Buster Midnight's Cafe (12 page)

So Warner Bros. came up with the idea of sending May Anna to Butte on an airplane for a publicity tour. They could hold the pre-miere at the Montana Theater and reunite May Anna and Buster. That way, they could take plenty of pictures of the two of them together, getting both May Anna and Buster into the newspapers. Me and Whippy Bird thought it was the best idea we ever heard because it would get the Unholy Three back together again, too.

There was a big crowd at the airport that afternoon. Me and Whippy Bird, Pink and Chick and Moon, and, of course, Buster and Toney were there to see May Anna arrive. There were reporters and photographers, too. Buster was in the first suit I ever saw him wear, and he got a haircut for the occasion. You could see the skin through his hair it was cut so close at the sides. He carried a big bouquet of white roses that he shifted from hand to hand. He was nervous, all right. May Anna wrote Buster letters, and he sent her postcards, and sometimes they talked long distance, but they hadn’t been together in almost four years.

“You think she’ll recognize me?” Buster asked Pink.

“Probably not,” Pink said, which made Buster laugh and settle down a little.

When the plane landed, everybody got off except May Anna. It was like a dramatic entrance in the movies. The stairs up to the airplane door were empty. The crowd was quiet—until May Anna ducked out the door and everybody cheered, me and Whippy Bird the loudest. She was dressed all in white with a white fox stole and a little white hat with a veil tied over her face. She waved, and Buster rushed up and gave her the roses and a big hug. May Anna was acting like a cool movie star, but you could still tell she was excited to see Buster. For a tiny minute she was May Anna Kovaks, squeezing Buster’s arm and hugging him back. Then she turned into Marion Street again, and took little dainty steps down the stairs, holding out the roses for the crowd. Me and Whippy Bird could see she was wearing silk stockings with no runs.

We were standing off to the side so May Anna didn’t notice us at first. She was blowing kisses and signing autographs. Then Buster led her to the microphone, where the most important people in Butte like the mayor and the theater manager and the head of the power company were waiting for her.

All of them shook hands with May Anna, then the mayor gave a speech, and the theater manager gave another speech, but Buster didn’t say anything. He just grinned at May Anna. Then May Anna, sounding like she had a mouth full of Tootsie Roll, said what a thrill it was to return to the best town in America and how she had traveled all over the United States, which wasn’t true, and no place was as beautiful as Butte. She told the crowd her fondest hope was to return to Butte one day and live here.

Now me and Whippy Bird knew where the reporters got all that wrong information.

May Anna was right in the middle of talking when she spotted me and Whippy Bird. She forgot her snooty voice and yelled like a Centerville ragpicker, “Whippy Bird and Effa Commander! You come right up here! Let those girls through!” We ran up and hugged her, and everybody cheered. “These are my best friends,” she said, and they cheered again. We never did find out who all those people were. Then May Anna asked where Moon was, so Chick and Pink brought him up, and May Anna kissed him and got Max Factor lipstick all over her veil. The photographers snapped away, which is why Moon was the youngest person we personally knew to get his picture on the front page of the
Montana Standard.

After May Anna finished her speech and everybody left, her press agent came up and tried to shoo us off, but May Anna gave him a hard look. “These are my friends. They stay,” she said in her gangster moll voice. So we stayed. Or rather we all went up to May Anna’s suite at the Finlen and drank gin. We realized how far May Anna had come when she walked into the Finlen Hotel. She didn’t have to register at the front desk or pay in advance or even wait for an elevator. They had one waiting for her.

May Anna was so busy we hardly had time to talk. There was the premiere that night then a visit to an orphanage and a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a trip to the Hill for cheesecake pictures in front of the headframes. May Anna asked me and Whippy Bird to meet her at the Finlen to go to the charity tea the next day, but we said we didn’t know anything about a tea.

May Anna turned to the press agent. “I told West Point to put their names on the list.” She always called Warner Bros. West Point or sometimes Sing Sing.

He shrugged and said, “I sent them to the charity dames.”

“I go. My friends go. Got it?” The press agent said he’d fix things. May Anna told us they always made mistakes like that. The press agent said she was right and that he shouldn’t have trusted the US mail.

When me and Whippy Bird met May Anna at the Finlen, she was dressed in white again—white silk dress, white gloves, and a hat shaped like a white soup plate. Me and Whippy Bird looked pretty snazzy, too, in matching red-and-blue flowered rayon dresses and red gloves and white rabbit capes. Whippy Bird wore her hair in an upsweep with big bangs rolled under, and I had a pageboy. To finish off our outfits, we had red linen purses and white ankle-strap shoes, and we wore the rhinestone pins May Anna brought us from Hollywood.

