“Less you know about it the better, hon, but the main thing is that Luella was getting crowded where she was, so she had to set up someplace else.”

“And she picked our barn, is that it?”

Jake was about to answer when Luella butted in. “Listen, honey, it’s only going to be for a while. I’ll give you two bits out of every dollar I make, just for the use of your barn.”

“Nobody can keep a secret around here. The sheriff will be onto you in no time.”

“Honey, you let me take care of the sheriff. All you got to do is go on about your business. It’s none of your concern.”

“It is my concern. It’s my house and that’s my land. I don’t want the kind of people who buy that stuff coming around and I don’t want the law crawling all over our barn. Anyhow, I don’t know why you’d start up a still now. They’re repealing the Volstead Act. Prohibition is going to end by January.”

“I know that, honey. That’s exactly why I have to try to make an honest nickel right now, before legal liquor comes back and puts little operations like mine out of business.”

Faced with the two of them, Emaline felt as though she was banging her head on a wall. She was about to say something else when Jake’s fist banged down on the table. “That’s just about enough, woman. We need the money, the still is goin in the barn. That’s all there is to it. Aint like we asked you to make it, nor drink it neither. You won’t have a thing to do with it. You can do somethin around here to help make ends meet, and all you got to do is shut the hell up.”

Jake’s face was black with anger. Emaline had never seen a man explode so quickly. It shook her.

“So does this mean Luella is staying with us?” she asked.

“Long as she pleases, she is. I told her she can have the basement house as long as she wants. You don’t expect me to turn my own sister out, do you?”

Emaline dressed and left the house without saying another word and walked the six miles to the Lindquist farm. She found Lee and Jim out with the team, mowing hay. She sat with them for a time in the shade of a haystack. Jim asked if anything was wrong. She shook her head.

“It might have been a terrible mistake, that’s all.”

He nodded, looked out into the distance with those blue eyes the way he always did, like he was looking for answers out there somewhere.

“He’s a hard man. I knew that soon as I saw him.”

“He is. Most of the time he’s real good to me.”