Bad Tooth on Moonshine

I pulled back into the hollow...to the very back of the hollow where Bud lived. Betty's car was there. That was rare. Betty was married to Bud...childhood sweethearts. But, mostly she lived in the city , because she couldn't cope with Bud's backwoods ways. Popping open a squirrel's skull between the thumbs, because the brain tasted good, was not her cup of tea. Having tried this, I find a cooked squirrel's brain does taste good. I would compare it to a Macadamia nut. But this is just an aside, I was mostly wanting to know how the shine was cooking.

In the light of the flickering fire from the wood stove, I could see that Bud was sitting on the side of his bunk looking quite sullen. Betty sat in a chair nearby with her legs crossed tightly. His elbow on his knee, his hand on his jaw, every bit the "Thinker". "What's going on, Bud?" I said, as I glanced to the primitive still on the floor and watched the steady drip. "This tooth has got to go !" he said, rubbing on his jaw. "I need you to pull it, Betty." he said looking over at her. She clutched her arms tight across her skinny body. "I can't do it, Bud."

Bud looked up at me. "Can you do it, Dan?" "I wouldn't know what I was doing, Bud. I'd be afraid I might kill you if I tried." Betty nodded.

Bud asked me to bring him the jar from the still. He swished it around in his bony hand, and said something about how it looked 'right'. And then he drank it. Then he pulled a knife from his pocket and cut a ribbon of cloth from the bottom of his T-shirt. "I guess I 'll have to do it myself." he mumbled. He wrapped this strip of cloth around the jaws of a pair of pliers. "The thing is", he said, "once you start pulling, you can't stop...you have to pull 'til its out."

Betty and I sat frozen as Bud inserted the pliers into his mouth. He spent some time getting it right. Positioning his elbow on his knee....feeling for a grip on the tooth.....bringing his other hand up to support the one holding the pliers. His face turned an ungodly red as he yanked. The tooth came out. He gave a drunken smile to Betty and then to me.
He got up weak kneed from his bunk. He carried the bloody tooth in the pliers to the stove. He opened the fire-box and tossed the tooth in. "There, God Damn it take that!' He staggered back to his bunk, fell across it and passed out. Since then, I have pulled two of my own teeth, out of respect.