by W E Monroe
The Most Beautiful Girl
W E Monroe
Copyright 2010 by W E Monroe
ISBN: 978-1-4581-8788-8
Chapter One: Rooster and the Moonshine
"Rooster! You ain't got that field plowed yet, have you?" Sarcasm edged her voice as she placed his lunch in front of him. After thirty-some years, the bliss of married life had faded.
"No, Lucille . . . I'm workin' on it." His squinty left eye stole a glance in her direction.
"I'm workin' on it," she mocked. "Ain't that what you told me yesterday? Let me see your eyes. Yep. You been up at the still makin' whiskey, ain't you? I swear, you drink more than you sell."
"Lucille, for god's sake, I just needed a little taste."
"Look at you. Ain't shaved in a week. No money for the salt and flour I need. You won't even go to church. You used to love me."
"Awww . . . Lucille. I love you. You know I do. But . . ." The chair scraped back from the rough-sawed table. As he had so many times before, Rooster fled from the sharp tongue of his wife.
"Rooster! Where you goin'?" she sternly called.
"I'm gonna hitch up the horse and ride down the hill to Harrelson Corners. Sell a few jars of shine." He stepped from the porch and dejectedly strode away.
"You better not drink none," she yelled at his back. "You done drank enough for one day. Your drinkin' is gonna ruin this family."
Rooster's one droopy eyelid gave the scrawny little man an undeserved, sinister appearance. His leathery face silently reflected the years spent coaxing an existence out of the reluctant, rocky fields of the west North Carolina farm. Slouched and tired looking, Jebediah Mooney appeared as though it was he, not Lucille, who gave birth to nine babies in fourteen years. Only one, Hester, now marrying age, remained at home.
Because Rooster stayed at least a little bit drunk most of the time, friends and family seldom knew when he was sober. But Lucille knew. She looked at his eyes. When sober, both his eyelids drooped, and he peered out at the world through two narrow slits. Once when comparing notes with Maude Fetter about husbands and moonshine, she remarked, "When Rooster's sober those squinty eyes of his makes him look just like a mole plowed up into the sun."
Rooster Mooney had always liked his liquor, but during the war with the Yankees, a need to drink took root and flourished. Until then he provided well for his large family.
From his farm, the Confederacy drafted one son after another to fight for Dixie. Then in the final, desperate days of the war, it took the youngest boy, Wesley. The war widowed one daughter. Six months pregnant with the Mooney's first grandchild when the news came, she collapsed into her daddy's arms. Two of his and Lucille's sons died and one of them, the boy, Wesley.
Rooster could not bear the losses and he sought refuge in the numbing effects of alcohol. When the sharpest grieving had passed, the craving for drink lingered. He gave up on living and wanted only to forget. Life became an endless succession of todays, with seldom a thought of tomorrow. Getting drunk, a way to shut out the reality of the man he had become.
Sober, he felt the barely concealed scorn of family and neighbors, but after a few thirsty swigs, he imagined himself a man of importance, intelligence, and wisdom.
Rooster farmed--when it didn't interfere with drinking. He raised a little tobacco, but mostly corn. Moonshine consumed a generous portion of the harvest. And Rooster drank away the profit, leaving only a meager existence for Lucille and Hester.
Rooster hid the still, with its tubs of mash, several hundred yards into the woods and up the rocky slope of Cowee Mountain. The wisp of smoke wafted upward through the trees far enough from the road to usually escape the attention of travelers.
From time to time Rooster attempted to improve his brew. Once in a while the experiments produced marvelous whiskey. However, by the time the new batch was made, the alcohol sipped from a previous batch invariably left him too drunk to remember--making it impossible to duplicate his success.
A few times a year, an unfortunate choice of ingredients in the mash revealed the presence of the still to neighbors and passers-by with an insistence that would command the attention of the blind. A foggy morning and a gentle northeast breeze would carry the pungent smell of ruined fermenting mash, drifting down from the still and across the field like a damp, malodorous blanket that slowly enveloped the cabin. The sour-smelling cloud continued its inexorable progress, and settled on the road by the creek.
"My God! One of Rooster's cows must have died. Drunk or not you'd think he'd bury the darned thing," remarked a neighbor to his wife as they rode by on a buckboard wagon.
"That ain't no dead cow. It smells like a skunk got into Lucille's kitchen and sprayed when she was making bread. Pity.”
“Well whatever it is, Rooster ain't gonna need no manure on the crops he's growin'. The stink will do the fertilizin' for him." The husband held his breath, slapped the reins on the horse and hurried up the rise beyond the Mooney farm and out of the sickening vapor.
Rooster says he makes a fine grade of aged moonshine. Some drinkers agreed -- the ones with an urgent craving for whiskey. It doesn't matter to his small assortment of customers that it's aged only days, not weeks or months. "Too much age takes away the bite," Rooster sagely advised.
According to Carl Treadle, who likes to tell about Rooster's first drink of the day, "He always says . . . I think I'll have me a little taste of that whiskey . . ., then he swings the jug up, sucks in a mouthful and rolls it around. Next, he swallows it all in one gulp and goes to makin' a funny shudder as it cooks everything on the way down. Then he throws his head back and wheezes, 'WHOOoooEEE!'
"Next, he raises up ramrod straight, to his full five-foot-two, and ol' Rooster's eyes 'pop' back open real wide and he looks around like he's examinin' the world just after the creation -- and, approves of what he sees! Then Rooster starts to struttin' around’ like a mean ol’ rooster. That’s how he first got called Rooster. Now he's ready to do battle with any man or beast -- except Lucille, of course. He thinks he's taller and meaner than anyone around," declared Carl, completing his description of Jebediah Mooney's first-drink ritual.
