Her trusty old still cranked it out by the pail.

Now Idy is gone, so’s I’ve laid her to rest,

And I drank her last run, sure t’was the best!”

Beau raised up.  “Now, if that ain’t  the lovlies’ tribute for a moonshiner I ever heard of, I don’t know what is!  Pass me the jug.  Here’s ta you, Aunt Idy!”

There was light rain falling the next morning.  It had started raining at sunup as O’Neil and Calhoun had shoved off the dock in the old rowboat.  They had talked Fitz-Ryan into spending the night at Casa O’Neil rather than try to drive the Caddie down those mountain roads.  He was pretty well lit and, while neither O’Neil nor Beau had any great love of lawyers (especially since their divorces), they kind of liked the old boy.  Fitzy was truly touched by the offer and promised to stop at the Widder Browne’s food mart and have her stock boy bring back some food.  O’Neil had requested him to call the local utilities for phone and electricity lines as soon as possible, which Fitzy was more than happy to do as it was stimulating the local economy—and his.  The last thing discussed the previous night was what to do about Aunt Idy... and her hobby.

“I can’t believe yer ole aunt was shinnin’ in tat cave!  Best not to let the townsfolk know when ya meet them, they’d be offended and it would truly besmerch her memory.”

“Besmerch?  Oh.  Because the old girl was a closet drinker?”

“Drinker?  Hell, no!  Shiner!  ’Round here, a fresh run off a good still is cause for celebration.  Tree or four years a’age-in’ they all git together an’ drink it.  Of course if the brewer is making more like poteen, the waitin’ is much less.  Judgin’ by d’juice in dis bottle, Ida was boilin’ up prizewinnin’ moonshine.  T’would a ben downright unneighborly to keep dis t’herself.  See, in Bannock-A-Bend we’re proud a’d’fact da good Lord gave us such fine fixins’ for the makin’ a’ uisce beatha.  ’Cordin’ to the legend, t’was St. Paddy hisself taught the ancestors how to make it!”

“Yeah, dat Ish Kabbile stuff is goo-ood!”  Beau was smiling as he raised the second of his three sheets.  O’Neil had been impressed on how quick he was getting lit on so little hooch.

“Yeh!  H’an that’s da problem!  It’s... rrrreal good!  Every year, in front of town hall, we have the ‘Moonshine in da Sunshine’ festival.  Some a da bes’ stills in Ireland compete.”

“Y’all have a shine contest?”

“Shine... an’ a’course t’yearly banshee hunt.  Tat crazy howlin’ ting ya got in those caves is the biggest tourist grabber in the wes’ t’Ireland, an has been fer over a hun’dred years!  Wad a fookin’ money maker dat ting is!  The bes’ part is because Idy’s property was so private—an’ so fookin’ back in d’mountains—der weren’t no chance a’ anybody ever findin’ the friggin’ ting!  Aunt Idy was a financial windfall for dis here town, I’ll tell ya.  Folk let her be ’cause a’ dat.  An because dey dought she was a liddle... wat would be the word?”

“Crazy?”

“Thas the exact word.  If dey was ta find out she was shinnin’ and not enterin’ her...  Wat bothers me, is that basturd, ole man O’Malley...”

“Who he?”

“Why, he’s the meanest and mos’ hated ole piece of roobish in d’whole of the Emerald Isle.  Your aunt hated him and his whole family, she’d turn bright red at ta mention of d’name.  Dey run Bannock-A-Bend, and mainly on d’prize money from the shine festival.  Fifty thou’sen Euros a year now, h’en pounds sterling a’fore tat, for t’las’ fifty years—not countin’ his other holdin’s in the bankin’ interests of ta town.  Ta festival is almos’ five hun’red years ole, but we ben handin’ out heavy money fer fif’y years.  H’AN’!  Darat bastaerd, he’s ben preasurin’ d’Widder Browne for her departed husban’s property by hand in marriage for as long as the poor woman’s ben a widder!”

