Buster Midnight's Cafe (6 page)

We weren’t as sure as May Anna. Buster came out of his corner quiet, not looking scared, but not looking like he was out for a fight either. He never glanced at us, not once, but I was sure he knew right where May Anna was sitting. When the fight started, he danced around with the Bomber for a few minutes in those tight shoes. Meanwhile, we were hoping and praying Buster could just keep doing that for four rounds without getting killed.

After dancing for what seemed like an hour, the Butte Bomber lashed out at Buster. Buster dodged him, and they went back to sidestepping. It didn’t start as much of a fight, them just moving around, making little swipes and dodging each other. A couple of times, the Butte Bomber connected, and once he knocked Buster down for a count of two. We were worried when that happened, but Buster hopped right up. He told us later the only reason he fell was because of those tight shoes. It was a pretty boring start, the boys said, and they knew more about it than me and Whippy Bird. It was so boring, in fact, that when the second round ended, people booed.

I think that was what got Buster going. Up to that time, he was just trying to get along without being hurt. But the crowd booed Kid McKnight, and Buster was responsible for Kid McKnight’s honor. That meant Buster had to do something. So when the second round ended, Buster sat down on his little stool and whispered to Chick, “This is it. I’m gunna knock him out. You just watch me.” Chick told us Buster didn’t even sound excited, just said it like you’d say I’m going to go get a glass of beer and a cigarette. He meant it, though. When Buster came out for the third round, he was a fighter.

You couldn’t tell from looking at him. He was still crow-hopping in Toney’s tight shoes and looking dumb as a Bohunk. Then the Butte Bomber took a poke at him with his right, and Buster moved in and damn near killed him. Buster countered with his left, hit with his right, then his left, and went in for the finish. He slugged the Butte Bomber with the most powerful right anybody ever saw in Columbia Gardens. The Bomber was out for five minutes. When the referee held up Buster’s hand and named him the winner, we leaped up on our chairs, yelling and hollering. May Anna was the loudest. So much for Miss Cool Movie Star. We clapped and whistled and hugged, and then Pink Varscoe kissed me. That was the start of serious things between me and Pink.

May Anna ran over to Buster, when he was climbing through the ropes, and kissed him. Then Chick kissed Whippy Bird. There was more kissing that night than May Anna ever had in any of her movies.

It turned out, Toney watched that fight. As we were leaving we turned around and saw him standing in the back of the room. He’d talked those cops into letting him go but not soon enough for him to fight, so when he got there, Buster was already in the ring. You’d think Toney would have been cheering, too, but he wasn’t. He was just studying his brother, quiet and collected the way Buster usually was.

Like I say, it wasn’t much of a fight. We were cheering like crazy, but nobody else was. As far as the crowd was concerned, they were just watching a couple of dumb turnips take pokes at each other, hoping to see blood. It didn’t matter to them who won. The people there didn’t know they were in on the ground floor of boxing history. It’s funny when me and Whippy Bird remember about that night, how we never knew something of importance to the world was happening. I bet
Life
magazine would pay about a million dollars for a picture of May Anna giving Buster a kiss after his first fight.

Maybe the
Montana Standard
sports writer knew. He gave Buster two paragraphs on the sports page the next day, saying Toney McKnight had perfected a new step that allowed him to knock out the Butte Bomber with a lightning right. He wrote that Kid McKnight was a power to watch on the Montana boxing circuit and predicted he would one day play in Salt Lake City. Maybe even Spokane.

“So, I won,” Buster told Toney when he caught up with him. Buster still had on those little purple pants, and May Anna was hanging around his neck. Buster wasn’t so cool you couldn’t tell he was proud of what he’d done and wanted Toney to be proud of him, too.

Toney nodded but didn’t say anything. Now, you may think Toney acted that way because he was jealous. Or you might think, like we did later, that Toney was giving a lot of thought to Buster’s future. I have to tell you both of those are true thoughts, but me and Whippy Bird decided there was something else going on in Toney McKnight’s head, too.

