December, 1919 – Chapter 12

Welcome to chapter twelve of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 12

Wherever I went, the German followed. If I went to the bakery, he was already there, marble rye in hand. Outside the newspaper, he’d loiter on a street corner, near the valets and drivers. Through the steam of coffee dissipating into the frozen air, I could pretty much always see him, a giant half obscured in mist.

He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. He’d drop his hat down to cover part of his face, but rose above almost every bustling city crowd; an oak among saplings. I hadn’t called him. Definitely hadn’t paid him. And yet he persisted, on my tail until the moment I walked back through my front door at night.

I didn’t mind.

Virginia did.

“It’s creepy.” she said, watching him with a side eye as we stood outside the office near the newly paved taxi line. Hot asphalt mingled with exhaust. The stench of modern progress. “How do you know you can trust him? What if he figures out what we’re doing?”

I laughed. “This guy knows what mom made me for lunch, what story I’m chasing, and my exact shirt size. He already knows about the malt, the kettles, that sack of dried hops; I’d guess everything, Ginnie.”

She huffed, not panicked but annoyed. “Well he better be able to keep a secret.” She leaned into my side, jabbing me with her elbow. She locked her eyes to mine. A deep, piercing stare to show she was serious, but all I could see was a sparkling array of emerald.

He had kept the secret, so far at least. I’d done my best to slip and sneak through side streets on our sojourns to the brewery, but this man was a professional. I’m sure he had no problems keeping up with me, even with his massive size. I’d seen him in streetlight shadows when I snuck out the cellar door after a session. Whatever his reason for following me, it had nothing to do with the clandestine brews we’d been boiling in the midnight deep.

We’d produced three barrels in two weeks. Our kettle limited production size; we hadn’t dared fire up the actual brass, not with the news of police already clashing with smugglers and brewers moving south from Canada. Virginia had pawned her gun after she’d realized that it takes a lot more gumption to use the thing than it does to own it. With the money she bought our kettle – an old but sturdy pot from a soup kitchen – and an angry little dagger – white buckhorn handle leading to five inches of potential cuts.

There was plenty of malt to mash for a while, but we had precious few hops to work with. The small garden behind the brewery would produce enough bines to keep us brewing, even if we couldn’t consistently guess the bittering we’d get from the fuggles that my father had dropped into the soil years ago. That didn’t matter now anyway. It’d be at least six months before they’re pop green cones all sticky with yellow dust, spicing the air with pungent citrus and pine.

I’d found some cans of pre-hopped syrup in a dry goods store just outside of Cherry Hill, across the Delaware. The nasty goop compared poorly to real, grain-mashed wort, but the yeast didn’t mind, and I figured beer-starved patrons wouldn’t either. Virginia scolded me for even considering a cheap path, especially when my father had done all he could to keep Philadelphia beer pure and traditional.

“Here, taste this,” she said, holding out a steel ladle. “It’s sour and thin; no one would want to drink this.”

She wasn’t wrong – I’d stretched too little syrup too far – the beer was horrible, if still technically beer. “Beggars can’t be choosers?” I said, raising my voice with my shoulders and tilting my head. She threw the ladle at me.

“I know it can’t be the same as it was, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right,” she said, her tongue a paintbrush of devotion. “I want to be the best illegal beer in Philadelphia, no, the entire east coast!”

Her zeal made her even more beautiful, even more enticing and alluring like her passion fueled my own. “I agree,” I said, “but if we don’t have any hops, we don’t have any hops.”

“I wonder…” her voice trailed off as she looked up, pensive. “The IRS probably kept all those ingredients, right? And not just ours, but all of the ingredients from all the local breweries.” A grin stole her lips and wrenched them upward. “And I bet they put them all in one place, too.” She rose onto the toes of her boots, as if the climax of her idea was lifting her into the air. “We find that place, find a way in, and take what we need!”

I sighed. Saw it coming, but still faltered as the freight train of crazy came barreling down the tracks. “You’re out of your mind; you do know that right?” I asked her, making sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

“It’s not that crazy. All those ingredients…right there. Hops aren’t heavy. We could make off with pounds of them and be set for months. All we have to do is learn where they took it all.” She moved closer. The excitement manifest in a rapid heart beat and ragged breath.

“We’re brewers, Ginnie, not burglars. You think we can just break into a government building? Just jump up to the roof like John Carter of Mars?”

She paused for a moment. “Maybe we can’t.”

Relief prepared to sink in…

“But maybe someone else can.”

…and then disappeared, dashed against the rocks of illogic and insanity.

She paced in a circle around the bubbling kettle, performing her nightly deep-thinking ritual. She stopped, raised a hand high, then brought it back down as and even bigger smile took over her face.

“The German.” She said, triumphantly.

“What? No.” I said.

“Yea, it’s perfect. That’s what he does. Learns things. Gets into places. He’s everywhere,” she said as I sat on my stool, staring at the boiling wort, unsure of what to say. “It really is perfect, Jack. We ask the German to steal us some hops.”

“I could do zat,” said Schweinsteiger, almost silent, like a cat, stepping out from the darkened piping behind two kettles. “But you two will have to do something for me, first.”

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 10

Welcome to chapter ten of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week, unless the author is hit by a car. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 10

“Rumor has it you gave the IRS inspector a hard time.” McGuire didn’t look up from the newspaper he was reading.

“I suppose.” I said, standing in the doorway to his cramped office. He’d just brewed coffee and the silky smell of roast swam across the room and up my nose. “I thought it was all pretty simple, really. He asked questions. I answered them.” I wanted to sit down, but McGuire made no offer.

“Rumor also has it that you’re not going to take this lying down.” He said, lifting his head and looking at me, one eyebrow raised.

I swallowed the lump of anxiety in my throat. Only Virginia knew about the malt; William had suspicions, but was far too meek to speak to anyone.

“They’re my rumors, of course,” McGuire said, after I remained silent. “Rumors that you’re going to finally put that writing talent of yours to good use. Rumors that you have some insider information into the way this “prohibition” is being handled.” He leaned back in his leather chair, folding his hands behind his head. “Rumors that a certain paper might be happy to run that story, if it’s well written.”

I stumbled to respond. “Oh. Yea. That. I probably should write something, huh?” The fear decrescendoed, but I still had to beat the fires of panic down to keep them from spreading to my face.

McGuire smiled. “Beats transcribing notes. Here.” Across the desk he slid a worn leather notebook, brow and cheeks scratched and marred by years of journalistic abuse. I opened it to find perfectly crisp white sheets beneath the covers. “The outside’s not much to look at, but I had Jason downstairs bind a whole new pad inside. That leather’s got history; it’s what I used when I first started writing.” He said, looking equal parts proud and expectant. “Time to starting taking the notes yourself, Cooper.”

I wanted to reach over the desk and hug him, but quickly returned to the doorway. McGuire wasn’t the hugging type, but this was the first time he’d done anything even bordering on paternal.

