Food Stamps and Moonshine Whiskey
by Gary Clifton
“Joe Johnny, I’m hungry. An’ it’s cold in here.” Annabelle’s crackling whine at age thirteen was caught in the trap between adolescent and adult.
Joe Johnny, fully dressed, tossed off his blanket and whispered hoarsely, “Hush, ’Belle. Don’ be wakin’ up Mama.” Using a make-shift poker made of metal scrap, he dug in the embers of the small wood stove, stoking up a feeble flame. He added the three or four kindling sticks remaining and turned to Annabelle, who lay on the bed in tears. Gotta chop wood, ’Belle. Lemme know if Mama wakes up ailin’, hear?”
Already wearing his only coat and both his shirts, he stepped out into the cold Northeast Texas morning chill. In fifteen minutes, he’d accumulated an armload and started back inside.
“Boy, make damned sure you also cut plenty to keep the store goin’ all day!” The strident voice of Harvey C. Sledge boomed. “An’ that delivery from Texarkana gotta be unloaded!”
“I be comin’, Mr. Sledge. Gotta made sure Mama and Annabelle get took care of.”
The obese old man mumbled an epithet and stepped back out of the cold.
Joe Johnny was stocky, quiet, and capable. With his twin, Annabelle, he’d lived the past three years with their disabled mother, Valta, in a converted chicken coop at the rear of Sledge Grocery on the Texarkana Highway. Annabelle was mentally slow and Mama, at twenty-seven, had gradually lost the use of her legs.
Joe Johnny tossed several sticks into the stove. Valta was awake, but still in bed. Using a battered table as a boost, he reached atop a corner shelf and pulled down a half-loaf of three-day old bread and a partial jar of peach preserves. He was forced to ration, and neither Annabelle nor Mama Valta could reach the precious food.
Using the warm stovetop, he laid on three slices, spread preserves with his Barlow knife and handed Annabelle and Mama Valta one each. He replaced the bread and preserves on the shelf, gulped his breakfast, and started outside.
“Stay away from that shelf, ’Belle. Directly, I’m comin’ back to fix the fire and bring sumthin’ more to eat.”
Valta, the unwanted daughter of penniless sharecroppers, had found her “employment” in Sledge Grocery as a child. Eventually, her family abandoned her.
Valta moved permanently into Sledge’s residence built on the rear of the store. When the twins were born to Valta at age fourteen, Sledge was widely regarded as the father, but indifference erased any widespread indignation.
Sledge tried retaining Valta and finding a volunteer to adopt the twins, then offered to pay more than one traveler to take the children with them. Child Protective Services and Sheriff Buck Horn came out, read Sledge his Miranda rights and said in effect, “You hatched ’em, you keep ’em.”
Soon after, injuries incurred by Valta from birthing the twins worsened into a crippling spinal ailment, confining her to an old wheelchair.
Skirting the law, Sledge threw them out of the house and into the abandoned shack they currently occupied. He provided a stove for heat and nothing more. Joe Johnny retrieved an old rug from a trash dump during a grocery delivery and dragged it home to cover the dirt floor.
Joe Johnny, by coercion and desperation, worked for Sledge, both delivering groceries and helping out with two additional livelihoods. Sledge augmented income by selling moonshine whiskey and buying and selling food stamps, both cash businesses.
Joe Johnny knew Sledge kept a box of cash on the top shelf of the grocery store with a .38 revolver beside it. He once heard Sledge, while drunk, tell Low Dog, the moonshine transporter, that he had $50,000 in that bucket and anybody who tried for it was a dead man.
“Need to get your lazy ass here on time, boy,” Joe Johnny heard Sledge harangue as he lugged wholesale groceries from Sledge’s old pickup. Then Low Dog pulled up out front in his Camaro. It was Tuesday, but he usually delivered on Thursday, to the rear door.
“Hands on the counter, you old bastard,” Low Dog snarled, out of Joe Johnny’s sight. Then the bootlegger said, “Cleo, the money’s in the fishin’ bucket on that top shelf.”
Two gunshots roared. Sledge screamed in pain. Joe Johnny ran to Smith’s Tavern next door shouting, “They robbin’ the store! Sledge been kilt!”
Sheriff Buck Horn and a deputy, drinking at the bar, sprinted to Sledge’s with pistols drawn. Joe Johnny followed. Low Dog burst out the front door waving a pistol. The deputy shot him twice in the chest at close range. The second robber burst out the back door and crossed Sledge’s lot into the heavy timber behind the hovel that Joe Johnny called home. Ahead of the sheriff, Joe Johnny followed the man.
The fleeing man was carrying Sledge’s universal white bait bucket wherein objects could be pushed in the top with the door designed to spring back closed, making it spill-proof. He wedged the bucket beneath a brush pile before resuming flight.
The sheriff, the deputy, and two patrons from Smith’s Tavern ran past Joe Johnny, waving shotguns. “Drop that pistol or we’ll shoot,” the sheriff’s voice wafted back from the woods, followed by an explosion of gunfire.
The sheriff passed Joe Johnny on the way back to his squad car. “Boy, you done good. Got any idea what they was after? Grocery receipts ain’t much.”
Joe Johnny shrugged. He eyed the brush pile. The white bucket was not visible in the dim forest light. “Got no idea, Sheriff.”
Near dark, after the robber’s body was carried out and the sheriff’s crew had cleared the area, Joe Johnny retrieved the bucket. Low Dog’s Camaro sat idle.
Joe Johnny took the Camaro back to his chicken house. “Mama...’Belle, whut say we order some chicken that’s been fried proper from Smith’s Tavern.” He pulled Sledge’s .38 from the bucket of cash. “Then we goin’ in a whole new bidness.”
Copyright © 2026 by Gary Clifton
