The Angels' Share

by James Markert

  Life had just stopped here. But the woods still held the smell of mash: the thick aroma of the grains cooking, the yeast turning the sugars into alcohol, the angels’ share escaping from aging barrels. William didn’t have many memories from when Old Sam was king; he’d only been six. Still, all the good memories of his father and grandfather involved the distillery.

  William slowed past one of the barrel runs and noticed Mr. Browder sweeping standing water from the porch of one of the ten vacant employee cottages. Ronald Browder was the only one to stay behind, with his wife and daughter, unwilling to part from his cornfield, which had thrived for decades before the distillery and still thrived after the Volstead Act. He believed the land was blessed. They were one of only a handful of black families left in town. Ronald’s wife passed in the winter of 1929, after a three-year battle with tuberculosis at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Now it was just Ronald. His daughter, Carly, had married two years ago and moved out.

  Mr. Browder took a break from his sweeping, and William stopped the car and rolled the window down.

  “Morning, McFees.” Mr. Browder approached the idling car. He had two bad knees but refused to use the cane Samantha had gotten him for Christmas. He moved around the front of the hood toward William’s side and stuck his head in. He winked at Annie in the back. “Sugar Cakes.”

  “Snowflake,” Annie said to Mr. Browder, laughing. His hair was a white mushroom.

  “How them legs, little girl?”

  “Better than them knees, old man.”

  Mr. Browder smiled large, patted William on the elbow. “You talk to Mrs. McFee?”

  William sagged in the driver’s seat. “Not yet.”

  “It’s okay.” He patted William’s arm again. He looked back at Annie. “Ain’t that right, little girl? Everything’s jake.”

  She nodded, started lightly punching the ceiling.

  “Got you a little boxer in the back,” said Mr. Browder. “I had another dream, William. About the distillery running.”

  The door to his cottage opened, and Carly Browder stepped outside in a paisley dress that showed her curves. William had been secretly coveting those curves since his school days. He never voiced his admiration to anyone. She was four years older and black. Neither should matter, and he had convinced himself that his parents would be jake with it—at the distillery’s zenith, half of the staff had been colored—but it was irrelevant now. She was happily married. And even curvier than he remembered. Is she with child?

  Carly Browder—Carly Charles—waved from the porch. William jerked a nod; Johnny and Annie waved back.

  “Gon’ be a granddaddy, McFee family,” Mr. Browder confirmed. “My girl and her man are movin’ back.” He tapped William’s elbow again. “It all a sign, Will McFee. And with all dat hubbub in the field las’ night, it gon’ happen. You watch now. You talk to Mrs. McFee. We gon’ get Mr. Barley up outta dat chair and into the houses again.” Done talking, he patted the car’s roof. “Move along, soldiers.”

  Mr. Browder stepped back and watched them go. “What was that all about?” Johnny asked. “What do you need to ask Mother about?”

  “Nothing.”

  Johnny looked over his shoulder toward the Browders’ cottage. “I would have loved to lock lips with that babe.”

  “She’s nine years older than you.”

  “I could handle it. I kissed Nadine Swarthwood last week. She’s eighteen.”

  “Nadine Swarthwood has smooched every boy in town.”

  “Except you, William,” Annie said, laughing.

  William accelerated toward the main road. “Close your heads, both of you.”

  The sun parted the clouds, heating the air with humidity William hadn’t felt since summer. One of the empty oak barrels moved, breeze-blown, across the run leading away from the distilling house. He followed it toward the potter’s field, pretending to kick it along, and then watched it pick up speed as it rolled down the hill and disappeared into the aging house.

  William peeled off to the right, where the grass of the field was saturated but not puddled; the hard ground had soaked in the rainfall. The older graves were visible only because he knew what to look for—slight sunken pits in the ground, weed covered and weather beaten. The newer graves were marked by kneehigh wooden crosses. He headed straight for the sixth row on the south side, where the shade from the aging house cast a thumbprint against the grass. About twenty paces deep, he found the newest cross and dirt-covered mound. The grass was trampled and muddy around the perimeter. Footprints, big and small, both human and animal, led to and from this grave.

