Uncle Virgil said, “The way we act?”
I said, “I reckon it shouldn’t bother nobody getting shot at, or thrown in jail, noooo, it’s just a game is all.”
Merritt mumbled his favorite response, “Oh brother, here
we go again.”
Five pairs of eyes turned to me, like I was a stranger among them.
I stood my ground. “Ain’t it right? Nobody here thinks it
matters.”
Uncle Virgil put his hands on his hips and poked his rear
end out. He waggled a finger at Daddy like he was scolding
him, and at that, the men and boys laughed. Aunt Juanita
faced the screen door again, ready to leave now they had what they needed. I fumed. This was typical of how it went when I got, as Daddy would say, up on my high horse. Their laughter followed me down the hall as I escaped. I went into the small bathroom and splashed water on my hot face. I brushed my
hair, and put a headband on to hold it back. I bent forward
toward the mirror and rubbed at the two frown lines in the
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middle of my eyebrows. Uncle Virgil’s truck started, making
the small bathroom window vibrate. The sound faded, and I
was glad they were gone.
I went back into the kitchen in time to see Daddy going
out the back door. He would hide the money, maybe in the
shed, or in the old outhouse. He didn’t trust banks. His mama, Granny Sasser, had been the same way, keeping jars filled
with coins and bills buried in various spots only she knew.
One day he found her out in the backyard, keeled over under
the clothesline, still holding on to a jar filled with cash. She’d had a heart attack and the story goes him and Uncle Virgil
used that money to bury her, then searched, trying to locate where she’d hid the rest. They found some, and split it, but both contended there was a good chance more was out there,
somewhere. Merritt was all the time digging in the yard, like a pirate hunting buried treasure, whereas I’d come to look at liquor profits as dirty money. I wanted none of it, yet it was as if I was surrounded by its very existence, even down to the very ground I walked on.
Daddy came back in a few minutes later, held out his hand,
and said, “Here.”
In it was a ten-dollar bill. I made no move to take it, but
Merritt did and Daddy gave him a look.
Merritt said, “Why can’t I have it if she don’t want it?”
He ignored that and held it out again. “Jessie. I ain’t having people think I don’t provide for you when you’re about to bust out of what you got on.”
It hadn’t helped one of my teachers sent a note home say-
ing I needed to come to school in proper-fitting clothes. If Aunt Juanita knew about that she’d have felt vindicated for
her comment.
I said, “I ain’t got no use for bootleg money.”
“Jessie.”
“What?”
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THE MOONSHINER’S DAUGHTER
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“How do you know where this came from?”
“You just carried a bunch of it out the door.”
“For all you know, this very bill was took out of my wallet
from my other job.”
“It ain’t from your other job.”
“Well, I suggest you stop eating then. I’m the one put-
ting food on the table and evidently it don’t matter where it really comes from.” Daddy kept on. “Them pork chops last
night? I noticed you enjoyed them. I bought them with boot-
leg money. Yeah, you ate the hell out of’em.”
I was suddenly very conscientious of my physical form,
fleshy thighs, hefty middle, and overly large breasts. I stared at a corner of the kitchen ceiling and noticed a cobweb.
He went on. “You want for things to be harder maybe.
Not have that kind of food to eat. And here I go again, try-
ing to give you money for nice clothes, but you won’t take
it. Instead, you want to go around without a decent thing to wear, going about looking like a hobo. You’re making me
look bad.”
I said, “It ain’t me making you look bad if people think like that.”
“I work hard; that’s all that ought to matter. After all, it ain’t nothing but money, Jessie.”
“If that’s true, why can’t your job in Wilkesboro be enough?
Why can’t you just do that, instead of using it to hide behind?”
Merritt sat with his shoulders hunched, head down. I didn’t
need to see his face to know his opinion. Shut up, Jessie.
“I make hundreds of dollars a night doing this”—and
Daddy waved the ten dollars—“while I only make forty dol-
lars a week being a mechanic. It don’t take much ciphering to know what’s what. I pay bills on time, and have had that job for twenty years.”
He was right. Unlike Uncle Virgil, Daddy handled finances
carefully. We had electricity that didn’t get shut off, that TV
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he was still so proud of, and a bathroom with running water, sink, tub, and a toilet. While our house was old and dilapi-dated on the outside, and needed a paint job, that was for appearances only. He had money to do anything, but he let it
set ramshackle and run-down on purpose. While everything
was nice inside, he made sure we came off as dirt poor to
anyone coming up the drive, meaning if there was a raid, we
sure didn’t look the part of successful bootleggers. Junk was piled up in the yard. Tires, parts to tractors long gone, an old lawn mower, the rusty fender off of one of them running cars, other odds and ends.
