The Angels' Share

by James Markert

  “Fat Pants squeals like a pig, ladies and gentlemen!”

  No one dared move to help. Everyone stood frozen.

  William felt paralyzed.

  Tommy swung the bat again, and again, sending Smith into avoidance rolls until Tommy choked up on the bat for easier leverage. “Like hitting a pillow,” Tommy said, finally backing away, his face red. He straightened his fedora and wiped the bloody bat on William’s jacket. “Go pray to your Potter’s Field Christ that he lives.”

  Tommy walked toward his woman, using his bat as a cane. “Let’s dangle.”

  William sat in the lobby of the Rose Island Hotel, wrapped in a white bathrobe, waiting for his shirt and pants to dry. He’d gone mute after the episode. Then he had told the police everything he wanted them to know: “Tommy Borduchi killed that man. Borduchi was here to witness Dooly being found. How did I end up in the pool? I walked in. Took my hat off first. And shoes. His blood was on my jacket. I walked into the pool fully clothed.”

  The glass door opened across the lobby and Sylvester Crone stepped in, adjusting his glasses as he approached. “Are you okay, McFee?”

  “Getting there, sir. Have you seen the body?”

  “I did. Excitement seems to follow you like a shadow. Of course, the untimely always makes for a good story.”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Our building was defaced with eggs and tomatoes this morning. People took offense to your mention of Asher Keating’s drug use.”

  “I called him a hero too.”

  “If it makes you feel better, the Post was vandalized also.” Mr. Crone waved it away. “Don’t worry yourself with that. You’re not doing a good job unless you’re stirring controversy. I assume you got pictures? Of this Dooly McDowell?”

  William pulled the camera from his satchel. “How’s the security guard?”

  “On a speedboat to City Hospital. He’s alive. For now.”

  “I couldn’t help him.”

  “Best you didn’t. Are you okay to write the story?”

  “The story’s already finished.” William pulled out the pages he’d written the night before. “At least up until that beating. And today’s daily.” He handed over the story about John Swell’s miracle with the fish.

  Mr. Crone scanned the Dooly McDowell article. “When did you write this?”

  William couldn’t wait to get off the island, where the air didn’t smell like blood. And he wouldn’t lose sleep if he never had to write another article about it all. “I wrote it before you got here.” William may not have been as good at lying as Johnny, but he was improving. “Mr. Rose let me use his typewriter and phone.”

  “Well done, Mr. McFee.”

  William closed his eyes and saw the face of Tommy Borduchi. He opened them and saw the baseball bat forced into Smith’s mouth. He’d never escape what he’d seen.

  EIGHTEEN

  The sun had set. William had spent the rest of the day in his bedroom, heartsick and dizzy from the bottle of Old Forester he’d bought after leaving Rose Island. Everyone in the house was asleep. He unlocked the door and stumbled to the bathroom to throw up in the toilet. He stole a bottle of Old Forester from Barley’s stash in the kitchen and slunk back to his bedroom, arms and legs achy, his brain sloshy like an ocean wave inside his skull. A skull that had a heartbeat, a slow thud that made him want to throw up again. So he did.

  The window was open. Outside he heard the protesters alternating chants of “Christ was white!” and something about Asher being a fraud. Johnny knocked on his door and told him ten people had been arrested. And that the Klan had arrived.

  Annie knocked on his door at lunchtime. He mumbled, “See you later, Sugar Cakes.”

  He drank bourbon until nightfall. Samantha threatened to knock down his door but ultimately left his dinner in the hallway. The bourbon helped him forget Rose Island. It took the edge off his sweats. It helped settle surfacing memories of Tommy Borduchi.

  “Left or the right, Boss?”

  He buried that voice with the bottle.

  Barley talked through the door like the rest of his family, though in more of a whisper. Even sounded drunk himself. Like father like son. “I know what happened put a scare into you, boy, but I have a feeling what we did worked.” A soft thud sounded on the door. Probably his father’s head leaning on the other side of it. “You know it?”

