The Stills

by Jess Montgomery

  Fiona ventures a look at Elias, but his expression is blank, his gaze pasted to the wall.

  After grace, moments pass as everyone eats. Fiona can barely swallow—the mashed potatoes are cold, the gravy scorched. The pickled red cabbage and sauerbraten George had insisted on, alongside the traditional Thanksgiving dishes, seem at odds with the bland turkey and green beans. But she’d taken several dutiful bites of the German dishes, even after the first one immediately made her stomach turn sour.

  “I managed the problem you sent me ahead to take care of!” Luther blurts, his voice booming in the dining room.

  The problem? George is just having the barn converted to a warehouse, a new gravel road added, for expanded distribution of Vogel’s Tonic—isn’t he? Increasingly, though, this explanation of George’s desire for this farm seems, well, thin. And what problem does Luther mean? If he wasn’t in Cincinnati, or here for the past few days, where has he been?

  A slight frown furrows Elias’s brow as he looks across at his nephew. “I don’t think we want to discuss business at the table.”

  “Well, George and Abe were!” Luther’s tone turns belligerent.

  The room goes quiet as George turns his gaze to Luther, who shrinks down into his chair, pale and quiet.

  “I—I believe my nephew is feeling not quite himself. He’s like this when he doesn’t eat for a bit—” Elias says. He pats his napkin across his sweaty, pale brow.

  George turns his stabbing gaze onto Elias. “Are you saying we should not have completed our work before leaving Cincinnati?”

  “No, no, of course not—” Elias starts.

  George looks back at Luther. “So, you did as I requested of you?”

  Luther nods.

  “Exactly as I requested of you?”

  He nods again, eagerly. Fiona sees, in the fear widening Luther’s eyes, that he had not done exactly as ordered, that he’d modified whatever those orders were, tried to be clever.

  Her stomach flips, as the thought slithers across her mind: No one out-clevers George Vogel.

  And yet she’d just convinced her aunt to go along with her plan to attempt just that. Being in George’s presence, seeing his stolid, uncompromising expression, the clench of his jaw, the way men deflect to him, inspires an overwhelming wave of second thoughts.

  She could just let George convince her aunt to sell the farm directly to him. If Aunt Nell won’t, will something happen to her, along the lines of Uncle Henry’s suspicious stroke? Her aunt and uncle have no children, and as their own living kin Fiona would inherit this farm.

  Unless Aunt Nell made up a will after Uncle Henry’s passing? Fiona wonders about this, as she had earlier in the cemetery.

  “Yes, yes, sir,” Luther is saying. He gives a chuckle. “Gonna be some sick men in Kinship this weekend.”

  Elias’s fork clatters to the floor. “Oh, sorry, sorry,” he mumbles. He leans over to pick it up, wipes it off with his napkin.

  For a moment, Elias’s and Fiona’s eyes meet, and she sees that his are wide with a sickening fear. Fiona stiffens. What did Luther mean by sick men in Kinship? What has George set in motion?

  “Good,” Abe says. “And the other matter we asked you to expedite?”

  “Oh—oh yes,” Luther says. “I had the meeting just like you said—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, stop loitering in the doorway and get in here!” George hollers at a man, one of his guards, standing in the entry between the dining room and the parlor, holding a plate of food and trying to eat quietly, his forearm brushing the revolver holstered to his side with every effort to spear a bite. “I hardly think anyone is going to find me here,” he adds, as if he himself had not been the one to order armed guards to precede him to the farm.

  The man comes in, puts his plate at the one empty spot, hesitates.

  “For God’s sake, no one is sitting there. Sit!” George commands.

  For a moment, the lights glinting off the crystal blur and fuse in Fiona’s vision. She sees only a watery whiteness, as the legs of the chair—that should have been Leon’s seat—rub against the thin dining room rug.

  George had promised her Leon would visit for Thanksgiving—then cavalierly broken the promise. And now, sitting in what was her Uncle Henry’s chair—her sweet uncle Henry, who’d saved her when she was just fourteen, whose death Aunt Nell has put at George’s feet—George motions for a stooge to take what should have been Leon’s chair.

  Fiona blinks, and her vision is clear.

  Fiona doesn’t just want to survive. That’s all she’s done, really, all her life. Survived at the goodwill of men—Uncle Henry, Martin, now George. George’s goodwill is fickle. No, she’s weary of merely surviving.

