Chapter Text
July 7th 1927.
Bathans, Missouri.
The hot, midday sun beat down on the town of Bathans, Missouri with the ferocity of high summer, its bright form wavering through the lens of its own heat. The residents of the small farming township had, for the most part, secluded themselves in the shady indoors to wait out the nigh unbearable heat of the day, leaving their streets almost barren.
The heat had made the people of Bathans foolish. Like small forest animals basking in the sun, their relaxation had unwittingly left their dens unguarded and open to the sly foxes that prowled the dry counties.
The car could be heard before it was seen. The sound of it tore through the silence that permeated the sleepy town, its loud growl sending flocks of birds into the air before the shiny, blue beast even crested the hill. The car and its driver peeled off the main road before hitting the town center – a small blessing that gave the people of Bathans permission to stay inside, permission to ignore the strange creature passing through their midst. It was a passer-by, nothing more.
The car turned onto a side road, the hard-packed dirt underneath it giving way to loose soil and stone. The driver gripped the wheel a little tighter in his hands, and reluctantly slowed.
The road wound down an incline, past stony farmhouses in various states of disrepair and low fences caging in every imaginable assortment of underfed farm animals. The car made a sharp turn onto another, smaller road, kicking up a wave of hot dust that hung in the air like mud in water.
The earth, like everything in the country as of the last seven years, was nauseatingly dry.
The driver turned the car down a final stretch and began to slow. He carefully eased the car over a misshapen, natural levee, the seat and wheel hitching awkwardly as the chassis shuddered over the uneven road. The driver looked up, catching a glimpse of the nearby river through the trees that lined the bank, snatches of iridescence on its surface from the bright sun.
It was pretty, and the driver let himself be momentarily distracted by it.
“Hey, Lance!”
The driver slammed the brakes and the car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. Everything not nailed down was flung forward, including the driver, whose head smacked against the steering wheel in a movement that would have been funny if it hadn’t hurt like a bitch. He looked up over the wheel, glaring through the dusty windshield at the cause of his misfortune. The cause of his misfortune grinned back at him.
“Fuck you, Pidge,” Lance huffed.
“Afternoon!” Pidge greeted.
Lance sighed and untangled himself from the wheel. Pidge sauntered up to the driver’s side window, so she could talk to him, obviously angling herself so she could stand under the small shade the car’s body provided. Lance glared at her.
“What were you doing in the middle of the road?” He asked, bypassing greetings entirely. “I could have hit you.”
“Nice to see you too, Lance.” Pidge waved a hand dismissively, her glasses glinting in the light. “I would have gotten out of the way, you know.”
“Sure.” Lance rolled his eyes. “I’m guessing you’re here and not downriver because…?”
“The original meeting place got comprised,” she said. The atmosphere immediately became more serious.
Lance blanched. “What? By who?”
Pidge gritted her teeth, looking irritated at the memory. “Iverson’s boys came through looking for the hooch. I told them there wasn’t any, but they tore the place apart anyway.”
Lance sighed, leaning back against his seat. “I’m glad we had the forethought to split up…. I thought for sure they wouldn’t follow us over the river.”
“It’s concerning that he feels confident enough to send them this far outside the county,” Pidge agreed. “It means he either has way more guys in his operation than we thought, or he’s just a stubborn bastard.”
“I’d like to believe the last one,” Lance said. “But I’m right in thinking we shouldn’t count on that, aren’t I?”
“That you are.”
“Then we’d better get to Lawrence soon,’ Lance said, revving the engine to make sure it was still on. ‘I don’t want to get caught up in something violent today; I’m wearing my nice shoes.’
Pidge laughed and peeled away from the side of the car, making her way around to the passenger door. As she clambered into the seat beside him, Lance took catalog of how she looked. He hadn’t seen her in the weeks since they’d split up for this job, but she looked exactly same as ever. Her too-big clothes hung off her small frame; a grimy shirt with the sleeves rolled up too far, stained overalls, and tatty shoes.
Lance wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes like Pidge’s, and he wasn’t entirely happy having them near his car either. Unlike her and her crew, he actually cared about looking presentable – however “presentable” one could be on his pay. Sure, that might mean simple cotton button-ups, slacks and tweed newsboys, but at least he kept them clean.
Pidge was small for her age, almost unbelievably so, but Lance supposed that worked in her favour – especially in this business. She was willowy without height or grace, a slender figure of pale, freckled limbs and unruly auburn hair. The first time Lance had seen her, he’d heard his mother’s voice in his head. “Dios! Someone feed that girl!”.
Lance on the other hand, was tall and lanky, with dark skin and close-cropped hair. He was far more threatening than Pidge; next to her he probably conjured the image of some kind of kidnapper and a poor middle-schooler. It didn’t matter that she was ten times more cunning and sneaky than Lance could ever dream of being.
“How’s the juice?” Pidge asked, jerking Lance out of his thoughts. She looked at him, inquisitive eyes tinged with concern, because the “juice” was the whole reason either of them were here.
Like any word in a foreign language, the code term translated itself seamlessly. Lance knew it wouldn’t have been damaged in the hard stop earlier – he was experienced enough in transporting goods like these to be confident of that fact. But he knew Pidge had reason to be worried, so he turned around to the back seat and threw back the tarp that hid the cargo he had hauled day and night across the state line.
