Scratch, page 17
Now, he and Holly were a part of the history of the Canaan valley, Holly more so than him, of course, simply due to her family. He was the transplant, unsure if he would ever be able to take root and thrive, or to become a part of the community.
A well-worn footpath branched off into the woods. It ran up a hollow parallel to a small stream that fed the quarry. Clear mountain water gurgled over rocks, washing them clean with its passage. It looked idyllic to Adam, the kind of path that only existed in books and fairy tales. It only took an instant to decide to follow it. He would turn back the moment the path petered out. He had no desire to get lost in these mountains.
The path followed the stream uphill for about a hundred yards. The farther Adam walked the higher the creek banks rose above the rushing water. The path, a well-packed dirt trail, stayed clear. He had to step over the occasional root or rock, and once he climbed over a fallen log, thick with fungus, but he had no concerns about losing his way back. It was cool under the trees, and damp. Spots of sunlight stabbed through the canopy and reflected countless shades of green.
He came to the source of the stream. A rock wall, moss-covered and dripping, jutted out of the hillside. The lower part was indented, not a cave so much as a small hole. Someone had placed a pipe, now rusty with age, into a crack in the rock. A clear stream of water poured from it onto the ground and down over the rocks. Adam stumbled down the embankment, and went to the pipe, getting his feet wet in the process. He stuck his fingertips under the pipe and was surprised at how cold the water felt. Adam was a city boy, through and through. He never drank water that wasn’t fluoridated, or out of a bottle. As he cupped his hands under the water he wondered what kind of microbes and diseases floated in it, then consoled himself with the knowledge that people had survived on water like this for most of the history of the world. The well that fed their new house was nothing more than a hole in the ground after all. He looked at the water in his palms, and then took a tentative sip.
It was cold, as cold as if it had been in a refrigerator. There was a slight mineral taste that was not unpleasant. On the contrary, it added something to the experience. This was fresh water, the purest the earth had to offer. The part of Adam that had been thinking about the symbolic nature of his dreams realized that this was the blood of the earth, and he was drinking from the source of life. That might be overstating the case, but he didn’t care. This made him feel alive in a way that drinking from a tap would never do. He leaned over awkwardly and let the water pour into his mouth, splashing his shirtfront and shoes.
“Good, ain’t it?” came a voice from the path above.
Adam jerked up and nearly lost his balance on the slippery stones. He waved his arms and staggered backwards in his attempt to remain upright, a task he succeeded in, albeit in a comically exaggerated fashion. Once he was sure of his footing he looked up, heart still racing at the surprise.
“Oh,” he said, relieved and feeling a little foolish. “Hi Jack.” Jack Hardy stood in the path with a metal bucket in one hand and a tall walking stick in the other. Blue stood next to him, his tail wagging in excitement.
“Didn’t mean to put a fright in you,” Jack said around the stem of his pipe. Blue trotted down the bank and splashed through the stream. He jumped up and placed his front paws against Adam’s jeans, leaving muddy tracks on the denim.
“Hey, Blue.” Adam rubbed the dogs floppy ears. “Go on, get down now.” Blue dropped to all fours and began to lap at the water from the spring. Adam wiped at the paw prints, smearing them even worse.
“No manners at all, that dog,” Jack said. He braced himself against the trunks of small trees as he descended the bank. The bucket bounced against his legs.
“Taking a walk?” he said when he reached the stream.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “I thought I should get to know my way around. It’s really something out here. Beautiful.”
“Yep,” Jack said. “That she is. You come by way of the quarry?”
“Yeah,” Adam replied. “Lots of frogs.”
“Snakes, too,” Jack said. “Gotta watch out for the copperheads. Give you a nasty bite. Blue usually lets me know when there’s one about.”
“When did the quarry close?” Adam asked.
“Right before the war,” Jack said. “That’s the World War, now, not one of these little skirmishes they call wars nowadays. Big operation before that, though, as were all the mines round here. Quarry was my first real job, one that I got paid for, anyway. Paid up to a dollar a day when things were really good.”