We think Toney was supposed to throw the fight that night. That’s why he sent Buster in when the cops dragged him off. That’s why he told Buster just to take care of himself. He didn’t give him any instructions about hitting the Butte Bomber because he never even thought about Buster winning the fight. He was just supposed to show up. Me and Whippy Bird think he got paid to take a dive, maybe by some of those bootleggers he hung out with. So at the time Buster came up to him, Toney was worrying was he going to get killed by somebody for a double cross.

When I first told that to Whippy Bird, she said if Toney was going to lose, why did he want all of us to go along and see it. That made sense, and I thought about it for a time. Then I pointed out how she always got soft and cried when anybody was hurt. Maybe Toney figured she’d put out for him since she wasn’t dating Chick yet. When Whippy Bird thought about it, she said it made sense to her, too. Me and Whippy Bird believe that’s another reason Toney McKnight never fought again; he didn’t dare.

Of course, by the time we figured that out, it was too late to ask Toney, though Whippy Bird would have been the one to do it, and I’m not sure she would have.

Even if we were right about Toney worrying he was going to get brained, we know he was thinking about something else, as well. That was Toney for you, always hustling. This time he was scheming about how to make a buck for himself out of Buster’s powerful right arm.

Buster and Toney looked at each other for a long time, Buster wanting Toney to say he’d done a good job. Next to May Anna, Toney was the one Buster admired most. Toney knew that, so after a minute or two, he broke into a big grin, and he and Buster hugged each other and pounded each other on the back.

“Buster, you get out of my pants and uncurl your toes, and we’ll all go over to Meaderville and celebrate. I’ll get the purse.” So me and Whippy Bird and May Anna and everybody else climbed back into Toney’s heap, and he drove us to the Rocky Mountain Cafe to spend Buster’s first prize fight winnings.

Even after all that junk we ate at the Gardens, we’d worked up an appetite yelling for Buster, so we all ordered ourselves dinner. We were drinking Shawn O’s, too, except for Buster, who almost never drank. He paid for a round, then he changed his winnings to silver dollars and went over to a slot machine and put in a few. Before you knew it, the bell went off, and there was all this noise just like when Buster floored the Butte Bomber. He won himself fifty dollars.

Buster just couldn’t lose that night’which is what me and Whippy Bird told May Anna when we found out Buster didn’t take her home until 5
A.M.
We would have been killed if we’d ever stayed out that late, but I doubt that Mrs. Kovaks ever knew what time May Anna got in.

“Buster,” Chick told him, “I never saw anybody throw a punch like that. You are the new Butte Bomber.”

“Butte Bomber, hell, you’re the new Jack Dempsey,” Pink said. They were falling all over themselves to flatter Buster.

“You aren’t the new anybody,” May Anna said. “You’re better than anybody. You’re you.”

“You’re the champ,” Chick said.

“He’s no such thing. He won one fight against a bum,” Toney said.

It sounded like Toney was pouring cold water on Buster’s win, and we didn’t like that. Even Buster looked unhappy.

“You won one fight in your whole life,” Toney said again. Toney liked the sound of his voice, and he may have realized just then that he wasn’t going to get attention from fighting anymore, so he’d have to get it from talking. “But,” he said, pausing to make sure he had our attention, “you could be a champ.”

We cheered at that. Those Shawn O’s surely had taken effect. We would have cheered to see Buster tie his shoes.

“I know something about fighting,” Toney said, and he stopped, maybe hoping somebody would say you bet you do, Toney. Nobody did, though, so he continued, “And I have never seen a right arm like that.”

Chick pounded Buster on the back, and Pink slapped me on the knee and said, “Natch.”

“If you would be willing to take some instructions from me as your manager and train the way I tell you, I think you can make it as a boxer.” Toney sat back looking important.

Pink called for another round of Shawn O’s and paid for them out of the silver dollars Buster piled up on the table.

Then Toney got serious, like he was finished talking big. He ignored us and turned to Buster. “Kid, I know I can never amount to anything as a fighter. I can win a few bucks and have a little fun, but I don’t have the power. You got the power. You got the cool head, too, which is something else I ain’t got. The thing I don’t know about is do you want to be a fighter, and will you train?”

Buster looked down at his hands and didn’t say anything. The McKnight boys forgot about the rest of us, and we pretended we weren’t listening, though of course we were.

