Shiner

by Amy Jo Burns

  Or, “Like kissing your best friend’s girl.”

  These stories, of course, were exactly what folks hadn’t known they wanted to hear. Flynn loved Ruby through his shine because he’d lost her. Making whiskey was an ode to his lost love, and people bought it, three bottles full.

  * * *

  All that changed the night Ivy died. It had been thirteen years since Ruby left Sonny on Flynn’s porch. When the call came—Ruby’s voice choleric—Flynn knew that something terrible had happened. He feared for her girl. Whispers around the mountain swore that Wren had almost drowned by Briar’s hand, and Flynn knew exactly what the hands of that preacher could do. He’d known for sixteen years, and he’d never said a word.

  “It’s Ivy,” Ruby said into the phone. “She’s dead.”

  Flynn felt like he’d been socked in the gut with a brick.

  “I’ll meet you at the trailer,” he said before hanging up the line.

  He left Sonny fast asleep on the couch. Flynn hoped he’d stay that way until morning. When Flynn pulled the Tacoma into the gravel lot in front of Ivy’s trailer, he found a great fire burning in the front yard. Greedy, it grew, clawing at the curve in the roadway. Flynn jumped out and ran toward it. Crazy Ricky, he thought. He’s gonna burn that body. The hair and flesh would stink all the way to Trap.

  Flynn readied himself to muscle Ricky to the ground. But on the other side of the flames, it was Ruby who stood with her legs apart, throwing Ivy’s things into the fire. Her dark eyes swallowed the light from the blaze.

  “Where’s Ricky?” Flynn shouted.

  Ruby tossed in Ivy’s wedding quilt. “I sent him away. He ain’t got the stomach to burn Ivy’s things.”

  Flynn tried to be gentle. “Why do they need to be burned, Ruby?”

  Her head snapped toward him. “They’re all infected. All.”

  He stepped toward her and felt the fire on his cheeks. “Does it need to burn right now?”

  She knelt and took up what looked to be Ivy’s wedding dress. “I ain’t gonna let this sickness kill anyone else.”

  Flynn reached out for a set of winter coats, but Ruby blocked his arm. “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll catch it.”

  “Tell me, Ruby,” he said. “What happened?”

  She looked at him, and the ash in the air caught her eyelashes. “Ivy got religion, Flynn.”

  * * *

  Inside the trailer Ruby took to scrubbing the floor. She trained her hand on a small square in the kitchen and scoured it until the edge of the linoleum started to curl beneath her force.

  “Ruby,” Flynn said. “It’s clean.”

  But Ruby couldn’t hear him. She rubbed her hands raw, then threw the brush against the wall. Flynn went to the window and opened it. The trailer had a spiced smell of sick to it, like molded tonics and gingered molasses. If Flynn didn’t know better, he’d have guessed Ricky was making his own absinthe in their bathtub. Flynn had considered making the high-priced liquor at one time to double his money, but he couldn’t stand the stench of anise cooking in a pot.

  Ruby sank to the floor and stared at the ceiling. “I could kill Briar,” she said. “Sure as he killed Ivy.”

  The boy inside Flynn who’d loved and lost Ruby wanted to coax even the smallest detail out of her, but her grief deserved better. It deserved tender silence. He watched her until she looked over at him.

  “You ain’t gotta stay,” she said.

  Flynn eased himself into Ricky’s chair. “Let’s sit with her awhile.”

  Ruby started to shake her head, and she couldn’t stop. “I can’t do this,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Flynn whispered. “I’ll take her out of the house. We’ll bury her next to Sherrod at the cemetery on our land. You don’t need to watch.”

  “You think that’s what I don’t have the stomach for?” Ruby grunted as she sat up. “I can’t survive here without her, Flynn. I can’t be Briar’s lover. I can’t be the preacher’s wife. I can’t mother what’s left of our mountain. I can’t.”

  Flynn clasped his hands to keep him from reaching out for her. “You don’t have to.”

  She didn’t hear. Instead her head fell to the side. “We should have left when we were seventeen, just like Ivy wanted to. I kept her here.”

  “Ivy knew you loved her.”

