Moonshine

by Justin Benton

  From the opposite side of the room, someone called out, “Wait. Don’t go yet.”

  It was Rebecca. She looked at me as she walked up to her grandpa.

  “Please help them,” she said.

  Mr. Yunsen furrowed his brow. “Were you spying again?”

  She looked down at the ground and said, “I was spying because, well, because I’m nosy. And because I knew something bad was going on and I made it worse.”

  Mr. Yunsen said, “Rebecca, what are you talking about?”

  “I made things bad for Cub at school, and I owe it to him to make it up somehow. If you’re not going to help them just because of me, then I’ll feel doubly worse.”

  “Rebecca, dear, that is most kind of you, but this has the potential to be dangerous.”

  “What’s dangerous is letting criminals come into town, take over the police, and threaten your friends.”

  I felt my cheeks warm and I hoped Rebecca didn’t notice me blush. She was trying to put things right between us. And this was a heck of a start.

  “It’s the right thing to do, Grandpa. And it’s just driving.”

  Mr. Yunsen pursed his lips then said to her, “It is true that it would be much safer to keep these criminals away from our town. And it would be two, three trips max. Really no different than my normal trips out of town.”

  “Please, Grandpa.”

  “Very well. I will assist in my small way,” he said, turning back to Pa and me.

  Before we could say a word, Rebecca kissed her grandpa’s cheek and dashed back around the corner.

  The sky had turned pink and the first stars were already out by the time the three of us spilled out the back door to figure out how much shine the Buick could hold. When Pa first saw that car, he squealed like a little girl.

  Mr. Yunsen popped the hood, and while he and I discussed quantities and prices, Pa pored over what he said was a Master Six engine. Mr. Yunsen was already planning to make two trips out of town in the next couple of days and was certain he could sell a full load each trip. He even offered to take Pa to the Federal Department of Justice in Knoxville so he could talk to the agents there. Pa just nodded and ran his fingers over the engine’s workings.

  We said our farewells, and Mr. Yunsen promised me he’d say goodbye to Rebecca for me. Me and Pa walked down Elm talking nonstop about everything that needed doing. We would have to unload the tree. The final mash would need to be run, then we’d have to take the still apart. With Pa hurt, I’d have to do nearly all the work.

  As we walked down the sidewalk, Pa stopped short.

  “You go on. I’m going to go talk to somebody. I’ll meet you at home.”

  “Where you going, Pa?”

  “I told you I’d see about that white house.”

  PA HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO track down the man who knew about the white house, but he did get an advance on a few gallons of shine and came back with food. With his hurt arms he could hardly help bring the shine out of the tree, but he insisted he could carry something. I wedged a small jug under his armpit and he did a goosestep shuffle toward the house. The glass slipped out and shattered on a hunk of limestone. We couldn’t afford to lose even an ounce of shine now.

  Pa sulked off to tend the fire while I scrambled in and out of the tree, scratching myself going both ways in the dark. I made a pyramid of barrels inside the coop, hoping the chickens wouldn’t get curious and peck into them. I was too busy to deal with a bunch of drunken hens.

  The October night was silent as I crunched through the dead pine needles with the last jug of moonshine we’d ever make. Pa was right behind me, his white bandages glowing in the moonlight.

  I had only about four hours before I’d have to load the Buick, then go in for a full day of school, where I’d be bombarded with questions about some imaginary Mafia life I wanted nothing to do with. And if word reached Pounder or the teachers, things could get even worse for us. Just thinking about it made me tired, but I knew I was too worked up to sleep.

  We walked in the back door and Pa went straight for his room. When I picked up the kerosene lamp on the table, he asked, “You’re not tired?”

  “No. I’m going to sit here a while.”

  I lit the lamp and our little kitchen glowed yellow and warm all around me.

  “And do what?” he asked from the doorway.

  “Nothing.”

  He paused for a second and scratched the back of his neck. “Mind if I join you?”