Sitting tightly in the back seat were rows and rows of bottles filled with golden-brown liquid. They, perhaps, looked unappealing on the surface – a thin brew, with the colour and consistency of dirty water – but to them, and others in their line of work, they were more precious than the Gods’ own ichor. Illegal whiskey – almost 100 bottles of it.
Pidge reached out, running her hand over the stained glass and faded labels, each declaring their contents to be “Iverson’s”. Not anymore, Lance thought. Pidge breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Okay… okay, that’s good.”
“You alright?” Lance asked as Pidge sank back into her seat. She looked almost miserable, her eyes lined with worry behind her giant glasses.
“Are we in over our heads, Lance?” She asked. The question would have been disarming if Lance hadn’t been asking himself the same thing the entire drive from Nashville to Bathans.
“It’s a bit late to be asking that,” Lance muttered. “But if you want my opinion, this is the best thing we could be doing for ourselves, and that’s what matters.”
Pidge looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to find some hint of dishonesty in his expression. But Lance wasn’t lying when he said this was the best thing for them, and he wanted Pidge to know that.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s go.”
Lance gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear!” He said, beginning the process of turning the car back on.
“How long is it going to take to get to Lawrence?” Pidge asked. “I don’t want Hunk to be waiting after dark.”
Lance took a pause before answering, mentally counting the miles. “A couple hours on the back roads,” he said. “How far away do you think Iverson’s boys are?”
“I have no idea, I just hope we make it there before them.”
Lance laughed. “You forget you’re driving with the best smuggler this side of anywhere!”
Pidge raised an eyebrow. “You once drove Iverson’s Chrysler into the Cumberland River.”
Lance laughed, slamming the gas and throwing the car into rapid forward movement. “I said the best, not the safest!”
The blue beast that had torn so uproariously into Bathans, Missouri, tore its way out in much the same fashion. With another profound roar, the car and its two passengers turned back onto the main road, letting the township recede into the distance behind the storm clouds of dust they kicked up in their wake. They had, for now, left the people of Bathans to their own monotony – allowing them to turn a blind eye to the goings on of the foxes of the dry counties and the unsavoury dealings they made under the noses of the river towns. For now, they could forget about them. For now, like small animals always did, they thanked God that trouble had seemed to pass them by.
7th July 1927
Lawrence, Missouri.
The white steeple of Lawrence’s only Catholic church stretched high above the riverside town like the needle of a giant sundial, casting a long, thin shadow across the Mississippi, signalling the evening.
Most of the residents of Lawrence had filtered away from the main streets as twilight approached from the east. This was the time for liminal business; the trading of things best not traded, strange deeds and illicit treasures changing hands on the docks and in the alleys of the town, with silent getaways erasing all evidence before the sun came up the next day.
Now was the time for the foxes of the dry counties to do their work.
Father Emmett Gordon was busy locking up his church. As he walked down the worn steps to his tiny town-car, he would notice the lack of crows along his church’s roof-line. They were usually an ever-present motif that many of his parishioners disliked but he privately thought gave the place a bit of much needed drama.
They were absent that evening, but he wouldn’t give much thought to what could have possibly scared them off as he drove away.
In the steeple of Lawrence’s only Catholic church, a young man and a cat sat in the shadows, watching the father’s car turn off onto another road and disappear. The man, obscured by the shadows of the bell-tower, had black hair and piercing eyes that evoked an image of the dark birds his presence had rid the church of.
The man’s cat, a ginger ball of fluff, sat curled on his lap, purring as he pet her with the hand he wasn’t using to shield his eyes from the low summer sun. He was looking over the town far more intently than her and she didn’t like it. Slowly getting to her feet, the cat raised her head to bump the man’s chin, mewling for attention.
“How are you doing, Cat?” The man asked in Korean, another thing that set him out of place in this small Missouri town. He finally looked away from the horizon and gave her a scratch behind the ear. Cat meowed.
Keith Kogane pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders, careful not to upset Cat’s position. It wouldn’t be getting cold tonight, not with a day this hot, but he still felt a chill as he watched the sun sink lower on the horizon.
He let his eyes drift across the town, skimming the janky line Lawrence’s buildings painted across the normally flat horizon. His gaze stopped on the town hall, the old park, and finally the train station and the old distillery, down by the docks. That would be his final stop after all was done tonight. From there, he could hitch a ride to St. Louis. A ride one step closer to freedom.
First, though, he needed money. That was where sneaking up into a church’s bell-tower came in.
Keith looked down at his watch. Father Gordon was most certainly back at home now. He took a deep breath, steeling his nerves.
“Okay, Cat, let’s go.”
Keith carefully moved Cat from his lap to the roof, swinging his leg over into the hole beneath the bell. Easing himself down into the gap, he locked eyes with his cat’s.
“Meet me downstairs,” he said, and he dropped down into the tower.
Keith swung off a wooden rafter and latched onto the interior of the bell-tower. His fingers gripped into the rough, dry wood, the peeling white paint curling uncomfortably under his fingernails. He began to climb down, careful not to brush against the ropes that controlled the church bell; any sound meant the end for him.
Keith had robbed enough churches in the past year to know almost instinctively where they kept their communion wine. In recent years they had come under higher and higher security; wine in the dry counties was like water in a desert, but they were easy enough to find if you were clever.
