Roll on Sugaree

By Loyd Little

Love, mystery, and a con man youll never forget

Roll Along Sugaree is the story of a farm community fighting for survival when a nearby town wants the creek that is the heart and soul of the community. However, the story is far more than that: A couple falls in love and the romance is shaken by police raids, mistaken intentions and a secret map.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491834831

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2013 Loyd Little. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/04/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3485-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3484-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3483-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013920733

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Note from author: Pictures of exotic fowl used in this novel have been donated by owners from around the world. It should NOT be assumed that these fowl are used in any form of cockfighting. Cockfighting is now illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Cover art is courtesy of Ben Furman

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

Dedication

To Kristine and to those who lost the fight

to save Cane Creek and to the No. 1 Book

Club of Orange County, N.C.

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The single-most effective charm [in Philippine cockfighting] is the underwear of a virgin stolen on Good Friday and smuggled into Mass the following Sunday, during which it receives Communion.

−Essay by Scott Guggenheim on "Cockfighting

In the Philippines in The Cockfight." 1994,

Alan Dundes, ed. University of Wisconsin Press

CHAPTER 1

On this October night, there were dozens of hutches the size of doghouses scattered around a field of permanent stubble. Twenty feet apart, they were created from pickle vats, milk crates, wooden barrels, car hoods, tires, rusty roofing tin and primitive freezers. And tethered to each with a lightweight chain was a rooster.

An acre of roosters endlessly stalking each other. Aseels, Whitehackles, Irish Brown Reds, Muffs, Gray Tormentors, spangled Roundheads and the Orientals: Green Japs and Macoy Jungles. Four, five, six pounds each. A couple of eight-pound Wisconsin Red Shufflers. Somewhere over there, a Houdan gurgled to itself in its sleep. A fearful, strangled cough. No doubt dreaming of a grand cockfight.

This night was clear, and a three-quarter harvest moon transformed the field of roosters into a checkerboard of murky squares. Beyond the field, the moonlight spread on the branches of pine trees and looked for all the world like sheets of snow.

Clarence Looper lived on this land, which had been his parents’ land, on a small branch of Sugaree Creek. What wasn’t swampy was mostly blue clay and rocks. The one-story house and the half-dozen gray outbuildings all had sprouted sheds in a distant past. Over there, a corn crib listed to the south and not far from it, beehives tilted the same direction as though the earth itself had slipped sideways in its own indifference and damp melancholy.

Daniel Cauthen, a banker and a key player in this story, leaned his crossed arms on a fence post and gazed at the field of roosters in the pale moonlight. Clarence was late, and Daniel was tired and irritable. An invitation from Clarence was an invitation to worry. In high school, Clarence had always been selling something of shaky provenance car batteries, bicycle parts, friendship. Even more galling were his attempts to involve you in fake wrecks, putting a dead snake in a mailbox, or sticking a stolen For Sale sign in the front yard of the Sugaree Baptist Church. Daniel considered why he fell for Clarence’s schemes. Well, he admitted to himself, part of it was that it was exciting and that something might work. If anyone (among the people that Daniel knew) could make it happen, it would be Clarence with the mojo. The juice to take a crazy idea and go for it. He was not at all like Daniel’s own family, who were serious farmers. Also, there was this: When Daniel hit the seventh grade in junior high and was agonizingly shy, Clarence had walked up to him one day and whacked him on the shoulder. And said, Hey, little buddy, what’s modivating? Daniel had had no idea what Clarence was talking about. But he had smiled.

Daniel looked at his watch but couldn’t make out the time. Probably eleven by now. Daniel’s family of Cauthens owned and leased more than five hundred acres a mile west of the Looper land and along the banks of Sugaree Creek. The Cauthens grew mostly corn and hay for their Holsteins. The family included a younger sister, two older brothers, their aging daddy and assorted spouses, in-laws and children. Except for Daniel, all worked on the farm. His older brothers had gone to agricultural school for two or three years before returning to the farm. But Daniel had majored in business at the University of South Carolina. The only one in his family with a college degree, he had returned to Haymarket and begun as a teller at Haymarket Savings and Loan. Now, just six years later, he was chief executive officer, and loved it. What he liked best was not milking at 4 a.m., not taking orders from his father and brothers, and not shoveling manure. Daniel and his wife had accepted a gift of twenty acres from his father and built a home on a hill surrounded by oaks and maples. In summer they were as isolated as if they were in the Smokies; in the winter they could look down on the family herd and see Sugaree Creek sparkling through elderberry thickets.

Suddenly, a vehicle rattled down an old logging trail and lights sliced the tops of the rooster hutches. A pickup stopped on the other side of the field. A door slammed and Clarence Looper, a thin silhouette in the moonlight, began walking with a cautious sidle across the field. An owl yawped desultorily.

