David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

“But sometimes barrel storage is desirable,” said Dalton. “Jugs can be hard to come by in large quantity, and wood is plentiful. If you have enough surplus, it is better to lose some to barrel storage than have no place to store it at all. When we explained all this to your Andrew-well, he had other ideas than mere coopering.”

I looked at him. “Is that right?”

He smiled, somewhat sheepish.

“Let’s show her the still,” Dalton said.

We exited the cabin and went to what Dalton called the outhouse, though it was a cabin twice in size to the one he lived in, a kind of rusticated warehouse or factory. In it was a profusion of pots, jars, and tubes that jutted out from one another and crisscrossed the room in a fowling-piece blast of confusion. Wooden barrels lined the walls, small fires burned in contained furnaces, steam boiled out of pots in tight little puffs. It smelled rich and rank in there, a kind of sweet and decaying smell, combined maybe with something less pleasant-like wet waste and fleshy decomposition. It was enticing and revolting.

“The principle is fairly simple,” Dalton said. “You start with a kettle full of fermented corn, what we call the wash. Then we boil it there, over that fire. The lid goes on the kettle. You see that tube coming out of it? That catches what burns off, since ’tis the strong stuff that burns off first-the spirit, if you will, which is why we call strong drink spirits.”

“So the drink that comes out of that tube is whiskey?” I asked.

“No,” Skye said, “that’s what we call low wine, which is run through the still once again. Now it comes out in different strengths. The first of it, the foreshot-well, that ain’t for drinking, let’s say that. ’Tis nasty and foul and strong. You can add a little bit of that to the final produce to give it some strength, but no more. After the foreshot comes the head, which you can drink, but it still ain’t good. Then comes the clear run. It looks like this.”

He handed us a glass bottle, and inside was a near-colorless liquid.

“That is more the whiskey I’m used to.”

“Aye, it is,” said Skye. “The flavor and color of ours come from the barrel. The longer it sits in the barrel, the more flavor and color it gets, but there was more to it than that.”

“It seemed to me,” said Andrew, “that more of the barrel’s flavor could be brought out by charring its insides. And so it is. The whiskeys we’ve been experimenting with the past few months are more flavorful than any we’d ever tasted before.”

“He’s done more than that,” said Mr. Dalton. “He’s been meddling with the recipe too, adjusting the proportions of the grains, adding more rye than corn to the mash. We’ve made your husband a partner in our still, and unless I’m mistaken he’s made the lot of us very rich.”

Dalton took out a bottle of the new tawny whiskey and poured us all a glass, with which we toasted our future. We had come west as victims, but now, it seemed, we would be victors. It was what we believed at the time and what we ought to have believed, because this was the America we had fought for, where hard work and ingenuity must triumph. We did not know that at that moment, back east, Alexander Hamilton and his Treasury Department schemed to take it all away from us.

The previous night I had not been so abstemious with drink as might be desired of a man in pursuit of reform, but I nevertheless awoke early and with an eagerness I had not known in years. I had before me a remarkable day because I had things to do. I had not had things to do in years. I’d had things that needed doing, that ought to get done, that had better be taken care of, but they were usually of the if not today then fairly soon variety. I had safely hidden away the stolen message inside an orphaned second volume of Tristram Shandy; the silver ball itself sat upon my desk like a monument to all that had changed in my life. I was alive and vibrant and I had things to do, monumental things, and I intended to do them.

Of the greatest importance was a visit to the City Tavern to begin my quest for William Duer. It seemed to me he was at the heart of everything. It was his man, this mysterious Reynolds, who had arranged to expel me from my home. Hamilton had identified him as a mischief maker, and the note I had recovered the night before seemed to allude to him. Granted, the D might well have been another man, but I did not think so. Hamilton had assured me Duer was not to be found in town, but I was not confident Hamilton had been honest on that score, not when the mere mention of the name Reynolds sent him into spasms of rage.

Trading would not begin at the City Tavern for several hours yet, however, so before going there I thought it best to visit the address Hilltop had given me. Thus, at ten, Leonidas met me at my rooms, and together we made our way south to the boardinghouse on Evont Street. The voyage from the heart of Philadelphia to Southwark was like witnessing, all at once, a youthful face wither into age. The redbrick houses, first stately and well-maintained, were, a block later, turned ramshackle and ill-kept. A block or two after that they became wood frame, and, soon after that, little more than shacks. The prim men of business and frenetic speculators and wealthy Quakers gave way to the laboring poor, to Papists and Presbyterians, to curious foreigners from Poland or Russia or other alien lands, to free Negro cart men crying out oysters and pepper pot. Some of these were dressed in the same plain garb one might find on a white man, but some of the women wore brightly colored and curiously patterned scarves upon their heads, the vestigial remain of savage origins.

Leonidas kept his head straight ahead, but I had the distinct impression that he knew some of these people and the odd feeling he did not like being seen with me. Indeed, we were not three blocks from our destination when a Negro boy of fourteen or fifteen, wearing heavy green woolen breeches and a ragged outer coat, came running up to him. “Ho, there, Leon, this the man that own you?” he asked, in a sort of singsong voice.

“Run along,” Leonidas said, very quietly.

“Hey, white man, why you not let him go when you promised?” the boy asked me.

Leonidas made a shooing motion, and the child, mercifully, ran off.

Evont Street was wide and well traveled but unpaved, and thus full of filthy snow and mud and animal leavings. Pigs roamed freely and grunted their courage at passing carriages. The boardinghouse-poorly kept, with peeling paint and splintering wood-was on the corner, facing the far more quiet Mary Street, but that offered it no air of repose or peace. It was a wretched place for wretched people, with boarded windows and a visible hole in the roof.

The woman of the house answered our knock. Here was a haggard creature of some thirty years, quite old-looking, with gray hair and heavily bagged eyes that bespoke her bone-weariness. Her three small children stood behind their mother and gazed at us with the empty expression of cattle.

“We seek an Irishman who may live here,” I said. “Tall, hairless, red-whiskered.”

“Ain’t no one like that lived here,” she said.

“Then you’ve never seen him?” I asked.

She said nothing and had the distinct look of a woman attempting to make up her mind. Leonidas pushed ahead of me. “Have you seen him, Mrs. Birch?”

Her face did not exactly brighten, but it became a degree less sour. “Didn’t see it was you back there, Leon. Is this him, then?” she asked, pointing at me.

“Yes, it’s him.”

She eyed me critically.

“Have you seen him?” Leonidas asked again. “It is important.”