A Parchment of Leaves by Silas House

man had a guitar. Aaron brought down his banjo, which he usually just sat around and strummed upon as if he really didn’t know a song to get all the way through. But this night his fingers flew across the strings like possessed things, picking out fast, wild music that I couldn’t help but pat my foot to. He hunched himself down—as if hugging the banjo to him—so that we couldn’t see anything but the top of his head and his shoulders moving to the beat.
    I imagined the music drifting over the creek like mist on an autumn evening, spreading itself out with its high notes pressed tight against the mountains. I felt like a bird had been let loose beneath my ribs. Everybody was clapping to the music or stomping their feet, and some of them were even up and clogging. I had not been so happy since leaving Redbud. Being amongst that music and the people hollering to one another, touching one another on the shoulder while they talked, drinking from the same jar of moonshine—all that made me feel at home at last, somehow.
    Saul handed me the jar of shine and told me to pass it to a man nearby. I stuck it under my nose and drawed its sweet bitterness up into myself. I shook my head. It smelled so strong, but my mouth watered to taste it, too.
    â€œTake ye a sup of it,” Saul said. I could tell he was already feeling good, for his voice possessed a laughing lilt to it that I had never thought he could manage.
    I did. I closed my eyes, leaned my head back, and took a good gulp of that moonshine. When I brought the jar down, I was breathing fire, and somebody shoved a jar of sauerkraut into my hands and told me to eat it right quick so I wouldn’t get sick.
    â€œLordy mercy,” I said, when I could catch my breath, and everybody laughed and slapped their knees. I never had tasted no liquor before in my life, and I feared that my mother would find out about this and come huffing up the road to wear me out with a switch.
    â€œThe trick is to hold your breath,” Saul said. “That way you don’t taste it.”
    â€œWhat’s the use drinking something if you don’t like the taste of it?” I said, and they all laughed wildly again, some of them slapping one another on the back.
    Saul kept taking swigs from the jar, but he wasn’t being loud or mean, like some men I knowed. My daddy used to get like that, way back. He would drink until he got outright cruel, and Mama would lock him out of the house. Once he took an ax and chopped the door down, then just fell into the bed and passed out. But Saul wasn’t like this at all. He just seemed like a more happy version of himself. His face looked distorted by his permanent smile, strange because he never let his eyes show what he felt. This was something I liked about him, although I couldn’t say why, and looking at him now—drunker than a dog, his face cut in two by that grin—I was disgusted by him and delighted at the same time. This has always been my problem in life—I feel too much all at once.
    â€œGo ahead,” he said. “Drink you some more of it.” He looked dead at me, as if this were a secret we were sharing. I looked around at the crowd. Not one other woman was drinking. Although my daddy and uncles got drunk at least twice a month, my mother and aunts had always just set and talked or gone about their work while the men had their big time. I didn’t care. I tipped up the jar again. And again. And each time it got a little easier to swallow, although I never refused the salvation of that sauerkraut. Whoever had canned the kraut had put the core of the cabbage down into it, and Saul took that and dropped it into a jar of moonshine. I was setting on Saul’s lap by now, and he kept one big hand on the small of my back.
    â€œLook there,” he told the boys, holding the jar up like a lantern.“We’ll give it an hour to soak up that shine, and one of you all can eat