December, 1919 – Chapter 12

Welcome to chapter twelve of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 12

Wherever I went, the German followed. If I went to the bakery, he was already there, marble rye in hand. Outside the newspaper, he’d loiter on a street corner, near the valets and drivers. Through the steam of coffee dissipating into the frozen air, I could pretty much always see him, a giant half obscured in mist.

He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. He’d drop his hat down to cover part of his face, but rose above almost every bustling city crowd; an oak among saplings. I hadn’t called him. Definitely hadn’t paid him. And yet he persisted, on my tail until the moment I walked back through my front door at night.

I didn’t mind.

Virginia did.

“It’s creepy.” she said, watching him with a side eye as we stood outside the office near the newly paved taxi line. Hot asphalt mingled with exhaust. The stench of modern progress. “How do you know you can trust him? What if he figures out what we’re doing?”

I laughed. “This guy knows what mom made me for lunch, what story I’m chasing, and my exact shirt size. He already knows about the malt, the kettles, that sack of dried hops; I’d guess everything, Ginnie.”

She huffed, not panicked but annoyed. “Well he better be able to keep a secret.” She leaned into my side, jabbing me with her elbow. She locked her eyes to mine. A deep, piercing stare to show she was serious, but all I could see was a sparkling array of emerald.

He had kept the secret, so far at least. I’d done my best to slip and sneak through side streets on our sojourns to the brewery, but this man was a professional. I’m sure he had no problems keeping up with me, even with his massive size. I’d seen him in streetlight shadows when I snuck out the cellar door after a session. Whatever his reason for following me, it had nothing to do with the clandestine brews we’d been boiling in the midnight deep.

We’d produced three barrels in two weeks. Our kettle limited production size; we hadn’t dared fire up the actual brass, not with the news of police already clashing with smugglers and brewers moving south from Canada. Virginia had pawned her gun after she’d realized that it takes a lot more gumption to use the thing than it does to own it. With the money she bought our kettle – an old but sturdy pot from a soup kitchen – and an angry little dagger – white buckhorn handle leading to five inches of potential cuts.

There was plenty of malt to mash for a while, but we had precious few hops to work with. The small garden behind the brewery would produce enough bines to keep us brewing, even if we couldn’t consistently guess the bittering we’d get from the fuggles that my father had dropped into the soil years ago. That didn’t matter now anyway. It’d be at least six months before they’re pop green cones all sticky with yellow dust, spicing the air with pungent citrus and pine.

I’d found some cans of pre-hopped syrup in a dry goods store just outside of Cherry Hill, across the Delaware. The nasty goop compared poorly to real, grain-mashed wort, but the yeast didn’t mind, and I figured beer-starved patrons wouldn’t either. Virginia scolded me for even considering a cheap path, especially when my father had done all he could to keep Philadelphia beer pure and traditional.

“Here, taste this,” she said, holding out a steel ladle. “It’s sour and thin; no one would want to drink this.”

She wasn’t wrong – I’d stretched too little syrup too far – the beer was horrible, if still technically beer. “Beggars can’t be choosers?” I said, raising my voice with my shoulders and tilting my head. She threw the ladle at me.

“I know it can’t be the same as it was, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right,” she said, her tongue a paintbrush of devotion. “I want to be the best illegal beer in Philadelphia, no, the entire east coast!”

Her zeal made her even more beautiful, even more enticing and alluring like her passion fueled my own. “I agree,” I said, “but if we don’t have any hops, we don’t have any hops.”

“I wonder…” her voice trailed off as she looked up, pensive. “The IRS probably kept all those ingredients, right? And not just ours, but all of the ingredients from all the local breweries.” A grin stole her lips and wrenched them upward. “And I bet they put them all in one place, too.” She rose onto the toes of her boots, as if the climax of her idea was lifting her into the air. “We find that place, find a way in, and take what we need!”

I sighed. Saw it coming, but still faltered as the freight train of crazy came barreling down the tracks. “You’re out of your mind; you do know that right?” I asked her, making sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open.

