The Bourbon Thief

“You can’t sell people,” Tamara said quietly.

“Oh, but you could back then. They say Jacob saw every shade of red when he came home to find nothing left of his favorite girl and his baby but the red ribbon she always wore in her hair and a thousand dollars he hadn’t had before. But he didn’t cry long. You know what he did with that money?”

“Started Red Thread?”

“That’s right. He started Red Thread. He bought a still, bought some corn and got to work making this family the wealthiest family in the state. But you know what? He must have loved that girl Vera, because when he started the bourbon distillery, he put a red ribbon around the neck of every bottle in her memory. Put her red ribbon on the very first bottle. We still have that bottle locked up in my office.”

“Can I see it?”

“Maybe later,” he said. She wasn’t allowed in Granddaddy’s office upstairs. No one was. “It’s been handed down from one Maddox son to the next. It’ll be your son’s someday.”

“We still have the ribbon?” Tamara asked, wanting to see it for some reason, wanting to have it. She should have it, and her granddaddy shouldn’t.

“We do. That red ribbon is what made us our money. Wives would tell their husbands, ‘Honey, go and buy some of that Red Thread bourbon because I want that pretty ribbon.’ Jacob Maddox was a smart man. Must have been a romantic, too. Red ribbon on every bottle? He must have loved that girl.”

“Or maybe loved waving that red ribbon in his wife’s face,” Tamara said.

“Well...maybe he loved doing that, too.”

“What happened to Veritas?” Tamara asked.

“Oh, hell, I don’t know.” Granddaddy waved his hand dismissively. “They sold her, and she wasn’t too happy about it. They say she swore at Mrs. Maddox, vowing she would come back someday and cut us off at our roots. She would end our line if it was the last thing she did. As you can see,” Granddaddy said, pointing at himself with his thumb, “that prophecy didn’t quite come to pass. Although we haven’t had the luck with babies as I’d hoped we’d have.”

“I guess not,” she said, feeling sick at her stomach. Was it the bourbon? She’d barely sipped it. Or was it Veritas screaming curses at Tamara’s great-great-grandmother all those years ago? Poor Veritas. They hadn’t even let her keep her red ribbon when they sold her.

“The Maddoxes are blessed and cursed all at once,” he said, pouring himself another shot of the Red Thread. “God gives us wealth and prosperity with one hand and takes away the children we need to carry on the line with the other.”

“It’s too bad,” she said. She felt for her grandfather. He’d had a brother and sister, but his sister had polio and didn’t make it past thirty and his brother hadn’t lived past age ten—scarlet fever.

“A man shouldn’t have to bury his own sons.”

And a girl shouldn’t have to bury her father. That wasn’t right, either. Nothing seemed right tonight.

Her grandfather lifted the glass to his lips. He lowered it before he took a drink.

“Are you going to let Momma fire Levi?” she asked.

“Your mother seemed quite intent on it.”

“Because we kissed?”

“For starters.”

“If you don’t fire him, I promise I won’t ever kiss him again.”

He smiled and laughed. “You know you don’t mean that. I think you want to kiss him again. And I don’t think you want to be good, either.”

“Does anybody want to be good?”

“You oughta want to be good.”

“But I’m not good. I asked Levi to kiss me. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

“I don’t know about that. I think he would have done it eventually.”

“Please, Granddaddy, don’t let her fire him for something I asked him to do.”

“I’m probably gonna have to let him go to shut your mother up. She is not a happy camper today.”

“She’s never a happy camper. She should quit camping.” Tamara giggled, but it was a miserable sound even to her own ears. A few tears hit her cheeks and she couldn’t swipe them off fast enough.

“What, angel? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I don’t want Levi to get fired. That’s all. And I don’t want Momma to send away Kermit to punish me.” And she didn’t want her father to be dead and her mother to be so angry all the time. She should have asked for those things for her birthday instead of the stupid car. “I’ll move to Arizona. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go live with Grandma and Grandpa Darling and then Levi can keep his job and Kermit can stay here with Levi.”

