by Ninie Hammon
The Double Springs office building sat at the top of the hill across the road from five ancient, funeral-black whiskey barrel warehouses—not the distillery’s only warehouses, but the oldest, the grandfathers of all the others. Double rows of lush red begonias lined the sidewalks in front of the office and flowed in profusion from two blue window boxes by the front door. A small, gray-haired woman who looked like she might have commanded a battalion of Panzers in another life ushered Sarabeth into a paneled office where a dark-haired man in a gray suit, his dress shirt open at the neck, sat behind an enormous desk. When he rose to greet her, she realized why the desk was big. So was he—6 feet 6 inches at least. Maybe taller.
“Seth McAllister,” he said, stepped to the side of the desk and extended his hand. “Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee? A soft drink? A barbecued chicken, maybe?”
“Excuse me?” She must have heard him wrong.
His face was more rugged than handsome, with a wide forehead and a Kirk Douglas cleft in his chin. But his eyes were penetrating, so dark brown you couldn’t see the pupils. He didn’t just make eye contact; he grabbed it and held on.
“Just thought maybe you’d regained your appetite.”
“The chicken man!”
“No, you’re thinking of the old guy, white hair, white suit, goatee—Colonel Harlan Sanders. People get us confused all the time.”
“Elsie Bingo. I remember now. You were in the food booth flipping chickens. I’d have sworn you were a career short-order cook.”
“Considered it as a life’s work, but gave it up for making bourbon. Chicken tastes better, but you don’t have to pluck a whiskey bottle. So tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the editor of The Callison County Tribune?”
Sarabeth smiled and sat down in the leather chair in front of an acre of cherry desktop; he settled his big frame into the one beside it.
“Like I said on the telephone, I’d like to do a story on Double Springs, how it’s been affected by what’s going on in the rest of the industry.”
“Twenty column-inches of See Dick and Jane Make Joy Juice?”
“Something like that. Are you nervous about being interviewed?”
“Not nervous,” he said. “Honored.”
Careful, girl. This guy could charm the shine off a doorknob.
The tour of the grounds started beside the office building at the stone fence, where a trickle of liquid flowed a couple of inches deep over mossy rocks.
“The water in this creek is run-off from Ballard Ridge.” Seth pointed to the hillside behind the buildings. “We pipe water to run the distillery from a spring-fed lake. First words out of the mouths of our tour guides—“Doubles Springs bourbon is not made from this creek water!”
“You personally write the script for your tour guides?”
“No, but I know what they say. I used to be one.” He gestured with one long arm, a sweeping motion that took in the whole distillery. “I’ve done every job here at one time or another. Summers as a kid, I rotated barrels in the warehouses, worked the line in the bottling room and did any other idiot job my father could find, including tour guide. When I came to work here full-time, I started at the bottom.” He paused. “Well, not rock bottom. Rock bottom is handing out souvenirs in the Quart House.”
“And that would be … ?”
“That building down there.”
Seth nodded toward a small stone structure, the only building at the bottom of the hill, separated from the Rolling Fork by the 6-foot rock fence that encircled the property. The building rested directly below the five old warehouses whose shadows pointed toward it like fingers.
“The Quart House might just be the oldest package liquor store in America.”
“Got a drive-through window?”
“I know you’re joking, but it probably had something very like that years ago.”
Seth explained that when the distillery had been built by his great, great, great-grandfather in 1865, the building down by the river was already on the property. Early moonshiners had used it to sell their wares to farmers, who brought their own jars there to be filled with whiskey dipped directly out of a barrel.
“Made a good cover for the Underground Railroad, too.”
“That building was part of it?”
“There’s a secret cellar under it where they used to hide run-away slaves and then sneak them out and downriver at night. Rolling Fork hits the Kentucky River, Kentucky River empties into the Ohio. Plaque on the wall by the door tells all about it.”
Then she remembered. Her fifth-grade class in elementary school had taken a field trip to different spots around the county when they were studying the Civil War. She remembered stopping at the Quart House, remembered her teacher talking about the brave people who’d operated the Underground Railroad there, who’d sacrificed and died to spirit run-away slaves to freedom.
Sarabeth looked out past Seth, gazing at the immense oak trees with just a hint of autumn color and the worn stonework. There was an order in this place older than the rest of the world that hurried by outside the creek-rock fences. The years had been gentled here. Mellowed. Time hadn’t halted altogether, but it had paused, sighed and then left behind the ghost of another age when it moved on.
“Now, the Quart House is a gift shop, has a big picture window cut in the front wall to show off the view, flower beds and stonework all around, and a couple of barrels of bourbon in it plus souvenirs. If you want to go down and get a keychain or a shot glass, we can.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.” She looked furtively to the left and right and then whispered, “Would the ground open up and swallow me whole if I confessed that I don’t drink. I’ve never been able to stand the taste of alcohol.”
“Bite thy tongue, small woman,” Seth intoned in the booming voice of a Pentecostal preacher, “lest lightning strike ye dead on the spot!” He paused. “Actually, your secret’s safe with me. I think mint juleps taste like paint stripper.”
