“Jake!  Where’s your Paw got to?”

“Er, he’s gone over to Old Man Potter’s farm,” I told Aunt Minnie, not knowing if I should tell her the truth.

“Don’t you mean Mr Potter?” she asked with her eyebrows raised.  Gee, she was getting to look more like Miss Taylor, our teacher, every day.

“Well, that’s what Paw calls him.”  I replied defensively.

“Well, it’s not fitting for you and Jeb to do the same.”

“No, Aunt Minnie.”

“Do you know how long he’ll be gone?  I need him to drive me into Pollen Bend to get some things for your Maw.”

“No Ma’am.  He don’t generally tell us how long he’ll be at the s… away”

I hastily dug an old bowl into the feed bin and headed to the chicken coop as an excuse to get away from Aunt Minnie before she asked more questions.

Paw hadn’t gone to see Old Man Potter.  He’d headed over to the Potter farm alright, but he wouldn’t want to see the farmer, rather to tend to his moonshine still that he had erected down in the old ravine that ran along the edge of the Potter property, far enough away from the house so that it wouldn’t be discovered by accident.  The Potters were old and didn’t get around too well, so only the area close to the house was farmed, and the still was pretty safe from discovery.

It was an old Mississippi tradition for country folk to brew their own liquor in homemade stills.  It was an old legal tradition for the sheriffs and deputies to track down these stills and charge their owners with breaking the law.  Many’s the farm that had a neighbour’s still hidden in its farthest valley, and Paw sent me and Jeb out regularly to search for illicit stills on our farm.  “You can’t trust no-one,” he said, forgetting that Old Man Potter couldn’t trust him neither.

Later that day, after Paw had taken Aunt Minnie into town, he sat for a while on the porch with his jug beside him as usual, with Maw installed in an old cane chair opposite him, cradling little Mindy Lou in her arms.  Aunt Minnie was indoors, seeing to the dinner dishes, and Jeb and I were in our favourite spy hole, under the porch.

“You’ve been very quiet since you came back from town,” said Maw.

“It’s the revenuers.  They’re back in town.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll have to get that old still dismantled before they find it.”

“Shush!  Minerva might hear you!”

“As long as Old Man Potter don’t,” grumbled Paw.  “Reckon I’ll take Jake along in the morning to help me.  Not so young as I used to be.”

“Jake’s got school.”

“One day won’t hurt.  What’s he going to miss?  Advanced bridge building?”

“He’s already in enough trouble with Miss Taylor.  And that incident last week with the skunk didn’t help!”

“Aw hell, that weren’t Jake’s fault.”  Paw snorted.  I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was enjoying it all over again, and Jeb, huddled by my side, had his hands over his mouth in an attempt to keep from laughing aloud.

“She told Minerva that when he drove her home, he was making smart remarks about bringing the skunk to school, rubbing it in.”

Paw took a deep swig at his jug.  “Be fair.  We heard Jake’s side of it.  He was trying to be helpful.  It’s not his fault if he was hiding behind the door when good sense was handed out.

“Anyway, I need Jake’s help tomorrow and that’s final.  Jeb can take a sick note in for him.  She can’t argue with belly cramps.  No need to tell her he got them from laughing so much about the skunk stinking her up.”  Now I had my fists in my mouth to stop my laughter.

The following morning, after Jeb had taken off to school, Paw and I set out for the Potter place.  I couldn’t help noticing that the back way onto Potter’s gully was well defined by months of Paw’s footprints coming and going to tend his still.  If Paw had put as much effort into farm work as he did into his still, he could have made enough money to buy his hooch.  However, I knew better than to suggest it.  Paw was touchy on the subject of his still, and he had a wide leather belt and a short fuse.  Though he hadn’t actually used it on Jeb and me, he held that belt over our heads as an incentive to keep on the straight and narrow.  I wasn’t about to test the shortness of his fuse or the strength of his arm.

When we reached the distant corner of the Potter Place, we lowered ourselves into the overgrown gully and it stood there before us, a blackened boiler and a jumble of copper tubing.  At one end of the array of tubes was a small barrel that had a clear liquid dripping into it.  Paw hurried over and disconnected it.  “Here Jake, you take this barrel and hide it back along the trail, under the bushes near that stand of elders.  Then come back here and you can help me shift this lot.”

After giving me a leg up over the edge of the gully, Paw handed me the barrel and motioned me away.  I staggered under its weight, but managed, with many stops for breath, to get it to where Paw had said, then headed back to the gully.

I found Paw in the middle of taking apart his beloved still.  He’d removed all the copper tubing, and when he saw me, he wiped a dirty hand over his sweaty face and asked, “Did you get it there alright?”

“Don’t worry Paw,” I told him.  “It’s safe.”

“Good boy.  You make an old moonshiner proud,” he patted my back and said, “Come on, let’s get this pipe hidden now.”

