The Stills

by Jess Montgomery

For a long moment, no one speaks.

  Just breathe in, out, in, out, slowly. As if she’s calm. As if she doesn’t feel as though George’s gaze is a lariat, looping around her neck.

  “George, I don’t think this is a good idea…,” Abe starts.

  “It’s a brilliant idea,” George says. “If my property is in her name, the damned feds can’t touch it.”

  George turns to the banker. “We will do as Mrs. Murphy wishes. Open an account in my wife’s name immediately, and transfer in funds from my account here. Set up the sale of the farm. And while we’re at it—” He looks back at Fiona. “But do you have the energy to wait here, while I set up similar paperwork for the Cincinnati properties? House, factory, warehouse?”

  “Oh my God, George, you can’t be serious!” Abe exclaims.

  This is better than Fiona could have even hoped for. She turns to Abe, glaring. “You are questioning my husband’s judgment? After demonstrating you can’t be trusted with a simple errand?”

  It’s cruel, this lashing reminder of the previous night’s events—Abe returning without Luther, the odious man turned to the four winds, likely to show up God-knows-where to stir up trouble, reveal George’s vulnerabilities. Shame dampens Abe’s eyes, bows his shoulders.

  He’s been a loyal soldier to George for years, never making a mistake. But somehow, chaotic Luther had managed to cause even Abe to err.

  Fiona presses her advantage. “What if”—what to call Luther?—“what if your charge is, at this moment, running his big mouth to the wrong people?” She reflects back on the awful Thanksgiving dinner from yesterday. “He said at dinner last night that he took care of what he was supposed to—whatever that was—but what if he didn’t?”

  George lifts his hand, and for a sickening moment Fiona thinks he means to strike Abe as he had the night before—or maybe her. Maybe she’s pressed too hard, too far. But George brings his hand down hard on the table, making the paperwork jump.

  For a moment, George’s and Abe’s gazes are locked. An understanding passes between them. What that means specifically, she can’t possibly know, but Fiona’s startled to recognize something she thought she’d never see in either man’s expression: fear.

  Good Lord. Why had they trusted Luther with a task so important that if he failed they’d both be imperiled?

  But it must have been important enough for Fiona’s question to strike at George’s confidence. For George says quietly, “I am serious. Property and other assets being in my name alone makes me too vulnerable.”

  He looks back at Fiona. She blinks a few times, as if trying to understand, and then says, “I can wait however long you wish, darling, to sign paperwork. Though—perhaps—while you and Mr. Chandler get it in order, Abe should take me to take care of the, well, the other errand?”

  She keeps her expression open, eager. She means the visit she’s to make to Lily—and hopefully pass on information about the tainted alcohol. Later—but only after she is sure George’s assets are securely hers—she can get word to the Prohibition agency, perhaps through Lily, about the farm being converted for bootlegging, and claim she had no idea that that had been the plan all along. Won’t getting word to the county sheriff about the tainted alcohol help prove her innocence?

  She’d rather George never know she’d told Lily about the tainted alcohol—assuming she gets the chance—but if, God forbid, George somehow finds out before she’s able to betray him to the revenuers, well, she’ll just say that she learned about the tainted alcohol from Elias, say he’d implied that Abe and Luther set up the plan against George’s will, so Fiona thought she was protecting George by telling Lily.…

  There are all kinds of ways to weave a few small lies in with the truth to make a shawl she can wrap herself in to appear innocent, beguiling, devoted to George—which is what he wants to believe about her, especially now that she’s the mother of his child—and innocent, guileless to the law and society, which is what they want to believe about women.

  Why hadn’t she seen earlier in life how easy it is to use those expectations to turn the game in her favor, rather than trying to live by them?

  Even her aunt—whom she’d always seen as a simple farmwife—had just used similar expectations to her advantage.

  Aunt Nell’s plan—to get as much of George’s assets into Fiona’s name as possible in this meeting—wouldn’t have worked if Fiona had known. For one thing, Fiona would never have gone along with it—her plan had been to slowly, steadily get George to turn over those assets.