Daniel smelled chickens and mold and something else. Rusting metal. A faint oil smell. Manure. Rotting wood. He shifted his feet impatiently and stuck his hands in his pockets. Clarence, he shouted. Over here.

Clarence edged crab-like across the field of roosters, carrying something in his right hand. It was like watching a man in a minefield that he knew, though not well. Finally, Clarence was there, his back to the moon and his face shadowed.

Clarence said, Hey, little buddy. We had a problem with one of the presses at the newspaper. I don’t know why they don’t buy new rollers. Damn things get out of line all the time because they’re twenty years old and worn−

It’s late. What is it?

I want you to see something.

A field of roosters is what I see.

With the knuckles of his right hand, Clarence tapped Daniel gently on the arm. No, you see what looks like a field of roosters. You want a beer? He held up a six-pack by its plastic strap.

No.

Clarence opened a gate of barbed wire; the latch was a leather loop made from an old belt nailed to a post. As they passed a rooster asleep on a tractor tire, it mumbled and shifted from standing on one leg to the other. It was a tailless Spanish Bolo, and the moonlight dusted a phosphoric glow over its brilliant golden feathers.

Daniel tripped on something and nearly fell. Jesus, Clarence, where are we going?

Finally, they stopped and a door scraped opened. A light flared from a bare bulb, illuminating the inside of an old tobacco shed. Above them, hanging from rafters, were skeins of spider webs covered with so much dust they looked like brown cloth. Scattered around the floor were decomposing grain sacks, empty Quaker State oil cans, a wooden hay rake and soft drink crates. Crumbled mud dauber nests littered a wooden table in the center of the room.

Clarence had a smallish face on a long, wiry body nearly six feet tall. A noticeable nose of Roman or perhaps French DNA. Good cheekbones. A wide mouth. Hooded eyes, shifting constantly. Black hair in close around his face. A naturally olive skin that was darker in the night. Pulling a beer from its plastic ring, Clarence turned a wooden Coca-Cola crate on end and slid it toward Daniel.

Ignoring the crate, Daniel said, Well?

From his billfold, Clarence unfolded a piece of brown paper that looked like part of a grocery bag. He refolded it into a different shape.

Look here, he said. The paper was crimped so that Daniel could see only the numbers 1548-5 written with a pencil. Clarence would not release it when Daniel tried to take it.

Clarence asked, Aren’t there fifteen numbers for Swiss bank boxes?

Swiss bank boxes?

Safe deposit boxes.

I have no earthly idea if the Swiss use fifteen or fifty numbers on their accounts. Why?

This is it. Our ticket out of here. Millions. Diamonds. Maybe more. Clarence’s eyes glittered. He sat on a crate and with a foot pushed the remaining beers toward Daniel.

Daniel sighed, jerked a can free, dusted off a crate and sat. He sensed Clarence’s excitement.

Clarence said, You remember that after high school, I went to Haymarket Tech. There, I met a guy named Cricket Bingham. You ever know him?

Daniel shook his head.

He was taking a law enforcement course at the tech and we went drinking a few times. Then I graduated and lost track of him. This was six, seven years ago.

Daniel knew it was useless to rush Clarence.

Then, lo and behold, a week ago, guess who rolled into town with a blonde in a short skirt? My old buddy Cricket. He had just gotten out of prison after three years for interstate truck theft. All he had been doing was taking a truckload of cigarettes to New Jersey. He had no idea the truck was hot. There’s big money in cigarettes these days. Do you know the taxes on a carton of cigarettes in New Jersey are eight bucks a carton? If a truck could carry−

Get on with it, Daniel said.

Anyway, Cricket had just been released from the federal pen in Eglin, Florida. His cell mate had been a man named Julius Genovese, who they called The Blade. It turned out that The Blade was the son of one of the big Mafia bosses in New York City. About eight months ago, The Blade’s daddy was machine-gunned to death. The Blade was convinced that he was next to be killed because he was in line to take over the family. Being in prison was no protection; in fact, it was worse because he didn’t have his own men around him, and bars never stopped the kind of money that was certainly on his head. Now, all this is according to Cricket.

Clarence finished his beer and tossed the can in a corner. With a shoe toe, he pulled the remaining beers back, and freed another.

The Blade was like a rooster in a field of bobcats. The day before Cricket was paroled, The Blade took Cricket aside and gave him a piece of paper with fifteen numbers on it. Clarence waved the scrap of brown paper as if drying ink. Now we’re getting to it, Danny. These numbers are for a Swiss safe deposit box that belonged to The Blade’s daddy. His daddy gave his son the numbers in case he was ever killed.

