The Whiskey Sea by Ann Howard Creel Read Free Book Online Page B

excitement bloomed inside her chest. Those boats were going out after a different kind of catch. They were shredding through these seas for a new purpose and new riches. It took them out on the ocean, way out, much farther than she’d ever been before. She’d never been beyond sight of land. What would it feel like to look in all directions and see nothing but a watery world? Stars stretching from one horizon to the other? She closed her eyes and imagined it.
    Her heart banged hard, her breath drew short, and she opened her eyes. Going against the liquor law was kind of exciting, too. Everyone hated this stupid new amendment. It hadn’t changed anything; in fact, people seemed to be drinking more than before. The law had made it exciting, rebellious, and more alluring than ever to get drunk. And the money!
    But it felt as distant as the dance clubs in New York City she’d heard about, the fancy verandas on the hill houses, and the hotel rooms with clean, white, scented towels. She had no way to join in. Even with the wakes of those contact boats making silvery ripples that rolled to the water below her and the new knowledge that the big rum boats were out there beyond the three-mile limit of United States jurisdiction, dancing around on the water like lures, she never guessed that it would have anything to do with her.

CHAPTER FOUR
    1923
    Over the next two years timing and Lady Luck were on Frieda’s side. Highlands was the closest New Jersey town to Rum Row, and more and bigger boats with faster, powerful engines were harboring in Highlands and making night runs to buy booze and bring it back to sell both locally and in the city. Those men needed engines they could count on, engines that wouldn’t fail them when chased by the guard.
    Frieda had been a dedicated student of Hicks’s and had become the trusted mechanic to many of the men who ran against the law. She could keep the old boat engines in top shape, as well as the war surplus airplane engines that many of the lobstermen had refitted for their boats for extra speed. She had been hired to work on a new Liberty, still in a crate; a fisherman had bought it for a hundred dollars from the government, and she had converted it to marine use.
    In addition, new boats, built strictly as shore boats, were being launched every day, most of them flat thirty-footers with fast Sterling or Liberty engines. All the engines needed alterations to get more speed, and Frieda had a knack for making adjustments that could coax out more power. She was as highly skilled as the men doing the very same thing, and yet her customers paid her less simply because she was female. She’d had to accept that, even though it struck her as vastly unfair. Plus some of the fishermen’s wives didn’t want her working around their husbands. She had built a decent business since going out on her own, but she still needed more work. She had competition from another new mechanic. Despite fishing full-time, Hicks was still trying to help her. Some fishermen continued to seek his advice about their boats, and often he gave them her name. Every day she went to Bahrs Landing, which sat by the water and had become a base of operations, and she scoured for business.
    Inside the restaurant well-dressed buyers from the city waited around one or more of the iron stoves for warmth, chatting, playing poker, or reading the newspaper until they received a signal that the boats were coming in. But it was the local men who made the dangerous sea runs—good seamen, lobstermen, and clammers who apparently didn’t see anything wrong with breaking a law that was mostly unpopular, largely ignored, and brought in more money than they’d ever seen before.
    She was pleased by her work and status as a boat mechanic, but that old longing for the sea had never left her. She knew that someday, some way, she would find a way out there. An opportunity would present itself, and she would know it when it came.
    I will watch and