Whiskey & Ashes, page 18
He pressed a hand against the sun-warmed beam and listened.
“…no irregularity,” Sams was saying, voice clipped. “This is a dispute of paperwork, not intention. The tax on those barrels was paid. You’ve seen the stamps ”
“It is not our place to determine the intent,” the collector interrupted, calm as a banker reading from a ledger. “The stock is under question. Orders must wait.”
Wait. Always wait. Wait for Abingdon, for Summers to weigh in. Wait for the next paper. Wait while saloon owners wired in fresh orders from out of town because nobody would touch a Gouge barrel now.
Walter turned back into the office, where the noise of the street filtered in through the louvered windows talk spreading fast, like spilled mash on a hot plank floor. One word at a time:
“Tied up.”
“Barrel seized.”
“Tax not paid.”
The door opened and shut. His father stepped in, quiet but electric. Ezekiel looked straight at him. “They’ve turned one barrel into a noose.”
Walter folded his arms. “So what now?”
“The partners are meeting at the St. Lawrence this evening. Payne wants to talk strategy. Dan King says he’s got connections who can lean on Summers if it goes to Washington.”
Walter didn’t move. “Do you think it was deliberate?”
His father looked at the telegram on the desk. “I think someone has reason to make it look deliberate. Massey’s temperance men. Or someone trying to buy cheap what they couldn’t earn.”
“And the public?” Walter asked.
Ezekiel allowed himself a tired smile. “They still believe we’re honest. That’ll matter. For now.”
Outside, the racket of the loading dock had gone still. A boy ran past with a newspaper the Evening Herald already blaring headlines.Walter stared after him, heart kicking. One barrel. One article. One ghost of a whisper of unpaid tax. And it was enough to damn them all.
Bristol VA, July 1911
Walter stood on the worn marble steps of the Board of Trade Building, the spring wind off the hills tugging at his collar. Just weeks ago, he’d sat inside that very chamber with his father and Mr. Cox, listening to talk of growth, influence, and the city's rising prospects. The scent of pine from the board planing mills still clung to his coat. It had been a heady thing being seen, respected, involved. He was no longer just the distiller’s son or the boy from Fish Springs. He was part of something bigger. His father’s name meant something here. But now the air tasted different. Bitter, metallic. Like the inside of a rifle barrel.
They came in the early morning. Quiet, federal eyes watching from the windows of a church across the street, as if heaven itself was overseeing the seizure. They didn’t storm in; they waited, watched, and when the moment was right, they moved one team to the bonded warehouse, another to the office, still more down to the rickhouse where the barrels lined the cool shadows like sleeping beasts.
Walter had heard the shouts, the clatter of steel-rimmed barrels being rolled and detained. Ten thousand gallons. More than that, really. Enough to drown a town or finance one. Now, the doors of E. Gouge & Co. hung open but lifeless. The stills were quiet. The men stood idle, as if they too had been seized.
At home that evening, the parlor was tight with words unspoken. Pantha moved like a shadow through the room, setting cups down with deliberate calm while Ezekiel sat in his worn reading chair, elbows on knees, reading over he articles again and again.
“They say it’s fraud,” Walter said, trying to keep his voice even. “That we claimed more output than we had bonded grain for. But we kept records hell, I kept those records. Every measure, every barrel tallied and stamped.”
His father looked up, eyes unreadable. “It isn’t about the whiskey, Walt. It’s about the message. We didn’t go quiet when Tennessee went dry and we didn’t go far either. Those for temperance want us punished”
Across the room, McNabb lit a cigar with shaking fingers, while Sams muttered about scapegoats and politics. Fox had been bought out but perhaps the damage had already been done.
“They’ll make a case of us,” McNabb said. “They want to make an example. They want a name people will recognize. Your father’s got that.”
Ezekiel said nothing, only tapped his fingers against the edge of the table. Walter watched him. The core partners of Sams, McNabb and his father stood together in this. Their bond continued to hold.
