Shiner

by Amy Jo Burns

  * * *

  Just after sundown Flynn chased the river to Ruby’s house. The whole of her cabin sat on staggered cinder blocks, with a row of her father’s steel-toed boots by a front door held shut with nothing but a leather latch. Flynn stood in the lush ground below the steep drop-off behind her cabin, peering up at the knotty rocking chairs on the porch. He watched for their tilting as evidence of life inside the house. They might as well have been stone. Patience, he consoled himself. He’d brought an empty mason jar with him, holes poked in the top. He caught fireflies. And he stood by, watching their lights blink. He’d wait until morning, he said. He wouldn’t sleep.

  Or so he thought. Soon enough he slumped against the bank and passed out. Flynn hadn’t been sleeping much since the peak of shining season had hit, and he’d spent most nights at the still with his father. The jar rolled from his hands. He dreamed of high, sweet corn. He dreamed of an even higher skirt. When he woke, Ruby stood over him, an angel apparition, her face lit by the glass jar of fireflies in her hand.

  “Flynn,” she said.

  His name. Her mouth.

  “Flynn,” she said again. “You’re lying in poison ivy.”

  “Shit,” Flynn said, and clambered to his feet. “It’s dark as pitch out here. How can you tell?”

  “This hill is covered with it.” She pointed toward the rising bank at their backs. “I took a tumble down here when I was a girl. Sickest I ever been.”

  Flynn could already feel the itch roaming up his arms, and he was too sleepy to ward off the panic. “What should I do?” he asked.

  “Jump in the river.” Ruby took a step away from him. “And quick.”

  He obeyed and dunked himself underwater, his body bucking against the skull-shattering cold. When he came up for air, he saw Ruby sitting at the water’s edge.

  “You think this’ll work?” he called.

  Her face turned from angel to imp. “No.”

  “Ruby,” he groaned.

  “Serves you right,” she said. “What do you want, Flynn?”

  He believed in honesty, always. “You.”

  She looked sad, even in the navy shadows of night.

  “What about Briar?” she asked. Her eyes slowly met his.

  Flynn stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “I won’t come between friends.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “It ain’t right.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  She tossed him a glare. “Don’t put that on me.”

  “Don’t act like you don’t feel this,” Flynn said. “Don’t do that.”

  Ruby took in a breath and held it. Then she undid her braid. When she remained quiet, Flynn threw a rock into the waves.

  “Women’s got fickle hearts,” he said, mostly to himself.

  He heard Ruby splash toward him, and he turned to see her hair, long and dark, grazing the stream. The switchblade at her hip shimmered in the starlight.

  “That’s because we’re trapped, Flynn.”

  The words stunned him. “You’re trapped?” he asked. “How?”

  “What do you think Ivy and I talk about on Sundays under that weeper?” Ruby asked. “I’ve seen you watching us.”

  Flynn reddened. “Schoolgirl secrets, I guess.”

  “Schoolgirl secrets?” Ruby laughed, embittered. “Ain’t no such thing.”

  She looked Flynn square in the eye. “We’re planning. Ivy watches my back, and I watch hers. That’s how it’s always been.”

  Flynn eyed the rubble of the current. He remembered how Ivy stood sentry when he brought Ruby to the hardwoods behind the gas station and kissed her. It took two young women to get just one of them the kind of thrill Flynn got for free.

  “Flynn,” Ruby said softly. “It ain’t a fickle heart I got.” Her skirt swelled in the water. “My heart’s shy, but it’s strong, too.” She paused. “Right now I can’t decide which it is.”

  He stepped as close as he dared, let his thumb lightly trace her collarbone. “I won’t kiss you again, ’less you want me to.”

  She moved closer still, rested her fingers on his mouth. “Don’t touch my skirt.”

  Flynn smiled. Their lips met. He felt a rush inside he’d never felt before, his hands swimming through Ruby’s thick mane. Soon her hair was all around them and Flynn got lost in it, never wanting to find his way out.

