“I was taking him to the doc—”
“Stop it.”
“Watch your tone, son. You’re not too old to see the back side of my hand.”
“Was there booze in the car? Wildemere says there was booze all over the street. And that he wasn’t the only one drinking.”
“You can believe a murderer or you can believe your blood.” Barley smoked for a few seconds. “That choice is up to you.”
William pictured Henry. Saw him swaying from the tire swing as sunlight found holes in the whiskey trees. Heard him laughing at the sounds Johnny made under his armpits. Remembered him peeing a rainbow across the hallway into the toilet. Saw him dancing grooves into the hardwood floor of the aging house while the town urged him on with applause. Slowly, mile by mile, his anger turned inward.
William pulled the car to a stop outside their house. Fall leaves spun around the darkened tree trunks. Barley stopped at the porch steps. An empty barrel rolled from the distilling house. Someone was sweeping inside, swift bristles across hardwood.
“What’s your mother up to?” Barley followed several paces behind William.
Inside, they found Mr. Browder up on a ladder with a wrench in his hand and sweat dripping from his hairline, working on the first column distiller. His daughter swept the floor in a flowery dress that accentuated the small mound at her belly. Carly’s husband hoisted an empty barrel above his head and muscles bulged from a white cotton shirt. Max jerked a nod at William on his way out the door and didn’t stop his momentum with the barrel.
William’s heart swelled. Is this really happening?
Samantha was on the second-floor balcony with Annie, doing some cleanup work on the pipes that led from the neighboring fermentation house. They must have gotten to work as soon as he and Barley left for the jailhouse.
Barley stepped inside. “What nonsense is this?”
Mr. Browder laughed from the ladder’s highest rung. “Mrs. McFee say it’s a sign, Mr. Barley. And I cain’t help but agree. With what happened with your girl and all. And I heard about that shot fired in church too. They all signs.” Mr. Browder grinned like a child at Christmas. “Been waitin’ for this day for years. Years, Mr. Barley.”
“I didn’t agree to this,” Barley said. Max lowered the barrel and kicked it on down the run, where it disappeared through the wall and rumbled along the track outside. Barley pointed to Max. “Who’s he?”
Carly laughed. “That’s my husband, Mr. McFee. Remember? Max.”
Samantha spoke from the loft. “Barley passed out the day of your wedding, Carly.”
Johnny entered next, sidestepped Barley, and called up to Samantha. “Mom, there’s a family of possum living in one of the fermentation vats. And birds in the other.”
“I didn’t agree to this,” Barley said, louder this time, pausing as Max walked forward with his massive hand out for a shake. Barley shook it tentatively.
“Here to help, Mr. Barley.” Max pumped Barley’s hand and let go.
“Was this your idea?” Barley asked William as Max moved toward the corner of the house for another barrel.
“No,” William said, and then thought on it, unable to hide a smile. “Well, maybe, yes.”
“I didn’t agree to this!” Barley shouted and everyone froze. Even the dog froze, having just entered through the barrel run. “How dare you all. I didn’t give my permission on this.”
Johnny handed Barley the Louisville Times. “Mr. Browder picked it up in town.”
Mr. Browder spoke from the ladder. “Went in for some apples and came back with that.” He looked at William. “Good work, boy.”
From above, Samantha said, “We’re proud of you, William.”
William had been so rattled leaving the jailhouse that he’d forgotten, and now the ink still looked wet across the headline. MIRACLE AT TWISTED TREE. And the subtitle beneath: DRIFTER BELIEVED TO BE JESUS CHRIST.
Barley’s eyes flicked side to side as he skimmed.
William waited proudly. Any moment the praise would begin.
Barley lowered the paper. “You wrote this?” His tone was bitter.
“Yes . . . Father, I wrote it. What do you think?”
Barley told him what he thought with a right hand to the left cheekbone, a knuckle-cracking punch that lifted William from the floor and turned his vision black.
