Shaking the Sleigh

by Delancey Stewart

  "Shall we?" I asked, offering April my arm. The wind whipped up around us a bit, sending the chilly air rustling through April's loose hair and prying at our collars and scarves with frosty fingers as we walked to the front door.

  We stepped inside, and were immediately confronted with a choice. A huge sign read "Distillery" and had an arrow pointing to the left. Beneath it read "Bar" and the arrow pointed to the right.

  "Which way?" April wondered aloud as she unbuttoned her coat.

  "Let's check out the distillery first," I suggested, and we headed to the left.

  We followed a narrow hallway filled with black and white photos of men rolling barrels, of strange-looking metal kettles and tanks, and of trucks poised outside the brick building, filled with kegs. There were a few newer shots in color, one of them featuring a tall lanky man with a familiar face.

  "Hey guys," the face from the photo was the same one that greeted us now from the entrance door of the distillery. "You’re the stowaways, right? From the sleigh!"

  "Hey Santa," I laughed. "Blanchard, right?

  "Yeah. I go by Wiley mostly, though." The man had a broad likable face with an easy grin that made me feel immediately at ease. Wiley Blanchard wasn't a big man—not like many of the athletes I knew—but he was tall, and the wiry muscle exposed by the flannel shirt rolled up his forearms told me he could probably hold his own when he needed to.

  "I'm Callan, and this is April."

  "Thanks for keeping things quiet in the sleigh that night," April said, shaking Wiley’s hand.

  "Of course. I know how it is," he said, the grin fading a bit to a smile that looked like it was probably his usual expression. "Hiding from the parents, were you?"

  April laughed. "Something like that."

  Wiley stood next to a tall counter made from whiskey barrels, and he leaned down now, resting on his forearms. "All right. Well, what can I do for you tonight? The bar's just through there," he pointed back the way we’d come. "But if you'd like a quick tour of the distillery first, we can do that too."

  "We don't want to intrude," April said. "We can come back during regular tour hours." She was gazing up at a sign over Wiley’s head that confirmed tours stopped after four p.m.

  He waved a hand at us, straightening back up. "Nah, that's for tourists. Come on. I'll show you around."

  He walked us through a broad barn-style door and into the heart of the distillery, where several huge copper tanks stood with soaring copper columns and complicated tubing and connections running here and there to various other metal containers and machines. Against a far wall, sectioned off from the machinery by a glass wall, were two long rows of barrels.

  "White oak," Wiley said, pointing to the barrels. "Best wood for aging whiskey and bourbon. And these beauties," he said, walking over and laying a hand on one of the huge copper stills, "are the heart of the operation."

  "Why copper?" I asked.

  "Most bourbon stills are either made from or lined with copper," Wiley said. "Makes for a better flavor. If you want the science," he said, pausing and lifting an eyebrow in question.

  "Yeah," I encouraged.

  "Copper reacts with the compounds that contain sulfur—the stuff that gives the liquor bad flavors we don't want. The distillation sends those bad flavors and odors up this long column," Wiley pointed up at the tall copper column. "And the alcohol comes out these tubes down into this container here." He patted a smaller silver container with a glass dial on the front. "That's the long and short of it. Most folks care most what it tastes like though, not how we make it."

  "We care about both," April said, wrapping her hand through my elbow and pressing herself to my side. A little thrill went through me, both at the contact, and at April's use of the word "we," something I wouldn't have expected to make me so happy.

  "Well, the exact distilling method is the secret sauce, so to speak," Wiley said, lowering his voice. "And my brother Wade would not be pleased if I gave away all the goods, so that's about all the 'how' I've got for you."

  "Some of the whiskey here has been aging for decades," Wiley told us, walking us through a door and into the barrel room. He pointed down to the darkest end of the racks. "A couple of those have been down there since before Prohibition. Grandpa had them back in the woods and he just rolled them in here and said they needed more time. We're a little afraid to tap them."

  "You've never tasted what's in there?" I asked.

