“And you got the money?” I asked.
“Nope,” Pa said, still rocking at full speed. “Spent it.”
Oh no.
Pa gave the chair one more big rock and used it to shoot himself up to his feet. He reached into the chest pocket of his overalls and pulled out something that twinkled even in the shade.
“Two pieces of brass. One for me and one for you,” he said, handing me one of the keys.
“We got it? We got the house?” I asked. I took it and stared, mouth open, like I’d never seen a key in my life.
Pa smiled and put his good hand on my shoulder. “We got it.”
So many pictures rushed through my head, images of the pond, of giant tomatoes, of the rich, coffee-colored soil, that I couldn’t think straight to talk. I just sat back in my chair, staring at the key in my hand.
The sun finally set behind a thick line of incoming clouds, and me and Pa left the porch and went inside to wait things out. We sat at the table and picked at our beans and rice for a while, but soon took our tin plates into Pa’s room so we could watch the window while eating. The shotgun was propped against the wall by Pa’s chair.
“You think we’ll hear the agents get Mr. Salvatore?” I asked.
“It’s only about eight. But if he starts shooting I bet we’ll hear something.”
Would Mr. Salvatore try to shoot his way out? Would he come here and shoot his way in?
Pa went out and hung the lamp from a nail on the porch. He came back in and we sat in silence. I watched the clouds as they raced across the sky to blot out the moon, then moved on. Pa now had the Winchester in his lap. All I could hear was the faint whistle of the draft coming from my room. I sat, barely breathing.
Around eleven, a hazy light appeared in the distance. The yellow glow split into two lights, the headlights of an automobile. The beams swung around the corner and cut across the cornfield like a scythe. I pressed my face to the windowpane.
“Is it the government men?” I asked.
Pa squinted and said, “Can’t tell. It looks long though, like Mr. Yunsen’s Buick.”
It wasn’t until the headlights were no longer shining right in my eyes that I got a good look at the vehicle, a large, boxy delivery truck.
“Salvatore,” Pa said, his voice shaking.
I looked up at Pa to ask what we should do, but my mouth went dry and I couldn’t get any words out. By the look on Pa’s face though, he didn’t have any answers either. There were no agents there to save us. There was only Mr. Salvatore, speeding toward our house. We both stood stock-still, Pa clenching the shotgun and me staring at him, waiting for him to explain what had happened. The roar of the engine cut off and I didn’t hear a thing until a single rap hit the back door like an axe blow.
“Jennings,” a voice called. It was definitely Salvatore.
My stomach lurched like I was going to be sick on the floor. Eyes shut, I shook my head. Please just leave us alone.
Salvatore knocked again. I whispered to Pa, “What do we do?”
Pa didn’t answer, just picked up the gun and pointed its barrel at the bedroom door as the banging got louder.
I reached over and put my hand on top of the gun barrel, gently pressing it toward the floor. Pa looked at me and I shook my head and whispered, “Don’t shoot him, Pa. You’ll go to jail. Or the rest of the gang will hunt us down.”
Pa shook his head and raised the gun muzzle back up, hand on the pump action.
“Please,” I said. “We can get away. We just need to get outside.”
Pa stared at me for a long minute, and I wondered if he had any trust left in him. Then he hid the shotgun behind the bedroom door and called, “I’m coming!”
I nodded to him and together we walked to the back door. As Pa reached for the handle, the door swung open and Mr. Salvatore walked right in. He had his hat pointed low over his eyes.
“What took you so long?” he asked.
“Just trying to get this lamp lit,” Pa said, lifting an oil lamp off the counter and fumbling with a match against the wick. “There we go.”
He turned the knob and the room brightened, but I still could not see Mr. Salvatore’s face.
“Where’s the shine?” Salvatore asked.
“It’s outside,” Pa said.
“No. I shined the headlights into your coop, all around. It’s not there.”
“Outside in the clearing,” I said quickly.
Mr. Salvatore turned and looked down at me, like he was noticing me for the first time.
