Excerpt
Before they had finished their dinner, just after it got dark, the
power suddenly went off. The darkness of the house was startling.
Only the glare of the lightning from the patio door to the east illuminated
anything. Eteo got up, found a couple of candles and a
lighter in a kitchen drawer, put the candles in two of the water glasses,
and lit them. The two small circles of light were enough to enable
them to finish their meal and put the dishes away. Then they sat
together in the family room and silently watched the storm light up
the eastern horizon. Finally, Eteo took a small frying pan from the
kitchen and a bottle of moonshine from his alcohol cabinet. He
poured just enough into the frying pan to cover the bottom of the
pan and held a lighter over it. It didn’t take too long for the almost hundred-
percent-proof alcohol to warm up and catch fire, creating a blue
flame that leapt around in various shapes dictated by the air of the
room. Logan had smuggled the moonshine from Crete a year ago
when he had gone back to his father’s home country on holiday. It
was the same drink the Germans called schnapps and Italians grappa.
In Crete they called it tsikoudia. It was made out of the leftovers from
mashing and pressing grapes for wine. These leftovers were boiled
and the steam guided through a coiled apparatus where it condensed
into a very potent alcoholic beverage that dripped down drop by
drop. The four men sat and enjoyed the shapes the burning moonshine
created. As it burned down, Eteo added a little more, cautioning his
sons and nephew not to move the table. If the flaming moonshine
spilled, it quite easily put the floor on fire. Suddenly Alex decided
that a blizzard would be a good thing to have at this moment, and
Logan and Jonathan instantly agreed. Eteo produced the cash for four
blizzards from Dairy Queen, and Logan and Jonathan went to buy
them. Fifteen minutes later, the four men were enjoying the flame of
the burning moonshine with their freezing blizzards when the power
came back on and all the regular sounds of the house resumed. Eteo
put out the flame. Jonathan got his books from upstairs and sat down
at the kitchen table to do his homework while Logan
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