“What happened?”
“Mines died,” Jack said. “The war came and most of the men had to go fight. Not only didn’t a lot of them come back, but the business never did, either. The valley’s been dying a little bit at a time ever since then, I think.
“But, that’s all old news,” Jack said. “How’re you and the Missus getting settled in?”
“Pretty well, though I think we’ll still be unpacking boxes this time next year. Neither one of us have much patience for details like that. If there’s something packed that we don’t need right away, it’s apt to stay in the box until we do.”
“How’s the little one?”
“Mike’s fine. Kids adapt pretty well. So, what’s the bucket for?”
“Water.”
“So I figured,” Adam said. “Don’t you have water at your house?”
“Yep.” Jack shifted the pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, then glanced around, as if someone might be watching them. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
“I suppose.”
“Well,” Jack said, “I reckon it’s not that much of a secret around here. ‘Bout everyone knows I keep a still just up the way. This is the best water to use for it, and it’s closer than my house is.”
“A still?” Images of hillbillies and Hee Haw flashed through Adam’s mind once more. “A real, backwoods still? Moonshine and corn liquor and that sort of thing?”
“Good God, fella,” Jack said, and a sly grin began to light his eyes. “I don’t make corn liquor. That stuff’s good to burn in your lantern, maybe, but I don’t recommend drinking it. The one time I did drink it, and mind you, I was a young man at the time, I was dead for three days.”
“What?”
“Stone cold dead,” Jack said, voice sober as a judge in a dry town. “Woke up while they was carrying my coffin out to the cemetery. All I could remember was the angels telling me they didn’t allow drunks in heaven and they sent me back to sober up.”
“And did you?” Adam asked, smiling now.
“Nope,” Jack said. “That's why I'm still here. Want to see the place?”
“Sure.”
“Then you can fill the bucket and carry it.” Jack held the bucket out. Adam grabbed it by the bail and placed it under the pipe. It didn’t take long to fill with cold, clear liquid.
“Try not to slosh too much out going up to the path,” Jack said, then turned and, with the help of his staff and tree trunks, climbed the bank. Adam followed slowly. The bail dug into his fingers with the weight of the bucket. He had to turn his feet sideways to get a good purchase on the ground. They dug into the black soil and pushed it into mounds as he climbed. His free hand grasped the rough bark of trees and helped lever him up. He spilled some of the water, but not much. Blue dashed around him easily.
“Okay,” he said once he reached the path. He switched the bucket to his other hand, an operation he would perform many times before they got to the still. “Where to now?”
“Just follow me and watch your step,” Jack said. “We got a steep patch just up ahead, then it levels out as we cross the meadow.” With that, the old man turned and began to walk at a brisk pace. Adam tagged along behind and tried to imagine Jack carrying the bucket on this trip. He wondered how many hundreds of gallons, thousands maybe, he had carried.
The path led them around the top of the hollow they had just come out of. Adam could look over the side and see the stream pouring out of the rockface below. From there the path made a sudden uphill turn, not as steep as coming out of the hollow, but Adam still managed to spill some of the water. At the top of this rise the tree line came to a sudden end and the path opened onto a wide meadow. Weeds and spring flowers carpeted the ground and filled the air with a sharp green scent that reminded Adam of exotic spices. Thick patches of briars dotted the hillside. A trail could be seen leading through the vegetation, tramped into a hard dirt path.
“Watch your step,” Jack warned. “There’s an old fence right here.” He pointed to the ground at the tree line and Adam saw jagged, rusty lengths of wire. The fence had been mashed down from years of neglect and disuse, the livestock it had been built to keep in long gone. The remains of a fencepost, rotted and broken, leaned sideways, still trying to hold the wire in place.
Jack stepped over the fence and walked into the meadow. Adam followed and felt his pant leg catch on something. He jerked his leg forward and heard a slight tearing sound as the cloth caught on a sharp metal barb. He tugged his pants loose, and then quickened his step to catch up with Jack.
