The Moonshiner's Daughter (ARC) Read online

  where the skin was sunburned, and it flushed even deeper

  after he dropped his hand.

  His voice cranky, like I’d asked about the birds and the bees, he said, “Don’t be asking me them questions; ask your daddy.”

  I said, “He don’t never tell me nothing.”

  Aunt Juanita, who’d married Uncle Virgil a couple years

  after Mama died, didn’t know a thing about her. I complained to her once and she waved her cigarette so dramatically, the end point flared orange and ash hit the floor.

  She said, “Well, it’s a doggone shame she ain’t here to raise you and your brother,” then narrowed her eyes at the bowl of ice cream and chocolate syrup I cradled in my lap. “Honey,

  listen, I can’t be your mama, can’t expect to take her place, but take it from me, ain’t no man ever gonna want to marry

  no tub of lard.”

  She took my bowl, yet half-full, and put it in the sink,

  smiling a little to herself like she’d done right by me and her way of thinking. I became self-conscious about my belly, my

  thighs, and my breasts—because that’s where she looked next.

  They kept growing faster than anything else. The next day

  she came to the house with two new bras stuffed into a bag.

  “You got to start wearing these or all manner of hound

  dogs are gonna be showing up here at this door.”

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  You could say Aunt Juanita was a blend of sympathy and

  meanness, neither all that helpful. I wore the bras, and didn’t ever bring Mama up to her after that. That had left Mama’s

  mama, Granny Marsh, who couldn’t talk or do much for her-

  self after a massive stroke. We would stop at the rest home to see her, only she didn’t know we were there most times. I’d

  look for any resemblance, believing Mama had to have had

  her features.

  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 some-

  thing I could take from him, not quite like what he was tak-

  ing 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!”

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  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 swallow-

  ing. 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.

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  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 speck-

  led 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 Mer-

  ritt 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

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  above him. Meanwhile, I tried to consider how a TV was sup-

  posed 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 ciga-

  rette 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 ciga-

  rette 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.

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  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 be-

  fore. 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

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  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

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  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 back-

  hand 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 some-

  thing 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.”

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  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 ex-

  asperation 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. With-

  out 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?”

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  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.”