In South Dakota, if you are hiking in the woods and you discover sluice boxes and other gold panning equipment, you are advised to leave it alone. In Kentucky you'd best keep walking if you find a marked hillside covered in ginseng, and in Oregon sweet spots for chantrelles and other mushrooms are guarded secrets. There are unspoken rules and codes in the forest, and it is the fault of the ignorant if they break them.
In North Carolina the things to avoid are other people's moonshine stills, marvels of simplicity and creativity that have been passed through generations of mountain families.
Anya Marlow, back home from her wander to the Pacific Northwest, was in the familiar grove near her uncle's house. It was late evening, uncomfortably close to morning, and the time-pocked copper parts of the old still flickered in firelight. The old contraption sat in a twenty-five foot grove, surrounded by mountain laurel and young hickory. Tyrer Creek swished and rolled nearby in the darkness.
There were only a couple of working stills left in the area; most had been stripped for parts or left to rust and decay years ago, but the Marlows were a reminiscent bunch for all of their bravado and intensity. They fired up the boiler a couple of times a year and experimented with mashes of apples, corn, pears, or other creative sugar sources. At every moonshine meeting, somebody was sure to remind Billy Marlow of his famously disastrous inspiration to use his bumper crop of tomatoes in the still. "Bill's lucky he didn't kill off the Marlows that year!" his brother Tom would always say.
Anya was the only woman present, as usual. Her mother and the other ladies, though only one generation apart from her, tended to uphold the perception that these events were for the men. Another unspoken code of the forest. Anya had no trouble breaking codes, especially since she'd been coming to this still for twenty four years.
Tom was her father, and obviously so. She shared his black curls and his slight nose, and they wore their hair at the same shoulder length. He sat with her on a two-by-four bench, waiting for the mason jar to come around the circle again. Fifteen other people were present, including two toddlers, three teenagers (who were over by the creek, no doubt trying to figure out if there were any possible way to rebel against this family), and Cort Crispin, one of her cousins. The rest were older men: the five Marlow brothers; Rand Marks, the doctor; Stephan and Micah Yoder, the dairy farmers; and Marvin Huynh, the Vietnam-born actor. Marvin was turning seventy-nine that night.
Tom asked Anya, "Did you fall in love with anyone up there?"
"Of course I did," she answered. "But Washington is a long ways away."
"Not many fellows worth having these days if they ain't willing to come courtin' from a distance."
"I was lost in the woods up there, you know. This guy and his friend came out of nowhere and rescued me after a few days of me wandering around."
"Oh, a hero?" Tom received the mason jar from Marvin. It was getting low, another quart sank low into the bellies of the party. "What'd he do when y'all got back to civilization?"
"He took me dancing."
"What kind?"
"Contra. He was pretty good. But Washington's got a few moves to learn before it could compete with Carolina." Anya took the jar from her father and drank the apple moonshine from it. It looked just like water, but it felt like fizz and fire and fancy as it traveled down her throat. She screwed the lid on and handed it to Micah, who went to the still for a refill. "He wants to farm."
"Great," said Tom. "You know how to pick 'em."
"You did alright," she said. "For a farmer, I mean."
He put his arm around her waist and she laid her head on his shoulder. He stared at the fire for the best part of a minute, thinking about his family and listening to Tyrer Creek. "I did. I do. I know."
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