Moonshine

by Justin Benton

  After a quick breakfast of toast and muscadine jelly, I said goodbye to Rebecca and we piled into the hearse. Mr. Yunsen, Pa, and I sat in a row on the front bench seat, while an empty coffin that would be the final resting place for our last batch of shine lay in the back. The day was promising adventure and my insides were starting to tingle until we got closer to our house and I spotted the deep tire ruts Mr. Salvatore’s car had cut into the road.

  “Is he still there?” I asked Pa.

  Mr. Yunsen edged the front of the hearse past the corn until we could just spy the house. I leaned up so close my breath fogged the windshield, straining to see any sign of Mr. Salvatore or his car.

  “He’s gone,” Mr. Yunsen said finally and swung the car in and around, backing it right up to the coop. It was a short haul for the last load of shine, but with only one working pair of hands between us, me and Pa had a hard time fitting those barrels into the coffin. Mr. Yunsen tried to help, but on his first barrel his spine cracked like a machine gun and he limped away. By seven o’clock we had loaded the hearse. Except for the giant copper still sitting in our woods, me and Pa could have passed for regular old dirt farmers.

  We settled in for the long ride, Mr. Yunsen driving fast and me taking in every sight I could out the window. We passed little towns that looked almost identical to Hidden Orchard, save for a few odd details that made them seem strange and mysterious.

  “Pa, this place has got sidewalks on both sides of the street.”

  “Seems wasteful,” he said.

  We headed down from the hills, the humid air getting thicker in my lungs with every passing mile. Pa said little, staring straight ahead and moving his lips as he practiced what he was going to say.

  In the eyes of the law, Pa was a criminal. And he was going to walk into a building full of government men and ask them to help him. What if they didn’t believe him? What if they just didn’t care? Or what if they cared so much they threw him in jail too?

  “Pa, don’t tell the agents nothing too bad about what we did, okay?”

  He nodded. “I’ll make this work. Somehow or other I’ll make it work.”

  Just as I was putting my hopes in our new life and a fresh beginning, I heard a clanging behind the hearse. I spun around to see a police car right on our tail.

  “Is it Sheriff Bardo?” Mr. Yunsen asked.

  The policeman dropped back, only to speed up again, almost nicking the back of the Buick.

  “No. I’ve never seen him before,” I said.

  Between flashes of red light, I could make out an angry man in uniform, pointing to the side of the road and mouthing some word over and over. He kept sounding an emergency bell mounted on his car.

  “I think he wants us to stop,” I said.

  “Just like that time outside Memphis, huh, Herbert?” Pa said.

  “I could run circles around his little Ford,” Mr. Yunsen said, with a hint of challenge in his voice.

  I saw that Mr. Yunsen’s hand was twitchinga little on top of the round gearshift, like he was just dying to get us into high gear. Running from the cops in a car full of shine seemed like a good way to get sent to prison for life. Hopefully Mr. Yunsen didn’t have some plan to go out guns blazing.

  Pa asked him, “You thinking about getting out of here?” His voice came out fast and nervous.

  “You tell me.”

  I turned toward Pa and asked, “If we ran, could we still go to Knoxville?”

  Mr. Yunsen answered for him. “Oh no. We’d have to lay low for a bit. He’d radio all the big towns.”

  “But we’ve got to go to Knoxville today,” I said. “We can’t give up now.”

  “Earl?” Mr. Yunsen asked.

  Pa was silent, staring pale-faced out the windshield.

  “We could say we’re on our way to a funeral,” Mr. Yunsen offered.

  “Please, Pa. We’ve got to try something.”

  “Okay,” Pa said.

  Mr. Yunsen slowed the hearse, parked us right on the side of the road, and rolled down his window. I heard the police cruiser’s door slam behind us. A few seconds later a rough red face appeared, the officer sticking his head so far inside the hearse that if Mr. Yunsen were to raise the window, it would have caught the policeman at the neck.

