As if being a woman sheriff in the West Virginia coal fields wasn’t tough enough, Mary Beth Cain’s life is complicated by the fact that the local hillbilly crime syndicate is run by her mother, Mamie. It's an association that, along with Mary Beth’s head-busting ways, has her staring down a corruption investigation when she gets a surprise visit from Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Connelly.
Twenty years earlier, Patrick was Mary Beth’s high school sweetheart, but they broke up because Mary Beth couldn’t cut the loose ties she maintains with her villainous family. Now Patrick’s worked out a deal to wipe Mary Beth’s slate clean if she'll just do one thing: arrest her brother, Sawyer, who is the cult leader of a booming anti-government militia that's been giving the Feds headaches.
It's an offer Mary Beth refuses until Sawyer's followers blow up a federal courthouse and G-men start swarming into town, preparing for a siege of the commando's compound. Suddenly Mary Beth is tasked with trying to head off a bloody, Waco-style massacre and the question isn't whether she should arrest her brother, but if she can do it in time.
As if being a woman sheriff in the West Virginia coal fields wasn’t tough enough, Mary Beth Cain’s life is complicated by the fact that the local hillbilly crime syndicate is run by her mother, Mamie. It's an association that, along with Mary Beth’s head-busting ways, has her staring down a corruption investigation when she gets a surprise visit from Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Connelly.
Twenty years earlier, Patrick was Mary Beth’s high school sweetheart, but they broke up because Mary Beth couldn’t cut the loose ties she maintains with her villainous family. Now Patrick’s worked out a deal to wipe Mary Beth’s slate clean if she'll just do one thing: arrest her brother, Sawyer, who is the cult leader of a booming anti-government militia that's been giving the Feds headaches.
It's an offer Mary Beth refuses until Sawyer's followers blow up a federal courthouse and G-men start swarming into town, preparing for a siege of the commando's compound. Suddenly Mary Beth is tasked with trying to head off a bloody, Waco-style massacre and the question isn't whether she should arrest her brother, but if she can do it in time.
CHAPTER 1
They started coming a week ago, roaring into Jasper Creek like some kind of Satanic cavalry charge, dressed in black leather with metal spikes and emblems of skulls and serpents and eagles and flame. More bikers had come every day since then, pouring relentlessly into the sleepy Appalachian town—and no one knew why.
Sheriff Mary Beth Cain had staked them out overnight at the KOA campground where they were living like hippies in tent cities, passing copious amounts of hooch around the campfires. The backs of their jackets said they were from Industrial towns. Places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Sheboygan, and Youngstown. Such a gathering might make sense in Sturgis or Daytona, or some other biker pilgrimage destination, but Jasper County was in southern West Virginia, the ass-end of the state, surrounded by nothing but worked out coal fields and hollers so deep you had to lie on your back to see the sun. Not exactly a tourist magnet.
The fuckers were up to no good. Mary Beth could feel it.
At seven-thirty that morning, she spotted the first to rise, one of the older bikers walking around the KOA bathhouse. With binoculars, she watched him as he readied for an early morning ride, revved his engine and took off serpentining through the campground. When he made a left onto the road that led up to Highway 460, Mary Beth spotted something strapped to his back that gave her a chill. A long gun. She was pretty sure it was an AR-15, a military style semi-automatic rifle that had become the weapon of choice for mass shooters.
Mary Beth decided to follow.
Her car was unmarked, a black Camaro convertible she considered the greatest perk of her office, but she knew she’d soon be made for a cop, regardless. For days she had tailgated various bands of these guys, practically forcing them over the speed limit as a pretext to pull them over. But so far she hadn’t found anything other than bad hygiene and good manners, the bikers always being all “yes ma’am,” and “no ma’am” and “I’ll be sure to watch my speed ma’am,” before getting off with a warning.
The man she followed now was heavy set, wore dirty jeans and a puffy black coat without insignia. Long hair and beard were both bushy and gray, an outlaw Santa Claus in polarized shades. His motorcycle was a forest green Dynaglide, a comfort bike, and he was taking her nice and easy, cruising low and slow through town.
