“So?” John said, settling onto his chair with a cigarette. His skin looked slightly grey, the black shadows under his eyes deep with the aftereffects of too much celebrating. Jerry didn’t have to look in a mirror to know he looked the same way. “You thinking yes?”
Jerry nodded.
“It’ll be rough work from the sounds of it.”
“We’ve handled rough work before, and we’ve survived. This one, though, it’s a big moneymaker. If we do this right, well then, Pa set us and our children and our grandchildren up for life.”
A little colour seeped into John’s cheeks. “We’ll make him proud.”
“Let’s start with something easy,” Jerry said, clearing the lump in his throat. “We need a name for the business. Something that lets people know our whisky’s the best around.”
“We could call it The Best Whisky.”
Jerry rolled his eyes. “A little more imagination than that, brother.”
After a moment, John’s face broke into a wide smile. “I got it. How about Bailey Brothers’ Best?”
It was perfect. Jerry could almost picture the label already. “I like it. Pour another coffee. Let’s get to work.”
Together, they sat down with their father’s journal, which had become Jerry’s textbook. In it, their father had written his secret recipe, lists of connections he had made among suppliers and buyers, and invaluable notes on his opinion of who was or wasn’t trustworthy. But just as importantly, beyond the journal, he’d left the boys with a lifetime of learned experience working alongside him on his still.
A still that would need to be expanded if it was to live up to Jerry and John’s plans.
“I want to talk with Uncle Henry about possibly moving it to his pig farm and expanding,” Jerry said. “Nobody’d suspect him. That’s just the beginning, though. I’m not quite sure…”
There were the physical logistics of the still, contacting the suppliers, building a web of networks. There were the threats they didn’t yet know. There were the—
“Jerry. You gonna let me in on your thoughts, or do I have to guess?”
He understood his brother’s frustration, but John had always been an impulsive man. Jerry, on the other hand, was a planner, and he wouldn’t do this thing halfway. If he and John were going to run a business, it’d be big, and it’d run smoothly. That’s the only way he saw it.
“I get that we need to plan,” John was saying, but all Jerry could hear was his father’s voice.Pay attention to the little things.And in that moment, Jerry saw all the questions and solutions laid out in front of him, clear as could be. He looked up slowly, savouring his brother’s exasperated expression.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t already worked it out, Jerry, because I know you have.”
“Of course I have.”
John stubbed out his cigarette. “Knew it. Tell me everything. What do I need to do?”
On a fresh page of the journal, Jerry began outlining the details as he saw them. “This is the setup. I’ll be in charge of manufacture, suppliers, finances, and general planning. You’ll look after the buyers, runners, vehicles, and protection. Pa wrote a lot of names in here, but we’ll need more.”
“All right.”
“We’ll rent a bigger warehouse not too far from here and hire men to guard it. A place with an office. That’ll be our headquarters. I’d like to hire some of the men coming back. The ones who can’t get regular work.”
John’s eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about a lot of hiring. Warehouse would be what, shifts of two?”
“Yeah, to start. As soon as production is going, there will be four of us at the still, cooking, bottling, and loading trucks. Two drivers taking different routes, each one with a guy riding shotgun. As we get rolling, we’ll switch up runners to keep it interesting for anyone watching. So with shift changes, we’ll need somewhere around a dozen men for now.”
“This is going to be expensive.”
“That’s just the start of it, John. In the beginning, it’s all about spending. The first job is to pay everyone off: the suppliers, the runners, the buyers. Payoffs will put us high on everyone’s list.”
“How are we supposed to do that? I mean, we got some savings, but we’ll have to pay the muscle—”
“Pa’s safe.” Jerry tapped the page. “Only we know where it is, and he put the combination in here. He also hid fifteen casks in the barn under a hill of straw, and five more in the cellar. That’s over five hundred beautifully aging gallons of whisky. The law says whisky has to be aged two years, and we have loads of that. If I’m calculating right, we hold on to Pa’s stock for now then gradually release it once our own production is underway.”
“I get it,” John replied. “Give the people a taste of Bailey Brothers’ Best and whet their appetite for more. When do we start?”