Me and Whippy Bird were ready to walk to the tea since it was only over on West Broadway, but your movie stars don’t walk anywhere. They took us in a big white Lincoln with whitewall tires and a red sign that said
WORLD PREMIERE
TROUBLE ON THE WATERFRONT
on the side. People waved to May Anna, and she waved back. Me and Whippy Bird waved, too.

The house was three stories high with white pillars and a copper roof. When we got there, May Anna sat in the car and wouldn’t get out until the press agent jiggled her arm and said, “Come on, honey. Show time for the folks.”

“I’ve never been in one of these big houses on West Broadway. I’m more nervous than at the premiere,” May Anna whispered to us.

“See here, May Anna. We’re right behind you. The Unholy Three. All for one and one for all,” Whippy Bird said, and May Anna hugged us and got out. Your movie stars do a lot of hugging, but, of course, May Anna meant it with us.

Me and Whippy Bird had never been in a house on West Broadway either, but nobody paid any attention to us. We thought the house was ugly with all that carved furniture, and dark, too, with the heavy velvet drapes hanging in the doorways, but Whippy Bird says what did we know?

Those ladies fell all over May Anna, telling her how proud they were that a Butte girl had done so well and handing her slips of paper for her autograph. One asked her if it was true Humphrey Bogart, who was pictured with her in
Look,
beat up women. May Anna said he was so sweet he would be right at home in that very room, which seemed to disappoint them.

Me and Whippy Bird filled up our plates, then Whippy Bird asked one lady if she would be so kind as to bring her a cup of coffee instead of tea, and I thought I’d die trying not to laugh. After we’d looked over the house we sat where we could watch May Anna sip her tea from a tiny white cup that was so fine you could almost see through it. There was gold on the rim, and the handle was the shape of a question mark. May Anna answered all their questions in her new, rich, snooty voice, and you could see them drinking it all in like mules at a trough.

One by one, those ladies came by to say hello to May Anna. She shook each hand they stuck out, saying, “So pleased to meet you,” as gracious as a queen. All of a sudden Whippy Bird poked me in the ribs with her elbow, making me drop my cookie. I started to say cut it out, then I saw her staring at May Anna, whose face had changed. I put down my cup and watched.

Only me and Whippy Bird could see she looked different because we knew how her face froze when she was upset. Her lips moved, but the rest of her face stopped working. Then I looked at the lady who had just said hello to May Anna. Whippy Bird whispered shut your mouth, Effa Commander. She was one of the food basket ladies who went by May Anna’s house before Mrs. Kovaks died. We knew May Anna recognized her, too.

“This is wonderful of you,” the lady drooled over May Anna. “You’ve helped us raise hundreds of dollars for our little food basket program. We present baskets to those less fortunate, you know.”

“I do know,” May Anna said with a little smile.

“You know of our work then?”

“Of course.”

“They do appreciate it so.”

“Do they?”

“Yes. It makes us feel so good.”

“I know.” May Anna smiled all the time, but she put her little cup down on a crocheted doily on the table next to her. The doily was starched so stiff, the ruffle stood up two inches high.

“We’d like to make you an honorary member of our group,” the lady said. She raised her voice so everyone would hear, sounding like she was giving May Anna the Academy Award.

“Oh, no,” May Anna said.

“Why, we insist, don’t we, ladies?” She turned around and looked at all the women, then stopped a minute on me and Whippy Bird, trying to figure out why we were there. Her look made me think that we were out of place in that room. They were all dressed in black and gray with no jewelry, and suddenly we didn’t look so elegant anymore. I knew then that there wasn’t any mix-up in the invitations. They didn’t want to invite us.

“No,” May Anna said.

The lady squinted at May Anna, not understanding. “But why?” she finally asked.

The room was quiet, and everybody watched May Anna, who stood out in her white dress just like she was under a spotlight. Her voice was sweet, and she was still smiling. I pointed to the woman and whispered to Whippy Bird, “Remember May Anna ripping off the legs of those frogs we used to catch? She’s going to do it again.”

“No. I don’t want your membership. Just like I didn’t want your food basket when you tried to give it to me five years ago. Surely you remember? You stayed for tea.” May Anna’s voice had become as cold as Butte in January.

The color went out of that lady’s face even though she was wearing too much rouge, that maroon color that I notice the Ben Franklin is carrying again, and we knew she remembered. May Anna kept on. “You tried to palm off one of your baskets on me. You must remember?” She stopped and looked around the room, pausing just a second to make sure me and Whippy Bird were listening. “You offered me a job as a maid. That’s when I went to work in … in Hollywood.”

