The drizzly fall evening didn’t stop the regulars and a few first-timers from lining up at the back of Riley’s shanty to receive their fill of the best-in-town moonshine. The shanty was a single-story puncheon frame constructed from local pine, bound on two sides by covered porches. The shanty unfolded into a thicket of brush and tall pine trees, as good a place as any to conduct moonshine business.
Riley, Jr., or Junior as he was called to distinguish father from son, had learned the business at his father’s knee, so when Riley’s health deteriorated, Junior made the whiskey, filled the orders, and took the money, and when he saw fit, extended credit to some of their whiskey-imbibing customers. Junior had grown into a powerfully built twenty-five year old. He had caramel-colored skin, cinnamon-colored eyes, and specks of premature gray hair that he kept short.
A flicker of light from a lantern sitting on a table on the back porch, coupled with the moonlight, helped Junior meet the demands of his customers, who were athirst for Riley’s brand of whiskey. Those in line brought their own bottles to be filled.
A tall man with a sallow, freckled face was next in line. Junior greeted him: “Mick, how you been?”
Mick was not only a drunk, he was a nosy drunk who had a knack for delivering news before it reached most people. “Question is, how you been? Heard the new sheriff’s shutting down all the stills.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I hear things,” Mick said.
Junior handed Mick his refilled bottle, looked into Mick’s grainy eyes, and said, “If you hear something a little more definite, let me know.”
Mick nodded and smiled, revealing a toothless mouth. He turned away and raised the bottle to his lips.
“Mick, you forgetting something?” Junior asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know I’s good for it, Junior. I pays you when I can.”
Mick was one of the customers who had a line of credit, one that was well beyond his means to ever repay. But because of his friendship with Junior’s father and because he’d ring the alarm if he heard something about the new sheriff, he walked away with another free bottle of whiskey.
After filling his last bottle at two o’clock in the morning, Junior tidied up and went inside the house and stood in the kitchen doorway, where he saw his father still sitting in a rickety rocking chair with his dog. Sadie, a black-and-sandy-brown, mixed-breed bull terrier, was at his bare feet. The man’s feet and ankles were ravaged with arthritis, which anchored him to the rocking chair. His eyebrows, bushy as a mustache, were hopelessly tangled. A jagged and ugly scar that streaked up the left side of his face glowed in the light of the lantern. His long lids rolled up and down his drowsy eyes.
Before Riley’s vision began to fail, he amused himself by looking out his front window, counting the birds as they perched themselves on a tree limb in the front yard. He mustered a wee bit of excitement when blue jays cavorted in the tree, as though they were performing just for him. He expressed himself with a mixture of coughs and laughs when they started fussing loudly, reminding him of his arguments with his wife. When night fell, he often fell with it, sometimes well before. If he made it to his bedroom, Junior thanked God, for it seemed to be a miracle for Riley to break away from his mooring and walk just a few feet to bed.
Riley felt Junior’s presence in the doorway. “The law catching up, son.”
Junior shook his head. “What’re you saying, Pa?”
Riley coughed a few times. He caught his breath from the strain of coughing and then said, “I reckon it’s time to call it quits. My stuff’s the best, but it’ll kill you before too long. Don’t know why I didn’t stop a long time ago.”
Junior walked into the small living room and sat on an uneven bench next to his father. He grabbed his father’s left hand and felt bone. “Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you stop, Pa?”
“I knew that stuff made people sick, but the money was too good. The money helped your sisters build homes in Atlanta. But I done paid a price now. Look at me. Can’t see. Got a weak bladder. I’m a mess, son.” Riley was silent. His lids stopped moving. Just as Junior started to say something, Riley squeezed Junior’s hand. “Your mama’s been gone at least five years; you been here helping me with the business and taking care of your old man. No more. It’s time to let me be. You got a life to live.”
“But Pa … ”
“But nothing, Junior. You gotta find a wife and get busy having children.”
It sounded like a dying wish to Junior, and he didn’t want to hear any more about his father’s regrets. “Pa, let me help you to bed.”
Riley raised his left arm from the armrest, and Junior stood up and half-lifted his father from the wonky chair to help him to the bed. As he lay there, he told Junior to retrieve a corrugated can that was on the floor of his closet. “Open it.”
Junior moved it closer to the lantern to see what it held.
“Don’t know how much in there, but should be at least two thousand,” Riley said.
Now Junior was sure his pa thought the end was near.
Riley told Junior to use some of the money for his burial; the rest would be his. He paused, then added: “I want Reverend Owen to bury me. I’m probably the biggest sinner in all of Mount Hope, but I know he’ll bury me.”
Riley remembered some unfinished business that he hoped Junior would work on. Riley told Junior that he’d once promised Cousin Ann that he’d one day return to Richmond to see her.
Junior knew nothing about Ann. He knew that his father’s father was “some cracker” who’d worked for Chad Davis, the massa who’d sold Riley down the river. He knew that his mother died young. Beyond that, there was nothing.
His frail health had prevented him from traveling out of Mount Hope, much less traveling to Richmond. He told Junior that he’d probably never know the extent of his family, but perhaps Junior would find the answers someday. He’d be satisfied with that. And that would be his dying wish.
Before his health declined, Riley had been a sporadic member of First Baptist for several years. Junior offered to take him and be his eyes, but he begged off. He was content to bide his time by sitting in his favorite rocker, talking to his dog, and listening to the cantankerous blue jays.