Moonshiner's Son

by Carolyn Reeder

  “We don’t call it Judgment Day ’round here, Preacher,” Pa said. “We say ‘court day.’ An’ I’ve been to town more ’n once, you know.”

  Trying again, the preacher said, “I came up here to say how glad I am that you’ve seen the error of your ways and given up making liquor, Brother Higgins. My prayers have been answered.”

  Tom waited expectantly to hear what Pa would say. He had a feeling the cat-and-mouse game was over.

  “You listen here,” Pa said harshly, making one of the lightning-quick changes of disposition Tom was never quite prepared for. “My only error was gittin’ caught. An’ I gave up makin’ likker in answer to the judge’s question. Preacher, not in answer to no prayer of yours.”

  Preacher Taylor’s jaw tightened. “You’re as much as telling me my mission makes no difference in the lives of people in these hills. If that’s true, I’m a failure.” Looking skyward, he quoted, “‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me?’”

  “The mission school’s gonna make a difference in our lives, an’ Miz Taylor’s clothing bureau will, too,” Tom said quickly. He didn’t want to lose his chance to learn to read because Pa’s words made the preacher so discouraged that he went back to the city.

  “You’re right, Tom,” the preacher said, standing up. “I mustn’t expect too much too soon.” Then he turned to Pa and said stiffly, “I’ll see you at the building site in the morning, Higgins.”

  In the waning light, Tom watched Preacher Taylor walk toward the gate and hoped he never found out Pa had only given up making com whiskey.

  As he drew near Harry’s cabin two days later, Tom told himself that if any revenuers were watching, they would think he was coming to visit his friend and not suspect he was ordering mash barrels from Harry’s father. “Hoo-hoo!” he hollered. “Hoo-hoo!”

  Harry came around the corner of the cabin and called, “C’mon back!”

  Tom opened the gate and went around the cabin, ignoring the two nondescript dogs sniffing at his ankles. He stood quietly, watching Harry pound a barrel head into place under his father’s supervision. It must be nice to be able to do your work right out in plain sight, Tom thought.

  Finally, Harry straightened up and said, “I gotta help Pa all day. We got a big order from—”

  “Shut your mouth, boy,” his father said, giving him a shove.

  Another moonshiner, Tom realized, and one who was doing a powerful lot of stilling. He wondered who it could be but was glad the cooper protected his customers even if Harry didn’t have the sense to. “Actually, I’ve come to order barrels for Pa, Mr. Perkins,” Tom said. “Soon as you can have ’em ready, he needs—”

  “I thought he promised the judge he wasn’t gonna make no more whiskey,” Harry interrupted.

  The words were hardly out of Harry’s mouth when his father boxed his ears. “I thought I told you to shut your mouth!”

  “Pa ain’t gonna make whiskey. He’s makin’ fruit brandy from now on.” Tom was glad he could set the record straight so folks would know Pa wasn’t breaking his word to the judge. Harry would make sure everyone heard all about it soon enough.

  Harry’s father chuckled. “Good for him,” he said. “I don’t drink, but I don’t like to see the gov’ment interferin’ with a man’s livelihood. Your pa can have some of those,” he added, gesturing toward a shed where barrels were lined up and stacked two deep. “Tell him he can give me a day’s help at harvest time in return.”

  “If your pa’s settin’ up another still, I guess you ain’t gonna have much time to yourself for a while, neither,” Harry said, his eyes straying to the bundles of barrel staves stacked nearby, ready to be assembled.

  “Guess not. Might not see you till school starts.”

  But Harry’s father said, “Harry ain’t goin’ to that school. He’s gonna stay here an’ help me make barrels for folks to ship their apples out in. That boy may not know when to keep his mouth shut, but he’s a good worker.”

  “School’s for young’ns,” Harry added scornfully, but Tom thought he saw a faint blush of pleasure color his friend’s cheeks at the words he’s a good worker.

  “Wal, I’m goin’,” Tom said “so if you ever need me to read you somethin’, just ask.” As he pushed aside the dogs so he could open the gate, Tom wasn’t sure whether to envy Harry his father’s praise or to pity him because he’d never learn to read.

