In the Fall

by Jeffrey Lent

  Summer was once again upon them and this time he saw it clearly for what it was—a short pause for all, guests and workers, an interlude aside from the hurly-burly drag-weighted span of days. His intention was to pick apart that summer’s draw of days to learn a way to inhabit that place, not to become a hotel man—he’d seen enough of them already to know that was not a route for himself—but some other thing that would be his, in the same way that Joey and Scully had made their pleasure their life. He had no doubt it could be done. And it was not that he was too young not to see what this had cost Scully; he simply didn’t believe it would happen to him that way. He believed in luck. Not the ordinary luck that comes to all in runs of good or bad seemingly out of nowhere but luck searched out, sought in the corners and back rooms and cobwebbed recesses where no other might think to look. Luck, then, earned someway. And luck that summer was an unlikely man.

  Binter was a Boer. Or Ukrainian or a Pole. Jamie was never sure and did not care. What mattered was the farm he had in the Easton valley south of Franconia in the swale meadowlands of the Gale River, a mixed farm of dairy cattle and sheep he grazed on the rock-strewn uplands rising toward Sugar Hill. Five years before his sheepshed had burned and he’d left the timbers charred and collapsed over the foundation hole and built a new barn and used the old site as a pit for his winter’s worth of manure, a steaming mound even in the hardest freeze of January. In the ruined cellar he built a small room of brick roofed over with the jumbled burned timbers to create a chamber in a place where none should be. And in this he established a distilling kettle and worm and space enough to draw off the raw mash into small kegs and keep it there for some few months before he determined it ready. The pale fumes from the still rose up through the manure piled over it and there was nothing to indicate a thing beyond what was seen: a steaming pile of shit. He purchased loads of corn to feed his dairy cattle and alternated that with freight cars of potatoes from Maine, which made an excellent sheep feed, and so ran off batches of mash and something close to vodka: both spirits clear and raw, each little different from the other but the variation in materials was just enough to evade suspicion. He had great numbers of both cattle and sheep. He had little incentive to part with any animals. His English was excellent, fair, or gone altogether, depending on circumstance. He was a tall droop-shouldered man with thick hair and a mustache once blond gone white and he wore full suits with a vest and fob chain to milk his cows in. Under the speckles of manure and sawdust bedding, his shoes held a full daily shine. His custom were loggers and woodsmen from the upper Connecticut Lakes and local men that he knew. He did not lack ambition or greed but had the immigrant’s wise and excessive sense of caution. That summer Jamie made three trips to see him before Binter would speak English to him. Jamie was happy with this. And patient. He already knew what he needed to know about the man.

  One evening in July he arrived at milking and a just-freshened heifer was belligerent, balking on the runway behind the stalls. Binter as usual ignored Jamie until he stepped behind the cow and with one hand to guide her neck used the other to screw the cow’s tail up over her back and like that she stepped up into the stall and Jamie went alongside her and pulled the stanchion closed against her neck. Her head went down in the trough, eating the soured leftover mash. Binter crouched at the flank of the cow beside, his fists wringing jets of milk to strike the side of the pail, the sharp ping giving way to a more hollow thump as the pail filled. His head turned sideways to rest a cheek against the belly of the cow. Looking at Jamie. And for the first time Jamie smiled at him, knowing the deal was already done. Jamie waited. After a time Binter turned his gaze back to the filling pail, his hands working slowly now, stripping the hindquarters and then the fore teats of the cow. Done, he looked at Jamie. The old man had a wen at the tip of his nose. He rose and stepped across the gutter and set the filled pail on the walkway. Turned his head to hawk into the gutter and looked at Jamie and nodded.

  “Cash on the barrelhead. Once a week, no more often. Come chore time, morning or night. Never on Sunday. You want it bottled, bring your own glass. But you, you have the automobile. So you’d prefer by the cask. Do your own bottling. The casks you can bring back. That way too you don’t have to worry about underestimating your needs. Because”—he raised a finger in the air—“I am very serious about the once-a-week only.”

  “I thought about that,” Jamie said. “Give me a couple weeks and I should have it tuned so I wouldn’t bother you but every two-three weeks. Best for both of us that way.”

  He enjoyed his work at the Sinclair. Each afternoon the black trousers and starched white shirt with new cuffs and a new collar and the silk brocaded vest limned in black with a paisley motif in dark gold and jade across the back would be on hangers in the small office behind the bar, sent up fresh from laundry, sometimes still warm when he pulled them on. He was a fine hand with the ice pick and small mallet and could continue conversation while his hands worked beneath him to fill a glass with hard shavings from the block of ice. He talked while polishing the silver-topped seltzer bottle behind the bar, making it look as if he was only keeping his hands busy while wiping away the smudged fingerprints so once again the tops of the high-necked bottles threw off perfect reflections from the gaslamps that in this room alone of the hotel had not yet been replaced with electric lights. He was studiously slow with a match for a cigar or cigarette, waiting a long beat clocked from an eye’s corner until he was sure the guest needed such and then was there with his hands cupped around the match as if to fend off some unknown breeze. He would not forget a man’s name even if three or four days separated the first and second meeting but he might run across the same man the second morning on the porch or striding Main Street and would not speak to him, only nodding if the eyes came his way. Understanding that the bar was sanctum sanctorum for some men on their holidays. Understanding that some men needed refuge from the refuge, that some men’s lives were complicated to the point where their families were further impediments. They tipped him well. Even that first summer, in the logbook on the small table next to the front desk where departing guests wrote comments on their stays, his name was mentioned several times. Shown this, he was deprecating. Still, some evenings after the bar had closed he would linger around the front desk before going off in search of Joey. Leafing through the pages of the guestbook, looking for mention of his name. Those blotted scrawled entries revealed his presence, rooted him, placed him in a way his own eyes and heart never could. He hated that he read them.

