Dog Days

by Brad Willis

August in Teardown, South Carolina is as hot as your mama’s underparts and it’s no damned time to be looking for a missing dog.

I’ve lost plenty of dogs in my time, and I’ll admit I’ve gone looking for them. Chappy went missing in April of ‘79 and I looked for that mutt for three days. Found him curled up underneath grandma’s porch licking on a broken leg. Son of a bitch lived another 15 years after that. Found Suggs worse off out by Lake Hartwell in ‘84. That was in May, and I’ll allow that I cried a little bit. But, I’ll be whipped if I’ve ever looked for a toy poodle in August. I once waited until October to look for Ugly Rudd, and he disappeared on the 31st of July in 1987. If you’re from Missouri or just about any state except Mississippi that starts with an “M” you won’t understand.

I don’t know about your grandma, but mine told me if I went swimming August, I’d drown. Said the Romans knew about the Dog Days of Summer, and the way she said it, I could hear the capital letters on every word. Of course, she called them the Roh Mans. And she didn’t hesitate to tell me to go to the pond if I was messing up her laundry, so she was either homicidal or a liar.

The takeaway, I figured, was that dogs and August don’t get along. I never drowned, but I avoided anything that barked from August 1st until Labor Day. That is all a long way of explaining why I initially balked when Lettuce Gambrell told me to go find his dog and the man who took him.

Lettuce’s real name, of course, is Lester, but since he went bald at age 26, people have been calling him by the nickname. Lettuce himself told me it’s because when his scalp gets sunburned it peels like a head of lettuce. Other people say it’s because he used to try to talk like he wasn’t from Pickens County and began a lot of his sentences with “Let us.” Like, “Let us go fishing” or “Let us kick that man in the ass.” But, I haven’t heard Lettuce ever talk like that and I sure as hell have seen his head peel off like he wasn’t going to have anything but skull left. Either way, the man’s white toy poodle disappeared on August 4th and Lettuce was convinced the little bitch wasn’t just out for a walk. “Foul play,” Lettuce said. “Fucking foul play.”

I never asked Lettuce how old he is and I don’t think he’d tell me the truth if I did. I’m pretty good at guessing these things though. At the State Fair last year, I guessed three ladies’ ages before the carnie could, and it was his job to do it. He told me to take a hike, that I was ruining his business. If you know me, you don’t have to guess how that conversation ended. Regardless, I’d say Lettuce is probably pushing 75. He’s looked like an old man since I was born, though, so he could be 60 or 160 and I wouldn’t know the difference.

“Fucking foul play,” Lettuce said on August 5th. He blew out a mouthful of Kool smoke and stabbed the butt into a saucer on his kitchen table. “I want you to find the son-bitch that took Miss Lib. I want you to bring her home.”
Miss Lib.

I’ll be honest, I was never fond of the dog or her name, but Lettuce once had a girlfriend from Liberty, South Carolina and that girlfriend once wore a sash in the Miss South Carolina pageant. Even though the time she was a beauty queen and the time she was Lettuce’s girlfriend never actually intersected, Lettuce never got over the fact he had dated a potential Miss South Carolina. Ever since, just about everything he ever owned had some connection to Liberty. He had a shotgun he called Liberator, a pick-up he called Bert, and, now, a dog named Miss Lib. The wire-haired yapper ran around the whole of Lettuce’s Libertyville–the Vatican City of Teardown, SC, a holy enclave in the middle of the unincorporated kudzu patch, and the only place in a 100-mile radius where you could get the best moonshine in either of the Carolinas or northeast Georgia.

Now, Miss Lib, the crown princess of Libertyville, was in the wind.

And it was my job to find her.

* * *

I, of course, knew who took Miss Lib.

I wasn’t there, I didn’t see anything, and I had no evidence to prove it, but I would’ve bet my truck and the $5,000 behind the baseboard in my house that it was Billy Parnell. The crime reeked of him, his tweakers, and a revenge motive better than the time my dad beat up a man just because he looked like my grandpa.

