Whiskey & Ashes, page 30
Their chauffeur, a quiet young man in a pressed cap, stepped out and began unloading the trunks from the rear. Ezekiel tipped him, more out of habit than thought.
The house looked just as they’d left it. Shutters were neatly latched, the porch swing still hung. The pine by the steps perhaps a bit taller than before. Then the front door banged open.
Irene came sprinting barefoot across the walk, hollering, “Mama! Daddy!” before Pantha could even lift her gloved hand. Pantha caught her in a practiced embrace, her travel wear crinkling against the girl’s cotton dress. Ezekiel took her next, lifting her off the ground and laughing.
Zeke appeared in the doorway next, one arm braced on the frame. He was long-limbed now, his collar open, his sleeves rolled up. A young man grown in their absence.
“You look older,” Ezekiel said, studying him.
“You look tired,” Zeke shot back. “Did you bring anything besides your dirty laundry?”
Pantha touched his cheek. “We brought home our bones,” she said, echoing a family phrase, “and the rest of us, too.”
Inside, the house still smelled of lemon oil and cinnamon. Nora must have come by to air things out. On the parlor table sat a folded note under a small vase of asters: Welcome home. Supper tomorrow. You rest tonight.
They unpacked slowly. Pantha slipped off her gloves and laid them across the washstand. Ezekiel set his hat on the hook and loosened his collar.
Over beans and bread that evening, laughter returned. Irene chattered about the neighbors’ cat. Zeke updated them on the market, and the state of the motorcar he had been working on, “She’s fine, but the belt’s slipping.”
Elmer filled them in on his newest concoctions brewing in the basement and Orde asked about every train or station they had traveled on or passed through during their trip. Eula and Lillian had helped Pantha empty the trunks and they chattered about the packages they had put in the parlor for their parents to hand out later.
It wasn’t until after supper, when Zeke returned from the porch with the Evening Herald, that the air shifted.
“It’s about Lee,” he said, handing it to his father. Ezekiel unfolded the paper in silence. Pantha, standing by the sideboard, stilled.
So. That was the welcome waiting for them. They were home again, but peace was still out of reach.
~
The front gate creaked as Ezekiel pushed it open, a familiar sound that had once signaled peace. Now it reminded him of headlines. Pantha had just set her hat on the entry table as she returned from a walk up town, when she saw the folded newspaper on the table.
“They didn’t wait long,” she said, smoothing the edge of the page. “Lee’s license was denied.”
Ezekiel’s jaw worked silently as he read the article again third time since Zeke had shared it on the porch the night before. The court had been unequivocal. No license could be granted to anyone connected to E. Gouge. Not family, former employees, and not even relatives by marriage.
“The man can’t even buy his own stock without them sniffing out my name,” Ezekiel muttered. “They don’t want a saloon shut. They want me shut.”
Pantha turned from the window. “And yet it’s open again. Just not under us.”
He nodded grimly. “Vires. A stranger, far as I can tell. They gave him the license within days. Same walls, same counter, probably the same customers. But this time it’s ‘legal.’” He let the sarcasm settle like dust. “So long as the name Gouge don’t hang above the door.”
Pantha walked over and picked up the article again. “The children will hear of it, you know. Even little Irene. They’ll say the Gouge name is poison in this town.”
Ezekiel leaned on the back of the chair. “Then we make it mean something again. Let them say what they will I know what I’ve built, and I know what I haven’t done.”
Pantha’s voice softened. “But we won’t be building it in public anymore. Not under your name. That’s the cost.”
He nodded. “Then we build in private. The books. The land. What’s left of the business. They can strip the sign, but they don’t own the name.”
From the hallway came the sound of their youngest son’s voice Orde calling for his mother to see what he’d drawn. Pantha kissed Ezekiel’s cheek and left the room.
He stood there a long time, looking down at the article. Then he folded it neatly, tucked it in the drawer, and turned the key. One day, the record would speak differently. For now, the saloon was open again but the Gouge name stayed behind the curtain at least in the saloon.
