Moonshiners' Hollow

Chapter Two

"F—" Tyler's hissed consonant broke a two-hour silence as Dad turned onto Papaw's road. The sudden agony that shot through his leg and up his back, and he doubled over the small table in front of him, head in his arms. His leg throbbed, hot and awful.

"Sorry, Son," Dad said. A knob clicked; the radio static that had pervaded the trip disappeared, replaced with tires crunching on the rough road. "The driveway ain't much better."

Each bump sent a new shock through Tyler's leg. Somehow, the pain was worse than it had been at the hospital. Before Dad had turned onto Papaw's road, the sensation had dulled into pins-and-needles that synchronized with the radio static. If Papaw's driveway was as Tyler remembered it, it was a crude gravel patch at a forty-five-degree angle.

Dad spoke a warning about turning into Papaw's driveway as the van slowed nearly to a halt.

The initial jolt shook the milk crate from under Tyler's leg, and the heavy cast smashed his leg into the floor of the van. Searing pain, white. His leg dragged, feeling like it was being torn from his body. The tips of his fingers wrapped around the cold metal edges of the table as color drained from his face. His head rolled to the side, and his vision faded to a brown pinprick.

On the barge. The frogs screamed and the bugs sang. Inky no-moon night, absence of stars; fish decay and rain on the wind. The river—dark, darker than the sky—lapped against the deck. Then: silence. Bizarre quiet—except the water—and then the boat shook...

A cold hand touched his skin, tilted his face upward. The tan headliner sagged above him. A hand waved in his vision. He turned his head. Red hair. Kat. She asked, "You alright?"

He felt cold all over, except his leg. He shook his head. There was chatter in the background. He had been doubled-over the table, but, like magic, he was sitting limply in the seat. His leg felt close to falling off at the groin; the rest felt freshly sunburnt all the way through.

"Well, I guess that was a dumb question, huh?" Kat asked. She turned her head and said something out the van door behind her, then turned to face him again.

"Did I pass out?" Tyler asked.

"Maybe a lil'bit," Kat said. The tone was surprisingly tender.

"Y'sound awful concerned for bein' so venomous b'fore."

"I think ya've been gone s'long that ya forgot what family's like."

Forgot what family's like. Tyler's eyebrows drew down while Kat leaned out of the van and yelled that he was okay. Dad's response echoed back, and then he was in the van.

Even after three years, nothing had changed. Kat and Dad pulled Tyler up to his feet and onto his crutches like no time had passed since they had all seen each other. They encouraged him, like they had when he broke his leg as child, to talk to them, even through his teeth, as a sign that he was listening to their simple words and commands.

Then, he was out of the van with a leaked curse and back into the mountains with his dad and his sister on either side of him. The air was humid, laden with plant decay from a recent rain, and the trees towered up to the sky behind Papaw's single-story brown house. He felt small. Dad urged him forward with a tap on the shoulder and a, "C'mon."

"I forgot," Tyler said. He didn't elaborate, because he couldn't—he had never known so much could be forgotten: the smells, family, the imposing tree-covered mountains reaching up and up and up. Kat urged him on, and he drunkenly shifted weight forward on his crutches to move toward the flaking white pillars of Papaw's porch. He felt off-balance. One crutch slipped on the gravel.