~
Later that week, they stood in the office of Judge McDowell Walter behind his father, spine straight, palms sweating in his coat pockets. The attorneys plead the case for re-bonding and allowing the still to continue production. It was an accusation, not a conviction they reasoned to the judge. The judge asked questions and Ezekiel’s voice was calm but deliberate, stating the case, defending their bond, their books, their honor.
McDowell leaned back, grave and thoughtful. “You’ll have your day in court. And your stills may run for now. But if there’s truth to these papers, Mr. Gouge, you’ll answer for every drop.” A $35,000 bond posted. It was a temporary victory, but Walter knew something had shifted.
As they left the courthouse, Ezekiel placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. “You’ll need to be ready, Walt. This won’t be like the last time. We’re fighting shadows now men with suits instead of badges, who hide in churches that preach temperance and they aim to hang us with our own ledgers.”
Walter nodded. Behind them, the city bustled as if nothing had changed. But he could feel it in his chest: the barrel had been tapped, and the whiskey was leaking.
~
Bristol Va, August 1911
A sharp rap at the door came just after dawn. Ezekiel was already awake, sitting in the chair by the front window, coffee gone cold in his hand, eyes fixed on the streetlamp that had just flickered out. The house on Oak Street was still, still as only early morning can be, when even the youngest of the children were deep in dreams and the clatter of breakfast dishes was still an hour off.
He opened the door to find a Western Union boy, hat in hand, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in the chill. The yellow envelope was creased at the corner, as if even it had hesitated before making its way to him.
“Mr. E. Gouge?” the boy asked.
Ezekiel nodded. “That’s me.”
“Telegram, sir. From Illinois.”
The boy offered it like a verdict. Ezekiel took it, closed the door quietly, and stood in the front hall for a moment with the envelope in his hand. His fingers worked the edge slowly. He knew. Before he read it, he knew.
It was from Mary. His sister’s name was written in a rushed, slanted hand on the dispatch line.
Father is failing. Doctor says come now if you wish to see him alive. He calls your name in the night. – Mary
The breath left Ezekiel’s lungs like a slow collapse. He folded the telegram once, then again, until it disappeared in his palm. He did not cry. Not yet.
Instead, he stepped back into the parlor where last night the partners had plotted strategies, discussed motions, bonds, and barrel counts. The ink was still drying on his latest letter to Massey’s lawyer. But that battle at least for this moment would have to wait. He heard the first small stirring upstairs: Irene turning in her sleep, the creak of a bedframe. Soon, the house would be filled with life again. But for now, the silence pressed in.
Ezekiel went to his desk, opening the red book his father read to him from as a child, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. This was the first letter from his father William had written him from Illinois the one after Ma passed, when he started West for a new life beyond Tennessee and all the memories. Yellowed with time. Words full of scripture and hope, of the pain of loss and the weight of faith. The same man that called him to his side now as his life grew short.
Pantha would know what needed doing. She always did. He would go to Illinois. He would go and sit with his father one last time. But before that, he would tell Walter. The boy now grown into the man helping carry this family through the storm. The boy who might soon need to carry more.
~
Fairbury, IL August 1911
His fingers trembled with fatigue, but his eyes were sharp. He had not slept since Louisville. The air here smelled of corn and summer rot. Nothing like the crisp, whiskey-perfumed mists of Limestone Cove. Nothing like the home of his boyhood. The hotel clerk barely looked up when Ezekiel signed the register:
E. Gouge, Bristol, Tenn.
Room 2B. One night maybe two.
He didn’t take the time to unpack. By noon, he stood on the steps of a modest frame house at the edge of town. A nurse with graying curls opened the door.
“You the son from Tennessee?”
“I am,” Ezekiel said, removing his hat.
“He’s been waiting. Don’t get him riled.”
Inside, the room was clean but sparse. The bed too narrow for a man who once plowed twelve acres before breakfast. But that was before the war. The one that robbed the breath of his lungs and the strength of his legs. The man in the bed was smaller than memory allowed whiskers gone white, hair thinning. But the eyes those defiant, glinting silvery blue eyes still burned beneath the shadow of his brow.
