He got up from the table and said, “Big Warrior ought to be ready. What’re you doing, Virgil?”
Uncle Virgil took his time spreading butter on his biscuit like he was painting a masterpiece, while still chewing on the previous one. It was obvious he didn’t care to lift a finger, not when he had that bundle of Daddy’s money hidden away. I detected an argument coming and turned to look out the window only to stare in shock at the figure on the back steps. Oral sat hunched over, the back of his shirt torn. He shook like it was freezing, but I’d already seen the outdoor thermometer and it was in the mid-seventies.
Still watching him, I said, “Y’all, Oral’s out here on the back steps.”
Chairs scraped the floor; they rushed outside. I went out, and circled around so I could see Oral’s face. He didn’t move, even as Uncle Virgil grabbed him by the shoulders. Oral’s mouth was bloody.
He said, “Boy, what’s done happened to you?”
Aunt Juanita bent down and said, “Oral, honey?”
Oral shrank from Uncle Virgil, and didn’t speak.
Uncle Virgil shook him, demanded an answer. “Who done this?”
Daddy said, “I bet I can guess, but let him tell it, if he will.”
Oral put a hand up to his mouth, and wiped. His fingers came away with the blood that had caked there.
Aunt Juanita said, “Honey, open your mouth.”
Oral turned to her, his face bruised and puffy. He opened his mouth, and revealed he was missing a front tooth, and his lip was split. Uncle Virgil grabbed at Oral’s hands and examined his knuckles.
He dropped them like he was disgusted, and said, “You didn’t even get in one lick to them sons a bitches who done this to you?”
Oral tucked his hands into his armpits. He had nothing to say, a rarity. Uncle Virgil’s face flared as if his insides were boiling, and he clenched and unclenched his hands like he might tear into Oral again. Aunt Juanita intervened and got hold of Oral by the arm.
She said, “Come on with me. We’ll go rinse your mouth out with salt water.”
Uncle Virgil smacked a fist into his hand, and said, “He ain’t got to say it. I know who’s responsible, and by God, I ain’t putting up with it.”
Daddy said, “Hang on now, Virgil.”
“What? You think I’m gonna let this go?”
Daddy said, “We got to think about how to handle it, not make things even worse.”
Uncle Virgil said, “They done run you off the road and look at what happened to him,” and he pointed at Merritt, who hovered nearby, absentmindedly rubbing his stump. “They ruined a still, burned our house down, and now they done something to my boy here, bad enough he’s done been struck dumb.”
Aunt Juanita stopped pulling Oral into the house and turned to Uncle Virgil.
She said, “Virgil! He ain’t dumb; he’s scared!”
Oral was knock-kneed and trembling again; his chest heaved up and down like he might cry. Aunt Juanita glared at Uncle Virgil, while Daddy continued to try and persuade him to his way of thinking.
Daddy said, “You ain’t got to list it all out; I know what they done. They want control is what it is, and they’re just trying to force us out. Let them agents handle it. That way they’ll end up in the penitentiary, and we won’t be having to look behind us all the time. Get’em put away and we’ll be done with’em.”
Uncle Virgil tramped around the yard, kicking at his truck tires, the grass, and anything else he felt needed to feel the bottom of his boot.
Daddy turned to Oral and said, “Oral, was it them?”
Oral’s answer was to lift his shirt up. In the middle of his chest was an angry puckered, blistered letter, a crude M, like they’d laid a smoking-hot piece of metal against him four separate times to form it. It stood out against the white of his skin, jagged red lines like on a peppermint stick. Air whooshed out of Uncle Virgil like someone had punched him in the gut, his rage building at the sight. Seeing what they’d done took my anger away for how Oral sometimes acted, and softened my attitude toward Uncle Virgil and Aunt Juanita too. Without a word, Uncle Virgil started for his truck, and Daddy followed him. He grabbed Uncle Virgil’s shoulder, but Uncle Virgil wrenched it away and kept going.
Daddy stayed on his heels, and said, “Virgil, listen to me now. Don’t you go do nothing crazy. Ain’t no telling what’ll happen if’n you do.”