“It’s not that crazy. All those ingredients…right there. Hops aren’t heavy. We could make off with pounds of them and be set for months. All we have to do is learn where they took it all.” She moved closer. The excitement manifest in a rapid heart beat and ragged breath.

“We’re brewers, Ginnie, not burglars. You think we can just break into a government building? Just jump up to the roof like John Carter of Mars?”

She paused for a moment. “Maybe we can’t.”

Relief prepared to sink in…

“But maybe someone else can.”

…and then disappeared, dashed against the rocks of illogic and insanity.

She paced in a circle around the bubbling kettle, performing her nightly deep-thinking ritual. She stopped, raised a hand high, then brought it back down as and even bigger smile took over her face.

“The German.” She said, triumphantly.

“What? No.” I said.

“Yea, it’s perfect. That’s what he does. Learns things. Gets into places. He’s everywhere,” she said as I sat on my stool, staring at the boiling wort, unsure of what to say. “It really is perfect, Jack. We ask the German to steal us some hops.”

“I could do zat,” said Schweinsteiger, almost silent, like a cat, stepping out from the darkened piping behind two kettles. “But you two will have to do something for me, first.”

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 11

Welcome to chapter eleven of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every week, unless the author has radical arm surgery. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 11

I flipped the big German’s card over and over in my hand, staring off at a darkening Philadelphia skyline. The clouds hung low, pregnant with snow due any day now, hugging the city in a cold embrace. The weather matched the mood; all the talk in the taverns felt muted and melancholy, like the entire city was collectively mourning those last few drops of booze left to die too young in the bottom of barrels. I’d cloistered myself on the roof of the brewery, tucked back behind the second stacked brick chimney where I thought no one could easily find me.

There, in the shadow of my father’s legacy, I cried. The wind slapped so fierce against my face I thought my tears would freeze, freeze like my spirit had as I watched the flames lick at the wood of his coffin. Threats and shadows finally snapped my last thread of stoicism, and I sat, like a child lost in the sprawling maze of a rush hour downtown, unsure what to do, or how to do it.

Berman and Moore never left my mind, but now, given Ritter’s insistence and insinuation, I saw demons in every shadow of every street corner. Protection? From who, and how? Legally, physically, emotionally? I looked down again at the crisp edges of the card, tracing my fingers over the elongated fours of the accompanying phone number. I hadn’t called. Not yet. I needed time to understand the danger, and know if it was only me who needed protection.

At the thought of my decisions putting my mother or Virginia or sweet William in danger, I abandoned any attempt at stifling my sadness. My sobs meandered upward on the draft between buildings, disappearing forever into the grey as my body purged itself of all the pent up fear and frustration.

“Crying won’t solve anything.” The voice startled me into action, and I jumped up, drew the small knife I’d been cradling like a paranoid vagrant, and turned to face its owner.

George looked terrible. Worse than terrible. His face pallid and sickly with huge, dark circles under each eye that made it like he’d just gone ten rounds with Jess Willard, and then another ten with Jack Dempsy. He’d lost weight, too, but still towered over me, imposing and austere. I moved back, keeping the knife out in front of me like a kitten brandishing its underdeveloped claws at that the maws of an hungry timber wolf.

“No need for that, Jack.” He lowered himself onto a brick outcropping across from me. “I’m not here to hurt you. In fact the opposite. Sit down.”

He motioned casually for me to pocket the knife and lower my guard. I put the knife back into its little leather home, but kept my hand wrapped around the handle, my nerves too cautious to trust anything or anyone.

“Heh, this prohibition might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Haven’t had a drink in two weeks. Was pretty rough at first, but I think the light’s finally coming back into my soul.” He held out his large, gnarled hand flat, palm down. It shook violently for a second before he closed it into a fist, brought it to his face, and blew warm air into the hole in the middle. He shivered, too, shoulders involuntarily shrugging despite a very heavy canvas coat.