“Well, why not?” Buster said. “What the hell else is there for me in this boob town besides going down in the mines for the rest of my life? You really think I can make it Tone? No shit now.”

“Yeah. But you got to work at it. Every day. I can tell you how. I can even show you some of it, though I never cared enough to work at it much myself. If you’re not going to dedicate your life to it, you say so now so I won’t waste my time. You do it, and you’ll be a champ.”

“He’ll do it,” May Anna said. She put her little white hand over Buster’s big mitt.

Things had got serious all of a sudden. Only a few hours before we had gone down to the Gardens to see Toney fight. Now we were hearing Buster’s decision to be a champion fighter of the world. We all felt strange and didn’t know what to say. Then the waitress brought our dinners and took our orders for a couple of bottles of wine to follow all those Shawn O’s. Today, wine’s for pansies, but during Prohibition, that Meaderville wine was stronger than whiskey, so we had a high old time. In fact, it was our first high old time, since me and Whippy Bird and May Anna were sixteen years old and still in high school. We were too young to drink that night even if drinking was legal. But who thought about that? It was Prohibition, and drinking wasn’t legal for anybody else either.

While we were all sitting around being serious, I’ll tell you what Pink Varscoe was thinking about, and that was trying to kiss me again, but I didn’t want him to, so I said, “Pink, don’t you think you ought to propose a toast.”

Pink raised his glass. “To the Unholy Three,” meaning me and Whippy Bird and May Anna.

“You jackass,” I told him. “Not to us. To Buster!”

So Pink toasted, “To the new Kid McKnight! Bottom’s up!”

Buster shook his head. “Kid McKnight’s Toney.”

“Take the name. It’s yours if you want it. Jack Dempsey got his name from his brother. You can get yours from me.” Buster said no, Kid McKnight was Toney’s name, and if he didn’t use it, the name should be retired. He wanted his own ring name.

So we ate spaghetti and drank wine and got serious again, thinking up championship names. We suggested the Kid from Butte and the Centerville Kid and the Butte Killer. Chick said what about Slug ‘em McKnight. Pink thought up the Butte Buster then Buster Knockout, which we all liked. Even Buster liked that one, though after he thought it over, he decided it was too cute. He wanted something classier. We mulled over the Montana Mauler, which had a snappy ring, and Pride of the Copper Camp, and the Butte Bull. Then Chick suggested the Fighting Miner, but Buster wasn’t a miner, so that wouldn’t work.

Buster said he’d think about all those names, but you could tell none of them was quite right as far as Buster was concerned. May Anna said they weren’t stylish enough, and Buster cared what May Anna thought.

We sat there studying on it when all of a sudden Whippy Bird looked at the clock, jumped up, and said, “My God, it’s midnight, Buster. We have to get out of here!” None of us had been paying attention to the time. Now me and Whippy Bird were in serious trouble.

We jumped up and started for the door, all of us except for May Anna. She just sat there with a little smile on her face, quiet as a statue. She put up her hand in the way she had that made everybody stop and pay attention to her. No matter if there were a thousand people having a Roman orgy, all May Anna had to do was put up her pale little hand and everybody stopped and listened.

“I have it, Buster.” Her voice was quiet, but we could hear it above all the noise in the Rocky Mountain.

“Have what, May Anna?”

“Your name.”

“Huh?”

“Your new name. Courtesy of Whippy Bird,” May Anna said. Then she stood up very slowly and looked at us with her glory hole eyes and held up her glass in a toast and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new heavyweight champion of the world. Ladies and gentlemen’Mr. Buster Midnight.”

Of course, nobody but us knew about Buster Midnight for a long time. We thought he was king of the hill, but so what? Fight promoters didn’t exactly beat a path to his door, and Buster more than anybody, even Toney, knew he had a long way to go to be a major prize-fighter.

As time passed, we got used to Buster practicing to be a boxer, taking it in stride and not paying him any mind. After all, Buster wasn’t much different from the other boys who left high school to go into the copper mines—which was the first thing Toney told Buster to do. Get the heaviest, dirtiest job he could in a mine. That kind of work would build up his body, Toney claimed. Strength wasn’t all Buster needed. Strength wouldn’t save you if somebody got to you before you had a chance to draw on it, Toney said. Buster had to be quick, too. So he learned to run and dance around and dodge and chop and jab and develop a good one-two.

