Samantha tied a red balloon to a low tree limb in the family cemetery. Today was both a sad and joyous occasion. Johnny was leaving for basic training in the morning. To send him off properly they were tasting the first batches of Old Sam. It had aged six years.
A fresh bouquet of flowers leaned against Barley McFee’s headstone. The surrounding trees were decorated patriotically with red, white, and blue balloons.
“Will Johnny go to war?” Annie stood from the bench. She’d just finished telling stories about Henry and Barley.
William tapped a blue one, bouncing it into the red and white balloons next to it, and watched as the cluster swayed in the breeze. He longed for the days when he was able to carry his little sister around, but now, at twelve, she was nearly as tall as their mother. “Well, not yet,” he said. “But he is enlisting. To protect us.”
“From Nazis?”
“From whoever threatens us,” William answered. He walked with Annie toward the front of the house. More red, white, and blue balloons floated from the porch columns; the paint was starting to flake again, and William made a mental note to repaint it soon.
He added, “Though I don’t see how we can stay out of this one.”
William dreaded the tax increase should they go to war. The country always raised taxes on the aging houses to pay for the wars, and that burden would fall on his shoulders.
“He’ll kill a lot of them,” Annie said confidently. She was an aunt now, twice, in fact—William and Polly had a three-year-old named Sam and a one-year-old named Mary.
William offered his hand. Annie gripped it, and together they walked across the driveway toward the potter’s field. She was too old to carry, but she still liked to hold her brother’s hand. They’d become even closer after their father’s death.
William made sure not to walk too fast. Two years after the Potter’s Field Massacre—which had left twenty dead—Annie began to acquire a subtle hitch in her walk. It never worsened to more than a limp and was rarely spoken of because Samantha refused to acknowledge it. “She walks fine, William,” Samantha insisted. “Stop your gumshoeing.”
The potter’s field was overgrown with weeds now, and most of the crosses had collapsed with the seasons. A new potter’s field had sprung up five miles down the road. Only Asher’s grave was cut and tended to regularly, which was what Barley would have wanted, according to Johnny; so he was the one who tended to it.
For months after the tragedy, people continued to visit Asher’s grave, but by the next year visitors had slowed to a trickle, and then finally to an infrequent knock on the door. Although the grave site had lost its luster, ten churches had moved into Twisted Tree, and the main strip upon which they’d settled was referred to as the Highway to Heaven.
The distillery was thriving with a full slate of workers now. Ronald’s Ghost was wildly popular, as was the limited two-year-aged bourbon they’d released as Barley McFee.
Still, William often missed the excitement of the Potter’s Field Christ. Six years had passed since the burial, and now, to most in the country, Asher Keating was a distant memory. But not to William, and not to the McFees, and not to a good portion of the folks in Twisted Tree, whose town had been revived in part because of Asher Keating.
William had drawn national acclaim with his coverage of the 1937 flood, but it became the last serious journalistic work he would do. As master distiller, he had made the distillery his life. To fulfill the occasional urge to report the news, he wrote a weekly column for the Courier-Journal. It was about bourbon distilling.
He did miss the hope Asher’s stories had brought forth. “Asher Keating did his job,” Polly told William. “He was a reminder. He was fuel. Let him rest.”
William agreed that Asher had been fuel, but he had burned out too early. The country had moved from the Depression to the uncertainty of another global war. Asher’s stories could be rekindled, could prove useful to morale. But he didn’t want the attention brought back to his family, so he ultimately decided to let Asher rest.
Annie still prayed in thanks every day and often left flowers on Asher’s grave. The blackened cross was still intact. Annie had tied balloons to it in the morning. They bounced together as the two approached the aging house, where the party was to begin.
Backdropped by thousands of golden trees, Johnny opened the door and hung halfway out into the sunlight. “Come on, you two. Let’s not wait until it gets aged to seven!”
William gave Johnny a hug; his brother clapped his back. “Want to join me, old man?”
