Restoring Harmony (12 page)

23

September 14th-Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.

-Ambrose Bierce

OVER THE NEXT THREE WEEKS, I WAS ABOUT READY to explode from both excitement and frustration over the whiskey. I hadn’t seen Spill once, which really bothered me for a couple of reasons. I kind of missed him, but more importantly, even though I hated to ask for help, I knew I needed him to sell the whiskey for me.

Not only was Mom’s due date creeping closer, but Katie’s wedding was less than two weeks away. Getting my grandparents back to the island and Mom’s health were the most important factors, but I didn’t want to miss the wedding if I could help it, either. I finally decided I couldn’t wait any longer for Spill. I would try selling two or three bottles, just to see how much I got. If it went well, then I’d sell the rest, buy our train tickets, and we’d go. I hoped we would see Spill again sometime, though. I’d found myself daydreaming a little too often about his blue eyes and friendly smile to just walk off without saying good-bye.

On a misty morning, I packed three bottles wrapped in one of Grandpa’s old shirts into my backpack and headed for the market. I wore a pair of old jeans I’d found upstairs, with a denim jacket, and I let my hair hang loose so it was kind of wild. I’d even smudged a bit of dirt on my cheek too, hoping I’d look like I belonged there, like I was tough.

I stopped on the street just before the entrance, slid one of the bottles out of my pack, keeping it wrapped in the shirt. Men sat at tables, playing cards, smoking, and drinking out of coffee mugs. The aroma of beer was strong, even though it was only ten in the morning. If I couldn’t get Spill to sell my whiskey to the rich people, then these were my customers, but I wasn’t sure how to approach them. They, however, had no qualms about talking to me.

“Hey there, baby. You’re a sweet thing,” a scruffy man who could use a good wash said.

“What’s a lovely little thing like you doing around here?” his pal with a mangy beard asked.

“Ummm . . . I have . . . I have something to sell,” I managed to squeak out.

“You don’t say?” He raised his eyebrows and let out a wolf whistle.

Everyone laughed, and I felt my face flush. Then a group of about six men, moving like a pack of wild dogs, got up from a table. As they shuffled towards me, I skirted around another guy who could’ve been one of their ugly brothers. I held on tight to the bottle, still wrapped in the shirt.

“What you got in your hand?” asked one of the men from the pack. He was crowding up to me, close enough that I could smell the reek of cigarette smoke on his flannel shirt.

In a matter of seconds, I was surrounded by a scraggly lot.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to back away. I’d changed my mind. This was not a good idea, and I had to get out of there fast. “Just my grandpa’s old shirt.” I edged to my right, and the circle of men moved with me.

“Let me see it.” A big hairy paw reached out.When I jerked back, the two bottles in my pack clanged together.

“Sounds like bottles,” one guy said.

I decided to come clean. Maybe I could start a bidding war or something. I unwrapped the Jameson Gold and held it up like an auctioneer.

“Who wants to buy this bottle of fine old Irish whiskey?” I asked a little too loudly. Suddenly every man within fifty meters descended on me.

“Buy it? Why would we buy it?”

“Seems like it’s there for the takin’.”

“No! Wait! Stop it!” I shouted as a man reached for it.

“There’s more in her pack. I can hear ’em.”

“No there’s not! Keep your hands off me!”

Someone tried to snatch the bottle out of my hand, but I held on with all my might. I’d been shoveling and digging all summer, and my grip was strong. As I yanked my arm away, I lost my balance and the bottle cracked against the head of the guy standing next to him. The whiskey was intact, but the man dropped to the ground.

“Hey! She killed Weasel!”

“Oh, my God!” I cried.

“He ain’t dead,” the man in flannel said, laughing. “Takes more than that to kill him. Look, he’s still breathing.”

Everyone laughed around me, and the scruffy guy nudged the fallen Weasel with his boot. His chest was definitely moving up and down, and for a second I was relieved, but then I felt a tug on my pack. I swung around, trying to hit whoever it was, but the man behind me was ready, and he grabbed my wrist, clenching it so hard tears welled up in my eyes.

“Let me go! Please! Please let me go!” I screamed. “You’re breaking my arm.”

In spite of everything going on around me, only one thing flashed across my mind. If he broke my wrist, I might never be able to play Jewels again. Or at least not very well.

“I’ll give you the whiskey,” I said. “Just let me go!”