  "I didn't say that," Wiley said, grinning at us. "But it's a good story, eh?” he chuckled. “A lot of our whiskey is twelve to fifteen years in barrels. Bourbon not as long."

  April was walking the length of the racks, craning her head up to get a look at the soaring stacks. I watched her wander down the row.

  "You guys local?" Wiley asked me.

  I nodded. "Well, I am. She's here for work."

  Wiley made a clucking noise of understanding. "Long distance then, huh?"

  "Well, we're not really a couple." At Wiley’s confused look, I added. "It's new."

  "Gotcha." Wiley clapped me on the back and April turned, coming back to join us.

  "So what's the 'half cat' all about?" she asked.

  "You'll see," Wiley said, leading us back to the hallway through which we had entered. "So this hallway here is in Charles County, and the part that goes to the bar is in St. Mary's. Part of the distillery sits in Center, and part in Charles, and half the bar is in Center, while the other half is in St. Mary's. They drew the lines after the building was established."

  "That's crazy," April laughed.

  "What's crazy is that all three counties have different liquor laws," Wiley said, walking us into the bar. "So technically," he said, taking the shots the woman behind the bar had just set up at his subtle nod and handing them to us. "You cannot drink that here by the bar, ma'am." He pointed to a line on the floor, about three feet away from the bar itself. "You can stand over there and drink."

  "What?" April was holding her shot, laughing.

  "Right here," the bartender said, pointing at a sign over the bar that read:

  "Um. These don't even make sense." I laughed. "If the bar is in Center County, how do you ring up orders?"

  The bartender pointed to the end of the bar, which curved significantly and held a register. "That's in St. Mary's."

  "This is hilarious," April said, stepping back up to the bar with her drink. She looked at me and grinned, holding up the little glass. "Ready to taste?"

  "Ma'am, sorry, but can I ask you to sit down first?" Wiley pointed to a bar stool.

  "Oh, you're serious?" April glanced around as if she expected a cop to appear at any moment.

  "We're always on the bloody edge of getting shut down," he explained. "Depends on which county's turn it is to patrol around here. They split it up since we straddle the lines."

  I chuckled. My new home was the best kind of weird.

  Just as April was sliding onto a barstool, a scraping noise came from the other side of the almost-empty room, and a cat appeared. It paused, the scraping noise stopping, and looked at us with large evaluating eyes. Its fur was a silver grey, and it stood up in all directions.

  "Come on Fluffy, it's okay," Wiley said in a coaxing voice. He glanced up at us. "His full name is a bit of a mouthful."

  "His full name?" April asked, taking a sip.

  "Mr. FluffyNuts," the bartender supplied helpfully.

  April laughed, spitting the whiskey she’d just sipped. I laughed too, but hadn't taken a sip yet.

  The cat chose that moment to emerge completely from behind the counter, his front paws pulling behind him a little cart with big wheels, which carried the back half of his body.

  "Mr. FluffyNuts was a rescue," Wiley said. "About seven years ago, my uncle found him on the side of the road. His back legs were mangled by a car, so Uncle Beau and my brother Wade made him a cart."

  "Oh my god." April's face was turning slightly red, and I suspected she was doing her best not to laugh any more.


  "Half cat," I said.

  Wiley lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. "A little more than half, I guess. But you got it." He winked at them. “Though if you want the truth, the place has been called that for a hundred years, cat or no cat.” April and I exchanged a confused look. “Enjoy the whiskey, y'all. That first taste is on the house. Try the bourbon, too." Wiley disappeared back down the hallway, and the bartender moved to the other end of the bar to help the few other people who sat against its edge. Mr. FluffyNuts wheeled himself off to follow Wiley, and April grinned at me.

  "What?" I asked, feigning innocence about the ridiculousness of everything we’d just witnessed.

  "Craziest town ever," April whispered, poking me in the chest to make her point.

  I shrugged.

  "And YOU live here," she added, poking me again.

