---

Resurrection Rum

by Stephanie Malia Morris

After Kraus’s The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch

 

ALBEMARLE COUNTY, July 1927: WANTED! One ROBERT HOWARD for the MURDER of JOHN LITTLE. Physical description: NEGRO MALE of lightish hue, aged SEVENTEEN or EIGHTEEN, of LOW STATURE and AVERAGE BUILD, head PEANUT-SHAPED with CLOSE-CROPPED hair. Known to dress above his station in GENTLEMAN’S SUITS, outrageous HANDKERCHIEFS, and WING-TIPPED SHOES (stolen, all). Wanted also for the illegal possession and transport of RESURRECTION RUM across county lines. KNOWN ASSOCIATES: a gang of six or seven Negro rumrunners both MALE and FEMALE variously aged TWELVE to NINETEEN (descriptions, sketches below). DANGEROUS BY ASSOCIATION. REWARD $100 for information leading to hideout and/or capture. Suspect known to be ARMED and HIGHLY DANGEROUS. DO! NOT!! APPROACH!!! Report all sightings to the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office at the following address: ——

One hundred dollars! Robert Howard — he declaimed to his KNOWN ASSOCIATES, speaking from the pulpit of Ma Marian’s kitchen table while his company of six or seven dug into peach cobbler and amened, brother, amened — Robert Howard was worth a million, gazillion, fafillion times that dead, let alone alive. And the rest of it? Low-stature, peanut-shaped head, above his station? His suit and shoes, stolen? Man, Robert Howard ordered his suits from Richmond. He made more cash money dollars running a crate of resurrection than Sheriff Little had made five years in office. But what did the chief of pigs know? Scared motherfucker, calling Rob out his name from the safety of a wanted ad, claiming him ARMED and HIGHLY DANGEROUS, his handkerchiefs OUTRAGEOUS. Blaming Rob for John, when all present knew the Sheriff himself had pulled the trigger, and John his own son. Sheriff wanted MURDER so bad, Rob would drive up to Charlottesville today, let his piece do the speaking. Now that would be murder.

His known associates shouted him down. Sugared crust and glistening brown chunks of peach sprayed from their protesting mouths, spattered the wooden table beneath their pounding fists and the planks beneath their drumming feet. They called themselves the Browntown Boys, preferring alliteration to accuracy, there being half as many FEMALE as MALE among them, and one or two with no interest in claiming either one. They all knew Rob for innocent. Sheriff Little had murdered before. Look at Pops B. But there wasn’t a soul in Albemarle would contravene him. If the Sheriff said Rob did it, Rob did it. Half the county was on the hunt. The drive from Browntown to Charlottesville crawled with pigs, rum-running rivals, Klan. Best lie low until things cooled down, the Browntown Boys said. Best let Sheriff Little’s falsehood stand. It was his loss. What sick bastard killed his own goddamn kid, whatever side of the law he was on?

Rob bristled from scalp to gold-cuffed sleeves. “Naw, son. John was one of us. He didn’t deserve that bullet. We ain’t taking his daddy’s shit lying down. Pops B. wouldn’t. I ain’t about to neither. We still got a job to do.”

The drumming and pounding slowed. The Boys reared back. Their chairs creaked in astonishment. “Not the man in Norfolk,” said a Browntown Boy, incredulous.

The man in Norfolk, Rob confirmed. John Little had promised him seven crates by Tuesday. Monday was most ways gone. The man in Norfolk had been John’s prize, hard won after a full year of wooing. Hell if one bullet was going to waste all his good work. John Little had never broken a promise. Robert Howard wasn’t about to let him start.

