Historical fiction written by Bryan Stalder

Kansas City, Winter 1933

Matthew Orr sat at his desk as the afternoon light settled in the narrow office, catching on the edges of account books and folded proofs. The place smelled of ink and paper, with the faint, familiar trace of whiskey that had long since soaked into the wood. He opened the lower drawer and touched the neck of a bottle—an old J. Rieger Monogram, its label nearly gone, refilled months ago with what everyone privately called Pendergast Gold.

Orr did not pour himself a drink. He rarely did, and never during business hours. The bottle stayed where it was, more symbol than temptation.

He unfolded the letter that had arrived that morning.

The handwriting was neat and deliberate, careful without being timid. The kind of script that came from habit, not schooling. The signature read Rosa Scardino.

Orr knew the name immediately. Joe Scardino had worked beside him years earlier at the Montgomery Ward warehouse in the advertising department. His wife Rosa was active at their church, steady in her routines, the sort of woman who brought lasagnas to potlucks and never raised her voice at meetings. If she had something to say in print, people would listen.

He read:

Dear Editor,

I am writing as a wife, a mother, and a Catholic woman who has lived in the Northeast long enough to see good laws and foolish ones come and go.

I do not write to encourage drunkenness, nor to excuse bad behavior. Our faith teaches moderation, self-control, and responsibility. Those lessons are taught at our tables, not by Washington.

I will speak plainly. There is wine in my home. There is whiskey in my husband’s cabinet. It is used at holidays, at weddings, and sometimes after a long day of work. We do not hide it from our children, and we do not abuse it. We treat it as our parents did, and their parents before them.

Under the law, this makes us criminals.

Prohibition has not made our neighborhood more moral. It has made honest people quieter and dishonest people bolder. It has not stopped drinking. It has only changed who profits from it.

I look forward to the day when this law is repealed, and when ordinary families no longer have to pretend that what they do responsibly in their own homes is something shameful.

We ask our children to respect the law. The law should be worthy of respect.

Sincerely,
Rosa Scardino
Northeast Kansas City

Orr lowered the page slowly.

There was no anger in it. No politics, no sermonizing. Just a plain admission, printed in careful ink: there is alcohol in my home.

That was the danger.

The country was in its final months of Prohibition, but the law still stood. While local authorities generally looked the other way on the matter, printing the letter meant publishing a confession. Orr wondered, briefly and uncomfortably, whether Rosa understood that. Whether a federal agent could, in theory, take interest. Whether a county prosecutor might feel compelled to act, if only to prove something. Did her husband Joe even know she had written this?

More troubling still was who else might read it.

Prohibition had been good business for certain men. That much was understood. He knew the name Johnny Lazia. Everyone knew who controlled deliveries, who settled disputes, who expected cooperation when laws became flexible. If repeal came—and it was coming—those arrangements would shift. Orr was already hearing murmurings about some LaCapra fellow. But that’s all he heard. Murmurings. People who spoke too freely sometimes found themselves reminded to be careful.

Orr did not imagine grand conspiracies. He imagined smaller things. A warning. A word passed. A quiet knock.

He poured a finger of whiskey and set the glass aside, untouched. He stared at it, thinking about the ordinary nature of the act, and the extraordinary trouble it had caused for more than a decade.

The rest of the week’s material lay ready: weddings, school plays, apartments for rent, parish notices. Life as it was actually lived. By Wednesday morning, it would all go downtown to the press, where other hands would set the type and roll it into Thursday’s paper.

Rosa’s letter sat apart from the rest.

Printing it did not mean endorsing it. It meant acknowledging that this was a voice in the neighborhood—and not a marginal one. This was not a speakeasy owner or a politician. This was a churchgoing mother saying, in public, what many said only in kitchens.

Orr folded the letter carefully and placed it with the editorials.

Outside, the street moved at its usual pace. A delivery truck rattled past. A man laughed too loudly. Somewhere nearby, a bottle was opened without ceremony.

Orr took the whiskey in one swallow, returned the bottle to the drawer, and closed it.

The newspaper’s role was not to instruct the community how to behave, nor to pretend it behaved better than it did. Its role was to notice—honestly—and to give space when the neighborhood spoke in its own voice.

This week, it would speak plainly.

And Orr would print it.