yards beyond the bridge Anderson passed a filling sta-tion: a simple clapboard square and a steeply angled roof with anupper story that jutted out from the front, providing a covered pull-inspot in front of the narrow porch. A pair of petrol pumps stood infront, with hand cranks and glass spheres on top filled with fuel. Sev-eral things about the place held Andersons gaze: a porch, but unlikemost rural filling stations this one had no chairs and no name on the

building, or advertisements for anything. Four cars were in the lot,brand-new sedans with engines running, as if lined up for gas thoughnobody was pumping any. A group of men stood by the front door,men in long coats and hats who all turned and watched Andersondrive by. A storage shed was set slightly up the hill that rose behind thestore, a squat cinder-block structure with an open door like a key slotand as Anderson passed a tall, gangly man in his shirtsleeves and hat

emerged from the building with a wooden crate in his arms. It seemedlike his eyes locked directly onto Andersons face. Then a blur of green-gold trees and the tires humming on the road and Andersonhunched over the wheel, humming up the backside of Grassy Hill and


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into Rocky Mount, the seat of Franklin County. Have to rememberthat spot, Anderson thought to himself, will have to run by on the wayback to Roanoke and see what its all about. Though even at thatmoment he knew that the look on the faces of the men waiting at thestation and the eyes of the tall man in the storage shed would makethat difficult. Anderson had lived in rural Virginia long enough toknow that look, the simple, insolent expression that said: Mind your own goddamn business.

Anderson picked up speed down the empty road, blasting throughwhirling vortexes of leaves. Route 33 bisected Franklin County north-south in a jagged stroke, winding through the steep hillsides and deephollows. It was the longest paved road in the county: Most roads werestill hard-packed gravel, a soil-sand-clay mix, or merely weedy rutsthat disappeared into field or forest. Driving through the hills of southern Virginia was reminiscent of some favorable sensations forAnderson, and he thought of the old restlessness. It was a good feelingto be on the move again.

T HE TWO MEN Sherwood Anderson came to see lay in a crowdedpublic ward in the Rocky Mount Hospital, a long windowless roomwith a dozen beds. Men of middling age, lined faces, stubble, indeter-minate. The first of the two lay motionless, tucked into the sheets likea sewing needle. He stared up at the ceiling with open, swollen eyes,

his skin blanched like boiled meat, the bedding stained with a yellow-ish fluid around his groin area. Next to him the other man had a deepcrimson scar running between his eyes and across his forehead, as if hed been branded with a hot iron. A puffed goiter like a weatheredleather bag hung under his chin. He was drenched with sweat, moan-ing and jerking his upper body from side to side, delirious with fever,the lower half of his body encased in thick plaster. The doctors told

Anderson that a good piece of his tongue was also missing, likely dueto an earlier injury. Anderson introduced himself and pulled up achair between their beds. The man with the injured groin ran his eyes


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over Anderson for a moment before returning his gaze to the ceiling.His skin was tight like a sausage and he stunk of rot.

The doctors told Anderson that neither man would say what hap-pened to them, but it was clear that one mans legs had been meticu-lously shattered, from ankle to hip, and the second man had beenbadly mutilated in the groin area. The police didnt get a thing either;the two men hadnt said a word, and theyd had no visitors. There wasnt anything else to it, the doctor said, shrugging. The mutilatedman was hanging on by a thread and the infection would take himsoon. It was a miracle he survived this long. The blood loss was extensive,the doctor said. Clearly left for dead. Somebody anonymously notified us.Otherwise theyd be dead, easy.The man with the shattered legs mightpull through, but it was sure he would never stand or walk again.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON originally came to Rocky Mount to write a storyfor Liberty magazine about a woman named Willie Carter Sharpe. Moonshine, said the editors, the snoops up north; these hill people wereliving off mountain whiskey, bootlegging; it was still the cash crop. TheVolstead Act of 1919, the legal enforcement of the Eighteenth Amend-ment, had created a many-headed hydra of illicit manufacture andtrade in these mountains. Production didnt end in 1933 with the repeal

of Prohibition: To avoid the heavy taxes on legal distillation, people stillmade their own or brought it in on rumrunners off the coast, but nowthat Prohibition was over people wanted to hear more about that sup-posed frontier period. These people weaned their children on the stuff,they said. They cooked their eggs in it, put it in their morning coffee.Everyone wanted it to go on, Anderson thought, the swells makingpiles of money and the consumers who savored that rancid sip of ille-

gal bathtub gin in some dirty hole in the Upper West Side of Manhat-tan. They wanted that added flavor of illegality, and they wanted thedangerous myth, the wild notion of gunplay and desperation. Get close,


