Читать книгу The Seal Wife - Kathryn Harrison, Kathryn Harrison - Страница 19

JULY 4, the town explodes, bunting and baseball and smuggled bottles of beer. Despite the fact that the Engineering Commission has designated the town as dry—there are no legal intoxicants in Anchorage, and anyone caught selling contraband beer or whiskey within the town site will forfeit his or her claim to a plot of land—alcohol flows through its streets from the Line, as the straggling track of whorehouses southeast of the site is called. The madams use their connections to buy beer by the crate straight off the dock, packed in boxes labeled BEANS or MOLASSES or LAUNDRY SOAP; and stills abound in the uncut woods. Women who sell their favors sell bootleg, too, either as an aphrodisiac to be consumed on the premises, or as a nightcap, to carry home in a hair-oil bottle.