He knows he’s being followed. Mary Beth was sure. Thought maybe he was trying to wait her out, see if she got bored enough to move on. But Mary Beth stayed the course for nearly an hour. A low speed, sirenless chase, like O.J.’s white Bronco, minus the hoopla, until she realized he was heading out of Jasper County into McCray.
“Why in the hell?” she said aloud.
This was the third or fourth time she’d followed a group of bikers out there. A place nobody in their right mind wanted to go, least of all, Mary Beth. She’d grown up in that former coal mecca that was now on its last legs, where only the most stubborn of locals remained by subsisting on welfare and disability scams and all manner of backwoods, black-market wheelings and dealings. The first time a group led her down those windy roads she assumed they were just trying to take her outside her jurisdiction. Little did they know that McCray County’s population had dwindled to the point it was being annexed into Jasper. Her department was already getting calls for assistance with its near daily overdoses, and all too soon the entirety of McCray’s dilapidated, drug-infested enclaves would officially be under Mary Beth’s authority.
“Screw this.”
Mary Beth hadn’t had her coffee yet and wasn’t in the mood for another trip through there. She flipped on the party lights flanking her rearview mirror and let the siren wail.
The motorcycle moved to the side of the road.
This was the first time Mary Beth had pulled over one of these guys alone. Policy mandated she use backup in such a situation, armed suspect and no exigent circumstances, but she was the sheriff, goddammit, and she was getting impatient.
She used her car’s loudspeaker to issue a command. “Hands in the air. As high as you can reach.”
The biker did as he was told, his back to her with the weapon of war laid across it at an angle.
Mary Beth dropped the mic, lowered her window, and opened the driver side door, swinging it out like a shield. She pulled her Glock 22 and trained it on the back of the biker’s head.
“Take three steps towards me,” she shouted. “And do it slow.”
The biker dismounted awkwardly. He pivoted around to face her and took three slow, exaggerated steps, like a pirate walking the plank.
“On your knees!”
The heavy man wobbled, had difficulty dropping to his knees and lowered a hand to steady himself.
“Hands in the air! Now, motherfucker or I’ll blow your head off!”
“Easy, ma’am. Yes, Jesus, God.” The man reached for the sky like a Pentecostal at an altar call. “I’m complying here. You’ll have no problems from me.”
Mary Beth’s heart battered her rib cage as she thought about that AR15. If there was a bump stock on that thing he could turn her car into Swiss cheese in about three seconds.
“Good.” Mary Beth tried to slow her breathing. “You follow my commands and we’ll get along just fine. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mary Beth swallowed hard. “Okay. Slowly. And I mean, molasses in January, slow. I want you to lie down on your stomach with your arms out in front of you. Just like you’ve got them now.”
Again, the man complied.
Once he was prone, Mary Beth approached. She placed her size seven boot on his lower back and tapped the barrel of her gun against his helmet.
“You hear that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s my gun. I am going to pull this rifle off your back. If you make any sudden moves, I am going to use my gun to fire a bullet through your spinal cord. We clear?”
“Crystal.”
Mary Beth seized the rifle with her left hand. She pulled it straight up from the man’s back and wriggled the strap out from under him.
“Good.” Mary Beth took a step. “Do you have any other weapons on you?”
“No, ma’am.”
Mary Beth backed away ten paces and laid the rifle in the grass out of reach just as a station wagon of gawkers passed by. “Stay put,” she said. Mary Beth approached carefully and frisked the man to ensure he truly had no other weapons. While he lay by the roadside, she also did a quick inspection of his saddlebags, confirming there were no other weapons or contraband. The only thing of note she found was the man’s ID and a permit for the gun.
“Okay, you can sit up.”
The man rolled onto his back and propped himself on an elbow before eventually getting upright.
“Want to tell me what you’re doing?” Mary Beth said.
“Just wondering and wandering.”
The man’s odd response was something Mary Beth had heard before and was beginning to recognize as some kind of code, maybe a biker way of saying “fuck you” to the cops, the way folks around Jasper said “bless your heart” when they were too polite to tell you to go to hell.
