Thirsty Work

Austin entertained the thought of death as the plane angled up for a steep ascent. It churned his stomach, and he gave into self-pity.

An old gentleman in a suit sat down beside him. He perused the alcohol menu with great attention, and ordered a number of spirits. As the drinks filled up the man’s fold-out table, Austin offered his own.

“You’re an enabler, for which I’m grateful,” the old man said between sips. “Why don’t you try the whiskey? It’s top notch”.

Austin moistened his lips with it, tasting but not drinking.

“Where are you headed to, my friend?” The older man asked, leaning back to take Austin in.

“Phoenix, for the McDowell Festival,” Austin answered, mustering up a smile, “It’s for work. I’m a writer.”

“A man of culture!” The older man sat up taller in his chair, leaning over into Austin’s space.

“I have a story for you. Better than any you’ve ever heard.” His smile hardened into a serious expression as he fixed his gaze squarely on Austin.

“When I was about your age, working as a talent scout in Bisbee, I saw a spirit.

She was dark-skinned, Apache by the looks of her, and had the most beautiful singing voice I’d ever heard. She played a strange instrument while she sang. Something between a crossbow and a fiddle. A primitive device, but in her hands, it conveyed such depth of emotion that I wept.

I thought that if I could get her on the record label, or on the radio, my career would be made. I was dead set on it. She was a diamond, and I would be the one to present her, in all her lustre and beauty, to the world.”

Austin felt the impulse to click on his audio recorder, wishing he hadn’t foolishly stowed it in the overhead luggage compartment.

His seat mate continued.

“After the show, I followed her backstage hoping to talk to her, or her mother, or whoever had accompanied her there. That pub was no place for a child.

I followed her through the curtain behind the stage, calling for her to stop. She didn’t stop. I tried to grab her by the arm but swear to god, my hand closed in on air. She was not made of flesh and bone. One second she was there, the next second, she vanished. Just like that,” he snapped his fingers for emphasis.

“I asked everyone if they’d seen her, they all affirmed that they had. I asked the barkeep who she was. He didn’t say much, except that she came by once in a blue moon and they gave her the stage.

Everyone laughed at me when I told them she was a ghost. The smug bastards were so sure, and it made me mad. I ended up smashing some bottles and got myself a lifetime ban from the county. I don’t blame them for it. It is pretty far fetched.”

“Did you ever find her?” Austin asked with a gentle curiosity.

“No,” sighed the old man, “and I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit. The only answers I could wrangle out of the townsfolk were myths. They told tall tales about a girl that rode on horseback through the desert at night, and disappeared if you shone a light on her. My wife and friends told me to let it go, but I never could.” A tinge of heartbreak coloured his voice.

The gravity of emotion expressed by the old man intrigued Austin. Surely, he couldn’t have seen a real ghost, but something did happen at that pub.

“What was the pub called?” Austin gently nudged, after a lull in the conversation.

“If it’s still there after all these years, it’s called ‘Thirsty Work’. 10 miles outside of Bisbee on the way to Tombstone. Low to the ground, and mostly under it. You can’t miss it.

I was told by the sheriff that it was built by a man named Jacques as an underground speakeasy during Prohibition. Some people in town said he was keeping prisoners of war, others that he was holding asylum patients. Some even claimed that he was a freemason. None of them had proof.”

Austin did the math. If he rented a car after touching down in Phoenix, he could visit Thirsty Work and just make it back in time for the festival.

“If you’re thinking of going, be forewarned. You may find yourself chasing ghosts, and that is a wheel that don’t stop turning.”

The old gentleman fell asleep not long after, and Austin sat awake pondering everything he’d just been told. When the plane touched down and lights came on, the old man awoke with a start, suddenly sober.

“I found out she sings once a year, on the night of the Summer Equinox. If you find anything interesting, let me know. You will be rewarded. ”

The old man extended a business card to Austin.

“Name’s Ernest. Ernie.”

A group of regulars sat playing cards at a poorly lit table in the back of the Thirsty Work.

A beam of light illuminated the whole bar as Austin pried open the heavy door, squeezing himself inside.

“Close the door!” Shouted Job, the bartender.

“You got water in the brain? Close the door!” One of the regulars complained, recoiling from the harsh rays.

Now that Austin was inside, he couldn’t help but entertain his own conspiracy theories about the place. The seating area was a massive pit dug into the ground. Outside it was a hot June afternoon, but inside it smelled earthy with a chilled dampness.

“Drink?” Job asked, without an ounce of warmth.

“Yeah, whatever you got,” Austin said.

