Time once again for our quarterly 700-word short stories. This month, we go back in time, to the era when Prohibition was the law of the land and many Americans did anything and everything they could to circumvent the law and get an alcoholic beverage.
Getting that illegal hooch to the local speakeasy led to two very different stories. In Bootlegger’s Ghost, Janet Dawson’s protagonist searches an abandoned farmhouse for money hidden by a bootlegger. D. Z. Church writes Whisky Six, about a Studebaker that heads over the border from the United States into Canada—and finds big trouble.
Here’s mud in your eye!
The money is stashed somewhere in that abandoned farmhouse by the creek. At least, that’s what Ralph told Grandpa.
We need that money, bad. People call this time the Roaring Twenties, saying everybody’s making a lot of money on the stock market, whatever the hell that is. People like us sure don’t have any money, except what Aunt Tillie hides in the cookie tin under her mattress.
Good times sure as hell passed us by. Papa never came home from the war. Mama died in the flu epidemic. Me and Sister live with Grandpa and Aunt Tillie in that old house on the edge of town. Grandpa’s a carpenter. Aunt Tillie does sewing and takes in washing. I’m looking for work but nobody’s gonna hire a girl like me, still in high school.
We had money coming in, once, on account of Ralph, Aunt Tillie’s son. He was a bootlegger, ever since Prohibition came in. Him and some other guys had a still in the barn on that farm, making hooch, then loading it onto trucks and running it all over the county.
Last month, the lawmen ambushed the trucks down by the river. Bullets flew everywhere. Ralph and his buddies got killed. Then the lawmen broke up that still and dumped all the hooch.
So, Ralph is dead and Aunt Tillie’s been crying ever since. I’m not crying much, but we sure need that money Ralph was giving her. Grandpa fell off a roof he was working on. He’s all stove up and he can’t work. I don’t know how we’re going to pay the rent and buy food.
Ralph told Grandpa he stashed some money at that farmhouse. But he didn’t say where. That’s why I’m out here now, looking for it. I figure a whole bunch of other folks will be looking for it, too. Ralph’s friends.
I wait till late in the day, then I take the keys to Grandpa’s Model T, don’t tell anyone where I am going. When I get out to the farm, I park by the creek and wait till it gets dark. I have Grandpa’s flashlight. I’ve been here before. I know the way.
That farmhouse isn’t big. Hasn’t been lived in for years. I started looking but I can’t find that money anywhere.
I’m in the bedroom when I hear noise. My heart pounds and I look for a place to hide. There, behind that old wardrobe. I turn off the flashlight and wait. A figure moves slowly into the kitchen. Is it one of Ralph’s pals, looking for the money? But this is like nothing I’ve seen. Hazy outline, an odd glow in the darkness. Then the figure turns.
I see the face and gasp. Ralph—dressed in his sharp pin-striped suit—but with bloodstains, dark red against the snowy white shirt.
“You’re dead.”
Maybe ghosts can’t hear or see. But he turns his head and looks at me, tilting his head to one side like he did when he was alive.
“I’m looking for the money. You told Grandpa it was here. We need it bad. I been looking all over but I can’t find it.”
Ralph’s ghost keeps looking at me. I swear he smiles. He walks away, toward the kitchen. I follow, carefully picking my way on the uneven plank flooring.
I already looked in the kitchen, and I didn’t find anything. But I didn’t look under the old wooden icebox. Too heavy to move. But not for a ghost. Except Ralph didn’t move it. My eyes get wide as saucers when I see him bend over and his shimmering hand reach through the door. Then he straightens and pulls out his hand. It’s holding something about the size of that ghostly hand. He holds it out to me. I can read the front plain as day—BLACK AND WHITE ROLL CUT SMOKING TOBACCO.
I take the tin, cold to the touch. With shaking hands, I open the lid and pull out the thick bankroll inside. More money than I ever saw in my life.
