Moonshine and Manslaughter

by Ellie Moses

  I hadn't been to Kudzu's Kafe in a while, but the owner, Miss Merlene Overton loved decorating with the infamous vine. She loved the stuff so much she named her cafe after it.

  The parade ended and the crowd milled into the street, young children running about picking up all the candy the queen candidates had thrown out to them.

  I thanked Floyd and Zeke for their help. “I need to find Billy Jack and see what he thinks of Luke's plans. May have just been talk on Luke’s part.”

  The noise of sirens sent the crowd scattering as Sheriff Quinn appeared. Floyd pointed to the hardware store across the street. “Looks like the sheriff found him first, Jolene.”

  I dashed across the street just in time to see Deputy Carter tackle my cousin to the ground.

  Aunt Dixie's voice behind me made the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Sheriff Quinn better have the National Guard on speed dial. My aunt was about to put a whooping on him he wouldn’t soon forget.

  5

  I sat on the uncomfortable benches outside the booking room hoping I could see Billy Jack before they locked him up.

  Aunt Dixie was following Sheriff Quinn all around the small police station raising a ruckus fit to wake the dead. Granny Mack had caught wind of the arrest by word of mouth and came down to the police station. She tried to calm Aunt Dixie down, but even she threw up her hands after a half hour chasing behind her like a chicken with its head cut off.

  She came to sit with me instead and I told her in whispers about the story I'd gotten from Zeke and Floyd. Instead of helping me figure out this new development, she began eyeballing me. I felt like I was under a microscope. I ran my tongue over my teeth to see whether I had some lettuce stuck there.

  Granny Mack knitted her brows and ran a hand down my arm. She pulled her hand back like she'd been shocked. I remembered the small piece of summoning stone in my pocket. I stood, meaning to pull it out and she caught my hand before I could retrieve it.

  “I thought I warned you about that thing, baby girl. You can't go carrying it around everywhere. It's changed you.”

  I started to panic and she pulled me back down on the bench. No one noticed because Aunt Dixie was still raising Cain.

  “What do you mean it’s changed me? I'm still the same,” I said with bravado though my insides were as jiggly as Aunt Dixie's Christmas gelatin salad.

  I couldn't hide my fear from Granny Mack. She knew me too well. She took my hands and held them tight. "You are changed, my dear girl. The summoning stone that little sliver came from is the strongest I've ever come across. But the change isn't all bad. It enhances your power, but you’re not ready for that yet. That stone, the whole of it wherever it is, belongs to you.”

  You know that feeling when you’ve had the wind knocked out of you? The last time I’d had my breath taken away anything near like that was when Ray was still living. I blushed furiously to entertain such a thought with Granny Mack staring me in the face. I placed a hand on my chest and inhaled deeply.

  “How do you know such a thing belongs to me? Like you said, I’m not ready for that kind of power. I mean, I know I’m supposed to be, but I’ve got a long way to go yet.” Pleased with my speech, I thought the matter was put to rest. Granny Mack crossed her arms and began to rock back and forth a tiny bit. I knew I was in for a story.

  “Your mama was supposed to own that stone, but she died before it came to her. She wasn’t ready yet either. I wasn’t ready for all the summoning stones that belong to me. You may never be ready. It comes to you to reveal the depths of your power.”

  I must have looked like I was about to faint because she got up and got me a paper cup full of water. “Isn’t that why you said I’m not ready for that kind of power yet? Maybe my depths aren’t as deep as you think.”

  “I said you weren’t ready for it to enhance your power, not that you lacked power. You need to listen with an open heart, Jolene. Don’t listen for what you want to hear, listen for what is being said. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief that way.”

  Granny Mack was right. I wanted it to be true that I wasn’t a powerful mountain witch. That’s why I always performed silly little spells, easy magic.

  Sure I helped people and sometimes amused myself, but that wasn’t the type of magic I would need to command if the time ever came that I was the last of my line left walking the earth.

  Granny Mack was right. I wasn't ready to accept the truth, and Billy Jack's antics had provided great distraction over the years. I pursued his troubles instead of tending my own garden.

