“Run!” I hissed, and before we could get our feet under us good, a figure came running, bent at the waist like he had intentions of knocking us down the way a bowling ball smacks into pins. His hat was pulled low, and the dark pants and shirt made him look like a black ghost. We ducked to get out of the way, but I was grabbed, and squeezed so hard I squeaked. He let me go and I dropped to the ground with a thud, landing on my rear end. Merritt put his fists up like he was going to punch if he could get a swing in, only the man started coughing, and remained doubled over. Then he started laughing. We knew that idiotic hooting snicker. It was Uncle Virgil, stinking to high heaven, the faint odor of peaches coming off of him. He’d been into the peach brandy he favored.
He puffed and wheezed, and in between his gasping, he said, “Law, I pitched that rock behind y’all and you both ’bout lit out of here like the boogeyman was after you.”
I brushed my pants off and said, “You ain’t funny. Not one bit.”
Uncle Virgil, still laughing, said, “Well, well, if it ain’t the old sourpuss.”
Even Merritt was annoyed. “You scared the shit out of us.”
Uncle Virgil said, “That there was an ambush test. Hate to say it, but the both of you failed. Gonna have to report it.”
Still picking twigs and burs off my clothes, I said, “Ha-ha. So much for being discreet; for all that noise, we might as well send out invitations to where we are.”
Uncle Virgil said, “Well now, I think you done turned more sour since I seen you last. It ain’t possible.”
The tang of his breath overtook the cool, fresh air, and I waved my hand in front of my face. His answer was to reach into the pocket of his coat, and bring out ajar. He offered it and I pushed his hand away.
“You know I don’t touch that stuff.”
He said, “This’ll straighten you out, make you more pleasant so you can see the world right.”
“I doubt that.”
He tipped his head back and said, “I agree.”
Merritt said, “I’ll have some!”
I said, “No you ain’t neither. Easton won’t stand for it.”
Uncle Virgil took a swig and Merritt swallowed reflexively. I’d caught him and Oral sipping on ajar, the first off a run known as singlings. It’s nasty, bad stuff, not fit to drink, and they’d been halfway to being loaded. I told him I’d not say a word, long as he didn’t do it again. His head hurt so bad the next day, I think he’d learned his lesson.
Merritt pointed at the still. “It ain’t got but a day.”
Uncle Virgil said, “That’s real good. Them other two ain’t far behind. It’s gonna be one big steady stream out the pots and into pockets. Well, I reckon it ain’t nothing left to do here. Things set like they ought to be?”
Merritt nodded while I started winding my way through the trees. They followed behind me and no one talked. I speculated on whose property we were using this time. I mean, if you thought about it, everything from start to finish stunk of wrongdoing. If it weren’t for what we’d just tended to, I might could’ve enjoyed being out here where the dusky silhouettes of tall trees camouflaged human presence, where I could come close to believing I’d not been hunkered down near the stinking box. Slipping through the woods soundless, leaving no trace, I could even imagine, I wasn’t ever here.
We made our way back to the vehicles and left quickly. To my dismay, Uncle Virgil followed us to the house, and came right on in. He sat down on a kitchen chair with a thud, as if his legs give out. I caught that sharp odor again, and supposed he’d been at it all afternoon. His eyes were bloodshot, and his clothes disheveled. The knees of his coveralls were muddy, like he’d fallen down at some point, and a chicken feather was stuck to the back of his shirt. He was liable to pick an argument as he was wont to do when he’d had too much. If Daddy had been here, he’d tell him to go home and sleep it off.
I said, “Want some iced tea?”
In an overly polite, mocking tone, he said, “If’n it ain’t no trouble to you.”
Merritt sat across from him and said, “What’s Oral doing?”
“Your aunt Juanita’s got him tangled up with chores. He’s in a bit of trouble, you could say. Hell, we both stay in trouble.”
Merritt’s attention sharpened, and he leaned across the table. “Yeah? What kind a trouble?”
Uncle Virgil yawned, scratched at his belly, and said, “The kind he hates most.”
I set a glass of sweet tea in front of him.
