I said, “I don’t believe you.”
“It don’t surprise me none. It’s why I ain’t ever told you, but I’ve always wondered would you hate it as much if you knew your mama not only hauled liquor, she made it too.”
The sun slid behind the line of trees along the road and the evening air grew cooler, but what he’d said disturbed me to the point I went hot all at once, and had to swipe my forehead. Silence filled the inside of the car, neither one of us willing to speak anymore. While I didn’t want to believe it, given the bits and pieces of memory I had, and the few that had slipped through on occasion, maybe it was true.
Down the mountain we went, and when we came to Lore Mountain Road, Daddy said, “Turn here.”
I did as he asked, still silent, still stewing.
He said, “What’s your speed?”
Without waiting for me to answer, he leaned over to check the speedometer.
“Get her up to forty at least.”
I pressed the accelerator and the car responded, a forward sensation that reminded me of riding waves at the ocean. We’d only ever been once, sometime after Mama died. Daddy woke me early one morning, told me to get in the car, put Merritt beside me on the front seat, along with a pile of blankets, and then drove for hours. I slept off and on, and when I woke in the early afternoon, we were in this strange place with no trees, only tall golden grasses that waved in the breeze on a light brown sandy hill.
Daddy parked the car on the side of the road, and we walked down a rough wooden walkway, across another small sandy rise to face an endless expanse of blue-green water, with an edge of white foam that came toward us, then retreated. There was a different smell to the air. Instead of fertile, pungent soil, and comfortable dry breezes scented with the pine, cedar, and wildflowers I was accustomed to, there was a different sultry odor, one that was seaweed-scented, briny with an overlying fishy odor carried on warm, moist wind. I could hear a flock of birds overhead, calling to one another in a high-pitched cry, all of them white with varying colors of gray and black on their wings. They swooped and sometimes rode the wind, suspended against a blue sky before settling on the strip of sand.
Daddy waved an arm at the water, and said, “It’s the Atlantic Ocean. Wanna swim in it?”
I shook my head yes, and we’d spent the rest of the day doing just that, him tossing Merritt up and down in the waves, and showing me how to ride them. Although we’d never been back, I never forgot the sensation of being weightless as the swells of water came and went. We left once the sun rested on the edge of the water, turning the sea orange as if a fire burned just beneath the surface. It was a real good memory.
I came to a bend in the road and automatically slowed down, but Daddy said, “You’re paying too much attention to the curve right in front of you. Look beyond the hood; let your brain and reflexes tell you how to go in and out of those turns.”
I tried what he said on the next curve. The car responded and the tires didn’t even squeal. My fear of having a wreck dwindled as I maneuvered the next one, and the next, smoother each time. He didn’t say anything more about Mama, and I was too intent on driving, making sure I didn’t make a mistake while realizing after all this time the one thing he thought to tell me first was how she’d made and hauled liquor. What I had wanted him to say I didn’t know, but it wasn’t that. Maybe he could’ve told me how they met. Maybe he could’ve told me how much she loved me and Merritt. There was a lot he could’ve said, anything other than what he’d chosen.
At the end of Lore Mountain Road it came to a T, and he said, “Turn around and let’s go back. It’s getting on dark.”
I found a wide enough area on the side to do a three-point turn without too much problem, and went back the way we came.
We were almost back at the house when I finally said, “Why would she want to do that, of all things?”
“She did it all her life. Her family, they had their reasons.”
“I sure can’t see no good reason.”
I’d made my own sacrifices is the way I saw it. I’d done what I was told even though I hated it. I’d fought against it at every opportunity, yet here I was finding out she’d been as involved in shine making as much as him.
He said, “Like I said, you don’t know all there is to know.”
He was quiet after that, and a few minutes later I pulled into the drive, and drove up the hill to the shed.
I put the car in Park, and when I pulled on the door handle, he said, “Wait.”
He shifted on the seat and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. Tucked behind his license he took out what I thought was only a creased piece of paper, and instead it was a black-and-white photograph. He held it out to me. The damage from carrying it the way he had for years and years made it difficult to make out the woman’s features clearly. With the interior light on, I brought it closer to my face in order to study it.
She’d paused in a pocket of light, captured by a heavenly sunbeam. She leaned against a car, the very car we sat in, newer, but one and the same. She held a cigarette in an elegant manner, one hand gripping an elbow, the other by her face, fingertips hovering near a high cheekbone. Her light-colored hair caught by a breeze had lifted about her face to frame it, and she smiled big at whoever took the picture. By her feet were clay jugs. Lots and lots of clay jugs. She had a booted foot propped on one with a look I could only describe as pride.
He said, “That there’s your mama. I took that picture right before she was set to haul that big load down to Charlotte.”
I locked in on the image, searching for some expression caught in that millisecond in time that would tell me who she’d been, what she thought, where life had marked her. He got out, then bent down to speak through the passenger window.
He said, “She really was the best of the best. I loved her.”
