Angels' Share (Bourbon Springs Book 3)

by Jennifer Bramseth

“When you look at what I’m about to show you, Bo Davenport, you need to understand that this place is to me what your distillery is to you. This is my home, my sanctuary. Never forget that. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Lila,” he promised, his anger now dissipated in the face of her passion for her land. “Hannah told me this place is special,” he said as he dared to take a few steps toward her.

  “That would be quite the understatement,” she said, and turned away from him to look out over the springs. “And when you look around this place, do you know what you will not see?” It was an impossible question to answer, so Bo remained silent, hoping she would fill the void. “There’s not a tasting room out here, Bo,” she said firmly.

  He got the message. She was all business that day, and any advances on his part would be rebuffed with extreme prejudice. No embraces, no kisses, tender or otherwise. If he tried to make a move here, Bo knew that Lila would see it as something akin to sacrilege.

  “I promise to behave,” Bo said and nodded.

  Lila smirked, a clear indication she did not believe him.

  He slowly approached the point where Lila stood, and before him was unfurled a truly beautiful spectacle.

  Below them were layers upon layers of exposed gray limestone, descending toward the creek, with the waters of the springs trickling and gurgling over the rough rock. Where they stood was the high point of the springs, and when Bo looked down he realized they must be standing almost directly over where the water emerged from the land. Hannah had told him how peaceful and quiet it was, and she had not exaggerated. She had also told Bo that when she had been at the springs, she’d been unable to detect the smell of the mash, and he had doubted her, as he had Lila’s similar claim. Yet their reports were correct. Bo knew that mash was cooking that day up at the distillery not more than a mile north of where he stood. Usually that scent was pervasive and washed over countryside and town alike, an olfactory beacon alerting all this is bourbon country. Yet he could not catch a whiff of it in the springs.

  “I’ve always wondered what this was like,” Bo said. “I’ve seen old sketches and photographs of this place, but they don’t do it justice.”

  Bo felt the resentment flowing off her in waves. He figured she must feel like someone was burglarizing her home, since she had made it clear she thought he had no business being there and that he was trying to take something from her. He knew she wanted him gone, and he wondered how long she would let him stay at the springs. The judge’s order hadn’t specified a specific length of time he was allowed to stay, and now that he had glimpsed this special spot, he began to fret that Lila was going to turn him around and march him right out of the woods and back to the four-wheeler she so hated.

  But he didn’t want to go. He understood that it was a unique place, and even though he had only seen it for the first time, Bo already felt a connection to it. He reasoned that his attachment grew from the fact that this land probably had been part of the distillery grounds at one point, and that water from these springs was at one time used to make bourbon, although it probably did not bear the name Old Garnet. This large swath of acreage along Old Crow Creek, which encompassed both the current distillery property as well as Lila’s land, had a long history of being associated with whiskey-making stretching back two centuries. And although the Old Garnet brand did not go back that far, for Bo, just knowing that these spaces were used for that purpose made the land special and sacred.

  Because land isn’t special just because it was a thing to be owned or possessed. Bo knew—as he knew Lila understood as well—that land acquired a sense of home and belonging by what had happened there. While it was nice to look at acreage and appreciate its simple beauty and maybe the nice view it afforded, it was better to have that knowledge about the past, about how people had lived and died in a place. Because that was part of a larger story, and most people felt a deep need to know stories and how things begin and end. That’s how people made sense of the world and related to it.

  And that’s what Bo needed. It bothered him that he didn’t know more about this spot, an important place in the history of Craig County and Kentucky—his home.

  He saw that all around the rough rock where the water leaked from the land there was a thin layer of green, lightly lush vegetation.

  “How can those plants survive?” he asked.

  “Because the water coming out of the ground is warm. It’s thermal-heated. Not a lot, but enough to keep this place green even in the dead of winter. I’ve been out here when it was in the teens and yet there was something growing around the rocks.”

  “Can you teach me the history of the springs?”

  “What do you want to know?” Lila said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Well, can you show me around, like I showed you around the distillery?”

  “Not really,” she said, and gestured toward the ground below them. “What you see is what you get. I guess you know that this site is the likely origin of the town’s name?”

  “Yes,” he acknowledged.

  He might not know that much about American history, but Bo Davenport sure as hell knew his bourbon history.

  Even though Bourbon Springs was very old, the town hadn’t been so named because it was a bourbon-making site. The settlement had acquired its name in the post-Revolutionary War period when there was a love for all things French, the nation’s great ally at that time. Other cities and areas in Kentucky reflected this historical affection. There were small towns called Versailles and Paris, as well as Bourbon County itself, named for the kings of France. The state’s largest city, Louisville, was named in honor of King Louis XVI. Long after Bourbon Springs had been named, the term bourbon became attached to the sweet corn whiskey produced in central Kentucky and shipped down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Although Bo had no fixed opinion on the issue, he was aware many argued that the whiskey acquired the bourbon appellation from its final destination in the Crescent City: Bourbon Street. Others maintained the name came from the whiskey-filled barrels stamped as having their origin in old Bourbon County, a geographic region of Kentucky, thus acquiring the label “old Bourbon County” whiskey. The name Bourbon Springs thus became a self-fulfilling prophecy because the town was now so intimately connected with bourbon and the very water to make that bourbon came in part from underground spring-fed wells on the Old Garnet property.