I said, “You mean he’s been into the liquor again.”
Merritt said, “I wished I could do that.”
I smacked his shoulder and said, “No you don’t.”
He frowned at me. “Do too.”
“You know what Easton said.”
Uncle Virgil picked up the glass and drained it while Merritt leaned forward, eager to hear more, thinking he was missing out on what he viewed as fun. He waited for Uncle Virgil to elaborate.
Uncle Virgil hiccupped, then put his head down on his forearms. “You got anything for this popskull headache a mine?”
I opened a cabinet beside the sink and got out a packet of BC Powders. He sat back, then hunched over again, like he couldn’t get comfortable, and you’d think Merritt would see this as a lesson to be learned. Instead, he only looked disappointed he wasn’t getting more details about his cousin. Merritt conveniently ignored my animated gestures behind Uncle Virgil’s back where I made like I was buttoning my lip, hoping a lack of conversation would make Uncle Virgil leave. Uncle Virgil sat up, shook the ice in his glass, a rude way of telling me to get him some more. I poured it full again, and set the pitcher beside him, a little harder than necessary. He winced, turned a bleary eye on me, but I ignored the look. He unfolded the little wax paper packet, tipped the contents in his mouth, and took a big swig of sweet tea. I started washing the cold, now greasy plates.
After a while, he said, “Hey, sourpuss.”
I kept washing and rinsing.
“Hey.”
I put the plate in the drain.
“Hey, you know what? Hey.”
“What, Uncle Virgil?”
He sniggered, his laugh grating, and making my own head hurt.
He said, “You ever heard that saying ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds ya’? That’s something to think about.”
He had no inkling I wasn’t eating, so it was kind of funny what he said.
I stopped washing a plate, and said, “When I see what a fine example you set, maybe that’s got something to do with it, among other things.”
Merritt made some noise.
Uncle Virgil said, “Shoot. Lemme tell you what. Blame your aunt Juanita for that boy of mine liking this fine product of ourn, not me.”
“I can’t see how that’s true.”
“Why sure. She’s the one got him started on it. Used it ever since he was a baby. Teething, here come a little whisky rubbed on his gums. Started to coughing, here come a little whisky, honey, and lemon. Couldn’t sleep, here come a little hot toddy. You ask me, that’s why he’s got the taste for it.”
I waved a hand, dismissing what he said.
I said, “You don’t see Easton drinking.”
Uncle Virgil’s little buzz was wearing off and he said, “Nope. Not the Saint.”
Uncle Virgil slumped on the chair, in no hurry. It was true, many around here used whisky the way he’d described, and Daddy had him a reputation for doling it out to the elderly who couldn’t afford a doctor. Maybe it was true, it might help some people, but it sure didn’t make up for all the other goings-on.
Uncle Virgil burped, and said, “When did he go on his run?”
“Couple hours ago.”
He stood and said, “Reckon I’ll see him tomorrow sometime.”
Relieved he was leaving, I held the back door open and he wobbled his way out. I waited till he got the truck cranked, then shut it. Merritt hurried to escape to his room before I could get started in on about Uncle Virg
il’s downfalls. I tidied around the kitchen some more, and by then it was going on ten o’clock. I stared at the refrigerator, then opened the door. There was that one leftover steak floating in gravy. Why not? It would’ve been mine anyway. I reached for it, then remembered why I wasn’t eating. That piece of steak was stained by liquor money. I shut the refrigerator, got more water, and went to my room. I sat at the small wooden desk where the dim light of the lamp cast a yellow glow over papers I’d left spread out. I had trouble focusing on what was in front of me. English was not my favorite subject for one, especially when I was too tired, too hungry, to concentrate. I bent over the work anyway, trying to ignore my discomfort.
When the sound of tires squalling on pavement came, I got up and went to my window. Our house was set back on a hill, and although the road out front was too far away to be seen, we could hear vehicles as they passed by and when someone went into the curve too fast that was the sound we heard many a night. The clock on my bedside table said almost eleven. I pulled the curtain back, but all I could make out was my own reflection and the view of my room behind me. I reached over and turned off the lamp and looked out again, staring at the white line of gravel leading to the house, almost shining under the moonlight.
