He looked at Oral first, then Aunt Juanita’s back.
She said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset. You found
money. So what?”
She came back to the table and snatched my plate away be-
fore I’d eaten one bite. As if I cared. I fiddled with my fork, absently drawing circles on the table.
Daddy was like a hound in pursuit. “Well, I sure as hell
didn’t put it there.”
Uncle Virgil reeled into the house at that moment. “What’s
all the commotion? Could hear you all the way up the hill
there.”
Daddy held up the cash so he could see it.
Aunt Juanita said, “It ain’t got nothing to do with us, right, Virgil?”
Daddy said, “You know anything about this in my night-
stand?”
Uncle Virgil reared his head back, and scratched his chest,
ogling the money.
He said, “How much is it?”
Aunt Juanita had gone back to scrubbing the hell out of a
plate. Nobody said a word.
Daddy, his voice filled with suspicion, said, “Sure is some
strange things happening around here.”
I piped up, “I’ll say.”
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Chapter 20
First chance I had, I went to show Merritt Mama’s picture. I waited until Oral disappeared into the bathroom again, still suffering the aftereffects of what he’d drank.
At Merritt’s door, I was cautious. “You busy?”
He fiddled with the hook on the prosthesis, sulking. His
body still slanted in that new manner to offset his missing
limb, and all of this said he was too aware of his life gone off course. He kept opening and closing the hook with his left
hand, while turning it vertical, then back to horizontal. I took his silence as permission.
I said, “I got something to show you; it’s—”
He interrupted me and said, “This thing”—and he nodded
down at the prosthesis—“it’s supposed to work by me adjust-
ing it, then pulling on this here strap thing, and making this move with my shoulder, but when I put it on, I can’t ever get it to do right.”
I said, “You ought to practice.”
He said, “Easy for you to say.”
I thumbed the edge of the photo and he said, “What’s that?”
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“What I came to show you.”
I held it out. He set the prosthesis down and took the photo with his left hand. He studied the picture, frowning down at the image.
He said, “Who’s this?”
Chills raced up and down my back as I spoke. “Our mama,
Merritt. It’s her.”
At that, he brought the picture up again, even closer, his
brow knitted.
Another minute went by before he said, “Dang. She was
right pretty, wa’n’t she?”
I said, “Yeah, I think so.”
He nodded, and said, “You look like her some.”
My mouth dropped. “What? How?”
He studied me, then the picture, as if deciding on what he
saw.
He said, “Shape of her eyes, her mouth maybe. I don’t
know. I just see some of her in you.”
I reached for it, searching for the likenesses he’d pointed out.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He said, “People all the time are saying I resemble Daddy,
but I ain’t ever been able to see it when I look in the mirror.”
I said, “You ain’t gonna believe this. She made shine and
hauled it too.”
“She did?”
“That’s what’s in them jugs around her feet. Daddy said she
was about to haul it down to Charlotte.”
“Wow, that’s cool!”
“No, it ain’t, Merritt.”
“Like hell. Who else’s mama did such?”
I replied, “Exactly.”
Merritt’s voice turned hard. “Ain’t a damn thing wrong
with it.”
“Except it killed her.”
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“You don’t know that for sure.”
I didn’t feel like fighting over it, so when Oral entered
the room I didn’t pursue it. His color was so washed out, his freckles were like tiny splats of brown dirt on his face. He collapsed on his back on the bed. I was always mixed up about
him. On the one hand I felt a bit sorry for him, while I also felt he got what he deserved. He’d taken his T-shirt off, and the M on his chest was raised up, blistered, and raw. Honey glistened in spots, making the wound look slick. He lifted his head and stared at the letter stamped on him.
When he kept on, I said, “What’re you doing?”
He said, “Watching to see if any hair’s growed on my chest
yet.”
“It’s just a saying, Oral.”
Disappointment fell over his features, and he let his head
drop back onto the bed.
He said, “Oh.”
He took so many things in a literal sense, it was a wonder
he’d ever passed his grades in school.
He sat up and noticed what I held. “Who’s in the picture?
Is it a nekkid lady?”
I said, “No! It’s our mama, your aunt Lydia.”
“Lemme see it.”
I hesitated, but then handed it to him. It bothered me, her
picture in his hands. He might do something just out of spite.
He said, “Is that shine in them jugs all around her feet?”
Merritt said, “It sure ain’t sweet tea.”
Oral popped his jaw in an annoying manner while he ogled
the picture.
After a minute, I said, “Give it back.”
