Buster Midnight's Cafe (23 page)

“I don’t want you to think you’re second choice to May Anna because you’re not. I’m not asking you to marry me because May Anna turned me down. The old Buster wanted to marry May Anna. This here’s a new Buster, and he loves you. You’re the strongest and finest person I know. You always stuck by me, and you never expected anything from me. I think me and you can have a fine life together, Effa Commander.”

noticed it was probably the first time since she was twelve she wasn’t wearing nail polish. “Come close,” she whispered to me and Whippy Bird. The nurse brought folding chairs, and we sat down on either side of the bed. We still had our coats on.

“Did Buster tell you?” she asked me.

“Tell me what?”

“What happened that night with John Reide.”

“We never talked about it. It’s none of my business.” I didn’t want May Anna to talk about it either. Not now.

“Buster’s loyal, all right. I should have married him when I had the chance. I wish I had. You’re a lucky girl, Effa Commander.” She gave me a tiny squeeze with her hand. “Buster’s lucky, too.”

I heard somebody move behind me and turned to see Eddie standing there. There were tears in his eyes. I wanted him to go away. Then I thought, no, he had a right to be there, too. He cared about May Anna just like me and Whippy Bird did, even though he wasn’t as close to her as we were. I didn’t like him because he hadn’t done anything for Buster during the trial. Still, he helped save May Anna’s career, and we owed him for that.

“You mustn’t talk anymore,” the doctor said. He was standing next to May Anna with a needle in his hand.

“No,” May Anna said. “Why do you think I stayed alive so long? I have to say this.”

“Honey, there’s nothing you have to say,” I told her. I could see there was pain all over May Anna, and I wanted her to have that shot. The picture of Mrs. Kovaks dying in the fourplex came back to my mind, and for a second I thought about my own mother and how she made Mrs. Kovaks custard and beef tea. I wondered if anybody had fixed that for May Anna.

She took a deep breath like she was gathering strength to go on. “Buster didn’t kill John Reide. I did. Buster covered up for me.” She sank back in the pillow and closed her eyes.

Her words rolled over me. I was stunned. Whippy Bird’s face froze in shock. After what seemed like forever, Whippy Bird turned to me, and I saw tears streaming down her face—for Buster and May Anna and maybe for me, too. “What happened, May Anna?” she asked for both of us.

May Anna didn’t answer right away. She’d spent so much of her strength saying what she had to that all she could do for a minute was open and close her eyes. Behind me, I heard the doctor whisper something, but I couldn’t make out the words. The nurse went into May Anna’s bathroom and turned on the faucet then came back and handed me a glass of water. I shook my head but didn’t look at her. I kept staring at May Anna, waiting for her to speak.

At last May Anna said, “John and I had a fight. I shot him. Then I called Buster, and when he came, I gave the performance of my life. I should have won an Oscar for it.” Her lips turned up just a little. “You know how I can cry when I want to. So Buster confessed. I knew he would. I didn’t have to ask him. He always looked out for me.”

I was so weak I grabbed the edge of the bed with both hands to keep from falling off the chair. May Anna had ruined Buster in the prime of his career. On purpose. That good man gave up his life’s work for her, sacrificed his reputation, and went to prison for something he didn’t do. She had done a terrible thing. Terrible.

Whippy Bird was waiting for me to speak, but the words didn’t come. We were all silent for a long time. Only the nurse moved. She straightened May Anna’s pillows and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead.

Whippy Bird whispered at last, “Effa Commander … say something.” I knew how upset Whippy Bird was when she turned to me for words.

Still, I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was think that the person Buster had loved most in the world almost destroyed him—and for no better reason than to keep on being a movie star. Then I told myself, Effa Commander, you can’t let a dying woman know what an awful thing she did. Besides, it wasn’t my place to say it to her. What happened was between Buster and May Anna. If Buster didn’t hold it against her, how could I?

When I was in control of myself again, I took her hand. “It was Buster’s decision, May Anna. It’s over.”

