Moonshine

by Justin Benton

  “Did your still blow?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a still,” Pa said weakly. He didn’t even try to lie well.

  “Then what happened?” the sheriff asked.

  “Somebody burned me.”

  The sheriff’s eyes grew large and he shifted around from one leg to the other. I could tell he was trying to work it all out in his head. He squirmed under his big white cowboy hat, and like a bolt from the blue I saw my chance for redemption.

  “You’ve got to arrest him,” I said to the sheriff.

  “Arrest who?”

  “Salvatore. He did this,” I said. “Arrest him.”

  The sheriff paused for a second, then frowned.

  “Maybe I should arrest the two of you for shining.”

  I stared at the sheriff’s puckered face and for the first time was hit with the enormity of what I had done. The sheriff would not take him to jail. He was in Salvatore’s pocket. As were Pa and I. Everything was worse because of me, and we had no way out.

  “Why’d you come here anyways?” Pa asked.

  I saw the sheriff glance at Pa’s blistered arm again, then look away.

  “To tell you to change your danged mind, Earl. They told me you were causing problems and that means problems for me. You could have kept shining and none of this would have happened. These aren’t men to be messed with. And…Well, now this,” he said, pointing at Pa’s burns.

  Voice quaking, I yelled, “Then why’d you come here telling us to stop shining in the first place? Saying you were gonna take us to jail?”

  The sheriff jumped back a bit, startled by my outburst. He leaned forward and answered in a hushed voice, like we weren’t the only three people within miles.

  “They wanted control of the liquor business. Complete control. Anyone not working for them had to go, they said. So I told you to stop. But then they saw how much they were selling up North and needed more. Always more, more, more. So I sent them to you.”

  I noticed the sheriff had still not said Salvatore’s name, and instead referred to him as “they,” which was troubling.

  The sheriff shook his finger at Pa. “I was doing you a favor, Earl. How stupid can you be to say no?”

  Seeing him insult my pa like that made me feel more shamefaced than I’d thought possible. I had to tell him that I was the one who’d said no. That it was me who could be that stupid. I started to open my mouth, but Pa put his hand on the back of my neck and gave me a squeeze that told me to be quiet.

  The sheriff spat on our porch and walked back down toward his car.

  “Stupid,” the sheriff repeated, and as he said it Pa looked down at me and squeezed my neck again. I winced and felt his hand fall away.

  The sheriff got back into his car and drove away. When the dust trail had faded, I said, “I was going to own up to it.”

  “You don’t say a word about that, you hear me?” he snapped.

  Pa seldom raised his voice at me, and it stung.

  “But why not?”

  “Don’t you know anything? You get any more mixed up in this and you’ll get yourself killed. What do you think a gangster is going to do to some punk kid screwing with his business?”

  I gritted my teeth, angry and embarrassed. Pa leaned down and poked his finger into my chest.

  “You get it now? He would kill you. I am not the problem. You are the problem.”

  I STORMED INTO MY ROOM ready to throw myself down onto my mattress, only to realize I’d left it in Pa’s room. That made me even madder and all I felt was an overwhelming urge to break something. My room was empty save for the two drawers on the floor, so I kicked one as hard as I could. It went end over end into the wall, the flimsy wood splitting with a crack and dumping my shirts onto the floor.

  “You ain’t done enough damage already?” Pa said from behind me.

  I shoved past him without a thought for his burns. Before I had any idea of what I was doing, I was out the back door and running down the path into the woods.

  The sun was going down and the few rays that cut through the brush were pushing my shadows east, so I followed them with no plan. I just watched my boots stomping down on my shadow.

  By the time I stopped, now shivering and shaking, I was standing on the sandy edge of Copperhead Creek on the far side of town. What was usually just a little trickle had swollen into a rush of dark waters, almost a river. The sun had set, and I just stared and listened to the creek’s flow hit the rocks. For a moment I thought about throwing myself in and seeing where I wound up. But as I gazed into the gloomy water I realized I had nowhere to go but home. That house that had been my whole world now seemed so little it would suffocate me as soon as I stepped inside it and saw Pa.

  I stuck my hands into the pockets of my denims and braced against the wind, following the creek north back to town. Near Elm I stopped and looked at the schoolhouse, all mysterious and unfamiliar-looking in the night, and I wondered if I could get in through a window and sleep there. I kept walking in the moonlight and reached the turn to Rebecca’s house, but didn’t even think about going there. She had no idea of the criminal things I was mixed up in, and if I told her then she’d probably never speak to me again.

  Main Street was empty except for a fancy-dressed couple coming out of a picture show and a drunk sitting against the wall of Beckwith Methodist. My foot was aching from kicking the drawer, and I stumbled on for miles until I finally reached our drive. There were no cars there, but the kerosene lamp shone in the front window.

  I had used the time out of the house to get my words together in my head.

  I walked in and looked dead at Pa as he jumped up from the kitchen table.

  “You nearly scared the life outta me! Where have you been?”

  “I messed up and I’m sorry. But I didn’t want to work for a criminal and I didn’t want you to either. And now you see why not,” I said, nodding at his burns.

