The Angels' Share

by James Markert

  “You make me sick,” William said, closing in. “You spread drivel like right or wrong, black or white. It’s not that simple.”

  “It is if you read the Bible.”

  “Well, maybe the Bible needs to be rewritten.”

  “Blasphemer,” Bancroft said. “Your day of judgment will be swift. Those who don’t accept Christ into their lives will burn in the eternal fires of hell.” Bancroft pointed toward the tents dotting the land. “As will all who give credence to this Potter’s Field Christ.”

  “You’re too much of a lunatic to recognize your own sins. Where’s your camera?”

  Bancroft pointed to the trunk of a nearby tree, where his camera lay shattered in the grass. “Your lady apostle saw fit to destroy it an hour ago. She said the distillery story is yours.” He stood toe-to-toe with William, who didn’t back down. “I don’t want it.”

  One of the protestors snapped a picture of the two of them.

  “I have other cameras. Readers need to know that their Potter’s Field Christ is being championed by a temperamental boy who will turn toward the Devil just like his father. Your little brother is dead because of his sins. What exactly were the McFees up to the other night?”

  “What are you meaning?”

  “Middle of the night. Lights on in the mill house. The three of you loaded something bulky in the trunk of the car and drove off. And then the next morning you conveniently happen to be on Rose Island and report the discovery of a body firsthand? I don’t believe in coincidences, Mr. McFee.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “Choices and repercussions.”

  William turned away. Bancroft called after him, “Advice, Mr. McFee? Don’t cross me again. Tomorrow’s story is a grain of sand. I can unleash the entire beach.”

  By the time the sun set over Twisted Tree, ten more barrels of white dog had been rolled into the aging house, and the day’s sour mash had been added to both the cooking and fermentation vats. Barley was in full throttle as master distiller, and William was his understudy.

  As the final arc of sunlight bled orange over the whiskey trees, Barley stood by the stone water well with his sons and Mr. Browder. He hung an oil lamp from the pitched roof, casting a hazy nimbus of light off the mossy stones.

  “So why are we standing out here?” Johnny asked.

  Mr. Browder held out a pitcher of liquid, samples of white dog from every barrel they’d filled during the day.

  “I’d like to take a moment to thank a former employee.” Barley looked across the well toward Mr. Browder. “The most loyal of loyal, who stayed when all the others so rightfully moved on. I’d like to thank him for believing this would happen, no matter how many times I insisted it wouldn’t. To Ronald Browder, you stubborn son of a gun.”

  Mr. Browder nodded. Barley said, “The minute we start rolling barrels onto those ricks, the tax bills will come in. I’ve enough saved to float us for a while, but we need our initial work to bear fruit. Because of this I’d like to announce a new flavor to sell while our barrels age.” He looked to Mr. Browder. “Named after our famous grower of grain, our corn connoisseur. Ronald’s Ghost.”

  Mr. Browder smiled, truly honored.

  “But ghost makes it sound like he’s dead,” Johnny said.

  “It’s because of his white hair,” said Barley. “And the whiskey is clear.”

  “I like it,” Mr. Browder said. “Ronald’s Ghost. Unaged corn whiskey. I like it, Mr. Barley. I’m honored.”

  Barley held up his hand, urging Mr. Browder to keep the pitcher. “Boys, my father—your grandfather—had a tradition. He set aside a cup from every batch of high wines. Said if the angels got their share from the aging house, then the Devil needed his share off the still. So he’d walk to this well and pour it down. Give the Devil his share. In doing that, he believed it would keep anything evil from the distillery. Pour it down, Ronald.”

  Mr. Browder tipped the pitcher and slowly poured the white dog into the well.

  “Give’m his share,” Barley said, lowering his voice. “Every last drop.”

  William stayed by the well after Mr. Browder had given the Devil his share; he’d hoped to see Polly. Instead, he watched a finely dressed man walk side by side with his finely dressed woman. Watched them emerge, arm in arm, from the whiskey trees, approaching Keating’s grave. The closer they got, the more William wished he’d gone inside with the rest of them.