  Walking through the settlement, he decided to stop at the Rigsbys’ and find out whether Lonny planned on going to school. Tom hollered as he walked down the lane, and Mrs. Rigsby came outside and called, “Lonny ain’t here, but come on in an’ try my blackberry jam on a piece of fresh-baked bread.” Tom didn’t need a second invitation, and when he started home, he was carrying a jar of jam.

  When he reached the cabin, Pa said, “About time you showed up. I’m gonna make the new worm—got everything ready while you was gone.”

  “Can I help?” Tom asked. He remembered the time Pa made a worm for a man from the other side of the ridge. He’d packed a long copper pipe with sand so that it wouldn’t fold shut on itself, and then he’d twisted it around and around a stump until it looked like a giant bedspring.

  “ ’Course you can help,” Pa said, eyeing the jar Tom had set on the porch. “Why else would I of waited till you was through visitin’ all your friends—an’ a kitchen or two on your way home? Come on, now.”

  Behind the cabin, Pa picked up the copper pipe Ol’ Man Barnes had brought him from the hardware store in town. “Higgins men have always taught their sons the craft of stillin’ and passed down their formulas for com whiskey and fruit brandy,” he said. “Makin’ the best whiskey an’ brandy in all these hills is your birthright, boy. It’s somethin’ I’m proud to teach to you, and someday you’ll be proud to teach it to your son.”

  Tom didn’t know what to say. Pa had never talked to him like this before, like he really cared.

  “Yessiree, you’re carryin’ on a family tradition that dates back four or five generations,” Pa continued, talking as they worked. “I never promised I wouldn’t teach nobody how to make corn likker, by gum.”

  Later, when they stepped back to admire the finished worm, Pa said, “Now come on down to that ol’ abandoned homesite where I’m settin’ up the rig, an’ I’ll show you where to start buildin’ the furnace.”

  Finding his voice, Tom asked, “I’m gonna build the furnace? By myself?”

  “Might as well do somethin’ to earn your keep,” Pa said. “Besides, I gotta get down to that schoolhouse-chapel for a while. Lance Rigsby’s buildin’ the pulpit an’ showin’ the men how to make them benches, but I want to see how they’re gettin’ along.”

  Lonny must be over there helping with the benches, Tom thought.

  “Don’t you forget how I showed you to make the flue, ’cause if you make a furnace that don’t draw good, you’re gonna tear it down an’ build it up right.”

  Tom refused to let Pa spoil his pride in being allowed to build the furnace around the still pot they’d patched the night before. But he couldn’t help feeling a little envious of Lonny, working with the men at the building site. He wished stilling weren’t such lonely work.

  16

  Tom wiped his sweating brow, leaving a streak of mud on his face. The sun beat down on his back as he gave the oozing red clay one last stir with his shovel and began to scoop it into the buckets. At least he wouldn’t have to carry those buckets, he thought, struggling to lift them onto the heavy wooden land sled he’d found near the ruin of the old homesite’s barn. Then he picked up the rope, and leaning into it with all his weight, he pulled the loaded “slide” toward the spring, where he would build the furnace.

  He thought enviously of Pa supervising the finishing touches on the schoolhouse-chapel while he labored here alone. Then, guiltily, Tom remembered the nights he’d slept while Pa had worked, making trip after trip, lugging barrels and carrying down the copper still pot they’d pa
tched. Tom gritted his teeth and resolved to work without complaining, the way Pa did.

  Dragging the buckets of mud off the slide and around the uprooted pine that shielded the still from the clearing, Tom surveyed the rocks he’d hauled earlier. As he studied the still pot with its crazy quilt of patches, measuring it with his eyes, little tingles of excitement ran up and down his spine at the idea of building the furnace by himself. This was his chance to make Pa proud of him.

  First, Tom scratched a circle in the dirt and checked to make sure it was a few inches larger than the widest part of the copper pot. Next, he shoveled out a thick layer of the gooey mud, spreading it along the outside of the circle he’d drawn. Then, choosing the flattest of the rocks, he set to work, pressing them solidly into the mud and carefully filling the spaces between them with mud, too. He knew the importance of building the furnace carefully so that no heat could escape between the rocks.

  At the last minute, Tom remembered to leave an opening in front so they could fuel the furnace. Pa wouldn’t have let him forget it for the rest of his life if he’d built a furnace and hadn’t left a place to feed in the logs.

