Castles of the Heart

By Hale Meserow

“Castles of the Heart” relates the life of Starlight O’Bannion, a very bright white girl born in the heart of redneck country in the years leading up to World War II.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carpenter's Son Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781940262024

Book preview

Epilogue

Prologue

I believe the first and only time I heard my Mama utter colorful language was when I was just six. "Son of a gun, Star! she hollered, the tin cup gripped tightly in her hand and her eyes squeezed shut in ecstasy. That’s the best shine this lady has ever tasted!" She opened her dazzling blue eyes wide and did a little dance, singing a nonsense song and grinning at me like a maniac. All the while she was careful not to spill even a drop from the cup.

I remember throwing back my little head and laughing as loud as I could. It was so good to see Mama smiling after all the darkness. I ran to her, my long curly blonde hair bouncing across my face. She grabbed both my hands with her one free hand, and we danced and danced and danced on the hard red clay up on that mountain as Mama sang and I just laughed. That might have been the happiest moment of my entire life. Even little Eloise caught the mood, clapping her tiny hands and screeching in her open-air playpen that Mama had made to allow her to play but not get near the still.

Just think, Star! Mama exclaimed. "In what, fifteen years? You’ll be able to walk into the Foothills Tavern and order a glass of whiskey if the fools in Washington come to their senses. But you won’t be able to buy this amazing liqueur, the finest elixir known to mankind. No, Star, this lovely creation will still be for sale by me only! Hah!" She sang verse two of her little song and we danced some more. My guess is she wouldn’t remember even one line of that ditty today, because it didn’t hardly matter what the words were. It was the moment that was important. That, and her delight that after all her experiments, she’d finally found the formula for some really tasty shine.

It turned out she truly had perfected the art of creating the nectar of the gods—or near enough. Her business virtually skyrocketed after that, to the point that she couldn’t hardly make it fast enough before Ned or Bear came around for another load to sell to the local speakeasies. She quit her job waitressing and became a full-time moonshiner. Pretty soon Mama was burying money in wax-sealed coffee cans all over the woods. She wasn’t about to trust any bank, after what had happened.

Sometimes I wonder if she remembers where all those coffee cans are. Knowing Mama, though, I reckon she’s got a map. Mama doesn’t miss much.

I often look back on that moment and smile. When I close my eyes, I can see every vivid detail of it. It was like my coming-of-age moment, when I realized how much my Mama loved me and even needed me. I had never really known Daddy, except from photographs, so Mama was my world. Gabe and Eloise were on the fringes of my awareness, but Mama was the sun in my sky. Regrettably, she has only one photo of Daddy and me together. I guess photos weren’t so common in those days. I’m sitting on his knee on the front steps of the five-room cabin he built with his own hands. The photo is kind of a rough texture, like they were then. You have to look hard to see the focal point of the photo—just above Daddy’s head—and the rest softens up a bit. Daddy is wearing a working man’s rough cotton shirt, which oddly enough I remember as being dark green. The photo is in black and white, of course, but I do remember that shirt. I wasn’t quite three when he died, and I don’t remember much of anything until that moment dancing with Mama at the still, but for some reason that forest green color lodged in my little head. I adore that color now and have it all through my wardrobe. Perhaps the memory was powerful because that shirt smelled like my Daddy as I leaned against his hard yet accommodating chest while Mama snapped the picture. No man I’ve ever known smelled like my Daddy, kind of a soft and alluring combination of pine, wood smoke, grease, and male perspiration. Every now and then, one of those scents will come to me and I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and for a split second I’ll look around me, somehow expecting to see Daddy.

Charles Stanley O’Bannion had curly hair, beautiful eyes, and a soft smile, manly but very kind. That smile stands out clearly in the photo. It’s a strange smile, almost as if the camera saw directly into his heart. He was a real man, according to Mama: nothing missing in the male make-up of that fella. But he was tender and loving to her, and to me as well. Sometimes, when she knows Eloise and Gabe can’t hear, Mama will tell me I was Daddy’s favorite. She always puts a finger to her mouth right after and makes me swear I won’t tell my brother and sister she said that. But it must be true; I can see in the way she nods knowingly. So he’s got his left hand on my little knees and his right hand on my belly, and I always imagine when I gaze at the photograph that he’s holding his little Starlight in a most tender and protective manner. I never cry when I’m looking at the photo, but on occasion Daddy’s handsome face will come to mind in the oddest circumstances and move me to a quiet tear.