They crossed the hillside meadow and entered another patch of woods on the other side. Another segment of broken fence stretched across the path. The still sat less than a hundred feet beyond the tree line.
It was a rickety shack, made entirely of old boards and timbers. The roof was made of sheets of tin, now rusted to the color of blood clots. An aluminum pipe stuck in the air like a finger testing the wind. There were windows, single grimy panes of glass, on the front and side of the cabin. Since there were no wires, he assumed this was the only source of light for the interior. Nails stuck out of the side of the building, most of them holding tools that had obviously not been used for decades. There were a number of license plates tacked to the shed, the oldest one Adam noticed bearing the date 1919.
Three upright posts held a tin roof out over what Adam would jokingly call a patio. The ground beneath the roof was hard packed dirt. Two old, warped and weather-beaten rocking chairs sat content with their age on the ground. An old wooden spool, the kind that had once held miles of electrical wire sat between them for a table. Blue jumped into one of the chairs, and nearly lost his balance as it began to rock.
Adam set the bucket on the spool and then began to flex his fingers to restore the circulation. He was sure that in spite of the spillage, the water had become heavier the farther they walked. Jack unlocked the front door. Adam noticed it had the same ultra-secure system of a small board on a nail that turned to hold the door shut. Jack pulled the door outward on squeaky hinges.
“You can bring that in here,” Jack said. “I ain’t making a batch today, but we can dump the water in the holding tank.” He leaned his staff against the shed then went inside. Adam flexed his fingers one last time then lifted the bucket, wincing as the bail dug into his flesh once more. He stepped into the darkness.
Even though the late afternoon sun shone through the dusty windows it still took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He could smell the sharp, acid scent of fermentation, and the aroma of malt and strong alcohol as he tried to focus on the strange, dark shapes in the room.
“Dump her in here,” Jack said from the gloom. Adam could see that the old man had lifted the lid on a large plastic barrel. Unlike the outside of the shack, the equipment in here appeared to be made of fairly modern materials. Adam supposed Jack had upgraded over the years as the old apparatus wore out. He went to where Jack stood and tipped the bucket over into the barrel. He saw that it was about half full. He handed the empty bucket to Jack, and the old man hung it on a nail that stuck out of one of the cross beams that held up the roof. It was low enough to bump your head on, but Jack ducked around it and went to the metal table that lined the back wall. The main body of the still itself sat on this table.
“Here she is,” Jack said. “Beauty, ain’t she?”
“I guess,” Adam replied. “I don’t have much to compare it to. How does it work?”
“Well,” Jack said, obviously warming up to his subject, “you put your material in here.” He gestured to a large pot. “Wheat, barley, potatoes, whatever you want to ferment. Then you boil it. The vapor goes up through this here copper tubing and over to the cooling unit, which is fancy way of saying where the ice water is kept. Then it drips down into the jugs. That’s the Reader’s Digest version anyway. I could go into a lot more detail about the ways different things distill differently, and all the chemical reactions that you gotta watch for, but any time I do that people tend to go all glassy-eyed and start pretending that they’re really interested. Want a taste of the good stuff?”
“Sure,” Adam said, a little hesitantly. Jack pulled a large brown bottle off of an unstable looking shelf, blew the dust off and pulled the cork. The strong aroma of hard liquor filled the shed. He held it out to Adam.
“Little brown jug, how I love thee,” Adam said, and took the bottle. He passed the opening under his nose and felt his sinuses convulse under the assault. He scrunched up his nose, took a deep breath then turned the bottle up to his mouth.
A trail of fire, in complete opposition to the cool spring water he tasted earlier, slid down his throat. It hit his stomach and exploded with napalm-like intensity, then quickly spread outward until he was able to feel it throughout his whole body.
“Whoa,” he choked. Tears formed in his eyes and he was sure he was sweating, his body’s effort, he supposed, to put out the flames that had to be shooting out of his pores.
