Buster Midnight's Cafe (15 page)

Not a minute after Moon disappeared around the corner, I saw Whippy Bird coming back in the opposite direction. She waved, holding up the grocery sack so I could see she’d gotten the bread. When I realized Chick would never see that pretty girl walking down the street again, wearing a smile on her face like she always did, I had to go inside to compose myself.

“I wish I’d taken our ration book,” Whippy Bird chattered as she came through the door. “The Nickel had more sugar than I’ve seen since the war started.” She handed me the bread. “I surely did take my time down there looking at it. I hope Moon won’t be late for school.”

“I sent him on already. I can take his lunch later.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Effa Commander. I’ll go by on my way to work and take the bus from there.” When I didn’t reply or even move to make Moon’s sandwiches, Whippy Bird looked at me closely. “What’s going on?” Then she saw the telegram in my hand. “Is that from May Anna?” But I could tell from her voice she knew it wasn’t. I tried to answer her, but there was a lump in my throat like a chunk of ore so I just shook my head.

“Then it’s not from May Anna?” she asked again.

“No,” I said. “It’s from the army.” She looked at that piece of paper in my hand for the longest time.

“Chick or Pink?” she whispered at last.

“Chick. Honey, I’m so sorry. He’s dead.” I put out my arms, and she fell into them sobbing.

“Pink?” Whippy Bird asked, the tears still streaming down her face. That was just like Whippy Bird to think of me while her own heart was breaking.

“He’s all right,” I said, though I didn’t know any such thing. I kept telling myself if he wasn’t, there would have been two telegrams instead of one. I hoped Pink was with Chick in his final hour. I couldn’t bear it if Chick died among strangers.

“Moon?” she asked. “Does Moon know?”

“No. We can tell him when he comes home.” I remembered how Whippy Bird had helped me with my sorrow when Maybird died, letting me cry and cry until I was numb. Whippy Bird needed her cry now just like I did then. There would be time enough for poor little Moon later.

Whippy Bird held on to me, her head against my shoulder, crying until the tears wouldn’t come any more. When she was quiet, I patted her on the back, just the way I had comforted little Maybird when I held her. “Do you want to read the telegram?” I asked at last. It was still wadded up in my hand. Whippy Bird wiped her eyes with her hands then took the paper and read it slowly. When she finished she handed the telegram back to me, and I straightened it and put it in the envelope.

Whippy Bird watched as I set it on the table, then gave a long sigh and took off her coat. It was bright green with a black velvet collar. Chick gave it to her for her thirty-first birthday, just before he went overseas. I got out a hanger but Whippy Bird shook her head. “Remember how surprised I was when Chick bought me this coat?” She blew her nose. “I wore it to the station when the boys left. Chick made me promise to wear it when he came back, even if it was the middle of July.”

Whippy Bird folded her coat lengthwise with the sleeves inside, then folded it in half and in half again until it was the size of a pillow. She pressed the thick wool to her cheek then lay down on the sofa with the coat tucked under head and closed her eyes. I sat on the arm of the sofa smoothing her hair with my hand. When I thought she was asleep, I got up for a blanket.

“Don’t go, Effa Commander,” Whippy Bird said softly without opening her eyes.

“I’m right here.” I sat down on the floor next to Whippy Bird.

“Green was Chick’s favorite color,” she said.

“That’s because your eyes are green,” I told her.

“Do you think he was in pain?”

I thought it over. “I hope not. The telegram said they’d send a letter. Pink will write, too, of course.” That made me feel better because I knew Pink would tell Whippy Bird Chick died easy. Pink would never in this world let Whippy Bird know if Chick suffered.

‘I hope he was close by.”

“You know Pink was right there. Nothing could keep those two boys apart. Pink would give his life for Chick.”

“I know.” Whippy Bird said as she reached for my hand. “They’ve always been close.”

“Just as thick as the Unholy Three,” I told her.

Chick was buried overseas in a soldiers’ cemetery, but we still held a service in Butte. May Anna wanted to come, but she was in the middle of a picture so Whippy Bird told her to stay where she was, that it meant more to her that she had been with Chick in North Africa. Buster and Toney couldn’t come either since Buster was training for a fight, but Toney called Whippy Bird and talked for thirty minutes long-distance, telling her if she needed anything at all, to let him know. He told me that, too, and was disappointed when I couldn’t think of anything for him to take care of.