  She wants to be in control of her life. To thrive.

  She puts her fork down, her hand across her midriff. Too soon, of course, to feel life stirring within her. She spreads her hand protectively, centers her will on the only pocket of warmth in her heart grown otherwise cold, a warmth for Leon, for this child, for their future through her.

  “Well, my apologies that the turkey is a little dry this year,” Aunt Nell says to the guard, then looks across at George.

  “It’s fine,” George says gruffly. “Now, I’m sure you’ve been enjoying your visit with my lovely wife—your dear niece—which is exactly why I sent her ahead. I know how much she’s missed being in this area, and—” George stops, freezes, at a sudden, horrific strangling sound, followed by a thready moan.

  Fiona turns—as they all do—to the source: Elias, slumping in his seat.

  CHAPTER 5

  LILY

  Thursday, November 24, 1927

  2:50 p.m.

  “Plain and simple—I wanted money to get Frankie to a treatment center for her asthma. One he told us about.” Marvena points at Dr. Goshen. “That’s why I started up a new still. For Frankie.”

  Marvena says her daughter’s name like a sigh, the sweet, simple Frankie exhaling into the room, yet at the same time drawing all the air out of it. Jurgis stares at Marvena, first with disbelief, then—worse—with no surprise at all. Only disappointment.

  Sorrow rushes Lily’s heart. Yet she’s angry, too. Not so much at the moonshining itself, but at Marvena’s deceptions, her willingness to profess one belief, yet act in opposition to it.

  Benjamin walks over to Lily. Sweet pinpricks run up Lily’s arm as Benjamin briefly brushes against her dress sleeve, as he looks at her with a kind, reassuring gaze: All will be well.

  He says to the group, “I’m taking a walk down to the creek.” Lily understands: he is not part of this argument.

  Tom looks at Alistair, says, “Come on. We’re joining him.”

  Alistair starts to protest, but Tom shakes his head, then says to Marvena, “Sis, you know I’d do anything for you—for my niece. All you had to do was ask—”

  “For company scrip?” Marvena asks harshly. “Treatment centers don’t take that.”

  His shoulders slump as if in defeat as he leaves the parlor with Alistair.

  Lily refocuses on Dr. Goshen and Ruth Harkins, still standing in the open doorway, cold swirling into the parlor, wrapping around throats and hearts.

  Ruth shivers. Lily puts a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Please, come in, get warm.”

  Marvena clears her throat, looks at Lily. “Frankie’s breathing problems just keep getting worse,” Marvena says. “Nana’s teas and tinctures offer ease—but they come back worse’n before.” She gives a slicing look at the doctor, rubbing his hands before the fire. “We went to the doctor, here, and he done sold us asthma cigarettes, said it would ease her troubles. Now there’s times she can barely breathe.”

  Dr. Goshen gives Marvena a hard look. “I prescribed the best—Page’s Inhalers! Are you sure she’s exhausting her lungs of all air before she inhales the smoke? Holding it there for several seconds?” He takes off his fine wool overcoat, so new that Lily recognizes it from the window of the men’s clothing store in
Kinship, and tosses it where Benjamin had been seated.

  “We had her follow the directions, like you said,” Marvena says. “But it did no good—”

  “We were foolish to put our faith in man’s medicine!” Jurgis exclaims. “We must have faith, keep prayin’ for her; if you just had more faith—”

  “Faith didn’t work for Mama, either.” Ruth’s voice softly threads around the room, stitching everyone’s gaze to her for a moment. “When the doctor couldn’t help, we left the Presbyterian church in Kinship to go to their church.” She nods toward Jurgis and Marvena. “Tried their healing ways. That didn’t work, either. So we left there, too.”

  Oh. So that’s why she hadn’t seen the Harkinses at church in a while. Lily’s heart cracks at Ruth’s flat, resigned tone.

  “Ruth’s right. We’ve tried faith,” Marvena rumbles on, steady as a train barreling down.

  “But you wouldn’t let Frankie—” Jurgis starts.

  “If the Almighty wants to help Frankie, then he might oughta just do it—but I’m done putting my faith in him!” Tears stream down Marvena’s face. “When’s he ever intervened—for any of those we lost? So yes, I went back to shining, for the money to get Frankie to the treatment center he told us about.”

