The Bourbon Thief, Page 21

  “She married to you, she ain’t too young for anything.”

  Levi started to the front door and stopped. He turned around.

  “I don’t know how to bring this up,” Levi began. “But while we’re alone...you should know I found a Polaroid of you and Nash. I’ll give it to you if you want it, but I don’t want Tamara finding anything like that. There’s nothing else in the house I need to know about, is there?”

  Bowen shook his head, the grin still on his face.

  “I cleaned everything out after Nash was gone. Must have missed that. But let me tell you something, cum’yuh, the only thing your girl needs to worry about in this house is you.” Bowen pointed right at him.

  Levi only laughed. “Well, I’d argue, but considering what we were planning to do before you showed up, I’m inclined to agree with you.”

  They let Tamara in and she seemed pleased as punch to see Bowen. Apparently they’d been pen pals for a year or more, writing back and forth about the island, about the oak trees, about the bourbon barrel cooperage where Bowen was foreman. Bowen didn’t call it a cooperage, however. It was a “cuppah-rahge” and he wouldn’t say a word about it until Levi pronounced it right.

  “Is this Red Thread in the mix?” Levi took a second sip. They sat on the porch, he and Tamara in the swing, Bowen in a chair with his feet up on the railing like they belonged there. They’d left the front door and back door open to air out the house. Tomorrow Levi would run into town and get some box fans. Lots of box fans.

  “It’s not.” Bowen raised his hand and shook a finger at him. “Red Thread’s too rich for my blood. I make my own.”

  “This is your own bourbon?” Levi asked. Tamara took it from his hand and sniffed it but didn’t take a drink.

  “This new kid botched a barrel few years back. I fixed it on my own time. I got the corn mash, the barley...” He sat up and mimed mixing up a cauldron of corn and wheat, stirring it like a witch’s brew. “Then I cooked it real good and put it in the barrel. It’s been in my shed for four years now. Tastes like the real deal. Better, maybe.”

  “You ever think of starting your own distillery?” Levi asked. “Now that you know the secret?”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Bowen said as he took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one up. “You gotta have the barrels to make Red Thread. And these barrels are all spoken for. I make them, but I can’t afford to buy one. They out of my price range.”

  “They only make a thousand barrels of Red Thread a year,” Tamara said, giving Levi his Truth Serum back. “They use regular white oak from Missouri for the regular bourbon, but the top-shelf stuff has to have barrels from here. Scarcity makes the price go up.”

  Bowen pointed at the woods surrounding the house with his cigarette clenched between his index finger and thumb.

  “These trees make those barrels,” Bowen said. “You want apples and licorice in your bourbon, you want these trees. Everybody wants these trees.” Bowen sat back again, crossed one foot over the other and took a long deep drink before taking another drag of his cigarette. He opened his mouth and breathed out like a dragon breathing fire.

  “What’s so special about them?” Levi asked.

  “What’s so special about them?” Bowen repeated, aghast. “Girl, you didn’t tell this boy about these trees?”

  “We haven’t really talked much about the trees,” Tamara said, a very diplomatic way of saying, I’ve been ignoring Levi for three weeks to punish him for being an ass.

  “You know the story about the island?” Bowen asked Levi, and Levi knew that Bowen knew that he didn’t know. The Truth Serum had made them all loquacious. “You, girlie?”

  Tamara shook her head. “Daddy never even told me the name of the island.”

  “For your own sake,” Bowen said. If Nash had meant to kidnap Tamara from her mother and bring her down here to live, it was for the best Tamara not know about Bride Island, where it was, what it was, so Virginia Maddox wouldn’t know, either. “I suppose you two ought to know.”

  “Know what?” Tamara asked, falling under Bowen’s spell and the spell of his Truth Serum.

  “The true story of this island,” Bowen said. “If you want to know it. If you think you can handle it. It’s not pretty.”

  “I want to know.” Tamara sat forward and it hurt to look at her. She was a child, Tamara was. No matter how she acted, how she played it, how she played him, at the end of the day she was still a child who sat on the edge of her seat to listen to ghost stories at night.

  “I’ll tell, I’ll tell. Let me fortify my storytelling apparatus a moment here.” Bowen took another swig of his drink.