“Why’s it there? You’re supposed to be ready.”
I answered, “We’ve got two big fifty-gallon barrels, but me and my pa are banged up and we couldn’t get ’em up to the house. If you help us roll ’em then the three of us can load your truck.”
Mr. Salvatore said nothing to this, just stared at us in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp.
“You go first,” Mr. Salvatore said finally, nodding toward me. “And carry the lamp. And you,” he continued, turning toward Pa and pulling his jacket back to expose the butt of a pistol tucked into his pants. “You walk right behind him.”
Just a glimpse of the dull metal finish on that revolver made my insides turn cold. We filed out of the house into the moonlight, me leading the way and Mr. Salvatore pushing us down the trail to the empty clearing.
THE KEROSENE LAMP SWUNG unevenly on its squeaky handle, throwing our shadows wildly across the pines. I walked in front, going slow to gain time to think, and Mr. Salvatore crowded us in from the back. Pa trudged along in the middle, silent.
“Next time have everything ready. And hurry up,” said Mr. Salvatore.
Neither me nor Pa spoke, nor did we walk any faster. As we moved down the well-worn path, I kept wondering why the government men had not come. Maybe they hadn’t believed Pa after all. Maybe they just didn’t care. Now Mr. Salvatore was marching us to an isolated area. The sound of a couple gunshots wouldn’t even reach town.
Pa quickened his pace behind me and whispered in my ear, “The tree.”
Of course, I realized. Mr. Salvatore knew the trail and the clearing, but he didn’t know the rest of the woods. He’d never suspect the tree, much less crawl under the briars on his belly to check if we were hiding in it.
“Meet at the tree. Run straight there,” Pa whispered, then slowed back down.
The full moon was bright, almost bright enough to erase the circle of stars around it. I studied the sky as I walked, boots weaving along the trail by memory. A low line of clouds was blowing in from the east and would soon block out the moonlight for at least a full minute, I reckoned. Might make it dark enough for us to make our escape from Salvatore.
I stopped walking and turned back to face Mr. Salvatore.
“Mister, I don’t know if I can load the barrels. My hand hurts real bad now.”
Mr. Salvatore crowded in on me and Pa.
“You can cry later. Keep going.”
“But it kills,” I said, putting my stitched-up palm and the lamp right in Mr. Salvatore’s face.
He squinted at the cut, but looked unimpressed.
“So use your other hand. Keep walking. And get that light out of my face.”
I did not move the lamp or my hand, just peeked up and saw the edge of the clouds, gray as ash, begin to creep across the face of the moon. If I could blind him with the lamplight, it’d take him a while to get his bearings when it was pitch black. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pa take a half step toward Mr. Salvatore.
Mr. Salvatore swatted at the lamp. “I said get that light out of my—”
Pa spun and threw both hands into Mr. Salvatore’s chest, shoving him to the ground. I heard Salvatore go down, and I took off around the other side, heaving the lantern off to my right. Mr. Salvatore yelled “Hey!” right as the lantern’s glass crunched somewhere behind me. With the thick clouds still over the moon, the night was everywhere and the woods were black.
Pa had a straighter shot to the
tree, provided he could find his way there off the path. I would have to cut across the trail at some point. I heard breaking branches to my left, followed by the flat patter of shoe soles on the packed dirt of the trail. I cut farther right. There were crashing noises in the brush and a crack like lightning. Gunshot? Impossible. It was too dark for Salvatore to have hit anything more than an arm’s length away and I knew Pa had been running hard. I kept running and soon all I could hear was my own heavy panting.
By the time I reached the edge of the cornfield, the night around me was blessedly silent. Pa had made it safely to the tree after all. He would hole up in there and Salvatore would never know. I just had to get myself safe now.
Mr. Salvatore was probably still on the path, somewhere out there. I ducked into the first row of cornstalks and looked out toward the house. No federal agents, no police had come. The lamp on the porch had burned itself out. Only thing I could see was the giant white truck that said FRISBEE’S PIES in big red letters. It was sitting so low that the bumper almost touched the ground. I knew it must have been packed with shine. Salvatore had probably been driving all over Tennessee collecting barrels to take back North.
