The Last Moonshiner
My officemates told me nobody goes to Appalachia without hooves. Folks turn or go missing. They said black mountain magic kills outsiders. And only a billy goat could reach Popcorn Sutton, the last moonshiner. I’m no billy goat, according to them. They said, How’s a paddy wagon like you gonna hitch up the mountain, Boy—you can’t even miss a meal? I don’t know why they called me a paddy wagon, but I felt like a prisoner, so maybe it fit. Because to them, I was nothing. That day, I quit.
I put on a goat suit because if I was dealing with magic, what the hell, and I put on a brave face to drive up the raggedy roads of Appalachia. My Jeep scattered leaves as the autumn wind blew chilly and whipped my fur: Me, Pan. Pan in Appalachia. Maybe a dead Pan soon enough. Popcorn might mistake me for game or who knows if someone else’s shotgun didn’t catch me trespassing first.
When I pulled over to stretch my legs at a lookout, the leaves talked to me in pigmy tongues. The trees and mountain and sky called in motley array, whispering faker —whispering about a running start, a free fall through the air. No. Not while Popcorn still lived.
Voices came from deep holes in the ground. I hallooed. Maybe I’d get some directions.
“Get gone!” came a muffled warning.
I walked over to another hole. I remembered what my officemates told me, that only a billy goat could reach Popcorn, so I tried something else: I bleated. It worked.
“You lost?” A different voice, gruffer.
I should say, it almost worked, because then the same voice yelled, “Use the road!” before cackling into a coughing fit. The crackling voice began mumbling again, but not to me. All the voices coming from the holes in the ground were talking to themselves, sometimes shushing themselves, too. They were hiding from the Bully, the one that got Popcorn.
Back in the Jeep, I nearly ran off the road a few times and would’ve plummeted down the mountainside, but by then I had a kind of dream magic with me. The Jeep zoomed under yellow droplets of leaves. Gold, gold, everywhere, but not a coin to deposit, not for Popcorn. I carried currency for Popcorn in the form of a carton of Pall Malls. Also I toted two cases of Ensure, which an interview mentioned was all Popcorn could eat nowadays. He couldn’t even afford Ensure after Uncle Sam, the Bully Billy. The Bully came for Popcorn, and now all of Appalachia was hiding from the Bully.
Somehow I knew where to pull off. About a mile’s hike from the road, Popcorn’s wooden shack house stood with two other shacks. A hand-painted sign like the name of a restaurant stretched over his porch—“NO SMOKING OUTSIDE.”
Popcorn came around from out back, coming up a cloud on this trespasser, but he put down his gun when he saw the Ensure and cigarettes. Popcorn Sutton was a sight for a weary traveler: gray beard long like a stretched Brillo pad, cigarette in mouth, overalls worn and mud-stained from moving rocks, laying copper pipe, making moonshine.
Talk about bleating. Five sips of that moonshine and I forgot English. I saw a Cheshire goat popping up in the trees, peeking over the supply shack, a big grinning Cheshire face hovering out in the clouds. We sat on Popcorn’s porch with his photo album—his daddy, his daddy’s daddy, all passing the moonshine, his whole family playing fiddles and banjos with the neighbors.
Popcorn, a stick figure with a swollen liver, stroked his beard and rocked. What rocking chairs he had. “All damn gone. All damn gone.” He chain-smoked, big bug eyes squinting. I stroked my fur suit. I always trusted people with eyes like his. He trusted folks who bore Ensure to a starving man.
Popcorn wore a blinking anklet. He said the government put it on him and told him he’d have to wear it until he went to jail. Then the government stole the piping for his stills, and the government stole his “likker.” They got him sentenced for non-payment of taxes on the likker. But what else could he do? Popcorn’s daddy lived from making moonshine, his daddy’s daddy, all them daddies. Mountain folks put it in their cough syrup. High demand in Appalachia. No, says the Bully. Told him he’d go to jail if he kept at it, and he did. Popcorn told me he wasn’t going to jail, and he said it like he meant it.
I thought about my former officemates: pale, scared. Homeless. Like me.
When I left a few days later, I promised Popcorn I’d bring back more Ensure. I couldn’t leave, though, not really. I kept my goat suit on. I slept on my own porch, close as I could be to the mountains.
Popcorn died later that week. The government stole his money and his moonshine, but couldn’t steal the rubber piping he used to suffocate himself in his garage. I got a phone call. Popcorn had me on his list. At Popcorn’s house, I hopped into the back of a pickup with twelve others, and we did our best to hang on while the pickup jumped around the mountain roads and lost the press—a movie about Popcorn had been released and suddenly he was a mainstream legend. But he was particular about who could be there to bury him. Only thirteen people stood in the field where he was buried, all toothless except me in my goat suit, and passed a jar of moonshine.
I bought the shack next to Popcorn’s and moved in. At first I was scared. I missed TV and chain stores. Pizza delivery. But if I took up Popcorn’s work, the mountains would be my home. I made like a goat Easter Bunny and carried my own apple batch of moonshine in my basket around to folks up in the mountains, and to tell the truth, they were nothing to be afraid of.