It was a good idea. No, it was a great idea. Soon as she said it, she knew that was what she’d do. Soon as her mother came home, she’d tell her the idea. She’d go away for a semester, live with her other grandparents, and her mother would miss her so much that she’d give up this crazy awful idea of firing Levi and selling Kermit.

“Come here, sweetheart. Come over here.” He held out his arms to her and reluctantly Tamara crawled into them and rested her head against her grandfather’s chest. He felt warm and solid and harmless. She could smell the bourbon on his breath and the cigar he liked to smoke in the evenings. Grandfather-type smells. “I’m not letting you move to Arizona. No, ma’am.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a Maddox and you’re my girl. Listen...do you have any idea how lucky you are?” he asked, rubbing her back. “You almost weren’t a Maddox, you know.”

She raised her head and looked up at Granddaddy in shock.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you were born six months after your momma and daddy got married. You know that much, right?”

“Well...yeah. I can do math.”

“Now don’t get me wrong, Nash loved you. But he did not want to marry your mother. It was the last thing he wanted to do. I had to twist his arm a little.”

“How?” She hadn’t ever heard this part of the story.

“When talking to the boy didn’t get his head on straight, I threatened to disown him. Your mother was carrying the next Maddox and there he was, being stubborn as a mule. He finally gave in after we made a little trade. There’s an island off the coast of South Carolina where we grow our trees. All the trees that make up the barrels we use for aging Red Thread. He said he wanted the island, so I gave it to him as a wedding gift. Then he married your mother. And so you were a Maddox the day you were born. You could have been a Darling, no Daddy, no Granddaddy, no nothing. That’s why I say you’re a lucky girl. Things could have gone very different for you, angel.”

Tamara couldn’t say a word. Her father had been so against marrying her mother he had to be bought off with an entire island? And if he hadn’t given in, she wouldn’t have had a father? Her grandparents on her mother’s side did okay for themselves. Grandpa Darling had been a bank president here in Frankfort until he retired and moved out to Arizona for the weather. As religious as they were, they probably would have kicked Momma out for having a child out of wedlock. Was that why her mother put up with Granddaddy? Because she knew he’d been the only thing standing between her and poverty?

“Daddy didn’t want to be my father?” she finally asked.

“Oh, he did. But not until you were born. The second you were born, everything changed. Love at first sight. You were his girl from day one.”

That made Tamara smile. She’d always known her mother and grandfather had been disappointed she’d been a girl. At least one person in this family had been happy she’d been born a girl. Other than her, that is.

“Aren’t you glad you’re a Maddox?” Granddaddy asked. She knew what she was supposed to answer.

“Yes, I am.”

“Being a Maddox means something in this state. Something important. We are the first family of Kentucky in a lot of ways. We’ve been here since before the state was a state. We’ve had governors in the family, senators. Since before the Civil War we’ve had the distillery. Only four distilleries were allowed to stay open during Prohibition and we were one of them. Even the federal government wouldn’t dare shut us down. And we make bourbon and bourbon is a perfect drink. Nothing like it. The problem with perfection is that’s not something we little human beings were born for. Perfection comes from heaven and we’re here on earth. So when you have something perfect like our family and our legacy and our bourbon, we have to pay a toll on it.”

“A toll?”

“That’s what the angels’ share is. We put fifty-three gallons of bourbon into each barrel to age. And the angels come drink their fill of it. Like paying taxes. So by the time we open that barrel up to sell the bourbon, nearly half is gone. That’s why we lose so many Maddox boys in this family. Things aren’t supposed to be perfect this side of heaven. And now that there’s only two of us left in the world—you and me—we better stick together before the angels come and get us. Right?”

“Right,” she said, nodding against the warm flannel of his chest.

“You know, your mother only wants what’s best for you. You worry her and that worry keeps her up at night.”

“Why’s she worried?”

“Because you’re the only Maddox grandchild. She wants you to do right by the family, and she’s worried you won’t.”

“I’ll do whatever I’m supposed to do. She doesn’t have to worry.”

“She wants me to leave everything to you in my will. She thinks I won’t do it because you’re a girl, and we’ve always left the company to the oldest boy in the family.” He picked up her braid and tickled her nose with the end of it.