  His face hardened.

  “That wasn’t your decision to make. It was my decision.”

  “I thought we were partners,” I said.

  “You’re no partner of mine,” he said. “Just a boy who doesn’t do what his father tells him.”

  I stumbled back a half step, like he’d pushed me.

  Right when I was about to say something back I caught the lamplight reflecting on that wet pink burn on his neck and I stopped. He looked so saddened by me. And I could see in his eyes he didn’t have a clue how to make things right. And I didn’t either. His little miracle boy had gotten him into this mess and now wasn’t smart enough to get him out of it.

  Shaking my head, I turned on him and dragged my mattress out of his room and into mine. I threw it on the ground with a loud whump then threw myself on top of it. There was no creaking of the floorboards in the kitchen so I knew Pa was still just standing there, that broken look in his eyes. I punched the mattress twice and lay there until I was asleep.

  The draft from the corner woke me early and I was confused for a second why I still had my denims on. The house was silent and I peeked into Pa’s room without him seeing me. He was there with no shirt on, trying to unstick his open wounds from the bedsheet. Looking at the clear, jelling ooze on his arm, I thought I might be sick. He had to be feeling a thousand times worse.

  With a sigh, I went in. “I’ll get it.”

  I tried to separate his arm from the sheet, but it was like they’d been glued together. Pulling the sheet tight, the skin finally popped loose, leaving a wet pink blotch on the fabric.

  “I could have done it,” Pa said, his voice soulless.

  I went into the kitchen and heated the can of honey to soften it up. I took it back in with the cotton and herbs. I could at least try to keep him from getting infected.

  “What’s going to happen now, Pa?” I asked.

  I stuck the wooden spoon into the honey, accidentally crushing a chunk of honeycomb.

  “If I tell you, can you keep your mouth shut about it?”

 
One of my best abilities had always been keeping quiet. It was a moonshiner essential. Apparently I didn’t have it anymore.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Last night while you were gone I had a fellow over to the house, a horse skinner who did time in El Paso. He knows about these kinds of things. I gave him some liquor and he told me what he knew.”

  “And?”

  “Salvatore really is with some big gang from up North.”

  Gang. My head went wobbly like when I’d drunk the shine. Pa went on talking while I tried to stop the room from tilting.

  “But he said he’d get Salvatore to come back on Friday.”

  “What?” I cried, accidentally mashing the spoon into Pa’s raw flesh.

  “Ow! Dang it, Cub, be careful.”

  “We got to get out of here! That’s tomorrow.”

  “Just calm yourself. I’m going to tell him I was mistaken, but that now I’d be grateful to work for him.”

  I didn’t say anything, just smeared the honey around on his arm without even looking at what I was doing. Grateful to work for him? Those didn’t sound like Pa’s words. I’d thought I was being a big man marching up to Salvatore and telling him no. Now begging to work for him was the closest we could get to being safe. In what kind of upside-down world was Pa meeting with a killer who’d lit him on fire a step in the right direction?

  “I just hope the price he gives me is enough for us to survive off of,” Pa said.

  “Maybe you could wear your negotiating shoes?” I offered with a smile.

  “They’re bad luck,” he said, then looked at me. “Everything is.”

  I didn’t know what was worse—the situation we were in or the guilt I was saddled with for trying to think for myself and ruining everything. They were twisted tight around each other like creeper vines, but maybe if I could get rid of one, the other would fall away. I pressed the elderflower buds hard into Pa’s sores.

  “We’ve got to get out of this, Pa. Out of shining, away from Mr. Salvatore, away from all this.”

  I braced myself for the explosion, but when I looked up, his face bore that same look of defeat and detachment.

  Quietly he said, “If I’d have known how bad this was going to get, I’d have found some new trade back when the getting was good. But you know since the crash there ain’t no jobs. And without us shining there ain’t no food.”

  That was true. We didn’t have any money. We couldn’t move away. We didn’t have any family outside this dusty shack we were holed up in. We had a tiny patch of corn, a shotgun, and an oak tree full of illegal liquor.

  “Mr. Salvatore’s coming tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Yeah. So after school you go to Mr. Yunsen’s house and wait for me there.”

  “I’m not going to school.”

  “You have to,” Pa said, his eyes looking sad. “It’s safer there.”

  “I’ll be fine here.”

  He scoffed and said, “Having you there is safer for both of us.”

  He didn’t want me around. Maybe he’d be happier if I was in the orphanage. Everything was crumbling.

  “But what are you going to tell him?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell him I’m going to work for him and that’s it.”

  I exhaled slowly, considering it. There were no other options.

  “You don’t think he’ll do anything crazy, do you?”

  “Not as long as he’s getting his way.”

  Terrific. We’d gone from shining for food money to working for a gangster who’d have no problem having his own St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on us right there in our house.

  FROM THE SECOND I WALKED into the schoolroom the next morning I could feel Miss Pounder eyeballing me. I tried to smile at her, but it came out more like a quiver and I just headed for my stump. The past two days had me feeling beat up, and I still had to worry about Mr. Salvatore coming to the house today.