Even smiling, Rob’s eyes carried a razor’s edge. There was no arguing against it. The Boys changed tack. There was no safe route to Norfolk, they said. The main roads were compromised. The murder, barely three days old, had seen to that. There were older roads, miles of unmapped rail and carriage trails, a third of the route trackless but for animals. But even the most backwoods of the Browntown Boys did not know them all. The road was one thing, wheels another. Who knew if the Tin Lizzie could handle rough road? The cart maybe could, but the cart was slow. They needed the car, with all John’s modifications to cargo and speed. But the car would be recognized, the blood of rum-running violence still misting her windshield, bullet holes in the driver-side door. Even clean, the whole county knew her, the Browntown Boys’ ride, carrying resurrection unblessed and unholy across the blue hills of Albemarle into the piedmont of Louisa and the riverways of Fluvanna.

“So what?” said Rob. “Let ’em recognize her.”

The Boys had their own private language of doubt: bent heads, rubbed knuckles, sucked teeth, slippery eyes, the low hawk of phlegm quietly and courteously spat. Their shifty glances touched then slid away.

Rob filled the quiet space. “The Sheriff thinks we’re running. Laying low. Doing anything but going about business as usual. Things are hot right now. But we can use that. The Sheriff see Lizzie heading Norfolk way, bold like she got nothing to hide, trunk full of crates? That’ll stop him dead.”

“So we outrun him?” There were a few sagacious nods. Boys catching up, catching on. Some still confused, nodding just to show they were home trained.

“Nah,” said Rob. “We give him a whiteboy.”

Again shifty glances touched and parted. Rob always had a plan. All the Boys had to do was keep up. But there wasn’t no whiteboy alive would drive for them, now John was dead. It was 1927. Jim Crow was calling the shots, even among outlaws. The colored rumrunners kept to their territory. The white ones did the same. That John Little had crossed the color line to drive for them as long as he did was a feat beyond the water and wine, and look what had happened to him.

“So we kidnap a cracker?” The Boys were trying.

“Check yourself. Ain’t no cracker touching Lizzie’s wheel except our John.”

There was a flabbergasted silence. “You know John’s dead,” said a Boy, martyr to the cause.

Rob smiled his razor’s edge smile. “For now.”

---

“Grandmama.” Rob spoke into the silence of the distillery. “I need a draught of resurrection, please. Straight.”

There was only one woman in all of Albemarle County who could distill a bottle of hooch so strong three sips of it unadulterated could resurrect the dead. Her name was Ma Marian. She sat between the wide open doors, footstool digging into the dirt. The still had not been this quiet since Pops B. had gone home, RIP. No fires burned. Her distillery crew of Browntown Boys were back up at the house, hooting and hollering, thrown amok by Rob’s plan. The July sun was white hot on her shins, pink housedress hiked to her skinny knees, bonnet hiding her great mass of hair. She nursed an unlit pipe. The air was sweet from years of distillation. She never wore her bonnet or housedress outdoors, never went barefoot, never smoked where the match could light fumes. Only once had Rob seen her so shabby, and that the day Pops B. passed with lungs full of the Sheriff’s lead.

“You tell those boys hush.” Ma Marian clattered her pipe across beautiful teeth, all of which were still hers. “This pipe and I came out here looking for peace.”

Rob bent over her, shading his eyes. Looking everywhere but at her drooping housedress, her fraying bonnet, her ashy bare feet, disturbed to see her so unkempt. He supposed it grief for John, though she hadn’t liked him. But grief was grief. It was right for someone to feel it, however temporary, however unnecessary. Trembling sweat dropped from Rob’s nose to mar his wing-tipped toe.

“The Norfolk job needs finishing,” he said.

She listened to his appeal. “You think the Sheriff’ll just let the two of you drive up to Norfolk, you bring that boy back? One of you wanted and the other of you dead?”

“I won’t be wanted if John’s alive. He knows who killed him. Sheriff knows it too. And the whole county’ll know it, Sheriff don’t call off his pigs and back off.”

“You think John gon’ snitch on his own daddy?”

“Can’t snitch on the law.”

Now Ma Marian shaded her face. The sweat ran down skin deep-colored and smooth as clay. She had the skin of a woman who’d outlive everyone she loved, and the eyes of a woman who prayed not to.

