Exclusive Excerpt From The Sweet and Bitter Taste of Moonshine

Ambrose Wells sat in the front seat of his aging Ford Bronco, staring across highway 174 through a dusty haze of South Carolina red earth. Light filtered through the slowly falling dust, and gently settled on a palmetto bush that grew under the shade of a massive, old live oak, and all Ambrose could think of was how beautiful it all seemed. In the back of his mind, in that deep, dark singularity where nightmares are born, he sensed that it was odd that he should think about this. Of all possible emotions that might be coursing through his rigid, aching body right now, it was this one—this appreciation of the ephemeral beauty of light passing through the drifting, sparkling particles of floating earth on a hot August evening— that had taken precedence. After all, the dust had been kicked up by his own tires as his truck had spun around on the soft, grey asphalt, and had come to rest on the dirt shoulder of the road. His vehicle was now facing ninety degrees to the right of its intended direction. In what must have been no longer than five or ten seconds, Ambrose’s Bronco had narrowly missed an oncoming, top-of-the-line Mercedes, spun around with startling speed, and slid to a violent stop on the curb he now found himself upon. As he realized this, the whole accident was replayed in his head with dazzling clarity.

He closed his eyes and saw himself driving down 174, a trip he’d made many times in the past, though it had been years. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember one damned thing he’d been thinking about between gassing up near Walterboro, and then nearly hitting the Mercedes here on Edisto Island. Almost an hour of time had elapsed, and he couldn’t remember what he’d done, seen, or thought of. He vaguely had the impression that maybe he’d been thinking about Big John Connolly, his boss up in Columbia who’d sent him down here on what seemed like a fool’s errand, but he wasn’t entirely sure. He hazily remembered going over the impressively arcing McKinley Washington, Jr. bridge that gracefully passed over the Dawhoo River like the curved neck of a swan, but other than that, he couldn’t be sure of what he’d thought about or seen while driving for the better part of an hour at roughly fifty-five miles per hour. But suddenly there had been a remarkable flash of brilliant green that had darted across his field of vision, almost simultaneously followed by a jarring, baritone thump as if something heavy had hit the windshield, and finally the sickening realization that his truck was halfway in the other lane, careening toward a light blue Mercedes.

The thunk of whatever he’d hit against the windshield seemed to have snapped him out of his reverie, and from that moment on, Ambrose experienced everything that subsequently happened with exquisite detail and crisp sensory recall. He’d looked up and seen the Mercedes rapidly approaching. He could see the driver, a young woman with light, sandy hair and a blue bandanna around her neck, tensely gripping the wheel and screaming, as if she were in a silent movie, for he could not hear her. He watched as she pulled hard to the right, and he felt amazed in an almost out-of-body way as her side mirror was violently sheered off by the front of his car. By now, he had automatically reacted himself, and he pulled his wheel hard to the right. He could hear the grinding of his wheels against the uneven dirt on the side of the road, and feel the rough bumps as they transmitted up through the chassis and into his seat.

Overcorrecting (and feeling somewhat ashamed about it now), he’d then turned the wheel hard to the left in order to return to the pavement while simultaneously slamming on the brakes. He felt the stress on the car, and the tension in his right calf as he pushed with tremendous effort against the poor brake pedal. The back of the Bronco by then had started to swerve around to his right as the wheels had trouble finding purchase on the softer earth. He remembered spinning a full 360 degrees, the back half of the car crushing a few unfortunate palmettos, and one very immature crepe myrtle that hadn’t stood a chance against the mass and velocity of the back half of his steel, 1992 Bronco. As the car swung around, Ambrose felt amazed that it had not yet flipped, and he even had time to wonder about how that was even possible—until he saw the Mercedes, whose side mirror he had violently freed, crash headfirst into a wooden picket fence.

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