Pop! Shatter!
Mississippi was hard on Lucas Hardy during the first decades of the twentieth century. Not that he deserved any special treatment in the deep south, because he was just like all of the rest of the white children and grandchildren of immigrants from DeSoto County on down to New Orleans. His father and grandfather before him were of Irish/English descent, just plain meat and potatoes folks who sought a better life in the Mississippi delta. Lucas just couldn’t find much of a way to make a living, except brewing his moonshine, dubbed white lightning. For some, trading in illegal libations was enough to make a decent living, keep food on the table, and the roof over the head. But for someone like Lucas, it was much easier to loose track of profit, and cost, and the other things that a businessman had to keep track of. When you drink your main export, the loss of business sense usually comes before other senses, like the feeling in your face or just the sense of being conscious.
Lucas already had this habit going against him, but there were two more things that may have contributed to his big mistake. His wife, Grace, was a decent woman, of the same descent, who relied on her faith in God and said prayers nightly. Many people in Claiborne County thought Grace was a saint for putting up with Lucas and all of the baggage that came with being a drunken moonshiner’s wife. Grace, in another life, another setting, could have been the perfect mafia wife, since she knew how the money came in but she turned her Christian sensibility away from the source. The other problem that caused Lucas to loose his senses, other than the booze and the pressure from a good woman, was the so-called revenue office. The revenuers, as the officers were known, made a living by sniffing out the illegal liquor operations in Mississippi, smashing stills and confiscating corn mash on a daily basis. The Claiborne County revenuer, Rupert Smalls, was on to Lucas, but could never seem to get into his yard without someone noticing. There were Lucas and Grace’s two grandchildren, who would find out in the future that the still was hidden in the thick reed and grass that grew under the trees near the pond. Smalls could also count on assorted neighs, winnies, grunts, and whatever other animal noises were made in the four-acre expanse behind Lucas’s house. Someone always got tipped off and Lucas always managed, even in a drunken stupor, to stop Smalls from coming in the yard. Rupert Smalls was far from a coward, but he drew the line on arguing with a drunken old man with a shotgun.
Lucas grew his own corn to make the mash that fermented in his still, so he normally did not have to go into Port Gibson, the center of life in Claiborne County, for white lightning supplies. One day, though, Lucas, surprisingly sober, got in his old banger truck and headed to Port Gibson, since some of the piping on his crude still would need to be replaced. When he shuffled in front of the general store, which was truly a general store, Smalls was sitting on a bench a short way down from the store’s entrance, smoking a cigarette. He was a wiry little man, with horn-rimmed glasses and a thin mustache. Everything about Smalls was thin, but his eyes were the kind that pierced right through you, the kind of eyes that could call you out on a lie before it ever finished sailing across your lips. Smalls smoked slowly, deliberately, hoping to eek some kind of information out of anyone he knew walking down Main Street. He held his cigarette with the cherry facing down, the butt planted firmly between his thumb and forefinger, giving him a casual yet intimidating look. Smalls did not intimidate Lucas, in fact, Lucas never worried about much. In the last big spring storm, a tornado came through the back two acres of the property and Lucas stood to watch, while the rest of the family, Grace in firm command, scattered into the cellar amidst the roar of the wind and the squawking, gaggling, and grunting of the animal menagerie. Lucas stood face to face with nature, so staring down a dumb-ass revenuer was not much of a job.
“Hullo, Hardy,” Smalls sneered, “haven’t seen you in a while. That operation of yours keepin’ you busy, I expect.”
“Smalls,” Lucas nodded, politely, because even as an old man Lucas remembered what his mama told him about being polite, “if you mean the animals, yep they’re keepin’ me busy. I got a goat that kicks up a fuss when you try to milk her.”
“Is that what you call it?” asked Smalls, trying to smartly refer to the illegal whiskey flow, but, after he said it, he felt stupid.
Lucas nodded again, still politely, although he was ready to take smalls by the collar of his cheap suit, and walked into the store. The clerk was the owner’s wife, a blonde haired lady with more bosom than anything else, a woman with whom Lucas had barely spoken more than two words in the twenty or so years of their general store business.
“Mornin’,” said the woman, and went back to filling candy jars.
“Mornin'”, replied Lucas, taking in the smell of the general store. There were so many pleasing smells in the delta, like rain, or cut grass, or barbeque, but the most pleasing to Lucas was the smell of the general store, a mix of hardware and oil, spices and soaps. To Lucas, this was the smell of progress, of industry, not just the economy in general, but his own progress and industry. After all, who went to a general store when things were really bad? Most people in dire straights went into the yard and killed a chicken or butchered a pig, but never to the general store. The owners of the Port general store had stopped offering credit right after the depression and never started again.
Lucas wandered among the aisles, half browsing and half consciously looking for the copper tubing he needed. He found the tubing and made his way back to the desk, where Ms. Bosom was still plopped. She took the tubing and placed it in a small paper bag, eyebrows arched at the sight Lucas Hardy purchasing copper tubes.
“Got a plumbin’ problem, have you?” Ms. Bosom asked, coyly.
“Yup”, said Thomas, smiling. For the first fifty years of his life, Lucas’s smile was able to captivate and turn women his way. He had natural charm, his mother once told him, and he still did, although his natural charm was a little obscured by several days’ beard growth and the indulgence of too much alcohol.
Ms. Bosom charged Lucas for the piping, collected his money, and turned back to her candy before Lucas could even get out the door. He stood for another few seconds, taking deep wiffs of his favorite smell. Smalls was still leaning against the bench, but wisely decided not to say anything to Lucas. He flicked his cigarette butt to the ground just behind Lucas, as he was climbing into the truck. Lucas drove off, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder in time to see Smalls go into the store. Lucas headed for home, but knew that it may be time to start hiding the booty.
