Page 23 of Lucifer's Revenge
“As all people did throughout time.”
“Correct. Well, maybe I get a little of my rebellion from this ancestor, but during prohibition, my granddaddy at the time, turned the barn that is currently the bar I operate into a speakeasy.”
“Oh my gosh, like they did in the cities, with passwords and everything, just so people could drink?”
“Yes,” Luc said with a smile at her enthusiasm. “From my family history, it just wasn’t during prohibition. My ancestorfrom the eighteen eighties to the nineteen forties ran several stills out in the woods. Not once was he ever caught, nor was he ever on anyone’s radar for being a bootlegger.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got old, nothing dramatic, just got old, and when his son took over the farm, he dismantled all the stills, and called a buddy of his father’s to come get the supplies and all the left-over moonshine. He turned the barn back into a cow barn.” As he talked, Luc had grabbed a napkin and was drawing on it. There was a large square with several x’s on it. “This is my property. Yes, I inherited it from my grandparents. This large x is the bar.”
“What are the squiggly lines?” She looked at him with a frown and sucked in her breath when he looked at her with a grin.
“Trees.”
“Oh,” she said, and giggled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Anyway, these other x’s are my house, I live in what everyone referred to as the main house when it was a working farm. These other two marks are where my parents and sister live. We all live on the same property, but have separate homes. These are former staff cabins. I guess you would call them staff, they worked on the farm.”
“Caretaker’s cabins?”
“Yes, something like that. Anyway, there used to be a house closer to the barn, but that was destroyed in a snowstorm back in the 1970s. There was so much snow it collapsed the roof, and by the time anyone could come in and try to replace it, it was too late, there was extreme termite damage. It was better to just finish tearing it down than to do anything with it. The only thing left is the basement, which we covered, and the chimney is still standing.”
“Why did you decide to make the barn into a bar?”
“I don’t really know. I think at the time, I had heard about the bootlegging, the speakeasies and thought that was so cool. Once I inherited the property, it was no longer a working farm, and my parents had rented out most of the land to the surrounding farmers. I stopped that once one of the people renting my fields tried a couple of illegal things.”
“May I ask what they were?”
“One, he refused to pay me. Two, he tried to tell me that because he worked the land then he had squatters rights. With that, he tried to sell a track to a housing development. I had my lawyer on him so fast that he lost his shirt, and ended up packing up and leaving. Once the dust settled from that fiasco, I refused to let anyone work the land. It’s gone farrow, and I don’t care.” He shook his head, finished his coffee, and refilled both cups. “Right around that time I had started the motorcycle club, Hell’s Coffin, and if it hadn’t been for that court case, I don’t think I ever would have started the bar slash restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Because of the barn being a working cow barn, like cows were milked there, it had been zoned commercial, but it sat on private property.”
“Ah, and because it was registered as commercial already, you just had to come up with a new business to put in it.”
“Correct. Like I said, the club had just started and we started using the barn as a club house. One thing led to another, and it wasn’t long, total of three years, to make it into what it is today. You can’t tell from the inside, but the walls are solid concrete, we just added studs, extra insulation, and drywall to make them into real walls.” He looked at her with his signature smirk and raised brow. “I can’t tell you how many hours it took us to pressure wash all the shit off the concrete walls. We did everything legally and even invited the health department in to inspect before we went the next step.”
“Oh, wow, that was nice of you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to pull into the parking lot one day and be told they were shutting us down for having a speck of old fecal matter on the walls. I know it sounds disgusting, but that’s why we added the extra walls. Besides, it helps with the cooling in the summer, and the heat in the winter.”
“This is all fascinating,” she said as she cradled her cup in her hands and lifted it to her lips to sip. “However, it doesn’t tell me why you don’t date.”
“Oh,” he said sheepishly, and leaned forward. “During all the construction of the bar, establishing the club, and taking that asshat to court for trying to steal from me. I met someone. I learned fast that she was only dating me for two different reasons.”
“Which were?” she asked to prompt him when he remained silent for almost two minutes.
Luc shook his head and sighed heavily. “One, she wanted the status of being the girlfriend of the president of a motorcycle club. She thought if she dated me, then she could be in charge of the women of the club. Little did she know that we didn’t operate like that. The only timemyole lady would be in charge was if there was any strife among the women. She would hear them out, then come to me. This chick thought what she said was the law in the club.”
“Can you give any examples?”
“She demanded the others pay for her when they went out. I’m talking her nails, her hair, her clothes.”
“Oh my.”
“Yeah, that lasted about a week before I shut that shit down. I told her if she couldn’t afford something, then she didn’t need it. She flipped a switch and tried to decorate the bar to make it into a posh downtown nightclub with neon and glass. She evenfired my contractors and tried to hire her own to get what she wanted.”
