Revelator: A Novel Read online

  Willie was still shaking his head at the wonder of it. It was after midnight and a dozen men sat in the tavern, most of them fresh off second shift at Alcoa and not ready to go home. The regulars knew Stella, but an elaborately Brylcreemed boy a couple of stools away was absolutely boggled to find an unattended woman in his vicinity. This was why she wore pants when working.

  “You ready to finally stop fooling around with that swamp water you’ve been buying?” she asked. She’d been working on Willie for months to make her his sole supplier. He usually bought from Lester Mapes, whose hooch she knew firsthand proofed all over the map, from 190 to 100, and it went down like a mouthful of gravel. “I’ll match his price, and you won’t have to worry you might be serving watered-down shine.”

  “I don’t know. I been with Lester a long time.”

  “I promise you a hundred fifty proof. Every gallon. Every time.” She knew very well that he’d water it down himself. But at least he’d be able to do it with confidence. Dilute some 100-proof to 75 or 50 and your customers took exception.

  “Can you get it to me before the weekend?”

  Meaning tomorrow. She projected a smile. “How much we talking?”

  “Let’s start with two barrels.”

  A hundred and ten gallons! She nodded as if this wasn’t four times what she’d been expecting. “That’ll do. Uncle Dan told me he’s got a private stash, aging as we speak.”

  “Is that so?” Willie had to suspect she was bootlegging for more than one distiller.

  “And I’m sure he’d part with it if I showed him cash money.”

  “You reckon half now, half later would satisfy him?”

  She gave him the smile he was waiting for. “I reckon it would.”

  Willie went into his back room to retrieve the money. From behind her a voice said, “Say, Stella! How’s Uncle Dan doing?” It came from a broad-faced man in olive-green coveralls.

  His drinking buddy said, “Yeah, what’s that ol’ rascal been up to?”

  Stella laughed and shook her head. “He’s doing just fine.”

  “Come on now, you got to give us a little news.”

  It’d be good business if she sat around with these half-drunk customers and started telling Uncle Dan stories. White southerners feasted on nostalgia, even the manufactured kind. They loved tales of true country folk, authentic and unsullied, running barefoot in the hollers and living life the way it was supposed to be lived. Nobody thought of themselves as a hillbilly, but they liked knowing they were out there somewhere, like the buffalo.

  “Sorry, boys,” she said. Alfonse was waiting for her, and they had a few more stops to make tonight. She told them, “Next time I’ll have a report for sure.”

  Willie came back and passed her a paper bag.

  “I’ll have Alfonse drop off your order tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll knock twice at the back door.”

  “That colored boy?” Willie laughed as he tucked the jar under the pine-top bar. “I’ll make sure to lock the door.”

  Stella didn’t move. Willie felt the change in the air, looked up, confused. He tried a laugh. “What’s going on? What are you—?”

  Stella got ahold of herself. Took a breath. “Two knocks.”

  * * *

  —

  across the street, Alfonse Bowlin leaned against Stella’s ’41 Ford coupe, cigarette in hand, making loitering look elegant. “How’s Mr. Teffeteller tonight?”

  “The same.” She didn’t mention the colored boy crack. “He’ll take two.”

  “Two gallons! That God damn cheap—”

  “Barrels.” Laughed to see his face light up. “Top that, Mr. Bowlin.”

  “You’re just trying to show me up.” The next two stops were in Hall, Alcoa’s Black neighborhood, and it would be Stella’s turn to wait by the car while he made the sale. Alfonse was a hell of a salesman, but 110 gallons in one order was a career-high bar for both of them.

  She took a Lucky Strike from behind her ear and lit it with her Zippo, just to be sociable. “I think he’ll take even more next week if we don’t mess this up.”

  “Where’s all this whiskey going to come from? We already promised everything you said you could make. Pee Wee alone’s on tap for seventy gallons.”