  “What do you do when you bring your students here?” he asked, not willing to give up on trying to engage her.

  Lila turned around and crossed her arms over her chest. “If you were one of my students, you would have already done at least three papers on these springs.”

  “Three?”

  “Yep. Three. The first would have been on the prehistory of this area. The second would have been on the Civil War and what happened around the springs in the time leading up to the Battle of Perryville. And the third paper would have been about the history of bourbon in Kentucky. So by the time you came here as a student, you would’ve already had a base of knowledge which would allow you to appreciate and understand what you were looking at.”

  “I know quite a bit about that last subject, but not so much about the first two. Looks like I’ve come unprepared, doesn’t it?” he said, half-jokingly.

  “Yep. If you were in my class, you’d probably be getting a failing grade,” she said.

  “C’mon, Lila,” Bo coaxed, “give me a break. Don’t think that I’m completely stupid when it comes to a general history of this place. Remember the little museum up at the distillery?” She nodded. “That was my idea. My mother helped me get some of it together, but I had a lot of those items and did the research.”

  Lila pulled back her hood, and Bo sensed he had somehow redeemed himself in her eyes by mentioning his work on the distillery museum. “Very well,” she said. “Follow me closely and listen.”

  She led him down into the springs and for the next hour lectured him and answered his questions as though
she were with her students or giving a tour. Lila showed him faint carvings along a rock face that she thought were several thousand years old. She told him about the first colonial settlers in the area, and ultimately about the Civil War skirmish that was fought at the springs.

  “I’ve picked up a few relics,” she said, “but my dad was the one who could really spot stuff. He seemed to be able to hone in on something, like he had some kind of internal radar to find discarded bits of things.”

  “What did he find?”

  “Typical things for a site like this which has been intermittently inhabited for hundreds of years. Arrowheads, pottery shards, animal bones, broken crockery, grapeshot from the skirmish. His big discovery was a Civil War-era sword. It belonged to some Union officer, if the markings on it are correct. I was with him when he found it. He was thrilled.”

  They were now far below where they had first stood when they arrived at the spring. Lila was nearer to the water and the tip of her hiking boot almost touched a small pool. She was staring into space, and he could tell she was completely captured by her memory of her father.

  “How old were you?” Bo asked.

  “I was in high school,” she said, and looked at him. “I think I’d just finished my junior year and that year-long class in American history. Lucy Davenport was my teacher.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Bo said. “Lucy did teach that, didn’t she? I had someone else when I had that class.”

  “Well, I was up to my ears in history at that point. Couldn’t get enough of the stuff. I remember calling her and telling her about the sword. She even came over to the house to see it that summer.”

  “Do you still have it?” Bo said as he walked around some large and very slippery-looking rocks.

  “Of course. It’s up at the house with the rest of the collection of things that have been recovered from here.”

  “Could I see it sometime?”

  “Maybe, but not today,” Lila said, cutting off his hopes of going to her home to view the objects.

  She marched back up the incline with Bo behind her until they were standing again at the place they had begun the little tour, and overlooking the entire springs.

  “Do you come out here often?” he asked.

  “A few times a week, depending on the weather,” Lila said, not looking at him.

  They both gazed at the woods surrounding the springs, and he sensed their thoughts fell on the same question: what the future held for the spot. He knew that if he got the portion of the land he wanted, he would take part of those woods, and for the first time he felt guilty about his claim. Bo turned his head northward and saw nothing but trees and the heavens. If he built a rickhouse in that same area, her view would be nothing but the side of a tall building instead of the vast expanse of cerulean Kentucky sky.

  A sky that was now bleeding into a deep cobalt blue, he noticed.

  “We should probably go,” Lila said, reading his thoughts. “It’s getting dark, fast.”

  Bo agreed and began to follow Lila back out through the woods along the path they had taken on the way to the springs.

  He was overcome once more with that senseless feeling of loss and knew that his short time with Lila that day was about to come to an end. And instead of it ending with an embrace or kiss, he fully expected her to stand and watch disapprovingly as he drove back to the distillery on the four-wheeler.

  He was lost in thought and not paying attention to where he was going when the toe of his boot caught on the ground. Bo cried out as his right ankle moved in a very unnatural way and he fell. Lila spun around at once upon hearing Bo’s little shout of pain and hustled back to him. He sat up, with his right leg stretched out and propped himself up on his hands.

  “Are you OK?” she asked, and put her small hands on his shoulder and arm.

  “Not sure,” Bo said, and winced as he tried to move his ankle. “Ouch! Damn, that hurts!”

  “Can you stand?”

  Bo tried to get up and put weight on his ankle, but he collapsed back to the ground. Lila went and fetched a large tree branch for Bo to use as a temporary crutch.