  I caught her hand and held it to my chest. "Yeah," I said thoughtfully, keeping her slim warm hand trapped in my own. "Yeah, I do."

  April tilted her head to the side and one half of her mouth lifted in a smile. "How do you feel about that?"

  "I think I like it here," I said honestly, thinking about the warm contentment that had been spreading through me all night.

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and seemed to be thinking about this statement. "Yeah," she said. "I think I can see why."

  "I mean," I said, still holding her hand but dropping it to my leg, pressing it there, wanting to keep her close. "It's got an interesting mix of people, the only family I really have is here … and I have to start my life all over again somewhere. Might as well be here, right?" As I said these words, they solidified in my mind into a certainty I’d only just acknowledged.

  "Do you really?" April asked, putting her glass on the bar so she could put her other hand atop mine, on my leg. "Do you really have to start all over, or do you just think that because you can't see anything else?"

  "Well," I said slowly. "My entire life was based on being a pro soccer player. Now that I can't do that, I need a reset." I didn’t want to talk about what had happened. I wanted to focus on her, on today, tomorrow.

  "But it wasn't," she said. "Your life was based on being a great athlete, on knowing how to get to the top of a game, on how to market yourself."

  "As a soccer player."

  "You're an expert at soccer."

  "Um," I shook my head, confused. Where was she heading with this? "Right. I guess."

  "So use that expertise in another way."

  "Oh, like as a soccer consultant. Right. I think I saw a help wanted posting for one of those on the way in." I laughed, but the sound only revealed the depth of frustration I felt. I’d thought through all this. I needed a new direction.

  "You might need to be a little more creative," April said. "Take it from someone who's lost a lot of jobs."

  "How many?"

  "Counting the last one?"

  I narrowed my eyes at her. "Yes."

  "I've lost three jobs so far."

  "Like, fired lost?" I cocked my head to the side. There were a lot of definitions of ‘losing’ a job.

  "Well, I don't think anyone's ever said, 'you're fired,'" she clarified. "But I can tell you it wouldn't have been well received if I'd come back to work after the talk."

  "The talk?"

  "The 'we think it'd be better if you worked somewhere else' talk," April explained. She pulled her hands away from where they'd been held on my leg and crossed her arms around her waist. "I was a horrible waitress," she explained. "So that made total sense. And then there was the barista job."

  "Not mocha-tastic?" I joked, hoping to make her smile.

  She frowned. "That was awful. And so was my barista game."

  "What happened?"

  "Someone ordered a decaf, sugar-free, nonfat latte."

  "And?"

  "I pointed out that they might as well drink water."

  "They didn't like that?" I guessed.

  "Neither did my manager," April said, her shoulders dropping.

  "You're good at what you do now," I pointed out, placing a hand on her knee, trying to reassure her.

  April just sighed. She looked at me, and for a moment I thought she was going to tell me something else, something to refute my statement. But she didn't. She picked up her glass and finished the whiskey.

  I followed suit. "So," I said, sensing that changing the subject was the way to go. "What now?"

  "Should we try the bourbon?"

  "Well, I need to drive us back," I said. "Do you want to try it?"

  April shook her head. "Not by myself."

  We each slipped off our stools, and I looked around. That round had been free, Wiley hadn't charged us for the taste, and now we were about to leave without buying anything. I wanted to support a local business, so I signaled the bartender to come over. "Is there any such thing as a to-go glass?" I asked doubtfully.

  "Only in Center County," she said.

  I looked down, realizing I was standing in St. Mary's. I met the bartender again a few feet down the bar. "I'd like two glasses of bourbon to go."

  "Done," the bartender said, placing them on the bar in plastic cups with lids.

  "And I'll buy a round for everyone at the bar," I added.

  The bartender's eyebrows shot up, but she accepted the stack of bills I handed her without a word. I couldn't help but glow under April’s surprised gaze too. I didn’t want to throw my money around, but if I could impress her a bit, that wasn’t a bad thing. And there were like seven people in the bar.