  * * *

  Flynn woke up late the next day, caught in a middling haze that led him to believe it was still the night before. When the sunlight broke through the parted curtains in his bedroom, his eyes opened. He blinked and squinted, shifted and yawned. It was then he realized his skin was on fire.

  He staggered to the porch in search of his mama, who took one look at him and ordered him back into bed. She went about making a poultice for him from onions and garlic and some mintweed from the back garden. The house smelled like an infirmary. Flynn languished in the hot of his room, swathed in boiled herbs. Sherrod peeked in and laughed. His mother rocked on the porch. Flynn couldn’t eat his lunch. And soon enough Briar came.

  “Figured you’d come by the cabin this morning,” Briar said, resting against the edge of Flynn’s bed. “On account of the rumors about those canebrakes spotted in Logger’s Nook.”

  Flynn had no interest in canebrakes, let alone any other kind of venomous serpent. He hoped the compress covering his eyes would rescue him, but somehow Briar knew he wasn’t asleep. Even when Flynn didn’t respond, Briar kept on.

  “When you didn’t come, I hiked over to Ruby’s instead.”

  So that was it. Flynn let the compress fall from his face as he opened his eyes. Briar hovered, a hazy blur at his bedpost.

  “Seems she ain’t feeling too good,” Briar continued.

  Even Flynn’s throat itched. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said.

  Briar took a seat at the stool Flynn’s mother had placed by his headboard. “You ain’t gonna guess what she’s got.”

  Flynn frowned. “And you’re dying to tell me.”

  “Poison ivy.” Briar paused to examine the red welts screaming across Flynn’s chest. “She said she didn’t realize it had spread all the way to the bottom of her daddy’s hill.”

  Flynn began to sweat, and it wasn’t from the poultice. The friends stared at each other—as much of a stare as Flynn could muster—as if the two were girding for a tug-of-war. Neither wanted to be the first to pull. With a sigh Briar relented.

  He stood and shut the curtains. “You best rest, Flynn.”

  * * *

  Briar visited the next day, but Flynn wasn’t conscious enough to notice. He’d taken the poison ivy hard after staying out all night. The creek water had curdled his skin, brought on a bad cold, the least manly thing Flynn could imagine—when he was lucid, at least. He went from sick to sicker. A traveling doctor came and left. Flynn’s mama prayed over him while his daddy gave him whiskey.

  “This’ll void those lungs,” Sherrod said.

  It took a full month for Flynn to feel like he wasn’t looking at the world sideways. He was weak and kitten-mouthed. Briar visited him almost every day, even though Flynn kept terrible company. They couldn’t spar the way they used to. They could barely finish a game of cards.

  “Oh, you again?” Flynn would say when his friend appeared at his bedpost, a sallow smile aquiver on his lips.

  “I saw your ugly face when I came to after the lightning strike. Damn near sent me back into a coma,” Briar would respond, shuffling the deck of cards Sherrod used for midnight solitaire while running a batch of shine. “So consider this your due.”

  And God bless Briar—he didn’t mention Ruby once. Flynn figured his friend was showing him mercy. But that wasn’t quite the truth. It was late summer by the time Flynn felt his feet grow strong beneath him again. His daddy’s business was almost closed up
for the season, and Flynn had missed most of it. Only a run or two left to go before the emptiness of winter set in.

  Flynn hadn’t been going to church since he’d gotten sick, but he’d heard from his mother that Briar had begun to preach from the pulpit about God’s miracles, destined for their mountain. I ain’t never seen so many people swoon, Hen said, and Flynn felt relieved he’d missed it. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, Ruby paid Flynn a visit. She brought bread and a book of Robert Burns’s poetry.

  “I’ve been reading this,” she said, placing the book on his bedside table. “I got it at the library book sale in Trap. Figured you’d like to read it while you recover.”

  He took the book and let the pages fan between his fingers. Ruby sat down, the bread nested in her lap.

  “You’re looking better,” she said.

  “Better?”

  “Ivy and I came once. While you were sleeping.”

  “You’ve been getting around,” Flynn said.

