Joe Taylor's Emergency

ONE Sunday morning when the church bells are ringing and the smell of chicken and dumplings steals through the inner parts of the jail house, Old Sam Johnson takes down his banjo and sings his favorite hymn: —

‘I never sing that song,’ says Sam Johnson, ‘ but I think of Joe Taylor and how he sung it right in this jail house thirty years ago.’

‘Joe Taylor?’ says Bill Allen. ‘That sounds like a story.’

‘It is,’ says Sam Johnson. ‘Listen.’

I

I know Joe Taylor back in 1883 when he’s just gettin’ his fort built and beginnin’ to organize his political party. I’m just a boy then, and one day I’m out fishin’ on the bank of Big Hurricane Creek when a tall man with a black beard comes along on horseback and says, ‘Howdy, son. I’m Joe Taylor. I’m doin’ some buildin’ over at my place and I’m lookin’ for a water boy.’

I know plenty about Joe Taylor from hearsay, but this is the first time I ever see him.

‘The job pays twenty-five cents a day and board,’ says he, ‘and if you want it, it’s yours.’

Well, I’m gettin’ to be right smart of a lad by this time, but I ain’t earned no money yet, and after I talk it over with the old man I take the job. Joe Taylor’s place is only about five miles from our place and I walk over there the next evenin’. When I get there I find Joe is doin’ some buildin’ all right, for he’s puttin’ up the funniest-lookin’ house since they fight the Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant. He’s got about twenty men cuttin’ down trees and smoothin’ them up with an adze, and he’s buildin’ a big log fort with a stockade and everything.

Joe don’t make no bones about what that fort is bein’ built for. He’s buildin’ it to protect him from the revenue men, and that means he’s steppin’ right out to defy the Government of the United States.

That kind of sentiment don’t hurt him none around where he lives, for moonshinin’ is an honorable profession and there’s been a standin’ fight on with the revenue men for years. Some of the old folks, of course, thinks Joe is right foolish to go out of his way huntin’ trouble, but there ain’t none of them likes the revenue men and they’re all hopin’ Joe gets away with it.

I take up my job as water boy and hustle buckets of water to the tops of them high hills to all them thirsty woodcutters, and in about a month the fort is finished. It’s a big two-story cabin with a tower on the roof and a palisade fence all around it, and it stands on the top of a round hill that’s steep on all sides. As a place to beat off an enemy, it’s about the prettiest little fight house you’ll ever lay eyes on, and we’re feelin’ right proud to have a place like that in the community.

The day it’s finished Joe calls me aside and says, ’I’m figurin’ on goin’ into this thing on a big scale and I’m keepin’ several of the boys to help me. If you want to stay on, the pay is fifty cents a day and board.’

That’s O.K. with me and I says I’ll take it. Joe has got a lot of other hands hired at the same time, and that evenin’ he calls us all into the yard and says, ‘I don’t want none of you fellers to get the wrong idee about the thing. This is dangerous work, and though I’ve picked you fellers because I think you’ve got plenty of sand in your craws, if there’s anybody wants to drop out, now is the time to do it.’

There ain’t nobody drops, and Joe says, ‘What I’m aimin’ to do is this. There’s a big demand for mountain liquor over on the Kanawha River, but there ain’t nobody makes any money out of the liquor business in this country because the revenue men has got them buffaloed. Everybody makes whiskey, but they does it on the sly and they tries to sneak a few gallons at a time to the market. Now I don’t aim to do nothin’ on the sly and I don’t aim to sneak nothin’ to the market. Them ten mules you see out there in the barn is there for a purpose. It’s fifty miles over the cow trails to Charleston, and them mules makes the trip in two days. Goin’ over they takes whiskey, and comin’ back they brings cracked corn and whatever else we need in the business. Twelve men and twenty-four guns goes with the mules and they don’t stop for nothin’ or nobody. Six men and the boy stays here all the time, and with the womenfolks that makes nineteen guns to hold the fort. It’s understood this ain’t no old maid’s tea party.’

This is a wild idee, sure enough, but all of us is young and lusty and we don’t care much what happens. We don’t think we’re in rebellion against the government or anything like that, for we’re good Republicans and will fight for the Union quick as anybody. We’re just workin’ for Joe Taylor at fifty cents a day, and if Joe Taylor says to knock off any revenue man that tries to stop us, we don’t aim to be behindhand in doin’ so.