ELEVEN
Dusk came as a smear of purple and gold. Samantha sat bedside on William’s wooden desk chair. She dipped the sponge into the bucket of cold water, wrung it out, and held it to William’s swollen face. He didn’t push away as he had the first time. His nose and cheek were numb now. “One child is healed, so your father maims another.”
“It’s not as bad as that,” said William. “So what about the distillery? Do we stop?”
“We’ll move right along. Mr. Browder knows enough to get started.”
“But knowing enough . . .” William sat up in bed. “Old Sam was built on quality. It has to be perfection. We need Father—”
“Once your father sees us doing it wrong, he’ll join. I don’t know him completely anymore, but I know him that much. He has too much passion for Old Sam to see it made incorrectly.” She winked. “Watch, you’ll see.”
“And if he forces us to stop?”
Samantha kissed William’s forehead. “Your father doesn’t force me to do anything.”
The bedroom door opened. Barley stood in the threshold with a folded newspaper in one hand and a full bottle of Old Forester in the other.
“Sam, I need to conversate with the boy, alone.”
She glared at Barley and then brushed past him into the hallway. Barley kicked the door closed with his heel and sat in the chair his wife had just vacated. “How’s your head?”
“Still attached.”
Barley leaned back in the seat, scratched his slick hair. “I may have gone overboard.” He pulled two small glasses from the deep wells of his pants pockets and handed one to William. “I should have gone for the ribs. Those bruises don’t show.”
“Is this a peace offering?”
“It’s just a glass. Hold it still and I’ll fill it up.”
He poured William’s and then his own and placed the bottle on the floor between his black-and-white shoes. William nosed the glass for the vanilla and caramel notes. He sipped enough to wet his tongue, and then the next tilt went down smooth. A warm, oaky finish spread out through his chest and helped him relax, and he realized for the first time that he’d gone a full day or more without having an attack of the cold sweats. Barley unfolded the newspaper, placed it on William’s blanket-covered legs, and tapped the main headline. “Read.”
GANGSTER ESCAPES HIGH-SECURITY PRISON IN EDDYVILLE. The newspaper was five months old, dated May 6, 1934. William had seen the article before. Probably had a copy of it tucked away in his closet. Tommy Borduchi, also known as Tommy the Bat—he killed using Louisville Sluggers—had escaped from the state penitentiary at Eddyville, Kentucky, after serving only seven years of a life sentence. He killed three guards before exiting by a second-story window. He’d gained allies among the inmates by supplying the prison with heroin, smuggled in by a woman named Eva Carcolli.
Tommy the Bat had a face chiseled from granite, cheeks crisscrossed with scars, and a jawline hard enough to chew rocks. His eyes were dark marbles under a shock of black hair.
A rush of sweat came upon William. He was looking at Henry’s Hash Man. He was sure of it.
“Did Henry ever see this article?”
Barley looked at the date. “It was published after his death, so no.”
“But it is possible Borduchi was in the newspaper before Henry died?”
“Yes. He’s wanted in six states. Why?”
Then that’s all it was. Henry saw the picture and it gave him nightmares. But William had a feeling of déjà vu that made no sense. He pushed the article away. “Why are you showing me this?”
“He made a shiv out of a toothbrush. Killed
his bunkmate. Stabbed him because he snored.” Barley lifted his glass. The bourbon slid through his parted lips. “He beat one of the guards to death with a bed slat. Slit another’s throat with that toothbrush. Word is he prayed over the bodies. He’s a self-proclaimed born-again Christian.”
“Stop.”
“This man wants me dead, William. He’s wanted me dead for years. I had dealings with him in the midtwenties. Things went sour. I was one of the reasons he went to jail.”
“Does it have something to do with Rose Island?”
Barley poured himself more Old Forester. “What do you know about Rose Island?”
“I’ve overheard you talk about it.”
Barley sat quiet for a moment. “Tommy the Bat. He didn’t know me as Barley McFee. He knew me as Dooly McDowell. A name born of necessity. I had three other partners: Tad McVain, Fop McDougal, and Gio McShane. We were known as the Micks. I was the only one with enough foresight to use a fake name. The other three Micks are dead.”