  He studied each of us, and the way his eyes went over us reminded me of the time me and Pa watched a mountain lion scout a herd of deer up in the hills, picking out the easiest prey to kill. The officer’s cold gaze finally settled on me. For what felt like a full minute, I looked up at him and gave him a pained half smile.

  “How about ya’ll tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “Oh, work I’m afraid,” said Mr. Yunsen. “Passing through on our way to a funeral in Knoxville.”

  “You’re working?”

  Mr. Yunsen nodded.

  “You wouldn’t happen to work as a bootlegger, would you?” the officer asked.

  “I beg your pardon?” Mr. Yunsen said.

  I heard Pa gulp like he was swallowing a spoonful of gravel.

  “We got reports of bootleggers coming through here. Rumrunners coming through in big vehicles. But you wouldn’t know anything about that now, would you?”

  The officer leaned farther inside the hearse, the rim of his hat scraping the roof. He stared at me.

  “How come you ain’t in school, boy? Harvest break ain’t for weeks.”

  His cocky tone reminded me of the first time Sheriff Bardo had come to our house. He had laughed at me when I’d gone mute and tucked myself behind Pa’s leg. I had nowhere to hide myself now, not unless I wanted to crawl into the back and get in the casket.

  Not a foot away from my face, the officer said, “Answer me, boy.”

  “I finished school. I did it all.”

  They had told me that finishing school actually took years. I had survived thirty-four days and failed nearly every test.

  The policeman asked, “You graduated? How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “So you’re working then?”

  “Always.”

  The officer turned his attention back to Mr. Yunsen and asked, “Do you have any illegal liquor inside this vehicle?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Step out of the vehicle and walk around back. All of you.”

  I squeezed tight on Pa’s leg in case Mr. Yunsen decided to zoom us out of there. Instead, the door clicked open and I saw Mr. Yunsen’s black coattails disappear out the driver’s door. Me and Pa got out on our side, and the three of us lined up behind the hearse in our suits.

  The policeman was huge. He was taller than even Pa and about as wide as all three of us put together. He motioned to the back doors of the hearse, and Mr. Yunsen opened them, exposing the purple velvet interior and the cherrywood coffin. The officer stuck his head in to inspect it, then pulled his head back out to inspect us.

  “You’re going to a funeral, huh?”

  I nodded and the policeman bent down and got right in my face again.

  “Okay, Mister Sixteen-Year-Old,” he said, “Who’s the funeral for, then?”

  “Miss Eugenia Rawls. Age sixty-eight. Fell off a horse and broke her neck,” I said, making it up on the spot.

  The policeman raised an eyebrow. I thought for a second I heard Mr. Yunsen chuckle.

  “So when we open this casket we’ll see her in there?”

  My story was all for nothing. He was going to find the shine. Before anybody could move though, Pa broke his silence and spoke.

  “Ooh, she’s in there all right, but just barely. That was the second biggest woman I ever saw. Took all three of us to get her in there. You should’ve seen old Wilfred here,” Pa said, pointing his thumb at me, “just jumping on top of that casket to fit her in there. Parts kept squirting out. I didn’t think we’d ever cram her in there.”

  The officer’s head jerked back about a foot and a half, and I saw his bottom lip quiver.

  I tried to keep the rhythm going. “We ca
n open her up if you want, but with this sun…” I paused and made a big show of studying the sun’s exact position. “I’d imagine the gases will have taken effect. You’d have to help us get her back in there.”

  “And she could blow,” Pa added.

  “She very well could,” I said.

  The officer looked like he’d found a mouse tail in his stew.

  With both palms raised, he asked, “So no shine?”

  “A body, but no spirits,” Mr. Yunsen said.

  “All right, let’s get you fellas out of here. Follow me and I’ll lead you through Coalville.”

  The cruiser pulled out in front of us and Mr. Yunsen fell in line right behind it with the hearse.

  “The two of you should be in motion pictures,” Mr. Yunsen said as we followed our special police escort through town.

  We were overcome with a laughing fit and every time we were able to control ourselves, I’d do an imitation of Pa’s voice and say, “And she could blow,” and we’d all crack up again. At the end of town the officer pointed us around him and I waved him goodbye and we sped off toward Knoxville for what I prayed was our final illegal sale.

