Chapter 5: A Hole In The Ground

      "We was digging the foundation and broke into a hole," declares Loy Patrick sliding his metal food tray onto a wooden picnic table in the darkening mess tent at the end of a long work day.

"You don't say! How deep?" Oil whispers, leaning across the table over his mushy plate of red beans and cornbread.

"Ain't seed bottom," the moonshiner murmurs back without knowing why they needed quiet, "but a stone dropped a ways." 

     The prison site at LaGrange is at the outer edge of a karst region in which limestone in the soil had been washed down over millennia to leave a dry surface favoring drought-resistant grasses. Underground rivulets gradually created a vast cave system draining into the Kentucky River basin. Rainwater runs into those caverns through surface sinkholes scattered throughout the nutrient-poor grasslands that would become prized for raising lighter and faster thoroughbreds.

     The two-hundred inmates transferred over from the flooded Frankfort prison had been assigned the grunt work for construction of the new reformatory. A group of six prisoners bunked and labored together in a newly conceived team model of rehabilitation for non-violent offenders. The completed penitentiary would have dormitories with open floor plans to foster interaction instead of the traditional individual cells.

     "What building is you working on?" continues Oil, trying to look Loy in his wandering eye.

"That old guard said the basement'll be a slaughterhouse."

"Tell you what, jam a sheet of plywood in and cover it with rocks and dirt."

"I declare, Oil's gonna run into a hole in the ground!"

"Keep it down hillbilly! A secret storage place might come in handy someday." 

Chapter 4: Hut Three

      "Don't want no darky in number three," complains a skinny inmate kicking the muddy ground and glancing every which way but into Oil's eyes.

"Now Loy, do you really want to cut off your nose to spite your face?" asks the older man throwing the tent flap closed and standing up to his full six-foot-two height.

     Following the January flood Kentucky governor Happy Chandler had moved fast to purchase land in sparsely populated Oldham County. By early March two-hundred inmates from the temporary tent city in Frankfort had been bussed down to LaGrange to be the construction crew for the new penitentiary. Once again they were housed in canvas tents, but this time they were sturdy WPA huts with wooden frames, paned windows, and triple bunks. 

     Prison life was finally returning to routine as the days got longer and the afternoon sun warmer with the approach of spring in the bluegrass region. State land had been set aside for grazing and gardening, and the inmates were charged with producing their own food. Visitors were soon to be allowed again, and that prospect had the prisoners plotting the resumption of pre-flood black markets.

     "What's that supposed to mean?" counters the backcountry man who'd been imprisoned the previous year for making and selling whiskey, something his Magoffin County family had been doing for generations.

"John Henry in there might be short, but he's a strong worker and ought to help meet our unit's quotas," Oil reasons before delivering his pièce de résistance: "And he's an experienced smuggler to boot."

Loy Patrick kicks the dirt again, scratches his chin, and declares "Reckon he'll do." 

Chapter 3: White Lies

     "Excuse my French," Oil calls up to his bunkmate on a frigid February night when the thin waxed-canvas tent assured that neither could sleep, "but what're you in for?.

"Caught me boating hooch out of Covington," Waters replies with a rueful smile that only he can see in the dark stillness of the frozen camp. "And me just the skipper."

"Shit flows downhill," the fifty-seven-year-old observes while tucking frozen hands into armpits. "Didn't they offer you a deal?"

"I'm no rat," groans the younger man curling up into a ball and slipping the wool blanket over his head.

     Moonshining was still big business in the dry counties of eastern Kentucky even after the repeal of prohibition in 1933. There was cash to be had at each level of trade from distillers in remote hollows to bootleggers with fast cars rigged for barrel transport to shippers ferrying the duty-free whiskey to more distant cities. Being a federal crime at all stages of the illegal business, it's merchants were hunted down by enforcement officers of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. By the 1930s, after thirty years of field experience, these revenuers preferred to hook a big fish by snagging the small fry and offering release in exchange for testimony.

      "Say Waters, why'd you risk your life sneaking over here?" Oil resumes after a few minutes of tossing and turning in the cold.

"I told ya..." begins Waters before being cut off.