William laughed it off. The truth of it was, Johnny had yet to, as Samantha said, find himself. He’d gone through a half dozen jobs in the two years since he’d turned eighteen, and three times that many girlfriends. He was lost and needed a road map.
Polly walked her husband over to the barrel Mr. Browder had tagged as “the one.” He hadn’t cut the bourbon down to proof yet, so William’s first taste was only one of ceremony.
William nosed the glass and smelled teases of fruit, vanilla, and caramel. “To Barley McFee, and Sam, before him,” William said, savoring the first sip, a smooth wave of flavor. “To Johnny. May the Lord keep him safe in his future endeavors for our country.”
Johnny took the glass and then a sip before he handed it to Annie. She held her nose and took a sip. She stuck her tongue out, which made everyone laugh. Annie gladly handed the glass to her mother, who was motioning for a little dusty-haired boy of five to come over from one of the rows of barrels—William’s youngest and most unexpected sibling.
“Barley,” Samantha said. “Come on, boy. You’re just like your father.”
The little boy sat on Samantha’s lap as she took a drink, savoring it with her eyes closed.
“I want a drink,” Barley Junior said.
His mother gave him a smell.
Barley Junior rolled his eyes and pretended to collapse on the floor. They all laughed and then smiled when the boy broke out into a quick little dance. Just like Henry would have done, although without the God-given talent. And then Barley Junior ran off to whatever he was doing in between the barrel rows before his mother had called him over.
William and Annie watched their little brother as he pretended to write on a notepad. “He’s taking inventory,” William guessed.
The surprise pregnancy had helped Samantha survive Barley’s death. “It had to have happened after that date,” Johnny said after they’d found out their mother, at forty, was pregnant. “Probably so,” William told him.
Annie watched Barley Junior. “He is a little miracle,” she said to William.
“The kind I can more easily wrap my head around.” William saw daily the uncanny resemblance between Barley Junior and Henry. They could have been mistaken for twins. Barley Junior’s feet moved subtly as he took inventory of the barrels, shuffling to a beat only he could hear.
Annie leaned her head on William’s shoulder. “Remember what I used to ask you about Henry?”
William nodded against the top of her head.
Still watching Barley Junior, Annie said, “I always knew that he’d come back.”
HISTORICAL NOTE
I suppose I’d categorize The Angels’ Share as commercial fiction set during historical times, rather than straight historical fiction, because the town of Twisted Tree doesn’t exist, except in my mind, and now hopefully in yours as well. But it does represent what the old distillery towns could have been like—the life-blood of the town, in many cases—prospering for years and then declining suddenly because of Prohibition. So it is true that these towns experienced their own type of depression a decade before the Great Depression gripped the country, and once Prohibition was repealed, most of the distilleries never bounced back. In order to become bourbon, whiskey has to age, so the distilleries that did start running again couldn’t bear the fruit of their labors until years down the road, unless they decided to sell the clear, unaged corn whiskey right off the still, which many did until the
bourbon whiskey aged.
One bourbon to survive Prohibition was Old Forester—originally Forrester with two r’s—and it was one of only a handful allowed to be made for medicinal purposes. Medicinal was a very loose term, and during Prohibition, whiskey was prescribed for just about every ailment, even as minor as the common cold, especially for those wealthy enough to pad the doctors’ and pharmacists’ pockets with some cabbage. In other words, it was not hard for the well-to-do to obtain liquor; while, on the other hand, the rest had to attempt to make their own—which sometimes resulted in sickness or death—or they had to find their way into whatever avenue they could of the ever-increasing world of speakeasies and bootlegging that soon gave way to organized crime. Thank you, Volstead Act, for creating all those gangsters in the twenties and thirties!