“Where did you learn to do this?” Adam asked as he handed the bottle back.
“College,” Jack said. “Chemistry class, though I’m pretty sure this isn’t what the professors had in mind when they were teaching it.” He wiped the neck of the bottle off with his sleeve then tipped it up to his mouth. Adam saw a small wince, nothing more, and then Jack put the cork back in place and returned the bottle to the shelf.
“You went to college?” Adam asked.
“Don’t look so dumbfounded,” Jack said with a smile. “We ain’t all uneducated hicks out here, though I reckon my grammar has slid downhill some over the years. Went to West Virginia University up in Morgantown back in the forties. Came back here and taught school for the next forty odd years. Kept me out of the War when just about everyone else I knew was shipping out.”
“Lucky for you,” Adam said.
“Yes and no,” Jack said. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret not being shot at. A lot of those boys who went didn’t come back. But it wasn’t easy for those of us left behind either. A lot of people assumed we were cowards, or not doing our part. Of course, when they needed a man for some heavy lifting or something, they knew right where to come. This was still farming country back then, too, and people relied on it to survive. Just because all the men were away didn’t mean the crops didn’t have to be harvested, or the hay put up for winter for the animals. I used to spend the whole day teaching, and then hire out at night to do farm work. Didn’t sleep a whole lot for a couple of years in the forties. Like I said, better than being shot at, but no picnic either. You wanna go sit outside?”
“Sure. It suddenly got warm in here.”
“It does that,” Jack smiled. He held the door open for Adam and they walked out into the shade of the tin roof. Jack shook the chair that the dog was sleeping in.
“C’mon Blue,” he said. “Give the chair to our guest. We don’t get many visitors, so least you can do is be polite.” Blue raised his head, then looked at Adam. With a look that said, “Oh all right, this time,” he jumped down from the chair and curled up on the dirt floor. Jack stopped the chair from rocking, then gestured for Adam to sit down. He took the other chair.
“So there is a school near here?” Adam asked. “Mike isn’t quite ready yet, though I suppose if we stayed in Pittsburgh she would have gone to pre-school next fall.”
“Not any more,” Jack said while rocking. “Used to be a schoolhouse in Canaan. That’s where I taught. Grades One through Eight in one room, assuming we had anyone in any particular grade that year. Then back in the seventies the county consolidated all of the little schools in this district into three big ones. There’s a bus that runs, but it only comes as far as the covered bridge. The kids who go there have to get a ride up to meet it every morning. There’s a big high school down in Bakersville, and that’s a long bus ride. There’s still a church school in town. Sue Miller teaches there, and a lot of the little ones go to that. Don’t know if I’d recommend it for your Michaela.”
“My Michaela.” Adam rolled the phrase around in his head and discovered he liked it. It wasn’t ownership, but he knew that she was his in the ways that really mattered. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. He supposed that the alcohol might account for some of the contentment he felt, but not all of it.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Just like the sound of that,” Adam said. “She’s not, you know. Mine, at least biologically speaking.”
“Your Holly mentioned that,” Jack said. “Said the real dad didn’t want anything to do with that beautiful child. Can’t say I understand that.”
“Yeah,” Adam said, anger evident in his voice. “He’s a piece of work. Asshole.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“I don’t know what to say,” Adam said. He was surprised at how comfortable he felt with this old man, a relative stranger to him. His relationship with his own father, while good for the most part, had never been the kind that invited heart-to-heart talks. Dad was uncomfortable with intense feelings, while Adam had based an entire career around the concept.
“That’s fine, too,” Jack said, but left a wide swath of silence if Adam wanted to fill it. Adam wrestled with his thoughts and feelings about Billy Haught for a moment.
“He’s such a dick,” he began, and then began to ramble. He told Jack about the rape that produced Michaela, and about Billy’s refusal to be involved. He told how he had met Holly while she was undergoing therapy, and how he had fallen in love with her, and how he had fallen in love with Michaela so much more easily.
