LUPPY JOE HAD BEEN THE KING MOONSHINE MAKER in the hollow for about ten years, running more than three thousand gallons a month. He had fifteen men working for his outfit, driving moon around to three counties, spreading it to the bars and shake shacks, the trailer parks and dice dens, where they’d use food coloring to turn the moon into bourbon, rum, tequila, and scotch.
Shad drove up the deeply grooved back road and swung toward the Anson farm, past clumps of birch and virgin white pine. He didn’t know most of the men wandering around the property stacking boxes inside the barn and hiding the drums and sugar sacks around back.
He expected at least a little hassling but no one flagged him down or gave him any trouble. Luppy must’ve been paying the Feds and local law an even higher kickback, allowing them to pinch a couple of the sixteen-year-old haulers now and again. The kids would only get probation, and the department could spend their money and still look like they were doing their jobs. Nobody gave a shit about the hollow anyway.
Jake Hapgood squatted on the far side of the house near a vat of corn mash, working one of the old-timer stills. He was tapping at the coiled tubing with a wooden bedframe slat. He chawed on a stalk of grass, boots covered with pig shit. He’d trimmed most of the singed ends off and needed another shot of mousse, but his hair was hanging in pretty good, one curl uncoiled over his eye. More duck’s ass today than pompadour.
Shad drove up slowly, watching out for the hogs, and parked. Jake turned and smirked. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of getting back into the make-liquor business.”
“I’ll leave that to the professionals,” Shad said.
“Run-liquor then?”
“No, I’m just here to visit with Joe.”
“Don’t think he’s home, but maybe he snuck in while I wasn’t watching.” He wore a slightly shamed expression that threw Shad for a second until he realized Jake felt guilty about being seen with Becka Dudlow at the bonfire. Situations like that could catch up with a man in the light of day.
Shad decided to ignore it, and soon the embarrassed look slid from Jake’s face. It occasionally took folks a minute or two to realize they had nothing to feel remorseful about in front of an ex-con.
A chuckle eased from Jake, filled with a certain nastiness but not his own. “Heard about what happened to your friend Zeke Hester. I thought you said you weren’t looking to get sent back to the joint.”
“I’m not.”
“You probably shouldn’t have left a good old boy like Griff as a witness then. He hates to talk unless it’s about the Normandy Invasion or something that happened out in front of his store.”
Left a witness. Like Shad was robbing the place and should’ve used a shotgun on anybody who saw him. “All that matters is what Zeke said.”
“Zeke didn’t say anything,” Jake told him. “He sure can blubber like a little girl though.”
“Throws like one too.”
Jake’s torso trembled with silent laughter, holding it in where it belonged because one day he might have to make a choice, and Zeke Hester was always going to be his neighbor. The curl flipped over Jake’s eye one way, and the breeze hiked it back the other. He acted like he was about to tell secrets again, leaned in, but didn’t say anything for a minute. His cooler sat nearby in the hay and he gestured toward it. “Want a beer?”
“No thanks.”
“I can’t go with whiskey every day and night like the old days.”
“Anybody who tries isn’t worth much before long.”
It was the truth, but having it laid out like that took Jake back a step, as if Shad might suddenly be judging.
Maybe they were all losing their slickness. Christ, you couldn’t say any damn thing without offending somebody. He didn’t know when everyone in town had gotten so sensitive, and couldn’t decide if he’d hardened up too far to simply make regular conversation now. The things you had to worry about.
Jake squinted at him an extra second and broke into a grin. He still had every tooth in his head, so he hadn’t started down the road yet. “Jesus, you haven’t lightened up half an inch since the other night. I thought after you were home a while you’d have settled back in.”
“I’ve got too much on my mind,” Shad said. “Sorry if it puts me out of sorts. Tell me . . . what do you know about Luppy’s wife?”
Chickens squawked and two angry hogs roamed by searching out the fallen corn kernels. Lament whined from the passenger seat, tried to loose a bark but was still too young.
