Heaven Sent (12 page)
W
hen Henry Lee had finished feeding and penning the hogs, he headed down a well-worn trail toward the creek. Turning off the main track, he continued in a parallel direction on a path that was so well disguised only the very best trackers would have even noticed it. He automatically took the careful precautions necessary for traveling to the still, pondering the events of the last two days.
Seeking peace in those things familiar, he decided that today would be a good day for starting a new batch of corn liquor. He hadn't planned on doing this yet. He liked to time it so that the distilling took place during the waxing moon, which was a good ten days away. But with his temper so close to the edge and his confusion of feelings, he decided that making a good batch of corn liquor would be a good occupation.
The unexposed trail that he had been following abruptly ended at a sandstone bluff that rose high above Pearson's Creek. He moved along the side of it until he found the "bench," a small ledge about three feet across and a couple of feet deep. He hopped up on the bench, and finding small toeholds in the sandstone he continued upward. About ten feet higher was what appeared from the ground to be a small indentation in the rock. Actually the indentation was a well-disguised overhang that hid a cavern that went far enough back to be completely private. At that height the smoke from the fire could diffuse easily and was rarely seen or smelled. There was a spring at the very back of the cave that fed into Pearson's Creek. Having water up so high made the site perfect. When he'd first stumbled upon it, it had seemed too good to be true. But, after looking around and checking out the site from all angles, he decided that his luck had really made a turn for the better.
The two things most necessary for running a still were abundant: water and ventilation of the smoke from the fire. Originally, Henry Lee had followed the advice of Ozark moonshiners, and for years had moved the still every two or three months. When he'd found this site the winter before last, however, it had just seemed foolish to move to some place less-suited.
He'd decided that practicing caution would make the still as safe as moving it around. He was not, after all, being pursued by revenuers. Revenuers, or tax men, were experts on discovering whiskey, but Federal taxes were not being collected on distilled spirits in the
Indian Territory
. His main concern was from his customers, many of whom would love to do a little private raid on his business, and from the federal
marshalls
, whose job it was to keep liquor out of the hands of the Indians.
Slipping into the overhang, Henry Lee had to stoop down through the entrance until the area was tall enough for him to stand. His new cookpot, which had come all the way from
Kansas City
, sat shiny and clean on the raised grate that he had constructed. He kept his equipment clean as a church. No one had taught him that, he'd decided on his own that clean whiskey just plain tasted better. He even boiled the copper coil, or worm as it was called, to make sure that nothing came out of it but moonshine.
Stacked on the far side of the overhang was at least a cord and a half of cut wood. Distilling took a hot and steady fire. A moonshiner couldn't just walk off and go foraging for timber, he had to have enough on hand to keep the fire going until the mash was cooked.
Opposite the woodpile was the area that passed as home during whiskey making. A cabinet with a few foodstuffs, a chair and table, a deck of cards and a bed were all that was necessary to live here for sometimes as long as three days. Near the front of the cave stood a couple of oak barrels. Both were empty now. Henry Lee knew that he'd have to get busy and make some corn grits this evening if he wanted to start making sweet mash in the barrel tomorrow. He was thinking about how hard it would be to get the corn grits done by tomorrow, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was no longer alone in this world. For better or worse he had a wife of his very own and tonight she could help him make whiskey.
* * *
Hannah had discovered that cooking as a married woman was proving to be a good deal different than it had been in her father's home. Her inspection of the pantry had yielded a surprising result. Rows and rows of store-bought tin cans full of vegetables and fruits crowded the shelves. The cans were expensive and highly prized, not for the food in them, which was considered poor quality at best, but for the tin. Once you cut the ends off the cans, the tin was flattened and used for roofing shingles. Hannah suspected there was enough right here in the pantry to finish a good-size shed.
She congratulated herself that she had already found one way she could show her worth to Henry Lee. From now on she'd put up her own fruits and vegetables and Henry Lee wouldn't have to pay a penny for them.
Hannah found a slab of bacon sitting in a salt tub and started frying it up. She also found a sack of greens that weren't too wilted and she put them on to cook, seasoning them with a bit of the salt pork and vinegar. Figuring that if she stirred up a batch of cornbread to cook on the top of the stove, that would serve as a meal. Not an auspicious beginning to her new life as wife and housekeeper, but it couldn't be helped.
She was beginning to wonder what had happened to Henry Lee, and how she would go about calling him for his evening meal, when he showed up at the back door carrying a washtub.
"Are you bringing in laundry?" she asked when she saw what appeared to be wet towels on the top of the tub.
"No it's corn," he said shortly. "We need to dry it out. Go start a fire in the fireplace."
Hannah looked at him as if he were losing his mind. Wood was a precious commodity to her, being raised on the plains, and even though it seemed in abundance here on Henry Lee's place, she wouldn't dream of wasting it by starting a fire in the fireplace in the middle of summer. Hannah's first instinct was to question his judgment, but she thought the better of it. Keeping her opinion to herself, she found wood in the wood box and did as he asked.
She watched Henry Lee get out a contraption that looked very much like her mother's quilting frame. He set it up in the main room and stretched a bedsheet tightly across it. Digging soggy, sprouted corn kernels out of the washtub, he spread them along the sheet.