“Oh, now you want to bargain, huh?” the bearded man snarled. “Too late, missy!”

He had the bottle, but he didn’t let me go. Instead, he started dragging me into the tent.

“Help!” I screamed. “Help me!”

That was when I saw Doug. He stood on the outer circle, bleary-eyed, his hair matted. He clearly hadn’t been to bed the night before. At first I thought he didn’t see me, but then our eyes met and relief flooded me.

I’d planted my feet as best I could to make myself as heavy as possible, but my sandals slid on the gravel, and my wrist was hot with pain. The more I resisted, the tighter the man held on, twisting it. I collapsed onto the ground, making myself deadweight, and then I kicked at him, but he wrenched my arm harder, and I screamed.

“Don’t try that with me, little girl.”

“Doug!” I yelled. “Please! Doug! Help me!”

The bearded man pulled me to my feet, and when I looked where Doug had been standing, he was gone. “We’ll have your whiskey,” the man hissed in my ear, “and we’ll have you too, if we want.”

“Or you could let her go,” a steely voice beyond the crowd said. “And then I won’t have to kill you.”

24

THE MAN INSTANTLY DROPPED MY WRIST, AND THE others around the edges of the group began to shuffle off as if they’d just been passing by. The way the crowd dispersed, I’d been expecting a giant, but instead, Randall stepped through.

Even though the bearded man towered over Randall, he stepped back, obviously worried. In a somewhat shaky voice he said, “You’ve got no right. We found ’er first. We’ve got no quarrel with you.”

“And I don’t want to have one with you, because the house always wins,” Randall said.

He was wearing the same suit he’d had on the day he’d taken my pie, and also the day he’d delivered the canning stuff, a dark one with stripes. And his felt hat stood at a jaunty angle. He looked cool and calm.

I stood there too scared to even massage my aching wrist. I’d forgotten all about the Boss. Randall had told me not to busk at the market, and if I couldn’t busk, I definitely shouldn’t be selling whiskey.

“Well . . . ,” Scruffy told the man, “there’s more of us than you.”

He hadn’t even gotten the words out before the few remaining men slunk off, leaving him standing alone. Unless you counted the unconscious Weasel, who lay at his feet, and I didn’t think you could.

“Doesn’t look like your pals are staying,” Randall said.

Scruffy backed away about three or four yards and then he turned and ran, leaving Weasel passed out on the ground.

“Th-thank you,” I stammered.

“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Randall said. “I’m very disappointed.”

“I’m sorry,” I squeaked. “I guess I shouldn’t have-”

“You better give me that whiskey, and I’ll see that Robert gets you the money. After a small commission, that is.”

I handed him the rest of the bottles.

“And then you better get outta here,” he said. “I told you once before about this not being a public market, remember?”

I nodded.

“In the future, if you’ve got anything else to sell, let Robert do it for you.”

“I will.”

Randall didn’t even bother to hide the bottles as he walked off. I ran in the other direction and out onto the street towards home. My swollen wrist burned, and my shredded dignity floated behind me in tatters. How was this Robert going to find me? I was halfway home before I put one and one t ogether.

Robert was Spill.

After what Doug had done, or not done, to help me when I needed him, I was highly tempted to never set foot in the garden again, but what choice did I have? We had to eat. After making sure he wasn’t there the next morning, I went over to check on the fall crops. I was squatting next to the kale, dreaming about music, when Spill burst through the gap in the fence.

“Molly! Where are you?”

I stood up, brushing my hands on my shorts. “Right here. Hi!”

“Are you crazy?” Spill shouted. “What were you thinking?”

He stood over me, hands on his hips, his face as red as his sunburned nose had been that first day we met.

“Wait a min-”

“You could’ve been killed!”

“Would you stop screaming?”

Grandpa stepped through the gap. “What’s going on? Why’re you yelling?”

“You know, for some stupid reason, I thought you were smarter than that,” Spill continued to rant. “What the hell were you thinking? If Randall hadn’t heard the fight, you’d be dead! If you have something to sell, you bring it to me!”

“How can I bring it to you when you don’t come around?” I asked coldly. I glared into his flashing blue eyes. “I haven’t seen you in a month!”

“It hasn’t been a month!”

“Well, three weeks, then,” I said. “I was getting desperate. We need to get home!”