“Fifty?  Fifty thousand Euros?  How much be dat in American dollars?”

O’Neil’s mind started working.  “Ahh, 1.33 dollars to a Euro...”

“Sixty-tree thou’sen at least, me boys.  Idy would have done the community a service taken dat loot.  If ya win, for the next year d’town helps yer run yer still for mass quantity, bottle yer shine, and run it from one end a’ Ireland t’d’other.  Ya know wad a good Irishman’ll pay for a top-quality jug?  The town splits it wid’cha.  They git half and you git half!  Lots a’ folk ’round here eaten off a tat. ’Bout sixty-tree thou’sen a year.  An’ if it’s an exceptional run, d’sky’s d’limit!”

They rowed about halfway out into the lake and threw their lines in the water.  Once the Caddie had headed back down the mountain, they rowed back to the dock.  It wasn’t that they didn’t trust Fitzy...which they didn’t... but they were strangers in a strange land.  The place needed mapping out.  O’Neil had begun to think that there might be a golden opportunity here.  Aunt Idy had died and left them everything they needed to make Mad Dash Irish Whiskey a reality without actually having to really work at it.

They packed up Idy’s still and loaded it onto the Good Ship Shine Runner, then dropped some fair-sized boulders in the entrance of her final resting place.  Later, they’d cement it up properly.  O’Neil’s thinking was simple: there was no need to let the world know old Idy (or her still) wasn’t still missing!

They rowed across the lake, parked the still pieces in the first cave they came up on (to keep it temporarily out of sight), and started exploring for the perfect hiding location.  O’Neil wanted to find the actual cave that the howling came from.  From what he’d seen so far, the locals wouldn’t go there, not even the law—a moonshiner’s haven if ever there was one!  They also needed a good stream of water that came up through the ground, not in from the lake; then they had to quietly get their hands on corn, sugar, and yeast in certain fair quantity without raising eyebrows!

Beau’s thinking was even simpler—set up the still and run off a batch of real redneck shine and see what the Irish do with it!

They spent the day exploring the shallow caves on the far side of the lake.  By ten o’clock the sun had come out, and by eleven the jug had come out.  By twelve they heard their first shriek.  They couldn’t quite figure where the sound was coming from, but it had the decency to wait for the sun to be out over the yardarm.  It was as if the whole mountain was generating the noise.

“Wat d’hell you think dat noise be, boss?”

O’Neil just shrugged.  “My guess, Beau, this here mountain is as hollow as a drum and all the caves catch the wind.  When the wind blows through the mountain, you gets a howlin’.  Any more than dat, don’t know, don’t care.  Aside from the banshee, Idy lef’ me a moonshiner’s goldmine.”

Beau pursed his lips and nodded.  He’d realized from the moment he’d seen the still that this place was as perfect as it gets.  He’d tasted his share of shine, and Idy’s was a top, top quality.  Part of it was the charcoal used as a filter; it was a finely-crushed powder of a type he’d never seen before (later he figured out she'd filtered it three times—something unheard of with most shine, but common with types of ‘real’ whiskey).  But the spring coming straight out of the cave wall was the livin’ end.  The Jack Daniel’s people would be doing back flips if they had a spring this perfect.  It was coming up from a source of untouched water, and was as iron-free as water gets... perfect for shine!

Now shine is kind of a funny thing.  The basic process for making Uncle Beauregard’s Biloxi bottled booze is basically the same as Jack Daniel’s Old Number 7... kind of.  Distil from grain—corn (if you’re using 51% corn or better, you’re making bourbon), barley maybe—boil into a mash, turn that mash into alcohol with yeast and sugar, then run that liquid through a filter, cool it, and catch what reconstitutes.  All a still does is to separate components and create alcohol, but nothing is added—it’s the filtering and barrels that do that.  Where Beau and Jack begin to diverge is in the niceties of production, especially around the barrel.