“There’s the truth they’ll listen to.” Her voice was heavy. “And the truth they won’t. Ain’t no telling which your John will feel like telling when push come to shove. He ain’t one of your Boys, Robert. His loyalty ain’t to you alone. He’s his daddy’s son. You think on that.”

“What, the daddy that killed him?” Rob hawked, but did not spit.

Ma’s eyes hardened. “I know you hurting, so I will let that slide. But there’s a reason I don’t sell resurrection straight.”

“Same reason you don’t give it to nobody actually needs it? Coloredfolk dying up and down these woods of every little thing and you giving them watered-down shine to make their sore joints go away for a spell.”

“Someone got to ease their burden.”

“Why? When you could end it?” He stepped so close he scuffed her toes. Her neck craned like a child’s. “The law don’t do nothing for us. Resurrection the only justice we got. But you won’t let nobody have their three sips, not even Pops.”

“Baby, grandmama just want to sit out here with this pipe. Just for a little bit.”

He opened his hand. “I ain’t trying to stop you, ma’am.”

She swayed on the stool, eyes shut and face lifted. But Rob’s shadow had blocked the sun. She sighed, reached down the collar of her housedress, and fetched out a black iron key. It swung from a length of twine into Rob’s palm, warm and glistening from confinement.

“You bring that boy back, and can’t you nor nobody else ever speak to him again. Not if you live to be a hundred, and him right there with you. You got that kind of love in you? You got that kind of hate?”

“Same what you had for Pops?” When she said nothing, he leaned in. “Thank you, Grandmama.” Awkwardly, he kissed her cheek.

---

They’d get around the not speaking thing. John Little was a Browntown Boy through and through. He’d found their city clientele: speakeasy slicks and rich college swells, madams with thirsty patrons and Great War vets haunted by shells, their names and addresses pilfered from the bootlegging operations the Sheriff busted up as well as the operations the Sheriff let slide, for a percentage of the cut. He’d driven the Lizzie these past three years, now Pops wasn’t around to share the duty. He’d laughed off Rob’s offer of a fifteen percent cut, asking only the freedom to tinker with the Lizzie as he pleased. He had never once asked where the still was hidden or made its secret a condition of his service. He had never wheedled to know how resurrection was made.

He’d sought Rob out in the graveyard, after Pops B. was buried. Stood twisting his cap in his hands and said, “I can fix the holes in that Lizzie, you ever need the help.” How he’d known about the bullet holes, Rob didn’t know. It had given Rob a savage delight to have the Sheriff’s boy laboring for his Black ass. John kept showing up, always at the graveyard, always asking about the car. Could she use more storage, more speed, better handling. He could do it, they ever need the help. Rob kept letting him, until his savage glee turned soft. Because no daddy’s boy of the Sheriff’s would keep coming around if he wasn’t a rum-running Negro at heart too.

---

Three sips of resurrection would not bring back a body the dust had claimed, or one more than four days gone. Something to do with Lazarus, Rob reckoned. But it had only been three days. John Little would still be good.

Rob stood six feet deep, teetering on the pinewood casket, stripped to trousers and slimy with sweat. The grave dirt had only been shovel packed, still loose from the funeral no one had invited him to attend. Above him the moon was a dollar coin, face caving under the earth’s long shadow, a midnight so complete its blue could only be seen from the corner of an eye. Browntown Boys encircled the grave, some on watch, others filthy from digging. Rob handed up his shovel and accepted a crowbar. He gave three good yanks. The pinewood splintered.

They’d cut the casket in haste, just a little too small. John was crammed in, ankles turned and head angled, big knees mountainous and big shoulders bunched up, arms stuffed in around his barrel chest. Death had softened him, like butter. His face had sunk into neck rolls of flesh the cold color of pastry. His bloated limbs were waxy, back mushy with pooled blood. In his suit and tie and good ole boy haircut, he looked like a stranger, lips a stark, purple line, half-shut eyes an eggy-white crust. Even three days dead he still smelled of piss. Rob’s throat heaved. He wiped warm spit from his lips. No Browntown burial would have looked so careless.

He made the Boys view him, to see what the Sheriff had done to his own.