“No, it’s not,” May Anna said. “There’s an envelope for you. I wrote it all out last week. The attorney signed it, so it’s legal. I want you to tell the newspapers. It’s time I made it up to Buster. Please, Effa Commander, let me do right by Buster.” There were tears in her eyes, maybe the first real tears of her life. I could feel just the slightest pressure from her hand, so I squeezed back. While I did, I thought that May Anna Kovaks had made a bad mistake, but she surely had some kind of courage. She waited for us in pain, and she was willing to ruin the legend of Marion Street to make things up to Buster.

“You’re a good person, May Anna,” I said. “I’ll do the right thing.”

May Anna closed her eyes then shivered as the pain shot through her. I could see she needed the medicine fast and motioned for the doctor to give her a shot. In a minute she was asleep. Peaceful.

Eddie walked over to the bed and kissed May Anna on the cheek. Then he left. Me and Whippy Bird got up and took off our coats. “Does she still know we’re here?” Whippy Bird asked the doctor.

“I don’t know. She might. You can sit with her if you like. Sometimes we think voices penetrate.”

So me and Whippy Bird sat by May Anna’s bed all that day and through the night, one of us on each side, holding her hands. We talked to her about Jackfish and laughed when we remembered the April Fools’ Day joke. “I never heard you crack up the way you did that day, May Anna.” Whippy Bird shook her head. “Me and Effa Commander were sure a pair of damn fools, all right.”

We remembered the raft, too, telling May Anna if she hadn’t gotten a tomato in the face, Buster never would have become a famous boxer.

Once Whippy Bird asked the nurse, “Would you be so kind as to bring us some coffee?” Then we both burst out laughing. After that we cried for a long, long time.

We talked about the movie stars we saw at May Anna’s party, though we didn’t mention John Reide. I said, “May Anna, do you know because of you, me and Whippy Bird got to meet some of the most famous people in the world? Why if it wasn’t for you, we’d be just two Butte nobodies.”

“We still are,” Whippy Bird said.

The doctor laughed. “That sounds like something Marion would say. You girls must have had a good time together. You’re three of a kind.”

“We surely are,” I said. “We were the Unholy Three.”

“She was going to be a nun once—-before she decided to become a movie star,” Whippy Bird told him. Then she looked at May Anna. “I wonder what would have happened if you’d gone ahead and become a nun.”

“Buster McKnight would have slit his throat. You surely saved his soul when you turned out,” I said.

“And yours, too, Effa Commander,” Whippy Bird added.

“She’ll see Pink and Chick before we do,” I told Whippy Bird at about three in the morning.

“She’ll meet Maybird, too,” said Whippy Bird. It made me smile to think she would get to meet my little girl.

In the morning, May Anna died.

We didn’t stay for the service. It was Marion Street’s funeral, not May Anna’s. We didn’t want to see flashbulbs go off and crazy people cry and grab flowers for keepsakes. It was bad enough with the people who came to the house or called. Reporters mostly. Louella Parsons wrote that “the heavens burn brighter tonight because one of Hollywood’s shining stars has joined them.”

“That’s a bunch of crap,” Whippy Bird said, and she surely was right.

We wanted May Anna to be buried in Butte, next to her mother, but Eddie said she told him to cremate her and spread the ashes over a field of white lilies not far from her house.

May Anna’s lawyer wanted us to stay and listen to the will since she left us something, but we said we weren’t gold diggers. We came to be with May Anna in her final hour. So the lawyer sent us the things May Anna left us, which included the stuff I already told you about and some of her better jewelry, and fifty thousand dollars each, which was enough to live on for the rest of our lives. She also canceled the loan on the cafe. Even though she was the bookkeeper, Whippy Bird never knew Toney got the money from May Anna. He told us he had friends from Buster’s boxing days who wanted to invest in the place. If we’d thought about it, though, we’d have figured out he went straight to May Anna.