Billy Parnell probably hated Lettuce more than he hated anybody in Pickens County. And, if we’re being honest, Parnell hated just about everybody. But Parnell had come to believe in a way only speed freaks can that Lettuce’s mere existence was cutting into his bottom line.

“Fuckin’ Lettuce, fuckin’ Lettuce gets everybody drunk,” Parnell said. “Everybody thinks he ‘s God’s damned gift to Teardown. Whiskey! That’s all he makes and people think he’s the Governor.”

This was at a poker game just outside of Easley and came out of Parnell’s mouth in one chemical-tinged breath. Parnell was on his 46th hour awake and was losing badly in the game.

“I’m the fucking creator here. I’m the one who can cook. I am a damned chemist, man. Governor Lettuce, he’s tied to that still and he sleeps half the damned day. He’s a drunk like the rest of you,” Parnell spat out in one sentence, and left the punctuation to the rest of us. He knocked over his chips and walked outside.

Parnell wore an orange stocking cap, a giveaway t-shirt, cargo shorts, and hiking boots. Always. It didn’t matter if it was July or January, the county’s biggest methamphetamine chef never changed. Several people had asked him about his sartorial choices and Billy Parnell had answered every time. Most people didn’t understand the words. Parnell talked too fast and through a less than perfect set of teeth. His mouth wasn’t necessarily the stuff they show at “Say No to Crank” seminars, but he might have made some decent money doing the “before” pictures for dentists’ brochures.

When people asked about his stocking cap, he said, “My head’s cold, bitch.” Always.

I speak speed geek. My dad never got into the crystal, as far as I know, but when he would come off the road and his little white pills, he’d be up for six or seven hours of rambling before sleeping for two days. Mom translated for me until I was old enough to hear it all myself. I was old enough when Dad told me not to expect him home for a while. When he didn’t come back for a year, I thought I hadn’t heard him right. But he did come back. He slept for a week before telling us he’d sold his truck and found God. When he left the next week, he said he planned to sell God and buy his truck back. We never saw him again.

Parnell was only like my dad in the way he talked and the ability to overestimate his physical strength. Five minutes after going outside for what was surely a bump of his own magic, Parnell nearly broke his arm trying push through a locked door. Ten minutes later he would produce a guitar from the humidity and, apropos of nothing, sit off in a corner singing “Amazing Grace.” When Parnell was singing, it was the only time he wasn’t disgusting. It was the only time you couldn’t see him rotting in front of your eyes. It was the only time you could understand every word that came out of his mouth. When I heard him singing of his saved, wretched soul, I almost completely forgot what he’d said aloud when somebody finally unlocked the door for him.

In a mush-mouthed, wide-eyed whisper, Billy Parnell had said the words, “And his little dog, too.”

* * *

Parnell was right about one thing. There was not a drinker in Pickens County who didn’t believe Lettuce Gambrell hung the moon, and every one of them was willing to toast the man and his moon with the county’s finest homemade whiskey. The ten acres Lettuce called Libertyville was sacred ground and you only walked down his long driveway if you had ten dollars to spend.

Lettuce was an institution, and you knew it because the straight folks gave him a pass. The same people who stood with signs and crosses in front of the Plez-U store when somebody saw a video poker machine? The same people who packed the County Council chambers when there was a vote on whether the Easley Applebees could serve beer on Sunday? The same people who celebrated in song every time a pregnant teenage girl got married? Those people loved Lettuce as much as the drunks did.

Every July 5th was Lettuce Gambrell Day in Pickens County. It was the one day a year the First Baptist minister allowed himself a shot. The town of Teardown hosted a county-wide barbeque. Six or seven people competed in the Best Lettuce Sauce contest. The only rule was the sauce had to be made with a jigger of Lettuce’s best stuff. I met my first girlfriend on Lettuce Day 1982. Her daddy was a drunk and her mama went to church. We got along fine, but she didn’t like barbeque and I found a new girl to take as a date the next year.

Of course, the county cops had to bust up Lettuce’s Libertyville country compound once or twice a year. It wasn’t even to keep up appearances so much as Pickens County gets boring in February and late September. Lettuce welcomed it most years.