Within seconds came the low rumble of an engine, and the crunching sound of tires rolling over the shattered small stones. The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 slunk past the house, heading up the hill behind the house. Daddy didn’t have his headlights on, which told me he’d been avoiding someone. I exhaled, partly relieved, partly annoyed. While we stayed at odds, I still worried he’d get in a wreck, or something else would happen. For now, another night was over, and finished. I could go back to my desk, work on the assignment half-finished, and stew over what I couldn’t change. A few minutes later the back door opened, and then he was tapping on my door.
He said, “Jessie? You up?”
The strip of light below my bedroom door showed the shadowy shape of him blocking part of it. I didn’t acknowledge him. A sigh, and a soft good night came from the other side before he went down the hall.
Chapter 4
The next morning I would have bet it was the same ten-dollar bill lying only inches from the gap at the bottom of the door. Sometimes I thought Daddy did stuff like this on purpose to get me riled. I picked it up. Brand-new, crisp, stiff, and perfect. To my mind’s eye it should’ve been grimy and weather worn as the moldy contraptions that bubbled and burped their vile concoctions out in the woods. I was unwilling to fight with him this morning. I brought it into the kitchen and placed it in the tin behind the sugar canister where he’d eventually find it. Or Merritt.
He was sitting at the table asking Merritt how it went over to Blood Creek.
Merritt said, “Fine.”
Without thinking, I opened the metal bread box and stared at the loaf of bread, inhaled the yeasty odor before I let the small metal door slip from my fingers, rattling as it shut. I was absolutely regretting my impulsive decision now.
Irritable, I said, “If you call Uncle Virgil showing up drunk as a coot fine. Which is why Oral didn’t make it neither. Aunt Juanita kept him at the house punishing him for being drunk too. I bet that’s really what that money’s for. Uncle Virgil only wants it so he can hand it over to Aunt Juanita and keep her happy, and only time she’s that is when she gets to gallivant around town spending it.”
Daddy wore a white T-shirt, navy-blue work pants, and white socks. He smelled of aftershave and the bleach I used to wash the whites, mingled in with fresh-brewed coffee and cigarette smoke. He didn’t act too put out.
All he said was, “Never did have a taste for it, myself.”
I poured a cup of coffee and said, “If there’d been anybody around, we made enough noise to get their attention.”
Daddy pushed his chair back. “I’ll say something about it again.”
Merritt said, “I can’t see what’s so bad about having a little taste of it here and there.”
Daddy said, “I ever catch you, it ain’t gonna be a good day.”
Merritt, anxious I’d let on about his little escapade with Oral, gave me a sideways glance. I narrowed my eyes over the rim of the cup, letting him know I hadn’t forgot.
“I need the both of you to come with me later on this evening. It ain’t far where I got to go, but it’s down that road where Virgil said he’s heard them government agents have been seen.”
These rides we went on bothered me as much as making liquor, the idea being if revenuers were on the prowl, we would appear like a family riding to the store, or off to visit somebody. No call for suspicion, no cause to question.
Merritt said, “What time?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be done with ball practice. It ain’t till after supper.”
Daddy hesitated, but I had nothing to say, and he might have been surprised I didn’t pitch a fit. He went to put on his work shirt and shoes and left five minutes later, not a word about the money he’d left. Not a word about me not eating, not only the night before, but now. Maybe this was his new way of managing what he believed were my shortcomings: ignore them.
Merritt and I caught the bus, and I sank into the seat beside Aubrey, a hint of moisture on my upper lip and brow. The bus shuddered as it moved forward and so did my stomach. She didn’t act like she noticed my silence. She was more of the talker anyway, and was going on about some boy she was wild about, thinking he might like her. If she’d said his name I hadn’t heard it. The bus rolled along, my gut following every curve and dip in the road. Aubrey’s voice faded away. I gripped the metal bar on the seat in front of us, praying I’d make it to school without embarrassing myself by getting sick.