I flicked through the pages, letting the sharp edges of the brand new paper pass across the callous of my thumb. The sheets fanned a dry mustiness into my face. The smell of fresh potential. “Thank you,” I said, quieter than I intended, “I’ll put it to good use. I know just the man to talk to first.”

“Good.” He said, pushing himself and his chair away from the desk, standing, and stretching. “I’ve been doing some outside reading. Is this something you could do?” He passed a section of newspaper to me, folded over, like he was trying to shield the contents from prying eyes. The national headlines had all been centered on the coming legal changes, but this one, clearly from a small-town paper was different:

“Pottsville Brewery to Weather Coming Drought with “Near-Beer”

A low-alcohol brew had been part of Virginia’s original idea, but I had shot her down, thinking it impossible. Continued brewing, even of something barely alcoholic, would certainly keep us in malt and hops. Maybe even give us an avenue to launder some of our other, less public projects. “Near-beer.” I said, pretending to ponder.

“Yep. Looks like beer, smells like beer. There’s so little alcohol it narrowly dips under the government’s mandate. I tried some last week in the District; doesn’t taste amazing, but it’s better than nothing if you’ve got that particular thirst for suds.” McGuire said, pantomiming a swig from a very large and very imaginary mug of beer. “From what I understand it’s just watered down regular beer.”

“Potentially a small beer made with second or third wort runnings. Watering down a regular beer would create something cidery and nigh undrinkable.” I looked up at the ceiling, imagine the tiny grist you’d use to brew a beer less than one percent by volume.

“Now you sound like your father.” McGuire said, breaking my concentration with a slap on the shoulder. “Uptown is yours now; I say you keep it running through all this. I’d put a hefty bet on that being what your father wanted.”

I hung my head, picturing dad. McGuire was probably right, but the mention of him, his plans, the rest of his life, stung. “We already signed everything over to the IRS. This would have been a little more helpful a week ago. There’s no way we can go back on that now.” I said. I hoped I wasn’t being too short.

“I’ve already thought of that,” he said, as he picked up the phone. “Jess, can you please send in Mr. Schweinsteiger?” A voice on the other end complied and then hung up.

A minute later, a hulking frame, nearly 6 and a half feet, ducked to step into McGuire’s office. He was lean but muscular, square-jawed, but handsome in an imposing sort of way. “Ah, Mr. Cooper, my pleasure. Should I call you Jack?” He spoke very quickly, words painted in a fresh coat of German accent. “Oh but how rude! Let me introduce myself. Tobias Schweinsteiger, esquire.” He bowed at the waist, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling fan.

I bowed back, and took the man’s hand in an overly firm handshake. The power in his hands bordered on supernatural. I thought for a second he was going to shake my entire body in one accidentally violent greeting. “Schweinsteiger?” I asked, butchering the attempt to pronounce his name with my American inflection.

“Ya. My family has come along way from raising pigs. Now I put them in prison.” He laughed. I could have sworn the whole room shook. “Gregory says you may be in need of my services?”

Gregory. McGuire’s first name, finally. I looked over at him, and he shrugged. “Services? What is it exactly that you do?” I asked.

“I help those who have been wronged. Especially wronged by bad people. I have a reputation, you see.”

“A reputation?” I said, looking up into his grey eyes.

“Yes,” he said, “I have been practicing law in the US for sometime now, but I wasn’t always a barrister. In Germany, zey call me Der Ritter.”

McGuire chimed in. “The Knight.”

Schweinsteiger reached into his coat and pulled out a card. With a flick, he tucked it into my shirt pocket. He then lifted his right fist to his chest – as if he was holding a sword – and grinned at me.

“I protect the innocent,” he said, pride now blended into his accent. “From what I have been told, you may need some protection.”

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 7

Welcome to chapter seven of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 7

The wind whipped, fierce and angry, in random blusters that felt like ice-cold fists to my face. I’d known some cold winters in the city, but the weather now seemed crueler, more foreboding than a typical New Year’s eve in Philadelphia. I shrugged the wool of my coat up higher, to cover some of the exposed skin of my neck. I hadn’t had time to grab my scarf.

Mayor Moore plodded beside me. Behind, Berman lurked, collar up and hands in pockets, hat pulled down to the point where his eyes looked like a snake’s. Moore’s mustached lip curled ever so slightly up every time another gust cut across our path; the only sign he felt the cold at all. Nate would be furious I was gone, but who was I to deny two such lofty and prominent branches of the Philly tree of law?

We walked in silence for some time, Berman herding us at cross streets, leading us to destination unknown. We crossed the Schuylkill on 3rd, made a left on North 20th, and then sauntered past a ghostly, snow-dusted Logan’s Square. No one in their right mind would be in the park on a day like this. No one except the mayor, a detective, and some poor confused kid, that is. Just as I’d had enough, and was about to demand some information, we stopped at the bleach-white steps of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul.

“Let’s get out of the cold, shall we?” Moore said, lithely bounding up the steps. Berman lingered behind, the ever loyal sheep dog. I couldn’t refuse, and my bones wouldn’t mind the warmth.

The towering stone of the cathedral swallowed us up like spiritual down, wrapping me in soft, yellow, candle-borne glow and subtle waft of incense. I’d never been much for religion but always loved the churches themselves; such grandeur and sophistication, equal parts welcoming and isolating. A priest shuffled near the altar, arranging a piece of purple cloth, while another disappeared into the under croft through a tiny side door. The church hummed with latent energy, drowning out the whispers of the two docents near the entrance.

“I always come here when I need to think.” Moore said, leaning closer to me. He moved down the aisle towards the front of the room, gently waving, coaxing me to follow. Berman leaned against a pillar, but didn’t remove his hat or coat. I felt nervous but safe, somehow protected by the sanctity of the building, if nothing else.

“Father Donovan knows me well. My family has been coming here for decades.” Moore said, kneeling and quickly crossing himself before leaning back against the pew. “Do you go to church, Jack?”

“No…well not for a long time.” I said. “My mother was raised Anglican, but my father always said he was too busy to waste a Sunday morning away from the brewery.”

“A shame,” Moore whispered, “no man should ever be too busy for his spirit.”

I took a bite of the irony in his words. “My father was never too busy for his spirit. I’d say it was his spirit that drove him. He was just never one for genuflecting at someone else’s altar.”

“Hmm, having met him, I can believe that.” Moore turned around and looked at Berman. He hadn’t even shifted his stance. “I’m sorry about him,” Moore said, “He’s harsh, but effective. I needed to talk to you, and in private.”

The oddness of the situation made my head swim. Why would a man who directly worked for President Roosevelt need to talk to a seventeen year old nobody from Philadelphia? The dimness and heavy warmth of the church made the situation feel surreal, a dream Nate would snap me awake from any minute when he found me asleep on my desk. But Moore refused to dissipates into nothingness, and Berman refused to go with him.