  The bar manager was a Scot named Oliphant with red-gold close-cropped curls gone silver at the temples, a stout man who rose only to Jamie’s shoulder but whose eyes followed him as if not trusting him. Jamie liked him. Oliphant slipped him a sheet of paper with the name of a printer in Concord and Jamie took his day off to ride the train south and make arrangements for labels. The bottles he ordered directly from a glassworks in western New York State. It was understood he’d do no trade where he worked. The distillation of potatoes he diluted by a quarter and held in glass carboys for three weeks with a cheesecloth bundle of juniper needles suspended in the liquid and then decanted into bottles with gin labels attached; the corn liquor he bottled straight with a coloring of caramelized sugar and this was his scotch. The labels were not copies of any in existence but they looked right. He sold only to men he knew and then in case lots; he sold nothing directly to guests, of his hotel or any other, but to desk clerks and dining room managers and headwaiters and barbers and stablemen. He sold to the small underground nightclubs. That first summer he would not sell to local men not associated with the hotels but during the next winter he slowly expanded and so met Wells and Terry. Brothers by nature, stature and inclination but not blood; both woodchuck-faced, hard-muscled men going soft from no longer working in the woods; both with the tang of woodsmoke and bacon grease year-round to their clothes. Strong yellow teeth showing black rot along the edges. Terry the larger and taller of the two, Wells with his temp
er riding him like a bull thistle down his shirtfront. Together they traveled the north country from Island Pond in Vermont east to Millinocket in Maine, servicing the lumber camps and mill towns, once every month or six weeks coming through Bethlehem with their heavy wagon drawn by a six-horse hitch of big-barreled roan Belgian geldings, year round. Jamie trusted them. They knew what they were doing and did it quietly and without pretense or show. Jamie distrusted flair.

  By the summer of 1909 they’d been there five years and their lives had taken on a pattern of satisfaction and accomplishment. He was now bar manager. And he had the liquor business. The local and state police were his customers. The federal men were farther north along the border and he had no interest in going to Canada for cheap liquor. He had no need. Binter was wrapped like a Christmas present; he bought all the farmer could produce. He drove a T-model Ford new off the line the winter before. He’d bought the small house in the tamarack stand the year before, the house with eighteen acres along the river, the sheep pasture and an old meadow grown up to alders and poplars and briars and young birch just beyond the sway-backed barn where he kept cases of liquor under a mound of rotted hay as well as a team of hot bay trotting horses and a sleigh for the deep winter when the Ford was no good at all and a high-wheeled gig for the brief weeks when the frost went out of the ground. In the early afternoons which were his mornings he would stand before the mirror shaving and remind himself that he was small-time. No Diamond Jim. He liked doing this. It was true but also somewhat of a joke. He had just started. He was in good shape and happy. He hadn’t exceeded his expectations. He was twenty-five years old.

  An evening in late July. The Ford running smoothly, along the avenue of maples lining the road leading along the slow swell of grade toward town, the grounds of the Maplewood already along the north side: the sand traps and greens and the taller roughs. He wore a driving coat, leather gloves, a visored cap and goggles. Beside him Joey was wrapped in a duster buttoned at the neck and spreading down around her to cover even her shoes, her hair covered with a wide-brimmed hat with flags of gossamer that tied under her chin. At her feet a satchel of gowns and slippers, costume changes. They turned into the long drive of the Maplewood and he took the fork for the long way around to the Casino. It was still early.

  “I’m cooking in this tent.” Dust the color of ash lay over her cheeks and nose. This was a routine conversation warm summer evenings.

  “It’ll likely storm later. That’ll cool things down.” To the east the crown of Washington was outlined shale gray against a welter of thunderclouds, lightning like small jets of gold cutting the dark from time to time. It was too far away to hear. The late sun angled against them.

  “I’d rather it was to storm, it’d do it earlier. Pretty evenings like this, they all stay out till dark, hiking or golfing or playing tennis. Half of them just want to eat dinner and soak in their baths and go to bed.”

  “That’s right.” He nodded, then added, “But there’s always still enough to go around. It’s never dull this time of year.”

  She was quiet then. People in groups and couples and some alone walked the roadway edge, all with the practiced remove of the guest not bothering to glance at whoever was arriving by motorcar.