Later, May Anna told us she was going to tell those women she went to work in Venus Alley, but when she started to say it, she lost her nerve. She told herself May Anna, no matter how much you want to get even, that’s no way to talk in a house on West Broadway. So instead she stood up like the great actress she was and looked at everybody in the room until she had their attention and said, “So nice of you broads to throw this party for my friends and me.” She looked every one of them in the eye, then smiled at me and Whippy Bird and turned and walked out of the room like she was the queen of England. Me and Whippy Bird, who had learned a thing or two from our best friend the famous actress, were right behind her.

After that trip, we knew May Anna would never come back to Butte to live. In fact, she never came back to Butte at all. It wasn’t just those ladies. It was that May Anna was a big star now, bigger than Butte. There was nothing here for her. May Anna belonged to the world, Whippy Bird said.

We also knew, finally, there were things more important to her than Buster. She loved Buster, all right—he was good to her and she knew he’d always love her, and he was the only man in her life she could ever depend on. Even Jackfish left. But we knew her career was more important. May Anna may have loved Buster, but she loved Marion Street more.

Buster knew that, too, though it didn’t seem to matter so much to him anymore. I guess Buster thought now that they had been reunited, he’d never really lose May Anna even if they didn’t get married and live in a house in Centerville and have kids like the rest of us. “Hell,” he told Pink, “me and May Anna already got married once. If we do it again, that’s bigamy.”

Buster was happy just being around May Anna, and Toney made sure he had plenty of chances to do that. After all the newspaper write-ups at the premiere of
Trouble on the Waterfront
in Butte and the pictures of the two of them, Toney knew May Anna was a sure ticket to fame for Buster. Not that Buster wasn’t famous already, but because of May Anna, Buster got to be known by a whole new group of people who normally didn’t follow boxing. “Icing on the cake,” he said, and he lined up a series of fights in California.

“We’re going to make him a western contender. California’s west, ain’t it?” Toney asked. “Besides, who wouldn’t rather train under a bunch of coconut trees with May Anna Street serving up mint juleps than in a ball-breaking Butte blizzard.” Whippy Bird said he had something there.

May Anna hung around Buster, all right. She went to every Buster Midnight fight in California. Sometimes she brought a crowd of Hollywood people with her and sat ringside in a white dress and a white fur coat and yelled like hell. May Anna knew plenty of things to shout, which was the result of her growing up in Butte. Also a result of working in Venus Alley. A big Hollywood producer who took her to one fight told her, “Good God, Marion, I thought those gangster dame roles were just an act. You talk like the real thing.”

May Anna replied, “Thank you.” When May Anna wrote us that, Whippy Bird said it was not a compliment, even though May Anna thought so.

Sometimes May Anna took Buster to Hollywood parties. At first she dragged him there because Buster didn’t want to go. He said he was liable to knock something over, though like most fighters, he was not clumsy. I’ve seen Buster carry half a dozen full glasses in one hand and not spill a drop. Then he told May Anna he didn’t know what to say to those movie stars and producers. He feared he would be tongue-tied, and everybody would think he was a dummy. That was just after the goofy snapshot of him holding the newspaper upside down was published, and some of the sports writers said Buster didn’t know how to read. One called him a High Country Hick and another said Buster had the body of a buffalo and the brains of a bat. Buster wrote him a letter telling him to turn that inside out—the body of a bat and the brains of a buffalo—and it would describe most reporters he knew, but the paper didn’t print that.

May Anna told Buster that compared to most of the people she met in Hollywood, he was as smart as a college graduate. She said she’d met some dumb noodles in Butte, but they didn’t compare to your movie people. We never thought May Anna was such a smart piece of high grade when she lived in Butte, but when she went to Hollywood, she got a subscription to
Time.
Then, later on, she joined a book club, so maybe she was smarter than we figured. She even had every copy of
Life
ever printed. When she met Mr. Luce, who was the publisher, she told him she had the very first issue of
Life
magazine, and he said imagine that. Maybe that was why he put her picture on the cover later on.

Finally, Buster told May Anna that up there in the ring, he was somebody. Once he put on a suit, he was just a pug. When he wore a tuxedo, he thought he looked like an usher. He was afraid of people handing him their keys and asking would he park the Hudson.

Still, Buster never said no to May Anna, so he let her drag him to parties all over Hollywood. After a while, he even began to enjoy them. Too much, Toney said.