“I mean, what’s with the rifle?” she asked.
“It’s just for protection.”
“Protection?” That rifle had a sixteen-inch barreled SP1 carbine with a collapsible buttstock and a high capacity magazine. It was what police departments with budgets far greater than Mary Beth’s issued to their SWAT teams. “You expecting a zombie apocalypse?”
“You can never be too careful, ma’am.”
Mary Beth gave him an ugly look. Then she made him wait there, sitting in the dirt, while she ran a check to make sure he didn’t have any outstanding warrants, or better yet, felonies, but to her disappointment, his record came back clean.
“I was told West Virginia was an open carry state,” the man said when she returned his ID.
“Uh, huh. Yeah, that’s right.”
“Can I ask why you pulled me over then? I don’t think I was speeding.”
Mary Beth maintained a bland expression. “I pulled you over for that busted taillight.”
The biker removed his sunglasses, revealing white, unburned circles on an otherwise ruddy face. “I don’t have a busted taillight.”
Mary Beth bent over so they were eye-to-eye. “Want to keep it that way?”
The biker nodded. He remained compliant while Mary Beth retrieved a tape measure from her car. She’d spent the last couple days researching every conceivable motorcycle regulation she could find, dreaming up new ways to harass these guys into moving on. Now she took her time inspecting the Harley, eventually coming up with citations for a seat that was too low, handlebars too high, and the lack of a passenger handhold.
“Y'all don’t really want to keep hanging around this little hillbilly old town, do you?” she asked, as she handed over the ticket. “Can’t be any fun getting harassed by the local fuzz every day.”
“It’s a beautiful part of the country,” the man said. “Especially this time of year with all the leaves changing colors.”
Mary Beth frowned. She pulled back the citation. “You know, I’m not sure I measured right. Think maybe I might need to start all over. Maybe disassemble a few things while I’m at it.”
The man gave her a shit-eating grin, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Don’t mind at all, ma’am. Take all the time you need.”
That’s when Mary Beth finally got it. Flaunting the AR15. The slow going drive, and patient compliance no matter how ornery she got.
He wanted her there. Wasting her time. Not watching what all the others were doing.
He was a diversion.
Admittedly, as someone born and raised in West Virginia, I get my hackles up when I hear a book is set in the Mountain State. I'm so used to people who aren't from Appalachia, writing narratives ridden with stereotypes and misconceptions about my home. But when a book is penned by a native, like Russell Johnson's The Moonshine Messiah, I settle in for what I know will be a wild and wonderful ride.
To say that Sheriff Mary Beth Cain is in a difficult position is an understatement. A feisty widow who assumed her husband's job after his untimely death, Mary Beth is charged with wrangling various crooks and lawbreakers in an area of southern WV where coal jobs are no longer easy to come by. To make matters worse, the biggest offenders are her own kin: her mother, Mamie, runs a strip club and is responsible for most nefarious activity in the area, and her brother, Sawyer, is a bombastic radio personality and militia leader who's riling up his followers to commit a dangerous anti-government action. When Mary Beth is given a deal to avoid an indictment--turn in her brother before people get hurt--she'll have to decide whether her loyalties lie with order or with her family.
Not only is The Moonshine Messiah a rip-roaring action-packed tale filled with shootouts and switchback curves, but the novel is also a complex disquisition on why many holler dwellers mistrust the government. Mary Beth's family has been forever damaged by the actions of these outsiders, so the presence of the Feds is an automatic ill omen of bad tidings to come. Author Johnson deftly navigates these intricate political waters without making the WV characters seem ignorant or out of touch: here, hillbilly is a term of pride, indicating a certain kind of folk wisdom and understanding. Johnson also nails that particularly strong, meandering voice characteristic of so much great Southern writing--an oral history driven speech, with sharp alliterations and pointed metaphors, that makes you feel like you're listening to a grandparent tell a story on a porch. Luckily for readers, Johnson keeps his ending open enough to make room for a sequel, so perhaps we'll return to his well-realized world and quirky characters sooner rather than later.