"Always stick to that and you'uns will be a man, even if you'uns die
with yer boots on."
The speaker was Zibe Turner, a creature who would pass for a Calaban. A
monster he was except his legs, which were short and slim, giving him a
dwarfish appearance. So he was a monster dwarf, if such a term is
allowable. His head was immense in size, covered with long unkempt
hair. His shoulders, arms and trunk would become a giant. A look at his
face showed a low forehead, black, restless eyes, wide apart, flat
nose, and large mouth.
Like Calaban he could be called "hag-seed," or the son of a witch and a
devil.
His moral nature was as misshapen as his body. His mind was degraded,
yet keen in plotting mischief and violence. His affections were
debased. Prospero's description of Calaban applied to him:
"Abhorred slave which any print of goodness will not take
Being capable of all ill."
The words of Saint Paul to the sorcerer fitted him: "O full of all
subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all
righteousness." He was a type of those whom the apostle described as
"filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, deceit,
malignity--implicable, unmerciful."
Strangely enough, one of the moonshiners had read Shakespeare's
"Tempest," and gave Caliban's title of "monster" to Zibe Turner. From
that day he was generally nicknamed "Monster Turner."
"Always stick to dat," repeated Turner in his deep, gutteral voice.
"Let's drink to de health of all moonshiners and to de defeat an' death
of all revenue spies. Dat's my holt (hold)." Suiting the action to the
words, he raised a stone jug nearly full of spirits to his lips and
taking a long draught, handed it to the next, and so it went the
rounds. The liquor, which would have made an ordinary drinker
intoxicated in a few minutes, had no perceptible effect upon these men,
who scarcely ever tasted water, so commonly did they drink the product
of their stills; but it perhaps raised their feelings a trifle and
loosened their tongues to speak other words and strengthened their
purposes to perform unlawful acts.
Sam Wiles then spoke: "Next to these officer dorgs who hunt us on the
hills and mountains, I hate them shoutin' hypercrits who air holdin'
that camp meetin' near Poplar Crick. They're tryin' to make the whul
county pious, and you fellers know how their head men have jined with
others around here to appint a vigilance committee to drive all such as
we'uns air out'n the State. Because we believe in pursonal liberty,
because we think it right to make our own whisky and to race our
hosses, because we sometimes try our luck at cards and win money from
the young fools in the valley, they want to put the law on our tracks.
Now the more camp meetin's we have around here, the less pursonal
liberty we shall have; and I propose to you'ns that we jine with the
boys on Honey Crick and bust up the camp meetin'."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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