The Moonshiner's Daughter (ARC) Page 7
ground in front of my feet. Daddy said I was going to walk
into a light pole, or a wall, one of these days. He couldn’t see my embarrassment. He couldn’t see it, or it didn’t matter.
On Main Street we passed by the federal building and
post office where I’d heard the government had set up a rev-
enuer’s office for Wilkes County, and where a slew of agents had been sent to try and catch all moonshiners and bootleggers, but tracking down people who didn’t want to be caught
wasn’t easy. No one could see that it had made much dif-
ference. From there we went across the Yadkin River into
North Wilkesboro. We went by Pearson’s wholesale grocery
where Daddy would get milk, bread, eggs, and cigarettes on
them miserable Saturdays. Finally, we came to Wilkes Gen-
eral Hospital.
Mr. Naylor said, “Want I should pull up to that there en-
trance?”
Merritt burped while Daddy stared at the brightly lit build-
ing and sucked hard on his cigarette.
He blew a stream of blue smoke out of the cracked window,
and said, “Yeah. I reckon that’s where we ought to go.”
For the first time in my life, I believed I heard a hint of
nervousness in his voice. Mr. Naylor eased up to the door and Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 52
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put the vehicle in Park. Daddy finished his cigarette, and got out. I scooted across the seat after him and got out too.
He leaned down to speak to Merritt, and said, “I’m going
in and see if I can find somebody to look at that arm.”
Merritt, his color gone from white to an unhealthy-looking
flush with eyes bright and glassy, didn’t respond. Daddy acted like he was deciding something, and he finally turned and
went inside where the large windows of the entrance showed
him looking around for help. It didn’t take long before a nurse approached. Daddy gestured toward the car, at where I waited on the sidewalk. Merritt had propped up on an elbow and
grinned stupidly. I glared at him, then turned back to see
what was happening.
Mr. Naylor said to no one in general, “You think she’d be
a little quicker.”
He was one to talk.
Merritt slurred, “It’s all right. I’m feeling purty good now.”
The nurse disappeared and came back pushing a wheel-
chair. Daddy held the door for her and in a matter of seconds she was beside the car’s back door, locking the wheels. She
was all business, barely sparing me a glance before she leaned down, and studied Merritt’s wacky-looking arm.
She said, “When did this happen?”
Merritt was vague. “Not long ago.”
She said, “What’s your name?”
He wore a lopsided grin and said, “Ish Merritt, ma’am.”
I wanted to be anywhere but here. It was evident he was
three sheets to the wind. Daddy shoved his hands in his pockets and paced.
The nurse said, “It’s going to hurt some getting you into
this chair.”
Merritt said, “Naw, ma’am, it ain’t. Not now.”
Daddy came forward and said, “Here, I’ll help him.”
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He motioned at Merritt, who apparently no longer had an
issue moving out of the back seat. It didn’t seem to bother him one bit as he shifted with Daddy’s help into the chair, his arm resting in his lap, all wrong-angled. The nurse grabbed the
two handles at the back and whisked him toward the hospi-
tal’s door.
Daddy said, “Marty, thankee kindly. Go on home. I’ll
bring what I had for you another night.”
We hurried to follow the nurse as she breezed by the desk
where another lady sat writing in a ledger.
The nurse said, “Let Doctor Barnes know we’ve got a seri-
ous arm injury.”
The woman immediately picked up a phone, held it to her
mouth, and spoke. Crackly speakers overhead blasted, “Doc-
tor Barnes, treatment room one. Doctor Barnes, treatment
room one. Stat.”
We had to walk fast to keep up, and soon we stopped at
some double doors.
She said to me, “You have to wait here.”
Daddy handed me a couple of dimes and said, “Call your
uncle Virgil. Tell him to come get us.”
I took the change and watched as the nurse took Merritt
beyond the double doors.
Daddy said, “We’ll be out soon as we can.”
The doors closed after them, and a few seconds later an
elderly-looking man in a white coat with a stethoscope slung around his neck went through them and I took him to be
Doctor Barnes. I tried to see if I could see Merritt and Daddy before the doors closed again. The hall was empty. I walked
back the way we’d come, looking left and right for the pay
phone. I found one a minute or so later inside a small metal box hanging on the wall. All around it were dirty messages,
the names of girls who would apparently do this or that, if
you called them, along with the so and so was here types of
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scribbles. I put a dime in the slot and dialed Uncle Virgil’s number. It rang six times and I was about to hang up when
Aunt Juanita answered.
She shouted an irritable, “Hello!”
That followed what sounded like a pot being thrown on
the floor. I swallowed, my throat about to close up, and not allow me to talk.
She said, “Whoever this is had better speak up. . . .”