Invariably, when that happens, I think of the pain Mama must have felt for who knows how many years. No wonder this tender, rugged, handsome backwoods Irish truck driver was able to capture the heart of a proper Boston debutante freshman at the University of North Carolina in Asheville and convince her to go with him to a homemade log cabin in the deep woods of Western North Carolina.

Gabe was five, close to six I believe, when Daddy’s log truck slipped on the icy snow as he drove around a curve on the forty-mile drive from Cherokee to Asheville. I was three. Gabe says he doesn’t remember Daddy at all. Sometimes I wonder if he just doesn’t want to remember him. Who knows? My guess is that the older Gabe got, the more he realized he was just like his Dad, and the more resentful he grew at the absence of him.

I’m willing to bet Gabe felt Mama’s pain in those early years, because he was old enough to sense it. Maybe he even heard Mama’s scream when the sheriff’s deputy came to the cabin early the morning after the accident, hat nervously in hand, and told her what had happened. I guess I don’t blame Gabe for his stubbornness. I was spared the trauma of that morning simply because I was asleep in bed.

I’ve read the police report of Daddy’s accident. Apparently there was an eye-witness, a man who was following Daddy’s truck because he figured a big vehicle loaded with logs fresh from the woods en route to the sawmill in Asheville would cut a track for his car through the snowstorm. This makes sense, given that the man was driving a Model T with those narrow tires they had back then. The man reported that he watched Daddy’s truck as it topped a ridge and started to descend down the winding road to a valley. Daddy was driving slowly and carefully, tapping his brakes so as to slow even further without locking up the back wheels and spinning into a jackknife. The witness reported that he yelled Look out! when he saw the entire truck start to slide on the icy road toward the right-hand side of the road, away from the ridge wall and toward the valley. He said it was all he could do to push down on the brakes to stop his own car as he watched the truck’s right wheels slip over the edge and the whole rig tumble down the hill toward the valley floor, because suddenly his own legs didn’t have any strength and were shaking like jelly. I can believe that. Once a driver sped through a stop sign right in front of me, and my own legs were trembling uncontrollably after I jerked the wheel and just missed that fool.

It wasn’t until I was in law school and back home to visit Mama that she told me about the circumstances of Eloise’s birth. I listened with shock as Mama related how she’d collapsed in the doorway of the cabin, eight and a half months pregnant with my little sister, when the deputy gave her the terrible news. Her water broke and ran all over the porch. Thank God the policeman did the right thing, at least by Mama. He scooped her up and raced her to the hospital in Asheville, where she gave birth in the foyer of the emergency room. The only mistake the deputy made was not checking for other children in the cabin. As soon as she was able, Mama pleaded with the nurse to send someone to fetch her son and daughter. The sheriff sent a deputy and Gabe and I spent the next few days in Mama’s room in the hospital with her and our new baby sister.

Of course, being just a toddler, I don’t remember any of that. Gabe doesn’t either. At least he says he doesn’t.

Chapter One

Isuppose I should start at the beginning.

I was conceived, according to Mama, on a warm spring night when the pine forest emitted an intoxicating aroma of unique incense. She described the night as being as clear as glass, with no moonlight or city lights to mute the dazzling rays of the spectacular heavenly array. It had been a difficult winter for western North Carolina, with below-average temperatures during the day and real cold at night. There had been far more snow than normal, to the point that the locals were beginning to complain that Alaska had migrated south.

But now all the snow had long since melted and the first warm front seeped into the foothills, bringing freedom to the human soul.

Charley–which was what Mama called him even though the locals all called him Paddy because he had been born in Ireland and migrated west with his parents at the age of three and still retained a healthy dose of the Irish brogue–stood on the porch on the dazzling night and whistled a happy tune. "Lord, will ya look at the stars, saints be praised! Madeline Barrington O’Bannion me love, come out with me. Do, now! This night’s too precious to waste it sittin’ inside a stuffy ol’ cabin, it ‘tis!"