II

Right away after the fort is built, Joe sends out his first mule train to bring a shipment of cracked corn from Charleston. He don’t take me along on account of my size, but every man he does take carries two rifles and three hundred rounds of ammunition. Joe heads the train himself and his men are the best shots in the county, which is somethin’. Nothin’ happens to us or to them while they’re gone, and when the corn comes back we start in makin’ the whiskey.

My job at this time is to be a kind of Jack-of-all-trades to everybody. I carry water to fill the barrels, wash jugs and bottles, and if somebody wants somethin’, as somebody always does, I run and fetch it. If there ain’t nothin’ else to do I go up to the tower room on the roof and take a look at the hills through the field glasses. Joe spends a lot of his time up there on account of maybe the revenue men will try to sneak up on him, but none of us don’t see any because they keeps to neutral territory.

When we’re up there Joe talks to me right smart about things in general and gives me advice on how to look out for myself.

‘Lots of people thinks,’ Joe tells me more than once, ‘I’m the worst kind of a fool, but that don’t worry me none. I’ve got my eyes open and I know as well as anybody that the Federal men is apt to get me. “Take a chance” is my motto, and be ready for every emergency. I want you to remember that. To be a success a man has got to look every proposition square in the face. He’s got to pick it up and look at it and see where it’s good and where it’s bad. Not only that, he’s got to be ready to play his last trump if it breaks the bad way. You can count on this: whatever happens to me I’m ready for it, and I’ll beat it one way or another.’

Joe is a smart man, all right, and I think quite a bit about that emergency talk of his, though I don’t ever do much with his methods. Seems like Joe has got somethin’ hard and cold in his nature that I don’t have, and I suppose that is why he gets somewhere before he dies while I don’t ever amount to much.

He ain’t all cold and calculatin’, though, as I know when he takes down his banjo and starts singin’. It’s there in the tower house at old Fort Taylor that I learn all I know about singin’ and the banjo, and all I know I learn from Joe Taylor. Joe has got one of them voices that makes a swellin’ in your throat and you feel like you ain’t here no more, but off somewhere in the air in a strange country; and he don’t sing the rollickin’, foolish songs that other folks sing. Pretty near all the songs Joe sings is sad songs, and they sounds like Joe is mighty religious. I can hear him yet singin’: —

When Joe sings he’s got a far-away look in his eyes and it don’t seem like he’s the man that can build a fort and handle a gang of outlaws. But there ain’t no sentimental streak in him when he’s dealin’ with men. He shows that when his mule train has the only fight they ever have in seven years, and it ain’t with the revenue men, either.

It ain’t got nothin’ to do with this story except to show what kind of a man Joe Taylor is, but there’s a gang of outlaws in this country at that time that calls themselves the Redlegs, and they specialize in ridin’ all over the country robbin’ stores and banks. They operate mostly over on the Kanawha, and their leader, Blind Bob Hedrick, is almost as famous as Jesse James. Well, one day Joe is comin’ back from Charleston with his mules when these Redlegs tries to hijack him over on Coal Mountain. They has a right bloody battle and the Redlegs get the worst of it. Joe chases them clear to the head of Thacker’s Creek, and on the way he catches three of Hedrick’s men that ain’t well mounted, and he strings them up on grapevines quick as a whistle. The poor devils hangs there till the buzzards picks their bones clean, and the Redlegs is mighty careful thereafter how they crosses Joe Taylor.

III

It’s always a mystery to me, and to Joe too, for that matter, why the government don’t send an army down there to fight him. Maybe it’s because the government is always hell on the little fellers and nice as pie to the big ones, and maybe it’s because they figure they’ll have to send a regiment of soldiers fifty miles through the mountains to do it, and it ain’t worth it. Whatever it is, I work for Joe Taylor in this business for over seven years, and durin’ that time he ain’t molested, not even once, by nobody except them Redlegs. There’s plenty of revenue men out in the hills, and they’re catchin’ poor devils that’s makin’ a little shine to keep from starvin’ to death durin’ the winter, but they can’t find Joe Taylor.

In the meantime Joe is cleanin’ up big. He makes a special brand of whiskey that he calls ‘Taylor’s Best,’ and it sells way beyond the Kanawha Valley. Joe gets so he drives his mule train down the main street of Charleston and unloads his stuff at the Charleston Wharf Boat. After I get to drivin’ a mule myself I see him hobnobbin’ with the bigwigs over at the State House.

