The Bartender's Tale (44 page)

Modesty, if that’s what it was, found my tongue. “One of us crazy is probably enough.”

“Fine,” she laughed sharply. Then gave me a strange, warm grin. “I can dig that—somebody else’s turn for a change.”

“Let’s go, everybody!” Pop ended that with a shout, finally getting the high sign from someone wearing a badge. Del sprang off toward the Gab Lab with headphones dangling and recorder swinging, although not before one last promissory look at Francine. In the rush to go, the next thing was Proxy proposing that she and Francine ride with us, inasmuch as she didn’t want to take the low-slung Caddie down there into the flood mess, and Pop drily telling her the Packard always had room to spare. One more thing to unnerve me. It was happening already, the slapped-together family, with Proxy’s bossy style that hit like lightning when it happened.

But as we went to jump in, Francine all of a sudden backed away. “Know what,” she said, as if it had just occurred to her, “my things are in Dellie’s van, I’ll ride with him.” Her expression was hard to read, except it was one hundred percent resolved. “Always up for an automotive adventure, you know me.”

About to climb in the notorious rear seat, Proxy whipped around and started to say something. But then thought better of it, simply smiled a few moments longer than that kind of smile should be held, and left things at, “Oh-kay, it’s like that, is it. See you and the lady killer in town.”

“Parting is such you-know-what,” Francine bestowed, and bolted off. Proxy came up to the front seat with us, lodging me uncomfortably in the middle between Pop and her. “She’s got it bad.” Solemnly she watched her daughter trot away down the line of cars. “When you get to that age, keep your head on your shoulders, Russ.”

“She could do worse.” I was grateful to Pop for sticking up for Del, and then he nosed the Packard into our spot in the line of cars, and we all went silent as the caravan slowly wound its way past the marble farm toward town.

—

THE RIDE IN,
while short, seemed as momentous as my arrival to Gros Ventre half of my lifetime ago, the sign at the city limits still standing on its higher ground before the highway curved decorously down to branch into streets, the same green roof of trees over everything ahead. The difference rapidly made itself known at ground level, a foot or so of dark water still standing wherever the soaked soil could not absorb any more. As we reached the first houses Pop said,
“Damn,”
once and definitively, at the ravages of the flood: driftwood snagged on porches and household goods sluiced into yards, and a smelly scum of mud and mildew everywhere, as if the town had been dropped into a swamp.

Bulldozers and graders had cleared a rough lane through the muck and debris of Main Street and were working on the back streets now. As the Packard crept past silent mud-coated storefront after storefront, I saw the Top Spot, sitting grimy and abandoned, and the Odeon, darkened and ghostly, and had to fight back a choking feeling. Emotion piled on emotion in me. You are only young once, the saying goes, but that is a terrible miscount. On that slow journey through the stricken town, I was young any number of times over, and each time different, young and lost without Zoe if her family moved away, young and spooked out of my wits at the unsettling tinsel-haired woman next to me emerging as my second parent, and most of all, young and stricken myself for my beleaguered father and what lay ahead of him at the Medicine Lodge.

At last the car eased to a stop at the familiar end of the street, and we sat saying nothing—even Proxy—for a short while. Still standing, the poor old saloon looked its age and then some, like a ghost town derelict abandoned to history. Flood debris had buckled the front door so that it stood drunkenly blocking the entranceway. A water stain so ugly it made me want to puke dirtied the building up to the plate-glass windows, and we could tell the flood had to have left the same rind of filth inside.

Taking in the scene, Pop looked as sick as I felt, but at last only said, “That door’s had it, we’ll have to try the back.”

—

WHEN HE WRESTLED
the rear door of the saloon open, what awaited us was beyond the meaning of mess. The water had swept through savagely, mingling spittoons and boots, bedrolls and saddles, empty Shellac bottles and anything within reach on the walls, and mud, mud, mud. The back room that had been the realm of exploration and costumes and every wild bit of imagination Zoe and I were capable of was a sodden dump now. It took everything in me not to break out bawling and cause Pop more woe. Grief does not always come out in tears.

