From the Chattanooga Gazette, October 6, 2005
By Ingrid Eberley, Staff Reporter
Police in Chattanooga are on the lookout for two men who robbed the Southern Mountain Bank around six Thursday night. Police report that bank employees were closing up when two men wearing ski-masks brandished guns and pushed their way into the bank. They made one employee go behind the counter and sent the other to get money out of the vault. They asked the employee to put the money into three leather bags. A witness reported the duo headed south in a red van with Tennessee plates. Bank officers estimated the two got away with at least $78,000. The FBI is investigating.
Damnation, thought sheriff Dick Leach. Could Lost Cow Pond really contain the money from that bank heist? The thieves had tossed the bags of money into a beaver pond? How stupid was that? With a feeling that several pairs of eyes watched him, he left the cruiser and slogged along the bank, peering into the murky water. If this didn’t beat anything! Supposing he couldn’t find that cash from the robbery right away, they would have to break up the dam and drain the beaver pond. Of course there was no sign of the money bags. He wondered if the thieves might be having a joke at law enforcement’s expense.
Leach scanned the water for signs of motion, but in the sharp sunlight of mid-morning, the pond looked glassy still, without even a long-legged water bug skimming the surface. Leach needed to think this situation through. He returned to the squad car for binoculars, and after picking a dry spot with some bushes as cover, he sat down to ponder and to wait. The sunlight warmed the log where the sheriff sat, and a breeze ruffled the leaves. The only sounds were birds chirping and a trickle of water flowing through the dam. How strange the beaver’s compulsion to build a dam when he heard the sound of running water. Liquid lapse of murmuring streams. The Sheriff wondered if that perfect poetic line was Milton’s or John Wesley. Or perhaps John Wesley quoting Milton.
Half an hour later, Leach saw motion on the opposite side of the pond. Making as little movement as possible, he brought the binoculars to his eyes. A big beaver waddled toward the water. Castor Canadensis. Trailing a scent of musk, no doubt. The animal’s brown fur glistened in the sunlight, as he paused and looked around. Did he sense the sheriff or did something else disturb the pond’s quiet morning? Leach watched as the big fellow slipped down the grassy bank into the water and paddled toward the lodge. He disappeared, and a few moments later the sheriff observed a sleek head in the middle of the pond. The beaver slapped his flat tail on the surface, then dived again. As the sheriff attempted to follow the beaver’s movements with the binoculars, the animal reappeared and heaved himself onto the brush atop the lodge. Other sleek heads appeared and one by one, each creating a perfect V in the water, as the animals swam toward the lodge. The colony was having a rendezvous? Now, what the hell was that about?
As interesting as this was, Leach needed to get some backup out here and locate that money from the bank.
Burma settled his old webbed chair between two rocks and took a long gander up and down the creek. The season for sittin a spell would soon be over. Sunlight played on the water, which felt a few degrees cooler than last week, yet the kingfisher perched on its usual branch above them.
Every weekday afternoon when they escaped Ma’s chores, the Weehunt boys sat in Elijah creek. They pulled ratty lawn chairs scavenged from the town trash day into the shallow water, took the jug and a six-pack or two of Sweetwater Festive Ale, and pulled on creek shoes, ancient high-topped sneakers. Then they sat in the creek, enjoying the cool water and the beverages. Sometimes they fished, but after a few swigs on the jug and a couple of beers, thoughts of fishing tended to drift with the current. Festive Ale wasn’t their normal beer, but they had “borrowed” two cases off the back of a beer truck parked in town a week or so back, and stashed it down by the creek. Ma didn’t like to navigate her old knees back up the two hundred rickety stairs to the house, so the creek was their territory.
The brothers were tall and rangy, with piercing blue eyes and dirty-blond hair. Ceylon was the oldest, then came Burma and Singapore. Their sister Sumatra was married and gone. Ma’s fanciful names had caused them plenty of schoolyard fights. Fighting was kind of a hobby with them, and if there was nobody else, they fought each other. Wasn’t a real fight until someone bled.
“When’s the last time y’all refilled the jug?” asked Burm.
“Last Friday, I’d say.” Sing rubbed his nose in a thoughtful way. “Yep. Friday.” “Notice anything peculiar? Bout the creek and bout the jug?”
