Rose and Happy made their way out the front of the house and started east down the road towards the sunrise. The sun was just above the trees, but the sky was still colored lavender and pink at the horizon. There were birds flying everywhere, singing and calling to one another through the thick forest growth.
Rose admired a red cardinal, swaying on a low cedar branch, calling out clear and loud. A noisy grackle was making its grating call from a high pine branch but flew off when Happy imitated its call back. Both girls laughed at the bird’s abrupt take off.
”I guess he wasn’t bargaining on that,” Happy laughed.
The eastern sky was clearing and bright sunlight reflected off the frost as it started to melt on the shrubs and grass. Happy and Rose, chatting and laughing, continued on their way and soon they were in front of a large blue house. Set back in a small grove of trees, the house had a dirt front yard, swept clean, with a circle of whitewashed rocks centered in the middle of each side. Several small children were playing in the yard, watched over by a young woman on the porch. As Happy and Rose approached, the children spotted them and cried “Auntie Happy!” and ran up the walk to greet them, the children hugging Happy in a group, stopping her from moving on.
“You got to tell Mama to let us go with you, Auntie,” they cried. “She said you don’t need any help, but we want to go with you. We want to look for treasure!”
“Oh, there’s no time for a treasure hunt today, you rascals! We have work to do. You all better stay here with your Auntie Scrappy watching over you. Besides, Minnie Lee, what will you do if A.T. comes over here looking for you and you’re gone? Who’s he going to wrassel if you’re out looking for treasure?”
“I love A.T., I’m gonna marry him,” a small girl with bright eyes and wiry braids declared.
Rose had to smile, Minnie Lee looked so determined. I wonder if A.T. is as keen as Minnie Lee is, she thought.
“You’re going to have to wrestle him down first, little girl, to get him married off. All he’s interested in now is thumping rabbits,” Happy teased.
She led Rose up on the porch and over to the young woman on the porch glider.
“Rose, this is our cousin Scrappy. Scrappy, this is Rose, from Chicago. She’s here with us for a while. Scrappy, you poor girl, do you have all these babies all day? Why don’t you sneak off with us, we’ll have a quiet day at least.”
Scrappy was tiny, thin with a sharp face but soft eyes. She greeted Rose, her eyes and nose crinkling up as she smiled.
“Nice to meet you Rose. Happy, I’d love to go off with you but Mama has plans for me today. I have more chores to finish than is possible. I have this lace to finish up, it’s for Minnie Lee’s new Christmas dress and don’t you know that she’ll have it torn up in five minutes with her tomboy ways? Still needs to be done, Mama says ‘Do it’ and I sure better. And I’m in charge of these young ones all day, but maybe we can help you carry all the decorations over to the church when you’re done cutting. You all go on in there and get her going on those fruit cakes, she’s driving me crazy wanting it all done yesterday,” Scrappy complained, but she was smiling all the while. “I think Mama’s made a coffee cake to bribe you, but don’t you fall for it. Nothing can be pay enough for the work she’ll put you through.”
“I can’t get out of it, Sylvester has to have his fruit cake or I’ll never hear the end,” Happy replied. “We’ll see you on our way out.”
Leading Rose to the front door, Happy called back to the children, “See you later!”
The children stopped playing and yelled “Bye, Auntie!” then whirled back into their games.
“I wish I had time to join them,” Happy sighed. “They’re playing Pirates in those bushes, I can hear them.”
In the kitchen every surface was covered with round metal tins. A small plump woman with a white apron over her dress was bustling around from tin to tin, muttering as she removed the lid from each.
She turned and exclaimed, “Finally! I should have had these done an hour ago, we need to start cutting branches soon if we’re going to get them to the church by eleven! Get your coats off and get those aprons on, I want to finish these right up!” she ordered.
“We’re ready Auntie, this is Rose,” Happy said as she crossed to the coat hooks on the back kitchen wall.
“Good morning, ma’am,” Rose added as she followed.
Quickly the young women donned their aprons, washed their hands and were ready to assist their aunt.