The mystical quality Sarabeth had sensed earlier became both more evident and more elusive during the next two hours. Seth took her to the print shop where bottle labels were printed on hand-operated presses. He showed her how his father had modified the covered bridge with native grown oak to accommodate the weight and girth of Double Springs’ tractor-trailer trucks. Then to the still house, where grain and corn were combined with yeast to ferment in an ancient cypress vat before distillation into the clear liquid deposited in the barrels for aging.
As the afternoon wore on, Sarabeth relaxed and let herself enjoy Seth’s company. She responded to the warmth in his dark eyes and loved the sound of his easy laugh. Their conversation had eased into the pleasant banter of old friends until they got to the bottling house.
Seth explained that most of his employees were concentrated in that one area, and were working on Saturday because of a water main break the day before.
“We bottle miniatures like you get on an airplane, pints, flasks, fifths and gallon jugs.”
“You say you’ve got 68 people working for you altogether?”
“Sixty-six full-time, then there’s two high school kids who work after school in the Quart House and on the grounds.”
“How many employees did you have two years ago?”
“Sixty-eight.”
“Are you selling bourbon like you did two years ago?”
Seth didn’t answer.
“Beam is down 30 percent. Barton is closer to 35. What’s your secret?”
He still didn’t answer.
Sarabeth felt her face flush. She hated this! Hated prying, putting people on the spot. Why had her father so loved his job? Her father. His memory shoved steel into her backbone. She didn’t want to ask the next question, but the degree to which she didn’t told her exactly how badly she needed to ask it. “You got extra capital coming in that they don’t?”
Seth’s voice was as cold as a stone in the night. “Double Springs is the finest bourb
on whiskey in the world. We’re a small distillery because we choose to remain small, to make bourbon the old way, the right way, with the emphasis on quality. The only extra capital we’ve seen lately is in sales.”
“You’re telling me that everybody in this room’s still got a job because your sales are up?”
Sarabeth looked deep into his eyes. He returned the stare. Maybe he should have stayed with his original calling. He was good at chicken, playing chicken. He never blinked.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” he said.
And she believed him. Trouble was, if she’d been on that jury, she’d have believed Jimmy Dan Puckett, too.
All at once she was tired. No, more than tired. Exhausted.
“Thank you so much for your time,” she said. “I think I’ve got everything I need.”
“You can’t go yet. You haven’t seen the Family Five.” He must have spotted the sudden fatigue on her face because he gestured back the way they’d come. “It’s no farther, just by the office, where your car’s parked.”
As they walked back across the grounds, Seth pointed to the woods behind the distillery where she could see the front two of eight huge barrel warehouses nestled in the trees. Then he told her about the five original warehouses, the first one built in 1900. She had to concentrate hard to catch what he was saying. Energy had whooshed out of her like water sucked down a sump pump.
“ … great, great grandfather was born on Derby Day, 1900. His father built the first big warehouse then and named it Lieutenant Gibson, for the horse that won the roses that day at Churchill Downs.”
As they approached the five big, black warehouses, arranged like the dots on a number 5 dice, Sarabeth could see ornate signs with names over the doors on each one.
“That started the tradition. My father was born in 1924 and that year’s Kentucky Derby winner was Black Gold.” He pointed to the warehouse behind Lieutenant Gibson. “Uncle Jonas was in 1925—Flying Ebony. That one’s the biggest, the one in the middle. My brother Caleb was born in 1948—Citation. And mine’s over there behind his—Black Star, 1953.”
“Your brother Caleb, does he work here?”
“Killed in Vietnam.”
It was clear by the way he said it that he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Barrels full of bourbon—50 to 55 gallons in each—are aged for five to seven years and they’re rotated on a regular basis.” They walked along the side of the Citation warehouse to the massive door on Black Star behind it. Seth shoved. It opened with amazing ease and Sarabeth stepped past him and into the building. “The barrels start out on the top, where it’s hotter and wind up down here on the bottom row.”
The ancient oak door closed slowly behind them. It was dim in the huge warehouse, quiet and still. The light filtered in through rows of narrow, barred widows high above their heads, slanting down in bright strips on the floor. Flakes of dust danced in the golden shafts of sunlight and vanished in the shadows.
The sudden quiet was intimidating. Like standing alone in an empty cathedral. Even a whisper would disturb the silent audience of whiskey barrels stacked rack upon rack, higher and higher until they melted into ghostly, shadowy figures in the gloom of the ceiling seven floors above.
The silence lengthened.
Seth reached out in the shadows and took Sarabeth’s hand. His touch was like a low-power electric current that sent shock waves all through her. She discovered that she was powerless to remove her fingers from his grasp, even if she’d wanted to, and she didn’t want to.
“Come here,” he said, his voice hushed. “I want to show you something.”
He led her like a child down the center aisle between the mammoth racks of barrels, down the whole length of the warehouse to the far end where there was a space about 3 feet wide on both sides of the aisle between the racks of barrels and the back wall of the building. Turning sideways, Seth edged between the barrels and the wall, along the open space until he came to the back corner of the building.