  A breeze stirred the humid air as Tom started toward the jumble of rocks that had once been the foundation of a cabin, and glancing up, he saw billowing white clouds forming. “Thunderheads,” he muttered. The sunlight had a brassy look, and as Tom watched, the clouds were becoming edged with gray. He cupped his hands to his ears and listened. Sure enough, he could hear a faint rumbling in the distance. He hated the thought of working in the rain, but if he quit, Pa would probably chide him and say it was all part of being a moonshiner.

  Keeping watch for snakes, Tom gathered rocks to build the next layers of the furnace. Then, wearily, he pulled the slide toward the spring. By the time he’d unloaded it, his back was sore, and his fingers were stiffening up from the punishment his hands had taken.

  Tom filled his buckets at the spring and wrestled them onto the slide, splashing himself in the process. Then, trying to ignore his fatigue, he set off to mix another batch of mud. He hadn’t realized how much mortar the job would take. Or that the sun would have baked the red-clay soil so hard that he could barely dig it until it had been thoroughly soaked. Tom tried to remember why he had been so pleased with being allowed to build the furnace by himself.

  He had loaded the slide with his buckets of mud and was pulling it back to the furnace when a gruff voice just behind him froze him in his tracks.

  “What you doin’ here, boy? This ain’t your land.”

  Tom grabbed the shovel and used both hands to swing it around in a wide arc, sending it crashing into the man’s leg. With a muffled oath, the man went down, and Tom lit off into the woods, ignoring the branches slapping at him and the roots grabbing at his feet. Minutes later he stopped, gasping for breath. He was safe now, he figured. No revenuer would bother to chase a boy through the woods—he’d wait to catch the man who was in charge of the still. To catch Pa!

  “I gotta warn him,” Tom said, his voice sounding loud in the silent woods. He skirted a tangle of greenbrier and then cut diagonally downhill through the open woods until he came out on the path. Tom hesitated when he saw a man limping toward him, and then he realized it was Pa. “Pa! What happened?”

  “You know dum well what happened, boy,” Pa growled, resting his weight on a stout stick.

  Tom stared at him, mouth open. And then he saw the broad smear of red clay on the leg of Pa’s overalls. He swallowed hard. “I—I didn’t know it was you, Pa. Honest I didn’t! I thought it was a revenuer. I guess I shouldn’t have swung that shovel till I made sure. That was a big mistake.”

  “I’m the one that made the mistake,” Pa admitted, “jokin’ you like that. Now come along home before this storm breaks. We stopped work early down at the mission ’cause it looked so threatenin’.”

  An ominous rumbling made Tom aware of how still the air was and how dark the woods had become. “Guess I’ll find me a platform stone to hold up the still pot an’ finish that furnace t’morrer,” he said, waiting hopefully for Pa to comment on the good job he’d done so far.

  “You better,” Pa said. “It ain’t anywheres near half done yet.”

  17

  “Too bad you ain’t makin’ whiskey no more, June,” Hube Baker said slyly as he eased himself into the rocking chair on the porch the next evening. “If you was, you could be a rich man.”

  “That so, Hube?” Pa’s hands were busy with the chair seat he was weaving from white oak splits, and he didn’t bother to look up.

  “’Deed it is, June. ’Deed it is.”

  Tom watched Hube slouch deeper into the chair, wondering how long it would be before the wiry little man told them the news he was bursting with.

  Hube pulled a bottle from his pocket and took a long drink. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he put the bottle away and said, “Just you wait an’ see, June. A lot of folks ’round here are gonna be gettin’ rich.”

  “That so, Hube?” Pa asked.

  “That’s so, June.” Hube waited until it was obvious Pa wasn’t going to ask him more, and then he said, “A stranger down at the store said he’d buy all the whiskey we could make. An’ he said he’d tell us how to speed up makin’ it. Said the offer’s good for all my friends, so if you want, I might could ask if he buys fruit brandy.”

  Tom glanced at Pa, wondering how he liked being included as a friend of Hube’s. Pa was frowning. “Did I hear you say you was gonna speed up makin’ your whiskey? It won’t be half as good if you do that,” he objected.

  “But I’ll be makin’ more ’n twice as much, you see,” Hube said. “Besides, I’m gonna age that whiskey two years in three days, like the man told me to.”

