Moonshine on the trolley

Of course, the trolleys no longer ran down this hill, but she thought about them every time she navigated over the old tracks ensconced in the black tar of the streets. Each day as she crossed the intersection and stepped onto the granite curb of Lexington Avenue, she could not help but allow her memory to run, hand in hand with her imagination; to hear the clang of the bell in her mind. She would hop on, skip up the steps, grasping the brass rail with one daintily gloved hand, the other clutched begrudgingly in her older brother's fist. They would ride down the hill each Saturday, to the end of the line, walking the last half mile to the old farm.

The basket on her arm, heavy with goodies, would be digging pink impressions into her flesh by then. Mrs. Bailey would greet them happily as if they had traveled a thousand miles, always relieving little Maria of the basket, tucking it easily under a soft flap of bicep. Nick, her brother, would set the empty wooden crates he had slung over his shoulder and secured with a worn strap of leather on the edge of the back porch.

Mrs. Bailey would cluck her tongue, exclaiming, "Maria, Nicky, come in! Y’all must be thirsty after your travels!" She would sit them down at her enormous kitchen table and pour glasses of thick, syrupy sweet tea with bright, round lemon slices. After refreshing her own sweaty mason jar, she’d plunk herself down beside Maria, asking about every detail of her week. Meanwhile, her brother, Nick would unpack the basket her grandfather had sent from his diner in town. He neatly set out baklava, feta, olives, and several little packages wrapped in brown butcher paper atop which Nick would always place a little leather-bound black book.

Nick would then go outside and help Mr. Bailey pack up the crates while Mrs. Bailey and Maria would set to work in the garden while she caught Maria up on the latest farm gossip. They would shell peas and pick flowers from her bright, messy flower beds. At the end of the day, Mrs. Bailey would refill Maria’s basket with a glass bottle of fresh cream sealed with a bit of paper and beeswax, a bundle of fresh flowers and greenery, jars of honey, and a dozen of the fluffiest biscuits anyone has ever seen. Mrs. Delia Bailey's biscuits were legendary throughout the tri-county area. Before they had to leave, Mrs. Bailey always fed them biscuits dripping with butter and honey and more sticky sweet tea to wash it all down before walking them out to the porch where Mr. Bailey was waiting with the crates to catch the last trolley home.

Their grandfather always met them at the stop adjacent to his diner, The Acropolis Restaurant. He would help Maria hop down from the last step and help Nicky unload the crates and carry them around the corner to the alley behind the restaurant. After leaving the crates on the dumbwaiter, Nick would go up to the dining room and help their parents finish cleaning up from their busy dinner rush while Maria filled her Pappou in about her day with Mrs. Bailey. While Maria regaled him with tales from the farm, Pappou would take the little leather-bound black book from Maria's basket and place it on top of the crates and lower them into the basement, where he would always then proclaim, "Huzzah! I will deal with those later- and turning to Maria, he would grab her hand and say, "race ya to the top!"

When they got upstairs to the dining room, Maria would unpack her basket, using the flowers to freshen up the little vases on the table tops of the booths and tables throughout the restaurant. She would carefully wipe down the menus and seats and make sure everything looked exactly right for the Sunday after church crowd the following day. Once everything was set, the family would congregate in the upstairs apartment they shared above the restaurant, where Maria's grandmother, Gia, had spent much of the day preparing a late dinner of roast lamb accompanied by Mrs. Bailey's fresh biscuits.

Maria was snapped back to the present, standing at the intersection where her family’s restaurant had been. She continued down the hill in the opposite direction. Her keys clanged against the metal door frame of the shoe store where she had worked for the past forty-five years. Today would be her last day. She had put in her notice to retire at the beginning of the month. Being the manager at Trolley Line Shoes afforded Maria lots of quiet time alone in the store. She would start a pot of coffee in the break room, and wander the aisles, straightening the shoe displays on the way to her office at the back of the store in the back of the stockroom.

The shoe store had begun modestly enough as a small retail stall in the hotel lobby across from The Acropolis Restaurant. She remembered her mother taking herself and her brother across the street for their penny sales in the off season. They would stock up on the next sizes up for the year, each allowed to buy one nice pair of dress ups and a pair for everyday and working in the restaurant. The owner, Mr. Rosen, would measure their feet and have his son pull a few styles for them to try on. Once they had made their selections, he would give them a wooden token for the penny arcade to play while their mother found something for herself and paid Mrs. Rosen at the register. Mother always left a certificate for a free Mount Vesuvius plate- Mr. Rosen’s favorite lunch dish, Maria remembered.