  I shrugged. Pa walked back into the kitchen and said, “Because I know something we can do that’s better than nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Have a late-night feast.”

  Pa pulled the frying pan off the wall, and using only the very tips of his fingers to work, started frying some catfish he’d picked up in town. I cut up some okra. Pa had brought biscuits too. They were hard from the cold air, but still good.

  We got busy preparing it all, moving around each other and working smoothly like we always had at the still. I put the okra on our wooden plates and Pa dumped big steaming chunks of fish on top and splashed some vinegar over it. We sat down at three in the morning, and just as I was about to take my first bite, I noticed Pa staring at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You know, you are just the spitting image of your ma.”

  “Great, Pa. I always wanted to look like a girl.”

  Folks before had told me what she had looked like—tall for a woman, pretty hair, big ears, but I could never put those pieces together in my head for a real image of her.

  “Not how you look. I mean the way you are.”

  “That ain’t possible.”

  “You know, it’s funny. Ya’ll have got the same way of lighting a fire, using huge pieces of kindling when anybody with common sense would start with pieces half the size.”

  I smiled and forked a chunk of fried catfish into my mouth.

  “And the same way of treating a cut or a burn, putting on a medicine fast and hard, not worrying if a fella’s in pain, just making sure the treatment’s on there good.”

  “Maybe you just got the same way of being a baby.”

  “Well, that too. But mostly it’s that the both of you ain’t got any quit in you. There were a lot of times when she was sick, whole months, when a regular person would’ve flat gave up. She was scared and she was hurting, but she kept fighting ’til the last second. And you’re the same way. I just didn’t see it ’til now.”

  I was plumb embarrassed by that point, but he wouldn’t stop. “Think about how strong you’ve been through all this. School for the first time, police trouble, a gangster on our tails…And did you get scared?”

  I looked at him for a long moment.

  “Yes. Every second.”

  “But you fought through it,” he said, pointing at me. “And we haven’t quit yet. That’s in our blood. And that’s something that’ll never die.”

  MR. YUNSEN ARRIVED WITH THE rising sun on Friday, dressed in a black suit that matched his hearse perfectly. It was up to me to load nearly three hundred gallons of shine into the Buick. I packed the shine everywhere I could, including inside the empty casket in the back. Two little pint jars went where the head would go and then I made a full body of bigger barrels. It was a perfect fit.

  Pa crouched down next to the hearse’s shiny spoked wheel and asked Mr. Yunsen, “What are you going to do if somebody stops you?”

  “If I’ve got a full load of liquor, I’d have to make a quick escape.”

  “You think you could outrun ’em?”

  “I’d love to find out,” Mr. Yunsen said with a sly smile.

  With my back feeling broken from having hefted all the barrels, I closed the little white curtains hanging on each of the rear windows and told Mr. Yunsen good luck. Pa and I watched him drive away with nearly half of everything we owned.

  I had to run to get to school on time, which was a cruel kind of torture because I was dreading class. Right as the last
group of people was heading in the door, Rebecca rushed up and grabbed my arm.

  “Hey, I fixed it.”

  “Yeah, thanks for getting your grandpa—”

  “No, I mean here,” she said, then rushed inside without another word.

  I followed her in and was instantly mobbed by half the class.

  Russ asked, “Cub, are you really Al Capone’s nephew? Rebecca swore it.”

  Oh no. What had she told people now?

  Frankie said, “And she said you’re scheming to rob Fort Knox. Is that true? Because it sounded like malarkey to me.”

  He stood there cross-armed, frowning at me, and the genius of Rebecca’s new rumors dawned on me.

  I smiled and said, “Oh yeah. Me and Uncle Al are going to dynamite it. I’m building a mansion out of gold bars.”

  Frankie turned and threw his hands up to the class. “I told you it weren’t true!”

  Shane stepped up and said, “But his pa really is a crook.”

  Rebecca pushed her way into the group.

  “And I’m the queen of England. You’ll believe anything.”

  Miss Pounder came in and everyone dashed for their seats.

