The Bartender's Tale (21 page)

He broke off, peering past Pop’s shoulder. “There it is!”

Pop whipped around as if some genie had escaped from one of the countless liquor bottles.

“The Roosevelt poster!” A long arm and finger extended past Pop, as if he couldn’t see what was under his nose. “Right by the cash register, where I was told you always kept one. How perfect!”

“Glad you like the deecor”—Pop wearily started to come from behind the bar, not a good sign for the person on the other side—“and now that you’ve had a look, you might as well get on with your business somewhere else, okay? We don’t have any missing voices around here.”

The young man shook his head, chuckling. “You certainly haven’t lost the gift of gab, Mr. Harry,” he said, practically bouncing with enthusiasm. “No wonder you and your saloon are legendary.”

If it was possible for my ears to perk up any more than they already had, they did so now. My own father and the Medicine Lodge, actual legends? Was that what a newspaper story could do?

“That’s pretty flattering to me and the old joint here,” Pop stopped short at the end of the bar, looking curiously at the interloper. “But that’s about to be over with, so I don’t think I’m worth your time, whatever it is you have in mind.”

“Hmm?” Still gazing reverently at Pop, our caller had that head-cocked attitude of hearing only what he wanted. “No, no, not this saloon, although don’t get me wrong, it looks like a perfectly nice place.”

Pop started to say something, but my blurt beat him, startling all three of us. “What saloon, then?”

“The Blue Eagle, of course”—Del Robertson gave that out like a song known by heart—“when history was being made at Fort Peck.”

4

H
ISTORY IS ALWAYS
being made, let’s face it, but Fort Peck did so on a scale all its own. The dam there was the biggest in the world when it was built, and the huge workforce brought in for what no less an authority than my fifth-grade history book called “the engineering miracle on the Missouri River” constituted a major New Deal effort to jack Montana up out of the Depression. All that was common knowledge. What was not, to the boggled twelve-year-old of the moment, was that the old saloon sign tucked away in the back room wasn’t merely a collector’s item from the mists of my father’s early days of hiring on as a bartender, it was a proclamation of proprietorship. Right there at the famous site of the Franklin D. Roosevelt speech and who knew what other exploits of the time.

“Pop, you didn’t ever tell me the Blue Eagle was your own—”

“Yeah, yeah, never mind, that’s another story.” He studied our visitor more closely, as did I. Crew-cut and lean, handsome enough in a college-boy kind of way, Del Robertson had the dashing look in vogue in the time of Kennedy, as if wishing for a torpedo boat under him. He stood there restlessly, all pockets and ambition. Even to me, newly hatched from childhood into adolescence, he seemed young in a way other than years—Pop would have said wet behind the ears—which made his appearance in the Medicine Lodge all the more odd.

“Look, fellow, you’ve caught me”—Pop glanced at me standing there with the broom forgotten in my hand—“us at kind of a busy time. And I don’t really have anything colossal to tell you about bartending, it was all pretty much in there in the newspaper.”

“It was? Which paper?” Out came a notebook and pen from one of the various pockets. “I’ll have to look that up.”

That stopped Pop. “If you didn’t see the newspaper story, how the hell did you find me?”

“Hmm? Oh, I took some rolls of quarters into a phone booth and started calling every newspaper editor in the state to ask if they knew of a bartender by your name in their town.” A modest shrug accompanied the telling of this. “Luckily, Gros Ventre isn’t far down the alphabet.”

Pop shut his eyes for a second, then opened them, blinking like an owl. “Bill Reinking is taking over from God.” Sighing mightily, he turned back to the matter of the perplexing visitor. “Okay, so you know about the Blue Eagle,” he granted, looking discomfited. He could see curiosity sticking out all over me. “Why’d you come hunting me up about something way back when?”

“Sir,” Del Robertson’s tongue practically tripped over itself in the rush to answer, “you’re the Leadbelly of Fort Peck.”

“I’m the
what
?”

“Don’t take it wrong, let me explain,” came stumbling out next. “You’ve heard of Alan Lomax, I hope?”

Pop squinted impatiently. “Didn’t he use to pitch for the Yankees?”

“Ah, no. Lomax is a musicologist, the best there is.” The word was new to both Pop and me. Someone who cured people of music?

Evidently not, according to the copious explanation that ensued—I took a seat on a bar stool during it, and Pop leaned back against the cash register with his arms folded—to the effect that this Lomax person collected folk songs, in the old days lugging a recording machine like a big suitcase through the hollows and swamps of the South until, to cut the story short, he heard about a colored man in a Louisiana prison who played a guitar and wrote songs like nobody else’s.

“Leadbelly,” our young informant concluded, as if saying the name in church. “Huddie Ledbetter. Possibly the greatest blues performer ever. The songs poured out of him like, like down-and-out poetry. The essence of the blues.” In illustration, he cleared his throat and tried to make his voice deep and growly. “
I’s got to bobbasheely through life alone, ’cause I got no constant home.
Classics like that.”