  Dr. Goshen shakes his head. “Don’t draw me into this—”

  “Faith in the man who sold us those worthless asthma cigarettes?” Jurgis’s tone twists with disgust. “You have to have faith in God, Marvena, really believe—”

  “I’ve believed! Mayhap I don’t have a good enough or a deep enough heart. Mayhap I’m too evil, too dark, the things I’ve thought and done—”

  Jurgis rushes to her then, puts his hands to his wife’s face. “Don’t say that, Marvena; that’s not true; you’re a good person … you just have to believe.…”

  Marvena gently but firmly pulls his hands from her face. “No, Jurgis. I need a solution and God ain’t listening, not to the likes of me. And mayhap God wants us to find our own answers. May be that having faith means using the wits the Good Lord gave us, best we can.”

  Jurgis drops his head.

  Marvena looks at Lily. “You gonna take me in?”

  Lily considers what she’d said earlier, about how it is not her job to have an opinion about Prohibition one way or another. It is her job to enforce the law when she knows—or has reason to suspect—it has been violated. And here Marvena has confessed.

  Lily feels a tug on her sleeve. She looks at Ruth.

  “My brother. All I know is he came home sick yesterday. It was late, after school woulda let out, but still some light, hanging on to the sky.”

  All right. So sometime between four and six in the afternoon.

  “Told me he’d been mindin’ her still.” Ruthie nods toward Marvena. “Then he fell asleep and won’t wake up. So I came today to get the doctor.”

  “Sadly, Mrs. Harkins has pancreatic cancer. There’s nothing I”—Dr. Goshen cuts Jurgis a hard look—“nor God can do. It’s just her time.”

  “But it’s not Zeb’s!” Ruth jumps up.

  Lily’s heart twists at the conviction of this girl. No one can know when it’s their time—and maybe it is Zebediah’s, young though he is.

  Then, refocusing on the purpose of Ruth’s desperate trek, and Dr. Goshen’s visit, Lily thinks of a quote from Wayne Wheeler, an advocate from the Anti-Saloon League, headquartered just northeast of here near Columbus, Ohio’s state capitol. He’d said, The government is under no obligation to furnish the people with alcohol that is drinkable when the Constitution prohibits it. The person who drinks this industrial alcohol is a deliberate suicide.…

  The quote, reported far and wide and in her local newspaper just last month, had so horrified Lily that it stuck with her, word for word. It could only be deliberate if the drinker was fully informed. She finds the law requiring deadly methanol to be added to industrial alcohol to be reprehensible, no matter the twisted logic defending it. Maybe, when she meets Mabel Walker Willebrandt, she’ll ask how a government that’s supposed to help and educate people could do such a thing.

  Now she looks at Marvena. “There have been reports in the bigger cities of people drinking industrial alcohol, or drinks made from that. But it’s lethal—as of earlier this year, the law now requires methanol to be added to make industrial alcohol undrinkable. Some bootleggers have been trying to dilute or mix it to make it drinkable. I gotta ask—”

  Marvena’s face darkens, and her hands clench by her sides. “You think I’ve been using alcohol the government’s tainted to kill people?”

  “The doctor needs to know what you’ve used, maybe not knowing the industrial alcohol is lethal, maybe hoping to brew product quickly to have plenty to sell,” Lily says. “Yours is not the only child whose life is at risk. I’ll worry about what to do about your violation of the law later. Right now, we need to help Zebediah.”

  “I didn’t use anything except corn. Pure spring water. Good steel kettles and pipes. Clean canning jars. My shine is pure.”

  Dr. Goshen sighs. “Well, something’s put Zebediah into a coma—which is beyond my ability to treat.” He looks at Lily. “Given how tragically the mother’s case has turned, I may not be able to convince them to get to the hospital over in Chillicothe.”

  “I can go with you to the family, but I can’t force them to send Zebediah, not by law—”

  Lily stops as Ruth’s hand laces into hers. “Please, Sheriff Lily. My daddy says you’re good people. If he’ll listen to anyone, it’s you.”

  Lily gazes out the window at snow falling thickly now in quickening darkness. She turns to Ruth. “How slick was the road down from your place to Kinship Road?”

