The Butterfly - James M. Cain [7]
After a long time, after staying up late mealing corn, making charcoal, and doing all kinds of things that had to be done, came the day when we warmed some water in the still and put down our first mash. And three days after that we made our first run. I felt nervous, because even if nobody could see us it was against the law and against all the principles I had. But it was pretty too, after you got going with it. On a little still you put in a toothpick, but on this one we used a skewer, a wooden pin that you dress meat with, that's sharp on one end and six or eight inches long. We stuck it in the end of the pipe, where the coil came out, and as the fire came up, there came this funny smell I had never smelled before but that I liked, and the pin began to get wet. Then on the sharp end, that was outside, came a drop, like the drop of a honeysuckle when you pull the cord through to taste yourself some honey. It fell in the fruit jar we had under it, and then pretty soon here came another drop. Then the drops were falling one after the other. Then they came together in a little stream, the color of water, but clearer than any water you ever saw. When the first jar was full, she poured it in the tall glass that the hydrometer worked in, dropped the gauge in, and took the proof.
"What does it say?"
"One seventy."
"Very good."
"My goodness, if it's that strong at the start we can run it clear down to thirty and it'll still be one hundred when we mix it for the keg."
"We'll run till it mixes one twenty-five."
"The more we get the more we've got."
"Maybe this is a case where the less you act like a hog, the more you put on some fat. We can run it till we got a lot and put it in the wood at a hundred. But then it dries out and gets weaker, and if it's weak it won't sell. And the weaker it is, the slower the charcoal works on it. If we put it in strong, we got color, flavor, and mellowness in a month, anyway enough to be a big help when it's mixed with regular liquor. But at a hundred we could be a year and we'd get nothing they'd pay us for. The longer we got to keep it, the more kegs we got to buy, the longer we wait for our money."
"That money's what I want."
"Then watch it, it don't get too weak."
"Then anyway we can have music."
She had a little radio up there by then, and turned it on, and I didn't mind, as it would be a long day, watching that stream off the end of the pin.
"And a drink."
"What?"
"What we making the stuff for?"
"You mean this?"
"Sure."
She climbed up, got a bottle of Coca-Cola out of the basin the spring ran into, and the tin cup we kept there. When she came down she poured from the jar to the cup, dumped some Coca-Cola in, and handed it to me.
"Taste it, it's good."
Now nobody could live their life in mountain country without learning plenty about whisky, but that was the first time I ever tasted it. It tasted like Coca-Cola at first, but then I began to feel good, and wanted another swallow. She had the cup by then, taking a swig, and then was when I knocked it out of her hand.
"There's to be no drinking in this."
"I'll have a drink if I want to."
"No, you won't."
"Will you kindly tell me why?"
"We got work to do for one thing. I get careless with this fire, so it's too hot, this whole thing could explode so easy you wouldn't believe it. And later, when it's dark, we've only just begun. We've got to lower this spent mash down, so we can feed it to the hogs and not have it all over the place, and we can't do that or anything if we're up here drunk. And we'll get drunk, if we take enough of it. They all do. I've seen them. And besides, it's wrong."
"You believe all you hear in church?"
"I believe what I feel."
"For God's sake."
Because by then I loved her so much I wanted to be weak, and do what she meant we should do, but my love made me strong too, so I knew I wouldn't do it. With liquor in me, though, I didn't know what I would do, or what she could make me do. "You heard