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him.
    “Get out,” he said, rising and slapping his cap against his thigh, dusting off dirt and twigs. “Out, Jelly. Now!”
    The back door to the Hudson pushed open. Jelly poked his head out like a shut-in child. Silvio looked around. He heard the sounds of laughter, and music, dings and bells. Walking around the banged up Hudson, he knocked tree branches from his face. “Hey, you hear that?”
    Jelly arrived at his side, breathing through his nose, his large belly deflating then inflating. As a kid, he survived on jelly sandwiches and even now preferred them over a steak. “Think it’s a carnival. Heard one was near. Smell that? Roasted corn and apples.” His mouth watered. “We should go on down,” Silvio smirked.
    “Huh? You bumped your head in there, Sil? We got to deal with the two crates of shine in the truck and the sheriff before the sun catch us.”

    “Can’t get on the road now. They’ll sweep back. We push the car down there.” He pointed to the deepest dive in the ravine. “Take the shine with us. Carnies can probably give us a lift out. Perfect cover.”
    “Carnie folk don’t help or take to strangers. You know that. No way they smuggle us. And that’s my pa’s Hudson. He’ll tan my hide.”
    “You twenty or twelve?” Silvio frowned. “Besides, it’s smashed.
    Engine’s busted. Look at it.”
    They stared at the plumes of steam hissing from the front grill. The car was bent inward around a thick oak tree. “Jelly, we don’t know if we don’t try. You got a better idea?”
    Jelly closed his eyes, his left cheek pulled inward as he sucked hard on the inside of his jaw. He was a preacher’s kid with the bad luck to be friends with Silvio. He was the only kid Silvio knew who had access to a car to run Dan Crichton’s hooch through this county. There was no turning back. Jelly shrugged his fat shoulders, and his belly flopped over his belt from under his shirt.
    “Bad run is what it is. I told ya. I told ya.”
    Silvio grinned. His blue eyes sparkled in the darkness. “Help me push the car out, and I promise to show you a good time.”

Chapter Three
    1932 Kentucky – A Hooch Dancer Named Buttercup
    “You done gone and did it. Aint ya?”
    Buttercup ran the zipper up the side of the dress, then down—up then down again. She grinned at how easy it was. She’d slip it off to her one good pair of garter stockings with no panties, just as Lady Joyce would. She’d done this before. She’d seen Lady Joyce do it too many times to count. It was going to be as easy as you please.
    “Ya hear me talkin’ to ya?”
    She didn’t bother to look back. “What you want, Trix?”
    “I want to know why it is that I’ve been performin’ before you were off your mammy’s tit, and I ain’t never had me own peepshow? Only chance I get is when someone run-off. That’s fine, but Lady Joyce down for the night, and Tiny picks you?”
    Buttercup turned on her. There was a simple answer to Trixie’s question. They could get a pig to stand upright and do the jig before they could sell one seat to see Trixie down to her skivvies. If she was pretty before, it washed away with her youth. Her refusal to bathe regularly and love for the hooch left her skin looking aged and saggy. Her breast drooped. Her lumpy butt cheeks drooped. Even her mouth drooped at the corners of her thin lips. She could barely cover her flaccid features with rouge. The Daisy twins told her that Trixie was thirty-four. That was ancient!! Besides that, she looked more like one hundred and four with dirty feet and missing back teeth. The only reason Trixie was included was because Claudette run off and they needed a third girl. “Take it up with Tiny. I’m jus’ doin’ as I’m told.”
    “Buttercup! You and Trix get out. Tiny calling,” Stan, the lot guy, yelled from outside the tent. Della swallowed her nervous tongue and quit with her taunts. It was show time.

    ***
    “I say it’s a bad idea. That’s what I say,”