“How?” William remembered meeting the Micks when he was younger. He’d forgotten them until now.
“McVain died the white death. Borduchi sunk Fop McDougal’s feet in concrete, then threw him overboard. Into the Ohio while he was still alive. Gio McShane was strangled with barbed wire two years ago in Cincinnati. Borduchi’s been looking for me since he busted out.”
“How do you know?”
“Our old house in Portland burned to the ground last month.”
“Is that why you moved us out here? You were afraid he’d come? That’s why you’re always looking out the windows? It’s not the Krauts? Was our Portland house under your other name?”
“Yes.” Barley drank, wiped his mouth as he yawned. “I thought we’d be safe here for a while.” Barley reached into his pocket for a cigarette and lit up.
“Maybe he already knows where you are, and the house was just a message.”
Barley shrugged, exhaled. “Wouldn’t put it past him to give me extra time. Just to watch me sweat. He’s like a cat who likes to toy with a ball of yarn.” He took another drag on the cigarette, sucking his cheeks inward. “But I don’t think so.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know how badly he wants me dead. If he knew where I was, he’d already have me resting in the Chicago overcoat.”
William watched his father. Smoke spiraled to the ceiling.
“A coffin, William. Relax. I’ve had a couple men in the woods for months. Just in case he shows.”
“What men? I haven’t noticed any men.”
“Because they’re good.” Barley pointed with the cigarette. “But that story you wrote . . . People are going to come now. Crowds searching for Christ. Looking for answers. Watch and see.”
William lowered his head.
Barley waved, the cigarette glowing like a meteorite. “It’s time for Dooly McDowell to die anyway. Like the rest of the Micks. I need to get Tommy Borduchi off my scent.”
“Father, what did you do during Prohibition?”
Fidgety, Barley took a deep drag, exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. “I ran booze. Part of a bootlegging system that rivaled Remus up in Cincy. I was actually one of his runners.”
Barley stood and paced around the bedroom. For a moment father and son listened to the sound of creaking floorboards.
“Tommy the Bat and Eva Carcolli. They’re dangerous. That moll would walk right into the prison with a balloon of heroin tucked where no one would find it.”
William felt like an adult; Barley was talking like he was one of the boys. Not one of his boys, but one of the boys!
“They’d pat her down, look inside her mouth, and then she’d ask to use the restroom. That’s when she’d retrieve it and slide it into her mouth, where they’d already checked. When she kissed Tommy, that’s when they’d transfer the heroin.”
Barley returned to the chair and poured more Old Forester. “Your grandfather hung himself the day after Prohibition agents locked our houses. They confiscated what we had bottled so the bootleggers wouldn’t raid. Which they did—half the agents were corrupt. One twitchy palooka named Royce, he took any bribe he could get. Paced like a caged lion with his tommy gun, smoking nonstop. Had evil in his heart.”
William didn’t move; he didn’t want to disturb this flow of information.
“First night he smashed a full barrel of Old Sam with a sledgehammer and made your grandfather watch as bourbon spread across the grass. That’s what ultimately broke him—watching all his work and sweat seep into the ground. Royce dared me to stop him. I said, ‘Don’t worry, I will.’”
Barley took a final pull on his Lucky before he put it out on his palm and flicked it in a wastebasket beside the bed. He yawned again, rubbed his red eyes with the pad of his palm.
“I told him to stop smoking around the aging house too. Aging-house fires can’t be put out. They burn until dust. ‘Appropriate ending,’ Royce told me. I hated him. And then I blamed him for my father’s death. He kept on smoking on our property. One night I waited until he exhaled, until his eyes were squinted just so, and then I pulled my Luger and blew the cigarette from his hand. Part of his thumb along with it.
“He fumbled for his chopper, but I had him on the ground with my gun on his forehead. He was a boy playing with toys, and I was a man who’d crawled through enough quicksand not to care. I pointed the Luger to the ground, an inch below his left ear, and I fired. I did the same to the other side and by that time he couldn’t hear. He ran to his car and never reported back for duty. The next agent had a better heart. He was even apologetic when his bosses came to take our entire inventory to a safe house.”
