Hell at the Breech Book

"Tell you something, Bedsole." he said. "Good sheriff has to know things, be they secret or not. Was a time back yonder in my ambitious years, when you was still chasing girls in pigtails, where I knew just about everything went on in my county, no matter how delicate, from the bowel movement of men to the ministerial cycles of women. A fly couldn't light on a stack of horse shit I didn't know about it. But then it happened I got older, as men will, and had to let some slack in my grip. You know. Now the habits of flies are unknown to me and men shit and women bleed unattended. And so there's two or three places I've let go too far. This here is one of 'em."

"That's a good little speech," Bedsole said. He took a cigar from his own shirt pocket and put it in his lips. "What's it mean?"

"Means I'm fixing to go to the bottom of some things."

Sheriff Billy Waite is feeling every mile of his existence in 1897. By the force of his will and sometimes by the vigilante justice of his gun he has kept Clark County peaceful.
He is respected.
He is feared.
He has started to drink too much.
And while he drinks he spends more time thinking about his past and some of his indiscretions weigh heavy on his mind.

"His coat hung by the door with the badge pinned inside it, and now, for the first time in his career as a sheriff, he could feel the metal as an organ gone bad, liver mossy or kidneys hardened, heart flattened out and its rivers of blood damned off."

When Billy hears about a shooting, an ambush, it is no surprise that it has happened in Mitcham Beat. Now the men in Clark County are a tough bunch, but the men in Mitcham Beat might be up there with some of the toughest sons-a-bitches in the known world. Many of them were in the war so they crossed that line decades ago between being just tough and having killed a man. Whistling lead is music that guides their fingers to the triggers of their own ready weapons.

How you treat them, they will respond in kind. Punch for a punch. Blast for a blast. Boot for a boot.

"Who killed Arch Bledsoe?"

Billy knows he is not the man he once was, but he hopes he has enough coal left in the furnace to do what needs to be done.

Tooch Bledsoe, cousin to Arch, has formed a gang of men who call themselves Hell at the Breech. The catalyst for this band of miscreants to form was the death of Arch, but it has just as much to do with the actions of McCorquodale. The split is between rural and town folks. McCorquodale holds a lot of paper on the rural people and of late he has gotten more aggressive about shoving people off their land; their little dab of red earth that they raised just enough cotton on to keep them in beans and bullets.

You take everything away from people and they are bound to take exception. Some will fall into drink, embracing their misery with both arms wrapped tight around their own failure, but others will decide that they didn't get a fair shake. They don't go to the law because it is rigged to help those with money. Bullets aren't cheap, but they are good shots, raised to shoot from a young age, and it will only take a couple to stop the black heart of that sombitch McCorquodale.

All hell breaks loose.

Billy is only beginning to investigate the murder of Bledsoe when this new murder has thrown his time table up in the trees. The town people want vengeance and they want it now. "The fog along the ground resembled smoke, as if the world were smoldering in its heart."

His investigations lead him to the whore Annie.

"She sat in a caneback chair by the table, wearing a housedress, breaking snap beans into small pieces and dropping them into a pail between her feet. A pipe on the table. Behind her, against the wall, stood her short shotgun. He raised his eyebrow at her, but she kept breaking the beans. Her dress was spread at her knees over the pail, showing her white skin, blue veins. How old must she be now? Fifty? Her hair was blond as ever, though."

Billy feels something wiggle he hasn't felt wiggle in a long time.

Annie soon has him on the defensive.

"You come see me once," she said. "As a customer."

"I don't recollect that."

"Lord, just as green a rich town boy ever got lost in the woods. Come in here with your ding-dong about to bust out of your britches, you and your cousin Oscar both."

"I reckon every boy within ten miles has been here." he said. "Only thing I care about today is if somebody come by last night."

This conversation, only lasts a few pages, but had me snorting; and well, maybe even giggling as Annie just kept making Billy more and more uncomfortable. Oh and by the way Billy remembers his youthful encounter with Annie in technicolor.

Annie might be the most dangerous person in the whole county because she knows "the ins and outs" about everybody whether they be from Mitcham Beat or from Coffeyville.

Mitcham Beat is beautiful.

"The land grew pretty to Waite's eye: field beyond field beyond field for well-kept cotton, each tuff white as a senator's eyebrow. Between the fields there were less level, unplantable space, lush deep wooded ravines with sprawling water oaks in the bottoms and hollows crowded with pine and other evergreens, limbs hung with Spanish moss, ivy, wisteria, and honeysuckle, creeks where cool water smooth the surfaces of wide white rocks. Locations perfect for whiskey-making. A farmer could tend his crops and, as he passed a hollow where he kept a still, climb to the bottom and check his mash."

Billy's mind is never far from his next drink.

I've read three Tom Franklin books and enjoyed them all, but this was my favorite. I thought the depth of characters that surround the brilliantly conveyed Billy Waite were just simply a pleasure to experience. I could smell the sweat of the horses, the face smacking stench of the unwashed, the taste of gunsmoke rising in the air, and the tang of old pennies as blood is spilled. The only thing that would have made it more perfect is if I'd had a jar of Alabama moonshine to burn my throat and grease my mind.

If you read the paperback, the publisher included a coda that was not in the hardcover version. My good friend, a prince among thieves, a gun toting, Grade A, made in Alabama knight named Michael Sullivan lent me his copy so I could read the coda. The fascinating part about this short story is that you will get to see Billy Waite as a younger man, when he knew exactly where the sun set in the sky when a fly landed on a stack of horseshit. If you like historical fiction, with the flavor of the old west, this is a book not to be missed.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visithttp://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: