Craddic rum.
Have you ever known a drop to be so sweet? I remember a score of nights that began busily through its uncorking. With only a slight of its emboldened perfume can I recall the countless names of joyous new friends who proudly sung old songs and made sure that the bottle should find its way into emptiness. Short moments, they were, times of iron-wrought kinship intwined with the joy of a perfect night. That short, wonderful moment, a time caught in crystal sky, the passing brilliance of a sun that fades from amber to a purple so profound that it be brushed by an artist. It is a simple thing. It is the advent of spring, and it is the final winds of Autumn. It is a scarf of elder’s weave and the warmth of touch upon a restless shoulder.
It’s not as thoughtful as you would consider a Lundrian Whiskey, there’s no smoke or peat to its flavour, nothing that should be mulled over, or used to think of dreary nothings as a low flame licks from the hearth-fire. It is a sweet rum, one that is as rich on the palate as you should find it to be warming in the stomach. Any barroom or snug that may hold a bottle of Craddic on their shelf is to be well respected, and a good sailor would rather see the winter’s solstice in sorrowful Loren before they pass by that battered green label.
The Dirty Three was stricken by a sleet that fell in the manner of cobblestone and the old tavern’s roof had been battered such that you may be forgiven in thinking it fatal. Such a deluge is more likely recounted in tales of olden time than it be seen in nature, but as a freak gust of wind carried the young wood-cutter lad off widdershins in fearsome bluster, I knew the gods must have been in foul mood.
The weather had moved onwards from novelty and now shifted towards the realms of utter terror as panes of glass were seen to shatter and splinters of lacquered wood burst from their grain; rocks of hail crashed into the walls of the tavern with impunity, nails were torn from their fixings and shot violently across the room embedding themselves into the opposing wall.
We were trapped; the cracks of panic were line the soles of our boots. I’ve seen terror do strange things to a man, and the trapped patrons with huddled with me that night would have clawed through stone and earth just to be away from thunder.
A short man, who looked as Lundrian as boiling a teapot, took flight toward the cellar, stepping on a loosened board as he ran and careening head long into a cupboard behind the bar. It was then that I saw it: A faded green label and the emblem of claymore that was stabbed into a wheel of cheese; Craddic’s rum, unopened and undisturbed by the storm’s vitriol.
I leapt into action as the cupboard began to fall. Striding over the bar I stepped upon the short man’s tumbling shoulders and snatched the bottle before it should fall to the ground. More alive than a flower in the advent of Spring, I clasped the cork between my teeth and wrested it free without losing a drop. With one hearty swig I became reborn and shouted in amazement to the onlooking tavern, ‘Who among us has time for a song?’ Seeing no movement roused I pointed to the barman and thrust the bottle into the air, calling, ‘Fetch me a fiddle so that we may dance!’
Once more leaping over the bar, I proffered the rum towards a girl by my side and bade that she do the same to her neighbour. There was a warming cheer as another bottle was found and soon something close enough to a fiddle had found my hand.
I am no musician but with enough rum in my toes and at fingertips I find that the call of song takes over and I will be dancing to the music of the weave or there with a bow in my had slicing across something resembling a string. There are no songs in my head that I confess to know, for a fiddle played best when its music is incapable of being named. I attack the melody with an old sailor’s rasping laughter, I will trill twelve passes over the fretboard before the first has decided where to begin or had a chance to argue of scale.
Attempting to outplay the storm itself, I danced around the flooded barroom and skipped over puddles that were growing by the meter. One by one the bar did join me, singing whatever song they knew and each holding in their hand whatever wasn’t already spilled. We formed circle and I took the centre, crouching low and sawing at the fiddle in ways the Stallinger Opera would call indecent. The rabble became a bluster, the bluster became a whirligig, and it was then that someone had unearthed a set of pipes.
The storm, in hearing our racket, did abate for a moment, curious of the rattling din that our merrymaking had become. Raucously we doubled our song in vigour, challenging the sky like a call from a mountaintop. The storm then drew backward in reply and raged with a gale both inhuman and strong. The shingles of our shelter were plucked away franticly by the grasping wind, thick sheets of shale clattered to the ground and soaked the whole tavern in frostbitten lashings; but in all this we doubled, tripled our shout. Arms linked in arms we bellowed out words that needn’t be defined, and by the blood of our ancestors we spoke to the storm a tale of life, a tale that will not be discounted, and it was then that we united in ourselves and made pact of that beast’s farewell.
Hail became rain and rain departed as mist. As the stars grew brighter and the scattered clouds became like ash, we took stock of the ruins that had fallen around us. The small man who had found the Craddic rum was sheltered by the remnants of the fallen cupboard the bar, becoming half-drowned for his cowardice. Grasping him by the collar and slapping him merrily on his trembling shoulder, I quickly invited myself to stay under his hospitality for a time and led him in a direction that was away from being asked to pay for damages.
The man, of course, was Benjamin Porter and from that storm we formed fast friends, as rovers will tend to do in their youth.
We wandered for a time, but the call of the sea had beckoned me again and Mr. Porter was a sedentary sort. Before our journey, before the Flying Apricot, I believed that I was to die at sea while Benjamin would grow old by the comfort of a fire.
This is how I met the man that you asked of and if you wish for the Apricot’s tale, go ask the fool who had thought of its name. For I do not truly know where Benjamin is now, but I assure you, he’ll have a blanket.
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 