Rated 16+ for language. A little project I did for Social Studies on the 20's and 30's - for those who don't know, it was fairly common practice for Canadians who lived on the US/Canadian border (and were near water that spanned the border) to smuggle alchohol over during the prohibition. The story is set in 1922, two years after British Columbia repealed prohibition provincially.
“Eddie! Can you see the shore?”
Danny was hollering to me over the roar of wind and rain. I steadied my grip on the side of the boat—both of us had given up on steering a long time ago.
“No!” I hollered back. Vick, beside me, was hurling into the water—most of the stuff, thrown back by the wind, ended up splattered all over my clothes. I was past noticing.
A particularly nasty wave washed over the small motorboat and sent a gallon of salt-water down my throat and up my nose. I coughed violently until it came back out—Vick threw up again.
At the other end of the boat, Danny laughed and spat out some salted bile. “Christ! Burns like vodka!”
“Goddammit, Danny!” Vick screamed. “I’ll kill you!”
“Cool off, baby!” Danny cackled. “Ain’t you got your sea legs?”
He’s in that place again, I thought to myself, strangely calm despite the storm. I knew Danny’s place—it was a place he went to when he there was nothing he could do, when there was nothing to be done. When all he could do was hang on, Danny hid in this great mess of a place, where chaos replaced tobacco, booze, women, and any other vice that kid might’ve had. Where delirium was the status quo.
“Gimmie all you got, God, you asshole!” Danny whooped as another wave just barely missed us. “I got my hooch, now gimmie yours!”
Oh yeah, he was in that place.
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I was twelve when the dry-spell hit, and nigh on sixteen when it ended. That was the year I met Daniel Hall, a kid who’d moved on up from the US of A about six months after we were allowed to drink again. Danny was a smooth operator—slick talk, slick clothes, always with a Lucky Strike cig hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He was bright, good-looking, and charming; the sort of guy that ladies wanted to dance with—the sort of guy that an average-Joe like me would kill to rub shoulders with. But I didn’t have to kill to cozy up to Danny Hall. Danny Hall had me in his back pocket from the first minute we met.
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“We aren’t supposed to be out here! We’re gonna get caught!” Vick sputtered. I could barely see through the rain—his face was a white circle floating in space.
“We won’t!” I reassured him… but I didn’t believe it. Not only were we ferrying a case of scotch to a dry port, but the boat we were driving wasn’t ours. We’d nicked it from Vick’s dad, Jimmy Waters (a boat salesman driven to his profession by an ironic name). Granted, we had nothing but good intentions—we’d planned on using the boat for one run and returning it early the next day. Of course, the way it was being battered now, there was no chance in Hell of Mr. Waters not noticing.
“Dad’s gonna kill me!” Vick moaned. A third (and smaller) wave smacked him in the face.
“Yeah! He’ll string you up by the crotch!” Danny hooted.
“I’ll string you up, you son of a bitch!”
“Shut up!” I bellowed at them. They shut up.
We rode out the storm in a jumbled mesh of silence and screaming. I tried to keep quiet and search for some sort of indication of land—Vick alternatively threw up and yelled at Danny—and Danny acted like a complete ass.
The landscape had shifted little; at some point, the monochromatic nature of the blur of rain and ocean before me had transitioned from deep blue to a smoky grey, but that had been all. My eyes were wet and tired from the constant squinting and straining to find light. I was shivering, my lips blue and my teeth chattering. My head ached from the constant screeching of my friends.
“Go on, Mr. Almighty, get your angels to piss on us some more! We can take it!” Danny bellowed to the clouds above (getting a mouthful of rain as he did so).
“He doesn’t mean it, God,” I cried. “Let up on the piss, please!”
Finally, there was a glimmer of hope—the dull blinking of a light somewhere in the gloom ahead of us.
“DANNY!” I screamed. “THE MOTOR! I SEE A LIGHTHOUSE!”
We had killed the motor a while ago, since it was more than useless during a storm. But it couldn’t hurt to try now—Danny revved the motor, and with much struggle, we managed to run ourselves a little closer into the bay. We could see docks now, and the faint edge of the beach.
“Maybe we should just swim for shore,” I suggested. “It can’t be any more dangerous than waitin’ to be swept away!”