“Is that why you two fight all the time?” Tamara looked up at him.

“You know about the fighting?”

“You two don’t hide it very well. You’re fighting because Momma thinks you’re going to disown me for being a girl?”

“We fight for a lot of reasons, but none that need to worry you. And you don’t need to worry about anything. As things stand today, when I die, you’ll inherit everything. The company, the house, the land, all of it. Now, I’m hoping by the time I kick the bucket, you’ll have had a baby boy or two, but you make no mistake, Granddaddy’s going to take care of you.”

“You’re not going to die anytime soon,” Tamara said. “You’re going to live for twenty or thirty years, and I’ll get married someday and have kids. Then we’ll have a boy in the family again, since that’s what everyone wants.”

“I’m not getting any younger. But even at my age a man has needs, things he wants to accomplish, things he wants to achieve. Now I’ve got money enough for a hundred men, you know what I really want?”

Tamara didn’t know.

Suddenly Tamara didn’t want to know.

“What I want is another son and to see him grow up.”

“It must be hard for you with Grandma in the nursing home.”

“I’m sure it’s harder for her than it is for me. If there’s anything left of her in there anymore. Not sure that there is.”

Tamara knew better than to suggest he get divorced. If there was anything that would tarnish the family name, it would be her grandfather divorcing his invalid wife so he could get remarried to any one of the fluttering young things who multiplied like fruit flies around him whenever he went out on the town.

“I wish there was something we could do,” she said. “I wish there was a way we could fix everything.”

If she had a magic wand, she’d wave it and her father would be alive again, and her uncle Eric, whom she’d never met. Her mother would be kind and loving instead of bitter and angry. Her grandmother would be healed and could walk and talk again instead of sitting all day in a wheelchair in a fancy nursing home that smelled like a morgue. And she’d wave it one last time and she and Levi would magically be together and that kiss they’d kissed today would be the beginning of a very good story.

“Actually, there is something we could do,” her grandfather said. “Something you and I can do. And even better, it’s something your mother wants us to do. And if you’re game for it, we’ll make sure Levi keeps his job here and you don’t have to go to Arizona and you can keep Kermit and your momma will be very, very happy for once in her damn life. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

“I know you will, angel,” he said.

Then Granddaddy kissed her.

7

Tamara’s entire body, her entire being, recoiled as her grandfather’s bourbon-laced mouth came down onto hers. She tried to wrench herself from him, but he grasped her upper arms and wouldn’t let her budge. A sound came out the back of her throat, a sound like squealing tires, and a scream that couldn’t escape.

His lips felt huge on hers, as if they could and would devour her in a bite if he tried. His stubble scraped her face painfully and it itched like poison ivy. Panic set in. Tamara thrashed and writhed in his arms like a cat in a trap, but he had her and wasn’t letting her go.

She became aware of her feet then, sliding across the hardwood floor and then the rug under the bed. They were moving not of her own accord. With a tug and a pull, her grandfather dragged her bodily to the bed.

“Calm down, girl,” he said, soothing her like a wild pony. “Calm down. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

But he’d already hurt her. Nothing he could do or say would unhurt her.

She tried yanking her arms free of his hands, but he merely tightened his grip. It felt like he was cutting the circulation off to her lower arms he held her so firm and fast. She went limp as a corpse. If he dropped her, she could maybe get away. But despite his age, he was still strong as a stallion.

“Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t...” She chanted the words like a magic spell, but they had no effect on him. He hoisted her off her feet with all the ceremony and gentleness he used when throwing bags of horse feed into the back of his truck and pushed her onto the bed. With one hand he held her arms over her head onto the pillows; with his free hand he loosened his belt buckle.

“Tamara, you have got to calm down.” He used his most grandfatherly tone on her—chiding and slightly exasperated. She’d gotten stung by a bee when she’d been little and had screamed so hard everyone thought she was dying. Those were his words back then when trying to get her to surrender her hysterics. “You’ll hurt yourself if you keep fighting. Calm down and, I promise, it’ll be over fast.”

“Please don’t do this. I don’t want to do this.”

