by Sarah Tomp
The surprise on his face let me know you’d been right. He hadn’t been the one to smash poor Aunt Jezebel. I said, “Looked like someone took a bat to her.”
He and Peanut broke into fierce and hysterical laughter.
“Well, Lulu. Seems to me you’re out of options. You ain’t got one thing that I want.”
“Nothing at all,” agreed Peanut, still snickering.
Once they’d quieted down I said, “I have Baby.”
Seth stared at me, unflinching. Looking more amused than surprised. Uncertain what I meant. It was in that second that I realized I had it all wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Seth didn’t know about Baby. You hadn’t promised him anything. He had no idea you’d rescued the yeast and hidden it. You must have had another plan. If only you’d told me. If only I’d asked.
When he’d sent you that text, he’d meant me. Little Baby Lulu.
I faltered then. I got truly good and scared. I pressed my hands against my shaking thighs. Focused on breathing. Tried not to fall out of that rickety chair. Seth ground his cigarette into the table. Flicked the butt to the floor, then scraped his chair toward me until we were knee to knee and eye to eye. He leaned forward and asked, “Who—or what—the hell is Baby?”
I didn’t have it in me to make something up. I could barely spit out the truth. “The yeast,” I said. “Your family yeast. That Jake kept.”
I let this sink in a minute, watched him seethe and try to settle on what to say.
“And how is it that you have it? Did Mason give it to you?”
“Forget Mason,” I said, as if I ever could. But at least I’d kept you away from here. “If you want Baby, the way your family has used her for every other batch of moonshine, well, then, we need to make a deal.”
He sat there, silent. Eyes flashing and mouth pinched tight. He rubbed his hair the way you do.
I said, “It has to be stored off-site. It’s tricky stuff. I might have messed up some other things, but I can take care of the yeast.”
“Let’s talk over drinks,” said Seth. “Peanut, get a bottle.”
Seth poured us each a shot glass. Pushed one toward me. I knew this was how deals got made. All in a day’s work.
The smell of moonshine hit me between the eyes. I could smell how it was made, where it had come from. The corn, sugar, and yeast. All mixed up and heated together. Made me think of Aunt Jezebel. Working and laughing in the woods. The good times. But the bad too. Seeped into that smell, the one that made my eyes water, was the whole summer.
You.
And suddenly, everything was as clear as the liquid I held in my hand. I couldn’t make a deal with Seth and Peanut. Like you, the moonshine pulled at me, led me places I didn’t belong. I had to turn away. Being nowhere and doing nothing was better than this place I’d reached.
I’d finally hit the spot where no was the only answer.
I knew, absolutely certainly, with no more doubts dancing in my head, I was done. No more moonshine. No more crazy illegal plans to get out of Dale. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I was going to be all right. I’d figure something out. Something that made some kind of sense. Something that wouldn’t make me lose myself along the way.
I thought about pretending to drink. To dump it out somehow. Or to simply spill it. But I knew that was only a temporary fix. I pushed the drink back toward Seth. Braced myself for what he would do.
That’s when you walked in the door.
You didn’t have to get a message. Didn’t need a map or directions. Somehow you knew where I’d go when I felt out of options.
Whenever I see you, my entire body responds. Each and every cell, molecule, atom, and the space in between wants to be near you. Like centripetal force. Gravity. Magnetics. An invisible, undeniable tug pulls me to you.
Even then, even there.
Even knowing I could never be with you.
“What’s that?” Seth pointed to the black plastic garbage bag in your arms.
Slowly, as though you had all the time in the world, you made your way across the warehouse, eyes scanning the room, taking us in.
“Hey,” said Seth. He stood up and faced you, his chest puffed out and fists clenched at his sides. “I asked you a question. What’s in the bag?”
“Baby.” You pulled out a five-gallon jug of foamy white yeast. You placed it on the crooked table, which swayed under the sudden weight.
The two of you stood facing each other. Same height, same coloring, same way of standing when you’re ready to pounce; but like in a mirror, each one’s opposite.
Seth said, “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Cuz,” then flashed a grin at me, looking like he’d won a 4-H blue ribbon.
“Good enough,” you said. “And now I’m all paid up. No more owing.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said.
“I do,” you said. “Baby trumps all.”
You held out your hand, waiting for him to shake it. “Come on, Cuz.”
All the hours in the warehouse were wearing on Seth. He looked twitchy and wired. Incapable of settling in one place. But, finally, he shook your hand.
After the two of you let each other go, you reached for me. Squeezed my hand, pressing the bruises I had from beating that tree with a pipe a million years earlier that day. You pulled me to standing.
Seth said, “This means you’re back, right? Like Lulu said.”
We all waited for your answer.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“You did it for her.” His face twitched. Rage simmered off his skin. “You did it all. You even fixed your goddamn truck for her. That was supposed to be for me. You were supposed to work with me.”
“That’s over. And now I’m taking Lulu out of here.”
“Not so fast.”
“I’m paid up,” you said calmly. “You agreed.”
“You’re paid up, but she’s not.” His eyes darted back and forth between us, his face twisted into an angry tangle of lines.