Boy oh boy, did I ever wish Zoe was here for this.

It intrigued me that something of the sort qualified as music, but Pop was unmoved. “Don’t turn into a damn jukebox, okay? What’s Leadbottom got to do with me?”

Another explanation poured out, the point being that after the songcatcher Lomax convinced Huddie Ledbetter to sing into the machine, other blues singers let him record them at it, too. “Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, the greats. It grew into one of the greatest collections ever done, all because Leadbelly led the way with that first session, if you see what I mean.” Just in case, our overeager visitor spelled it out. “When potential interviewees are a trifle, ah, shy, an oral historian needs someone known and trusted to sort of”—he spun his hands as if churning up the proper words—“break the ice, let’s say. With your reputation, Mr. Harry, along with the Blue Eagle’s, you are the absolutely natural one for the Fort Peck project. You’re the perfect”—at least he didn’t say Leadbelly this time—“icebreaker.”

“You want me to get Fort Peckers to spill their guts for you,” Pop wasted no time cutting through that. “What kind of an ess of a bee do you think I am? Not a snowball’s chance. Stick to blue music.”

The collector of Missing Voices looked hurt.

“Sir, you misunderstand. Gathering people’s own stories is crucial to preserving that chapter of history. It’s a”—hands spun again—“a crime against civilization to let those voices be lost.” I, at least, was impressed.

He paused to muster a new thought. “Let me put it this way. Fort Peck had so many workers—thousands, really—that I can’t possibly know which ones would be the best to interview. But from what I’ve been told over and over, practically everyone there sooner or later was funneled through a certain institution”—he bunched his hands narrowly—“as historians call a social fixture in a community. No, please, don’t try to be modest, Mr. Harry, it’s true. By every reputation, the Blue Eagle saloon was a Fort Peck institution without equal.” He had that spellbound look again as he gazed at Pop. “And naturally that makes you the institutional memory.”

Pop groaned. “How the hell did I get to be the institutional anything all of a sudden?”

“The place in history finds the man,” Del Robertson said sagely.

“Maybe you mean well”—Pop plucked up a fresh towel for bar polishing—“but I’ve got a business to tend to. Even if I wanted to, I can’t go trotting off across the countryside with you trying to find yayhoos who worked at the dam.”

“That’s the lucky part,” the response came as if it couldn’t wait. “They’ll be at Fort Peck, in droves. At the Mudjacks Reunion.”

“That bunch? Getting together like high schoolers? When’s this?”

Wouldn’t you know. The eager-beaver historian named the exact day the papers were to be signed and the sale of the Medicine Lodge would be final. Not to mention the opening-night performance of Mrs. Reinking, carefully coached eyes and all, in
The Importance of Being Earnest.
There seemed to be only that single red-letter date on the otherwise numberless calendar.

Pop could not hide his relief. “Naw, I couldn’t go with you then even if I wanted to. I’ve got something important to do, it’s all set up. Besides,” he concluded righteously, “I promised the kiddo and his friend I’d take them to the play over in Valier that night. Busy as a one-handed juggler, see?”

“But”—Del Robertson couldn’t believe his day of days wasn’t more sacred than ours—“it’s a historic occasion, you have to be there! It’s a monumental celebration! Twenty-five years almost to the minute,” the earnest explanation of the Mudjacks Reunion was not about to let up, “since the dam fill was begun.”

Something thrummed in me at hearing that. First the thirty-year winter. Now this. The way 1960 kept bringing historic numbers had to add up to something a person would remember into eternity, didn’t it?

“That can’t be ri—” Pop did the Fort Peck arithmetic in his head and frowned. “Okay, so Fort Peckers will be there thick as weeds. There’s your setup. All you need to do is wade in with your recording machine and find the ones who’ll gab to you, no sweat.”

“That’s just it.” The lanky figure shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve been trying for weeks, out on the coast and other places.” The strain in his voice showed the effort. “It’s no use. Every time I track down someone who was at Fort Peck and they start in on their stories, inevitably it leads to something that happened in the Blue Eagle, and when they realize I haven’t talked to you first, they absolutely clam up. The last one told me, ‘You better go see Tom Harry, he knows A to why about any of that.’” He paused, as if tasting such sweet words. “Isn’t that such a great way to describe an institutional memory?” After that wistful moment, he went back to looking doleful but determined. “That’s what I mean about needing you to break the ice, sir.”

“No, you don’t,” Pop said, showing every sign of losing his patience. “Cripes, there were loads of other bartenders at Fort Peck.”

“None like you, everyone says. Mr. Harry, I absolutely cannot get the interviews I need at the Mudjacks Reunion without you.” Pop’s shake of the head hastened the next plea. “Please, sir? It would only take a couple of days.”