Toney made him jump rope for his footwork. Me and Whippy Bird and May Anna used to sit by him on the front porch of the little McKnight house in Centerville, keeping him company while he jumped up and down like some halfwit, grinning or talking to anybody else who stopped by. He even skipped rope at May Anna’s house while she sat on the stairs and talked to him. You’d think people would laugh at that big man jumping rope, but nobody did it more than once. I remember the afternoon when Pug Obie was coming off shift. “Hey, honey,” he called to Buster. “Where’s your dolly?”

After Pug got up off the street, though, it was “Hey, bub, can’t you take a joke?” Mostly, people knew Buster and knew he was in training, and they admired that. The gang could tease him but not anybody else.

Sometimes Toney would get a broom and wave the handle around fast in front of Buster’s nose. “Hit it, Buster! Hit it!” he’d yell. And old Buster flailed back and forth trying to hit that broom, punching and slugging. Before long, he got so good at it that Mrs. McKnight told them to use a stick or else Buster could sweep the house with what was left of the broom. That was a funny idea, all right. Big Buster hunched over, sweeping the house with a broom on the end of a twelve-inch handle.

When he waved that broom around, Toney said mean things to Buster, like calling him “she,” or telling him he was a dumb petticoat or some others (which I would not want you to know about now that Toney’s deceased) to make Buster mad.

There was a reason for Toney saying mean stuff. He wanted Buster to learn to control his temper in the ring. Buster, as I said before, already was a cool customer, but Toney knew there were things that would make Buster mad—mad enough to lose his temper. Getting rattled could make Buster lose a fight. So Toney trained Buster to deal with anything anybody said—inside the ring or out. Toney said a boxer had to be careful not to get into fights outside of the ring because he would be in big trouble.

Toney also gave him a rubber ball to toughen up his hands, and when Buster wasn’t working in the mine, skipping rope, or hitting the broom, you could find him at home reading the sports page with his hands going squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, on that red rubber ball.

Now that reminds me of something I want to say. During the murder trial in Hollywood some of those reporters said Buster was a dummy, that he couldn’t even write his own name. Hunter Harper put that in his book, which is another reason why I don’t like him and why I’m writing this down so you’ll know the truth. Buster read all the time, maybe not your major works of literature like
Forever Amber,
but he read the newspapers and the fight magazines. What’s more, he always carried pulps with him, which he read on the train or in the dressing room. Sometimes when he was traveling and staying in a hotel room with nothing to do, he even read the Gideon Bible.

The reason that talk got started about Buster being an illiterate was Buster and Toney were fooling around once, and they posed Buster for a funny picture. Buster put on Toney’s coat, which was too small for him, so when he buttoned it, it pulled in the front. They put a hat on his head that was so tiny it just perched there, with Buster’s ears sticking out under it. Finally, Buster stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes, and grabbed the
Montana Standard
from the porch and turned it upside down just as Toney snapped the picture. It was the kind of silly Kodak everybody takes. Buster probably gave it to May Anna, but somebody got a hold of it later on during the trial, and the California papers printed it. The wire services even picked it up. That’s why the story went around that Buster was a pumpkin head. And that is a lesson not to take damn fool snapshots.

There were other things Toney taught Buster. He made him practice his punches in a shed out back that was so low Buster couldn’t stand up straight. He had to squat down, and that developed his crouch, Toney said.

To build up his speed, Buster ran. He ran to work then back home at night. When he wasn’t working, he ran foot races against the horses that pulled the delivery wagons on Montana Street, but he got so he always won. Then he went to Columbia Gardens and ran around the race track. When they took out the horses to exercise, Buster raced against them.

Sometimes we went down in Toney’s machine and watched Buster run against the thoroughbreds. “If you don’t make it as a boxer, at least you can fill in at horse races,” Whippy Bird told him.