“I can’t apologize for what I did. It happened and the consequences can’t be undone.” He didn’t make eye contact as he spoke, just stared off at some point behind me. “Virginia won’t talk to me. I understand, of course, but it’s killing me. Her mother doesn’t know anything, and the lie, or at least the lack of truth, eats away at me every day. I haven’t touched a drop since. The whiskey transforms me into a man I can’t trust.”

“George…” I said, trying to be gentle.

He cut me off. “You don’t have to do that, Jack. So like your dad. Try to make everything better even when it isn’t,” he said as he shivered, or shook, again. I couldn’t tell whether he was fighting the DTs or the cold, or some awful combination. “Your dad was like a brother to me. Losing him, then losing the brewery, then losing my entire identity to this temperance movement…I just couldn’t cope.”

I relaxed my grip on the blade and let the tension slide out of my muscles. He seemed sincere, and from his demeanor, it looked like the cold turkey detoxing had left him too weak to be a threat to me. My fear at being caught alone with him suddenly shifted to pity. Strange, I thought, how our emotions can flutter so ephemerally from one extreme to the other.

He sniffed, wiping his nose. “I never expected you and Ginnie to…well…you know. Andrew always joked about it, but she’s my girl, and I never accepted that she’d grown up. I want you to know…” his voice dropped, like he couldn’t figure out what to say, or was very reluctant to say what he needed to. “I’m happy for her. For you. Who better for my girl than my best friend’s son?”

He took his hand out of his coat pocket, and held it forward. The last hand I’d shook was Ritter’s, that massive, powerful paw that made my hand feel like it was made of tissue. George’s hand felt strong, too, but less assertive, less mighty, more connected and forgiving, like the callous digits, scarred and dry, were forgiveness and embarrassment incarnate. I took it, shook it. He coughed and flipped the collar of his coat up against the stubble on his neck.

“Let’s get down,” I said, shaking off a shiver myself. “It’s going to start snowing any minute now, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to climb down a slick, frozen ladder.” George forced a smile, and weakly got to his feet. As he shuffled toward the steel railing that lead back down to the brewery floor, he turned back to me.

“I know it won’t matter, but can you tell Virginia that I miss her?” It was hard to tell in the bluster, but for a moment I thought I saw a tear well in his eye.

“Crying won’t solve anything,” I said, flashing a cheeky smile.

He sniffed and nodded, before disappearing down the ladder, into the dark shadows of the brewery floor below.

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 8

Welcome to chapter eight of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday (or Thursday, sorry!). Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 8

Blood dripped and slipped through the rollers of the mill. William cradled his hand, wailing inconsolably, like the machine had ripped it clean off. I turned his palm upward to examine the wound, careful not cause any more undue pain. It was an ugly slash, glistening red and slick, but nothing some iodine and fresh bandages couldn’t fix.

“Oh, William, this isn’t so bad. It’s pretty superficial.” I said, half-lying, trying to keep him from panicking.

“I could have lost my hand!” He said, unsatisfied. “That thing is a death trap.” He pointed at the grist mill with his good hand, keeping the other, wrapped in the now crimson and white of his over shirt, close to his chest.

“You’ll live,” I said. “There’s some aspirin in my bag. You should probably take some before the throbbing kicks in.”

He shuffled off, so I continued the disassembly work. When in use, the mill heaved and chunked, its joints creaky and achy from old age and rust. It should have been replaced years ago, but my father had sworn the gap between the rollers was so perfect, he dare not mess with it. In defense of his eccentricity, our grists had been finer and our brew days smoother since he unlocked the magic of the ancient mill, but as I sat with a wrench and screw driver, separating sheets of sharp, worn metal, I realized just how dangerously out of service it had become.

William had made a deal to sell it to a local wheat farmer for much more than it was probably worth, and given that Nate hadn’t paid me after my little mayor-fueled disappearing show, I needed the money. William continued to whimper like pathetic puppy even though the bleeding had stopped. His quiet sobbing summed up the feeling in the brewery, embodied the sinking emotions of everyone having to pack and box up their jobs, their dreams, their lives, all so the now illegal parcel could be inspected and checked off a list by some nameless IRS lackey in the coming days.