  In the early-evening dark the whites of Bowen’s eyes glowed like twin fireflies. Levi put his arm on the back of the swing and Tamara leaned against his shoulder. This was much better than the silent treatment.

  “It’s not a story for innocent ears.” Bowen set down his glass and took a long drag on his cigarette before blowing out a fine smoke ring.

  “My ears aren’t innocent,” Tamara said.

  “I was talking about him.” Bowen winked at Tamara.

  “I think I can handle it,” Levi said. Bowen refilled his and Levi’s glasses from the plastic pitcher. Tamara sipped her plain sweet tea, the ice clinking against the sides of the glass.

  “Long, long ago this wasn’t Bride Island,” Bowen began. “This was nothing but swamp island, nothing but ratty little stub trees, copperheads, rattlesnakes, marsh rats, alligators and enough damn pluff mud to drown a horse in. It wasn’t a pretty place, not like now.” Bowen pointed at Tamara. “Back...oh, a hundred and many years ago, a rich Frenchman—a comte, which is like a count, which is like an earl, I think, whatever da fuck that is—he bought this island. He had three sons, you see.”

  Bowen lifted his hand holding up three fingers, which Levi could see by the light of Bowen’s cigarette.

  “The first son, he knows he gets the money and the title when Daddy Count dies, so Son Number One sticks close to home. Son Number Two does what number two sons always did—he joins the army and becomes an officer and secretly hopes for Daddy Count and Son Number One to meet an untimely end. But Son Number Three? Nobody knows what to do with a third son. Join the church? Join the circus? No, Son Number Three does what third sons have been doing all their lives—he leaves home. Go west, young man. He went far west. All the way across the ocean west, all the way here. Daddy Count owned some land in the New World. He bought it from a crook who didn’t tell him this prize piece of land was a stinking dirty swamp. When Son Number Three arrives after two months on a boat, he’s not a happy boy. What’s a man to do in a swamp?”

  “So what did he do?” Tamara asked.

  “Son Number Three—Julien St. Croix. How’s that for a name? Croix means cross and maybe he was born to carry such a cross. Give the boy credit, he didn’t turn tail and run back home. Land is land, after all, and he knows there’s gotta be money here somewhere. He’s a smart boy. Went to school, knows the world. He thinks, swamp...water...crops...rice. They grow rice in swamps in China. Why not grow rice in swamps in America? So he does.”

  “With slaves?” Levi asked.

  “What do you think?” Bowen pointed the burning tip of his cigarette at Levi. “’Course he did. And St. Croix made himself barrels of money. But a man can’t live off money alone. A man needs a legacy. He needs a wife. So he writes home and tells Daddy Count how much money he’s made and how he needs a wife now so he can have sons of his own to inherit this golden swamp of his. He remembers a girl he loved as a boy and wonders if she’ll marry him. Daddy Count writes back and says her family needs money. St. Croix writes back and offers to pay off their debts. Daddy Count says that’s good, but his bride won’t come to America unless St. Croix builds her a house to live in. A fine house. No cabins in the swamp for her. So St. Croix builds a fine house for her right here on this island. Big house fit for a queen. St. Croix writes back and says he’s ready for his br
ide, and Daddy Count makes the deal and puts the girl on a ship and sends her this way. But the ship sinks and the bride dies. These things happened back then.”

  Bowen shook his head and played like he was wiping a tear off his face. Had he entertained Nash at night with dramatic retellings of stories, too?

  “But the deal’s done,” Bowen said. “Daddy Count paid for a bride, paid off those debts. They send their other daughter instead. The little girl in the family. The only daughter they had left.”

  “How little?” Tamara asked. Levi looked at her and saw her eyes wide and listening, eager as a child for her bedtime story.

  “Fourteen,” Bowen said. “Though they told her to tell people she was sixteen. Like anybody care about propriety down here in the swamp. She wasn’t much more than a child, but she was the only girl they had left to trade. And they were happy to be rid of her. What else is your little girl good for if not getting you out of debt?”

  “And they sent her across the ocean to marry a man she’d never met?” Levi asked, aghast.

  “They sold her,” Tamara said, and her voice was hollow as a dry barrel.

  “I can’t say they sold her,” Bowen said. “But I can say St. Croix bought her.”

  “What happened?” Levi asked. “Did the girl make it?”