“Time to pay the taxes,” he said the first time I saw it happen. I was nearly over the back fence when I heard the damned Sheriff himself take Lettuce in a giant hug and slap him on the back hard enough to break a rib. I’m not saying the deputies all left with a jar for themselves, but Lettuce never spent a night in jail that I saw.

Most years he welcomed it, I said, and I still can’t say why, but there were times when even Pickens County’s patron saint of liquor didn’t want to see the cops. I learned this when I was sixteen years old and standing in Lettuce’s front yard.

I’ll be honest, I guess, and admit that my mom didn’t handle it well when dad went off to find a buyer for his God. She’d been a good trucker’s wife up until that day and for a couple of months afterward. By late summer, she was asking me to go down to Libertyville and fetch her some medicine. By the next April, it was one of my weekly chores.

“You’re good to your mama,” Lettuce had said to me that afternoon. His foot was propped up on a cement yard frog, his hand resting on a knee with a Kool stuck between his index and middle finger. “Your daddy was a son-bitch.”

About that time, Lettuce saw the line-up up of patrol cars at the top of his driveway. The deputies were stopped, smoking, and waiting for the Sheriff to get out of church. Lettuce took a last drag off his cigarette and took me hard by the shoulder.

“Drink this,” he said, and produced a clear bottle from his hip pocket. It was the same thing I’d just bought for my mom. I’d never had it before, but didn’t ask any questions. I unscrewed the top and poured it back into my throat. I only gagged a little, and– I’m still proud about this–I didn’t throw up.

“Now,” Lettuce said, “Get in that car of yours, drive up to the top of the road, and run into one of those cruisers. Then drive off and make like a crazy person.”

I’ve been asked to do a lot of messed up stuff in my day. My dad once had me carry a pair of woman’s underpants to the town dump in a plastic bag. My sixth grade teacher gave me an A for holding her weed in my desk. My best friend at Liberty High once asked me to let him punch me in the face in front of his girlfriend. Each of those times, I asked more than a few questions, outlined the caveats, and made sure there was something in it for me. But the afternoon Lettuce sent me on a drunken rabbit run up his driveway, I didn’t say one word.

By the time Sheriff Pearis had pulled into the line, I was driving up the gravel drive like the bootlegger I certainly was not. I plowed through the wooden mailbox post and clipped the bumper of Deputy Rice’s squad car. I floored it and threw gravel into kudzu patches on both sides of the road. I only slowed down long enough to let the cops get in the cars and chase me. Then I stomped on the accelerator with one foot, kept it on the road with one hand, and poured my mom’s whiskey on my shirt with the other.

When I got to the Saluda River, I skidded to a stop and jumped out of the car. Four marked cruisers and the Sheriff’s town car hit their brakes at the top of the road. Every driver jumped out with his gun. I threw my hands in the air, and with real tears in my eyes, screamed, “My mom started drinking when Dad found God!” It was a lie, of course. Mom didn’t start drinking until Dad was done with God, but my screaming story was better for the cops and made for the perfect one-line monologue as I collapsed on the river bank and rolled in the mud.

I only spent four hours in jail. Lettuce bailed me out himself, and I never heard about any charges.

“Son,” he said to me as he drove us back toward the Saluda, “I could use a little help around Libertyville.”

And that’s how I became Lettuce Gambrell’s fixer.

***

There are a lot of stupid people who buy whiskey. There are even more stupid people who drink whiskey. There are, for instance, the kinds of people who will drink a jar of Lettuce’s stuff and then drive their car through the fence of the Greenville-Pickens speedway and around the track for as many laps as they can drive before their tires blow out, their dog hops out the passenger side window, and the local constabulary arrive to start asking questions. Those are the same kind of people—when faced with possibility of arrest and the seizure of their Pinto—will tell the arresting officers where they can find the source of this fine whiskey.