He drove a beat-up Ford truck about town and it was what
he let me and Merritt drive too. He didn’t care if it got ac-cidentally backed into a tree, which Merritt had done a few
times when he was about eight and could barely see over the
back seat. Sally Sue was a whole other matter. That was a
hulking tank of a car and in good shape. It was so fast, he was a blur going down the back roads of Wilkes County. He kept
her out of sight behind the house in an old shed.
“Can’t you ask for a raise?”
He gave a short laugh. “That forty bucks is with the raise I got earlier this year. It ain’t nothing to be ashamed of, Jessie, what we do. Our family’s been doing it a long time.”
“If there’s nothing wrong with it, why’re we always sneak-
ing around?”
I glared at him, and it was like one of them old Westerns,
locked in a standoff, one or the other about to pull the trigger. He was about sick of me and my constant rub, like a pair of shoes that didn’t fit. He stuffed the bill back in his pocket and walked back outside. A few minutes later his truck went
down the drive, on his way to the job in Wilkesboro, and we
had to get to school.
I said, “Maybe I’ll just quit eating then.”
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Merritt got up, a disgusted look pulling his face down.
“You ain’t never gonna stop.”
He went to get his books while I started thinking about
me sitting at the table with my empty plate in protest. Food I would have surely cooked passed right under my nose.
Mashed potatoes the w
ay I liked, creamy with little pools of warm butter. Fried chicken on a platter, crispy and hot, and beside it, another bowl filled with rich, brown gravy. Fresh corn. Tomatoes. Warm biscuits and pear preserves. My stomach growled. There happened to be a chocolate pie sitting on the lower shelf in the refrigerator. I opened the door and bent down to swipe my finger through the whipped cream.
From behind me came, “I told you so.”
Embarrassed, I straightened up and said, “It ought not to
matter to you what I do or don’t do.”
“It don’t.”
Merritt went outside, and I stared at the pie a second longer before I shut the refrigerator door. I picked up my books and followed him. He was already at the end of the drive, and
when I approached, he kept his back to me like I wasn’t there.
It was April, and still cool with the sun not giving much
warmth, but suddenly, I was hot. I ain’t embarrassed, I told myself, while knowing very well my own brother was ashamed
of me because I was fat. The bus pulled up, and the doors
swooshed open. He bounded up the steps and had a choice
of sitting with Curt Miller, or Abel Massey, his best friends.
I searched for Aubrey Whitaker, and when I saw her she slid
over, patting the spot next to her. Relieved, I dropped into it, and didn’t speak.
She said, “What is it?”
She had large brown eyes like a fawn, silky black hair cut
in a bob and always perfectly rolled in a pageboy. She was
thin as a vine. Aubrey had been my friend since we were
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seven years old. They’d moved here from Charlotte, when her
daddy accepted a position as the minister at the Shine Moun-
tain Episcopalian church. As we’d grown older, I began to see how different it was in her family, how they led a respectable life, with her father steering his congregation to Jesus, and her mama, sweet and kind, if a little strange. I’d sometimes wished I was Aubrey for all them reasons, but mostly because she didn’t look like me. To her question, I shook my head.
She insisted, like I knew she would. “What? ”
“Just the usual.”
“You want to talk about it?”
She reminded me of the school counselor sometimes.
“Not really.”
She huffed loudly and flipped her hand. When I got
grumpy, she got impatient. We gazed out the window, nei-
ther of us speaking. While I usually told Aubrey everything, I’d never before talked about how I was unhappy with myself.
I was afraid she’d get to thinking maybe I was right. That her time ought not be spent with the likes of me, and then she
wouldn’t want to be my friend, and where would I be? Try-
ing to find a seat on the bus, and eating my lunch at a table by myself, like scary Darlene Wilson with eyes black as night, who spent most of the time hissing and talking to herself and whose mama was said to be off her rocker.
The bus finished with stops and picked up speed as it went
along Highway 18 toward Piney Tops High School. Other
girls seated toward the front laughed without a care. There
they sat with their brilliant white bobby socks rolled down
to show slim strips of legs tanned from helping with family
crops and gardens. Their crisp ironed skirts and dresses made them look cool, and clean. They laughed and twirled gleam-ing pieces of curled hair, as carefree as leaves on the wind. I couldn’t imagine any one of them doing filthy work like stirring sour mash.
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My mood darkened.
Aubrey pointed at Cora McCaskill and said, “Gosh, she’s
got on enough makeup today.”
