The Whiskey Rebel

Once we reached my boardinghouse, I sent Leonidas home and knocked upon the door. My landlady had never seen fit to trust me with the key, yet she was always majestically resentful when I awoke her upon returning. There is no reconciling with some people, and I was, admittedly, disinclined to reconcile myself to this one. She did not care for me much, though I did not know if it was because of my general habits, or because I did not pay rent, or that during my late-night returns to her house I would sometimes behave unquietly. Once, while too full of drink, I had reached out and pinched her nipple.

It was now nearly midnight, so I was surprised that my knock was answered so rapidly. My landlady, Mrs. Deisher-a stout German thing-was in the habit of answering my late knocks with a taciturn scowl, clad only in her dressing gown. Tonight she was fully dressed, and though she opened the door she did not stand aside to let me in. Indeed, she blocked me, holding a candle, her hand trembling slightly.

“We must speak, Mr. Saunders,” she said, in her heavy accent.

“Captain Saunders,” I told her. “Must I always remind you? Do you not value patriotic service, or do you perhaps mourn for some Hessian officer?”

“I am sorry to say to you this, but here there is a difficulty with your rent.”

My rent. There was always a difficulty with my rent, perhaps because I was so very undisciplined about paying it. “Then we shall discuss it in the morning, but I must now sleep.”

She grunted. She winced. She shook her head. “You owe me for three months, and I must have payment.”

What nonsense over a mere ten dollars. I have ever been good with words, good with the gentle art of persuasion, but I rarely could summon the will to speak to this creature with a smooth tongue. Instead, I took a step forward and gave her my most charming smile. “Mrs. Deisher, we have ever been friends, have we not?” Never wait for an answer to such a question. “We have ever been on excellent terms. I have always been your admirer. You know that, do you not, Mrs. Deisher?”

“Have you the money?” she asked.

“A mere ten dollars? Of course I have the money. I shall have it for you tomorrow. Next week at the latest.”

“But not only for this month, sir. You owe for the past months. You must pay thirty dollars to clear the account.”

My mind had only been half engaged in this conversation, for it was a dance we had danced before, and we knew each other’s moves as well as old lovers. Instead, I had been turning over thoughts of Mrs. Pearson and, to a lesser extent, Lavien, while I absently charmed my way into my unpaid rooms. The demand for thirty dollars arrested my attention, however.

“Thirty dollars!” I said. “Mrs. Deisher, is this the time to speak of such things, in the cold darkness when, as you can see from my face, I have suffered great injury tonight?”

She shifted her squat weight and squared her squat shoulders. “I must have money now. There is a young man with wife, a baby, who can take your room in the morning. You will pay me, or you will go. If you don’t do either, I will summon the watch.”

“Are you trying to ruin me?” I demanded. My irritation caused me to forget, if only for a moment, the value of good ma

Her face settled into hard woflishness. “Do not use such language. I don’t love it. Tell me only, have you money now?” She asked the question through trembling lips.

“It is clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. What is this about? Has someone paid you to cast me out? It was Dorland, wasn’t it?”

“Have you the money now?” she repeated, but with less self-righteousness.

I had hit upon something and thought to test my theory, so I said, “Yes, I do. I shall pay you, and then I shall go to sleep.”

“Too late!” she shrieked. “It is too late! You have used me ill, and I do not want you no more. You must pay me and go.”

This was Dorland; it had to be. And yet I did not quite believe it. It was not that he was above such mean tricks, just that I did not think he had the wit to conceive of them. “If you are going to cast me out, you can hardly expect me to pay you,” I observed. “You’ll not get a pe

“Then you get out. You do it or I’ll call the watch.”

By itself, the watch was nothing to me, but I feared public knowledge of my eviction. Should word spread that I had lost my rooms, my creditors would descend upon me like starved lions on a wounded lamb. I could not disappear into the airless bog of debtor’s prison just when Cynthia Pearson had reappeared in my life.

It was not the first time I’d been cast out of a lodging, nor the first in the middle of the night. I had done what I could and would not humiliate myself by prolonging the argument. “Very well. I shall collect some things, and I shall quit your miserable house. Be so kind as to pack what I do not take now, and keep your fingers off what does not belong to you.”

“I keep your things as surety, and if you try to get them I’ll call the watch. The watch.” She’d seen it in my eyes, sensed my fear with her low animal cu

Forever seemed a bit extreme, even for a flight of fancy, but I did not dash her dreams. I was too angry, and she must have seen that too in my eyes, for she took a frightened step backward. In response, I offered her a very stiff bow and set out once more into the rain.

I t is a sad thing for a man to realize that once he has lost his home, he has nowhere to go. My life in Philadelphia, brief of tenure, was such that I knew many men, but had no friends I dared approach this late at night to request shelter. I could not go to any of the ladies who were generally kind to me, even the unmarried ones, for if I were to appear in my current sodden, beaten, and hatless state, I believe the spell I had once cast might dissipate. As for Leonidas, I would, this one time, violate his desire for privacy and throw myself on his mercy, if only I knew where he lived.

As if in accompaniment to my bad humor, the rain had begun once more. With the cold numbing my fingers, my boots nearly soaked though with melted snow and mud, I trudged back to Helltown and the Lion and Bell. I asked Owen to let me have a room and to put it upon my account, which was now, ironically, in excellent order. If not precisely warm, Owen was at least agreeable, recognizing that, in what I had believed to be my dying moments, I had deceived my way into doing him a good turn. Surely this act of kindness undid my early misrepresentations.

He would not allow me a private room but sent me to a mattress of sack and straw on a floor in a room full of drunk, farting, belching men who smelled as though they had never seen the inside of a washtub. I was one of these creatures, and I fell asleep regretting that Dorland had not killed me after all.

M orning came, as it insists upon doing, and my head ached from drink and violence. My ribs were purple and inflamed. My ankle was swollen as well. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, but I must have given it at least a minor twist during my adventures with Dorland.

I had no time to nurse my wounds, however, for I had money to earn. And how does a man such as myself fill his purse in a pinch? Unfortunately, the secret involves a clean and handsome appearance. Even were my face not in its current contused state, I would still need to bathe and gain access to better clothes, now held hostage by my ogre of a landlady. Were I in possession, however, I should proceed with the confidence of one pleasing to the female eye. I am told it is so. I am tall and manly in stature, and I know how to direct a tailor to shape clothes to advantage. My hair remains thick and dark brown in color, and I continue to wear it in the rugged queue style of the Revolution.