Catholic churches were always the best targets. Keith had found that they usually had far more alcohol stashed away than other places of worship, some of which had none at all. If there was something Catholics liked, it was free booze, and if there was something Prohibition Catholics liked, it was any booze at all.
Communion wine wasn’t particularly alcoholic, but it was the best quality alcohol in the country – the only thing with a 100% guarantee of not blinding you if you drank it. That fact, in and of itself, was worth money. It had been Keith’s source of income for months.
Keith pulled a hairpin out from behind his ear, where he kept a small cluster of them hidden away. He jammed it into the lock on the office door and began working it. The silence of the church was tenser than he liked, but he steeled himself. This was in and out, just a normal job.
The lock clicked open, and Keith sighed in relief.
The back office of the church was a modest situation, to say the least. There was a small oak desk, a few filing cabinets, and a large stained-glass window depicting some biblical scene Keith couldn’t place. For the most part, the room was sparsely decorated. The only thing of note was a large safe behind the desk. Keith ignored it, heading instead behind the desk and kicking open the bottom drawer. Another, smaller safe was wedged in the back. That was the one he needed. He crouched down and began to pick at the lock.
Keith wasn’t religious, but he always felt a little bad about stealing from churches. He found himself making extended eye contact with a tiny statue of Jesus on the desk. The poor man was stretched out on the cross, hands and feet and face bleeding as he died. His face, twisted in agony, was framed by a radiant halo. It made Keith more than a little uncomfortable.
The lock on the safe clicked and Keith tugged the door open, revealing a small stash of bills and two bottles of communion wine. Proper, legal alcohol in its natural habitat. Keith grabbed a bottle, but left the second one, opting to instead grab a fistful of bills which he shoved in his pockets.
Keith stood up, quietly clicking the safe shut and dusting off his jacket. Before he left the office, he saluted the little Jesus.
“Thanks for the wine,” he mumbled. Hopefully the Good Lord wouldn’t mind too much, feeding the needy was supposed to be his thing, right?
Keith emerged quietly from the room, and turned around to shut the door. With any luck the church wouldn’t know they’d been robbed until next Sunday, giving Keith enough time to be on the road north to St. Louis, to become a mere memory on the streets of Lawrence.
But as the office door clicked shut, he heard another click – the opening of the front door.
“Well, well, well… Look what we have here…” A gruff voice drawled from behind him. Keith turned and felt a sharp blade of icy fear plunge into his chest. Two men stood in the doorway. They were dirty-looking, brutes of men in stained overalls. One was large and muscled, with thinning hair and beady eyes. The other was scrawny and lithe, with gnarled teeth and a newsboy tugged low over his face.
Don’t panic. They were just thieves. Probably. Keith could shake them. Maybe.
“When they told us to check the town I thought they might’ve gone a little crazy!” The little one sneered – Keith wasn’t good with accents, but the guy sounded Southern. “But here y’are!”
He started to raise his hands, wine still clenched in his fist. He was embarrassed at how white his knuckles were. Who were these guys? How did they know he’d be here?
The big guy on the right grunted at him, striding forward. “Drop the liquor, kid.”
Panic rose in his chest, bubbling and boiling like hot water. They found you, the voice in his head said. They found you, and you didn’t even get that far.
Keith’s head span, and suddenly purple streaked across his mind. The man was saying something to him, and his hand was reaching into his coat – the sliver sheen of a gun flashing in the dim light. The purple, like a violent violet wound, burned against Keith’s eyes. He moved before he could even think about it.
Keith drew his pistol with expert quickness and shot twice; once into the big one’s shoulder and once into the little one’s thigh. That one screamed and fell to his knees – an action that probably worsened the injury. The big one stayed on his feet, which was admirable in a morbid way, one hand flying to his shoulder and the other shooting out to steady himself on one of the pews. His gun clattered to the floor.
They aren’t going to get you, not today.
But then the purple faded from Keith’s vision, and with a sinking terror in his chest it left nothing but the shattering realization of a great mistake.
They were wearing orange bandannas, symbols of a gang Keith only knew from reputation. A Tennessee gang, and that meant…
They weren’t the ones.
“Fuck,” Keith muttered.
The big guy howled in pain.
“Uh…” Keith stood in the aisle awkwardly. He didn’t know what to say now. “I thought you were someone else… sorry.”
The big one spat blood and lunged for Keith. “You motherfu– “
Keith decided he didn’t want to explain himself and kicked the man in the jaw, sending him sprawling across the aisle alongside his friend. He didn’t wait for a response. He tucked the communion wine under his arm and sprinted for the exit. There was a gunshot, from which thug Keith didn’t stop to see, and the wood on the right side of the door-frame splintered outwards. Keith’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept running.
He burst through the double doors and ran down the steps. Cat was there, waiting for him, and he didn’t break stride as he unceremoniously scooped her up and shoved her under his arm alongside the wine. She growled at him.
“Sorry, Cat!” he cried. “We’re going!”
Cat yowled.
Keith ran for the nearest alleyway, awkwardly juggling a gun, a cat, and a bottle of wine as his feet took him to his getaway’s hiding place. Keith skid to a stop beside a dumpster, kicking away a clumsy barricade of boxes to reveal his bike – sleek and red and the only valuable thing he had to his name. He tossed the wine into the saddle bag, shoved Cat into his jacket, and jammed his pistol clumsily into his waistband.
“Hey, kid! Get back here! Where’s our hooch?!”
