In the Woods, Bears

Chapter 7 - Moonshine

Laying flat on her back, Kennedy watched the useless hotel fan turn above her bed, the blades wilted and bent. No matter what she did to the air conditioner, the room never got cold. A handful of nights, six BLTs, some milkshakes, piles of fries, and cut tomatoes later, she still hadn't built up the courage to try the meatloaf at the diner.

Everything in the hotel room smelled musty. If it weren't for the name of the lake on the photograph, and the rock she had put her hand on today, she'd be convinced her parents had never been here. No one knew them. The photograph had passed through so many sweaty fingers. The hotel staff. The cop she'd met at a stoplight. The Rideshare driver. The guys at the garage. Some women she'd encountered at the park. The drunks at the bar and the bartender. She'd even gone by the high school, but they'd insisted that their school had never kept copies of the yearbooks. She'd pleaded with them, but without a name, there wasn't much they could look up in their records.

On her phone, she searched for any sign that there had been a runaway, or disappearance around the time of her birth. Nothing. No sign of her folks. It was as if the whole town had never lost a young person. Never had a kid go bad from drugs, or run off to find a new life. The only stories she could find were puff pieces about the apple festival, or the latest Mayer, and even those were buried and rare. The few teenagers she saw around town looked normal, prone to the same amount of trouble and mischief as everywhere else. There wasn't even a record of a car accident. She swayed her feet at the end of the bed and rested her phone on her chest. It was hopeless. She'd failed.

*

A few hours later...

In the mirror, Kennedy grimaced at herself, showing teeth foamy with toothpaste. She spit into the sink and watched the green fluff swirl down the rusty drain along the flow of faintly brown water. Looking back, she should have gone to Florida and enjoyed her first spring break. Days of nothing burger. People kept pushing the photo back toward her without even looking at it. Fuck it.

Maybe her parents didn't come from here. Maybe they just came to the lake that one sunny day. She needed a whiskey. She reached for the shirt she had hung over the towel bar and smelled it. Not fresh, but not disgusting either. Five whiskeys. She needed them. Kennedy tugged her favorite blue shirt on over her head and ran her fingers through her tangled brown hair. Dark circles marked the undersides of her hazel eyes. Every time she fell asleep, the air conditioner would kick on and wake her up, growling like a threat from underneath the window.

Makeup bag open, she pulled out her reddest lipstick. She'd been turning down local boys every night at the seedy bar next door. The past few nights, she'd stopped herself at one or two drinks, wanting to be fresh in the morning. Maybe a different type of encouragement would shake loose someone's memory. The local bar flies kept narrowed eyes on her as if she was a lightning bug invading their territory. They wouldn't slow her down tonight. She'd ask every one, even if it got her thrown in jail. She smudged her eyeliner with a fingertip, turning her eye smoky, painting herself for war. Tonight, she'd shut the place down. Dance. Drink. She'd listen to people say no until she just couldn't anymore. Her parent's photograph felt heavy in her back pocket. If she could just go home with a name, that would be enough.

When she walked into the bar, for the fourth night in a row, the grizzled bartender with the eyepatch, placed a whiskey on the counter. Of course, the name listed on the foreclosure had been blacked out in the yearbook. While she'd been at the library, she'd used their computer to search for the death certificate. The house had been empty for almost four years. Wild animals must have broken in, or teenagers. Both could be destructive in an empty house. She'd been to the police station, the high school, and two of the local churches. Except for the librarian, no one had been helpful. At the bar, she'd shown the photograph around so many times that people had started to avoid her.

After claiming her drink, she sat down on one of the two open barstools. When their work day was done, people filtered in, here and there. The place found its groove a few hours after dark when the crowd grew younger. Every night she had come here, and danced like Cinderella, until midnight. When the men grew bold and looked at her with open hunger, she left. Too old. Too hillbilly. Not enough teeth. So far, she had resisted the townie's charms.

A broad fellow, in a mechanic's work shirt, with the name Jeremiah stitched onto his pocket, stepped up to the end of the bar where she sat. "I'd sure like to buy you another."

He had nice eyes, warm honey brown, with lashes too long for a boy. "I just got this one."

"The well drinks here aren't worth the pennies he will charge you for it." He showed her a flask. "How about I upgrade you?"

"I'm pretty sure that is how most kidnapping movies start."

"It's just shine. Have you ever tried it? This has been flavored with last year's blackberries and cinnamon. It's my own creation." He reached out and claimed her glass and brought it to his lips. He upended what was left of her whiskey and placed the empty glass on the scarred bar top. Unscrewing his flask, he poured the purple-black fluid into her glass. A finger's worth. "Try it. You won't find anything like it anywhere."

The way the fluid reflected light was hypnotic and she could smell summer rising from the glass; stained fingers, purpled lips, freedom distilled.

He brought his flask to his lips and took a deep pull.

Lifting the glass, she held it in the bartender's direction, as he filled a beer from the tap. "Is this going to be something I regret?"

With a shake of his head, the bartender said, "You won't regret tasting the shine, but I don't know if I can make the same comment about Jeremiah." He pointed at the man with one finger. "You, Sir, will have something to regret if you keep bringing your product into my establishment."

Raising his hands, Jeremiah protested, "Personal use, my man. She just looks like she hasn't been here long, and won't be here much longer. I thought she should taste the mountain."

Tipping her fingertips around the rim of her glass, she inspected the man. Handsome in his own way. She liked his wide hands and work-worn fingers. If she would have gone to Florida, she would have drank and screwed her way through the week. All she had done here was uselessly search. Maybe her parents had been like her, coming here to go to the lake from some other town, even some other state. It was time to go home. She lifted the glass and offered a toast. "To not being here much longer."

"To making the most of the night." He clicked his flask against her glass and she brought summer to her lips and drank.

A tall wiry man with a shock of red hair pulled back into a ponytail stepped up behind Jeremiah, sharp-eyed, sun-worn for someone in his twenties, with brown freckles like connect-the-dots across his skin. "Are you trying to poison her with your experiments, little cousin?" He winked at her, green eyes flashing. "Don't let him fool you. My peach recipe is far superior. She looked from one to the other. Competing? Or a team? Jeremiah's warm, amused smile showed no jealousy or anger.

"Pour the lady some and let her decide." What the hell. Kennedy pushed her glass toward the redhead.