From underneath the shoot, with catcher removed, I picked out large bits of old malt, briefly turning on the motor to clear out any smaller, hidden grains. The mill spun violently, twin rollers moving in opposite directions, inhaling soft, fresh, sweet kernels, mangling them, exposing their unprotected insides before unceremoniously dumping them onto the floor.

But without that brutal journey through and transformation at the maw of a many-toothed monster, the malt would never fulfill a greater destiny, never start the great cycle of conversion and consumption, of birth and decay, of disparate parts coming together to make a greater whole. My father always extolled yeast as the veritable mother of all brewing, but to me, a beer’s real life began at the mill.

Virginia moved silently, like a cat trying to avoid detection. The purple-black under her eye had faded to mottled yellow and brown. She’d come in early and said nothing to me, scouring the inside of the mash tun as if we were going to brew. The rhythmic shick and slide of her coarse sponge on the stainless steel played a background beat to the rest of our work, a somber melody of shuffling sacks and tired sighs. George made no appearances.

As I wrenched loose the bolt holding one of the rollers in place, Virginia passed behind me, moving towards the fermentation tanks. My nerves stood at full attention, sending a shivery salute down my spine when my nose caught the waft of her shampoo.

“Going to be hard to brew without a mill.” She said, an ethereal whisper dissipating into the cold air.

I turned to respond, but she’d already moved out of earshot. I figured after that night, after George had discovered us and threatened us, that she would have given up this crazy crusade. But apparently I was wrong. Always underestimating. Never quite finding that rarefied wavelength where Ginnie buzzed so beautifully with life. Her brown mop bobbed back and forth as she scrubbed.

William caught me staring.

“It’s OK, Jack.” He said, much calmer. “I know you’re both young, but it’s pretty easy to see what’s going on here.”

I looked at William, stoicism giving away to boyish embarrassment. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” I said, trailing off.

“Because of George?” William plopped down next to me, right hand firmly squeezing left. “He’s her father, sure, but she’s allowed to make her own decisions. She’s nineteen. No longer bound to his direction, legally.”

I knew George didn’t give a damn about the law. “Thanks, William.” I said, forcing a smile.

“No one knows what’s going to happen. This new law might only last a year or two. Or it might go on forever.” He said, looking across at Virginia. “My point, and the thing you should be focused on, is that we don’t have much certainty to cling to these days. When there’s a sure thing, and you can feel the truth of it so deep in your bones, you should probably go for it. Consequences be damned.”

His words swam around my brain like an Olympian doing laps. I’d allowed my December days to fill to the brim with anger, regret, crippling self-pity, meanwhile ignoring all the potential beauty of a brand new January.

After a brief silence, he nudged my arm, and asked for help up. Once back on his feet, he hugged me, announcing he was going home to have his wife, Mary, nurse his hand. Soon after William, the last of the day workers we’d hired said their goodbyes with tipped hats, leaving the two of us alone, again.

“I’m going to tell William not to sell the mill.” I said, clanging my wrench on the metal still attached to the hopper. “I’ll find a way to make money. Maybe more hours at the paper.” The declaration met only with silence, so I walked over to the tank Ginnie had cloistered herself in like a spring robin on her nest.

“I ruined the perfect gap,” I said, waving the loose roller in front of my face, “but I guess that’s OK. I’ll set it up myself this time.”

Virginia climbed out of the fermentation tank and stood in front of me. “Good.” She said, wrapping one arm around my waist. “And I agree.”

“Agree with what?” I asked.

“William.” She whispered, resting her head against my chest. The sun hovered halfway down the horizon, throwing its rippled twin across the blue and green sprawl of the Delaware as the planet, and my heart, embraced the coming night.

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 4

Welcome to chapter four of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday. Links to all published chapters can be found here. 

Chapter 4

As the hammer sank the pin deep into the flesh of the primer, a spark nested in a bed of powder, heating it, igniting it, exploding it, forcing the bullet out of its cozy barreled home into the crisp December air. The cold didn’t slow its attack; it seemed neither bothered nor fettered by the chill as it ripped into the wood at the end of the lane much faster than my eyes could track it. Before the man-shaped target could recover from the first blow, a second, then a third, then a fourth pounded into his chest and neck. Every time the gun roared out into the afternoon, my eyes involuntarily blinked. Like a modern, metal Medusa, they didn’t want to look directly at the fury, lest it turn its deadly attention on me.

