Chapter 1
By late August in Chattanooga, Tennessee, folks have had their fill of the summer’s relentless sunshine, heat, and humidity. Fortunately, though, they hadn’t had their fill of bluegrass music or moonshine. That’s why I was up early this Saturday morning, scurrying about my tiny mountainside cabin, getting myself ready for the opening of the Hamilton County Bluegrass Festival. I’d donned my usual firefly-green T-shirt that bore my moonshine brand’s logo, a pair of old-fashioned denim overalls, and sneakers with gel inserts and arch supports. I’d be on my feet all day at the festival. Best to be prepared. For the final touch, I pulled my brown curls up into a carefree ponytail, swiped a few coats of mascara on my lashes to accentuate my dark-brown eyes, and applied a light coat of lip gloss. There. All done. No sense putting much more effort into my appearance. With the outdoor temps still lingering near ninety, makeup would melt off my face. Besides, I wasn’t the glamorous type to begin with and, at just over five feet tall, I was better off going for girl-next-door rather than gorgeous.
My gray cat, Smoky, eyed me from atop the kitchen counter, where he lounged. Unsanitary, I supposed. But I’d scolded the cat and removed him from the counter a thousand times before and learned it was a futile endeavor. The instant his paws hit the floor, he’d jump right back up onto the countertop. I bent over and put my face in his while scratching behind his ears. “Be a good boy while I’m gone, okey dokey, Smoky?”
The swish of his tail said, Nope. Not even gonna think about behaving. He’d probably spend the day sharpening his claws on my couch, shedding on my bed coverings, or kicking the litter out of his box.
I gave him a kiss on the head and headed out to my fluorescent-green glow-in-the-dark van. In the daylight, it just looked crazy bright but, come nighttime, you couldn’t miss the van as I made my way around town, advertising my wares as I went about my business. My first order of business today was to pick up my granddaddy from the Singing River Retirement Home. If not for Benjamin Hayes having lovingly taught me how to make moonshine, I wouldn’t even have my Moonshine Shack shop. I owed everything to him. Well, maybe I owed some to his father, who’d first taught him the secrets of moonshining, and to my Irish ancestors who’d preceded him, bringing their whiskey-making know-how over with them from the mother country when they’d immigrated long ago and settled in the mountains here.
I motored down the winding road that led from my cabin into the beautiful city of Chattanooga. Granddaddy waited on a bench in front of the one-story stone retirement home, clearly eager to start the day. He might be almost ninety years old, but he was like a little boy when it came to our moonshine. He loved talking up the ’shine with customers, drawing them in with his folksy charm. Today, he’d enjoy the fresh air and music. Bluegrass was his favorite, especially the classics like “Rocky Top,” “Mountain Dew,” “The Wabash Cannonball,” and the fast-paced instrumental “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
When Granddaddy spotted me approaching, he pushed himself up to a wobbly stand and stuck out a gnarled thumb as if attempting to hitch a ride. Forever the jokester.
I unrolled the window, raised a hand in greeting, and called, “Hey, Granddaddy! Ready to hear some good music?”
“Sure am, Hattie!” he called back. “Ready to sell lots of ’shine, too.”
Like him, I hoped for big sales today. Since I’d launched my brand and opened my Moonshine Shack, things had been a roller-coaster ride. Not long ago, the former owner of the Irish pub located across the street from my shop was found dead on my store’s stoop, and my moonshine had also later been implicated—wrongly—in a poisoning death. But things had bounced back and were on an upswing now. Only time would tell how far up the swing would go. The festival was a perfect opportunity to introduce my ’shine to more folks. There was sure to be a big crowd of bo
locals and bluegrass fans from around the region. With any luck, they’d spread the word about my ’shine when they went back home to their cities and towns.
I hopped down from my van and helped my granddaddy into the passenger seat. Though he fussed at me the entire time and insisted he didn’t need my help, he’d have never gotten into the seat without a little boost from me. As we drove off, he waved goodbye to a trio of women working a puzzle on the veranda. “See you later, ladies!”
They waved back, one in particular treating him to a bright smile filled with perfect teeth. She’d clearly polished her dentures. They were as white as her curly hair, which she’d swept up into a wild knot atop her head. With her curls and carefree smile, she resembled my long-gone granny.
I glanced over at Granddaddy. “Something going on between you and Louise?”
“Her name’s Louetta,” he snapped, “and nothing’s going on. How could you even ask me that? She sits by me sometimes on movie night and we share a popcorn, but that’s all.”
Fighting a grin, I asked, “Do you plan in advance to sit together at the movies?”
