(OOC: Life happens and we are trying once again to resurrect our folder. Thank you to everyone still following along with our stories. The following posts are mostly snippets of Isaac and Josette's past)

Isaac scanned the list Shae had given him at the Boozefest a final time before shifting eyes to two crates he'd already packed in a final cross-check and tally to make sure the woman's order had been properly crafted, selected and packed. A quick count was tapped with a finger against each lid before he hefted the crates and carried them out to the bed of his 1960 Ford truck. She'd seen better years"needed some new paint in a couple of places but she'd held together well all things considering. As Isaac set the crates in over the side of the bed an old memory surfaced from back when he was still just a kid trying to make his way"moonshine, a 56 Chevy and an old friend"

Isaac gave a glance to his old, beat up Heur wristwatch. He'd found it at an estate sale a year or two ago, told it'd been issued to pilots back after the war"face was pretty scratched up and the leather band was well worn, shot through with white creases of age. It still worked and that's what mattered to the young man as he stood at a lonely intersection of empty roads with just the electric buzz of the blinking yellow and red street lights for company. Just a few ticks shy of ten when Isaac heard the rumble of an engine and saw the glow of approaching headlights heralding a vehicle coming his way.

He bent low to pick up his rucksack and sling it over a shoulder. He'd developed a habit of carrying almost everything he owned wherever he went as the past few years had been spent moving from one place to another, sometimes in a hurry. An old 56" Chevy pick up truck rumbled to a stop as it pulled off the road, the whine of worn out breaks seeming to echo for miles before the truck came to a stop.

"You ready?" The gravel and syrup voice sounded from within the truck.

"Yeah." Isaac answered, his dogwood drawl a distant cousin to the mountain twang of the voice in the truck. "You want me to drive?" Isaac asked, the tone of his tenor carrying a touch of compassion'the way a young man might ask his elderly father.

"Hell no. Don't you be takin tha worrisome tone with me. Sound just like my wife every time I get up on a ladder or out on the tractor." A spry spring in the lilt of that voice indicating that the spirit which inhabited the body was much younger.

"She ain't wrong"I seen you out on that John Deere'safest place is right in front of ya." Isaac answered with a grin before he tossed his rucksack in the bed of the truck and opened the door that had more patina and rust than paint showing to climb into the cab.

"Son"I could knock out two o yous righ now and still have enough left over to refresh the missus when I was done." The words spoken in a clear jest though there was just a single note of warning there"like the man wasn't going to tolerate any pity or sympathy on account of his age. "Gonna be a good nigh." As the gears ground and the truck lurched forward back onto the asphalt to make a right turn at the intersection. "We jarring tonigh."

"That's good, Creek. I got a buyer lined up back in town." Isaac answered as he cracked the window to let in a bit of air. "Says if we can deliver he'll set up a regular buy." Eyes the color of thunderstorms looked towards the driver of the truck and his senior partner, Elijah "Creek" Harper.

"You serious now?" Creek asked, Merlin white eyebrows becoming animated at the prospect of steady business.

"What the man said." Isaac drawled with a bit of a grin. Creek's energy was infectious and consistently contradicted his age. Isaac saw he was in his usual pair of overalls and cheap, threadbare button up so old and used it was damn near transparent in places. Isaac had never asked him his age but guessed it to be north of seventy"maybe even eighty. Not that the years seemed capable of slowing Creek down.

A legend in the shine business of West Virginia, Creek had been making the stuff in an unbroken chain of know how that dated all the way back to when them frontier boys got together and decided to challenge ole George Washington and Mr. Hamilton over taxes.

"Hot damn!" Creek crowed and slapped Isaac on the knee. "You got a future in the shine business kid." A grin showing through the tobacco stained whiskers of Creek's unkempt beard. "You stick with me, learn what I telled ya?" Creek nodded in agreement with his own words. "An you'll always have a trade that can keep money in yer pocket."