Detaching himself from his own reeling anxiety, Austin noted that the rest of the bar patrons were very different from himself. Their faces were gaunt and pale, their clothes dirty, worn, or ill-fitting. And they all stared at him, undoubtedly hostile.

Job carried a small, black, leather-bound book in his waist apron. It was intricately carved with a beautiful design, reminiscent of grapevines. Every time Job knelt down to fetch a bottle from the mini-fridge, he secured it against himself so it wouldn’t slip out.

As night fell on the desert outside, more patrons arrived and Job fixed them up with drinks. Soon, the bar had reached maximum capacity. When everyone finally had a drink in hand, Job hurriedly ducked behind the bar curtain, leaving the night’s mess. Austin followed after, pulling the curtain aside just enough to see a dim hallway. He snuck down the hall, toward a supply closet. Peeking into the cramped closet, he saw Job sitting cross-legged on the floor, the black book open on his lap. The pages were scrawled with a barely-legible handwriting that looked to be quite antiquated.

To Austin, it looked like candlelight was dancing on Job’s skin, but there was no candle. The flickering shadows became ripples of texture marring the surface of the bartender’s face.

Protrusions of flesh crested and fell like waves. Job’s bones cracked and contorted as he shrank to half his size. What had been his face now reflected one of a teenage girl with long black hair and tan skin.

Austin was paralyzed by fear.

Clutching the book in front of her chest, the girl stood up. As if the book opened up a passageway, she walked confidently toward Austin, and then directly through his body.

The crowd erupted with anticipation as she stepped on to the stage. Austin rushed back through the curtain and found a dark table close to the stage to hide under. He clicked on his audio recorder and held it out as close to her as he could without being seen.

She sang songs in a mix of English and a language that was unlike any he had heard before. Faintly Spanish-sounding, the resemblance faded when he listened closely. She sang about how storms, floods, droughts, and fires had destroyed her family’s livelihood. She sang how her father was a good, hardworking man whose stubbornness got the better of him. Her voice was smooth, polished, and mature for her age. It echoed through the room with the strength of a choir. Reverberating off the walls, making it sound as if she was everywhere. When she was finished, she left the stage without a thank you or goodnight.

Austin scurried after her, sneaking back behind the curtain and down the corridor, to the supply closet. She sat on the floor, the book open on her lap, and the transformation began. Subtly at first, bumps rippling her skin. Becoming more dramatic as her hands started growing and contorting.

Bewildered, Austin had a premonition of what would happen. If he did nothing, she would change back into Job. He couldn’t allow that. Something in her performance resonated in him, awakened a noble mission to free her of the forces that held her in this bind. Where did she go when she was not here?

He walked forward in a stupor of blind confidence and picked up the black book that lay in the girl’s lap. The transformations that had started taking effect on her face eased away, leaving an expression of relief.

There was a moment where he could have reached out and felt if she was real, but he resisted. What good would it do him to know?

She turned swiftly, running back down the hall and out of sight. Austin saw a sliver of the night sky as she opened the door, and was gone.

He held the black bound book in one hand and the audio recorder in the other. It was still recording. On the flyleaf of the book, was the name Jacques Melling.

Austin carefully read through all the pages while standing still in the supply room closet. One page held his attention:

“June 21, 1921: Today I woke up to the sound of hooves on sand. Before I could gather my bearings and collect myself, the coward in me shot at the sound. I was fearful that it was a raider on horseback who was coming to steal my horses or my munitions.

I knew it was a girl as soon as I saw her fall, and I felt repentance and sorrow stronger than my fear. She had come down from the mountain to work with her father on the stagecoach trail. To join the ranks of Apache men working in my employ.

After her burial ceremony, her father came to my tent and said some things that I did not fully understand. My Apache translator conveyed to me that he wanted to do a spirit trade. I agreed. I would trade a descendent of mine to the spirit world so that his daughter could come back.

It sounded patently absurd but I could not bring myself to deny him that request. Maybe it would give him some measure of solace, and act as a gesture of reconciliation.

I cannot imagine the depth of a father’s pain, having lost his daughter before she had the chance to become a woman.”

Austin felt his understanding of reality wash away like dust on a windshield.

He walked out of the pub, and when he was far enough away that he was certain no one would bother him, he set the book on fire with his lighter.

As it burned, he allowed himself a moment of mourning. He still had questions, but he felt his fear replaced by a heavy-hearted acceptance.

The next day, he enclosed the audio recording he had made in a small cigar box, and sent it to the address Ernest had provided on his card.

Weeks later, after Austin had arrived back home in Oregon, an envelope came for him. As he unfolded the letter, a cheque in the amount of $20,000 fell out. Signed in stately handwriting, it read “Ernest Heatheridge -- for giving an old man some closure.”