By the time I’d help Paw distribute the copper pipes around the gully, well hidden in the long grass and tangles of kudzu vine, I was as sweaty as he was.  It only remained to move the boiler and other assorted bits and pieces when I heard voices from above the gully.  Despite the heat, Paw and I froze.

“They said it was down here.  I’ll go first.”

For a bone idle man who I always thought was too lazy to shake the dead fleas off of himself, Paw sure could move fast.  Grabbing me bodily, he almost threw me up over the lip of the gully, then followed in a mad scramble.  Flattening out in the tangled kudzu, we waited.

Down the other side of the gully came crashing three men, two of whom were strangers, so we knew they were the revenuers.  The third man was none other than Deputy Don Deakin, Aunt Minnie’s brother in law.

“That’s torn it!” groaned Paw.  “If Don knows, then Minerva knows, and there’ll never be any peace around the place until she up and goes.”

“But surely Deputy Deakin wouldn’t spill the beans to Aunt Minnie?”  I asked in all innocence.

“Your Aunt Minnie could worm a secret out of a priest in the confessional!” he grumbled.

“Yep, it’s down here, what’s left of it anyway,” said one of the revenuers, the tall lanky one.  “Just where Mrs Potter said it would be.  Looks like they had some warning, and dismantled as much of it as they could.”

“Well, let’s get it on the wagon and take it out of here,” ordered his partner, a redhead with a mean cast in his eye.  “You think we should hang around in case they come back, then we can nab them?”

“Nope,” Deputy Don put in his two cents worth.  “They’ll be smarter than that, and with the boiler gone it’ll be some time before they can start brewing their moonshine again.”

“But we may never find out who they are,” protested Lanky.

“Can’t be helped.  Anyways, the most important thing is shutting them down, and I reckon we done just that.”

As they were talking they had attached ropes to the boiler and proceeded to drag it to the side of the gully where they could hoist it up to their wagon, hidden from our view.

I glanced sideways at Paw, and was surprised to see no anger or bitterness on his face.  “You don’t look too worried, Paw.  What are you going to do now?”

“Same as last time,” he grunted.  “Wait until the revenuers have finished up here, then go get the boiler back from the impound yard.”

“What?”  I was startled into a yelp, and Paw slammed his rough hand around my mouth.  One of the revenuers stopped pulling on the rope and assumed an attitude of listening.  “Did you hear that?” he asked his partner.

“Just a jaybird squawking,” said Deputy Don, turning away unconcerned.

Paw let go of me, and I asked in a whisper, “You mean Deputy Don’s in on this?”

“Sure is,” grinned Paw.  “Where would he get his liquor from if he went busting up all the stills in the county?  Everybody waits until the revenuers have gone, then we go and get our boilers back.”

I was astounded at the duplicity in our legally appointed law officer, and not for the first time wondered what the world was coming to.

“Now Don wouldn’t have told them about the still, so Mrs Potter must have got hold of the revenuers and told them.  I wonder how she knew it was here, and why she’d do such a thing anyway?”  Paw wondered.

I gulped and kept quiet, but I had a vivid memory of running away as she yelled after me:  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you tormenting poor Monty.  You’ll get your comeuppance one day Jake Barton!”  I vowed there and then never again to tie a tin can to a cat’s tail, especially when that cat belonged to Old Lady Potter.

Paw rose to his feet and pulled me up too, and we slowly made our way around to where I’d parked our barrel of moonshine.

“You’re a good boy Jake,” said Paw, ruffling my hair.  “I knew I could count on you.”  I just hoped that my trouble with Old Lady Potter would remain our secret.

Eventually we got the barrel back to the farm and stowed it in the barn.  After washing off the sweat and dust, we went into the kitchen in search of something to eat.  Aunt Minnie was standing at the sink, washing baking trays.  The smell of fresh baked bread filled the air and fuelled my hunger. 

“Aunt Minnie, may I have some bread with butter and blueberry jelly?”  I asked politely.

“Yes of course, Jake,” she replied, turning to us.  “You must really be hungry.  Dismantling your Paw’s still can’t have been easy work.”

And Paw stood there with his hand on my shoulder, thunderstruck.

“You think I was born yesterday?” demanded Aunt Minnie.  Paw just stood there with his mouth open, catching flies, and she continued.  “Nope, but I was born around here, and know that when the revenuers come to town, every moonshiner around here gets a feather up his ass.  Come on, sit down and I’ll boil some water for tea.”

Paw and I looked at each other, then at Aunt Minnie and slowly released huge grins of relief.

“Minerva, did anybody ever tell you you’re really something?” asked Paw.

I was so happy that we weren’t in big trouble that I ran to Aunt Minnie and gave her a hug.  “And I don’t even care that you’re Miss Taylor’s friend, “ I told her, the nicest thing that I could think of to say to her.