The telegram about Pink came exactly four weeks later, the very same day, a Wednesday. Moon was at school. The first thing I did this time was look at the name on the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. P. M. Varscoe, and that told me what was inside. Nobody but me and Whippy Bird and the army knew there was a P. M. Varscoe. I closed the door and sat down in the rocker before I opened the envelope.

The words were the same as in the telegram about Chick, only there was Pink’s name instead.

I knew we might lose one of the boys, but not both of them. When Chick was killed, I thought in my heart that meant Pink was safe. Now he was gone, too, and it wasn’t fair, just like it wasn’t fair to lose Maybird. But this time I didn’t cry. I just sat there and rocked. I remembered how happy I was that day Pink gave me the rocker. I was pregnant for the first time, and he was always bringing surprises like toys for the baby or orchid corsages for me. Pink bought the rocker while I was at work, and when I came home, he was sitting in it with a big smile on his face. “Hi, Mom,” he said when I came through the door. Then he pulled me down on his lap, and we rocked back and forth like that while I thought I surely was the luckiest girl in the world. I grieved for Pink and Maybird. Then I grieved for Chick again, and for me and Whippy Bird and Moon.

I don’t know how long after that the phone rang. Somehow I got up out of the chair to answer it.

“Effa Commander. Were you outside? One of the girls here invited me and you and Moon for supper tonight. I thought it might be nice to get Moon out of the house, that is if you haven’t started cooking.” When I didn’t answer, Whippy Bird said, “Effa Commander? Is something wrong?”

“It’s Pink.”

“Pink?”

“Killed.”

“Oh, honey. I’ll be right there.”

So me and Whippy Bird clung to each other again, and when Moon came home from school, he cried with us.

“No Uncle Pink either?” he whispered to Whippy Bird.

She shook her head.

“No daddies,” Moon said after he thought it over. “But you and Aunt Effa Commander can still be my mamas.”

“I guess he’s the man of the family now,” I told Whippy Bird through my tears.

May Anna sent even more roses for Pink’s service. When I talked to her on the telephone, she told me she knew Pink was with little Maybird. That was a comfort to hear, and it was exactly what Whippy Bird told me when she got home after my telegram came. Buster couldn’t attend the service because he had a fight scheduled in Los Angeles, but Toney came, which surprised me. The two of them lived on the West Coast now, and Toney’d always been with Buster at his fights.

Afterward, when I stood in front of the church, shaking hands with the people who came to remember Pink, Toney gave both me and Whippy Bird a hug and said it wasn’t right, two of his best friends being taken like that. He asked if he could do anything for me, but I said just him being there meant a lot.

“There’s one thing,” Toney said, looking everywhere but at us. “After Chick died … well, I bought that house you’re renting. I wanted to make sure you had a place to live. I’m going to put it in both of your names just in case something happens to me. I’m only telling you about it now because I’m joining up tomorrow.”

Me and Whippy Bird looked at him like he was crazy. “Why would you do a thing like that?” Whippy Bird asked him.

“It’s my duty.”

“To buy us a house?” I said. Even May Anna didn’t buy us houses.

“Oh, that’s nothing. Me and Buster have lots of money. It was Buster’s idea anyway.”

But it wasn’t. Later on, when I thanked Buster for that generous thought, he told us he wished he could claim it, but he couldn’t. He said Toney always did look out for Whippy Bird even if she never knew it. That made me and Whippy Bird think about Toney in a new way. He’d always been Buster’s brother, Toney the hustler. Now we thought about him being a separate person, and a fine person, too.

Toney just laughed at me and Whippy Bird standing there, struck dumb. “It’s worth it to see the look on your faces. Maybe I ought to buy a house for Moon, too.” That’s when he sounded more like the old Toney, who did things just for the hell of it.

Then Whippy Bird remembered Toney said he was joining up. “You don’t have to do that,” she told him. “You can get out of it. We already lost Chick and Pink. We don’t have to give every damn boy in Butte to the war.”