As far as bourbon is concerned, there are rules that make it so. There’s the old adage: “All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.” These bourbon rules were not yet regulated during the time of this story, but here they are: First, it must be made in the United States. It certainly doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky, although that state does produce 95 percent of the world’s bourbon supply, and that percentage was still accurate during the time of this story. Kentucky has an abundance of white oak trees—what some call the whiskey trees—as well as a lot of limestone to naturally filter the water used for distilling. Louisville, specifically, consistently ranks at the top of the list for some of the best tap water in the country. Second, the aging must take place in a new, charred oak barrel. If it ain’t new and charred, it ain’t bourbon. Oftentimes Scotch will be aged in used bourbon barrels from Kentucky. Third, the mash bill—basically the ingredients—must be at least 51 percent corn, with some distilleries pushing up to 70 percent or more. The rest is made of rye and barley. Fourth, the whiskey can’t enter the barrel at higher than 125 proof—it has to be watered down—and it can’t be bottled at less than 80 proof. Fifth, and lastly, nothing can be added except for water, and this would only be to decrease the proof. If you’ve got some kind of flavored whiskey, or anything with color and flavor, it’s not bourbon. Bourbon gets all of its coloring and flavor naturally from the charred oak wood as it expands and contracts during the aging process.
The first bourbon distillery I ever visited was Jim Beam in Clermont, Kentucky. The campus, like every distillery I’ve toured since, is quaint and beautiful, and as soon as I stepped foot inside one of their aging houses to see rows upon stacked rows of barrels aging on ricks, I knew I had to write a story about bourbon, and more specifically about what I smelled inside the aging house: the thick, buttery aroma of vanilla and butterscotch and caramel and fruit—I could go on—of what I learned was called the angels’ share. The whiskey that evaporates through the barrel staves as it ages, the offering to the angels! Some believed, especially back in the day when fires were more prevalent, that the angels, after receiving their share, in turn kept the distilleries safe from fire. Some distilleries unfortunately still caught fire, and when a distillery burned, there was no putting it out. They usually burned to the ground. Jim Beam actually has a bourbon now called Devil’s Cut, which comes from liquid extracted from the used barrels, the theory being that if the angels get their share, the Devil might as well get his cut too, which gave me the idea for Old Sam McFee pouring an offering off the still into the well so the Devil would also get his share.
Last year alone, over eight hundred thousand people visited the Kentucky bourbon distilleries in what is now widely known as the Bourbon Trail, and my wife and I, along with some eager friends, are knocking them off one by one, collecting bottles and sampling and taking in every little nuance of these hidden gems. There is also a growing craft tour of smaller distilleries that are equally as pleasing to the palate.
We are right smack-dab in the middle of a bourbon boom that stretches the globe with distribution, a Golden Age so to speak, and there are now more barrels of bourbon aging in Kentucky than people. Bourbon is not just a drink anymore; it’s now a culture and a growing identity. So if you, loyal reader, haven’t had the chance to visit these distilleries and take in the smell of the angels’ share, I hope that one day you will.
As mentioned before, Twisted Tree is a fictional place, but I’d like to take a few words to mention the aspects of the story that were rooted in history. Leaning on what I’ve seen from my many bourbon tours, I had to blur my eyes and imagine what the distilleries could have been like back then. They didn’t have gift shops and T-shirts as they do now, but I’d like to think they were very similar to how I described Old Sam McFee in the book, secluded and surrounded by trees and limestone water and ripe with the fresh smell of mash.
Unfortunately, the Klan was very real. Although much smaller in the 1930s than it had grown during the mid-1920s when it became one of their main priorities as Prohibitionists to break up speakeasies and dismantle anything to do with rum running and evil spirits—along with perpetuating the hate we’ve come to associate with the Klan—the KKK was still a force in the South during the time of this story.
The coke ovens where Polly sometimes stayed were real, and after they were no longer used, the homeless did move in and the police would move them back out.
Rose Island was a real place, like a modern-day amusement park, with all the fun things mentioned in the book, even down to the famous black bear in their zoo named Teddy Roosevelt. Rose Island now looks like a ghost haven, but at one time was a wonderful place for families to spend their day. To my knowledge, no shady dealings between gangsters and bootleggers took place there, but who really knows?
