Buster Midnight's Cafe (5 page)

Jackfish was different the next summer, though. Pop said he was becoming too domesticated, that Jackfish needed to get out for the sake of his soul. I guess Jackfish thought so, too. No matter how much Mrs. Kovaks pleaded, Jackfish said he was going prospecting.

“It’s not like I’m stepping,” Jackfish told her. Pop said Jackfish liked the women, but when he lived with Mrs. Kovaks, he never stepped. That didn’t make Mrs. Kovaks feel any better though.

The day Jackfish left, Ma gave him a currant ring, and Pop gave him a bottle of real Canadian whiskey, and Mrs. Kovaks and May Anna hugged him and hugged him. Mrs. Kovaks sat on the porch with a handkerchief to her eyes while me and Whippy Bird and May Anna stood on the steps waving until Jackfish was out of sight.

We didn’t see him again or even hear about anybody running across him the whole summer. Mrs. Kovaks had gone back to the Finlen to work again. May Anna said they needed the money, but we knew her mom was lonely, too. She couldn’t sit around the house all day by herself. Then, after Jackfish had been gone three months, she started stepping. One night, she didn’t come home until almost morning. May Anna never said a word to me and Whippy Bird. But we knew. You always know about stuff like that.

Pretty soon Mrs. Kovaks was going out every night and coming home drunk. We knew May Anna was worried even though she told us her mom was only making friends. Once when me and Whippy Bird went to May Anna’s we heard them arguing.

“If you keep acting like this, Jackfish will throw you out,” May Anna pleaded with her. Mrs. Kovaks said Jackfish couldn’t throw her out because it was her house.

“What if he doesn’t come back, then?” May Anna asked her.

“I already made up my mind he won’t. He’s dead,” Mrs. Kovaks said. “He fell off a mountain or got eaten up by bears.”

When May Anna came out to us, she was pale, dabbing at her eyes with her hanky. “He’ll come back. I know he will. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s over,” May Anna told us. May Anna stopped working on her mother. Instead, she started being as mean as she could be to Mrs. Kovaks’s boyfriends, hoping if she wasn’t nice, they’d go away. But it didn’t work. She even got Buster to threaten Bear Meat Canonia, who was keeping company with Mrs. Kovaks, and though he never came back, Mrs. Kovaks found another man to take his place. Me and Whippy Bird tried to be extra nice to May Anna because we knew she was aching inside.

It got worse and worse. In the fall, when it looked like Mrs. Kovaks was right about Jackfish being dead, Splooks Shea, a bartender from the Blue Parrot, moved in with her, and they spent most of their time together either drunk or getting there.

Jackfish came home in October. Pop saw him first and called to me and Whippy Bird to come and see. Jackfish was trotting down the middle of the street, pushing a jack as hard as he could because he was in a hurry. The jack didn’t go fast enough, so Jackfish ran ahead of it and took the stairs at Mrs. Kovaks’s two at a time. He burst into the house calling for May Anna and Mrs. Kovaks. Then he saw Splooks sitting there in his underwear and Mrs. Kovaks in her slip, both of them having a drink. We never knew what they said or if they said anything at all. It wasn’t a minute before Jackfish came right back out. Pop grabbed his arm and said something about Mrs. Kovaks being a good woman despite how it looked. “Don’t throw away your family, you damned pig-headed Irishman!” he said. But Jackfish pulled away and ran down the street.

That was when me and Whippy Bird heard May Anna. She ran out on the stairs and called out “Jaaaackfish!” in the most pitiful voice I ever heard. Even in
Her Man
when John Garfield ran out, she didn’t sound as mournful as she did that day on the steps of her house. She yelled only once, but you could hear it echo all over Centerville, sounding back and forth like a bell ringing. There was no other sound, just “Jackfish” echoing fainter and fainter. Jackfish never looked back.

The reason Jackfish stayed out so long was he had struck it rich, exactly as he planned, though May Anna didn’t care much about that. She just wanted Jackfish back. It wasn’t a big strike, but it was big enough. It would have put the three of them on Easy Street. Whippy Bird said if Jackfish had moved back in, May Anna never would have become Marion Street, so maybe it was for the best. But then again, maybe not.

Jackfish sold out for a hundred thousand dollars. He went to Europe and mailed May Anna picture postcards every month or two. He never wrote anything, never even signed his name, but May Anna knew they came from Jackfish. After he spent all his money, he came back to Butte and worked as a miner until he got his back broke in a cave-in. Then he went on the dole. May Anna was in Hollywood when Jackfish had the accident, but we wrote her right away and told her about it. She sent Jackfish money every month until he died.