After prohibition and during the depression, the hotel that housed the shoe store, along with many other Asheville businesses closed. The Rosen family had saved over the years and slowly expanded the small store, eventually buying the building that occupied the majority of the small city block. The alley that also intersected the street where her grandfather’s diner had stood on the hill above the shoe store had been enclosed to create a fabulous wrap around store front, creating the feeling of a big city department store in the expansive space.

These days, in what had been The Acropolis, there was now a trendy “speakeasy” style bar called O’Henry’s that looked like a big old library; leather bound books line the walls, and you can score rare, signed copies of literary greats alongside The Joy of Sex. A bookcase at the back opens using a code you get on your book receipt, and behind the façade is a golden age night club complete with white tablecloths and a drink menu featuring micro distilled spirits in cocktails with names like The Gift of the Magi and The Clarion Call. The irony was not lost on Maria.

The last time she had seen her grandfather, she and Nick had just returned from the Bailey farm. This time, when Nick went upstairs, Pappou put her on the dumbwaiter with the crates and sent her down to the basement with them. She heard him at the back door talking to someone above her in muffled tones. Soon, Pappou was bounding down the stairs two at a time. He rushed past her and shoved a shelf of preserved peppers and grape leaves aside. Behind the shelf, a stone archway had been fitted with a huge steel door with a combination lock. Pappou opened the lock and swung open the big metal door. Inside, the walls were earthen and stained black with old soot. He packed the crates into the little oubliette. At the back of the earthen hallway was another stone arch which had been plastered over. There were more crates stacked near the back wall, each housing a couple dozen jars of liquid, some amber, some clear. To one side, there were several stacks of the little packages wrapped in brown butcher paper. Pappou took the little black leather-bound book out of her basket and ripped out the first page. He folded the page into the pocket of Maria’s pinafore, and said, “you keep this and don’t you tell anyone about it. The next time you see me, I’ll get it back from you and we’ll go get you an ice cream sundae, ok, my sweet? Now you go upstairs and tell Papa that Pappou went downtown with the boys for a little bit and I’ll be back in time for dinner. Until then, this piece of paper is our little secret.” He tucked her back into the dumbwaiter. The ropes quivered, and Maria ascended into the dish pit at the back of the dining room. Nick scolded, “Maria, what are you doing?! You know you’re not supposed to play in there!” He grabbed her hand to steady her as she jumped out of the cart. "Pappou sent me up in it! He said to tell Papa he had to go downtown with the boys for a bit.” Behind her, Maria heard her mother drop a tray of glasses. Nick set her back on the edge of the dumbwaiter and grabbed the broom and started helping mother sweep up the glass. “It’s okay, mommy, Pappou said he’d be home before dinner.”

Maria never saw her grandfather in person again. In the year that followed, Maria’s family sold the diner to another nice Greek family from church. They used the money to hire lawyers to defend her Pappou and to move the family to the neighboring town where they lived in anonymity for the rest of her childhood. Her grandfather had written her and her family letters from jail. Her letters from him were always upbeat but only the last one ever mentioned the piece of paper he had given her that day. The end of his last letter to her had simply said, P.S. My Angel- only you will know when it is time for our secret to reveal its surprise.”

Over the years, Maria had memorized the numbers on the folded piece of paper, which had eventually grown worn as the writing had faded. She had used it as a bookmark, often squirreling it away in a favorite spine for months at a time. This morning before work, Maria had removed her old copy of Look Homeward Angel from the bookshelf, the folded paper tucked inside, and placed it in her leather handbag.

It had taken her over twenty-five years to figure out what the secret meant. And several more just to gain access to the little earthen oubliette. Maria had been working her way up the chain of command at Trolley shoes after moving back to Asheville for several years when she was doing inventory. Behind the mountain of pallets that housed the shopping bag supply, Maria noticed a stone archway that had been plastered over long ago.

Over the next several years, Maria had slowly removed plaster from the archway, concealing the broken bits in an oversized handbag, disposing of them in a dumpster behind the parking garage. Over her last year of employment, Maria had been able to remove all the contents of the earthen vault. The little brown packages had amounted to twenty thousand silver notes and were easy enough to carry out in a couple of shoe boxes tucked inside the shopping bags with the red and black Trolley logo. The jars had taken time and effort to remove, a few at a time over the past year, and a few a day over the last month were smuggled out in cardboard boxes as she moved out of her office. Nick had helped her move the last one. She couldn’t wait to let him in on the secret about the treasure, the best being the recipe for Mrs. Bailey’s biscuits scrawled into the pages of the little leather-bound black book.