  But then, Fiona now sees that that approach would have given George too much time to have second thoughts, and Abe too many chances to talk him out of it. Aunt Nell had been clever—as well as wise in knowing Fiona would need to be genuinely shocked at the idea, so George would not suspect the idea had been Fiona’s.

  Fiona ventures a glance at her aunt, longing to ask why. Why had she pushed so hard, nearly ruined everything? But of course she knows: her aunt didn’t trust her to be strong willed enough to follow through on her plans.

  Aunt Nell had said as much, up at the cemetery, though God only knows it’s unfair. Fiona had been a child. And yet she also sees sorrow on her aunt’s face, and a flash of something else: I’m sorry.

  Fiona wishes she could nod, acknowledge that she understands the apology isn’t for taking over, speeding up the plan she’d shared the day before.

  It’s for the past.

  That silly needlepoint pillow—the lumpy half she’d stitched, the smooth half Aunt Nell had finished—comes to mind. They’d finished the project, in their own awkward way, together.

  Tears spring to Fiona’s eyes. She blinks hard. In the moment it takes for her vision to clear, Aunt Nell is already looking back at George. “Can we get on with the paperwork? I want to catch the next train out.”

  CHAPTER 13

  LILY

  Friday, November 25, 1927

  10:07 a.m.

  Here on Devil’s Backbone, farther southeast but higher up than in Lily’s spot in Bronwyn County, the snow falls heavier yet more languidly, as if a heavenly pillow has just given itself a little shake and loosed a few feathers.

  After she’d left the courthouse, Lily had first stopped at the Kinship Inn.

  No, the hotel clerk had assured her, Luther Ross did not check in earlier this week. We’d know Luther Ross if we saw him.

  So maybe he had come on Thursday, as he’d said, with George and Elias and Abe.

  Then Lily had headed to Marvena’s. With the thickening snow, she’d felt nervous that her Model T would get stuck, so when she’d stopped at home to get her bloodhound Sadie, she’d also left her automobile with Mama and hitched up Daisy.

  Her instincts had been correct. Now Daisy clomps over snow-shrouded ruts and rocks that would have caught the tires of Lily’s Model T and then slickly held them spinning.

  At last, they come to the clearing where abides Marvena’s log-and-mortar cabin. From the chimney, smoky tendrils rise, their caresses barely visible against the gray sky.

  Lily stops near the towering woodpile. The squeak of her wagon wheel would have alerted Marvena to someone’s arrival. Sure enough, after a moment, the cabin’s front door opens and Marvena steps out, forgoing her customary wave. Her shoulders slump, as if from a deep sigh of foreboding, as if knowing that of course Lily’d be coming.

  As Lily spreads a blanket for warmth over Daisy’s back, Sadie jumps down and runs up to the cabin to joyously greet Shep, Marvena’s old coonhound, as he emerges from under the porch.

  * * *

  Inside the cabin, the greeting between Lily and Marvena had not been so jovial.

  Now Lily sips her cup of boiled coffee, offered up by Nana, who stands watch at the stove over a pot simmering with herbs and onions. Ordinarily Lily would tease Nana about her concoctions and Marvena for letting her mother-in-law take over her kitchen. But on this morning of stilted cordiality, Lily notes the redness of Marvena’s eyes. She had been crying—rare
for Marvena, but Lily can imagine that Marvena and Jurgis would have fought after last evening’s revelations about Marvena’s moonshining.

  This morning, Jurgis would be back at work in the coal mines and Frankie should be back in school, but Marvena had explained that Frankie was still asleep on her cot in the new sleeping room addition Jurgis had built off the back last summer, with a thick curtain dividing the room in half for privacy for Nana and Frankie.

  “How is Zebediah?” Marvena asks quietly.

  “Recovering at the Chillicothe hospital,” Lily says. “He has the sugar.”

  Both Marvena and Nana look worried. All know that sugar diabetes is serious, especially in one so young.

  “So, he wouldn’t have had to drink much alcohol to trigger his state.” Lily takes another sip of the good, strong coffee. “He would likely have ended up in a coma sooner rather than later, they say, and it may be a blessing the alcohol triggered evidence of the sugar now—well, at least since he was lucky enough for it to come on at home ’stead of when he was out alone.”