“Same corn whiskey as always.” Ceylon pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket. He took the old Zippo lighter that Sing handed him. “What about the creek?” “Water’s higher,” drawled Burm, “And I been seein things. Thought it was on account of the jug.”
“What you been seein besides water and dragonflies?” asked Sing.
“Twenty dollar bills.”
Ceylon said, “Yer drunk, Burm.”
“Don’t think so,” answered Burm. “Lookee there.” He pointed toward the middle of the stream.
Ceylon and Sing gaped as green bills floated by. A ten, two twenties and a fifty.
“Jeezus! Grab em!” Ceylon dropped his cigarette, and lunged for the money. Burm and Sing followed his lead, and the creek churned like sharks at a feeding frenzy from their diving and grabbing. The kingfisher let out a harsh rattle, and flew away.
An hour later, Ceylon heard Ma calling at the top of the stairs.
“Go see what she wants,” he told Burm.
“I’m all keyed up. Ma can read me like the funnies. She’d know somethin was in the wind with us being all wet.”
Ceylon turned to Sing. “You go.”
“My breath might smell like likker. You know Ma don’t like us on the jug in the afternoon.”
“You two ain’t worth shootin.” Ceylon headed toward the stairs, stopped, and looked over his shoulder. “What’s the word?”
Burm and Sing ran over and they formed a huddle. Three male voices chanted, “All fer one and one fer all.”
A querulous female voice shouted, “I been callin’ and callin’. What you boys doing down there? Git up here!”
“I’ll see what Ma wants. And remember I already counted the money and I don’t forget the sum of two thousand seven hundred and forty dollars. I don’t forget it for a minute. Don’t y’all touch them bills.” Ceylon headed for the stairs.
When he returned a few minutes later, Burm and Sing were rolling on the bank of the creek, flailing and pounding each other. Sing’s nose was bloodied and Burm’s face looked like it had been ground into the mud. Their jeans were filthy with dirt and leaves. “What the hell’s the matter with you two? Didn’t we say our special pledge? Didn’t we?” He grabbed each brother’s shirt by the neck and knocked their heads together. “Where’s that money?”
Sing rolled off Burm and wiped his nose across his wrist. He collapsed into an old white plastic chair. “Burm says he’s gonna buy a diamond engagement ring for Sara Beth. There won’t be nuthin left for us.”
Burm spat in the dirt. He hooked a thumb at Sing. “Mr. Big Spender here wants to go to Las Vegas. Eat a steak so big it’s floppin over both sides of the plate and some fool dessert that’s on fire. Buy himself a blonde hooker with long skinny legs. Wants to shoots craps and play the dollar slots. Money’d be gone in a day.”
Ceylon glared at them. “We got a problem. Ma had some news she was just dyin to tell me. Concernin the money. It’s from that bank robbery a couple days ago up in Chattanooga. Sheriff found out the robbers dumped it in Lost Cow Pond and he’s lookin fer it.”
Sheriff Dick Leach, awkward in hip waders and holding a rake, took a tentative step into the beaver pond. The bottom dropped off unevenly, and Leach walked like a stork through a slippery salad. His pipe stem legs were better suited to driving the squad car or dangling off a stool at The Coffee Pot Café.
He beckoned to his deputy. “Bring on ‘the rakes, hoes and implements of destruction.’ Let’s get this over with.”
The deputy squinted at the sheriff. “Implements of destruction.” That was a good one. Goddamned beavers. If it had been his decision, he would have dynamited the dam, but the sheriff had yammered on about too much water downstream and draining a few feet off the pond to “take a gander at what those creatures might have been up to.”
The sheriff pointed at a spot near the edge of the dam. “Let’s start over there. See if you can dislodge some of that brush.”
The deputies, all in waders, prodded and poked the dam with the rakes and hoes and even a crowbar. After thirty minutes effort, a stream of water cascaded over the remaining branches, revealing spots of green.
“God Almighty, Sheriff! There’s money stuck right into the dam.”
Leach nodded, his boyish face impassive. “Small potatoes compared to what’s in those missing bags.”
They waited, while the water level dropped with an agonizing sluggishness.
“Sure you don’t want me to fetch a few sticks of dynamite, Sheriff?”
“And blow those bags of bills to kingdom come?”
The deputy shrugged and climbed onto the bank.
