Forever Never Ends Read Free

into the channeled stream, and clear liquid dripped from the mouth of the pipe into a glass gallon jar at the far side of the room. A fire flickered under the rig, casting low shadows against the walls. The end of the pipe belched a puff of steam.
    "Thing of beauty," Don Oscar said, beaming like a father whose son had just been elected to office. "Ain't a ounce of lead in that still."
    Which wasn't true. Don Oscar had used lead solder to secure the pipe joints. But compared to the poison that a lot of his competitors brewed up using car radiators as condensers, Don Oscar practically deserved a seal of approval from the FDA.
    Don Oscar pointed to the black corners of the springhouse ceiling. "And here's my latest little addition to the business. I done divided up the stovepipe into four, so the smoke gets spread out a mite better. Them Feds got helio-copters nowadays. Two of the pipes go into the bank about twenty yards and come out under a laurel thicket. It's a bitch to clear the ash out of those pipes every few months, but the smoke'll never give me away."
    Ralph nodded in admiration, his Andy Griffith ears cutting a faint breeze in the air. "Feds are out hunting for dope these days, now that the hippies finally wised up enough to plant the shit out in the wilderness."
    Don Oscar winced at the mention of his other competitors. "I smoked that stuff once, even thought about getting into it myself. Hear the money's real good. But who the hell wants to deal with a bunch of stinking hippies?"
    "Well, they say a man's got to change with the times."
    Ralph flicked his tongue beneath his beaver teeth, his small eyes shining in the darkness. "But I'm a believer in tradition myself."
    "Amen to that, brother." Don Oscar took a Mason jar from the shelf that ran under a boarded-up window. Ralph didn’t disguise his desperation as Don Oscar's hand tightened around the lid.
    "Let me show you something," Don Oscar said. Ralph let his stringy muscles sag in disappointment. Don Oscar led him over to one of the barrels. As he did, a low rumble rolled through the mountains, shaking the springhouse walls.
    "Thunderstorm sure moved in fast," Ralph said. "And me on foot."
    "That ain't no thunder. Them boys are dynamiting over on Sugarfoot again. Gonna knock that whole blamed mountain down to gravel if they keep it up."
    Don Oscar lifted the plywood lid off the nearest barrel then let it drop back down. A cloying stench clubbed the air of the room.
    Better not let Ralph see THAT , Don Oscar thought. Damned possum crawling in there and dying like that. Hell, it'll cook out. At least it died happy.
    He moved to the next barrel and pulled off the lid, then stood aside so that Ralph could see.
    "Looks like either runny tar or soupy cow shit," said Ralph.
    "That there's prime wort, my friend. That's what gets cooked down to make that joy juice you like so much."
    "What the hell did you show me that for?" Ralph said, drawing back and crinkling his rodent face.
    "So you'd appreciate the product. And not bitch about the price. Now, if you want to get messed up—and I don't mean stoned, I mean stone , like a rock, where you can't hardly move your arms and legs—then you dip your tin cup into this and take a gulp."
    Ralph leaned closer, hesitant, gazing into the murk of the fermenting mash as if divining the future in its surface.
    "It's all science, see,” Don Oscar said, loquacious from the sampling he’d done. “Convert sugar to ethanol, distill to stouten and purify, slow-cook to perfection or else you get it too watery. Yep, I could write a book on this stuff."
    Ralph looked like he didn't give a rat's ass about the how or even the why of grain alcohol. Right now he seemed worried about the when . The first faint tremors worked through his limbs and sweat oozed from the pores of his sallow skin. Ralph needed a drink soon or he'd go into spasms right there on the muddy floor of the cookhouse.
    But when you're buying on credit, especially unreliable