  William didn’t know it. Barley hadn’t seen the fanatical spark in Borduchi’s eyes as he’d prayed over Dooly McDowell’s body. Maybe Tommy the Bat was a cat, and they were the ball of yarn. He hadn’t seen the way Borduchi’s face lit up at the mention of the Potter’s Field Christ.

  Barley cleared his throat outside the door. “Polly asked about you.”

  Maybe Samantha was right and he should go into the priesthood. That way he could sweat and panic and not give two hoots about who saw his red, embarrassed face.

  Barley eventually left. William didn’t feel relieved. It was quiet, too quiet, and his bottle was nearly dry. He went ahead and finished it off.

  The soil at the grave was disturbed, overturned and left in clumps of root, dirt, and sod. At first he thought someone had been at it with a shovel, but then it made sense that Asher had climbed out. Laughter drew him toward the aging house, laughter and footsteps and shuffling.

  He looked through the window and there they were. Asher half covered in earth and Henry in his dancing shoes, the two of them sidestepping and clapping in tempo. Henry did the Black Bottom and the Jitterbug Jive and Asher did the fox-trot. The aging house glowed with so much energy that the window glass was hot to the touch. Henry looked at the window and waved. His mouth didn’t move, but William heard Henry’s thoughts. I’m a prodigy, Will’m. Sometimes God puts a little extra in the recipe.

  Fingers splayed, William put his hand against the glass. Henry did the same, mirroring the motion from ten yards away. William couldn’t bear for the magical connection to be lost. I’m sorry, he thought. I know, Will’m.

  William awoke with tears in his eyes. He accidentally kicked an empty bottle across the floor and it clinked against the baseboard under the window. He wiped his eyes and felt warmth around his sockets, as if his hands truly radiated from touching the hot glass in his dream. He turned on his desk lamp and searched through the drawers. Child prodigies. He’d done a day of research on the subject after Henry won the dance marathon. William had never transformed the research into an article as intended, but in the right bottom drawer he found the page of notes he’d taken.

  Child prodigies are usually under the age of ten with talents performed at the levels of an adult. They are so rare as to immediately garner attention and awe. More definitions of prodigy: Person with exceptional talent or powers . . . an act or event so extraordinary and rare as to inspire awe and wonder . . . a portentous event or sign . . . an omen . . .

  William loaded a clean sheet of paper into his typewriter and began to peck out his thoughts. Sometime in the middle of the night, his eyes grew heavy and he fell asleep, comfortable this time, on his bed.

  NINETEEN

  William came downstairs, having splashed his face with cold water, brushed his teeth, and slicked his hair down with a scoop of pomade, to rejoin the world of the living.

  Polly was at the kitchen table. “Next time I ask you to walk me back to my cottage, are you going to be too busy?”

  He smiled, relieved. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”

  “You do that.” She stood, straightened her dress—another one from his mother’s closet.

  “While you were hibernating, the distillery continued on. We are about to fill the first barrel.” Without another word, she went out the door.

  After eating two boiled eggs and rushing through a cup of joe, he followed her out into the cool morning. Barley was on the porch, one column away from completing his painting project.

  William surveyed the porch. “Looks good.”

  Barley carefully edged the top of the column, then
looked down at William. “I went into Louisville. No one seems to know this Sanscrit. The bums aren’t as willing to talk about Asher anymore, and the ones willing told me nothing we hadn’t already heard.”

  “You went to the city by yourself? Who drove you?”

  “I did.”

  “When did you start driving again?”

  “Since you turned turtle.”

  William watched Barley paint. “They’re filling the first barrel. You coming?”

  Barley acted uninterested.

  The whiskey-tree crowd and the protestors were all currently subdued. Even Bancroft and the Klan stood silent. Most of the folks knew the distillery’s history, and many had prayed for its revival, and so they watched, knowing something important was about to happen.

  William entered the cooking house first. His footfalls echoed off the wooden walls. The cooking tub was three-quarters full with milled corn grist and limestone-filtered water. It would be the first batch to include 25 percent of the sour mash backset from what was currently being distilled two houses down the run. Which was why, even though they would age the initial barrels, they wouldn’t sell them as Old Sam. Tradition would have them age those barrels until the whiskey completely evaporated and the angels were good and drunk.