Mama protested that the baby must not be left alone, but Daddy replied, He’s asleep, ain’t he, Madeline? He’ll keep through the night like he always does these days, the good little lad. Besides, we ain’t goin’ far. I’ve a mind to take a little stroll up to the piney woods on the hilltop, just me and me lass. Wha’ do ya say, Madeline, me precious love?

Mama looked at Gabe and considered. It was true that he’d been sleeping through the night for four or five months now. And she’d stopped breast-feeding him a couple of months ago, so she was mostly dry. Perhaps it was time for a bit of romance again. She came to the cabin’s screen door and gazed into the eyes of her beloved husband.

Are you trying to seduce me, Charles Stanley O’Bannion? she asked with a wry smile.

Absolutely! Daddy replied with a big grin. "Aw, come with me, Madeline! ‘Tis such a fine evenin’, and ‘tis been so long since we could walk of a night by the light of the stars. Do come out with your man, me fine lady. Do!"

Mama nodded. Give me a moment, she replied. She turned and walked into the bedroom, where she slipped off her panties and took down the quilt her grandmother had made. She walked onto the porch and took the arm of her husband, her ankle-length housedress flowing as she descended the front stairs with him.

Mama knew she was pregnant that very night. They’d made love a few times since the baby had been born, but it was always tentative and hesitant, as if they had to learn all over again how to please one another. This night there was no such awkwardness. Mama had no sooner spread the quilt on the pine needles than she whisked the dress over her head, leaving her surprised husband gaping and smiling and speechless. He too quickly disrobed.

Mama never goes into detail after that. But I can imagine what transpired. Mama simply says it was a night to make a baby, and that they did. She tells me she lay on her back after a few hours, looking up at the heavens as her weary but exhilarated husband stroked her breast and nibbled her neck, and she said Starlight.

Daddy mumbled, What’s that, darlin’?

Starlight. That’s her name. That’s what we’ll call her.

Daddy leaned on one elbow and looked down at Mama. He gave her a soft kiss on the lips and pulled up again. Starlight? he asked with a grin. ‘Tis a mighty unusual name, by the saints.

Mama smiled and nodded. Ah, yes, but this will be no ordinary girl, Charley. Starlight O’Bannion will be known.

Daddy chewed his lower lip. Known, ya say, he repeated, gazing down at her.

Mama nodded with certainty. Yes, she will. Known as an intelligent, sweet-natured, courageous girl. Those will be her hallmarks.

Daddy smiled. Is that a blessin’, then, my love? Much as the blessin’ Jacob gave each of his sons?

Mama considered. You could say that. Intelligent, sweet-natured, and courageous. These traits will be known as the hallmarks of her life.

And how are ya havin’ this insight, Madeline?

Mama shrugged. She was quiet for a moment. Then she replied, Sometimes … well, I just think sometimes an angel whispers in our ear, Charley. If we listen hard enough, we can hear what he’s saying. An angel whispered in my ear tonight.

Daddy smiled. Well, now! he exclaimed. Sure, and I wouldn’t be such a fool as to deny a revelation from heaven itself, now, would I? Tell me, Madeline, did he tell ya Starlight’s middle name?

Mama grinned. He said that’s up to you.

Daddy threw back his head and laughed heartily. Ah, ‘tis a wise angel, this one! All right then, let me see, let me see. Hmmm … He paused for a moment, thinking. Ah, sure an’ I have it! he exclaimed heartily. How ‘bout Evelyn, after me Ma?

Mama smiled with satisfaction. Perfect! she replied softly. Absolutely perfect, Charley. I’ve thought of that name in the past, should we have a little girl. Your mother would be pleased.

A shadow came over Daddy’s face. He stared off into the woods and nodded. Aye, well pleased, she’d’a been, he replied with a hint of pain. And me Pa too, had the cholera not got ‘em.

And so that’s how I became Starlight Evelyn O’Bannion, born in the backwoods of western North Carolina to a former Quincy society princess/college freshman and an Irish log-hauling truck driver. It seems almost a fairy tale to me, given where I’ve been. But Mama’s blessing has worked out in a way that surprised me. Yes, I’m intelligent, as my academic accomplishments demonstrate. And I guess I am sweet-natured; at least most people find me pleasant. But courageous? Ah, that’s a story. Oh, my is that a story!