“We can’t leave the boat!” Vick yelped.
“We can’t leave the booze!” Danny added.
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“Eddie, think about it,” Danny had said to me, “them that’s dry will pay anything to get their stuff.”
I was thinking about it—thinking hard. The idea of running liquor onto US soil—of “wetting the dry”, as Danny said—was appealing. But doing jail-time in a country that didn’t belong to you was not. I was about to tell Danny no to doing the run—but then Danny had to go and open his big fat mouth.
“If you do, I’ll put in a good word for you with Alice Clifford.”
He’d got me there. Alice Clifford, prettiest girl in town, had never given me the time of day—she hadn’t given any guy the time of day… except Danny. And Danny was currently caught between the trap-door legs of one Betty Ford. If there was one advantage of being friends with the infamous Daniel Hall, it was that there were plenty of leftover ladies to snag on the rebound.
So I said yes.
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Danny won the argument, of course. Danny always won. We stayed in the boat, trying desperately to steer our way to shore. After a while, we actually managed to reach the dock—Vick, who was the strongest of us, tossed the crate onto the slick wooden wharf. Danny whimpered as the scotch bottles clanked and sat still. There was a brief struggle, but I managed to tie the boat ever-so-precariously to one leg of the dock. Then we took turns leaping from the boat.
When we were all on solid ground, it took the combined strength of Danny and me to drag poor Vick away from his Dad’s battered boat. We hauled him (and the scotch) towards a nearby boathouse. It was old, and leaking, and the walls moaned as the wind tried its hardest to knock it down, but it was shelter nonetheless. Danny sat cross-legged on the floor, cradling the crate as tenderly as if it were a very large and very rectangular baby. Vick’s legs seemed to give out under him—he collapsed like a rag doll and didn’t move. I fell to my knees and wondered vaguely what Momma would say when she found out where I was.
Danny sprang to his feet, “Now we’re talking!” he cried, and dove across the room. A moment later, he returned with a crow-bar. “Come morning,” he explained as he started to crank open the crate, “somebody’s gonna notice the boat. Or, if it’s gone, they’re gonna notice us. And if we ain’t found by the right people…” the lid of the crate popped off, exposing the scotch bottles. Danny grinned. “We might as well drink the evidence.”
“Never again, never again…” Vick babbled as he sat up and reached for a bottle.
Danny cackled and gave him one, “What, all it takes is a little wind ‘n’ rain to throw you off? There won’t be a storm every run, Vick.”
“I mean it, Danny! What’s a quick buck against all this crap? We nearly drowned—my Dad’s gonna kill me dead when he learns about the boat—and what if we get caught?”
“We won’t get caught!” I insisted, taking my own bottle.
Vick shot me a dark look. “Fine—take Danny’s side! You always do! Everyone always does. He’ll never be wrong, ‘cause he’s Danny Hall! We’re risking our necks to sell scotch, Ed! And why? ‘Cause Danny-goddamn-Hall said so!”
“At least he’s saying something!” I snapped. I felt for Vick, but there’s nothing quite like insulting a man’s best friend to get him going. “We ain’t rich enough to leave town. We ain’t got the brains to get fancy jobs—hell, you never made it past seventh grade, Vick! If it weren’t for Danny, all we’d do is shovel shit and get drunk, and you know it! Yeah, we’re risking our necks to sell scotch, but it’s better than doing nothing!”
That shut him up. Vick gave a nearby bucket a swift kick—the sound of metal on wood split my pounding head in two. The silence that followed almost seemed to breathe; like it was alive… alive and beating with its own angry pulse.
“Well, Christ, guys,” Danny said quietly, opening his bottle and taking a swig of scotch. “Way to ruin a good time.”
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When British Columbia was dry, Momma made bathtub gin and Daddy brought the whole neighbourhood home for a drink. We set up a bar in the basement—my kid sister Louisa and I weren’t allowed down there under Momma’s Law, but when the ladies weren’t looking, Daddy would give me a sip of his whiskey.
“Momma knows best, boy… kids shouldn’t be drinking,” he used to tell me. “But sometimes, Ed, a little poison’s good for ya.”
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