She attended to whatever had to be done in Carbon City, and that was plenty, but I couldn’t have gone in there and had people look at me, and know from what I was buying what I was up to. She got the tubs we needed for the water, and for the mash, and the kegs for aging the liquor. Everything had to be small, on account of the tunnel, as I didn’t want to drag any more stuff to the shaft mouth than I could help, but nothing gave us much trouble but the kegs. They were supposed to be charred, but I couldn’t see that they were, so we had to char them. While I worked on my pipe, she’d fill them with chips and shavings, until they were almost full up to the one end I’d left open after slipping the hoops and taking out the head. When it was going good with the flame she’d roll it around with the hook end of the fire poker she’d brought up from the cabin, until all over the inside was what they call the “red layer.” Then we’d souse water in it, and next day I’d put the head back in and tighten the hoops, and we had one more container ready. For all that stuff I gave her money, but it didn’t cost as much as I had thought it would, because she got a lot of it second-hand, and beat them down when she could. But some things, I don’t know where she could have bought them. For instance, the hydrometer she got, that you have to have to test the proof with, came in a long pasteboard box. And stamped on the box was “Property of Carbon City High School.” I kept telling myself I had to ask her about it, but I never did.
After a long time, after staying up late mealing corn, making charcoal, and doing all kinds of things that had to be done, came the day when we warmed some water in the still and put down our first mash. And three days after that we made our first run. I felt nervous, because even if nobody could see us it was against the law and against all the principles I had. But it was pretty too, after you got going with it. On a little still you put in a toothpick, but on this one we used a skewer, a wooden pin that you dress meat with, that’s sharp on one end and six or eight inches long. We stuck it in the end of the pipe, where the coil came out, and as the fire came up, there came this funny smell I had never smelled before but that I liked, and the pin began to get wet. Then on the sharp end, that was outside, came a drop, like the drop of a honeysuckle when you pull the cord through to taste yourself some honey. It fell in the fruit jar we had under it, and then pretty soon here came another drop. Then the drops were falling one after the other. Then they came together in a little stream, the color of water, but clearer than any water you ever saw. When the first jar was full, she poured it in the tall glass that the hydrometer worked in, dropped the gauge in, and took the proof.
“What does it say?”
“One seventy.”
“Very good.”
“My goodness, if it’s that strong at the start we can run it clear down to thirty and it’ll still be one hundred when we mix it for the keg.”
“We’ll run till it mixes one twenty-five.”
“The more we get the more we’ve got.”
“Maybe this is a case where the less you act like a hog, the more you put on some fat. We can run it till we got a lot and put it in the wood at a hundred. But then it dries out and gets weaker, and if it’s weak it won’t sell. And the weaker it is, the slower the charcoal works on it. If we put it in strong, we got color, flavor, and mellowness in a month, anyway enough to be a big help when it’s mixed with regular liquor. But at a hundred we could be a year and we’d get nothing they’d pay us for. The longer we got to keep it, the more kegs we got to buy, the longer we wait for our money.”
“That money’s what I want.”
“Then watch it, it don’t get too weak.”
“Then anyway we can have music.”
She had a little radio up there by then, and turned it on, and I didn’t mind, as it would be a long day, watching that stream off the end of the pin.
“And a drink.”
“What?”
“What we making the stuff for?”
“You mean this?”
“Sure.”
She climbed up, got a bottle of Coca-Cola out of the basin the spring ran into, and the tin cup we kept there. When she came down she poured from the jar to the cup, dumped some Coca-Cola in, and handed it to me.
“Taste it, it’s good.”
Now nobody could live their life in mountain country without learning plenty about whisky, but that was the first time I ever tasted it. It tasted like Coca-Cola at first, but then I began to feel good, and wanted another swallow. She had the cup by then, taking a swig, and then was when I knocked it out of her hand.
“There’s to be no drinking in this.”
“I’ll have a drink if I want to.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Will you kindly tell me why?”
“We got work to do for one thing. I get careless with this fire, so it’s too hot, this whole thing could explode so easy you wouldn’t believe it. And later, when it’s dark, we’ve only just begun. We’ve got to lower this spent mash down, so we can feed it to the hogs and not have it all over the place, and we can’t do that or anything if we’re up here drunk. And we’ll get drunk, if we take enough of it. They all do. I’ve seen them. And besides, it’s wrong.”
“You believe all you hear in church?”
“I believe what I feel.”
“For God’s sake.”
Because by then I loved her so much I wanted to be weak, and do what she meant we should do, but my love made me strong too, so I knew I wouldn’t do it. With liquor in me, though, I didn’t know what I would do, or what she could make me do. “You heard me, Kady? That’s one thing we don’t do.”
“I heard you.”
Chapter 4
And there came the night when we drove into Carbon City with our first hundred quarts, packed in every bag and sack and poke I could find, and yet all you could hear was glass, rattling louder even than the truck. I thought I would die, and when she left me, after I parked by the railroad, everything from the chirp of crickets to the clank of yard signals just gave me the shivers. After a long time she was back, with a café man, and he had a flashlight, so I wanted to holler at him, and tell him to put it out. But we had it set that she’d do the talking, so I sat there and wiped off sweat. They talked along, and he put the light on a bottle for color, then did some tasting and handed it back. “It might not be so bad, sister, except it’s all full of caramel.”
“O.K. I’ll take it up the street.”
“Can’t you taste it?”
“What would I be tasting it for? I made it, dumbbell. That color’s charcoal, that I burned in the keg myself, as anybody would know except maybe a jerk that hadn’t seen good booze for so long he’s forgot what it’s like. But it’s all right, and no hard feelings. I’ll just take it where they know what it means to have some hundred ten proof in the house that makes blended stuff taste like something, and kick a little bit too.”