Chapter Two

You know, when I think about it, I guess I do remember quite a bit from even before the dance with Mama at the still. I remember her stories.

Perhaps that’s why Gabe and I don’t get along so well. We never did, really. We’re opposite genders and two years apart, but more importantly we’re just different. Mama read to him just like she did for me, starting from when he was just a few months old, but it never really took with him. He just isn’t the reading type. He likes to build things and use his hands, just like Daddy did—or so says Mama. When she read Treasure Island, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, and The Last of the Mohicans to Gabe, he just got bored and fidgety. My guess is that Mama more or less quit reading to him out of sheer frustration because she was heavy with me and he’d made it clear he wasn’t interested anyway.

But me? Oh, my word, how I loved Mama’s stories! We never had children’s books in the cabin; Mama didn’t want to waste her time or ours with less than good literature. But Mama didn’t give up after her failure with Gabe. She took a chance and start reading to me well before I was aware what was happening. These days she tells me she knew I was special in a bookish way right from the start, because unlike Gabe I always perked up and smiled when she began to read, even as a baby unable to sit up yet. And she read me those same books over and over and over to the point both she and I had them just about memorized. She tells me she used to glance up from the page now and then to watch me, and I would sit with my eyes closed and a soft smile, just taking it all in. I believe there’s a place in some people that just needs to be filled with stories. I’m one of them, for sure.

Literature was very important to Mama. It still is. I suppose it’s the one link to her heritage and upbringing that’s meaningful for her. As a girl in a mansion in Quincy, Massachusetts, she had nannies who read books to her, taught her to read and write in beautiful cursive as well as block letters, and supervised her early education. Literature became part of the fiber of her being, and no life in the backwoods of Western North Carolina was going to deprive her of it. As a result, so she tells me, nowadays she reads close to thirty books a year on a variety of topics. She’s just about read out the entire Cherokee Public Library, and every time she goes to Asheville she visits both thrift stores to look for new books. If she was still in Boston’s high society, she would reign as the authority at every soiree and dinner party, no matter the subject at hand. Of course, no one in Cherokee pays much attention to Mama’s erudition. She’s simply known as the lady who makes shine and knows a lotta stuff. Folks understand there’s a mysterious depth there, but they don’t let that get in the way of liking her. It certainly doesn’t diminish their taste for Mama’s exquisite product.

So I guess that’s the reason I could read and write before I was four years old.

When she saw that I liked books, Mama purchased a few pads of rough elementary school paper with the faint blue lines on it and began to teach me words from around us. She wrote an upper-case A and then the lower-case pple to show me the word for the delicious red fruit we gathered in the autumn. Then she drew a picture of a shiny apple and shaded it so I could tell it was round and how the written word related to it. She wrote an upper-case B and added the lower-case ird to identify the beautiful creatures that fly around our woods and drew a picture of a bird in flight. C was followed by ap, which she identified by merrily donning the bright red straw hat she so loved, and laughing as we paraded around the living room, her striking poses to show off the hat and me just jumping up and down and screeching. D was followed by og to identify Brutus, the old yellow Lab that Daddy had bought from a neighbor and was nearly twelve by the time I could write his name. I wrote Dog time and time again so I could remember how to spell it when I proudly told Brutus what he was. He wagged his tail at my wisdom and gave me a slurp kiss. But then he wagged his tail at just about anything, as I recall.

I took those blue-lined pads and sat on the front porch for hours each day, writing down what I saw and what I could remember from the stories Mama read. These days she tells me with a laugh that I near wore her out, jumping up every two to three minutes and running into the house to ask her how to spell one word or another.

One day I decided to write a word beginning with the first letter of every letter of the alphabet. When I got hung up at Q, Mama introduced me to the dictionary. I still remember that day, so I guess I actually do remember quite a bit from before the day at the still, come to think about it. It was like discovering Heaven. So many wonderful words! And right there for the taking! Pretty soon Mama was buying new blue-lined pads and pencils once a week or so, because I kept wearing them out. She saved a couple of those pads. It’s both humorous and nostalgic to glance through them when I visit her these days.

