“White Lightning,” he said.
Myra covered her mouth, eyes wide. “Where’d you get that?”
“This old boy at school, Buddy Roach. His daddy makes it.”
“You better hope Mama never finds it,” I said.
Mark grinned and held the dirt-smeared jar up to the light falling through the chicken wire. “I believe I can outrun her,” he said, and took a long swig. He squeezed his eyes shut and coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Myra laughed and clapped her hands. I twisted my head away, burning with jealousy.
Mark was laughing, too, trying to catch his breath, eyes streaming water. Then he held out the jar to Myra. “I dare you,” he said. “Just one sup.”
My back stiffened. I wanted to reach out and grab her wrist as she took the jar, halting it on the way to her lips, but my dread of being mocked won out. I knew Mark would tell me not to be a chicken and Myra would probably think less of me, too. I saw how she was looking at him. Even if she liked me best, it was my brother she admired.
At first she thrust the jar back at Mark, spluttering and choking, but he handed it back to her. “First drink always burns going down,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”
He was right. We passed the jar around a few times and the more we drank, the easier the fiery liquid went down and settled in my stomach, radiating heat. I kept watching Myra and before long her face looked different to me, cheeks and eyes bright in a way I didn’t like. After a few drinks the world tilted each time I moved, but I didn’t refuse the jar when it came to me. Myra and Mark seemed to find everything funny. Pretty soon they were laughing at nothing, looking at each other and busting out in foolish giggles. Moonshine didn’t have the same effect on me. I just felt dizzy and green around the gills. I was about to pretend I heard somebody coming, anything to get out of the stinking heat of the chicken coop, when Myra said, “I want to go somewhere.”
Mark took another long swig from the jar. “There ain’t nowhere to go,” he said. “That’s the trouble with being stuck up here on top of a mountain.”
“This isn’t the top of it,” Myra said. “Granddaddy went to the top and he said you could see all the way to town.” Her words sounded slurry. I took the jar from Mark and forced myself to drink, even though I was heading fast toward being sick.
“It’s not that high,” I said. Myra wobbled getting to her feet. She stood there swaying in the slick-bottomed shoes she’d worn to school, not made at all for climbing.
“My daddy’s been, too,” Mark said. “He claims there’s a field up yonder.”
Myra’s eyes lit up. “There’s a field? Maybe that’s where Wild Rose goes when she gets loose.” I could picture Rose grazing, long neck bent, in my great-grandfather’s mountaintop paradise. I knew Myra would never rest until she saw it.
“Let’s go up there,” she said.
Mark tried to get up and they both laughed when he tripped over the rusty tines of a rake and nearly fell back down again. “I will if you will,” he said.
I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. “Don’t you remember what happened to Daddy?” I asked Mark, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “It’s too steep of a climb.”
Then Myra said something that cut me to the bone. “Why do you have to be such a baby all the time?” I could feel the blood draining out of my face.
Mark slapped me hard on the back and I almost tipped over. My head was swimming. “Buck up, private,” he said. “Have some gumption about you.”
Myra narrowed her eyes at me, as if they were having trouble focusing. “If he’s too yellow,” she said, “we’ll just do it without him.”
I stood there for a minute unable to speak, hating both of them, until Mark said, “If we’re going we better head out, so we can make it back before supper.” I could have told him there was no way we’d be back before supper. We were guaranteeing ourselves a whipping, but I kept quiet. I moved to let them pass and then followed them out of the chicken coop into the sun. We looked over our shoulders as we ducked under the fence, Mark holding the barbed strands apart for Myra, and disappeared into the thick pine trees that marked the beginning of our woods. Mark and Myra stumbled ahead, half leaning on each other, and I wanted to knock their heads together. I thought of turning back and telling Daddy what they were up to, but in the end I stayed my course.
The climb was easy at first. There was a footpath worn up through the trees, but I didn’t feel any better about the fix I was in. It didn’t help how the moonshine sloshed back and forth in my stomach. Several times I had to stop with my hands on my knees until a dizzy spell passed. At first Mark and Myra pretended they were still having fun. I tensed up each time she slid on loose rocks but Mark would get behind her and push, tickling her ribs under her blouse. It wasn’t long, though, before their giddiness wore off.
The terrain wasn’t very rugged but it labored straight up through trees so tall we couldn’t see their tops even when we craned our necks. After we had walked for what seemed like hours, sweating and pale and thirsty, the footpath began to disappear under a scrawl of twisted roots and ferns. I was so sick-feeling, it took every ounce of my will not to give up and sit down. At some point Mark must have realized it was still a long way to the top. I could see our predicament dawning on his face. Now he would be the baby if he suggested turning back. I was heartened a little to see my brother getting his comeuppance, and relieved that the climb wasn’t as dangerous as we had been told.
But just when I began to think Daddy had exaggerated, we came to a place where it seemed the mountain’s rock core had erupted through the pebbled dirt surface of the slope and heaved it almost in two, each side studded with scrubby bushes and tall, thin trees jutting at angles across the divide. It was still daylight and not much cooler in spite of the elevation but there was fog up ahead, curling close to the ground and clinging to the tree trunks. We all stopped and Mark and I exchanged nervous glances. I knew he wanted me to be the yellow baby she had called me, to let on like he was only turning back to appease his cowardly little brother, but he wasn’t going to get away with it. Then Myra started climbing again, maybe imagining Wild Rose grazing in a mountaintop meadow, or maybe just being stubborn. We had no choice but to go on behind her.
I mustered what little strength I had left and pushed myself upward, arms heavy and tongue dry and the rancid taste of moonshine still thick in the back of my throat. The incline was almost vertical and it was a struggle to keep my balance on the rocks. I bit my lip, shaking with exhaustion, trying to see through the sweat in my eyes. When I glanced up, I realized that Myra was out of sight. She had disappeared into the fog and Mark wasn’t far behind. There was nothing between the leaning trees but blank sky and the mist that had risen up to claim her. I went cold with dread and scrambled to catch up with them. That’s when I began to lose my hold, fingernails clawing for purchase in the crumbling dirt. In those slow seconds before dropping, heavy and helpless like in a dream of falling, I turned my head to the side and saw another outcropping. Some of the pines there were broken off with their tops bowing down. Between the rise I clung to and the mountain’s other jagged face a buzzard was circling. Then my arms and legs gave out and I was flailing backward, hands searching in vain for something to grab. The tumble down was fast, a blur of ground and sky, before my head cracked on a stone.