Things were no better when we checked on the barroom: bar stools collected in a tangle like a beaver dam and booths still bleeding maroon where the flood had sat. Even the painting of the Buck Fever Case was curling away from the bottom of the frame. Pop took a look behind the bar and swore to himself.

Proxy had been silently biding her time. Now she gazed around, appraising everything as if it was hers. “How’s the insurance?”

Pop wobbled a hand. “So-so, like it always is.”

“Then the thing to do is get the place going even before it’s cleaned up,” she said, the soul of reason. “You can’t do business if the joint isn’t open, isn’t that the truth? You remember how it was, everybody at Fort Peck needed a stiff drink and some company right after the big slide, they practically stampeded in on us.”

“That was different,” he answered hollowly, both hands braced on the bar as if he needed the support. “The Missouri River didn’t touch the Blue Eagle. This place was underwater for days and days.” The age lines in his face appeared painfully deep as he gazed around at what was left of the Select Pleasure Establishment of the Year, the plaque still on the wall and the animal heads shiny-eyed above it all and the posters of Roosevelt and Kennedy intact but peeling at the corners, while everything below showed where English Creek had lately been. Besides the wrecked stools and booths and the rest, the floor was a mud bank to a depth that made a swamper’s heart sink.

“Come on, don’t let this get you down,” Proxy did not let up. “The beer and whiskey didn’t float away—”

“It might as well have, everything else did.”

“—and we get Francine in action behind the bar, things will improve lickety-split. Now that she’s straightened herself out, she can take on more of the running of the joint, spare you some of the headaches. You’ll see.” This was said as if it was a done deal, making my head spin. “The house didn’t look bad,” she was saying next, “so that’s a load off the mind, isn’t it.” True enough; on our way into the back, we could see across the alley that the house seemed to be simply waiting patiently for its missing porches, front and back, and other than those it did not appear to have suffered much water, thanks to its high foundation. The Buick, too, had survived in gunboat fashion, two-toned with muck halfway up its sides but still squatting in place on the driveway. Survivors under the leafy protection of Igdrasil, whatever its powers were.

“I never was any great shakes at housekeeping,” Proxy dealt herself in further, “but I bet I could hold things together over there while Francine and you get the joint back on its feet.” She glanced impatiently toward the one functioning doorway of the barroom. “What’s keeping her and Lover Boy, anyway?”

“Delano probably stopped to record a frog crossing the road,” Pop sighed, wearily drawing himself up behind the bar. “Then we’re supposed to count on Francine being here to save our skins, just like you’ve been doping it out, hey?” he mulled, looking no less haggard. He held up his hands before Proxy could say anything. “I’m not contesting that. If it wasn’t for her, I think I’d sell off the joint for whatever it would bring. Earl Zane might still be fool enough to buy it for practically nothing.” He studied me as if I held some kind of answer. “I don’t know, that might still be the best way to go. Get us all out from under.”

I was torn. Was I ever. If the Medicine Lodge went, so might the problematic sister and the mother from nowhere. Women with slanted smiles out of our life. But without the saloon, what would Pop’s life and my own amount to?

“Tom,” Proxy negotiated with the patience of a taxi dancer and more, “you’re not seeing the chance here.” She swept a slow hand around the mess that was the barroom. “The joint is an attraction after what’s happened. People are gonna be curious, word will get around and they’ll come in for a look and buy a few rounds. I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.” I am almost sure she didn’t wink as she said the next, but the effect was the same. “And plenty of them are going to be hard up for ready money, aren’t they. You can stock up the back room again in nothing flat.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Pop said tensely, “but—” And I had, too, even before Proxy came right out with it.

“Speaking of ready money, there’ll be every kind of construction crew passing through here after what’s happened, won’t there.” Either she forgot about me in her effort of working on Pop or figured I didn’t have anything to say about the matter. “Judging by Fort Peck,” she gave a knowing grin, “some interesting stuff might turn up to be traded in, huh? And I bet we could—”

By now it was all lining up like the script of a nightmare. Canada. Medicine Hat. Those trips.

Without thinking—no, with all too much thinking left over from solitary parentless nights while blizzards blew and worries piled up, I let out in a burst, “Pop? Remember what you promised.”