  “Zebediah’s mama—Dora—how’s she doing?” Marvena asks. “We ain’t seen her at church in a month of Sundays, seems like.”

  “She might have days left.”

  “I’m right sorry to hear that.” Marvena tries an offhand smile, but it’s wobbly, like her next statement. “In light of that, I’ve got no right to complain that you’ve come to take me in.”

  Nana, who has turned back to the bubbling pot, stiffens.

  “Thought to,” Lily says. “But a possibly more pressing case has arisen, and I could use your help. You cooperate with me, and I’m pretty sure the judge can be convinced to let you off with a fine—so long as you bust up your still and foreswear future moonshining.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You said you went back to it just for Frankie,” Lily says.

  “Yes.” Marvena leans her forehead against her fists.

  “Could you tell me more about Frankie’s situation? That might help me convince the judge to ease up on you.”

  “The asthma cigarettes Doc Goshen lauded don’t do much good, so Jurgis is ready to write off all doctors as quacks, and for all I know, he may be right.” Marvena’s voice goes so downy soft that Lily must lean across the table to hear the rest. “Breathing steam from Nana’s teas soothed Frankie through the fall, but now even that doesn’t last long. Doc says there’s a new place in Cincinnati, a children’s hospital that helps children like Frankie. But just getting her there, what’s more, finding money for treatments—” Marvena’s explanation staggers to a stop.

  Lily understands. Marvena doesn’t need to explain that though Wessex Corporation—owner of the mines formerly known as Ross Mining—offers better safety practices such as not using young boys to set dynamite lines—as Marvena’s nephew, Alistair, had once been forced to do when the mine had been under the control of Luther Ross—and pays better, it’s still in scrip. And Marvena’s pay, from working for the United Mine Workers to help miners throughout the region campaign for the right to vote on unionization in their companies, is welcome but surely not sufficient for the cost of getting Frankie to Cincinnati for such advanced care.

  Yet Lily is still angry at her friend—but not really for breaking the law. Why hadn’t Marvena trusted her? Had enough faith in their friendship to fill her in before now, ask for help? Now—in front of Nana and with Frankie in the back room—is not the time to ask.

  Lily picks up her tote bag, pulls out the revenuer’s badge.

  In the coal-oil lamplight haloing the table’s center, the badge shines brightly. Marvena stares at it, brow furrowed. Lily waits, knowing Marvena, who has just learned to read over the past year and is making slow but steady progress, is sounding out the gold words on the cobalt blue shield-shaped badge:

  Bureau of Prohibition Agent

  US Treasury Department

  hough a slow reader, Marvena is a sharp woman, and after she sounds out the words, the meaning and implication quickly dawn, and alarm tightens her face.

  “Has a revenuer been around your place?”

  Marvena shakes her head.

  “Heard of any poking around these parts?”

  “Nope.” Marvena looks up at Lily. “Where’d you get this?”

  “From Ruth. She slipped it to me last night, just before the doc and I left with Zebediah. Said her brother had given it to her, just before going under. She gave it to me in such a way that it’s clear she didn’t want her folks to know about it.”

  “So you’re saying Zebediah got it at my place—when he was watching my stock.”

  “Looks like.”

  “I never saw any revenuer at my place.”

  “But somehow a revenuer found it. Someone sell you out?”

  “Can’t see why. Everyone keeps to their turf.”

  “But you’ve started up again after more than a year being out of the business. Wouldn’t that make some folks mad?”

  Marvena gives a wry grin. “You know, Jurgis split most of the wood out there last night and this morning. So I reckon so.” Her smile drops, and her eyes glisten. “United Mine Workers gets wind of this, I’ll lose my job!”

  Lily forces her spine to stiffen, her voice to sternness. “I gotta do my job, too. One way or another, I have to let the bureau know about this badge showing up in my neck of the woods.” She thinks of Agent Barnaby Sloan—and Luther Ross—in her office earlier. Should she have shown this to Sloan? Not in front of Luther. Should she tell Marvena about Luther’s presence in the county—that he’s supposedly working with the agency as a mole in Vogel’s operation? Yes. But she can’t tell her. Not until she knows for certain that Marvena didn’t know about the missing revenuer. Agent DeHaven.

