Manny looked down. “Yes, Papa.”
Manuel said sternly, “It’s time you start acting like a man of this house.”
“Yes, Papa.”
After his father left, and Manny watched his father and sisters walk south toward the mills, Manny scampered outside to Adele’s. She was open, even at this early hour, and had three buckets lined up on the counter. “A half-penny a delivery,” she said. “How does that sound?”
He would be rich in no time. He nodded. She shoved two of the buckets toward him. “Two go to Mr. Chace near the orchard. Go in the back door, you know the rules.”
“Yes, Mrs. Adele.”
“The last one goes to Queen Mary.”
Manny snickered. They called her Queen Mary because she was an Irish snob in the neighborhood. She “knew people.”
“Come back for noon and I’ll have more.”
He made his deliveries, and it wasn’t until the afternoon when saw the policemen on Broad Street. They drove slowly down the street, one of the cops with his head hanging out, almost smelling the air for something. He didn’t wear a uniform, but looked like he wore a suit. Manny ducked into a store while the car went by. A woman screamed, and he saw it was a beauty parlor.
He jumped out quickly and ran up the street, holding the bucket close to him so that it wouldn’t slosh all over the place. He turned a corner onto Maple Street and found his way to the house he was meant to deliver it to. He ran back to Adele’s, careful to watch for that cop car.
“Mrs. Adele,” he said, out of breath, and he put his hands on his thighs, bent over to try and catch his breath.
Adele waited. “Coppers,” he finally said.
Adele smiled. “I pay my way. They don’t bother me.”
He shook his head. “Don’t know this copper. He smell booze.”
Adele’s smile turned to a frown. “Where’s the money?”
He took out the quarters, and Adele gave him his penny. Then she went to the phone. “Ellie? Can you ring Leon?” She hummed to herself as the call went through. “Leon. I heard something about—they are?” She turned to look at Manny, her eyes now wide. She let out a few words in Irish that Manny didn’t understand, and the conversation took place in that language. She slammed down the phone and leaned on the bar. To the two patrons there, she said, “Get out! Manny, go downstairs and—and,” she didn’t know what else to say. She was shaking.
“Mrs. Adele?” Manny went behind the bar.
“My God, the feds are in town, and they’re going to raid us. You have to tell your papa. I got eight barrels downstairs!”
Said one of the men at the bar, “Call Danny.”
Adele whirled on the man. “Danny. Danny Walsh? What pound o’ flesh will he take outta me if I do?”
“Either him or the feds,” said the man, draining his beer quickly and heading out the door.
Manny was alone with Adele, who paced back and forth along the wooden boards behind the bar, wearing out another patch. “Omygod, what do I do?”
“Who’s Danny?”
“A mover,” she said shortly. “Go run home and tell your Ma. They’re gonna raid you too if they see the dumbwaiter. Go, go!”
Manny ran out of the bar and into his house. His mother was washing clothes on the wooden washboard in the tub. “Mama, the feds are here.”
His mother dropped everything into the tub. “Where?”
“They’re going to raid Mrs. Adele and maybe us too?”
“Come downstairs.” She got up and they went down into the cellar. He could see the still against the wall, the one that made the moonshine from the rotting apples in the orchard, and the vats full of fermenting grape juice for the red wine. A few empty barrels stood on one side of the dumbwaiter, that only went up about three feet to Adele’s cellar, and then would roll out onto her dirt-packed floor. It was easier to build that than a ramp.
He and his mother moved the barrels next to the still. Then they got a wooden screen and placed that against the still. The vat they couldn’t help; they drained it into barrels and rolled the barrels up the stairs. They placed the barrels out back and poured the grape juice into the garden.
They were still working when the girls got home, and they were enlisted to help. At the same time, Manny saw a fleet of cars and trucks near Adele’s. As Manny was rolling one of the barrels to the back door, he saw a man come toward him. Built solid, he wore a t-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled in one sleeve, and dungarees. He looked like a dockworker, with his splash of red hair. He smiled at Manny. “Need help w’ tha?”