  He took his notepad from his pocket and jotted notes about the scene, especially the six deer watching from the woods, the fox spying from the barrel run outside the aging house, and the woodchuck inching like a wounded soldier up the hill from the whiskey trees. Birds of different sizes circled above—crows, hawks, redbirds, robins, and blackbirds.

  A malnourished chocolate Labrador approached, so thin his ribs were visible. His fur was matted with mud and burs, and his tongue lolled lazily. The dog barked three times, deep and throaty but friendly, and continued forward with his tail wagging. He rubbed against William’s legs much like a cat would and then sat next to the cross. He had no tags or collar. William petted the dog behind the ears and allowed him to lick his hand.

  “You need some food, boy?” The dog panted, licked his hand again.

  “Go on then.” William pointed toward the family’s garden. “Grab some off the vines. Get what you need. I’ll explain it to Barley.”

  The dog was reluctant but then barked and ran toward the garden.

  William squatted, eye level with the horizontal cross-board. Across the old barrel stave in black paint was written: HERE LIES THE BODY OF ASHER KEATING. And down the vertical stave, his dates: ???–OCT. 19, 1934. Despite the crowd of mourners, no one was close enough to him to know when he was born?

  William wrote in his notepad, and by the time he finished the dog returned with a half-gnawed cucumber. He’d never seen a dog eat a cucumber, but if you were hungry enough, you could eat anything. William rubbed the dog’s back and felt spine beneath the skin.

  “Did you know Asher Keating, boy?”

  The dog barked. William then noticed three cats—one gray, one beige, and one black—sneaking in the weeds twenty yards away and realized the dog was barking at the felines, not in response. If Mr. Browder had seen them, he would have claimed it as a sign—the cats had returned to chase the mice away so the distillery could be opened. “I’m not fond of cats either.”

  The dog finished the cucumber and licked his chops, and then his ears perked toward a coughing noise coming from the aging house, a building that was four stories tall with evenly spaced wood-shuttered windows that opened and closed like doors.

  William stood from his crouch. Since it was stripped of the thousands of barrels of bourbon it had once contained, noises echoed off the vaulted ceiling like they did in church. Decades of aging bourbon had left the exterior limestone walls streaked with a sooty black residue, a yeasty-smelling fungus that gave a distilling house character. But now the black streaks looked like shadowy fingers and made him leery.

  The man coughed again.

  William approached with the strange dog by his side and a pen in his hand. His heart began to palpitate, a precursor to the sweats. He stopped outside the arched wooden door, which was cracked open a foot on rusted hinges.

  “Hello. Anybody in there?”

  “Come in,” a raspy-voiced older woman said. “We mean you no harm.”

  “We only need shelter,” said a man.

  The dog barked, trotted inside. A few seconds later the dog opened the door wider, nudging it with the top of his head. A robin flew from the belly of the aging house. William ducked beneath the fluttering wings and stepped inside the building.

  One of his earliest memories was entering this very building at six years old, holding his father’s and grandfather’s han
ds. “One . . . two . . . three . . . jump!” They’d practically swung him all the way across the potter’s field, as if he were flying. It was December of 1919. The air was crisp and cold. His father had recently returned from the war, and his grandfather was only two months away from hanging himself.

  William had to crane his neck to take in the breadth of the barrels: thousands of white-oak casks stacked on ricks up to the ceiling; nine levels of bourbon whiskey aging for years, turning from clear white to copper and amber, pulling the smells and flavors from the contracting and expanding white oak, filling the house with the pleasant aroma of escaped vapors, heavy with the scents of corn, barley, and rye, vanilla, caramel, and butterscotch.

  “You know what that smell is, William?”

  “What, Grandpa?”