October 1915 – East Hill Cemetery, Bristol
The October wind carried the brittle edge of early winter as Ezekiel enter the main gate of the cemetery. He paused where the stone path curled toward the family square. East Hill Cemetery lay across the very line that split Bristol in two, with graves resting in both Tennessee and Virginia soil. And now, so did his children.
He’d stood in this spot so many times that year. First when they brought Walter’s casket home, the rosewood box carried with reverence off the Southern Railway. Then again when they brought Mollie, long buried beneath the sycamores by the Watauga, re-interred so the siblings might rest together.
The polished Quincy granite stood at the center of the lot simple, solemn, and unmistakable. Gouge, it read in large, raised letters, a name carved deep into the dark stone, defiant and enduring. It had been set only days ago, surrounded by the concrete curbing he’d paid to have laid that spring, when the ache of Walter’s absence had become unbearable.
Eleven months. Eleven months since the telegram. Since the quiet horror of it… convulsions following acute indigestion…, they said. Since the delay of bringing his body home and the silent coffin finally returned to the station. Walter and Mollie now rested here together, a brother and sister whose lives had both ended too soon, one too far from home.
He had written to the Canal Commission, to the Army liaison, to every office he could find. He demanded answers, dignity, and truth.
He touched the stone. It was cool and immovable. Just like the federal men had been. But this square this monument it answered to no government. It answered only to blood and history.
A low rumble sounded from the road. The motorcar, waiting at the cemetery gate. He’d driven himself this morning. He needed the quiet, the control.
“I brought you home,” he said aloud, his voice low and gravel-edged. “And now you both rest together. Right here, where you belong.”
Ezekiel stood a long while. Then, from the inside pocket of his overcoat, he drew the letter that had arrived the previous week from Washington.
No further action. Insufficient evidence to warrant an inquest. The matter is considered closed
To them, it was just another foreign death, a quiet footnote in a growing world crisis. The war in Europe was consuming attention. The Canal Zone was dangerous, distant. What was one young man to a nation bracing for war?
Too many dead, they had written between the lines. A war in Europe, and another perhaps on the horizon. To Washington, one bookkeeper’s sudden death in Panama was a whisper in a storm.
But to him it was breath. It was Walter.
His first son. His right hand. His echo.
He folded the letter and tucked it into his coat. His jaw tightened. With one hand, he rested his fingers against the large stone monument, and with the other, he touched the earth, the empty space beside it reserved for the day his body would follow.
He glanced across the cemetery, its neat rows sprawling like lines on a ledger. The GOUGE monument stood near the entrance, where it would be seen by every passerby. A statement not just of grief but of presence and legacy.
The breeze picked up. Leaves skittered over the curbing and scattered across the grave. Ezekiel replaced his hat, stood a moment longer, then turned toward the car.
As he drove slowly away, the black granite caught the sun one last time, and the raised letters glinted with a fire of their own.
December 1915 – Spencer Street , Bristol, Virginia
The parlor glowed with lamplight, casting warm pools across the polished wood floor and the high-backed settee where Pantha sat with her ledger open, the nib of her pen scratching steadily across the page. Outside, sleet tapped against the windowpanes in fits and starts, glazing the town in winter silence.
The family was together. The house had the lived-in scent of coal smoke and coffee and the faint lemon polish used on the banister. The gaslights hummed and the clock chimed the half-hour.
Ezekiel leaned in the study’s doorway, his overcoat still folded over one arm. He had just come in from the warehouse with Zeke and Elmer, where a fresh inventory had arrived. Four thousand gallons, legally bonded. Enough, for now.
“They say Virginia will go dry by spring,” he said quietly. “May first. The papers are certain.”
Pantha didn’t look up. “Then we plan accordingly.”
He gave a small smile. That meant: She already had.