  “It wasn’t enough.” Ruby wiped the soot from her temple, then shot a glance toward the trailer’s front door.

  “Briar’s coming,” she said.

  “No, he ain’t.”

  She stood. “You think you know everything, don’t you, Flynn?”

  “I know Briar. And if he’s got something to feel guilty about, he ain’t gonna show his face.”

  “His guilt is years too late.”

  The night Ruby sat up with Ivy’s body was the only night Flynn and Ruby ever spent together. He could see how anger had devoured the grief she felt. He’d witnessed it before—hell, he’d felt it before with his own daddy. It wasn’t hard to believe that if you got mad enough, the world might spin backward and undo that which could not be undone.

  “There never was a woman so foolish,” Ruby finally said, sometime after midnight. The lamplight glowed soft like the rising sun on Easter morning.

  “Who?” Flynn asked. “Ivy?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Me. I figured I was saving myself from an illegitimate life by not marrying a shiner. And what am I now? Married to a swindler, just like my mother.”

  “Briar don’t see himself that way,” Flynn answered.

  “Humans do what’s right in their own eyes. That don’t make it right.”

  “What did you expect?” Flynn rubbed his jaw. “Briar ain’t changed since we were young.”

  “I thought God was speaking through him. That whole story he told about seeing our mountains cast in sapphires—I thought he was prophetic. He saw the riches I’ve always known were hidden deep in our land, the ones that have nothing to do with coal. I thought he’d bring them here, Flynn. Now I see it was only Briar’s delusions the whole time.” She fingered the strands of hair that had fallen from her braid. “He always had such a mystery about him. I trusted it would end up pointing somewhere, and it only sent me in circles.”

  Flynn dared not defend Briar, even if he did find that most good intentions, God-centered or otherwise, ended up pointing nowhere in the end.

  “Here’s what scares me, Flynn. I feel God in here.” She touched her heart. “I feel it no matter what Briar does. But what if Wren don’t?”

  “You’re afraid for her soul? That she’s gonna choose the wrong kind of life?”

  “She never got to choose.” Her eyes fell. “I wanted to save her from the life I lived with my father, and that’s exactly what I gave her.”

  “You did the best you could.”

  Ruby laughed. “Did I? Keeping Wren in Briar’s house is the worst thing I ever done. Do you know what he did to her, Flynn? He tried to drown her. And still I didn’t leave him.”

  “Ruby,” Flynn said. “You’re grieving.”

  “Well.” Ruby straightened. “Grief can make clear what was clouded.”

  Flynn knew it was true. It seemed that night, with a fire of Ivy’s possessions smoldering right outside the window, Flynn might have been granted a second chance.

  “Leave him, Ruby.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I promised myself and God that I’d serve Briar until I died.”

  Flynn exhaled. He longed to tell Ruby that he’d seen her husband strangle a man. Briar hadn’t earned Flynn’s loyalty or his silence. Even so, Flynn had pledged to remain faithful to the moonshiner’s way of life, and that meant keeping his word. If a shiner forfeited it, soon he’d have nothing left.

  “Ruby,” Flynn started. “You can end this.”

&nbs
p; She broke then, and Flynn lifted a tear from her cheek.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Turn him in for trying to drown your daughter.”

  “To the law?”

  Flynn nodded. “They’ll give you a safe place to stay,” he said. “Or you can stay with us until you’re on your feet.”

  This might have been the first time in her life that Ruby stopped fighting. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

  Flynn’s heart shattered a little from hope, if such a thing were possible. “I’ll take you to the station myself.”

  “I’ll have to bring Wren,” Ruby said. “I can’t leave her.”

  Flynn nodded. He’d need to add another room to the hunting cabin for them. “Of course.”

  Ruby lifted her eyes to his. “No one in Trap will look at you the same.”

  “They’ll still like the taste of my whiskey, I suspect.”

  “Let me bury Ivy.” Ruby smoothed her skirt. “And then we’ll go.”

  He nodded. “If you can wait at the grave, I’ll come for you.”

  “And I’ll need a divorce,” she started.

  “You’ll need money.”

  “I got money.” She reddened. “The money you sent—it was you, wasn’t it? I’ve been saving it.”

