The Whiskey Rebel

by David Liss

  These were not men made to mind their manners, and they did not like that they should be asked to do so. Phineas spat on the floor, that his contempt might be better visible.

  Hendry watched Skye’s face darken, and he responded with a grin. “I guess we can’t all be schoolteachers like you. We can’t all know about our p’s and q’s, but then, some of us are still men and don’t hide behind the skirts of an Irisher, so there it is. You have something to say to me, stand up, set down your piece, and say it like a man.”

  “One moment,” I said. “This is my husband’s house, not your camp. You, Mr. Hendry, must be the one to restrain yourself.”

  “Shut up!” It came from Phineas, and we all stared, even Hendry. He eyed me with such hatred, I feared he might leap upon me like a savage and slit my throat. More than that, I feared Andrew might confront him, and such a confrontation would lead to disaster. Perhaps not today, for these men were outnumbered and outgunned, but soon enough.

  “Phineas, what have I done that you would speak to me so?” I spoke quickly, my words rushing together, but I needed to get them out before Andrew could speak. I would make this a woman chastising a boy so that it would not become a conflict between men.

  “Muzzle your woman, Maycott,” Hendry said. “She’s brung you enough troubles already, hain’t she? Talking to lawyers and such. That’s right. You thought no one saw you going to speak to that troublemaker Brackenridge?”

  I felt a jolt of fear run through me. Had I done this? Had I brought this trouble upon us?

  “I only wished to discuss with him the writing of novels,” I said, pleading my case to Dalton and Skye, not Hendry.

  “You may speak with whom you like,” said Andrew. “It is no concern of Tindall or his bootlicks. You’ve been tolerated long enough, and now you are warned. Leave my cabin.”

  “The colonel don’t like to see a man so used by a woman,” said Hendry, who would not do Andrew the honor of hearing his words. “I come from the colonel and I speak for the colonel and I hear for the colonel, and the colonel don’t like to hear women speaking out of turn. Makes him angry, is what it does. I don’t much care for it, neither. I beat my own wife, and I don’t see no reason not to beat yours.”

  Dalton rose to his feet. “You must be mad to speak so. You’ll not leave here with your tongue in your mouth.”

  “I’m from Colonel Tindall, and if I don’t return, and return whole, the lot of you will be fitted for a noose.”

  “Yes, you come from Tindall,” Andrew said. “We all understand you believe it protects you. You speak foully to my wife to show your power, and I do not kill you for your words to show you that they are meaningless. Now say your master’s bidding and spare us more bluster.”

  Mr. Dalton scowled at what he perceived as conciliation on Andrew’s part, but Mr. Skye smirked with approval. Andrew had granted Hendry permission to state his business but humiliated him at the same time. It was perhaps as good an arrangement as could be hoped for.

  Phineas appeared lost in a different exchange, one that took place in an overlapping, ghostly realm. He spat on the floor again and looked up at me, his eyes dark and frightening.

  Perhaps sensing things could yet go badly, Hendry sucked in a breath and pushed forward. “I’ll say my bit then, as ye beg me.” He stepped over to the table and examined the bottle and the mugs. He picked up one of the pewter vessels and sniffed at it. “Is this it, then?” he asked, looking directly at Andrew. “Is this the new whiskey that’s got folks talking?”

  “’Tis the whiskey we have been making,” answered Andrew.

  Hendry drank back the mug. He looked inside it. “Tastes like the same pig shit to me. Looks a little different, but it don’t taste like nothing new. Maybe all you done was piss in some of the old sort. Is that it, Maycott? You been pissing in the whiskey? That’s what it tastes like, piss drink. Pisskey maybe you’ll call it. Be more honest that way.”

  Mr. Skye let out a guffaw. “Spoken like a man too familiar with drinking piss. Is it your own or Tindall’s that you suck down so often?”

  Something hot and dangerous began to form on Hendry’s wreck of a face.

  I think Andrew must have understood that we found ourselves in a powder keg, and he wished to douse all fires. “Thank you for your critique,” he said. “I shall certainly keep it in mind as we make the next batch, which perhaps you will care to sample.”