My legs buckled beneath me. There’s only so much adrenaline can hold before shaky nerves collapse.
Seth gestured around the warehouse. “She’s seen too much. How do we know she’s not gonna run home crying to Daddy? You think he won’t call the law?”
“Lulu’s got her own secrets. She won’t talk.”
I nodded, silent, as if to prove it.
He turned to me. “What happened to us making a deal, Lulu? You came here wanting to work with me, remember?”
You let out a strangled half laugh. “That wouldn’t be good for anyone.”
“I don’t know. I’m sure she’d be good at something.” He reached toward me.
You jumped between us. He swung at your face.
The table tipped, and everything fell. In the midst of tinkly shattering of shot glasses and the half-full Mason jar, Baby hit the hard floor with a thunk. At first I thought the jug survived, thanks to some kind of scientific phenomenon based on inner density and the thickness of the glass, but then the white bubbles oozed out and across the cement. A sour smell of yeast mixed with the sharp burn of moonshine whiskey filled the air.
We all stared at the chaos on the floor. Peanut, reliable as ever, let out a nervous giggle. And then said, “Shit.”
You sighed and shook your head. “This is why I never should have brought you Baby. You can’t take care of anything.”
“We can save it,” Seth said, with frantic insistence. “Peanut, go get something to scoop it up.”
As Peanut left, you said, “Won’t work. It’s trashed.”
“The hell,” said Seth. He took his cigarette from his mouth and pointed it at you. Looked like he had something to say. But then, he stopped. Turned the cigarette over in his hand. Smiled. Then flicked it onto the spill.
With a roar and a flash, the spilled moonshine caught fire. I jumped back from the heat, stumbling over the chair.
It was like the rush of flame lit something i
nside Seth. “You have no goddamn respect for this place,” he roared. “You piss on all of us. Every time you helped her, you told us we’re shit. Nothing but shit.”
He ran to the stash of bottles. Threw one at you. You ducked, and it hit the floor, the spill of it feeding the flames.
Again and again, Seth threw bottles. The crash and smash of glass rang around us. The smell of the whiskey burned my nostrils all the way into my throat. I coughed and choked. My eyes watered, making it hard to see much more than light and movement.
When I stepped to the side, a bottle crashed at my feet, spraying me with the liquor. Another crashed next to me. You met my eyes across the thirsty flames. The fire between us was headed toward the still.
The enormous tank of fuel.
“Stop!” you yelled, a few feet from where I cowered against a fermenting tank. “She was right, Seth. Dammit, she was right.”
Seth paused, a bottle held over his head.
“I’m back.”
“Mason,” I said, willing you to look at me. To find another way. But you kept your eyes aimed on him.
Seth lowered the bottle but kept a white-knuckle grip hold of its neck at his side.
“I was waiting until she left town to tell you.”
The way he looked at you was so raw. So full of wanting to believe you.
“Unless you’d rather burn this place down,” you said.
He dropped the bottle at his feet.
“Come on. Help me get this fire out.” You dragged a bag of corn toward the flames. Seth cut it open, and the two of you lifted it together, dumping the grain.
No more fire, but no more Baby either. Only the stench and a smoky haze remained. Mixed in with the smell of burnt was ripe fermentation. “Damn,” said Seth. He looked to you, worried, like he finally realized what he’d done. “What are we gonna do about the yeast?”
You didn’t answer right away. You made him wait to see how you’d fix it. But then you said, “I have the backup supply. It’s safe.”
“You what?” Seth wiped his face, spreading black smears across his cheeks. He looked like a little boy coming in after a hard day of playing outdoors. “But why?”
“You know Baby doesn’t get stored here,” you said. You shoved his shoulder playfully. “And you know why? Cuz of days like this one, Cuz.”
You laughed together, the sound off-key and out of sync with my own gaspy breathing. I tasted nervous sick in the back of my throat.
Peanut came in then, carrying a bucket. He said, “What the…” and waited by the door.
You smirked at Seth. “You really thought we screwed up this time.” You put a hand on his shoulder. Said, “Let’s go get the yeast.”
Seth turned to me. Frowned and said, “You came here ready to make a deal for our Baby. Is this a setup? Are we gonna find one of your junkyard dogs waiting for us?”
I shook my head. There was no one waiting for me anywhere.
Peanut said, “I don’t like this.”
That must have been the one and only time Peanut and I agreed.
“I don’t know if I can trust either of you. You play too many games.” Seth paced back and forth. His eyes shone wild and bright against his filthy face. He paused, spit on the ground, then said, “All right. This is how it’s gonna roll. You tell me where this yeast is, and I’ll go get it while you stay here. If it’s like you say, then we can let little Lulu skip along home.”
We weren’t in any position to argue the plan, but you didn’t even try. Once you gave him directions, Seth and Peanut charged out the door, leaving us alone.
I ran to the door. Over and over I tugged and pulled. Until you said, “It’s locked from the outside.”
I finally turned to you. “Why’d you come here, Mason?”
“Me?” Your eyes were wide and disbelieving. “I’m here for you, Lulu. To save you. Again. All summer long I’ve been trying to keep your ass out of trouble.”