  April smiled and lifted the to-go cups off the bar.

  "Ready?" I asked.

  April nodded. "Yeah."

  15

  Taking the Cat on the Road

  April

  Maybe a more responsible person would have just gone back to her hotel room, I thought as I rode next to Callan in his truck, holding "to-go" cups filled with bourbon. He did ask if he should drop me off. But I’d looked over at him, caught that hopeful gleam in his mischievous eyes and seen the corner of his mouth twitch up. And I’d said no. "My place?" He'd asked then, and I had nodded, knowing I had already crossed some lines. Knowing that if something went wrong between us, I could end up adding this to the long list of jobs I’d lost.

  But Callan had gotten under my skin. How could any sane woman see him—all that muscled perfection topped with dark hair and those eyes that drove me mad—and not make some bad decisions? He was the guy from the underwear billboard, for heaven's sake, right here smiling at me. And he had that wounded vulnerability, that little glimmer of the lost boy looking to be found. And I found myself wanting very much to find him. Even if I should be working on finding myself instead.

  The town glowed around us as we navigated the narrow streets, heading back to Callan's house. Now that the tree was lit in the square, it cast a golden glow for blocks, throwing light into the close damp winter air and making it impossible to forget that Christmas was near. I imagined that Singletree—er, um, Christmas Tree, that was—must be a great place to be a little kid. Every day felt a little bit like something special with all the decorations and twinkle lights and general excitement for the holiday in the air.

  As we pulled down the lane to Callan's, his own house glowed almost as brightly as the town square. "Man, look at that," he said, his voice warm.

  "It's beautiful," I said, and I found that I meant it. The old plantation house was lit within and without. The windows glowed in a welcoming tint and the pillars out front were wrapped in twinkling lights that looked like glitter. A family of snowmen had been added since yesterday, and there were stacks of decorative presents on the sprawling front porch.

  "You're starting to be won over," Callan said, pulling through the gate after pressing the remote button he’d had installed and parking the car. "Admit it." He turned and looked at me, his mouth lifted in that half grin again. But it was his voice, velvety and low, that had me thinking I’d admit anything he wanted me to.

  "I am,"
I said, my eyes never leaving his. I was being won over, and I wondered quietly how badly this would end.

  "Come on," he said, and he slid out of the car and came around to open my door for me. His limp was more pronounced than it had been earlier.

  "Are you okay?" I asked, handing him the drinks.

  "It's just the cold. It's a little worse when I'm stiff." He looked away from me as he said this, and I realized he didn't want to talk about his injury, so I let it drop. But my heart twisted a bit as we climbed the stairs, wishing I could do something to help him.

  Inside, Callan put on music—not carols, though, I drew an absolute line at voluntary Christmas carol listening—and we sat on the rug in front of the gas fire, bourbon in our hands.

  "I had fun with you," Callan said, taking a sip.

  I felt my cheeks flame, though I wasn't sure if it was the bourbon or Callan's words. "Me too," I said after a minute.

  "And I was glad you weren't ready to go home yet."

  Home, I thought. Callan meant the inn, but my mind was wandering back to my quiet dark apartment, cold and empty. Was it strange that I had recently started thinking I might get a tree when I got back? "Yeah," I said quietly. Then I raised my eyes to meet his. I would have to go home at some point, of course. And then this would end. This—whatever this was. I might as well enjoy it until then. I’d gotten in a little too deep to back out gracefully now, and there wasn't a cell in my body that actually wanted to anyway.

  "So," Callan said, clearly trying to draw me out. I knew I had been quiet since leaving the distillery. "You're off now for a bit, right? You said the next week is when the LA office reviews the film you got this week? So where does that leave you?"

  I smiled. I had wondered that myself. "Well, tomorrow I'll need to write up a few things to go with the package we're sending back for review. The camera crew actually goes back—or one of them does—with the files, and does a bit of editing. So they'll review what we've got next week, give me any new directions, and then we'll wrap the last two houses."