  “Her name was Louisa, named for a king, I think, though Louisa is a damn funny name for a king, ain’t it? Anyway, the ship comes in and they put out a little rowboat to bring Louisa to St. Croix. They say she stood up in the boat when she saw the man on the beach waiting for her. They say it was love at first sight. They say the boat was still fifty feet from shore when she stepped out of it. And they say it wasn’t love at first sight for St. Croix, but it must have been something because he ran into the water to meet her and carried her all the way out of the water in his arms. Ain’t that a pretty picture?”

  “Stupid girl,” Tamara said, shaking her head.

  “Stupid in love. Or maybe she was too damn sick of boats she’d rather drown than stay another second on one. But the first idea is more romantic. I’m a romantic.”

  “Are you?” Levi asked.

  “Can’t you tell?” Bowen said, grinning, but it looked like a grimace to Levi. “Now, back to thirty-four-year-old—he might have been thirty-five, come to think of it—Julien and his little Louisa. They were married in St. Croix’s house the night she arrived, nobody but slaves and her old lady chaperone to witness. Now, Louisa was a sweet girl, innocent, with a good heart, and St. Croix called her Loulou, and don’t you think that made her melt like butter when he did? Little Loulou liked it here, liked the sunlight and the ocean. They say when she smiled the sun came out and when she laughed the birds flew down to hear it and when she sang the angels put down their harps to listen. And when she cried, St. Croix took her upstairs and an hour later both of them would be smiling again. She was so young, you see, no one had gotten around to telling her ladies weren’t supposed to enjoy that sort of recreational activity. St. Croix doted on her, spoiled her. When Loulou asked for the foreman to stop whipping the slaves, St. Croix put a stop to it. When she asked for a girl her age to keep her company, St. Croix brought two ladies, a momma and her daughter, over from France to do her hair and dress her and powder her nose, all to please her husband. And when he asked her one day why she was sad and sighing, she said it was because she missed the oak trees at her home in France. She loved the ocean. She loved the sky. She even loved the swamp. But why is it there were no real trees on this island?”

  All was quiet on the porch. Levi heard nothing but the breeze, the wind chimes and the ocean roar in the distance. A fly buzzed past his ear and Levi ignored it. Tiny fires glowed in tin cans—homemade citronella and rosemary candles to keep the mosquitoes away. Starlight, moonlight, firelight and one tiny red light from the tip of Bowen’s cigarette—the perfect light for telling ghost stories. And Bowen sure told his tale with relish, like a boy trying to scare the shit out of his little brothers. And Levi was scared, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the sounds of the owls calling back and forth or the branches moving to and fro as unseen animals settled in to sleep. Or maybe it was the look on Tamara’s face, like she wasn’t hearing someone else’s story, but her own.

  “St. Croix wasn’t about to let his sweet bride sigh another sigh, not when he could do something about it. He wrote his man and asked for oak tree saplings, the best there was, spare no expense. Three months later here they come on a ship, two dozen of them. These were the finest trees money could buy, sturdy and strong and from the deepest, greenest forests in France. A rare sort of French oak. St. Croix planted his oak trees and they took. They were ten feet tall by the time his bride was showing with her first child. By the time their son was five years old, the trees were big enough for a boy to find worth his time. And they were happy, St. Croix, his bride and his boy. Happy and rich, which is a rarer combination than we’d like to think. Of course, it couldn’t last. The ocean lasts. Trees last. The sky lasts. A third son and his child bride happy and in love? That won’t last. How could it? God is a patient judge, but when He issues His verdict, justice is swift.”

  Levi had been getting pleasantly drunk, but at those words he sobered up. He pulled Tamara closer to him. Her body was stiff at first like she didn’t know him. But then she softened and let him hold her tight.