Me and Whippy Bird stopped by to see him from time to time, taking him fresh currant ring, which was his favorite. He said we’d turned out to be regular Cousin Jennies, but his heart wasn’t in teasing us anymore. He came to our house only once after that. It was when Pop died, and he was laid out in the parlor. Ma told me to go to bed since a friend would sit up with Pop that night. I couldn’t sleep, and when I heard somebody talking, I crept downstairs to see who it was. “I shoulda listened to you, Tommy. I’m here to say you were right, and I was a hard-headed damn fool.” I sneaked back up to my room so Jackfish wouldn’t know I’d heard him.

Whenever we went to opening night at one of May Anna’s movies in Butte, there was Jackfish in the audience. You couldn’t miss the red hair. Once I saw him coming out of the theater with tears streaming down his face, and the picture wasn’t even sad.

Buster McKnight turned pro the night somebody spit on Toney McKnight’s shoe. I remember it because it was also the night Pink Varscoe kissed me for the first time.

It was Miners Union Day, and a bunch of us decided to go out to Columbia Gardens. Toney had a fight there that night, and he wanted us to go and cheer for him. Even then, I think he liked Whippy Bird and wanted to impress her, though Whippy Bird says back then he was twice as old as her, and Mr. Bird would have killed him if Toney had so much as put a finger on her. Mr. Bird felt that way about every boy Whippy Bird went out with, especially her husbands. She says Toney just wanted to show off, which he surely did like to do.

Toney’d been a fighter for a couple of years. He started punching as a union thug, beating up miners who spoke out against the union. Then he lined up a few bouts to see if he could make money at it. He wasn’t very good, but he fought dirty, hitting where he wasn’t supposed to, so he won more times than he lost.

He had a heap and said he’d drive all of us, so we didn’t mind if we went. There was me and Whippy Bird and May Anna, Pink Varscoe and Toney and Buster. Whippy Bird says don’t forget Chick O’Reilly. I remember thinking we were snuggled in like honey in a comb, because I kept telling Pink to mind his own beeswax whenever he put his hand on my knee.

It was a busy night. Any night in Butte used to be busy. Sometimes the sidewalks were so crowded you had to walk in the street, even at 4
A.M.
But on Miners Union Day it was busiest of all because everybody in Butte went out on the town. The saloons were full and the restaurants, too. Even the hotels were packed because people came in from out of town for the parade. The reason we were glad to get a ride in Toney’s jalopy was the streetcars were so crowded, it would take forever to get to the Gardens even though they were right at the edge of Butte.

The Gardens were one of the finest things Butte ever had. There was a roller coaster and a merry-go-round and a nice zoo with a bear pit and even peacocks that sometimes got loose and wandered uptown. I always wondered what would happen if one of those birds fell down a mine shaft. The miners were superstitious, and I bet meeting a peacock underground could make them think it was a sign from the devil that their time had come. I’m surprised nobody ever stole one of those birds and took it underground. The sound of a peacock screeching in the stopes would have sounded like a banshee for sure.

The thing I always liked best about the Gardens was the gardens. There were always flower displays. Sometimes the gardeners spelled out
COLUMBIA GARDENS
in different colored flowers that they grew in their own greenhouses. It was swell, all right. There was grass and lots of trees, too, something we didn’t have in Centerville or most any other place in Butte.

And the smells! Who could forget that about Columbia Gardens. The popcorn and the fried grease smells. In Butte it stank of the smelters and that electric smell that came from streetcars. You got the aroma of garlic and onions and Italian sausage from Meaderville or those funny pungent spice smells from the Chinese restaurants and herb shops. At Columbia Gardens, though, you smelled flowers. It was like perfume. Roses and hyacinths and pansies.

The pansies are what I liked most about Columbia Gardens. There was maybe a whole acre in pansies. When we were little, they’d let us kids loose in there for ten minutes, and we could pick as many pansies as we wanted. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I think back to when I was a kid in the pansy garden. I think heaven is being let into that garden by yourself with as much time as you want to pick the flowers.

We weren’t out to pick posies that night, of course, although Pink snitched a rose for me from one of the flower baskets. The night was pretty. Lots of drapey flowers like ferns hanging from the light poles, and there were Chinese lanterns strung up over the sidewalk, too. Whippy Bird says there never were Chinese lanterns at Columbia Gardens, but this is my story, and I’m telling it my way.