  “Be that as it may, there's still the fact that your grandson is about to be charged with murder. Someone has to figure this out cause Sheriff Quinn is happier than a fly on a cow patty right about now, even with Aunt Dixie raising the dead in his police station,” I pointed out as I watched the booking room door.

  “If I don't get her out of here, she may very well call up your late Aunt Ophelia and Uncle Earl.” Granny Mack left me standing there and went to rein in her daughter.

  I hadn't meant to be so literal about the dead, but Aunt Dixie was in rare form. I turned away as Granny Mack took her arm and moved her, with more than a little magick, towards the station doors.

  The booking room door opened and I pounced on Deputy Carter like a duck on a June bug. “He gets to see family before you take him back, and I'm family."

  He squared his broad shoulders and smiled at me as if my cousin's world wasn't crumbling faster than a sandcastle at high tide. “Technically, so am I.”

  I went to push past him to get to Billy Jack, but Deputy Carter caught hold of my arm. He wasn't rough about it, but I wasn't going to get in without his cooperation.

  If he hadn't been a Warlock, I could have easily distracted him. But we both knew the other's power and that we couldn't start a test of magick wills here at the police station.

  I felt Ray's ghostly presence all of a sudden and Deputy Carter must have as well. He let go of my arm. “I’ll give you ten minutes,” he whispered and glanced toward Sheriff Quinn.

  Ray waited in the hallway, his steady gaze pinned on Deputy Carter. I knew he envied the man and at times felt jealous, though there was zero reason for it. I felt nothing for Deputy Carter except a bit of wary indifference.

  Billy Jack stood when I walked in and tried to hug me, but he was handcuffed. Even though my cousin flirted with trouble as regularly as I breathed, it hurt my heart to see him like this. It would kill Aunt Dixie, and she'd kill me for taking his only allowed visitor slot.

  I sat in one of the two metal chairs in the room. I spoke with more confidence than I felt. “We ain't got much more than a few minutes and you've got to help me if we're going to get you out of this.”

  Billy Jack obediently sat back down and buried his head in his hands. Good. At least he remembered my instructions from the last time he was brought in by Sheriff Quinn. Those times he'd made bail, this time he wouldn’t be so lucky.

  The last time he’d been brought in for some petty crime, I had devised a plan where I cast a glamor about us so we appeared to be having a normal conversation.

  As I spoke, Sheriff Quinn, who now stood on the other side of the two-way glass with Deputy Carter, would hear that normal conversation. To him, my words would be nothing that might raise his suspicions.

  But Billy Jack and I could say whatever we pleased. It was an iffy use of bright magick, technically I was helping my cousin, but it was the kind of thing Deputy Carter could never do in his official capacity.

  “Let's cut to the chase here. Zeke and Floyd said someone else might be looking to frame you. Somebody like Luke Woolum. They overheard him and Sissy Prather in a shady conversation at Kudzu’s. You have trouble with Luke lately?”

  My cousin laughed bitterly. “That's a dumb question, Jolene. Of course I have trouble with Luke. That's nothing new. But I doubt he'd be smart enough to pull off a plot to set me up. He's no Warlock, he’s only regular folk and not the brightest bulb either.”

&n
bsp; I sighed in exasperation. “Do you have any better ideas?”

  He looked up at me with amusement. It irritated me to see he was nowhere near as upset as me or Aunt Dixie at his current situation. “Just let Mama handle this, Jo. She'll bail me out. We have the money.”

  That was true because of how good his shine business was, but I doubted he'd be offered bail until Monday, if at all. I’d learned Judge Maynard was the one who would set it due to Aunt Dixie’s bickering with the sheriff, and he was none too fond of our family.

  “I don't think Sheriff Quinn will see you walk on bail this time, nor the judge. Your only hope is if I can find another plausible suspect.”

  The door to the booking room swung open and Aunt Dixie stormed in with Granny Mack on her heels. Before I could get another word in edge-wise with Billy Jack, he was being hauled out by Sheriff Quinn.

  Aunt Dixie was screeching so loud, I had to cover my ears. Granny had encircled her with golden light to limit her power as a safety precaution. Aunt Dixie, frustrated by Granny Mack’s interference, yelled after the sheriff. “Delbert Quinn, I hope you gave your soul to Jesus because your butt is mine!”

