The Photographer

Clumsy

Idyllic small towns spread news; it's incorporated into the unwritten bylaws that the business of one is the business of all. When Bethany Anderson left home and turned her back on moonshine maverick, Rocco Anderson, the town drew in a collective breath and held it until she crossed county lines fifteen years later. Only then did they pierce their lips and shake their heads, even if they were envious of her leaving, they all knew no one leaves the family business, especially not the way she did and worse yet, she only returned after her daddy's body had stiffened.

Bethany pushed the blanket off of her body and let her warm feet touch the cool hardwood floor next to the couch. Once she got a job, she'd have electricity and heat turned on again. Until then, she used the generator to power a lamp and the coffee maker. The coffee maker brewed a southern pecan blend she bought before coming home. If she couldn't spend the night sleeping, she'd spend it drinking coffee and reading her father's legal papers. In the few hours that she had been back, she had boxed up almost everything that reminded her of her father. His friends had cleaned the house well enough to pass for a professional service, with everything stacked in the cellar next to the basement rec room.

Despite her education and qualifications, her sealed criminal record made her less than desirable, even though she had been busting herself day and night for fifteen years to shake that albatross and had succeeded in Raleigh, Boston had opened doors for her. She would have to fight for a job in town. That had more to do with who she knew rather than what she knew, though.

Her savings were already thin and she cut up all her cards in New York; she didn't want to leave a trail for Joel.

When her dad died and left her the property, unpaid bills, and a house full of junk, she knew the smartest place to hide meant someplace Joel never knew about. If she could just lay low for a few months, stay off the grid, she might not have to worry about Joel picking up and following her.

Small town North Carolina would be the perfect pit-stop to help her save up to make it somewhere she wanted to be and right now, that ended neither here nor there; she wanted someplace new.

No more memories, she thought as she looked out the window over the kitchen sink and saw the broken swingset that she and Ellie had played on as kids. Shane had been her first kiss behind the tree next to the slide. They were eleven.

Dark and painful, the thoughts around her sister flooded in with an urgency she couldn't keep at bay. Cursing her old man, she ran her fingers through her hair and turned away from the sunny backyard. Fall mornings with the dew still on the ground, before breakfast, before running to catch the bus, she and Ellie would wake the birds with laughter and reach for the sky with their toes.

Frost could be beginning to form and Ellie would still be barefoot, crunching the brown and fallen leaves beneath her feet. If her sister were here, they'd watch the steam rise off their warm skin in the frozen air.

She stared at the empty refrigerator, her stomach grumbling and empty. The last can of soup sat on the counter, next to an expired box of baking powder; she cursed herself for just getting coffee and soap when she went to the store. When she left, she didn't tell anyone her plans, not even Rocco; she just disappeared and never spoke anyone except Kelly.

Her boyfriend at the time didn't even know she left; but she doubted he would have cared. He had a string of girlfriends. Though they had both moved on with their lives, she didn't feel ready to smile and be happy for him and his crack-addict wife. Her father had no problem calling her and telling her just how much Shane had screwed up but the call always ended with his slobbered and slurred mumbling and not so much as an I love you. In the end, his slobbered and slurred screaming drowned his lungs and arrested his heart while he left her another angry message.

If he had been alive, she may have just wished him dead. Sober, he could never have been hateful but drunk, the cantankerous little man with nothing to live for is the one she knew best.

The guys who ran the shine, the riders and the drivers, knew his weakness ran far outside the moonshine but he built a great kettle and the deep oak barrels toasted over cedar shavings produced the darkest whiskey anyone else could get. Even the guys who had no hand in the shine at the shop knew but they kept him sober at work; a man has a right to his own life, they would say and they let him live it, helping him home and looking out for him in his stupor.

Kelly, as loyal as a dog, had drawn up her father's will and made him get life insurance, if only to make things easier on Bethany after watching her dad fumble through her sister's funeral. It helped that the roughneck's daughter became a lawyer two towns over and would do anything for her daddy. They always had a relationship that Bethany envied and wished for, even as young girls. Christanna wanted to make her dad proud and when she screwed up, he caught her before she fell and cleaned her up if she needed it. In state or out, Raleigh or Boston, he would still reach out. He had been the dad Rocco failed to be; her dad liked to torture her with the one thing he knew hurt her the most, her leaving Shane. But then, he had died and still haunted her dreams, controlling her behavior and making her wish she could torch his house.

A torch to the house might be a good idea, she fantasized. A clean slate. She could rebuild something smaller, something more open, something clean. The closest neighbor lived a half mile up the gravel road. The house would be ashes before the volunteer fire department got there.

Life insurance and hopefully property insurance could help cover that.

Finishing the cold soup and ignoring her coffee, she made her way down the hallway to the guestroom. Her first instinct had been to camp out in there but the chill in the air, the something not quite right kept her out. She looked at her father's room. Sleeping, staring into that room in the middle of the night, even the most hardened heart would have a second thought about sleep.

On the way down the hallway, she opened a closet, nearly stubbing her toe on the tools her dad kept shoved on the floor. These were old, greasy, banged up tools that he just couldn't throw away and apparently neither could his friends. But that sledgehammer stood out, as if it called out to her.