  “One fine spring day St. Croix’s son—Philip was his name—climbed the tallest of the oak trees and a branch broke under his foot and down down came the little boy. The sand is soft, but not when you fall thirty feet on it. He was dead before his momma could get the scream out of her mouth. St. Croix came home from the rice paddy to find his bride cradling their son’s body in her arms. She wouldn’t let him go. And the next day she carried him into the ocean and let the water take them both away. When her body washed up two days later, the doctor said she was carrying her second child. His son’s body never came back. St. Croix went mad as rich men with broken souls will do when God dares to contradict them. He took his slaves off rice duty and made them drain the swamp. After that they had to plant trees. Oak trees, seeds and saplings from the tree that killed his boy. Every day for years they planted those trees, tended them, cultivated them. Then there were trees as far as the eye could see... Why did he plant those trees? Who knows? Maybe he did it because he loved his wife and she loved the trees. Maybe he thought he could bring his boy back if there were enough climbing trees to tempt his soul. Oh, but he was a sad sight, St. Croix was, wandering this island in his dirty clothes, unwashed hair, unshaven face, arms black from the soil up to his elbows. He planted, too. Planted half the trees on this island himself. And when there was no inch of this island that didn’t have a tree on it, he walked into the house he had built for his bride, poured out every bottle of scotch he could find, every bottle of brandy, every bottle of fine Irish whiskey, poured it on the carpets imported from Persia and the drapes that came from the finest houses in Paris. Then he lit the drapes afire, and he and the house burned to the ground. Goodbye, third son. Goodbye, bride. Goodbye, little boy who loved to climb trees. St. Croix’s body was nothing but ash and the boy’s body never turned up. Only Louisa’s body is buried here. Married and buried, all on this island. It’s a damn shame if you ask me, but that’s what happens when you build your castle on the backs of other men. St. Croix wanted paradise and this island became his hell. Your great-great-grandfather, Miss Tamara—Jacob Maddox—is the man who bought the island from Daddy Count’s second son, who wanted nothing to do with the place that broke his brother. And I can’t blame him. And this island has been Bride Island ever since because of that St. Croix’s pretty little bride, and Louisa Island would sound kind of funny, don’t you think? And, of course, St. Croix was already taken.”

  “That’s quite a story,” Levi said. “All true?”

  “Every word of it. You see, my great-great-grandfather was the man who dug her grave and watered the oak St. Croix planted by it. Nothing left of that family but on
e tombstone. But us?” Bowen slapped his chest and grinned like a town mayor at a ribbon cutting. “We’re still here, alive and kicking.” Bowen lifted both hands and both legs in the air and waved them. He was certainly alive and definitely kicking. He was also drunk.

  “Is her grave still here?” Tamara asked. “Can I see it?”

  “It’s still here if you can find it. I have no idea what’s become of it. Overgrown now, the whole grounds are.” Bowen shrugged and downed the last of his bourbon. “But you can find the house pretty easy if you look. What’s left of it, which ain’t much.” Bowen stubbed out his cigarette, slapped his thighs and stood up. “Now if y’all will excuse me, I must be heading home. It’s been a pleasure.”

  “Wait, where’s the house?” Tamara asked him.

  He pointed north and deep into the woods. Levi saw Tamara staring into the darkness. He put his hand on her knee, fearful all of a sudden, fearful like she’d go right now this instant and he’d never see her again.

  “You aren’t going house hunting,” Levi said. “Not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  “No. You go when I go,” Levi said. “Tomorrow I’m going with Bowen to the cooperage. If we own this island, I want to know everything there is to know about it.”

  “I know everything I need to know about it,” Tamara said.

  “I don’t. Now go in the house. Get ready for bed.”

  “Do I have to?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, you have to. I’m escorting Bowen home.”

  “I am home,” he said. Levi looked at him. Bowen grinned. “I can walk there in the dark with a blindfold on if you made me.”

  “We’ll walk there in the dark together. With a lantern.”

  “You ain’t no fun,” Bowen said, rolling his eyes. He stepped off the porch, wobbling as he went, but he made it more or less as vertically as he needed to be.

  “Can I walk with you?” Tamara asked.

  “Bed,” Levi said. “Go to sleep.”

  “But—”

  “Bed now,” he said. Tamara turned and walked into the house, slamming the door behind her. Levi watched her through the door, watched her disappear upstairs to the bedroom.

  “You have it bad,” Bowen said. Levi looked at him and grinned.

  “I have a pretty wife and a house and an island. I think that’s the very definition of having it good.”

  Levi lit the camp lantern and he and Bowen set off down the little dirt road to the main dirt road.

  “You want to see the cooperage, I’ll come get you tomorrow morning.”

  “I do,” Levi said.

  “I won’t get you too early.” Bowen winked at him, his face