The Bartender's Tale (2 page)

And the smaller figure in that mirror reflection? My mop-headed self, the early draft of some decade yet unwritten? Other than the shock of hair as shoe-polish black as his, I was not any miniature of my father. Complexion-wise, Pop’s was merely the washed-out sort that comes from years spent under fluorescent lights, while I had the hopelessly pearly pale skin that generally is found on someone blond, the kind that always sunburns, never tans. Beyond that, my features were more regulation boyish, more—for lack of another word—cozy than his rugged ones; Lassie would have licked my face by the hour. Where resemblance was concerned, then, time had its work cut out for it on the boy and the man paired in that mirror.

“That’s my last card, Pop! I win!”

“Cripes, just my luck you’re such a cardslick.” Stuck with the Old Maid, he tossed in his hand, frowned for a moment, then scooped the cards together for a shuffle. “Let’s play another one.”

Another led to another, and while I did not manage to skunk him entirely, he ended up the Old Maid several times more than I did. At last he let his wristwatch come to the rescue. “Hey, look at the time, we’d better turn in. Tomorrow’s another real stretch of road.”

He let me choose which side of the bed I wanted, and we undressed. Pajamas were in my suitcase, but Pop got under the covers in his shorts and undershirt, so I bravely did, too.

I was too excited to go to sleep, my mind going every which way, the what-ifs still buzzing in me like bees. My father was no example of repose, either. I could tell he was lying there awake with his hands under his head. Before very long he sat up in bed and I heard the scratch of a match, and the draw of breath as he lit a cigarette.

I turned on my side, toward him. “Uncle Arvin says people who smoke in bed are sticking their necks out.”

“He’s a fireman; it affects his judgment.”

I stayed the way I was, watching the red end of his cigarette as he took slow drags and expelled the smoke into the dark. “Pop? Can I ask you something?”

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.” My heart stopped a little at that. The springs creaked as he leaned to tap an ash into the bedside ashtray. “Only kidding. Ask away.”

“Is it gonna be just us? At”—I didn’t know what other word to use—“home?”

He did not say anything until he had finished his cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray. “We’re enough, kiddo. Catch some shut-eye.”

—

GOOD-BYE, SAGUAROS,
hello, sagebrush. After the days of our long drive north, the Two Medicine country and its anchoring town were all at once the world around me, and I had some real adjusting to do. Phoenix had mountains of a kind around it, but nothing like the great high snowy peaks of the Rockies that now stretched farther than I could see, to wherever Canada was. Hay fields green with alfalfa, also new to me, were tucked along a wooded creek that wound all the way from the mountains, and white igloo-like things that Pop identified as sheepherders’ wagons stood on distant ridgelines. And from the sign at the city limits as he slowed the Hudson to a more reasonable speed, I realized that the town I had always heard him speak of as Grow Von was spelled Gros Ventre. I asked why and drew the reply: “It’s French, so it doesn’t need to make any sense.”

I craned my neck at the strange storefronts—a store that called itself a mercantile, with rolls of barbwire stacked on a loading dock; another place of business that identified itself as the Top Spot, and left it to the curious to figure out it was a cafe; next to that, Shorty’s, the smallest barbershop I’d ever seen; what looked like a clothing store, called the Toggery; and finally something I could recognize, a movie theater marquee, with ODEON spelled out in bright red letters—as Pop drove along the shady main street, in no hurry now. Halfway through town, he slowed down even more and pulled over. “Welcoming party for you,” he said, cracking a grin. I peered over the hood of the car at sheep, sheep, and more sheep, filling the entire street and coming right at us like a woolly stampede.

“Wh-what do we do?”

“Sit tight and think of lamb chops.” He explained that the flock of animals stamping their hooves at us was being trailed to the ranch from summer range and the town was used to this sort of thing. In back, whooping the sheep along with the help of a busy dog, were a stumpy herder who looked like he needed a bath and a longer-limbed man in clean clothes and a good Stetson hat. Under their push, what must have been a thousand fleecy eye-rolling ewes, the lambs beside them nearly as large and agitated as they were, rapidly surrounded Pop and me where we sat; their stupendous blatting sounded as if the sight of us was making them lose their minds. I wasn’t really scared, but not very far from it either. As the sea of sheep parted around the car, Pop rolled down my window to call to the long-limbed man. “Hey, Dode! Got the kid, come meet him.”