“I know you’ve been following McGuire, and I know McGuire’s been looking into my office and associates.” He tilted his head backwards, starting straight up at the bas-relief dotted dome. “I know you’re looking for some closure, Jack. Your father was a good man, and the way he died was…regrettable.”

My mind dropped its clutch, shifting from confusion to anger. “Regrettable?” I nearly yelled, rippling an echo all the way down the nave and back. The priest at the altar turned, demanding silence with a steely look. I nestled back into the cushion of the pew, heart pounding, rage rising. “He was murdered.” I whispered, though gritted teeth.

“No, he wasn’t,” Moore said confidently. “It was an accident. The sooner you and McGuire accept that and stop hounding my colleagues, the sooner we can all move past this mess.” He turned his head, settling his square-framed eyes on mine. “You have to drop this and focus on taking care of your mother. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you, or your family, or even your livelihood, Jack.”

My brain fumbled, and I dropped my words.  Moore raised his arm, beckoning Berman over. The sullen trenchcoat obliged, slowly.

“Berman will take you back to the Gazette,” he said, crossing his hands on his lap. “This is the last I want to hear about any of this. You do not want to see me again, understand?”

I forced a nod, as Berman grabbed the back of my coat and pulled me out of the pew. He jerked me back down the aisle and out the door, into a gentle flurry of the year’s final snow.

“Get lost, Cooper.” Berman all but threw me down the church stairs. “You know where you stand now, and it’s on the wrong side,” he said, knocking my shoulder as he walked past. “I’ll be watching you.”

I spit on the street behind him, but he didn’t turn back. The wind threw itself at my face yet again, nearly freezing the tears welling in the corners of my eyes. The church bells tolled, on and on and on, out into the coming storm.

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 6

Welcome to chapter six of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 6

My days in the newsroom drag. The constant ringing of telephones and smacking of typewriters used to annoy me, but now they act like a journalistic lullaby. If not for some particularly potent coffee from Marco’s down on Market street, I’d probably be waking up with indentations of keys and fresh ink on my face.

The echo of Virginia’s gunshot keeps me awake. As I heard it crack all the bones of that quiet night three days ago, back turned, unsure who fired or from where, I imagined it zipping straight for me, like father, like son, fates cruelly twisted together like some defective DNA. Even though it hadn’t hit me, or anyone for that matter, it still played tricks on my subconscious, and as I lay in bed, watching the moon’s silvery fingers through the windows, all I could hear was the explosion of powder and my heart beating.

I had since avoided the brewery, hiding beneath piles of notes that needed transcription, occupying my mind with the minutiae of McGuire’s notes, hoping to find some new information about the murder. The police hadn’t changed their story, but McGuire was certain that the details had been washed, dried, and folded within the walls of the precinct before ever being made public. That was the game I played of late; burrow as deep down into the prosaic as possible to shelter myself from the bomb blast of reality that had scorched my earth near clean.

Virgnia’s gun and George’s fist weigh heavy, but not heaviest. It had been two weeks since my father had slipped from this life to the next, but I hadn’t really mourned. There had been no time. At least I tricked and then convinced myself that there had been no time; I’d actively thrown myself into anything and every activity I could find – financial paperwork, business plans, supply orders – bent on filling his shoes without taking the time to fully realize that he wasn’t there to wear them anymore. Besides, it seemed like mother was doing enough mourning for two. She wouldn’t eat much and slept as much as the cat, curled up on the chaise in the front room, endlessly staring out the window like his salt and pepper stubble might come up the front steps any minute now. Andy the little silver tabby, had rekindled his love affair with her lap, and I could pretty much always find them, an unaffected pair, dodging waking life by not participating in it.

I’d only seen Ginnie from a distance. I could see the purple on her cheek, the limp in her left leg, but she was alive, and had somehow placated her father’s wrath. Her body looked pained, but her eyes and spirit seemed as determined as ever.

“Are you almost done?” The voice broke my concentration, and I realized I had been staring blankly at nothing, fingers not moving on the keys. Nate stood in front my my desk, shoulders slumped in disappointment. “I know you’ve got a lot in your head, Jack,” he said, trying to inject some wisdom, “but we can’t fall behind here. I don’t want to have to hire someone else.You’re too good to easily replace.”

“I’m sorry, Nate,” I said, “I did finish Thompson’s and Pine’s notes though.” I handed him a dense pile of crisp sheets still stinking of the iron and carbon of fresh ink.

“And those?” He nodded to the even bigger pile to the left of my elbow.

“Not yet.” I said. “McGuire’s is still in here, before you ask, plus a few things Anderson asked me to transcribe for the story they’re running tomorrow.”

Nate’s face contorted in a mixture of panic and pain, like a dog who had just bitten down on a bumble bee. “You haven’t type up that story yet?” His raised voice cut through the din of the newsroom; a sour note so out of time with the majors and minors of business as usual. Voices dropped, eyed turned. “They gave that to you days ago! It should already be blocked by now!”

“No one asked me about it. I’ll do it right now if it’s so important.” I said. “Give me an hour.”

“An hour! Well don’t let anything distract you. I don’t want to have to fire you, but not even McGuire can stay my hand if you end up delaying the entire press.” His last puff signaled the end of his huff, and the switchboard operators stuck their heads out of their stained wooden doorways to see him march down to his office, still raving to himself about topics unintelligible.

I began to type, slowly at first, mopping the emotional clutter from my brain. The metal letters crashed through the silk ribbon, one heavy clank and thud at a time. “M-a-y-o-r  J  H-a-m-p-t-o-n  M-o-o-r-e  t-o  S-h-u-t-t-e-r  A-l-c-o-h-o-l  E-s-t-a-b-l-i-s-h-m-e-n-t-s  P-e-r-s-o-n-a-l-l-y.” I slung the ribbon back across to the other side with a satisfying ching. “J-a-n-u-a-r-y  T-h-i-r-d  1-9-2-0.”

As I energetically hammered the return key to begin the body of the release, my phone blared a hello, nearly shaking its own hook. “This is Jack,” I answered.

“Mr. Cooper?” A bright female voice on the other end said. “There is someone here to see you. Can you please come down to reception immediately?”

I assumed it was Ginnie, or mother, or possibly even Elmer, who’d been hounding me about a signature for days. “I’m very sorry, but I cannot spare even a minute now. Can you tell the caller to try me again later, or leave me a message?”

“Erm, Mr. Cooper, I don’t think that will work. You should probably just come down here.” Her voice trembled ever so slightly.

I could picture Nate’s face, near exploding, red, contorted, if he came back to find my chair empty. “Well I’m sorry, it’s just not a good time.” I could hear someone in the background, a low voice bearing the rasp of a smoker. The receptionist’s voice faded, and I could hear a slight “oh!” as someone took the receiver from her hand.

“Jack Cooper?”

“Yes, sir?” I said.