“We claim him.” Even shaking, Rob’s voice was ministerial, salted with fury. “We’re taking him back to the still.”

The Boys balked. “Ma said no strangers.”

“He a stranger to you?” Rob barked. The Boys fell back, ashamed.

This sundown side of the piedmont, the moon was both blessing and curse: bright enough for the digging and the getaway wagon, bright enough to betray them. The night was a living thing in these mountains: rumrunners plying their trade, to say nothing of the manhunt. Move quiet, Rob told his Boys, and fast. He whistled for ropes. The Boys lowered two. Rob looped his end around John’s feet. The Boy at John’s head struggled to slip the other beneath his arms. An owl screeched, a wild wobble that sounded of human panic. In the distance, dogs began to bark.

“Deputies.” A second Boy scrambled to the edge of the grave. Hers had been the owl’s cry. “Coming fast. I think they know.”

Best to assume they did. “Half of you, lead them off, then get clear.”

It would take one minute, maybe two, to haul John clear of the grave. Five minutes, maybe six, to carry him to the wagon. The graveyard was too small and crowded to bring the wagon far. Skinny pine and woody brush choked the paths between the graves. Maybe they could make it, maybe not. Easier if they weren’t hauling. Easier if John could run.

Rob wrenched the flask of resurrection from his back trouser pocket. He straddled the body, knees wedged against pinewood. John sighed a death sigh, with a farting stench. Rob yanked open his jaw. “Pour,” he told the closest Boy. The Boy’s face twisted with terror, at the deputies and dogs or the corpse, Rob did not know. Hooch splashed. The Boy would empty the flask before John got a drop.

The owl’s hooting was farther away, fox yips circling off to the east and a bobcat’s yowl to the west. But not all the dogs followed the Browntown Boys’ distraction. Claws scrambled in summer-blasted leaves. The Boys remaining brandished shovels. Men ululated, shouts echoing in the summer dark like rebel yells.

Rob snatched back the resurrection, swilled, and bent to the stiff, purple lips. He slotted his mouth to John’s as he’d once seen Pops do, breathing air into the lungs of a half-drowned swimmer fished from the James. Rob spat, forcing resurrection down the throat that could not swallow.

One mouthful, two mouthfuls, three. Wet, throaty snarls filled the clearing. Shovels whipped and whooshed. A dog yelped. A Boy screamed. Leaves and dirt sprayed into the hole, raining down as the Boys retreated, swinging. Lamplight jumped and swung, casting long the circling shadows of dogs. “We got to go,” someone shouted down. But Rob could not pull himself off the body. John lay so still. Come on, come on, work! he tried to yell, but the fear had closed his throat tight.

“Rob, please!” a Boy cried. A dog lunged. The plea cut off with shrieking. The clearing burst with light, bellows, swearing. And then men were among the Boys, seizing them, grappling. A Boy kicked as a man lifted then flung him down in an explosion of grave dirt. A shot rang through the clearing. Voices human and canine howled together. A white face poked into the grave, shouting, “They stealin’ the body!” A pistol swung toward Rob. From behind the gunman a Boy swung a shovel, knocking him sidelong.

John’s mouth jerked. His chest shuddered. His great big hands flailed, found pinewood box and crumbling clay wall and finally Rob atop him, riding the lift and fall of his chest. John! Rob nearly shouted. John Little opened his eyes before the forbidden word could come out. Rob’s grin slipped.

---

What became of a man who’d been to the other side? Even had it been allowed, there was no time to ask. Rob bellowed for his Boys, but did not wait. They had to run. No point if John was caught. But the Boys would be all right. They were clever and fast. They’d get away, Rob told himself.

They abandoned the getaway cart, took only the horse. John staggered like his legs did not know him. Rob circled back.

“What’s going on?” John slurred, as they mounted. “Why we running? Where are we? I said ‘what’s going on?’ ”

Rob bent low, ignoring the barrage, nose full of grave stench, ears full of unanswerable questions and the Boys’ distant yelling. John would catch on. He had no other choice.