“Keep the sonofabitching old biddies moving, Dan, I’ll catch up,” the rangy figure yelled to the herder, then came and poked the brow of his hat in the car window. “Huh-uh,” he declared after a close look at me. “Been a mistake. Better take him back.”

Much alarmed, I shrank far down in the car seat. The frozen expression on Pop didn’t help.

Our visitor broke out in a generous smile that had a tooth missing. “How can this one be yours, Tom? He’s way better looking than you.”

Relieved, Pop instructed me to shake hands with Dode Withrow, sheep rancher and prize customer. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” The ranchman went through with the ceremony as if we were equals. “Randall, do I remember your front name is?”

“Russell,” I piped back. “Most everybody calls me Rusty.”

“Then I guess I better, too. So, Rusty, are you all set for the derby?”

“He’s gonna be,” Pop answered stoutly for me while I blinked at this revelation. Thanks to the Wheaties box that Aunt Marge plunked down beside my cereal bowl practically every breakfast of my life, I knew there was such a thing as a soapbox derby, in which Wheaties-filled boys surely no braver than me were depicted scrambling into homemade miniature race cars and letting gravity guide them to glory on a downhill track. How lucky I was! Never mind the what-ifs! I had a father who fetched me all the way from Phoenix to put me in the cockpit, if that’s what it was, of my very own soapbox flyer. I couldn’t wait to see the wheeled wonder.

“This old man of yours generally has something up his sleeve,” Dode Withrow confided to me with a wink, turning to go. “See you on the big day.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the derby, Pop?” I asked, bouncing with excitement.

“How the hell could I, when it’s supposed to be a surprise?” he stated with irrefutable logic, putting the car in gear and nosing it through several last panicky sheep, up the street to the Medicine Lodge saloon and all that came with it.

—

THE BUILDING WE
pulled up to was a lot like Pop—taller than ordinary, showing its years somewhat but not giving in to them, and impressively two-toned at the very top, where the biggest black letters I had ever seen were painted onto the whitewashed square front to spell out MEDICINE LODGE. Beneath that in lesser lettering but still about a foot high was BEER—SOFT DRINKS—FULL BAR AND THEN SOME. I was to learn that the triumphant previous owner added that line once Prohibition ended, and when Pop bought the place not many years later, he saw no reason to change the wording.

Wisely, the brass-trimmed doorway below the signs was inset against the weather, while on either side of it, department store–size plate-glass windows provided anyone sitting at the bar with a full view of the activity on Gros Ventre’s main street, such as a passing parade of sheep. This saloon was already more personable than the Mints and Stockmans of all our toilet stops since Phoenix, and I could hardly wait to go inside. But Pop made no move to get out of the car.

“Kiddo”—his brows drew down as he looked over at me—“there’s something we need to get straight. Did Aunt Marge ever say anything about me and”—he inclined his head toward the saloon—“this?”

I thought. “One time I heard her tell Uncle Arvin that a bartender wasn’t the absolute worst thing you could be.”

“That’s high praise from Marge.” He continued to look at me intently. “What about those cousins of yours?”

“They said stuff all the time. I didn’t listen, honest.”

“Smart use of your ears.” His creased face showed relief for a moment, then he turned serious again. “Okay, here’s the straight scoop. I’m in business here”—he nodded to the Medicine Lodge, and I wouldn’t have been too surprised if it had nodded back—“just like somebody who sells candy bars or jelly beans. Only what I sell has alcohol in it. You know what that is, do you?”

“Sure. It makes people drunk.”

“Too much of it can, just like you can get a bellyache from eating too much candy.” I could tell he was putting every effort into making me understand. “People are gonna drink and have a good time, that’s just the way it is. Even the Bible says so, Jesus doing that stunt with the water and the wine at the wedding, right? But customers who are feeling thirsty don’t need to get out of hand, and I see to it that they don’t. If they want to drink themselves blind, they can go down the street to the Pastime. If they want to have a few snorts in a decent joint, they can come in here.” He turned his eyes to the waiting saloon. “Cripes,” he said, more or less to himself, “churches are for sinners, too. What’s the big difference?” His gaze shifted to me and he cleared his throat. “Follow what I’m saying?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s that, then. Let’s head on inside.”

—

THE JOINT,
as I right away learned to call it, was not yet open for the day, but behind the bar, a scrawny man in an apron that fit him like a tent was setting up for business.