“This is detective Keith Berman, Philadelphia Police. I am here with Mayor Moore. You have two minutes to get down here, or I’ll send two uniforms up there to escort you down less than amiably.”

The phone clicked, and went dead.

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 2

Onto and into the second chapter of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday. Links to all published chapters can be found here.

Chapter 2

I’ve always likened the brewery to a newsroom; a teaming hive of lives all running about on singular errands, but working towards the same ultimate goal. But where the newsroom housed literal lives, men in ties making phone calls and attacking paper with pen, the brewery overflowed with the sensation of life, pungent yeasts procreating, malt melting into sugary wort, nature allowing us to ever so briefly throw a bridle over its power. I’d spent most of my youth in that warehouse off of Market street, not so much helping as observing. My dad tried to instill a sense of work ethic in me, but there’s only so much seriousness a ten-year-old can stomach. Darting between copper kettles, across grated floors, over the new woven linen hoses, I watched men – no – titans, impossibly large and ribboned with muscle, heave bags of malt. They towered over me, sweaty, menacing, rough-hewn and dangerous, until they flashed me a smile. Sometimes, father would scoop a tiny bit of cracked malt into my hands as an odd, but welcome treat.

Nothing had physically changed, and the kettles still steamed their work into the cold morning. My father’s ghost hadn’t found its way back here yet, apparently, and his normal spot, next to the brew log, looked shadowed and sad. The boil bubbled subdued and doleful; even the birds who normally chirped and wrestled over strewn grain sang some subtle sorrow. The brewery itself, the building and all the equipment my dad has poured his life into, was in mourning.

Will spotted me first. “My boy, oh my dear boy. I’m so glad you came. You didn’t have to, you know. We can all take care of this place until you’re ready.” he said, clearly trying to be gentle.

“No, it’s fine,” I said, “I needed to get away.”

William turned and ushered me onto the brewery floor. He waddled, his knees unsure, and occasionally reached down to pull up the belt that was desperately trying to slip off of his huge belly. What he lacked in physical coordination, he made up for with wit and business savvy. “We’ve still got several orders to fill. Dobbin’s on 9th needs another barrel, but we’ll be late on our orders for Petsworth” he said, trailing off as he looked upward at the rays bouncing through the skylights.

A voiced boomed from the catwalk near the grain hopper, “Not that any of that will matter in a few weeks!” To those who didn’t know him, George looked frightening. A burst pipe and a fist of steam had badly burned the side of his face five years ago, and left his right eye milky and dead. He towered too, over six feet, built like some mythological hero. Father joked that George was descended from Hercules. “So, Jack, I guess you’re it now?” he said, venom sneaking into every word.

“Oh nevermind him,” said William, slightly under his breath, “before the war, he’d thought your father would leave him in charge, is all. I’m sure you’ll work together to get this mess sorted.” This mess. Now it was my mess. Twenty-three states had twisted closed the hydrants of free-flowing booze before the US had trenched into Europe, and now, even the capital had pulled the plug on any form of distillation. In part thanks to a dozen or so politically smart and stubborn brewers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania had stayed sane, and our brewery had survived the initial drought. But that “nonsense about the 18th” (as my father called it), stood signed, ratified, a hydra snarling its prohibitionist and protestant heads at our entire operation. It was only a matter of time before the gavel cracked, and the statist fingers of the law, supported by the Anti-Saloon League and the Temperance Union, crept in to ruin the business.

My mess. The only conversation I’d had with father about the coming tide amounted to, “don’t worry about it,” which was proving decidedly unhelpful now. I’d overheard him talking about using the brewery to make “near beer,” exploiting a loophole to skirt under the listed alcohol limits but still make beer and turn some, if much lesser, profit. There wouldn’t be much else to do with a brewery in a world where alcohol was illegal, aside from dismantling the copper and selling the space to some cannery or fishmonger.

“It’s not just that.” George had come down from the catwalk and now stood in front of us, massive arms locked across his chest. “He’s too young.”

I didn’t argue. This past October had been my seventeenth. While standing in for father during the war had tempered my boyish immaturity, I was terrified at the prospect of being in charge. I was my father’s son, especially temperamentally, but I had a fair share of my meek mother rattling around in my genes, too.

“I know, George. I need your help,” I said, stifling tears. The last thing I needed was to cry in front of him. He slapped a huge hand on the back of my head and pulled me forward until our foreheads were touching.

“Your father was a brother to me. I can’t change his decision now, but I can and will tell you what’s best for this brewery.” he said. I could see the pain in his one good eye. As tough as he was, the loss had lodge a knife into his heart. William batted at George. He let go of my head before nearly crushing me in a hug.

“We do need some sort of plan.” William said, “none of us quite know what Andrew was going to do.”

“We keep brewing.” The newest voice lilted in sharp opposition to William’s shrillness. Brow covered in malt dust, plaid sleeves rolled up, walnut hair tucked up and back, Virginia appeared from behind the kettle like a Venus just emerged from the fermentation tank. “We do what we do,” she said, a playful madness flashing across her green eyes.

“We brew. We mash and boil and ferment until they come in here with guns and force us to stop.”

To be continued…

Two Announcements, One Blog Post

Resolutions. Never liked ‘um. They always seem like psychological scapegoats, faux-vagaries and promises cobbled together to atone for holiday gluttony.

So no, I won’t be making any resolutions for 2015.  Instead, I want to announce my two big projects for the year. Admittedly 2014 was sort of punchy and random on the blog, partly because my neurons naturally fire punchy and random, partly because in the blur of re-adjusting my life after loss, I found it difficult to look too far into the future.

But 2015 offers a fresh twelve on the Gregorian, plenty of time to plan, and a coming spring packed to the petals with potential. I’ve always worked best within the confines of a larger tasks, knowing I’m working towards some discernible end, tackling the very large by splitting it into the very small.

Nonfiction Project: Homegrew.com

My garden embodied emotional peace for me last year, and as I was planning out what I wanted to grow this year, it struck me: why not grow my own barley? I’ve already got hops in the ground, so grain seemed like a natural progression. From there I figured I might as well reclaim my own rainwater to water said crops, and it didn’t take too many logical leaps to add wrangling my own yeast strain to the list of springtime yard-jobs.

And then, if I had all four ingredients, just sitting there all nice-like, I might as well brew some beer, right?

Thus, from the verdant loamy field of my brain, Homegrew was born. I plan to grow and malt my own barley, isolate and cultivate my own wild yeast strain, collect and filter rainwater, and pluck and dry some hops all to brew a beer completely made by my hand. Nothing store bought, ingredients wise. I will not, however, be building my own tools (he says now…).

I’ve already created the site, and will track every step of my journey via categorized posts. My goal is to turn the site into a searchable archive of how I did each step, the problems I faced, and (hopefully) how I overcame them. It’s sort of like extreme homebrewing meets extreme gardening meets extreme blogging. Sort of.

