The Fire of Home (A Powell Springs Novel) (8 page)

“Duncan!”

Bax was headed for home when he heard someone call his name. He turned toward the source and saw a rough-looking bum in an alley between two stores that had closed for the day. It was still light out at this time of year, but the street was quiet. The muscles in his gut tightened and he moved his right hand closer to his sidearm. Something about this lowlife seemed familiar but he couldn’t imagine why. He hadn’t seen him around town. He kept his distance and stared at him.

“You have my attention. Who the hell are you?”

The man grinned, showing missing front teeth. “You don’t remember me, Sarge? Tsk, tsk, tsk. And after everything we went through in France.”

Bax frowned and his pulse began to thud in his ears. “No, I don’t.” He started to turn away.

“Remember that last day of the war? You got yourself into hot water for—”

Faster than he himself would have imagined, Bax rushed the stranger, grabbed his throat, and pushed him deeper into the alley. He thumped the man’s head, once, against the brick wall. At this close range, he smelled of tobacco and stale sweat. “Let’s try this again. Who the hell are you?”

A flash of fear crossed the stranger’s face. “Milo Breninger.”

Fog, mud, rain, deafening bombardments, corpses, disembodied limbs, misery, screaming horses, screaming wounded . . .
In the time it took a shooting star to cross the sky, all these images whipped through Bax’s mind—images that would never leave him, not if he lived to be one hundred. Sure, he remembered him now, a scheming, cowardly bastard who cheated at cards, complained about everything, and was always the last one over the top going into battle. He tightened his grip.

“What are you doing in Powell Springs?”

“Let—let go of—my throat,” Milo croaked.

Slowly, Bax released his bristled neck. “Well?”

Milo slid farther along the wall to put some distance between himself and Bax. “I’m just passing through on business.”

“Yeah? What kind of business goes on in alleys? Purse-snatching?”

“I just had to take a piss—”

“Powell Springs isn’t that kind of town. We don’t put up with that stuff. I could arrest you for that alone.”

Now Milo smiled again through his ratty mustache. “I don’t think so, Duncan. Don’t you need a record as clean as a choirboy’s to get a job with the county sheriff’s office? I’ll bet you didn’t tell them about those good old days in the army.”

Bax clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. “What are you doing in Powell Springs?” he repeated.

“I told you I have business here and it’s none of yours.” He nodded at the deputy’s badge pinned to Bax’s shirt. “But I’ll bet the sheriff would like to know about his helper’s past.”

“He already knows I was in the army.”

“But does he know the rest of the story?”

“What’s it to you, Breninger?” Bax said, growing more tense and angry by the moment.

“It looks like you made a new start here, with a nice job. If you want to keep it, I think we need to strike a bargain, you and me.”

Bax suspected where this was heading, but he wanted to hear the rest of Breninger’s threat—because he felt certain that’s what this was—so h
e’d
know where he stood. “Bargain. You mean blackmail.”

“Yeah, call it what you want. For the right price, I keep my mouth shut and you keep your job. Otherwise”—he shrugged—“I’ll sing like a canary for the county.”

“And get nothing.”

“Not money. But sometimes satisfaction is good enough.” His voice dropped and his smirking, oily tone turned dark with a lazy contempt. “You thought you were so high and mighty. Sergeant American Hero. In the end, you were just the same as everyone else. Worse, maybe.”

Bax’s insides were churning like Amy Jacobsen’s washing machine. H
e’d
be damned if h
e’d
pay this scummy son of a bitch a single dime to buy his silence and give Breninger control over him. There would be no end to the harassment if he started paying him. He was willing to take his chances and hope that this was a bluff. After all, the man was no saint, either. But if it wasn’t a bluff, well, h
e’d
been to rock bottom before. “If I were you,
I’d
leave Powell Springs. It wouldn’t be hard to find information about you that would interest the law. But sing, canary—sing if you want to.” He looked Breninger up and down, from his cheap suit to his greasy sneer. “Who would believe
you
?
I’m not giving you one damned cent.”

Obviously insulted, and disappointed with the outcome of his brilliant plan, Breninger turned red in the face and actually shook his finger at Bax. “Don’t think I won’t, you piece of shit! This isn’t over!”

Bax waved him off and turned to walk away, hoping h
e’d
successfully hidden his rattled nerves and shown only strength and fury.

“And I can go anywhere I want. This is a free country!” Breninger yelled.

Bax almost laughed at the juvenile absurdity of his declaration.

Amy left Deirdre in her bed with a hot water bottle, Granny Mae’s medicine, a cup of tea, and some toast. She looked miserable and sounded worse, like a honking goose. Amy would handle dinner tonight, but she was up to that. Domesticity had always been her chief talent in her youth. Jessica might have had a scientific mind, but she could barely boil water. Amy knew her way around a kitchen and homemaking very well.

The first man in the door was Tom, but he dropped by just long enough for Amy to make him three sandwiches from the pork chops sh
e’d
cooked. He was working late at the mill. With Tom gone and Deirdre sick, that meant—

Bax came home, and she heard him on the enclosed back porch, following his usual routine of washing at the sink. She took dinner out of the warmer and put it on a platter. He walked in and nodded at her but wouldn’t look at her. He seemed even angrier than he had been when h
e’d
snapped at her yesterday.

She refused to acknowledge his rudeness and directed him to a seat at the table. “Tom is working tonight and Deirdre is still sick with her cold, so we’ll be eating in the kitchen,” she announced.