My voice shook. “But that’s over, isn’t it? You made it clear you don’t want anything to do with me. I thought that was because you were coming back to work with Seth. But it’s me you didn’t want to deal with anymore. I don’t know why you bothered now.”
Your fists were clenched, the muscles along your jaw pulsed. “I guess you really don’t know me at all.”
There were a million things I didn’t know. I folded my aching arms around myself. “All I wanted was to keep you away from here.”
The exact place we were. But worse.
You let out a harsh laugh. “By making a deal with Seth? Who, by the way, now has Baby and I’m going to have to figure out how to keep him from screwing that up too! Dammit, Lulu, how could you?” You stopped. Your voice turned cold and quiet. “I told you not to get mixed up with Seth.”
Of course you had. Except it was way more complicated than that. “But I’ve been mixed up with him all along, haven’t I, Mason? Whether I knew it or not. You let me think everything was fine, when all the while you were paying him to leave us alone. Seth’s right. You do play games.”
But I did too.
I had to tell you what I’d done.
We’d kept too many secrets from each other. Too many truths were hidden in the shadows, slipped behind the shine we wanted the other to see. Troubles were left to sour in the dark. If we’d shared our worries, we might have carried them together.
I said, “Seth’s not going to find Baby. I moved her. I didn’t want you coming here. I thought I could make you see.…”
You turned a pallid shade I’d never seen on you. An unfamiliar look of wretched panic filled your face. I’d never, not in one moment that we’d been together, ever seen you scared before. You said what I already knew. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
We set off in different directions, frantically looking for inspiration. While you tried to work a crowbar at the bottom of the giant metal door, I poked around every corner, behind each of the massive burbling, groaning tanks. I tried to find a secret door in the thick cement walls. Wished a magic drawbridge would open and set us loose. As I searched, I tried to shake off the pervasive smell of fermenting mash, ripe and ready.
“Could you get to the windows?” I asked, pointing at the ladder alongside one of the silver tanks.
“Wouldn’t do any good,” you said. “Neither of us will fit through.”
“There’s nothing to do, Mason. Nothing.” Panic made it hard to think.
“Hang on,” you said, grabbing my hand, pulling me close. “We can’t give up.”
But I had nothing left to give.
“I didn’t want you to see this side of me.” You traced the cut on my lip. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. About Seth, and what he knew.”
I nodded.
“You’re the first person who ever thought I might be something more than moonshine, Lu.”
So much more.
Your voice trembled as you went on. “I know that’s what brought you to me, but then it was like you saw something different. That this was only part of me. And I started thinking that if I could concentrate on you, and us, I could make sure everything turned out all right. You made me believe in something better.” You took a deep breath, then said, more firmly, “We can figure this out, Lulu. We’re gonna get out of here. We just gotta have faith.”
I wanted to believe like you do. Tried to pray, but was all out of words. Wished I could clear that fermenting smell from my head.
Then, like a flash, I thought of the bucket in my garage. The mess of that explosion.
I was good at making messes. An expert at destruction.
“The fermenter,” I said. “What if we closed the release valve?”
It was a simple kind of solution. But hard to predict the result. No guarantee.
“Maybe someone will hear the blast,” I said.
“We could get hurt.”
When Seth came back, we would get hurt. For sure.
You would have liked more time to think about the plan. Time
was one more thing we didn’t have. If we were going to try, we had to act while we could.
You climbed the ladder, and I waited at the bottom, holding it steady. You leaned over the tank and turned the knob. The tank let out a sigh. The bubbles at the bottom of the pipe let out a deep hrrumph burp of protest, then stopped popping into the bucket.
Down on the ground again, you set the table on its side across the room from the fermenter tank that had already started to hum. “That sound means it’s blocked,” you said. Just the way we’d hoped.
We built a fort behind the table. We dragged over sacks of cornmeal for fortification. As a final touch you draped a tarp over our mishmashed pile, fastening it with duct tape.
“So we don’t get sticky?” I asked.
You hugged me and said, “Sure. That too.”
It was time to hunker down. We crawled under the tarp into our den.
I had to ask the something that still didn’t add up. “If you weren’t going to work with Seth, how were you going to get me more money?”
“I thought you could sell cheap vodka at the Queens’ party and call it moonshine.”
I still can’t bear to think that would have worked.
Lying there, in the dim light, you kissed me like that first time on the side of the road. But also like it might be our last.
Each time the fermenter groaned or screeched, we’d look at each other. We held our breaths and waited. There is no one better to wait with than you. Realizing the face in front of you is the exact one you’d like to see if it’s the end, well, that’s something to sink into.
Beyond our cozy space, the blocked fermenter sang its one-note song, now adding some squeaky complaints. I said, “If we get out of here…”
“When,” you said.
“You have to leave Dale. Promise me, Mason.”
You wrapped your arms around me, squeezed me against your chest. “Seth needs me,” you said. “You saw him. He’s out of control.”
“You can’t fix him.” I forced you to meet my eyes. “It’s going to ruin you too.” My voice was thick with needing you to know what I knew. “It’s going to kill you. And it’ll be all my fault. I can’t carry that.”