  “The mule path was already pretty slick. From the sharpness of the wind, more sleet and snow is coming.”

  Lily knows neither her nor the doctor’s Model T will make it all the way up to the Harkins place, not on a steep, sleet-slicked dirt path.

  She looks evenly at Dr. Goshen. “You will drive up over to where Possum Creek Run branches off Kinship Road, just outside of Rossville. Leave your automobile there.”

  Dr. Goshen frowns, shakes his head. “I just bought the newest model. Yours, though, has the sheriff’s star, so people passing by will be less likely to vandalize—”

  Lily grits her teeth to hold back the hard words that fly to the forefront of her thoughts. Dammit, what “people,” on a Thanksgiving evening? Doesn’t doctoring sick people matter more than his sharp new motoring machine—which, as such, would be faster and more reliable?

  There’s no time to argue—or to ask Marvena the flurry of questions swirling in her mind. Between the boy’s condition and the coming dark and storm, there is only time for one focus: helping the boy.

  As Lily turns toward Ruth, she spots Benjamin bringing a mug of warm milk to Ruth. Oh, so he hadn’t gone to the creek after all. He’d filled in Mama, no doubt, who’d warmed up the beverage. As Ruth takes the mug, gulps eagerly, Benjamin stares at Lily, eyes shining with admiration. How much has he heard? Lily brushes off the thought—no time for foolishness now.

  Ruth licks milk from the top of her lip. Lily takes the empty mug gently from her, hands it back to Benjamin, while saying to Ruth, “Dr. Goshen will take my automobile, then. We’ll follow with my mule and wagon. Then you can direct us up to your house. That way, if we get your pa to agree for Zebediah to be taken to the hospital—”

  Ruth’s chin tremors and Lily wishes she could scoop her up in a hug. But it wouldn’t be right, not yet, for such an embrace would harken of comfort after loss, and she can’t take hope away from Ruth. So instead she amends her statement. “When your pa agrees, either he or you can go with the doctor to the hospital—”

  The doctor moans—this is more than he’d bargained for. Lily gives him a coal-hard look, hopes he can read her meaning: You’ll go, or I’ll requisition that automobile of yours.

  Lily turns back to Ruth. “Does that plan sit well with you?”

 
Ruth’s eyes widen, at last awash with relief and fear and hope, mingling emotions that prick tears. She dashes them away with the back of her hand and nods.

  CHAPTER 6

  FIONA

  Thursday, November 24, 1927

  4:00 p.m.

  “Are you feeling better?” Fiona asks.

  Elias does not react. Eyes closed, he lies so still under the chenille bedspread that for a moment Fiona thinks he’s passed. But his eyelids flutter open and he gives a small nod.

  “Water?” Elias’s voice is a thin, crackly croak.

  Fiona pours a small glass from the pitcher on the side table. She holds the glass to his lips, helps him drink.

  “Luther?” Elias’s eyes are wide with worry, concern for his nephew outweighing any fears he has for himself. It would be touching if Fiona didn’t find Luther so grotesque, if Aunt Nell hadn’t insinuated that Elias had had a hand in helping George figure out a plan to kill Uncle Henry. “Where, where is he?”

  “He went with Abe to find Dr. Goshen,” Fiona says. “He said he knows the heart pills you need, that Dr. Goshen should have them on hand.”

  She leaves off that Abe hadn’t wanted Luther to go with him—couldn’t Luther just tell him the type required? But as two of George’s men helped Elias up the stairs, George had given a dismissive wave of his hand. Take Luther, he’d ordered. Before he gives us all a coronary! Fiona understood—Luther would fuss and dramatically holler, more so than usual. George can barely tolerate him.

  And Abe, always the good foot soldier, had complied.

  A few minutes after Abe and Luther had left, the two men came back downstairs, only to find George ordering Aunt Nell, Go keep an eye on him. Fiona quickly assessed—she didn’t want Aunt Nell alone with Elias. What if she directly accused him? Blurted out the discussion they’d shared at Uncle Henry’s grave?

  I’ll help, Fiona had said.

  Klara can do that.

  And give Klara a chance to grill Aunt Nell about what they’d talked about? On the other hand, leaving Aunt Nell alone meant that George might make an offer on the farmhouse and Aunt Nell—just to end the nightmare that had overtaken her house—might agree.