by Sarah Tomp
Finally I caved. “I thought you were my boyfriend.” I kissed you then. I didn’t even care if anyone was watching from across the junkyard.
With your fingers through my belt loops, you grinned goofy at me. “I like hearing that.”
“Good.” I played with your shirt.
“Check my back pocket.”
I reached around you, pulled out a thick wad of bills. “Oh my…”
“You done being mad now?”
I ruffled the bills, too many to count right there. “I can’t believe it worked.”
You laughed.
I’d missed your laugh. I realized leaving wasn’t going to be as smooth and easy as it would have been a month earlier.
I glanced at the cashier trailer, but the dark windows and the bars made it impossible to see if anyone was looking out. I stuffed the money back in your pocket. “If Sal sees this, he won’t let you leave until you spend it. But, Mason. You can’t up and disappear again.”
You tilted your head and said, “I didn’t know anyone cared if I made it back.”
I cared too much.
22
Everything about us getting together was mixed up and confusing. Backward. We’d gotten so close before we ever kissed, and then kissed like crazy, but we still hadn’t gone on a real date. I’d already missed you before I’d left. It was like eating an ice cream sundae upside down and we were making our way down to the sweetest tastes of chocolate and cream.
But.
I had to stay focused on leaving. Daddy had been gone for a longer stretch than usual. Ever since I’d found Mom whimpering in the dark, Sal had been helping out more than I liked. Having him around our house was a loud reminder that I needed to make more money.
We’d split up the huge wad of cash you’d brought back from your sale up in northern Virginia, leaving seed money for supplies and expenses in our community pouch held by Roni, who we all trusted best. I’d immediately sent my share to USD.
I still had a long ways to go, but if we could make that same amount each week—which would mean running Aunt Jezebel as fast as she could go—I’d have enough by mid-August. That’d even give me a two-week cushion to finalize plans and pack and maybe even have a bit of summer vacation. But that didn’t leave a lot of room for mistakes along the way. I didn’t realize then just how good that first sale was. Good enough that now, looking back, I wonder if you took your cut.
Fact was, we had to make more moonshine. The mash Bucky and I had made while you were gone was ready. Getting back to our spot in the woods felt like a homecoming. Aunt Jezebel’s copper sides had blackened and she was starting to show green spots from being outside, but she was beautiful to me.
As we walked around her, I thought you were simply taking in the smells, the birds and chipmunks talking, the way the sunlight flickered through the branches above the mossy ground. I held your hand as I breathed in green and dirt and sunshine and you.
You suddenly let go of me and knelt in the leaves. “Someone’s been here.” You showed me the limp bit of twine. “I put this up last time Bucky and I were here. Someone broke it.”
“I bet that deer came back,” I said. “The one you almost shot.”
“Deer step higher than people.”
“Who would be up here? No one else has the right to be on Roni’s land.”
“You really think everyone follows the rules, don’t you, Lu?”
“Well, they should.”
Never mind that we were breaking all kinds of rules.
That run went a little bit rougher than our charmed first time, but it was all right in the end. Bucky burned his forearm early on, and then there was that moment things got backed up and you had to jiggle something free. Mostly it was a job and we did it.
We—all four of us—were a little subdued that day. I was caught up in my usual muddle of impatience. You were probably thinking about that string and wondering who might have been there and why. Bucky and Roni must have been thinking about their fight the night before even though we didn’t know anything about that at the time.
Roni steered clear of Aunt Jezebel altogether. Instead, she raked leaves and pulled weeds. When she started rearranging rocks to make a wall, Bucky said, “Quit playing house, Roni, and help get these bottles ready.”
She threw a rock at him and took off toward the stream. Bucky stomped off to follow her, leaving you and me to finish and clean up.
As we scrubbed Aunt Jezebel’s insides with lemon juice I asked, “Who do you think was up here, Mason? Are we going to get arrested?”
I love the way you take your time to say what you mean. After you finished wiping her down and closing her back up, you said, “I don’t think we have to worry about the law. They’d have to have a reason to snoop around private property. It’s easier to catch a sale.”
“Who else would be here?”
“Might have been a poacher. Or a lookie-loo. Some people make a hobby of finding stills.” Your hair was long enough now that it looked a little mussed when you bothered it. You being nervous made me nervous too.
“But that’s not who you’re worried about.”
“Word’s out that I’ve been asking around for sales, Lu. Never know how far those echoes travel.”
“What should we do?”
“Wait and see. Pray if it makes you feel better.”
I wonder if you knew I wasn’t praying so much anymore. I was still going through the motions, going to church, saying grace before meals, praying the Rosary with Mom. But I’d given up on God getting me what I needed. It was up to me to make it happen. You were helping. But I could only count on me.
“Mason, do you have your gun with you?”
“Maybe.” You looked wary.
“Teach me how to shoot.”
“Why?”
“I want to know how. In case I ever need to.”
“It’s my thinking that I make sure you don’t have to.”
“It’s not like I’m going to get a gun, but it’d be a shame if something came up and I needed to know how but no one had ever taught me.”