  “I would,” he said. “I would like to, thank you so very much, but I don’t think I’ll be able to on account that there ain’t going to be a next batch.”

  “You’re done with it,” said Phineas.

  “Think ye so?” Dalton took a step forward, and he was a fearsome sight as he did.

  “It come from Colonel Tindall,” said Hendry. He picked at a scab on his flaking chin. “He don’t like it. He’s heard that Maycott here ain’t clearing the land none. It won’t serve, so you,” he said, jabbing a finger in Mr. Dalton’s direction, “you’ll make your pissy whiskey the way you used to. I don’t want to see nothing like what you done with Maycott again. I want to hear people complaining they can’t get it no more.”

  “We will do as we please,” said Andrew. “You’ve had your say, and we’ve tolerated far more than we ought for the sake of keeping peace, but I won’t keep it forever. Get gone. I’ll hear no more of you.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. See, Colonel Tindall is your landlord, and he wants you clearing land. If you don’t, there’ll be trouble.”

  “Tindall’s got his own distillery,” said Mr. Skye. “and he doesn’t much care for us eating into his business. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You think so, is it?” Hendry asked, as though he knew something we did not.

  “I shall tell you what I think,” I said, stepping forward, “should you care to hear a woman’s opinion. I did visit Mr. Brackenridge, as you say, for I wondered if a man who cheated once might not wish to try to cheat again. I wanted my contract examined very closely, to make certain we did nothing the law did not allow. There is nothing in it that grants Tindall the right to tell us what we must or must not do with our land or with our time.”

  “Shut your mouth!” Phineas barked at me.

  Dalton lifted his weapon, though he did not yet aim it. “That boy’s lost his mind, Hendry. Get him out of here before something untoward happens.”

  I put a hand to my mouth. I did not want bloodshed, and I certainly did not want it in my home. And yet, I did not fear. I believed Mr. Dalton had the control not to lose sight of himself.

  Hendry did not flinch. He put a hand on Phineas’s shoulder and spoke gently. “Let’s keep our heads, boy.”

  He spoke as though everything were easy, and that made it possible for Phineas to believe it. It seemed that even vile Hendry had things to teach me.

  He looked at Andrew and grinned. “You can see my point now, I think. All this business with women and lawyers, it won’t come to any good. It ain’t wise to go against the colonel.”

  “I think it’s time for you to run.” Mr. Dalton raised his gun.

  Hendry shook his head, as though saddened by the depravity of those whom he tried to help. “I guess you’re gonna make it hard ’pon yourselves, hain’t you? I can’t say I’m surprised. Told Colonel Tindall it would be that way. Harder on you for all that, but it was never going to be otherwise. Let’s take our leave, Phineas.”

  The two left and closed the door behind them. The men began at once to speak to one another in excited tones, but I paid no attention. Of course I was interested, but I was distracted by the scene out the window. Directly before our cabin, Hendry was taking a leather strap to Phineas. He’d made the boy lift up his hunting shirt, and he whipped at the exposed buttocks. Phineas faced the window, but his eyes were tightly clenched. Then, at once, he opened them, and saw me watching. I ought to have turned away, but I did not. Phineas met my gaze, bold and unflinching, and, despite Hendry’s lashings, his manhood began to stiffen,
and his eyes bored into me with pure malice. I should have looked away, spared him his humiliation and myself the raw nakedness of his fury, but I kept looking all the same. I found it terrifying and terrible, and yet it was the darkest, truest thing I had ever seen.

  Ethan Saunders

  As we walked to City Tavern, I explained to Leonidas what had happened with Miss Fiddler-that Pearson kept a simpleton as a whore, that the Irishman had been searching for Pearson there and had left him a note, and that the note had been picked up by Lavien, who seemed not only to know what I knew but to be well ahead of me. I should not have been surprised, given that he had been looking into this matter for weeks, but I was nevertheless disheartened by losing what I had imagined to be an advantage. On the other hand, if Lavien knew all I knew, perhaps he knew of this alleged threat against the bank, which meant I would no longer be burdened with keeping the secret.