  He knew her thoughts. She worked now with the hotel orchestra. Two nights here, then one at the Fabyan House, one at the Mount Washington, sometimes at the Profile House in Franconia Notch. It was later after the ballrooms closed that she’d be cut loose to the small after-hours clubs where he’d always find her; then alone with no orchestra. Just the piano player, sometimes some sideman from one of the orchestras tailing her to sit in. Some horn player. And her schedule was no different from her desire to have every available person in her audience, each night, at whatever place, each time. It was a greed, he thought, the greed of talent. At best three and a half months, thin-stretched to four in good years, when she had the audience she felt herself worthy of. With the proof. The rest of the year was makework. But for now she was only herself, some purified rare creature in footlights and the single spot when the stage lights went down, a length of velvet or satin or late at night sheer contours limpid on a stool or prowling the small stages. Her eyes innocent and hooded, turned down toward herself and bold yet still; thrust up with a jerk to find the one man five tables back who had not succumbed—who thought her a lovely voice but trite, too contrived, not quite making the mark, not grand—and she would drop her raised eyes on that one man and sing half a line or part of a chorus and then turn her head back down and he would be finished. Jamie knew how she worked.

  They came around the side of the hotel where the spired tower of the Casino was ahead and he notched down the throttle and the Ford backfired with a tight neat puff and they slowed. The air over them was still, free of dust, and she began to remove her wraps. They came to a stop before the Casino. He was airy, jubilant, seething and joyous for the night before him. He said, “Here we go. Another night to clean pockets and unstuff shirts. Give everyone a taste of what they want. God, I do love these people.”

  She stepped out of the car and removed the duster and folded it and set it in on the floorboards. Untied her hat and took it off and placed it atop the duster. Lifted out her satchel and placed it on the lawn behind her and brushed her dress: a dark violet satin, the color of moonlit midnight. Her buttoned boots blood red, saddle leather. Her eyes turned off toward the tennis courts. She said, “No, you don’t. You hate them all.”

  He could barely hear her. He shut down the Ford. Thinking, Here we are again. He said, “I wouldn’t want to be a one of them. But that doesn’t mean I hate them. At least, not more than most anybody else.” And grinned at her.

  She picked up the satchel. Then turned back to face him. A clump of guests were coming up behind the stopped car. He was keen with awareness of them. She said, “It’s not necessary you stay up so late every night to see me home. I can get rides.”

  “I bet so. I bet that cornet player would be happy to give you a lift. Thing is, I guess he’d lose his way, get lost. I bet he’d do that.”

  Her eyes on him. “I know the way.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “He’s just a musician. More pecker than brain. You don’t have to worry about me. I just feel a little cornered is all. Roped in. It’s not that I don’t like seeing you setting out there. It’s just maybe sometimes I’d like to have to work it all out myself.”

  He nodded. “You bet.” Knowing they were both lying now. He said, “Well I’ll leave you be then.”

  “I’m not telling you to run up there and screw some girl working laundry.”

  “I never thought it. Unless that’s what you mean.”

  “Don’t twist me around like that.”

  He got out of the car. Went around the front and lifted the crank down and inserted it. Paused then and looked at her. He said, “I’m not twisting you one way you didn’t set out to have me do.”

  She swung away from him, the satchel striking her thigh. The violet dress slapped tight against her. Without looking back, she said, “Don’t be an idiot.”

  He twisted the crank until the flywheel clicked tight. Then stepped back and clipped the handle one more time and dropped his hand. The engine turned and caught and the handle came to a stop. That first flip could break an arm. He got back in the car and pressed the throttle lever up and drove around the Casino, raising dust in the airless dusk and scattering guests as he went. The storms over Washington held and he guessed there would be no rain this evening. Or perhaps late, when the sheet lightning came down broad in strokes of orange and green, purple and blue. He liked those storms. I’m maybe an idiot he thought, but I’m sure as shit not stupid.

  At the Sinclair he spoke to his bartenders, sat in the small office and wrote out a beer order and another for cigars and cigarettes. Read through the notes in the bar ledger. Studied a single time card. Went out to the service end of the bar and leaned there until a particular waiter came up, a
man older than himself with damp drooping ovals staining his shirt under his arms, his tray wet with beer froth. Empty glasses.

  “Evening, Mister Pelham.”

  Jamie nodded. “Henley.” Then, “Problem last night?”

  Henley had red ears that stood out like exit lamps. “No sir. Not much. Had to ask a man to leave.”

  “A man to leave,” Jamie repeated.

  “That’s right. He was bad drunk, stinking. Mad at the world. Didn’t like the beer, didn’t like the cigars, didn’t like the whiskey. Didn’t like anything. Sitting alone there in the back. The gentlemen around him, I could see they were uncomfortable with him. And he poured a beer on me.”

  “That right?”

  Henley nodded. “Said it was skunk piss. Asked me how I liked the smell of it.”

  “And?”

  “I asked him to leave.”

  Jamie inclined his head toward the bartenders. “You get Jake or Stanley involved?”

  “No sir. I didn’t see a need.”

  Jamie nodded. “So you asked him to leave.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he left?”

  Henley wet his lips. He was still holding the tray out beside his body, the arm supporting it beginning to vibrate with the effort. “He did leave. I had to assist him some.”