Before we left, Eddie asked me what I planned to do about the letter May Anna wrote. I said I would talk it over with Buster before I sent it to the newspapers. Eddie told us he didn’t know anything about May Anna doing the shooting until she wrote the letter. Still, he hoped we would not throw mud on a legend now that May Anna was dead. I told Whippy Bird he was in love with May Anna, and she said so what else is new.

Father Pig Face gave a service for May Anna only an hour after we got back to Butte. Toney was running the restaurant, so Buster met us at the train and told us about it. He refused to go. He said he still wanted to bust Pig Face after all those years. May Anna didn’t have many friends left in Butte, so me and Whippy Bird decided we ought to be there. She had a lot of fans in Butte, though, because the church was jammed.

It wasn’t a funeral. It was just a memory service with Pig Face talking about May Anna and how much joy she gave the world. I thought he laid it on a little thick about him growing up with her and being good friends, which we knew they weren’t. Whippy Bird said that was all right because priests had an in with God, and it might do May Anna some good. He looked truly sad when he talked about her, which Whippy Bird said he had reason to be since May Anna wouldn’t be sending him any more money for candles. There were plenty of candles lit for May Anna that day. I thought Pig Face was responsible. Whippy Bird said that might be so since he could light them for free.

Buster being the loyal person he was waited for me on the steps until the service ended. He and Pig Face nodded at each other, but they didn’t shake hands. It looked to me like Pig Face was still afraid of him.

“I didn’t bring the Jackpot. I thought maybe you’d like to walk home,” Buster said. It was winter, but the sun was out, shining so bright it made your eyes sting. We said good-bye to Whippy Bird, and Buster waved to Nell Nolan. Then we walked down North Main. It was the first time I’d been alone with Buster since I got back.

“How did Pig Face get his name?” I asked.

“You ever look at him?” Buster said, and we laughed. It surely was easy being married to Buster, I thought as we walked along. We both liked to walk, and our strides matched.

“May Anna was awake when we got there,” I said.

Buster nodded.

“We had a chance to say good-bye.”

“That’s good.”

“She talked, too.” I stopped by a cribbing that held back the hill on Woolman Street and looked up at Buster. “May Anna told me. She told me she killed John Reide, not you. It was her deathbed confession.”

Buster looked at the headframes on the Hill. After a minute, he rubbed his hand across his forehead, and I saw his eyes were red, so I looked away.

“She wrote it all down,” I continued. “It’s in a letter in my purse. She told me to tell the newspapers.” He didn’t reply. Then he took my arm, and we walked on. “It’s what she wanted. Now’s the time to tell the truth. That’s what May Anna said.”

Whatever went through Buster’s mind just then, he didn’t tell me. He put his arm around me and squeezed so hard I thought he’d bust me in half. It was cold, and we walked the last few blocks as fast as we could. When we got home, Buster put three logs in the fireplace and lit them then he sat down in the easy chair. I hung up our coats and perched on the footstool next to him. For the first time since I left Butte, I felt warm, and it wasn’t just because of the fire.

I opened my pocketbook and took out the letter. It was addressed to me. “Me and Whippy Bird read it about a dozen times,” I said, handing it to Buster. “The lawyer wrote it all down, just the way May Anna told us.”

Buster let the envelope sit in his lap while he stared into the fire. “You want a drink?” I asked, but he shook his head. “May Anna’s a good person. She loved you. She proved it when she wrote that letter.” Maybe I should have been jealous, but I wasn’t. May Anna was dead, and I could surely share Buster with her memory.

We sat by that fire a long time, maybe an hour. The flames died down, so I wadded up some newspaper and lit it with a match. After it caught, I added more logs. Outside, it turned dark and a thick snow started blowing against the house. After a while, I went to the window to watch the lights come on all over the Hill. Then I turned on the lamp and sat down on the arm of Buster’s easy chair. “Read it, Buster,” I said, picking up the envelope from his lap and handing it to him.