But all this time the country is changin’ and people is beginnin’ to get different idees. I don’t know it at the time, but lookin’ back I can see that towns is springin’ up on account of the coal mines and the people comin’ in believes in schools and in law and order. We don’t notice it much over on Long Branch, for we’re still a long ways from the railroad, but you can take it from me these mountains is changin’ fast by 1890.

It’s along about this time, when Joe is flush with the profits of seven years’ business and is buyin’ up coal lands right and left, that he begins to figure it’s time to make a change. He always keeps on the good side of his neighbors and does them plenty of favors in transportin’ their stuff to the market, and they tell him he ought to run for sheriff. In them days a sheriff don’t do much but collect the taxes, and Joe is a mighty good collector. He thinks the proposition over without sayin’ much, but I know he’s got somethin’ big on his mind.

By the time I’m eighteen years old Joe always keeps me with him in Charleston, and this is how I find out which way the wand is blowin’. One day we walk up three flights of steps in an office building, and Joe introduces me to my first lawyer.

‘The government is finally comin’ round to our way of thinkin’,’says the lawyer to Joe, ‘but they’re insistin’ on the back tax for seven years.’

‘How much do they want?’ says Joe.

The lawyer names the price, and Joe says, ‘I’ve made twenty times that much in the last seven years, and if they’ll clean the slate I’ll pay it. It would have been cheaper for them to license me in the first place, but that’s their lookout. It’s understood that they’ll give me a license as a bonded distillery under the name of Fort Taylor Distillin’ Company?’

‘Yes,’ says the lawyer, ‘they’ll do that. They’ve already said so.’

‘All right,’ says Joe. ‘Fix up the papers.’

This don’t mean much to me, but when we get outside Joe says, ‘Sam, you ain’t an outlaw no more, for you’re workin’ for a respectable bonded distillin’ house.’

That’s all the same to me, so Joe says, ‘ Sometimes I’m afraid I got you started wrong, Sam. Times is changin’ in these hills and outlaws is goin’ out of fashion. What this country needs is less outlaws and more law-abidin’ citizens.’

I note this is a funny way for a man to talk that builds his own fort and tells the government to go to the devil, but I don’t say so. It strikes me that Joe gets more and more respectable as his bank roll gets bigger, and I notice that people is apt to be that way. A man that’s got property will be’ strong for law no matter how he gets the property.

‘Yes,’ says Joe, ‘I want you to think about changin’ your ways, and I’ll let you in on somethin’ else. This Fort Taylor Distillin’ Company is just a bluff to get things legal. The railroads is cuttin’ into that business already and inside of a year I’ll be out of it.’

‘What you goin’ to do?’ says I. ‘Turn preacher?’

‘Hell, no!’ says Joe. ‘I’m goin’ into politics on a reform ticket and clean up the moonshiners.’

IV

Well, I figure Joe has sure enough gone nutty this time, but I find out he knows people a lot better than I do. I stay on with him doin’ odd jobs for about three years more, and I sure see some powerful changes in this county. Joe buys him a newspaper over at the courthouse, and the first thing he does is to print a long article about how times is changin’ and he is linin’ up on the side of law and order by gettin’ his business legalized. Then he starts runnin’ articles sent out by the W.C.T.U., or some other organization, tellin’ about the terrible effects of strong drink. And finally he says he’s had a change of heart, and can’t go on with his business no more, and he’s closin’ down his distillery.

It beats anything the way people fall for Joe’s stuff, for pretty soon I find men that has been moonshiners all their lives holdin’ up Joe Taylor as a good example. It seems like people out our way has been sinners for a long time, only they don’t know it, and now they’re tryin’ to make up for lost time. Just like that — moonshinin’ ain’t a respectable profession no more, and the only folks that follows it are the lowdowns that ain’t got their proper decency nohow.

Joe Taylor gets himself elected sheriff by the biggest majority this county ever sees, and right there he sets the fashion for all the sheriffs since his time. He says he’s the guardian of law and order and he’s goin’ to see that the law takes its course. He serves notices on the clans that killin’ is out of style and he lays down the law on moonshinin’. He makes enemies, of course, but it seems like he’s got most of the public with him, and his biggest splurge as sheriff comes when he gets the county court to build this jail house.