Four squad cars lined the narrow road, and it seemed like the traffic was heavy for a weekday afternoon. Word must have got out to the locals. They’d have to post somebody here overnight or the dam would be picked clean by morning.
The deputy watched the sheriff directing the operations. Little pipsqueak of a guy. Smart as a whip. Some folks called him “Lychee Nut” behind his back. Whatever the hell that was. The deputy only knew hickory nuts, pecans and walnuts. Peanuts, too, which weren’t nuts. Everybody in Georgia knew that.
The Deputy, a simple man, liked Terrapin beer, pulled-pork barbeque, sex without athletics, sound sleep and police work, in that order.
Sheriff Leach, looking thoughtful, waded back to the shore. “Wonder if we should get some police divers to help find the missing bags. Probably Atlanta has divers. Maybe Chattanooga. I reckon the Feds have them. What do you think?”
What the deputy thought was “dynamite,” but he said, “mebbe as a last resort, sheriff.”
“I think we can hold off a day or two.” The sheriff paused and his eyes rested on the deputy. “The American beaver. Usually thought of as a pest but actually beneficial.” He nodded at the deputy. “What do you know about beavers?”
“Varmints,” thought the deputy, but he answered, “Not much, sheriff. They build dams and create a nuisance.” He nodded toward the pond. “They ain’t worth eatin and they ain’t worth shootin.”
“Bet you didn’t know they build a dam when they hear the sound of running water,” said the Sheriff. His eyes had that faraway look he sometimes got, when his mind ranged in places the deputy’s didn’t go.
Deputy squinted at the pond, seeing only a cold wet place to work.
Sheriff fixed his eyes on a point below the dam. “Why don’t you pay the Weehunts a visit? They live on that bluff about half a mile downstream from where Elijah Creek joins up with Little Emma.”
Leach still stared at the damn, while the deputy waited for him to finish his thought. Sheriff had such long thoughts.
“Just get the lay of the land. Find out if they’ve seen anything unusual last couple of days. Talk to Ceylon or Mrs. Weehunt. Don’t pay any attention to Sing or Burm. Those boys—" he paused and spoke under his breath, “swim at the shallow end of the gene pool.”
The deputy grinned. “Understood, Sheriff.”
Leach took off his waders and climbed into the cruiser. While he waited for the water level to drop, he thought about the lousy hand that fate had dealt the beavers today. They just wanted to eat and mate and work. Especially work. Gnaw, chomp, chomp, bite, and adios pine tree. The sheriff wanted to share the beaver lore with his son, John Keith. No need to stop there. The entire fourth grade class could learn from today’s lesson at the pond. Teacher, too. Leach took out his notebook, thought for a moment, and began to write.
He would call the head beaver, a big masculine fellow, Tall-Tail. He imagined an old grandfather. Call him One-Tooth. Tall-Tail’s mate could be Birch-Cruncher, and this season’s young, Deep-Diver and Little-Lookout. The kids would like that. In the first act, the beavers would be gathered beside their lodge. He saw a pile of brush and brown costumes with black noses and flat wide tails.
Tall-tail: What are these green things in our dam and where did they come from?
Birch-Cruncher (with pride): These are leaves that Little-Lookout found in an animal’s hide. Right in our pond.
Tall-tail: These leaves did not fall from any tree hereabouts. They don’t even look like leaves.
Old One-Tooth: These leaves will bring trouble. We don’t want humans coming to the pond with traps to maim our legs. Still worse, they bring the mighty noise that causes the dam to disappear.
Tall-tail: (holding up a ten dollar bill). No taste of leaves. No smell of leaves.
Birch-Cruncher: But so strong.
The young beavers play a game of tag around Birch-Cruncher, who speaks again. Birch-Cruncher: Listen, when Little-Lookout swam to me with the bag full of leaves, I heard water rushing over rocks, gurgling around branches, bubbling along a bank.
Leach heard a commotion by the pond.
One of the deputies was hollering and holding up a brown bag. Leach tucked the notebook into a pocket and climbed out of the cruiser.
Deputy Bob Ames maneuvered the squad car into the red dirt of the rutted drive leading to the Weehunt’s place. Trees obscured the back of the old farmhouse, and the deputy pulled around by the long porch and parked alongside one of the old rust bucket pickups in the front yard. Ceylon and Miz Weehunt sat on the porch. A few scrawny brown chickens scurried away when Ames got out of the cruiser. An ancient hound tottered to his feet and plopped down again.