  Old Sam’s mash bill included 80 percent corn, 14 percent rye, and 6 percent barley—the latter two added after the corn mash had boiled and cooled slightly, to 140 degrees, because they cooked at a lower temperature than the corn. William braced his hands on the lip of the cooker, imagining he was Old Sam’s master distiller.

  He moved from the cooking house and followed the barrel run outside to the fermentation house a few paces away. It was empty as well, but not void of sound, and certainly not of aroma. The next batch to be distilled was nearing the end of the fermentation process. Inside the massive cyprus vat the yeast feasted on the mash’s sugars and starches, eating and multiplying, the golden liquid popping and bubbling as the sugars converted to alcohol and the room became thick with corn and carbon dioxide.

  It was important to keep it under 80 degrees, hot enough for the yeast to work but not so hot to kill the yeast too early. The McFee Distillery used the same yeast strain since its first days. According to legend, Samuel took the strain home with him daily, locking it in a safe between his bed and the shotgun propped against the wall. Apparently Mr. Browder had kept the yeast strain alive through Prohibition.

  William walked from the fermentation house and entered distillation, where he found everyone gathered around the three stills: Samantha, Johnny, Annie, Polly, Mr. Browder, Carly, and Max, and then John Swell and his boy, Peter. The first still was fifteen feet tall and shaped like a column. By the time the fermented mash entered the distillation house, it was known as distiller’s beer, because it looked, smelled, and tasted like a rich beer. It was heated to just over 200 degrees inside the still, and the alcohol was vaporized, cooled, and condensed into a clear liquid called “low wines,” testing at about 125 proof. From there it entered the onion-shaped thumper still, where it was distilled a second time, resulting in a water-clear whiskey known as “high wines,” and it was this “white dog” unaged whiskey William was hoping they’d sell right away.

  The group had gathered around the McFees’ third still, another copper thumper, where Mr. Browder had just cut the first batch of white dog with water to get the proof down to about 110 and was now pumping it into the first barrel.

  “There he is,” said Samantha. “He’s finally risen.”

  William joined the group just as Mr. Browder pulled the hose from the barrel. “And we’ve got company.” William pointed to the window. The top of Barley’s hat was visible.

  Samantha rolled her eyes.

  Mr. Browder held out a tray of shot glasses full of the white dog. It smelled heavily of corn and made William’s nostrils flare. They toasted the first batch of the new era. William winced, wiped his eyes. It was sharp and potent, but the aftertaste was a precursor to the bourbon it would one day become. Johnny choked and his eyes popped, which made little Peter Swell laugh. William patted his little brother on the back.

  “Save some back for the well,” Samantha told Mr. Browder.

  The well? Just as William was about to ask what they were talking about, Mr. Browder handed him the bung mallet. “You want me to hammer it in?”

  “I’ll do it if he doesn’t,” said Polly.

  William grabbed the hammer and winked at Polly.

  Mr. Browder positioned the bung in the barrel’s hole. “Hit it flush.”

  William eyeballed the target and hit it dead center, and then again to make sure it was flush. Mr. Browder kissed the barrel and removed the wedges holding it on the track. The five-hundred-pound barrel turned down the sloped run and thundered across the wooden floor. Boards popped and creaked under the weight—a giant awakening from a decade-long slumber. The barrel made the curved turn and rolled toward the opening in the far wall, where the run would carry it across the walkway, through the sunlit potter’s field, and into the aging house.

  William was the first out the door, with Johnny and their mother right on his heels, but they were not the first to follow the barrel across the field. Barley had kindly taken that position, walking alongside as it rumbled along the run. Every ten feet or so Barley put his hand on the barrel to coax it along. The tent folk applauded as Barley accompanied the barrel toward the aging house.

  William could tell by the strut in his father’s walk and the sway of his arms that he was giddy, and quite possibly crying by the way his head bobbed. William urged Samantha forward. She hesitated at first, then took off running to catch up. She and Barley shared a glance that warmed William’s heart. Together they escorted the barrel around the next turn and down the slope toward the aging house.

