“The way I see it,” Pa went on, “a child beater’s no better ’n a wife beater, an’ I don’t like bein’ on the same level as Hube Baker.”
A wave of feeling washed over Tom. He’d thought Pa’s silence the last two weeks showed his disappointment that his son would never make the best whiskey and brandy in the hills. But instead Pa must have been brooding about what he’d done. “You ain’t nothin’ like Hube,” Tom said fervently, but Pa made no response.
By the time they reached the mission, people had already gone into the schoolhouse-chapel. Mrs. Taylor stood up to lead the first hymn, and she smiled at Tom when she noticed him sitting in the back beside Pa. Tom knew she’d have ridden up to visit him if Andy hadn’t told her he was sick with measles. But even though he’d missed her, he hadn’t wanted her to see his braises—not for Pa’s sake, but because he didn’t want her feeling sorry for him.
Outside after the service, Mrs. Taylor told Tom how much he’d been missed at school, and he thanked her for the soup she’d made and sent with Andy. Then she looked up at Pa and asked, “June, how long would it take you to make me three chairs?”
“Couple of weeks, I reckon. You want rockin’ chairs or settin’ chairs like the one I made you for school?”
“Make one rocker and a pair of chairs like mine,” Mrs. Taylor answered. Then she asked Tom, “How many carvings can you have for me in two weeks?”
He thought of the box of birds and animals beside his mattress in the loft and asked, “How many you want?”
“Bring me all your very best ones,” she said as she turned to greet Emma Baker.
“I made that doll family to show you, Miz Taylor,” Emma said, holding out a basket filled with corn-husk dolls.
“Wonderful!” Mrs. Taylor exclaimed. “Make me all the dolls you have time for, and be sure each one’s a little bit different from the others.” After the woman walked away, Mrs. Taylor mused, “I should have asked her where she got that basket.”
“Probably from one of the Simpson brothers,” Tom said. “They all make ’em, but Jonah’s are the nicest.” Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Mrs. Taylor was heading toward the edge of the clearing, where Jonah Simpson stood talking with Cat Johnson.
“What’s that li’l lady up to now?” Pa asked suspiciously.
“She knows a man in the city who sells mountain crafts,” Ol’ Man Barnes explained, “an’ she’s gonna send him things folks make. Whenever anybody buys somethin’, he’ll send back half the money for the one who made it.”
“She’s fixin’ to make me keep that dadburn promise she tricked me into, if you ask me,” Pa grumbled as he went off to find Lance Rigsby.
Lonny and Harry had been listening nearby, and Lonny asked, “What’s ‘crafts,’ anyhow?”
Tom didn’t know quite how to answer this, but one of the girls from Ox Gore Hollow did. “Crafts are things folks make by hand,” she said importantly.
“City folks ain’t gonna want nothin’ we make,” Harry said.
“If Miz Taylor says they’re gonna, then they’re gonna,” the girl answered confidently. “Miz Taylor told Ma folks that can’t make nothin’ theirselves hanker after handmade things. They don’t always use ’em, though—sometimes they just set an’ look at ’em.”
Harry sneered and mimicked, “‘Miz Taylor. Miz Taylor.’ What’s she know, anyhow?”
“She knows a lot,” Tom said sharply, adding, “You just got your nose out of joint ’cause no city folks are gonna want to buy your pa’s barrels, Harry.”
“Yeah, Harry, you’re just mad ’cause barrels ain’t crafts,” Lonny said, grinning.
Turning to his cousin, Harry said belligerently, “Carpenterin’ ain’t crafts, neither, you know.”
As he half listened to his friends’ argument, Tom’s eyes were on the girl. The way she’d spoken right up just now surprised him—it wasn’t the way a mountain girl behaved. It was more like what he’d expect from Amy. Suddenly Tom was aware of an expectant silence and he turned to the boys and asked, “You say somethin’ to me?”
“I said,” Harry repeated, exaggerating his words, “makin’ moonshine’s no craft, neither.”
“You’re right about that,” Tom said. “Makin’ moonshine the traditional way like Pa an’ I did, now that’s a art.”
Harry squinted at him and repeated, “Like you ‘did’?”
