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Chapter 34
Mr. Reardon appeared more like he had when I first met
him, calmer, tie knotted in place, but still looked like he’d not had any sleep.
He said, “I found the two cars.”
I set my books down, and sank onto a kitchen chair while
Merritt inspected him much like I’d seen him study his base-
ball cards.
I said, “Did he come for his?”
“Eventually. We staked out the area, and the man you iden-
tified as Martin Murry came out of the woods from behind
your house.”
I said, “That’s who he is.”
Mr. Reardon nodded, and said, “I know.”
“Where is he now?”
“I hoped he’d do something to give us reason to arrest him.
We didn’t have to wait long. He went to the vehicle, pulled
up the back seat, took out a jar, and started drinking. He was hauling a load when he encountered you.”
Mr. Reardon waited for me to respond. I could’ve laughed
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337
at the idea of Martin Murry drinking our shine right in front of Mr. Reardon, and I had to control my expression.
I said, “He drank the entire time I was with him.”
Merritt fidgeted and Mrs. Brewer gave him the fisheye.
Mr. Reardon said, “Well, he sure didn’t act like the man I
knew. He started ranting about how he’d lost everything be-
cause of your family. How your family was finished. When he
got in the car, intending to drive off, that’s when we got him.
He tried to tell us he was confiscating the vehicle as evidence, but I’d heard enough out of him to question him. I took him
into Wilkesboro, and we got the full story there.”
I began to have hope this was all going to be over, and
I said, “Did you ask him about Mama, what happened that
day?”
“I did. He seemed surprised I knew her name. I didn’t tell
him how I came by it. He said he was only doing his job,
that he’d told her to move away from the still, and she’d not listened, had the nerve to laugh. In his words, she said, ‘The day I ever listen to the likes of a Murry is the day I’ll die.’ He pulled the trigger, and well. You were there.”
I nodded. “But we’ve never heard about him.”
“Martin Murry’s grudge also has to do with an arrange-
ment his own daddy had with your father. After your mother
died, your father went to Leland Murry, said he wasn’t a killing man, but that there needed to be reparation for what
happened. Your daddy gave him the chance to take care of
it. Leland Murry arranged for Martin Murry to get another
name, then sent him packing with nothing but that, told him
Wilkes County and surrounding counties were off-limits.
With a new name, he could make up his own history, and
he became a revenuer down in Alabama. I think it was on
purpose, with the intent to eventually get back at your fam-
ily. He’s simmered over this for years. Through the ATU he
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must’ve rekindled hard feelings. He somehow finagled it so he was assigned here.”
This must’ve been what Daddy had talked about when he
said Leland Murry had shown Mama some respect right after
she died. Martin Murry had been disowned on account of
her. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
He finished with, “From the way he makes it sound, none
of his family liked the idea of somebody taking what they
thought was theirs, and theirs alone.”
I said, “We’ve heard about it all our lives. Right, Merritt?”
Merritt raised his prosthesis. “This is on account of them.”
Mr. Reardon sounded surprised. “How’d that happen?”
Merritt said, “They run us off the road one night. My arm
got broke, then infected. Had to be taken off.”
I said, “They got ahold of our cousin, branded him. Put an
M on his chest. They also burned our uncle’s house down.”
Mr. Reardon said, “That house that caught fire a few
months back, just down from your place?”
We nodded.
He said, “I’m wondering now if most of this was all of his
doing.”
I said, “Ain’t a one of’em ever not cause some sort of grief around here.”
Mr. Reardon said, “That will hopefully improve. Espe-
cially now.”
I said, “I guess he’s the reason Daddy got caught too.”
Mr. Reardon shook his head and said, “No. That wasn’t
him.”
Merritt’s chair scraped the floor, maybe an attempt to kick
me under the table, his way of saying, See? It was you all along.
I went still, my hands knotted in my lap, head down, and I
waited for Mr. Reardon to say so.
He said, “That would’ve been because of your uncle.”
I exhaled.
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Merritt, his voice sounding doubtful, said, “Uncle Virgil?”
“Yep. He showed up at our office one afternoon, yelling
about the Murrys, pounding on my desk. He was so lit we could smell it coming off him. After he left, we kept an eye on him, thinking he’d lead us to something. Sure enough, he went to
that still site not too long after he’d been in. We were about to nab him, but he got spooked. He took off through the woods,
and although we waited for him to come back, he never did.
But now we had the location, so we hung around, knowing
someone would return. It ended up being your father.”
