The Moonshiner's Daughter

by Donna Everhart

  “Like what?”

  Merritt would surely point out what a pig I was and how I didn’t need them biscuits I was starting to smell. He’d tell her about the chicken Aunt Juanita brought and that I ate all at once. He’d tell her in that tone of voice he got, like I was an embarrassment he had to tolerate.

  Confused, I said, “That I ain’t big, especially when my clothes ain’t ever felt right.”

  This was the truth. My clothes were cutting into me this very minute.

  She shook her head ever so slightly, and said, “I reckon not, chile. Not when they’re two to three sizes too small. I know your daddy’s got to have given you money to buy new things.”

  Aside from what Aubrey had given me, I’d been wearing what I had in my closet and drawers long as I could recollect. There was nothing wrong with them although my jeans might have been a little worn, my skirts and dresses a little too short, and flimsy.

  She crooked her finger and said, “Lean forward.”

  Hesitant, I did as she asked, and felt her grab at the collar of my shirt. She pulled it up, and when the material was released, I sat back and waited.

  She said, “Ain’t a wonder you ’bout to bust out of them. What you got on is at least two sizes too small.”

  Merritt said, “Daddy’s tried to give her money, but she don’t never take it.”

  Mrs. Brewer studied me. “Why’s that?”

  I said, “I ain’t using that money.”

  Merritt said, “She goes to school like that—”

  Mrs. Brewer held up her hand and Merritt stopped talking.

  She said, “Let me tell y’all about yer mama. Some years back, I seen her as I was comin’ out of Pearson’s. She stopped to talk to Mrs. Turnbull, who was in a state. Y’all wouldn’t know Mrs. Turnbull; she’s been gone from here for some time now. Now, I couldn’t hear what all got said, but I seen how yer mama listened, then she took Mrs. Turnbull’s arm and went back into the store. They come out a minute later, and Mrs. Turnbull was beamin’ ear to ear. That mama of yours sure was a kindly lady. She went with me oncet to help someone. This young gal by the name of Callie Monroe got herself in a family way. I reckon her husband wasn’t wantin’ no kids and I could see why. They were right poor. Lived in a shack with a dirt floor, and it ain’t about that, but more about how there was barely any food in the place, and about how he was. It ain’t fittin’ to bring a young’un up who’s gonna start off life half-starved, likely gettin’ beat within an inch of his or her life near ’bout every day. She was petrified of him, and had tried to take care of matters herself.”

  I shifted on my chair and glanced at Merritt, who flushed red, but all Mrs. Brewer did was point her finger at him, wagging it to make a point.

  She said, “He needs to hear what lengths a woman will go to when she’s afeared of a man, and he’s near ’bout a man.”

  She went on. “Yer mama sat by Callie while I did what I could, trying to patch up all that damage she’d done to herself. It was too late though, but yer mama held her hand even after she’d slipped away.”

  “How’d she end up going with you to help that girl out?”

  Mrs. Brewer said, “Well, now. I believe that gal was actually related to her somehow. A cousin maybe. She’d called me to come see about her. She didn’t care none for the husband of hers, it was pretty clear. His name was Lucas. I don’t know why I recollect his name. Funny what one recalls, ain’t it?”

  I nodded. “Like what I saw.”

  Mrs. Brewer said, “What you saw?”

  I nodded. “Mama. What happened to her.”

  Merritt butted in and said, “You weren’t but four,” and he turned to Mrs. Brewer. “She thinks she knows. She don’t.”

  Angry, I said, “Yes. I do.”

  Mrs. Brewer ignored him, and said, “You mean when she died?”

  I nodded again, closed my eyes, seeing her in flames.

  I said, “She burned to death. I saw her catch fire. She started running. Daddy went after her, pulled his shirt over her head, but it was too late. He won’t talk about it, or her. Never has.”

  Mrs. Brewer said, “Such as that would be hard to take for any of us, but mostly for family. ’Course it wasn’t never mentioned directly, how it took place, considerin’. There was always a bit of gossip, which ain’t ever helpful.”

  “No’m.”