  “A portion of the bourbon evaporates through the stave joints of the barrels. You’re smelling what we call the angels’ share. Our offering to the angels. We share our bourbon and they protect our distillery from fire.”

  Now, as William entered, he was met by a gush of cool air and dust motes, a patchwork of sunlight and shadow, vacant wood-planked floors dotted with bird droppings and scratches from dancing shoes. The abandoned ricks and empty barrels were covered with mold. The faint smell of the angels’ share still lingered, and William felt like a child again.

  The smell had once been their religion.

  “Come in, please,” a woman said.

  A bird flew across the highest pitch of the roof.

  William turned to the woman’s voice. She was dressed in heavy layers, with thick military-style boots too big for her feet. The laces were untied, and the ends clicked against the wood floor as she stood to face William. Her face was lined and hard lived, her gray hair mostly concealed by a red kerchief, but her eyes were sharp. “We’re not here for trouble, I assure you.”

  Sitting in the shadows were men and women, all white except for two Negroes, outfitted in dresses and suits and coats that were aged and weather beaten.

  “What are you doing here?” William foolishly held the pen out as if it were a dagger.

  “My name is Beverly,” said the older woman. “We came in here last night to escape the rain. Do you live in the main house?”

  William nodded. The dog was by his side again. He started to ask them where they lived, but it was clear to him that they lived nowhere. They lived everywhere. They lived inside whatever stronghold they could find each night. He knew enough to be cautious. “You were here last night. Nobody ever visits the potter’s field. Where did the rest go?”

  A man in a tattered brown suit, mismatched wing tips, and a moth-nibbled derby spoke from his seat atop an empty oak barrel. “They started their walk back to the city.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Clive. I’m happy to be alive.” The man, who could have been twenty or forty, it was hard to tell, tipped his hat. “I’m a veteran of the Great War.”

  “So is my father,” said William.

  “His name?” asked Clive.

  “My name is Barley McFee.” He walked through the door of the aging house with a shotgun leveled at the squatters. “And I’m not afraid to shoot. You’ve got one minute to get your bindles off my property.”

  “Father . . . don’t . . .”

  “I’ve got this under control, William.” Barley aimed the gun.

  “Father, they’re unarmed.”

  “And how do you know that, son?”

  He didn’t know. He’d just assumed. And then a tall, bald man in the back removed a pistol from his coat and slowly placed it on the floorboard. Another man two barrels down did the same, except his looked like a Colt. And then a red-haired young woman in a yellow dress slid a shiv from the folds of her faded skirt and dropped it to the floor.

  William couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed her first. Her eyes were green, as lush as Kentucky grass after a spring rain. She stared directly at him, and the attention made him gulp. She was stunning; feral looking but pretty as a Georgia peach. He shook his head to get his wits about him.

  “Anybody else heeled?” Barley eyed the weapons on the floor. “Last chance to show your cards. No?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Okay, then. Who is Asher Keating?”

  William said under his breath, “I was just getting to that.”

  Beverly stared at Barley, eyes burrowing into him. “Are you a godly man, Mr. McFee?”

  “I doubt there is such a thing as a godly man.”

  “Why didn’t you leave with the others last night?” William was afraid his father would tighten the screws on them too quickly and clam them up.

  Beverly looked over her shoulder toward the redhead, as if she needed her permission to talk.

  It was the redhead who answered. “Perhaps if your father put down his bean-shooter we’d be more inclined to parlay, and everything will be jake.” Her voice was sharp enough to cut paper and it took William’s breath away. He reached out and slowly lowered Barley’s rifle.

  “What are you doing, son?”

  “I’m trying to have a conversation.” William looked back toward the redhead, surprised to discover he wasn’t wilting in her presence. “Can you tell us why you all stayed behind?”

  “It was agreed by one and all that we”—the redhead motioned to her fellow squatters—“would stay behind.”

  “What’s your name, doll-face?” asked Barley.