These are the people my mere existence is meant to discourage from doing anything more stupid than they already have. Not that I like to tell too may for-instances, but there was this time Caber Collins climbed up to his roof and refused to come down until his wife let him make love to her while he watched Animal Planet. The police in Central waited around on the ground until one of them came up with the idea of trying out their new less-lethal ammunition–in this case a shotgun shell that fired a beanbag. One of the officers held up his hand and asked what happened if Caber fell off the roof and got hurt. The third officer on the scene remembered the time the black bear had climbed into the fire tower on Glassy Mountain. Before long, the volunteer fire department was there with a handheld trampoline, Caber was rolling off the guttering, bouncing in between the firemen, and landing remarkably on his feet.

“It’s Lettuce!” he screamed from his spot on the front lawn. “Lettuce’s ‘shine made me do it. And my wife thinks I’m a deviant! I just like the meerkats!”

None of us really cared about the Collins’ bedroom habits or about the meerkats. What’s more, the Central Police Department didn’t give a damn about where Caber got his booze. Problem was, if people kept blaming Lettuce for their problems, they were eventually going to confess to the wrong people. Like people with the letters “U.S.” on their badges.

So, every once in a while, I am required to make an example of someone who gets himself in trouble or talks too much. Collins was the first, but not the last, and there will be more. How I work isn’t really anybody’s concern. I will point out, for the record, that Mrs. Collins had no problem with meerkats or watching them while in her undies. I made sure of that myself.

In either case, word of Caber’s front lawn confession and the subsequent trouble it caused him got around. Now, most people claim they got their shine from an old timer in Western North Carolina. Each time that old man gets blamed for something, it’s like a gold star for me.

See, Lettuce doesn’t have to worry about the locals for the most part. Sure, there will be the occasional rookie who doesn’t understand the arrangement or the fact that Lettuce has a sort of de facto grandfather clause in the Palmetto State’s liquor laws. But, overall, Lettuce gets left alone and I am left to the more mundane tasks of collecting debts, buying Lettuce’s groceries, and, on the odd Friday afternoon, taking Miss Lib to the groomer in Piedmont. The last of these is my least favorite part of the job, because Lettuce refuses to let me put the dog in the bed of my truck. He further discourages the use of the handy Doggy Belt restraining device I picked up at the Greenville PetCo.

“Liberty,” Lettuce said reflectively once over breakfast. “I’m not sure it’s right to try to restrain liberty. I think it would be just as wrong to tie that dog up in your truck. And don’t be smoking in the cab while she’s there either.”

And so, it’s an hour ride to Piedmont and an hour ride back with an hour killed in the middle while the groomer does the work, all because Lettuce met the owner and he thought she looked like his old girlfriend.

This is what I do.

***

It’s a quarter-mile or so down the tree-lined gravel road that leads to Bill Parnell’s place. I couldn’t drive it too fast or I’d end up in one of the pines or at Billy’s door before he had time to register it was me in the truck. Rolling up on a tweaker at full speed is just asking to get shot. So, I drove slow and planned my speech. It went something like this:

“Billy, I know you don’t like my boss, and you probably know he doesn’t like you too much either. I know that you are proud of your line of work and you see Mr. Gambrell’s as something beneath the art you create here. And, Billy, I’m not going to question how you support yourself or the methods you use to compete. That is, I’m not going to lecture you on the morals of business. But, Billy, we’re talking about a man’s dog here, and that is something with which you don’t fuck. And, so I’m here to ask you–man to man–to give me the poodle.”

Normally, I don’t give speeches when Lettuce wants me to do something. I usually don’t have to talk. Somehow the sight of me alone gets done what needs to get done. When dealing with Billy, though, I thought the idea of a preemptory diffusion of the situation was in order. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard of Billy sticking people, shooting over their heads, and, in one unfortunate case, poking out the eye of a guy who came at him too fast.

When I felt ready, I eased around the corner, waved at the cheap security camera hardwired into the tree, and pulled into the clearing of dirt that doubled as Billy’s front yard. Six or seven rusted propane tanks sat against a row of milk crates. A junk pile was littered with empty packages of Sudafed. A bored pit bull sat chained to a spike near a woodshed.

I sat in the truck for longer than I would, say, if my dad was standing on the front lawn. I looked across the stretch of red clay and there stood Billy Parnell in his cargo shorts, t-shirt, and stocking cap. Beside him on a thick chain leash sat Miss Lib. She was pure white, tongue hanging from side of her mouth, and, if I didn’t know better, smiling.

