David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“Then we have very different projects,” I said, and saw no reason to say more.

“Should you ever require a pair of eyes to look at it, I hope you will call upon me.”

“You are very kind,” I said, and turned to my dishes. A moment later, because I sensed my words had so pleased him, I repeated myself. “Very kind.”

Andrew began to spend a great deal of time with these men. They helped him with the land clearing-at least Dalton and Jericho would, for John Skye avoided such work where he could, pleading age and back pain. Instead, he would aid me with the farming or join me in the cabin and ease my isolation while I prepared the evening meal. The five of us would eat together and then pass the evening with whiskey and conversation, or perhaps Andrew would join them, riding out to one of their cabins. Then, so slowly I did not notice, the land clearing diminished until it ceased entirely. Andrew would leave in the morning and come home in the evening. He would more often than not smell of whiskey, but he did not seem inebriated and I had no concern that he had found another woman. Even so, there was something furtive in his looks, as though he had been about something not entirely wrong, but certainly something he chose not to reveal. I did not love it, but I would not ask him to speak before he was ready.

Indeed, Andrew appeared happy, self-satisfied. Though he would approach the cabin with a secretive lightness in his step, I had not seen him appear to be so pleased with himself in a long while. I was lonely, yes, and missed the company of the men, Mr. Skye in particular, but I could not protest. I was a woman, and my presence was expendable so long as I did my duty. I would have to endure the solitude even while Andrew enjoyed company.

It was not only the company of Mr. Dalton and Mr. Skye that drew him in, however. He would sometimes spend his evenings at the Indian Path tavern, where women were not welcome. There the men would talk of the things that plagued Westerners-how the politicians of the East wanted us to tame the land but cared not to help us fight Indians. They spoke of the fear of foreign agents combing Pittsburgh -the British, the Spanish, the French-looking to stir up trouble. They talked of the new government back east, their hatred of Duer, and how all must be set squarely at Hamilton ’s doorstep.

So it was that, with Andrew gone so much from the cabin, my novel began to take shape in my mind-slowly at first, but the characters gathered around me, moths drawn to the flame of my mind. In the quiet, I spent the day making notes, examining the contours of my story, and, soon enough, beginning the writing process itself. I would write, I decided, a novel about our own experiences, about the evil men who defrauded patriots to line their pockets. I would write about the Duers and Hamiltons and Tindalls of the world, and about a group of Westerners who decide to exact their revenge upon them. Perhaps it was the thrill of confronting these men, if only on paper, but the words came to me as they had never done before.

This is how our time passed for two months, and then, as summer began to turn to autumn and a coolness settled over the land, Andrew spoke to me.

“Have you never wondered,” he said, “where I go each day? Where I spend my time?”

“I have wondered,” I said, “but I thought you would tell me when you were ready.”

“It is not like you to restrain your curiosity.”

“’Tis not like you,” I countered, feeling somewhat chastised, “to be secretive.”

“You have your novel,” he said. “You do not have to tell me it goes well, for I can see it upon your face. Can you not see from my face that something goes well for me?”

I could not help but smile. “I have seen it.”

“And shall I tell you what it is?”

“Do not tease me, Andrew. You know I wish it. Tell me if you are ready.”

“It is better that I show you.”

And so we set out across the rugged path to Dalton ’s large cabin, some two miles away. It was a pleasant afternoon, the air filled with the buzz of insects, and we strolled in easy silence, my hand upon his arm. Somehow we were happy. Somehow in the midst of our ruin we had each found something, some part of ourselves we had been missing, I in my writing and Andrew in his secret.

At Dalton ’s cabin, which I had never before visited, the large man greeted me, Mr. Skye beside him, at the door, and they both had the foolish look of boys who have done something both wicked and childishly charming. Behind the house, Jericho Richmond worked in the field. He raised his hand at us as we approached, but at once wiped his brow with his sleeve and returned to his work. Mr. Dalton invited me in, sat me near the fire, and set before me a small glass of whiskey, which I began to lift to my lips.

“You’ve come to enjoy your whiskey,” Skye said, before I could drink.

“I don’t think enjoy is the right word,” I said. “But it is part of life here.”

I took a sip of the drink, but I immediately took the cup away in astonishment. I’d had whiskey before, in quantities I would not have credited in my former life, but here was something entirely different. It was darker, I saw by the light of the fire, amber in color and more viscous. And its flavor-it was not merely the sickly sweet heat of whiskey, for there was a honey taste to it, perhaps vanilla and maple syrup and even, yes, the lingering tang of dates.

“What is this?” I asked.

“To answer that,” said Skye, “to fully answer your question, we must first make sure you understand what whiskey is. Do you know why we make whiskey? Are we merely hard-drinking men, reprobates who cannot live without their strong drink?”

“Would you catechize me?” I asked.

He smiled. “Oh, yes. You see, I’ve been planning this conversation in my mind, and I mean that it should go as I wish. Now, tell me. Do you know why we make whiskey?”

“It is the only way to profit from your harvest.”

“A woman who reads the Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce misses very little,” my husband observed.

I took another sip, attempting to dissect its intricacies. “You grow your grain, but beyond what you need for your own use, there is nothing to be done with the surplus. There are no good roads, so the voyage east is too long and too difficult, and ultimately too expensive to transport large quantities of grain. You cannot use the Mississippi to travel west, since the Spanish will not permit it. So what is to be done? The most logical answer is to turn your surplus grain to whiskey.”

“Quite right,” said Skye.

“There is always a market for whiskey,” I continued. “It becomes popular back east, and the army is increasingly replacing rum with whiskey, and though it is cumbersome to transport grain, it is far less to transport whiskey by the barrel. That is why whiskey stands as a substitute for money. At some point it may be exchanged for specie and thus is useful for barter.”

“And that,” said Mr. Skye, “is where your husband has become so useful.” He pointed at Andrew. “He almost at once recognized that there was more flavor to be got into the drink. ’Tis a barter economy, but right now all whiskey is held equal. No one’s drink is lauded above another’s. But what if we could produce something that was better than what anyone else had?”

“Of course,” I interrupted. “You introduce something more scarce; it generates more desire; you get more for your trade.”

“Exactly so once again, lass,” Skye said. “Now, Dalton and I have been in the whiskey trade for some time, and we thought that Andrew here, with his skill as a carpenter, could be of use to us. We’ve long known you get more flavor out of whiskey by storing it in barrels rather than jugs, but the difference is not significant. More flavor, but the flavor is not always good, and an abundance of bad flavor does not add much value. Beyond that, the barrels are harder to transport, and the wood absorbs some of the whiskey, leaving you with less product for the market.”