Okay, now Keith was positive these guys had the wrong person.
Keith turned to see the big guy, staggering out of the church, still holding his shoulder.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
Keith slung a leg over the seat and edged the motorcycle out from behind the piles of garbage he had hidden it behind. Sending one last box skittering across the alley, the motorcycle was free of the barricade. Keith revved the engine and tore off down the narrow street, letting the screams of the bootleggers fade into the distance. He turned around.
“I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for!” He yelled at the thug’s receding form.
A gunshot rang out again, kicking up dust a few feet from Keith’s back tire, but he was already speeding away.
Cat wormed her way to the collar of Keith’s coat, poking her ginger head over his top button and mewling curiously.
“It’s alright, Cat,” Keith said. “We’re getting out of here a little earlier than planned, that’s all.”
As Keith ripped down the side streets of Lawrence, a dozen different questions swirled in his mind.
Had his paranoia finally driven him crazy? Of course those guys hadn’t been after him… how egotistical did he have to be to think people would cross hell and high water to follow a runt like him? But if they weren’t after him before, they were after him now, and what was a Tennessean gang doing in Lawrence?
Whatever the answers were, Keith knew he didn’t want to stick around to hear them. He turned off towards the train-yard just as the sun dipped below the horizon, spilling the last of its light over the dark land like the final drops of whiskey. The day had ended, but the night had just begun.
Lance pulled the car into the alleyway behind the old distillery and turned off the engine. He opened the driver’s door and immediately regretted it as the hot evening air rolled into the cab. The air was thick with the scent of smoke and industrial garbage that spread from the adjacent train-yards. Lance stifled a gag. This was a nasty place, one that only became nastier as the sun sank low in the sky.
It had taken him and Pidge seven hours to get to Lawrence, a time-frame not aided by her insistence that they take every swerving back-road imaginable as they picked their way north along the river. There had been a few false scares; a few sightings of distant cars that never turned out to be anything more than businessmen or farmers on commutes far less dangerous than theirs. When they had finally caught sight of Lawrence on the horizon the sun was already setting, and the lights of the town were a welcome beacon.
Pidge yanked the side-door open and clambered out onto the street. She stretched over-dramatically, her joints clicking. Lance made a face at the uncomfortable noise that Pidge, thankfully, didn’t see.
“When are we meeting Hunk?” Lance asked.
“Now,” Pidge said, straightening her jacket. “He should be inside.”
The Outram Distillery in Lawrence was once a behemoth of industry, but now it lay rotting on the banks of the Mississippi like a hollowed, scavenged carcass of the old world. It was an old world where their line of work hadn’t had to be done in shady alleys, muddy back-roads, and sweltering bayous. Lance couldn’t remember a time like that – stories of it were almost as unbelievable as the Greek myths children learned in school.
It couldn’t hurt to dream of those days though.
Outram Distillery was one of hundreds in the state that had been abandoned at the turn of the decade. After the passage of the Volstead Act, the life had been sucked out these places with the quiet swiftness of a biblical purge. Now they were nothing, nothing but dens for squatters, junkies, and, of course, bootleggers.
Bootleggers like Lance found refuge in the lonely skeletons of their more legal predecessors. After most of the distilling equipment had been dismantled, the feds had pretty much left the places alone; if there were somewhere bootleggers wouldn’t be, it was a useless distillery, right?
He and Pidge made their way into the dark bowels of the old distillery. It didn’t take them long to find Hunk within its towering walls.
Hunk Garrett was not easily missed: He stood at 6 feet, 2 inches and was exactly as strong as he looked, which was very strong. He was from the islands far across the sea to the west and Lance had never asked how someone from as far away as Hunk came had managed to end up taking Chemistry in a college in Tennessee, but that’s where he’d met Pidge, and that’s how he’d met Lance. That had been the best thing that had happened to Lance in years so he wasn’t one to question it.
“How’s it going, Big Guy?” Lance greeted. Hunk smiled as the two approached.
“Working hard! How’s it been for you?”
“Eventful!” Lance said elbowing Pidge. “Pidge got stopped by Iverson’s boys just before Bathans.”
Hunk’s entire demeanor changed to one of deep fearfulness. “Pidge got what!? But we crossed state lines?!”
Hunk was smart, he was resourceful, but most of all he was scared enough about everything to keep the other two members of their trio grounded. That was one of the reasons Lance liked him.
“It’s alright,” Pidge assured. “Just tell us what we’re doing now.”
Hunk dove right into their plan. “I’ve found an easy access point just down the way where the train’s going to be stopping. All we gotta do is get the loading ramp ready and we’re good to drive Old Blue there into one of the back carriages. Those won’t be unloaded until St. Louis, so we should be left alone long enough to slip out a town or two before then.”
Pidge and Lance nodded.
“Oh! One more thing!” Hunk leaned over and began to dig through his bag, eventually pulling out a sketchbook. He opened it and handed it to Pidge. A dozen prototype designs for whiskey labels jumped out at them from the pages in scrawls of pencil and charcoal.
“Holt & Garrett,” Hunk said, smiling at the expression of borderline ecstasy on Pidge’s face as she surveyed the designs. “Our names in lights, just like you wanted.”
Pidge Gunderson was not Katharine Holt’s real name, but Lance had enough experience with fake names to not care about that part of her all that much. She had reasons for it – reasons involving tiring gender politics that Lance hoped would be sorted out before he had the chance or cause to bring a daughter into the world.