Lucas arrived home as Grace was fixing dinner. When Lucas was sober, he and Grace could have been any other grandparents who had been married sixty years. He took a sniff of the stew Grace was making, and told her he had some work to do. Lucas walked through the kitchen and into the house’s newest room, a sort of den he had started building. Actually, with his son Harry, Lucas had almost finished the room. The wallboard was up halfway and all around the room, the exposed frame of the room sticking out of the top like a skeleton. Lucas looked down one of the walls, hoping that no rats or roaches had died in between the wall board and the outside wall. He also thought that this might be a good hiding place for any contraband he may have to disguise.
Lucas trudged out to the pond and located the tree with the still hidden below it. He had fashioned some nets into a camouflage of some kind, covered with weeds and muck and leaves, and laid them over the still, careful to leave vents to let the steam come out and the air for the fire to come in. Lucas uncovered the still, looking around nervously for any sign of movement. He sat down on a crate of assorted bottles filled with his brew and opened the crate next to that one. Some people think on the sofa, in the outhouse, in the bed, but Lucas did his best thinking on a crate of white lightning. The open crate was filled with mostly clear bottles, in all shapes, from medicine bottles to soda bottles, rudimentarily stopped with corks Lucas had cut from a board. He reached for one of the smaller bottles, small enough to fit in his pocket, and pulled the cork. Lucas tipped the bottle back, taking a long gulp, feeling the liquid hit his tongue, then begin its slow burn down his throat and into his stomach.
“That should get me started,” he chuckled, thinking about a way to hide the still and the liquor from the certain visit from Smalls. After all, Smalls had probably managed to get Ms. Bosom to tell him what she sold to Lucas Hardy, which, depending on the judge’s mood, may or may not be enough evidence to charge Lucas with keeping an illegal moonshine operation. Lucas took another long swig of booze, then another, then another. When he woke up, the empty bottle next to him, the sun was already going down, Grace would have served dinner and probably supper, and the chances of a visit from Smalls were getting greater.
In a sudden smattering of creativity, Lucas decided to carry the two cases of booze up to the house and put them in his original ideal for the hiding place, the half finished walls of the new room. He stood, more steady under the influence than not, and picked up the first crate. Lucas hauled the heavy crate up the rise and back to the house, noting the light in the bedroom window. As he noticed the light, he put the crate down, causing a glass rattle that seemed much louder than it really was in the still Mississippi dusk. Grace came to the window, obviously not surprised to see Lucas in that condition, but also not angry that he missed two meals. She was used to this, and left plates for him in the icebox, Lucas having out of necessity taught himself how to heat up the food. Besides, Grace was, as you might have guessed, a great country cook who kept her family fed well. Grace pulled the curtains and turned away, praying silently for the redemption of her wayward husband.
Lucas brought the crate into the new room, then turned to collect the other case of booze. When the two cases were safely open on the floor in front of him, he started pulling bottles out, big ones first, and placing them into the space between the wallboard and the outside wall. He could tack up the wallboard on the upper half of the wall until the heat from Smalls wound down. Lucas put one bottle in his pocket and planned to hide the other one in the truck. Nowdays, no one thinks of hiding alcohol in their vehicle, but then, that was usually the place to hide it. No sheriff searched cars in Claiborne County, unless they had been missing, or occasionally were found with dead bodies in them.
Lucas grabbed the hammer and small tacks from the tool chest on the floor, and began tacking up the wallboard, attempting to make it look like the new room was finished. He slipped the hammer through the loop on his coveralls and remembered to take a big sip of the whiskey, just to make sure that he could work on making the room look good. Before he tacked the next piece, Lucas looked down into the space and counted 47 bottles of white lightening, a street value that would keep the family fed for a couple of weeks. Lucas quietly tacked wallboard for about an hour, then, pleased with his work, went to the front porch to finish off the bottle.
Smalls, becoming wise to the fact that his visits were too regular, decided to wait until Saturday morning to pay his visit to the Hardy place. Friday passed uneventfully, Lucas pausing in his operations and his drinking to put on his fancy coveralls and sit down to dinner with Grace, the grandkids, and the kids. An uneventful day was common, but for Lucas, the day was nerve-racking. Every time he passed a window he looked out to make sure that Smalls wasn’t snooping around, even though he had hidden the bottles and temporarily dismantled the still.
On Saturday morning, Lucas woke with a start, reacting to a noise that was not part of the Saturday morning awakenings.
Pop! Shatter. Gurgle. Pop! Shatter. Drip. Lucas sat up in bed, startling Grace in the process. Pop! Shatter. Gurgle drip drip. Grace sat up, too, wondering what in the world was making that noise. They got up, walked through the living room, through the kitchen. Nothing. Pop! Pop! Pop! Shatter! Shatter!
From the new room, the sound was bigger, wider, and smellier. The air was filled with the smell of fermenting corn mash liquor, not the rich smell of a good brandy but the nearly stomach turning low-class drunk smell of not quite done bootleg liquor. The bottom of the wallboard and the baseboard had begun to erupt with wet spots, as the popping continued. Lucas only knew of this happening once before, when old man Langtry had told him that if your process was just off, the stuff would blow the bottles. What, with the pressure of Grace and the revenuer Smalls, it’s no wonder his recipe was off by a few hairs.
When Smalls arrived, the air was full of pops, shatters, and that awful smell. As he led Lucas off, he laughed, thinking that this was surely one of the best ones yet. The judge, two days later, laughed hearty over the story, and, in a good mood, let Lucas go, provided that he not try to make any more bootleg. Of course, Lucas’s run ins with the law were legendary after that, and the glass and cork from the bottles stayed inside the wall, even long after Lucas and Grace were gone.