A fifth shot careened wide, just to the left. McGuire lowered his pistol and exhaled deeply.

“Don’t just stand there, kid. Either shoot or leave. I hate having someone looking over my shoulder. Makes me nervous.” he said, without turning to look at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, words manifesting as puffs of steam, “I don’t shoot. I mean I’ve never shot. My father didn’t like guns.” The targets shuddering under the force of all the slugs sent my mind down a dark alley that lead to an image of my father, down and bleeding, multiple holes in his back.

“Funny attitude for a veteran,” he said, carefully sliding bullets into the magazine with practiced, calloused fingers. “I suppose I can understand that. Your dad was a good soldier, but never really cut out for a life of fighting.”

The non-stop shots, coming at random intervals, echoed out into the skyline, eventually fading out somewhere near the clouds. I closed my eyes and in my mind tried to layer yelling, cries of pain, and artillery strikes on top of the gunfire. No one ever talked about the war much, and I had no way of knowing what my father, McGuire, and those hundreds of thousands of other men had endured. Every crack and bang crept through my subconscious like a worm made of fear, playing back all those nights my dad had woken up in the worst part of his dreams, screaming, crying, shaking at some memory of northern France.

“Nate told me you’d be here, so I…”

McGuire interrupted, “of course he told you I’d be here. Bet he didn’t tell you why I’d be here.” He fired his eighth shot with composure, plugging a perfect hole in the middle of the circle on the target’s right shoulder. “See that goon with slicked back hair in lane 10? That’s Joseph Cavoli, some glorified knuckleduster from New York. Next to him, in the sharp grey suit? Brian Cleary, a distiller from Boston. Both claimed to have come down here to find work, but it’s been two months, and neither have jobs. They’ve been chummy with detective Berman, and I want to know why.”

I watched the two men fire shiny new revolvers. They lacked the grace and precision of McGuire, but made up for it in enthusiasm. Six shots for every one of McGuire’s. They laughed with each other, dropping bullet after bullet into spinning chambers,  but from this distance, it was impossible to make out what they were saying.

“Look kid, I know why you’re here. I knew you’d read those notes,” he said, finally setting the gun down and turning to face me. In his olive drab jacket he looked like a quintessential soldier; broad, brave, bold. “I can’t help you. Not yet at least. I’m working from the ghost of a hunch here. I knew you’d come find me, I just didn’t think you’d come find me here.” Smoke from the powder had started to choke the afternoon with sulfur and charcoal.

I stood silently, partly unsure what to say, partly intimidated by place and presence. McGuire forced a smile. “If I find out anything, I’ll tell you and your mother first. Please just trust me. Don’t you have more important things to do than follow me around, anyway? Like, maybe, oh, I don’t know, running a brewery?”

I blushed. He had a point. I’d just run off and left everything to George in my fog of selfish mourning. As I turned to leave, I stopped, brain whirring. “Wait, how did you know about that?”

“There’s not much goes on in this city I don’t know about,” he said. “Call it reporter’s intuition.” He smiled. I nodded.

“Oh, and kid? Do yourself a favor. Learn how to shoot. I have a feeling the streets of Philadelphia are going to get a lot uglier in the wake of the 18th.” McGuire turned back to his target, raised his pistol, and fired.

---

Virginia slung herself halfway into the window of the kettle, sucking in the sweet steam from the wort. “Hops! We need more hops!”

George sighed. “It’s a pale ale for chrissake! If we add any more hops it’s going to be too bitter to drink. You have to learn the limits of these things, Virginia.”

“But they smell so good! Looks, Jack will agree with me. Needs more hops, right Jack?” She swung down off the small step ladder and ran over to me. George glared at me before sinking his shovel into a huge pile of spent grain. “So glad you found some time to come see us. Are you just going to stand there, or actually try to do some work?” He said, tossing the shovel to me. “This pile needs to be moved so that farmer Prescott can come pick it up. I said he could have this batch.”