  “So I need to go check out the area,” Lily continues. “Need you to take me there. We can do it quietly, with you cooperating, and I’m thinking the judge will go as light as possible on you. You’ll lose your still, pay a fine, maybe, yes, lose your job, but you’ll still be here. With Frankie.” Lily nods toward Nana, now turned to stare at them, wide-eyed. “With your family. Or I can get a warrant, bring deputies, come back, force the situation.”

  “Mama?” Frankie appears in the entry from the new back room. Her word comes out a strangulated plea as she gasps for air, as if she is not standing in a cabin but underwater.

  In a flash, Marvena is up.

  “The water’s not steaming yet!” Nana cries.

  Marvena grabs a bowl from a shelf, gets out a pack of cigarettes. Quickly, she flicks a lighter, lights the end of the cigarette, kneels next to Frankie.

  The child’s gasps have intensified into desperate barking wheezes.

  Helplessness washes over Lily, just observing this. Marvena rubs Frankie’s back with one hand and with the other holds the asthma cigarette to Frankie’s mouth. The cigarette quivers between Marvena’s thumb and forefinger, but Marvena’s voice is cool, steady.

  “Just close your lips over it. That’s right. Now inhale. C’mon, child, inhale!”

  Frankie does so, as tears stream down her face.

  “Hold in that smoke,” Marvena demands. She counts to five. “Now let it out, slowly.”

  They repeat the process twice more. Finally, Frankie’s breathing evens out.

  Marvena stubs out the cigarette, checks its tip. “There’s menthol in the tobacco, and other medicines. Stills these little hairs—cilia, doc calls them—in the lungs.” She shakes her head as she puts the cigarette in the pack, the pack in the bowl, the bowl on the shelf. “Ain’t that something? Hair in the lungs! Well, it stops the attacks—but it ain’t a cure. And each attack seems worse than the one before.”

  Marvena scoops up Frankie, who lowers her head to her mama’s shoulder.

  Tears stream down Nana’s weary face. “I’m sorry I didn’t have the herbs steaming—”

  “It’s all right, Nana. Just give her the treatments every few hours.” Marvena peers up at Lily. “Nana’s treatments help,
in between the cigarettes.”

  But neither, Lily reads in both her friends’ faces, is sufficient, not in the long run.

  Marvena says to Frankie, “I gotta go help Sheriff Lily.” She grabs her coat from a peg by the door, and wraps her head and neck in a red hand-knit scarf—no doubt one of Nana’s creations. Then she turns to Lily. “Ain’t far. We can walk.”

  * * *

  The cold snatches Lily’s breath, thins it into a sip of air. Is this a taste of how Frankie feels when she’s having an asthma attack? Poor child.

  Lily trudges on, pushing herself to keep up with Marvena’s hardier pace. Snow restlessly tosses about on a swirling breeze. Sadie, Lily’s tracking hound, trots alongside, leaping from time to time at a random snowflake—a welcome sight of innocent glee on this somber trek.

  “I get the feeling there’s something you’re a-holding back,” Marvena says. “You’ve been right touchy all morning. I mean, aside from being put out with me.”

  Luther Ross.

  God help them all. Lily’s thoughts on the trek had wavered, pro and con, about telling Marvena about Luther and Abe’s visit last night to her house and about her encounter with Luther and Agent Sloan.

  If Marvena finds out Luther’s back in the area—and working with an agent—she’s likely to set out with a shotgun to shoot him dead. Not that Lily blames her. In addition to his and Elias’s contributions to Daniel’s demise, Luther had also played a role in the final days of Eula—Marvena’s older daughter.

  When she does tell her, Marvena will be furious about her not sharing this information right away. Lily hoped she’d come to understand. For now, the focus must remain on finding out if this revenuer’s badge means anything—or not. Then Lily can face her friend.

  Marvena comes to such an abrupt stop that Lily nearly stumbles into her. Marvena shoots an amused look her way, then points. Lily spots, then, the rocky overcrop, dark stained with ancient drippings of rain runoff, earth draped with tangled vines turned sere and brown by winter. In summer, with such growth thick and green and ropey, and rocks coated with moss, the rock ledge and the shelter it created below would be nearly impossible to find.