years. But everybody makes mistakes.'
'Hey, I got pride.' Don Oscar pounded himself in the chest twice with his thumb. His friends told him he looked like Mister Magoo, because he was round-headed and bald with a bulbous nose. So what if the veins in his face had blossomed and broken from a lifetime of taste-testing his product? He'd never put much stock in looks anyway, and at least he had Ralph beat all to hell in that department. 'Family's been doing this for generations.'
'And you do it proud,' Ralph said, shaking the jar again. 'But a fellow hears stories. People going blind and such.'
Don Oscar stomped his boot into the mud. Beggars ought not be choosers. 'Now, you just come here and look,' he said, grabbing Ralph by the shoulder.
He led Ralph into the springhouse. The building's stone base was covered with thick green moss, and the slat-board siding was dark with rot. The two men blinked as their eyes adjusted to the weak light that spilled through the doorway. A sweet fog of fermenting corn mash crowded the room.
The springhouse had been built into the side of the hill. A stone reservoir was set high into the back bank, and a wooden chute carried water into the room, spilling silver dribbles from gaps in the planks. The earthen floor, soggy from the leaks, was a marsh of boot prints. A row of wooden-staved barrels lined one side of the springhouse.
At the center of the room sat a large contraption that looked like a stripped-down washing machine crossed with a UFO, plugs and coils sprouting from its metal body like hot copper worms. The coils wound into the channeled stream, and clear liquid dripped from the mouth of the pipe into a glass gallon jar at the far side of the room. A fire flickered under the rig, casting low shadows against the walls. The end of the pipe belched a puff of steam.
'Thing of beauty,' Don Oscar said, beaming like a father whose son had just been elected to office. 'Ain't a ounce of lead in that still.'
Which wasn't true. Don Oscar had used lead solder to secure the pipe joints. But compared to the poison that a lot of his competitors brewed up using car radiators as condensers, Don Oscar practically deserved a seal of approval from the FDA.
Don Oscar pointed to the black corners of the springhouse ceiling. 'And here's my latest little addition to the business. I done divided up the stovepipe into four, so the smoke gets spread out a mite better. Them Feds got helio-copters nowadays. Two of the pipes go into the bank about twenty yards and come out under a laurel thicket. It's a bitch to clear the ash out of those pipes every few months, but the smoke'll never give me away.'
Ralph nodded in admiration, his Andy Griffith ears cutting a faint breeze in the air. 'Feds are out hunting for dope these days, now that the hippies finally wised up enough to plant the shit out in the wilderness.'
Don Oscar winced at the mention of his other competitors. 'I smoked that stuff once, even thought about getting into it myself. Hear the money's real good. But who the hell wants to deal with a bunch of stinking hippies?'
'Well, they say a man's got to change with the times.'
Ralph flicked his tongue beneath his beaver teeth, his small eyes shining in the darkness. 'But I'm a believer in tradition myself.'
'Amen to that, brother.' Don Oscar took a Mason jar from the shelf that ran under a boarded-up window. Ralph didn’t disguise his desperation as Don Oscar's hand tightened around the lid.
'Let me show you something,' Don Oscar said. Ralph let his stringy muscles sag in disappointment. Don Oscar led him over to one of the barrels. As he did, a low rumble rolled through the mountains, shaking the springhouse walls.
'Thunderstorm sure moved in fast,' Ralph said. 'And me on foot.'
'That ain't no thunder. Them boys are dynamiting over on Sugarfoot again. Gonna knock that whole blamed mountain down to gravel if they keep it up.'
Don Oscar lifted the plywood lid off the nearest barrel then let it drop back down. A cloying stench clubbed the air of the room.
Better not let Ralph see THAT, Don Oscar thought. Damned possum crawling in there and dying like that. Hell, it'll cook out. At least it died happy.
He moved to the next barrel and pulled off the lid, then stood aside so that Ralph could see.
'Looks like either runny tar or soupy cow shit,' said Ralph.
'That there's prime wort, my friend. That's what gets cooked down to make that joy juice you like so much.'
'What the hell did you show me that for?' Ralph said, drawing back and crinkling his rodent face.
'So you'd appreciate the product. And not bitch about the price. Now, if you want to get messed up-and I don't mean stoned, I mean stone, like a rock, where you can't hardly move your arms and legs-then you dip your tin cup into this and take a gulp.'
Ralph leaned closer, hesitant, gazing into the murk of the fermenting mash as if divining the future in its surface.
'It's all science, see,” Don Oscar said, loquacious from the sampling he’d done. “Convert sugar to ethanol, distill to stouten and purify, slow-cook to perfection or else you get it too watery. Yep, I could write a book on this stuff.'
Ralph looked like he didn't give a rat's ass about the how or even the why of grain alcohol. Right now he seemed worried about the when. The first faint tremors worked through his limbs and sweat oozed from the pores of his sallow skin. Ralph needed a drink soon or he'd go into spasms right there on the muddy floor of the cookhouse.
But when you're buying on credit, especially unreliable credit, you better rein in your horses and bite your tongue and nod at all the right times. I'm calling all the shots here. Hey, that's pretty damn funny, all the SHOTS here, ha-ha.
Ralph pointed to something, a pale powdery thread that branched out like a tree root down the side of the barrel into the wort. 'What the hell’s that?'
Don Oscar bent down and looked, pressing his soft belly against the rim of the barrel. 'Some kind of fungus or dry rot, I reckon. Won't hurt nothing. It all comes out in the wash.'
'Dry rot when it's so wet in here?'
Don Oscar reached into the barrel and touched the tendril. It squirmed spongily and crumbled. Don Oscar rubbed his fingers together, spilling motes of green and white dust onto the surface of the wort.
'Smells funny,' Don Oscar said, whiffing like a maitre d' checking a vintage.
'Whatever you say, buddy. Can I have my jar now? You know how I get the shakes.'
Don Oscar knew perfectly well how Ralph got the shakes. That was why he was making Ralph wait. There wasn't a lot of entertainment out in the sticks, especially here on the back side of Bear Claw twenty miles from nowhere in either direction. 'When can you pay?'
Ralph’s eyes were dark as salamanders. 'Got my disability coming at the first of the month, same as usual.'
'And what's my guarantee you won't blow it all on that factory beer at the Moose Lodge before I get mine?' Don Oscar rubbed his fingers against his flannel shirt. That mold or whatever it was had made his hand itch.
'I promise, Don Oscar.'
Don Oscar smiled in secret pleasure. He didn't care much if Ralph paid or not. He ran a healthy small business, with low overhead and tax-free profit. He allowed himself a helping of mountain generosity. “Here you go, Ralphie.”
Ralph grabbed at Don Oscar's hand, pried the bootlegger's fingers away, and held the jar to his chest as he ran for the door, slipping on the dark, damp floor.
Took it like a chipmunk grabbing an acorn. Don Oscar watched from the springhouse as Ralph struggled with the lid and tipped the jar bottom to the sky. Ralph's Red Man cap nearly slid off, but the adjustable strip stuck to his collar. The bill of the ball cap jutted cockeyed toward the treetops. Some of the liquor streaked down Ralph’s stubbled chin and wet his shirt as he gulped.
Ralph wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve and headed into the woods. Ralph disappeared among the pale saplings and gray-mottled trunks of the oaks. Don Oscar listened to Ralph's feet kicking up dead leaves for another
