Light to the Hills: A Novel (36)

“I don’t have a taste for neither,” Finn admitted.

“Then you won’t be drinking up the profit,” said Gripp. “That’s more for us. I gotta camp out here to keep the furnace stoked, and we don’t want folks rooting out our spot. When we’re cooking, you’ll act as lookout. I ain’t about to sit in a jail cell for nobody. Ain’t been caught yet, so don’t worry ’bout that none.

“Back in Corbin, I needed a lookout and had to let a feller in on my whereabouts. All he had to do was ring a cowbell in case of a raid. Ugliest feller you ever saw. Had a ring of warts that circled his neck like a collar, so I called him Toady. Toady Newsome. Nephew of one of the local lawmen, and he let on like we’d be in the clear.”

Gripp continued, keeping one eye locked on Finn as he unspooled his cautionary tale. “Now Toady did keep watch, but he wasn’t like you. Even though we’d worked it out fair and square, like me and you, he figured his cut should be bigger since he had to sit out in the weather, getting drained by ticks and mosquitoes.”

“We’re both out here working,” said Finn.

“That’s what I told him!” said Gripp, glad Finn could see common sense. “He didn’t see eye to eye with that, so one day, he didn’t ring the bell. Easy as you please, he let the sheriff and three deputies walk right by him and up the hill to the still. Lucky for me, I’d just hacked off the head of a copperhead with a spade and carried it off over the hill to chuck it into the ravine. Six black crows shot out of the treetops, cawing to wake the dead, and I dropped to my belly. Toady was at the creek, pointing the way like a tour guide.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Finn assured him.

Gripp left out the part about how he’d hid out behind the feed store later that evening until Toady emerged, balancing a fifty-pound sack of corn on each shoulder. Gripp was close enough to see the white wart nubs stubbling his lookout’s wretched neck.

“Already setting her back up again?” he’d asked Toady, gesturing at the corn sacks with the end of his pistol. Gripp chewed a two-inch stub of a hickory stick in one corner of his mouth, and he switched the stick to the opposite corner with a quick flick of his tongue. “I only know one way to keep your big mouth shut for certain.”

Gripp had fired twice, hitting Toady first in the left knee so that he’d buckle, the corn sacks falling heavy on the ground in front of him. The second shot in his gut ended him, and he fell forward onto the bags, his blood seeping through the burlap and ruining its contents.



Finn MacInteer was strong and plucky, even with his game leg. Gripp was happy enough to partner with him since he shouldered a good share of the work, but Gripp’s trust only went so far. At the first sign of the breeze shifting, Gripp wouldn’t hesitate to cut his losses. It was up to Finn whether he ended up as one of those.

It was heavy work, except for the tasting, but the money trickled in, reliable as the sunrise. Folks tended to go without a lot of things before they’d do without their corn liquor. Gripp reassured Finn that his role in the making of it had nothing to do with how people chose to spend their wages. When Finn brought up tales of families and children who missed meals, families he knew good and well had a pa who was one of their regular customers, Gripp dismissed his concerns.

“He’d get it from other fellers if he weren’t getting it from us,” Gripp pointed out. “You can always buy ’em a sack o’ groceries to leave on their steps if you take a mind.” Gripp handed Finn a handful of bills for his take, and Finn slid them into his pocket.

The roosters were another story. They weren’t nearly as much trouble as brewing corn liquor. Gripp set up on a space of land just over the ridge from the MacInteer cabin in a direction they had no need to walk, where there were no patches of ginseng or deer trails. Finn had to tote water and feed to the birds.

Gripp set up individual huts for each of the birds, some fashioned from barrels, some from salvaged pieces of tin. He tethered each of them to their huts by straps on their legs, and they seemed content to scratch and peck in their small kingdoms, crowing to beat the band from sunup till sundown. Finn occasionally dragged their huts to fresh ground so that they could hunt and peck in new territory, but mostly he fed and watered them. They were as varied as folks in a city, some with plumed colored feathers on their necks and heads, some with tails that cascaded in long feathers that almost brushed the ground. Red, white, black, speckled, and one that was so black it was almost purple—they looked like pictures of fancy ladies from Hollywood.

For the most part, they were surprisingly even-tempered. Sometimes, in the interest of protecting their hens, roosters could turn mean and mount sneak attacks on a person, ambushing them and flying at their calves and ankles with wings beating and talons clawing. It was fearsome to behold.

“We had a rooster once that turned mean,” Finn recounted to Gripp. “It chased my sister clear across the yard, and she ran screaming into the house in tears. My mama marched right outside and snatched that rascal up by its neck. Gave it two sharp twists, and that was that.” He chuckled at the memory of his mother’s ire. “Mama can turn a mean-tempered rooster into supper before you can stomp your old hat.”

“Don’t be wringing any necks up here,” he cautioned. “I need these fellers ready to fight.”

He knew how to breed them for it, honing their natural instincts to go after the color red. The fights rarely lasted long. As soon as they were placed in the ring, the birds might posture for a few moments, dropping a wing and dancing sideways, but then it was Katy, bar the door. They flew at each other, sometimes balancing impossibly on their wings while the spurs on their yellow legs pummeled furiously. Every so often, Gripp hiked up the mountain to the cock cabin, as he called it, selected seven or eight birds for the night’s event, and took bets on them to win, as smug and cocksure as a rooster himself. Finn never went. He didn’t have the stomach for it. Instead, he was on hand when Gripp returned, ready to doctor a gashed breast or patch a pecked eye.