At the JD distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, they light the charcoal fires for boiling their mash down with 140 proof whiskey, so’s not to taint the iron-free spring water/mash mix with foreign substance odors.  Beau was considering a propane gas tank.  The ‘Jack’ boys filter their alcohol through a sugar maple charcoal, and just for laughs they age the whole magilla for years in 500 pound brand new, charred, white oak barrels for additional flavor and color.  They can do this up to a thousand barrels a day.  When the aged contents are poured into bottles, it’s over—whiskey stops aging when put it in glass bottles.  After they’re emptied, all the new barrels are used, so they’re sold—usually to the Irish.

Now, good Irish whiskey is usually (but not always) distilled not once but three times.  O’Neil suspected Idy was doing that, or something pretty damned near.  The guys at Jameson’s and Bushmills use sprouted barley, dried in a kiln, and then they mix that with unmalted barley.  They grind the mix into grist.  Then, distilled, they put it into the used barrels to age and pick up additional flavors.  Smooth?  To a fault!

Shine, on the other hand, meets the minimum requirement for turning cornmeal, sugar, water, and yeast into alcohol.  When Beau’s boiling his mix down, the scent of home-baked cornbread fills the air.  Beau always used cornmeal, but some guys prefer a dried animal feed perked up with sugar.  It was what you did to mass produce shine; it wasn’t great for flavor, but it maxed out the alcohol yield, so much so the maker might have to cut it by adding water to the jugs.  And while modern distilleries are all copper and stainless, a still in a one-man operation is often nothing more than some pots over some wood to burn and some copper tubing through something cold to convert the vaporized alcohol back into a liquid.  The big boys go through hell to remove all the imperfections they can from their product.  With moonshine, it’s part of the charm.  Filtering?  Sort of.  Aging?  In glass or a plastic milk jug for as long as it takes to deliver it.  Going blind, alcohol poisoning, and exploding stills?  All part of it.  On the upside, an okay production whiskey takes six or seven years to complete the process; a great one could take twelve years or more to age.  But if you know what you’re doing, moonshine can be cranked out and ready to party in six or seven days.

Beau, being in charge of technical production, spent a good three days walking the far side of the lake (fishing pole in hand to throw the revenuers off the scent if they were watching—old habits die hard) exploring the caves, looking for a grand home for his new mega-still.  Time was of the essence.  Shine season is June to October, when the crops needed were blooming.  The Brannock-A-Bend booze-arama run-off was the second weekend of October, when the stills were dumping their nectar.  It was already the end of June.  He needed to find a cave for Idy’s still to build enough Mad Dash shine for the run-off, then find another spot for a mass-production unit.

He found the most perfect spot he could hope for about fifty yards up from the shore in a place almost directly across the lake from the house.  They could watch the cave from inside, unobserved.  There was a small opening in the face of the rocks, just big enough for the big man to squeeze through.  Inside though, a shallow spring of ice cold and clear water dropped from a small waterfall, ran the length of the cave in a shallow stream separating the caverns and exited in a gentle flow down into the lake.  There were several smaller openings in the rock wall faces, and two enormous caverns that went straight through the mountain and came out on the other side at an entrance big enough to drive a small pickup truck through, right by the road running into town... which eventually turned out to be a remarkably lucky break.

Beau was so excited at his discovery, he rowed immediately to his ‘stash’ cave where Idy’s still was stashed, rowed it all back to the new cave, carried it all up the fifty vertical yards, ran down the hill, and rowed straight back to O’Neil, who was busy in Idy’s kitchen trying to analyze what was left of the old girl’s booze and to cook something akin to American food.  The Widder Browne had sent her stock boy up with a load of Irish groceries.  Things like black pudding—made from blood, grain, and seasoning—may be a breakfast staple in Ireland, but it wasn’t on the menu for either of the retired NFLers.  Boxty, a kind of potato pancake, wasn’t bad once O’Neil got the hang of making them.  No matter; it kept them going, and as soon as things got set up, there’d be fish!