"Really son, I been around long enough to know a white lie when I hear one."

"Well it wasn't just some guys. All of us climbed out through that gash in the women's wall." 

"What else?"

"Some stayed awhile, but not me. I just wish I'd a stayed off the river."

"A word to wise, Waters: Your only mistake out there was getting caught."

Chapter 2: Roll Call

      "All right you jerkoffs," shouts a newly assigned prison guard from the parade ground between the inmate tents. "Line up and state your name!"

"Patrick," begins the first guy in line, a bean pole of a man with a lean face and a wandering eye squinting into the low January sun.

"Whole name, asshole!" the guard growls, waving a clipboard and stabbing a pencil toward the now slouching prisoner.

"Loy Patrick."

"That's more like it. Next!"

"OL Beatty." 

"What's next, Vinegar?" the guard chuckles, appreciating Oil's responding laugh as he checks the name off the list. 

     The Kentucky State Reformatory at Frankfort had been as strict and as segregated as they come. A guard would have known the name and face of every inmate on their assigned block of single-bunk cells. Black and white prisoners were housed in separate buildings and would never have been allowed to fraternize, but the chaos following the unprecedented flooding, riot, and evacuation had not yet restored order to the makeshift prison camp.

     Oil had seen this census coming and done all he could to make his bunk mate appear more white. He traded Waters' relatively new khakis to another inmate for an older and browner set. He plucked about half of the dark hairs to lighten up the eyebrows. He instructed the young Black man on pulling his shirt collar up and hat brim down for less face exposure. He even coached Waters on posture to assume a more upright carriage. It helped that Waters was from a lighter skinned family.

     "Next!" continues the guard, glancing at his watch and the long line of inmates.

"Robert Waters, sir."

"Hmm, I don't see you on the list," he ponders, leafing to the next sheet. "That spelled like the flooding kind?"

"Yes sir."

"Well looky here, there you is on the colored rolls. Hmm."

"That's a mistake," Oil states as calmly as he can. "Waters been on my cell block for a year now."

"Righteo," the harried jailer resumes, writing in the name on the checklist of white prisoners. "Next!"

Chapter 1: Hell And High Water

      "They had no business mixing you and me, Waters," calls a pale and balding man from the bottom bunk of a conical tent as another inmate climbs into the top one.

"That supposed to mean," scowls a darker skinned younger guy as he rolls onto a thin mattress barely filled with cotton batting. 

"Hold your horses, mister," laughs the old guy turning from his side onto his back.  "You know what they call me, right?" 

"Hahaha, I get it," grunts Waters as he pulls a coarse wool blanket over his sodden khaki clothes. "Oil and water don't mix, do they?"

     After two days of rising muddy water and sinking drinking water in the old penitentiary, the involuntarily fasting prisoners had taken matters into their own hands. It took the arrival of the National Guard in army boats to quell that flood of rage in the cold torrent of January 1937. Then the inmates had been rounded up and herded across pontoon bridges to an emergency tent city thrown up by the WPA on a bluff just east of the Kentucky State Reformatory.

     The Frankfort prison had been operating on the banks of the Ohio River since 1800 with segregated buildings and single-celled rooms barely retrofitted for electricity. Funding had long been earmarked for a new reformatory, but the lean budgets of the Great Depression had put a cog in that wheel of progress. It took the flood of the century to get the modernization process rolling again.

     "Speaking of mixing, how did a man like you end up on this side of the river?" the older guy softly calls, tucking the olive army blanket around his bony shoulders.

"They was shipping us down to Eddyville so I slipped into your line," mutters Waters as he rolls his small frame from side-to-side, unable to find a comfortable spot.

"All the coloreds are going to maximum security?"

"In that highwater hell some guys broke into the women's building." 

"Whewee, nothing like a black man maybe getting a white woman to get 'em riled up." 

     "Why they call you Oil, anyways?" whispers down from the top bunk after a few moments of silence. 

"Had me a bus garage before the crash."

"Oh, it's not 'cause a that O.L. at the front of your nameplate?"

"Well well, there's your secret to keep - it's Orville Leslie to nobody but you and me."