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Present day—Ain’t My Fault distillery, Nashville
“Are you coming, babe?” he asks, waking me from my daydream. I follow him while he explains the intricate details of moonshine-making.
“Where did you meet Nathan?” I ask, climbing a set of stairs overlooking the distillery floor.
“In AA,” he says, not a hint of a joke in his voice as he looks at me sideways.
“AA?” I ask, laughing nervously, not believing him, and bumping my elbow against his.
“I’m serious,” he says quietly, leaning back against the railing.
And I shut my big fat mouth. I take a second before I rasp, “What, you’re serious?”
“Yeah, I met him during our twelve-step program. Been sober for four years now. Got a good sponsor; still hard as fuck though. Go to meetings every week.” He grins. “Took some time. You know how much I hate talking about myself.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I can’t believe it; he quit. Like he told me he would. I’ve never believed him. Why should that last time have been different?
I stop in my tracks. It means he has been sober since right after I left him in LA. It’s like he can read my mind when he says, “I know I told you I would quit time and time again. This time, it’s true. One day, I was done being wasted every damn hour. Guess every fucked up thing that happened in my life gave me an excuse to start and to stop.”
He grins again. “Still smoke though. It keeps me calm and my mind off drowning myself in alcohol.”
“But how can you own a bar and distillery if you can’t drink?” I ask, looking at the copper kettles.
“Danny, the guy who brought us dinner, is our head of inventory and has the final say. Sometimes Jack and your grandpa help out when I’m working on a new taste. We were the first legal moonshine distillery in Tennessee.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“No, I’m not. I asked the guys not to fill you in on this. I wanted to be the one to tell you when you were ready not to kill me anymore.” He sounds hurt. “I saw the crumpled Rolling Stone with me in it on your desk,” he murmurs, lowering his voice.
“So you’re telling me from the moment you moved here, you weren’t only writing songs and performing around town, you were also running a legitimate business?” I shake my head like I’m waking up from a dream. “And my dad and grandpa are moonshine tasters?”
“Yeah, and good ones. Me and Sterling made a deal to make music together and I do this on the side. Some years are better than others,” he says, flashing me a sly smile. “Nathan is a sixth-generation original bootlegger. His great-grandfather worked for Al Capone in the thirties. His family never stopped making moonshine, most of it from their backyard. Part of Nathan’s plea deal for making illegal moonshine was going into AA. That’s where we met. We almost fell of the wagon a couple of times but this business pulled us through.”
“I thought the meetings were anonymous?”
“They are, but Nathan doesn’t care. He’s happy to be alive and working on his dream. Come on, follow me.” We make our way down the stairs to the back of the building.
“But isn’t this like dangling a carrot in front of a horse?”
He stops in front of a big wooden sliding door. “You’re calling me a mustang, babe?” he asks, grinning and taking out a set of keys.
“A mule, maybe.” I giggle.
He snorts. “I’ll take it,” he says, turning the key.
“What’s this place?” I ask, looking around the packed warehouse. I hear the bluegrass band and the people dancing and talking somewhere in the distance.
“Here, we store everything for the bar and distillery. We ship out right from that door,” he says, pointing to a couple of gigantic gates on the right. The steel construction gives it an old factory feeling.
“It looks like—”
“An old plant floor?”
“Yeah,” I say, following him.
“The government used it during World War Two. It was condemned in the sixties. Nathan and I bought it for a dime years ago and fixed it up.” He motions to the woodwork. “The guys helped with the easy construction during the weekends. Your grandpa oversaw the whole remodeling with his construction company before he retired.”
“They never said shit to me.” I look up at him.
