The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

What was changing, however, was the situation. Roosevelt and the Democrats had won on a repeal platform, and Prohibition was on its way out. The Twenty-first Amendment had been proposed only two months before but Michigan had already ratified and Wisconsin was scheduled to ratify the next week. Even Alabama, whose legislature had passed the “bone dry law” way back in 1915, had seen the light and would probably ratify in the summer. FDR had already authorized the sale of near beer and wine, which was the cause of much rejoicing all across the country, and the federal and state governments were already reckoning just how much they were going to collect in the way of liquor taxes.

But repeal wasn’t likely to change Mickey’s recipe for success (Charlie fervently hoped so, anyway), or his and Archie’s business model. Mickey wouldn’t want to comply with whatever licensing requirements the state of Alabama intended to cook up, and Archie wouldn’t be thrilled about the idea of collecting taxes from his friends and turning them over to the state. So the operation would stay dark, hidden away out there in that hollow, with Tom-Boy and Baby Mann cooking up the best mash for miles around and Mickey delivering it to his enthusiastic friends and fans in Darling, Monroeville, and neighboring villages. As far as they were concerned, Mickey and company were God’s own cousins, and deserved to be protected from Agent Kinnard and his deputy agents at all costs.

And protection was necessary. Moonshining was a contest between the canny hunted and the clever hunter, and while moonshiners were wary, watchful, and armed for defense, Kinnard and his kind were determined and resourceful and armed with the law. Kinnard was famous for his smash-and-nab raids, leaving stills in smoking ruins and shiners in handcuffs. He and his men had pillaged three stills over in Monroe County just the previous week, once again putting Alabama at the top of the list of moonshine operations put out of business. Shining could earn the shiner a year, even two, in prison, and stories about their convictions showed up every so often in the local Alabama papers.

But Mickey LeDoux hadn’t been nabbed, thank God, and by God he wouldn’t be, if Charlie had anything to do with it, which he wouldn’t have, since he was just a newspaperman. He leaned back in his chair, propped his feet on his desk, and surveyed the room, which held all the equipment needed to put out the Dispatch every Friday—equipment he had inherited from his father, along with the newspaper. Over there against the back wall was the old black Babcock cylinder press, a hulking four-pager that shook the floors and rattled the windows when it was running at top speed. Next to the Babcock was the prewar Linotype machine that Ophelia Snow had learned to operate, even though women were not supposed to be strong enough to pull the big lever. And there was the Miles proof press on the table beside the Linotype; and the marble-topped tables where the pages were made up; and the printers’ cabinets with their drawers full of type fonts; and the stacks of paper, press-ready. And the smaller job press on which he printed the flyers and invoices and business forms that had always filled in the income gaps as newspaper ad revenue waxed and waned. Trouble was, the job printing business was waning, too. Times were bad all over.

Charlie took another swig and belched. The Dispatch and print shop was home to him, the only home he had these days, other than Mrs. Beedle’s rooming house, where he was required to take off his shoes and tiptoe up the stairs if he came in after nine o’clock, like a burglar or a guilty husband. If he got tired of playing by Mrs. Beedle’s rules, he could always tell her where she could stuff them and borrow a cot and put it over there in the back corner beside the press—which wasn’t a bad idea, anyway. It would save the five dollars a week he paid Mrs. Beedle for that broom closet she called a bedroom. And the office was just a half block from the tack room at the rear of Mann’s Mercantile, a block from Pete’s Pool Parlor, and two doors west of the Darling Diner, where he ate most of his meals.