“Free?” I said. “Dad usually sold it for a pennies a pound.”

“Well your dad ain’t here, is he?” George said, “Prescott had a rough crop last summer and he needs to keep his animals fed, so I said he could have it. We ain’t using it for anything anymore. There’s more to this business than beer and dollars. Your dad knew that.”

Virginia nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “Don’t mind him. He’s just being grumpy. Come smell this wort. Don’t you think it needs more hops?” She grabbed my hand and jerked me across the room to the kettle. As she dangled again, steam rising up through her curls, the malt mixed with her Watkins hair rinse, flooding my brain with delicious memories. She reached up and grabbed me by the waist, pulling me down down to her level.

“I’ve got a plan, like we talked about before” she said, in the privacy of their bubbling kettle. “But we can’t tell George.”

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 3

Welcome to chapter three of “December, 1919″, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday. Links to all published chapters can be found here.

Chapter 3

Yellowing teeth snarled from chew-scarred gums, billowing hot, noisome breath inches from my face. The beast crept forward, thick skin partially obscuring dark, bloodshot eyes. If not for a wall of chained links, it would have been on top of me, tearing my clothes and skin. I kicked  the fence near it to try to scare it off, but it only seemed to get more angry, dropping its head and growl to a lower, more serious pitch.

“Why do we always have to go this way?” I said, trying to refill my lungs. “You know that dog hates me.” I had toppled clumsily over the fence to avoid being mauled, landing awkwardly on my right shoulder. It throbbed in time with my panicked heartbeat.

Virginia laughed, watching me struggle to my feet as she sat on a trashcan at the end of the alley. “It’s a better way to the Inquirer,” she said right before crunching into an apple she’d magicked form her pocket, “you gotta get to know the city, Jack; the main roads will never teach you anything. Besides,  I wanna make sure you haven’t gone soft, sitting at that desk all day, writing.” Her inflection on the last word pierced my pride. She scribbled her hand in the air in a condescending pantomime.

“I haven’t gone soft,” I said, “there’s a lot of hard work in reporting a story, you know.”

Virginia rolled her eyes. She’d known me long before I was infected with the journalistic bug. She remembered a version of me who spent hours scouring rooftops for perfect blackbird feathers, a version of me who’d rather have explored, and adventured, and gotten into trouble than sit at some desk being tutored by old men in suits. We’d slipped apart as the years got leaner, meaner, cursed by war. She’d never been happy that I’d snubbed my father’s chance at apprenticeship in the brewery, mostly because she couldn’t see me as anyone but the 13 year old boy who lived in her memories. I couldn’t get angry; I was guilty of the same. It was difficult for me to look at her freckles and not see the girl I’d swooned over in the throes of adolescent love, difficult to see her now, made hard and cold, all that playful jeux de vie snuffed out by the world. By the world, and by George.

We popped out of the alley and turned left onto Fayette street to cross the bridge over the Schuylkill. The frozen water caught the sun’s reflection and distorted it like a broken mirror. I imagined the individual droplets rolling on in unrelenting mass exodus to the ocean, only to be scooped up by our little brewery, forever married to malt before moving into a new, glassy home. Father always said that life began in the water. Looking off at the horizon and seeing the little river disappear into some impossibly remote unknown, it was easy to believe him.

“This is where I leave you,” Virginia said, throwing her arms around me in the most platonic of hugs. “Gotta get back before the mash rest is done, or George’ll have my ass.”

I watched her hair bob down another alley near Bar Harbor. Sometimes she seemed incapable of walking down the side walk like a normal person.

The Inquirer building loomed. I used to think the current building was architecturally impressive, but I’d recently been by the site of the new building, a massive, 18-story behemoth that was still under construction. It’s skeleton towered over everything around it, monolithic, austere, a monument to news that could not be ignored, especially by the neighbors who now lived in its shadow.