Hannah was so curious about what he was doing, that she kept looking back to see what was happening next. This did not help her attempts to start up a fire. He seemed so calm and determined, nothing like the rather ne'er-do-well farmer who was more interested in fun and games than in farming that she'd imagined. His face in profile revealed a stronger jaw than Hannah had previously noticed and his high cheekbones seemed to accentuate the straight, sparse brows above his eyes. With his sleeves rolled up to keep them out of the wet corn, his powerful brown arms and big hands were in sharp contrast to the whiteness of the bedsheet he was working with. Hannah remembered the strength of those arms as he had pulled her close that morning, and the remembrance of those hands moving slowly down her body, stroking and caressing, brought a flush to her cheeks and strange fluttering in her abdomen. Henry Lee finally looked up and caught her staring at him. She didn't have the fire going yet, so he thought to give her a hand.
"Here, you spread these out nice and even all along the sheet," he instructed, "and I'll get that fire started."
She leaned closer, watching him as she imitated his movements. "What is this for?"
"I'm drying them out so that I can make corn grits."
"My heavens," Hannah exclaimed. "What army are you planning to feed, there must be a bushel of corn here!"
"I feed it to the hogs," he told her, turning his face away from her so she didn't see his sly look. "They're low on feed, I need to get these dried and ground by tomorrow."
His look was a challenge. "I'm not sure that I can get it done by then, by myself. But then I remembered that I had you as my helpmate. Are you my helpmate, Miss Hannah?"
The look on his face, sort of teasing and flirty, was the same he had given her when she had brought him the water at the church. It had distinctly annoyed her at the time, now, strangely, it made her feel warm and friendly toward him.
Hannah vividly recalled the vows she had made yesterday evening. She was his wife and she wanted to show that even if he hadn't chosen her, she could still prove to be a bargain. Never in her life had she heard of pigs that had to have special food. Her father's pigs ate fodder and leftovers and whatever else they had put in front of them. But if, for some strange reason, Henry Lee's pigs ate corn grits, then she would help him make corn grits: bushels and bushels of corn grits.
"Of course, I'll help," she said enthusiastically.
Henry Lee smiled back at her, pleased with his own private joke: the preacher's daughter making corn liquor.
He seemed content with the supper put before him, even with Hannah trying to apologize for not cooking something up special. He considered himself a pretty fair cook and had always taken care of himself. But the greens were better than they ever tasted when he cooked them, and her cornbread was so smooth and slightly sweet that it was almost like cake instead of bread.
"It tastes fine," he told her. He was not yet willing to give more of a compliment than that.
"Well, of course, you didn't have anyone to cook for you, but now that I'm here, I can do for you."
"You just worry about getting that corn ground into grits tomorrow, that's what I really care about."
Hannah shook off his concern. "I'll have all that corn ground before
tomorrow, don't give it another thought. You really are an unusual man, to care more about the food you feed your hogs than about the food you feed yourself."
Henry Lee choked slightly on a bite of Hannah's warm cornbread and swallowed his laughter. Could this ignorant female really believe that he would go to all this trouble to feed hogs? She was either crazy, or she thought that he was!
"Now, about the food for yourself," she began, talking to him as if she were an adult and he was a rather slow child. "It's a bit late in the year, but I thought I would try to start up a garden. We won't get too much from it this far into the summer, but everything we do will be just that much that you won't have to buy."
"Don't worry about it," he said, wondering how he would explain his trading without mentioning the whiskey, "there's no need for you to start up a garden."
"But I want to. It's part of my job to set your table."
He shook his head and waved off the idea. "Like you said, it's too late in the year. There's no need for you putting in all that work for what you'd get out of it. I don't even have any ground that's been turned, it would take a team and a prairie cutter just to dig you out a space."
"I should put up stores for the winter," she protested. "I'm your wife, it's just not fitting that you should have to get store-bought to provide for your table."
To Henry Lee it almost sounded as if she were jealous. He was a bit surprised at her anxiousness. Being a hard worker fit his former image of her as the preacher's spinster daughter. It didn't fit at all with what he knew now to be the truth about her.
She was right about a woman providing for the table from her own garden as being more fitting, and if they only ate food that she'd put by, at least they'd be sure that it was plenty clean and good. He guessed that would be important to her, being in the family way.
Just reminding himself of that soured his disposition. His eyes automatically dropped to her stomach, the sight of which was hidden by the table. He wondered when she would be showing; hopefully, not until winter. People sort of lost track of time in the winter and maybe her early blossoming wouldn't start that much gossip. Though he hated the idea of being saddled with another man's child, he liked children well enough and he thought he could tolerate this one. He'd just have to think about it as an orphan.
"You're right about needing a garden and doing your own canning. I think that's a good idea, but it's too late for a garden this year. I'll trade with some of your farmer friends for fresh produce and you can do with it what you think best."
"Trade? What will you trade?"
"Pigs." That was the answer he gave and at her surprised expression he began carefully studying the food on his plate. He knew it made no sense to suggest that any local farmer would trade table crops for pigs. Everyone in the territory kept pigs. You could ship them out as a cash crop or take them into town and get something for them, but for the locals they were the main source of meat for territory cooking.
"Who around here would trade you for pigs?" she asked him.
"Pretty near anyone," he replied deciding that the bigger the lie the more likely it would be to be believed. "That's why I only feed my pigs corn grits, makes the best ham and sausage in these parts. Everybody wants one of my pigs, I'm surprised that you haven't heard of them before."
Hannah hadn't.
After the meal, Henry Lee went to work carefully stirring the corn on the quilting frame. It was very important that the kernels were completely dry or they would not grind properly. The fire going smartly in the fireplace now made the room about one hundred degrees. With sweat running down the side of his face, he wondered why he'd been so impatient, not allowing the corn to dry out in the sun for a couple of days. It was all the fault of that woman, he decided. She had the power to make him do things that he wouldn't normally do.