“Yes, you do, baby.” He nodded his head, but still he straddled her hips and sat on her thighs to still the frantic kicking of her legs. “You said you did.”

“I don’t want to anymore.” She wept the words and choked on them. She could hear her own voice and it sounded alien to her, foreign. She’d never heard herself scream like this, never heard herself cry like this, never heard herself pray to every god and goddess anyone had ever put their faith in to save her from what was about to happen to her. “Please...” She thrashed and squirmed. Tears scored her face, sticky and hot.

“We only got to do it a few times.” He ran his hand through her hair, gently, ignoring her thrashing, ignoring her pain.

“I can marry somebody. I can find somebody. I’ll have his baby right away. I swear to God I will.” Maybe she could bargain her way out of this. She’d marry any man on earth right now to get away from this moment, from this man.

“It’s gotta be me, angel. It has to be me. But once you’re pregnant, we’ll get you married and get you set up in a nice house. And you can have anything and everything you want. That sounds all right, doesn’t it? You won’t have to live with your momma anymore. I know you’ll like that. You can even marry Levi, and won’t that make your momma mad.” He chuckled then like he’d made a joke. A joke.

Somewhere inside Tamara, somewhere deep inside, something clicked. Or maybe it didn’t click. Maybe it snapped. A switch flipped. A light went on. A match was struck. A fuse lit. Something burned, something smoldered.

Something exploded.

...you better believe if you don’t shape up and grow up and do what your grandfather tells you to do, you will end up with nothing. I will not let you screw this up, not after all I’ve put up with.

It’s high time you earn your place in this family. Your mother thinks you’re getting a bit too big for your britches. She told me to take you down a peg or two.

This was why Momma left and didn’t come back. This was why. Because her mother had sold her, sold her out to her own grandfather. Sold her body to him in exchange for Red Thread. Her mother...that coward, that bitch, had driven away, leaving her alone with him so she didn’t have to hear her daughter’s screams. And her grandfather, this vile piece of shit, was going to rape her until she was knocked up and he could marry her off. He wanted a baby boy so bad he was going to make her have it for him. He would fuck her until she gave him one. If the first baby was a girl, he’d fuck her again and again and again. All for his dirty kingdom. If she could, she’d burn to the ground, right here and right now. She wanted fire, fire everywhere. She wanted her grandfather burning in hell and her mother burning right next to him and the house burning down, taking all of Red Thread with it.

Tamara pushed against her grandfather’s chest as hard as she could. Then she saw something.

A brown pool of water crept in under the door. She noticed it first. Her grandfather was too preoccupied undoing his pants to notice anything. But when he turned his head, he saw it, too.

“What the hell?” he said, his brow furrowed in frustration and confusion. For one second he looked the other way. For one second his mind wasn’t on her and what he was doing. For one second the water rapidly rushing into the room was more important than anything, even this.

That one second was all Tamara needed.

With her free hand she grabbed the lamp off the nightstand and smashed it against his head. He screamed and blood burst from his temple. In a daze he slumped onto his side, his hand over the bleeding wound, swearing and blinking, and Tamara wriggled her way out from under his bulk. Frantically she looked around for a weapon—anything would do—and saw a heavy silver candlestick on top of the dresser. Two inches of water surrounded her ankles as she stood up off the bed. Two inches and rising fast. The candlestick was heavy and square—art deco, a gift from her grandmother—and when she slammed it down onto her granddaddy’s head, it made a soft and awful thudding sound. He keeled over, not moving, not a muscle.

A gust of wind brushed across her body, lifting her hair. Ice-cold wind like someone had left the door open to winter and called it inside.

Tamara stood there and giggled a little. She’d gone to a slumber party two weeks ago and they’d played Clue. Miss Scarlet in the bedroom with the candlestick...

Noises came from the side of the house, jarring her from her delirium—something falling over, something else cracking and wood splintering like a door coming off the hinges. The water in the house was a foot high now, muddy and stinking and ice-cold. The shattered remains of the lamp covered the bed like glitter. In the window seat sat the bottle of Red Thread. Tamara picked it up and smashed it against the wall. The red ribbon around its neck fell into the water. She fished it out and grabbed her grandfather’s hand, twisting the ribbon around his index finger. He moaned and Tamara gasped. The water reached her knees.