“May Anna can be the jockey,” Pink smirked. He said it under his breath so Buster wouldn’t hear. Me and Whippy Bird did, though, and Whippy Bird punched him in the ribs.

“Or you can be a mine mule,” I yelled, and I was just about right. Not long after that when one of the mules in the Mountain Con where Buster worked was sick, Buster pushed the ore cars himself. For a time, he was called Mule McKnight, but that name never stuck. Probably because Buster insisted that everybody call him Buster Midnight. We insisted on it, too. That was the classiest name I ever heard, even better than Marion Street. I guess me and Whippy Bird can pat ourselves on the back for helping to invent two of the most famous names in America.

Not everything Toney made Buster do was so great, though. He told him to chew pine resin that he dug out of trees. Me and Whippy Bird tried it once, and it tasted like hell, worse than near beer. That pine gum was tough as leather. Toney said it helped Buster toughen up his jaw. He told Buster to chew garlic before a fight, too, but Buster never did that. He wasn’t against breathing garlic fumes on the other boxer, which was the reason Toney told him to do it, of course, but he sure didn’t want to stop those kisses he got from May Anna every time he won a fight.

There was one other thing Toney had Buster do that was crazy, and that was get beef brine from the Hutchinson Brothers Packing Company and soak his hands in it. He even rubbed it on his face. Buster claimed it made his hands tough as ore—“hard-rock hands,” one of those sports writers called them.

All that was just the start. In addition, Toney arranged for Buster to work out at the Centerville Gym. Toney hustled up some kind of deal, as he always did, probably providing free bootleg. It let Buster practice there for nothing as long as he was a sparring partner for the other fighters training at the gym. That was good because Buster learned about fighting from other people besides his brother. Toney didn’t know everything there was to know about fighting—even though Toney thought so.

It’s odd when you think about it. There was Toney, only a so-so fighter who didn’t care enough to train himself, but still, he was the best trainer in Butte for Buster. He was harder than anybody else ever would have been on Buster, too. “You think I’m tough?” Toney would say when Buster complained. “You just step in that ring with somebody who knows what he’s doing. You’ll find out what tough is, Buster Kid Midnight.” Toney always got Buster’s ring name mixed up. I think that’s because he still hoped Buster would pick up Toney’s old Kid McKnight name and bring it glory.

After he’d trained for a couple of months, Buster told Toney to line him up a fight. Toney wouldn’t do it.

“You fought a bum,” he told Buster. “You connected with a lucky punch. You might not be so lucky the next time. What if the other guy gets lucky instead? What if you go in the ring with somebody who kills you or even worse, ruins your career? How many hits you think you’re gunna take if you get matched up with a real powerhouse?”

Toney told Pink he was afraid if Buster got beat bad in a couple of fights, he’d lose his confidence, and that was the worst thing that could happen to a beginning boxer. He didn’t want Buster to quit before he got started. He also told Pink he didn’t want to waste his own time on a second-rate fighter. What me and Whippy Bird think was Toney wanted to make a big splash with Buster. Every time Buster stepped in that ring, it was Toney in there fighting, too.

After a while Buster got bored and said he wasn’t going to run horse races all his life, and if Toney didn’t get him a fight pretty soon, he’d give it up. So Toney looked around for some tanktown bouts. Butte was a big fight town. Toney wanted to wait on Butte until Buster Midnight was somebody.

So he lined up a fight in Billings, which was just an ordinary town. Toney and another trainer put it together. They rented an Elks hall one Saturday night and sold tickets, agreeing to split the take, no matter who won. I expect it was right then that Toney decided he would manage Buster’s winnings—if managing is what you call it. He managed them just about as well as he did the Columbia Gardens purse that we spent on Shawn O’s and dinner in Meaderville.

That’s part of the reason Buster never had any money left over from his fighting days. But then who ever heard of a fighter that got rich doing anything but running a restaurant? Buster didn’t fight for money, anyway. He wanted to be somebody. For May Anna. And that was the way it worked out.

We went to Billings with Buster and Toney to watch that fight, of course. It took half a day to get there, so me and Whippy Bird got permission to spend the night in a hotel, which was as exciting as seeing Buster fight. Pop said I could go if Whippy Bird did. And Mr. Bird said Whippy Bird could go if I did. May Anna’s mother didn’t care and probably didn’t even know that she was gone.