  Mrs. Brewer said, “Tell me what you think caused it.”

  “They were making shine. I think the still blew up. Daddy’s always so careful. It wasn’t because of something he did. I think somebody shot at it.”

  I went to studying the fine thin lines of gold swirled into white Formica, at how I could follow one of those lines and it would lead nowhere, the patterns random, without direction and coming to a dead end. I felt like this, like I didn’t know which way to turn, how to move forward. Like I was stuck at a dead end.

  Merritt said, “I think it was an accident is all.”

  I said, “I ain’t so sure about that.”

  He shrugged as if to say, See how she is?

  She sighed and said, “Yer mama was good at makin’ the shine now. I do know she had that reputation, and she got real good at runnin’ it too. She was interested in doing the fruit bitters like I do. She was supposed to come get my recipe for the cherry one. It made me real sad to know she’d passed.”

  It got quiet for a minute or so; then she said, “When’s the last time y’all talked to your daddy since he landed in that god-awful place?”

  I remembered how he’d sounded, and my voice cracked. “A couple days ago.”

  Merritt sounded glum when he said, “I wished I could see him.”

  Mrs. Brewer said, “I expect visitors are allowed.”

  He appeared hopeful while I figured Daddy, he wouldn’t want to see me, not after I’d heard that disappointment in his voice, sharp as stepping on a nail while barefoot. Mrs. Brewer got up and got the pan of biscuits out. She set them on the table, and the smell was intoxicating.

  Mrs. Brewer said, “Git you some of that butter and honey. Got it from my own hive out yonder.”

  I picked up a biscuit. Food was the last thing on my mind. I had no idea what it was I wanted anymore.

  * * *

  Mrs. Brewer called down to the facility and found out we could go see him between the hours of 1:00 and 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, and it happened to be Sunday. She said she’d drive us later that afternoon. Considering Merritt and I had been up most of the night, sleep was needed, so we sprawled out in her living room on the couch and in a chair, but I felt no better when I woke up. As we went to her car, I motioned at Merritt to sit up front. I wanted to be in the back seat so no one could see my face, see the guilt overwhelm me as we came closer.

  What was it like inside where they had him? Damp walls maybe, dim light from only a tiny window, if that. Visualizing it only added to the dread. The parking lot held a half-dozen cars. Mrs. Brewer parked under a big elm tree, and as soon as we went in, the interior immediately depressed me. An old man, gray-haired and stooped over, wore a striped jumpsuit. He was working in a hallway to our right, putting on a fresh coat of beige paint, the color as flat as my own mood. He was in no hurry, his slow and methodical movement replicating the ticking of the clock directly over his head, as if he’d been mesmerized by the sound.

  There was a constant clanging of thick gray metal doors. Whistling, yelling, and even laughter came from somewhere deep within the building. I smelled disinfectant above the sharp scent of body odor, and the paint. We had to check in, state who we were, and who we’d come to see. We had to sign our names, declare our relationship to the incarcerated. We were studied from behind a glass partition, as if by being here we too ought to be behind bars, as if our association to the one inside meant culpability by the very fact of knowing of him.

  A guard said, “You’re early for visiting hours. Go with him, and he’ll take you where you can wait.”

  Another short, squat-bodied guard led us do
wn a short hall and into a room with a few chairs lined up in crooked rows.

  He said, “I’ll come get you in a bit.”

  I was in a panic internally, while outwardly I worked to keep my face neutral, and my hands still. I sat on them until I lost feeling and then sat with them pressed into my thighs. Merritt’s left leg bounced up and down, and Mrs. Brewer picked up a newspaper left on a table and began reading. It felt like it took a long time before the guard returned and motioned at us to follow him. We went by the old man still painting in the hall, practically in the very same spot. Walking through this building seemed a long ways away from Shine Mountain, from that curve in the road and the driveway that led up the hill to our house. I wished I was back on the mountain, not here. Even while I resented making shine, I’d recognized the beauty that surrounded me as I made my way to Blood Creek, Big Warrior, and Boomer, back before it was ruined. There was peace in the way the creeks wound and curved across the land, trickling softly beneath the birch, oak, and pine, and where sunlight speckled the ground. I felt settled there, the slow, warm days soothing, hiding me away from the rest of the world. The quiet calmed anxiety.