  Miss Pounder waited until I’d sat down before she called me to her desk. I marched back up. Everybody in there was watching me now and waiting for a show.

  “Cub, you were absent yesterday.”

  “Um, I’m sorry.”

  I heard the whole class laugh behind me. Miss Pounder shook her head.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. You just have to give me a note.”

  “Yes, Miss Pounder,” I said and started walking back to my seat.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, above the class’s giggles.

  I wheeled around and threw my hands up. “To write you your note!”

  The class was boiling over with laughter now. I’d done it again.

  “From a parent, Cub. You have to bring a note explaining your absence,” she said.

  “I didn’t know, all right?” I said, ten times louder than necessary. “There was no way for me to know.”

  I’d just yelled at every person in the class. Miss Pounder’s mouth was hanging open. Everybody else gaped at me like I was on the verge of going completely nuts, which I was. Looking up and down the rows of desks, I glared at them, challenging someone to tell me how I could have known. When they didn’t, I slumped into my desk.

  At lunch Rebecca and I sat outside on an old cedar bench, Rebecca swinging her legs, me staring at the ground. Rebecca didn’t seem to know I’d been at her house the other night or about what happened to Pa. Mr. Yunsen must have kept quiet about it.

  She had a bean sandwich and was nice enough to share with me because I had forgotten to bring a lunch. I had two bites, but my guts were so twisted up I felt like I was about to turn inside out.

  “Grandpa said you were coming over today. Told me not to let you escape,” she said with a giggle.

  “Did he say anything else?” I asked.

  “About what?”

  I shook my head and said, “I’d like to go to your house today. But I can’t.”

  I wasn’t going to leave Pa alone at the house. I’d already decided that. And he’d be furious at me for it. But I didn’t care if he put me in the orphanage himself later or packed me on a ship to China, I was going to try to help him.

  “Grandpa said…”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “Tell me why not or I’m gonna drag you to my house by your hair.”

  Not knowing too many folks had always made it easy for me to keep my mouth shut about shining. And keeping the secret had made it special for me and Pa. It was our little trick on the world. But at that moment I felt like I had the pressure of the still inside me, the boiler cap ready to blow right off.

  “If I tell you something, you can’t tell anybody. Nobody at school, no teachers, nobody.”

  Rebecca leaned in, obviously excited. “Of course.”

  I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Me and my pa make moonshine. It’s a kind of alcohol and it’s against the law.”

  “I know what it is. My grandpa used to sell it.”

  “We got mixed up with someone bad. A crook. Maybe worse. He burned my pa.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Did the doctor go see him?”

  “No. Your grandpa took care of him. It was the middle of the night.”

  “What?” she asked. “Grandpa? When?”

  “Two nights ago. But my pa’s okay.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

  I had no answer and waited for her to fly off the handle at me. Involving her grandpa involved her, and she had a right to be mad.

  “Did you tell the police at least?” she asked finally.

  “They already know. The sheriff knows the man who did it. But he won’t do anything.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said and shook her head. “No, no. I’m sure he will. The sheriff has to. It’s what he does.”

  “That’s what I always thought too. But when you’re doing crimes, nobody has to help you.”

  Rebecca turned toward me and grabbed my arm.

  “There’s always somebody, Cub. Like whoever is higher than the
sheriff.”

  “Who, like the chief of police? Maybe the president? I should just write to Hoover, huh?”

  She squeezed my arm hard. “It’s not just the two of you out there on your little farm. People can help you. I can help you.”

  We looked at each other and I didn’t see the tough girl slapping people across the back of the head. I saw someone who understood about losing your family.

  “Yeah, but how?”

  She let go of my arm.

  “I could let you go to your house today, for one.”

  After school let out I raced home, half hoping I could make it in time and half terrified of what I’d find there. I skirted around our eastern field and saw an automobile and two people standing on the porch, one person in a slick suit, the other with his arms bandaged so much they looked like two cotton puffs sticking out from his body.

  They hadn’t seen me yet and I had next to no plan of what I was going to do or say, so I slowed to a jog and headed up to them.

  Pa spotted me coming up the drive and his whole body went rigid.

  As soon as I was in earshot, he yelled, “Cub, you get out of here. I’m doing business.”

  Salvatore turned and looked at me, lips curling into an ugly smile.

  I didn’t stop. Pa stepped down off the porch, like he was blocking me out. I walked up until we were face-to-face.

  “This is my house too, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Let the boy stay,” Salvatore said, from the porch. “He needs to learn a lesson too.”

  He was looking down on both of us, like he had taken over.

  Pa exhaled loudly and said, “I think we were about finished anyway.”

  “Tell your boy the deal,” Salvatore said. “Because he didn’t understand things too well last time,” he added with a smirk.

  Pa said, “Two deliveries a month, a hundred gallons each time.”

  “Two hundred gallons a month?” I asked, sure I’d misheard. When it had been the both of us working every night, two hundred gallons would have been tough. With Pa’s arms almost useless and me in school all day it would be about three steps past impossible. Once the stash in the tree ran out I’d probably have to quit school and work day and night at the still.