Cora had turned around in her seat to talk to the girl be-
hind her, and from where we sat, it was easy to see the blue eye shadow clear up to her eyebrows. She was very popular, and could get away with it. She wore new penny loafers, the copper coins glinting like she’d spent a few hours polish-ing them. Her daddy was one of the richest people in North
Wilkesboro. He owned a car dealership and his commercials
played on the TV all the time.
Aubrey stared at her intently. “Whore of Babylon.”
She would think that. She wished she could wear makeup,
but her strict religious daddy wouldn’t allow it, and she resented anyone who could.
She repeated herself, and when I didn’t respond she said, “I bet I know why she’s popular.”
I still didn’t reply and we rode for a while with me watch-
ing Aubrey watch Cora.
I finally said, “I might go on a diet.”
Her attention shifted back to me. “Huh? Why?”
Exasperated, I said, “Ain’t it obvious?”
She leaned toward me, and in a hushed voice like she didn’t
want anyone to hear she said, “Daddy doesn’t eat for days at a time on occasion, usually when he’s seeking knowledge and
enlightenment.”
“Enlightenment.”
“Yeah, you know, insight to a problem. It’s called fasting.”
Aubrey and her family were different, mainly because her
mama came from California and was a bit of a nut ball in my
opinion. She practiced something called yoga. I didn’t know
a soul who’d ever thought of twisting themselves into such a tangle, but her mama did and I’d watched her a time or two.
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seen her crack open a couple eggs and swallow them raw. As
soon as I’d said it, I began to rethink my declaration. Aubrey’s enthusiasm would only lock me into something I’d blurted
out to get her attention.
I said, “I don’t know. I’m just thinking about it.”
Once you talk about a thing, it’s like a commitment, and
before you know it, you’re getting asked, Have you started yet?
and, Why not? I went back to looking out the window, wishing I’d not brought it up, unsure I could hold myself to it.
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Chapter 3
The smell of steak and gravy. The sound of forks scraping
plates. Even their chewing. All of it grated, as I sat with a glass of water before me, reading the Wilkes Journal-Patriot while trying not to stare at their loaded plates. I was looking at the front page where it showed Senator John F. Kennedy at some
campaign rally in West Virginia with his brother Bobby by
his side. They were interesting-looking people, but what the article said wasn’t enough to keep my mind off what was going on around me. I’d somehow found the fortitude to do
what I’d told Aubrey, and had survived twenty-four hours on
water alone. It wasn’t easy watching them eat and my attitude was a little more than sour at this point. The day before, when I’d told Aubrey about dieting, Daddy had come home that
night and pointed about how he’d bought the food we were
eating with that “good ole bootleg money.” He and Merritt
laughed while I shoved my plate aside, got up, and started
washing the pots and pans. Daddy had tried to get me to sit
back down.
“Jessie. Jessie, come on, I was only playing.”
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I kept my back to them, pictured the meat gone green, the
squash and butter beans flecked with rodent hair, the biscuits filled with mealworms. The decision was mine to own, and
if Aubrey’s daddy got himself enlightened, maybe I’d get an-
swers for my own self.
This second night was harder though. I set the paper aside,
got up, and began washing. Both had finished, but remained
at the table. I removed their plates without making eye con-
tact. The chair creaked as Daddy leaned back to relax.
He said, “I need you over to Blood Creek with Merritt, see
how it looks while I make a quick run tonight.”
At the moment, I was not enlightened. I was light-headed
and irritable.
My answer was short. “I got homework.”
“It won’t take long.”
“It’ll take long enough.”
He got up out of his chair, and as he left the kitchen he said,
“Do as I say, Jessie.”
I so wanted that one last piece of steak and I’d been think-
ing about giving in and eating it until he said that. Merritt’s expression was gloomier than mine. With Daddy out of the
room he didn’t need to say or do anything for me to know he
was aggravated. It showed in the way he got up from the table, the chair shoved back harder than necessary. It was different between them. All Daddy had to do was tell him what he
wanted done and Merritt acted like he couldn’t wait to get on it—but he had his own reasons. He’d been wanting to do the
runs down the mountain and into the big cities, not just haul in supplies to the stills. Daddy was, at the moment, dead set against that notion mostly because of revenuers, and he sure wasn’t going to ask me, the wretched, disagreeable daughter.
It was enough we had to ride with him as deterrents now and
then, and he had to hear me complain about that on top of
everything else.
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Merritt waited by the door as I stacked dirty plates in the
sink and turned on the hot water. He tried to act tough, but with a trace of milk on his fuzzy upper lip I could only view him as my baby brother while also seeing how much he resembled Daddy with his dark hair brushed back off his fore-
head.
Defiant, he said, “I can do what needs doing.”
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