Please stop by and check out the new site at: www.homegrew.com. I already added some preseason content, but new posts will start rolling in as I do research, buy seeds, etc. I may cross-post on Literature and Libation some, but for the most part, it will be all original, new content.

Thanks to my friend Melody for the “From Seed to Sip” inspiration

Fiction Project: “December, 1919”

The last Session had Alan McLeod asking what beer books we’d like to see in the coming year. While there were many excellent suggestions, one collective desire sounded a bit louder (or a bit closer to home) for me: beer fiction. I’ve written some tangentially beer-related fiction before (here, here, and here), and many other short stories inspired by beer, but they’ve always been one-offs, standalone flashes, never anything of any real substance or scale.

In 2015, I plan to remedy that. Instead of following the traditional path of writing a whole manuscript, editing it, and sending it off to collect rejections from publishers, I figured I’d do what I (like to) do best, and blog the story. Or serialize it into 52 parts. One chapter a week, every Wednesday, for a year. Around a thousand words per chapter, give or take a plot point or two.

Without having to add a “spoiler alert” tag, the story is titled, “December, 1919” and tells the story of Matthew Cooper, a young man who unexpectedly inherits his father’s brewery (and legacy) on the cusp of Prohibition in the US.

The first chapter will go up next Wednesday, January 21. I hope you’ll stop by and read a while.

Cheers, prosit, sláinte, and thanks for all the support.

Brew Fiction: Twice A Maharaja

He knew it was a bad idea to split his soul again, but with the curved blade inching nearer to his heart and the garlicky, bearded breath of his murderer beating down on his face, there weren’t many other options.

He closed his eyes, whispered in a language long forgotten by man, and felt lightning blast through his veins. For an uncountable flash he was a bolt, pure power, a god incarnate.

When he opened them again, he was looking down at his old body; feeble, mangled, gasping through the blood and tears of a life about to end. He locked eyes with the white and hazel that had been his for 70 some years, watching the confusion unfold as the assassin tried to understand that he had, thanks to the Maharaja’s hidden talents, just murdered himself.

A copper pan fell and clattered on the floor, and the king leapt back, bloody kukri held out in front of him, still dripping lethal red warning. This body wasn’t as young as he’d hoped his next would be, but it was lithe and flexible, built to run and climb and kill. He lowered the blade and slipped behind a nearby pillar of ornately carved sandstone, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unlucky voyeur.

Silhouette sprawled across the bedroom floor in furniture and curtain shaped cut-outs of pale, lunar glow. The moon was full and fierce but half the room remained pitch and hidden, plenty of space for another assailant to hide. He eyed the corners behind the massive royal bed warily, for any slight sign of unwelcome movement.

Shiny fur, more obsidian than matte, slinked through the night, weaving in and out of shadow like it was made from, or part of, the darkness. Two jaundiced eyes ruined the perfected camouflage. The cat silently jumped onto the king’s table, disrupting the maps and military figures he’d been obsessing over only a few hours earlier.

“Oh, it’s just you?” He reached out and let the cat sniff his fingers. The digits were knobby extensions of an ugly hand, hairy, scarred, betraying a life of poverty and thuggish petulance. It had been so long since he inhabited another, that the sudden unfamiliarity of his limbs made him feel dizzy, and he grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling.

The sudden movement scared the cat, who darted to safety under the bed. The king knew he needed to eat and rest, but the scene in the bedroom had to be cleaned up before the servants came to preen and dress their lord for his morning rituals. He grabbed a earthenware pitcher from the table and swallowed greedily. Where he had expect water he got beer, malty and warm, left out of cold storage for too long. It felt good to have something in his stomach, and the alcohol ever so delicately shaved the edges off the pain still echoing in his brain.

Even though the body was no longer his, the memory of the blade’s bite remained, sending phantom messages to his nerves and flesh, who sung dissonant songs of pain in return. He had long ago mastered a way to keep physically young, but his mind was layered with a millennium of memories, a hundred different lives, some rich, some poor, some blissful, some agony. He wondered, wiping the beery froth from his coarse unkempt beard, what this new body, this next life, would teach him about the world.

A far curtain rustled, and the king turned to see what the cat was up to now. But instead of finding more feline antics, he found three men who had presumably entered through the window, all wrapped in faded gray linens, brandishing knives just like his. The biggest of the three looked down at the pile of bloody regal robes, then back up at the king’s new body. He opened his mouth and sounds came out, but the Maharaja did not recognize them as words.

“व्हत् हप्पेनेद?” The assassin used the tip of his knife to point at the corpse. “तेल्ल् मे व्हत् हप्पेनेद!”

He poured through his history, through all the books he’d read, all the places he’d lived, trying to decode the message coming from this gruff intruder. To buy time, he grunted, feigned exhaustion, even knelt in faux-fealty, hoping, assuming, that this man was his superior in whatever gang they represented.

Unsatisfied, the three moved towards the king, silky hisses of sharpened steel being drawn from leather following close behind. The Maharaja panicked for the first time in a century, unsure he had the energy to stop all three men, given how recently he’d changed corporeal residence. He held the kurki forward, but his arms were weak. The first parry knocked him back into the table, soaking the maps in the remainder of the beer.

Just before he was stabbed for a second time that same night, just before giving the man a chance to imprint another painful puncture, just before the world turn blindingly white, he closed his eyes and whispered those ancient words.

This time the lightning was more like fire, his soul an insatiable inferno moving between realms.

When he opened them again, he could see the hunched backs of the three men, bent over the space he’d so temporarily rented. The room seemed much brighter than before, but the colors were muted, as if some were missing. This body felt good; springy, agile, seductively sneaky.

The men seemed happy with their work, and went to rifling drawers for royal secrets and treasures. The Maharaja watched them closely, perched atop a bookshelf, his two yellow eyes the only sign he was there at all.

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”
― John Milton

The Session 84 – Round-Up (Part 1)

(My round-up will be in two parts, due to length)

Listening to Garrett Oliver talk about many beer bloggers and journalists “missing the story behind beer” this weekend at the University of Kentuck Craft Writing Symposium makes me especially glad that I got such a great (and varied!) turn out for my turn hosting The Session. I was worried that the topic might be a little too avant garde, a little too Dogfish and not enough Sierra Nevada. I was worried it might annoy some people, or turn them off with it’s open endedness and unabashed rule breaking. But I got 31* responses ranging from silent movies to poems to stream of conciousness word art, and each and every post tickled the creative corners of my brain with feathery delight.

*(If I missed anyone, it was not intentional, I just didn’t see your link on Twitter or in the comments of the announcement. If you don’t see your self here, send me a link and I’ll add you. You may also be in part 2, coming tomorrow.)