  AS WE ROLLED DOWN OUT of the hills and into the flatlands, I took to reading the giant hand-carved signs posted at the entrance to every little town.

  Welcome to Mapleton

  The Sunniest Town in Tennessee

  Thirty feet farther down the road there would always be an even bigger sign, newer and thrown together with railroad ties and scrap wood.

  NO JOBS

  TRANSIENTS KEEP MOVING

  There were great crowds of people in the streets, some standing in lines, other folks sprawled out in a park sleeping in the middle of the day. Pa nodded toward one white-haired woman wrapped up in a copy of the Tennessean daily and said to me, “That there’s a Hoover blanket.”

  “How come there are so many people around?”

  “No job to go to,” Pa said. “Maybe just looking for food.”

  As we neared the Knoxville train depot, the buildings changed from wood and brick to soggy cardboard and riveted sheet metal. There were jumbles of shacks along the road, everything shoved together with pallets, cardboard, and jagged scrap metal. Fires blazed out of dirty trash barrels. Folks stared at us as we rolled by in our big black hearse.

  One group of kids a little younger than me started running alongside us. The soles of their shoes were flapping and they were hollering, trying to get a look inside. They probably lived in that big mountain of pallets we just drove by. Made me and Pa’s shack seem like a mansion, I thought. Pa passed ’em each a nickel at the stop sign and I felt a little embarrassed when they looked me over in the church clothes Mr. Yunsen had lent me.

  “We must be the only folks in America quitting their jobs,” I said.

  Pa nodded. “You see how skinny everybody is?”

  Walking right through the street was a teenage girl the color of the sidewalk, all knees, elbows, and cheekbones.

  “They don’t have room to farm here. We can raise chickens, grow potatoes, corn, spinach,” Pa said.

  “So what do they eat, then?” I asked.

  Mr. Yunsen pointed at a long row of people lined up against a brick wall.

  “Those people there are waiting for soup. They can get free soup, bread, perhaps a coffee.”

  And here we were, I thought, trying desperately to wash our hands of the one thing guaranteed to put food on the table. Except we were no longer shining just to get by. Salvatore owned us. I glanced over at the scorched pink skin peeking out from the cuff of Pa’s shirt and that helped shore up my faith we were doing the right thing.

  I read a big sign that said DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, KNOXVILLE, and Mr. Yunsen parked next to a long line of black government cars. He shut off the motor and the three of us sat there, silent.

  “You want me to go with you, Pa?”

  “No, boy. This is something I’ve got to take care of myself.”

  Mr. Yunsen leaned across and said, “No matter what they say to you, Earl, make sure they know that a major bootlegger is going to be in Hidden Orchard tomorrow. If they catch the big shot, they’ll be more lenient with you about any past wrongdoings.”

  Pa looked up at the big, penitentiary-style federal building and shook his head. “I always figured if I came here it’d be in bracelets.”

  He looked at me for a long moment and I had the dreadful thought that he was trying to memorize my face in case he didn’t come back out. Like he was sacrificing himself or something.

  He flashed his best smile, patted me on the leg, and said, “Here we go. Time to dazzle ’em.”

  Before I could say a word, he was out of the hearse and striding into the building.

  I said, “This feels wrong.”

  Mr. Yunsen cranked the hearse and we pulled away from the building.

  “Let him take care of himself. We still have to sell this moonshine.”

  MR. YUNSEN DROVE FASTER, the Buick thundering down the dreary city streets.

  “So where does this buyer live?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. We’re going to his place of business.”

  A few turns later we were parked behind one of the tallest, glassiest buildings in the city. It must have been five stories high, and I bet from the top you could have seen all the way down into Georgia.

  “Give me two minutes,” Mr. Yunsen said. He disappeared down a stairway into the bottom of the building.

  I slid over into the driver’s seat to see if I could figure out how to drive in case I needed to. All the buttons and pedals reminded me of my first ride in the sheriff’s automobile. He had operated his vehicle with much less style than Mr. Yunsen, and I decided that I would someday become a champion driver.