Eula and Lillian were out at a Christmas social. On the far side of the parlor, nine-year-old Irene sat cross-legged by the hearth, cutting colored scraps from the Montgomery Ward catalog to paste into her scrapbook. Her tongue was pressed in concentration against the corner of her mouth. Beside her, Orde traced figures in the margin of his schoolbook numbers and symbols from an arithmetic lesson until he yawned and leaned back on the rug.
“They said my name at school again,” Orde murmured. “For the honor roll.”
Ezekiel stepped over, ruffled his son’s hair. “You’ll make the papers again before year’s end,” he said. “I’d wager on it.”
Pantha glanced up at that sharply. “We don’t wager,” she said.
He chuckled, walking past her toward the dining room. “No, we invest.”
She returned her gaze to the ledger. Another deed signed. Another property placed under her name alone. If the tide turned against them fully, and it might, the children would have land and means. They would have a future.
The wind sighed against the glass, but inside all was still. Ezekiel paused at the sideboard, poured two fingers of brandy into a crystal glass. It was legal for now. He raised it to the room.
“To home,” he said simply.
Pantha didn’t look up, but she dipped her pen once in the inkwell before saying, “And to holding it.”
18
The Storm
February 29, 1916 Bristol, VA
The sky over Bristol was bright with the clean, hard light of late winter, a kind of sunshine that sharpened the outlines of everything it touched. The town still carried the hush of the season, but on this leap day an oddity of the calendar there was something sweetly fated in the air.
Inside the small church just across the Tennessee line, Horace Ezekiel Gouge, Zeke to his family, stood quietly at the front, hands folded behind his back, his collar pressed flat with the care only a mother could give. He wasn’t known to fidget, but his left thumb tapped lightly against his ring finger. He smiled, looking up the aisle, when the music began.
She entered on the arm of her father, a machinist by trade and proud to give his daughter away. Lucy wore a gown of soft satin and lace, her eyes steady beneath a modest veil. Zeke held his breath as she walked down the aisle, her steps firm and graceful, her gaze fixed on him with the kind of trust that remakes a man. When she placed her hand in his, it was not just a gesture it was a vow in itself.
His younger brother Elmer stood beside him as best man, his lanky small frame unusually still in the moment. Zeke’s heart twinged gently. It should have been Walter there. He wore Walt’s favorite tie for the occasion, a quiet tribute to the brother who once stood beside him in so many ways.
The ceremony was short and tender, attended by both sides of the divided city Virginia and Tennessee but for a few perfect minutes, everyone inside that little church felt stitched together by joy and the solemn beauty of young love.
The Parlor on Spencer Street, Bristol, VA
The parlor on Spencer Street shimmered with polished wood and soft laughter. The late afternoon sun filtered through the lace curtains, warming the room with a golden hue that even a cold February couldn’t dim.
Pantha had taken great care with the details fresh lace doilies, polished silver, and a small spray of winter roses placed just so beside the cake. She moved about the room with quiet purpose, overseeing her young daughters as they tended to the guests.
Eula, now eighteen, stood tall and poised, refilling glasses and smoothing napkins with practiced grace. Lillian, just fourteen but eager to follow her sister’s example, fluttered between guests offering slices of almond cake. Ten-year-old Irene stood near the fireplace, too shy to speak but wide-eyed at the spectacle of fine dresses, soft music, and grown-up conversation.
Orde, twelve, leaned stiffly against the banister, his tie slightly crooked and his patience long gone. “This whole thing could’ve been over an hour ago,” he muttered to himself under his breath, daydreaming of tools, wires, and a half-built windmill model waiting for him in the shed.
Ezekiel, ever the steady presence, stood near the window, hands behind his back. When Zeke and his new bride entered the room, he offered his son a single firm nod, then turned and took Lucy’s hand in his own. “You’ve got a good heart between you,” he said simply. “Build on it.”
Her father, still holding his hat in his hands, stood quietly nearby. His wife had passed in 1909, but he had raised his daughter with care and dignity. Today, she looked every bit the woman her mother would’ve hoped for.