I tried to make myself bigger as I stepped out of the truck and faced Billy. I took long, sure steps toward him and the dog. I kept my hands in fists and my jaw set firm as I made up the final ten yards between us. Billy’s face was blank. At any second he could’ve reached out with a gun or fallen over dead and I would not have been surprised. He did not look like a man who was ready to listen to a speech. He didn’t look like a man who was ready to do anything. His face usually looked like it was going to crawl off his skull. Instead, Billy looked tired. When I finally got toe to toe with him, I had one of those Holy Shit Moments.

Billy was sober.

I relaxed my fists and opened my mouth.

“Billy, I know you don’t like my boss—“ was all I got out before Billy cut me off.

“Here,” he said, and handed me the human end of the leash. “Tell Lettuce I said I’m sorry.”

With that, Billy turned his back and walked into his house.

Miss Lib licked my hand and began her prance toward my pickup. I did my job.

I followed her to the truck.

***

“She smells funny.”

Lissa owned the Clawed Paw and she probably could’ve been a beauty queen when she was in high school. But watching her rub shampoo into Miss Lib’s curls didn’t have me looking at her hands with anything that felt like longing.

“She’s been out on a bit of an adventure,” I said by way of explanation. It didn’t start to describe how I’d just taken possession of her from Pickens County’s biggest meth dealer and how that smell could probably get us both spun out for the rest of the afternoon. And it didn’t properly describe how I’d much rather be playing cards in Easley or doing absolutely nothing instead of spending my afternoon acting as the personal valet to a little poodle.

“Well, she smells it,” Lissa said and rinsed the soap out of the dog’s hair.

I had hoped Lettuce would let me hose down Miss Lib back in Libertyville, but the dog had been scratching at her ears so much, Lettuce said I’d best be off for Piedmont.

“Might be mites,” he said.

And so I drove. I kept my cigarettes in my pocket, the passenger side window down, and, because Lettuce was certain Miss Lib was a godly dog, gospel on the truck radio.

Now I stood in the grooming room of the Clawed Paw and wondered about Billy, about how he was sober, about how he’d just handed me Miss Lib’s leash without any more than a “Sorry.” If I’d been betting, I would’ve wagered Billy would’ve sold the dog before I got there. Or killed it. No, it had been easy and that had me feeling odd.

I picked up a few dog treats out of one of those warehouse club plastic bubble gum containers and let them fall back in. I would be happy to get back to Lettuce’s. He had me worried. I didn’t know if he’d been fretting about Miss Lib or just getting old, but he wasn’t himself.

“Miss Lib!”

Lissa’s voice shook me out of my worry. It was all baby talk and fussing.

“What do you have in your ear? You bad little girl! Where have you been putting your little head?” Lissa cooed. She had Lib’s ear pulled up and was looking inside.

Two minutes later, Lissa was standing in the grooming room with a $50 bill in her hand a “what the hell” look on her face. For my part, I had a soaking wet dog in the cab of my truck and “Come Ye Sinners” cranked up loud on the speakers.

I smoked all the way back to Libertyville.

***

“Where is she?” Lettuce said and craned his neck around the posts of his front porch. “Where’s Miss Lib?”

I stood at the base of the steps with a cigarette shaking in my fingers. I’d left the dog in the cab of the truck and the air conditioning running. Through the closed windows, I could hear the final refrain of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” and Miss Lib howling a bit with the singers.

Lettuce stood up from his chair. I could smell the booze on him. It had been ten years since I’d seen him take a drink, but the glass in his hand was nothing but clear shine and fire.

“You left her in the truck?” he asked. He seemed almost hurt.

“Lettuce,” I started. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what was safe to say. I was as confused as I’d been since the day my Dad started talking about God. “Lettuce, Lissa found something in Miss Lib’s ear.”

“Told ya,” Lettuce said and fell back toward his chair. “Mites.”

I shook my head like a dog trying to get water out of its ears. “Not mites, Lettuce.”

