David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

But there was something to be gained. Andrew saw it-not yet clearly, but I believe an idea was already forming in his mind. He now knew how the locals did their business, and he already sensed there was opportunity for a man willing to do it a little differently. He had never in his life made his own whiskey, never even considered doing so. He was, nevertheless, already mulling over in his mind the things he would do that would, in the vicinity of the four counties, elevate his name from obscurity.

Evening descended, and Cherry Street was full of middling people in their middling clothes going about their middling business, exchanging with each other their very, very middling sentiments. They stepped with manic precision, avoiding mud and filth and mounds of snow, piles of manure, clusters of animals-chickens, cows, goats, pigs-being driven here and there by angry-looking minders waving their sticks. They ignored the looming blackness of chimneys spewing soot. They bustled and bumbled and bumped about, returning home, attending to their evening meals, engaged in conversations so quotidian I could scarcely comprehend. When shall I mend this pillow? What thought you of that piece of ham? No, the other piece. Have you had a moment to speak to Harry about the crate of salt cod?

I do not condemn these creatures for living their own little lives and discussing the things in them, but the smallness of it pained me. Yes, I was brought low, but what of it? Had I not lived fully? Such a full life does not allow for the petty and trivial concerns of domesticity. That was the palliative I applied when I thought of how fate had robbed me of Cynthia all those years ago. Even then I understood that I would never have conversations with her about salt cod and pillows. Men who had lived as I had, with dirt and blood and death, were not made for the comforts of domestic quiet.

Mixed in with the sooty air lingered the scent of hearth fires and stews and soups and roasting meats, and I recalled that I had eaten nothing since breakfast. Here, where Cherry intersected with Third Street, near the Hebrew house of worship, was where Lavien had told me he made his home, so it was here I looked for him. I saw a pretty young Jewess and thought that if I were in better form I should surely present my question to her, but now-tattered and filthy and bruised, wearing a poor and stolen hat-I feared I would frighten her. Instead I found an Israelite peddler, pushing his cart of rolls, and asked him if he knew a man named Lavien. He directed me to a house in an alley, half a block away, with a bright red door and said, in heavily accented English, that I might find him within.

I knocked at this narrow two-story house, and a servant at once appeared. She was aged and unappealing, with that distinctive and unpleasant old-person smell, and yet she sat in judgment of me.

“Go on,” she said, with a wave of the hand. “We have nothing for you.”

“How can you know what you have for me when you know not who I am?” I asked.

“Get gone, you with your fancy talk. We have given to beggars enough today.”

All at once a woman appeared behind her, and she was like the sun rising against the black sky. This was a very pretty Hebrew, with a wide round face, large black eyes, and arched eyebrows.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” I said, directing myself to this new and infinitely more pleasurable creature, “but I am an associate of Mr. Lavien, and I must speak with him.”

“He’s a beggar, missus,” the servant said, “and drunk, by his smell.” Here was a woman whom clearly no one had ever married, and I could not blame mankind for not asking for her withered and mean-spirited hand. For shame, old prune, to speak to me so.

The wife, however, demonstrated her superior perception. “He’s no beggar but something else.” Then, to me: “You know my husband?”

“I do, madam, and I apologize for my appearance, but things have gone hard for me this last day, a story with which your husband is familiar in part.”

“Show him in,” she said to the servant. “I’ll fetch Mr. Lavien.”

The house was narrow-as was common, for in Philadelphia, houses are taxed according to their breadth-but it was also quite deep. The crone led me through a well-appointed hallway, with a handsome rug and several fine portraits, and into a sitting room that was very full of books for so modest a home. I sat in a slightly low-backed but well-cushioned chair, and there the woman left me without offering refreshment, which I thought rather uncivil.

Lavien was apparently at hand and had no interest in impressing me by making me wait. I had hardly had time to study the pale green wallpaper, flecked with bits of pink, before the Hebrew attended me and was good enough to present me with a glass of Madeira. I drank deeply from it-very good stuff-and we settled down together.

“You are bleeding from your head,” he told me.

“Prodigiously?”

“No, only a little.”

I shrugged. “Then it is no matter. I shall come to the point, sir. I need you to give me thirty dollars. Perhaps another twenty for comfort. I need you to give me fifty dollars.”

He made little effort to mask his amusement. “I have no such sum to spare. My position pays well enough, but I am hardly a rich man.”

“I thought all you Treasury men were wealthy,” I said.

He snorted. “You have been listening to the lies disseminated by that rascal Jefferson.”

“You are not one of those men so blinded by Hamilton that you are set against Jefferson?” I asked.

Lavien clucked like an old woman. “ Jefferson is a liar and scoundrel and, in my opinion, an enemy of the state.”

“I think he is, in fact, Secretary of State,” I suggested. “Common mistake, though.”

His eyes narrowed, and his expression darkened ever so slightly. I suspected he was attempting to measure my sincerity, my level of enthusiasm for Jefferson and his republican followers. Lavien struck me as the sort of man who always measured a man’s opinions, who felt for strengths and weaknesses. He was the sort who could not step into a room without noting the location of every door, which windows he might jump through in a pinch, which tables might be toppled for a shelter from bullets. I knew the sort. I had spent the war as just such a man.

“ Hamilton has had cause to lament that Washington puts his faith in that man,” he said. “Soon enough, Washington will regret it. Jefferson has opposed us at every turn. And he will stop at nothing.”

“Perhaps Hamilton wants opposing,” I said.

“You cannot defend Jefferson. In his wretched newspaper he even insults Washington, calling him old and feeble of mind.”

I knew it, and I hated that Jefferson did not have the sense to leave Washington ’s reputation alone. “That ought not to be,” I admitted.

“But despite all that, you are against Hamilton ’s great achievements, Captain Saunders? You were against the Assumption Bill? You, an old soldier, opposed paying out the debts the states incurred during the war? And the Bank Bill? You think it a mistake for a nation to have a bank upon which to draw funds in times of crisis?”

The Bank Bill. The act of Congress that had established Hamilton ’s pet project, the Bank of the United States. Cynthia’s note said that her husband’s disappearance, the danger to herself and her children, had something to do with the new bank. Best to take this slowly, I thought. I would not show too much interest. I would listen.

He spoke very calmly, but each syllable landed like a hammer blow. The entire world knew that Jefferson hated Hamilton and his Federalist policies, but Hamilton and his supporters were generally much quieter. I suppose they had the advantage of success, since Washington so often sided with Hamilton, and the Congress, though it grumbled, had voted his policies into law. Hamilton and his followers did not need to spit venom in the press the way the Jeffersonians did, for they were instead making laws and shaping policy. But if Lavien was any measure, it seemed the Hamiltonians were filled with just as much resentment as the Jeffersonians.