  “How can you do that?” Tom asked, forgetting that he didn’t want anything to do with Hube Baker.

  Hube turned and looked just past Tom’s left ear. “I char me some oak chips and put ’em in the whiskey and it turns a golden-brown color. Just like it was aged in oak barrels, the man said.” Hube paused to let them digest that before he added, “An’ he told me how to speed up the stillin’.” Leaning forward he said, “Bet you didn’t know addin’ a bit of potash an’ some ground-up taters will speed things up an’ git you more whiskey, too. An’ addin’ lye gives a sharper flavor. What do you think of that, June?”

  Pa’s hands gripped the edges of the unfinished chair seat. “I think it’s a crime, what you’re fixin’ to do. Ain’t you got no pride?”

  Hube shrugged. “I don’t see nothin’ wrong with bein’ modern. Like the man said, why should we still be makin’ whiskey the same way our grandpappies did?”

  “’Cause it’s a family tradition,” Tom said.

  Pa began weaving the white oak splits again. “’Course, if a man never had no reputation to uphold, I can see why he might not care about the quality of his product,” he said bluntly.

  Tom glanced over at Hube, but the man didn’t seem to realize he’d been insulted. “Wal,” he said, getting to his feet, “lemme know if you change your mind, an’ I’ll find out if that feller buys fruit brandy.”

  Neither Tom nor Pa spoke until long after Hube was out of sight. When Tom saw that the taut set of Pa’s jaw had finally relaxed, he asked, “Who do you think that man is, the one buyin’ all Hube’s whiskey?”

  “A bootlegger.” Pa spit a stream of tobacco juice off the porch. “One of them that buys whiskey from the stillers an’ drives it to the city to sell.” Pa tacked the end of the last white oak split to the chair frame and sat back to admire his handiwork.

  Tom admired it, too, proud that Pa had made the chair Mrs. Taylor would use when school started on Monday. Monday! Now that the day he’d been waiting for was so near, Tom felt a little nervous. He welcomed the sound of Andy’s holler—a good story would keep him from worrying about school.

  “I met Hube Baker on the path,” Andy remarked after the greetings were over.

  Pa snorted. “He’s been up here braggin’ on
how he’s gonna make twice as much whiskey in half the time an’ sell it all to some bootlegger,” he said in disgust.

  “Ah, a bootlegger. That explains the automobile tracks down at the settlement,” Andy said thoughtfully. Then he, too, inspected the new chair. “If you make another one of these, I’d like to watch and take some notes,” he said.

  “You mean you ain’t never seen nobody make a chair before?” Tom asked in surprise. “Not in your whole life?”

  Andy shook his head. “In the city, folks buy most of the things they need instead of making them.” He reached for the half-full jar Pa offered him.

  “Swallers real smooth, don’t it?” Pa asked when Andy handed back the jar. “Better enjoy good whiskey while you can, before this Pro’bition rains it.”

  “We both know there’s no way that law can be enforced, June.”

  “That ain’t what I mean,” Pa said. “I know Pro’bition ain’t gonna stop moonshinin’, but it’s gonna ruin it, sure as we’re sittin’ here on this porch.”

  Tom had never heard his father talk like this before. “Ruin it, Pa? How?”

  “Wasn’t you listenin’ when Hube talked about addin’ potash an’ ground-up taters an’ even lye to his mash?”

  “Yeah, but that’s just ol’ Hube, ain’t it?” Tom couldn’t imagine anybody else even thinking of doing what Hube was planning. Potatoes couldn’t hurt anybody, but lye sure could. Women used potash and lye when they made soap!

  Pa snorted. “Just Hube an’ a lot of others who care more about makin’ money than they do about makin’ good whiskey.”

  Andy finished lighting his pipe and leaned back in the rocking chair. “You may be right, June,” he said thoughtfully. “A lot of pop-skull liquor’s being sold in the cities nowadays.”

  Pop-skull likker. The word itself almost made Tom’s head hurt. “But nobody’d ever buy a second time from any moonshiner who made pop-skull likker, would they, Andy?”

  “The customers have no idea who made the whiskey they buy, and even if the bootleggers knew, they wouldn’t care. They’re in it for the money.”