  I leaned up to Rebecca’s desk and said, “You actually did fix it. Thank you.”

  “Wasn’t hard. I told you everybody here is dumber than donkey teeth.”

  By lunch the class debate had turned to whether Roscoe had flunked fourth grade four or five times, and no one even gave me a second look when I joined the kickball game.

  We had penmanship class after lunch and halfway through I realized I really had to go. I balanced my dip pen on the inkwell as best I could and got up from my desk.

  Miss Pounder sat upright in her big special chair and cleared her throat all loud at me like her pipes were clogged with porridge.

  “Cub, where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ll be back. Don’t you worry,” I said, not slowing.

  She jumped out of that throne of hers and cut me off before I could reach the door. She stood there squared off on me like she was Dempsey in the ring.

  “You can’t just leave, Cub. Not without telling me where you’re going.”

  They had a lot of rules at that school. A lot. And I abided by them as best I could. But there was one rule that was so bizarre that I refused to honor it.

  In my most polite voice, I said, “Miss Pounder, I will be back. That’s all I have to say.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and smirked at me.

  “If you need to visit the outhouse, Cub, all you have to do is ask.”

  “I will do no such thing.”

  Her big head jerked back, and she let out a little yelp at my defiance.

  I said, “It seems disgusting that you want people to tell you their business like that. Even a dog doesn’t have to ask permission.”

  The class was in hysterics. A couple of the boys were even applauding. I sidestepped her ready to bob and weave under a left hook, but she was glued to the floor, silent. Two and a half minutes later, I was back in my desk practicing my penmanship.

  Nobody talked about it after that. Not Pounder, not anybody in my class. But my little protest apparently struck a chord with the others. That afternoon, two other students came and went during Pounder’s class like civilized people.

  * * *

  ● ● ●

  After school, I walked Rebecca to her turnoff, then continued on to the house. Pa was sitting at the table, surrounded by crumpled dollar bills and Eight O’Clock Coffee cans full of coins.

  “That house is for sale. The owner has been trying to get rid of it for two years. But it’s eleven hundred dollars upfront.”

  My legs were shaking with joy. “And we got enough money?” I asked.

  Pa looked up and smiled kind of embarrassed-like, trying to grip a pencil between the fingers of his bad hand. He had been marking on a ledger in big, ugly swoops. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Yunsen came by with over nine hundred dollars. Tomorrow he’s selling another three hundred gallons. But I’m still working the numbers here to see what we need for the rest.”

  “Can I give it a shot, Pa?”

  Pa pushed the ledger over to me. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and sighed. “I feel like I been in a fight.”

  A sheet and a half of paper later, I looked over at him and grimaced.

  “It’s not impossible, Pa.”

  “No?”

  “If we get seven fifty a gallon for the rest, plus maybe two hundred dollars for the still, it would work out.”

  “Did you say seven fifty a gallon?” he asked, gripping my arm. Salvatore was paying him two and a quarter.

  “It’s not impossible.”

  A powerful thunderstorm came that evening. Pa and I spent the rest of the weekend indoors, pacing the floors and talking about what we’d be doing if it weren’t raining. On Sunday morning, the ground was nothing but puddles. The garden had flooded and little rivers ran down the rows. I sat out under the leaky porch roof, waiting for the rain to slack off to a drizzle so I could clean the still.

  By late afternoon the lightning storm had passed and I told Pa I’d clean the still and get it ready myself.

  He said, “I can help. My left hand is almost working now.”

  “You shouldn’t get your bandages wet. It won’t take me more than an hour.”

  “Then I’ll go see Yunsen and set things up for tomorrow morning.”

  I wished I’d thought to go to Rebecca’s house. We went in, and following a quick chicken dinner, I set off into the woods with a jug of vinegar and salt I’d mixed up to clean the copper. On the trail I heard the sorrowful hoo-ah-hoo of a mourning dove somewhere up in the big tree, but couldn’t place him. Staring at the tree, I realized it did not look as commanding it usually did, maybe because I knew its trunk was now nearly empty after two days of sales.