I choked out, “Hey Aunt Juanita, it’s Jessie.”
“Jessie. What is it, why are you calling?”
I imagine it wasn’t natural seeming, getting a phone call
from me.
“We’re at the hospital. Merritt hurt his arm.”
She said, “Good Lord. You okay? What about your daddy?”
“I have a knot on my head, but Easton is all right. Our car
got run off the road.”
She said, “Wait a minute.”
A scraping and rustling came through the earpiece as
she passed the phone to Uncle Virgil. Before he spoke, he
coughed, a hoarse hacking that rattled my ear. I held the receiver away until his voice, sounding like a buzzing bee in a tin can, came through.
I put it back to my ear in time to hear him say, “What hap-
pened?”
I spoke in a low voice even though I was the only one in
the hall.
“Daddy and us, we were on a run, on that road where you
said there’d been agents. A car started following us. It ran us off the road, and then pushed us over the side. I think we
rolled a couple times. Easton said it was Murrys.”
Uncle Virgil coughed again, and said, “Damn.”
I waited and there came a long stretch of silence.
He finally said, “Juanita said Merritt’s hurt?”
I said, “Yeah. We’re at Wilkes General.”
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“What’s the doctor said?”
“Nothing yet. I’m waiting to find out. Daddy wanted you
to come get us.”
<
br /> “Let me get dressed and I’ll be there quick as I can.”
He hung up without saying good-bye. I walked back the
way I’d come and found two chairs in the hallway near the
double doors. I sat in one of them, jiggled one foot, then
the other. After a while, I noticed mud, bits of grass, and other debris from my shoes sprinkled over the shiny, clean waxed
tile. This fit my general attitude at the moment, like I had no right to be sitting in this clean place operated by people who made a living by doing fine and upstanding jobs, people who were valued. Like the nurses I’d seen with their white dresses and shoes, pristine uniforms of mercy and kindness. I stared at the floor again, at what I’d left, and thought of what I’d read earlier on the wall by the phone. What was on the
floor said, Jessie Sasser was here, without me having to write it down. I moved one foot and tried to scrape the mess out of
sight. More fell and I gave up.
Before long, I began to realize how hungry I was. The
peanut butter sandwich and milk was long gone. My stomach
rumbled, protesting its vast emptiness. It was like my belly had a demon in it, growling at me. I only had the one dime
left. I doubted it would be enough to buy anything from a
vending machine, if they even had one. I got up and drifted
down the hall again, passing by doors that said: “Janitor,”
“Men’s Bathroom,” “Women’s Bathroom,” “Supply Closet,”
and directions to other parts of the hospital. I found nothing, so I walked back the way I’d come, sat back down in the chair, and waited. Time slowed to a crawl, while I preoccupied myself trying to count each square of tile I could see without getting up. The doors finally swung open.
Daddy came out first; the doctor followed close behind,
saying, “I can smell it, and see it. The boy is drunk.”
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“If’n he is or isn’t ain’t none of your business.”
The nurse came next with Merritt, his arm swathed in a
huge white plaster cast almost to his shoulder. At least it had a slight bend in it. He wasn’t grinning now, his color gone
gray. The doctor left quick as he’d come. Daddy evidently
wanted to explain the situation to the nurse, and he gestured at Merritt.
He said, “He had a little bit of something to help him with
the pain until we could get here is all.”
The nurse waved a hand and said, “You don’t need to ex-
plain. My own granddaddy and grandma loved to sip the fruit
bitters for what ailed them now and then. Doctor Barnes isn’t from around here. He doesn’t understand. This young man’s
going to be in some pain as the days go by, but the doctor’s given me a prescription for you to fill.”
Daddy said, “Where do I pay?”
“We’ll send you a bill. He’ll need to come back—”
Daddy cut her off. “We ain’t coming back.”
“He’ll need to get that cast off.”
“I’ll see it gets taken off.”
She didn’t say another word. She wheeled Merritt back to
the entrance we’d come in off the parking lot. The nurse gave Daddy a piece of paper just as Uncle Virgil came through the doors looking like he’d been in a fight with the ground. His pants and shirt were rumpled, and his eyes bloodshot. We
made our way out to his car and I imagined to her we looked
like a rough lot. I considered my family, and turned inward, assessing my own self.
My conclusion, A rough lot, to be sure.
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Chapter 6
On the way home Uncle Virgil and Daddy talked about re-
taliation. Merritt sat hunched against his door while I leaned my head against the window, eyes closed and listening.
Daddy said, “First I’m gonna have Troy get his wrecker
and haul Sally Sue back over to the house where I can get her fixed back up.”
Daddy trusted Troy Dalton because he’d go get his car, no
questions asked.