“Afternoon,” Ames said to the pair.
“Afternoon.” Miz Weehunt’s reedy voice welcomed him without enthusiasm. She was a thin, plain woman in a dark cotton dress and sturdy black oxfords.
Ceylon grunted a greeting of sorts. Sounded like “noon.”
They each held a can of iced tea.
Trying to make his voice amicable, Deputy said, “Bet you all are wonderin what brings me out here on a Monday afternoon.”
No response. He thought Ceylon gave a brief nod.
Miz Weehunt motioned him to an old oak rocking chair next to her. “Set a while.”
Ames sat down between mother and son.
“Notice any goins on by Lost Cow Pond?” he asked.
“Yee-up.” Ceylon stared across the bare yard toward the creek as he drew the word out into two long syllables. “Heard the sheriff was looking for the money from that Chattanooga bank robbery.” Ceylon scratched his arm. “How’d he know to look in the beaver pond?”
“Aw, they caught one of the robbers with some of the money on him over in Hillsboro. Guess he reckoned he would get a lighter sentence if he told where the rest was.”
“I heard tell it was almost seventy-five thousand,” said Ceylon. “Nice chunk of change.” He continued to stare off into the distance.
“Yeah,” said the deputy. “You haven’t seen any of it, have you?”
Ceylon snorted with laughter. “Well, don’t I wish!”
Ames chose his words carefully. “Sheriff thought some of the bills might have washed down the creek along here.”
“Then they’d be half way to Goslar by now.” Ceylon paused a beat. “Ma, don’t we have a cousin down that way?”
The old lady nodded, and her liver-spotted hand smoothed the skirt of her dress.
“We should call and tell him to watch out for some money floatin’ down the creek,” she said with a dry chuckle.
Deputy Ames stood up. “Where’s your brothers?” he asked Ceylon.
“Don’t rightly know. Somewheres. Maybe in town. You need em?”
Ames shook his head. “Best be going.” He stood.
“Don’t rush off. You want some ice tea?” Miz Weehunt put her hands on the chair as if she was going to stand up.
“Thanks, ma’am. Not this afternoon.”
Mother and son watched him get into his car and drive off.
If he were a gambling man, he would bet that the Weehunts knew something about that money. They seemed a little too offhand. Sheriff should have come himself.
Back at the beaver pond, all the deputies stood on the bank in a semicircle around the kneeling sheriff. Deputy Ames parked the cruiser and walked though the muddy grass to the group. The sheriff, wearing white rubber gloves, was examining three leather bags, the kind a messenger might carry. One of the bags was closed, but the other two were open, and Deputy Ames could see packages of currency.
“Holy smoke, sheriff! You found the money.”
“We got most of it.” The deputy thought the sheriff’s calm voice held a note of pride.
“Some of the bills undoubtedly washed down Elijah creek and I would venture a guess that there’s still some stuck in the dam, but this looks like the lion’s share.” Sheriff Leach looked up at the deputy. “What’d you find out at the Weehunts? Anything unusual happening there?”
“Naw. They knew about the money. Didn’t seem too concerned. Mebbe a little too unconcerned. Didn’t see Sing or Burm around. Just Ceylon and the old lady.”
“Acting friendly, were they?”
“Reckon they was somewhat.”
“’A man can smile and yet be a villain,’” said the sheriff.
Now why was the sheriff yammering off about politicians when they had money to count?
“You want to put those bags in the squad car?”
“We’ll put them in the trunk of my cruiser,” said Leach. “Have to hand it over to the Feds. They can dry it out and count it.”
The sheriff was looking thoughtful. That usually signified work for somebody.
“You and Leroy put on those waders and follow the creek for a little way, say up to Dodd’s bridge. Look for any bills that might have come to rest. And discourage anybody who looks like they might be hunting for those greenbacks.”
“Okay, Sheriff.”
The search netted them a total of two hundred sixty dollars and they had to shoo a passel of treasure hunters away. When they passed the Weehunt’s property, it was quiet and peaceful, with a few lawn chairs on the bank. The sun was setting behind the trees, casting golden light over the creek. A kingfisher turned its head and watched them from a perch high above the water.