“Callie’s sharp, has a nice way about her. Young still, but mature. And I’m not only talking about her body, which is fine, you understand. She can lighten your load just by standing near you. She’s smart, and grasps exactly how to keep Joe on his best behavior. He hardly drinks anymore, and you recall what kind of a miscreant he could be when he was tappin’ the jug too much.”
Luppy used to get drunk and sit naked on the porch with an eleven-gauge pump. He’d fire into the darkness at the smallest noise and claim he was aiming at gophers. He’d wounded two of his employees that way. One lost the tip of his left pinkie, and the other took thirty stitches in the buttocks and wore the flattened shot in a locket around his neck as a kind of good luck charm.
You found providence wherever you could, even if you had to pull it out of your ass.
“You ever see my sister out this way?” Shad asked.
“Here on the farm? Mags? What in the hell would she be doing out this way?”
“Someone said she and this girl Callie were friends.”
“Not that I ever noticed.”
“They were in Preacher Dudlow’s Youth Ministry together.”
You couldn’t help but come full circle when you were dealing with such a tight circuit. It was no different than when you were making a break for the county line. No matter what back road you took, you eventually hit the river, the gorge, or the highway. You couldn’t do ninety across the hollow for more than ten minutes before you had to turn around and go back again.
Jake lit a cigarette. The fumes from the vat caught high above and a blue burst of flame scurried wildly through the air. There were men all over town whose eyebrows would never grow back. “I know Callie used to stop in there on occasion, help Mrs. Swoozie bake pies for the church sales. Go clean out some of the river shacks and sell odd goods at the parking lot flea market.”
With a whimper, Lament hopped into the driver’s seat, stuck his paws up on the steering wheel like he wanted to drop into fourth gear and rip the hell out of there. Smart dog, all right.
The pigs squealed and circled closer and closer, agitated, noticing something.
His field of vision began to narrow. He blinked but nothing changed, except the night came pushing in, pressing forward as if coming for him. The whole world began to darken. This was new. He took a deep breath and drew a trail of smoke off Jake’s cigarette into his face. He felt another presence near him, possibly even watching him from the fields.
Lament pawed the horn twice and Shad’s eyes cleared. He snapped to attention as if somebody had pressed a shiv into his kidney.
“Go on in,” Jake told him. “You know the way. She ain’t the edgy type.”
Shad walked across the yard noticing marks in the flattened grass where federal helicopters had landed this week. The other men eyed him and nodded and kept on going about their work, loading the plastic jugs into the backs of pickups, the blockers working on their engines.
If Mags had come around here, what would she have thought of all this? The heat intensified and inched across the back of his neck, and the hinges of his jaw began to ache. Was this where her death had started? Whatever had led her up Gospel Trail?
He stepped to the door of the Anson house and suddenly wanted to talk to his father, put this off for a while and get back to the old man. He didn’t know why.
Lament honked again.
Luppy’s door was always open. Shad stuck his head in, glanced around.
She was sitting
at the kitchen table poring over papers, looking very much like his sister had when Megan was busy doing homework.
Eighteen or so, with willowy blond hair like layered lace adorning her shoulders. She had intense, dark eyes that drew your attention directly to them, even if she wasn’t staring at you. They shone like black gems. She wore jeans and a white cable-knit sweater that also reminded him of Mags more than it should have, but perhaps it was good to keep the dead in mind now.
Callie Anson got up and walked across the kitchen carrying a checkbook and bills, frowning as if she didn’t like the numbers she kept coming up with. She threw everything down with an aggravated huff of air.
Shad could imagine what Luppy’s bank account must look like. For years he’d followed his grandfather’s tradition of burying cash in mason jars around the farm. Luppy used to keep intricate maps drawn on graph paper, but one rainy season half his property flooded out, and he lost eighteen grand to the mud. If Luppy Joe was keeping his money in the bank now, he probably had a dozen scattered accounts, funds going in and out of them arbitrarily.