“Hey, are you hard of hearing or something? I told you no already.”

“One day.”

“Ever been thrown out of a joint before, Delbert? Because you’re about to—”

“That’s not my name.”

“Then what the hell is?”

“Delano.”

You could have heard a fishhook drop after he said that. Pop jerked a thumb at the poster picture of Roosevelt. “Same as him? How come?”

Delano Robertson, as we now knew him, blushed. “My father lived and breathed the New Deal and President Roosevelt. He was administrative assistant to one of the main members of FDR’s ‘Brain Trust,’ Rexford Tugwell.”

“Lucky you didn’t get named after him,” Pop observed. “Delano, huh? That’s halfway interesting.” He squinted in fresh appraisal of the visitor. “You’re from back there?”

“Washington, D.C., you hit it on the nose.” A boyish smile accompanied the admission. “Born and bred, strict in the District, as the saying is.”

“How about that. You keep up with politics any?”

“Somewhat,” came the cautious answer.

“What do you think of this guy Kennedy’s chances?”

FDR’s namesake was no dummy. With the Kennedy poster looming over Pop’s shoulder, he said in that tone of voice a person uses in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “He’s the better man. If sanity prevails, he’ll win.”

“Nixon’s a rat,” Pop growled in confirmation, “you can tell by looking at the ess of a bee.” He was scrubbing back and forth over the same already gleaming spot on the bar wood with his towel, a sign he was thinking hard. “So you get paid for going around and listening to people, if you can manage to get them to talking in the first place? Not a bad racket.” And not too unlike what went on in a certain barroom. “Where’d you learn this oral history stuff? Harvard?” he asked hopefully, knowing Roosevelt and Kennedy had gone there.

“Come again?” The red head tilted a little to one side, as if catching up with what had been said. “Oh. Actually, no. William and Mary.”

“I guess you get a longer diploma that way.” Pop tossed down his towel. “Hey, Delano,” he seemed to enjoy trying out the name, “I can see why you’d like to have me glued to your side at the Fort Peck doings. But even if I wanted to, I’ve got a business deal that same day I positively have to be here for. Right, kiddo?” If he thought I was going to confirm the need to sell the Medicine Lodge, he was going to have a long, long wait; what he said may have been accurate, but that did not make it right. I sullenly kicked the leg of my bar stool until he took the hint and turned back to the other person whose hopes he was dashing. “Anyhow, before you go on your way, better have something to help you pack that name around. On the house. What do they drink at Willy and Mary?”

Delano Robertson smiled bashfully. “The same as any college, I suppose. Kegs of beer.”

“‘On the house’ runs out after one glass,” Pop made clear. While the beer brimmed to a perfect head, he included me in the proceedings by scooting an Orange Crush down the bar to where I was still perched. “This character with his ears hanging out is my son and swamper, Rusty.”

Delano came at me on scissor legs for a handshake, as if we were long-lost brothers. “Twenty-five years,” Pop was muttering to himself and perhaps the Roosevelt poster as he fussed the glass of beer to perfection, “where the hell does the time go?” This prompted me to give Delano a secret look of encouragement, not that he needed much of that. By now he was taking in the barroom, from the stuffed menagerie protruding from the forest-green walls to the pressed-tin ceiling that looked as old as heaven, to the ornately carved breakfront, with its cargo of bottles and glasses and mirrors, as though he couldn’t get enough of it.

“This is priceless”—he plopped down on the bar stool next to mine and twirled as if on a merry-go-round—“the way you’ve kept this a classic saloon, Mr. Harry.”

“Yeah, well, it takes some real hard running to stay in the same place these days,” Pop agreed with that. I watched him think hard, his forehead furrowed the way that usually meant a wrestle with his conscience. “Here’s the honest truth, Delano. Keep it under your hat, but I’ve about got a deal to sell the joint and—”

“No!” Delano cried out, whirling on his stool to face Pop. “I mean, that’s totally surprising. The saloon and you, both the best of the kind, and for you to give it up now, at the height of—”

“Would it be too damn much trouble to let me finish what I’m saying, do you suppose?” Pop’s glower sent Delano into retreat behind his beer glass. “That’s one of the reasons I can’t go gallivanting off to Fort Peck with you. There’s a last few things to be worked out on the deal that day, and then we’re going to sign the papers, so I need to be here instead of there, see?”

“The time is out of joint,” Delano brooded as if he were about to cry in his beer, “and the joint is out of time.”

“Run that by me again?”

“Shakespeare, at least the first part.” A tingle went through me, and I waited breathlessly for what Delano would cause next. “It’s just too ironic,” he went on in the same voice of gloom and doom, “that the very day you would be the center of celebration at Fort Peck will be your last as bartender here, Mr. Harry.”