Pidge was adamant they use the alias in the day to day – especially when conducting any dealings resembling business. Lance understood her feelings; names were clothes, and sometimes it became hard to take them off. But she had insisted their first line of sellable hooch have her real name on it. Hunk had made that happen.
“They look amazing, Hunk,” she said, grin audible in every syllable. Hunk replied with a flourishing bow.
“Twas nothing, my friend,” he said, badly imitating a British accent. The trio laughed.
Lance still wasn’t feeling entirely steady. It was more than jitters, at this point, they had travelled too far and invested too much in this for this to be anything other than fear he was feeling.
But it was his only option – their only option – to get out of their shit lives and into something better.
The news had arrived in the Nashville speakeasies about two months ago. It had snuck into their quiet halls in the form of hushed rumours and half-drunk stories. Pidge, of course, had heard them first.
The rumour was that a wealthy benefactor in St. Louis was trying to start a speakeasy. The story was untrustworthy for the most part; it morphed and changed between tellings with all the fluidity of the river waters it had travelled down to reach them. Some said the benefactor was a disgraced European noble, others said he was the son of a Sicilian mobster or an old brewery owner not ready to give up his ways. Some claimed his wealth totaled in the hundreds of millions, and that he’d give money to whomever sold him the best hooch in the land.
That last claim was usually accompanied by someone attempting to sell Iverson’s boys their hooch (the best in the land).
But no matter how outlandish the details were, the core of the story remained constant and solid from telling to telling. Someone in St. Louis was looking to enter the bootlegging scene, and he was offering money for help – a proposition with only one entry requirement: Whiskey. A lot of it.
“We have to go,” Lance had said after Pidge had brought the rumour to his attention. “We’re going nowhere here. This is a chance to do something more with our lives than being Iverson’s errand boys.”
“By being someone else’s errand boys?” Hunk had asked.
“You know what I mean, Hunk,” Lance had almost pleaded.
“I wouldn’t mind getting out of here,” Pidge had said. “I’d kind of like to make booze without Iverson’s name on it for once.”
Hunk had looked nervous, but his voice had been surprisingly steady when he agreed. “Okay… When do we start?”
It had taken them several weeks to lay out the operation. It involved a lot of planning, timing, and luck. Hunk and Pidge had left first, slipping out of Nashville on a border-bound train in the middle of the night. Lance made his escape about a week later amidst the confusion caused by the two chemists’ disappearances. Iverson had cared more about the mutiny of his prized moonshiners than he ever would about a single bootlegger, so Lance had taken advantage of the old man’s tunnel-like focus on Hunk and Pidge to slip out of the city with almost 100 bottles of his best booze (and some of Pidge’s more experimental stuff for good measure).
The plan was simple in theory: they would split up to draw off any attention, and Lance would pick them up along the way. Together, they’d board the north-bound train from Lawrence to St. Louis, smuggling Lance’s car into one of the back carriages that stopped right next to the old distillery. On the last stop before St. Louis they would slip out again and drive unnoticed into the city.
In practice it was more complicated. Though he hadn’t seen any in person, the fact some of Iverson’s gang had followed them across the river had Lance worried. He hoped they had given up, or that he and Pidge had driven fast enough to make it to Lawrence before them. Lance was usually an optimistic person, but years in the business of smuggling had taught him that caution wasn’t a pessimistic trait to value; there was nothing more optimistic than wanting to not die.
He knew they couldn’t relax until the moment they handed the whiskey over to the buyers. Only then could they stop looking over their shoulders. For now, they needed to act fast.
“Now that we’re all caught up,” Lance said. “We need to get on that train. When’s it coming in?”
A surprisingly close-by train whistle answered his question.
The three of them looked to the horizon, eyeing the plume of steam slowly coasting towards them over the darkened skyline.
It didn’t take long for the trio to get set up after that. By the time the north-bound train had pulled into the station the ramp was ready, Lance was already sitting in the driver’s seat with Hunk to his left and Pidge wedged with the whiskey in the back, and the engine was running.
Lance threw Old Blue into gear and inched forward, up the ramp, into the train carriage that would deliver them to freedom. As easy as that. It didn’t feel like it should be that easy, but Lance tried as hard as he could not to look that particular gift horse in the mouth.
They were just finishing their tie-down of the car when the whistle sounded and the rumble of the train’s engines rippled through the length of its body. Now, Lance could exhale a little. Now they were moving. Now they–
There was a sound from outside.
The tearing sound of a small engine – no – more than one. A small engine and several bigger ones. An uneven patter of distant gunshots. Getting louder. Getting louder every second.
The train inched forward.
“Iverson’s boys?” Pidge asked, her voice small.
“If it’s Iverson’s boys, who the hell are they shooting at?” Hunk replied.
The trio looked at each other and then jumped into action.
Lance kicked the ramp away from the train. “Get the doors!” He yelled, and Pidge and Hunk, like the well-oiled machine they were, ran to opposite sides of the large, sliding doors and started to push.
The train wasn’t moving nearly fast enough yet.
Lance scrambled back to the car, reaching into the rear window to pull the tarp back over the hooch. Keep it safe, keep it safe, he thought. That was the only goal. And if he also grabbed his gun out of the back seat at the same time? That was just added security.