Up to when Joe Taylor is sheriff the only jail in the county is the log shack that stands where this jail house is now. It’s got only one room and it don’t often have prisoners. There ain’t much talk of law and order in them days, and there ain’t much need for a jail house. But Joe Taylor sees right off he’s got to have some place to punish the criminals or his talk about law and order is goin’ to be a lot of boloney. So he gets the county court to pass the specifications for a model jail house that’s right up to the minute in the year 1894.

That’s the year the jail house is finished, and while I don’t pay much attention to it beforehand, I get right well acquainted with it when it’s done. There’s a travelin’ salesman bumps into me on the street when I’m four sheets high, and when I sock him in the jaw I wake up for the first time in the jail house. Nowadays I’m used to it and kind of miss the place when I’m away, but I don’t like it then, and, never thinkin’ that Joe Taylor will see one of his old pals stay in the jail house, I sends for Joe. When he comes I see he ain’t sorry like he ought to be.

‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ he says, ‘but law is law and it’s against the law to hit a man in the jaw in this town.’

Sittin’ there lookin’ at him, I see Joe is gettin’ to look older and harder and he’s changin’ more and more into a successful business man. His eye is cold and he don’t seem to have no feelin’s at all. It riles me a little to think Joe is goin’ to leave an old friend in the lurch, but I find out I misjudge him there, for he says, ‘I know you think I’m a hard-boiled egg, Sam, and I’ll admit I ain’t strong on the feelin’s. Comin’ from where I do, a man has got to watch his step and he can’t let sentiment run away with his good sense. Here’s what I’m up against. I’m goin’ over this country preachin’ law and order and pointin’ out the jail house as a place for offenders, when one of my own men gets in jail. The jail house is a new idee and people watches it. If I turn you out, people is goin’ to say law and order means my enemies, but it don’t apply to my friends.’

I see where Joe is right, and I say, ‘I don’t mind the ten days in jail so much, but how am I goin’ to pay the fine? If I don’t pay the fine they keep me here till I do pay it, and that ain’t so good.'

‘You don’t need to worry none about that,’ says Joe. ‘I’ll pay your fine and you can draw on me for whatever else you need while you’re in here.’

That’s white of Joe and I think he’s got a heart after all. We get to talkin’ about one thing and another, and finally I says, ‘Joe, I see you’re changed a powerful lot since we ride the mule trains, and I don’t hardly know you. When you tell me you’re goin’ to reform the county and clean out the moonshiners I think you’re plenty foolish, but I see you do it, and it don’t seem to hurt you none, either. But what I want to know is this: Do you do these things because you want to help the country like you say, or do you do them to help yourself?’

Joe knows I’m his friend no matter what he says, so he points outside to where a hickory sprout pushes out between two bricks in an old walk, and he says, ‘You see that sprout. It wants the sun. Down beneath it is other sprouts, and they’re lookin’ for the sun, too. Now I wonder if that hickory pushes the bricks back to help itself or to help the others.’

I see Joe ain’t changed none for all his talk about law and order and good citizenship, and he’s goin’ to be a tough customer to deal with when he wants the sun.

V

After the ten days is up, Joe pays the fine and I go back work in’ for him same as if nothin’ has happened. I don’t aim to spend no more time in jail houses then, but it seems like I can’t keep away, and inside of three months I’m back again for gettin’ too riotous at a church meetin’. That’s just the beginnin’. As long as Joe Taylor lives I don’t draw no long stretches, but when he dies I’m here about every winter for one thing and another and I think he does right well by me when he builds a place where I always find a bed and some vittles.

The second time out I quit Joe for a while on account of not wantin’ to embarrass him by always gettin’ in jail, but it seems like I can’t work for nobody but Joe. Pretty soon I’m with him again, and so long as I lay off the liquor I work for him fine. One thing I’ve got to say for Joe. No matter how much I get in jail or how much I disgrace him by gettin’ dog-drunk on the street, he’ll always pay my fine and give me a job. He may be a bad actor when he’s crowdin’ for a place in the sun, but he don’t forget I’m a faithful servant when I need him.

Well, things go on this way for about six years, and in the meantime Joe is gettin’ so rich and powerful he don’t know what to do with himself. His coal lands turns out to be regular gold mines, they’re worth so much, and Joe sets up his own bank to take care of his money. Joe is the first man around here to wear a banker’s hat like the New York bankers wear, and he is president of the First National. His wife is dead for some years now, and when Joe is gettin’ along in the fifties he marries a kid about one-third his age and builds her that big brick house that they call the Taylor Place.

