The Moonshiner's Daughter Read online

  When she died, I was relieved because I could quit waiting for her to share something, could stop hoping she’d see me and say, By the Lord sweet Jesus, if it ain’t my own Lydia.

  By the time I was fourteen, my patchy memories eventually led me to my own answers. First, Mama died while Daddy was making moonshine. Second, something went wrong, and it had been his fault; otherwise he’d talk about her. Guilt was what kept him silent. My arrival at this conclusion sent me plundering the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator more than ever, eating till I couldn’t move, followed by remorse at being such a pig, and the need to get it out. From that point on, we hardly ever had leftovers. There’s only so much you can do to show frustration when you’re not but a teenager. It wasn’t long before I understood all the eating and vomiting did me no good. I still knew nothing about Mama, only now I’d come to a point where I couldn’t stop. My resentment toward Daddy continued to bloom. I finally thought of something I could take from him, not quite like what he was taking from me and Merritt, but a way to show him how I felt.

  We were sitting at the supper table, plates filled with chicken, rice, and gravy, corn bread. Daddy liked lots of pepper, and the shaker sat near Merritt’s elbow.

  Daddy always spoke soft, so his, “Pass the pepper, Son,” wasn’t heard by Merritt as he scraped his fork across his plate, mixing rice into the gravy.

  I raised my voice and said, “Easton said to pass the pepper!”

  It got pretty quiet. I slid a big forkful of rice in my mouth, and didn’t need to look at the head of the table where he sat.

  Daddy said, “What’d you say?”

  The food turned gummy, thick, and I focused on swallowing. It could’ve been the dim light of the bulb overhead, or it could’ve been the fact I unexpectedly had tears, but I believe it was sadness I recognized and what drew his mouth down.

  I was determined, though, and poked Merritt. “Easton said . . .”

  Daddy set his fork down. “What’s this about?”

  Resolute, I said, “You know.”

  “I know? What do I know?”

  “You know.”

  The double meaning was lost. Daddy sat back on his chair with a look of consternation and a hint of impatience. I crammed in more rice and gravy, bit into the chicken, and ended up with a mouthful so big I wasn’t sure I’d manage it without choking. I chewed, swallowed, and the clump sat, midway in my throat. I drank water to wash it down.

  Merritt said, “Gee whiz, Jessie.”

  His voice held a tinge of awe.

  Daddy said, “Don’t you go being disrespectful now.”

  “It’s your name, ain’t it?”

  “Don’t you be sassy neither. There’s that woodshed out back.”

  He’d never whipped us much, so I called his bluff, “I ain’t scared.”

  Merritt gasped, and said, “Doggone, Jessie.”

  Daddy said, “I don’t know what this little game of yourn is, but you go right on, if’n it makes you feel better.”

  “It does.”

  He leaned forward and I jerked back. I didn’t fear him, but that abrupt movement wasn’t like him. For the most part, he didn’t get riled about much; it wasn’t in his nature. Usually.

  He pointed his fork at me and said, “Get this out of your system, whatever it is, but by tomorrow, I expect you to call me proper.”

  “It’s in my system because you don’t talk about it, won’t talk about it.”

  Merritt slid the pepper over, and Daddy sprinkled it over his food till everything was the same color, mounds speckled black. He went back to eating like I’d never opened my mouth.

  “See?” I said to Merritt and the room.

  The next day Daddy backed up our steep drive, and in the back of his truck sat a big box.

  “Look a here,” he said, pointing at it as he got out. “Got us a TV. We’re the first ones around here to have one. What’cha think, Jessie? Merritt?”

  Merritt hopped about, his exuberance making up for the lack of mine. Daddy pulled the tailgate down, and Merritt climbed into the back and pushed the box toward him. Between the two of them, they lifted it out, grunting, and straining under the weight of it, and brought it up the couple of steps to the door that I at least held open.

  They pushed and shoved it into the corner of the living room, and after it was unboxed, Daddy said, “Plug it in, Son. Turn it on.”