Buster sighed then took the letter out of the envelope and looked at it for a few minutes until he could focus on the words. First, he read it slowly, then he read it again. The fire flared up as pitch seeped from a log, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the flame light up Buster’s face. He was still the handsomest man I ever knew. At last he folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.

“Babe,” Buster said at last, “May Anna lied.” He tore the letter in half and threw both pieces into the fire.

I finished this book without the inspiration of Whippy Bird. She passed on in the spring, just before the roses bloomed at the house on West Broadway I bought with some of my inherited money from May Anna. The day I signed the papers, I told Whippy Bird I surely wished May Anna knew she’d bought me a house on West Broadway.

“She knows,” Whippy Bird said. That was thirty-five years ago.

One of the last things Whippy Bird told me before she crossed over was: “You have a mission, Effa Commander, and it is to polish a golden Hollywood legend that Hunter Harper tarnished. Even if I’m not here to push you. You have a responsibility to finish the book.” Once more, she was right.

After his book came out I never looked at Hunter Harper without wanting to lob an ore chunk at his pea brain for writing down that he had investigated and discovered Marion Street committed the murder of John Reide, and Buster covered it up. Besides being wrong, that was not a major scoop on his part anyway because the story was Hollywood gossip for years after May Anna died—courtesy of the nurse at her deathbed or maybe the attorney. Still, after Hunter Harper’s book came out,
People
magazine and
Parade
and all the others picked up the story and printed it. That was why me and Whippy Bird thought it was important to write the true facts and why I finished the book even without the help of my lifetime friend, Whippy Bird O’Reilly McKnight.

“It was May Anna’s goodness that made her tell us she killed that man,” Whippy Bird said once.

“And Buster’s goodness that he didn’t let us believe it,” I said.

“She was willing to sacrifice her world reputation for our friendship. And for love of Buster, too.”

“I guess in the end, there’s nothing that matters more than friends. But you and me always knew that, Whippy Bird,” I told her.

It was the cancer. Whippy Bird was brave as she always was. She never complained even when her hair fell out from the chemo and she couldn’t eat. Moon’s oldest boy, Bumbo, brought her marijuana cigarettes to make her feel better, and me and Whippy Bird Sat in her bedroom and smoked them until we both felt fine. I said since I gave up tobacco cigarettes with Whippy Bird, it made sense to start smoking dope with her.

“Funny, isn’t it, you losing your two best friends from cancer, even though I’ve lived twice as long as May Anna,” Whippy Bird said. “We’re both going out on cotton sheets, too. I never did understand why they wouldn’t let May Anna die on satin. I always wondered, were May Anna’s cotton sheets round like her bed?”

“Square like your head. I haven’t lost you yet. I could still go first,” I told her.

“No you won’t, Effa Commander, and you’ll have to plan the funeral. No cremation either. That’s because no matter where you scatter my ashes, they’ll blow into the mine pit, and I’ll end up as a copper pipe in somebody’s bathroom.”

“You want a Pig Face service?” I asked. Pig Face gave a nice funeral for Toney when he died, even though he wasn’t Catholic. But I wouldn’t let him touch Buster.

“No, but I think it would be real nice if you lobbed a tomato at him. You can put in the paper that instead of flowers, people should throw tomatoes at BS. You know, Buster beat up Pig Face because May Anna got a tomato in the face, but I must have got a dozen, and he didn’t do anything.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.

I was with her at the end, me on one side and Moon on the other, holding her hands, just like me and Whippy Bird were with May Anna. The last thing she said to me was: “It’s not dying I mind, Effa Commander. It’s leaving Butte.”

“What she means is leaving you,” Moon said.

I knew that. Because we were one person. Losing Whippy Bird was like the ore vein in me had pinched out. I can’t remember when she wasn’t my best friend. We were closer to each other than we were even to our husbands. Part of me died with Whippy Bird that day.