He turned to the doors, just in time to hear a cacophonous crash followed by a shadow that slipped through the doors just as Hunk and Pidge slammed it shut. Lance’s hand went immediately for the gun on his hip, but he hesitated before drawing it.
The figure who had just entered rolled to a stop on the floor, awkwardly trying to stay in an upright position while clutching something to their chest.
It was a man. He was young, probably about Lance’s age, but very different looking. He was smaller, a little broader, and distinctly foreign. As he steadied himself, he turned and looked the three of them, piercing eyes peering through a messy mop of dark hair.
“Evenin’,” he said, very out of breath. “Is this the train to St. Louis?”
“Um, yes?” Pidge said, a little incredulously.
The man nodded and got to his feet, finally revealing what he was holding against his chest. It was a small ginger cat, gently blinking from where it sat tucked into his jacket as if amused by the situation if found itself in. It seemed to be the only one; everyone else stood there is shock. Lance decided he’d be the first to get angry.
“What the hell is going on?!” He shouted.
When Keith had ditched his bike at the train-yard and jumped into an open carriage, he hadn’t expected it to be occupied, but it wasn’t filled with mobsters or orange-bandanna wearing bootleggers, so he counted that as a positive.
“Just… takin’ a breather,” he said, answering the tall one’s question, desperately trying to embody that claim with large, gulping breaths. “Getting shot at by some… orange chumps. You know how it is.”
Keith resisted the urge to sit down again, despite how tired he was. He took a few more breaths, steadying himself. Cat meowed, and he gave her a quick scratch behind the ears.
“Did you say orange?” the little one of the three said and – woah! – that was either a girl or a middle-schooler.
“Y-you a dame?” He blurted, unable to stop himself.
The little one spluttered and turned red, which Keith took as a yes even before she said, “Yeah, but what does it matter, huh?”
He opened his mouth to apologise, because that had been pretty rude of him, but she put up a hand. “You said orange, yeah? Like bandannas?” She mimed a bandanna around her neck.
The pieces clicked together like one of the jigsaw puzzles his father used to do at Christmas. Except this puzzle wasn’t of a field of flowers or a map of Canada. This puzzle was of a terrible, horrible situation he was stuck in the middle of.
“Wait, you know them? Those guys are after you!?” Keith cried. The tall guy shrugged.
Keith scoffed, unable to keep the hot anger in his chest from boiling over. “Do you know what I had to do to get away from them?!”
“I’m guessing something that made them very angry,” said the girl, who was sticking her head through the gap in the doors. “They’re behind us.”
“In cars!?” The big guy yelled, running to see. The sound of distant gunfire echoed far off – but not far off to make Keith feel safe, and the two of them jumped back from the door with a speed that was almost comical. Keith, however, wasn’t finding this situation very funny.
“Okay, What I did was definitely not enough to warrant chasing down a train,” Keith said. “What did you do to them?!”
The three strangers shared a long glance that Keith hated the unspoken implications of. He hated them more when the girl spoke, confirming a fear Keith hadn’t known he’d had. “We, uh… may have stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of whiskey from them.”
She pointed to the blue car nestled in the back of the carriage, and Keith found himself staggering over. There, haphazardly covered by a thin tarp, were bottles upon bottles of dark liquid. Keith needed to sit down. Of course, the train he decides to take north would be the one crawling with bootleggers. So much for laying low.
“This is just swell,” he mumbled. Cat meowed.
“How long until they catch up with us?” The tall guy said, turning to more urgent matters than Keith.
It was the big guy that answered. “We’re still in the city, so the roads are smaller,” he said. “But once they’re on the open road they’re going to catch up with us in no time…”
“And from there–“ the girl started, but gunfire cut her off. She let the statement hang.
Keith felt a writhing in his jacket and looked down to see Cat trying to duck her head fully beneath his collar. He felt his heart sink. Cats were smart, his was maybe the smartest he’d ever met, and she knew trouble when she smelled it. “We’ll be fine, Cat,” he whispered.
“Hey, new guy! Quit it with the kitty! You packing heat?” The tall one was shouting at him from where he now stood at the door, peeking out through the small gap they had wrenched open.
The sound of gunfire and revving motors was far too close to them now. Keith's hand went to the gun jammed in his waistband.
“Yeah," he said. "But we’re going to need more than four guns to take out all the guys who were chasing me.”
“Well, good news.” The tall one twirled his gun around his index finger. Keith hadn’t gotten any better with accents in the last 20 minutes, but this guy’s one wasn’t as… American… as the others. He made a note of that. “Looks like we only have two guns.”
“Oh perfect,” Keith said. “We’re dead then. Bye.”
“We’re not dead yet,” the tall one said, suddenly serious.
Keith frowned. “We’re going to need something much more powerful than a couple of pea-shooters if we–“
His voice trailed off and his eyes trailed to the car tucked away in the corner.
“Hey… how strong is that stuff?” Keith asked suddenly. The girl looked where he was pointing.
“The whiskey? It’s strong… like 80 proof, maybe 90?” The girl looked taken aback initially, but then looked thoughtful, like she understood where he was going with this line of questioning. “W-we have stronger stuff, though, like 100 proof.”
Perfect.
“Where is it?”
She answered with action. She sprinted over to the car and threw the side door open. She dug around for a second that stretched far too long and pulled out three bottles of different, less presentable looking alcohol.
The big guy gasped. “What are you going to do with that!? It hasn’t been tested yet!”