Toney took us over in his new Studebaker President Eight, which had window shades and a backseat that held about two dozen people. He had gotten big-time in the bootlegging business in those days, making runs to Canada every week or so, and that’s why he ditched the heap for the Studebaker car—and why he had ten or twelve bottles of Canadian whiskey tucked under the seat.

You have to realize back then, though the boys were out of high school, me and Whippy Bird and May Anna were sixteen and not as familiar with liquor as we were later on. Me and Whippy Bird especially. We were so green we still thought you got drunk mixing an aspirin with a Coke. That day we knew for sure we could get drunk drinking Canadian—and right out of the bottle since Toney didn’t pack glasses in the Studebaker President Eight.

“Toney, don’t you have no ice?” Pink asked, leaning over the front seat. “You can’t ask these ladies to swig from the bottle.”

Toney, without taking his eyes off the road, said, “I got ice, all right, just no glasses. If you want to hold the ice in your hand and pour this good whiskey over it, then suit yourself.”

“Or use Whippy Bird’s shoe,” said Buster. “Her shoes are too small for a bird,” which is the truth. She is the only grown woman I ever knew who wore Thorn McAn little girls’ shoes, and that’s because she has a size three foot. Today she wears little kids’ sneakers from Sears.

All of us were drinking except Buster because Toney wouldn’t let him. Me and Whippy Bird passed out, which wasn’t such a bad idea since that is a long, boring drive. When we woke up we were sober though it took me a little while before my mouth felt like it was part of me again.

May Anna was better about drinking since she just sipped a little every now and then. I remember waking up while she was singing. Her voice sounded good to me, which is why I knew I was still drunk. She said the whiskey kept her warm, which was no little thing since it was winter. You never knew anything as cold as winter in Montana. The wind blows straight down from the North Pole with nothing to stop it except barbed wire fences with the gates open. (I read that in Hunter Harper’s book and thought it was catchy, which is why I’m using it. He shouldn’t complain since he got most of his stories from me and Whippy Bird.)

In Billings we stayed at a big hotel on Broadway, which I remember almost as much as I do that fight. I’d seen fights before, but I’d never stayed in a hotel until then. The only other times I’d ever been away from home were when I stayed with Whippy Bird or May Anna or if I went to my grandmother’s house in Anaconda. In fact, the only other time I could remember being a paying guest in a hotel was when Mrs. Kovaks took us to May Anna’s birthday lunch at the Finlen in Butte.

We had a big iron bed painted white that was swaybacked and sagged in the middle, just like home. Me and Whippy Bird and May Anna drew straws to see who had to sleep in the middle. Whippy Bird lost, but it didn’t matter because May Anna slept somewhere else. I bet you can guess where.

When we got to Billings, Buster and Toney disappeared inside the Elks hall while we checked into the hotel and checked out the town, which was not one of your more exciting places. We were in a position to know because we were from Butte. People talk about mining towns being rough and ugly, but they’re exciting, too. Billings was dull, and we felt like hot stuff around those hay farmers and cowboys.

The Unholy Three had grown up quite a bit by then even if we were still in high school and didn’t know much about liquor.

May Anna’s hair wasn’t platinum blond yet, but it was getting lighter. It wasn’t that mine runoff color anymore. She’d shot up some in height, too. Willowy was what the movie magazines called it. She was willowy in Billings.

Me and Whippy Bird weren’t so bad either. Whippy Bird was still little—she is still waiting for her growth, which is a little joke we have—but she looked perky with all those red curls. She never got the freckles your redheads usually get either. Me, I was tall, and I wore my hair in a bob, and I was skinny—but skinny was fashionable just then. Pink told me I looked like Tillie the Toiler in the funny papers, but then he always flattered me. Still, we were lookers, if I do say so myself. We surely cut a picture of fashion there in Billings among all your ordinary people. We sure knew it, too, walking around in our high-heeled slippers, chewing Wrigley’s Doublemint, and setting fire to Camel cigarettes, as May Anna liked to put it.