Jiff sprang a gaze at Collier that was nearly one of fright. "Aw, no, er, I mean, I know him, sure, but-" He gulped. "But only 'cos I do odd jobs for him, handymantype stuff. I do a lot'a work on the side for folks, includin' him. Trimmin' hedges, fixin' doors'n windows and such."

But it seemed like an excuse. Jiff probably owes the guy money or something, doesn't want me talking to him and winding up with the scoop. Again, Collier dropped the mysteriously sensitive issue after saying, "I'll try to find him at the bookstore, like you said. I just want to ask about local beers."

Next, Collier winced when the barmaid's low-cut bosom descended to serve them their burgers. Do I have to l.u.s.t after EVERY GIRL WHO WALKS BY? he scorned himself. He tried to refocus.

The burger was fine, but he couldn't stop enthusing over the beer. By the time he finished his second gla.s.s of lager, Jiff looked sheepish at him. "Is it all right if-"

"Jiff, order as many as you want. I told you, tonight's my treat."

"Thanks, Mr. Collier."

Collier tried to cheer him out of his mope. "And I really appreciate you bringing me here." Collier pointed to his gla.s.s. "I'm sure that this is the beer I need to finish my book and make my deadline..."

Eventually, Jiff did cheer up, as drunkenness impinged. Collier's rule was generally to never drink more than three beers in a day, so that he could write down his impressions with a clear head. However, when his third gla.s.s was done-Oh, to h.e.l.l with it. I'm on vacation-he ordered another.

"Careful there, Mr. Collier," Jiff warned. "This brew's got a kick that sneaks up on ya."

You're telling ME? "Five percent alcohol, I'll bet."

"Five point three," a crisp but feminine voice cut in. It wasn't the barmaid but instead a woman Collier thought must be a cook, for she wore a plain full-length ap.r.o.n.

"Specific gravity or volume?" Collier asked pedantically.

"Volume," she replied.

"Wow, that is strong. But it doesn't taste that strong."

"That's because of the six-row Bohemian hops, the same hops that were brought here by Czech immigrants in the early 1840s."

The specific remarks reached through Collier's rising buzz. She knows her beer. And then he took a closer look. Hair black as India ink hung just a bit past her shoulders. She seemed small-framed but something in her eyes showed him a large-framed sense of confidence. Collier's s.e.xism ranged his eyes over her bosom but the baggy ap.r.o.n wouldn't hint at her size. An ornate silver cross sparkled just below the hollow of her throat.

When he tried to say something, though, he caught her staring at him.

"I don't believe it. Justin Collier is in my bar."

"Dang straight!" Jiff announced a bit too loudly. "A bonner-fide TV star he is!"

Collier winced.

"Hey, Jiff," the woman leaned to whisper. "Mr. Collier probably doesn't want a lot of attention."

"No, actually I don't," Collier said, relieved.

"Oh, sure, sure." Jiff got it. "Say, how about a couple more?"

The woman poured two more gla.s.ses and set them down. Then she extended a small but somewhat roughened hand. Probably from dishwashing, Collier presumed.

"I'm Dominique Cusher, Mr. Collier," she introduced. "It's a real pleasure to have you here. If you want to know the truth, your show is about the only thing I watch on television these days. I really love it."

"Thanks," Collier said. "Pleased to meet you."

She held up a finger. "But, I remember a couple episodes ago, you were touting that new Rauchbier from Oregon. Whew! You actually like that codswallop? They cut their barley with corn, and I could swear I tasted Liquid Smoke in it."

Collier laughed at the surprising, bold remark. He didn't really care for the product, either, but the question nagged, What the h.e.l.l is a dishwasher doing drinking an obscure smoked beer? "Well, sometimes business has its demands. Every now and then I have to give a nod to a beer that's not all that great."

Now she smiled. "Oh, I understand. Advertisers."

"Bingo."

"I have to do the same thing, too. It kills me to post a Bud happy hour...but if we run the special we get a discount. Don't know how people can drink it."

"But more people drink it than anything else," Collier noted. "Business is business. One has to accommodate the market. But let me just say that this house lager is excellent. Could you please pa.s.s my compliments on to the brewer?"

"You just did," she said.

Collier was stunned. "You-"

"That's right, Mr. Collier," she said with no arrogance. "I've got a master brewer degree from the Kulmbach School, and I took supplemental courses at Budvar in Budejovice and Tucher in Nuremberg." She pointed between two of the service tuns. There hung the certificates in plain view.