I look into Ralph’s eyes, not cold and dead, but glittering with a spark of life.
“Thanks, cousin. This will help.”
I stared at the photo on Dad’s dresser. It had leaned there all my life. A man, in a pin-stripped suit and brown fedora, his eyes shaded, one thumb tucked in the waistband of his pants.
Whenever I asked, Dad would say, “Great Uncle Dan.”
Not tonight. I carried the Deco-framed photo to where Dad nested in a garage he called his den. It was furnished with a broken-down brown Naugahyde lounger, a 1929 vintage cherry-red sedan bought at auction in 1974, and a wet bar bearing Canadian Whisky.
“Come clean!” I ordered. “Great Uncle Dan. Now.”
Dad glanced at me over the copy of Baking and Snack magazine he was reading. “Dan backed his Studebaker Six out of the driveway Halloween 1930, told everyone he’d be back next day. Wasn’t.”
“You were 17.”
“And full of it. I dressed up as a vampire. Bloody teeth, the whole nine yards. I could flip the cape like I was born to it. My girlfriend was impressed. Dan saw us out and waved us over to his car.”
“Joy ride?” Dan asked, handing me a flask of rye.
“That’s it,” my gal said, “My folks will kill me. Besides, there’s a party later.”
I adjusted my cape as I clambered into the car. Dan flew down the road towards the Windsor, Ontario, bridge. It started to snow. It seems like it always snowed for Halloween in those days. Little rotten, mean ice particles. I took a jolt of his booze, my toes lit on fire, I swear. He grinned, snapped the brim on his fedora, and drove faster.
By the time Dan and I rolled across the world’s longest suspension bridge into Canada, we were loaded. High octane. Fire-breathing, crazy loaded.
So I missed a few things.
When I got into the car, the springs didn’t jolt. When Dan turned the wheel, the headlights turned with it. On dirt or snow, a cloud billowed behind us. But who the hell cared? Not the Canadians who were in recovery from their own abstinence. Sure, Labatt was their thing, but man, could they make Whisky!
Snow piled up along the roadway two feet deep. The Studebaker hit 90 miles an hour without a hiccup. I think we slid into Toronto. Dan drove to an unmarked warehouse on the lake, parked between a couple of Buicks, low to the ground and armored from the looks of them.
“Hey, boy, you wanna party?” Dan slurred, opening the glove compartment. One .45 rolled into his hands. The other one he passed to me. He stuck his in the belt of his pants. I stared at mine.
“Ready,” he nodded. “Gotta load our booze and 23 skidoo.”
I think I said yes. Never been sure. I opened the Six’s door, and something hit me. Chunky, I still got a dent in my head. I think Dan did it. Armed men popped up out of the Buicks. As others poured from wooden sheds. Shedside, everyone had a badge. And Browning automatics. Rat-a-tat-tat.
I crawled under the Six, slunk into the driver’s seat, turned the key and spun out of there. I figured they’d be waiting for Dan in Windsor, so I tore south to Fort Erie, across the Peace Bridge, into Buffalo, hit a wall of fresh snow, slewed sideways, left the gun on the leather seat and ran.
Got a job in Buffalo. Learned baking, drove home in 1933, started the business. Bought this house, put Dan’s picture up, and never looked back. Golden Wheat bread made us rich. Who knew?
If not for Uncle Dan, I’d be on a production line and you’d be in hand-me-downs. Does that answer your question?
“Sort of.” I flipped Uncle Dan’s frame over, loosened the two cardboard wings and pulled out a key. “And this?”
“Uncle Dan.” Dad nodded at the door of the car in his ‘den’. “Check the glove compartment.” A cedar box slid out. “When Golden Wheat made us, I went to Toronto and found where they’d tossed him, a cemetery. Don’t know if it’s him, but it’s bones.”
“And your Whisky Six?”
A hand on the cherry-red finish, he said, “That’s his baby. Made me, made us.”