Chapter 17

I had to tell. I had no choice. It was the Jones Five and Ten Law, passed a couple of years earlier. I was well aware of what it said. Anyone who knew of the sale of illicit liquor but didn’t report it was just as guilty of the crime, punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

I stood in the hallway outside Mother and Daddy’s room, lifted my hand to the door, hesitated.

Calvin Fludd deserved to be arrested. He had to be punished both for bootlegging and for beating up his own son. Now that I knew what was happening, how could I let it go on? How could I not turn him in?

Then again, if I told, what would happen to Jimmy? Wouldn’t Old Man Fludd notice the missing bottles, the ones Jimmy had pilfered tonight, and from there figure out where the leak was? Surely he would come to realize Jimmy knew about the stash. Not only knew about it but had helped himself to it. If the place was raided and Fludd arrested, no doubt he’d figure Jimmy had turned him in.

And Marcus. What about Marcus? I leaned my forehead against the door and broke into tears. I had a feeling I was somehow going to lose him over this, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it. The cords of my heart were all tied up around him, and I didn’t want to have to disentangle myself and step away. He’d made me happy, really happy, in a way I’d never been. And yet, I couldn’t deny what was true. At the tip of my anger, the hottest part of the flame, was a sense of betrayal. Marcus wasn’t who I thought he was. And he was never going to be who I wanted him to be. He knew the liquor was being sold at the station, and he wasn’t willing to do anything about it.

I took one step back from the door just as it opened. Daddy stood there, staring at me with puzzled eyes. “Eve? Darling, what’s the matter?”

I fell into his arms and cried even more loudly, burying my face in his shoulder, dripping tears onto his shirt and the strap of his suspenders. He shut the door behind us and ushered me into the room.

“Sweetheart,” Mother cried. “What on earth is wrong?”

I sat down on one of the chairs and took several deep breaths, trying to compose myself. Mother handed me one of Daddy’s handkerchiefs, then sat on the footstool and put her hands on my shoulders. She was already in her robe and slippers and had been brushing out her hair, readying for bed.

“Sweetheart,” she said again, “can you tell us what’s wrong?”

Daddy sat in the opposite chair and waited.

My face burned and my head felt heavy, like it had turned to stone. I wiped at my tears and looked at Mother and Daddy’s expectant, fearful faces. “It’s Calvin Fludd,” I began, and by the time I finished my story their faces had run the gamut from concern to disbelief to horror almost equal to my own.

Mother turned to Daddy. “Do you suppose Cyrus knows they’re selling liquor right across the street?”

Daddy took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m going to find out.”

Mother stayed behind while Daddy and I went off to find Uncle Cy. Thomas, the night clerk, was behind the front desk looking at the guest register. He smiled wanly as we approached him.

“Evening, Thomas,” Daddy said.

“Evening, Mr. Marryat.”

“Would you happen to know where Cyrus is?”

“I believe he’s retired for the night, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Thomas responded with a slight lift of his chin; his glasses flashed as the lenses caught the overhead light.

Daddy and I moved through the sitting room where the clock on the mantel showed the time to be almost midnight. As we made our way down the hall into the ballroom, I said, “Do you suppose Uncle Cy’s asleep?”

“If he is, we’ll wake him up,” Daddy said. “I don’t intend to wait till morning.”

Uncle Cy answered our knock right away. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of slacks, and he held a glass of iced tea in one hand. He stared at us a moment, his brows raised, as though he didn’t quite know who we were.

“Sorry to bother you at this hour of the night, Cy,” Daddy said.

“That’s all right,” Uncle Cy said, opening the door wider and stepping aside. “Come in.”

One of Jones’s radios was on, tuned to a comedy show of some kind. Two men talking, a drum roll, people laughing, and then abrupt silence as Uncle Cy turned it off.

“Have a seat,” he said.

Daddy and I sat in the two wing chairs while Uncle Cy pulled a straight-back chair over from the table. He set his glass of tea on the floor beside him.

“Jones here?” Daddy asked.

“He’s asleep,” Uncle Cy answered. “So what’s this about? There a problem?”

Daddy leaned forward and squeezed his hands together. “With the lodge, no. Listen, Cy, it’s the station across the street.”

Uncle Cy’s face was passive, though somewhere in the center of his eyes I thought I saw a flash of alarm. He picked up his tea, took a sip, set it back down.

“Calvin’s selling bootleg liquor from that place,” Daddy said. “Eve saw it tonight, the whole stash. All folks have got to do is pull around back to the car wash, and apparently Calvin loads them up there.”

Uncle Cy’s eyes slid over to me. “This true, Eve?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to tell the whole story again. I was exhausted, my head was pounding, and I wanted nothing other than to crawl into bed and weep myself into a merciful sleep.

Uncle Cy sniffed. He lifted an index finger to his lips and frowned in thought. Finally, he dropped his hand and said evenly, “Listen to me, Drew. We’ve got nothing to do with Calvin and his station. What he does is his own business. It doesn’t concern us.”

Daddy sat motionless, a sickish pallor sliding over his face. His Adam’s apple moved up and down his throat a couple of times, as though he was finding Uncle Cy’s words hard to swallow. Then he said, “Are you telling me to turn a blind eye?”

Uncle Cy nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you to do. I’m telling you for your own good. This county is full of bootleggers, and they don’t take kindly to snitches.”

“That may be so, Cy, but you can’t expect me to just sit by and do nothing. This isn’t homebrew they’re selling over there. It’s real liquor, no doubt being smuggled across the border from Canada. We got criminals working right across the street, and you’re telling me to leave it alone?”

Uncle Cy sidled forward to the edge of the chair till he was almost face-to-face with Daddy. His eyes grew small, his skin ruddy. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself in the middle of,” he said slowly, as though Daddy was a dull-witted child. “I’m telling you to keep your nose out of other people’s business.”

Daddy was undeterred. When he spoke, a small chill moved up and down my spine. “What Calvin Fludd is doing,” Daddy said, “is not a business, it’s a crime. And if we sit idly by and say nothing, we’re just as guilty.”

“So be it, Drew. The laws of Prohibition have made everyone a criminal in one way or another—”

“Not everyone, Cy—”

“And so we run the lodge and keep our noses clean, and we don’t worry about what people are doing across the street or up the river or anywhere else for that matter. Do you understand me, Drew?”

The two brothers stared at each other with such intensity I thought one or the other of them might simply explode. Finally, Daddy stood, reached for my hand, and pulled me up out of the chair.

“Drew?” Uncle Cy said again.

“I thought you would do the right thing, Cy.”

“I am doing the right thing, Drew. You’ve got to believe me. I know this town in ways you don’t. So we’re all going to keep our mouths shut and go on doing what we were doing before this happened tonight.”

A small muscle worked in Daddy’s jaw. Uncle Cy sighed.

Daddy tugged at my hand and we left without saying another word.