With this Session, I wasn’t just trying to be silly. My goal was to get you thinking in a different way, a perpendicular way, perhaps even in a way that opened the door to something beyond the contents of the glass. Beer seems magical when you sink down into the scientific beauty of fermentation, but again, to paraphrase Mr. Oliver – “Beer isn’t chemicals; beer is people.” And people are stories. And poems. And films and songs and photos. The beer is only the surface of an ocean of lives lived in, with, on, around, and because of brewing.

I’ll start with those who used my second favorite medium next to words: photographs. Stan Hieronymus – partly responsible for starting this whole Session thing – presented 5 pictures, not necessarily beer related, with a beer name and a brief caption. The simplicity of his post let my brain wander and create stories for each, sort of sensory deperevation through images, I suppose. My favorite was the picture of the old, worn stone stairs. I imagined some drunk monk slipping down these after hitting the trippel a bit too hard.

Bryan D. Roth also chose the path most-photoed, getting cheeky (possibly even illegal in some states) with his “reviews.” It’s good to know I’m not the only one whose cat harasses them when they’re trying to peacefully sleep in the bathtub after some BCBS. Also, good to know Bryan has cornered the market on beer, potato chip, and pajama pairings.

John Abernathy wasn’t far behind with his excellent snowy #beertography of 10 Barrel Brewing’s “Wino” (that, as an aside, I think he should enter into an @beertography contest on Twitter) or as it’s now known, for anyone looking for it, “16 Barrels.”

Following closely were the moving photos, mesmerizing machinations that seemed as if thousands and thousands of still images had somehow been spliced together by some modern sorcery. David Bascombe’s 20’s era silent movie (slash mime) throw-back of him tasting a lambic had me laughing out loud in my cubicle, especially with that dastardly grin at the end (I take it he loves lambic). Boak and Bailey (Jessica and Ray, respectively) cobbled together a montage that felt like a perfect nod to art-deco, fruit, and keyboard synth music/drum machines. Oh, and yummy beer. I take it they quite liked Thornbridge Chiron (It’s a party!), and it was particularly citrusy. I will admit I was slightly disappointed they didn’t opt for the creative flower arrangement beer review. Maybe next time.

Deep down, I hoped one of our musically inclined brethren would cover a song for us, but several people went the audio route, either way. Looke of Likey Moose (yes, I read your about page) compiled an eclectic beery playlist (to review Potton Brewery’s Shambles) that opened with one of my favorite songs of all time: Beer by Reel Big Fish. The rest of the list was pretty stellar too. I mean it featured The Cure and Elbow, so it was clearly very awesome.

Simon Tucker did something I really hoped someone would, and reviewed a not-beer in the style of a beer. His beer-like review of The Fall’s album “Grotesque (After The Gramme)” was equally hilarious and poignant. Being an American neo-punk kid (Op Ivy and Tiger Army all day), I went and listened to this whole album, and I think Simon’s review of it was spot on (and it sounds like he has great headphones that really make the kazoo shine).

I had intentionally opened this Session up to all writers, hoping to coax a few non-beer people into our weird world, and apparently it worked! Cameron D. Garriepy penned a vivid piece of flash fiction that captured how intimate sharing a pint can be. Her story definitely made me want to get my hands on a bottle of Spinnaker from Rising Tide (and read more of her work).

Following suite, in less fictional ways, were our poets. Dan at Community Beer Works wove an impressive A-B-A scheme short poem that had me wondering where and why they were alone that night. I guess there’s no reason to keep up the fight. Thomas Cizauskas gave us a operatic ode (but he didn’t sing it), confessing his true love for cask ale, ah, sweet mystery of life it be. To round out the poets, I’ll include Sean Inman’s complex and fascinating stream of consciousness (not really poetry, but poetic none the less) that was either channeling my madness, his, or some combination thereof. Lance agonizing gashes under necktie in time as sentenced, indeed, my friend (since writing this, Sean commented, and I figured out his nonsense wasn’t nonsense at all, it was a brilliant first-letter = blog post concoction. Well played sir, well played).

In the only attempt at the literally dramatic, Glen Humphries gave us a short scene from a play that could have been ripped from the daily stage-direction of any beer geek’s life. Especially that part about conversations where hops are never brought up. Those still exist?

And now for what I can only label “miscellaneous;” those brilliant smatters of beer-fueled wisdom and tap-tuned wanderlust that I can only lump together because of their eccentricity. Fellow NAGBW winner Alan McCormick had me going for a bit as he blatantly insulted me for all the internet to see, until I realized his non-review was a delicate, clever jab at Stone, and their well-known (and reviled?) Arrogant Bastard. Fellow DC denizen Jacob Berg waxed scientific about Lactobacillus, entertaining and educating us about Westbrook’s Gose and yeast in one fell, sour swoop.

Alan McLeod, author of much internet-renown, was either actually confused, or feigned confused by the topic, and gave us a short blurb from his book “The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer” that in a meta-sort of way fulfilled the requirements of this Session. It’s deceptively on-point, and I thank him for his humor. Dave Ellis offered a two-pronged post, the prior half about his dislike for generic reviews (which in general, I share), and the latter half a theoretical situation of drinking Mornington Peninsula Imperial Stout on the side of a massive mountain as a way to capture the awe-inspiring flavor (all in the voice of John O’Hurley).

Liam at Drunken Speculation went all graeca antiqua on us, and while Aristophanes is my classical jam, his apt chosen passage about the taming of Bucephalus from Plutarch’s Life of Alexander was surprisingly relevant to Dogfish Head 90 minute. If you studied the classics. And have no problem connecting modern beer to ancient texts. Can we expect a drunken translation of Parallel Lives from Liam in the future?

Pivní Filosof got all deep and recursive on me, delving into the paradoxes of fate, and the delicious dual-identity crisis that is Black IPA. Without knowing, I think we tapped into each other’s Jungian collective unconscious, as his entry is thematically, deliciously, tangential to my own.

Paul Crickard’s interpretation of the topic was among my favorite, and his romantic, thoughtful nod to either his partner or his long time favorite, or both, hid deliciously behind the head of literary ambiguity. Jeremy Short’s heartfelt defense of Coors Extra Gold really cut through a lot of the craft beer bravado, and I think can be introduced nicely with the choice quote, “Beer is a social drink and Extra Gold comes in 30 packs.”

Rounding out the miscellaneous post was #beerchat friend Tom Bedell, who quite literally tried to drink the new flavor (abomination?) from Jelly Belly. His pictures went very much appreciated, and that last one of Tom slugging down a “glass” of Jelly Bean Beer made this ole’ softie smirk. I too long for the IPA, or perhaps hop flavored Jelly Belly.

Bravo to one and all. You exceeded whatever random expectations I had, by a long, long shot.

More to come tomorrow, with more excellent writing, in what I can only call “beer memoir!”

“Brewing is hard. Writing is really, really, really hard.” -Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery

Session #84 – Alternative Reviews – Breckenridge Bridge

This is my entry for the 84th Session, hosted by me, on this here blog. The topic: Alternative Reviews. Warning: this contains lots of words (even more than usual).