  “Been able to get to town once a week with Old Lady Frye. I help her with her groceries and her chickens.” Ruby paused. “My daddy’s been spending days at the junkyard, and my mama’s still nursing baby number seven. No one notices me unless I make a fuss.” Her smile had pain in it. “It’s a relief.”

  Flynn sniffed. “How’s Ivy?”

  “As happy as Ivy can be.” Ruby tore off a piece of bread and handed it to him. “She met a boy from Elkins.” She raised her eyebrows. “You jealous?”

  “You know I ain’t.” He reached out for her hand.

  “I’m marrying Briar,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  Flynn’s temperature pitched. “You ain’t,” was all he could say.

  “Flynn,” she said, so gentle that it cut him open. “You ever known me to lie?”

  He couldn’t bear to look at the royal contours of her silhouette as she glanced at him over her shoulder. He turned his face away.

  “You are fickle,” he said.

  Ruby didn’t flinch. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Why?” he said to the wall. “Because I love you and you don’t love me back?”

  She touched his arm, then withdrew. “Because you ain’t a woman.”

  Flynn grunted. “What the hell’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Briar’s a good man,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Flynn scoffed. “The world’s just full of them.”

  “He’s honest. He’ll make an honest living.”

  “Honest?” Flynn stole a look at her over his shoulder. “You can make an honest life having people pay you to lead them to God?”

  “That’s tithe money,” she said. “It’s sacred, even if a preacher uses it on himself.”

  “And I bet that’s always what you dreamed of, isn’t it? Living off a tenth of someone else’s scraps.”

  “Money has nothing to do with it.” Ruby could barely manage the words.

  Flynn laughed, and Ruby went red.

  “Briar gives me hope,” she said. “Do you know how rare that is, Flynn? And it’s not just hope for myself. For all of us. He’ll bring good things to this mountain. Our lives will change. You’ll see.”

  “That don’t mean you have to marry him,” Flynn said, but even as the words left his mouth, he could see that Ruby had sailed away from him on the wind of Briar’s promises. “He’s all talk.” Flynn hated himself as he said it. “And that you’ll see.”

  Ruby set her jaw. “He’s your friend, Flynn.”

  “Get,” Flynn said. “Just get out.”

  Ruby stayed calm, even though her fingers clutched her skirt. “Do you know what my father does, Flynn? How he makes his money?”

  Flynn knew. Everyone knew.

  “He scavenges by the quarry,” Ruby said. “He takes copper out of abandoned houses. He lifts parts off of old cars by Arledge’s junkyard. That’s what he does.” She waited for him to say something, anything, but he didn’t. “A shiner gets his paychecks left in tree stumps instead of the mailbox, and I ain’t gonna live like that. Not anymore.”

  Flynn kept his back toward her. Here was the truth: Her disapproval of his daddy and his shine hurt. Sherrod, for all his quirks, had never let his boy or his wife go hungry.

  Ruby left the room so quietly that Flynn lay there a good five minutes thinking she was still perched on the stool waiting for him. He was ready to turn and say, An honest living? Is that all you want? Then I’ll do it, Ruby. I swear I will. But he was left alone with the stool, the book, and the bread. He’d never felt lonelier.

  Flynn decided he’d never go back to a Sunday service. He saw no point in it now. How flimsy his motivation had been, never once trying to fool God but hoping to fool himself. Shiners had always been decried in the hills. People drank shine in secret, but none of the work that went into it could be condoned in daylight.

  He grew stronger with every chug from the growler of whiskey his father kept stashed beneath the floorboards. His lungs cleared. By early September the weather eased. The evenings went cold. Flynn stayed up and listened to the sad hooting of the owls. He would work. Every night he would work, and he’d never have to answer to any man. Shining might have robbed him of a legitimate life, just as it had robbed his father, but goddamn it—he’d choose it every day until his death because it chose him, which was more than Ruby had done.

  * * *

  The night before Briar and Ruby’s wedding, Flynn headed to his truck to meet his father at the still site. He didn’t plan on attending the church ceremony, though Briar had asked Flynn to stand beside him as his best man. It was the first time Flynn had ever refused him.