Not long after we buried Whippy Bird, I was having a sandwich in Pork Chop John’s Uptown, when Pig Face sat down on the stool next to me and ordered one loaded. “We’re the only ones left, Effa Commander,” he said. “We’re the last of a great era.” I nodded. We were the same era, all right, but Pig Face wasn’t privileged to be part of the gang of me and Whippy Bird, Pink and Chick, Buster and Toney, and May Anna Kovaks.

Those memories kept me going during the terrible days after I lost Whippy Bird. I tried to go on as I always had, watching television at my little house on West Broadway or listening to Oakie O’Connor and other Butte people I knew on Buster’s old Emerson radio. There was the Senior Center for when I wanted to go out. And every week Moon invited me for dinner with his wife and the boys.

A few months later, after I’d begun feeling better, Moon came by with a big cardboard box for me from Whippy Bird. Inside were the things May Anna left her along with Whippy Bird’s snapshot album of when we were kids and Toney’s collection of Buster Midnight stuff. There was the scrapbook Toney kept on Buster throughout his career, and some posters of Buster as the champ. They’re worth about a hundred dollars each now, but you’d never get me to sell them. “I will surely enjoy these, but you made an extra trip for yourself,” I said. “You’ll have to come back and pick them up when I cross over.” After Buster died, I drew up a will leaving everything to Moon.

“That won’t be for a long time,” Moon said. Then he invited me down to the Jim Hill for a cup of coffee. “You have to get on with your life, Aunt Effa Commander,” he said.

“You are just like your mother, telling me that,” I said wiping away a tear. “She told me that every time something of serious importance happened to me.” Like when Buster and Toney died, ten years ago, only a few months apart. Once more, we were widows together. We grieved for a time, just as we had before, with me refusing to step foot inside the restaurant after we sold it. Then one day Whippy Bird said “Effa Commander, we have to get on with our lives. It’s time me and you had lunch,” and she marched us right into Buster Midnight’s Cafe, only they’d changed the name to the Kopper Kamp Kafe by then. We ordered a BLT and an iced tea. From then on, I didn’t have any trouble walking inside.

The new owners asked to buy all Buster’s photographs and trophies and ribbons and even Toney’s old purple silk trunks that Buster wore when he fought at Columbia Gardens. Me and Whippy Bird said no. They should go to the history museum as a memorial, which is where they are now, in the Buster Midnight Room. We wouldn’t let them use Buster’s name on the restaurant either. We thought the people might not buy the cafe when we told them that. Then they decided the location was good, and if they kept the old menu, people would keep on coming in.

There’s a room at the museum for May Anna, too, which also has things we donated, like the fur scarf she gave Ma and the dresses she sent us during the war. Also the Brown Jug sign, though I am the only one left who knows it’s true historical significance for Buster Midnight and Marion Street. She’s a big tourist attraction in Butte these days. The city council wanted to name a street for her until they found out there already is a Marion Street.

Some people think the sculptor used May Anna’s face on the “Madonna of the Mountains,” the statue they put up outside Butte, but me and Whippy Bird knew it didn’t look anything like May Anna. We like the “Madonna” anyway. “Work of art,” Whippy Bird said when she saw it gleaming in the sun. “Work of art.”

Moon was right. It was time to go on with my life and visit the Jim Hill once more, though it was hard knowing I’d never see Whippy Bird behind the counter again. So one morning I woke up and said today’s the day, Effa Commander. I waited until 11
A.M.,
too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. Just the regulars were there along with a few tourists. I waved to Joe Mapes who was sitting in his office, then I sat down at the end of the counter.

“Hi, honey, you want a cheese sand?” Alta asked me. That’s what she says to everybody, and sometimes it works. You go in there to get a cup of coffee, and you end up having a sandwich, too. I tell her just the regular. I don’t have to tell her no decaf because she knows. “Here you go, kid,” she said putting down the cup on the counter. Since I was there the last time, Joe Mapes bought new cups with two green rings on them, a wide ring at the top, and a narrow one below it. I missed the old china mugs where you could feel the scratches with your tongue.