The route cost good time, so tortuous even Rob lost track. They arrived at the still deep into the afternoon. A Browntown Boy who’d remained behind offered up the early edition of The Daily Progress, courtesy of her mama’s cousin’s best friend’s son. The print was so fresh it stained Rob’s fingertips.

“Mr. Rob,” she said, as he snatched the paper. “Is Tommy with you?”

WANTED! One ROBERT HOWARD for DEFILEMENT, DESECRATION, and GRAVE ROBBERY. REWARD $150 captured ALIVE, $300 DEAD. The Sheriff seeks good men to hunt him down. Report your interest at the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office. REWARD $150 for the safe recovery of the body of JOHN LITTLE.

“Body?” John’s voice came over his shoulder. He seized the ad before Rob could crumple it. “What body? Rob, what the hell is going on? Why won’t you say nothing? Rob. Rob. ROB.”

“Mr. Rob.” The Boy kept trailing. “Did Tommy come? Only we heard there was dogs. Some Boys got back, but Tommy . . .”

Rob dismounted. “Lizzie ready with those seven crates?”

“Sure, but —”

From behind John said, “I am asking you a question.”

“It’s just Tommy don’t run so well . . .”

“Your brother’s good.” Boys, struggling in the deputies’ arms, dogs tearing at them, shovels ripped from their hands, all those bloodied skins, yaller and redbone and dark brown and midnight. They would be good. They had to be good. They were Rob’s Browntown Boys. Their hurt would be worth those three sips of resurrection.

“You’ll talk to the kid,” John said, “but not me?”

Goddamn this not speaking. Rob pointed John to the driver’s seat.

“No,” John said. “No, I ain’t going nowhere until you say something to me.” His eyes the color of putrefaction raked the yard, the assembled Boys, only four instead of seven. “One of you best open your mouth and say something to me the hell this second.”

The Boys looked at Rob. Did it count if you addressed words meant for the resurrected to another person? What violated the spirit, versus the letter? Why had Rob not asked? “Go get Ma.” Rob’s mouth was cotton thick. A Boy went, obedient. Ma did not show.

It was past high noon. They’d never reach Norfolk today moving this slow. Rob crossed to the Lizzie. Over his shoulder he reminded the Boys of the plan, hoping it did not violate resurrection law. They would be taking the main road, no back roads, and would be back by morning. For the first time in his rumrunning days, Rob wanted to be found. They’d been on back roads the first time, clowning when the Sheriff’s car had come screaming from among a stand of trees, flanked by deputies, too many to outrun even in the souped-up Lizzie. Pops, too, had been on back roads when the Sheriff had found him. Not this time. Rob had the power now, not to kill but resurrect. The Sheriff would see. All those crackers would. Try me, Rob would say. Stop us on this road and I will make sure your own son puts you away with his own testimony. John was his own eyewitness. The truth Pops B. had been denied.

Rob opened the driver’s door, still pointing. “The hell wrong with you?” John cried. “Since when you got nothing to say to me? Look at me, look.”

Rob caught John’s nape in both hands. He drew their foreheads together. John squirmed, wild as a tomcat. Rob dug his fingers in. He pressed himself against the body that had just been a corpse, big in its baggy faded suit, nails thick with grave dirt. He breathed in the putrid death rattle, the body still swollen with gas. John’s jacket was crooked from the chase, pus-colored kiss of the exit wound seeping through his thin shirt where John’s heart had once beaten. Rob stared up into the bottom of his eyes, still the wrong, unsettled shade of blue. John quieted.

Again Rob opened the door. This time, John got in.

---

They took the road to Norfolk. Rob did not look at John. Something about looking made words impossible to hold back.

How he’d loved their drives, before the bullet. John’s voice a slow, dark, constant drip, like molasses, his chuckle that couldn’t be hurried. The two of them talking too much and all the time: about racing the Lizzie down Carolina way, where the bootleggers ran races like shine. Plotting to expand to the big cities, Richmond, Baltimore, D. C. Arguing about resurrection.

