Shotgun Charlie Read Online Free

mean old coon, but he was generous with his knowledge of corn whiskey making. It was a skill he had worked to teach young Grady. But he and Grady had argued time and again on one point—the old man had said that a proper moonshiner must not like his product too much. Oh, he could enjoy it once the day’s labors were through, but there was no call for taking a drink while on the job. And that was something Grady could not abide by.
    There came a day when Grady had been entrusted to the operation of the still for an afternoon while his grandfather attended to business in town. Grady decided he’d celebrate the fact that he was nearly sixteen years of age. He’d ladled a dipperful of young, raw corn squeezings. One had led to two, and when he’d been nearly through with a third, along came old Grandpappy, who’d laid down the law, clouting young Grady hard enough to set his ears to ringing. That was when it all happened, when everything in Grady’s life turned for naught. And when he made that unbreakable vow to himself never to put up with another man’s wrath again, why . . . there was no going back.
    He’d taken the beating, not saying much. But he’d managed a bottle of the prime stuff down the front of his bib overalls when he left. He’d finished that bottle off that evening and decided he’d not said nearly enough to the old man, so he headed back to ol’ Grandpappy’s place, found him asleep in his chair before the potbelly stove, head slumped to one side. He knew that whenever he talked with the old man it was never a two-way road. The old man always had to have the upper hand, always had to edge him out of the conversation altogether.
    That time he’d been determined ol’ Grandpappy would hear him out. So he’d done the best thing he knew to get the old thickhead’s attention—he grabbed up a ball-peen hammer and brought it down on the old man’s bean once, twice, three times. And maybe a few more for good measure; he never could recall the exact number.
    All this came back to Grady years later as he sat drunk, looking at a different man he’d killed, trying to hold a conversation with him, as he’d done with ol’ Grandpappy all those years before. The old man hadn’t listened, even though he didn’t talk back to him, of that he was sure. And this one was the same.
    But now, when he looked at this man, he saw ol’ Grandpappy, and though the man had been a crusty sort, he was the only one in the whole dang Haskell clan who had ever paid him any mind, shown him any sort of kindness. And now Grady found himself missing the old man, missing the ridge and those green, green mountains more than he had in a lifetime’s worth of Sundays.
    â€œI tell you,” he said to the stiffening corpse, “I don’t know how to get back there, to get back home to the Chalahoosee Ridge. I’ve tried a number of times over the years, but there’s always something that needs my efforts. Something that prevents me from pointing my horse toward the southeast. . . . Hey!” Grady leaned forward, shouted again, but the dead man didn’t move.
    Grady Haskell went on like this, conversing with the man he’d so recently incapacitated, for another hour before expiring himself, a sagged mass of angry killer, in the dead man’s other chair.
    When he awoke, some hours later, dawn’s sun had begun its slow crawl skyward. Grady’s head pulsed like a hammer-struck thumb with each beat of his heart. He did his best to ignore the voice inside that told him to lay off the liquor and he might well wake up feeling better one of these days. He knew the voice was probably right, but he pushed it down, did his best to tamp it and ignore it and kill it. And the best way he knew to do that was to guzzle back a few mouthfuls of gargle.
    He leaned forward in the chair, caught sight of the man he’d