He acted like he didn’t hear me. I moved closer, my hand
out, but he turned away, and positioned his fingers at the top, like he’d rip it in half.
My breath caught. “Oral.”
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Merritt said, “Hey, give it back; it’s the only one we got.”
Oral paid him no mind.
He said, “It’s gonna cost you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m warning you. Give it
back.”
He smirked. “Five hundred dollars, it’s yours.”
“You’re such a little shit.”
“Maybe, but I’m a smart little shit.”
Merritt caught Oral off guard when he walloped his arm
with his prosthetic, hard enough to make him drop the photo.
The picture fluttered to the floor and I grabbed it.
Oral exclaimed, “Ow! Sons a bitches!” while Merritt stared
down at the wood arm like he was seeing it for the first time.
He held it up and turned it this way and that in wonder-
ment. “I ain’t never thought about how it ain’t got no feel-
ing to it. I mean, I can sometimes still feel my fingers, you know?”
Oral, rubbing on the area Merritt hit, said, “Well, I sure
can’t feel mine now. What’d you go and do that for?”
“Because you can be such a pain in the ass.”
Oral sat back down on the bed, a sullen look on his face,
and I could see that peanut brain of his working overtime at being ganged up on. I left the room and went to lie down
> on the couch, my head starting to throb. With the lamp on,
I studied Mama in the photo, staring at the jugs around her
feet.
Late in the night when all should’ve been quiet, I woke up
to Aunt Juanita and Uncle Virgil arguing. Their voices rose
and fell, vibrating off the wall and sounding like giant bees.
After a while, footsteps came down the hall and the shape of Uncle Virgil appeared in the living room doorway, with Aunt
Juanita right behind him, whispering. They came into the
room, and with the light still on they could see I was awake.
I sat up and said, “What do you want?”
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Uncle Virgil came closer and said, “You went in the room
today?”
“It’s my room.”
Aunt Juanita nudged him and said, “Which means yes.”
He said, “That money, we need it.”
“What do you want me to do, steal it back for you?”
Aunt Juanita bent down so her face was close to mine and
pointed her finger under my nose.
She said, “You listen to me. This is all your fault. We
wouldn’t be here but for you causing trouble. You need to get us that money. It’s the least you can do. And it ain’t stealing when it’s owed us. And if you can’t get it back, you need to replace it somehow. Maybe from up on that hill there.”
“I ain’t about to dig up my own daddy’s money for you.
You got your little mole to do that, remember?”
Aunt Juanita clenched her fists, and Uncle Virgil gripped
his head like it was about to come off his neck. She made a
frustrated movement, throwing up her hands as she turned to
leave.
“You can’t reason with her, Virgil. She’s too hardheaded.
Always has been.”
“Damnation,” was all he said.
They went back down the hall, Aunt Juanita sounding as if
she was scolding Uncle Virgil, her voice going up and down.
I turned off the lamp, and flopped onto my back again. I had almost drifted off when the back door squeaked open and
closed softly. I got up, crept into the kitchen, and looked out the window. In the moonlight, a tall, dark shape headed uphill, then toward the shed. It had to be Uncle Virgil. I eased the door open and watched as he disappeared around the back
of it. Aunt Juanita’s constant harping must’ve compelled him to go back outside in the pitch dark, the time of night when the most common critters moving were possums, raccoons,
and rodents. I put him in the category of a rodent.
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I shut the door, and went back to the living room to decide
who was worse of a traitor, me, for what I’d planned to do,
or them stealing from their own kin. My thoughts came to a
stop when the back door opened. Uncle Virgil went scooting
down the hall faster than normal. There came the click of
my bedroom door, the low murmur of voices, then silence.
Finally.
I’d been out with Daddy a few more times learning to drive
Sally Sue. One of those times he taught me how to do the
bootleg U-turn.
I almost refused when he began explaining what I would
do, and why I would do it, but he said, “Your mama, I’m telling you she could whip this car around on a dime.”
I quit protesting and learned. On that particular trip, he’d made a comment that buried its way into my head where it
echoed loudly.
He’d said, “You’re a natural, like she was. You got a feel for this car, an ability like she had. Shoot, you might come to be as good at driving as her.”
I didn’t know what to think anymore. I was getting so con-
fused about all of it.
One morning, Uncle Virgil and Aunt Juanita acted sub-
dued, communicating through odd looks mostly. Oral wasn’t
behaving right neither, sitting at the table, and picking at his scabby wound, while not talking much. Highly irregular, all
of it.
Daddy, talking to no one in general, said, “I’m going to get Big Warrior going, got corn to haul in.”