“Sell it straight,” John urged, “and give the money away, you need to play hero. Stealin’ from the rich.” He’d laughed his big laugh. “Ain’t stealin’ if they payin’ you hand over fist.”

“Money’s good,” Rob would acknowledge. He would never turn down filthy lucre. “But money don’t bring back the dead.”

And wasn’t resurrection justice, in a world without it? No court had convicted the Sheriff for Pops B.’s murder. They’d called it DEADLY JUSTICE, courtesy of The Daily Progress headline. Rob could not understand why Ma was so afraid. Why she made this miracle brew only to water it down, so it did nothing more than reduce swollen knuckles and quiet bad backs, relax arthritic fingers, grease stiff necks, and ease troubled knees, cure toothache and headache and heartache, wash away the sour milk of cataracts. Her son had died and she’d let him stay dead. What kind of love was that? What kind of justice? Rob would march John up to her the second they got back, show her what real justice looked like, make her look at real love.

The Lizzie moaned into a turn, coughing under John’s hesitant foot on the pedal. Rob drummed impatient fingers. “Punch it!” he wanted to holler, to laugh. He wanted to pound the top of the windshield and rise with open arms to the warm, wet wind, to suck down summer air until it clogged his lungs. Didn’t John remember? The buck of the Lizzie beneath them before she settled, like a racehorse, young and cocksure. The road ribboning and endless, each tight turn a death sentence they outwitted, every roar of acceleration a roar of exhilaration, the crates bumping and crashing, ropes taut and straining. Sun peering through the woods, jealous of their fun, sweeping in and out of green shadow, clouds gunning for the finish line.

Pops might have driven like that. He’d said the Lizzie was the future. Ma had grumbled and he had kissed her cheek, telling her it was time to give up the cart, the small operation, the old way. City-folk needed resurrection as much as country, and Pops was their man. He’d promised Rob they’d drive together, and fast. He’d only driven the Lizzie twice.

The Lizzie slowed further. Rob frowned in confusion. A car pulled out from the bushes just ahead, its black and white chassis marked with the emblem of the Albemarle County Sheriff. The Lizzie crawled to a stop. Rob looked at John. John gripped the wheel, knuckles purple red. Stopping had not been the plan. They were supposed to drive by, just enough for the Sheriff to glimpse his son’s resurrected face. Just enough to scare him.

Sheriff Little heaved from his car. He was a big man on top, small on bottom, narrow waist and legs like an overgrown boy’s, whiskey barrel above the belt, the shirt of his uniform straining. He too had hair the color of a pinewood coffin, trimmed back from eyes the same putrid blue.

A deputy followed him, mouth diarrheal over the grumble of engines: “— they was running, all of them running, I saw them with my very own eyes, they weren’t carrying nothing but the body was gone, and the dogs, they caught that stink and wouldn’t track, no matter how hard we whipped them —”

The Sheriff chopped a hand for silence. He looked past John to Rob. “You got a streak of mean in you a mile wide,” he said. “Thought that old gal woulda raised you better.”

“You call my grandmama by her name.” Rob rose, gripping the top of the windshield. He was dizzy with the Sheriff’s steady gaze. It was just like John’s, the same unsettled blue. But the Sheriff was alive and well. He’d never been resurrected.

John slammed out the car. The Lizzie swayed with a grinding rattle. “Sir?” he said to the Sheriff, and when the Sheriff did not look at him, “Pa?”

Silence met his question. John spun from Rob to the Sheriff to the deputy. “Am I dead?” The deputy shuttered his eyes. “I am talking and talking, but am I dead?” John’s voice was almost a scream.

“Don’t think I don’t know the rules,” the Sheriff said to Rob’s confused face. “I already been through this with his mama. I ain’t doing it again.” He unholstered his gun. He aimed it at John.

Bright fear and brighter fury leaped in Rob’s chest. “Shoot him and I’ll just bring him back. Shoot me and he’ll do the same. Shoot us both and my Boys’ll come for the bodies.”