Uncle Virgil stopped and faced Daddy.
He said, “Shit fire, Easton. Look at my boy. A damn M burned onto him, for crissake. Look at Merritt over there, a cripple the rest of his life.” His voice dropped low as he walked toward Daddy, and said, “And it ain’t all, is it? Is it? What about—”
Daddy started for him like he might hit him. He cut him off: “I’m warning you, Virgil. You don’t get to talk about that.”
Uncle Virgil tipped his head back and said, “It ain’t been forgot about.”
“No, it ain’t. I think on it every single day.”
Uncle Virgil shook his head. “We need to snatch that youngest one of theirs, that little shit Willie, give’em a taste of their own medicine. See how they’d like an S burned onto his ass.”
Daddy said, “I ain’t part of no craziness, Virgil. I ain’t. We been doing this all along now, ain’t never hurt nobody.”
Aunt Juanita said, “Listen to him for once, Virgil, for God’s sake. What he’s saying makes sense, or somebody’s liable to get themselves killed.”
Before Uncle Virgil could respond, there came the sound of a vehicle and everyone quit talking when Daddy put a finger up to his mouth. He went toward the corner of the house. He stayed partially hidden behind the camellia as he tipped his head past the leaves to peek at who it was.
A door creaked loud, slammed, and somebody called out, “Hey, anybody here?”
I recognized the voice.
I said, “It’s Mrs. Brewer from school.”
I went by him and saw Mrs. Brewer beside her old clunker of a car, hand up to her forehead blocking the sun.
She said, “Sasser, you look’n’ a mite peaked.”
Daddy came behind me, and I said, “She’s the school nurse.”
Daddy said, “What is it you’re wanting?”
Mrs. Brewer narrowed her eyes at him; then she addressed me. “Said I was coming to check on you, here I am.”
I said, “Yes’m.”
Daddy said, “Check on her for what?”
Mrs. Brewer moved her mouth like she might have a bit of chewing tobacco tucked down in her lip.
She gave him that singular look of hers, and said, “Her well-being is what, case you hadn’t noticed.”
Daddy shoved his hands in his pockets, like he didn’t quite know what to make of that.
He said, “You know anything about burns?”
Mrs. Brewer turned her head slightly and squirted a thin brown stream out of her mouth with the precision of a toad squirting poison, affirming my previous thought she dipped.
She said, “’Course I do.”
He motioned for her to follow, and led her around the back of the house. Uncle Virgil, Aunt Juanita, Oral, and Merritt were right where we’d left them, every one of them wide-eyed like they’d expected to see a Murry come round the corner.
Daddy said to Uncle Virgil, “Let her look at him.”
Uncle Virgil nudged Oral, and said, “Show her.”
Oral lifted his shirt again, and Mrs. Brewer squatted down and studied the mark left on him.
She stared up at Uncle Virgil and said, “Shoot. He’s done been branded. Who does such?”
Uncle Virgil said, “It don’t matter about that. What can we put on it?”
“Honey.”
Aunt Juanita said, “Honey?”
Mrs. Brewer nodded. “Smear it on, put a light dressing on it, and it’ll help keep it from getting infected, reduce scarring.”
Aunt Juanita looked relieved, and nodded.
She said, “Okay.”
Mrs. Brewer tilted her he
ad at me, and said to Daddy, “I want her to come with me fer a bit.”
Daddy studied her, then said, “Why?”
She didn’t answer him, and stomped off around the house. I went after her, not waiting for him to tell me I could.
When we got to the front yard, she pointed at her car and said, “Git in.”
“Where we going?”
“Just down the road.”
Mrs. Brewer drove slow, so slow I thought it might take us all of an hour to get down Shine Mountain. We finally made it, and headed down Boomer Road toward Wilkesboro, except she turned off on another road that put us going back west again. After another ten minutes of nothing but the wind making noise in the car, she eventually turned down another road, paved, but bumpy all the same from where the asphalt was worn out. After we’d gone about a half mile, we came to an old gas station, a flat-roofed building painted white, trimmed in red, and the kind of pumps you didn’t see anymore with glass tops that showed the orange-colored fuel inside. She didn’t pull up to one; instead, she parked at the side where two pale green doors said: “Women” and “Men.”