* * *
Mrs. Brewer, our school nurse, had seen a lot in her lifetime. Once a granny woman, she’d come from Grassy Mountain in the next county over to attend to students at Piney Tops after her husband died when his tractor flipped over on him in the middle of a tobacco field. It happened early morning right after sunrise, and she didn’t know. She didn’t go looking for him until he didn’t show up for noon dinner. Minor ailments like fever, dispensing bandages, and the occasional aspirin for some pain here or there was how she now filled her days. She had snow-white hair and looked to be in her seventies.
She scowled at a notepad and wrote my name down with some comment off to the side I couldn’t see well enough to make out. I’d only been once before, back when my stomach was cramping bad enough I couldn’t sit up straight.
She said, “What ails you this time?” as if I’d been coming to see her on a regular basis.
I didn’t look her in the eye. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? Mrs. Hardin thought you was ’bout to pass out.”
I said, “I’m on a diet.”
She sniffed. “Dieting. Hmph. You young gals sure is something else nowadays. Always trying some fool notion. You got to et. Dieting? More like starving yerself. Can’t be doing such or you get to feeling like this.”
I didn’t give her any response, and she said, “Wait here.”
Five minutes later she came back with a tray from the lunchroom and plunked it in front of me.
“Et.”
I didn’t want to eat, but given her tone, and the look she delivered, I believed I’d not be allowed back to class until I did. It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a carton of milk. My belly said yes while my head said no.
She crossed her arms and said, “I hope I ain’t got to tell you ’bout the gal who keeled over and died right in front of me when her fragile heart couldn’t take no more of her ‘dieting.’”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then et what I took the time to bring.”
The miracle that was simply food inside me soon eliminated the floaty spots, and my hands quit shaking too. Mrs. Brewer busied herself arranging gauze and pills in a small cabinet while I tried not to cram the food in too fast.
After a few minutes, she saw I’d finished and said, “Now. I know you got t
o feel better.”
“Yes’m.”
I was not lying.
“Good. Now get on back to class. If you want to go about it sensibly, there’s something called food a body needs. I want you to drink this.”
She dug around in an enormous pocketbook and handed me a paper packet. I stared at what was scribbled on the front, in her jagged, sharp writing. “Blessed Thistle Tea.”
She tapped it with her forefinger, the first knuckle joint twice as big as it ought to be, and said, “Put about a teaspoon in tea ball, bile, and drink it.”
I nodded.
“Hot, cold, with or without honey or sugar, however you want. It’s good for lots of ailments. Particularly the kind some of you seem to get these days with all of you caterwauling about weight. I ain’t never for the life of me ever heard of such.”
“Yes’m.”
She shooed me out of the tiny room, and slammed the door. I held tight to the packet as I went down the hall, and stopped outside the girls’ bathroom, wanting to get rid of the sandwich that burbled in my belly. The thick taste of peanut butter in my mouth almost made me gag. I’d tried eliminating peanut butter before, and it didn’t work well—at all. The bathroom door banged open and here came Cora with her best friend, Stacy McKinney. I turned sideways to let them pass and they breezed by me chattering like I wasn’t there. I went in, and stood over the toilet. The thought of forcing food up made me weak-kneed. This thing I did, it was hard. Today, there came a clear don’t. I left the bathroom, and by the time I got back to class the taste of what I’d eaten was gone and I wished for more.
That afternoon after school I changed into a pair of dungarees. I sucked in my belly to button them and pulled the zipper up. I got a belt, and cinched it tight around my middle, tight as I could get it. I stood, getting a tiny bit of relief from the gnawing ache with the pressure against my innards. I’d eaten that sandwich and now my stomach rebelled, wanting more food. After two days you’d think I would give up, but I couldn’t. I’d come this far, it had to matter. I fixed a quick supper, fried a few hot dogs, heated some baked beans, and popped open a can of biscuits. They ate and no one noticed I didn’t. I inhaled the aroma of food like smoke off of someone else’s cigarette. I brewed some of Mrs. Brewer’s special tea and drank a cup of it. I hid the packet in the cabinet, behind some canned goods.
The Moonshiner's Daughter Page 4