Jim drives to Madam Maybelles

Lucky y'all, get to read the first page of my book.
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Dempsey Witt - Dem to folks who knew him, Dim to his friends - was taking the scenic route to work today. It was a fine, almost spring morning in southern Georgia, in January. The January dandelions were letting go, the January honeysuckle was in the air, and the smell of almost springtime in January was blowing in the wind, as fine as nostril wine... It's almost spring! Dempsey thought-yelled to himself.

'Almost is all you need!' Dim sang out loud, to the tune of a hundred year old Beatles song that was squeaking out of the old dashboard radio of the pickup he was driving to work. Dim was in a pretty good mood that morning, for a dilapidated old bootlegger. He hardly even noticed any of the potholes as he bullied the old 'lectric Ford pickup down the well neglected oil roads of southern Georgia, USA... well neglected in the upkeep, but well familiar in the driving of. That's the way that the oil roads of back country USA had been for the last hundred years, and Dem was sixty-six years old and could vouch personally for a bunch of those years. 'Oil roads were made for runnin' moonshine,' his dad used to say. They were the arteries and veins of it - and right now, Dim was the beating heart that was pumping the vital hooch to the vital organs, Like Buckeye Buck. If Dim was the heart that pumped the hooch, then Sheriff Buckeye Buck was definitely the liver that did the processing. Sheriff Buck, that is. He was the organ that filtered the hooch that Dim delivered, so that it was provisioned fairly and according to the Law of the Land. Buckeye Buck was the hooch accountant, the county liver... yeah, there we go! That's the analogy we were looking for!

That's what Dempsey Witt was thinking that morning as he trundled to work over those ragged potholes. Work for Dempsey Witt was running hooch, and running hooch was work for Dempsey Witt - Dim, as he was known to his friends, Dem to just folks - and he'd never known anything different for his whole life. Later on he'd maybe think about how strange all of that seemed in retrospect, once seen outside of his world of rural Georgia, after the universe had exploded in his face, but whatever future that was gonna be, Dempsey Witt had no idea of it right then. He had hooch to deliver today, and not some time hence.

So, it was a fine, spring-like January morning in Southern Georgia that Dempsey Witt - Dim to his friends, Dem to just folks; he always liked to make that clear - pulled his old hooch laden Ford 'lectric into the front yard of Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis. It was 7:00 AM, and only just seven hours past the state mandated closing time of any and all reputed houses, be they ill or well. Dim (we'll just call him that from here on, ok?) cut the juice to the Ford and parked for a while, waiting. After a couple of minutes the front door of Madame Maybe's cracked open by just a smidge, and an amplified caterwaul issued forth.

"BEELZEBUB IS A PRETTY GOOD GUY!"

Dim rolled down his window and hollered back.

"AS FAR AS DEMONS GO!"

And again, from the crack in the door -

"BUT HIS BROTHER BAAL..."

"LORD DON'T HE WAIL!" Dim yelled in reply. He was close to cracking up. And again, from the crack in the door -

"AND BAPHOMET..."

And now both of them together!

"IS JUST PLAIN PSYCHO!"

The front door to Madame Maybe's House of Well Repute and Oasis slammed open. Half a dozen gun barrels poked out, pointing in all directions, like some kind of Looney Tunes ensemble.

"We gothcher dead to rights!" came the challenge.

Dim had stepped out of the truck and was already at the tailgate. "Dead to rights?" he laughed as he fiddled with latch. "You don't even know what that means, you asshole!" The tailgate clunked open. "Gitcher fat ass out here and help me with this moonshine!"

Sheriff Buckeye Buck of the county of southern backwoods Georgia, state of Georgia, USA, lumbered forth.