All Other Nights (21 page)

H
OLLY SPRINGS WAS A SMALL TOWN IN NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI—
now officially part of the Federal Department of the Tennessee—surrounded by beautiful forests and blessed with an impressive share of castle-like estates, along with an even more impressive share of well-stocked saloons. It was a stop on the railroad line to Jackson and New Orleans, the hometown of the founder of the Mississippi Railroad, whose enormous mansion General Grant had promptly commandeered to house his own wife. The people in the town—women, children, old men, and the occasional amputee—loathed the soldiers, of course. Little boys threw rocks at them as they walked by. Since the Union advance, the place had been flooded with war profiteers; the town held huge stores of cotton that no one had need of in the Confederacy, and now unscrupulous speculators were apparently making a killing buying them up and selling just about anything to the desperate residents in exchange. As a result, the town was experiencing quite a boom under the new occupation, with a flourishing underworld of profiteers, which apparently irked Grant as he attempted to use as much of the town as he could as a place to stockpile his own supplies. The taverns and saloons were doing great business since they had arrived; new ones seemed to spring up every day. So it happened, one tired afternoon after their arrival, that Sergeant McAllister and the supposed Sergeant Samuels made their way toward town in search of a drink.

Jacob had not been looking forward to this. Their regiment, one of the last reinforcements to arrive, had been camped just outside of town, engaged in rather low-level work repairing some damaged railroad tracks and otherwise guarding the supply line, for almost two weeks before McAllister remembered his offer and felt guilty enough to fulfill it. He was apparently no more excited than Jacob about their little outing, but he was cheerful in his attempt to make a go of it. When he met Jacob on the main road toward town, Jacob saw that he had brought Hoff with him, which to Jacob was a relief; it meant that he still wouldn’t need to speak.

“Where to?” Hoff asked.

“I have an excellent destination for us,” McAllister announced. “A tavern just down the road from the depot. I found it last night.”

Hoff groaned. Like most of the others, he had spent the previous two weeks becoming a connoisseur of the local scene, and was already bored by it. “I’m sick of trying new places,” Hoff said. “They’re all the same. We already know the whiskey is best at Smith’s.”

“Ah, my friend,” said McAllister, raising a finger, “but the best thing about this place isn’t the whiskey.”

“Then why bother?”

McAllister grinned. “The tavernkeeper there is a young lady,” he said. “Not a bad-looking one, either.”

“A lady tavernkeeper?” asked Hoff. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” McAllister said. “Apparently it was her father’s place until he died.”

“Poor thing,” Hoff said, with mock pity. “Surely she is in need of some masculine companionship.”

“That’s what I was hoping,” McAllister said, with a theatrical sigh. “But she’s a lady sphinx. Won’t indulge anyone who can’t solve her little riddles. Trust me, I tried. I thought it would only be honorable to give you both an opportunity to try as well.”

They both glanced at Jacob, dutifully waiting until he shrugged.

“Capital idea,” said Hoff. “At least I won’t face much competition from the ghost.”

McAllister led them about half a mile off the main road, on a dirt track leading toward a few houses just a short way from the center of town. It was November, and even though it was early afternoon, the day was already fading. The dirt track they were following was turning gray under the orange sky. Dead leaves swirled in little circles on the wind before them as they walked, crunching beneath their boots. Hoff and McAllister began talking about various adventures they had had with the local “ladies” while off duty in Memphis, but Jacob soon stopped listening. He looked up and saw a thin streak of cloud turn deep purple, a war wound gashing the sky. It reminded him of standing in the Hebrew cemetery in New Orleans, of seeing the sky change color over the trees just before he continued toward the home of Harry Hyams. He forced the memory from his mind.

As they turned a corner on the road, Jacob saw a long wooden house emerge before them—or, rather, he saw what might have been a house, if it hadn’t been hidden behind a lawn of tall grass, with its roof and walls grown over with a tangle of brambles. It was as if the place had been abandoned years ago; the idea that living people still occupied it was enough to stir a hint of hesitation into his breath. Beneath its thick layer of thorns, the house might just as easily have been a cave, or the lair of some mysterious beast. As they approached, Jacob saw a weathered gray wooden sign hanging beside the open door. Though most of the paint had worn away, he could make out enough of the carved red letters to read what it had once clearly said:
SOLOMON’S INN.

