The Bartender's Tale (17 page)

Pausing in his discourse to Pop, the vice president turned and smiled indulgently at the sunny pair of us. “Cute children you have, Mr. Harry. What are they, twins but not the identical kind?”

Pop shook his head and gave the kind of wink that passes between men of sophistication. “Different mothers, if you know what I mean.”

“Oho,” said the vice president, not entirely as if he knew what that meant.

When at last we had been shown everything there was about beer making, our host leaned toward Pop as if confiding a business secret.

“Of course, we can brew our product until it runs out our ears, but we can’t sell one drop without superb skill such as yours be-hind the bar. That’s why we here at Select were so pleased to”—he chuckled—“select your establishment for this year’s award.”

Pop took this as imperturbably as a captain of industry. Nodding gravely to the activity in every precinct of the brewery, he responded: “I’m glad to see I’ve got your crew working Sundays to keep up.”

“That’s saying a mouthful!” the vice president acclaimed that. He thumped Pop on the back as Joe the beer man had done with the delivery of the award letter; I mentally tucked away the bit of behavior as the Great Falls Shellac—whoops, Select—salute. “Well, onward to the luncheon,” our host exclaimed. “I’ll meet you at the Buster.” He smiled tolerantly at Zoe and me again. “I hope you brought your appetites with you.”

—

LIKE THE BREWERY,
the Sodbuster Hotel—so named in tribute to the grain-growing region that Great Falls was at the heart of—was a place Pop and I, and for that matter Zoe, might never have encountered in the ordinary course of our lives. Classy enough to invert itself into the Hotel Sodbuster in the terra-cotta name on its facade, it also made sure to boast GREAT FALLS’ FINEST! in a banner over the front entrance. The marble lobby and overstuffed furnishings and potted greenery showed that it was not merely claiming that honor by default, and in those surroundings I’m afraid our threesome looked like just what we were, Sunday visitors who were in over our heads in a fancy hostelry. Not a thing in the brewery excursion had seemed to faze Pop, but he looked nervous about this.

A desk clerk a lot better dressed than we were coolly directed us to the banquet room. Pop halted outside the big oaken doors, though, and jerked his head for Zoe and me to follow him down the hallway. “Anybody who has to take a leak, now’s the time.” Zoe did not yet have the skill of blushing on cue, but she otherwise acted ladylike enough as she minced into the properly labeled restroom while we went to the one marked GENTLEMEN.

The Hotel Sodbuster had restrooms deluxe. More of that marble on the floor, and sinks that nearly snowblinded a person. Even the places to pee gleamed, and, thinking of my dreaded latrine duty at the Medicine Lodge, I wished out loud its facilities were as nice as these.

“Sure,” Pop muttered as we lined up side by side to do our business, “just what the joint needs, a Taj Mahal toilet.”

“Pop? Are you worried about something?”

“What do you think? It’s an award ceremony, isn’t it, so they’re going to expect me to get up and say something, aren’t they. And I’m no public speaker, am I.”

“Can’t you just say, ‘Gee, thanks,’ and sit right back down?”

“What kind of an ess of a bee wouldn’t have any more manners than that?” He zipped up, and checked me over to make sure I had done the same. “Okay, let’s collect Zoe and go get this over with.”

Stepping into the gathering in the banquet room of the Buster was like entering a forest of business suits, with a few of the dignitaries’ wives sprinkled in to coo down at Zoe and me. The vice president from the brewery greeted Pop and ourselves like old friends and led the trio of us around to be introduced. The roomful was quite an assortment—the slickly dressed mayor of Great Falls and sunburnt farmers from the barley growers’ association and up-and-comers of the local Chamber of Commerce and burly beer distributors from all over the state; names flew by us in bunches as Pop shook hands endlessly. With his height and the silver streak in his hair, he stood out in the crowd like a cockatoo, and I could tell he was uncomfortable with the marathon of one-sided conversations people were making with him. This was one of those occasions where much was spoken, but very little was actually being said. Zoe and I were asked over and over how old we were. It was a relief when the vice president clattered a spoon against his beer glass and announced it was time to take our seats.