She got out, leaned down to the open window, and said, “Wait right here.”
I said, “Okay,” but she was already headed around the building.
I sat in the car, a light breeze ruffling strands of hair, tickling the side of my face. Strangely relaxed, I didn’t want to think about what was going on at the house; I just wanted to sit here quiet. After a few minutes, she came back carrying a brown bag, and two sweaty bottles of Coke. She got in and whatever was in the bag smelled really good. She handed me a Coke, and something wrapped in a corn husk. I set the bottle down in the floorboard, and held the strange bundle. She unwrapped hers and revealed something like moist corn bread.
She said, “I want you to eat that one, and I’m going to eat this one.”
Why she was giving me food I had no idea.
I shook my head. “I ain’t hungry.”
She said, “Yer telling me a story.”
I set it on the floorboard along with the drink, crossed my arms, and leaned against the door, looking out the window. I felt like I might faint from the scent.
My voice weak, I said, “Why do you give me that tea? It ain’t helping whatever you think I need helping with.”
She sighed. “It is; you just ain’t letting it. Hair’s coming out most likely too. Heart’s beating odd.”
I did look at her then, at those pale blue eyes that said she already knew what I’d been experiencing.
She said, “You need to et, put some meat on them bones. You just don’t know how to go about it. Something’s messed you up, and it don’t matter what it is, but I seen this before, and it can be fixed. Now, here. Pick that up, and try it. It’s the best thing you ever gonna have.”
She took a bite and showed me what was inside. Beef and cheese coated in a red sauce.
I said, “What is it?”
“Tamale.”
I repeated the strange word. “Tamale.”
She nodded toward the building and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez help pick apples, pears, and peaches. Mr. Long runs this here gas station part-time, and he’s also got fruit orchards, and when they ain’t picking, the Hernandezes help run this place, and they cook these, and sell’em. They’re from Mexico.”
I said, “I ain’t ever had me a tamale before.”
I leaned down and got it off the floorboard. I unwrapped the papery husk and nibbled a corner. Sensations overwhelmed, and my stomach felt like it was going up and down. I put my hand up, covered my mouth, fearful I’d get sick.
She said, “Chew it slow. Take your time.”
I did as she said, swallowed, sipped on the Coke, tried not to think. She changed the subject.
“What was going on back there? What happened to that boy?”
I’d taken another nibble, but at that question I couldn’t help but think about how Uncle Virgil was so hotheaded he was liable to do anything. What if our own house got set on fire? The image of Mama ablaze and running under the trees came to mind, and I lost my appetite altogether. I put the tamale down.
She said, “Never mind. It’s more important you et.”
I was ashamed of what she’d seen. It meant I’d have to explain about a lot of other things, but I found myself wanting to tell her, at least a little bit of it.
I said, “You know what Easton does?”
She stopped chewing and said, “Who’s Easton?”
My stomach growled while I tried to ignore it. Little black dots came and went, and the imaginary ones were about as bothersome as the real gnats. I kept my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t swat at them and seem crazy.
“My daddy. Easton.”
She said, “You call him by his given name?”
I shrugged, then nodded.
She said, “Hm. Reckon you got your reasons. He works up there in Wilkesboro, is that right?”
I mumbled, “That and he does . . . other stuff some might question.”
She kept eating like she hadn’t heard the last part. I picked the tamale back up, and little by little, I nibbled and nibbled some more. She finished hers while I conducted war, battling the craving to eat it in one gulp and then want more. I finally ate all of mine, then stared at the door for “Women.” My breath came faster, my eyes watered, and I started swallowing over and over. She saw my distress and started the car.
She said, “That’ll go away here in a minute or so. Breathe slow; don’t let it get you. You got a monster in you thinks it’s the boss. You got to show that it ain’t.”
She reversed and pulled out of the dirt parking lot while I tried to do as she said. I closed my eyes, my hand clamped on my mouth. The fact Mrs. Brewer was a nurse took away some of my embarrassment at my behavior.