We had plenty of time to walk around and go on the rides before the fight. Pink took me on the roller coaster and said he’d hold on to me if I was frightened, but I told him that was stupid. If I was scared, I wouldn’t go. If I wasn’t, I didn’t want him hanging on to me. Besides, if I wanted to fall out, there was nothing he could do to stop me. May Anna told me you were supposed to make men feel like big, strong protectors, even though you knew you didn’t need them. She could do that just fine, but I couldn’t, which is why she went out with Robert Taylor and I didn’t, I guess.

So there we were, smelling the flowers, going on rides, and stuffing ourselves with hot dogs and cotton candy. Except for Toney. He wouldn’t eat anything before a fight for fear he would throw up in the ring, so Buster didn’t eat anything either. I guess that was moral support. You have to say for Buster and Toney, they always backed each other up.

We were standing around the refreshment stand, and Toney said it was about time for him to go suit up for the fight when that guy spit on his shoe. I don’t think he meant to. He took a swig of something that was wrapped in a brown paper sack. It must have been bad because he spit it out on the ground. Only it got all over Toney’s shoe. It was a nice two-toned leather slip-on with a white top, and that man left a big brown stain on it.

That made Toney mad as hell because he spent most of his money on clothes, and he always looked spiffy. He might have thought getting spit on made him look bad in front of Whippy Bird, too. So he grabbed the guy by the tie and said, “Hey, pal, wipe the shoe.”

If Toney had just asked the man to say he was sorry, he might have said okeydoke and done it, but nobody’s going to lean down and clean bad whiskey off your shoe, especially a drunk, dough-faced Bohunk who looks meaner than a mule.

“Clean it yourself, you lousy petticoat,” he told Toney, though I, myself, never thought Toney looked Cornish. He was too big.

“You want to fight, chump?” Toney asked him, putting up his dukes.

Before any of us saw it, and especially before Toney saw it, that Bohunk hit him in the head and knocked him backward. Of course, it took more than that to hurt Toney McKnight. Still, he was sur-prised and stunned some, and him being a fighter, he was plenty mad at not having his defenses up. He hit that man’s chin with his right, then gave him a left to the stomach, and the Bohunk caved in like his brown paper bag.

That set off the chump’s friends, and they started closing in on Toney—until a couple of cops showed up. They took one look at the man lying on the ground and asked who started the fight. The Bohunks pointed to Toney so the cops cuffed him right there.

“Hey, I’m supposed to fight,” Toney told them.

“You just did, bud,” the cop told him right back.

“Not here, over at the ring, you dumb ox.”

I always thought Toney was a goofy thinker when he was mad, and Whippy Bird says that was surely right. She says he wasn’t such a swift thinker when he wasn’t mad either, but she’s just kidding.

“Who you calling dumb ox?” the cop asked Toney.

Well, right there Toney could have apologized, and Buster might have ended his days as just another retired miner.

“You, you stupid bastard,” Toney answered.

Buster didn’t have a temper like his brother, and he tried to explain that Toney was scheduled for a boxing match, but the policeman told him to shut up. “We’re taking him in to cool off,” he said.

By then, Toney realized what he’d done, but it was too late. The cops were dragging him away. “You fight for me,” Toney told Buster.

Buster just stood there with his mouth open. It was like Toney had hit him, too.

“Go on, kid,” Toney called over his shoulder. “Nobody’ll know the difference.” Which was true enough since the two of them looked pretty much alike even though Toney was older.

“I can’t fight!” Buster called back, shaking his head.

“You bet you can!” The cops had taken Toney half a block, one dragging him and the other pushing him along with a nightstick in the back. We were following. “Kid,” Toney pleaded, pulling up short, “I’m in real trouble if I don’t show. You gotta do this for me.”

That’s the only reason Buster fought. He never in his life gave a thought to being a professional fighter before that night. He just always assumed Toney would be the boxer in the family. Buster said he learned fighting just to protect himself, which I already said is not the case. He learned it to impress May Anna. But I think it’s true he hadn’t thought about being a professional.

The cop kept pushing Toney along with his nightstick, and when Toney tried to stop, he gave Toney a chop in the kidneys. “Get going!” he said. That must have been why Buster agreed right there he’d fight.

“Don’t you worry, kid,” Toney yelled. “You just get in the ring with him. It’s only four rounds. Protect your head. You can do it.”

Buster stood there watching Toney until he disappeared in the crowd, then he turned to Pink with kind of a helpless look. “Where’s Toney’s trunks?” he asked.

