Pa's Missin'

The Gelos family has lived in the woods between Lenoir and Brown mountain as long as anybody could remember. The exact location bein' omitted here on account of they don't much want attention, and since I get to tell their tale I'll give 'em that much. Round about the tellin' of our story, the summer of '22, Frank Gelos was the patriarch of the family, called "Pa" by all his kids and most of the time by the misses when she was still alive, god rest her soul.

Pa and the family had taken to moonshinin' and runnin' when the lumber jobs had gone bust, and they were damn good at it. Pa made some of the best whiskey in the holler, and had a car he bet could run laps around any of those out of Wilkes, let alone any of those lawmen north of Richmond. Business was good, if not a bit, uh, let's say tenuous.

Sheriff Adams had come down to the holler from Lenoir to talk to Pa. That wasn't uncommon, local law talkin' to moonshiners. Way they saw it, if the folks over in Washington didn't give a damn about keeping the jobs Ritter and Champion took when they cut down every tree on the damn mountain range in the community, but saw fit to put their foot on damn near the only industry left, well...they wouldn't have a hand in enforcin' it, that's for damn sure. Still tho, shinin' was dangerous business, and Sheriff Adams was a good man.

"Frank, I'm not here ta' tell ya' to stop, but to at least thing of your family. Real fancy folks are up in town now and they seem keen on findin' out whats goin' on in the hollers. Hell, I ain't sayin' this to you as a lawman, but as a friend and your brother in the church."

Pa didn't take the family up to church no more. Not since the lumber companies up and left. Think his religion got up and walked out with it. Didn't help it weren't no secret how the preacher man felt about the shinin' business. He had been at the pulpit singin' the praises of prohibition when it got passed, drinkin' bein' such an awful sin and all in his eyes. So, needless to say, Pa wasn't particularly won over by that line of concern. So Sheriff Adams got back in his car and left.

That was two days before Pa went missin'. Kids woke up and he wasn't around. By the afternoon concern had set in. Car was still there. Gun was still in the house. The kids asked around the holler, but no one had seen him. Pa knew the woods and the roads around here better than anyone. Wouldn't get lost. Wouldn't have a run in with a bear, and hell if he went somewhere he might he'd have taken the gun. So the 8 Gelos kids talked it over, and decided while a few of them worked the rest ought a go see if they couldn't turn up where Pa had gotten to.