  Flynn nodded. Ruby had been wanting out for a long time.

  * * *

  Flynn didn’t want to die from happiness. He wanted to live for it. He rushed home and woke Sonny from his slumber.

  “Find a broom,” he said. “And quick.”

  Just after dawn Flynn collected a pile of fresh lumber to expand the sun porch. It wouldn’t make a perfect second bedroom, but with a door and a daybed it would do the trick. He’d put in a skylight next to the lookout perch, he thought. Wren ought to like that.

  Sonny swept the same patch of flooring three times over before Flynn shuffled him into the bedroom. Then he gathered some fresh violets from the nearby hill, placed them in one of his shine bottles. He pulled a red ribbon out from the sewing basket his mama had kept in his cupboard and tied it around the vase. He smiled. And then he fluffed the pillows and spread some fresh fabric over his worn sofa. His mama would have been proud. Ruby would feel at home here, and right quick, too.

  But all of that was not to be. By midmorning Flynn had completed the preparations for the burial, since it was fixing to rain. He’d called in a favor with the gravedigger, waited next to Sherrod’s plot as Ivy’s coffin was lowered into the ground. Then he returned home.

  He wanted to let Ruby grieve her friend. He wanted her to come with him, to choose this life, to follow it through.

  Flynn had long ago befriended the agony of waiting. He hadn’t slept, and the late morning passed like molasses. He sat on the porch between the rough lumber he’d just posted. The sky bruised. He took a sip of shine, then a swig. He’d meant to shower himself, shave, and change the clothes he’d been wearing since the day before. He’d wanted to cut down the rusted ring of tin cans Sonny had strung along the ridge of his property. Flynn paced, then sat, then paced again. By noon he gave in. He ought to pick Ruby and Wren up before the downpour started, he reasoned. He pulled out his keys and headed for the Tacoma until he saw Dr. Ed walking toward him.

  It was no good sign, a doctor walking. Flynn prayed for the first time since he was seventeen.

  Don’t be for Ruby, don’t be for Ruby, don’t be for Ruby.

  But it was. When he heard the news, Flynn sent the doctor away. The sweet sounds of his mountain ceased, even as rain started to fall.

  “Hey, Daddy.” Sonny came up behind him. “Hey, Daddy, hey.”

  His boy wasn’t much for words, but he was there, and Flynn couldn’t bear to be alone. He placed a hand between Sonny’s shoulder blades and leaned in. The world had fuzzed over. Sonny led him to a spigot, where Flynn splashed water on his face.

  “Go fetch the quilts. And the ax and the snake pole,” Flynn said. “We got a serpent to kill.”

  Flynn might have killed himself for all the swerving the Tacoma did as he drove toward the sugar maples. He couldn’t see straight. Sonny tumbled about in the back. When he saw Wren fixed over her mother’s limp body, a weary wrath overtook him. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew Briar was at fault. The horizon roved like an ocean wave. He slid to a stop, and Sonny hopped out with the quilts.

  Flynn watched Wren, who looked first like Ruby, then Briar, then back to Ruby again. All the hope he’d stored up drained out of him. A hem of lightning stitched the sky. He cracked open the driver’s-side door and planted his boot on firm ground. He swayed and steadied, promising himself Ruby’s would be the last body he’d ever bury on Violet’s Run.

  * * *

  Ruby’s girl was a problem. Flynn didn’t know what to do with her. He could have let Wren stay in his hunting cabin, but Flynn had business to tend to, vengeful business, and Wren couldn’t witness it. Keep her, Flynn, he could almost hear Ruby begging as he watched her girl seated at the end of his bed. Keep her safe.

  It knifed his heart to send Wren to the Tacoma so he could drop her at Aunt Bette’s. He might as well have been leaving his own child, so strongly he felt that Wren ought to have been his. But if Briar came hunting for Wren, he’d come to Flynn’s first. Wren would be hidden at Aunt Bette’s, closer to town. He took a last look at Ruby before leaving, ran his fingers over her collarbones, her knuckles, her feet. All of her here, and yet none of her his.

