David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

One afternoon, perhaps a bit too warm with his excellent wine, I turned to Mr. Skye, who sat next to me, explaining to me his understanding of the evils schemed by Hamilton and Duer back east. His argument was a convoluted business, not Skye at his best, and while I wished to comprehend his meaning, my thoughts were too jumbled, my disposition too relaxed, to take in his words. Instead, and rather rudely, I said, “Do I remind you of someone, Mr. Skye?”

I had my answer at once, for he turned red and looked away, rubbing his leathery hands at the fire until he could regain himself. “Why do you ask it?”

I had been too free. I drank deep of my goblet of wine, to hide my discomfort, and took some pleasure in the feeling of numbness that spread through me. I finished what I had, and Mr. Skye refilled, and I could not say I was sorry. “It is only that you look at me with a certain recognition. You have from our first meeting.”

“Perhaps I recognize in you a kindred soul,” he offered.

“I have no doubt you do, but I think I recall to you someone from your past.”

“You are perceptive, which I’m sure you know.” He smiled at me, a sad sort of smile, and though I had always seen him as an old man, in an instant I had a glimpse of him youthful and beardless, charming if not precisely handsome. “When I was a young man at St. Andrew’s I had a connection to a young lady in Fife. Her father was a wealthy laird, extremely well placed in society, and my father-well, he was not. It was not a usual thing for someone in my family to attend university. I was very much in love, Mrs. Maycott, but the situation ended in scandal. There was a duel, you see, and the young lady’s brother died. It was for that reason that I fled my native land and came to this country.”

I blame the wine, for I said what anyone would think but few would speak. “They say it was scandal that sent you west once more to our settlement.”

His face revealed nothing. “I am, perhaps, prone to scandal. It is a poor trait, I know.”

“I rather think it depends on the scandal,” I told him.

He blushed, which I own I found rather charming.

“You and I are friends,” I said to him, “and so I hope I may ask you something, as a man. I fear I cannot ask my husband, for it might be too uncomfortable for him to be honest.”

“Of course, Mrs. Maycott.”

“It concerns the attraction men feel for women, something I must understand for my novel.”

He took a sip of wine. “You have raised a subject about which I know a great deal.”

“I know about courtship and love. I understand these things. Your feelings for your lady in Fife, for example. What I cannot comprehend is the attraction felt by men like Tindall or Hendry. They look at a woman with desire, yet they do not love her or like her or even regard her, as near as I can discern, as a person. If it is mere physical release they want, would not one woman do as well as another?”

He sipped more wine. “I wonder if perhaps this is a conversation best not had.”

“We have come so far. We must finish. Do you not think so?” I do not know that I thought so. I knew the impropriety of the subject, but that was what I loved about it. Why should I not speak of what I like with a trusted friend? I knew I could depend upon his goodness, and I saw no reason why I should not take some small thrill in something as harmless as it was illicit. Even so, I knew there was a more selfish reason I pursued this subject. The people I wrote of in my novel held no propriety as sacred, and though their transgressions were far greater than anything I contemplated there in Mr. Skye’s home, I believed I needed to know some small measure of it. I wanted to know the thrill of doing what the world must condemn.

Mr. Skye nodded at me, and I took that as agreement, so I pushed forward. “Do all men desire women they neither know nor like? I understand attraction, being drawn to a face or a shape, but for women, I believe we must always engage in fancy with such an attraction. If we see a man we like, we imagine that he must be good and kind and brave or whatever thing it is we most treasure in a man. It seems to me men like Tindall and Hendry don’t trouble themselves with such fancies. They merely desire and wish to take. Are all men thus?”

Mr. Skye cleared his throat. “A man will always be drawn to a pretty woman, there can be no stopping that, but each man alone chooses how to shape that interest in accordance with his heart. If you will forgive a crude analogy, every hunter must have his dog, but when the dog is not hunting, some men will allow it to lie by the fire and feed it scraps from the table. Others will curse it and beat it if it so much as wanders where its master does not want it. Can you conclude from these two examples how men, taken as a whole, treat dogs? No, for though the desire to hunt with a dog may be near universal, the method of keeping the animal is different from one individual to another.”

“Do you mean that some men long for affection whereas other men yearn for conquest, and these are unrelated desires?”

“I think all men desire conquest of some sort, but the ideal differs from man to man. One might wish his affection returned. He has thus conquered the indifference a woman might feel toward him. Another prefers conquest in its basest form. In this, I think, women are different, which is only right. Men will yearn for any willing heart, so women must be the gatekeepers of desire in order to prevent a general anarchy.”

By now, I had pushed the subject as far as I dared, and as far as I wished to. I had made him uneasy, and I had made myself uneasy, but we had both persevered, and, if I was not mistaken, we had both enjoyed the challenge. And perhaps not coincidentally, he opened for me another bottle of wine and sent me home with half a dozen eggs.

Winter at last relented, and in the spring of 1791 it seemed that, despite the despair we had known only a year before, life was a delight. Our cabin had become a home, with wooden floors and warm carpets, the walls papered with birch bark, covered with prints Andrew had himself framed. We had such material things as any Westerner might desire, and if we wanted something-food, tools, linens-we need only trade whiskey to get it. We had gone from being outsiders to occupying a pivotal place in the community, and there was hardly a man west of the Ohio Forks who did not know Andrew’s name. My pile of completed manuscript pages grew, and I believed that in a year’s time I should have the book that had been my life’s ambition.

Once the snows had melted and the paths were cleared, Andrew planned a trip to Pittsburgh. We had not been since the fall, but such visits were not particularly pleasant. The cooler weather offered a lessening in the scent of rot and decay, but the city grew even more filthy with soot and coal dust, and though we might ride into town well appointed, we should ride out looking like chimney sweeps. The city was populated by the worst of western rabble-rough trappers and traders, drunken Indians, lazy soldiers for whom a gun and a uniform gave them leave to confuse liberty and license. Even more, I loathed the wealthy of the town. They walked about in outdated eastern finery, pretending the streets were paved, the buildings made of stone, and that they were in Philadelphia, or even London, rather than the last outpost of civilization. All was dirt and muck and filth, coal dust that descended like black snow, rooting pigs, fluttering chickens, defecating cows. It seemed to me less an attempt at a city than a preview, for so many of its inhabitants, of Hell.

Andrew, nevertheless, needed supplies to experiment with new whiskey recipes, so I went with him. As we often had different tasks in town, we made a habit of tending to our separate business, and so we parted, planning to meet again outside a grocer’s. Andrew went in search of what his whiskey trade demanded of him. I went in search of a lawyer.