  Merritt obliged; then they stood side by side staring at the glass tucked into a wood cabinet. As the TV warmed up, it made a low whistling noise that went higher and higher until the white dot in the middle of the gray screen became black-and-white slanted lines. Daddy slapped a hand on his head, and went back outside. He came in with a smaller box, and out of it he took what he called “rabbit ears.” He set them on top of the TV, wiggled them back and forth, and fiddled with one of the knobs on the front. A grainy picture finally emerged of a man talking behind a desk with the letters NBC above him. Meanwhile, I tried to consider how a TV was supposed to make up for what I really wanted. Little did I know I would soon become enamored with a show called The Untouchables, and wishing for my own Eliot Ness.

  The first time Uncle Virgil heard me call Daddy by his given name, he said, “Now that don’t sound proper like.”

  By then Daddy had gotten used to me calling him that, and waved a hand like “don’t bother.”

  Aunt Juanita pursed bright pink lips, pinched her cigarette out, and said nothing. Oral and Merritt acted as if they couldn’t decide whether they should be in awe or not. I quit asking him about Mama, even stopped speaking his name unless it was absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, I remained on the lookout for possible hints of her presence. I’d noticed how when Daddy sat at the kitchen table, always on this one chair, he’d get to rubbing a finger over a couple of brown spots where a cigarette had blistered the Formica top. I began to dwell obsessively on that scorched area, wondering who left the mark. Did she smoke? Maybe it was from her very cigarette from when they’d sat at the table together, smoking and enjoying a first morning’s cup of coffee.

  Over time I’d noted a couple of other small places about the house and my imagination ran wild. Like the circular stain on the night table in their bedroom, the one opposite the side where he slept. The small fingerprints left in the paint on the wall in the hallway, a happenstance discovery when the sun hit there a particular way, and only at a certain time of year. The day I detected them five little ovals, I placed my own fingers in each one, easily recognizing they were slightly bigger, yet too small for Daddy. I became certain the prints had to be hers, yet these were empty and unsatisfactory findings, especially when Mama’s ghostlike presence was only as tangible as the wisps of smoke from the blaze that took her all them years ago.

  Chapter 2

  I stared at my new driver’s license reflecting on how any picture could be worse than my school photo. It was early, about an hour before school, and we were in the kitchen where Daddy counted money from the haul he’d made the night before. The radio was on, and the broadcaster sounded as bored as I was as he delivered the news of the day. He droned on about the Ku Klux Klan and the cross burnings along major roads in South Carolina and Alabama over sit-ins at lunch counters. I expected to hear more about such an event, but he moved on to a race car driver who’d died at the beginning of a twelve-hour endurance race in Florida. I got up and fiddled with the knob, looking for a station with music. Uncle Virgil and Aunt Juanita had dropped by, supposedly on their way to town for corn needed at one of the stills. Sometimes this was the inconvenience of them living only two miles away.

  Uncle Virgil couldn’t take his eyes off the small piles of cash, and this was the real reason he was here. He had a hard time keeping a job, having worked at the feed store, and then at the factory where they made mirrors, and now he worked at a poultry farm. He had a bit of a drinking problem and Daddy said if it weren’t for him needing to keep Aunt Juanita happy, it would be all he’d do. They were an unlikely pair as I’
d ever seen. She came from Lenoir, and you could call that a big city compared to anything out here. The Brushy Mountains where we live are part of a spur off the Blue Ridge. She joked about how they really weren’t mountains at all, more like bumps.

  She sipped her coffee, leaving a pink half circle of lipstick on the cup’s rim. Her nail polish matched. She wore another new dress, and kept brushing her hand across the fabric as if she liked the feel of it. Aunt Juanita was slim, and had her hair and nails done once a week at the beauty parlor. She knew better than to make any suggestions about my appearance. We’d had that reckoning a while back.

  She’d said, “Jessie, I think it’s high time you start taking better care of yourself.”

  “High time to who?”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  She said, “Don’t you think you ought to do something about yourself? You could start with your clothes, fix your hair.”

  “I don’t know why it matters to you.”

  She said, “Suit yourself,” and that was that.

  My abrupt ways had always gotten under her skin.

  I listened in while Daddy told Uncle Virgil about a close call he’d had with a revenuer last night. Uncle Virgil’s head was in his hands. He was unshaven, hair going in all directions, as if the shock of what he’d ingested had it standing at attention. He was younger than Daddy, but looked older. When Merritt and Oral came in from outside, letting the screen door slam, he gave them both a dirty look, but neither one noticed. They were all agog at the sight of the cash stacked on the table. They sat, Oral taking the chair farthest from his daddy.