Later, as twilight settled over Bristol and guests began to thin, Zeke and Lucy stepped out the front door, arm in arm. They walked into the chilly evening, stepped into the waiting car which drove them toward their new home at 909 Arlington Avenue a modest brick house gifted by Ezekiel and Pantha. The porch light was already burning. The curtains had been hung. The hearth waited for them.
From the window, Irene waved shyly, Lillian stood with Pantha, and Ezekiel watched in silence.
On this rare day, a day that wouldn’t come again for four more years, love had taken its first leap.
The Distillery Office – April 1916
The windows were cracked to let the spring air in, but the ledgers on Ezekiel’s desk might as well have been covered in frost. The aroma of aging mash faintly lingered beneath the more pressing scent of ink and paper. Ezekiel stood at the corner of the desk with his sleeves rolled up, spectacles low on his nose, as his son Zeke flipped through a book of tax receipts.
“Every gallon tallied. Every dollar accounted for,” Zeke murmured, tapping a neat column. “It’s all here, Papa.”
Ezekiel didn’t look up. “It’s not just about what’s here. It’s about who comes looking and what they’re told to find.”
Zeke leaned back, frowning. “Revenue men again?”
Ezekiel nodded. “Two in the last week. Different names, same gaze. Looking to catch us short by a half-ounce.”
He closed the ledger, then tapped it once with a thick finger.
“We’ve run clean,” he said. “Always have. But the mood is shifting. The press twists anything, the League fans it, and every man in town pretends he’s never touched a drop.”
Zeke hesitated. “Should we stop entirely?”
“No,” Ezekiel said flatly. “We’ll slow. We’ve got enough stock to last through October. Keep the men paid and the papers proper. No reason to give them anything.”
Zeke paused, then allowed a breath of weariness. “But don’t think I don’t feel it. Like we’re running out a clock someone else wound.”
Elmer, passing through with a tray of coffee mugs, smirked and nodded toward his older brother.
“Easy for him to talk about running clocks he's got a whole new household now. Probably can’t even find the coffeepot without written directions.”
Zeke gave him a shove as he passed, but the smile lingered. “You’re just jealous I’ve got hot meals and curtains that match.”
Ezekiel chuckled and looked his son over with a steadier eye. “You’ve got more at stake now,” he said. “It’s not just us anymore it’s you and her, and that roof you’re keeping over her head. You have options you don’t have to stand to the end with me.”
Zeke nodded, quieting.
“Yes, sir. I know.”
That Evening – The Parlor on Spencer Street
The lamplight caught the glint of brass on Pantha’s secretary desk as she sorted through household records. The scent of warm bread still lingered from supper. Ezekiel leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples, while Zeke flipped the latest city bulletin on the dining table.
From the hallway, Eula entered with composed steps, newspaper in hand and a raised brow.
“Well,” she said, setting it down between them. “It seems I’ve become a woman of some local renown.”
Ezekiel squinted over the rim of his spectacles at the newspaper and read. “‘If Miss Eula Gouge will call at the box office today… she will receive passes for two.’” He chuckled softly. “Fame at last.”
Pantha looked up, her tone both amused and proud. “I always said your name would be in the paper someday. I just didn’t expect it to be under ‘Moving Pictures.’”
“I suppose I’ll take Lillian with me,” Eula said, half-teasing. “Unless you want to come along, Papa.”
“Oh, no,” Ezekiel said, waving her off. “I’ve enough theatre right here, with daily comedy and courtroom drama, without the ticket price.”
She sat beside him, her skirts brushing the floor with care, her posture poised like her mother’s.
“I know things are tense,” she said quietly. “I hear it in how you and Zeke talk when you think we’re not listening.”
Ezekiel turned his head. “You’ve always listened, Eula. Just learned when to speak.”
She smiled wry, thoughtful, grown.
“You’ve built something that mattered,” she said. “That still does. They can’t take that from us. No matter what happens.”