"That's incredible," he said. In fifteen years of beer writing, he'd never met any American to graduate from Kulmbach, and perhaps only two or three women with master brewer certificates from anywhere. Suddenly, to Collier, she was the celebrity. At once, he felt invigorated. This fiery little woman with black hair and rough hands is the one responsible for what has to be one of the finest lagers in America...Dominique Cusher.

Jiff seemed content to be out of the conversation as he swigged more beer and shoveled in the rest of his burger. Dominique leaned over on her elbows, smiling. "I guess you're on vacation, right? I can't be arrogant enough to think you came all this way to try my Civil War Lager."

"Actually, I did. A couple of fellow beer sn.o.bs told me about it." He took another sip and found no trace of monotony. "It really is fantastic."

"Mr. Collier here's finishin' up a book," Jiff barged in.

Collier nodded. "I need one more entry for my Great American Lagers project. I don't want to jump the gun, now, but I'm pretty sure this is going to be it."

"That would be a true honor." She tried to contain the thrill. But her eyes sparkled. "No palate fatigue yet, huh?"

"None," Collier admitted. "I'm not finding any deficits. Let me buy you one. It's known as good luck-"

"To buy the brewer a gla.s.s of their own beer," she finished. "Goes all the way back to the Reinheitsgebot Purity Law." Dominique poured herself one, then clinked gla.s.ses with Collier and Jiff (though Jiff's slopped a bit out of his gla.s.s).

"Prost," she and Collier said at the same time. "Who's he?" Jiff said.

"It's German for *cheers,' Jiff," she informed.

"Aw, yeah, that's right..."

Collier smiled at her. "I'd try some of your other selections, too, but I should wait. I don't want anything to interfere with my initial impressions of the lager. Is there anything unique about the recipe that you could tell me?"

"It's a family tweak," she said. She seemed to nurse her gla.s.s in exact increments. "A variation of Saaz hops and some temperature jinks in the worting process. But please don't tell anyone that. My ancestors would crawl out of their graves to come after me."

"So you're a family of brewers?"

"Yep. This tavern's been here in various incarnations since the beginning of the 1800s, and the Cushers managed to hang on to it all that time, even through the war. When federal troops captured the town in 1864, they burned every single building downtown except this tavern. When the Yankees tried the beer, they didn't dare put a torch to the place."

"Good sense."

"The only other structure they didn't burn was the Gast House, now Mrs. Butler's bed-and-breakfast."

"I wonder why they didn't burn that, too," Collier questioned. "They were pretty torch-happy once they started to win."

"Jiff can tell you that," she said.

Again, that pained look on Jiff's face. "Aw, come on, Dominique. I been tryin' hard not to let any of that creepy B.S. get ta Mr. Collier."

"I knew it," Collier said. "Ghost stories. Haunted folklore."

"The way it goes," the woman began, "is that when the Union commander sent a team of men up to the Gast House, he had to wind up putting them in the stockade."

"The stockade? What on earth for?"

"Because they refused to carry out their orders."

"They refused to burn the house, you mean?"

Dominique nodded with a mischievous grin. "They said they were too afraid to go inside, said there was an unG.o.dly presence."

Jiff frowned, as expected, but Collier wasn't impressed. "That's all?"

"No. Then another squad of men were sent up to the house, and..." Her eyes shined at Jiff. "Jiff, tell Mr. Collier what happened."

"Shee-it," Jiff said under his breath. "The second squad never came back, so's the Yankee commander went up there hisself and saw that the whole squad hanged thereselfs."

"From the same tree that Harwood Gast had hanged himself a year and a half previous. The tree's still there, too, right Jiff? That giant oak next to the fountain."

"Yeah, but it all ain't nothin' but a bushel basket full'a horse flop, Mr. Collier."

Collier chuckled. "I've got to tell you, Jiff, it's a fascinating story, but...I don't believe any of it. So you can relax."

"Thank G.o.d..."

"Regional folklore has always interested me, but at the end of the day," Collier said, and paused for effect. "I don't believe in ghosts."

"But Jiff's right," Dominique added. "There are a lot of ghost stories around here, typical of any Civil War town. Funny thing is, our stories are a bit harder-edged than most."

"Harder-edged?" Collier asked.

Jiff b.u.t.ted in again. "So, wow, that's really interestin', that this beer's been around since the war. I didn't even know they had beer way back then."