Uncle Virgil said, “I can do the routes if’n you need me to.”
Daddy pulled hard on his cigarette. “I’ll see what calls I get.
Everyone got what they needed only a couple days ago.”
Uncle Virgil said, “What’re we gonna do about it?”
“I got to think on it, but you can bet I ain’t gonna forget it.”
“Maybe I should try and find out where they got a still.”
“It could be useful.”
Uncle Virgil grunted. He dropped us off and since it was
late, he didn’t stay. Merritt wobbled inside, and immediately went to his room. I trailed after him and watched as he sat
carefully on the bed, grabbed his extra pillow, and then laid Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 58
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back using it to prop his arm up. His mouth was a straight
line, his eyebrows lowered so he didn’t have to look at anyone.
It was starting to dawn on him how hard it might be for the
next few weeks. No ball games. Merritt held distant dreams
of maybe being a major-league player, and for as much as he
liked pitching, I’d seen the difference when we worked a still.
He played ball, and he was good, but the way he talked about making and hauling liquor, it was like his destiny. There
would be none of either for a while.
Daddy came into the room with a glass of water and set it
on Merritt’s nightstand. He was in a begging mood appar-
ently.
He motioned at the glass. “It ain’t gonna do me no good.
My arm’s already killing me again. Can’t I please get me some more of that hooch?”
Daddy ignored him and I was glad.
He said, “Take these.”
He dumped some pills in Merritt’s hand. Merritt gaped at
his palm with disappointment, then took them. I hovered in
the doorway, and when Daddy went by, he shook his head,
warning me against anything I might have to say. I was empty though, in more ways than one. What had happened to us
fastened around me like when I tightened my belt to keep my
stomach from hurting. We could’ve all been killed and no one would have found us for days. He went down the hall into his room and shut the door firmly, letting me know he was done
for the night.
It was just as well.
I went into the kitchen. I didn’t turn on the light as I
reached for the refrigerator handle, the peace of the house
reassuring me I was safe. I opened it and the light inside came on, throwing out a half circle of brightness around me. I visualized one of them seeing me there, ready to point and laugh.
I hesitated, then grabbed the beans, hot dogs, biscuits, the Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 59
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bottle of milk. I shut the door, and with the light gone, I
let out a sigh. I didn’t think about what I was about to do.
I pushed my negative thoughts aside as I lifted the tinfoil off the bowls, the crinkling sound loud to my ears. I waited a
moment, then unwrapped the biscuits from the wax paper. I
could see myself getting drunk off food like Merritt had gotten drunk off the liquor.
It began like it always did. I would start slow, chewing with care, until an urgency overtook my methodical approach. It
happened when there came t
his need to fill what was bar-
ren, satisfy a void that belonged not to regular hunger, but to something else. It compelled me on, go quicker, quicker, as if my body was only this chasm, the hole in my middle always
there, always growing until I was overtaken by it. Even I understood this wasn’t entirely about food. No. No matter how
much I ate to try and rid myself of the hollowness, to eliminate the want, I didn’t know how except to do this.
I ate the hot dogs first. There were four, gone in eight bites.
I grabbed the beans next, scooping spoonful after spoonful.
When I’d emptied that, I grabbed the milk, and guzzled
straight from the bottle, big gulps that threatened to spill over. I suffered one of those strange headaches and my insides churned. I sat back, noticing the kitchen, the mess around me.
I turned my attention to my middle, which had become tight,
and uncomfortable. I got up and paced the floor, breathing
deep. I was repulsed by my tremendous weakness. I could fix
it. I started for the bathroom and stopped. I swallowed over and over, attempting to fight the inevitable.
It was so uncomfortable, I relented and rushed down the
hall. I waited, standing over the toilet before turning away, and instead, I turned on the faucet and splashed my face with cold water. I straightened up, and didn’t look in the mirror. I didn’t want to see me, to look at my betraying eyes, the ones filled with such revulsion. The food roiled, reminding me of Ever_9781496717023_2p_all_r1.indd 60
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sour mash fermenting. It was revolting when I thought of it
like that. I turned from the sink, dropped to my knees, and
rested my forehead against the coolness of the lid on the toilet.
I wanted to cry knowing I couldn’t stop this any more than I could stop Daddy. I was already heaving as I lifted the lid up.
I let my body do what it wanted, and finished by shoving my
fingers into my throat.
I was out of control again.
From the living room window, I could see Aubrey through
a slit in the curtains. Her head swiveled, taking it all in, judg-ing how we lived. Like I was prone to do, I envisioned how
she might see it, the long-standing rusty junk, weeds grown
knee-high, paint peeling to expose old graying wood. I usu-
ally went to her house. When I’d been little, Daddy would