David raised his glass quickly but carefully, in one, thoroughly practiced motion. The amber sloshed perilously near spilling, the gyroscope of his wrist and hand the only thing from keeping the bar from a beery bath. “Here’s to life!”

The cry pierced the air above the bar, setting into motion an avalanche of reaction: displeased glares, questioning glances, humorous smirks. Even the drunk karaoke girls stopped to look at David, who by now, was standing on the foot rests of his bar stool like some inebriated half-giant.

Geoff looked at him down the glassy length of his shaker, smiling through his sip.

“It’s good to see you back to your old self.” Geoff said, as he set the glass on the bar. He picked it up again, looking down at the watery ring of condensation kept afloat by the bar’s waxy finish. He set the beer back down halfway on top of the first ring making a tidy two-ring Venn diagram. He turned to David, “Maybe you should slow down. You’ve had a hell of a few weeks.”

David looked back at him, eyes half glazed by the beer that was worming its way through the folds of his brain. “No man, I feel great! Why you gotta be such a cop all the time?” He waved at the bartender, trying to get his attention through the commotion of a Friday night.

“Because I am a cop, idiot.” Geoff had already slipped the car keys from David’s coat pocket into his own. He knew David too well, knew his tiny bladder and even tinier tolerance, and didn’t trust him not to fumble to his truck in three beer’s time, when he was well beyond a reasonable state to be awake, never mind drive. He checked the time on his phone. “Hey, Dave, man, I gotta run. Cathy’s expecting me soon and I’ve got a long shift tomorrow.”

“Aw man! Just one more, come on. COME ON!” David taunted him, holding one fist-defiant index finger near his face, scrunching up his nose and mouth, part demanding, part begging, part unsure he should even have one more himself. Geoff laughed, threw down two twenties, and shook his head. “Not tonight man. Next time. I got your tab though. And your keys. There should be enough there for a cab, too.”

It took another half hour to process that Geoff had meant his car keys; thirty full minutes of crawling around in the stale beer-fog of under bar, looking for any glint of metallic silver of Chevy logo. The beer had done its job, and was still billing hours to the client of insobriety, so David didn’t even entertain being mad at the long-gone Geoff. He smiled at fate, and let the beer decide with infallible drunk wisdom, that the best bet was to walk the eight some miles home, not call a cab.

♦♦♦

The late summer air soothed his sing-along-sore throat, Vicks VapoRub on Colorado wind made of purple poppies, peeling pine, and that undeniable smell of coming thunderstorm. David loved August nights in Breckenridge, and for a while, lost in a alcohol-fueled flood of senses and emotion, he didn’t mind his hour long saunter.

He came upon the bridge, an old parker-style in need of paint with rust pocking its metal like acne on a teenagers oily forehead, and could smell the fishy waft from the river below. The crossing marked the halfway point of his trip home, that moment where he was equidistant between bar stool and bed, between drunkenness and sobriety. He took a moment at the center of the bridge to lean out over the rushing, storm-swollen water. Odd detritus lined the bank near one of the concrete supports: several mismatched tires, probably dumped there by Tom from the auto-shop on Lincoln; a soggy, algae stained futon that looked like a reject from an IKEA as-is section; a shopping cart upturned and abandoned at least a mile from its normal home at City Market.

The river passed by without noticing David noticing it, upstream looking exactly like downstream as if it didn’t matter where water began or ended, only that it flowed. If it hadn’t been so late, if he hadn’t been just one beer past buzzed, David might have dangled his legs down over the edge of the bridge and sat there a while, let summer sink into his soul, let the river wash away the night, let the peace of nature remind him how lucky he was to be alive.

As he turned to finish his journey home, some movement near the water caught his eye. A shape, tall and thin, a man down by the bank, near the access road, swaggering in shadow. Then he saw another man, a bigger man, approach from behind, thinking for a moment he heard shouting and crying on the back of the wind. He watched, too far to help, too close to cry out without jeopardizing himself, as the larger shadow slung something out of his pocket and snapped serenity in two with the crack of a cocked hammer colliding with primer.

Had his mind been clear, he would have immediately called Geoff, had the entire Breckenridge Sheriff’s department on the scene in minutes. But panic closed its powerful grip on his mind, and he could do nothing but run. Across the bridge, down a side street, through bushes and under trees. Muscle memory guided his feet, the world passed by, half buzzed by sprint, half buzzed by the the booze still sloshing in his stomach, and he soon found himself on his own front lawn, lungs grabbing desperately into the night for more air.

♦♦♦

A viper, two green slits on dark grey, stared at him from across the room. His eyes adjusted slowly like auto-focus on a dying camera lens, regret manifesting behind them like two jack hammers of you-should-know-better. 11:03. Not so bad, given how late (or early) he had slipped into the silky caress of his down comforter after his mad dash home.

He knew he should call Geoff, but was worried he hadn’t really seen what he thought he saw, that Geoff would just laugh him off and tell him he needed to go to AA. Even if David had wanted to talk to him, he couldn’t find his phone, and weight of his eyelids and slouching slurch of his stomach suggested it might not be time to get up anyway. He let his head fall back onto the pillow and watched the snake disappear behind a horizontal curtain of black.

When he woke again, the viper was gone, replaced by two turtles rolling on into infinity. His headache had mellowed into a gentle sluggish fog, like his brain was covered with an entire bottle of Elmers. The hangover had cleared enough, enough at least, for him to sit up without worrying that a fault line might open up on the back of his skull. He dug around in his jean pockets for his phone, not surprised to see more than a few missed calls, mainly from his mother and Geoff, both of whom, he was sure, were checking to make sure he’d made it home in as few pieces as possible. He brushed away the notifications and nudged the phone with his thumb to call Geoff.

It rang four times before being deposited, like some lowly letter, in a voice mail box. “Hey man, it’s Dave. I’m fine, just really, really hungover. This is going to sound weird, but I think I saw someone get shot last night. Like seriously. I was pretty plastered, but I’m going to go check it out. Meet me at the old bridge at ten and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

The sun had long since exited stage West by the time he pulled into a spot by the old deserted fish packing warehouse. From here he could see the silhouette of the bridge like a lattice against the night sky, lights from down in the city giving just enough glow to make the sky look eggplant, not ebony. The night was calm except for the wind that swept down from the north in sporadic, energetic bursts.

David was late, but so was Geoff. Another fifteen minutes disappeared into unrecoverable history with eyes glued to the street that ran into pines on the far side of the bridge, waiting to see a squad car come rolling past the treeline. Another twenty passed and still no squad car, still no Geoff. Sick of waiting, David decided to see if he could find any evidence of what he witnessed almost exactly 24 hours before.

The water chilled the air near the bank, enough for David’s arm hairs to unfurl, stand up straight, like a frightened porcupine. He moved to where he thought he’d seen the shadow scuffle, searching the ground for signs of blood or foot prints or shell casings, using all of his best TV crime drama knowledge.