“Zeke,” William said, voice raw with age. “Took you long enough.”
Ezekiel forced a grin. “You had to go so far to die, Pa? I had business.”
“Business,” William rasped, coughing into a handkerchief. “Still chasing those barrels?”
“No. Just ghosts.”
William reached under the covers and drew out a small bundle wrapped in linen. He untied it with fingers like dry roots.
“Your mother’s letters,” he said. “Yours now.”
Ezekiel took them reverently. Yellowed with age, the ink faded but the handwriting still clear: Judah’s upright, elegant script. “She never stopped praying for you,” William murmured. “Even when you turned from the church.”
“I didn’t turn, Pa. I just…” Ezekiel stopped, swallowing the heat in his throat. “It got hard to hear God in the church that condemned my livelihood when the bible never condemns alcohol it only teaches moderation or in the courthouse where those that seek to destroy what I built are supported by those preaching temperance in the churches.”
William smiled faintly. “I know. I tried too hard to be good. You tried too hard to win.”
Silence stretched between them. Only the tick of the clock and the dry shuffle of a curtain in the breeze.
“Your Ma, she said once,” William continued, “that if a man can raise up a good son, he’s done something holy. I told her I’d done that with all you boys. Even when I couldn’t prove it.”
Ezekiel’s eyes fell to the outline of his father’s twisted hip beneath the blanket the pain, the lost years, the snow, the blood, the long walk home with no papers, no welcome, no justice.
“You fought too long,” he said quietly. “You should’ve come home sooner.”
“I came as soon as God and the government let me,” William whispered.
Ezekiel leaned in. “I’m not ready, Pa.”
“For what?”
“To bury you.”
William chuckled, and it came out as a cough. “Too bad.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again with sudden clarity.
“Promise me you’ll keep in touch with your sister Mary,” he said. “She has been a comfort to me without Judah for so long.”
“I will.”
“And go easy on yourself, Zeke. You carry too much.”
Ezekiel nodded. “It’s the only way I know how.”
William’s hand found his. It was cold and trembling, but still stronger than it should’ve been.
“Judah, kept my first letter in her Bible. The one with the flower I drew in Kansas. Said she kissed it every night I was gone to war. Mary has the bible now and my letters to keep when I am gone.”
A tear slipped down Ezekiel’s cheek. He didn’t brush it away.
“When you get home,” William said, voice fading, “read her letters out loud… read them to the wind… maybe she’ll hear you.”
“I will Pa, now rest. I am here now.” Ezekiel held his father’s hand as he slept. He etched every moment into his memory. He would carry these last moments with him.
William Gouge died two days later.
Ezekiel stayed one more night. Packed the letters in his satchel. Took the early train home. He sat in the parlor, his father’s red book on the desk and his mother’s letters beside it.
Ezekiel pulled out one yellowed envelope from the bundle and read it aloud to no one. And after too much brandy, he said to the fire,
“I did prepare myself, Pa. Just... not in the way you meant.”
Late August 1911 Oak Street, Bristol, Virginia
The sun had just slipped below the rooftops, casting a warm lavender glow through the lace curtains of the front parlor. The supper dishes had long since been cleared, and the younger children had drifted into their quiet chores and bedtime routines. The clock on the mantel clicked steadily toward nine.
Ezekiel sat in his worn armchair, the same one where he'd read to his sons and daughters when they were young The Decline and Fall of Rome, Gibbons. In his lap lay a letter he’d written earlier that week but hadn’t mailed. It was addressed to Nathan in Cullom. He hadn’t known how to end it.
Pantha was nearby at her secretary desk, her shoulders steady beneath her dark linen blouse, her pen scratching across a ledger page. They hadn’t spoken much since he’d returned from Illinois. But he’d felt her presence like a second heartbeat constant, composed.