  A tap on the window startled me, but when I turned there was Mr. Yunsen motioning for me.

  Mr. Yunsen asked, “You ready to get rid of this shine?”

  “More than anything.”

  At the foot of the stairwell, Mr. Yunsen rapped on a gray metal door. It opened a crack, an eye appearing in the slit and studying us. The door swung open and a seven-hundred-pound gorilla of a man in a suit hustled us in, the door banging shut behind us.

  I stood there motionless trying to take it all in, but it was too much, like a shotgun blast of sights and sounds. The room was alive with music, except it wasn’t the tinny, scratched music from a radio—it was like thunder, and I felt it more than I heard it. Three men with horns gleaming like gold were playing as a short-haired woman in a flowy blue dress like a waterfall crooned into a microphone. It wasn’t but mid-morning and these people were partying like it was New Year’s Eve.

  “How come there are so many people in here?” I asked Mr. Yunsen.

  “Graveyard shift at the cotton factory just let out,” he said. “For these people it’s midnight.”

  Inside it was all tobacco smoke sifting through amber light and the sound of clinking glasses over laughter. Mr. Yunsen guided me up to a long wooden bar with a mirror behind it reflecting countless bottles. A round, smiling man reached over the bar and thrust out a meaty hand.

  “Welcome to the Blind Tiger,” he yelled over the noise. “I’m Donnie Bridges.”

  He had the face of a prizefighter, the angles all pushed around and smoothed out. I shook his hand.

  “Herbert here tells me that you and I may be able to do some business together.” His voice was bright and at the same time briskly professional.

  “We may,” I answered, as casually as I could.

  At this, the man threw back his big bald head and laughed. He turned to Mr. Yunsen and said, “I love it! And people say the American businessman is dead.”

  Mr. Bridges led us through the crowded room, past women holding thin white cigarettes and men who puffed on cigars the color of melted chocolate. We reached a private booth in the back corner and slid into the black leather seats.

  “Okay, now,” Mr. Bridges said. “What have you got?”

&nbs
p; “Moonshine, sir. Tennessee’s finest.”

  “Tennessee’s finest? All right, I’m listening. Who made it?”

  “I did, sir.”

  The smile on the man’s face now jumped from ear to ear and he slapped his hands together and laughed.

  “Makes the product and sells it too. The kid’s going to end the Depression all by himself.”

  The waitress returned and popped the caps off three bottles of Coca-Cola. I had a big sip. It was ice cold.

  “All right, kid. What’s your price?” Mr. Bridges asked.

  I thought hard for a second. I could tell that Mr. Bridges had a lot of money and he seemed to have taken a liking to me. He seemed like a good guy too, though, and I wasn’t there to try to take advantage. I knew exactly what we needed for the farm, and I wouldn’t ask for a penny more.

  “Seven dollars and fifty cents per gallon. Plus these Coca-Colas, and one for my pa.”

  “No.”

  His smile had vanished and something hard crept into his voice.

  “No more than five dollars a gallon.”

  Words did not come to me, and so this rough man and I just looked at each other across the mahogany table. Had I done something wrong? Five dollars a gallon was devastating. Mr. Bridges leaned back, looking very much the owner of his illegal bar.

  The giant in the pinstripe suit trudged up to the booth and whispered something in Mr. Bridges’s ear. Mr. Yunsen was fidgeting with his bow tie and I caught him staring at that big bulletproof door we’d come through. It felt like we were sealed into a bank vault. Mr. Yunsen leaned over and said, “It’s fine, Cub. The important thing is that we sell it all.”

  I shook my head and asked him, “Have you got any of our shine on hand?”

  Mr. Yunsen reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a slim pewter flask. I took it and slid it across the table.

  “Sir.”

  Mr. Bridges looked down, but didn’t touch it.

  I said, “As a courtesy.”

  He reached his beefy hand out and flicked the bottom of the flask. It spun a blur of silver circles then disappeared into his palm. He uncapped it and held it under his nose, then frowned.

  “It smells like…like…”