Good Intentions (Samogon 1) (2 page)

Four Years Earlier

It was a beautiful sunny day, eighty degrees, and traffic was light. The blue Wrangler was cruising down I-64 at seventy-five miles per hour. Beyoncé was blasting on the Jeep’s audio system and the three soon-to-be graduates sang along as if they were there with the diva herself. Smiles stretched across their faces with no cares in the world. It was their time.

Rochelle Donovan was returning home after a four-day trip visiting Kentucky colleges.
She and her girlfriends were no strangers to I-64. They had traveled the interstate many times during their junior and senior years to shop and hang out in Lexington and even Cincinnati. This particular road-trip was for figuring out where they would spend the next four years of their lives.

Richard Donovan doted on his daughter, even spoiling her.
She was, after all, his only child. As much as she loved to play around, she had a strong work ethic, his work ethic, and she had a love for learning―a desire she no doubt got from her mother, a school teacher.

Rochelle had applied to almost every college in the nation.
The idea of leaving home was overwhelming. She just loved receiving letters back from all the different colleges. Seeing them in the mailbox also made her parents happy. Here she was, a young black girl, living in rural Kentucky, fluent in Spanish, exceptional skills in math, and a good mind for business.

Her success reinforced Richard Donovan's decision many years ago to move away from Atlanta and away from the big city life, where gangs and violence would have inevitably influenced the life of his little girl.
No way would she have been this blessed with all that corrupt influence around her. And yet, in the middle of Klan territory, Richard Donovan had endured very few problems from the overly conservative white fashion.

Her girlfriends, Jennifer and Leah, were your typical all-American girls.
Jennifer O’Dwyer was the popular rich girl on the cheerleading squad. Leah Marquette was a French-Indian whose ancestors had been in Kentucky since the 1600s. Her family lived comfortably, but were far from rich. She was the athlete of the group—volleyball in the fall, softball in the spring. All three girls were on the honor society. Rochelle was the smartest of the bunch. Leah had struggled to make it, but Rochelle’s mother, Louise, had tutored Leah so she could apply for academic scholarships and grants.

***

Richard Donovan was walking through the rows of sweet corn as he waited for his daughter’s return. The Donovan farm consisted of two hundred acres. Eighty acres were utilized for corn, a large pond covered five acres, and another five had been cleared for their house, out-buildings and grain silo. The remaining 110 acres were made up of woodlots and small fields. Plenty of deer and turkey moved through the farm and neighboring properties, and a lot of rabbits. The Donovan farm sat just outside the Ashland city limits on the borders of Ohio and West Virginia. The Big Sandy River and a large forest butted-up to the farm from the state-line. The farm was willed to Donovan when he was thirty-two years old by a former U.S. senator from Kentucky.

It started in 1988, when Richard was a twenty-five-year-old master sergeant with the Marine’s Force Recon stationed in Panama City.
Panamanian General Noriega was being hunted by U.S. special forces, and all through Panama guerrilla warfare exploded as the Panamanian drug cartel warred with U.S. forces in attempts to protect Noriega. The American Embassy was on high alert and all personnel were at risk.

Twenty-two-year-old Tricia Brennan was an analyst with the State Department assigned to the embassy in Panama.
She was also the daughter of Senator Donald Brennan of Kentucky. One morning she found herself outside the embassy when gunfire erupted between Panamanian rebels and local police. She was caught in the middle and unable to reach the safety of the embassy compound.

It was then that Panamanian rebels spotted her and moved
toward her to capture her. Embassy personnel were worth a small ransom if captured and just as much in fear if killed. But a child of a sitting U.S. senator would fetch a hefty ransom.

The embassy marines on guard that morning watched helplessly, unable to intervene or leave their post as the events unfolded in front of them.
Embassy marines were under special rules of engagement which prevented them from engaging the enemy unless the embassy itself was attacked first. Brennan was off-site―they could not assist her despite the military being in-country with an international warrant for Noriega and in the midst of a low-intensity covert war.

That was when Master Sergeant Richard Donovan and two members of his platoon exited the front gate.
His platoon was not assigned to the embassy―they were in Panama as part of a marine element hunting Noriega. This particular morning found the master sergeant and his two men in the embassy obtaining intelligence reports and visiting the master sergeant’s young wife, Louise, who was a civilian contractor translating Spanish for the State Department.

Louise watched in horror as her gung-ho husband led his rescue team out the front gate and into the fire.

When it was over, five Panamanian rebels lay dead, Donovan and one of his men had been shot, and Ms. Brennan was rescued unharmed. The rebels actually shot at Brennan as she passed through the embassy gates, not realizing they had just fired directly on the embassy. And with that, an entire unit of embassy marines returned fire, killing several more rebels and sustaining only minor injuries themselves.

Donovan and his two men were awarded the Bronze Star for their heroic act.
Senator Brennan had requested that the master sergeant personally escort his daughter safely out of Panama and back to D.C. There, the ailing senator thanked Richard Donovan and swore to remember him.

Donovan left the Marines a couple years later and he and his wife returned to Atlanta.
Richard took work as a contractor doing plumbing and electrical work. Louise started teaching in high school. Soon after, Rochelle was born.

In 1995, Richard Donovan received word that the cancer-stricken senator had died and had willed Richard a two-hundred-acre parcel of land that the senator used for hunting.
Louise wasn’t thrilled about living in the Appalachian foothills. It was a complete change from Atlanta’s city life and even from her young family life in Veracruz, Mexico. After marrying Richard she was only too happy to get out of war-torn Panama and into Atlanta.

