Excerpt: Connection at Newcombe // Kayt Burgess
As part of our guest edited month exploring publishing and the emotionality of sharing writing, Kayt Burgess shares this excerpt from Connection at Newcombe, forthcoming from Latitude 46 Publishing in April 2021.
Trains. The newly amalgamated CNR was going to build a train right through their property. It was exactly what he needed. Not only could he import the hops he needed to fulfill Grandpapa Bannatyne’s recipe, but he could export.
Government regulation dictates that the community must be sufficiently large to benefit from, and service, a rail system. In this area, the population minimum is two hundred . . .
He could export his beer. Just like Aonghus. But not like Aonghus because he’d gotten caught. Like Aonghus, but smarter. He’d find abetter route. The prohibition rats were cracking down on the southern Ontario pipelines. Most of it would get through, sure, but he didn’t want to send his grandpapa’s beer all the way down south just for the coppers to pick it up for themselves. He needed to get it to the gangsters, to New York, Chicago.
Prohibition: it wasn’t for the vets. Booze was mother’s milk to soldiers. Prohibition was for the nuns and the priests, the mousy housewives and the shrill ladies’ groups of the world.
“Mayor Healey went to get our most recent census data. We all know Newcombe doesn’t have two hundred residents; we need to figure out a plan to fool the census authority. I need your help.”
And what they all needed was a taste of Bannatyne’s India Pale Ale. He just needed those hops.
“Pa, are you listening?”
“To what? Shit, Callum. I didn’t see you there.”
Callum sighed. His mother sighed like that. “I’ve been talking for the past five minutes.”
This Callum was a strange Callum: thin, hungry for something Fergus didn’t recognize. Maybe it was just food. Fergus didn’t trust thin people, didn’t understand them. Why were they so thin? Couldn’t their wives cook? If they couldn’t, why did they marry them? Maybe thin people were just stupid. The McKies were stupid and they were skinny as celery. Then again,Mayor Healey was stupid and shaped like mashed potatoes.
“I can’t believe Mum’s still sore about me leaving.Figured she’d forgiven me by now.”
Callum wasn’t stupid—not yet. “You need a wife, Callum. And don’t be stupid—one who can cook.”
“That’s why Mum went home? Because I don’t have a wife?”
“What’re you yammering about, boy?”
“Did you hear anything I said? About the trains.”
“Of course!” Fergus blustered. Hell, Callum was like his mother. Peg always asked him inane questions like that too. “When they put the train tracks through Newcombe I can get my hops and sell my beer toChicago. Detroit. Hell, even New York City.”
“Sell it to . . . Christ, Pa, I didn’t say that. I said you could get your hops.”
“Then what? Squirrel all that magic beer away? Waste it on drunk log drivers, Indians and Frenchies who’re happy with fermented dog piss? Of course not! Gotta think big, son.”
Callum massaged the bridge of his nose. “Pa, right now, we have to find a way to make the census bureau believe we have two hundred people in Newcombe.”
That all? Psh. The boy worried too much. Fergus had it all sorted. “Wooden cut-outs. We’ll put’em far out in Farmer Slokem’s field so the census man can’t get too close. Deceive the eye.”
Fergus bet Aonghus hadn’t taken precautions shipping his beer. He’d probably just stacked the barrels in a carriage and sent it off to Detroit. But that wasn’t good enough. They needed to be camouflaged. Inside a storage box, or in milk jugs.
“Maybe,” Callum didn’t sound very open-minded. “I was thinking we could ask the Wakami band if they’d come and pose as residents.Toronto bureaucrats have no idea how they live. We can just set up wigwams at the end of Main Street and the Southerners wouldn’t know the difference. As long as you stop with the Indian jokes, Noelle might even help us.”
Fergus looked over at their barmaid. She was a handsome, black-haired woman, not too thin, so he trusted that, although she’d a sly, clever look to her he hadn’t decided on. “Why does it matter to that woman what I joke about?”
“Noelle is from Wakami.”
“Indian, eh? And right under our very noses. Never would’ve thought.” Now he knew why he didn’t trust that girl.
“Jesus, Pa, you’ve known since the day you met her. Fifteen years ago.”
Kayt Burgess's debut novel Heidegger Stairwell (Arsenal Pulp Press 2012) won the International 3 Day Novel Contest and a finalist for the 2013 ReLit Award for Fiction. She is also a scriptwriter on the best-selling augmented reality app Zombies, Run! and writes stories, poems, plays, and produces work in experimental digital storytelling. She received her Ph.D. from Bath Spa University in 2017. Kayt was born in Manitouwadge, Ontario and lives in Elliot Lake.
