Out of the Frying Pan

The Law of the Land

The feud between Sheriff Howell and Cec went on for years, then finally came to an end. Sheriff Howell retired and Cec kept on making his whiskey, but the new sheriff was too busy making a name for himself and didn’t want to waste time on the shiners.

One day, a car pulled up at Cec’s house, and a man got out. Cec didn’t recognize him at first, but it was Sheriff Howell – no uniform, no cruiser, no longer Sheriff. They said their howdy’s and the ex-Sheriff came upon the porch and pulled up a chair. Now Cec still called him “Sheriff,” but others got used to calling him “Mister Howell,” a name he hadn’t answered to for over twenty-five years.

When I was thirteen or fourteen, Cec told me the story of what happened on the porch that day.

Mr. Howell reached over, got a stick out of the box that Cec kept on the porch, and reached into his pocket for his knife. Looking up at Cec and then back down at his stick, he realized that Cec wasn’t gonna start the conversation – just like a thousand times before. Finally, he broke the ice.

“Cec, you know I’ve been retired for a while.”

“Yes, Sheriff, I know.”

“Dang it, Cec, I ain’t Sheriff no more!” Mr. Howell snapped back. Cec still had a way of getting under his skin.

“Yep, I know it ain’t your title anymore.”

Mr. Howell knew that Cec didn’t trust him, and was frustrated, trying to think how to put into words what he wanted to say. There was a long pause, and then Mr. Howell began to speak.

“For years I knew you were behind making and selling the whiskey around these parts, and if I could, I would have done my job.”

Cec spoke up, “Yes sir, I know that but—“

Mr. Howell cut him off. “Now don’t start that again, that ‘I don’t know nothing’ stuff, trying to be innocent and all. Now I’m asking you where and how you hid it, as man to man. I give you my word it will go no further than this front porch.”

Cec eyed him over. Seeing it bothered the man so much, he reached out with his hand. Ex-Sheriff Howell reached out with his and they shook. Cec said he could feel and see the defeat in the old sheriff.

See, that’s all it took, was for a man to give his word and a handshake. That was the real law of the land, the law that no one ever broke.

Cec leaned back in his chair, as did Mr. Howell, and then Cec busted out laughing. He was a-laughing so hard, his eyes were tearing. Mr. Howell didn’t find the laughter amusing at his own expense. “You making fun of me, Cec?” he barked.

Cec, wiping the tears from his eyes, gained enough composure to say, “No sir, I”m not,” then thought better of it and said, “Well, yeah, sorta,” and started laughing again. Mr. Howell’s face was stern, waiting for Cec to try and catch his breath and wipe the tears away. Finally Cec calmed down and apologized.

“It just hit me all at once, all the years, all those years you and your boys tried to prove something and couldn’t, me sitting here on this very front porch with you poking around, me trying my best to keep a straight face. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Well, are you gonna tell me or not, dang it?”

“Sure, sure, give me some time, ya waited this long, haven’t ya?”

Cec looked down at the box where the whittling sticks are kept, and then back up at Mr. Howell. Misinterpreting why Cec was looking at the box, Mr. Howell said, “You’re pulling my leg, right?”

Cec laughed, “Yep, it ain’t that close.” He looked out into the yard then and smiled. “You fellows must have passed it a thousand times a thousand.”

“What are you talking about?” Mr. Howell followed Cec’s gaze and looked out into the yard. He didn’t see anything different than he’d ever seen before: a couple big oak trees, a few homemade decorative wood whirlygigs, a dirt driveway that arced around the remains of an old pickup truck which was overgrown with weeds, and an expanse of tractor-mown grass between the house, the woodshed, and the barn.

Cec said, “Yep, there it is, my first pickup truck.” Mr. Howell’s jaw dropped as Cec got up to show him. “There ain’t nothing in that old truck or in the back of it, but weeds.” They walked the forty feet from the porch to the old truck, and Cec poked at it with one of his canes. “Go ahead and open the hood.”

See, it wasn’t uncommon to see an old vehicle up in a yard if it broke down beyond repair. You sold what you could off of it, bought yourself another one, and just made a new road around the old one. And that’s what Cec did. He did, however, make a few changes to his old one. Ex-Sheriff Howell approached the hood – from the outside he would have sworn it would be rusted shut, but it moved pretty easy thanks to the nicely oiled hinges on the inside.

And there it was, right where the motor should be... a hand-operated well pump.

Cec told him, “Look where you put the gas in,” and there he found a pipe that disappeared below the ground.

The old Sheriff just smiled and asked, “How big is your tank?”

Cec replied, “Oh, somewhere about two thousand gallons.” What he didn’t tell him was that it was one of those big tanks off a milk truck. It had broken down on a nearby dairy farm, and so Cec’s boys had buried it in the ground.

Mr. Howell shut the hood, shaking his head, and started laughing. Now it was his turn to wipe the tears from his eyes. As he did, he told Cec, “I’ve sampled sips of your shine, and could even tell when it was yours. I’d like to have a real drink of it, if you would be so kind as to share some with this old Sheriff.”

The two men went back upon the porch, sat back down, and Cec reached over to his wood box, dug down under the sticks, and pulled out a jug of moonshine. The two adversaries looked at each other and began to laugh. They laughed on into the night, drinking and sharing stories from each other’s point of view.

Ex-Sheriff Howell was a man of his word. He never told to anyone where Cec kept his shine.