  “I know what we’ve promised. But between me and Hump, we can work around the clock and make enough for Willie and our existing clientele.”

  “Oh, they’re clientele now?”

  “That’s business talk for customers who pay full price.”

  He chuckled and put up his hands. “You’re the boss.”

  “Damn straight.” Their customers thought Stella was just a bootlegger like Alfonse, running hooch cooked up by the mysterious Uncle Dan. Her secret, maintained for professional reasons, was that she was the sole distiller, with some assistance from Hump Cornette. That boy wasn’t the brightest employee, but he was loyal and eager to please.

  Alfonse started to ask a question, but headlights were coming up the highway. No mistaking the three beacons on the roof—it was a radio car, looked like a Plymouth. Not Alcoa police, then; they drove Dodge.

  The car zipped past them, hit the brakes. Alfonse swore. They watched in silence as the car backed down the middle of the highway and stopped beside them. “Blount County Sheriff” on the door, the driver’s window down.

  “Jesus Christ, Bobby,” Stella said. “You like to give me a heart attack.”

  Bobby Reed was Sheriff Whaley’s deputy. Whaley was a pain in the ass and a worry to her business, but Bobby was all right, a longtime acquaintance who appreciated the occasional jar left on his doorstep. “I’ve been looking all over for you, Stella. I got a message for you.”

  He glanced at Alfonse. Bobby was good people, but he was still white people. Nobody around here cared for Stella driving around with a Black man. Alfonse had let it be known that he wasn’t African but Melungeon—Dutch and Indian and a little Portuguese, probably more Caucasian than some of the sons of the Confederacy—but that didn’t carry any weight with white folks: dusky skin was midnight black as far as they were concerned.

  Stella said, “Whatever it is, you can say it in front of Alfonse.” Alfonse raised his cigarette in salute, not quite disrespectful.

  Bobby said, “It came through the prayer chain.”

  Stella grunted. She hadn’t heard that phrase in years. A cold feeling came up in her stomach like rising water.

  He said, “Abby Whitt wanted to get you word, soon as possible.”

  She blinked hard. “Get to the point.”

  The deputy spoke. Two words, and they were swallowed up by a roar in her head like radio static. Alfonse asked her if she was all right. She put a hand out to him, then stopped herself before she touched him. Bobby stared at her.

  “What did you say?” she asked. The question was automatic, a delaying action. The words were there if she wanted to hear them, like the shout of a drowning man in heavy surf.

  Motty’s passed.

  * * *

  —

  she drove alfonse back to his Chevy, tucked away behind the trees just off 129. Alfonse offered to stay with her, but she told him no, he could collect the rest of the orders in Hall, leave the white deliveries till morning. Nobody’d bother him if he stayed in the Black part of town.

  To her consternation, he wouldn’t get out of the car. “You sure you’re all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Not convincing, Stel, not convincing. I was in France when I lost my mamaw and I cried like a baby.”

  “You won’t see any tears from me. Motty was mean as a snake.”

  He laughed. “Is that why you looked so mad?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Bobby Reed told you she’d passed, and at first you looked like you was about
to fall over—and then you got that look.”

  “Look?”

  “Like you’re about to punch a drunk in the throat.”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. “That wasn’t anger, that was disappointment. I never thought she’d die in her sleep. I expected her to go down in a hail of bullets.”

  “So why you going up, right this minute?” Alfonse asked. “She’ll still be dead in the morning.”

  That was the truth. And Motty would still be dead in a month and a year. Maybe in a dozen years Stella would be ready to go back to the cove. She said, “I got no choice.”

  He pursed his lips. “Care to elaborate?”

  She didn’t care to, no. Then: “I never told you much about my family.”

  “You never told me a thing about your family. That’s all right, I figure it was your business.”

  “I got a cousin, living up there alone with Motty. She’s just ten.”

  “She’s alone in that house with a dead body?”