Wait, Clarence. Why would The Blade give the numbers to Cricket? Danny was astonished that he was sitting in a decaying tobacco shed with Clarence Looper who was talking about Mafia chieftains. How does Clarence get into these things? Daniel couldn’t even imagine knowing such people.

I’m getting there. Cricket was getting patrolled out of prison but the Blade’s still got years to serve. The Blade was touched by their friendship, so he offered Cricket a deal. If Cricket could get a hold of the money in the safe deposit box, Cricket could keep a percentage. And with that money, The Blade could buy plenty of protection. Even in prison. Who knows how much is there? Millions? Gold?

This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. People in prison have nothing better to do than dream up these fantasies.

Clarence waggled the brown paper. This isn’t a fantasy. The problem is that Cricket has no money. Plus, he can’t leave the States because he’s on probation. He remembered me from our days at the tech. You should see him, Danny; he’s not the same wise guy. He’s calmed down. We got together and talked about the good old days. I’ll be glad to introduce y’all. He and Diane are staying at the Dixie.

I don’t want to meet any ex-con. Get on with this dim-witted story, Clarence.

Cricket needs for somebody to go to Switzerland and get what’s in the safe deposit box that was owned by The Blade’s daddy. Cricket will give me twenty thousand out of the Genovese fortune to bring back the money, the diamonds, the gold. And then Cricket gets the rest to The Blade. All he’s doing is delivering what belongs to The Blade anyway.

Clarence leaned back. Swiped at a cobweb on the wall beside him. Got the web stuck on his hand and rubbed it off on his jeans. It stuck on his hand again. Daniel watched in disbelief as Clarence wiped the cobweb from hand to hand before it finally rolled into a ball and fell off.

What I need from you, Danny, is enough money to finance my trip to Switzerland.

Daniel’s first reaction was to laugh. The idea of Clarence Looper in Switzerland was preposterous. This is ridiculous. How could you get the box, even assuming there is one and that it matches the numbers, because it’s in The Blade’s−his father’s name? They don’t know you. And another−

I’m on top of it, Danny. I’ve already applied for a passport and it should be here any day. And there’s this. From his jacket, Clarence took out a folded piece of white paper and handed it to Daniel.

Daniel found himself looking at what claimed to be a limited power of attorney, signed by one Julius Genovese and authorizing one Clarence Looper to open and receive the contents of a safe deposit box in the name of Dante Genovese, late of New York City. The power of attorney stated that Julius was the son of Dante and, therefore, owner of the box. The document was signed and witnessed.

Clarence said, I’m putting up as much of my own money as I can, but it’s not enough. I figure I need at least seven thousand for the plane tickets, hotels and so forth. If you’ll loan me seven, I’ll pay back eight. Hell, that’s all we need. I got the numbers. I got the power of attorney, he said. You can make a thousand dollars in one week.

This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Why would a Swiss banker believe any of this? Daniel handed the paper back.

Because-I-got-the-numbers, Clarence said, tapping an ink-stained finger on the brown paper with each word. The-secret-Swiss-numbers.

Daniel rolled a now-warm can of beer against his forehead. This is insane, he thought. I’m in a tobacco barn in the middle of the night, and Clarence Looper, who used to pull his pecker out at recess and wiggle it until somebody screamed or threw rocks at it, is telling me with a straight face that he is going to con Swiss bankers out of a Mafia chieftain’s fortune. Let’s see if I got this right: Two guys are in a federal pen. One guy’s father is supposed to be a mob boss and is gunned down. The son in prison wants to get his father’s box of money so that he can buy protection from the bad guys around him. His cell mate is getting out on parole, so he persuades the cell mate to get the box of money. But the cell mate/parolee can’t leave the country so he asks Clarence to go. My god, what harebrained flummery, Daniel thought. On the other hand, what a grand scene among a bunch of con men if it were true.

I got the numbers, Danny, Clarence repeated. A personal loan between you and me. If you don’t have the money, then give me one of those home equity loans. It’d be no skin off you that way.

Daniel stood and brushed off his pants. I’ve got to go, Clarence. It’s late. My advice is to forget it. Loony toons.

The last words Daniel heard as he started across the field toward his car were, Think about it, Danny. A thousand dollars for free. And you don’t even have to report it.

Daniel stooped under the last barbed wire fence. He turned back to look at the black-and-gray field of roosters. A story told to him by his grandfather came to mind. As a young man his grandfather had left the farm and lived for a while in south Georgia, near the Okefenokee Swamp. In late November, the geese migrated south and in those days the flocks covered half the sky and took an hour to pass. Like a great fleet of silent bombers. At night, the men built bonfires in fields, and the geese saw the lights and mistaking them for the sun or perhaps hoping for roasted marshmallows, they swung their enormous formations around and dropped down. Thousands circled the fires as the men waited in the shadows with shotguns.