The old building heaved under the energy of too many people into too small a space. The entrance saw younger valets running around trying to move cars, older valets handling the occasional horse and carriage. The coat-check revolved nonstop as visitors, reporters, and assorted law enforcement officers paraded in and out of the building on errands secret, private, or both. The hallways, lined with tiny one-desk offices, sang a cacophony of ringing telephones, tapping telegrams, scribbling pens, and enthusiastic conversation.

My desk was near a window; which, according to the senior staff, was incredibly lucky for someone of my age and inexperience. I flopped my coat over the old chair someone had found for me on one of the upper floors, and began the tedious job of transposing my colleague’s hand written notes into the clean click-clack-ching of typewriter pages. I’d barely finished a single paragraph when a stack of papers fell directly over my flying fingers.

I looked up. Nathan smiled. “More for you kid. I left numbers on each in terms of priority,” he said, pointing his pencil at the tops of the sheets. “You’ve got something from McGuire in there, so I suggest you do those first unless you want him barging in here in a huff like he does. He’s been such a pain in the ass since he won that award.” I wanted to like Nathan, but he always dumped his workload on me, usually so he could cut out early with that blonde who worked in the telegraph office. I nodded at him, pushed the papers to one side, and tried to finish what I was working on.

“Hey, Jack?” Nathan posed the question with that sympathetic intonation that heralds an uncomfortable conversation. “I heard about your dad. We all liked him around here. Great guy. Great beer. I spoke to Mr. Knight about it; if you need a break, we can cover for you.”

I looked up again. “Thanks, Nate. I think I’ll stay though. The work keeps my mind off of it,” I lied, “I might like to take this Saturday off though, to be with my mother.”

Nate winked. “Saturdays are slow in here anyway. I’m sure Mr. Knight won’t mind.” He cancelled out most of his kindness with a second pile of notes that he dropped on my desk just before he turned to leave.

I grabbed the stack of papers, and began to quickly scan the titles to put them into a workable order. McGuire’s piece found its way to the top, partly to placate him, partly because the stories he worked on were usually packed with local intrigue. As I loaded a new ribbon and set to my sisyphean labors, a few hastily scribbled lines in the middle of the notes caught my eye:

“Spoke to detective Berman about the “accidental” death of Andrew Cooper. Claims he wasn’t aware of Cooper’s politics. Story doesn’t add up. Will follow up in the next few days.”

To be continued…

December, 1919 – Chapter 1

Welcome to the first chapter of  “December, 1919”, a serialized novel written by Oliver Gray. New chapters will be published every Wednesday.

Chapter 1

Face red and flecked with sweat, he held his cap chest-height, scrunched between fidgeting fingers.

“G’d morning ma’am. That’s not to say it’s a good one. I’ve just come from down the docks,” the boy said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as if trying to buy time before speaking again. “I’da telephoned you see, but then I remembered y’ain’t got one. I came running when I seen it. There’s been an accident ma’am.”

“Yer husband…” he said, dropping his head.

Mother’s face completed his sentence. Sickly pale and expressionless, like her spirit had already moved on to join my father, leaving her body behind as a barely breathing husk. We both lingered in the kitchen as seconds sludged by in agonizing silence. I wanted to speak, hug her, lie, conjure some linguistic magic to tell her we’d be OK without him. But instead I just stood, watching the sky turn rotten apple orange in a cloud-muddled sunset. At some point, my mother broke her silence, and left me alone at the kitchen table. Her shock faded into sobs, which, as the night’s shadows sank ever deeper, crescendoed into unrestrained wails. I couldn’t do anything except listen to her mourn and refill my glass.

The boy had offered little in his bumbling description of the events, just a blunt announcement that my father would never come bounding through that door into our home again. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know what really happened, he’d come of his own accord, in a rush, in the face of a situation that would have taken the heart of most boys. The police didn’t come to report his death for several hours, but when he hadn’t come trudging down that side alley after work the previous day like he did with machined consistency, we had braced ourselves for bad news. Part of me felt something change in the energy of our little home that night, a goodbye winked in the streetlights reflecting on the snow, in the quiet mewling of Andy, our alley cat, like the world was letting me know he was already gone.