Inside the tavern, there was little to dispel his impression that it was more lair than room. The windows were few and small, and even though it was still late afternoon, candles had been lit, making the faces of the few patrons there gleam from below like hovering ghosts. The tables—about four or five long ones, plain planks with plain plank benches—were mostly occupied by officers much older than they were, along with a few old civilian men taking an early supper. Two boys were ferrying food and drinks from the kitchen to the tables. The three of them entered and took seats at the bare wooden bar, the other side of which was occupied only by a rack of tin tankards hanging by their handles, a few shelves lined with bottles of mostly unlabeled liquor, and a well-stoked fire with an enormous old pot dangling over it, a cast-iron cauldron steaming with something that smelled like cabbage soup.

“I see we have arrived in high society,” Hoff sneered.

“Trust me just this once,” McAllister whispered. At that moment, a young woman burst through a door behind the bar.

She was tall, just a few inches shorter than Jacob, with dark eyes and dark curly hair. She wore a plain black dress and a canvas apron that made her hips flare out, an effect that was soon obscured by the bar itself. Her neck was long and pale under her dark curls, one of which hung just above her eye, having escaped from the bonds of a red ribbon in her hair. Jacob watched as she stuck out her broad lower lip, puffing a stream of air expertly at the errant curl until it fluttered back behind her temple. She glanced in Jacob’s direction, and smiled. Her smile unnerved him. It was the first time a woman had smiled at him since the last time he saw Jeannie. He looked down at the counter, running a finger uneasily along a scar in the wood.

“Miss Abigail!” McAllister announced with a grin. “Do you remember me?”

Jacob glanced up again and watched as the woman’s smile changed, becoming more ordinary, polite, dutiful. The curl fell back down over her eye; this time she pushed it behind her ear with a pale, thin hand that she quickly returned to her hip. Her dark eyes blinked, fluttering with either indulgence or annoyance, or both. Though she was almost too thin, there was nonetheless something solid about her, as though she were a pillar in the room, rooted to the ground as she held up the sky. Another man might find her beautiful, he reflected. But as he watched her, an excruciating thought seeped into his consciousness, an eternal pollutant to his soul: no one in the world would ever again be Jeannie.

“Of course, Sergeant McAllister,” she said. Her voice had a bit of a drawl, but a controlled one, perhaps because she was addressing three men in blue uniforms. “How could I forget you?” Her eyes darted back to Jacob again. He once again avoided her glance, looking at his own hands as they rested on the bar. His wrists were thin and pale, bristling with blond hair. For some reason that he could not name, he was afraid.

“This time I’ve brought some friends,” he heard McAllister say. “This is Corporal Charles Hoff, and this is Sergeant Jacob Samuels. Gentlemen, meet the proprietress.”

“I’m Abigail,” she said, and curtsied. “Charmed.”

Jacob bowed to her quickly, allowing himself to stand up straight again for a better look. He watched her smile at him, letting the sound of her voice saying her name echo in his ears. Then he realized something, an impression he hadn’t allowed himself to register when he saw the sign outside the door, and bowed to her again. As he straightened, he watched as she scanned his face and saw her thinking, puzzling. She was about to say something to him, but before she could bring out the words, McAllister slapped the bar.

“My colleagues and I would each like to ask the young lady if she might be inclined to go out for a promenade tomorrow afternoon, privately of course. But she says there’s a riddle we need to solve first,” he said, in his most charming voice. “Only the gentleman who knows the answer to the riddle gets to escort the young lady. Am I remembering that correctly, miss?”

Abigail smiled again, the dutiful smile this time. “Yes. And meanwhile, will it be whiskey all around?”