I remembered how I’d felt watching them take him away
while I hid. Uncle Virgil had bragged how he’d taken care of it. He sure had, knowing it had to have been his fault Daddy was caught. But all he’d worried about was if Aunt Juanita
could tolerate him if he went to jail. I felt somewhat vindicated, finally.
I said, “What’s gonna happen to Martin Murry now?”
“He’ll go to jail for a long time. He’s been straddling the
fence as a revenuer under a fake name. Plus, running liquor.
That’s serious.”
Martin Murry had said to me, You can’t run in both directions, and he’d been doing that very thing himself.
Mr. Reardon said, “I ought to let you know, I spoke to your
father about what’s been going on here. I asked him to tell
me about Martin Murry, and he gave me the same account
of what took place with your mother and what he and Leland
Murry agreed on. He also said you never did act the same af-
ter you saw your mama die. Said he’d tried to understand you, and probably didn’t do such a good job.”
I had to blink fast. Aside from Mrs. Brewer, I’d never imag-
ined anyone else trying to understand me, much less Daddy.
I said, “I ain’t ever forgot it”; then I said, “Wait here.”
I got up and went into the green bedroom and got her pic-
ture. I returned to the kitchen and held it out.
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Mr. Reardon stared at it for several seconds. He said, “You
favor her. She was quite the legend around here; so I heard
from your father.”
“Yes.”
And I meant it for both parts of his comment.
He said, “Well, that’s about all I know. Do any of you have
any questions?”
Merritt and I looked at one another. It was so much to take
in, but I did have a question.
“What happened to our daddy’s car?”
“It was taken as evidence.”
He retrieved his hat off the table, stuck it on his head, and stood. We got up and followed him to the front door.
Before he went out, he said, “We’ll keep doing what we
can to clean up the county here. Keep an eye out for me, will you?”
I said, “I sure will,” only I didn’t intend it in the way he meant.
After he was gone, I said, “Wow.”
Merritt said, “No wonder we didn’t know Martin Murry.”
Mrs. Brewer said, “Shoot. I wished I didn’t know not one
soul in that family nohow.”
We stayed with Mrs. Brewer another week, and then went
back home. In time, I allowed what the Murrys had written
inside our house, whether Willie, Royce, or maybe Martin
Murry himself, to be painted over. We went back to making
the Sasser shine, using Mrs. Brewer’s still at first, and hauling it in her car like she’d suggested. Sometimes we used the truck, but we had to be careful because the back end sinking too low might create suspicion. Merritt said Daddy had told
him once that Troy Dalton could fix the suspension on just
about any vehicle that would hold it level even when loaded
down.
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I said, “But he’d have to have it a few days, and then we
wouldn’t have nothing to drive.”
He said, “Maybe we could get us a new car.”
“Maybe.”
School went on as usual, and the saga that was Cora and
Willie became the talk among students, especially after Cora got Homecoming Queen, and Willie, of all things, Homecoming King. It was bizarre how he was changed by Cora’s
influence. Even his clothes were different, penny loafers now instead of the Wearmasters, sweaters tied around his neck. He didn’t spare me a glance, and it was like he was afraid I might notice him.
Every now and then I’d see Nash Reardon in town and I’d
always throw a hand out the window, wave, and give him a
thumbs-up as if I approved of what he was doing. I also went in to see him for no other reason than to keep him from coming out to check on us and maybe catch something going on.
Times were changing. There was talk that one day brown li-
quor would be sold legally in Wilkesboro and North Wilkes-
boro, managed by the government. Wilkes County citizens
weren’t quite ready for that though, and kept voting to delay the permit of what was called a regulated Alcohol Beverage
Control store. This was good news for us, and we continued
to build on orders, while keeping Mr. Lewis, Mr. Denton,
and others supplied.
After a while my fear of being caught at the Big Warrior
subsided and we went back to using it, the dings and dents
in the side a reminder of my time in the woods with Martin
Murry. Being at the old still site brought back the past. Sometimes I’d get to thinking so hard about working with Daddy
out there, I would swear his voice echoed through the trees.
Then there were times I was sure someone lurked nearby. It
was always the idea of it being a Murry that haunted me, and I’d get scared enough to abandon the site, no matter what
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point we were at. This irked Merritt to no end because we
had to start with new mash all over again.
“How we ever gonna save enough for another car if you
keep wasting the corn we’re buying? That’s twice now.”
“I can’t help it; geez, Merritt, do you want us to get caught?”
“No, but ain’t nobody ever showed up. Ain’t ever been a
sign of a soul. You’re just spooked is all.”
