Heaven Sent by Pamela Morsi

kept his equipment clean as a church. No one had taught him that, he'd decided on his own that clean whiskey just plain tasted better. He even boiled the copper coil, or worm as it was called, to make sure that nothing came out of it but moonshine.
    Stacked on the far side of the overhang was at least a cord and a half of cut wood. Distilling took a hot and steady fire. A moonshiner couldn't just walk off and go foraging for timber, he had to have enough on hand to keep the fire going until the mash was cooked.
    Opposite the woodpile was the area that passed as home during whiskey making. A cabinet with a few foodstuffs, a chair and table, a deck of cards and a bed were all that was necessary to live here for sometimes as long as three days. Near the front of the cave stood a couple of oak barrels. Both were empty now. Henry Lee knew that he'd have to get busy and make some corn grits this evening if he wanted to start making sweet mash in the barrel tomorrow. He was thinking about how hard it would be to get the corn grits done by tomorrow, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was no longer alone in this world. For better or worse he had a wife of his very own and tonight she could help him make whiskey.
    * * *
    Hannah had discovered that cooking as a married woman was proving to be a good deal different than it had been in her father's home. Her inspection of the pantry had yielded a surprising result. Rows and rows of store-bought tin cans full of vegetables and fruits crowded the shelves. The cans were expensive and highly prized, not for the food in them, which was considered poor quality at best, but for the tin. Once you cut the ends off the cans, the tin was flattened and used for roofing shingles. Hannah suspected there was enough right here in the pantry to finish a good-size shed.
    She congratulated herself that she had already found one way she could show her worth to Henry Lee. From now on she'd put up her own fruits and vegetables and Henry Lee wouldn't have to pay a penny for them.
    Hannah found a slab of bacon sitting in a salt tub and started frying it up. She also found a sack of greens that weren't too wilted and she put them on to cook, seasoning them with a bit of the salt pork and vinegar. Figuring that if she stirred up a batch of cornbread to cook on the top of the stove, that would serve as a meal. Not an auspicious beginning to her new life as wife and housekeeper, but it couldn't be helped.
    She was beginning to wonder what had happened to Henry Lee, and how she would go about calling him for his evening meal, when he showed up at the back door carrying a washtub.
    "Are you bringing in laundry?" she asked when she saw what appeared to be wet towels on the top of the tub.
    "No it's corn," he said shortly. "We need to dry it out. Go start a fire in the fireplace."
    Hannah looked at him as if he were losing his mind. Wood was a precious commodity to her, being raised on the plains, and even though it seemed in abundance here on Henry Lee's place, she wouldn't dream of wasting it by starting a fire in the fireplace in the middle of summer. Hannah's first instinct was to question his judgment, but she thought the better of it. Keeping her opinion to herself, she found wood in the wood box and did as he asked.
    She watched Henry Lee get out a contraption that looked very much like her mother's quilting frame. He set it up in the main room and stretched a bedsheet tightly across it. Digging soggy, sprouted corn kernels out of the washtub, he spread them along the sheet.
    Hannah was so curious about what he was doing, that she kept looking back to see what was happening next. This did not help her attempts to start up a fire. He seemed so calm and determined, nothing like the rather ne'er-do-well farmer who was more interested in fun and games than in farming that she'd imagined. His face in profile revealed a stronger jaw than Hannah had previously noticed and his high cheekbones seemed to accentuate