  They didn’t pray long before the man genuflected, making the sign of the cross on his head, chest, and shoulders, and they headed back toward the trees. It couldn’t be him. He’d seen Tommy the Bat’s face in every man tenting in the woods, and he’d been able to blink those faces back into the real thing. He blinked and this man still had Borduchi’s face.

  Keep walking. Keep on walking and never come back. We gave the Devil his share already, so you keep on walking. He convinced himself that that was exactly what Tommy the Bat was going to do, but then Borduchi looked over his left shoulder and tipped his hat to William.

  His heart stuttered, but he played it cool. He nodded back and watched as Tommy Borduchi and his moll disappeared into the whiskey trees. After they’d gone, William braced himself on the curved stone wall of the well and gagged into the abyss.

  “Keep on walking,” he said softly. He didn’t like how it echoed back to him, so he talked in his head to keep from soiling his pants. He didn’t recognize me. He tipped his hat because that’s what men do when they want to say thanks for allowing them time at Asher’s grave. He didn’t recognize me. Dad never needs to know he was here.

  The longer he stood out by the well, the more William convinced himself that the man hadn’t been Tommy the Bat at all. Just had a striking resemblance, he and the woman. And now they were gone. Gone for good and no harm done. They’d given the Devil his share just in time. William hoped they’d given him enough.

  TWENTY

  The porch looked new. William found Barley sitting on the stoop with a bottle of Old Forester. Henry’s shoes dangled around his neck like weights; his shoulders drooped.

  “Porch looks nice.” He wouldn’t share what he might have seen by Asher’s grave.

  Barley took a swig from his bottle, scooted over. “Where you been?”

  “Heard you made Mother a root-beer float the other day.”

  Barley’s suited men stood guard in the shadows all around the house. William would have felt more comfortable if they were watching the woods instead of the police.

  Barley shrugged and wiped his mouth and scruffy jawline. “Thank you, William.”

  “For what?”

  “Didn’t realize how much I needed the distillery until I saw that first barrel roll.” Barley smelled the air. “Sometimes I feel like my heart’s been torn by buckshot. This smell fills a few of the holes.”

  He gazed toward the family cemetery. Henry’s headstone was visible from where they sat. “I used to joke that Henry was growing up to be too much like you. I suppose that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.” Barley patted William’s knee. “That boy could be so stubborn, though. I’d tell him to do something until I eventually did it myself.”

  “You never did that with us.”

  “No.” Barley took a drink. “The youngest gets away with certain things.”

  “I was guilty too,” William said. “Those dimples, and that smile. Blue eyes, big as saucers. He was impossible to say no to. But then . . .”

  Barley appeared to be crying, but when he moved his hands from his face, his eyes were dry. “I want you to become the next master distiller.” Barley glanced at William. “I don’t question your passion for journalism. But Old Sam runs in your blood. Mr. Browder is an old man. And Johnny is too jingle-brained.”

  “I’ll have time to learn from you—”

  “Time is never guaranteed. Learn now. I could die tomorrow or in fifty years, but—”

  “Dad, stop.”

  “I want you to be prepared when I’m gone, Will
iam.” With the bottle, Barley motioned out toward the distillery. “It was your grandfather’s dream for this distillery to thrive for generations. Do you know what he said the first time he saw you, the first time he held you? ‘Feels like a master distiller to me.’ And then you cooed some gibberish, and everyone laughed when Sam said that you already talked like a master distiller.” Barley smiled at the memory. “And then you loaded your diaper and he handed you back to your mother and said, ‘But he smells like Barley.’”

  “You smelled like dirty britches back then?”

  “I don’t know what I smelled like, William. Grandpa Sam liked to needle me.”

  “Is that what you do when you call me a daisy?”

  Barley took another swig of bourbon. “I suppose.”

  He offered William the bottle but he declined. He had a clear head and didn’t want it altered. “The other night. You were telling me about Old Sam being stored in the concentration house. How’d you get involved with Tommy Borduchi?”

