Light to the Hills: A Novel (35)
Gripp had lain it all out. He’d do most of the heavy lifting since he already had the know-how and experience with running liquor. He just needed a good spot of land near a creek to operate the still, one that wouldn’t be too hard for Finn to get to with his bum leg and handy walking stick. In the off-season, when they weren’t brewing and getting stashes to bootleggers, he had about twenty crates full of roosters ready to fight. If Finn could tend to them while he kept the still fired up, neither one would have to work that hard, all told, and they could split the cash. Well, maybe seventy-thirty, since he had done all the planning and up-front investing. Fair was fair. No telling how big they could grow the enterprise as long as they were quiet and smart about it.
“You strike me as both quiet and smart. Just the kind of partner I been needing. You get squeamish about anything, just say the word and you can bow out. No hard feelings.”
Gripp had Finn convinced it was a win-win, a sure ticket out of the mines, and a way to bring in some cash. “You can be careful and keep your nose clean,” he’d coaxed. “Not all moonshiners are no-count outlaws. You wouldn’t be doing the dirty parts anyway; I’m the one getting my hands dirty.”
When he sensed hesitation, Gripp zeroed in. “Now, if you’re worried about your family, this’ll help them, too. You don’t want to be no deadweight, under your mama’s feet. You’re old enough to make decisions for yourself anyhow, ain’t you?” He rested a moment to let his words settle in. “Whattya say? You in?” asked Gripp, his right hand outstretched. “You ready to learn a new trade? It’s decent money, and the sky floats above while you do it, a regular blue sky that won’t cut loose and fall.”
The boy had shaken his hand, just as he’d wagered he would. And he’d known right off at least two prime spots they could set up a still, back deep in the woods, close to water, and covered by trees and wild grapevine, where it wouldn’t be easy to walk up on. As for a place for roosters, there was a space not far from Finn’s own house that he could get to easy enough. They’d have to watch for coyotes and foxes, weasels and skunks, all the things that went after an easy meal.
“You ain’t seen my roosters,” Gripp had bragged. “They’ll fight to the death and send them critters flying with their tails between their legs. It’s something to see! They got spurs two inches long and sharp as a razor after a strop.”
With the locations secured, he set to work assembling a still with Finn’s help. Through the cold, gray months of winter, they stole blocks of time to arrange things. They hauled bags of meal, malt corn, and flour out into the woods, half dragging, half carrying their supplies. Once everything was gathered, they fashioned a stove out of stone and mud from the creek, with a hole beneath where the fire would burn and a flat top where the still would sit. Finn carved and ran a wooden trough from the creek to the site so that they could siphon cold running water throughout the process.
Making a good batch of ten or twelve gallons of moonshine took a solid eight or more days. Once Gripp had run the liquor through the still twice and it tasted to his liking, he declared the whiskey ready—around 110 proof. Many times, Gripp tasted himself into a stupor, and Finn had to take over and make sure the fire didn’t burn too hot or the jugs overflow at the worm’s end. This was partly why Gripp liked to have a partner—someone else could finish the work while he had a high time in the woods. Once they divvied it up into jars, gallon jugs, or barrels, whatever was on hand, Gripp sent word to his runners, and they were off to the races.
While they worked, they’d stop to warm their hands by the fire, and Gripp jawed about his past adventures and places he’d lived. One of his prime spots—his first, as it happened—was Nashville. The city had industry, the spectacle of regular pasture races with beautiful horses, and the celebrity of a new one-hour radio show that boasted fiddlers and pickers like Uncle Jimmy Thompson, Bill Monroe, and Uncle Dave Macon. Gripp hung around outside the Ryman stage and listened to the music that drifted out into the street, jealous of the attention the musicians received, their names on the marquee out front. He wanted to matter like that.
He hadn’t walked Nashville’s streets long before he discovered Black Bottom in the poorer Sixth Ward, named for the frequent flooding of the Cumberland that coated the roads with its silty residue. The nickname might have also had something to do with its residents—poor coloreds, many of them freed slaves, who lived and worked along the river or in service jobs in the houses of well-off whites. What drew Gripp was the colorful assortment of whorehouses, saloons, and gambling joints.
While folks elsewhere in the city were in a frenzy over some dustup about a monkey and a feller named Scopes, Gripp lost himself in the pleasures of Sadie Rue, a wide-hipped mistress who schooled him in the ways of women. Thanks to Sadie’s loose lips, an amorous sheriff’s deputy got wind of his midnight route. An ambush and gunfight (thank goodness for his inherited pistol) left him with a warrant out for running liquor and killing a lawman. Once more, he’d hopped the trusty L&N and lit out from Nashville, this time with a .45 caliber bullet lodged in his thigh and a smoldering lifelong grudge against Miz Sadie Rue.
“You watch,” Gripp told Finn. “Won’t be no time before word gets out about my—our—whiskey. This ain’t the kind of fancy bourbon that needs so much time to age in a barrel for some kind of special flavor and color. No need to wait that long or pay that much when you can drink it pure and simple, the way the good Lord intended.”