The result was that when Mama took me to the one-room schoolhouse the day that Gabe started the second grade—he should have been starting third grade, but they decided to hold him back to improve his reading and writing skills—Mama talked to the teacher and asked her to give me a test. When I proved that I could read and write better than any student among the thirty-two in the school up to the fourth grade, the teacher started me in the second grade rather than the first.

That was a mistake.

Yes, it was a good idea from an academic point of view, because to place me in a useless (for me) learning environment would only make me bored and restless. But oh, my, did it create problems in our house! Gabe absolutely could not handle the fact that he’d been held back and now his little sister, two years his junior, was in the very same grade! He pouted, threw tantrums at school, and came home just before dark three days in a row instead of no later than an hour after school let out, as was Mama’s rule. His behavior frightened me near to death. I honestly thought he was going to take the axe to me, the way he glared.

Now imagine you’re a single mother in this situation. What would you do? How would you handle it? You love both your son and daughter, and you want to solve the problem by respecting the dignity of your highly offended son while preserving the educational advantage of your uniquely gifted young daughter. Do you take the whip to your son, or give him extra chores? Do you throw up your hands and just push your daughter back to where she otherwise might have started, in the first grade?

My Mama is a very clever lady. She talked with the teacher and came up with an elegant solution. They moved me up to the third grade! It was fairly easy to do in a one-room schoolhouse without the bureaucratic rules of a bigger, more formal school. Strangely, that seemed to mollify Gabe. My guess is that it removed whatever competition he sensed and put me into a permanently weird category in his mind that enabled him to salvage his self-esteem. And it worked just fine for me. Mama gave me arithmetic training at night so I could catch up on the work the second-graders were getting and be prepared for long division when the teacher introduced it to my class. In addition, the teacher, Mrs. Davis, a sweet middle-aged lady, assigned me to work with three first-grade girls, helping them learn to read. I did that an hour each day and loved every minute of it, and my little girls learned to read faster and better than their peers. My peers, too, actually. It was rather odd, being their same age and playing dolls with them after school while acting as their tutor for a time during the school day. But we made it work. They knew I loved to read and didn’t hold it over them.

Mama made shine every day the weather was decent, which meant all but three months of the year. She drove her Ford, the one Daddy had bought a year before his death, over to Asheville on a regular basis for groceries. When I was in my teens, she told me she’d had a standing order with the grocery store for several years: three hundred pounds of sugar in fifteen twenty-pound bags, twice a week. When she was first asked about such an unusual order, she told the store manager that she owned a candy store in Greensboro and needed the raw material to make her product. That seemed to satisfy him, although she once mentioned that she’d seen others with large sugar orders in those days and the store manager probably knew how it was being used in the era of Prohibition.

Until Gabe was old enough to help her, Mama had to do all the heavy lifting by herself. And it was truly work. Because her still was up a sloping, winding trail in the woods a few hundred yards behind our cabin, all the materials had to be hauled up there. Daddy had built a stout wooden wagon with car tires on two good axles, so she had transportation as long as she kept the bearings greased and everything tightened down, but it was still a huge effort to haul it all. A hundred pounds of sugar along with all the necessary water from the well required tremendous leg strength. Given that she used only five pounds of sugar in three gallons of water to make the basic wash for a batch of shine, you can imagine the effort she had to put forth. I remember Mama always having really strong legs and a muscular, wiry body.

When she had the wash ready in a large three-gallon glass jar, which she called a carboy, she added yeast according to a formula that only she knew. I later learned that Daddy had taught her the basics, but it was she who experimented with the various elements and steps of the process until she had her own unique product. One of those elements was the exact amount of yeast.

Once the yeast was added, she capped the carboy with an airlock. This allowed a minimum of gas to escape so the bottle wouldn’t explode but kept the process tight for the yeast to work. It was always fascinating to squat down and look at the various carboys she had working as the yeast ate the sugar and excreted carbon dioxide and alcohol into the water. Usually about two weeks into the process, when the bubbles had subsided to nearly zero, she slowly and carefully uncapped a carboy and tasted the mixture. If it was too sweet—and only she could tell—she capped it again for three or four days.