That made us all laugh because we thought Buster would say something like he couldn’t do it or he was scared or try to bluff and say he would beat the hell out of the other fighter. He didn’t do that. He was cool like he always was, in the ring or out. That was one of Buster’s strengths. In his early matches when the other fighters didn’t know him, they’d say mean things to Buster to get him flustered, like call him a petticoat. It never worked, though.

The only way anyone ever successfully baited Buster was to tease him about his girlfriend being a hooker. It always backfired since it didn’t fluster Buster; it just made him vicious. Like the time Morrie the Mauler told him, “I’m gunna finish you, then celebrate with the blondie in Venus Alley.” Buster didn’t say anything, didn’t even bother to set him up. He just took one step forward and slugged Morrie in the mouth. Morrie went down for the count. Usually, Buster was known as a gentleman. In fact, one or two writers called him the Gentleman from Butte, but he could be mean when it came to sticking up for May Anna.

We were all excited about Buster fighting. Pink and Chick raced over to Toney’s car to get his trunks as well as his shoes, which turned out to be too small for Buster. That’s why he crow-hopped all over the ring that first time, making the sports writer who was there think this was some new kind of foot technique. But then that writer thought the fighter was Toney, not Buster. Toney fought under the name “Kid McKnight,” so nobody knew what his real name was. The two McKnights looked so much alike, nobody could have told you which one was in the ring anyway. Except us, of course.

Nobody cared either. Toney didn’t have many followers except for Buster and Chick and Pink and a few girls you could count on hanging around him because he was such a flashy dresser. Toney was not exactly the biggest fighter in Butte. That’s why he was doing a four-round exhibition match at Columbia Gardens at the same time there was wrestling and foot races going on. You fought for “exposure,” the Gardens said, which is another way of saying the purse wouldn’t pay for more than two rounds of Shawn O’s for Buster’s gang.

I never knew why Toney fought, whether he just liked the attention or whether he actually thought he had a chance at something. Whippy Bird said it was a way to keep out of the mines. He never liked getting his fancy clothes dirty. Everyone said he was “high-toned,” which is where he got his name, of course. May Anna said he was the toniest dresser she ever met, and she would surely know. Toney could have been a bouncer or a bartender or, in fact, the bootlegger he was. He didn’t have to be a fighter. Maybe he didn’t care about it much because he never stood in Buster’s way, never made him feel he’d taken anything away from Toney. I expect Toney knew he ended up with more glory being Buster’s brother and manager than he’d ever have got as Kid McKnight.

Buster went off to the boys’ room to change clothes, then he came back, looking as fancy as Toney in those purple silk shorts.

“Why, Buster, you’re elegant,” May Anna told him. It was the first time I ever heard her purr. Buster looked just like a Columbia Gardens peacock when she said that.

Then he started shadowboxing and doing warm-ups like he’d seen Toney do, though I don’t know if it helped him. May Anna helped him, though. Just before he headed for the ring, she planted a kiss on his mouth and said, “I’m proud of you, Buster. I’ll be watching.” Old Buster, he walked down that aisle like he was already a champ.

Chick acted like his trainer and got the water bucket and the towel and the mouth sponge, though he didn’t know any more what to do with them than the rest of us. Buster was the only one who knew fighting, and that was only because he helped Toney train and used to hang around the Centerville Gym.

I never knew the real name of the man he fought. He was called the Butte Bomber. Buster said he was just some bum, but he looked dangerous to us. He was bigger than Buster, who was no peaweight himself, and he had a broken nose and Happy ears like cartoons you see of prize-fighters. He climbed through the ropes and sneered at Buster, then said so everybody could hear, “Where do they get these kids?”

Like I said, Buster never got flustered, even in his very first fight. He stood there, quiet, just like a gentleman, while Chick laced up his gloves.

May Anna was cool, too, though me and Whippy Bird were sweating buckets. She just smiled sweetly at Buster, kind of like a Madonna, with her hands folded in her lap, her head high. It was the first time I noticed May Anna had a neck like a goose. I think she’d already started practicing being an actress.

Pink sat down next to me. He was sweating, too, with little beads of perspiration standing out on his face. It was as hot there as it ever gets in Butte, but it wasn’t only the heat that got to Pink. He found out the Butte Bomber just about killed somebody in his last fight, and Pink being the damn fool he sometimes was, he told us all about it, so we were scared for Buster. Whippy Bird said if he told that to Buster, she personally would kill him. May Anna wasn’t frightened though. “Buster will take care of Mr. Butte Bomber,” she said.