A week later, in mid-morning, Sheriff Leach paid a call on the Weehunts. He parked his cruiser on the road and walked up the dusty rutted drive, taking care to tread softly. When he came to the corner of the farm house, he heard a woman’s thin voice. Miz Weehunt was talking. Must be sitting on the porch again. The spotted hound dog under the hackberry tree looked at him, but didn’t bark. Leach stopped to listen.
“I finally got the hang of this new-fangled phone. I talk to Sumatra just about every day. She says to give you and Sara Beth her congratulations. Says her babies would like a cousin or two real quick.” She cackled.
“Ceylon got the truck fixed. New tires and a rebuilt radiator. He says it runs good now. Listen, you keep your eye on that brother of yours in the flesh pots of Biloxi. Tell him no chasin women and no gamblin. He did? No! A skinny blonde? That boy don’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
Leach was doing some quick calculations, and he figured the Weehunt s had already gone through about twenty-four hundred dollars of the stolen money. Leach wanted to find it all. Account for every last dollar. And now the Weehunt clan had spent the remainder. He would never see it.
“Sheriff, can I help you?”
Leach could not suppress a slight start. He turned to see Ceylon standing a few feet away. He felt his face color at being caught eavesdropping on Miz Weehunt’s conversation.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your mama,” he explained, and even to him the excuse sounded lame. “She’s taken to her new cell phone?”
“I reckon.” Ceylon’s narrow eyes didn’t look too friendly. He wasn’t a man who would appreciate any jesting references to Myannamar and Sri Lanka. Particularly not Sri Lanka.
“You Weehunt folks seem to have hit a spell of prosperity.” Leach cleared his throat. His voice had sounded higher than he expected it to. “I’ve heard it said that ‘diligence is the mother of good luck.’” The sheriff felt like he had a whole stream of long thoughts flowing into his head about the Weehunts and their sudden, if modest riches.
He followed Ceylon, who rounded the corner of the house and hollered, “Ma! We got company. It’s the sheriff again.”
Old lady Weehunt sat in the porch swing. A small silver cell phone lay in her lap. Leach eyed the phone.
“Those are truly technological marvels, aren’t they, Mrs. Weehunt?”
“It’s handy.” She looked at Leach without a trace of a smile. She didn’t invite him to sit down.
“I was just telling Ceylon, that you folks must be having a lucky streak.” He continued to stare at the cell phone.
“Mama’s first cousin in Tennessee just died. Left her somethin’,” Ceylon said as if reading Leach’s mind. He stood on the porch step with his arms crossed, like he was guarding the door. Ceylon topped six feet and the sheriff didn’t reach five eight, and with the added height advantage of a step, he towered over the sheriff. Leach noticed that Ceylon’s jeans were clean and even pressed. Looked new.
“That so?”
“Yep.”
“Must have been a nice windfall. Wish I could afford that trim little phone and a Gulf Shores honeymoon and a casino vacation.”
“It weren’t like that.” Ceylon’s blue eyes gave Leach a flinty look. An uncomfortable pause made Leach shift from one foot to the other.
“So your brother Burma got married, did he?”
“Yep. Married Sara Beth McCullock. Nice girl.”
“A man should have a little money laid by to get married nowadays.” Sheriff eyed the porch swing where Miz Weehunt sat. He didn’t like standing in the yard with Ceylon towering above him on the porch.
“Yessir. Burm worked at that poultry processor over by Delphi all summer,” Ceylon explained, “and saved every red cent.” He fingered his chin, as if he had deep thoughts of his own about men and women and marriage. “Nothin like a good woman to keep a man workin and even sober.”
Leach nodded. Nothing like finding a few dollars in the creek to create some whopper lies. “And I suppose there’s a logical reason why Sing is down there luxuriating with the honeymooners,” he said dryly.
“Why, sheriff, you know there is. See that shed behind the house?” Ceylon turned and hooked his thumb in the direction of a dilapidated shed that hadn’t seen paint in generations.
The sheriff thought the shed looked so ramshackle that a gust of wind could render it into a pile of boards.
“Well, it was the damndest thing, but Sing was searchin for the white crock that mama makes her pickles in.” He looked at his mother who nodded in agreement. “Thought he’d seen one in the shed. He got to poking around and noticed an old chest under a pile of junk. He drug it out and dusted it off and damned if it didn’t have five or six of the nicest old quilts you ever did see. Likely pieced together by my great grandma.”