  “Maybe.” Uncle Hendrick, Motty’s younger brother, lived in Atlanta, a day’s drive away, and if he’d gotten word about Motty he’d be on the road already. She couldn’t let him get to the house before her. “Though I’m hoping Abby’s with her.”

  “This is the same Abby who taught you to moonshine?”

  “You’d like him.”

  “I’d certainly like to shake his hand. Thanks to him I can make a living—bootlegging beats the hell out of the alternative.” Alfonse had come out of the army with two options: go back to mining bauxite like he’d done before the war, or work in the Alcoa pot room with his daddy. Then he’d met Stella, and a third way appeared.

  He reached for the door handle but didn’t get out. “Anything you need, you call me, all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Promise me.”

  No doubt plenty of people assumed she and Alfonse were screwing. And it was true the two of them had recognized straight off they were the perfect match—just not for romance. It wasn’t color that made it impossible, though that might have been enough. And it wasn’t that he was an unattractive man. But early on they realized they could do something much rarer than make love—they could make money. They called it their Moonshine Marriage.

  She kissed his cheek. “My Hooch Husband.”

  “My Whiskey Wife.”

  She took out the paper bag of cash she’d gotten from Willie, then handed the whole wad to Alfonse. “Have Hump buy more supplies. We’re low on everything—sugar, mash, malt. And tell him to buy white oak charcoal, because we’re going to need to speed up the aging. Then as soon as he can, start running a batch.”

  “White oak charcoal. All right.” Alfonse was a bootlegger and a salesman, and mostly stayed out of the way when Stella was cooking. “Has Hump ever run the still on his own?”

  “First time for everything. I’ll try to get back as soon as I can.”

  Alfonse didn’t like the sound of that, but he was a gentleman about it. “Be careful up there, Stella. Those hillbillies are crazy.”

  “Not crazier than me.”

  “Fair enough.” He got out of the car, then leaned through the window. “So what’s her name? This girl cousin.”

  Stella put the Ford in gear. Suppressed a sigh.

  “Sunny.”

  * * *

  —

  with the new paved road, it took most tourists over an hour to get from Maryville to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Stella made it in thirty-five minutes without even pushing the Ford hard. Not two months ago, she and Alfonse had dropped a brand-new engine into the old car, a Cadillac overhead-valve V8 with 190 horsepower. It was like jamming a cheetah’s heart into a barn cat’s body. She roared past the park gate without touching the brakes. A few minutes later she was deep in the cove.

  Out of bootlegger’s habit she cut the lights and the engine and coasted into the front yard. The house was dark except for a pair of hurricane lamps burning in the windows. She watched the front door until the steering wheel turned slick under her palms.

  Ten years ago she’d told Motty she was never coming back to this place. It had never occurred to her that Motty would force her hand by up and dying.

  Stella stepped up to the front door, knocked. After a while she pushed it open but didn’t step inside. The room was lit only by those lamps.

  She called out, “Sunny?”

  She waited a mite longer, and then stepped in.

  Even in the gloom the house felt the same as when she left. She knew without taking inventory that everything was still in its place. The hook rug under foot, the cane chairs, the rack holding three guns as familiar to her as family dogs: Motty’s .22 single-shot, her Winchester Model 97 shotgun, and Long Tom, the ancient family long rifle, passed down from Russell Birch himself. The house smelled the same, too; decades of wood smoke and tobacco and bacon grease had soaked into the timbers.

  The only thing different was herself. She could see now how cramped and dark and worn out the house was, like a tiny wooden ship on a long voyage.

  She walked down the short hallway that ran between the front room and the kitchen. Her old bedroom was on the right. She knocked on the door and said, “Sunny?” Eased the door open. The room was dark, but a few shapes were visible: her old chiffarobe, hulking in the same corner as always, and her bed, now against the north wall.

  The girl wasn’t there.

  Had Uncle Hendrick already gotten there and carried her off? It didn’t seem possible. Sunny had to be up the mountain, with Abby.