“What made you think you could sell whiskey without getting killed?”

“Sell whiskey?” Grandpa demanded. “Who’s selling whiskey?”

“Your granddaughter!” Spill spit out the words like poison. “She waltzed into the market yesterday waving around bottles of whiskey. If Randall hadn’t known who she was, she’d probably be in a ditch somewhere.”

“Where’d you get this whiskey?” Grandpa asked.

Uh-oh.

“Ummm . . .”

The two of them glared at me.

“Well?” Grandpa demanded.

“Your basement.”

“My basement? Not Jameson’s Gold?”

“I found it in that storage closet behind the bar.”

“You stole my whiskey?”

“I didn’t steal it! You said if I could find anything to sell in the house, I could have it.”

“Well, I didn’t know there was whiskey!” Grandpa shouted.

“I’m sorry,” I said to both of them.

Spill had come into the garden through the gap in the fence between my grandparents’ house and Doug’s, and he turned and stormed off back the way he’d come. I ran after him as he barreled right through the house, nodding politely at my grandma, and out the front door.

“Wait, Spill. Come back.”

“Here,” he said, turning to me. “I almost forgot why I came.” He thrust a huge wad of money into my hand.

“What’s this for?”

“Your whiskey.”

“Three bottles brought this much money?”

“I told you, imported whiskey is hard to get around here. This is your share minus Randall’s commission. And a ten percent tip for saving your life.”

I fingered the money. “Spill. I’m sorry. Really.”

His face softened. “I’m not mad. I was just-”

“What?”

“Scared for you,” he said, his voice low.

“I’m sorry. Really. Tell Randall thank you.”

He nodded.

“It’s just that my mom, she needs a doctor . . . and my sister’s wedding is a week from Saturday.” I smiled at him, trying to make him understand. “I had to try. . . . I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was partly my fault. I shouldn’t have just disappeared. It’s . . .” He unlocked his bike without looking at me. “Look, Molly, we both know who I work for, and I’m just not sure that you should be hanging out with me. The Boss isn’t that happy about me fraternizing with civilians, either, which is why I haven’t been coming around.”

I giggled. “Fraternizing with civilians?”

“The Boss prefers if we aren’t too friendly with the public,” Spill explained. “It’s safer for everybody that way.”

“Oh, well, I don’t really care what you do. . . .”

And I realized as I said it, I didn’t. Spill was a nice guy. So what if he delivered black-market sherry to the rich? It’s not like he was killing people or anything.

“Well, you should care,” he said.

“Well, I don’t, and you can’t tell me what to think.” I smiled at him and tilted my head, forcing him to meet my eye. Finally he smiled back. After a long silence, he took one of my hands in his, and my heart did a flip.

“I do have to go, Mol,” he said. “Try not to do anything else that stupid, okay?”

“Gee, thanks!”

He laughed.

“There are nine more bottles of whiskey,” I said. “Is that enough to get us home?”

“Should be. I’m not sure exactly when I can help you, though,” he said. “But it’ll be soon. I promise.”

“Thanks, Spill. You’ve been really great, and I . . . well . . . thanks.” I looked at the ground instead of him, suddenly aware of how messy my hair must look after all morning in the garden. “Listen,” I said, “if you think I’ll get enough for the whiskey, I guess I’ll leave the food with Doug. You know, for the kids.”

“About Doug . . . ,” he said.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Oh, never mind.”

“No, really. What?”

“Nothing. I can’t talk about it.” He looked over at Doug’s house. “It’s just . . . you can’t take the kids with you, can you?”

“And what? Sneak them into Canada in our suitcases?”

He shrugged.

“It’s not like I haven’t considered it,” I said. “But don’t you think I have enough responsibility right now just trying to get my grandparents back home with me?”

“Yeah. Never mind.”

“Is Doug in some sort of trouble?” I asked.

“I gotta go.”

I reached out and touched his arm. “Spill. Seriously. You can tell me.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but then he stopped himself. Instead, he reached up and covered my hand with his. “Molly,” he said, “it’s too late for Doug. Just . . . just try not to take on his problems too, okay?”

I scowled. “After yesterday,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about me trying to help him.”

He squeezed my hand. “I know,” he said. “But he’s in over his head this time, and he might try to . . . I don’t know . . . play you for sympathy. Stay clear of him or he’ll take you all down with him.”