Manny had been doing it all day, and he could have used a rest. He nodded, and the man whistled. Two other big men came over, one effortlessly lifting the barrel onto his shoulder, the other going to his mother. The man with the cigarettes went to his mother too.
They spoke in low tones, as his mother brought the man down into the cellar. The man came back up with a stick of chourice and was smiling. The two men went back down into the cellar and brought up more barrels, but this time took the barrels to their trucks. Now things were moving faster.
Manny stayed out of the way. The men finished just before his father got home, who immediately started screaming at his mother. The kids scattered, running into the house. Manny followed, and sat cowering at the foot of Emma’s bed, Elsie and Alice in the bed with Emma.
“Manuel!” yelled his father from the kitchen. Manny knew he was in trouble when his father used his full name like that. He blinked away tears, tears that would probably send his father into another rage, and he stood up at the foot of Emma’s bed. The three girls, their eyes wide, stared at him as he straightened his shirt and gulped.
“Manuel!” yelled his father again, and Manny heard him trooping to Emma’s doorway. He stepped out from behind the foot of the bed and met his father at the threshold.
His father grabbed him by the ear and yanked him out into the kitchen. His mother sat quietly, her hands on her lap, her head down. She had a bruise forming on her face.
“Tell me the truth,” said his father, just as there was a knock on the outside front door.
His father glanced in the direction of the doorway. He seemed undecided for a moment. The knock came again, much louder this time. Manuel tossed Manny so hard he fell against the wall and onto his butt. Manuel went to answer the door.
Manny heard his father scream for him again. He got up off the floor as his mother stood up, straightening her apron. Manny ran to the front door to see the man in a suit from this afternoon and three policemen at the door. “What are they saying?” his father asked him.
“They want to come in to look around.”
“Tell them no.”
But one of the cops must have understood what his father said, and he shoved by his father to come into the hallway. The hallway led to the apartment, and the three cops stormed into the place. His father was beside himself, yelling at them in Portuguese, while Manny tried to move out of the way of the men. They went into Emma’s room, looking in the wardrobe and under the bed.
Then they went into the cellar.
His father followed them. The man in the suit led the way, and immediately bee-lined for the vat. “What’s in here?” It was the first time he spoke. He had a touch of an accent, southern perhaps.
Manny translated for his father. “We make wine. We cook with it.”
“This is a very big vat,” said the man. “You must cook with it a lot.”
His father motioned to the chourice hanging from the rafters. “We use it for this.”
“Do you sell these to anyone?” The man reached up and took one of the drying links, squeezing it.
“No, of course not.”
The man in the suit didn’t look like he believed it. Manny noticed one of the cops standing near the false wall that hid both the dumbwaiter and the still. He looked at the cop, who gave him a wink.
“Nothin’ down here,” said one of the cops to the man in the suit.
He looked disgusted, got in close to his father. “You watch your step, Portagee.”
His father said, “Eu nao entendo.”
The man in the suit huffed at him, pulled out a cigarette and started up the stairs. He lit it at the top of the stairs. “Let’s go,” he said to the cops, and they all filed out the front door.
The family breathed when the man and the cops left. His father said to his mother, “Where’s dinner?”
His mother jumped to scrape together some spicy egg sandwiches.
His father never apologized, but, then it wasn’t expected. The next morning Manny went to Adele’s but the door was locked. It was the same the day after that, but that day his father brought him to the mill to present him to his foreman. Judged “too scrawny” for the Bleachery, he was dragged away to the looms to work there for the day, and for the next ten years until the mill closed.
On Sunday, his mother got Emma up to go to church. Everyone in the family went to church that Sunday, up the road to St. Patrick’s. Manny saw Adele there, and told her that he was working in the looms now, and couldn’t be her delivery boy.
She smiled at him, patted him on the head, and told him, “I couldn’t afford ya, anyway.”