That Harry never missed a thing, Tom thought. “Yep,” he said, “we gave it up.” Unwilling to face the volley of questions he knew would come as soon as Harry and Lonny recovered from their shock, Tom added, “You don’t need to know why.”
Hands in his pockets, he walked away. When he looked back, Harry and Lonny had wandered off, but the girl from Ox Gore Hollow was still watching him.
31
Tom was hurrying down the mountain to buy tobacco for Pa when he rounded a curve in the trail and came face to face with P. D. Hudson and Cory. His heart began to pound, and he had to remind himself that he no longer had anything to fear from revenuers. Tom stepped aside to let the men pass, but Hudson stopped and asked, “Who’s your father buying his corn liquor from these days?”
“Don’t think none’s been made ’round here since Eddie Jarvis left,” Tom said innocently.
Hudson made a sound that might have been a laugh, and he and Cory started up the mountain again. Tom watched the two revenuers trudge purposefully along the trail. Maybe they were going after Hube Baker, he thought, and after a moment’s hesitation, he followed them.
It was a public path, Tom reasoned, but just the same, he was glad the men didn’t look back and see him. Where the path made a hairpin bend, he struck out through the woods, shortcutting toward the Bakers’ side yard. He was headed toward some scrubby cedar trees, thinking that they would shield him from view and allow him to watch both the trail and the house, when someone grabbed him from behind. A gloved hand covered his mouth and a voice hissed, “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re not going to warn him.” It was Ralph, the third revenuer. Tom struggled, but Ralph only held him tighter, shoving him to the ground behind the cedars and pinning him down with a knee in his back.
Tom could see nothing, but he heard the crunch of boots on loose rock, and then there was silence as P. D. Hudson and Cory stopped not ten feet away. “It’s there on the porch rail, so everything’s all set,” Hudson said in a low voice. “Let’s go.”
Pulling Tom to his feet, Ralph stood up to watch, and Tom saw Emma Baker’s red apron hanging on the railing of the porch and the revenuers heading for the henhouse. He watched Cory lift the wooden bar that latched the door and follow Hudson inside. Tom was conscious of Ralph’s shallow breathing behind him, and he felt the man’s grip relax a moment later when Hudson emerged with Hube. The sound of an ax striking wood came from the small building, and Tom could almost see the wave of fermented mash gushing out of the barrel.
Ralph released him, saying, “I’d better not catch you interfering with our enforcement activities again, kid.”
Brushing himself off, Tom glared at the revenuer but said nothing. As he turned to leave, Tom glanced toward the house to see if Emma Baker was watching and noticed that the red apron was gone. Hube must have knocked her upside the head once too often, he thought as he cut back through the woods. But Tom couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for the old man’s nerve, setting up his still in a henhouse not fifty feet from the path and having his wife bar the door from the outside when he was working there. No wonder Hube bragged that he just ignored the warning rifle shots nowadays.
Back on the path again, Tom headed toward the settlement, almost running. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to tell the news before it became common knowledge. Outside the store, he barely paused to admire the revenuers’ car, and he ignored the handful of little boys sitting on its running board.
“You pass anybody on your way down here?” Ol’ Man Barnes asked casually as he handed Tom the tobacco twists Pa had sent him for.
�
�Only a couple of revenuers goin’ after Hube Baker,” Tom answered just as casually. Suddenly the center of attention, he told what had happened—except for the part about the red apron. By the time he went outside, carrying Pa’s tobacco, the little boys had disappeared, and Lonny and Harry were leaning against the car.
“You waitin’ for them revenuers to come back?” Tom asked.
Lonny nodded. “You gonna wait with us?”
“I already know who they’re bringin’ down, an’ besides, I gotta git on home.” Tom turned as if to leave, but Lonny grabbed his arm.
“It’s weasel-faced ol’ Hube Baker, ain’t it?” he said eagerly.
Tom nodded. “Here they come with him now.”
As the little procession approached the car, a crowd gathered, watching silently. “Hey, Mr. Baker,” Harry called, “at least you’re gonna git yourself a automobile ride out of all this.”
“But I’ll have a long walk home again come court day,” Hube replied, summoning up a grin as he looked between Harry and Tom.
