The Bourbon Thief(95)

Tamara took a deep breath. She could do this. She just had to be smart. The warehouse had seven floors that held all the very best Red Thread bourbon. The cheaper stuff was in the warehouse right next door, with a wooden breezeway connecting the two buildings. If this warehouse burned, the one next door would catch fire, too. Fire liked to climb and eat. If she gave it enough fuel on the first few floors, it should eat its way all the way to the top.

Tamara went up to the fourth floor and straight to the Red Thread Legacy Single-Barrel bourbons. These were the oldest bourbons, the ones hand-selected by Maddox men, who would come in once or twice a year and go on a tasting spree looking for the best of the batch. They signed their names on the barrels. Here was a row of George Maddox specials. Behind it was a row of Robert Maddox select bourbon. Her great-grandfather had been dead twenty years. One barrel sporting his signature would sell for as much as a car. Tamara picked her first barrel. It had George Maddox’s signature scrawled on the lid. She cracked her knuckles for the fun of it, lifted her ax and slammed it into the wood. She took a good chunk out of the wood, but it required three or four more swings until the barrel cracked and the bourbon burst out of the oval slit she’d cut into it. A puddle of rust red formed on the floor.

Every barrel that bore her grandfather’s name got the ax. Every barrel that bore her great-grandfather’s name got the ax. The fumes from the hundred-and-fifty-proof bourbon scalded her eyes and went to her head. She wondered if she could get drunk just off smelling the stuff.

“Lizzie Borden took an ax...” she chanted while she chopped. “Gave her bourbon forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one...”

She giggled at that. She thought it was a fine rhyme.

When she’d finished busting up all the barrels of Red Thread Legacy, she took a rest, leaning back against the wall to catch her breath. This was hard work, swinging an ax. Already she’d formed blisters on her hands. The acrid smell of undiluted bourbon filled the air and made her want to vomit again. Or was that morning sickness? Was it morning yet? She glanced out a window and found it was still full night without even the hint of morning on the horizon. Maybe she had night sickness instead. Was that a real thing? She didn’t know anything about being pregnant. Levi would surely kill her when he found out she was chopping up barrels while carrying his child.

Except he wouldn’t get mad at her because he wouldn’t know. Because he took her gun and drove away. Since he wasn’t there to tell her to stop, she didn’t.

“Break over,” she said to herself. She wiped off her face using the tail of her shirt. Sweat or tears? Both. She went down to the third floor and started swinging at the barrels by the stairs. Bourbon gushed out from the ragged gashes and poured down the stairs to the second floor.

The work was hard. She felt like she was damaging her body by doing it, breathing in all those fumes and fighting exhaustion to keep going. But she did keep going. For all the pain and the discomfort and the nausea, she took a terrible pleasure in what she did. She imagined George Maddox standing a few feet away from her, his wrists and ankles bound in Veritas’s shackles, another man holding him by an iron neck collar in place. Granddaddy would have to watch what Tamara did. He would have to stand there and do nothing while his own child, his own blood, busted open barrel after barrel of Kentucky’s finest bourbon and let it pour out onto the cold dirty ground. And there was nothing he could do about it.

“You did this to yourself, Granddaddy,” she said. “You have only yourself to blame. You raped my mother, and you tried to rape me, and you treated Levi like a servant when he was your own son. You fucked us all...” It made her smile to say “fuck” to him. She wasn’t ever allowed to swear at home. Not a “fuck.” Not a “shit.” Not even a “damn” unless it was followed by the word Yankees.

“Fuck you,” she said and took a swing. “Fuck your father. Fuck your grandfather. Fuck his father. Fuck you, Jacob Fucking Maddox. If y’all hadn’t fucked so much, you wouldn’t be so fucking fucked.”

Tamara raised up the ax to hit another barrel and it slipped from her hands and landed on the floor behind her with a terrible clatter. She gasped and jumped back. It had almost hit her right in the back.

Panting and woozy, she looked at her hands. Her palms streamed with blood. She’d worn off whatever was left of her blisters and the skin on her hands. She stuck them under one of the barrels still leaking fluid and screamed at the sting as the alcohol cleansed her open wounds.

She wept from the sheer agony of it. Not since that night with her grandfather had she known such extreme physical suffering. How could she keep going like this? But how could she stop? She wasn’t close to being finished. She’d probably broken open only a hundred barrels if that. A hundred of the maybe forty thousand in the entire warehouse? Not enough. Not nearly enough. She staggered back and turned to the window. She pressed her sweaty brow against the glass. A hundred yards away, no more than that, she saw the river. To it she whispered a prayer, a petition... You carried Veritas away. Help me bring her back.

The river made no reply. It flowed on, silent, lovely and dark.

Tamara lifted her head and made her appeal then to the angels gathered around.

Please?

No answer.

She lowered her head and rested it on a broken barrel. Her shoulders slumped and she could hardly stand. She pushed a hand against her stomach for comfort. Alone as she felt, she wasn’t alone.