Ceylon paused, apparently to see what effect his story had on the sheriff. Leach just nodded and said, “Do tell.”
“So we aired em out and hauled em off to an auction house down by Atlanta. We were plumb flabbergasted at the money city people will pay for an old heap of rags if they’re quilted in the country.” Ceylon returned the sheriff’s little smile with one of his own. Miz Weehunt continued to nod. She polished the phone with the hem of her red apron.
“We sold the old chest, too,” Ceylon continued. “Turned out to be cedar wood with nice copper bands. Smelled kind of aromatic.”
Leach felt a grudging admiration for the other’s man’s lies, so easily told. He said, “Do tell,” again. Miz Weehunt stood and went into the house. She didn’t reappear with any offers of iced tea. Leach’s throat felt parched and he hankered for a tall glass of something wet and cool.
Ceylon pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Marlboros, not the cheap off-brands from the convenient mart. “Smoke, sheriff?”
Leach declined. “How about you? Must have received a pretty big bonus to get that old truck fixed up so fine it’s primed for the NASCAR Pickup race down in Daytona?”
Ceylon exhaled a big cloud of smoke. “Have to confess I did.” He smiled and Leach smiled back. “It’s kind of embarrassing to tell you, sheriff. I don’t know whether I should.”
Leach figured it was the wrong time to say, “do tell” again. Instead he said, “Weehunt, you and I are men of the world.” He heard the clatter of pots and pans inside the house.
“Well, la da freakin da!” Ceylon ground his cigarette into the old Mason jar lid that served as an ashtray. “Men of the world! Then you won’t be surprised when I tell you I sold my solid copper still. Some Yankee dealer bought it and paid a fine price, too. Said it was a valuable antiquity. A piece of history is what he said.” He paused and looked at Leach. “But I reckon we’ll all miss the moonshine. Just seemed like the time to shut down the still.”
Leach felt like he’d been sucker-punched. His ace in the hole was going to be a threat to bring the ATF boys from Atlanta up here to poke around a bit.
“Say, you have a veritable hub of commerce here by the river,” he said. “Maybe you should open an antiquities boutique. I can just see the sign out by the road. Black with gold lettering. Weehunt and We Find.”
In spite of his cheerful banter, Leach had to admit to himself that he had been bested by this hillbilly, this bubba, this uneducated but canny hayseed.
“How old are you Ceylon?” he asked.
Ceylon answered with raised eyebrows. Must have been surprised by the question. “Thirty-two come November.”
“Ever thought about a real job? “
“Now and again.”
“Ever thought about the police force?”
“Can’t rightly say I have.”
Leach fanned his face with his hat. “Deputy Ames is moving to Columbus. We’re always on the lookout for a few good men. Local talent that knows the people and knows the country. Smart ones. Pay is decent and it’s good steady work. Interesting, too, like with those beavers. You never know what the day will bring forth.”
“That’s for damn sure,” said Ceylon.
“Of course I like my cops to be honest and trustworthy.”
Ceylon still stood on the porch, looking down at him
“I’ll give it some thought,” he said.
The odor of meat frying came out of the kitchen. Smelled like chicken fried steak. Leach’s mouth coursed with saliva. “I better get back to town.”
“See ya, sheriff.” Ceylon opened the screen door and went into the house.
Holy shit! The last thing he had planned to do was offer Ceylon Weehunt a job with the Sheriff’s office.
The big beaver led the colony through the high grass and sorghum bushes, across the fields and over a dirt road, and through more fields, past where the kudzu covered an old barn, and along a stand of mighty oaks. He stopped and listened. From the direction of the winter winds, there came the faint noise of running water. The others heard it, too, and took heart. They crossed a pasture overgrown with thistles and skirted by a derelict windmill with creaking blades. At last they scampered down the green shady banks of Little Emma Creek and ate a meal of alder and willow. In a high overhead branch, a kingfisher observed them.
Sheriff Dick Leach glanced out the window as a battered pickup pulled into the parking lot. A man climbed out and walked with purpose toward the cinder block building. Leach recognized Ceylon Weehunt, wearing an old tweed sport coat that looked like it had survived fire, flood and seasons of moths. Ohmigod, coming in for an interview. Sheriff had had time to consider his offer to Ceylon, and now it seemed like a terrible idea. What had possessed him, anyway? He stood up and walked to the front office. For once his thoughts were short and jerky and mostly involved expletives.