VI

Now you may think a feller that’s as smart as Joe Taylor is and gets where Joe Taylor does will live to a happy old age and die peaceful. He’s got everything to make him happy in the way of money and power and he don’t have to crowd in and fight for his place like he used to. Seein’ him around town in his long coat and his banker’s hat, with his side whiskers fly in’ in the wind, you ’ll say there is a man you can depend on. He’s sane and sober, and he won’t do nothin’ foolish.

That’s the way Joe Taylor looks to you, for he’s a man that keeps a grip on himself and he’s got a mighty penetratin’ mind. But what you won’t see is that down underneath Joe Taylor is still an outlaw, and he’s hard as steel and a little crazy. I know this because I’m sittin’ in this jail house, in the year of our Lord 1901, when the door opens and they bring me a cellmate that ain’t nobody but Joe Taylor himself!

‘Howdy, Sam,’ says Joe, quiet like he is payin’ me a social visit. ‘Got your banjo?’

‘Sure,’ says I, wonderin’ what in the name of thunder they’ve got him in jail for. ‘Want to play a little?’

‘If you don’t mind,’ says he.

I get the banjo and Joe sets down about where I’m sittin’ now and puts it in tune. He’s got long thin hands on a banjo, and I see his fingers ain’t nervous. That don’t tell me much about Joe Taylor, for I ain’t seen the man that’s got him beat for cool nerve, but I begin to think it can’t be very serious or he’d show it more than that. He gets it in tune finally, strums it a few times, and starts singin’ that song I sung awhile ago, ‘They’re Comin’ Down the Mountain One by One.’

Many a time I sit quiet and listen to Joe Taylor sing like I’m afraid somethin’ will break all of a sudden and spoil everything, but all my life I never hear Joe Taylor sing like he sings here in the jail house. His voice is sad and caressin’ like a mother soothin’ her baby, but there’s somethin’ else in it, too. It’s sad and it’s sweet, but I know he is singin’ to ease the iron in his soul, and that somethin’ terrible has happened.

When he finishes he don’t say nothin’, and I hear two fellers talkin’ in the other cell block.

‘God!’ says one. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Don’t know,’ says the other.

‘What have they got you for, Joe?’ says I.

‘Murder,’ says he, not battin’ an eyelid. ‘I just killed my wife.’

I hear tales for some time about Joe’s kid wife, so I say, ‘Same old story, I suppose.’

‘Yes,’ says Joe. ‘Same old story.’

I’m sorry for Joe, for he’s been a good friend to me, but I make a mistake tryin’ to cheer him up a little. ‘Well, it happens in the best of families,’ says I, like it don’t amount to much, ‘and there ain’t nothin’ to worry about. With the lawyers you can get you’ll come off clean as a whistle.’

Joe don’t say nothin’, but he looks at me a long time and I see he thinks I’m an amusin’ feller. I feel right foolish then, for I know Joe ain’t committed murder without figurin’ the price, and after a while he says sort of sleepy-like, ‘I believe I’ll turn in, Sam, and get some rest. Thanks for the banjo.’

He turns in and drapes a blanket over the cell door to keep out the light, and I start walkin’ up and down the bull pen. Of course I feel sorry for his wife, but that’s over and I can’t help feelin’ sorry for Joe, too. I see he’s put himself in a tough spot, for wife killin’ ain’t exactly popular under any conditions, and I can’t see why Joe of all people does it. There ain’t nobody will take a chance quicker than Joe, but even so there’s other ways of handlin’ domestic troubles besides murder, and it ain’t reasonable to suppose that Joe don’t think about them. The more I think about it the more I believe somethin’ is back of what Joe tells me and I’m a fool for worryin’ about it.

I strum the banjo and sing a few songs till supper time, for there ain’t nobody in the block but me and Joe, and the banjo keeps me from gettin’ lonesome. When the jailer’s wife brings in the evenin’ chow I call Joe, but he don’t answer. I try his door and find it’s locked from the inside. I remember then that a feller breaks jail through the roof of that cell one time, and I think I see why Joe laughs when I start talkin’ about the lawyers. I can break out there myself if I want to, and it’s fifty to one Joe is out in the mountains by this time and they’ll never get him. It’s a big load off my chest, anyhow, and when the jailer’s wife comes back I tell her Joe is sleepin’.