  We walked the distance back to the heart of the city and to Walnut Street, where we stepped under the enormous awning of the three-story City Tavern, the principal location in the city for business. No city in the United States had a genuine stock exchange, and perhaps taking its cue from the British model-where there was, indeed, a proper stock exchange, but all real business was transacted in nearby taverns and inns-the trade in government issues, securities, and bank shares transpired in public houses.

  The City Tavern was but the most principal of trading taverns, where the most powerful and reputable speculators plied their trade, but one building was not enough these days to house the mania that had infected the city of late. At virtually any tavern within two or three blocks of the Treasury buildings, men might be found buying and selling securities, stocks, loans, and bank issues. The success of Hamilton ’s bank had created a frenzy for bank stocks of all sorts, and the trade in Bank of New York and Bank of Pennsylvania issues was brisk. Much of this new business sprang from a general sense of possibility and euphoria, but much was merely because the Bank of the United States had millions of dollars to lend and did so at easy rates to help promote the economy. Hamilton believed in making credit widely available and making it cheap. The end result was trade, frenetic trade. Men bought and sold with wild enthusiasm but also created: new businesses, new ventures, and yes, new banks. These sprang up almost monthly, and though most were mere opportunistic adventures, occasions for selling worthless shares to men who hoped to sell again before the bubble burst, the trade appeared unaffected by the common knowledge of worthlessness. Hamilton had hoped to invigorate the economy with his bank and he had done so, but his enemies argued that he had not merely given the markets energy, he had rendered them mad.

  I asked Leonidas to wait outside and stepped through the front door. In doing so, I thought I had stepped into the middle of a brawl, for in the front room some two dozen men were upon their feet, shouting most vociferously and waving papers at one another. Each man appeared to have with him a clerk, who sat by his side, frantically scribbling down the devil knew what upon pieces of parchment or in ledger books. Their pens moved with such rapidity that ink sprayed in the air like a black rain.

  I stared at the chaos, hardly knowing how to respond. I must have remained there a few moments, transfixed by the lunacy around me. At last I heard a whisper in my ear. “Curious, is it not?”

  It was Lavien, and he wore a look of extreme satisfaction. “I wondered how long it would take you to find your way here. Come sit for a moment.”

  He led me to a table and called for tea. I called for porter. Our drinks arrived with relative dispatch, and Lavien leaned back, to watch the confusion of the room around me in which men in fine suits acted as though they had been possessed by devils. I could make nothing of it, but my companion watched the proceedings as though it were a race conducted with horses whose skills and particulars he knew well.

  “What brings you here?” he asked me.

  “Once again, you hope to get information from me yet offer nothing in return,” I answered. “But I will be more generous than you. I look for a William Duer. Do you know if he is in Philadelphia or has been recently?”

  He pointed. “The one waving papers in both hands-that is Duer.”

  Hamilton, who evidently had not troubled to inform Lavien of his lies, was now exposed, and I looked over at the man the Secretary of the Treasury was so anxious I not meet. The madman in question was not very tall. He had narrow shoulders and delicate, nearly feminine features, though he had a high and balding forehead and hair cut short with a dandyish curl to it. He wore a crushed velvet suit, dark in its blueness, almost purple, and he would have appeared comical had he not conducted himself with the most astonishing seriousness. I found nothing compelling in him myself, but the men in the room appeared to attend to his every sound, his every gesture. A mere shift in the direction of his small eyes was enough to change the course of whatever lunacy took place before me.

  “Why are you looking for Duer?” Lavien asked me. His expression betrayed nothing.

  “Oh, this and that,” I said. “Any thoughts on why Hamilton would tell me that Duer was not in Philadelphia and had not been for some time?”

  Lavien paused, but only for a blink of an eye. “I doubt Hamilton remains informed of Duer’s comings and goings. Tell me how the two of you happened to discuss him.”