McAllister nodded eagerly as she took down three small tin cups from the rack behind her and began filling them. One of the two boys who had been serving the tables came up to the bar, moved around to the back, and stood on a stool behind it as he reached for something on a shelf. “Here, let me get it for you,” Abigail said, and took down a bottle of brandy, passing it to the boy. The boy climbed down from the stool and paused at the bar, facing them. His head only came up to the young lady’s chin. For an instant Jacob thought of the other children his age he had seen in recent months—Ellis, Rose, the boys throwing rocks in the streets of Holly Springs—and felt a surge of shame at the horrid world the adults were leaving behind. The boy’s hair and eyes were dark like Abigail’s, but his shoulders were stooped, and his face was locked in a sneer. His expression seemed oddly familiar to Jacob, though it took him a moment to place it. It was the way that Harry Hyams’s slave had glared at him when he arrived at the Hyams house in his stolen Rebel uniform: a look of unconditional, unparalleled contempt. To see it on the face of a child was nothing short of terrifying.

Jacob’s companions failed to notice. “The young scion of the establishment, I presume?” McAllister asked with a grin.

Abigail put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Yes, this is my brother Frank,” she said.

Frank contemplated the three of them for a moment, eyeing their uniforms. Then, rather suddenly, he razzed his lips and spat, a drop of spittle landing on the bar just short of McAllister’s hand. Jacob watched as McAllister turned bright red.

Abigail slapped the boy’s arm, though the slap, like her smile, seemed more dutiful than meant. “We don’t spit at the patrons, Frank,” she said, then added, in a loud whisper, “even if they deserve it.” She slapped him again as he departed with the bottle of brandy. “My apologies, gentlemen,” she said, in a tired voice that suggested this had happened before. “His father died at Shiloh.”

Her father too, it would seem from her expression. Suddenly Jacob was ashamed of the sniggering conversation on the road about how the young lady had inherited the tavern. He thought of how McAllister had mentioned that the regiment had been at Shiloh; surely McAllister and Hoff had both seen their friends killed there. Perhaps one of them had killed her father himself; who could know? But sentiment was a weakness now, as it always is among young men. If the word “Shiloh” evoked anything in either McAllister or Hoff, neither would let on. There was an uncomfortable pause as the three of them drank their whiskey, looking down into their tin cups as the young lady pulled a rag out of her apron and wiped the spittle off the bar.

After Abigail refilled their drinks, Hoff regained the confidence to speak. “So what’s the riddle?” he asked. “I’m a certified genius, miss. If I can’t answer it, no one can.”

“I very much doubt that,” she said, and glanced again at Jacob. Her eyes on his made him inexplicably nervous. He looked away.

McAllister raised a hand. “I know I gave the wrong answer last night. But may I try again?”

Abigail turned back to McAllister, and laughed. “You may try, but you’ve already lost.”

“So what’s the riddle?” Hoff called, banging a fist on the bar.

Abigail smiled. The three of them watched her, their attention rapt. “It’s simple, really. Here it is: What is the opposite of meat?”

Jacob watched as Hoff frowned and McAllister smirked. But Jacob smiled to himself, a quiet, secret smile, and gave himself permission to continue staring at the woman behind the bar. And then she saw him smiling, and knew.

“Don’t guess vegetables,” McAllister warned, waving a finger in the air at Jacob and Hoff. “I already tried that, and I paid the price. Now I’m going to guess bones.” He turned to Abigail. “That’s my new answer, miss. The opposite of meat is bones. Bare bones. Well?”

Abigail grinned. “I told you, you’ve already lost,” she said. She glanced at Jacob, and paused. He picked up his cup and swallowed down the whiskey, peering at her as he drank. The air between them was electric. The other two men failed to notice.

“But am I right?” McAllister begged.

Abigail looked back at McAllister. Then she leaned on the bar on her elbows as she gazed into McAllister’s face, close enough to kiss him. He smiled, until she said, “No.”

“Oh, I am slain!” McAllister groaned, and threw himself on the bar in an absurd swoon, splashing out a few drops of whiskey in the process. “I am slain on the enemy’s sword! Oh, someone please bury my poor meatless bones!”

Hoff grinned. “Is it my turn yet?”

Jacob glanced down again, then looked back as Abigail planted her elbows back on the bar, inches from Hoff’s face. “Yes, sir,” she said, flicking her hand against her forehead in a mock salute. “Your answer, Corporal Hoff?”

He leaned back, his grin even wider. “I see I’ve won already,” he announced.

“If you’re the winner, then what’s the answer?” Abigail asked, her voice teasing the narrow gulf of air between their faces.

“It’s very simple,” Hoff said. “Feed.”