“Now Happy, I know you know what to do but let me explain to Rose,” the woman fussed, wiping her forehead. “Fruitcake,” Aunt Emma began, “Is made in October. It needs to age, and mellow, to be good. But because it needs to be aged, it needs to be preserved, to keep the fruitcake from drying out and spoiling. Today we’re adding new preservative to my cakes.”
“How many fruit cakes did you have this year, Auntie?” Happy asked, winking at Rose over her aunt’s shoulder.
“Fifty fruitcakes,” Emma declared, “And that’s probably not enough. There’s always someone else looking for one.”
Emma handed a large jar of clear liquid to each of the young women, along with a measuring spoon.
“Only a few tablespoons for each cake, girls, no need to waste it,” she warned.
Rose bent over her jar and inhaled. A sharp, burning odor assaulted her nostrils, and she choked, starting to cough.
“What is it?” she cried, wiping her eyes.
“Moonshine, Rose,” Happy told her, grinning, “It’s moonshine.”
“Moonshine!” Rose exclaimed.
Happy started to laugh and Emma frowned at her.
“Now Happy, it’s no laughing matter. Ever since Prohibition started my fruitcake has not been the same. Moonshine is no substitute for good brandy, or rum, or even a good whiskey is fine. But alcohol is the only way to preserve fruitcake, so if moonshine’s the only alcohol I can get then that’s what we’ll have. But don’t waste it Rose, it’s difficult to get enough of it.”
“Ol’ Auntie here has to go to the bootlegger in Gainesville to get her hooch,” Happy whispered to Rose, and both of them started to giggle. “That’s why everybody wants some of her cake, it’s soaked in ‘shine. Start on fire if you’re not careful around a flame, has so much liquor in it.”
The three women began to carefully unwrap the cheesecloth away from the tops of each of the fruitcakes set in the tin containers. In the center hollow of each cake there was a small glass.
Happy showed Rose what to do: slowly sprinkle two tablespoons of liquid over the surface of the cake then fill the glass in the center. After the cakes were rewrapped, the lids were replaced and the cakes had to be carried out to the porch one at a time so the liquor in the glass wouldn’t spill.
“That liquor will evaporate into the cake over the next week or so,” Happy explained.
When the fruitcakes were all finished and put away on the back porch, Happy put out coffee cups and plates and Emma went to the pantry. She returned with a crumb-topped cake on a blue glass cake plate.
“Let’s have some coffee now. Thank you so much girls, I would have needed twice as much time if you couldn’t have come, and I need to get to the church.”
While they were enjoying their coffee the back door opened and two men entered. One was older, with white hair. The younger man was Sylvester, who Rose vaguely remembered being introduced to the day before, as she stumbled upstairs, half asleep.
The older man moved with difficulty, and his face was haggard. Sylvester helped the older man remove his coat, and Rose saw that he had a limp arm and needed a cane to walk. He crossed the kitchen with halting steps and sat at the table, leaning over to kiss Emma.
“I am worn out,” he said. “But my traps are all set, thanks to this young man.”
Sylvester hung his and the older man’s coats on the pegs by the door, along with his hat. He was big and tall, with broad shoulders and back, clean-shaven with dark eyes. His face was serious looking until he smiled; then his eyes lit up and he looked like a happy man.
He smiled at Emma now and told her “I brought you your furs, Auntie, but I better get some of that fruitcake or I’ll take them right back.”
He crossed the kitchen to give her a cloth wrapped bundle.
“Now Sylvester, you’ll get your very own fruitcake, don’t you get one every year? I swear I never knew a man with such an appetite,” Emma replied as she reached up to hug him. “You’re going to have to wait though, just like everyone else.”
“Smells like you have something sweet for me this morning, Honey,” he grinned, looking over at the cake as he kissed his auntie.
“Oh, you, sit down you two, have some coffee,” Emma smiled.
“Uncle James, this is Rose Winter, cousin Rose from Chicago,” Happy told the older man.
“Pleased to meet you,” Rose told him, offering him her hand.