  Out of nowhere, I considered what Mama might have thought of Daddy being in here. Would it have changed her mind about what they did? Would she have been ashamed, or would she have been defiant? The guard opened another door and motioned us inside the new room as flat and plain as the one we’d left. Mrs. Brewer, Merritt, and I sat at a table against a wall. There were other tables placed about, some empty, some with people already in the process of talking, sharing baked goods that had been brought, and checked by a guard. Some still waited, like us. I felt so out of place, like we had no business being here. It made me realize that, to my knowledge, Daddy was the first Sasser to ever be penitentiaried, and I had all ideas he was ashamed.

  I waited uneasily, and tried not to fidget. When the door opened and he came into the room, everything dropped away like being in a tunnel and getting sucked backward very fast. I grabbed hold of the edge of the table, to stop the lightheadedness and the shakes I could feel coming on. My breathing erratic, Mrs. Brewer turned and watched me with concern.

  Merritt jumped up as Daddy got closer, and the guard who led him to our table said, “Hang on, son.”

  The guard spun Daddy around and unlocked the handcuffs they’d put on him for the walk from wherever he’d been kept to here. His chin touched his chest while this happened. I was right. He was mortified they did this in front of us.

  The guard tapped his back and said, “Sit in that chair. Keep your hands on the table.”

  They acted like he’d committed murder. Daddy looked so uncomfortable, and out of place in this environment, like the wild animals kept in cages at a zoo. He had on a gray jumpsuit with the giant word “INMATE” on it. His complexion matched the color of his clothes. There was a number over the pocket on the front. Inmate 3568, it said. He hadn’t shaved, and I wasn’t sure he’d showered. His hair wasn’t brushed back like usual, but hung limp on his forehead. His eyes were as bloodshot as Uncle Virgil’s would get when he’d been on a binge. He dropped into the chair opposite us, sitting with his hands between his thighs at first, until the guard made a rapping noise on the wall behind him and pointed at his hands. Daddy placed them on the table. After that, he didn’t move. He didn’t look at us. I started having trouble, getting dizzy, like I was twirling. It was distressing seeing him in here, and seeming nothing like himself.

  Mrs. Brewer cleared her throat and said, “I brought some of these biscuits I made this mornin’, thinkin’ maybe you’d be hungry.”

  He ignored the biscuits and said, “How come you’re with them?”

  She said, “They come to the house early this morning afore it got light. There was some trouble up to your house.”

  Daddy turned to Merritt, not me. It was like I wasn’t there actually. It wasn’t anything specific, just this sense I was being ignored.

  He said, “What was going on?”

  Merritt didn’t go into any detail. “The Murrys showed up yelling and carrying on. It didn’t last long.”

  Mrs. Brewer tilted her head at me, as if encouraging me to say something. Agitated, I shook mine no, while Merritt leaned forward with a plan all his own.

  He said, “We’re gonna get you out of here. We’re gonna get some money, somehow, and get you out of here.”

  I frowned at these words he spoke. At this very idea of his. How were we going to do that? If we both got jobs and worked day in and out, it wouldn’t be enough, and it wouldn’t be in time.

  Daddy gave him a small wink. His voice subdued, he said, “I know you would, if you could, Son. Maybe it ain’t worth it though. Maybe I’m right where I need to be.”

  Merritt shook his head over what Daddy said; then he got upset.

  “No. No you ain’t neither! It ain’t right. You didn’t do nothing. You don’t deserve to be here.”

  That’s when Daddy finally acknowledged I was even there. It was the way he did it, a subtle turn, and by what was in his expression. I wished I could’ve vanished. I wished I hadn’t come. I understood in that moment how he felt about me, and what he thought about what he believed I’d done. He believed I’d betrayed him, had set him up to be caught. He believed I’d purposefully not told him about Uncle Virgil stealing his money. He thought the worst and I understood I’d become someone he didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. He stared at me like I didn’t belong. Like I was an outsider, a stranger in his midst.