“Take him,” said the Sheriff. “He’s none of mine.”

“Wait.” John faced the gun. The wildness had drained from his eyes. His body rocked with heavy breath. The Sheriff considered him over the barrel. Rob braced for the click, the boom.

“Before my son died,” said the Sheriff to Rob, “he told me he’d chosen the law as his vocation. Said he was gon’ shoot outlaws too mean to bring in, same as me. But after he shot your daddy, he couldn’t keep nothing down. Chucking up on the side of the road, crying at me, ‘Pa, I didn’t mean it.’ Crawling and panting after you where the whole damn county could see, riding around in that car. My son’s been dead a long time. But you tell me.” The Sheriff’s jaw worked. “You finally bring him back?”

John heaved a breath he did not need. He walked toward the Sheriff. Walked until the muzzle of the gun burrowed against his heart.

“I know where the still is,” he said. “If you want the resurrection.”

The seam of the windshield creaked in Rob’s fists. He was not sure he’d heard right. He waited for the words to reverse themselves. For John to say, never mind.

The Sheriff nudged the barrel of the gun beneath John’s chin. They studied each other, eye to blue eye, the putrid blue Rob had thought the mark of the grave. The Sheriff licked his thumb. He slow swiped it across John’s cheek and wiped away a smudge of the grave dirt.

“Mean,” he said to Rob. “But you still got some of that old gal’s heart.”

He handed the gun to John, barrel first.

---

Pops B. had taught Rob everything, from woodcraft to the ugliness of men. So Rob braced himself for what he would see when too late, he stepped foot in Ma Marian’s distillery.

He saw the police car Sheriff Little and his deputy had taken, multiplied now — at least two more had joined their entourage. From the road where they had left him, Rob had watched the mob emerge, like haints: the pigs, the rival rumrunners, the Klan, their dogs, all following Sheriff Little in their autos and buggies, on the backs of horses. At their head was the Lizzie, John at the wheel.

In the yard of the still the Sheriff shouted: that they were to take any crates or barrels they found and smash all the rest. Shoot the rumrunners or leave them be, it didn’t matter to him. And why would it? What was 150 dollars alive, 300 dead when the Sheriff had finally found himself resurrection? Maybe he had no more family to resurrect, even if he’d wanted to. But there were plenty in the cities who did.

Rob heard from the woods the quietest of whistles. A Browntown Boy touched his elbow, the one who’d brought the newspaper. He followed her into the shadows.

“The rest of you got out?”

The Boy nodded once.

“Ma Marian?”

“In a bit.”

“Where is she?”

“Lightin’ her pipe.” The Boy cocked her chin up the embankment. “She said for us to meet up high. Best seat in Browntown for the fireworks.”

“How much time we got?” The Boy shook her head. “You go on. I’ll catch you up. Did . . . did Tommy make it back?”

She shook her head again. He could not read her look. He had never seen a Boy who did not look worshipful, face so contained and cold. He tried to hold her gaze, to stomach his shame. But finally he could not and went his way.

John had pulled the Lizzie to the edge of the wood. He stood in its dappling, dusk warming the corpse white, so he almost seemed himself. He followed Rob’s steady approach without turning his head.

“Neither you nor that car,” said Rob, “was worth my pops’s life.”

John shrank. “It was never about — I didn’t know — ” But then he gasped, very small, like he’d been struck on the inside. He clutched his head. His gun dropped to the dirt. The blood came bit by bit. It ran first from his eyes, a tear-stained dribble; next from his nose, clotting and black. It drained from his ears, last from his mouth, two tarry streams joining the rest, gathering at his chin. He stumbled forward, seized Rob as he sank to the ground. Rob followed him down.

“He was my pops.” Rob cradled John by the elbows, stared into those off-blue eyes that had always been John’s, looking for his friend. “My pops. My pops.”

Ma Marian found them long after John had gone still, head sunk on Rob’s thigh, suit of his trousers soaking up the blood. She gripped Rob’s shoulder. He slowly let the body drop away.