Everybody was watching Hunter Harper talking to a pair of tourists. Not much has changed, I thought, except that everybody got a little older in the six months since I’d been there. That, and the fact it was Hunter Harper entertaining the tourists instead of Whippy Bird. Alta doesn’t like to talk to people she doesn’t know. Once me and Whippy Bird heard a reporter try to get her to say something he could put in his newspaper, so he asked, “How’s tips?”

Alta leaned against the counter, took a puff on her Kent, which she put back in the ash tray in front of the reporter so the smoke went in his face, and said, “They’re worse than the shits, honey.”

So now Hunter Harper was the geyser of information. I didn’t pay any attention to him, just sat there and tried to think about Whippy Bird standing behind the counter, making pancakes, wondering if I ought to order some for old times’ sake even though I already had my breakfast. I nodded down the counter at Jimmy Soo, who was a cook at the West Park when I ran it and at Buster Midnight’s Cafe, too. Jimmy’s mind wanders these days, and sometimes when things get dull, he dumps his food on the counter and eats his ham and eggs right off the Formica. Whippy Bird claimed there was nothing wrong with him when he did that since the counter was as clean as the plate. It was when he put a tea bag in his coffee that you knew his mind had gone.

I heard a tourist ask about Marion Street and smiled at my coffee while I waited for Hunter Harper to say that Marion Street sounds like an
ay-dress.
That’s what Whippy Bird would have said. I heard her say that hundreds of times and laughed at every one. He didn’t, though. Hunter was not a wit like Whippy Bird.

Little bits of Hunter Harper’s story came down the bar to me for a few minutes, but I was too wrapped up in my memories to pay much attention. I started to listen, though, when I heard him say my name.

“There were three of them. Two of them were good friends of mine. Marion Street, whose real name was May Anna Kovak,” which wasn’t true. As you know, it was Kovaks with an
s.
Then he said, “The other two were Whippy Bird and Effa Commander. God knows what their real names were.” He stopped so the tourists could laugh. “They called themselves the Holy Three.”

“Unholy Three,” I muttered. The man on the next stool glared at me like I was older than God and moved his coffee away.

“You know, Whippy worked behind this counter until she died a few months ago.” I curled my lip when I heard that, since only people who didn’t know Whippy Bird called her Whippy.

“Effa Commander’s in a rest home, God bless her soul,” he continued. I glanced at Alta, who blew smoke at Hunter for that. I wasn’t any more in a rest home than he was. I was only seventy-five, though like May Anna, I liked to shave the years a little.

“Three peas in a pod, they were,” he continued. “All worked in Venus Alley, which is what we called the red-light district here in Butte. That’s how come they knew Buster Midnight. He was a real ladies’ man.” He stopped, and one of the tourists asked him a question I couldn’t hear.

“No, Marion Street was just a working girl. I think Whippy was the madam. I’m revising my book, and I’m going to include that.”

I was used to people making up lies about May Anna and even Buster. They were legend, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. But not Whippy Bird. And not by a jackass like Hunter Harper.

I put down my coffee, real slow, so I wouldn’t spill it because I was so mad I was shaking. Then I got down off the stool. Joe Mapes heard what Hunter Harper said, and he came out of his little office to shut him up. Jimmy Soo stood up, too, being the gentleman your Orientals always were in Butte, but I shook my head at them. Nobody had to fight battles for me and Whippy Bird. And nobody was going to talk about Whippy Bird like that when Effa Commander was around.

I walked down the counter to Hunter Harper and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and blinked at me like he didn’t know who I was.

“I’m your old friend, Effa Commander, escaped from the rest home,” I told him. Then I saw everybody watching me, and I remembered May Anna losing her nerve at the end of the charity tea with the food basket ladies, when she’d started to tell them she’d moved to Venus Alley but said Hollywood instead. May Anna chickened out, but I wasn’t going to back down. I was the defender of Whippy Bird. “Put this in your damn fool book,” I told him. Then I smiled a little, looked away, wound up, and decked him with a Buster Midnight.