  “I’d heard rumors Old Sam was being leaked. McVain’s contacts put us in touch with Borduchi. He was a runner for George Remus early on, then split with the know-how to copy what Remus had done in his hidden distillery at Death Valley Farm.” Barley caught William grinning. William wiped it away; he shouldn’t find this amusing.

  Barley said, “Like Remus, he bought up distilleries and pharmacies to get his hands on good whiskey and bourbon. A lot of the whiskey stored with ours came from distilleries bought by Tommy.”

  “So he had access to all of it?”

  Barley nodded, flicked a leaf fleck off his pant leg. “He found the holes in the Volstead Act just like Remus did. Sold bonded liquor to himself. Under government licenses for medicinal purposes. He’d hijack his own trucks and then sell it illegally.”

  “And this is where you come in?”

  “We had a meeting with Tommy at the Seelbach Hotel. Hidden room off the Oak Room, where Capone played cards. That’s where Tommy liked to do his business before Rose Island.”

  “What about now? Where do you think he’s hiding out?”

  “I’ve heard whispers of Shippingport.”

  “The police have been unable to find him—”

  “Unable isn’t the word. Connections don’t end when you’re in the big house.”

  “You mean the coppers are protecting him?”

  “He’s in some of their pockets, yes.” Barley finished off the bottle and placed the empty between his feet.

  “Wouldn’t those same coppers help him find you then?”

  Barley patted William’s leg, as if proud. “Trousers got two pockets, William.”

  “You’re paying them too?”

  Barley eyed the empty bottle, probably wishing he had more. “Been paying the coppers big cabbage for months to throw him off my scent. And they’ve been fleecing me for more ever since Tommy burned the house down. Bulls ain’t dumb, and they know I’ve got it.”

  “Seems like a dangerous game for them, you know, straddling the line.”

  “Coppers gotta make a living too.”

  William took it in, in awe of his father. “Tell me more. What happened next?”

  Barley puffed his cheeks and exhaled. “We came to terms with Tommy. His trucks would leave the concentration house with full loads. Taken to his pharmacies all over the state. Sometimes we drove those trucks. Other times we were hijack men and we’d steal from them. He was moving Old Sam inventory, and it became my goal to rescue every bottle. I wanted to hide it until Prohibition was repealed. But McVain . . . If he was going to risk his life—because Tommy would have killed us for sure—he was going to profit from it. So we hijacked our own trucks, made off with anything Old Sam, and kept the rest for Tommy.”

  “And you sold it? The Old Sam? Behind Tommy’s back?”

  “Yes. We formed our own distribution lines.” Barley stood from the porch step. “If anyone was going to make money off what my father distilled, it was going to be me.”

  William stretched out on his bed with a yawn, feeling the window-reflected morning sunlight on his eyelids before he opened them.

  “This is very poignant, William.”

  His eyes flashed open. Polly. In his bedroom. He leaned up on his elbows, remembered he didn’t have a shirt on. Polly sat at his desk with a cup of coffee steaming, the article he’d written about the distillery in her hand. His bedroom door was wide open.

  “Thank you.”

  “William, get dressed and meet me outside.”

  “A guardian angel?” William asked.

  He was trying to digest what Polly had just told him of Asher and Henry’s connection.

  Clouds had moved in. The sky was full of circling blackbirds. More deer had gathered in the woods behind the aging house, staying put under the boughs but watching, waiting.

  “Asher claimed he could feel it every time one was born,” said Polly. “Children with inexplicable gifts that leave people in awe. In wonder. That make people smile. Laugh. Cry. He felt a hug of warmth around his heart. The same surge he’d get from an opium high.”

  “He felt this for prodigies?”

  “Henry wasn’t the only one Asher kept track of.” She moved a strand of red hair from her brow and folded her arms as they walked. “There was a boy in Salem who played violin at three. A girl in Bardstown doing complex mathematics at age four. A little black boy in Frankfort born blind, who could paint a sunset perfectly without ever seeing one.”