Toney tried to explain, but I could see it wasn’t easy for him. He was used to talking big. He wasn’t used to saying what was in his heart. “It just isn’t right,” he said finally. “Chick and Pink gave their lives, and what am I doing? Sitting around throwing down the booze with May Anna’s friends and getting on Buster to skip rope. I’m not so proud of myself. So I talked it over with Buster, and he agrees that me joining up is the right thing to do.”

“Why, Toney, you’ve got a conscience!” I told him. He blushed, but he didn’t deny it. The next day Toney joined the navy, and we didn’t see him again until the end of the war.

We had our grief, me and Whippy Bird. I’d get home from work just after midnight and see Whippy Bird through the window, sitting in the rocker with her head in her hands, crying. She had to hold herself together during the day because of her job and because of Moon. It was hardest for her in the evenings, when I was at Gamer’s, and Moon was in bed, and she was alone. When I came home and found her like that, I would fix us a bourbon and seven and put some records on the victrola. Then we’d talk about the days when we used to go to the Brown Jug before the war started and it was turned into a pig farm.

Sometimes, at three in the morning, Whippy Bird would hear me stirring and know I was having a hard time. So she’d bring in hot chocolate and marshmallows, and we’d sit there in our nightgowns, talking just the way we did when we were little girls spending the night together.

Whippy Bird was the only one who understood what I was going through because she was going through the same thing. Ditto for me. We helped each other with our sorrow. She even understood about my having a double loss. She had Moon at least. But I’d lost both Pink and my little girl, and there were times when I didn’t care if I lived or died. That was when she told me how much Moon loved me and how she’d never be able to raise him without me.

When I was really blue, Whippy Bird told me I ought to think about a career in the restaurant business. That was hard to imagine because I never in my life wanted to be anything more than Pink’s wife. I never thought about having a job after Pink came home. Now I could see that I would have to support myself for the rest of my life. “I should have been smart like May Anna and gone to Venus Alley when I had the chance,” I said.

“What chance was that?” Whippy Bird asked, and I had to laugh because I surely was not cut out to be a hooker. Whippy Bird told me I had a talent for cooking just the way May Anna had a talent for other things, and I ought not to waste it. I told her May Anna was at the head of the line when they passed out talent, and I was at the tail end, stuck with the leftovers.

May Anna let us have our grief. She let us go through that awful winter. She’d lived through enough Butte winters to know how cold and depressing they were even if you didn’t have sorrows. Maybe that was the reason she sent that silly little lace jacket when Maybird was born. There were weeks when the sun didn’t come out at all, and the coal smoke hung over the town like a black cloud. It got so cold you thought you’d never get warm again. You couldn’t walk more than a block without ducking into a store to get warmed up. We’d do a fine business selling pasties at Gamer’s to people who came in just for a minute to get out of the cold. That fresh, crusty smell alone warmed them and they bought the hot pasties to put in their pockets to keep their hands from freezing.

One time it was so cold, I stopped in a florist shop and pretended I was going to buy flowers. It was steamy inside, and the windows were striped from drops of water that rolled down the panes. The smell of flowers was so sweet it made me think of the gardenias Mrs. Kovaks wore, but when I told Lottie Palagi, who ran the shop, I wanted a gardenia to take with me, she said it would freeze in the cold. She knew I wasn’t there to buy flowers anyway and let me stay as long as I wanted. Lottie said she always stopped in Gamer’s for the same reason.

After a cold spell like that, there were warm days with the sky so blue, it hurt your eyes. Those were the days we bundled Moon up and took him out on his sled. When we got home, his face was sunburned. Then just when we thought spring was surely coming, the weather turned again, and it was always worse than before.

After we went through that first winter without the boys, May Anna called us up long-distance and said she was sending us tickets on the North Coast Limited to come and visit her. Whippy Bird refused at first. “You can’t do that, May Anna. You spent too much money on us already.”

“God almighty, Whippy Bird, if you don’t get out of Butte, you’ll turn gray and old, just like the snow,” she said.

“And most likely melt out in the spring,” I added since Whippy Bird held the receiver so we could both hear.

“You, Effa Commander. Just wait until you see the flowers. You never saw anything in your life like the flowers in California.”

We thanked her for the kindness but said no. Whippy Bird told her she wouldn’t leave Moon, and I said I couldn’t get off work. “You have to. You just have to,” May Anna pleaded. “Won’t you do it for me? I need you.”