Neighbors call it a beer j'int. Entering, you are greeted by the
proprietor, a mild, pleasant fellow who asks in a slow mountain drawl,
"What kin I do for you?" If you happen to be an old acquaintance as I
am, Tennis Hatfield--for he it is who runs the place--will add, "Glad to
see you. I've not laid eyes on you for a coon's age. Set." He waved me
to a chromium stool beside the counter. "I've quit the law." Tennis had
been sheriff of Logan County for a term or two. "This is easier." He
flung wide his hands with a gesture that encompassed the interior of the
Silver Moon Tavern. "Well, there's no harm in selling beer." He fixed me
with a piercing look such as I had seen in the eye of Devil Anse.
"What's more there's no harm in drinking it either, in reason. Young
folks gather in here of a night and listen to the music and dance and it
don't cost 'em much money. A nickel in the slot. We ain't troubled with
slugs," he said casually. "The folks choose their own tune." He pointed
to a gaudily striped electric music box that filled a corner of the
tavern. With great care he showed me the workings of the moan box, he
called it. "These are the tunes they like best." He called them off as
his finger moved carefully along the titles: "Big Beaver, The Wise Owl,
Double Crossing Mamma, In the Mood, and Mountain Dew. They just
naturally wear that record out. Young folks here on Main Island Creek
like Lulu Belle and Scotty. See, they made that record Mountain Dew." A
slow smile lighted his face. "'Pon my soul all that young folks do these
days is eat and dance. That's how come me to put the sign on the side of
my beer j'int--Dine and Dance. We're right up to snuff here on Main
Island Creek," he added with a smug smile. "But now Joe Hatfield over to
Red Jacket in Mingo County, he follows preaching and he says a beer
j'int is just sending people plum to hell. I don't know about that.
There's never been no trouble here in my place. I won't sell a man
that's had a dram too many. And if he starts to get noisy"--he lifted a
toe--"out he goes! I aim to keep my place straight." He shoved his
thumbs deep into the belt of his breeches. "Not much doin' at this time
of day. The girls in school or helping with the housework; the boys in
the mines. Don't step out till after supper. Then look out! The young
bucks shake a heel and the girls put on their lipstick. Them that can't
afford a permanent go around all day with their hair done up in
curlycues till they look a match for Shirley Temple by the time they get
here of a night. Times has surely changed."
A bus whizzed by and disappeared beyond the bend of the road.
"Times has changed," Tennis repeated slowly as his gaze sought the
hillside where Devil Anse lay buried. "I wonder what Pa would a-thought
of my place," he said with conscientious wistfulness. His eyes swept now
the interior of the Silver Moon Tavern. "This couldn't a-been in Pa's
young days. Nor womenfolks couldn't a-been so free. Such as this
couldn't a-been, no more than their ways then could stand today." The
son of Devil Anse leaned over the bar and said in a strangely hushed
voice, "Woman, I've heard tell that you have a hankerin' for curiosities
and old-timey things. I keep a few handy so's I don't get above my
raisin'." He reached under the counter. "Here, woman, heft this!" He
placed in my hands Devil Anse's long-barreled gun. "Scrutinize them
notches on the barrel. That there first one is Harmon McCoy. Year of
sixty-three," he said bluntly.
While I hefted the gun, Tennis brought out a crumpled shirt. "Them holes
is where the McCoys stobbed Uncle Ellison and there's the stain of his
gorm."
The gruesome sight of the blood-stained garment slashed by the McCoys
completely unnerved me. I dropped the gun.
Instantly a door opened behind Tennis and a young lad rushed in. He took
in the situation at a glance and swiftly appraised my five-foot height.
"Pa," he turned to Tennis Hatfield, "you've scared this little critter
out of a year's growth. And she ain't got none to spare."
Seeing that all was well he backed out of the door he had entered, and
Tennis went on to say that his young son had quit college to join the
army. "He'll be leaving soon for training camp. That is, if he can quit
courting Nellie McCoy long enough over in Seldom Seen Hollow. 'Pon my
soul, I never saw two such turtledoves in my life. She's pretty as a
picture and I've told her that whether or not her and Tennis Junior
every marry there's always a place for her here with us. A pretty girl
in a pretty frock is mighty handy to wait table." Again the wideflung
hands of the proprietor of the Silver Moon Tavern embraced in their
gesture the shiny tables, booths, chromium-trimmed chairs, and the gaudy
juke box in the corner.
In September, 1940, Tennis Hatfield's son, Tennis, Jr., joined the army.
He was nineteen at the time.
The Hatfields and McCoys have married. Charles D. Hatfield, who joined
the army at Detroit's United States Army recruiting office, is the son
of Tolbert McCoy Hatfield of Pike County and is friend to his kin on
both sides.
The two families held a picnic reunion in the month of August, 1941, on
Blackberry Creek where the blood of both had been shed during the feud,
and at the gathering a good time was had by all with plenty of fried
chicken and no shooting.
Today on the eve of another war things are still quiet up in Breathitt
County so far as the Hargises are concerned. Elbert Hargis, brother of
Judge Jim Hargis who was slain by his son Beach, has passed on. They
buried him, the last of Granny Hargis's boys, in the family burying
ground behind the old homestead on Pan Bowl, so called because it is
almost completely encircled by the North Fork of the Kentucky River.
To his last hour, almost, Elbert Hargis sat in the shadow of the
courthouse looking sadly toward Judge Jim Hargis's store where Beach had
killed his father, the store in front of which Dr. Cox had been
assassinated. His eyes shifted occasionally toward the courthouse steps
down which the lifeless body of J. B. Marcum plunged when Curt Jett shot
him from the back. Again Elbert's gaze turned to the second-story
windows of the courthouse from which Jim Cockrell had been shot to death
one sunny summer day.
Ever alert and never once permitting anyone to stand behind him, with a
gun in its holster thumping on his hip every step he took, Elbert Hargis
must have lived again and again the days when his brother Jim directed
the carryings-on of the Hargis clan. But if you'd ask him if he ever
thought of the old times, there would be a quick and sharp No!, followed
by abrupt silence.
Elbert Hargis is dead now. And a natural death was his from a sudden
ailment of the lungs. He died in a hospital down in the Blue Grass where
white-clad nurses and grave-faced doctors with a knowing of the miracles
of modern surgery and medicine could not prolong the life of the aged
feudist for one short second. The last of Granny Evaline Hargis's sons
rests beside his mother, alongside the three brothers John, Jr., Ben,
and Jim, and the half-brother Willie Sewell, whose death away back in
1886, when he was shot from ambush at a molasses-making, started all the
trouble. In the same burying ground with Elbert is the vine-covered
grave of Senator Hargis, father of the boys, who preceded his wife
Evaline to the spirit world long years ago.