She bustled into the hall, came around toward the living room, and spotted Shad taking up space in the doorway. A breeze washed in around him and her hair whisked about her chin.
Without any show of alarm, she peered over his shoulder and saw Jake still working out there with the wooden slat, the other men crossing the yard to the barn. She was reassured that they’d let Shad through.
She drew to her full height, nearly six foot, as tall as Luppy, and asked, “Who are you?”
“My name’s Jenkins. Shad Jenkins.” He tried to give a disarming grin but wasn’t sure it was coming along the way he hoped.
The dark eyes softened. “Megan’s brother?”
“That’s right.”
“You were in jail.”
“Yes.”
“And you just got out.”
“Yes.” So it was going to be like this.
“You’re not looking for Joe?” It wasn’t really a question, more like a topic of conversation already rejected the instant it was touched on. “You’d like to talk with me.”
“Yes.”
That sweet girlish voice was pure tallow in the winter, creamy and thick, smooth and somehow feathery. It reminded him of how young she truly was, and he felt oddly upset with Luppy.
“To speak about her. ’Cause you were away for so long.”
You could only nod so many times before you started feeling like a moron, so he just waited until he got an invite to take a step off the welcome mat.
“I don’t know what you expect from me.”
“Neither do I,” he told her.
“Come on inside then.”
On the mantel sat a large framed photo of Luppy Joe and Callie on their wedding day. Luppy looked happy but uncomfortable in a short-sleeve shirt and bolo tie. His huge belly hung low over his belt, the button there straining to keep shut. Callie had on a half veil that came midway down the bridge of her nose, obscuring her eyes though you could still discern them under there, black like punctures through the cloth. She wore a long white silk dress, almost antediluvian in style. The kind they wore while strolling their plantations before the War of Northern Aggression. She was at least six months pregnant in the picture.
Shad didn’t see any kid’s toys around. No crib, no bottles or jars of baby food. He didn’t know if maybe her parents were taking care of the child or if she’d lost it. You could never ask certain questions.
“You’re the one who bought the Mustang that Joe’s cousin died in, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Way Joe tells it, the guy’s hair killed him.”
“Chuckie Eagleclaw’s mother killed him, though you could say it was the receding hairline that caused his death.”
It nearly brought a smile to her lips, which was enough for the time being. “How’s that?”
“He kept checking himself in the rearview and took his eyes off the road.”
She grabbed the top of a ladder-back chair and squeezed until the muscles of her neck stood out. Shad tried not to stare at the tightly angled curves packed into the well-fitting clothes, the meaty crook of her throat. It wasn’t easy.
“I heard you’re scrambling for trouble,” she said. “Causing discomfort everywhere you go.”
It stopped him cold, the way she put it. “Who’s saying that?”
“Everybody knows it. You think hollow folk got something better to talk about than an ex-convict who comes home to find his baby sister dead?”
So much for tiptoeing. It proved she was astute, already in tune with his purpose, and didn’t mind laying it out on the line. “I suppose not.”
“You’re not going to bring any of that distress and annoyance into my house, now are you, Shad Jenkins?”
“I only want to talk.”
“All right. Come sit.”
Moving across the house was no different than traveling through his own life. He remembered returning here late at night after delivering liquor to the roadhouses and parish bazaars. The guys would be playing poker with their watch fobs and silver dollars in the pot, the same as their fathers and grandfathers. Shad would know he was connected by a real but intangible trail leading back across the dim leagues of his own ancestry.
On the counter sat a jug of moon, a bottle of wine, and a freshly made pot of coffee, but she didn’t offer him anything.
“I’m not sure what to ask,” he said.
“I’m not sure what I can tell you.”
Now that he had someone who might help, every question he came up with sounded faint and weak. “Like you mentioned, I was out of touch for the last couple of years. I missed a big part of her life as she grew from a girl to a woman. I’m trying to find out the kind of things my father wouldn’t know.”