He sat down and pushed his food around on the plate but didn’t eat much. If he was silly enough to carry a grudge, she wouldn’t indulge him. But the silence stretched out until it was awkward, and she found herself poking at her own food. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of what to say, and he didn’t seem like a man who bothered with small talk. She supposed she owed him an apology, but it came hard to her. It shouldn’t—sh
e’d
spent the past four years apologizing every single day for something. It had become an automatic response to apologize to Adam since he found fault with her for the most minor things. Now, though, it wasn’t as easy.

When Bax wasn’t looking, she studied his profile—his lean jawline, the merest cleft in his chin, the strong brow. He was a very nice-looking man, but with many secrets, she suspected. Maybe even more than she had.

“Mr. Duncan—Bax—” she stumbled.

He looked at her.

“I-I’m sorry about what I said yesterday. I didn’t mean to blurt out—well, you were right. It was none of my business. I was just surprised to—”

“Never mind, Amy,” he muttered, cutting her off. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to be nosy.”

How could someone sound polite and uncivil at the same time? she wondered, feeling stupid and no better for her effort.

He put his fork down on the plate with a clatter. “I’m not very hungry tonight. Maybe you can give this to Tom when he gets home.”

He pushed away from the table and got his jacket where it hung on a coat rack by the back door. “I’ll be back later.”

Amy watched him go, and found herself sitting at a table with a pile of food and no one to eat it.

What a shitty,
shitty
couple of days it had been. Bax walked to Tilly’s under a clear, star-flung sky, alert as a guard dog for any shadow or other hint of a person lurking around. A few people were on the street, but most were at home, eating dinner. Certainly h
e’d
known worse times, but yesterday Amy had seen his back, and today that encounter with Milo Breninger had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit.

After the last few lousy years, he believed h
e’d
finally found a place among the people in Powell Springs. He worked at a respectable job, no one knew about his past, and h
e’d
even allowed himself to begin thinking about the future. Maybe a wife, kids, a place of his own.

H
e’d
imagined that once with Polly, had it all planned, until everything had gone to hell. Sometimes h
e’d
regretted not marrying her before he left for the war, as sh
e’d
wanted. She wouldn’t have been able to shed herself of him so easily if he had. Then h
e’d
think, what would he have been left with—an angry woman who despised him? Or maybe she would have divorced him before he got back and married Jack Bradshaw anyway.

So he abandoned that dream, along with a lot of the others h
e’d
once had.

But now, when he pictured it, the image of that wife had begun to wear Amy’s face. Amy, a married woman. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the combination of vulnerability and iron-willed strength that he detected in her. Or the sense that she could fill the emptiness in him that h
e’d
known for so long. But at least h
e’d
had a flicker of hope. Now that tiny spark might be doused by a man who had dodged the law by enlisting in the army—Bax had overheard him bragging about it in the trenches one night. H
e’d
been a fool to think things could really get better.

He reached Tilly’s, and when he looked through the windows, he was glad to see it was fairly quiet in there tonight. This damned Prohibition had really put a knot in everyone’s knickers. Thanks to the governor, Oswald West, Oregon had even imposed a dry-state order three years ahead of the Eighteenth Amendment. It was an incredibly stupid law that was causing more trouble than it stopped. Bootleggers and rum-runners were making a fortune on alcohol smuggled over the border from Canada, and moonshiners operating their own stills were killing people with the brews they cooked up. Human nature being what it was, even people who usually didn’t drink wanted to now. He was grateful that Whit Gannon didn’t enforce the law around here, but this saloon was the only one he permitted to operate in Powell Springs. All Whit demanded was that Virgil Tilly sell true bottled whiskey. If Virgil bought homemade hooch from anyone, or worse, set up his own still, Whit had promised h
e’d
personally deliver Tilly into the hands of the Prohibition agents. There were a few men living up in the hills to the east who cooked up wood alcohol—Dr. Jessica had been called to treat a couple of their customers in the past few years. But there was no saving them.

Virgil Tilly was reluctant to sell a whole bottle to someone because deliveries were unreliable and risky, but tonight, Bax was willing to pay the premium he asked for.

He pulled open the screen door, and although there were only a few customers standing at the bar, a layer of what might be permanent tobacco smoke hung over them. They were some of Tilly’s regulars. They bought the swill that Virgil made up in his back room for people who didn’t want to pay for straight whiskey or gin. Some swore the saloon owner used horse liniment, Worcestershire sauce, Listerine, or plain water to cut a bottle of Canadian alcohol. He wouldn’t own up to anything, apparently very closed-mouthed about his secret recipe, which tasted like poison.

It was a colorful place, Bax had to admit. Stuffed trophy heads observed the proceedings from their places high on the walls, which still bore posters left over from the war, a calendar, and other signs that reminded customers that no minors were allowed and credit was not offered.

“I tell you truly,” Tilly testified to his audience. He had a piece of paper and a pencil in his hands. He gestured at the counter behind him, where he kept his glassware. “Yo
u’d
think those loggers would be good for business. They can drink like it’s their last day on earth, and they’ll even pay for the good stuff. But if they get into a fight, all the profits go right out the door. Yesterday, those two lamebrain oafs broke ten dollars’ worth of stuff. Ten dollars!” He whacked his inventory list with the pencil for emphasis. “They even managed to knock down my four-point buck. Here, Bax.” While he handed Bax his purchase, everyone else looked up at the empty space on the wall.