Family meeting-Study "Chptr 4"

The rage was building inside Joseph Lavery. He looked into the warehouse from the window of his office. Everything was as it should be. The moving truck was tidy and in working order. Padding blankets and crates were stacked and folded for the next day’s job. Their two employees had been sent home with pay to feed their families. The Lavery Brothers Moving company was booked solid for the next month. - And now this. He looked at his brother Daniel, still seated at the desk, having the nerve to look smug after what he just did. Joseph would have socked him if he wasn’t a praying man. Suddenly, Joseph blurted out, “The Gatt Brothers? What were you thinking?” “I was thinking about making money, Joe!” Daniel expected Joseph to respond this way. He had his argument prepared. “We’re already selling the stuff.” “Sure, but to friends and neighbors and occasionally over to Sully’s but that’s it! This is different, this is crime!” Said Joseph with conviction. He wasn’t wrong. Distilling and transporting high volume spirits for resale and distribution was a federal offence. Selling to a place like Gatt’s was instant incrimination. The small booze operation the Lavery’s had been running was a hobby, a community service of protest to the eighteenth amendment of the prohibition of alcohol. The Laverys believed an honest day’s labor deserved a strong drink. What a man put in his body was his own business. Distilling on a small scale came with some risk but getting caught with a bottle or two never came with incarceration. It could but didn’t. The Cops and The Dry Squad didn’t go for small infractions. Too much paperwork. Bottles got dumped out or, in most cases officers just pocketed the loot for their own personal drink. Selling to a place like Gatt’s where they were taking five jugs a week was a new kind of game. The kind that the dry Squad was keen to. One that Joseph wanted no part of. This had been a source of contention between the brothers from the beginning. Daniel wanted to grow, distill as much as possible, make money. It pained him to constantly turn customers down, and they were! They had a reputation for having the best Moonshine in the region and he was ready to cash in. “Four hundred dollars a month Joe! Four hundred! What’s a few more jugs a week?” “It’s another cask! It’s two more truckloads of rye and sugar a month from the pier and double the water from the city. We can’t hide that! Tell me this, how are we gonna get it to them? How do we know the squads not watching their building and seeing our truck with our family name on it? Our name! How can I be sure they won’t be watching Sully’s, bringing a heap of trouble on that poor old man and his boys. Four hundred dollars a month? That doesn’t seem enough for what you’ve just enlisted us to!” “Enlisted us to?” Daniel was indignant. “What have you enlisted us to, old man? A life of servitude to the well to dos? Hauling their shite all over this town?” “It’s an honest day’s work.” Joseph waved him off. Daniel fired back, “That’s just something poor folks say to face another day!” Joseph, scowling “It was good enough for father…” Daniel snaped his fingers as if his proved his point, “We couldn’t afford a headstone for that poor fool when he died…” “Don’t you dare call him a fool!” “Well, he was! Pushed that damn plow all his life only to die without a proper burial. He brewed the best Poitin in Donegal and practically gave the stuff away. Jesus, even the Priest came to Dad every week, but he just couldn’t muster the savvy to make a gain from it.” “It was a hobby…” “It was a missed opportunity! I’m not going to die someone else’s man like he did.” “No, you won’t die like he did, not at this rate. You’ll die young rich and fat in a bed of your own money with no wife or child.” Daniel laughed cruelly, “No wife and child, I guess that aint far from how you’re gonna die at this rate!” In an instant Daniel received a fisted blow to the face. He fell to the floor in a heap while Joseph stood over him. “Don’t you ever mention that again you snake!” Joseph was on the verge of tears or rage. His body is tense. Daniel knew to stay put where her is on the floor, motionless.