Sight unseen, O’Neil gave his blessing to Beau’s choice of still sites.  He’d known Beau long enough to let him run with the booze ball.  While Beau was walking around the lake, O’Neil had been busy too.  There was now a phone and electricity, and the house had been torn apart as sockets and lines were put in.  To Fitzy’s delight, O’Neil had requested Idy’s septic tank be dug up and replaced, although he was a bit confused as to why O’Neil would order not one, but two brand new tanks, a large and a small.  The large tank would be dug into the ground, the smaller left next to an old outhouse.  O’Neil said he and Beau were used to working and needed something to do.  At their leisure, they’d dig it into the outhouse system themselves.  When Beau saw the small septic tank sitting in the front yard, of course, he knew what it was for!  It would be a pain to seal it all up and sterilize its innards, but this thing was a pot you could boil down a thousand pounds of mash in!

For the next few days, Casa O’Neil was a beehive of activity.  To the Brannock-A-Benders, these two strange ‘Yanks,’ despite Fitz-Ryan’s vouching, were taking on the nature of recluses.  But word coming back from the Widder Browne’s grocery clerk, Shamus Finnerty, was that while they were ‘strange,’ they were generous (actually, it was just that the conversion formula of Euros to dollars still eluded them at times).  By the second or third visit to deliver groceries, the small septic tank had already disappeared and a great patch of sod by the old outhouse appeared all dug up.  A prodigious feat for two men working alone!  Shamus couldn’t understand why they had ordered a fifty-pound bag (American weight) of sugar, twenty-five of dried corn, and twenty-five of dried barley.  You’d think the five pounds of yeast would give it away, but given the Yanks' disdain for black pudding, Shamus tended to believe it was for American breakfast food!

And did they love to fish!  Shamus couldn’t understand why these two Yanks were using ultra-light fishing tackle in one of the best pike ponds in Ireland, the pike being an insane fish that could grow to a vicious (and toothed) fifteen kilograms.  However, when word got out both Beau and O’Neil had been professional footballers, the town decided they must be true sportsmen and their eccentricities were to be expected and accepted!

Truth be told, at the first sign of a human being, O’Neil and Calhoun jumped into that old boat and Beau would row them out into the middle of the pond.  Beau was doing so much rowing, he'd worked himself into opening day shape.  They’d smile and wave and throw their lines into the water in a grand pretext of fishing.  So far it was working.  Contact was minimal, and nobody seemed suspicious about any moonshinning activities.

All that was soon to change.

O’Neil realized that Beau was starting to look and act like a galley slave, and that couldn’t continue.  It seemed to O’Neil that all Beau was doing was rowing back and forth across the pond.  He, with Fitzy’s help, got an old Chevy flatbed pickup truck which was mechanically fixable (redneck, remember?), and while Beau worked on setting up Idy’s still, O’Neil drove down to Galway Bay, purchased a flat-bottomed bass boat with the biggest electric motor he could find, and drove it back tied down to flatbed.

It was about three in the afternoon when O’Neil got back.  Across the lake he could see his man sitting on a rock with his pole, casting out into the lake.  Idy’s still must be up and running, O’Neil thought.  He pulled the boat off the truck and, with a supposedly fully-charged battery, buzzed his way towards his friend.  It was a pleasant trip today, the sun was out and a warm wind blew.  He remembered that while an electric boat motor will get you there, it wouldn’t do it very quickly.  It made him miss fishing a bit.  As he quietly buzzed along he had time to turn all the events of recent days over in his mind.  This set up was perfect.  He'd cracked Idy’s recipe, and it was damned close to what he’d done to Beau’s brew... well, Idy was all-natural, and he had recreated it with a chemistry set sent from home.  If they could win the Shine Festival, they could do a real start up on the Mad Dash in quantity and really see its commercial potential.  All that extra help, wow!