She started with the wall between the kitchen and the living room, checking for studs and guessing where the load bearing beams might be. The simple house layout and the daughter of a carpenter, she could spot where she didn't need to hit and that first hit, the shattering of a lifetime of memories shoved in the dusty shadows, felt as refreshing as the first smell of salty sea air in the warm summer sun.

Nothing. She wanted nothing from him. Nothing from this house. This became his coffin. He built it and drank everyone away.

The dust and drywall shards littered the couch and floor, white sand and glass flew through the air, landing in her hair and on her bare feet. Her skin itched and bled from shards jumping errantly as she swung the heavy hammer through the wall.

Clearing the wall, she looked through the new threshold and felt relief. She used the landline to call Kelly.

"I want to gut the house." She requested before he even greeted her. "I want the guys to gut the place, trash everything. Walls, carpet, appliances, furniture. Get it out. I want a shell."

"Bette."

"My stuff will be in the barn. I have a few of Ellie's things but it's not like we have anyone else." She had already packed away Ellie's life in the trunk of her car. The pictures of the two of them, the ratty brown bear, her pre-teen dairy, had all been the first things Bethany claimed from her father's house. "I know the guys packed up his stuff and stored it somewhere. They can keep it or give it someone who needs it."

"I'll get someone over there in the morning."

"Thanks, Kelly."

Before stepping outside to dust off, she checked her cellphone. Thankfully, it remained on autopay from one of her credit cards that she had ditched. She hadn't given her dad's number to anyone nor had she told anyone why she had to leave so quickly. Two emails from her roommate back home and ten texts from her ex-boyfriend. He had some trouble with the ex part. She'd get back to them later or tomorrow, depending on how her day went. She'd spend the day chasing applications and talking to the local hospitals for work.

She steeled her resolve. She'd stay long enough to fix the place up, sell it, and make enough to disappear into the sunset.

The drag through town felt empty, as it tended to be just before the morning commute brought traffic jams and revenue to area business. There were a few bars she could look at if anybody still wanted to hold her teenage folly against her but she held out looking at the bars until she knew for sure. People frowned on barmaids who weren't putting themselves through school, but she had come here, gave herself a year, and an empty year on the resume hurt just as much as the sealed criminal record.

Her dad and his engine and leather brothers had terrorized more than one local establishment and led law enforcement on many high speed chases as they muled moonshine from the dunes to the mountains. The stories that they guys came back with, that they laughed over as the fires danced in the yard and they inhaled the smoke from the grill, romanticized it. They suggested a romantic and exciting way of life, a way to get out from under authority and enjoy your life.

Bethany talked Shane into letting her drive the van. The guy that had been supposed to go wanted to hang out with his girlfriend and she knew they wouldn't let Shane drive alone. He told the old guys he'd have it covered and they drove off before anyone knew any different.

Shane had been driving in front, his motorcycle taillight leading her up to the Virginia border as she drove the bakery delivery van loaded down with over a dozen cases of crystal clear and pure moonshine. No traffic on the road, she felt the warning in the air, not that she ever listened.

She wanted to prove herself to her dad, to his friends, that she could do just as much as anyone else. She wanted his respect, his attention. Ellie had been spending the night with a friend from school and at sixteen, Bethany knew better than any adult. Besides, only five hours driving and a girl driving the delivery truck wouldn't raise any flags. No one would think to pull her for moonshine.

Shane's taillight slid sideways before her headlights illuminated a police car with its lights gone dark. As soon as she slammed on her brakes, over a dozen agents were blocking her in with their cars and guns and screaming at her. Even though no male would cry, she turned on the water works and played the damsel in distress card, which scored her more points with the burly men who probably had daughters at home. They managed to keep the cuffs off of her but the verbal berating didn't stop and she didn't give up who loaded the truck she drove.

A good lawyer on payroll got her underage offense sealed and Shane had survived with minor injuries and time served before the case settled out of court.

Reality broke through her meandering thoughts with the growl of an open engine behind her. She pulled to the turn lane and prayed they wouldn't look in at who drove, though everyone knew she had come back for her dad's death. She had used his car after Kelly picked her up from the airport and had managed to avoid having to deal with any of the details. She saw no one, except for Kelly. Kelly always showed up. But then, he had been the dad she always wanted, so it felt to good to be able to mourn her life here and have the warm fatherly arms and safe worn leather smell to comfort her.

Slowing to turn into the first open gas station, she watched five bikes pass her but heard more as she turned the engine off by the gas pump. She felt nervous, unready. She had dyed her hair chestnut brown, rather than blonde and she had changed her high school slim for womanly curves but she pulled her dad's baseball cap down over her eyes just in case.

Two bikes parked at the gas pump on the next island. Her breath caught in her throat as they removed their helmets. She felt the muscles in her neck tighten up, drawing her shoulders closer to neck.

She turned to her car, readying the nozzle to fill her gas tank but tripped on the cement curb as she came face to chest with a wall of a man, spilling the gas on his leather boots before losing her balance and falling to the curb.