I WENT BY RILEY’S STORE AFTER WE FINISHED here yesterday. You’re right, there are old storage cellars still under the barn out back, David tells Mr. Hart on a hot afternoon in what has now become the month of July.
They’re not the only ones, by any means, Mr. Hart answers. You take a close look at some of the older farmhouses down near the water, you’ll find trapdoors, false ceilings, closets in unlikely places. Everybody was hiding the stuff, both for selling and drinking.
They’re sitting outside in Mr. Hart’s front yard, on plastic lawn chairs under a tree. David helped carry the chairs from the decrepit garage teetering on its last legs in back of the house, the same place he found Mr. Hart’s moldy, calcified clippers.
It must be a law of nature, David thinks, that when folks get old, everything around them ages too: their bathrooms and kitchens, their rugs and chairs, their cars, their clothes, their pets, their books, their eyeglasses.
Just try and buy an old person anything new, though, a garden cart that actually works or a rake to replace the one with half the prongs broken off. They’ll protest. They don’t want it. David sees it all the time at Peterson’s Garden Shop. (Despite what his dad says, he’s already put in a good amount of time there over the years.) The old stuff is like family to them. You wouldn’t throw out your wife just because she’s lost a few teeth.
Mr. Hart goes on:
There’s a house up in Harveston where a pipe runs from the beach all the way up to a big holding tank under the garage. They’d pump Canadian whiskey by the gallon up there and repackage it for delivery—you know, siphon it into olive oil tins or gasoline drums, anything to fool the Feds if they were stopped on the road.
Creative thinking, David jokes.
You wouldn’t believe how creative you can get when it comes to making money outside the law.
I thought you said you weren’t involved.
Like I told you, I had friends in the business. Close friends.
Well, I guess none of them has come into this story, yet, David says, slyly. Unless you’re about to get close to Charlie Pope or Mr. Riley.
I’m not.
So there was somebody else?
A big important somebody, that’s right.
Well?
Keep your cap on, you’re about to meet ’em.