By dawn,

they would have two, three hundred on the ground.

If a rooster crows between dark and midnight and crows an even number of times, it’s a sign of a marriage.

−Old Carolina saying

CHAPTER 2

One afternoon a week later, a small thunderstorm pounded across Dead Baby Ridge which was fifteen miles north of Clarence’s land. The ridge was so christened a century ago, according to legend, when somebody left a baby in a Purina feed sack at the edge of the road that runs across the spine of the ridge. No one paid the sack any mind until animals tore it open, exposing a tiny head with shocking brunette hair.

Dead Baby Ridge divides two of the great river basins in the upper, central half of South Carolina. Rain that falls northeast of the ridge collects into creeks that flow eastward until they reach the Wateree, which began as the Catawba River back in the foothills of North Carolina. South and west of Dead Baby, Sugaree Creek and her cousins flow around Haymarket and then into the Congaree which later flirts with the Wateree for a hundred miles before they cleave to form Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie, shaped like two peas in a pod. A pittance of water is released from Marion into the Santee which meanders to Cedar Island on the coast. The rest of the water drops seventy-five feet through the Pinopolis Powerhouse into the Cooper River and rolls into Charleston.

In 1893, Annie Oakley, gray-haired at forty-two, arrived at the Cooper River Fair Grounds in Charleston as part of Jed Travis’s Traveling Circus. She drilled the heart out of an ace of spades at seventy-five feet with a .44 Colt revolver, according to stories passed down. One of Clarence’s family stories was that his great-great-grandfather, who was fourteen when Annie Oakley came through, had never seen anyone handle a gun like that, much less a woman. The legend was that it left his great-great-grandfather considerably cautious about women. All in all, not a bad approach.

On this day, the day of the thunderstorm, June Hammonds, who was a member of one of the largest farming families on Sugaree Creek, walked from the Haymarket Independent newspaper where she worked as a reporter to Daniel Cauthen’s office in the savings and loan, two blocks away. Several days ago Daniel had asked her about a newspaper story, and she had finally found it in the newspaper’s morgue. And she’d made a copy. The Independent did not have all of its back issues online yet.

Clarence also worked at the newspaper as the number two in the pressroom. But because the press gang worked normally from around six p.m. to around two a.m., his path and June’s path rarely crossed. They knew each other slightly since they grew up in the same part of the county but Clarence (and Daniel) were three years older than June.

The Independent was founded in 1914 and was still owned by the McManus family, a family whose genes had turned mushy in the last generation. Run by two brothers and a sister, the paper championed their private causes. With some families, private causes can be noble and may even be public causes. Rarely was this the case in Haymarket. Todd, the oldest McManus and the publisher, cared passionately about the postal service, timely delivery of the mail and, most importantly, the cost of second-class mailing, which included newspapers. Todd started to twitch if two weeks went by without a story or an editorial on the postal system. For example, several years ago Todd ordered and got a series of news articles delving into the tricky and curious though not noticeably burning question of who actually owns mailboxes. Those ordinary, rural mail boxes that are nailed onto posts beside the road. If the recipient owns it (so went Todd’s editorial logic), why can’t a newspaper, say the Haymarket Independent, buy space on the outside of the mailbox to advertise the many fine features and qualities of said newspaper? But if the U.S. Post Office controls the mail boxes, then how come ordinary people have to buy them in the first place? And repair them? And buy new ones whenever teens smash them with baseball bats? Furthermore, since the postal service forbids advertising on mailboxes, is this not a limitation on the freedom of the press?

The second-oldest McManus, Barry, managed the circulation department. He spent most of his time fretting about how the paper looked online and rounding up teens to hawk the paper at intersections. For example, one spring he timed a half-dozen stoplights and took the results to the news editor, explaining how these non-sequential times interfered with the timely delivery of a newspaper to its loyal and faithful subscribers. Eight months later, no article had yet appeared in the paper about non-sequential lights, and so Barry checked with the news editor. The news editor said he was still considering the best way to handle the complexities and nuances that such an article deserved.

Such a SERIES of articles, Barry had countered.

Ah yes, the editor had answered.

The McManus sister wrote a society column, much to the aggravation of the society editor. The sister was in the Junior League and wrote about League members and their charming, tastefully decorated homes. Also, the League planted flowers along unsightly roadways, which was benevolent if perhaps shy of momentous. But the sister believed one rose bush was worth at least a newspaper column. Maybe two.

So the hard-hitting editorials of the Independent championed serial stoplights and reminded people about roses beside highways and detailed the treachery of