“Afternoon,” said Ceylon.
“Afternoon,” echoed the Sheriff. “What brings you to town?” He thought he knew, but he dare not say it, dare not breathe it.
“Bet you think I came about that job?” Ceylon’s face had a foxy expression, like he had a juicy secret.
The Sheriff made a non-committal sound.
“I decided against it. Just wouldn’t seem right somehow, me being a deputy.” He paused and stared hard at Leach who hoped his vast feeling of relief was not evident.
“Ma thinks she left her new cell phone in the shoppin’ cart at the Corner Market, but it could have been at the drug store or the bank. She’d sure appreciate getting’ it back.”
“I’ll ask around,” said the Sheriff.
“You ever find all that money from the bank robbery?” Ceylon asked.
“Not all of it.”
“This morning I was fishin in the creek and I found thirty dollars wedged in a log.” Ceylon handed him a ten spot and a twenty, both still damp.
“Thank you,” said Leach. “Not every citizen would be so honest.” He was finding it hard to keep from laughing.
“You can give it to the patrolmen’s benevolent society or some such,” said Ceylon.
“Have to give it back to the Feds,” answered Leach.
“Honesty is the best policy,” said Ceylon, looking the sheriff right in the eye.
The sheriff wanted to say mention that there was no honor among thieves, but he resisted the urge. He watched Ceylon walk out to his truck with big easy strides. An odd duck, Ceylon.
Sheriff took a long break and read a little Faulkner and had lengthy thoughts about men and beavers and thievery and the ways of the world. He wrote the second and third acts of the beaver play for his son’s class.
The next day the grocery store manager found Ida Weehunt’s cell phone wedged in between the shopping cart proper and the child seat. That afternoon Sheriff drove out to the Weehunt place to return it. The whole family was there: Burma, Singapore, Ceylon, the bride Sara Beth in a pink dress, Sumatra with her three kids, and Miz Weehunt, who was effusive with thanks and offered him sweet tea.
He tried several times to get a conversation going about the natural benefits of beaver dams for creeks and rivers, but none of the Weehunts evinced any interest in the topic, except Ceylon who commented, “mark my words, those critters will be damming up Little Emma Creek in no time.”
Leach spied a brown jug on the floor by the sofa, and Ceylon must have noticed him staring at it, because he picked it up and held it while he made a speech.
“Since we’re all together here, and what with Sheriff kindly finding and delivering Ma’s new cell, let’s have a little toast to each other and to Sheriff Leach.” He raised the jug for all to see.
Miz Weehunt’s jaw dropped and her eyes got staring wide, but she made a quick recovery and scrambled up to find some jelly glasses. She poured Coca Cola for herself and the kids, and Ceylon took the jug and poured a slug of corn whiskey into each of the jelly glasses.
“Here’s to Sheriff Leach,” Ceylon said, lifting his glass. His eyes had a strange glint that the Sheriff couldn’t fathom. The Weehunts raised their glasses uncertainly.
“The bane of bank robbers and beaver dams.” Ceylon hoisted his drink a little higher. “Weehunt and he found.”
Sheriff raised his glass to Ceylon. Under his breath he said, “Touché.”
From the Hillsboro Reporter, October 27, 2005
By Roger Meredith
On Monday Harvey County Sheriff Richard Leach and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents detonated a well-concealed moonshine still on Elijah Creek. The explosion was heard as far away as Dodd’s Bridge. The aluminum still, thought to be capable of producing 50 gallons a week, had been well-camouflaged by green galvanized roofing, and the mash box and condenser were spray-painted to match our red Georgia soil and the underbrush. “It was such a good still that it pained us to destroy it,” commented Sheriff Leach. “Although illegal, those things are really part of the heritage of this part of the state, a link to our past, through the years of Prohibition. A lot of good Georgia men were suckled on mountain moonshine.” The still straddled a disputed property boundary, and although the GBI agents waited for two days, the still’s owner did not show up and is still unknown.
At Parents’ Night on November 1, Miss Esposito’s fourth grade students will present the play, The Time of Green Leaves, written by Sheriff Richard Leach whose son John Keith is in the class. The play dramatizes the role of the beavers in finding the money bank robbers chucked into Lost Cow Pond.
Copyright ©2006, Judy Copek. All Rights Reserved