Page 74 of Moonshine Lullabies

“I’d love to give it a go,” Alina said. “If I drew on it with pencil could you carve out the lines pretty shallow?”

“Well yeah.”

It was about that time my kid moored the boat to the barge and I asked him, “Hey Bubba, you think you can go on in the house and get me one of the rabbit skulls I brought with me for Miss Alina?”

“Sure thing!” he said. “I gotta get me a good knife anyhow, Miss Alina, you got one?”

“I believe I do,” she said, and she got up to go with him.

“I wonder what it would take to really make a shop like we were discussing, like a real brick and mortar place,” Cor said. “I’ll be right back, I want to grab my laptop and start dreaming a little.”

I gave a nod, and she got up and went in, too. Alina came back out with Tate right behind her and held a rabbit skull and a drawing pencil in her hands.

We sat and worked all four of us on our own things for a while, all of us in a silent sort of harmony and it was nice. Eventually, I straightened up from my big skull about the same time Alina straightened up from her rabbit skull.

We looked at each other and laughed a little and she handed it over.

I set mine aside and eyed her vision, examining it closely.

“Huh,” I nodded. She’d drawn pine trees and dots in the sky above them, the smaller dots looking like divots needed for stars, a bigger circle gave me an idea.

“You know, I could carve the moon out and put a moonstone in there, that would look mighty fine if this works.”

“Ooo, yeah!” Cor cried, and she smiled.

I nodded and started working asking Alina a few questions, like if she needed me to get the lines etched for the trees and if I should rough up the sky to take a blue if she wanted. She agreed and it didn’t take me but no time at all to rough out the little skull and hand it back.

“Moment of truth,” she said blowing on it and dusting it off with her fingers. “Let’s go in the house.”

We went on in, and she went into the room to the right across the living room which was a sort of cross between an office and an art studio – the one wall of shelves filled with jars and bottles of powdered this and that.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

Cor was talking to Tate who was in the kitchen filleting his Gar fish up for me. He’d cleaned it out outside and tossed the guts into the water. Circle of life an’ all that.

“Mom, this is almost ready,” he called.

I poked my head out the door and said, “You know how to fix it like I like. You go on and chop it up and season it. Get everything ready and we’ll fry it up together. You see we’re busy, son, an’ you know this is all stuff you’re gonna have to know. I ain’t sendin’ you out in the world or to a future wife not knowin’ how to pull your weight.”

“Yeah, no! I know,” he said. “I was just tellin’ you where I was at. I know the rule about hot oil.” I smiled and nodded.

“Comin’ up quick that you’re gonna get past needin’ watched for that,” I said and he grinned at me.

“What ‘cha makin’?” Cor asked him.

“Gar cakes, they’re like these fried fish cakes and they’re so good. They’re my favorite.”

I smiled and went back in where Alina explained her process for extracting and making her own paints and the like. I was impressed.

She worked on water coloring the skull, which took some trial and error.

“I think I’m gonna take some of this silver paint pen to the stars, and maybe around the moon, what do you think?”

“Might look mighty fine around the eye sockets, too,” I said, and she nodded.

“Mom! Oil’s ready!”

“Okay,” I went out into the kitchen and Corliss said, “I watched him heat it, he was safe about it.” I nodded.

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