Isaac remained silent, just leaned his head back against the cab of the truck and the back of the seat to settle in for the drive out to where Creek kept his stills. Tucked back in a holler along a little tributary of the Cheat River out on the Allegheny plain is where they were headed and where Creek had been distilling his White Lightning for decades. Course they had to move stills all the time"Johnny Law didn't care a fig about making whiskey"no no no"you just had to pay the tax man, make sure Uncle Sam got a cut up front. Thing about that was"Creek didn't think them government boys had any right to his cash. Isaac and Creek had been forced to move in a hurry just a few months ago when county sheriffs came stomping through the woods with hounds and flashlights. Fortunately no one knew the back woods the way Creek did and Isaac was no slouch moving over uneven land himself.

Isaac's thoughts drifted, as they tended to do from time to time, back to Georgia. He didn't regret leaving, striking out on his own just a few years ago but he still wondered about his family"how his brother was doing in school"what car his mother had demanded for her birthday. He didn't miss it but he couldn't disconnect himself from blood anymore than he could from breathing.

Those railroad tracks had led north out of Savannah that night, carried him up into the Palmetto State and further, the eldest Wheeler drifting like a dandelion on the wind for a few years. He'd wound up in West Virginia, taken in by Creek, his wife Ethel, and their four dogs after Isaac had done some work day laboring repairs on Creek's roof due to Ethel forbidding her elderly husband from climbing up there himself.

Isaac leaned over to the window and exhaled, let his breath fog up the glass to see if anything showed up. Thoughts turning to Josette, a wistful little smile threatening to blossom as he thought of her up on the stage performing over in Europe after everything she'd been through. If Isaac held any regrets about his choices over the last few years they inexorably connected back to Josette. He wiped way the fog when nothing appeared and settled back in for the drive up to the mountains.

"Son"look like you got the weight o the world crushin down around yer shoulders." Creek observed after several minutes of silence. "Far too young to be havin whatever it is houndin ya like that." The two had an easy partnership"Creek hardly ever pried into Isaac's past and Isaac hardly ever volunteered, both of them men and at ease with the other's silence.

"Ain't nothin." Isaac's antebellum accent sounded after a few moments, the Wheeler scion holding true to his part of the bargain.

"Mmhm." Creek sounded unconvinced. "Then it's a whole lotta nothin"maybe this'll cheer ya up then?" Creek grunted as he fished an envelope out from his overalls and tossed it over into Isaac's lap. "Came yesterday all the way from France. Josette"that's yer sister righ?" Creek clarified, knowing just enough to know he didn't know the whole story about the young man.

Isaac looked down at the envelope, fingers tracing over the petite penmanship as the lights of the highway flashed by. "Yeah'she's over there studyin to be a dancer." Obvious pride sounding in his voice despite the continued secrecy surrounding his past and upbringing'seems his mother's quest to keep things private had rubbed off on him anyhow.

"Well go on, son'read the damn thing why don't ya?"

"You ain't ever gonna stop are ya, Creek?" Isaac asked with just a hint of amusement sounding in that drawl as he fished a knife from his pocket to carefully slit the envelope from end to end with a kind of precision not typically seen in a bouncing, jittery old truck. The knife was replaced with a penlight so Isaac could read the carefully scripted words of Josette's letter, his heart lifted by the contact even as the subject and tone hardened his eyes and jaw until a little tick bloomed along that line of muscle and bone.

"Family is all a man's got at the end o the day, Isaac?" Creek answered, not realizing he sounded far too much like Isaac's true father in that moment for the younger man's liking. After a moment Creek glanced Isaac's way as he read the letter.

"If you say so." Isaac's slow, southern speech sounding in the same tones he used with his father before carefully folding the letter back up and placing it in its envelope. Isaac saved every letter Josie wrote him, tucked them away in his rucksack with a couple of rubber bands to be wrapped up in an old bandana for safe keeping. She was the only one who bore the Wheeler name that ever knew where he was day to day"and the only one that'd make an effort to stay connected even if she weren't the only one to know.

"I know so." Creek retorted, gnarled knuckles resting easily on the big wheel of the Chevy. "She have good news?"

"Long drive, Creek"an we got a lotta work ahead if we're gonna make this order." Isaac spoke through a slow exhale, the twenty year old Wheeler throwing up a wall to hard stop the conversation before Creek could get it going.

"Alrigh then.? Creek nodding, understanding when to give a young man his space and turned his eyes back to the black ribbon of road stretching out in front of them.