We are Doodeewaun

Justin was worried. For a fourteen-year-old he had a lot of on his shoulders. He had made friends and did not want to have to sneak away in the middle of the night the way they did when they came to live with Grams. Father had said they were starting over again but it seemed to Justin that what Father had started over was the same thing he had been doing in Chicago. The faces of his men were all familiar. They were from Al Capone’s gang, run out of Chicago by prohibition agents known as the Untouchables, led by Eliot Ness. Like Father, when their picture showed up in the newspapers, they went into hiding. But, they were not only hiding. They were working hard to meet whiskey delivery requirements. To make enough corn whiskey to fill railroad cars, they had to step on toes. Neighbors were getting hurt.
His father carried a Thompson submachine gun, threatening to use it on anyone who got in his way. His mother had always been afraid but since they came here, she became recluse and seldom came out of her room. His little brother, Brandon, had created imaginary friends that he talked to in the forest.
The doodeewaun in the forest called the gangster the ‘evil one’ and knew the danger that their beloved Hanna Dupree, her daughter and her grandsons were in. They watched and listened from hidden places inside the house, the barn, and in the forest. They kept Hanna posted on what the gangster was doing so she could stay a step ahead of him. Soon, she told them, she would think of something to bring an end to his evil rein.