I crouched there, catching my breath and trying to figure out what to do. I could creep around the front of the house, make a run for Pa and the tree that way. That had been what Pa had told me to do—go to him.
But how long could we hide in that dark trunk? Maybe one night. We would have to come out sometime, and Mr. Salvatore could come back whenever he wanted and take care of us. If he’d burned Pa for not wanting to shine, what would he do to us now?
Salvatore didn’t even have to leave tonight. He could sit in his truck or right at our supper table and wait us out. No one else would come for days. Only possibility would be that Rebecca would see I wasn’t at school and come with her grandpa. And then what would Salvatore do to them?
Crouched in the cornstalks, I rubbed my hanfs together to get warm. My eardrums were throbbing from running in the cold. Me and Pa were all alone out here, just like we’d always been. And if I went to him in the tree, nobody would know what was happening. I needed to get somebody here—Mr. Yunsen, somebody from town, anybody.
I looked at the truck again, its chrome fender shining silver in the moonlight. Maybe I could figure out how to drive it and go get help. But then I remembered all the levers in the sheriff’s car and how Mr. Yunsen said you drove almost completely with your feet. Mr. Salvatore would see me fumbling around in his truck and shoot me dead.
An idea started forming in the back of my head. Looking off toward the clearing, I found myself trying to recall what Pa had said when we’d first talked about if moonshine was bad. “Blow you sky-high if it touches flame. Liquid dynamite,” he’d said.
A sharp wind rustled through the stalks and I shivered. I was cold. Looking at the pale white-and-silver truck in the moonlight made me colder. A fire would get people here, I thought. A big fire would, at least. And the truck sitting right in front of me probably held a half ton of shine. But if I burned it, would I get blown up? What if I blew up the entire town?
For a solid minute, I looked back and forth between the woods and the truck, thinking, trying to make myself move. The plan had been to go to the tree. Pa had told me that. And the last time I’d broken from his plan I’d almost gotten him killed. But were we just going to hide there in the woods forever?
I took a deep breath and broke cover, sprinting toward the front porch and bracing for gunshots. I heard only my own boots pounding through the grass.
The house was dark, but I ran straight in the front, sidestepped the table and chairs, and within seconds had grabbed the matches and a few sheets of newspaper from the kitchen. With the can of lamp oil, I slipped right back out the front door.
Peering around the edge of the house, I could see the truck, but I couldn’t make out the woods or the trail. My breath was coming in ripples now, jerky breathing in and out. I would count to three and then run for the truck. One…two…and the next second I was there, tugging at the passenger door and throwing myself onto the big front seat.
It was almost too dark to see, but as I crawled over the seat into the back, the strong, mediciney smell of shine hit me hard. I ran my fingers around in front of me, finding the curve of an oak barrel. I tried to be careful pouring the kerosene, but it came flooding out, soaking the barrels and my shirtsleeves.
The oil seared into my cut palm as I tried to wipe it from my arms. I set the can down and blew frantically on my hand, then gritted my teeth and picked the can back up. Cry later, I thought. The smell of kerosene had replaced the smell of shine and I knew I had oil all over me. I dribbled a trail up to the front of the truck, then backed out the passenger door, splashing the front seat as I went. The kerosene can was still about a quarter full so I lobbed it right onto the driver’s seat.
Crouching there behind the passenger door, my hands shook viciously as I struggled to pull the newspaper and matches from my pocket. I crumpled the paper into a ball and set it on the seat. The image of Pa’s blackened arms flashed into my head and the matchbox fell to the grass. The cold, pain, and a strong chokehold of fear had grabbed me and I wished desperately that I was anywhere but next to that truck, gagging on the fumes. Just light a match, I thought, and my body would do the rest. All I had to do was strike one little match, touch it to the newspaper, then run. I had started thousands of fires. One more big one and it would be all over.