  “Pauline.” She looked at William. “Friends call me Polly.”

  “And why was it agreed that you all got to stay behind?” asked William.

  Beverly answered, “Because we were his closest followers.”

  “He’s our savior,” said Clive.

  “He made sure we were fed,” said a mustached man in a black fedora.

  “He made sure we were clothed,” said Beverly.

  “The Lord God made him our savior,” said Pauline, as serious as anyone in the room.

  “They’ve gone off their tracks,” Barley whispered to William. “We should take them all to Lakeland Asylum.”

  William ignored him. “You believe he was a savior?”

  “No believing to it,” said Clive. “He was. Still is.”

  “You think Asher Keating was . . . ?”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Pauline. “Asher Keating was the second coming.”

  Barley laughed. “Does that explain all the animals outside?”

  “It is no coincidence,” said Beverly. “Animals are prominent in the Bible. You should—”

  “I want you all out of here by sundown,” said Barley. “Come on, William.”

  “We can’t.” Pauline stopped Barley cold. “I’m sorry, Mr. McFee. But we can’t leave yet.”

  William had never admired someone so instantly.

  Barley stepped closer. “And why can’t you leave yet, doll-face?”

  “Because he is to rise on the third day. We have to wait. A roof over our heads, even for two more nights, would be preferable to the weather.”

  Barley grinned. “You got rent money?”

  “We have nothing,” said Pauline. “As you can see.”

  Barley straightened his white fedora and pointed the shotgun lazily toward Pauline. “Three days. If you’re not gone by then I’ll bypass the bulls and get rid of you myself. And don’t take anything from my garden.”

  Barley left. William followed, but not before he’d nodded at Pauline and tipped an imaginary hat her way.

  “Thank you, Mr. McFee,” Pauline said to William.

  “You’re welcome. But friends call me William.”

  William hurried to keep up with Barley’s pace crossing the potter’s field. The dog barked at their heels.

  “Where’d the dog come from?”

  “I dunno.” William shrugged. “He’s lost. Maybe he ran away. Can we keep him?”

  “No.”

  “Can we give him a name, at least?”

  “You should name him Cat. That would really needle hi
m.” Barley patted his leg. “Come here, Cat.” The dog obeyed, tongue lolling, which Barley clearly hadn’t expected.

  “He likes you.” William looked over his shoulder toward the aging house in the distance. “What do you make of that back there? Did you count them?”

  “No, I didn’t count them. Why would I count lunatics?” And then after a few more steps, “How many were there?”

  “Twelve. Do you see the significance?”

  They’d reached the gravel driveway. Samantha wasn’t home from the grocery yet.

  Barley stopped at the porch steps. “William, we’ll fly to the moon before we have an apostle named Pauline.”

  “I like the name Cat. I think it’s funny, calling a dog Cat.” Johnny finished his pork chop and then put down the rest of his Coke. “Come here, Cat. Roll over, Cat. Play dead, Cat.”

  Samantha wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and then placed it, folded, next to her empty plate. “Annie, dear, don’t play with your food.”

  Annie stared at the corn she’d smashed between the fork tines, then slid it inside her mouth and swallowed with a sour face. “Now may I be excused?”

  Samantha sighed, waved her hand dismissively. “Yes, go on.”

  “Henry is going to love you, Cat!” Annie hustled to the living room and sat by the window overlooking the front porch. The dog had his paws against the window, smudging the glass and steaming it with his breath. William couldn’t see his father’s chair from where he sat, but Barley was already snoring. Annie put her hands to the window, mirroring the dog’s paws.

  William watched his little sister. “I wish, for Annie’s sake, we could keep him. Haven’t seen her this happy in a long while.”

  Samantha took a sip from her Coke and then studied the bottle. Johnny had brought them Coke to have with dinner for three nights in a row. “How did you come about these again?”

  “Coke truck came by after school was out.”

  “And how did you pay for them?”