There is a lunchroom inside the molasses plant, twelve feet by twelve with half walls and a long plank table surrounded by a dozen mismatched wooden chairs. There’s an icebox in the corner and a dartboard along the exterior wall. Decks of dog-eared cards are scattered on the table, along with ashtrays and salt and pepper shakers and a few outdated magazines.
Ava and Morgan and Ezra meet there in the early morning. Ava has already talked to Morgan over breakfast and her brother has proven to be surprisingly agreeable. Jedediah has been gone early, off to counsel a parishioner who was ailing with the cancer. Now Ava and Morgan sit at the table scarred by countless cigarette burns. They are crossways to Ezra, in more ways than one.
“It’s not moral and it’s not legal,” Ezra is saying. “And that is the end of this conversation.”
“Who says it’s not moral?” Ava asks. “And hang the legal.” Ezra glares at her. “What is wrong with you these days? Is this what Chicago did to you? Did you pass your time in speakeasies there—drinking liquor and smoking cigarettes, and listening to radical nonsense?”
“Speakeasies?” Ava says. “You do realize that prohibition ended three years ago, brother.”
“Not in these counties, it didn’t,” Ezra reminds her. “Fooling with moonshine is a crime. You can go to jail for making it and you most certainly will go to jail for selling it.”
“Only if you get caught,” Morgan says.
“Oh, you’ll get caught,” Ezra says. “Look in the dang newspaper. Folks getting caught every week for selling that stuff. What the local police don’t find, the federal agents do. This is a harebrained idea if ever there was one. Which one of you came up with this?”
“You got a better one?” Morgan asks.
“Any idea is better than this,” Ezra says. “It’s time for the two of you to grow up. You’re not talking about selling lemonade down at the crossroads. This is dad-blamed criminal behavior.”
“Murder and rape, that’s criminal behavior,” Ava says. “This is supplying a need.”
“Since when do people need hard liquor?” Ezra demands.
“Well, a want then,” Ava says.
Ezra shakes his head. “This is beyond stupid. And not only that, but you’re as green as grass, the both of you. How would you even—” He stops himself. “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation. Even if you could convince me—which you cannot—you’d never talk Father into this in a million years.”
“Talk me into what?”
It is Jedediah, standing inside the loading door. Nobody has heard him come in. His unlit pipe is in the corner of his mouth; he tucks it into his coat pocket as he approaches the lunchroom. Ezra gets to his feet to meet him. He starts to speak but Ava is quicker than him. Ava has always been quicker than him.
“Luther Briscoe has been selling moonshine over to Johnson City. That’s where he’s been going in the truck.”
Jedediah considers the news in his deliberate manner. He doesn’t speak for a full minute. “Well...whatever his duplicities, we will not be turning Mr. Briscoe over to the law, daughter. That would serve nobody.”
“I have no intention of turning him in,” Ava says. “I want to partner up with him.”
“How’s that?” Jedediah asks.
Now Ezra has his chance. “These two geniuses are of the opinion that the Flagg Molasses Company should go into the production and selling of hard liquor. They’ve come up with this scheme in spite of the legal and moral ramifications of such a dunderheaded notion. I thank the Lord you arrived when you did, Father.”
Jedediah walks over but does not sit down. He glances briefly at his two sons before turning to Ava, knowing instinctively that he needs to deal with her.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is about, daughter?”
“Have a look around, Father,” Ava says. “Ten years ago, we’d have to go outside to have this conversation because this plant was in full production, and noisy as all get-out. Today it’s so quiet I can practically hear Ezra stewing over there. We all know there’s no money in the manufacture of molasses these days. However, there is in corn. More specifically, corn liquor.”
Jedediah takes his pipe from his pocket and puts it in his mouth. He sucks thoughtfully on the stem a moment, despite the fact that the bowl is empty. “Are you suggesting that we willfully break the law, daughter?”
“That particular law is being broke all over the country each and every day,” Ava tells him.
“There is such a thing as a bad law.” “There is also such a thing as a bad idea, sister,” Ezra says. “And this surely qualifies. Liquor has an abominable influence on man. Those who take to it in excess ignore, or even worse, abuse their families. They wallow in sin. Some move on to become dope fiends and sexual degenerates.”
Morgan smiles as he props his boots on the table and clasps his hands behind his head. “You’ve been reading those magazines down at the drugstore again, Ezra.”