  Stella went into the second bedroom.

  Two lit kerosene lamps on the windowsill and one on Motty’s Singer sewing machine, making the air shimmer. The iron-frame bed seemed to float above the dark floor. Motty lay in the center of the bed with her arms crossed over her belly and eyes closed. The patchwork quilt, the old blue star one that had been Stella’s favorite, lay unwrinkled across her, the pillow placed just so under her head. Was this Sunny’s work? It was worthy of an undertaker.

  Stella stared at Motty’s face for a long time. The flickering lamplight made it seem as if she might be breathing. At any moment she’d open her eyes and say, What the hell you looking at?

  Motty’s glasses and the jar containing her teeth were in their usual spots atop the sewing machine. A Bible lay on the seat of a chair, open to a page late in the New Testament, one verse underlined. It was Stella’s own Bible, the one she’d left behind when she ran away from the place. She’d gotten it as a gift when she was twelve years old and remembered underlining that passage.

  Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.

  Who set out the Bible? Motty wouldn’t have been looking through it before she died; she’d never been one for scripture, of any religion.

  Stella touched the back of her hand to Motty’s cheek. She’d braced herself for the coldness, thinking it would feel like a slab of hog flesh—Stella had butchered and hung her share of hogs—but it was a shock just the same. This dead body was a mistake. A wrongness. When she first came to the cove as a child, Stella thought Motty was ancient, even though she couldn’t have been more than sixty. Eventually she came to seem not old but ageless, permanent as the mountain.

  Stella sat on the edge of the bed and folded back the quilt. Motty wore her old housedress, the one with the pink ceramic buttons. Stella turned the body’s arm, ran a thumb over the palm. The skin was heavily calloused, crossed and recrossed with scars like a switchyard—but unbloodied. The other hand, harder to see in the dim light, also seemed unwounded, and as scarred as always.

  For five years it had been just the two of them on this farm. There’d been no privacy, no modesty. They took turns bathing in a steel tub in the kitchen, went braless in the heat. When Stella went through puberty, it was Motty who explained her new body
to her, who belted on her first sanitary pad. Stella rubbed the Jergens lotion between Motty’s shoulders, massaged her blue-veined calves, buttoned her Sunday dress from behind. On the coldest nights they slept in the same bed. This leftover body seemed like some kind of trick.

  She undid the first button of Motty’s dress, and the next. Pressed a hand to the old woman’s throat, then moved her hand slowly down, between her breasts, across her cold belly. It was a stupid gesture; the wound she was looking for would be near impossible to see in this light, much less find by touch.

  She reached for the lantern. Set it on Motty’s belly, holding the top of it with one hand. The woman’s pale skin, exposed like this, was obscene.

  Stella leaned close. There. A puckered bruise like a yellowjacket’s sting, surrounding a trio of dots. No one looking at it would take it for a killing wound. But Stella knew.

  The God in the Mountain had killed her.

  A sound. Stella jerked upright, glimpsed a shadow moving in the hallway. Then quick steps, running away.

  Stella shouted and lurched into the hallway, still holding the lantern. The kitchen door banged open, and a figure threw itself into the backyard, small and rabbit quick.

  Sunny.

  Stella chased, calling the girl’s name. Somehow Sunny had already crossed the yard. She vanished into the shadow beside the hog pen and seconds later reappeared, on the hill above the barn. Stella caught only a flash of a pale dress, a spray of dark hair. In the moonlight her arms and legs seemed strange, a swirl of light and shadow. Then the trees swallowed her.

  Stella ran for the path between the crossed trees. As she passed the hog pen she glanced into the dark under that roof and it seemed empty, thank God. Then she started up the hill.

  * * *

  —

  minutes later stella was bent over, huffing hard, sweat running down her back. It had been ten years and ten thousand cigarettes since she’d run up those switchbacks.

  The front door to the chapel hung open. The arm of a shiny padlock was hooked over the handle.