  Merritt said, “Whoa. Looks like a good night!”

  Oral pointed, then whined, “How come we ain’t never got that kind of money?”

  Uncle Virgil reached all the way across the table to backhand him, but Oral ducked, then shot a hateful look his way. Merritt propped his chin on his hand, watching with apparent adoration the man at the head of the table.

  Daddy winked at him and continued on. “I believe it were Bob Stoley. I kind a played him along just to see what all he’d do. ’Course, he didn’t stand a chance against old Sally Sue.”

  He chuckled with affection for his car, an Oldsmobile Rocket 88 modified to carry liquor in a fake gas tank, and jars of it under the back seat. He joked he could hear the goods sloshing when he took a curve too hard. Uncle Virgil laughed too, but it didn’t sound natural, more like he was only doing it to go along. He kept his eye on the money the same way Oral did, licking his lips every now and then, wanting to say something. I’d seen this before, him working up his nerve to ask Daddy for a handout. I got up and poured myself some coffee, waiting to see if he would. It didn’t take long.

  Uncle Virgil said, “I might need me a little cut.”

  Daddy thumbed the bills and Aunt Juanita got to studying on her cuticles, her cheeks gone deeper pink.

  Daddy said, “Yeah?”

  Uncle Virgil sat up straighter. “Yeah.”

  “Well now.”

  Daddy turned to look at Aunt Juanita, who found something not to her liking on her pinkie. She was almost cross-eyed trying to see whatever it was.

  Uncle Virgil said, “Yeah. I mean, it ain’t like you got nothing to worry about. I got rent, and we need’n a few things.”

  Daddy said, “What happened to the money from that last run?”

  Uncle Virgil raised his shoulders. “Like I said, there’s things we need.”

  Aunt Juanita dropped her hand into her lap, and with exasperation said, “For heaven’s sake, Virgil. Just tell him you owe people because you can’t play cards worth a lick and lost it over that foolishness.”

  Daddy said, “Who do you owe?”

  Uncle Virgil rubbed his hands together, the sound raspy and dry, like papers rustling.

  “That’s my business. Mama gave you this place here, while I got nothing but a damn plow and combine I ain’t never gonna use. I reckon I don’t quite see that as fair. Seems like maybe you ought to pay my rent now and then, and it’s just how I feel about it.”

  It was an age-old argument Uncle Virgil liked to use to make Daddy feel accountable for his self-made struggles. It worked about half the time and today was one of them. Without hesitation, Daddy took one of the stacks and pushed it toward Uncle Virgil, who snatched it up like it was a ham biscuit. He shoved it in his front pocket, and grinned at Aunt Juanita. She rolled her eyes and sipped her coffee. He simmered down now he had what he wanted.

  Uncle Virgil said, “Hell, it ain’t nothing but money, ain’t it what you say?”

  Daddy nodded. “Sure, sure. It’s what I say.”

  Uncle Virgil stood and so did Aunt Juanita. “All good?”

  Daddy said, “All good.”

  Uncle Virgil went to the back door with Aunt Juanita on his heels. She motioned to Oral, who ignored her, and then Daddy got to laughing softly again. Uncle Virgil was about to step outside and he stopped.

  He said, “What’s funny?”

  Daddy went back to thumbing the rest of the stack of bills.

  He said, “That run last night?”

  Uncle Virgil said, “Yeah?”

  “I’ll be damned, if it were Bob Stoley, he fired off a shot at me.”

  Uncle Virgil said, “Woowee! When’s the last time that happened?”

  “Never.”

  “I suppose he was mighty ticked off he couldn’t catch you.”

  “He can’t stand being beat, for sure.”

  “Maybe it was a Murry.”

  Daddy grinned as if he enjoyed reflecting on the danger and excitement of being chased and shot at.

  His manner irritated me, and I said, “I honestly don’t get the way y’all act.”

  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 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 ajar 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?”

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bsp; 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 saying 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?”

  “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 putting 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 bootleg 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, trying 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 dollars 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.”