I looked both ways, dropped my smoke into the grass, and then stepped up onto the porch. I leaned in toward Lettuce’s bald head. He smelled bad. I whispered into his ear, “Lissa found a bug.”

“A bug?” Lettuce said out loud. “Like mites? Or was it a tick?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and whispered again. “Lettuce, she found a bug and not the kind you’re thinking.”

I held up my finger like to say “One second,” then hopped down the steps to the truck. I carried the poodle under my arm and climbed onto the porch with one finger over my lips. I kneeled down in front of my boss and put the dog on his lap. With a finger still in front of my lips, I lifted up Miss Lib’s left ear and allowed Lettuce to look inside.

Lettuce looked deep, he looked hard, and his eyes softened. He nodded his head and brushed my hand away from the dog’s ear. He laid his head back on the front wall of his house and petted Miss Lib on her stomach.

“Thanks for getting her washed up for me,” he said and took another long drink from his glass.

I sat in a lawn chair in front of my house that night thinking about how Lettuce had sent me on my way after that. He made like I hadn’t just shown him a listening device inside his dog’s damned ear. I didn’t feel much like playing cards after that. So, I grabbed a jar from Lettuce’s shed and sat smoking and drinking until the moon got high.

I couldn’t figure it. Billy Parnell was paranoid, no doubt about that, and if his reputation was any indication, he was pretty good at cooking the crystal. But a bug? Why would he want to listen to Lettuce talk all lovey to a poodle?

Across the acre or so and gravel road that stood between my house and Libertyville, I heard Miss Lib bark a couple of times.

She sounded happy.

***

“I need you to carry me over to Parnell’s,” Lettuce said.

It was five days later and it was the first thing Lettuce had asked me to do since I drove his wet dog home from Piedmont.

“Lettuce, you want me to take you to Billy’s?” I’m sure my face was all scrunched up.

I kneeled down in front of the dog and pulled up her ear. The bug was still there.

“Yup,” Lettuce said and walked toward my pickup. He was sober and walked taller than he had the last time I saw him. “Put Miss Lib in the house. No need to let Billy get a look at her again.” He climbed into the passenger seat and looked at me like he did when I was sixteen years old and fetching my mom’s medicine.

It took us ten minutes to drive over to Billy’s and Lettuce didn’t say a word the whole way. He just looked out the window at the kudzu. When we reached the long gravel driveway, Lettuce pulled up his pant leg. Stuffed in the leg of his boot was the .38 he usually kept in the drawer with the tea towels. In all the years I’d known him, I’d seen Lettuce fire the gun once, and that was to scare off a deer that was getting too close to the still house. Even then, the gun had looked wrong in the old man’s hands.

“Lettuce,” I started. I didn’t have anything else to say.

Lettuce put one in the chamber and shoved the gun back between his white skin and the boot leather. “Stay in the truck and be ready to leave when I am.”

The truck tires kicked up red clay dust when we pulled into Billy’s front yard, and Lettuce looked like the old man he was as he stepped out of the cab and across the dirt. Parnell was out of his front door and walking toward Lettuce before the dust settled. I looked down and noticed my knuckles had gone gray on the steering wheel.

“Thanks for sending my dog back,” I heard Lettuce say.

From my distance, I couldn’t hear anything else, but I saw Billy’s eyes just below that stocking cap. His pupils were fixed and his skin was drawn taut over his jaw. Whatever had made Billy sober the last time I saw him had let him go. He was back on his own personal highway.

When Lettuce reached out and put his hand on Billy’s shoulder, Billy’s right foot stepped back and his left hand started into his pocket. My hand was on the truck’s door handle before I could stop it. Lettuce must have heard, because instead of reaching for his boot, he put up his palm like a traffic cop.

Lettuce leaned in and said something I couldn’t hear. Billy’s jaw relaxed and he looked confused. I settled back in my seat and watched Billy lead Lettuce up the steps into the trailer. They closed the door behind them and left me looking at the red clay dust, a bored pit bull, and the detritus of a five star meth chef.