For Richard it was simple, especially after visiting the land.
The Appalachians provided a lot of hunting, which he did not get to enjoy in the city of Atlanta, and it was far from all the big city violence.

When Richard was clearing the area behind the house to build a barn and work shop, he made a discovery that would change his family forever and put them on a course he could never have imagined.
Beneath a pile of leaves and ground cover was a concrete slab, five feet wide and six feet long. At first he thought he had discovered a grave marker, except that it was too large. He then noticed how one side of the slab was severely scratched up and the ground on the other side was worn down from having something heavy dragged across it.

He went back to his truck and retrieved a crowbar.
Surprisingly, the slab slid open with little effort. There beneath the slab were well-crafted stone steps that went down for about twelve feet. Railroad ties supported the walls. Descending the steps, Richard stood in amazement as the passageway opened up to a bunker thirty feet long and twelve feet wide with a ten-foot ceiling.

An old oil lamp hung at the bottom of the steps still filled with kerosene.
When Richard lit the lamp and the bunker illuminated, he saw more railroad ties supporting the bunker walls. Two-by-tens and thick sheets of plywood supported the roof that lay covered in Earth. Paving stones covered the floor. At the far end of the bunker, plumbing extended down from the ceiling to provide water from a nearby spring. A small ventilation shaft ran to the surface.

Running along one wall was a gutter that led to a drainage pipe.
And sitting in front of the gutter were a couple of one-thousand-gallon stills that were filthy with rusted parts.

On the opposite wall sat a crude wooden table and three chairs.
Hanging on the wall were a few faded pictures. One, a color photo of the senator in his younger days along with two other men, and four turkeys laying dead after a hunt.
Three men, three chairs―
all evidence of who last visited the bunker and about when, Richard told himself.

Two other photos were printed in black and white, showing what could be the senator as a young boy with his father and grandfather, and with a large buck hanging field-dressed from a tree.
Another photo looked to be taken in the time of prohibition.

On the table sat two books, a ledger of gallons of whiskey and fruit brandy that had been made in the stills, and recipes for corn whiskey, apple cider, and fruit brandy.

Richard sat in the bunker for half an hour contemplating the situation before leaving with the books and photos. After studying the recipes, Richard had convinced himself he could replicate corn whiskey—
white lightening
as it was more commonly known.

First thing he had to do, which he considered the most difficult, was repair the stills. The stills themselves, or the distilling containers that held the water, mash and sugar for cooking, were in great shape. They just needed to be cleaned out. The condensers were shot and crudely put together, and the liquor containers would have to be replaced. The piping on the heat source was fine; it just needed propane tanks for fuel. The spring water was nice and cold. He didn’t quite know where the drainage led to, but it wasn’t clogging.

Richard’s day job as the contracting plumber for Cartwell Banks provided all kinds of opportunities to
acquire
the parts he needed without cost, especially the copper piping. The one other part of Senator Brennan’s will had provided Richard with maintenance contracts for Cartwell’s main bank in Ashland and five outlying branches. The senator knew what a handyman Richard was after their conversations in D.C. and that Richard planned on becoming a contractor after the military. It was the perfect way to thank a man for saving his daughter without cutting into the estate―a tract of land nobody wanted or knew what was under it, and service contracts worth nothing except to a working class man, which the Brennan family men were not.

In no time Richard had acquired enough copper to make one of the condensers
―a worm of one and a half inch piping that ran downward in a spiral. He built a good box to house the worm and to hold the cold water that would cool the worm. As the mash boiled into the top end of the condenser, the coldness of the copper worm would cause the steam to recover in liquid form, becoming distilled moonshine.

It took Richard a few tries with corn mash before he figured out the process.
Knowing when the mash had fermented long enough before distilling was the trick for him. In no time he was able to make two hundred gallons of white lightening that was clean and clear with a high proof and smooth taste. But now what to do with it all.

Richard just laughed at the predicament he had just put himself into.
If he were to get caught with everything he could explain the stills and the bunker, but not all the moonshine. That would fetch him a hefty prison sentence.

He sat there staring at the old photos, wondering what it must have been like living in the prohibition era and running bootleg whiskey for the speakeasies.
He laughed softly as he thought of being a modern-day Bumpy Johnson.

As he continued to sit there enjoying his whiskey, he wondered what the senator was thinking when he prepared his will and left Richard all this land with the bunker.
Did the senator want me to have the stills and enjoy it like he had? Was I even supposed to have found the bunker? Maybe the senator was so gone with cancer he forgot the bunker was even here.
Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter, Richard was aware of it and already enjoying it.

But there was one thing that was just itching at Richard to know.
What did three hunting buddies need two thousand gallons for?
Surely they weren’t running whiskey themselves. As Richard thought about it for a moment, he came up with the only explanation that made any sense―the senator was entertaining his political supporters with moonshine during private events to raise campaign money, or giving it out as gifts to those who were loyal donors. Politicians and corporate fat cats were big drinkers, and probably looked upon Appalachian moonshine as a rare treat.

The lay of the land provided the ultimate protection for distilling moonshine.
To the east and north, the Big Sandy River ran through with low-lying crop land between the river and the farm―impossible for anyone to sneak-up from. To the southeast, the West Virginia border presented jurisdictional issues, and a forest opened up to the farm’s many fields, removing any cover before coming to a small woodlot. To the south and winding northwest, the Little Sandy River, neighboring properties, and a state highway bordered woodlots, fields, and then the farm’s lake and corn crop. Facing north was the house, behind which stood two out-buildings and a grain silo.