“Okay.”
“What did you do? Where did you go?”
She gave a rough scowl. “What the hell kinds of questions are these?”
She was right, he had to focus. “You were in the Youth Ministry together.”
“We went visiting around the county. In the hollow alone there’s four Christian churches, including Reverend Sow’s room in back of his dry goods shop where he’s got a couple pews. Some of them like wine and dancing, some prefer more puritan behavior with the occasional all-night gospel sing. Then there’s others who stick to the old ways, around the bottoms. You know how it is. Reverend Dudlow would ask us to talk to them, hand out literature, try to get them to come into town more often and listen to his sermons.”
In a movie, the guy playing Shad would’ve reached out about now. Maybe brushed her on the wrist or the back of the hand, and the audience would’ve sunk into their seats, feeling the sexual tension building on the screen.
Christ, he was as bad as Zeke, always thinking about a camera going in for a close-up.
It was too easy for your vengeance to blur into something like hope. Shad pawed at his chin some, trying to get a bead. “So you girls went visiting.”
“Don’t call me a girl, please. You might not mean it to sound offensive, but it is. I’m sensitive to that tone. My mother often gives it to me.”
“I apologize. So you both, ah, did what exactly? Knocked on doors?”
“Handing out pamphlets. We sometimes went out as far as Enigma, Poverhoe City, and Waynescross.”
A thread of sweat worked down his collar. “Did you go to the Lusk farm?”
“Which one’s that?”
“Place out on Route 18 in Waynescross. A sad few acres with a dying cherry orchard and ill children. Two that have flippers instead of arms, another who’s hydrocephalic. Kid with a big head, shaped like a pumpkin.”
“I know what it means, Shad Jenkins. We had a couple of drop-offs along Route 18. But I don’t recall the name Lusk or anything like those children.”
“Are you certain?”
She frowned again and a crease appeared between her eyes. “I’d remember a kid with
a pumpkin head, don’t you think?”
It couldn’t be a coincidence, that Megan should be in the area where her own mother lived and not see her.
“Was there ever any trouble? Handing out Preacher Dudlow’s brochures? Two young ladies like yourselves?”
“Sometimes we’d get shooed off. Folks aren’t very open-minded in praising God some different way than they’re used to. Or not at all, as it mostly turns out. A truckful of the Sweetwater haulers give us a hard time once, hootin’ and fallin’ down in the street and such, but nothing a woman doesn’t have to deal with almost every day in this town.”
“Zeke Hester?”
“What about him?”
“He ever bother Megan?”
“After she smashed his mouth and you busted him up the way you did? No. He cut a wide path around us.”
Lament gave a prolonged honk, and Jake shouted, “I do believe that dog might be asking for a job as a blocker. You boys think we should give him a trial run?”
The flat of Shad’s hand began to creep along the table and he realized he was reaching for her, like he had the right. He stood and put his fists in his pockets, leaned against the wall. “Did you ever go up to Gospel Trail Road?”
“No. Nobody needs go up that way.”
“There are hill families beyond the ridges. The Johansens. The Taskers. Burnburries and Gabriels.”
“I never heard of them before. Besides, it’s too far. We usually walked.”
“You walked to Waynescross and Enigma?”
“No, Joe gave me his truck on those days, of course.”
He caught on at last. An instant wash of regret went through him for being so ignorant, but he didn’t let it show. “To make a drop-off. You weren’t just handing out church literature; you were delivering moon.”
“I was doin’ both on certain days. I thought you would’ve understood that, considering who I’m married to.”
“I should’ve. Did Megan often go with you on runs?”
“She was only trying to get folks involved with the church. If I had a delivery to make, I just brought it along in the truck. The rest of the time, we visited, helped with the bazaars, bake sales, things like that. She was an old soul.”
November Mourns Page 10