Once she deemed the mixture to be just right, she added just over a half-pint of molasses and stirred it carefully. Then it was time for the most important step in the process. She poured the mixture into a stainless steel vat and screwed down a cap upon it to make it airtight. This vat sat carefully balanced on large stones so she could build a fire under it. Out of the top of the vat, a coil of copper piping rose up in an arc that she could bend at will in order to direct the distilled liquid into whatever container she chose. She sat by the vat as it rose in temperature, watching the thermometer on the side of the vat very, very carefully. When I asked her about it, she said, "I’ve done this enough times that I know exactly what temperature produces ethanol, honey. That’s what I’m looking for. Before it reaches that temperature, I point the copper pipe into one of these collection tubs. That’s waste product, and I don’t ever want my shine to be polluted with it. And once it reaches the proper temperature, I quickly switch the copper pipe to one of these other stainless steel vats and tend the fire to maintain that temperature. That produces the first run. When all the mixture has boiled away, I toss the liquid in the waste vats into the woods. Then, when I have a full three gallons of first run, I mix them together and boil it again. Most of what I collect in the second run is good ethanol. Really good. That’s the shine, Star. That’s what sells."

She had two distributors, mountain men named Ned and Bear, whose job was to bring her clean shine jars and then take the product to sell. Each of them had a regular route of speakeasies, church basements, and even city offices where they sold Mama’s shine. It always went fast, so Mama was kept busy. Ned and Bear would bring back a carload of clean shine jars and two-thirds of the proceeds of what they’d sold. Additionally, they could each keep a quart of shine a week for themselves. I got the impression these were two very happy men. Neither ever tried to cheat Mama, and neither had the desire to try to make shine on their own. I guess they knew a really good thing when they saw it—or, more likely, tasted it—and sold it.

Mama used to deposit the money she made into an account at the Bank of Cherokee. But when she was two years into the business and had a considerable sum there, the bank manager asked her to come into his office one day. Once Mama was seated in front of his massive oak desk, he informed her that they were partners in the business, the two of them, and that henceforth he would be taking a third of the proceeds and investing it for their partnership. When she objected, he said You know, Madeline, it’s possible the sheriff could take a walk up that mountain of yours. I’m sure you’re aware that making moonshine is illegal. If he finds your still, he’d be obliged to smash it up. I’d sure hate to see that happen. Mama said nothing. She merely began to decrease the amount of money she deposited and buried the rest in sealed cans in the woods. When the bank manager noticed the declining amounts and questioned her, she winced, held her back, and said it was getting harder and harder to do the physical work necessary to make shine, and she was thinking of quitting the business. Within weeks, she stopped making deposits altogether. A month later, she closed the account and withdrew what the bank manager hadn’t robbed. I never saw the money he stole, nor any interest, she told me later. That mongrel just flat robbed me. I considered taking Daddy’s pistol to town one day and demanding that he give me the money, but that would have resulted in such a ruckus that it just wasn’t worth it. I just put the robbery down to the cost of learning how to be in business, and I kept right on making shine. She laughed. Revenge is sweet, Star, especially when your target can’t really pin down that it’s happening to him. That fella must have heard of all the really good shine that was being sold around town, and I’m sure he had his suspicions, but he knew if he ever put the sheriff onto me I had the bank statements to demonstrate his guilt. Yes, it was delicious, I can’t tell you!

Chapter Three

It was awful when Mama buried

Reviews for Castles of the Heart

[mbarkman_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

To every book I read, I have a reaction of some sort. And this in turn seems to shape my opinions and hopefully my motives in some way, even if this appears to be insignificant. This book causes me to rethink how I react to others of another nationality, no matter which it is. Will I be willing to stand up for someone or do I even notice skin color?Castles of the Heart started off reading like a memoir or autobiography to me. Although it was slow going at the first, it was definitely worth the time and perseverance. About half way through, I found the pace to pick up and the rest of the story had me glued to the book. This is a book that I would recommend do not judge by the cover. Although the burning cross alerts the reader to the racial tones of the book, it is not as graphic a story as that suggests. I felt the last half of the book was well done, with enough activity to keep the reader interested. I received this book free from Fred at The Bookclub Network and Caprenter's Son Publishing in exchange for an honest review. A positive critique was not required. The opinions stated are my own.