New Moon
The
night is cool on the porch as I stare out over the hillside lined with
oak and cedar and slanting shadows of midnight blue. It’s a new moon.
I’m alone except for the farm dog’s silhouette as it keeps watch from
down in the yard, dignified in his distance from a visitor like me. As
the light coats the darkness in its own subtle quilt, he rises once in a
while to walk in circles, seek the center of his plot and nest back
again somewhere warmer. And tonight he is the only thing stirring. On
the hill across the lonely dirt road, there are a million breathing
things, and they are all perfectly still. Even branches which could wave
in the fall breeze don’t. It is a massive stillness that’s odd to a
stranger’s eye. Tonight I have watched this scene like an optical
illusion, looking for a picture made out of its parts. I’ve watched it
until could easily imagine a sudden madness, some fluke stroke that
changes everything forever. Out here it could happen, and I can’t help
but think that on dark, creaking porches all over the outskirts of
Lynchburg, it does. But now and again you’re pulled back from it by a
stray dog or pickup in heat and on its way to the next unincorporated
town looking for what it can’t find at home. I’ve come to this place
since I was old enough to walk, and my younger self knows it well. But
this older one, now back to visit, he’s not so sure. Is the dark getting
deeper with age? The stillness now seems able to consume that distant
and modern world whole.
“C’mon in here. Got something to show ya’.”
I start as I turn to see my father’s cracked smile pressed against the screen door. I can still sneak up on you, boy, it says.
“Hey, Pop.”
A new
pocket knife. A bit of twisted, historic metal unearthed by hours of
free time and Civil War reverie. Doesn’t matter. I’ll bite. It’s my job.
The folding chair knocks over a water bowl, and I plod past Matt Dillon
and Festus, past the tiny bathroom smothered in plastic flowers, and
into the kitchen. He’s already rummaging in a cupboard, shoving aside
cans and boxes of Minute Rice. Elbow-deep in Bush’s beans, he retrieves
something delicately, as if it were his samurai sword. I give him the
questioning look he expects, and he hands it to me. Only after I turn it
over in my fingers do I realize that it is not empty. Now it’s my turn
to smile.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
I hold
the Mason jar up to the dim bulb overhead. He’d said for months that the
boys who own the land up on the hill behind the property line were a
source, but I’d long written it off to his penchant for storytelling.
Something old and new at once. A quart of myth.
“Tastecha’ some.”
I unscrewed the jar and put it to my nose. Potato vodka with a kiss of corn.
“Heh. Go on-n’ try it.”
I raised it to my lips, ready for the burn.
“Whoa….smooth.”
“Yep, that’s some good stuff right there. A lot of it you cain’t even drink, but I like this. I put it in my Coke.”
I took
another drink, having wanted to taste homemade my whole drinking life.
Its legend has always been an intriguing one, a fairy tale pointing
straight to the south, this very area too, where my mother’s father
carved out a life between hill and holler. With so many tales that fade
away come adulthood, tasting this now was something special. Visions of
iron kettles. Black and whites careening down dirt roads just to take
them out. Sepia men snaking jars in false Ford floorboards, their chests
cutting through the night, fighting with the presence of buckshot.
Brimstone deputies hell-bent on holding together a right and decent land
for one more Sunday.
This
may have been bootleg, but tender care in some backyard or basement had
planed down the edges of a truly epic proof, sanded down the rough
finish to something approaching art. As the spirit finished sliding down
my deflowered throat, it occurred to me. Was this discovery just the
first? What else about this special piece of history could be unearthed?
Would the present reality of Everclear end up not rife with mystery and
character, but sterile as an office park, complete with dull glances
toward empty parking spaces? For now what I knew for sure was that some
‘shine is as good as anything you find on the shelves today. And, more
importantly, the real thing is still very much alive and as close as my
parents’ cupboard. I handed him the jar and watched it disappear back
into its camouflaged lair before being covered with an old checkered
tablecloth.
As Miss
Kitty lovingly scolded Festus for his time in the saloon, I passed my
dozing Dad and returned to the porch and the new moon. I looked out into
the dark and the stillness that I once knew well. I took another sip
and saw something stir somewhere in the blackness. Maybe it was time.
Time to reconnect. I could trace this rare juice back to its source, if
only to gaze on the wellspring as it exists today. I could study my own
blood through stories that still echoed in the town. I could go back in
time with these older eyes, decide for myself what is myth, and what is
just plain larger than life.
____________________________
Michael
K. Gause has taught German, sold men's clothes, stocked diapers at
midnight, and served coffee to people he hopes never to see again. He
was once told he'd never write anything good. Last year he was nominated
for a Pushcart Prize. He figures that makes things square. He assumes
responsibility for two chapbooks and is creator and host of The
Dishevel’d Salon, a monthly gathering of Twin Cities artists.