  Flynn was cracking the driver’s-side door of his truck and hefting his foot when he saw a flash of scarlet barreling toward him in the twilight. It was Ruby in a red gingham dress, stomping up the hill. Flynn froze, half in the truck and half out, unable to do anything but gawk.

  Ruby blustered toward him, her eyes lit and her fists pinched. Flynn barely had time to rescue his foot before she slammed the door shut with her heel.

  “You look real pretty,” he said.

  “Don’t.” Her cheeks flared.

  Flynn sighed.

  “Tell me why you won’t stand with Briar,” Ruby spit.

  “Because I’m in love with you.”

  “That’s selfish, and you know it.” Ruby’s lip ticked. “He’s your best friend.”

  “That don’t mean I think he should marry you.”

  She wiped the sweat from the back of her neck with her hand. “This will end your friendship. Is that what you want?”

  Flynn tried to shrug. “Briar knows I don’t like falsehood.”

  “Falsehood?” Ruby laughed. “The shiner don’t like falsehood.”

  “Pretense, then.”

  “Briar ain’t got hardly any family, except for you.”

  Flynn gave a slow nod, thinking back to the two of them hunting for snakes in the woods when they were boys.

  “I’m here for anything else,” he said. “Anything but this.”

  Ruby looked ready to shove him. “That’s not good enough.”

  “Would you stand with Ivy if she married that drunk from Elkins?”

  She bit her lip. “I would.”

  “That makes you a worse friend than I.”

  “Tell me a better option, Flynn. Please.” Ruby was mad and growing madder, still. “We women ain’t so free to do as we wish. You take that so much for granted it sickens me. Can’t say I’m surprised. You and Briar both—you’ll do just as you please without regard for anybody else.”

  “Ruby, if I did as I pleased, I’d put you in this truck and drive far away from here.” He stepped toward her. “And I’d kiss you until you forgot all about Briar.”

  “Don’t talk to me like
that,” she said.

  “You want me to talk to you like that.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I want.” Her hands started to shake, and Flynn knew he’d pushed too far yet again. “You both think I’m a bartered calf to be passed back and forth because you’re taught the world is yours for the taking. And mine is for getting took.”

  Ruby smoothed her hair, ran her fingers down the length of her braid. “I just came to invite you to the wedding,” she whispered. “I see that was foolish now.”

  She turned and headed back the way she’d come. The night was bearded in black, the moon not even a sliver. A perfect night for making shine.

  “Come on now, Ruby,” Flynn called. “Let me drive you. It’s blacker than black out.”

  “I can find my way.”

  He watched her go, and then he laid himself flat in the bed of his truck with his hands over his face. He was losing both Briar and Ruby by his own stubbornness. Soon enough folks around Trap would blame Ruby for coming between Flynn and his best friend, but the truth was that Flynn didn’t care for the man Briar was becoming—the performer, the ham. The “blessed,” if you believed in such things. Flynn loathed the idea that God was some kind of cheap magician. Why worship something you could find for two dollars on the midway of a county fair? But Ruby didn’t see it like that. What had she said? You and Briar both—you’ll do just as you please. In her estimation Flynn and Briar were too alike. Perhaps that was the truth of it. Flynn didn’t much care for Briar anymore because he didn’t much care for himself.

  By the time Flynn lifted the hands from his eyes, morning had come. Behind his truck the cabin had gone golden in the early sun. He checked his watch: a quarter past five. Sherrod was likely sitting on his bucket next to the still, growing crosser with each playing card he dealt. The final barrel of mash wasn’t going to run itself, and it was about to go bad. Flynn sat up, rubbed his eyes, and searched for his keys. Then he saw Briar—on the morning of his own wedding—leaning against the Chevy’s tailgate.

  Briar stared off into the tree line, his white eye lilting back and forth. It looked like he’d forgotten how to move. Flynn touched Briar’s shoulder, but he didn’t stir. It reminded Flynn of how Briar had looked after lightning struck—his features frozen as sweat slid down his temples.