Walter leaned against the hearth with his arms crossed, his face still touched by the grief of knowing his grandfather was laid to rest beneath the Illinois soil. Elmer sat on the floor beside little Orde, whose head lay against his older brother’s knee. Even the girls Bernice, Eula, and Lillian sat unusually still near the window, crocheting silently or folding fresh laundry.
It was Eula who broke the hush. “Mama… do you think Grandpa ever missed Tennessee?”
Pantha paused, the ink drying mid-stroke. “Every day,” she answered, gently but with certainty. “But he made peace with where he was.”
“He loved the mountains,” Ezekiel added, looking toward the fireplace, speaking to no one in particular. “Said he could still see Unaka Ridge in his dreams even when he couldn’t walk but a few steps to the porch.”
Walter nodded, his voice low. “You said he asked about the river. The Watauga. About the valley… He said he never imagined the family would be scattered so far.”
“Not scattered,” Pantha said firmly. “Just planted wide.”
They fell quiet again.
“I remember Uncle Zeke Birchfield,” Ezekiel said suddenly, more to himself than to the room. “He gave me my first taste of mash in a copper thimble. Said it’d cure whatever ailed me.” He smiled faintly. “Father never approved. But he never tried to break us of it either. Just prayed harder.”
Walter let out a short breath, half a laugh. “He was kind to me when we visited. Even though he thought I was too tall to be a Gouge.”
Pantha smiled at that. “You have your grandfather’s eyes, Walter. His steadiness. His questions, too.”
“And his faith,” Ezekiel said quietly, folding the letter. “Even when life didn’t answer him the way he’d hoped.”
He rose from the chair, walking to the secretary desk. Pantha lifted her eyes as he approached, and he placed the letter beside her inkpot.
“I’ll finish it tomorrow,” he said.
She nodded, her hand brushing his lightly. No need for more.
From the corner, Orde piped up sleepily, “Papa, will you show me the mountain where Grandpa grew up?”
Ezekiel crouched beside his son. “One day, we’ll go back to Limestone Cove. I’ll show you the field where I learned to plow. Where your Uncle Nathan knocked the wind out of me in a snowball fight. Where your grandfather came home from the war so thin we thought he was a ghost.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Did he really fight in the war?”
Ezekiel looked across the room, to the faces of his children, to Pantha, then nodded. “He did. Not just with bullets. But with sickness, and courts, and pride. He fought to be heard, to be believed.”
There it was again that weight. That thread that stitched the years together, running from a barefoot boy in a cove, through the hills, through the years, through him. He rose slowly. “Come on, son. I’ll tuck you in.”
As Ezekiel led Thomas Orde from the room, Pantha closed the secretary lid. She sat still for a moment, watching the last light fade from the parlor window. Then she whispered, “We carry them forward.” Walter heard her, but said nothing. He simply nodded and turned the page of his father's old red book.
~
Over the next few weeks, Ezekiel tried to get back to normal routine. Not so easy with his business hanging in the balance. He kept mostly to himself, occupying his hours between the distillery, legal briefings, and the echoing room of his study. The case against E. Gouge & Company the one that had seized ten thousand gallons and nearly gutted his business had not gone away. It only thickened.
In September, he took the train to Abingdon, not for court but for politics. He wore his best hat and stood among Bristol’s Republican delegates as they gathered at the city hall to nominate candidates for the state legislature. His name, still carrying weight, was printed plainly among the elected delegates: E. Gouge. A quiet nod to his resilience, or perhaps just another ledger entry in the careful game he played one hand in business, one in law, one always hovering over the fire of public opinion.
But the fire grew hotter.
~
By early October, indictments began to drop. Twenty-six in all, four tied directly to his distillery. The newspapers called it “the Gouge Case,” as though he were the only man in Virginia making liquor, as though barrels and revenue stamps were criminal by design. The charges technical, bureaucratic, a maze of tax code and seized accounts would be heard in the United States District Court in Abingdon, Judge H.C. McDowell presiding. The same courthouse where Ezekiel had once filed for business licenses was now prepared to judge the legality of his enterprise.