Ezra glares at him. Ava goes into her purse now and pulls out the Bible that Jedediah had given her on her fifth birthday. Several pages have been bookmarked with scraps of yellow foolscap. She opens to one and reads aloud.
“‘Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.’” Finishing, she glances over to her father. “So advises Ecclesiastes.”
Morgan grins as Ava goes to another bookmark.
“While in Psalms we find––‘the Lord makes plants for man to cultivate––bringing forth food from the earth and wine that gladdens the heart of man––’”
“‘And oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart,’” Jedediah finishes for her. “You were always one to do your homework, Ava.”
“You can call it homework if you want,” Ezra says. “I call it using the scripture for nefarious purposes.”
Jedediah ignores the statement as he comes over to sit at the table. He produces his tobacco pouch and begins to fill his pipe, tamping the coarse shreds with his forefinger. He is quiet until he lights the bowl and has a rosy glow inside.
“This...proposal of yours,” he begins, looking at Ava and Morgan. “How large of an operation would it be?”
“We don’t know the answer to that yet,” Morgan replies. “This plan is as fresh as this morning’s biscuits.”
“Would it put back to work some of the men we’ve laid off?” “That’s the idea,” Ava says.
“Father,” Ezra says sharply. “Surely you’re not considering this?”
“The Lord helps those that help themselves, Ezra,” Jedediah says. “There are hungry people in this hollow. Hungry and discouraged and nigh onto giving up, many of them.” He looks at Ava. “What do you know about making moonshine, daughter?”
“Not the least little thing,” she replies. “The first person we’d hire back would be Luther Briscoe. I spoke to him regarding this just yesterday.”
“And where would you sell it?” Jedediah asks. “And how would you sell it in a fashion that does not land you in the county jail?”
“We’d have to find the markets,” Ava admits. “Safe markets, not in this neck of the woods, I expect. Luther has some ideas about that.” She pauses. “I’m not suggesting this would be easy, Father. But the good Christian does not shy away from hardship.”
“Nor does he court it where none theretofore exists,” Jedediah reminds her.
Ava smiles. “Ah, but the hardship does exist. You said as much yourself a couple minutes ago. I didn’t go looking for it.”
“For crying out loud!” Ezra exclaims. “This is criminal activity. We are not considering this. We are not.”
Ava ignores him, keeping her gaze fixed on her father. “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” she says softly.
Jedediah smiles at this. Ava has long made a habit of using his own words in discussion with him. It’s hard for a man to refute his own words. He sits quietly for a time, pulling occasionally on the pipe stem. He is as calm as Ezra is not. After a while, he gets to his feet.
“I need to think on this,” he says and leaves.
That night Jedediah builds a fire in the back yard, beneath the sycamore tree that his grandfather planted more than sixty years ago. He carries a chair from the porch into the yard and sits there, smoking his pipe and feeding the fire occasionally with pine limbs. Morgan has gone off to practice his music with his group and Ezra is at home with his family across the way. Ava stands in the house and watches her father. He sits there motionless, hatless in the night air, looking into the fire. A hundred yards away, Ava’s mother rests in the family graveyard. Ava wonders if Jedediah is consulting with her. And with Him.
She watches for a while and then she goes into the front room and reads a paperback novel she’d picked up in a drugstore in Indianapolis on the bus ride home. The story doesn’t hold her interest, but she can’t blame the book. Her mind is scattered of late. Every half hour or so, she checks on Jedediah. He is still there when she finally sets the novel aside and he is still there when she heads to bed.
And he is there when she arises at dawn, staring into the fire even yet, although by now just a glowing heap of embers remain. By the time she has the coffee boiling, he comes into the house. There are flecks of ash from the fire on his suit and even in his hair. Ava has no idea if he’d slept at all, but he looks rested and content. Her father, in general, is one of the most content people she’s ever known. It is one of the things she envies most about him.
He comes in through the kitchen door and stands there, watching Ava as she slices potatoes into a frying pan. There is sow belly sizzling in a second pan. Ava glances over and tells him good morning.
“We are going to need a fairly large quantity of corn,” he says.
Ava smiles. “It just so happens that Stub Parnell has two hundred bushels he would love to be shed of.”
“Then let us break our fast and then go see brother Parnell,” Jedediah says.