When Clancy awoke, he didn’t have to get out of bed to know that the mule was still there, rotting in the middle of the road.

It had been there for three days now, bloating up in the summer heat, gathering flies and other foul things to it. But this was the first time the stink had been enough to wake him.

Clancy stood and began to make his morning water in the chamber pot.

“Hmph.”

He scratched around the edge of his beard as his urine rang against the porcelain.

“Didn’t used to be like this.” He muttered to himself. “Used to be if a mule fell over dead, it got cleaned up.”

Finished, he buttoned himself up and scooped up the bowl.

“Not since them Union boys come, though.”

Clancy stepped out to his stoop where a tuxedo cat was there to great him, holding the decomposing ear of the dead mule in its mouth, purring happily.

“Hsstt! Get!” Clancy shouted, tossing the contents of his chamber pot after the fleeing cat. The waste left a wet streak in the dirt.

“Now everybody thinks the city is like some kind of giant toilet.” He spat. “It’s absolutely despicable.”

Memphis Note
When the Union troops took over control of the city, there was period of social service breakdown. No one knew who was still in charge, and more importantly, if those people had the money to pay them at the end of the week. So, problems started to emerge, like the mule that was left to rot for several days in a Memphis neighborhood because no one from the city would clean it up.

The young man stood up from the long table where they were all seated. He was a mid-level official somewhere between the military government and the city’s civil functionaries. No one in the room looked comfortable discussing what they’d all been gathered to discuss, and he was no exception.

He cleared his throat, trying to figure where to start after the short break.

“Now then, where were we?” He asked the room.

“This weekly examination of yours,” piped up a white-bearded doctor at the far end of the table. “I won’t have it be some half-done, disingenuous, hand waving examination. It’ll be an honest-to-God medical examination. If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it properly.” As he spoke, he slapped his hand down on the table, punctuating his words.

“Of course. That’s why you’re all here, to ensure that we do this in the best possible way.”

He paused for a moment, adjusting his glasses.

“And I’m sorry if I gave you or anyone else the wrong impression, doctor. This isn’t an ‘if’. Come the first of next month, for the good of public health, prostitution will be legal in the city of Memphis.”

Memphis Note
As Union troops moved into Memphis, so did the number of prostitutes. After a few years, the prevalence of STDs was nearly unmanageable. So, the Union army declared that prostitution should be legalized and regulated for the health of the troops. After a pilot program in Nashville, prostitution became officially legal in Memphis in 1864.

R.C. Graves frowned, tossed the geological report aside and kicked his feet up on the desk. From out of his office window, he could see the drilling team working, boring down deep into the earth.

“I’m telling you it’s hidden right beneath us, just out of sight. Like a ghost struck see-through by the light of day.” The young geologist had said. “You could change the whole of the city if I’m right, Mister Graves.”

“You’d better be right for what I paid, son.” Was all he’d said in response.

R.C. Graves knew what the geologist was referring to. Spring rains caused the water levels to rise, river and swamp water mixed with the city’s sewage, emulsifying into a deadly cocktail that brought the Yellow Fever each summer. But that wasn’t his concern. His business was one of comfort and luxury. R.C. Graves was in the ice business.

And you couldn’t have good ice without clean water.

Suddenly there was a great crack and a roar from the drill site. Graves looked up, thinking a storm had rolled in because of the rain and thunder. But then he realized it wasn’t rain.

It was the drill.

They’d struck water.

Memphis Note
The Memphis Aquifer was first tapped in 1887 by R.C. Graves of the Buhlen-Huse Ice Company. His and the company’s interest in the aquifer, which was only vaguely known, was to tap the clean water to sell as ice to local hotels, restaurants and homes. When his crew hit water at 354 feet below the surface, the release of pressure forced a geyser of clean water back up the shaft. This discovery lead to the drilling of dozens and then hundreds of other wells, all of which provided clean drinking water to Memphis, and helped break the death grip Yellow Fever had on the city.