“No,” he said. “She asks me if I’m going to watch the show and, if I say yes, she saves me a seat. But there’s no plan.”
Sure sounds like a date to me. “I think you’ve got yourself a girlfriend, Granddaddy.”
“No, I don’t!” He sent a heated look my way and scowled. “I’d never cheat on your granny.”
The poor, naïve fool. He might not realize he was dating Louetta, but I was pretty sure she thought she was dating him. Besides, you couldn’t cheat on someone who’d been gone for over decade. His heart would always belong to Granny, but I’d bet even she wouldn’t mind seeing him enjoy some female companionship. I dropped the subject, though. No sense getting him all riled up. He was difficult enough on his best behavior, and I’d never forgive myself if he suffered a stroke or heart attack on my account.
We drove on to Market Street, turned down the back alley, and parked in the Moonshine Shack’s rear parking lot next to the single-horse trailer I’d repurposed as a portable moonshine bar. I’d spotted the old trailer behind the barn where my boyfriend, a mounted police officer, boarded his horse. The paint had faded, the metal had begun to rust, and the tires had been worn bald. Like the old gray mare, the trailer wasn’t what it used to be and had been put out to pasture. When I’d approached the owner of the boarding facility abo
ut buying the trailer, he’d barked a laugh. “Hon, you don’t want to put a horse in that old thing. The floor’s likely to cave in.”
I told him I wouldn’t be using it to transport a horse, but rather planned to repurpose it as a mobile moonshine bar. He’d barked another laugh. “You millennials. You’re always turning things on their heads. You’ve got imagination, I’ll give you that.”
Speaking of giving . . . “How about I give you fifty dollars and you give me the trailer?”
“Sold!”
As fast as he’d accepted my offer, I had to wonder if instead I should’ve asked him to pay me fifty bucks to haul the thing away. My friend Kiki Nakamura and I had laid some plywood over the floor of the trailer to cover the holes. We’d also painted the outside a beautiful midnight blue with the word moonshine in glow-in-the-dark fluorescent green across each side. Kiki, a graphic artist, added a white crescent moon and a scattering of brilliant stars. When we finished, I had an adorable portable beverage bar that I could use to serve my moonshine at outdoor events. The cost of the trailer and paint was less than the price for renting a commercial food trailer a single time. I didn’t need all the bells and whistles of a fully outfitted food truck anyway. There was no need for running water, gas, or electricity. Moonshine could be stored at room temperature, and ice could be kept cold in plastic coolers.
Today would mark the trailer’s debut. I couldn’t wait to see how things would go at the festival! After attaching the trailer to the hitch on my van, I headed through the back door of my shop and into the storeroom. Granddaddy used his cane to hobble inside to help me. In light of his age and balance issues, his help consisted primarily of telling me to be careful and making sure I packed enough jugs of his pure Granddaddy’s Ole-Timey Corn Liquor, which I sold in earthenware jugs sealed with a cork. I also packed up multiple cases of my fruit-flavored moonshine, which was sold in mason jars. I loaded a portable table, folding chairs, sun canopy, chalkboard sign, cups, and napkins into the trailer, as well as large beverage coolers that contained iced tea, lemonade, and a sour fruit punch. I packed cleaning supplies, too, in the event of spills. To fight the heat, I’d ordered two small battery-operated fans online. The fans went into the van, as well.
Materials in tow, we drove to the riverfront area and made our way to Ross’s Landing, a riverside park with a natural amphitheater, pier, and marina. I flashed my vendor badge at the attendant and was al
lowed to drive my van through the checkpoint and onto the festival grounds. A covered rectangular platform had been erected at the end of the grassy area to serve as the main stage. While bluegrass music typically did not include instruments that required electricity, microphones and speakers would nonetheless be needed to amplify the sound. To that end, men strung electrical cords, set up speakers, and hung lights. Food trucks and trailers rolled slowly along, easing into their assigned places. Merchandise vendors milled about on the other side of the lawn, setting up their booths along the perimeter of the grass.
Granddaddy glanced about. “Where’s our space?”
“We’re booth number thirteen.” When I’d received the booth assignment from the event organizer, I’d been tempted to ask for a different space. After all, the number thirteen was supposed to be unlucky. But I’d refrained. After all, we make our own luck, don’t we? At least, I liked to think so, for the most part anyway. Unexpected things could happen, of course, but it was childish to fret about something as silly as a booth number. Besides, the spot was close to the stage, where we’d be highly visible. I’d been fortunate to land such a prime spot.
We continued past booths ten, eleven, and twelve. I pointed when I saw four orange cones marked with the number 13 designating the perimeter of our space. “There we are.”