The distillery went up minutes after they crested the hill. She had been right about the view. It was a wonder of a thing. A fist of orange and yellow flame punched a pair of metal tanks high above the trees. Moments later, they heard the boom. It rocked the hill, shaking loose rocks and scree. Those of the Boys who had been standing sat abruptly down. Only Ma Marian kept her feet.

Men burst through the walls both whole and in pieces, catapulted through the swinging doors like jacks spun high: beheaded torsos still buttoned up in ironed shirts, trunkless pairs of legs in creased trousers knocked ass-over-ankles, bodiless heads racing like marbles, hooded in white flames.

Sheriff Little slammed into the yard, clothes blown clear away but for a single shoe. He was crisped the black and pink of brisket, spitted through the mouth with a spear of wood. Where the shaft came out at his side it trailed the dirt like a finger, mapping his decline. They watched him drag himself toward his cruiser. Halfway there he sank from his knees to his elbows. A third of the way after that, he scraped forward on his belly. A handsbreadth from the tires, he laid down his head and died. Chunks of building clattered around him, a burnt black rain, bits of barrel, twists of metal hoops.

The Lizzie lay crushed on the edge of the wood, her two front seats and ample cargo crumpled beneath a fallen tank. Glass sprayed the hood, beneath the U-shaped fold of the windshield. The seven crates had splintered into oblivion. Resurrection foamed beneath the tires, studded with shards of dark bottle.

There were one or two more booms, brief and embarrassed. Smoke hazed the air. The scent of barbecue sweetened the evening breeze.

“Well,” said Rob. Ma and the Browntown Boys looked at him, sitting on the ground. Rob tugged at his gold cufflinks. He was neither soothed nor inspired.

“I heard the Negroes in Norfolk pretty thirsty,” a Boy ventured.

Ma dropped down heavily. “They just gon’ have to survive on water for now.”

She patted her person. Rob handed back her pipe, fallen just behind her. She nodded her thanks and stuck it unlit in her mouth.

---

NORFOLK, VA, September 1927: WANTED! A gang of BOOTLEGGING NEGROES calling themselves the HAMPTON HELLRAISERS for the illegal possession and distribution of RESURRECTION RUM. REWARD $600 for information leading to capture. Report all sightings to the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office at the following address: ——

---

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “Resurrection Rum” by Stephanie Malia Morris, and if you enjoyed that, she has links to her other published stories on her website stephaniemaliamorris.com. She has also narrated several stories on PodCastle, Escape Pod and Cast of Wonders and you can find links to those stories on our page about her linked in the show notes.

I have to tell you: as a person who is white, male, older and financially comfortable, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to comment on the situations being explored in this story, no matter how much of an ally I think I am.

Personally, I think the story does an excellent job of exploring and presenting those issues without any need for commentary or clarification from the likes of me.

That said, I did try to do some research on African American bootleggers. Mostly what I found is that there is very little to find. Most of the history of bootleggers, rum runners and moonshiners during the era of US prohibition has concentrated on the ones who were white and male. Because of course it does.

Some of that can be explained — if not excused — by the fact that apparently most bootleggers of colour didn’t keep many records. Most of their history has been passed down through oral traditions. I assume that the lack of record-keeping was as much to hide evidence as any other reason, though I suspect that white people using illiteracy and innumeracy as tools of oppression is also a factor.

Also, I did read about a Black woman homesteader in Montana named Bertie Brown who was reputed to have some of the best — and safest — moonshine in the country. Tragically, she died when her still blew up while she was multitasking at tending her still and doing laundry using gasoline as the cleaning agent.

That last fact surprised me, so I looked into that as well. Turns out that gasoline, being a hydrocarbon itself, is quite effective at removing grease and oil stains. But Ms. Brown’s fate stands as a warning that using it for that purpose is really not a good idea.

In any case, it wouldn’t surprise me if stories of her and women like her circulate in the manner of folktales and may have inspired Ma Marian in today’s story.

I leave you with this thought from Malcolm X: “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”