  “Put your weight on this and put your arm around my shoulders,” she instructed him.

  “But I’m pretty heavy, Lila.”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” she claimed, and urged him to do as she said.

  With Lila supporting him and with him using the makeshift crutch, they made it out of the trees and to the four-wheeler.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” Lila said, and pulled out her phone.

  “For this?” Bo said, and pointed to his sprained ankle. He was sitting on a tree stump. “That’s not necessary.”

  “But how are you going to get out of here, Bo?” she asked. “You can’t drive the four-wheeler back with your right ankle messed up. And I sure as hell don’t know how to drive it—I wouldn’t feel safe trying.”

  “What about your truck? Could you bring it out here?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to leave you out here alone and injured with it getting darker and colder by the second,” she said. “You’re going to have to come with me back to my house and I’ll put you in the truck there and take you back to the distillery. You can come get the four-wheeler,” she said with palpable contempt, “tomorrow or whenever.”

  Bo had no reasonable alternative than to do what she wanted. It took another twenty minutes before they reached Lila’s truck. Bo had mastered hobbling along and balancing on the tree limb, but by leaning so much on Lila he was sure he’d left her tired and achy across the shoulders. After she got him into the truck, she rushed into her house, retrieved her purse and keys, and they were on their way.

  “Are you sure I can’t call an ambulance for you?” Lila asked him once she had gotten him inside his house back on the distillery grounds.

  She flipped on the lights and Bo hobbled across the room. “I’ll be fine,” he insisted, and fell onto his couch.

  Chapter 11

  Lila hadn’t been sure what to expect when she realized that she was going to see the inside of Bo’s home, but if she had been expecting a mess, she was disappointed. For a bachelor pad—if the small home could be called such—it was tidy to the point of boring. The most objectionable thing she saw was a pile of newspapers scattered across the kitchen table.

  She stood in the middle of Bo’s living room and studied the area to her immediate left. There was a large overstuffed brown couch, a few chairs, and a large flat screen TV on the far wall. To her right and opposite the living room was a small kitchen, beyond which was a short hall leading off to the back of the house. To the left of the hall were rooms, and she reasoned those were the bathroom and bedroom areas.

  “What about calling your mother? Or Hannah?”

  “Why would we need to do that?” he asked.

  “Because you can barely move, that’s why.”

  “I can get up,” he insisted.

  “The hell you can, Bo,” Lila said, and slipped out of her parka and threw it on one of the chairs next to the couch. “You might be able to walk tomorrow, but if you have any hope of that, you’re going to have to take care of yourself tonight.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked as she walked into his kitchen.

  “I’m going to make sure you have some dinner.”

  She managed to find enough to make grilled cheese sandwiches for them both, although she did doubt the freshness of the bread. Lila found a can of tomato soup and they split it. She served the dinner to Bo on an old metal TV tray she found in the cabinet under the stove, while she ate at the table.

  “Thanks for showing me the springs, Lila,” Bo said as she was cleaning up and loading a few things into the dishwasher.

  “Didn’t have much of a choice there, did I?”

  “Why are you so mad at me about that?”

  Lila came to the end of the counter where the kitchen met the living room area. “Because I know you told the judge I showed the springs to Ha
nnah and wouldn’t show them to you.”

  “No, I told my attorney that. And I told him that so we could keep the surveyors out of the springs. I thought it would be better if I saw the springs rather than having the surveyors go where you don’t want them.”

  “But I don’t want anyone messing around in there,” she said, taking a seat at the table rather than join him in the living room.

  “Then why did you show the springs to Hannah last summer?”

  She cocked her head at him. “Jealous much?”

  “Seriously, why her and not me?”

  “You do realize how jealous you just sounded, right?”

  “Why?” he persisted.

  “Well, at the time, no one had sued me,” Lila said. “And Hannah’s not you.”

  “So Hannah’s good enough but not me?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Lila shot back, walking into the living room. “My problem has never been with Hannah—or your mother, for that matter. The land dispute has always been between you and me.”

  “Can we really not settle it?”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about that,” she snapped. “My attorney doesn’t even want me around you.”

  “I got the same lecture,” Bo admitted.

  “Besides, we’ve talked it to death, remember? We talked and argued and yelled until we couldn’t anymore. Now we have lawyers to do it for us.”

  “What if I bought the land, springs included, and gave you some kind of easement so you could always access them?”

  Her whole body stiffened, like a soldier coming to attention. “No. Those springs are mine. I will never give them up, especially for your little empire-building schemes.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Empire? You think I’m building an empire?”

  “Yes, or trying to expand it.”

  “My little empire, right,” he said to himself. “And it looks like it’s going to have to stay that way—little.”

  “I don’t understand why it has to be my land,” she said.

  “Because I see it as my land, or at least part of it,” he countered. “Old Garnet is made here, aged here,” he said, and pointed to the floor. “A lot of distilleries have rickhouses scattered all over the place. Not us. It’s all right here on the premises. But I can’t expand and make more because I’m landlocked. You know how you feel about the springs? That’s exactly how I feel about the distillery.”