Lynna Banning - Wildwood

“Spirits!” she blurted aloud. She could clean the press with alcohol!

Where, she wondered as she marched along the board walkway, could she get alcohol?

Across the street the plunking of a tinny piano drifted out the open front door of Charlie’s Red Fox Saloon. Jessamyn halted midstride.

A saloon served alcohol, didn’t it?

She set her uplifted shoe down with a resounding thump and stepped off the walk into the street. With one hand she hitched her skirt up out of the dust and with the other tilted the parasol against the slanting sunlight. Head up, shoulders squared, she headed straight for the Red Fox.

The piano player’s spirited rendition of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” broke off the instant Jessamyn stepped past the swinging doors.

“Goshamighty,” a hushed male voice spoke into the silence. “A lady!”

Jessamyn lowered her parasol and gazed about the dim room. The place reeked of cigar smoke. The pungent scent of beer and strong spirits reminded her of the brewery a block from the Boston Herald office.

She moved with care among the rough wooden tables clustered with card players and cowhands with tanned faces and sweat-stained hats. Ignoring the hostile faces turning in her direction, she advanced to the polished oak bar.

The bartender, a pudgy, red-faced man with a soiled towel tucked in his belt, regarded her in silence for a full minute. Finally he signaled the piano player to resume and stepped toward her. He swiped the grimy cloth across the counter.

“Don’t allow women in here, miss.”

Jessamyn quailed at his tone. Summoning her courage, she straightened her back and spoke over the noise of the piano. “Oh, yes, you do. The sheriff told me about your fancy ladies-—that is the term? They are women, are they not?”

The bartender coughed. “Well, ma’am,” he began in a strangled voice, “women, maybe, but not—”

Jessamyn looked him straight in the eye. “Then just think of me as a customer. Not as a woman.”

“Kinda hard to do, seein’ as how you’re all fit out with them ladyfied duds.”

What did he say? Oh, he meant her clothes. Good heavens, didn’t anyone out here speak understandable English? Working to keep her voice calm, she replied, “Then shall I remove them?”

The man’s eyes popped. “No indeed, ma’am! I got enough trouble with Sheriff Kearney as it is. Now you just git along outta here. This ain’t no place—”

“Hold up there, Charlie,” a gentle, slightly raspy voice interrupted.

Jessamyn turned to face a stocky, muscular-looking man with limp, sun-lightened brown hair and skin tanned to the color of coffee diluted with a dollop of cream. Keen brown eyes looked steadily into hers from under the drooping brim of a shapeless brown felt hat.

“You refusin’ service to the lady?”

“Shore am, Jeremiah. An’ no deputy’s gonna tell me differ’nt.”

The deputy lifted the shotgun he carried. “Well, now,” he said without raising his voice. “Law says it’s illegal to steal horses.” He clunked the gun down onto the bar top. “Also illegal to serve rotgut whiskey or—” he cast an eye about the room, glanced from the stairs to the bartender and back again “—run a sportin’ house.”

He leaned both arms on the bar and laced his blunt fingers together. Jessamyn watched the back of one hand graze his gun stock.

“Dammit to hell, Jeremiah. Why don’t you mind yer own business.” The bartender slapped down his rag and swore again under his breath.

“Law is my business, Charlie. Now, I suggest you give the lady what she asked for.”

“Oh, hell’s bells. First it’s serve that Indian-loving sheriff, then it’s serve his Johnny Reb of a deputy and now it’s serve the lady. Dammit, back in Abilene—”

Jeremiah unlaced his fingers.

Charlie snatched up the bar rag. “Okay, Jeremiah. Okay.” He glanced at Jessamyn. “Just tell me what you want, ma’am, and then git.”

“I’d like a bottle of alcohol. Whiskey, I mean.”

Charlie’s thinning eyebrows rose. “Gawd, ma’am, a whole bottle?”

“Maybe two bottles. Big ones.”

The bartender gave her an odd look, dipped behind the counter, then straightened with a single quart of Child’s Whiskey in his meaty hand. “One bottle. Should last a little lady like you more’n a year. Mebbe two.”

“She said two bottles,” Jeremiah said quietly.

“Two! What in hell does she need two quarts of my best—”

“Isn’t none of our business,” Jeremiah interjected.

“It’s for my press,” Jessamyn blurted. She looked from Jeremiah’s placid, square face to Charlie’s round, florid one. “The printing press at the Wildwood Times office.”

“Huh!” The bartender spat onto the floor behind him. “Last time I looked, printin’ presses drank ink, not whiskey. Ain’t that so, Jeremiah?”

Jeremiah turned his chocolaty gaze on Jessamyn. After a long moment’s perusal, during which Jessamyn felt her cheeks flame and her nerve begin to fail, the man’s face creased into a wide grin.

“Whatever she wants is all right by me. Wouldn’t put nuthin’ past a lady who can write them elegant newspaper words. Make it two bottles, Charlie.”

Charlie clunked another quart of Child’s onto the counter.

“Thank you,” Jessamyn breathed. She sent the sheriff’s deputy a look of gratitude.

Jeremiah nodded, grabbed both bottles by the necks and reached for his gun.

“Hold up! I ain’t been paid yet.”

Jessamyn turned toward the bar. “How much do I owe—”

“Put it on my tab, Charlie.”

“Your tab! You nickel-nurser, since when do you have credit around here?”

“I guess maybe since right now. I kinda like the idea. ‘Sides,” the deputy breathed as he started toward the door, “the war’s over now. Reb money’s good as anybody else’s.”

He nodded a good-night and pushed through the swinging doors. Jessamyn had to skip across the floor to catch up with him.

“Thank you,” she panted. “I’ll repay you, of course. I’m Jessamyn Whittaker, Mr….?” She paused expectantly.

“Jeremiah, ma’am.”

“Jeremiah what?”

“Hull. But jes’ Jeremiah’ll do. Never had much need for a last name.”

Jessamyn pricked up her ears. “Why was that, Jeremiah?” Her reporter instincts told her his answer might be interesting, maybe even newsworthy.

Jeremiah shrugged. “Well, I kinda belonged to the plantation, you might say.”

Jessamyn blinked. “Belonged? You mean you were—”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Not a slave. My daddy was the overseer for Mr. Kearney. All of us—my mother and my brother and my sisters—we grew up on the Kearney plantation. When the war broke out, Mr. Ben, the colonel, joined his regiment. I joined up with him. We rode out the gate together, and I never looked back on that dogtrot house I was raised in ‘ceptin’ once.”

Jessamyn stared at him.

“Miss Whittaker, if you’ll just tell me where you want this whiskey…”

“Oh, yes, the whiskey!” She tore her gaze from Jeremiah’s no longer smiling face and stepped up onto the boardwalk in front of the newspaper office. “In here, please.” She bent to insert the key.

The lock stuck. She jiggled it three or four times before Jeremiah leaned his shotgun against the wall and stepped forward. He gripped the knob with his square fingers.

“Gotta lift up, Miss Jessamyn. Sometimes that lock gets the crotchets.” He gave a little nudge and the door swung inward.

Jessamyn set her parasol on the battered desk, turned and lifted the whiskey out of Jeremiah’s hands.

“I am in your debt, Jeremiah.”

“It’s gettin’ on toward suppertime. You gonna clean that press now?”