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IKE “DOZER” MOONEY, AKA THE MOONSHINE MAN
What the blazing hellam I doing? Running off with Oana (pronouncedoh-ana) feels obviously wrong yet perfectly right.
This blonde religious nutjob and wannabe wild child is my dream girl. For nearly a year, I thought she was a damn ghost. I’d given up hope that my booze-induced beauty was real. However, her arms around my waist sure feel like flesh and blood.
How did I get here?
The moonshine. Yep, it was the butter-pecan-flavored booze whipped up by my downright ancient great-grandfather, aka OG Peepaw, aka Zeb Earlham.
His birthday party at the family’s homestead—our twenty-acre piece of paradise in Tumbling Rock, West Virginia—left everyone in a wild mood. I’d been wandering around, unsure what to do with myself. That’s when I stumbled upon Zeb, wearing honest-to-goodness overalls and a straw hat like he was auditioning for the part of a hillbilly in an old-timey Hollywood movie. His leathery skin was on full display since he didn’t think his outfit needed a shirt. A few wisps of his white hair poked out from under his hat.
“This devil’s piss ought to put hair on your balls,” Zeb insisted when I took the jar of moonshine.
“I’m twenty-eight. My balls are plenty hairy already.”
“Are you?” he asked, squinting at me.
Zeb’s been a scrawny, dried-up raisin of a man since long before I was born. For most of that time, he’s either bunked in a shack in the woods or at his former home shared with his ex-wife, Coretta. Occasionally, he squatted in a tent on my family’s homestead.
I wasn’t sure how I got stuck talking to Zeb. For most of the day, like all the ones that came before it, I’d been hanging around Val and his older brother, West.
The well-built bikers were the golden boys at the family’s homestead. They owned the bright blue eyes of their mother, Poppy, and the muscled build of their father, Emmett, aka the club’s enforcer. Women flipping loved West and Val, purely based on the men’s easy good looks and effortless smiles.
One day, West would be the Rawkfist Motorcycle Club president. I figured Val would be VP while I’d act as an enforcer or maybe road captain. Basically, they’d lead, and I’d follow.
My dad had been the club’s VP since I was a kid, but leadership never suited me. I preferred hiding in the shadows. If people talked to me, I had to respond. I’d never been chatty or a showoff despite growing up on the homestead, where loud and dramatic was treated like godliness.
My skill was hiding in the background, watching and reporting back to my president, aka my uncle, Court Bayer.
Though most people didn’t like snitches, my dad used to be a cop. He always appreciated my talent for ratting out troublemakers.
That day, I was thinking a lot about the future. What did I really have to show for my twenty-eight years? I liked my jobs—riding with the club and fixing cars for King Peepaw, aka Jared Sheerer. I was cool with living in my parents’ house despite Ma-Journey and Pa-Donovan often hinting I might die of old age in my childhood bedroom.
My younger sister, Edith, still lived at home. My older brother, Otto, had his own place on the homestead. All of the homestead’s younger population planned to build our future homes here, just like our parents did. Except building a house now without a wife or kids felt like a waste of energy.
So, I lived at home and focused on the family business. My grandfather helped found the Rawkfist Motorcycle Club. My uncle had been president since I was a kid. This life was all I knew, and I wasn’t curious about living any other way.
But I still wondered if I was in a funk. Shouldn’t I crave more? Why wasn’t I thinking about finding a woman and sliding babies into her oven? The hold up was definitely the woman part. Kids seemed easy.
However, when my cousin, Tuesday, asked when my balls would start being useful, I just shrugged.
That was how I handled the homestead’s drama whores—stared blankly, shrugged, and grunted sounds that might be words. Bam! They left me alone.
I learned early on how drama whores required feedback. If I went static on them, they could either stick around to wither from boredom or find someone more fun.
“I used to be big and strong like you,” Zeb told me while I eyeballed the moonshine jar. “Real workhorse. Men feared me. Women wet their panties. And not in a piss way, if you catch my drift.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I replied, still eyeing the moonshine and wondering if he spit in it. “You were a stud.”
“Massive one.”
Standing nearly a foot over him, I ask, “If you were my size once, how come you shrunk so much? Did someone leave you in the dryer for too long?”
Zeb narrowed his eyes. “You’re not funny, boy.”
“I’m not trying to be. I just want to know what to avoid, so I don’t shrink like you did.”
Before Zed could share his secrets, the woman he couldn’t quit arrived.