I pulled into our space and we climbed out of the van. The first thing we did was set about erecting the pop-up canopy in front of the trailer so my customers could enjoy some cool shade while waiting for us to prepare their drinks. Laying the parts out on the grass, I screwed the support poles together and attached them to the canvas canopy in the appropriate places. But as I tried to erect the tent, the supports collapsed in on each other. This is a two-person job.
Granddaddy shifted his cane to his left hand and reached out with his right. “I’ll hold the poles while you tie ’em down.”
While my grandfather held each corner pole in place, I used a mallet to hammer the plastic support stakes into the grass. When we finished, I took a few steps backward to admire our handiwork. I held my breath as a light breeze kicked up and the wind filled the canopy, attempting to whip it about, but the covering held its ground. I released the breath—phew!—and raised the mallet in victory. “We did it!”
“Did what?” came a familiar woman’s voice from behind me.
I turned to see Kiki approaching with a large rectangular cooler on a dolly. Kiki was one of the most reliable, supportive, and thoughtful people on the planet, though her punk-rock garb sometimes threw people off. Today, she sported a bright-red romper with torn fishnet hose and battered combat boots. She’d topped things off with a bright-yellow bowler hat adorned with a pink silk rose in full
bloom on the brim. She looked like an escapee from clown reform school. One side of her head was shaved close to her scalp, while the dark tresses hanging from the other side cascaded over her shoulder. She’d adopted the punk look after studying abroad in London during college.
I explained the source of my pride. “Granddaddy and I set up the shade tent all by ourselves.”
She eyed the canopy and shrugged. “Big whoop. I just lugged fifteen tons of ice from my car.” She quirked her head to indicate the cooler.
“And I can’t thank you enough.” Though I seriously doubted her math, I stepped forward and enveloped her in a warm hug.
Now that the canopy had been installed, we situated my grandfather on a folding lounge chair in the shade. Leaving Granddaddy to hold down the fort, Kiki and I went to her Mini Cooper in the public parking lot and retrieved the additional two coolers of ice she’d picked up for me that morning. Her car was painted to resemble the Union Jack flag. For such a small car, the Mini held a surprising amount of cargo.
We stacked the heavy coolers on the dolly and rolled them back to my moonshine trailer. The trailer was seven and a half feet high, six feet wide, and ten feet long, just big enough to hold the six-foot table and stack the coolers beside it for easy access. After covering the table with a vinyl tablecloth for quick cleanup, I stacked the cups upside down on the tabletop, where we could grab them to prepare the drinks. Kiki set the napkin dispenser beside it. I uncorked a jug of the unflavored moonshine and placed two jars of each flavored moonshine on the table in easy reach, replacing their aluminum lids with pour spouts. Things were warming up inside the trailer, and my skin felt clammy. I strategically positioned the two fans on the floor, angled upward and turned to maximum power to provide us a small measure of relief from the heat.
Today, we’d be serving three moonshine drinks that Granddaddy and I had concocted together. The first was called Blueberry Bluegrass Tea, and consisted of iced tea with a shot of blueberry moonshine, garnished with fresh blueberries and an orange wedge. The next we’d deemed Rosemary Lemonade. It, too, was simple. Lemonade with a dash of my grandfather’s unflavored moonshine, garnished with both a curlicue of lemon peel and a sprig of fresh rosemary. The Sucker Punch consisted of two-thirds fruit punch and one-third ruby red grapefruit juice, with a dash of cherry moonshine, a dash of peach moonshine, and a dash of apple pie moonshine, garnished with a strawberry. An extra shot of ’shine could be added to any drink for only a dollar more.
Being a professional artist, Kiki naturally assumed the role as sign-maker, using colored chalk to list our drinks on the chalkboard before setting the sandwich board sign up in front of the trailer. As much as I would have loved to sell bottles of my moonshine here, my permit allowed me to sell only ready-to-drink beverages. That said, I had a stack of coupons at the ready, providing a ten percent discount to anyone who ventured into the nearby tourist district and visited my shop on Market Street. Nora, the blonde, midthirties sales clerk I’d hired a few months earlier, was running the shop today, with help from a student from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, my alma mater.
Kiki glanced around. “Nobody can miss you right here by the stage. How’d you land this primo location? You know someone on the planning committee? Bribe them with free moonshine?”
“Nope,” I said. “It was sheer dumb luck.”
