Shaking the Nickel Bush (14 page)

12

We're in the Dough

L
ONNIE was still in his bedroll and snoring, but I shook him till he was wide awake, showed him the ten, and told him, “We're in business, partner, but we won't stay there long unless you roll out and get going. If this thing works the way I hope it will, we'll need Shiftless—and we'll need her in tiptop shape. You get into town and buy whatever you need to fix her with—up to seven-fifty. We'll have to save the rest back for grub, at least until after tomorrow.”

“Jeepers Creepers!” Lonnie hollered, threw the blankets back, and made a grab for his britches. As he hauled them on he hollered again, “Boy, howdy! We're in the dough!” Then he dropped his voice and said, “Look, buddy, for seven-fifty I can get enough stuff to make her good as new again . . . maybe for seven. How 'bout me gettin' some bacon and eggs while I'm in to the store? Honest, buddy, I'm gettin' to where I can't hardly go gluten bread and salmon no more.”

Lonnie didn't even think to ask me what kind of business we were in, but went hurrying off toward town as soon as I told him it would be all right to get a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon. As soon as he was gone I took my loaf of bread out of the Dutch oven, then sat down in Shiftless's shadow to make a life-sized armature for a man's head and neck. When I had it finished I worked up all the clay left in the bucket till it was soft and pliable. I was putting it onto the armature and thumping it into general shape with the heels of my hands when Lonnie came back. He stopped by the smoldering fire to lay the bacon and eggs down, then came over and stood watching me for a couple of minutes. “That ain't no horse,” he said at last. “What you doing that for? Thought you said we was in business.”

“If this comes out any good we might be,” I told him.

He stood and watched me a few minutes more, then asked in a puzzled voice, “Well, what the devil is it, buddy? One of them jars like the old Mexican in Phoenix makes? What do you, scoop the inside out after you get the outside made?”

“No,” I said, “it's going to be a man's head, and if the banker in town thinks it looks the way he did when he was young and handsome, we might be in business.”

“Jeepers Creepers!” Lonnie shouted. “Why didn't you tell me you could do that kind of stuff, buddy—not just horses?”

“I don't know if I can—without a live model to take measurements from,” I told him, “but I'm going to try. It won't cost anything but my time, and that hasn't been very valuable for the past month.”

Ever since I'd sent the last fifty to Mother I'd been telling Lonnie just where we stood on cash, but the only time money meant anything to him was when we didn't have any. Right until that minute he hadn't even wondered where the ten came from. Then when it began to dawn on him he whispered, “Creepers, buddy, that old buzzard didn't give you a tenner 'fore he ever seen it, did he?”

“Mmm, hmm,” I told him, “but you'd better cook your breakfast and get started on fixing Shiftless. If this comes out any good we'll have to get in to Safford for plaster, and it's too far to walk.”

Lonnie was so sure we'd struck it rich that he fried himself four eggs and half a pound of bacon for breakfast. Then he changed into his greasy old jeans with the missing leg and went to work on Shiftless. From then till twilight he was too busy to come and see what I was doing, and I was too busy to think about stopping to eat.

I never did take the old tintype out of my pocket. As I'd talked to the banker I'd been studying his face, and it crossed my mind that when he was a young man he must have looked a good deal like William S. Hart—except for his mustache and the way he combed his hair. That was all I wanted to remember. I'd always liked Western movies, and Ivon and I had gone to see every William S. Hart picture that was shown in Wilmington. All I had to do to see that face again was to close my eyes, and as I worked on the clay I kept closing them every few minutes.

When it began to get dark enough that the light wouldn't reflect back off the damp clay I called Lonnie. He came around Shiftless, looked over my shoulder for half a minute, and said in a shocked voice, “That ain't the old buzzard at the bank, buddy! That there's Bill Hart.”

I jumped up, grabbed him, and swung him around in a couple of dance steps. “If you think that's Bill Hart we're in business,” I told him. “No need to hold back on the grub now. Want to beat it into town and buy yourself a steak and me a chicken? But don't you dare swipe the chicken. We've still got business to do in this town.”

That evening after we'd had our feast I made Bill Hart over a little while Lonnie watched me. I took his cowboy hat off, put a good big lump of clay on his head, and worked it into a mass of wavy hair—parted in the middle, and with spit curls above the temples. Then I rolled pigtails of clay between my palms, laid one on each side of the upper lip for a mustache, pressed them into shape, curled the ends, and marked in the hair with a broken stick. When I was finished, the bust didn't look a bit like the old banker—and it didn't look much like Bill Hart either—but I hoped it would look the way the banker wanted it to.

It did. I don't know whether or not it would have if Mabel hadn't told him how handsome he must have been as a young man. He didn't seem to mind her telling him, and he said it was a “spittin' image” of what he had looked like at the time of his first marriage.

I didn't even have to mention the fifteen dollars; he had Mabel give it to me out of the till, and his only worry seemed to be that I might not get the clay cast into “marble” before it warped out of shape. For several minutes he walked back and forth in front of the cage, trying to make up his mind where the marble bust should be set. There really wasn't a spot in the little room where a plaster bust wouldn't look as out of place as the angel Gabriel—wings and all. The only thing I could think of was to hang it on the wall above the door, so I said, “If you'd like me to I could cast it with a metal hook at the back of the base. Then you could hang it on the wall right above the door. Don't you think it would have an impressive look up here, Mabel?”