I had to hope it would get better as time went on, this
jumpiness I had. It caused internal turmoil, and made it difficult for me to manage that other thing, what Mrs. Brewer
called “the monster.” It felt like one, the roaring inside me like some horrible beast, urging me to eat, eat, eat, then give it the relief it wanted. I hated it, and loved it. I obeyed it at times and ignored it at others, and that made it rage louder and longer.
Mrs. Brewer got to where she hovered over me like a bee
over a flower, maybe seeing something I couldn’t.
I finally had to say, “I’m fine; it ain’t all that bad anymore.”
She folded her hands in front of herself, and sniffed. She
didn’t believe me, and the worry lines on her brow deepened.
She said, “I’m only wanting to help you, child.”
I didn’t admit how uneven my heartbeat had become, even
as I lay in bed at night, or how unsteady my legs were, as
unreliable as balancing on toothpicks. I didn’t talk about how sore the insides of my cheeks were, the burning from my
chest into my stomach, the odd way my lower legs and ankles
swelled. I tried to do as she wanted, eating when she fixed
food and brought it over. She took hold of my hand one time, frowned at the scrapes on my knuckles, which were from my
own teeth from pushing my fingers down my throat. I pulled
my hand away.
“That’s from stacking wood crates.”
She only shook her head.
* * *
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Daddy came home in the late spring of 1961, almost un-
recognizable, gray, sad-faced, thin as a scarecrow, and wearing the clothes he’d had on when he was caught. They were
clean, but hung on his frame, flapping like curtains at an open window. It was good he was home, but strange too. I was
seventeen, and Merritt fifteen, taller than me by almost a foot.
Daddy wasn’t so keen at first on knowing about our shine op-
eration, while I was itching to tell him how I’d just hauled a hundred gallons into Winston-Salem two nights before.
He said, “So, tell me, Jessie. What do you want to do?”
This was puzzling.
“What do you mean, what do I want to do?”
“I been thinking. Had plenty of time for that, and such.”
He gave me a sad little smile.
Merritt said, “Hey, Daddy, watch this.”
He showed him how good he’d become at using his hook,
twisting it and going around the kitchen picking up this and that.
He said, “I even learned how to pitch left-handed. I ain’t as good as I was, but I been playing with some of the boys from school. I do all right.”
Daddy said, “That’s fine, Merritt. You’ve been working
hard at it; I can tell.” Then he turned back to me, and said, “I might’ve been wrong forcing you into something you never
wanted to do. I can see that now.”
“If you mean making sh
ine, I do like it.”
“You don’t need to pretend just because of what happened.”
“I ain’t pretending. Ask Merritt. Ask Mrs. Brewer. They’ll
tell you it was my own decision. I ain’t so bad at it either.
Maybe not as good as Mama, but I reckon I could be, one day.”
Merritt nodded, but Daddy held on to his guilt tight, like I held on to my own shame.
He gestured toward me, and said, “You look like you been
locked up.”
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Mystified, I said, “What?”
His hand dropped by his side, like it took too much strength to hold it up.
He said, “Pale.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine, just working a lot is all. Daddy, I made a haul over to Winston-Salem.”
“You ought not work so hard; slow down some.”
“I’m fine!”
Merritt said, “She ain’t neither; she’s puking in the toilet all the time.”
“No I ain’t!”
He said, “I can hear you, even when you turn them faucets
on, Jessie.”
I felt cornered. Mrs. Brewer could help me explain if she’d
been here, her kindness, and softer words would’ve made it
all right. I wasn’t up to arguing. It had been a late night, and Daddy had only come in just this morning, at the crack of
dawn, using his old key.
“I’m fine. I am.”
The two of them swayed, like they were pitching about on
the deck of a ship, but it wasn’t them. It was me. I placed my hand on the back of a chair, steadying myself.
I said, “Really. I am.”
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Epilogue
A few days later we went to Big Warrior and I explained to
Daddy how we’d transferred the materials from Blood Creek
and rebuilt it. I was panting by the time we walked in, but
if they noticed, they said nothing. He went over to the still, knocked on it, and smiled at the smell of the mash fermenting.
Daddy said, “I sure have missed that. Why’d you decide to
move it here?”
Merritt acted like he didn’t know, but I said, “I figured they wouldn’t come back after they’d caught you, and destroyed
the still that was here. Mostly though, because it was Mama’s favorite place.”
“That’s mighty good thinking on your part, Jessie. Don’t
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