“Safe house?”
“The government moved all the whiskey and bourbon to concentration houses so it could be more easily guarded. There were ten of them, four in Louisville. All the Old Sam was stored in the Sunny Brook warehouse. Whiskey was still sold during Prohibition, William, for those lucky enough, and rich enough, to get their doctors to prescribe it for ‘medicinal purposes,’ which they did nonstop. They’d take those scripts to their druggist and go home with legal bourbon, legal whiskey made from Samuel McFee’s sweat, my sweat, and the sweat of others like me. Old Sam was the heart of this town, and it was siphoned out through phony drugstores and bogus pharmacies.”
He stared out the window. “It was Tad McVain’s idea to get involved. He had contacts in Chicago who were in with Giovanni Torrio and Al Capone. They were making millions controlling bootlegging and alcohol distribution.”
“You knew Capone? And Johnny Torrio? Johnny the Fox?”
“Met them a few times, yes. Met a lot of men. Joe Masseria, Lucky Luciano, Bugs Moran, George Remus . . .”
“The King of the Bootleggers.”
“Arnold Rothstein.”
“The Brain Rothstein? Did he really fix the World Series? The Black Sox Scandal?”
“Never heard you correctly refer to baseball before.” Barley grinned, leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed.
“It was all over the newspapers. Who else? Did you ever go to one of Remus’s parties?”
It was almost too much for William to stomach. He’d take another punch to the face for more conversation like this with his father.
He looked again at the picture of Tommy “The Bat” Borduchi. William had met the Micks; had he ever met Tommy? A memory like an itch wanted to surface and then came upon him in a flash. A Louisville Slugger, blood coated, rolled across a garage floor. Hard faces. Tough guys. Dad was one of them. Was he crying?
William snapped back into the present and swung his legs from the bed. Barley had dozed off in the chair, the bottle of Old Forester resting in his lap. William grabbed it, helped his father to the bed, covered him with the blanket, and turned the light off. He tiptoed from the bedroom and down the steps to the first floor.
It was close to midnight and the house was quiet. William made sure the doors were locked, then stood looking out the bay window. W
hat his father confided in him . . . Tommy the Bat . . . Would his story about Keating bring enemies to their doorstep?
TWELVE
William awoke the next morning to the smell of hotcakes. He sat up in his father’s recliner, snapped the footrest down, and squinted out the sunlit window. Out by the hammer mill, Annie walked through the grass with an armful of sticks, and next to her Johnny carried a toolbox from the grain mill. On the end table next to the recliner was a note from his mother:
You’ll have to explain to me why you and your father switched beds last night? Enjoy your hotcakes.
Mother
William felt like there was quicksilver sloshing around in his head instead of a brain. He touched his cheekbone and winced; it was tender to the touch. He hurried through the plate of hot-cakes she’d left beside the note. They were still warm because they’d been sitting in the sun, but there was no telling how long they’d been there. The melted butter had turned them spongy, but they did the trick, and by the time he stood from the chair he was more awake, and the throb where Barley had pasted him was more manageable.
According to the clock on the far wall, it was twenty minutes past ten. He never slept that late. What is that scraping sound? He opened the front door and found Barley on the porch wearing a white tank top and old trousers. He looked up but never stopped scraping the porch column. Old paint flaked like snowfall, collecting in his arm hair like dandruff.
“You snore, son.”
William squinted in the sunlight. “No, I don’t.”
“How would you know? I’m telling you, you do.”
William spotted three paint cans next to the first step. “What are you doing?”
Barley wiped sweat from his face. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“You’re gonna finally paint the porch?”
Barley shook his head, resumed scraping and smoothing with his hand. He rarely showed his arms, but they were corded with muscle. “Did the Old Fo dumb you up?” Barley looked out across the gravel driveway as Samantha, wearing clothes she normally used for the garden, exited the fermentation house and entered the grain mill. Max followed behind her, carrying a heavy box of something clunky. “Like an ant farm.”
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