The first party he liked, Buster told us, was the one at Douglas Fairbanks’s house. Buster was treated very nicely by the famous people who were guests and by the not-so-famous people there, too. They were as friendly to Buster as anybody in Butte. Mr. Fairbanks said he was a number-one fight fan, and he’d give up his Hollywood career if he could knock out Jack Dempsey. Hell, who wouldn’t, Whippy Bird said.

Mr. Fairbanks forgot about his other guests and took Buster into his rumpus room and asked him about the fights he’d been in, and did he think he had a chance at the championship, and would he show Mr. Fairbanks in slow motion how to do the famous Buster Midnight punch. Mr. Fairbanks said he could jump through the sky on ropes and fight a duel with real swords, even dive off a boat into the ocean, but he didn’t have the strength he wanted as a fighter. He put Buster right at ease. May Anna said when she discovered Buster had disappeared and went looking for him, she found the two of them in the rumpus room, Buster with his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, teaching Mr. Fairbanks how to throw a punch.

“You ought to learn this, Marion,” Mr. Fairbanks told her. He was crouched over like Buster with his right arm out jabbing at the air. “Buster taught me this punch. It packs a hell of a wallop.”

“I already know how to punch,” May Anna said. I’ve been watching Buster Midnight train since I was five years old. If he can knock out Pig Face, there’s nobody in the world he can’t lick.”

Buster beamed at her. “Pig Face wasn’t so tough,” he said.

“Pig Face?” Mr. Fairbanks asked. “Pig Face?” Then he laughed like it was a joke. “Pig Face!”

“He hit him like this.” May Anna gave Buster a little fake punch in the chin. Then she took Buster’s arm and said, “Come on, You Big Lug. I’ve got to introduce you around.” She called him You Big Lug a lot in Hollywood. There was a picture of them in
Radio Mirror
with the caption MARION STREET AND HER BIG LUG. She liked to stand next to Buster because he made her look fragile. She also liked to stand next to Buster because he got her a lot of attention. He never believed there were people who would rather meet him than Marion Street, though it was true. She said pretty girls were a dime a dozen at Hollywood parties, but people would wait in line to meet a real prize-fighter.

Buster even met Humphrey Bogart at one of those parties. He said it was too bad May Anna was right. Mr. Bogart was a gentleman, but Buster liked him anyway. He wasn’t tough like he was on the screen. He came right up to Buster and said, “Hello. I saw you fight last week. Mind if I ask you a question?”

Every time Buster went to one of those parties, he ended up giving fight lessons. Toney said Buster ought to charge. He’d make more money as a boxing instructor than fighting, and he wouldn’t get beat up either.

Mr. Bogart didn’t care about the Buster Midnight punch, which Mr. Fairbanks did. Instead, he asked Buster about his footwork when he boxed. That was right after the stories about Buster being a dope, and while he showed Mr. Bogart how to place his feet, Buster happened to mention he was embarrassed about what the newspapers printed. Mr. Bogart told him not to pay any attention to what the papers wrote. “All you want is your name up in front of people. When it isn’t, then you worry,” he said. “Not everybody goes to see you fight,” he added. “Some people go because you’re the famous Buster Midnight, so they can tell their friends they saw you.”

“They’ll stop doing that if I stop winning,” Buster told him.

“I guess you’re right,” Mr. Bogart replied. “There’s not a lot of loyalty in the entertainment business.”

Right then, of course, there wasn’t any danger of Buster losing fights even though Toney arranged the toughest matches he ever fought. There was more and more talk about Buster going up against the champ, Clay Tom Baker, and it didn’t come just from Toney. Every sports writer in America talked about Buster as the next heavyweight champion of the world. It was just a matter of time before Toney and the New York promoters signed an agreement that Buster would fight Clay Tom Baker at Madison Square Garden.

We thought Buster would train in California, but Toney felt that May Anna had already given Buster enough exposure. Besides, Toney thought Buster ought to train at a higher altitude to give him stamina. I think the real reason was Toney was afraid Buster was getting soft from going to all those parties. Me and Whippy Bird think Toney was afraid he’d lose his grip with May Anna and her famous friends around. Toney didn’t want to have to fight May Anna for Buster.

So Toney set up training for Buster at Columbia Gardens in Butte, where Buster got his start. He organized a regular old-time fight camp and charged people one dollar to watch Buster work out, though me and Whippy Bird got in free whenever we went down there. Toney even had a special pass made up for Moon, who ran around the ring yelling, “Kill him, Uncle Buster. Kill him dead.” Moon could shout before he could talk.