I stared at the picture, dumbfounded by him sharing it, and telling me he’d loved her. I’d never understood his silence about her. Behind him hung a honey-colored moon balanced on the dark points of the treetops as if tacked in place. The more he said, the more trapped I felt by the differences between me and her. When I didn’t respond he offered something that didn’t have to do with moonshining.
His voice dropped into a lower tone, and he said, “Your mama? She didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She never raised her voice or had a cross word for nobody. She had friends up and down this mountain and beyond. She thought before she spoke, and it earned her a lot of respect. Even that son of a bitch, Leland Murry, respected her. He showed it once, after she died.”
What did he do? Tip his hat at the car carrying her casket? It didn’t matter. What mattered was everything else Daddy said, and how it was like he’d used her as a weapon against me, pointing out her disposition and how she navigated her world different from me.
How she was what I wasn’t.
I said, “Why are you telling me now? After all this time? After all them times I asked?”
He hesitated; then he said, “It ain’t easy for me talking about her, for one. And second, I seen something happening to you. I realize you ain’t had nobody to talk to all these years. Daughters need their mamas. I’ve always been too busy to worry it was anything more than you being how you been all your born years, but I’m thinking maybe it’s more than that.”
“How I’ve been?”
“Tetchy, funny about eating, moody most days, never smile, strange habits going on, and such.”
I compared her image to my school and driver’s license photos. Mama’s eyes twinkled, whereas mine appeared dull; she looked happy, and I generally looked pissed off. Uncle Virgil had rightly given me the name sourpuss, if I wanted to be truthful. What I learned so far about her made me defensive and grumpy, and now Daddy was thinking too much about my quirks and behaviors. I wanted him to get mad, wanted his attention directed away from why I was the way I was. I didn’t want him trying to figure me out.
I said, “I bet she wouldn’t have t
ried to outrun them like you did that night. She wouldn’t have had to prove nothing.”
That did it. He started to walk away; then he stopped.
He faced me and said, “There’s a lot you don’t know, Jessie.”
I said, “Well, you’re sure right about that.”
He didn’t respond. He strode down the hill, and stopped briefly by Uncle Virgil again, who made no move at all to indicate he knew Daddy was there. Daddy shook his head and went inside. The moon had been released by the treetops and was well on its way toward the crest of Shine Mountain. I considered what he’d said about Mama, yet I had trouble with his vision of this mild-mannered woman who appeared easygoing, content, and filled with happiness. All I had was that one image of her running as fire embraced her upper half. Her falling and how she’d called out Daddy’s name. The way I’d imagined her didn’t match with what Daddy said, or with the person in the photo. After a while I walked down the hill kicking at the ground here and there.
When I got close to Uncle Virgil, he startled me when he said, “There’s a reason he won’t talk about it.”
I stopped. “Because he’s guilty, that’s why.”
“That ain’t it.”
The aroma of shine came off him strong like and the fact he could talk at all was miraculous.
“Then why?” I challenged him. “I remember some of it, you know. She was near a still. She got burned alive. Don’t you think I ought to know the truth?”
His eyes glittered in the dark, and he took a good healthy swig again before he replied.
His answer was my second astonishing revelation of the day: “Yeah.”
I moved a step closer and he shook his head, waved an arm to stop me.
“I done told you long time ago, it’s ’tween you and your daddy. He’ll get round to it one of these days. Maybe. Don’t count on it. Can’t count on nothing from nobody. That’s the most important thing I can tell you.”
I left him mumbling to himself. Trudging downhill, I thought about Mama being a moonshiner and a bootlegger. It made my gut burn, and my head hurt. I rubbed at my scalp, and when I brought my hand down, it was like I’d run it through a cobweb. I wiggled my fingers, releasing strands to the wind. I reached up and finger combed my hair, and more came out. I didn’t know why this was happening, but I clapped my hands to get rid of the hair before I went inside and found Merritt and Aunt Juanita eating. She’d managed to fry ham, and boil some potatoes with butter. Oral was sitting at the table, but eyed the ham and potatoes with a sickly expression.
She pointed to the pot and pan on the stove and said, “There’s some left. You’re looking right puny; better eat.”
I got a plate, plucked a piece of ham out of the frying pan, scooped potatoes out of the pot, and sat down. I tried to catch Merritt’s eye. He was using his left hand to eat, and I had all good ideas he wasn’t ever going to want to use the hook arm. Aunt Juanita pushed her plate away, and lit up a cigarette.
She blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, then said, “Where’d you and your daddy get off to?”
“Just riding.”
She leaned forward, about to say something more when Daddy came into the kitchen from his room. His frown was so deep his brows met, giving him a hawklike appearance. He waved a handful of money in the air, looking at each of us.
“Anybody want to tell me where this five hundred bucks come from?”
Aunt Juanita shoved her chair back, and took her plate to the sink.
She tossed out a nonchalant, “How should I know?”
He said, “I found this money in my night table. Somebody knows how it got there.”
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 before 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 nightstand?”
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.”
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 adjusting 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? ”
“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.”
“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.”
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.
The Moonshiner's Daughter Page 19