Startled, Proxy shot a look at me and then at him. “That didn’t sound much like a Christmas list.”

“It’s something between Rusty and me,” Pop said, as if coming to. He started to say more, but broke off on seeing Del outlined alone in the doorway at the rear of the barroom, however long he had been standing there. The other two of us followed his gaze to the unspeaking figure. Accompanied only by what he lugged at his side, Del appeared strangely unmoored without Francine inches away.

“The lost are found,” Proxy greeted him but peered past. “Where’s that daughter of mine? We need to put her to work.”

“Gone.”

The word hanging in the air, he stepped on into the barroom, pale as he’d been during the tick bite episode. “Oh, and she said to tell you she’s borrowing the Cadillac.”

For a second or two, the trio of us at the bar took that in as dumbly as the stuffed animal heads. Recovering first, Proxy started, “She didn’t ask—gone where?”

“The coast. The Pacific one,” Del added punctiliously, his face blank. “She said it was time for her to leak into the landscape.” He plowed through the mud on the floor as if not noticing it, to where the three of us were congregated at the bar. “And she told me to go to her room and get this.” He swung what he was carrying onto the dully gleaming surface.

I recognized the ditty bag right away, although not ahead of Proxy. “Her toiletry stuff, is all. I’ll take it and—”

“I’m afraid not,” Del overrode that, pushing the kit bag away from her. “She made me promise to give it to Tom and Rusty. You’ll see why, she said.”

Pop’s brow narrowed. I hovered as he dug into the contents the distasteful way men do in women’s purses and such, until his hand found something that made his face change. Ever so slowly he lifted out a bottle of hair dye and set it on the bar top. Midnight Black, the label read.

“Why’d you try to pull this?” he said in a deathly tone, squinting at Proxy as if she was hard to see.

She sagged against the bar. The other three of us in the picture composed from that bottle—father, brother, lover—stood waiting for whatever truth she had in her. If Del was right and there was a moral edifice embodied in remembrance, we were owed a masterpiece of confession.

“I had to do something with Francine,” Proxy began in a defeated voice. “She was getting to be more than I could handle. Didn’t have any direction in life and about to turn into man bait. What’s a mother to do, that stupid old saying.” With an effort, she met Pop’s steely gaze. “Then I stumbled across that newspaper piece. You seemed to have everything going for you, just the right material for a father. Having a kid sounded like it suited you, Tom, like it never did me.” Still looking stricken, she glanced at me, and our eyes held for a long moment. “And Rusty for a brother, who’d maybe take her mind off herself for a change, that fit right in, too. I figured the two of you would be good for her.”

“Besides a famous saloon she just might inherit,” Pop spoke in his same unrelenting tone, “if the two of you played your cards right.”

Her expression turned strangely wistful. “That didn’t hurt, either.”

“I bet it didn’t. It might even have been the main point.”

Proxy had nothing to say to that, her silence the deepest confession of all. All these years later, she still was under the spell of the Blue Eagle. A storied saloon, an institution of its kind that bestowed reputation and a good living on its possessor—no wonder it was such a tempting memory. I almost could sympathize.

Pop simply looked at her for what seemed an eternity, as Del and I stood silently by. Finally he flicked a finger against the bottle of hair dye. “Just for the record. Francine isn’t mine, is she.”

“Don’t I wish.” Proxy stirred from her slump against the bar. “She’s Darius’s, tooth and nail. Her hair’s even like the Duffs had, trying to be red.” The rest was spoken even more dolefully. “She takes after him in how damned spiky she is, too. That’s one reason I let his side of the family raise her. It turns out not to be the best decision I could’ve made, huh?”

The admission seemed to take a lot out of her. Blinking hard, she smiled, with the effort showing. I honestly felt her gaze coming before it returned to me. This was what I had most feared, the moment when she would openly say something like, “That leaves Rusty. Our real kid. We better call it a draw about Francine and the joint and so on, and get ourselves together about raising this one right, now that we both know how, don’t you think? A family’s a family, even with a few interruptions.” My imagination could hear it all before she actually said, “So, anyway, Tom. The back-room business we could do, up north? If Russ could see his way clear to let you out of whatever you promised?”