Uncle Virgil nodded, and Aunt Juanita said, “That’s nice,”
like Daddy had said he was going to Sunday school.
Daddy said, “Jessie, how about you come with me? I could
use some help since your uncle Virgil’s going looking for a
job today.”
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My initial reaction was to balk, to throw up barriers and tell him no, but out of the blue, I found myself in this weird place, like I had to allow him a tiny bit of loyalty against the wrong being done by Uncle Virgil behind his own brother’s back,
while also struggling with what I’d learned about Mama.
I sighed, and said, “All right.”
Uncle Virgil rubbed his hands together, and said, “Yeah,
heard about some possibilities up near to Adley.”
Daddy said, “Good, good.”
Merritt didn’t bother to ask if he could come with us. He’d
given up on Daddy letting him do much of anything right
now. The both of them were already butting heads over Mer-
ritt’s refusal to use the prosthesis on a regular basis. Daddy thought more harm would come to him, as if the loss of his
arm made it impossible for him to function in the world, like a baby bird with a broken wing.
He’d said, “Son, you’re at a disadvantage right now.”
Merritt adopted Oral’s behavior and sulked.
Daddy and I went outside and, as had been his custom of
late, he tossed me the keys. We rode with the windows down,
going south on Highway 18. We had the radio off, not talk-
ing, just riding. It felt good, although I wished I’d put my hair into a ponytail. It was flying around my face, and every time I reached a hand up to brush it behind my ears, I came away
with a few strands I released out the window, floating off my fingers like threads in the wind.
Daddy said, “Why’s your hair coming out like that?”
“Everybody loses a little bit of hair.”
“Not like that.”
“It’s nothing.”
He went back to gazing out the window, slouched in the
seat, falling silent once more. I turned onto the small side road off Highway 18, and after a few miles there was the familiar curve where a pathway sat tucked away. The tracks were hid-Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 208
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den, barely visible unless you knew how to find them. I put
on the brakes, turned, and soon the shade of the trees cooled the air. Undergrowth scraped the bottom of the truck as I
maneuvered a section and the truck jostled us back and forth.
We bounced over ruts and roots until I finally came to a stop near a thicket of mountain laurel. I parked and we got out.
We hefted bags of corn out of the back, one apiece, and began walking in, him in front, me trailing after, struggling a bit with the weight of what I had. This was when Daddy offered
me another tidbit about Mama.
He said, “She liked coming to Big Warrior best.”
I tried to stay calm, but the “why?” came out as a shocked
little gasp.
He
gave me an assessing look before saying, “The creek was
closer, and she could cool off in that area that pools sorta deep at that one end.”
He shifted the corn on his back. Here he was, dropping
bread crumbs while I was starving to know her. I wanted to
understand everything and as fast as possible, not unlike the way I ate sometimes. Closer to the site, Daddy set down his
sack of corn, and motioned I should do the same. Silent, we
observed the surrounding woods from the left to the right.
Big Warrior Creek ran fast, and the water rushing over the
rocks muffled the birds calling out to one another overhead.
We waited several minutes before advancing a few feet, and
waited some more. We did this a few more times, until fi-
nally, the still was in view, where all looked fine.
Out of the blue, Daddy whispered, “Got something I’m
needing you to understand. It’s about your mama, an arrange-
ment I made after she was gone.”
I whispered back, “Okay,” sounding calm, but in a turmoil
over what he’d said.
He said, “Let’s get the still going, and we’ll talk about it.”
I nodded, and he held his finger to his lips, then pointed
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at the site, indicating he would go the rest of the way first and for me to wait until he gave the all clear. I nodded. He proceeded with care, head swiveling. He got to the point of
no return, that critical fifty feet, and finally, he was right at the boiler. He faced me, and went to lift his hand in a signal, when movement in the woods beyond stopped me. To my
horror, the man with the patch over his eye stepped out from the cluster of bushes behind the still. He held a pistol, wore a strange smile. The urge to yell a warning rose in my throat, but it came instead from the expression on my face. Daddy
spun around to face the man as I ducked into the underbrush.
Peering through leaves and branches, I watched in disbelief as the very thing we’d avoided all our lives began to unfold. The man kept the gun aimed at him, but Daddy made no move to
run. Then, Nash Reardon and another agent came forward.
The man with the eye patch said, “Well now, look a here
who done got caught finally after all this time.”
The man’s comment explained why he’d acted like he had
that day when I told him my last name was Sasser. He knew
Daddy somehow.
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