She said, “Sip on that cold drink.”
She drove back the way we came, and when we got to the road to go to Wilkesboro I realized we were going to her house after we passed by Pearson’s. We went by the federal building, and to my amazement, the man I’d seen in the woods, eye patch unmistakable, came out of the same door I’d gone in, shambling along the sidewalk, and my thinking he was a revenuer was confirmed. He talked to himself and I watched him in the side view mirror until he turned a corner.
We pulled into her drive. By then, my stomach had calmed down some, and the need to get rid of the food I’d eaten had subsided. She got out of the car, and motioned for me to follow her around back. She had nicely cut grass, surrounded by a white painted wood fence. There were birdhouses mounted on posts everywhere and about five or six old gourds hanging like decapitated heads from an old rusted pole, the preferred home for martins. I could hear singing and chirping as the birds fluttered about the tops of pitch pines, chestnut oaks, and sourwoods. A small shed sat in the corner of the lot, one end of the rusted tin roof a bit lower than the other. She’d painted it light green like the house, and had buckets and old clay pots with flowers sitting around it.
She had a padlock on the door, and reached into her coveralls. She retrieved a key, unlocked it, and gave a little shove. Sunlight flooded in on shelves filled with jars holding canned goods. She motioned at me to come in, and shut the door. It went dark for a second until she pulled on an old string and an overhead bulb clicked on. She slid some jars aside to reveal others with a clear liquid that shimmered like diamonds. Others held fruit and were colored pale pink, to red, and to a darker color.
I understood what I was seeing, yet I asked her, “What’s in them jars?”
She confirmed what I saw. “Shine and fruit bitters.”
I said, “Where you get it from?”
She said, “Shoot, child, I make it my own self.”
Chapter 18
Uncle Virgil said Oral had been struck dumb, but after seeing Mrs. Brewer’s personal supply of shine, I fit that description.
She said, “Been making it my entire life.”
You just never could tell about people. She dusted
off a few lids and eventually selected four, held them up to the light, and then handed them to me to carry. She motioned me back outside, slammed the door shut, and locked it again.
She said, “Put’em in there,” opening the trunk to her car, and pointing to an old wooden box.
I did as she asked, and she tugged an old quilt over the top, reminding me of Daddy hauling shine to his customers.
She said, “Amos Cox in Traphill gets some, and the Woo-tens down to Cuddle Creek. They say it ain’t nothing better’n a little of that pick-me-up to set them right in no time.” She said, “Maybe you ought to take you a sip now and then, get that internal furnace of yern stoked.”
I drew up, and said, “Never.”
She spit, and while I wasn’t willing to participate in a discussion on it, she got to telling me how she had her a little still set back in the woods behind her house, how she liked to go out there and tend to it, like it was a hobby. Mama’s image came out of nowhere, like a fiery comet streaking across the sky. Death leaves a stain on you, a dent in your soul. That’s how I felt about Mama’s presence, like she’d stained my insides, left a dent in my soul. What might Mrs. Brewer think if I told her Mama had been burned alive, and how I was almost 100 percent sure my very own daddy was at fault because he loved making shine a little too much? I wanted to point to Merritt’s missing an arm, Uncle Virgil and Aunt Juanita’s burnt home, and Oral, with that ugly M scorched into the tender white skin of his bony birdlike chest. Our still being ruined was the only good thing that had resulted from any of it, but bad always outweighed good by a far cry. She felt very different about it than me. She saw shine as a simple tonic for certain ailments. She didn’t hold to the idea it was nothing but trouble, and caused a mountain of grief. It hadn’t cost her like it had us.
She said, “I reckon I need to get you on home so you can quit listening to an old woman’s prattling.”
She drove just as slow as when we’d started out, occasionally stopping so she could check on areas where she had her some ginseng growing, or “sang” root as she called it. She said she’d dig some up and what she didn’t dole out to those in need would be sold in town come fall. By the time we got back to the house it was late afternoon, and I hadn’t spoken a word since I’d rejected her idea of me sipping on shine.
The Moonshiner's Daughter Page 17
