David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

I turned to her. “I beg your pardon.”

Her face opened into a wide grin. “ Peah-soh, ” she keened.

All at once it was clear to me, and I cursed myself for a fool for not seeing it sooner. “My God. Is the girl a simpleton?”

Miss Fiddler did not respond to this vehemence. “I thought you knew. Yes, she was born that way, and when her parents died last year and left her in my care, I knew not what to do with her. But as you can see, she is very pretty, and she does not object to her duties.” She leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “She rather relishes it. You are not going to be one of those men to lecture me, are you?”

There was a depth of inhumanity here that even I found too diabolical to contemplate, but this was not the time for useless lectures. I was getting close to learning something, and along the way I was both elated and horrified to discover that Cynthia’s husband was more of a beast than I could have imagined.

To the elder lady, I said, “I am not one to judge. One man’s monstrosity is another man’s diversion. For my part, Miss Fiddler, I would delight in bedding an idiot-vastly amusing and all that-but that is not why I’ve come. It is on government business, and I do hope that when I come to report my findings to the President and his advisors I have only information to tell him, not the nature of the people who could not help us. You understand me, I think.”

She nodded, now of a more sober deportment. “I see all too clearly what you are after.” She waved Emily out of the room. “Ask me your questions.”

“Did a tall hairless Irishman come here looking for Pearson?”

“He came,” she said, “but there was nothing to tell him. We never do business here, as I told you, so Pearson, other than our first meeting, was never a guest in my home. I explained that to the Irishman, and he left almost at once.”

“Almost,” I said.

“He asked if I would hold a letter for a friend,” she said. “He gave me five dollars to take the note and said I would receive another five when its rightful owner came to collect it.”

“I am the rightful owner,” I said.

She laughed. “I doubt that, as you did not know of the letter before now.”

“Miss Fiddler,” I said, “I presume you will have no objection to giving that letter to representatives of the United States government.”

“Of course I would not, were I still in possession of it,” she said. “But I gave the letter away three days ago to the last gentleman who came in search of it.”

“The last gentleman,” I repeated.

“A slender young man with a beard who also claimed to work for the government. Lavien, I believe he called himself. Is he a colleague of yours?”

Winter and Spring 1791

They let the whiskey age in the barrels all winter and then much of the next spring. In summer, while Andrew tinkered with the stills, experimenting with new ways to bring yet more flavor to his drink, Mr. Dalton and Mr. Skye traveled the county, letting men sample their new whiskey. Mr. Dalton’s whiskey boys went even farther to spread the news of this new distillation. They rode from settlement to church to trading post, uncorking their bottles for eager settlers to taste. When autumn came and the rye and corn were harvested, mules and horses laden with grain began to make their way to Mr. Dalton’s operation.

Stills were expensive things. Most men could not afford one, not even a small one, and so the custom was for farmers to bring their grain to a third party who would distill it in exchange for a portion of the proceeds. Virtually everyone who tasted the new whiskey understood that they must have this drink and no other or their grain was wasted. It would trade for more or, for those who wished to make the venture east, sell for more. In turn, Dalton, Skye, and Andrew amassed increasing stores of grain to turn to whiskey, which they could sell or use for trade. Whiskey was the coin of the realm. Like a creature from a child’s tale, they had learned to manufacture precious metals from baser materials.

Dalton and Skye soon found their stills used beyond capacity. More machines had to be purchased. Men said they would wait as long as it took, if only they could have their grain distilled to be so full of flavor. It was not only that the new whiskey was desirable but that the old was now depreciated. Why turn your straw into silver when you could turn it into gold?

For my part, I was busy too. Once I decided that I would place a fictional version of William Duer at the center of my novel, I filled up page after page. The story centered around the evil speculator William Maker and his scheme to defraud war veterans of their pay, and in it I mocked the greed of the wealthy, celebrated the ardor of the patriotic, and bemoaned the conditions of the frontier. Yet the frontier of my novel was peopled not only with ruffians and miscreants but noble souls, patriots swindled by a government tending only to the cares of the wealthy. These fictional men found a way to strike back and set the country to rights. I felt certain, utterly certain, I was doing what I had longed to do, inventing the American novel, writing a new kind of tale, whose concerns and ambitions mirrored the American landscape.

Autumn turned to winter, and we spent our second cold season in the West. It was hard, for our fireplace and stove could sometimes do little to stave off the brutal western chill, but it proved easier than our first winter, for now the whiskey bought us food and blankets enough to increase our ease. Sometimes Andrew would join Mr. Dalton and Mr. Richmond in a search for desperate winter deer or in a far more ambitious bear hunt. This was a dangerous business-waking a beast from its winter sleep-but at least it yielded us fresh meat. During these excursions, Mr. Skye would often invite me to pass the time at his own home.

Visiting Skye’s house was always a delight, for he had the finest cabin in the settlement. It rose two stories, and having no one to spend upon but himself, he had troubled to furnish it, if not elegantly, then at least comfortably. Through a set of circumstances that were never entirely clear to me, he had purchased the lease for this land from a man who’d been desirous of leaving the area quickly, having incurred the anger of both Colonel Tindall and a band of Shawnee braves. Mr. Skye had come west with more ready cash in his pocket than most men, and he had been one of the few settlers in the region capable of buying the lease for any amount of real specie. Now, each season, he hired four or five workers-usually slaves lent out by their owners-to help him grow wheat and rye and Indian corn for whiskey and vegetables for his own use. He had, in addition, several cows and chickens and half a dozen pigs, and he worked hard each winter to keep them all alive.

While the others hunted-a sport for which Mr. Skye said he’d had no enthusiasm, even as a young man-I would sit with the white-haired gentleman, the only person with whom I could discuss my novel in any detail. I would not let him read any of it-not yet-but I would tell him of the story and its actors, and he would offer useful suggestions. He also presented me with roasted meats and fruit preserves and even eggs, all served with samplings from his precious store of wine. I will not pretend it was not good to taste such things again.

I am not foolish, and I also cannot pretend, particularly when we took wine, that I did not feel Mr. Skye’s eyes upon me in a way not entirely appropriate. But I saw no harm in it. I knew to my soul he would never act upon whatever impulses he might feel, and I enjoyed his hospitality and his conversation. It would have been wrong to deny one another the pleasure of our meetings because he harbored feelings about which he would remain forever mute.