Of course, the thing I was thinking about was that no direct light could hit it up there, and it would be kind of hard for anyone standing close under it and looking up to tell how little it looked like the old gentleman. Mabel was sure it would look impressive, and the banker was even more sure of it. “Now you're talking!” he told me. “Never would have thought of that myself, but I'm no artist—just an old wore-out cowman, like all the rest of 'em in the banking business hereabouts. It's what you might call a haven for men that last till they're too old to work and too ornery for the women folks to have around a house. There's not a one of us, up or down the line, but's long past seventy. Have a cigar, son. Come on in and sit a little spell. Always did want to talk to one of you artist fellows. Guess a man's either born with it or without it.”

As he talked he led the way back to his desk, and I said I'd save the cigar to enjoy after I'd had my dinner. There was no sense in telling him I didn't smoke and that it would make me sicker than a locoed pony. When we were seated, the old gentleman leaned back in his swivel chair, looked out the barred window toward the mountains, and said, “Yes sirree, a man's got to be born with it, just like he's got to be born with the feel for cattle . . . or a horse. Take me, I couldn't draw a straight line. All I know about art is that I like it . . . if it's good, you understand. A range of mountains like the Pinalenos yonder, or a sunrise in spring . . . when the sky and the land's blood red. Seen one of our red dawns yet? Been up to the Canyon?”

After I'd told him that I hadn't but intended to, he went on asking me other questions, about when I'd first taken up art as a livelihood, and what great artists I'd studied under, and if I'd been to Paris. I didn't tell him any straight-out lies, but I had to stretch the exact truth out of shape a little. I couldn't tell him I'd taken up art as a means of livelihood about half an hour ago, and I thought he might feel as if he'd made a better bargain if I let him think I'd studied in foreign countries, so I mentioned Ivon three or four times, and the shape of the mosques in Moscow. Really, I wasn't listening to him too closely. I was listening to Mabel. She'd been talking on the telephone ever since the banker and I went back to his desk, and she was more than bubbling over about the beautiful bust I'd made, and how I'd done it all from a faded old tintype so it looked real enough to talk, and that I was going to be in the neighborhood for only a few days, and that my price was ridiculously low—only twenty-five dollars for an exclusive marble bust.

Mabel's talking made me proud, scared, and embarrassed all at the same time, and I got out of there as soon as I could find any excuse for breaking away. When I went past her cage she asked anxiously if I'd be able to stay in eastern Arizona long enough to make five or six more busts. She said she'd taken the liberty of promising two other bankers I'd do theirs before I left, and she knew that three or four others would feel left out if they couldn't have them. I didn't want to seem overanxious so I said I'd agree right then to do the two she'd promised, and I'd talk to my partner about stopping long enough to finish the others. I was almost to the door before I remembered she hadn't told me which bankers she'd promised. Then I told her it would take two or three days before the casting was ready, so I'd make the two clay models in the meantime.

That afternoon while we were putting the wheel bushings in Shiftless and tightening up her front end, I told Lonnie as much as I thought I should about the bust business, but I didn't tell him that ten dollars wasn't the full price. I knew he'd want to spend most of it in trying to make a new automobile out of Shiftless, and I thought I had more than enough in her already. Except for her boiling, she did well enough after we'd finished with her. Her front wheels didn't wobble, the new bands didn't slip, and we made twenty miles an hour when we drove to Safford for the casting materials I needed. The only real trouble was that she still wandered back and forth across the road like a cow on her way to pasture—and she rattled and shook as if she had St. Vitus's dance.

I knew well enough there would be no artist's supply store in Safford, but I was lucky enough to find everything I really had to have for making the castings. Of course, there was no casting-grade plaster of Paris to be had, but I found a sack of fired gypsum at a lumber and building materials yard. I found Castile soap at the trading store, and an old broken parlor heater in a junk yard. All I wanted from the old stove was the isinglass behind a row of openings in the front, but I had to buy the whole stove to get it. It cost two dollars, and Lonnie thought we could use it for cooking, but it would have been a terrible nuisance to haul around, so I just slipped out the strips of isinglass and left it where it was. At the hardware and implement store I found a set of enamel pans that fitted inside each other, a couple of enamel buckets, a wooden mallet, a whetstone, and a few chipping chisels. And I had the man put them in a good clean burlap sack.

If Lonnie had been much of a thinker he'd have known I'd got hold of some extra money somewhere, but thinking wasn't his strongest point. While I was picking out the things I needed in the hardware store, he was busy rummaging around the auto supply and paint counters. Then when I was ready to pay my bill he came up with both hands and his arms full of stuff he'd picked up—a side view mirror, a fancy radiator cap, two quarts of paint, a dozen or so small tools, and a whole bundle of emery cloth. I tried to head him off easy so I wouldn't have to tell him right in front of the clerk that we didn't have the price, but Lonnie wouldn't head off.

I had to take him aside and whisper to him that he could buy the stuff later if we had good luck, but that we couldn't afford it yet. He looked up at me like a little boy who has just been told that Santa Claus really doesn't come from the North Pole. “Well, buddy,” he whispered, “you told me last night we was in business . . . if that was Bill Hart.”

“We might be if we're lucky . . . and if I can fool enough people,” I told him, “but we're not yet. I don't know if this gypsum I got will work for casting. If it won't, or if these people find out that I'm not really an artist, we could be sunk.”

Lonnie stood for a minute with his head down, but peeking up under his eyebrows at the enamelware the clerk was stowing into the gunny sack. “Look, buddy,” he whispered, “we ain't goin' to eat so much we'll need all them pots and pans to cook it in . . . and old Shiftless don't boil away enough water we'll need more'n one bucket to lug it in.”

“Those are things I need for making the castings,” I told him. “Without them we wouldn't have a chance of getting into business.”