“We’re not drinking it,” Keith said.
He grabbed two of the bottles from the girl’s hands and twisted the caps off with his teeth. He sliced the edge of his lip in the process and the spicy tang of the moonshine burned in the cut. He winced, but soldiered on.
“What’s your plan?” The tall guy asked. Keith spat the caps to the floor.
“I need you to siphon some oil from the tank,” he said. A look of recognition passed over the three faces in front of him, but it was the tall guy that sprang into action first.
“Alright!” He yelled, wild laughter playing on his voice. “Let’s light ‘em up!”
Keith jammed the open bottle between his knees and began ripping the fabric of his shirt using his teeth. The rough, cheap cotton tore easily, and Keith very quickly had two long strips in his hands. He grabbed the bottle and began to pour the moonshine over the material. He soaked them – drenched them – like his hands had learned to do so long ago.
The tall guy emerged from behind the car.
“I have it!” he said. “Get over here quick!”
Keith got to his feet, shoving the wet strips of fabric in his teeth for safe keeping, the odorous liquor burning his mouth. As he came around to the back of the car, he saw the tall guy crouched down by its hood, a long pipe leading from his hands into the car’s underbelly. Thick, black liquid was dripping out from the end of the pipe.
Keith had done this before – a dozen times, maybe more – but he’d never done it in a place like this. He just hoped the routine he’d memorised so carefully would be enough. He placed the open bottle on the ground. ‘Fill this,’ he said, passing it off to the tall guy. He obliged, and began to fill the empty space in the bottle with viscous black liquid.
“What’s your name?” The tall guy asked, grinning wildly as he worked.
“Keith,” Keith said, not really caring if these people knew it.
“Lance.” The guy offered his own name, his voice almost giddy. “And you, my friend, are the craziest person I’ve ever met.”
You have no idea, Keith thought, and he smiled despite himself. “Fill this one.”
The two boys swapped bottles. Keith, now holding the mixture of motor oil and moonshine, wasted no time is shoving the cotton strip inside the neck of the bottle, worming the smelly rag deep into the volatile slurry. He reached for the other one and did the same. For a moment, he sat there and stared at his creations. They were shoddy and rushed, but he hoped against hope they’d be good enough to do the job.
The sound of gunshots rang from outside, snapping him back to the present. Keith stood up, bottle in hand, and passed the other to Lance.
“Make it count,” he said, and ran for the door.
The other two bootleggers had swung the doors open while Keith and Lance had worked, exposing the train car to the world tearing past outside. The tracks were still on open ground, right next to the road, and there was nothing between them and the three black cars of their pursuers but a small, 8-foot gap.
Perfect.
“Got a light?” Keith shouted over the blustering cacophony of the wind. All three of the bootleggers pulled out lighters. Keith grabbed the one closest to him and flicked it open. It sparked to life, orange flame trembling – almost in anticipation – in front of him.
Keith lit the rag. The fire burned – oddly – red instead of orange.
Oh. This is not clean moonshine.
Excellent.
He could see the two men from the church in one of the cars. The little one was sitting in the back with a Tommy gun slung over the side window. The big guy was in the front, driving with more ferocity that the others in his crew. Keith couldn’t blame him; after all, that shoulder wound looked nasty.
He heard the sound of Lance lighting his rag. Time was short. He locked eyes with Lance, and the two of them nodded in unison.
Three. Two. One.
Keith could hear the sound of the gun cocking, he could see the whites of their eyes.
He threw the bottle.
It hit the hood of the thugs’ car and for a terrifying, too-long moment, nothing happened. Then, like fire from hell itself, the bottle exploded, sending a wave of red flames rippling across the body of the car. The hulking black beast, now engulfed in flames, swerved back and forth on the road, veering to the left too hard and slamming into the second car like a flaming arrowhead. The second car buckled, swerving left and spinning out on the dusty road, falling behind as the flaming car veered off into the night. The only one left was the third car, whose unknown driver pushed forward. Keith saw the metallic flash of a gun hanging out of the window. He turned to yell at his companion.
“Lance-“
But he was already ahead of him.
Lance threw the bottle, finding his target on the third car with pinpoint accuracy – not just hitting it, but passing it straight through the passenger side window. The flames erupted within the cab, briefly illuminating a grisly tableau of its two occupants, like grotesque shadow figures, against the red light. The image vanished as quickly as the screams did, replaced with violent, blazing light as the car immediately stuttered out of control, swerving madly towards them and colliding with the side of the train.
The car flew into the air and fire, like ribbons, streamed out of every window as it spun and flipped onto its side. The sound of screeching metal pierced the air, masking for a moment the rhythmic chugging of the train and the howling of the wind. The train rumbled as shards of metal crashed up against its iron wheels like waves on a cliff. Then, like it had never happened, the burning carcass of the car fell into the distance and disappeared as the train thundered on.
The four occupants of the train carriage stood in awed shock in the open door, wind whipping past them as they silently stared at the place their pursuers had once been.
“Oh my god,” the girl finally said. “That was… oh my God. Was… was the fire red?”
“Yup,” said the big guy in a small voice.
“Oh… I’m very glad we didn’t drink that.”
“Yup.”
With the silence broken, Keith turned to Lance. “Did you throw that through the window?”
Lance was stood stock-still, eyes wide. “…Oops,” he said quietly.
