The Woman From Away

Bill Albright lived in a ramshackle, old two story house that you could barely see from the road for the wildly over grown hedges. There was gingerbread all along the overhang of the veranda roof and the second story featured a turret and a widows walk plus a wraparound balcony. The driveway was so choked in weeds and shrubs that it was barely passable and Bill liked it that way - he was a legendary bootlegger and he valued his privacy. Ain't gonna make it easy for the revenue man, he would say from his rocking chair as he cleaned his shotgun, they gonna hafta find me 'afore they kin catch me.

There were other bootleggers on the island but nobody could outrun and outflank the revenuers like Bill. He was in his 60's by then and his hair had yet to turn gray. He had a ruined, leathery face though, eyes sunk deep and always a little melancholy. He kept his black beard cropped close, favored the traditional flannel shirts and black fishing boots under his overalls and was never seen without a pack of Players cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He could light a match using his thumbnail, an ability we very much admired and, to his delight, were always trying to imitate. He taught us all how to play cribbage and dominoes, shear a sheep, harness a horse and fish for eels. He told us stories of great ship wrecks and the young men taken by the sea, stories of being a merchant seaman in his younger days, stories of finding sin and redemption in the same ports, stories of the revenue man and his endless search for Bill's well hidden and well protected whiskey stills. From his front porch rocking chair, he taught us sea songs his grandfather had taught him......Farewell to Nova Scotia, your seabound coast, may your mountains dark and dreary be .....for when I am far away on the briny ocean deep, may you never hear a song or a wish for me .....
and others we learned but had to promise not to repeat. He taught us that life, if lived well, could be a great game and a great adventure even if you were only known for whiskey making.

One June, Bill made one of his frequent trips "up the valley" and returned missing two fingers on his left hand. He had met, so the story went, a widow woman with a somewhat dubious past and someone had passed a remark that left him no choice but to defend her honor. No one ever mentioned the fate of the man who had made the remark and when Bill brought his bride home the following year, a pretty, young brunette with green eyes called Katie Rose, considerably younger than her third husband and inclined to be flirtatious, not a word was said. Katie Rose would bury Bill some twenty years later after a long and successful marriage. Even my grandmother attended the service although she had always been of the opinion that Bill was a no account and a damn fool who's luck with the revenuers would one day run out. Mind me, she said as we left the church, I don't hold with whiskey making but I don't much hold with revenuers either. Katie Rose had the still leveled the day Bill died and had him buried in the whiskey soaked ground without so much as a marker. When Nana asked her why, she shrugged and said that they'd never caught him alive and that she'd be damned if they'd catch him dead.

That was the day the villagers stopped calling her "the woman from away".