  Luke Woolum’s place was five miles past Granny Mack's house. It was actually his daddy’s land, but Luke had moved from his family’s home in town after high school. Luke's daddy was the only doctor practicing in Devil's Elbow and had bought up acres as the years passed.

  Doc Woolum had come to the Appalachians as a young man fresh out of medical school. Serving a rural community was a way to have his student loans forgiven. He never left.

  Doc had hoped Luke would follow in his footsteps, but his only son cared more for muddin’ than medicine. Luke's truck still wore a layer of mud from the last time he'd gone out to Boggs Mud Hole. Me and Billy Jack used to go all the time when we were still in high school.

  As I parked my jeep past his falling-down mailbox, his thirteen coon dogs began baying in welcome. You could hear them dogs clear down on Main Street some days, that’s how loud they were.

  Luke came out on the porch barefoot wearing nothing but his jeans. Sissy pushed aside the curtains in the window beside him. I smirked as she hurried outside to lay claim on her man as if I'd come to lure him away.

  I could have been attracted to Luke, he was handsome in that 70s sideburns kind of way, but he could never hold a conversation near as interesting as the ones me and my ghostly love had all the time.

  “What brings you by, Jolene?” He drawled, his twang pronounced.

  I glanced at the Timex Granny Mack had given me my senior year. It was nearly five o'clock. I guesstimated Luke had probably been drinking since noon. About the time Billy Jack was arrested.

  I stopped at the bottom of his porch steps and looked up. "I figured you might like to know my cousin was arrested for murder today."

  Sissy snickered and I fought the urge to march up the steps and slap the silly right off her face. I could always hex her with my toad frog spell and have her break out in warts, but that was beneath me. Instead, I fixed my eyes on Luke, waiting for his reply.

  "Well now, that's a real shame. I always knew it'd come to this, though. Ain't no way that boy could keep runnin' shine like he was and not pay the piper, Jolene. Even you ain't that dumb." Luke crossed his arms and looked out over the cornfield that sat on the eastern edge of his property. It was brimming with new corn stalks this time of year. Anybody that made corn liquor always had them a good cornfield.

  I walked up the steps and sat down in the porch swing like I had an invitation, but neither one of them wanted me there. "I sure ain't that dumb, Luke. What I wonder is whether you are. Seems to me like you have reason to set my cousin up for a fall. Where were you the night that feller was killed?"

  Sissy placed her hands on her bony hips. They poked through her jeans at an angle as she walked over and sat beside me. I felt a tingle in my witchy senses.

  Luke sure wasn't magick, but I wondered if Sissy was. I didn't know her all that well.

  When she leaned forward in the swing and put her hands on her knees, I noticed the necklace that dangled in the gap at the neck of her tank top. I saw a glimmer of blue there. I breathed deeply and forced myself to meet her eyes.

  They were blue one minute and green the next. The colors shifted so fast, I wasn't sure of what I'd seen. The world around us shrank as she took my hand. Her voice was crystal clear in my head but her lips never moved. “Leave here and never come back. Next time, you won't live to tell no tales."

  I couldn’t tell up from down when she let go of my hand. My spirit felt like it had been given a supernatural wedgie. The coon dogs were baying loud enough to wake the dead and that’s all that brought me back to myself. I gulped in air like a drowning man and rose from the porch swing to get as far from her as I could.

  The woman gave me the willies. She used some kind of magick, but I didn’t think she was a witch. Maybe a nymph or a sylph with her changing eye color that had matched the sky and the water.

  Since the depth of Sissy’s powers were unknown to me, I put on a brave face. I wasn’t going to show my hand and let her know just how powerful I was as a mountain witch, though she probably already knew. I patted myself on the back for not using my toad frog spell on her earlier.

  I shivered as a waft of otherworldly cold air hit my neck. Ray had followed me out to Luke’s place and now stood behind me. I glanced at Sissy to see whether she had noticed.

  She leaned back in the porch swing and twirled a piece of her blue-dyed hair. Her lips twisted into a pout and then she blew a kiss my way. The heifer was flirting with my boyfriend!