The big guy turned to walk away from the door, making it halfway across to the car before deciding it better to just sit down on the floor.
It took them a little while to clean up the mess Keith had hurriedly imposed upon them. Keith helped out as best he could, but it seemed the three bootleggers knew their way around their own equipment much better than him, so for the most part he stood on the side-lines with Cat firmly clasped in his arms and listened as they told him their story.
They asked him where he was from first, and Keith gave the standard answer: His name was Keith and the cat was called Cat. He was the son of Korean immigrants and had been raised in California. He’d spent his teen years in several uneventful places across the US. It wasn’t a total lie, but it wasn’t the total truth.
Then they told him about themselves. Their names were Lance, Pidge (the girl), and Hunk (the big one) and they were – obviously – bootleggers. They used to work for a gang in Nashville, for some guy called Iverson Keith vaguely knew the name of, but left, leading to them being chased by thugs across state lines. Hunk and Pidge were moonshiners – and pretty good ones, if they were to be taken at their word. Lance was a bootlegger, or at least Keith inferred that he was; he was staying pretty quiet about himself.
“So, where are you taking this stuff?” he asked after introductions had been made and they had all settled down to sit and eat. The doors had been left open now allowing them to look out over the night-time fields of southern Missouri.
“There’s a speakeasy in St. Louis looking for a new supply,” Pidge explained, cracking into a can of something. “We figured the best bootleggers in Tennessee might help them out a bit!”
“You’re the best bootleggers in Tennesse?” Keith couldn’t keep the doubt out of his voice. He absently pet Cat, who hadn’t left his jacket, while they talked.
“They’re offering a lot more money than our old gig,” Hunk explained, he’d already eaten about four cans of peaches and looked to be taking a breather. Pidge squawked indignantly at her partner’s refusal to play along.
Money. Keith hated that he was now interested.
“You could… come with us,” Hunk said. “We could always use more help, and you seem handy with… uh… setting things on fire?”
Keith snorted. He was good at that, wasn’t he?
You can’t go back into that world, Keith, a voice inside his head said. You’re going to St. Louis to find Shiro and nothing else.
But the taste of the moonshine in his mouth, still burning his cut lip and mingling every so sharply with the blood, was a vibrant force. He felt the chemical tang of it – a taste he had come to love over the years. Despite the copious quantities of lead that was apparently running through some of it, the stuff these guys were peddling was good. It was good enough to be worth far more than the measly communion wine Keith had been selling to dumb country kids. It meant money and it meant more of the rush he had felt tonight – a rush he hadn’t felt in months.
An offer to get in on an operation like that was a rarity and, to some, a blessing.
He was in St. Louis to find Shiro, sure, but how was he supposed to do that on the chump change he’d been making up until now?
“Sure,” he said, trying to sound casual. “What’s the name of the place?”
Pidge wiggled her fingers at Keith. “It’s shrouded in mystery,” she cooed, not sounding at all serious. “But we have connections in town who say it’s called the Chateau des Lions.”
“El Castillo de Leones,” Lance said in Spanish through a mouthful of baked beans, which didn’t help Keith any more than the French. That must have been apparent on his face or in his silence, because Lance quickly said it in English too. “The Castle of Lions.”
He’d never heard of it before, and he’d heard of a lot of places. “I don’t know it.”
“It’s new,” Pidge said. “But it is real. Hopefully.”
Keith sighed. Normally he wouldn’t take on a risky gambit like this, but he was out of options. Selling church wine wouldn’t be able to prop him up forever.
They settled back into some simulacrum of silence.
“You can put your things in the car if you want,” Hunk said a while later. Keith nodded and got to his feet.
The car was a behemoth and he had been wanting an excuse to look at it closer; A four-seater with even more space in the back, thick wheels for uneven country roads and smooth city ones alike, a solid steel chassis, and a blue paint job that was anything but subtle. He couldn’t fathom how a bootlegger like Lance, who already seemed to stand out enough, had survived this long in this car, but he decided he didn’t really care.
All he cared about was this car’s cargo and where it would take him.
One step closer to finding Shiro.
He tossed his satchel in the back seat and paused.
Keith looked down at the bottle of wine in his bag, nestled next to his one change of clothes, a can of tuna for him and Cat to share, and a few loose bullets. It seemed pretty pointless to keep it now, with a veritable fortune of whiskey three feet from where he was standing. Better not waste it. He leaned over and tugged it out, making sure not to upset Cat with the action.
“What’s that?” Pidge asked as Keith settled back onto the floor. “Is that wine?”
“Yeah, I was going to sell it, but I guess I don’t have to anymore,” Keith said. He looked at the label. Sacramental Wine, bottled in Napa Valley, 1926. He nodded to himself as if he had any idea what those words indicated about the quality. “It’s real stuff too.”
Keith could almost see the mental math Lance was doing. “Wait…” He said, eyes narrowing. “Did you steal that from a church?”
Keith popped the cap and let the smell of grapes and Jesus fill the train car. “Do you really care?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I mean… a little,” Lance said, unconvincingly. Cat meowed like she, too, didn’t believe him.
After a moment of silence, Lance wordlessly grabbed the bottle and they shared it around as the night grew to its full, star-filled splendor outside. They sped off into the unknown under the moonlight, Lawrence at their backs and St. Louis on their minds – drinking holy wine without the whispers of a single prayer on their lips.