It was cramped and musty, the air heavy with the weight of uncounted years. Hazy light filtered down from high above where sunshine spilled off barrels 50 feet over their heads. Seth turned in the cramped space to face Sarabeth, his back against the side wall of the warehouse, with the barrel rack on one side and the back wall of the warehouse on the other.
“There,” he said simply, pointing to a spot on the rough oak board of the barrel racks stretching from the floor up into the gloom above. At first, Sarabeth saw nothing. Then her eyes made out crude letters carved in the wood about even with her elbow. She bent to examine them.
“When I was a kid, this was my hiding place,” Seth said.
“J.S.M.,” she read out.
“Jordan Seth McAllister. Carved it one afternoon after Martha gave me a Category Five backside tanning for Super-Gluing Caleb’s butt cheeks together.”
“You didn’t!”
“Did, too! I can’t remember why anymore. I must have figured he’d earned it, but I don’t know what he did that made me mad enough to select that particular method of payback. I just know I decided to run away from home afterwards and this is as far as I got. It became my special place. My sanctuary. Even made a ladder so I could climb up to the top rack from back here and peek out the high window at the world. You can see the Quart House at the bottom of the hill and the whole rest of the valley.”
Seth pointed to odd-sized pieces of wood nailed in 2-foot intervals all the way up the beam into the twilight. Sarabeth impulsively reached out, grabbed the piece above her head and pulled herself upward, feeling around with her foot for the rung nearest the floor. She took another step, and another, but the fourth piece of wood came loose when she put her weight on it. Off balance, she twisted toward Seth, reached out and he caught her as she tumbled, pulled her tight against his chest and let her slide down his body to the floor. Then he made no movement to let her go. She stood with his arms around her as one emotion slammed into another inside her like cars rear-ending each other in a freeway pile-up. Time suspended, elongated as she stood unmoving, reveling in his nearness.
“It’s stuffy in here,” she finally gasped, and stepped back. “I need to get some air! ” She whirled around, made her way quickly to the center aisle and practically ran out of the warehouse, her shoes click, click, clicking on the ancient wood floor in the heavy silence.
She made it out the door, then leaned up against the side of the building, trying to regain her equilibrium. She was dizzy, disoriented and a little sick.
All of a sudden, Seth was standing in front of her. His big shadow enveloped her and blocked out the late afternoon sun.
“I know what it is,” he said quietly.
She looked up, startled. “You know what what is?”
“Hunger. You didn’t have any lunch, did you?”
“Nothing since this morning’s breakfast of champions.” She sighed out the words. Relief she couldn’t explain made her almost giddy.
“That I can fix. Have dinner with me.”
Don’t do it! Tell him you’re busy. Tell him you’re sick. Tell him it’s raining frogs and you’re getting ready for the Second Coming. Just say no!
“Yes. Dinner sounds wonderful. I’m starved.”
Seth smiled and pointed to a white house at the top of the hill. “I live right up there and I’m sure I can rustle up a meal and have it on the table in less than an hour.”
“You’re making dinner?”
Seth tilted his head back and laughed out loud, a deliciously free, joyful sound.
“No, I meant I’d get my housekeeper to whip something up.” Then he grinned. “Though I did try my hand in the kitchen once.” He paused for effect. “My cooking was so awful the flies took up a collection to patch the hole in the screen door.”
• • • • •
The center snapped the ball; the quarterback faked to the right and handed the ball off to Ben. He made it three steps. The offensive lineman missed his block an
d Ben got nailed by a linebacker. The force of the broadside impact squirted the ball out of Ben’s hands like a bar of wet soap. The nose guard caught it on the first bounce and was high-tailing it toward the opposite goal line before Ben even hit the ground.
Whistles shrieked all over the field. The coach was spitting bullets.
“You got pig grease on your fingers, boy?” he screamed.
Ben jogged over to stand by himself on the sidelines.
“Coach is so tough they say his spit’ll raise a blister on boot leather.” Ben looked up to see the big quarterback, Jake Jamison, standing beside him. “His problem is he’d rather yell at you than tell you what you did wrong. I saw what happened out there.”
Then Jake pointed out that Ben had been holding the ball too far from his body, and with one hand. Ben had grown up on the USC sidelines watching his father coach, had started playing peewee football when he was 8 years old. He knew how to hold a ball! But obviously he hadn’t done what he knew to do.
The coach yelled, “Ok, run the same play again.”
Jake handed the ball off and Ben grabbed it with both hands this time, spun off around the linebacker, sidestepped another tackle and was flying toward the end zone like a missile, leaving the defense grasping for air.
Ben ran the ball three more times before the scrimmage was over; he ran two of those possessions in for touchdowns.
In the locker room afterwards, Ben was something of a celebrity. Nobody had made much effort to get to know him before; now, everybody wanted to be his friend. But he sought out Jake, who was standing in front of his locker buttoning his shirt.
“I never got a chance to say thank you,” Ben said. “What you said, it helped a lot. I just wasn’t thinking.”
Jake shook his head. “Obviously, I wasn’t telling you anything you didn’t already know. You were awesome out there.”