Trouble with the Brewers, More Trouble at Home

Canada loves beer. Beer and rye whiskey. There are some who prefer wine, especially those out there in Quebec, but those in the small town of Maggot Creek want things simple. They want a cold beer from the ice-box after a day of plowing or haying. They want it on the porch, watching the sun setting. The dog or the children or both in the yard screaming. A rye, perhaps, after dinner. Rye and coke or ginger ale. Cold with cubes of ice. And hockey. The beer just flows at the games. Flows like tears at a Ukranian funeral, as Norman's mother would say. The local team, which includes 16 of the twenty-two male teens, is always the scene of at least one off-ice fight a month during the season. Beer-fueled, Rev. Traherne, would say. Though he was known to sneak a beer at the game.

This is how Norman knew that the tavern would succeed. The beer would certainly flow. The people would drink. The music play, if he could fix that old player in the garage. But there was one problem: he couldn't get the beer. Old McCutcheon ran the nearest brewery up in Glasgow's Cove (Don't ask anyone how the town got the name - no one knows). It was run out of a converted barn, with his five sons helping out. All of them looked nearly alike, couldn't tell one from one another. All with names starting with an M. Michael, Malcolm, Matthew, Matthew James (known as Jim), and Menzies. Good Scottish names, he would say. Daughters, also, were named preferably with an M. Mary, of course, Madeline, Martha, and Grace. The M was a tradition he intended to keep up. Rigidly in the case of the boys and optionally in the case of the girls. Girls needed names to suit their characters, the characters of the boys he would shape himself. "You name your boys with your head," he would say. "Your girls you name with your heart."

Thus the other two girls were name Elizabeth and Anna. They were both married now and living elsewhere. One in Winnipeg and the other in Kenora. They had their own lives.

Either way this McCutcheon ran his brewery the way that Hitler had run Germany. He kept his nose in, oversaw everything, made sure that everything was done to his own exacting standards. His own grandfather had started the business and he would make sure that nothing was changed. Only the best hops and barley, none of that white refined sugar. He designed labels, named brands, checked quality, created recipes. Worked eighteen hour days. Nothing less was expected from his sons. His youngest washed the tanks, spent hours scrubbing the insides of ten foot tanks. He always smelled of detergent.

But he would sell Norman no beer. Twice he had driven to the brewery in Glasgow's Cove and both times he was chased off with no reason given. But it was the only brewery within a reasonable distance. He didn't know what he was going to do.

On friday night, after the traditional fried chicken and mashed potato dinner, he had sat on the porch and watched the sun set. It was nearly seven when Heidenworn, the newspaper editor,