  Ray moved from behind me and went to sit beside her. Now my blood was boiling, but he had turned and looked at me before taking a seat beside her. I knew that look. It was one he gave me when he thought I was being foolish.

  I turned my gaze to Luke, who was oblivious to what all was going on right in front of his mortal eyes. I fixed my mouth to drip honey instead of the venom I wanted to shout at Ray.

  “Luke, I ain’t trying to get nobody in trouble, but Billy Jack will stand trial for murder. Judge Maynard will deny bail and my cousin will be wrongly convicted. If you know anything that can help him, I wish you’d tell me. I’d be mighty grateful.” I batted my eyelashes and tried to look seductive.

  He laughed right in my face. “I ain’t got nothing to tell, Jolene, but if you think I’m gettin’ mixed up with a hippy witch like you, you got another think comin’. You are purty as a speckled pup, I’ll give you that, but Sissy done told me how you Bakers and Macks got magick in you. Explains how your cousin has been so good at runnin’ shine all this time.”

  I stood motionless, shocked that Sissy knew about our magick and realizing of course she would sense it being as she was a magickal creature too. Luke would never have figured it out on his own. I chose not to confirm or deny the charges.

  Instead, I laughed at him like I was three bricks shy of a load. “That’s a good one, Luke. You think Billy Jack runs shine better than anyone cause we’re all witches? I guess that’s better than ownin’ up to the fact that you are lazier than a hog in mud and would be beggin’ in the street if it wasn’t for your daddy.”

  He raised his hand, meaning to shove me backwards but Ray was between us before Luke could make contact. Instead of shoving me, his hand went right past my shoulder.

  Ray gritted his teeth and warned me to get back to my Jeep. “He’s a punk Jolene, but that girlfriend of his has some powers that might be dangerous. I can’t tell if she’s a nymph or a sylph.”

  I started to tell him I’d thought the same thing when he yelled for me to go. I turned tail and hurried down the steps.

  Sissy’s laughter followed me as the dogs set to baying again.

  By the time we got home, Ray was so agitated that Delilah started growling low in her throat til I thought she was going to flip the switch into painter mode.

  I was so danged tired I couldn’t take the drama so I shooed her downstai
rs with promises of snuggles at bedtime to appease her.

  Ray hovered around my little apartment making me edgier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Our run-in with Sissy Prather had added a new twist to the mix.

  “I know you got your back up, Ray, but I can’t stand much more aggravation.”

  He looked at me like I’d grown two heads. “What did you think was going to happen when you went out to Woolum’s place loaded for bear with no back up, Jolene? It’s untelling what kind of fire power that boy has and that girlfriend of his…she’s more dangerous than him.”

  Ray had part of the situation right.

  “Listen here now, I ain’t sitting around here waiting for Billy Jack to go to prison for life and I ain’t afraid of Luke Woolum either. Sissy Prather is another story. She threatened my life, Ray. Now, I don’t think she could kill me if she tried, but I sure don’t want to find out the hard way.”

  The air grew chillier as Ray sat beside me. I shivered and he gave me his best puppy dog eyes. The air grew a little less frigid when I place my hand over his and it sank through to the couch cushion below.

  “I’m sorry Jolene, but if you’re going to go around doing Sheriff Quinn and Deputy Carter’s job then you need to have me riding shotgun from here on out. I can protect you in more ways than you might think.”

  I felt terrible about worrying him.

  “What do you think Sissy is? I’ve never met a nymph or a sylph so I can’t say I’d recognize one from the other, but Granny Mack has some knowledge on the subject. Think I’ll take her fishing tomorrow and see what she has to say.”

  Ray laid his ghostly hand on my leg. “We’ll take her fishing tomorrow, right Jo?”

  “Right,” I said as I leaned my head against the couch where his ghostly shoulder rested, “now pull up Oh Brother Where Art Thou on Netflix.”

  “Netflix and chill, Jolene?” Ray said and laughed.

  I grabbed one of the many quilts Granny Mack had made for me over the years and snuggled up. “Hardy har har, Ray Dang Davis. You already provided the chill.”