Collier knew Jiff was desperate to change the subject. But why would silly ghost stories bother him so much? Another Southern cliche? Were people from the South more superst.i.tious than anyone else? Collier doubted it. But the pedant in him couldn't resist the deflecting remark. "Actually, Jiff, beer's been around for at least eight thousand years, and in earlier civilizations, it was the main carbohydrate staple. Before man figured out that they could turn grain into bread, they were turning it into beer."

Dominique accentuated, "Early nomads discovered that they could boil ground-up grain, like barley, wheat, and millet, and eat it as a porridge. But when they accidentally let it sit around, or when rain would saturate their grain stores, it would ferment and become ale. It had the same nutritional value as bread but it wouldn't go bad, like bread does, because of the alcohol content. And let's not forget the additional fact. You don't get a buzz from bread..."

Collier and Dominique spent the next half hour bantering more about beer. When he offered to buy her another, she declined with a comment that struck Collier as odd: "No, thanks. I never drink more than one beer a day."

Collier found this astonishing. "But you're a brewer, for G.o.d's sake."

"Well, that's sort of the point." She said it all very non-chalantly. "I'm a Christian. I don't let myself get drunk. You know, the body's a temple of the Lord, and all that."

Collier's eyes shot back to the cross around her neck. What an odd thing to say...He struggled for a response that wasn't stilted. "Well, Jesus drank wine, right?"

White teeth gleamed in her grin. "Yeah, but he didn't get s.h.i.t-faced and swing from chandeliers."

Collier had to laugh.

"And that's the kind of stuff that happens when I drink too much," she went on, "so...one's my limit. I figure the least I can do is not insult G.o.d by getting p.i.s.sy drunk."

Collier was intrigued by the strangeness of it all. The mild profanity mixed with a matter-of-fact religious sentiment. "My own personal rule is no more than three a day; it's no fun to write about beer when you're hungover." Then he looked at his gla.s.s and realized that he'd just finished his fourth. "But I'm being a hypocrite today. One more please. And another for Jiff."

"Thanks much, Mr. Collier," Jiff said, slurring "much" as "mlush" and "Mr." as "Mlister."

When Dominique returned with two more, Collier felt the need to continue. "But I've never thought of having a few beers as much of a sin. At least I hope it's not."

"Inebriation leads to temptation," she said. She was unconsciously fingering her cross now.

"I've definitely been guilty of that," Collier admitted.

"Sure, and we all have. Making an effort to stay sober is a form of repentance"-she frowned as if irritated with herself-"but I'm not trying to Holy Roll you. It's just my personal view. Spiritual beliefs are individual. When you're in the bar business as long as I've been, you learn fast-"

"Never talk about religion in a bar." Collier knew.

"You got that right. Anyway, I don't want you to think I'm a Holy Roller. Telling other people how to live is the worst hypocrisy. I think it's best to show your faith by example, not chatter and finger-pointing. If you're a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever. Live it, don't talk it is what I try to do."

This girl is cool, Collier realized. He also realized he was half drunk. Don't make a d.i.c.k of yourself! "You weren't telling me how to live, you were just explaining why you only drink one beer a day. Beer sn.o.bbery is a sophisticated science. If you drink too many, you might as well be guzzling domestic draft-"

"Because no one can appreciate the nuances of fine beer, not with a load on."

G.o.d, I really dig her, Collier acknowledged to himself. Even the way she talked-half colloquial, half philosophical-seemed s.e.xy. She looked at her watch, then excused herself. "I have to go upstairs and check the wort. But please don't leave yet."

"Wouldn't think of it. I might even have to have a sixth gla.s.s of your lager. See, my rules go out the window pretty fast," he joked, "but I can only blame you."

"Me?"

"For being the purveyor of one of the very best lagers in America."

She smiled at the overt compliment, then slipped away through a door behind the bar.

Jiff leaned over, concerned. "Shee-it, Mr. Collier. She say she had warts? Man, you don't want none'a that."

Collier was quickly learning to frown and smile in amus.e.m.e.nt simultaneously. "Not warts, Jiff. Wort. Wort is beer before the yeast and hops have been added. After the solution ferments and is filtered of its excess proteins, it officially becomes beer."

"Oh, yeah, well, now that I thunk of it, I'm pretty sure I knew that, and, yes, it's a d.a.m.n good thing she ain't got warts. Not that I ever had 'em-you know, the s.e.xual kind-" Jiff p.r.o.nounced it "sax-shool." "And I say it's plain as barn paint she got a serious torch fer you."

Collier's unconfident eyes looked at him. "You...really think so, Jiff?"