“How do, why, James Winter’s girl, I never,” he replied, shaking her hand as he looked her over.
“Welcome Rose, I never did get to greet you proper yesterday,” Sylvester said as he joined the others at the table. He smiled at Rose as Happy got up and went to the pantry for cups and plates for the men and poured them coffee.
James looked over at Rose. “Your daddy was my namesake. What a sad, terrible day when he died. He was a good man. Always helped out around here.”
“Practically lived over to our house,” Sylvester added. “He was my running partner in our younger days, you know.”
“Yes sir, mama told me,” Rose replied.
“You remember when you two stole that fruitcake from the back porch?” Emma asked him.
“Mmm. I got such a whupping for that. Was worth it though.” Sylvester finished his cake slice and held his plate out to his Aunt for another.
“Your Daddy was with me when I stole that fruit cake, but he didn’t help,” Sylvester told Rose. “He told me not to, wouldn’t eat a bite of it. Wouldn’t tell on me though, either, even when Mama asked him. He just said ‘Oh Auntie, don’t make me say’. 'Course Mama knew it was me just by the nature of the crime.
“We were oh, six or seven I guess.” Sylvester chewed another bite of cake, had a sip of coffee. “Auntie, here, was making a batch of her fruit cakes. Old Jim and I were spying on her, watching her box them up and put them in the cabinet out on the porch. He kept whispering ‘We oughtn't be doing this, Syl’ but I wouldn’t listen to him. Once Auntie went off somewhere I dashed up on the porch, opened that cabinet and stole off with one of those fruitcakes. If it wasn’t so heavy I’d have probably taken two, but I could hardly carry one.”
“You were a scamp,” his aunt said, “But I never could resist you, with those long eyelashes and those dark eyes. He was always so handsome, even as a little boy,” she told Rose.
“I sure wish my good looks worked on Mama the way they did on you. When she found that cake tin in the woods at my secret spot, soon as I came in the house she came after me with a dishtowel and slapped me silly. ‘Don’t you EVER steal from your own, don’t you EVER’, she kept yelling, Snap! with that towel upside my head, back on my rear. It was more humiliating than painful, but I never saw her so mad.”
“Mama sure can get on a tear,” Happy agreed. “She’d never pass up on a switching, either. One time she told me, ‘I’m too tired to switch you today, I’ll do it tomorrow’. I had to wait a whole extra day for my punishment, and that made it twice as bad.”
“Oh, a little switching never slowed you down,” Emma told her. “You always were up to something, fighting with some boys or making mischief with the younger children.”
“I like to keep things interesting,” Happy admitted.
“Come on now, you two,” Sylvester said as he pushed his empty plate away. “I’ll be helping you this morning, that’s why Mama sent me over. I left Roy back at the house with her to cut wood. Let’s get that greenery cut and brought over to the church, I have things to do today.”
Finishing his coffee, he stood and leaned over to kiss his Aunt Emma’s cheek.
“You make the best cake ever, honey,” he told her.
“Oh, go on with you,” she replied, smiling as she patted his face. “Thank you for helping your Uncle James with his trap line.”
“Sir, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sylvester told his uncle.
“Son, I’ll be here,” James replied, gripping Sylvester’s offered hand.
The two young women dressed for the outdoors and along with Sylvester went out the back door. Sylvester found a wheelbarrow in a shed in the back, took an ax and two hatchets. Pushing the wheelbarrow he headed along the side of the house towards the front. Scrappy and the group of children were nowhere to be seen, but the sound of singing and clapping came from close by in a circle of crepe myrtle bushes.
Happy smiled. “I love that game,” she said. “I can go faster than anybody. ‘Old Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black’ ” she sang.
“I’d like to see you crawl in those bushes now, Sister,” Sylvester teased her.
“I can still fit, Scrappy’s in there,” Happy retorted. “You’re the one that’s too grown up.”
The three young people left the front yard and headed east down the road. Soon all three were walking together, singing the clapping rhyme Happy had been singing earlier, as Happy danced down the road.