The people backed away when Cory started the engine, and everyone stood and watched until the car was out of sight and the dust began to settle.
“Pa’s waitin’ on me,” Tom told Lonny and Harry as he turned to leave. “We’re workin on them chairs he’s promised Miz Taylor.” No one ever referred to her as “the preacher’s wife” anymore, Tom realized. She was always “Miz Taylor.”
Emma Baker was sweeping the porch when Tom passed her cabin. “Hey, Miz Baker,” he called, waving.
She waved back. “Hey, Tom. You see them revenuers takin’ Hube off to jail?”
“Yep, but he didn’t seem to think he’d be there long.”
“He’ll be in Atlanta a year an’ a day this time,” Emma Baker said confidently, coming over to the fence. Noticing Tom’s dubious expression, she added. “Miz Taylor said she’d ask the preacher to see to that. She don’t cotton to wife beaters no more ’n he does to moonshiners.”
So that was how Emma got word to the revenuers, Tom thought as he continued up the mountain. Imagine Emma turning Hube in! Who’d of thought she had it in her?
The rest of the way home, Tom silently rehearsed the way he’d tell his news. When he walked into the cabin, Pa looked up and growled, “What took you so long?”
“First I got caught by a revenuer, an’ then I watched Petey Hudson an’ Cory raid Hube’s still. Here’s your tobacco.” Tom tossed it to him and sat down on a stool by the hearth. “Now, what you want me to do?” he asked.
“I want you to tell me the story you been practicin’ all the way up this mountain,” Pa said irritably, “an’ I want you to peel them white oak splits for my chair seat while you’re tellin’ it.”
When Tom had finished his account of the raid, Pa said, “Served him right. Emma should of done it years ago.”
She couldn’t very well have done it before Mrs. Taylor and the preacher came here, Tom thought. He worked a few minutes in silence before he looked up and said, “I’d like to try carvin’ somethin’ along the back of one of them chairs, Pa. Along there,” he added, pointing to the top of the chair back Pa was working on.
“Before you try that fancy stuff, you gotta learn how to choose your wood, an’ weave the seats, an’ fit tight joints, an’ all the rest,” Pa said sternly.
By the time he was a man, Tom thought with satisfaction, he’d be making chairs as fine as Pa’s. Even finer, because he’d carve them all, each one a little different—unless, of course, they were a matched set.
A shout brought Tom back to the present. He went to the window, hoping it was Andy coming to see how Pa made chairs, but it wasn’t. “It’s Preacher Taylor,” Tom said, going to the door.
“I been expectin’ this,” Pa muttered, standing up, “an’ I’m ready for him.”
The preacher grasped Pa’s hand and pumped it up and down. “Congratulations, Higgins,” he said heartily. “I always knew that with God’s help you could do it.”
“It’s my boy, here, that helps me. Preacher,” Pa said, putting a puzzled look on his face, “an’ I been makin’ chairs off an’ on ’most all my life. ’Course, I ain’t never had a chance to sell none ’til Miz Taylor got her—uh, her craft co-op goin’,” he added, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar words.
“You know very well my congratulations are for choosing the straight and narrow path,” the preacher said, still smiling. “If I never achieve anything else in my ministry here, I’ll feel I’ve succeeded,” he added proudly, warming his hands at the fire.
“An’ what exactly do you mean by that?” Pa asked.
Tom glanced at Preacher Taylor, but it was obvious the man hadn’t heard the warning note in Pa’s voice.
“Because of my influence, Hube Baker’s on his way to jail, and he’ll be tried in a county far enough away that no one there could possibly be one of his customers. And the king of the mountain moonshiners”—he gave Pa a little bow—“has given up his evil practice for good.”
“You’re dead wrong about a couple of things, Preacher,” Pa said curtly. “What I done wasn’t evil, an’ you had nothin’ to do with my givin’ it up. Nothin’ at all!”
Tom and the preacher both jumped when Pa thundered his last words, punctuating them by jabbing his index finger at the preacher.