You were quiet a minute. Then said, “I guess I could.” Then added, in a gentle, firm voice, “Only because all those facts and fears you spouted off—those are about people who don’t know what they’re doing.”
You led me away from Aunt Jezebel, closer to where we’d camped. You pulled the pistol from your ankle holster and handed it to me.
I turned its surprising weight over in my hands.
“You have to check if it’s loaded, Lu. You always have to check.” The urgency in your voice made me feel scared and protected in the same breath.
Once you’d removed the magazine and emptied the chamber, you let me turn the weapon over in my hands, had me look at it from every direction. I practiced pointing it. You stepped behind me. “Let yourself stumble.” You pushed my back, making me step forward to figure out it was my right leg that needed to go in front. You faced me again, placed your hands on my shoulders, then my hips. “Keep your head straight, that’s where your aim’ll go. Now brace yourself.” You pushed at me, testing my stance. “Good. Nice and steady.”
You showed me how to load the gun. Made me do it on my own a couple of times. Finally satisfied, you stepped behind me and said, “Lift her.” I lifted my arms straight in front of me, holding it in my right hand with my left one supporting the hold. You stood solid and warm as you wrapped yourself around me. The stubble from your cheek rubbed mine as you helped me hold the gun. “Cradle it like you’ll never let go.”
Your heart beat against my back, we breathed together in perfect time. Then you stepped away. “Take the safety off.”
I did, easily.
“Pull the trigger.”
“You sure?” Sweat trickled along my neck and down my sides.
“Nope. Put her down a minute.”
I wiped my left hand off on my jeans, transferred the gun to it, and wiped the other hand. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“Take a minute.”
“I’m all right. I want to do this.”
You stepped back, out of my line of vision.
The sound was deafening. Literally. My hand tingled and throbbed. Adrenaline coursed through me; my heart danced wildly in my chest. I took a couple more shots before Bucky and Roni came running.
Roni said, “Mother-of-a-gangster, what the hell are you doing, Lulu?”
“What are you staring at?” I asked Bucky, ignoring the heat in my cheeks.
“I have no idea,” he said. “No idea at all.”
I didn’t either.
It was Roni’s idea to hide the bottles of moonshine in my silly gift car parked outside the cashier trailer. It was too much hassle to haul them back and forth to Aunt Jezebel when the goal was to sell it all as soon as possible.
We labeled the boxes of bottles BOOKS, ensuring the Muscles would have no interest, and stuffed them in the backseat and trunk once you jimmied off the lock. It was like I was packing up for school.
You, who believes in meant-to-be—what do you think about the way I didn’t have to go looking for customers? They came to me.
One day, when Sal was working off-site, a man came to the cashier window and mumbled, “I’d like some of your, uh, special.”
At first I wondered if he was slow, or a pervert who’d need me to sic Dawg on him—we’ve seen both. He said, “Ollie sent me. Said you had some poison. To drink.”
I got his meaning. But was too surprised to answer. Roni stepped up to the window and said, “We might be able to connect you with our contractor who handles rat control. Leave us your name and number. We’ll get back to you.”
“Shit, honey. I don’t care about rats. I just want some moonshine.”
Roni almost growled, “Shut it. What do you think this is?”
He stepped back from the window mumbling curses. “Ollie said…”
I whispered, “We could make a sale.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes you are too naive to believe.”
Once he left the yard, Roni paged Ollie. When he and Randy showed up at our trailer, she got right to the point. “Where do you get off telling your loser friends that Lulu is a moonshine dealer?”
“I don’t think Lulu’s a dealer. I think she’s making time with one.”
I said, “Mason is not any kind of anything dealer. That was my cooler. Mine. Not his.”
Randy said, “So you are the dealer.” He turned to Ollie. “Told you.”
“You don’t have to put it like that.”
Ollie held his hands up. “I’m not looking to get anyone in trouble. I thought I was helping some friends with mutual goals in mind.”
Roni kicked him out of the trailer.
“Might want to think about it,” Randy called back over his shoulder. “We got a lot of loser friends.”
I said, “If someone’s a friend of Ollie and Randy, it’s probably all right.”
“Do you actually want to get arrested?”
“If we sell our own brand of rat poison, it’s not really our fault if someone uses it for something else. Is it illegal to sell rat poison?” It probably is, but that wasn’t my point.
“What if Sal finds out?” Roni crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. “You need this job as much as I do, Lulu. What if we can’t sell enough for you to go to school? Don’t you want to keep working here? It’s a better job than anything else you could get.”
I didn’t, and yet I’d have to.
It was such a circle of a puzzle. If I sold the moonshine on Sal’s property, I might lose my job. If I sold enough I wouldn’t need that job. If I didn’t sell, I could keep my job, but I didn’t want it. Hard to know which way to play.
A little later, Roni sighed. Then said, “Thing is, I don’t want to work here if you’re not here, Lulu. Not anymore.”
So we pulled out the empty baby food jars. They weren’t anything Sal cared about. We washed them out and dressed them up with our dead rat logo. We kept our XX sign as the dead eyes, then added whiskers, a pointy nose, ears, and a long skinny rat tail that wrapped around the jar. It was a silly design that tickled us. Pretty soon we had the cutest little baby moonshine jars anyone had ever seen. Somehow those little jars of pseudo–rat poison didn’t seem big enough to take seriously.