Afterward, Moon always went home and put on his gloves and hit the punching bag Buster gave him and pretended he was Buster. We all said wouldn’t it be something if little Moon followed in Buster’s footsteps. “We could bill him as the Man in the Moon,” Chick told us.

Whippy Bird said she’d rather Moon got a job where he worked steady. Which is what he did. Moon turned out to be short and scrawny and went to Lake Forest College and became an accountant. “He wasn’t born to fight,” Whippy Bird says. “He was born to add.”

We’ve seen some circuses in Butte but nothing compared with the Buster Midnight Training Camp. People came from all over. Every old boxer in Montana and plenty from outside showed up to be sparring partners. Toney, being a soft touch sometimes, gave training camp tickets even to the ones he turned down.

All the big New York newspapers sent sports writers to cover the training and dig up what they call color—just like they do now when they write about Butte’s copper industry. Me and Whippy Bird must have been interviewed fifty times about what Buster was like as a kid. Every time we talked to a writer, some photographer sneaked up and popped a flashbulb in our faces, so we became celebrities, too. May Anna said she saw a picture of Whippy Bird in a Los Angeles newspaper. We became real professional at giving interviews, which is why so many of your reporters today ask for us at the Jim Hill. The word was out. You want color, you talk to me and Whippy Bird.

Whippy Bird told them Buster once studied to be a priest, that he went to church every day and Pig Face always gave Buster a mass before his fights. She said Pig Face and Buster were old friends, which is about the funniest thing anybody ever printed about Buster. Then she told another reporter that Buster’s father was a copper king, and he owned all the buildings uptown, which was why he was called Broadway Buster. I guess me and Whippy Bird can’t complain about reporters not getting the true facts straight.

I told them Buster’s favorite thing to do was hunt jackalope, which everybody knows is a made-up animal that’s half rabbit, half antelope. I invented jackalope hunting at Pork Chop John’s, which is where me and Whippy Bird still go when we’ve got our faces fixed for a pork chop, and nothing else will satisfy it except one loaded at Pork Chop John’s—Uptown, not on the Flats. We’ve been going to Pork Chop John’s so long, we remember when they left the bone in.

I was passing the time of day with John when a man with an ugly tie and a straw hat sat down on the stool next to me and said he was a reporter from the
Herald-Tribune.
He acted like hot stuff, the way your reporters do today, and he thought I should turn cartwheels just for the privilege of being at the same counter with him. He put a Camel on his lip, fired it up, and said he was looking for a real Butte native and would I answer a couple of questions. I guess he didn’t know that by then I knew the ropes.

I told him I’d answer his questions just as soon as I finished chewing on a burger made out of jackalope that Buster shot, and darn if that fool didn’t believe it. He wrote a story about Buster being a jackalope burger hunter. Me and Whippy Bird thought he’d be embarrassed when he found out he’d been suckered, but all the other reporters picked it up, so he figured he got a regular scoop, as the fellow says. After Toney read that article, he called Buster the Jackalope Burger King of America. For years, people went into Pork Chop John’s and ordered “jackalope” burgers. They got served the pork chop loaded, which is what they call it when they add mustard, pickle, and onion. Toney liked pork chop sandwiches so much he said once that being Pork Chop John would be about the best thing in the world.

Every store in Butte sold Buster Midnight ribbons and pins and other classy souvenirs. Me and Pink bought a Buster Midnight doll with little tiny boxing gloves and orange silk trunks for Moon. I still have my lime green rayon pillow with the gold fringe that says BUTTE, MONTANA, HOME OF BUSTER MIDNIGHT.

There were so many people crowded into Butte and Columbia Gardens for the training that they had to call in the state troopers to keep an eye on things. The law had its hands full stopping people from pestering Buster and arresting the pickpockets and the crooked gamblers. There were hookers, too, of course, but mostly the troopers let them alone. You could tell the hookers because they all tried to look like May Anna, with platinum hair and ankle-strap shoes. They walked up and down at the corner of Broadway and Wyoming where May Anna was discovered, just the way your Hollywood hopefuls hung out at the drugstore where Lana Turner got her break.

Toney never had such a good time in his life as he did when Buster was training. He slicked back his hair, which was parted just off center, and poured some kind of lime toilet water on himself. Toney was the first and only man I ever knew personally who wore perfume. He grew a little Ronald Colman mustache and wore pleated white pants and brown-and-white shoes, just like the Texans do now when they come to Butte in the summer. He tied a silk scarf around his neck, too. Whippy Bird said he looked like a pimp, though she never told Toney that. He thought he was the snazziest thing in the state of Montana, running around and yelling orders to people.