The Courier-Journal building where William takes his stories was a real place, as were most of the mentions of Louisville back then.
The Lakeland Lunatic Asylum, where Asher Keating’s mother stayed, was a real institution and looked as described in the book. It was torn down decades ago and replaced by a prison.
Everything of historical significance in the book, from Prohibition and bootlegging, to the war and the Great Depression, to the Roaring Twenties and the unique language used then, is as accurate as I could make it. Obviously when dealing with history and fiction, sometimes facts and details slip through, but my goal was to provide the best overall impression of the times as I could, and hopefully I did that.
Lastly, homelessness resides at the heart of The Angels’ Share, and no time was it more prevalent than during the Great Depression, when so many lost all they had and finding work proved difficult. It saddens me to think of the number of homeless in the world, and homeless veterans especially, men and women who fought for their country but somehow slipped into obscurity and go unremembered in death, as if their lives didn’t matter. That’s when I came up with the character of Asher Keating, a homeless veteran buried in a field with others cast aside and forgotten. I thought, What if this one did matter, a lot, and to a lot of people, despite the fact that he was homeless and possibly mentally ill? What if he mattered so much that those who knew him thought him special, someone who had little but gave much and changed lives for the better? A man, even though dead for the entire story, who could brighten days with memories of how he lived his life, with generosity and compassion for all?
And so the story of the Potter’s Field Christ was born.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Until next time.
James Markert
May 17, 2016
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An author may get the praise and his name on the front cover, but no book can be written without the guidance and support of others. Writing a novel truly is a team effort. Writing the acknowledgments is the most stressful part of a novel for me, because I’m paranoid I’ll leave someone out. So for all those I’m leaving out, thank you so much! I would like to thank my wonderful parents for raising me in a loving household where creativity thrived and the arts were as regular as the seasons—that upbringing will forever be my muse. To my earliest first-d
raft readers, Craig Kremer, Tim Burke, Lloyd Holm, Jeff Bunch, Tom McGraw, Amy Stock, and Carrie Coe; to my siblings, David, Joseph, and Michelle, for their unflinching support; to my cousin John Markert for being a constant sounding board. Thank you to my friends and support system at St. Edward, and to all of my tennis families and friends in Indiana, Blairwood, and Louisville Tennis Club, especially Larry Kline for his friendship and support over the past twenty years. To Gill Holland for your early praise and enthusiasm for this novel; you got the ball rolling for sure, so thank you. I consulted several books in researching this novel, and I’d like to give those authors and titles a quick mention: Kentucky Bourbon Country by Susan Reigler, Bourbon in Kentucky by Chester Zoeller, Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America by Edward Behr, Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson, The Great Depression: America in the 1930s by T. H. Watkins, and the great book The Encyclopedia of Louisville, edited by John E. Kleber.
Any mistakes in the novel are mine.
I’d like to thank one of my high school English teachers who has passed away—Roger Eppinger—for having us read Stephen King our senior year instead of the so-called classics. You got kids to read, and more important you helped nurture my love for reading, and the rest, as they say, is history. After a few drafts of this novel, I was confused and felt like I was swimming upstream with no paddle, and then my brilliant agent sent Allison McCabe to the rescue. Allison, your editorial advice not only helped save the novel but gave me the confidence to plow on with what will hopefully be a long, fruitful career of making stuff up. You helped pull from the muck the exact voice and tone I was striving for, and I look forward to collaborating on future projects. To all of my new friends at Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins, I can’t wait for this ride to begin: Becky Philpott for championing this thing from the start; Daisy Hutton for welcoming me aboard; Karli Jackson for your keen editing eye and for molding the final product into perfect shape; Becky Monds, Jodi Hughes, and Kristen Golden for helping this book shine brighter; Julee Schwarzburg for the line editing and expert advice; and all those who have contributed throughout the process from editing to marketing to distribution—thank you!
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