  William gripped Polly’s hand and took off running. He wanted to see the barrel enter the house himself. The rest of the crew wasn’t far behind, even Annie, who was racing Peter Swell in a slant across the potter’s field.

  The crowd cheered, and in every man’s face William’s paranoia saw Tommy Borduchi.

  Bancroft arrived snapping pictures of the rolling barrel. He waved sarcastically to William. Polly said, “I’d like to smash that man’s camera into a hundred pieces.”

  William liked her grit, but what he liked more was the sound of that heavy barrel rumbling toward the opening of the aging house. Once inside, the angels’ share hit him like freshly baked bread—hard, in all his senses at once, an overload that made him hungry, tingly, thirsty, alive, and, dare he even think it, dizzy for Polly, whose palm had begun to sweat in his.

  The barrel slowed inside the aging house and settled against a block at the end of the run. From there, Barley and Mr. Browder positioned it on the mechanical lift and watched as the barrel inched upward. At the lowest row of ricks, Mr. Browder transferred it to the platform. William let go of Polly’s hand. He started to roll the barrel on down, but Mr. Browder stopped him. Max held his arm out to stop the barrel’s progress.

  “Bring it back,” said Mr. Browder, a surgeon eyeing a prepped patient.

  He waited for Barley to get on the opposite side of the barrel. Together, the two rotated the barrel clockwise two precise ticks, and then one more, before they both backed away, studying the angle. “Good?”

  Barley nodded, looked at his son. “Bung hole needs to stop at high noon. Don’t want to give the whiskey a chance to leak. Go ahead. Now you can push it.”

  William did as directed. He invited Johnny and Annie, and together the three McFee children got the barrel rolling. William followed it inside the rick, watching the bung hole pass underneath only to show itself a few seconds later on top. After ten more revolutions, just as Mr. Browder and Barley had calculated, it stopped against the end of the rick, two feet from the stone wall, and the bung hole was exactly at high noon.

  Barley shook Mr. Browder’s hand and patted him on the back.

  Bancroft entered with his camera; Ba
rley looked up. “Scram. You have no right to be in here.” Bancroft snapped a picture of the initial barrel resting in the rick like a handheld egg.

  Barley looked away from the flash so as to hide his face and then moved toward the reporter. “Take another and you’ll be figuring how to digest it.”

  William jumped in front of his father. “Get out, Bancroft.”

  He held up his hands. “I’m going. No need for violence, Mr. McFee.”

  William slammed the door behind him. When he turned back toward his family and the crew, they stood silent. Barley clapped his hands and smiled. “Come on, boys. Quit bumping gums. We’ve got barrels to fill.”

  William took a break around midday, because Barley forced him to. Once he’d gotten his hands dirty with sour mash, he didn’t want to stop. Distillery labor was invigorating; it was in his blood. He felt connected to the lineage and history of what they were doing. And it filled his mind with better images than those that had occupied it since Rose Island. But that didn’t mean he was going to let Bancroft steal his story.

  Barley said, “Do what you need to do so you can get back to work.”

  William wiped mash from his hands, put on his topper, and ventured into the woods in pursuit of Lulu Bancroft. It wasn’t the first time William had mingled with the crowd, but it was the first time he didn’t feel safe. The euphoria from earlier in the day was gone, and the overall mood had changed from excitement to annoyance. Tempers were growing short; not everyone’s prayers were coming true. William could hear whispers as he passed. “There he is, the McFee boy.” He felt exposed and vulnerable maneuvering around the tents, nodding to some while shaking the hands of others, blessed and cursed for his articles in equal measure.

  The Roman Catholics, led by Father Vincent, had huddled into a group and were holding a small service while a cluster of Protestants did the same twenty paces away. Their voices rose in competition until both sides seemed more aware of the other instead of the service itself. And there Bancroft stood, in the foreground of Mr. Browder’s cornfields, taking notes, a line of KKK standing centurion-like around him.