Roni said, “Well, all right. Let’s rid the world of rats.”
What’s that saying you have? If you kill one rat, three more move in to celebrate? Yep.
23
Wally’s Pie Place was crowded and booming with music that night we went out with Roni and Bucky. It was strange to have a first real date after so much time together, but nice to get fixed up for you. To not have twigs in my hair and sludge on my skin. You might not mind when I’m a mess, but I could tell you liked how I looked that night. You looked good too with your pressed shirt and smooth-shaven face.
I was feeling giddy and light. We’d sold a bunch of rat poison jars, and you and Bucky had made another batch of moonshine that morning. You’d assured me the new mash was started and Baby was doing her thing. All according to plan.
I felt your hand on my back as I waded through the crowd of middle school kids playing video games in the front lobby. Once we hit the main part of the restaurant and people from school waved from their tables, you let me go. Bucky, who knows everyone, and Roni, who was on her way to being famous, stopped to talk along the way, but I headed straight for the back booth.
It felt unfamiliarly ordinary to be sitting under a roof and at a real table. You concentrated on the menu while I said, “What kind of pizza do you like?” And “Have you tried the honeyed wings?” Then, “Do you like this song?” Conversation didn’t flow easily. Finally we sat in silence within the noisy restaurant. There was too much space between us in the booth.
“It’s crowded in here,” I said. “Maybe you should scoot closer to me, leave room for someone else.”
You looked at me funny. “What will your friends think about you being with me?”
“Which friends?”
“You’re the one who rushed us back here.”
I know it was weird to be back in the real world, but I couldn’t believe you’d think I was hiding you. “I quit worrying what people think about me a long time ago, Mason.” That was one of the best parts of knowing I was leaving. I kissed you then, for way too long to be polite in public.
Roni plopped down on the opposite side of the booth. “Well, everyone’ll know about you two after tonight. Some of the biggest mouths in Dale are here.”
I laughed. “Did you tell them it’s only our first date?”
“First date, huh?” Bucky eyed us across the table, then asked you, “Did you pick Lulu up?”
“He sure did.”
“Did you meet her daddy?”
I said, “He’s out of town. But Mason already knows him from Saint Jude’s.”
“Doesn’t matter what he thinks he knows. If Mason’s your date, you know your daddy’s gonna suddenly look at him from a whole new point of view.”
“Is he that bad?” you asked.
“Worse.”
“True fact,” said Roni. “He made Connor Martin almost pee his pants.”
That might be true. But that’s Connor’s problem, not Daddy’s.
“Well,” said Bucky. “I think it’s my duty to serve as Mr. Mendez’s ambassador and ask a few questions.” He grinned evilly and handed you a napkin. “Did you know you’re wearing the same shade of lipstick as my one and only precious daughter?”
I blushed a little to see the rosy smudges around your mouth from mine, but I wasn’t about to let Bucky know.
You wiped your mouth and said, “I wanted to color-coordinate.”
“Uh-huh. Well, make sure you don’t wear matching underwear.” Bucky pointed suddenly. “You weren’t just thinking about my daughter’s underthings now, were you? Because you wouldn’t think about the Virgin Mary’s lingerie, would you? I’m getting the feeling
you are, boy. What is wrong with you, having thoughts like that? Is your condition treatable?”
He had Roni and me laughing while you tried to keep a straight face.
Bucky went on. “Are you going to do something with your life, Mason? Ten years from now, will my daughter be proud to have spent time in your company?”
Sad but true, Daddy really does ask that one.
“Enough, Bucky,” said Roni. “You’re making me nervous. I can’t even imagine how poor Mason is feeling.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Bucky. “You better invest in some really good deodorant. He smells fear.”
I linked my arm with yours, wrapped my foot around your ankle.
The waiter appeared then. You and Bucky knew him. I felt him checking me out, and I wondered what he thought about us being together. Did he think I was too young for you? Pretty enough? I cared more what your friends thought than my own.
After we ordered our steak-and-fry pizza Bucky said, “So, Lulu, you think you’re going to start eating weird tofu-pesto-spinach pizzas once you’re in California?”
I laughed but didn’t feel like talking about California right then.
“I guess if you never come back, it doesn’t really matter what you eat. Not to us, anyway.”
“Shut up, Bucky,” said Roni. “You keep this up, they’ll never go out with us again.”
“That’s what she told me. She’s never coming back. Isn’t that right, Lulu?”
That’s what I’d said. I’d even said it to you. It wasn’t that I’d changed my mind; it simply didn’t fit in there that night. I would have kicked Bucky under the table if I thought it would have knocked that smirk off his face.
“Sorry I forgot his muzzle,” said Roni. “He gets cranky when he’s hungry.” She leaned across the table and said, “Y’all, I have big, big news.”
I checked her finger but didn’t find a diamond.
“The Queens are having another field party, and Lullaby Breaker is going to play.” She beamed and then said her real news: “We’re even playing two songs that I wrote.”
“Wow.” I turned to Bucky. “That’s amazing, don’t you think?”