The Moonshiner's Daughter (ARC) Read online

  bered 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

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  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 al-

  most 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 acknowl-

  edge him. A sigh, and a soft good night came from the other

  side before he went down the hall.

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  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 Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 35

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  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 li-

  quor, 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

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  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.”

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  “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 some-

  thing 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 elimi-

  nated 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 to 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

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  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 eliminat-ing 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 dun-

  garees. 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 Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 39

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  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.

  After supper Daddy got up from the table and I quickly

  washed the dishes, staring out the window as he backed Sally Sue out of the shed and came down the hill. Merritt went out and got in the back, sat on the fake seat concealing the jars of liquor directly beneath him. They waited on me, the engine

  grumbling as if it wasn’t used to idling. I dried my hands,

  went outside, and got in the front on the passenger side.

  Daddy commented, like I cared.

  He said, “Got us a full load tonight off Blood Creek earlier this afternoon. Y’all done real good.”

  That meant the fake gas tank was full too. The delivery

  would hopefully be over and done with quick, like most of

  them. I leaned forward to fiddle with volume on the radio,

  tuning into WKBC. To my disgust they were playing “White

  Lightning” by George Jones.

  I started to shut it off, but Daddy said, “Now that’s what I call good timing. Turn it up!”

  I rolled my eyes and did as he asked, listening to George

  wail and carry on about making shine. He glorified it. Daddy’s fingers tapped the steering wheel in time to the song, the radio the only sound except the slap of Merritt’s baseball into the palm of his glove coming from the back seat.

  We headed toward the obscure back roads where nothing

  except an occasional house, pastures with cows, or a tobacco barn broke up the landscape. The top of Shine Mountain rose

  above all others, tall enough to see as we drove south. Soon we turned onto Lore Mountain Road, where the revenuers

  had been spotted. Daddy obeyed the speed limit, keeping his

  eye on his side view and rearview mirrors. He motioned for

  me to turn the volume down. A sliver of the orange sunset

  leaked through the trees every now and then as dusk created

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  shadows in the creases of hillsides. Sharp curved switchbacks made the road appear indecisive, as if it wanted to first go left, then right. We finally came to a little stretch of straightaway.

  Daddy said, “Ain’t nothing like a little evening drive.”

  It was like him to try and turn liquor hauling into any old

  ordinary pastime. I didn’t bother to answer. His window was

  down halfway and cool air circulated inside the car. The sun was soon gone altogether, and with the veil of night over us, I leaned my head against the back of the seat, occasionally

  glancing at my side view mirror. At least if I had to be in-

  volved, obscurity was always comforting. We descended into

  one of many hollers, and as we came to the bottom of the hill I saw the flash of headlights in my side view mirror.

  I said, “Somebody’s behind us.”

  Merritt spun around in his seat and looked out the back

  window.

  He said, “Sure is.”

  Daddy kept his speed, and we began to climb again.

  He said, “It don’t mean nothing.”

  He kept a look out though.

  We lost sight of the car in the curves, but soon as we came

  to another stretch where the road went straight, Daddy said,

  “They’s closer.”

  He accelerated a bit, and Sally Sue’s engine responded. We

  went along as quick and effortless as the current of the Yadkin River. He could put plenty of distance betwee
n us and whoever was back there without really trying. All he had to do

  was press on the gas a bit more and that would be that. When the other car held the distance, and then came closer, Daddy kept looking in his rearview mirror.

  He said, “Getting closer,” as calm as if he was browsing the newspaper and had run across an article of interest.

  In the back, Merritt turned around completely and started

  giving us second by second comments on the car’s distance.

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  All it did was increase my anxiousness. When the car was two lengths away from our bumper, Merritt announced this.

  I said, “We can see for ourselves, Merritt.”

  Daddy said, “Got all this road, ain’t no need getting so

  close.”

  He accelerated and we rounded the curve; the force of

  speed combined with direction pushed me against the door. I

  gripped the armrest and watched the headlights of the other

  car grow smaller. Daddy kept his foot on the gas even as we

  came to another curve. There was a slight squall of the tires and I saw how he wore a little smile, like he was enjoying

  himself. None of the runs in the past had turned into any-

  thing other than a meandering ride down the mountain, and

  then up the drive of someone’s house, or to the back side of a store where smiling faces welcomed him and what he carried.

  This was different, and I worried about the speed and the

  curves, and the other car.

  I said, “I hope they got the good sense enough to leave us

  alone.”

  Daddy said, “Maybe I’ll pull over, see if they’ll go on by.”

  Hopeful he’d do that, I said, “Yeah.”

  Another straightaway came and the car regained most of

  the distance lost and was almost as close as it had been before.

  They slid over into the other lane like they were going to

  try and pass us. Daddy let off the gas some so they could. As they came alongside, they stayed there, which made him look.

  Without warning, he floored it.

  Merritt, his voice worried, said, “What’re you doing?”

  Daddy didn’t answer; instead, he leaned forward and con-

  centrated on driving, both of his hands gripping the steering wheel. The other car made an attempt to come alongside us

  again, and he went even faster, like they were at the racetrack everyone had been talking about lately, some dirt circle where others who were running moonshine raced their cars against