Until a few years ago, the still was concealed in a large barn, behind the house. One morning back then, he tipped the jug for his first drink and barely enough dribbled out to dampen his tongue.
A full mason jar rested on the shelf, but Abe Fetter bought his whiskey on Tuesdays. This was Tuesday and he'd be coming to pay for it when he could sneak away without the missus knowing. Rooster eyed it longingly. But, a promise was a promise.
He decided there just wasn't time to wait for today's moonshine, dripping from the still to fill the jug again. This was an emergency. He put a saddle blanket on the ground, snuggled into its softness beneath the coil and positioned himself with his mouth wide open. The dripping liquid accumulated slowly, drop by drop, and patience yielded one mouthful after another. There lay a once-again contented man, lulled by the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of moonshine on his tongue.
This worked fine until he drifted off to dreamy sleep. With a rasping snort, he inhaled half a mouthful of 190 proof moonshine. The liquor burned its way down his windpipe and into his lungs. The dream became a nightmare. Indians! Scalping him! Not his head! Savages were ripping the hair from his chest!
Arms and legs flailing, he leapt to his feet and danced like a crazy man. Spasms of coughs sprayed the rest of the whiskey in his mouth directly into the fire under the 'still, igniting some nearby hay. Swinging the blanket to beat out the burning hay, a corner of the heavy quilted material flicked Abe Fetter's full jar of moonshine from the shelf and it shattered on the blade of
the plow. The contents splashed onto the glowing sparks of the hay. There followed an impressive flash and a "woooOOOFF" that abruptly blasted two hens out the doorway and brought a bellow of alarm from the cow. Rooster's eyebrows and every hair on his head went up in smoke, as well as a four-day growth of beard and most of the hairs in his nose.
Heroic efforts of family, neighbors, and passers-by saved the cabin. Mrs. Mooney surveyed the scene -- the smoldering remains of the barn, the scorched walls of her home, and a forlorn but now sober husband. Lucille began to think about life without Rooster that day.
Grief had also left its mark on Lucille. While Rooster numbed himself with moonshine, she had plunged into religious fervor.
Then, a few months ago and several years after the barn burned, Brother Sanborne's Revival came to town! Lucille sat in the front row every night. By the third night, she and the preacher were old friends. The fourth and fifth nights she stayed late to be "saved" again in the darkness of the empty tent, and for a little "laying-on-of-the-hands."
After the revival, the wagon rolled out of Murphyville, and Brother Sanborne made a stop down the hill from town. Lucille Mooney swung a few belongings wrapped in a bed sheet up to the preacher and climbed onto the seat next to him.
Hester was her daddy's only remaining companion in the cabin by the creek. A little more than plump, the last of his offspring brimmed with spirit and confidence in spite of features a friend would describe as somewhat less than lovely.
One day at lunch, Rooster uneasily observed his daughter's envy and delight as she played with Amy Poole's baby. Amy often visited on her way to town, to show off her baby and to talk worshipfully about her man and their sharecropper’s farm. It was obvious; Hester wanted a baby. One day soon, she would meet a special man and start a family.
The next morning a troubled Rooster sat with his jug in the shade of a tree. An ache inside that had little to do with thirst, cried for relief. In an hour or so he had plowed a little of the field he'd promised Hester he'd work on. His plowing, arrow-straight when he started, had become a little less straight after each pause for refreshment from the jug. The meandering furrows now bore little resemblance to the shape of the field to be planted. As the mule stood patiently, spasms quivered his flanks and a long floppy ear periodically twitched to defeat the attacks of a buzzing horsefly.
In the afterglow of a couple more sips, Rooster reached into a bib pocket of his overalls and removed five objects that had caught his eye while plowing. He examined three walnut-size, grayish, six-sided stones he'd picked up. He turned one slowly in his fingers. A drop of perspiration splashed on it. That's strange, he thought. The wet part glows with a little six-legged star inside that rolls around when I move the stone. The drop from his brow evaporated and the little star faded. He dropped those three into his other hand and turned his attention to the last two. Rolling them in the palm of his hand, he smiled. Hester will like these for her collection. Both, bright red, as clear as glass and heavy like the gray ones. They're prettier and bigger than those other four or five red ones she has. Look at that one! It's almost as big as the end of her little finger. It will be her favorite.
Funny, I've only seen these when I plow over there close to the woods on the slope. Maybe it's the rain, washing them pretty rocks down the side of the mountain. It did rain hard last night.
If I had the money, I'd make that little red rock into a golden necklace for my Lucille. Lucille! Frustration and hurt welled up. He angrily flung the pretty stones away and watched them disappear into the soft, plowed earth.
Rooster sat perfectly still, lost in loneliness, and gazed out across the field. "Why did my Lucille have to up and leave me?" he asked the mule. The mule halfheartedly swished his tail at the horsefly. "If it wasn't for Hester, I'd have no one. And when Hester leaves . . .," he sighed.
"I think I need another taste of that whiskey." A glisten of tears tickled down the creases of his leathery cheek. The back of a hand wiped away the telltale tracks and he lifted the heavy jug. Halfway to his lips it stopped. Holding the whiskey at arm’s length with both gnarled hands, Rooster stared at it intently. Slowly, sadly, he lowered the moonshine to the ground, as if to say "goodbye" to an old friend . . . or an old enemy.