  He said, “Some here think different. I’m sure of it.”

  Mrs. Brewer, disturbed by this statement, shook her head ever so slightly. Abruptly, I stood, left the table, and went toward the door.

  I told the guard, “I’m done visiting.”

  He opened the door, let me out into the hallway, pointed to another guard standing at the door to the waiting room we’d been in.

  He said, “Go wait in there.”

  The other guard let me in, and motioned at the chairs for me to sit. I got the distinct sense nothing happened here without one being led, directed, or told what to do. I sat down to wait on Mrs. Brewer and Merritt. It didn’t take them long. I barely had time to start thinking about how Daddy acted when they came into the room. Merritt’s mouth was thin, and his face was colored that deep red again like it got when he was either mad or embarrassed. Mrs. Brewer was frowning, but she wasn’t angry, only troubled.

  She said, “You ready to go?”

  I got up and we left, no words spoken among us, not while going to the car, and not while going home. I felt downright sick. Worse than ever. I sat in the back seat and didn’t care if I ever went back. For as horrible as it was, I was overcome by sadness, the unfairness of being misunderstood. Mrs. Brewer was right. I was going to have to fix it, only I wasn’t sure how.

  When she pulled into her driveway, Merritt was already opening the door, but she said, “Wait a minute.”

  He let go of the door handle, and though we’d never had us a mama to give us a talking-to, I sensed something like that was about to happen. She reached over and opened the glove compartment and pulled out a little tin of dip. She pinched some, and stuck it down in her lip. Merritt watched and then reached his hand out for it. To my surprise, she let him have it, and he set it on the seat so he could get a pinch using the fingers on his left hand.

  She said, “Like this,” and proceeded to show him how to get a little bit and tuck it down inside his lip against his gum.

  She said, “Now you got to learn how to spit, and be accurate. Don’t try it in my car though.”

  She glared at him, but he only mumbled a polite response around what he had: “No’m.”

  She relaxed against the seat, and said, “I know that visit back there was hard. Ain’t a thing easy about seein’ your own daddy in such a place. It ain’t gon’ be easy movin’ ahead without him for the next little while. But listen to me now, and listen good. You two ain’t got nobody but one another. Family
is family, no matter what. You two got to get over this difference between you, and that’s what’s got to come first. He’s your brother, and she’s your sister, whether you like it or not. Nothin’s gon’ change that. You can make this easy on yerselves, or you can make it hard, but y’all know this already. It’s time for the both of you to come to a different understandin’. It’s the only thing’s gon’ work, and get you through it. You got to help one another, not work against one another.”

  She opened her door and sent a spurt of tobacco juice off into the yard. Then she heaved herself up out of the seat, and shut the door. Merritt didn’t move and I didn’t either. I could see him working his mouth over the tobacco wad, getting used to it being there.

  I said, “What’s it taste like?”

  He said, “If you want to know the truth, it tastes like shit. Mixed with mint.”

  He opened the door and spit the wad out in the dirt.

  I said, “I’m gonna say it again; then I ain’t saying it no more. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s okay too. I set out to ruin Daddy’s stills, but I didn’t. If I could do everything all over again, I wouldn’t have said nothing to Aubrey. She told Willie, and he must’ve told his family, and that’s how it all got started. They’re about half-crazy, and you know that good as I do.”

  Merritt got that mad look on his face again and his jaw muscle rippled as he clenched it.

  He said, “Maybe. Either way, even if it wasn’t you who ruined the Boomer still, the Murrys doing what they been doing is because of you, even if indirectly. What you say don’t account for you letting Uncle Virgil and that little shit, Oral, take Daddy’s money.”

  He got out and slammed the door. I stayed in the car for a while, knowing that putting all this back right was going to be a lot harder than I’d ever imagined.

  Chapter 25

  A couple days passed and I decided it was time to leave Mrs. Brewer’s house.

  I said, “I need to get back and make sure nothing’s been done at home, like what happened to our uncle’s house.”