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they said. The people, the characters, their desires, the inner lives and pas- sions: Thats what you do best after all.

There was a big trial gearing up in Franklin County, a trial thatwas going to clean up the remnants of a messy, long-running battlebetween bootlegging syndicates including the commonwealths attor-ney, who it was rumored would be accused of racketeering and con-spiracy. All the major bootleggers in the county, including WillieCarter Sharpe, if they could catch her, were being called in for grand-jury testimony. Sharpe had originally married a big-shot bootleggerand soon became the principal driver for the operation, driving pilotcars as the caravans of booze careened and smashed their way throughthe hills of rural towns and into the conduits of the major cities,becoming a celebrity in the process. They said Sharpe had movie-starlooks and diamonds set in her teeth. New York City society womensent her passionate love letters, desperate to be with her. Libertywanted Anderson to bring the story to a national audience.

Sherwood Anderson had been in the southwestern part of Virginiafor most of nine years by 1934. He built a house in Marion, the seat of Smyth County, to the west of Franklin, higher up in the mountains.He purchased two local newspapers and set about life as a small-towneditor. Anderson was aware that more than one literary wag had sug-gested he was reverting to his former life, trying to go back to some lostplace of youth. But he knew he wasnt trying to revert to GeorgeWillard and the town of Winesburg: In fact it was the thing he hoped

to distance himself from.While his house was being built, Anderson squatted in a rude shack

on the hillside above. He spent his days watching the score of mountainmen crawling over the frame of his house, working in their methodi-cal, efficient way. He had a deal with his publisher, Liverwright, whowould send him one hundred dollars a week plus a percentage of hissales, including those for the Modern Library reprints of Poor White

and Winesburg, Ohio. Liverwright would publish whatever Andersonsent him. In those days Andersons writing desk was neat as a pin, andhe eventually went up to New York and begged Liverwright to let himout of the deal. The house he built was called Ripshin.


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ANDERSON CAME FROM Ripshin the day before and stayed over at ahotel in Roanoke, then met with the editor of The Roanoke Times inthe morning. It was still early when he left, the sky moving from pur-ple to lavender and the trees along the road dropped their leaves, andhe was glad to be out on such a morning and away from his house.Anderson ground his teeth and gripped the wheel when he thought of his nave hope that Ripshin would become a rustic literary salon. Aplace where the intelligentsia would gather about him in his bucolicparadise. Perhaps even his friend Gertrude Stein would come andpace the floor of his study with him, talking painters and semantics.

Instead the two newspapers were holding him hostage; he was atthe offices nearly every week, working with the printers and writingnearly the entire thing himself. To let off steam Anderson developed acharacter named Buck Fever in a column that dispensed humor andfolksy wisdom, a sort of Will Rogers meets Mark Twain.

By 1934 Ripshin was filled with noisy, bothersome people, peoplewho overstayed their welcome, people whom Anderson once felt weretrue peers and comrades but now seemed more like chattering urban-ites out for a turn in the country, and he was merely the innkeeper. Hisonly solace was Eleanor, the young woman he met in Marion duringthe final years of his last marriage. They were married the year before,and during his travels he wrote her long, passionate letters that shocked

himself and that seemed to contain the vitality that he usually was ableto produce only in his fiction. In fact the letters, the words and phrases,the sentiments and ideas, seemed to come from some shadowy charac-ter, not fully formed, that lay deep inside him.

T HE EDITOR OF The Roanoke Times said it was likely some kind of

payback. Sitting in his office that morning before visiting the hospital,cheap cigars in the cluttered, paper-filled room; Anderson felt sleepyand despondent.

