Clare Vanderpool - Moon Over Manifest

Callisto Matenopoulos and Hermann Keufer loaded the corn onto a wagon and hauled it over to Shady’s place. “Ma-ten-o-pou-los,” Mr. Matenopoulos said, sounding out his name. He laughed as Mr. Keufer stumbled over the pronunciation. “You think my name is difficult. At Ellis Island, the inspector asks my friend Milo, ‘What is your last name?’ ‘Zoutsaghianopoulous,’ he says. The inspector asks him if he wants to change it to make it easier to pronounce. My friend gives this much thought. After all, this is his family name. Finally, after much consideration, he agrees. ‘Take out the h .’ ” Mr. Keufer chuckled loudly.

Of course, the real excitement was at Shady’s place, and Jinx was right in the thick of it. This was the first time Shady’s whiskey still had seen the light of day. The whiskey-making machine had been retrieved from the darkness of the abandoned mine shaft on the Widow Cane’s property, where it had been in constant activity since the start of Prohibition. But one wouldn’t be enough for the operation they hoped to have up and running. So Donal MacGregor, Hadley Gillen, and Nikolai Yezierska assembled four more stills out of spare tanks and copper tubing and set them up in a run-down barn near the natural spring. This gave them an easy supply of water and an out-of-the-way location to run their operation.

But it was as if Shady himself was also thrust into the light of day and he was left stunned and unsteady. He reached for a bottle of whiskey stashed under the eaves overhanging the back steps. Just a sip to stop the shakes and give him a little liquid courage. He uncorked the bottle and moved back into the shadows of the eaves.

The back screen squeaked open and Jinx stood beside him. “Come on, Shady, you can do it. Just show ’em what you know.”

Shady ran the back of his hand over his whiskery face. “I don’t know anything.”

Jinx’s voice was calm and steady. “Right now there’s only one thing these folks need to know and you’re the only one who can teach them.”

Shady stood still a full minute before placing the cork back in the bottle. He returned it to its hiding spot above and stepped into the warm daylight as Jinx held open the screen door. Then Shady oversaw the process with the watchful eye of a master craftsman, wanting each of his apprentices to learn the art of his trade. He seemed grateful to have Jinx nearby for moral support.

“That’s right, keep that burner low, Mr. Keufer. We don’t want to scorch the mash. Casimir, why don’t you get another batch going in that tank over there? Corn, water, yeast, and sugar,” he said, rattling off the contents of a time-honored recipe used by bootleggers throughout many a dry region.

“I knew a guy in Chicago,” Jinx said, “he scorched the sugar to make a richer color.”

Shady shook his head. “It may be wrong to make whiskey, but there’s a right way to do it.”

The first batches of mash fermented day after day, with any number of men standing by, like children in Mama Santoni’s kitchen. Stirring, smelling, eyeing, wondering.

On the ninth day, Donal MacGregor stood at a simmering tank. “Give it a whiff, Shady. I think it’s ready.”

Shady smelled the brew. “Cap it off and Jinx’ll hook up that copper tubing. When the liquid separates from the mash, it goes through the tubing and ends up in this barrel.” He lifted the spigot at the base of the oak barrel and captured a few ounces of amber liquid in a glass jelly jar.

Shady’s hand showed only a slight tremor of need as he held the jar to the light to check the color, and smelled the liquid’s aroma. Folks who knew Shady knew he struggled with the drink. So when he poured the whiskey back into the barrel and said, “It’s ready for Velma T.’s elixir,” everyone understood that was to be the code of conduct. Not a drop would be had by any man there.

• • •

Jinx and Shady hauled the first barrel over to the high school. Mrs. Larkin caught sight of them on the front steps. “Shady,” she called in a shrill voice. “Shady Howard.”

They pretended they didn’t hear her, and walked into the high school and down the hall to the chemistry room. Mrs. Larkin had been working Jinx pretty hard, making him weed her garden and clean out closets of her husband’s old papers. Worst of all was sitting down for afternoon tea, carrying on what she called polite conversation, which, in her estimation, was something every gentleman should be capable of doing. So it was understandable that Jinx would wish to keep his distance.

But as Mrs. Larkin stormed in behind Shady and Jinx, all three stopped dead in their tracks.

“What’s that smell?” Jinx rubbed his neck as the pungent odor practically singed through his nose, clear to the back of his head.

Hattie Mae looked up through safety goggles while Velma T. stood sentry over several beakers of clear liquid warming over Bunsen burners. “A fermented mixture of corn, castor oil, eucalyptus extract, menthol, iron, potassium, and calcium,” Hattie Mae answered.

“Nothing that wasn’t in it when you two ne’er-do-wells took it upon yourselves to play hanky-panky with my elixir,” said Velma T., jotting some notes on a clipboard. Her safety goggles looked like bulgy fly eyes against her narrow face.

Shady and Jinx both knew they’d have to tread lightly, as Velma T. was not completely on board with their endeavor.

“How do you make so much with just those little beakers?” Jinx asked.

“This is what is called the base mixture,” Velma T. answered, “which you would know if you ever showed up to my chemistry class. This syrup combined with Manifest springwater in an exact four-to-one ratio makes up a palatable and restorative elixir.”

“Velma,” Mrs. Larkin interrupted, “surely you are not going to participate in this”—she struggled for the right word—“this … charade. My husband, the late county appraiser, would be rolling over in his grave at this exercise in depravity. Why, I’ve a mind to telegraph my sister’s boy in Topeka. He works in the governor’s office. He’s the assistant to the assistant, you know.”

Most folks were surprised and more than a little curious when Mrs. Larkin stayed behind for the quarantine instead of leaving town with the rest of the people of means. She’d certainly made her objection to Jinx’s plan clear the night of the town meeting. Her daughter, Pearl Ann, was already away at the university, and some speculated that Mrs. Larkin was less a person of means than she liked others to believe and maybe couldn’t afford to leave town. At any rate, since she was still here, there was nothing they could do but hope that she wouldn’t ruin everything.

Ignoring Mrs. Larkin, Velma T. lifted her safety goggles onto her head and glared at Shady and Jinx through narrowed eyes. “You know, I should have let Sheriff Dean arrest both of you for tampering with a medicinal product and endangering the public health. My elixirs are carefully synthesized compounds of potentially dangerous elements.” She poured the syrupy liquid into a measuring glass and tested the volume and density. “They are meticulously prepared remedies that deserve a little respect.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Neither Jinx nor Shady pointed out that her elixir had never remedied anybody until it was mixed with Shady’s whiskey. However, the following silence said it all.

“Still, I suppose serendipity is a force to be reckoned with,” Velma T. said with a sigh.

Hattie Mae came to the rescue. “Now, don’t you underestimate yourself, Miss Velma. Of course there are discoveries made by unexpected occurrences. But it takes the right someone to make sense of it all. You told us yourself, ‘An apple is just an apple until it falls on Sir Isaac Newton.’ ”