Next to us was a booth selling big Bavarian pretzels. The smell of the warm dough enticed my taste buds. I know what I’m having for lunch. Farther down was a line of food trucks and trailers with offerings ranging from barbecue to hot dogs to healthier plant-based fare, the aromas of their foods drifting along on the breeze and making my stomach growl. The merchandise vendors lined the opposite side of the lawn. Directly across from my moonshine booth was a vendor selling T-shirts, while the adjacent booth offered sunglasses, sun hats, and sunscreen. Another sold artisan soaps and lotions.
We’d just finished setting up when the gates opened and music lovers began to stream onto the lawn. Some had brought lawn chairs with them. Others carried blankets or beach towels to sit on. Others simply flopped down directly on the grass. Boats began to pull up at the pier on the river, too, the occupants taking up positions on their decks, planning to enjoy the concert from the comfort and privacy of their vessels.
At noon, the first band took the stage. The group included five performers with various stringed instruments, including a banjo, an upright bass, a violin, a guitar, and a mandolin. Though it was much too hot for the full western suits worn by traditional bluegrass bands, all were dressed in jeans, white dress shirts, and classic black string ties. By then, my grandfather had eaten both a pretzel and a corncob-on-a-stick, drunk a full cup of our Blueberry Bluegrass Tea with an extra shot of ’shine, and fallen fast asleep in the lawn chair, his cane resting across his belly as he dozed, snoring softly. Onstage, the musicians tuned their instruments. The portly fiddle player tucked the instrument under his chin, put his bow to the strings, and played a few quick notes. The guitarist ran through a scale. The banjo player treated us to the first few notes
of the classic “Dueling Banjos.” The bass stood taller than the man who plucked its strings. As his fingers moved, the instrument offered what sounded like a deep and dire warning—doom-doom-doom.
After playing a few bars on his mandolin, the lead singer stepped to the microphone to check that the equipment was working properly. “Testing, testing. One, two, three.”
An earsplitting squelch came from a nearby speaker. EEEEEERK! My hands flew to cover my ears. Kiki crossed one eye inward and stuck her index fingers in her ears. Meanwhile, my grandfather shot up out of the lounge chair, launching his cane into the air. “Mercy!”
While I helped to resettle my startled grandfather on his chair and rounded up his cane, the sound technicians and equipment crew made a few adjustments onstage and the singer stepped back to the mic. Fortunately, we were prepared this time and protected our eardrums as best we could. The second sound check went off without a hitch. The singer apologized for nearly causing a mass aneurism earlier. “Sorry ’bout that squeal, folks. It’ll be all good sounds the rest of the day. I promise.”
A female emcee in cowgirl boots and a ruffled denim dress sashayed up to the mic to get the party started. “Howdy, folks! Welcome to the Hamilton County Bluegrass Festival. Let’s give a big welcome to our first performers, the Quintucky Pickers!”
With the headliners scheduled to perform much later in the day, the audience was still relatively meager and offered only scattered applause, but the lack of fans didn’t dampen the musicians’ spirits. They launched into their music with absolute abandon, as if they were born to play bluegrass.
Customers began to wander over to the moonshine booth, and Kiki and I greeted each one with a smile. Granddaddy ventured into the trailer to help us out. Kiki processed payments using a fanny pack full of cash and a handheld card scanner attached to her phone for credit and debit card payments. As she called out the orders, Granddaddy scooped ice into cups and handed them to me. I filled the cups with the appropriate mixer and shots of ’shine before handing them to the waiting customer, along with a discount coupon that could be redeemed at my shop. “Enjoy your moonshine!” I called after them as they left the booth.
Between sets was our busiest time. When the line dwindled, Kiki stepped out in front of our booth and danced an improvised jig using Granddaddy’s cane as a prop. No one could ever accuse my friend of being shy, that’s for sure. Once she’d drawn people’s attention, she’d use the cane to point to the booth, cup her other hand around her mouth, and call, “Step right up and get your ’shine on, folks!"
As a line formed once again and Kiki handed the cane back to my grandfather, I gave my friend a smile. “You missed your calling, Kiki. You should’ve been a carnival barker.”
“It’s never too late,” she said. “Maybe I’ll take it up in my spare time.”
As the day wore on, band after band took the stage. The crowd and the noise level grew until Kiki was now having to cup her hand around her ear to hear the orders as the customers called them out. At one point, the line at our booth was at least two dozen people long. It seemed the more people that there were at our booth, the more people wanted to know what was drawing such a crowd. We sold more moonshine drinks than I dared dream of! In the early days, there’d been times when not a single customer would enter my shop for hours, and I’d wondered whether starting my own moonshine business had been a mistake. But today told me otherwise. Launching my ’shine brand and shop was one of the smartest decisions I’d ever made. We were making money hand over fist. Patrons had even tucked quite a few dollars into the tip jar Kiki had put out. ...
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