The Third Life Of Old Benny Reed

      "Get away!" shouts the old man huddled under a rock overhang on the western slope of Cave Mountain. "Let's go home," James quietly answers while stooping into the dark maw of Benjamin's secret cave.  "You all don't want what I have," Benjamin groans as a raven croaks from the steep hillside above them. "Alicy done broke out in chicken pox on the way to Little Rock," counters James reaching a hand down to his father. "We'll all have hallow's eve at home."      Thinking he was dying anyway, Benjamin Reed had waited for a chance to do so alone. A perfect opportunity arose when his catching of the pox coincided with a family trip for the first fall festival at the newly completed Arkansas State House. After the rest were gone, he'd climbed on his young pack horse with a blanket and a horn flask containing his insurance policy, the toxic heads and tails from a moonshine run.      Old Benny had found the small ca...

     "I just don't get it," begins a shaky James from his seat on a moss-covered boulder, the saffron-colored leaves of a cottonwood crinkling above his head in the fall breeze. "Why bust the pot when it's half full?" "Never...you...mind," coughs Benjamin levering the blade from a wide gash in the copper still and swinging again.  "Keeping the heads and draining the rest is no way to make money for old rope," the son continues, regaining composure after his father takes a second swing.  "Best...to stick...to one's knitting," Benny responds as he heeds his own advice and tears open the rest of the copper pot.     The old man had needed to keep some distance from his immovable son blocking the still. He knew that the itchy red spots emerging on his arms and under his beard were just the beginning. Smallpox could take down a previously unexposed settler family as easily as a Native American one.         Just before Benjamin thr...

       "Hold your horses," shouts James Reed in front of the still in the chill of a late October morning up in the back hollow.  "You...ain't...seen...the evil," his father coughs, his right hand smoothly lifting a hatchet even as his speech is interrupted by hacking.      Benjamin Reed had felt triply ill after his visit to the Cane Hill trading post. Some of the Cherokee risking their lives for a sip of whiskey had been sickening enough. It was made worse by the realization that back country distillers like himself had been preying on hopelessness. Then there was the cough that had now brought out sores in his mouth and throat.       Having lived his entire life on the remote frontiers of western Virginia and mountainous Kentucky, Benjamin hadn't been exposed to all of the European diseases that had rampaged through the eastern Native American communities. Being immune-naive to Orthopox and other viruses meant that the illn...