Tamara grasped her grandfather by the ankles and dragged him off the bed. She couldn’t get any traction at first, but terror gave her strength. She tugged and lugged and pulled. His penis hung out of his unzipped pants like a fat earthworm. If she had garden shears handy, she would cut it off his body.

With one final yank on his belt loops, Tamara heaved him off the bed into the cold dirty water. And then, because she knew she had no other choice if she wanted to survive this night, she grabbed two fistfuls of his Lee Majors hair and shoved his head under the water.

Some part of his brain must have registered what was happening to him. He thrashed hard after the first inhale of muck, but she had the advantage now and wasn’t going to lose it. She held him down until he stopped moving and, to be on the safe side, long after he stopped moving.

When it was done, she stood there looking at him there in the water, floating, seaworthy as a garbage bag. He didn’t look like a person anymore.

From the other room came a screeching sound—the river rearranging the furniture. Tamara ripped the silky pink cover off her bed and shook the broken glass out of it. Wrapping it around herself like a shawl, she waded through the now knee-deep water to the door. The house had gone mad. Chairs floated. Papers and books bobbed on the surface like toy boats. The smell of sewage permeated the air. Somewhere a light flickered and Tamara had a new fear then—electrocution. She heard a squeak and saw movement in the water—a gray rat swimming down the hall to save itself. Panicking, Tamara forced her way past a china cabinet now turned on its side and floating and made it to the stairs. She rushed upstairs to the bathroom and hit her knees in front of the toilet. For what felt like an hour she wretched and vomited. She threw up so hard her throat tore and she urinated on herself. She could taste blood in her mouth.

Then the lights went out.

Tamara blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. With the pink blanket around her again, she dragged herself to her feet and felt her way down the hall to her grandfather’s office. It faced the highway instead of the river. If the water kept rising, it would be the last room to flood. The door wasn’t locked, and if it had been, she would have busted the door down for the pleasure of breaking something. Inside the office she saw a black box on the desk. In the dark the telephone looked like a cat curled up and sleeping. Should she call for help? She didn’t know. She’d been warned once not to touch the telephone in a storm, but it wasn’t lightning. Carefully she picked up the receiver. The line was dead. She was all alone in the house with her grandfather’s dead body.

Tamara went to the window. The lawn was gone. The manicured horse pastures crisscrossed with white board fences—gone. Cobblestone driveway—gone. The stone fence built long before the Civil War by slave labor—gone. Now there was only water. Water water everywhere. Only the stable up on a high knoll had been spared. If the water kept rising, it would be the next to go. And so would she.

When she was a little girl in Sunday school, she had learned the story of Noah and his ark. From what she remembered from her lessons, God had promised He would never destroy the world with a flood again and He’d given the rainbow as a sign of His promise.

It seemed as if God had changed His mind.

Tamara turned from the window and found her grandfather’s pack of cigarettes on his desk and the matches in the top drawer where he kept his fancy pens and stationary. She didn’t light a cigarette, but she did light the candles she’d found in the top drawer. The sight of the candles on the desk gave her an idea. She started digging through the drawers. If God destroyed by water, she would destroy by fire. Tonight she wanted to destroy everything. Business papers. Letters. Her grandfather’s Last Will and Testament if she could find it so she wouldn’t inherit anything because she didn’t want it. She didn’t want a brick of this place. She didn’t want a dime. In a drawer she found a handgun and bullets. Granddaddy’s revolver her mother had threatened to use to shoot Kermit. Tamara opened the window and held the gun out over the water. Except...no. What if she needed that later? She closed the window, kept the gun. The police might come for her. She wouldn’t let them put her in jail for what she did. She’d rather die first than take the blame. Her mother had set her up, left her alone so her grandfather could have his way with her. Her mother would burn for this, too.

Tamara dug every sheet of paper out of the drawers. She tossed his ledger books into the wire wastebasket, an appointment book, anything she could get her hands on. Anything she could burn, she would burn.