  “How odd. I don’t recollect. But what can you tell me about him?”

  “He is the king of the speculators,” Lavien said. “He is both daring and reckless, caring for nothing but his own profits. In my opinion, he is plotting something this very minute.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know precisely, but I have seen him consistently shorting six percent government issues-that is, gambling that they will lose value. He is important enough that when he predicts stocks will decline, others presume the same and follow suit.”

  “Is that illegal?”

  “No,” said Lavien. “Merely interesting.”

  A fter another hour of commotion, the frenzy died down. Men settled at their tables. Clerks ceased their writing. Most of the speculators now turned to the business of drinking tea or left the tavern altogether. Duer sat at a table speaking with a pair of speculators Lavien did not know. All appeared easy and jovial.

  “You very obviously want a word with him,” Lavien said. “Let me introduce you.”

  “Why are you helping me? I thought you and Hamilton wanted me to keep my distance.”

  “Merely showing some respect for a brother of the trade,” he answered, his face typically, troublingly, blank.

  I did not believe. I think he knew Duer would prove uncooperative and I would learn there was nothing I could accomplish on my own and that attempting to meddle with a government inquiry would prove a waste of time. It is what I would do, were I in his place.

  Duer was in the midst of some tale about how he had extricated himself from the decline of value that the Bank of the United States scrip had suffered the previous summer. According to the little I heard, the value reached a low point and would have caused financial disaster throughout the country had Duer not convinced Hamilton to take action. Once Hamilton did so, the value of scrip rebounded. It was, in other words, the precise opposite of the version Hamilton had told me: namely, that he, the Secretary of the Treasury, had refused to be swayed by friendship and had defied Duer for the benefit of the nation.

  The story came to a rather abrupt end when Duer noticed us standing within earshot. He coughed rather ostentatiously into his fist and sipped at his coffee. “Mr. Levine is it? Have I not told you I have no more to say to you?”

  “It is Lavien, sir, and I am not here to speak to you myself but to introduce this gentleman. Mr. William Duer, may I present Captain Ethan Saunders.”

  “Captain Saunders? Where have I heard that name? Nothing good, I think.” He waved his hand, as though I were a fly to be shooed. “Wasn’t there some business about betraying your country? I’ve no time for traitors.”

  “And yet here I am, makin
g time for traders. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  He did not answer.

  “And what of Jacob Pearson?” I asked. “Have you time for him?”

  “Is he here? What of it? He has more to fear from his creditors than I have from him.”

  “His creditors?” I said.

  Duer clucked like a schoolmaster reviewing some unsatisfactory work. “Have you not heard? Pearson is in dangerous straits. He’s been selling off his properties all over the city, though it shan’t be enough, I’ll warrant. A reckless man, and reckless men always stumble.”

  “And what is your connection to him?” I asked.

  “I know him from about town, of course. He has proposed business with me on more than one occasion, but I cannot work with one such as he, and his current crisis merely proves my earlier suppositions. Now, I’ve given you more time than you deserve. I must go.”

  “One moment, Mr. Duer. Are you familiar with a large Irishman?” I asked. “Bald-pated, red-mustached, muscular?”

  “You must have mistaken me for a juggler,” he said, “or perhaps a bearded circus performer. I know no one of that description. Good day.”

  He began to walk away from us, and I immediately pushed after him. “Hold,” I called.

  He quickened his pace. “Reynolds? Your assistance, if you please.”

  I started at the name, for it was that of the man who had paid my landlady to cast me out, and it was the name that had so upset Hamilton. From the corner of the tavern came a rugged fellow, rather tough-looking in his stature and homespun clothes, a large wide-brimmed hat draping over deep-set eyes. The hat shaded his face but did not entirely obscure a massive scar that reached from his forehead, over his eye, and descended to his chin-a wide pink swath of old injury.

  He stepped between us and Duer and grinned in a most feral manner, showing us rather pointed teeth. Reynolds was large, in need of a shave, and possessed of an evil breath. “Mr. Duer requests the two of you would be so kind as to fuck off.”