Allowing Lettuce walk inside that trailer made my stomach sick. I never had to send my dad into surgery or a child off to war. My mama was still alive and the worst scare she’d ever given me was the morning I found her asleep on the front lawn. She asked for biscuits and gravy when she woke up. I’d never learned fear, and I never had enough of anything to worry about losing it.

When I was 20 years old, Lettuce had given me the pick-up truck I was sitting in that afternoon. It was old then and it’s older now, but it was the first thing I’d ever claimed as my own.

“You earned it, son,” he said.“Keep’er running.”

Now, I sat in the cab waiting to hear the gun shot, waiting to see the old man who had given me my truck walk out a murderer. Or waiting to see Billy walk out with death in his eyes and Lettuce’s blood all over his hands. I waited to ride home with a killer or turn into one myself, because if Lettuce was dead, Billy would be, too, and before the pit bill ever raised its head off its paws.

Fifteen minutes passed. I didn’t listen to the sports radio talk about Clemson’s chances in the coming season. I didn’t think about how Lissa might look a little better if she cut her hair and put on something pretty. I didn’t do anything but watch the front door of that trailer and listen to my stomach make scrunching noises.

When Lettuce came out, he didn’t look back. He walked slowly for my truck, a plastic Bi-Lo grocery bag in his hand. Billy stood behind him on the step and didn’t look pissed off or happy. He just leaned against the doorframe and watched Lettuce walk.

I kept my eyes on Billy and jumped a bit when Lettuce opened the passenger door. Before he pulled himself up onto the vinyl bench seat, he tossed the Bi-Lo bag on the floor by the gear shift. When Lettuce shut the door, I shifted into reverse and backed toward the trees. When the truck moved, the Bi-Lo bag spilled into the floorboard.

Two zip top baggies slid over to Lettuce’s feet when I hit the brake. He turned to me as I stared at the bags.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Lettuce didn’t talk all the way back to Libertyville, and even when I’d said there was a black car following us, all he did was nod. When we pulled in front of his house, he looked across the cab at me. His eyes were soft and a little damp at the edges. He leaned over into the floorboard and grabbed the bag of crank.

“Thank you, son,” he said and got out of the truck. “You can get on home if you like.”

I felt my chest tighten up. I’d spent so many years with Lettuce, and I’d never been one to ask him a question. My job was to do what he said and he made sure I didn’t want for anything. I never asked him how he made good with the Sheriff. I never bothered him about what he did with his money. If he had a job, I did it.

I sat there in the truck and thought about Billy, that black car, and Miss Lib. I thought about Lettuce’s gun, the baggies of meth, and the look Lettuce had in his eye. As Lettuce climbed up onto his porch, I grabbed for the door handle and jumped out into the gravel.

“Lettuce!” I yelled across his yard. “Thanks for what?”

Lettuce smiled then. “Thank you, son,” he said and went inside.

I got drunk by myself that night and smoked through two packs. By the time I went to bed, I was screaming at my dad and sure he could hear me. I passed out before I heard an answer.

When I came to, I thought it was one of those late August storms that back up from the southeast. The thunder rattled my window panes and toppled the glass jar beside my bed. I sat straight up under my sheet and found my fists in tight balls. I listened for rain but heard nothing until the house shook again. My window lit up with orange like it was dawn.

I pulled back the curtain and saw what I knew I’d see. Across an acre of kudzu and clay, Libertyville was on fire.

***

I ran all the way to Libertyville on bare feet. I still wore my day clothes and when I started to sweat, I could smell the whiskey I’d drunk six hours before. I felt like I’d get sick as I ran up the side of Lettuce’s property. The explosions kept on, and every time one went off, the flames from Lettuce’s house would reach up into the smoke. Even when I was running, I knew I was only running to find Lettuce dead. I think I probably cried a bit and thought about Miss Lib.

When I made it down Lettuce’s gravel drive, my feet were cut up and bloody. I stepped into the grass and looked at the fires. Flames shot out of every window in Lettuce’s house. The work shed where he kept his supplies was already falling over. The still house was just gone and probably fueling the dozen or so small fires that burned all over the property.