If anything criminal had gone down in the midnight deep, the river had washed away all evidence. David was sort of happy Geoff hadn’t shown up, and hoped he hadn’t even heard his voice mail. He’d obviously embarrassed himself enough the night before; no need to add this little costly piece of police involvement. He turned back, laughing at himself and his drunken hallucinations when he smelled the unique smoke of a clove cigarette. Before he could trail it to a source, he heard a loud pop, and pinch a stab of pain in his left side. Slick, stinking mud stained the knees of his jeans. His hands felt numb, like he’d slept on them for too long. The river and his vision danced red, then white, then dark.

♦♦♦

He heard the beeping first. A whole cacophony of machine generated pings and dings, some high pitched and rhythmic, others low, growly, but random. Despite sending many signals from his brain, his eyelids refused to part, his mouth refused to open, his throat refused to produce sound. He floated, robbed of three of five, only smelling, listening.

David bobbed in the cosmic darkness for what felt like two eternities. He thought he was thinking about things, about philosophy and theology, chatting up Alpha and Omega over a pint of porter, learning all about life before, and after, and now. Voices from across the bar occasionally chimed in with comment, but one stuck in his mind like an echo: “You’re going to be OK.”

Voices outside the bar, muffled voices, some he thought he recognized, others as foreign as a Japanese tourist in Texas, started to become more common. He regained some audibility, mainly in grunts, but enough to signal to the distant disembodied speech that he was there, and should not be ignored.

Eventually Light snuck in, a piercing, awful light, as if he’d just emerged from some dank cave into the brilliance of a Gobi afternoon. Pupils constricted and dappled ceiling tiles formed a landscape, telling David he was lying down, in a building of some kind. A plus. Geoff loomed over him, a huge face hanging like a moon over his bed. “Dave!”

Two weeks later, the grape sized wound near his left kidney had healed sufficiently for David to be discharged. As soon as he was conscious enough to talk, Geoff filled in the hospital-induced blanks. He’d been late to the bridge because the battery on his phone had died, and he hadn’t heard the voice mail. By the time he had arrived, David was already face down near some old tires, blood seeping down into the river like a sanguine tributary. They’d gotten him to the hospital in just enough time to prevent him from bleeding out.

Despite many, many objections from the nurses, doctors, and Geoff himself, despite his near brush with death, David demanded they go out for a celebratory beer. Convincing him like only a best, old friend can, Geoff obliged him. “OK, OK. Just one beer. I guess you deserve it.” At home, David ditched the mint scrubs the doctors had given him since his clothes had been taken as part of the investigation to find the shooter. He threw on a fresh t shirt quickly, already imagining the lager sloshing sultry across his tongue.

He parked his truck and met Geoff by the door. The bar was lively, even for a Friday night, and a group of tipsy college girls were bullying the touch screen on the Karaoke machine. Geoff pulled up a stool, and helped David onto his, worried about disrupting the stitches. David nodded to the bar tender, ordering two ambers, two ruddy wonders poured perfectly into branded shakers. “I think this moment deserves a toast.”

David raised his glass quickly but carefully, in one, thoroughly practiced motion. The amber sloshed perilously near spilling, the gyroscope of his wrist and hand the only thing from keeping the bar from a beery bath. “Here’s to life!”

Brew Fiction: Black Friday Rules

Unsure of the why but well practiced in the how, Liam pulled the straps on his father’s kevlar vest tight, jostling the back plate to make sure it didn’t move and expose any vulnerable vertebrae near his neck. Reminders of past years nicked and slashed the thick canvas, letting the ballistic plastic below smile through as a dozen plaque-stained grins.

His father shrugged forward to test his gear, twisting and bouncing like a sprinter preparing for the one hundred meter. He pointed to the machete lazing on a stool next to the fire. Liam lifted the blade, watching the flipped images of the flames dance on its polished face, careful not to cut himself on the edge so recently honed to skin slitting sharpness.

It was too much ferocity for a ten-year old, too top heavy, too awkward and inelegant to be an effective weapon. But in his father’s hands, rough steelworker’s hands, it snapped through the air, a cobra striking with steel fangs. After three quick flicks he slid it into the scabbard already mounted on his hip with a satisfying shlink, like a key settling into a lock. “Dad, why do you have to go out?” Liam studied the flames, trying to scry the answer before his father responded.

“We won the tickets this year. I have to go. We’ve been waiting for this chance since your little sister was born.” He sank into the ochre couch as he bent to tie his boots, the tension in the room tightening with each pull of the black laces.  Liam swallowed the mix of fear and tears that filled his little body to emotional maximum. “But…last year…”

His father didn’t look up from his boots. “Last year was different. I was just part of the mob. I thought maybe I could…but we don’t have to worry about that this year. I got tickets. I’ll be right up front. I probably won’t even have to use this.” He pet the machete like it was his loyal pet, man’s best metallic friend. The boots tied, he stood up. Where his lanky, underfed father had stood twenty minutes ago, a soldier stood now, a man made for war, ready to face or deal death, whichever came first.

From the window, Brooklyn looked split in two: slowly dying fires twinkled down the shadowy streets of the burrough, while those few who could still afford electricity blared prosperity from the top of the skyline like a decadent halo. Liam thought he could see into those impossibly high windows sometimes, catch a glimpse of the people in colorful clothes watching little men dance across digital screens, look into, however briefly, the life his father promised to bring home for them every November.

“Why can’t you just stay home? Me and Jess don’t need a TV. We’re OK, Dad.” His father stopped adjusting the filter on his gas mask and met the boy’s unblinking stare. “It’s not that easy, Liam. I want to give you the chance you deserve, and to do that, we have to fit in. One scan shows that we have no TV, no computer, and that keeps me from even interviewing for a better job.” He dashed a pile of high gloss ads off the kitchen table, casting a rainbow of sales across the sparsity of the ground-floor apartment.”We need this stuff, and today is the only day I can get it.”

A scream shattered the glass serenity of the night, the last cry of some unlucky soul falling early to the violence in the streets. His father knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be like last year, Liam. I promise. This time I’ll be there right when the meal ends. Right next to all the stuff. I’ve got a plan to get there, my whole route home. We’ve got the gear and I’m more prepared than ever. This year might mean we can move to the tenth floor next year.” He slung the empty sack over his shoulder, trusting the strength of his own bag more than the thin white plastic with the blue and yellow logo.

He moved towards the door, heavy boots marching out a funeral dirge on the wooden floors. “By why, Dad? Why does it have to be this way?”

His father turned around to take one last look at his son before he put his life, and his money, in the hands of the corporate machine. “Because it’s always been this way, son. There isn’t any other way to make it in this life. Those are the Black Friday rules.”

“Thousands they grieve as the Black Friday rule” – Flogging Molly