I fumbled a match out of the box, squeezing it so tightly it nearly snapped. On three, I thought. But on one, my hand had already taken over and lit the match and touched it to the paper. The seat ignited instantly. By two, I was tearing across the grass back to the house. I never got to three because I heard a loud noise right as I reached the porch. It was not the thunderous boom I had expected, but the voice of Mr. Salvatore shouting at me from the edge of the woods.
WITH MY CHEST POUNDING, I ran around the porch, jumped the steps, and stopped at the front door. If Mr. Salvatore came around the front, I would run inside. If I heard him at the back door, I’d make a run for the tree. I didn’t hear him coming either way because the next second a roaring explosion ripped the night in half and I was left wondering if I had indeed blown up the whole town. Even with my eyes squeezed tight and my arms clasped over my head, I could feel the flash of fire and the house rattling under my boots.
In the roar, my ears popped, like someone had slapped them and forced air inside my head. On wobbly legs, I slumped against the door. Steadying myself as best I could, I dared to peek around the corner of the house and looked right into a nightmare. Burning chunks of wood rained down into the yard. A white-hot barrel hoop rolled across the scorched grass like a runaway bicycle wheel. A wall of flames stood where the truck had been, thick orange embers tornadoing up into the wind.
Everything was fire or blackness. I couldn’t see Mr. Salvatore. He had either run back into the woods or been blown into the treetops. A rooster crowed from the coop, either thinking daylight had come early or was just terrified.
I rubbed my eyes hard and tried to see past the other end of the porch. It was a dark hundred yards to the edge of the woods. Hopefully Pa was in the tree, sitting there safe.
Head down, I took off around the house and made it across the field and into the trees. I didn’t slow until I was hugging the giant oak’s trunk and feeling my way around to the backside. A voice called, “Cub!” and I spun a circle, but couldn’t place where the voice had come from.
“Boy, up here.”
Against the orange glow of the sky I saw the silhouette of Pa sitting in the tree.
“You all right?” he said.
“Yeah, Pa. I think so.”
“Can you make it up here?”
Ignoring the pain in my hand, I scrambled up the limbs, finally reaching the thick branch Pa was perched on. As I scooted out and sat next to him, I got a good view of the scene below.
There was no truck left, only a pit with
flames rising twenty feet into the air. The coop was missing its roof and the chickens were flapping up and over the wall. Our little garden and the backside of the house were both as black as coal. Hopefully the snakes had hightailed it out of there. The house’s back door was still standing, but looked so crispy that a breeze would turn it to dust. Our home probably only had ten minutes to live.
Pa said, “I thought you were going to run straight to the tree.”
It was pretty obvious I hadn’t done what he’d told me to, what with our house turned into a bonfire and all.
“I mean I was gonna, but…”
He chuckled, waving me off.
“But you did something smarter,” he said, pointing out past the fire toward town.
A line of dots was coming down the road. Automobiles, at least three of them, approaching to see what had happened. In silence, we sat together and watched the line of lights get closer, finally stopping in front of the house. Men rushed around, scrambling back and forth like ants, finally finding the well and a bucket and throwing water on the fire’s edges. They didn’t bother with our cabin.
“I’m sorry about the house, Pa.”
“Small sacrifice.”
“I mean we were moving anyways.”
“It’s okay. Time to say goodbye.”
It was true all we’d really lost was a couple of rotten mattresses, a shotgun, and a table. And we had a new house, a better one. A part of me ached, though, seeing it go up in smoke, remembering all those nights eating supper in there with Pa, laughing. It had been me and him against the world, and that was our fort. But Pa had already been burned once and I’d nearly been blown up just minutes ago, so I figured if there was going to be a burning, better the house than us.
“Any idea where Mr. Salvatore is?” I asked.
Pa lifted my arm and pointed my finger off toward the western field. I pressed my head against my shoulder and looked down my arm like I was sighting in a rifle. Right at the end of my finger, about fifty yards from the blazing crater where the truck had been, was a smoldering black lump.
Moonshine Page 15