The cave that Beau had selected was more than perfect.  The water was perfect.  The in and out openings with access to waterways and a road were perfect.  Perfect, perfect, perfect—except for one thing.  Inside, the yelling within the cave was at maximum, along with moans, groans, and occasional cuss words, or what sounded like cuss words, that couldn’t be clearly heard in the cave and not at all outside it.  Both he and Beau felt the long yelps seemed very, very familiar.  It would have to be lived with.  Idy’s still was up and, by the looks of things and the smell of baking cornbread, running.  Days before, they had flat-bedded the septic tank to the rear entrance of the cave and dragged it to a brick stand Beau had rowed to the cave.  They just needed to figure out how they were going to lift the tank onto it, but there was no rush for now.  Within a week, all their long-term plans seemed to be falling together nicely.  If they could just quell the racket in the cave!

“How’s the fishin’? ”  Beau had reeled in and was dragging the new craft on shore.

“Nice boat.  Ain’t had a nibble.  But I ain’t really trying, neither.  Just killin’ time until the pot’s a-boilin’.”  A big smile spread across his face.  “Won’t be long, neither!  Idy’s still entered the world of twenty-first century technology!  And we ain’t gots to be watchin’ no wood fire burn!”

There was something about the way Beau had said that which sent a chill up O’Neil’s backbone.  “Say wat?”

“Fitz was here right after you lef’ dis mornin’.  I give ’im a hun’red bucks and had ’im pick us up a small propane grill wid an extra propane tank.”  O’Neil had seen mash pots boiled with propane gas before.  “I took the one tank wid the grill.  It werked fine, but it weren’t ’nuff.  So’s I hooked the spare tank an’ rigged a burner.  It was fine, till it froze up.”

“Froze?”  Propane tanks required a gizmo called a regulator.  Without one, the propane froze in the lines and the whole thing became a bomb!

“Yup!  But I fixed it!  I rowed back and got Idy’s washtub, filled it with water, put the tank in it and built a fire underneath the whole ding.  It be defrostin’ real good.”

O’Neil’s feet were moving top speed.  A propane tank over an open flame was not the smartest thing Beau had ever done.  He brushed past Beau and darted into the cave.  As he disappeared inside the entrance, there were two colossal blasts followed by the noise of a massive landslide.  It stunned Beau, but he shook it off and rushed in after his buddy.

The smoke and dust were intense.  As it cleared, Beau found his friend, half smoked and staring off into a new cave opening.  The blast had cleared what must have been a previous landslide that created a wall sealing up what had been a room of a goodly size.  Inside the new opening were goodly dozens of 500-pound oak barrels and the remnants of what had been a goodly-sized still—but that wasn’t what O’Neil was staring at.  When Beau reached his friend, he saw it and stared too!

Staring back at the Americans was a gentleman of rather short stature, maybe five feet three inches tall.  He wore a three-cornered leather hat over greasy shoulder-length hair.  He had no official facial hair, but looked like he hadn’t touched a razor in weeks.  A worn leather vest covered him from his shoulders to almost his knees, and he wore brownish trousers belted by a wide black belt from which a sword hung on one side and a really old form of a firearm on the other.  He leered at them as he swayed left to right, being very careful not to spill the contents of the large pewter mug he held.  O’Neil and Beau could tell by the smell that the strange character was blasted up on some very, very powerful shine!

He leered at the speechless footballers for a moment.  Then, looking around and realizing he was no longer trapped, stepped forward as drunkenly best as he could until he was standing toe to toe with his liberators.  Shaking himself as erect as he could be, he spoke.

“Captain Brian ‘Pegleg’ Paterson, at your service, sirs!”  There was an uneasy silence for a full minute as the Americans gawked at two perfectly good legs.  Realizing what the problem was, a great smile spread across the shade’s face.  He laced his free thumb behind his belt buckle and tapped his fingers along the buttons of his fly.

“It be an ‘onaray’ title, sirs, given me from d’ladies o’ Galway Bay, who found it a goodly size!”

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