Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

“The roadhouse.”

“That’s why I told you not to go near it. If a man is so inclined, he can take his pleasure in the rooms upstairs. Or get skunk drunk in the back room. Lefty’s is a regular den of iniquity. A blind tiger.”

“A what?”

He’d explained the term, and she was astonished.

“A speakeasy? Here? Where there’s a church on every corner?”

He snuffled. “Me and Ernie, and every moonshiner around, love nothing better than a tent revival that goes on for days. We raise more spirits selling corn liquor on the parking lot than the preachers raise under the tent. Make more money than what’s dropped in the offering plate, too.”

They laughed together before he turned solemn again. “When this new still is up and running, I’d like to expand the business. But those boom towns…naw,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m too old for all that rowdiness. And, if I was to poach on the Johnsons’ territory, they’d cut out my heart and feed it to a mad dog.

“Just as scary,” he went on, “are the government agents on the hunt for bootleggers and moonshiners. And it’s open season. They patrol every road going in and out of those oil towns, armed to the teeth. More and more of them are getting those new submachine guns. And even if it weren’t for the guns, Ernie and me don’t have a vehicle fast enough to outrun theirs.”

They fell into a ponderous silence, each lost in thought. Laurel picked up a piece of pie crust left on her plate and crumbled it between her finger and thumb. Her mother had taught her the technique of making it flaky. She remembered standing on a footstool in the kitchen, watching as her mother combined the ingredients and added cold water, one drop at a time, until the dough was the perfect consistency to roll out on the floured surface.

She often felt a wave of nostalgia for her mother. But never for her father. The condemnation he would heap on his daughter, the moonshiner, perversely deepened her determination to succeed at it.

“Tell me more about Lefty’s,” she said.

“It does a brisk business. Folks come from all round.”

“Who keeps him stocked?”

“A bootlegger out of Dallas. Or so I’m told. He’s talked about, but not by name. Lefty also supports the local economy, though.”

Laurel raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

All Irv said was, “Lefty and me have an understanding and do just fine by each other.”

“Who else does he have an understanding with?”

“That’s his business.”

“It’s our business, Irv. Our bills are caught up, but I don’t want to be just caught up. I want to make money, and my stock-in-trade is moonshine whiskey.” She leaned forward across the table. “Maybe Lefty—what’s his last name?”

Irv scratched his cheek. “You know, I don’t recall ever hearin’. It’s always just been him and his wife, Gert.

“Could Lefty be enticed to buy more from you if you discounted the price per jar?”

“Jug.”

“He buys by the jug?”

“He does, and I’m leaving well enough alone, missy. We’ll make enough profit without taking a baseball bat to a hornets’ nest.” He ended on that note, pushing back his chair and announcing that he was beat. “Thanks for the pie. I don’t think I’ve ever had better.”

She wished him a good night. He retreated to his bedroom and shut the door, but Laurel was too keyed up to go to bed. Over the course of their lengthy conversation, several things had become crystal clear to her.

One. The new still would double their production, but it was unlikely that Irv’s regulars would correspondingly double their consumption—especially under the watchful eyes of their wives. In order for the new still to pay for itself, they must increase their customer base.

Two. Ernie’s talent was distillation and controlling the quality of their product. Thus far Irv had proved to be a crafty and capable distributor of it. However, neither thought like an entrepreneur. Growing the business would be her contribution, and she was eager to start.

It galled her to think that the Johnsons had a foothold in the boom towns. But any attempt to compete with cutthroat big-timers like them would be foolish and potentially hazardous.

And, realistically, neither Irv, nor Ernie, nor she could make the long and dangerous trips up and back to the oil patch towns, hauling hooch. In newspapers, they were portrayed as fertile fields for every form of wickedness. One was either a purveyor of it, or a victim, but no one was immune to peril.

If the immoral climate and fearsome competition weren’t enough cause for trepidation, there were the heavily armed lawmen who couldn’t be outrun.

Surely there was a safer, saner way to conduct business. But how, when the manufacturing and selling of their product were illegal? These inherent dangers wouldn’t abound if they were making and selling hat pins, or sachets, or…

She drew focus on the coconut meringue confection in the center of the table.

Eight hours later, she was still seated at the table, but the pie had been replaced with the scattered contents of the recipe box her mother had given her when she married. She’d filled sheets of paper with scribbled notes, jotting down ideas as they occurred to her. Various lists had grown longer as the night had stretched into morning.