It was hard to tell whether I’d fallen asleep, or if the bourbon had eloped with my consciousness at some point in the night. Solar knives cut through kitchen, piercing the Philadelphia air, highlighting the emotional hangover that had slung itself over the house. My mother still sobbed, but now her cries sounded pathetic, not angry. I cracked three eggs into a bowl. I wished I could do the same to my brain to relieve the pressure. As the clear turned white against the black of the cast iron and my mind focused back on painful reality, I heard a knock on the front door.

Before I could take the eggs off the heat, my mother emerged from her room, wiped her face, and forced a smile through puffy cheeks. She’d changed into a black dress. Sharp juxtaposition to her normal vibrant purples and blues. “I’ll get it,” she said.

I followed, not wanting her to be alone with anyone quite yet. I could see a man through the side window, but the sun glared at just the right angle to obscure his face. I was wary it might be the police again, or some nosy neighbor that wouldn’t want to leave my mother in peace until she has all the details to share with the church gossips. She cracked the door slightly, hiding most of her body behind the wood and hinges like a shield, and peeked out into the morning.

In perfectly pressed tweed stood my father’s oldest friend, Elmer Green. I hadn’t seen him in years. He’d put on quite a bit of weight, but those wrinkles – the natural tattoos of a man who smiles and smokes too much – gave him away. He took off his hat. “Sorry t’ bother you so early Meredith. And you, Jack. I was in New York. Came down as soon as I heard.”

Mother made some tea. Earl Grey. His favorite. Elmer slurped it thankfully, trying to shake December’s romantic advances. “I can’t believe it,” he said, steam from the cup obscuring his eyes, “Shot? And by the police no less? What did the inspector say? I just can’t believe Andrew made it through that hell for something like this to happen.” He stopped talking when mother’s eyes went dewy. “I’m sorry Mere, it just seems so…unfair.”

It was unfair. My father, the proud and loquacious Corporal Andrew Cooper, served two years in the blood-slick mud of the French countryside. He’d beaten the statistical odds and returned relatively unharmed, save for a shrapnel scar on his right cheek and some memories he’d rather have left on the other side of the Atlantic. He’d faced down Germany and death, emerging from the stink of the trenches victorious.

All to be mistakenly gunned down by some flatfoot who thought he’d make a name for himself by catching a thief.  “They thought he’d robbed a bank,” I said, trying to fill in some details for Elmer, “he was lugging a sack of barley. In the dark the police thought it was a bag of money.”

From the police recount, my father had acted suspiciously and refused to step out into the light to show himself to the officer. The officer in return felt threatened, and was forced to fire. This version of the story conflicted greatly with my father’s personality and with what the dockboy had told us. I didn’t know what to believe, except that a man had killed my father and wouldn’t face any justice for doing so.

Elmer reached into his bag and pulled out a stack of papers.

“I hate to do this now, but it’s important,” he said, shuffling through the mess of yellowing sheets. “Before we left for the War, Andrew asked me to witness for ‘im. I’ve got all the correspondence. He was worried he’d never come back from France, and wanted to make sure you and Mere was taken care of.”

“A will?” I asked. It was unlike my father to think so far ahead.

“Of sorts,” Elmer said, handing a careworn, fold-marked letter to me. “More like a contingency. Not officially legal, but a judge wouldn’t be denying these if you presented ’em. He left the house and service pension to Meredith. What little is left of his grandfather’s money is hers, too.”

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I’d forced the idea of his death from my mind when he went to war, imagined my father a modern day Achilles, nearly invulnerable, incapable of succumbing to a force so common as death. And now, after celebrating his return, finally settling back into some kind of familial normalcy, I had to face the senselessness of it all. I thanked Elmer for taking the time to see us, and excused myself before the dam behind my eyes gave way to the building torrent.

“Wait, Jack, there’s one more thing,” Elmer fished around in a separate pocket of the bag for another, much cleaner and official looking document.

I turned.

“He left the brewery to you.”

To be continued…