“Hey,” Pop called out as we entered, which seemed to serve as
Hello
and much else in his vocabulary
.
“Didn’t manage to give the place away to some bigger fool than me, I guess?”

“That would take too much looking,” came the croaky reply. The sparely built part-time bartender gave me, or at least my existence, a bare nod of acknowledgment, then cocked an eye at my father. “Can I trade in this apron for my rocking chair, now that the prodigal has returned?”

This was Howie, bald and cranky and indispensable to Pop for filling in as needed. You can’t run a saloon like a country club, and Howie was an old hand at handling customers of all stripes, having owned a roadhouse and row of cabins during the war, when the Great Falls air base was going full blast. “Howie knows the tricks of the trade,” Pop would say in a certain kind of voice. In the fullness of time I eventually figured out what trade was plied in that row of cabins.

“Not so damn fast,” Pop told him now, “I haven’t even had a chance to change my shirt yet. Let’s take a look at how the cash register did in my absence.” Remembering me as he rounded the bar, he reached into the pop cooler. “Here”—he handed me an Orange Crush—“entertain yourself while I count the take, okay?”

So, wide-eyed at the new surroundings, I was temporarily left on my own in my father’s prized place of business. “Your old man makes his money off of a bunch of drunk sheepherders,” knucklehead Ronny had told me plenty of times. Whatever the quantity of truth in that, at the moment there were none of those on the premises, and the venerable barroom was mine to explore. I still see the Medicine Lodge of that day as clearly as if it were a stage set.

The highly polished surface of the classic bar, as dark as wood can get.

In back of the bar the colossal oak breakfront, as ornate as it was high and long, displaying all known brands of liquor. According to what Pop had heard from the oldest of old-timers, it had taken a freight wagon usually used for huge mining machinery, with ropes up, down, and sideways, to haul the tall, teetery thing; coming across the prairie, it must have looked like a galleon sailing the sea of grass.

A lofty pressed-tin ceiling the color of risen cream. Walls of restful deep green. Original plank-wide floorboards as substantial as a ship’s decking.

Fake-leather maroon booths along the far wall where only strangers and loners ever sat, and a baize poker table looking a little lost at the absolute rear of the room.

Crowning it all, literally, my father’s notion of decor, or as he pronounced it,
dee-cor
: his menagerie of stuffed animal heads protruding from the walls. The buck deer, mostly antlers. The mountain goat and the antelope facing one another, glassily. Cougar, bobcat, even coyote, lopped and mounted. The one-eyed buffalo over the front door was particularly dramatic, dark and mangy, a ghostly relic of the great vanished herd of the plains. This wildlife motif achieved a last flourish in the gilt-framed painting dominating the wall across from the bar, a reproduction of a hunting scene by Charlie Russell, the cowboy artist who painted Montana in dreamy sunset colors no matter what time of day. Called
Meat’s Not Meat Til
l
It’s in the Pan
, it showed a hunter in the high country scratching his head in bafflement as he gazed down at the mountain sheep he had shot on a ledge impossible to reach. A good many of the Medicine Lodge patrons had hunted since they were big enough to hold a rifle, and they heaped scorn on the unfortunate in the picture who had pulled the trigger inadvisably, always referring to him as the Buck Fever Case. As far as I know, Pop never turned a hair when crude remarks were directed at his chosen masterpiece, evidently convinced the artwork was doing its job, giving the audience something to think about.

Such was the saloon of near-mythic status, which stayed substantially the same in the span of time when I went from a half dozen years of age to a full dozen. I would like to say I felt its inimitable atmosphere from that first moment. Actually, all I could think about was a derby-winning soapbox race car waiting somewhere for me.

“Ready?” Pop called to me after he had counted out the take at the cash register. “Done all the damage we can here. Let’s head to the house.”

—

WE WERE PRACTICALLY THERE
by the time I settled onto the car seat and resumed gawking over the dashboard. The house stood across an alley from the back of the saloon; Pop could walk to work in about half a minute. I had to get used to the fact that although we were in the middle of town, there were more trees than anything else. Nearby English Creek and its good, steady water table accounted for that, cottonwoods growing to such tremendous size that Gros Ventre was practically roofed over with leafy limbs. An old giant of the species loomed beside the lofty two-story structure we pulled up to now, the yard white where its seed fluff had drifted down. Pop stopped the car in the dappled shade of the big overhanging limbs. When we got out, he laughed comfortably at the fluff falling on us like confetti, and said: “Say hello to Igdrasil.”