  It was sundown when I got there and the clearing was a soupy mess. There were some logs and kindling in our stack under the sweetgum tree, but even those had been hit hard by rain. After nearly half an hour I had a sputtering little fire going next to the pot. I set some more logs around it to dry them and got to work cleaning the copper with an old wire brush.

  My eyes were stinging in the wet wood’s smoke and after a few minutes of scrubbing my hands were cold and raw. I could kind of see my reflection in the still, so I knew it was somewhat cleaner, but in the dark it was hard to tell how much. I dumped the rest of the vinegar over the top, then headed down to the creek to fetch more rinsing water. The water off the wet leaves ran up the cuffs of my overalls and froze my legs. Somewhere back toward the house a twig snapped and I stopped mid-step.

  Standing there as quiet as I could, I heard another snap. Too loud for a squirrel or rabbit, I thought, but maybe a big buck. I waited a full sixty heartbeats, but only heard the creek gurgling and water dripping down off the pine needles. I filled my jugs with water and walked silently across the dead leaves like Pa had taught me. I got back to the clearing to find Mr. Salvatore standing next to the fire.

  I gasped and dropped the jugs of water. Mr. Salvatore stood between the fire and the still, hat pulled down over his eyes and mud almost up to the knees of his suit pants. He looked right at me, no expression on his face, hands shoved into his pockets.

  “Why is everything taken apart?” he asked.

  I scrambled to pick up the jugs and walked over to the parts of the still, watching Mr. Salvatore out of the corner of my eye. I felt a slow raking over my insides.

  Mr. Salvatore took a step toward me and yelled, “Why is everything taken apart?”

  His voice came out harsh like his vocal cords were packed with crushed glass.

  “Um, I had to clean it.”

  Mr. Salvatore watched as I poured the creek water down the side of the kettle, splashing it all over my legs. I busied myself rinsing the pot, but I could feel Mr. Salvatore’s eyes on me.

  “How’d you know where the still
was?” I asked.

  “The sheriff told me. Plus, I’ve been here before,” he added with a menacing grin.

  I looked down and kept scrubbing the pot.

  “Where’s your father?”

  Pa wasn’t at home, I realized. In the reflection off the gleaming copper, I looked myself straight in the eye and thought, I can get us out of this. Salvatore thinks I’m just some dumb backwoods kid. I took a deep breath, turned and faced him, ready to say Pa was at a neighbor’s, at church, anywhere. Other words came out.

  “He’s at the doctor ’cause you burned him.”

  The expression on Salvatore’s face didn’t change, and we stared at each other for a long moment.

  “That was nothing,” he said, taking a step toward me. “What we call a ‘warning shot.’ ”

  He walked up until he was within arm’s distance, then took off his hat and wiped his brow with his coat sleeve.

  “Kid, that was a trip to the ice cream parlor compared to the things you see growing up in a family like mine.”

  A crime family, I thought. Mafia.

  Mr. Salvatore went on, “You and me aren’t all that different, kid. Brought up in the family business, outside the law. You know as well as I do there ain’t no going against it.”

  His family was nothing like mine. I was nothing like him. And as a matter of fact, I had gone against the family business.

  He looked off into the woods, then straightened his suit coat and put his hat back on. “Plans have changed. First delivery Tuesday night.”

  Tuesday? That was in two days.

  “You said we had ten days,” I said.

  “Are you dense, kid? I just said the plans had changed. A hundred gallons.”

  Nothing was ready. Pa hadn’t talked to the Feds yet. And worst of all, we no longer had a hundred gallons in the tree to give him.

  “But a hundred gallons is too much.”

  “I know you’ve got hundreds, kid, your pa told me himself. And you’ve already had your warning.”

  It was impossible. He did not understand that.

  “We need more time,” I said.

  “Tuesday,” he said, and I could tell his patience was fraying.