After I’d run all that way, I didn’t know what to do but stand there and watch the place burn. I heard the fire trucks off in the distance, but I knew there was no getting in that house or saving what was in it before it was nothing. I sat down on the grass with all my weight and closed my eyes.

“If you’re gonna run ‘cross that road, you should wear shoes.”

Lettuce sat cross-legged in the grass not ten feet from me with Miss Lib sleeping in the fold of his leg. A Kool burned in his left hand. When the fire kicked up again, I could see Lettuce was smiling.

“Government’s been wanting me for a while,” he said. “I figured they would’ve come before now. Not for Billy, they might’ve waited longer.”

Lettuce flicked his butt toward the fire, picked up Miss Lib, and walked over to where I sat. He set himself down softly and patted on Miss Lib’s belly.

“Billy got himself in a fix,” Lettuce said. “Got pulled over on I-85 when they was doing one of those drug sweeps. Ended up in front of the DEA.”

I nodded in the darkness, but I didn’t know why. It didn’t figure.

Lettuce coughed once then said, “Billy didn’t have but a little bit on him. Little possession charge. DEA didn’t know what they had sitting in front of them. But he didn’t stop talking. He could’ve paid a little fine and been gone, but he thought he was in it deep. So he started talking, and of course, he said Lettuce Gambrell.”

“Lettuce, the DEA doesn’t care about you,” I said. “You make whiskey. They don’t give a damn.”

“You ever heard of the Tax and Trade Bureau?” Lettuce asked and lit another cigarette. When I shook my head, he said, “TTB. You can make your own beer in the U.S., but don’t make any whiskey without getting a permit or you run into them. Turned out, one of the DEA guys had a brother in the TTB and he knew all about Lettuce Gambrell. Knew all about Libertyville.”

“So, the bug,” I said.

Lettuce laughed out loud. “I don’t think they even knew if they were serious with that thing, but when Billy told him he had my dog, they had some guy fix Miss Lib right up. I knew what it was when I saw it. Lifted her ear up just like this and said, ‘Well, come on then.’”

Miss Lib yipped and licked Lettuce’s hand.

“I sat and talked into Miss Lib’s ear all night,” Lettuce laughed, “and the next morning there was a tired old boy standing on my front porch asking me to just be quiet. By lunchtime, I was sitting down with the TTB, the DEA, and hell, the CIA for all I know. They told me they wanted me quit of it and I told them they’d be better off with Parnell.”

“The crank,” I said.

Lettuce nodded and said, “I told Parnell it was time we started helping each other instead of fighting. Told him I needed some retirement money. Told him I could help him out. Convergence of markets, I said.”

It was my turn to laugh. I thought about Billy standing there in his boots, shorts, t-shirt, and stocking cap when the feds broke down his door. The amount Lettuce got from him that morning would put Parnell away long enough for him to find God, Buddha, or my dad.

I looked up at the fire. “And this?”

Lettuce lifted up Miss Lib’s ear and whispered into it.

“It’s done, boys,” he said. “I’m quit of it.”

***

Pickens County cried with Lettuce.

For the next week, it was like the county courthouse or the First Baptist Church of Easley had burned down. With every charred piece of glass the volunteers raked up out of that yard, they knew that one of their institutions had just burned to the ground. The Greenville News even sent over a reporter to do a piece about Lettuce. Story called it an accidental fire.

“Nah, I think I’m done,” he said when the reporter asked him if he would build another still. And that was all he said.

The feds had Billy in custody before dawn broke that morning. Story was he was screaming Lettuce’s name all the way to the pen in Lee, Virginia. We figure to see him again in about 20 years. I suspect he’ll still be wearing his stocking cap.

Lettuce got bored that winter. By spring, he opened up Liberty BBQ in a little building down by the Saluda. He’s got a sauce recipe from every winner of Lettuce Gambrell Day going back 20 years. Nobody comes around for his whiskey anymore, but every sauce has a shot of Lettuce’s finest in it. I don’t ask any questions and neither does the law.

I still see Lettuce every day. I drive him to work in the morning and come back to run my poker game in the back room at night.

Come by if you’re ever looking for a game.