  William scratched his head.

  “Pascal, young David of the Old Testament, Joan of Arc,” Polly continued. “Lovecraft reciting poetry at two, writing poems at five. Mozart playing at four. Picasso painting The Picador at eight. Beethoven and Chopin performing at seven. Capablanca beat his father at chess at four—”

  “Henry won a dance marathon at four.” William stared at the aging house. “My little brother could dance, the Charleston and the Black Bottom. The Lindy Hop and the Jitterbug Jive, the Shimmy and the fox-trot—his hands clapping and feet stomping, sweat dripping. Said he could outdance all the folks in Twisted Tree, and that’s what he did. Nothing, not even the share, brought angels to the ricks faster than his shuffling feet.”

  “Asher was there, William. At the dance marathon. He watched.”

  William had wondered as much. “The day Henry was born, a tornado swept through Twisted Tree. It was coming toward the distillery. It jumped our house. There were deer just like there are now . . . Why are they here?”

  “I don’t know.” Polly moved toward the trampled grass path surrounding the aging house. “Asher wasn’t always forthcoming. I didn’t know him when Henry was born. But Asher told me he felt heat on that day. He set out to follow it, saw the destruction here. Saw the untouched distillery and the evidence of uprooted trees where the tornado touched back down. He stood in the woods and wept for Henry, he said, because—”

  “Henry didn’t cry when he was born,” William finished for her as they walked side by side toward the barrel run.

  “Asher said we can be molded and shaped, but some can’t escape their nature.”

  “Some things just already are,” William said. “That’s how Henry described his dancing. ‘Not everything is learned. Some things just already are.’”

  “‘Sometimes God puts a little extra into the recipe,’” Polly said, suddenly stopping in the shade of a yellow-leaf tree. “That’s what Asher would say. ‘And sometimes God doesn’t put enough.’”

  William’s eyes grew as he recalled the similar way Henry described things. “And sometimes, even though God must try to keep the Devil away, the bad stuff still gets in.”

  “Asher felt that too. Like little bee stings. When one of the other kind was born.”

  “But babies?”

  “The bad stuff can get in.” Polly started strolling again, and William followed her into the sunlight. They sat together on the barrel run. “Asher felt his first ‘bee sting’ as a boy. Felt the warmth and the sting simultaneo
usly and it made him sick. He was six houses away from his own when he saw teenagers arguing. A boy and a girl.” Polly gave William a preparatory glance. “At four, Mary Borduchi was known on her street for having seen a vision of Mary and Jesus. Tommy and Mary Borduchi.”

  She paused to let it sink in. “Mary was the first prodigy for Asher. He didn’t understand why he needed to do it, but he watched over her all the same, despite her being older. He felt the need to protect her. There was something reverent about her just as there was something evil about her twin brother. Something not right.”

  William rubbed his face with shaky hands. “Mary Borduchi, she’s a Carmelite nun. Cloistered at the Sisters for the Aged and Infirm.”

  “Asher never stopped looking after her. Their order is believed to be under the special protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

  William gazed toward Asher Keating’s grave, just as the deer were doing. “Is that why Asher Keating was born? To protect prodigies like himself?”

  “I believe it’s bigger.”

  “When did he start believing he was Christ?”

  “Not sure he ever believed he was. He never knew exactly what he was. Claimed he was confused with his degree of . . . giftedness. Until the war.”

  “So he came back knowing he was more than a prodigy?”

  “You’re looking at it wrong. He came back understanding there are different degrees.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of giftedness. And that he was closer to it than any prodigy since Jesus.”

  “You’re implying Christ was a prodigy?”

  “Why not? You’ve read the Bible, William. Was Christ not the greatest prodigy of all?”

  William gave Mr. Crone his story about the revival of the distillery, and in turn he was handed a copy of Bancroft’s latest in the Post. It included a picture of William standing nose to nose with Bancroft. He scanned the scathing article, then tossed it into the garbage on his way out.