The Law

THE LAW by J.C. Starker The Folks in Cherokee Hollow had their own ideas about the "Law", especially when it had to do with kinfolk troubles. rhe James boy had been missing for three weeks when folks in Cherokee Hollow became a little worried over his being gone. Somebody suggested sending down for the sheriff. They wouldn't have said anything about the law if it hadn't been for the red scarf the dogs drug down the road leading out of the hollow one hot August evening. The boy had kept the scarf, dirty and ragged as it was, tied around his neck the whole summer he'd been visiting the Mullinses, cousins on his father's side thrice removed. No, they weren't the type of folk who had much to do with the law, except for an occasional case of paying fines to bring somebody home out of jail for drinking too much where drinking too much put a man behind bars. "Give unto Caesar," someone would say, and two or three of the men would go down out of the mountains, go forty miles away to Bowling Green, and bring home the poor foolish soul who'd gotten caught in Caesar's land. The young boys were warned not to have truck with the big town, and the young girls were told stories that made them stick close to the mountains and the church. But the red scarf, telling what it told coming down the road with the dogs, wouldn't have been carried outside 4 the hills if the boy had been close blood. Close blood would have called for something else besides the telling of it to the law in Bowling Green. It was, one old man in the hollow said, a duty-bound telling because the boy was from Detroit and his people up there would want something said to the law. People in the city liked things written down on a record. That was what the old man said and he knew because once he had visited a cousin in the city and learned that records were almost more important than people in places like that. Jesse Estep was chosen as one of the carriers of the scarf because he had the only running motor in the hollow. Chester Riley was sent along with him since Chester had been over to Bowling Green two or three times and hadn't gotten into trouble. He was, folks had a mind to say, a man who could get along better than most with the law. He'd look after Jesse and the truck and whatever else that came up. Cherokee Hollow was tucked back into a group of mountains that rolled on and on across the whole state of Kentucky . At least that's what most people in the hollow believed. The twelve families who had settled there, breeding until the hollow was full of Esteps and Rileys and Claytons and Mullinses, had long ago decided that Cherokee Hollow was, in fact, the center of the state. There wasn't any use to go looking outside for anything much worth the time it took to look, they'd tell the young folk growing up, no use at all. They intermarried , worked hard for the company man who gave them a shovel and told them where to dig for coal, and they went to church when a preacher showed up to marry someone or give them back to God. It was August, 1938, when Jesse and Chester went looking for the law. "Dang it, Jesse, you ain't got good springs on this thing," Chester shouted as soon as the truck started down the bumpy road leading out of the hollow. "The heck I don't," Jesse shouted back. "I got the best danged springs on this truck you'll ever ride on." Chester leaned out the broken side window of the flatbed truck and watched the front tire wobble badly after they bounced through a deep hole in the road. "Your derned tires is about to fall off, too," he grunted. Jesse leaned out his side and gave a low whistle through his...