Likely the trade, the editor said.


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He had eyes like holes in a meat pie and an annoying snarl to hisspeech, talking out of one side of his mouth.

Those boys did something to somebody, he said. And when nobodytalks, you can bet there is liquor involved.

The editor confirmed the rumors of the coming trial. Closed grandjury.

Well, the editor said, you wont find much of a story down inFranklin County. Unless you manage to pry it out of a dead mansjaws.

Such wit, Anderson thought. What a clod.Sir, Anderson said, I am no greenhorn. I know these people and

their plight well. I know something about moonshine liquor.Pieface nodded, giggling, his broad frame shivering.You spend enough time in Franklin, the editor said, youll start trip-

ping over it.The editor waved his cigar in the smoky air in front of him. Ander-

sons stomach let out a whine of discomfort and he wished hed hadbreakfast.

Theres a fella, the editor said, down at the Rocky Mount jail rightnow. A fella named Tom C. Cundiff. But you wont get spit from him.The mans crazy as a coon. Couple fellas in there with him, all steadyshiners. I wouldnt talk to any of them unless they was behind bars andwould be there for a while. Actually I ought to tell you who not to tryand talk to.

Thatd be fine, Anderson said.The editor dug through a file drawer next to his desk, pulled out a

thick sheaf of papers. He licked a thumb and selecting a few pages of proof copy tossed it onto Andersons lap.

Maybe you seen this, he said, from a few years back.

December 20, 1930: DEPUTIES GUN DOWN BROTHERS

AT MAGGODEE CREEK Bondurant Brothers Shot Trying to Run BlockadeNear Burnt Chimney


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I wouldnt seek thoseboys out if I were you, the editor said.Im not planning on starting trouble, Anderson said.The editor put his hands together on the desk and craned his pie-

face closer to Anderson, who could not help but lean away.Ill tell you what, the editor said. Theres only two things up in them

Franklin County hills for those who are looking: stump whiskey and free ass whippins.

BEFORE GOING TO the hospital Anderson pulled into a filling sta-tion just outside Rocky Mount to get something to eat. Three menand a young boy sat, chairs leaning back, against the clapboard sta-tion wall that was peppered with metal signs advertising GrangerRough Cut Tobacco, Mineraltone Hogs, Harrods Medicinal Pow-ders. They stared at him brazenly as he came up: blank, open facesthat disclosed nothing but slight contempt. Anderson said hello andreceived a nod from each in return, even the small boy, who, Ander-son noticed, was shifting around a quid of tobacco in his tannedcheek. Inside a woman stood behind a counter in a calico-printdress. A potbellied stove stood in the middle of the store, sur-rounded by a moat of wood chips. Anderson walked through thefew aisles of scant merchandise. Two dirty-faced young girls eyedhim from where they squatted against boxes and played with dollsmade of burlap. He bought a couple packs of crackers nabs, they

called them in this part of the stateand a bottle of birch beer. Atthe counter, receiving his change, Anderson could hear the faintwind singing against the metal roof, the creaking chairs on theporch.

Anderson pulled out of the lot and onto a muddy road that spooledout before him into the dark trees. He rubbed the steamed windshieldwith his bare hand and stamped the chill out of his boots on the floor-

boards. Sure, he thought, its everywhere; the streams are runningthick with alcohol, the sky raining whiskey. He beat the steeringwheel with his fists and screamed at the road.


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AT THE Rocky Mount Hospital Anderson produced a bottle of whiskey from his coat and offered it to the man with the mutilatedgroin. A foolish gesture perhaps but he didnt know what else to do.The mans eyes flickered on the bottle and his lip curled in a sneer of contempt.

Is it money? Anderson asked. Why dont you just tell me what hap-pened?

He sat at their bedside for almost an hour. The moaning man withthe broken legs lapsed into unconsciousness and slept fitfully, hishands twitching under the sheets. Nurses came into the ward to tendto other patients and Anderson watched them squeaking down therow of beds, their crisp uniforms crackling like paper. After a whileAnderson unscrewed the bottle of Canadian and had a bolt himself,the hot whiskey catching him by surprise and he coughed sharply,drawing looks from others in the ward.

