“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“I imagine. Just… Oh, here we go!” I said as I discovered what I’d been looking for. I displayed the bottle to a less-than-impressed Mitchell.
“Am I supposed to know what it is?”
“This is your family namesake right here. Mitchell’s Buckridge Deluxe Scotch.”
I handed it to him, and he stared at it blankly as I fetched two shot glasses from a cabinet. I wiped them down with a rag and set them on the bar before Cohen.
“Those can’t be clean,” he said.
“I’m sure they’re as clean as they were back when your pa was serving people in this place. Here, let’s see what kind of a lightweight you are.”
He handed it over, and I poured us shots. We each took a glass and raised them. “To your heritage,” I said, clinking my glass with his before we downed them.
“Damn,” he said, clearly impressed with the taste. There was more Mitchell to him than he realized.
“God, I won’t admit it’s better, but it’s at least as good as the O’Ralleys’ Buckridge Deluxe Scotch.”
“Wait. You guys have the same thing?”
“Ah, someone’s finally wising up to the feud between our families. Gimme a sec…”
I greedily poured another round, enjoying the warmth against my throat as I downed the next shot. A little hair of the dog wasn’t going to kill me.
I turned back to the photos hung on the wall and found one of Cohen’s pa when he looked like he was in his twenties.
I couldn’t help noting their similar appearances. His father was in a button-up and tie in the photo, but between the cheekbones and strong jaw, even the shade of brown hair, if someone had told me it was a photo of a younger Cohen, I would’ve had a hard time knowing any different. I pulled the picture down and handed it to Cohen.
“Let me set the stage. Early twenties. Prohibition. Our great-grandparents were the best of buds and a bunch of deadbeats whose parents were waiting for them to get wives and kids. But not our great-granddads. No. They wanted to have a good time, enjoy life with their buddies…which involved a lot of parties, where they could get their hands on the much-coveted moonshine of that time. Now, being as charismatic and cool as my side of the family must have been—”
“I know a dig when I hear one,” he joked.
“Okay, maybe as cool and charismatic as both our sides were, they wanted to be the ones throwing the parties. They started on our great-great-mamaw’s property, because she thought it sounded like a great way for Randall to find a wife. So they got to making their own moonshine with their buddies, having these small parties. Well, first they were small, but apparently they knew how to make some liquor, and soon everyone was coming to these parties. They started to make a killing. Keep in mind this was illegal, so they could charge high prices for their time.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“And both of them dreaded the idea of having to do any labor that didn’t end with them getting to throw a big party, so they kept it up. And getting bigger and bigger all the time. They basically turned into chemists as they became obsessed with expanding the products. They wanted people to come from across the Mason-Dixon line to get a taste of their alcohol. And they did. But they also managed to pick up some colorful clients along the way…”
“I feel like this is going somewhere shady real fast.”
“Technically, it’s been shady for a bit, but yeah. Now, there was a woman named Dorothy Mills, who owned the most popular house in town, if you get my meaning.”
“She was a lady of the night…?” he deduced.
“I think she’d be offended that you called her a lady, but yes.”
I clinked my glass to his and said, “To Dorothy. You’ll see why in a moment.”
He smiled, and I downed my shot and went on. “There were some brothels in town, but Dorothy ran her own house, worked alone and often. She arranged for Randall and Arthur—that’s your great-grandpa—to bring their product in three times a week, compensated them with plenty, and they’d go on their way. Well, so each of them thought, but Randall got involved with Dorothy and was planning on marrying her. Kept it secret until he decided to propose. Then he told Arthur, who, it turned out, had a similar arrangement with her. And these guys, as you can imagine, had it out. Best of friends turned on one another and agreed to a duel for Dorothy’s hand. We’re talking pistols-at-dawn kind of duel.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah. Now, the properties we’re on, back in the day, they shared. Bought several miles from where their parents lived to start their own distillery as they were expanding. But both had houses a ways from one another, so they planned to have the duel at the creek in between. Invited all their buddies, had a few drinks, and then met up at dawn for the big duel—”
“I’m assuming they chickened out since later they both had kids.”
“Nope. Great-granddaddy Randall got shot…right in the shoulder, fortunately for me today. But you can imagine it left a real sore spot on his shoulder…and heart.”
“So my ancestor married the town prostitute?”
“You’d think, but Dorothy didn’t much care for violence, so when she heard about the duel, she wouldn’t have either of them.”
Cohen burst into laughter. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Not at all. She was done with them as lovers, but she was very interested in continuing business as usual, so Arthur Mitchell decided to leave the shared business and start his own. However, their most popular product at the time was…the Mitchell-O’Ralley Buckridge Deluxe Scotch.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Also, Dorothy’s clients’ favorite, and she agreed, during their split, to buy from each of them, but neither could agree on who had come up with their secret recipe. Now no one knows. Great-granddaddy claimed they wrote it down and it was in his handwriting, but he could never show anyone the paper, so looks like we’ll never know. But it’s made for plenty of gossip through the generations. And also competition like no one’s ever seen before.”
“Scandalous,” Cohen joked.
“And that’s just the bits from the past. Apparently, Big Daddy was sweet on your mom when they were younger. And rumor has it that, in the meantime, she was busy being sweet on your dad.”
“Are you serious?” Cohen asked, his mouth agape as he clearly heard the news for the first time.
“Yup. But don’t ask me none of the details. Big Daddy don’t talk about it, and all the reasons she ran off are so varied, you’re probably the only one who has a chance of knowing what really happened that far back.”
“Feels like I’m learning more every day,” he said. “I know even less than you thought.”
He seemed to be struggling to absorb everything I’d just shared, which I more than understood, so I offered a compliment in hopes of distracting him from the shitbag of history he’d just gotten a stiff taste of. “I like the way you pour a shot.”
That green-eyed gaze looked right into me as he offered his killer smile once again, assuring me the distraction had worked to ease him up a bit.