Preacher Taylor swallowed hard. “But I thought—”
“I don’t care what you thought. Ain’t no man on this earth could force me to give up makin’ moonshine—no preacher, no sheriff, no judge. An’ there ain’t no law could make me give it up, neither. You understand that?”
The preacher nodded.
“I decided on my own to give up moonshinin’, an’ don’t you forgit it.” Pa threw his knife down on the curls of wood that littered the floor around his shaving horse and stormed out of the cabin, leaving the preacher staring after him. Tom didn’t know what else to do, so he picked up the knife and put it on the mantel.
“At least he told the truth when he said no judge could make him give up making moonshine,” the preacher said bitterly. “You and I both know he broke his solemn word to the judge in Buckton.”
“That ain’t so. Preacher Taylor,” Tom protested. He held up his hand when the preacher started to interrupt. “He promised he’d never make com likker again, and he didn’t. He made fruit brandy instead.”
The preacher stared at Tom for a moment, speechless, and then leaned against the mantel, his shoulders shaking. Tom was aghast. And then he realized the preacher wasn’t crying—he was laughing. Laughing?
“Well, Tom,” the man said when he could speak again, “that should be a lesson to me.” When Tom looked at him blankly, he quoted, “‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’”
Tom wished he’d just say what he meant instead of quoting from the Bible.
“You see, Tom,” Preacher Taylor explained as he sat down in the rocking chair, “I was so proud of myself, thinking I’d influenced your father to give up his e—to give up moonshining, that I let myself in for a lot of embarrassment.”
Tom nodded, understanding now, and the preacher said ruefully, “All my preaching, and all my talking, and all my work to get the sheriff out here and P. D. Hudson on the job, and then I find out your father decided on his own to give up moonshining. How did that happen, anyway?”
“You’ll have to ask him.” Tom didn’t think it was the preacher’s business how that had happened, but he wasn’t going to say so.
“Have to ask me what?” Pa asked, coming inside with an armload of wood for the fire.
“To ask you why you decided to give up moonshining, June,” the preacher said.
Pa set down his load of wood. “You know, Charles, that dadburn Pro’bition rained stillin’ for honest men.”
“I don’t quite understand,” Preacher Taylor said, frowning.
“The moonshine goin’ out of this holler nowadays will rot your gut, if it don’t kill you first,” Pa said. “Before Pro’b
ition, there was some bad whiskey made ’round here, but it was made honest. It was bad ’cause the men makin’ it didn’t have no skill. They wasn’t raised up in the moonshine tradition, with fathers teachin’ sons down through the generations an’ takin’ pride in their craft.”
Pa paused, and Tom stared down at his feet. A feeling of regret crept over him.
“They was usin’ sugar an’ yeast instead of makin’ pure corn whiskey,” Pa went on, “an’ sometimes scorchin’ it a little ’cause they was careless, but it wouldn’t of hurt you none to drink it.”
The preacher frowned. “But I don’t understand how Prohibition made things worse.”
Tom looked at him in surprise. The man seemed to be listening—listening and trying to understand. “I’ll tell you how, Preacher Taylor,” he said. “A bootlegger came in here an’ told folks how to make more whiskey faster, an’ he told ’em all kinds of stuff to put in it to trick their customers into thinkin’ it was better ’n it was.”
The preacher ran his fingers through his hair. “I can see how this happened, human nature being what it is, but I still don’t understand why it made your father give up making moonshine.” He turned to Pa and said, “I’d think the liquor you made would have been in great demand if no one else’s was worth drinking, June.”
“It was,” Pa agreed. “It was. But them other fellers had gave moonshinin’ a bad name.”
“So you decided to give it up,” the preacher said, wonder in his voice. “I decided to give it up.”
Tom frowned. Pa might pride himself on always telling the truth, but saying things so a person got the wrong idea wasn’t all that much different from lying. Pa could have just told the preacher his reasons were private. But then, of course, he wouldn’t have felt so clever.
“Well, Brother June, I’m glad you’ve stopped, whatever the reason,” Preacher Taylor said, standing up and holding out his hand again.
Pa grasped it without hesitation. “Makin’ chairs is a lot easier ’n makin’ moonshine, Charles,” he said, “but it sure ain’t near as excitin’.”
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