Later Anderson walked the corridors and asked some nurses anddoctors about what was reported in the papers and got nothing butshrugs and nervous smiles. Nobody at the hospital wanted to say any-thing. He sat beside the two men for another hour and read The Roanoke Times, sipping a paper cup of whiskey. When he finished thepaper Anderson stood in the door to the ward with a cigarette andwatched the two men, both of them now unconscious, their sheets

soaked with sweat. Anderson felt his own damp jacket, his mouth dryas ash. He had drunk nearly a third of the bottle and yet felt com-pletely sober. His trouser cuffs were stained with red clay, and he couldfeel the grit of it on his hands.

AS HE TRAVELED through Franklin County over the previous fewmonths on his long, meandering drives, Sherwood Anderson habitu-ally stopped at farms, pulling onto rutted roads wherever he spotted


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men working in the fields. He walked with lean farm boys throughthe wide rows of tobacco in the dead of July, the sharp green of thedrooping leaves, waist high and spreading wide in the sun. The boysand men said little, unwrapping their dinner, sandwiches of cold porkand biscuit, gulping at their food as they sat in a shady spot under thewithered elms. Their eyes flitted across Anderson from time to timebut mostly they seemed to be staring at something far, far off, theirfaces, necks, and arms burned deep from the sun. The earth crackedlike a puzzle, the fine dust of that clay getting into everything, and bythe days end, standing on the sloped floor of his rented room in RockyMount, or back at Ripshin, he invariably found the red grains insidehis shoes, in his socks, his pockets, in the corners of his eyes. Along theroads large swaths of clay on road cuts exposed like open wounds.When families sat down to eat supper freshly scrubbed from the fieldsthey still carried the grit in the fine lines of their eyes and wrists, and itclung to the vegetables, it was baked deep into the hoecakes and cornbread, it lived in the crispy skin of the chicken, the blood of the pork.

Anderson marveled at the stoic endurance of these people, theirmasterful silence and complete allegiance to utility in all things. Barnswere constructed from castoffs, old signboards and discarded pulp-wood. Ax handles were filled with half a dozen tightening wedges;rusted plows hammered back into shape until they snapped, then to bereheated at the makeshift forge and hammered again; the pump han-dle a length of copper pipe; vehicles cannibalized and rebuilt, each per-

mutation carrying the original further from the initial purpose andappearance. The detritus of their efforts lay rotting in the hollowbelow the house, a ravine of rusted muck. Even then, in the eveningthe old farmer would peruse his personal junkyard and wonder if hecould get that old tie-rod to fit his thresher hub. It was a never-endingbattle to make do with what you already had, and when things gaveout they literally exploded into red dust.


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ANDERSON WAS LEAVING the hospital when an orderly in the hallmotioned for him to follow. Now what? Anderson thought. He wastired and the slight tang of a daytime hangover was coming on. Theorderly led Anderson down another hall and eventually stopped at adoor, holding out his hand, his oily face impassive and dead-eyed, andwhen Anderson gave him the whiskey he swirled the bottle around,eyeing the level, shrugged, and tucked it into his back pocket andextended his hand again. Anderson laid a dollar on his horny palm,and the orderly led him into a dim storeroom filled floor to ceilingwith shelves stacked with shimmering jars of various sizes. Theorderly pulled a cord for the light.

This were delivered to those boys the day after they was admitted,the orderly said, pulling a cloth off a half-gallon mason jar.

Just in a paper sack, he said, no note or nothin.Anderson looked and tried to understand what he was seeing.That there is what you call white lightnin, the orderly said. Moun-

tain licka.The jar full of clear liquid and a grayish mass with loose tendrils,

bulbous, mottled, a slight tincture of blood like a phantasm. A pair of irregular spheres, suspended like dead eyes.

And thatd be that boys tackle floatin in there, the orderly said, themans gonads.

Anderson blanched, the sour whiskey rising in his throat.


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Now a major motion picture: LAWLESS - A Novel by Matt Bondurant

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