  “Sonny,” he whispered to his boy, who was stationed in the rocker nearby. “I know it don’t seem like it, but Ms. Bird is family to us. And we don’t leave family alone in death till they’re buried. Am I right?”

  “Right.”

  “Can you keep her good company till I get back?”

  “She’ll get the best company, Daddy.”

  Sonny pulled the rocker close to Ruby, and it was the kindest thing Flynn’s boy had ever done. The night Flynn agreed to take Sonny as his own, he’d thought of it as a gift to Ruby—one she didn’t need to repay. But for a long while now, Flynn saw the debt as his. Ruby had given him a family, a friend, and a future. Briar’s boy had grown into a young man that Flynn cherished, just the way Sherrod had once cherished him.

  In the Tacoma, Flynn drove like he and Wren were falling down the mountain. Fog from the rain filled every breath, and the stars hid behind the storm. Flynn left on his windshield wipers long after the rain had stopped.

  “You should turn me in,” Wren finally said.

  Flynn took a right onto Aunt Bette’s crooked road. Trap lay sleeping at the bottom of her hill. “What for?”

  Wren leaned her head into the window. “Killing my mama.”

  “You ain’t killed your mama,” Flynn said. “A snake did.”

  “You don’t understand. She took it from my hands. I didn’t believe enough, and it killed her.”

  “Belief ain’t got shit to do with it,” he said.

  “Yes it does.” Wren shook her head. “You don’t know my father.”

  Flynn paused. “I know him some.”

  He pulled to a stop by Aunt Bette’s mailbox. A dim light glowed from inside. Wren didn’t move.

  “My daddy blames me,” she said.

  “No he don’t.”

  “Well, God does, then.”

  “God don’t blame people.” Flynn cringed. He’d never been one for offering spiritual counsel.

  “How can you be sure?” Wren asked.

  She asked without malice or sass. She asked because she wanted to know.

  Flynn exhaled. “Ain’t that why Jesus returned?”

  “He ain’t returned yet.”

  Flynn threw up his hands. “Apologies.”

  Wren smiled, brief. “Maybe God don’t blame me, but I played a role just the same.”

  She spoke it as if it had come right out of a you
ng Ruby’s mouth. Flynn barely had the strength to speak.

  “Aunt Bette’s gonna take real good care of you,” he said. “Funeral will be in three days. Somebody’ll be by to get you.”

  Wren stepped out and looked back through the open window.

  “Are you going to find my father?” she asked.

  Flynn didn’t answer. He whipped out of the driveway and hung a left, headed north on the road out of town, in search of Briar Bird.

  Dear Wren,

  I have to tell you—

  You’ve heard the old proverb: Land is passed from father to son, confessions passed from mother to daughter. The only confession I have for you is this—Ivy and I did what we had to in order to survive.

  In a world of unkind men, we fought to be kind to each other.

  III.

  DEAD WOMAN’S CONFESSION

  Years before Flynn and Briar snared a coachwhip in the belly of a rusted plane, Ivy and Ruby met in the churchyard. It was the white of winter, they were seven years old, and soon neither of them would remember it.

  Ivy leaned against the downed trees at the bottom of the gas station’s hill. Her feet were buried in snow, and her thin coat shimmered crow-black against the ice. Ruby hiked toward her as snow swarmed her knees.

  Ivy had seen Ruby in church before, though they hadn’t spoken. Their mothers weren’t friends, nor were they friendly. Their fathers hoisted serpents and spoke in tongues. They danced to the chime of a tambourine while a crowd of women watched in awe. The two men were opposite in likeness—Ruby’s father, Hasil, was gray-haired and slack-faced, while Ivy’s father was purple-necked and swollen—but they had one thing in common. Sunday was the only day either of them felt like a king.

  Outside the gas station, Ruby crept close enough to see that Ivy was sitting on a pile of gloves. A dozen of them. Her hands were dahlia-red in the snow.

  “You’re cold,” Ruby said.

  Those winters taught girls in dresses what death would be like, the iced amnesia of skin forgetting how to feel. Ruby didn’t ask for a pair of gloves. Most mountain girls didn’t yet know how to warm themselves, didn’t find themselves to be worthy of much comfort.