Thanks to Pop’s eminence, ours were at the head table, and with a roomful of people in front of us to be spied on just by looking, Zoe and I now were in our glory. We sat watching, keen as magpies, as the grown-ups socialized variously. I was storing away the tongue-tied expression on the barley farmer who had ended up next to the mayor’s wife when I heard a finger snap under the table, a signal either from the ghost of Shakespeare or Zoe.

Leaning toward her in response, I whispered, “How now?”

She giggled, but whispered back with concern: “Your dad looks awful serious. Isn’t he having a good time?”

“He has to get up and make a speech of some kind.”

“So? He doesn’t have stage fright, does he?”

“He doesn’t have a speech.”

“Ooh, that’s not good.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe he can tell them it fell out of his pocket back at the brewery and went into one of those big vats, and so the next time they have a beer, they’ll have a taste of what he meant to say.”

“I don’t think he’d go for that.”

As if by radar, Pop turned from valiantly keeping up a conversation with the vice president and said under his breath, “Don’t get carried away, you two.” We obediently straightened up, mute as puppets.

Waiters in white jackets flocked into the room, and the food came. I studied my plate to learn what a banquet consisted of. Mashed potatoes, no surprise there. String beans, harmless enough. Roast beef, pink in the middle. Very pink. In Gros Ventre, someone would have been sure to joke that they had seen critters worse off than this get well.

I had never met anything yet I couldn’t eat, so I went right at my meat. Zoe, though, only tweaked hers with her fork.

Observing this, Pop told her out the side of his mouth, “Dig in, princess.”

“It’s not cooked,” she whispered to him.

“It’s rare, is all. Give it a try.”

“I can’t. The color turns my stomach.”

“Better chew with your eyes closed, then. Come on, people are watching. Saw some off the edge and eat it.”

“Do I have to?”

“Hell yes,” he said, giving her a look. “It’s good manners.”

I knew that look, and braced for trouble. The last thing we needed in a roomful of important people was a contest of wills between my father and Zoe over a chunk of meat. But miracles do happen. Swallowing hard before the really hard swallowing, she cut a bite and ate it. Then another. I was amazed; in our suppers together in the cafe, I had seen her throw a fit over an undercooked pea.

Thus the banquet proceeded without warfare, and after sufficient beer had been served to the grown-ups, the vice president rapped his glass with a spoon again to draw everyone’s attention.

He introduced the mayor, who said a few pleasantries and doubtless won some votes by promptly sitting down. The vice president got to his feet again and talked on for a while about the long and warm relationship between the brewery and establishments such as Pop’s; I noticed the word
saloon
never crossed his lips, let alone
joint
. In conclusion, he said it gave him the greatest pleasure to present this year’s award to “an owner and bartender known as one of a kind, Tom Harry, for an establishment which also has no equal, legendarily the first place of business in the town of Gros Ventre and still its leading one, the Medicine Lodge!”

At that, Pop had to stand up and receive a copper plaque that surprised him with its size and heft. As he wrestled it into security in his arms, Zoe and I craned for a look at the thing. Besides the fancy inscription, it was a representation of that scenery around Great Falls we’d seen on the drive in—the river valley, the Charlie Russell square butte, the mountain background—but where the smelter stack would have been, a gigantic Select beer bottle loomed over everything.

Pop studied the engraved scene for a few moments, then said as if thinking out loud: “I have a customer this bottle is about the right size for.” That drew a laugh—Earl Zane would never know he had been his own best joke—and I felt relieved for Pop.

However, he looked not too sure about what he was going to say after that as he ever so gingerly deposited the award onto the table and faced the waiting audience. He ran a hand through his hair, as if trying to comb his thoughts into place. “Something like this comes as quite a surprise, although I guess it’s a long time in the happening. Down through the years, I’ve sold oceans of Shel—”

“Ooh!”
Zoe squealed in the nick of time, as if I had goosed her.

“Kids these days.” Pop recovered hastily, giving her what amounted to a grateful frown. He cleared his throat and started again. “Like I was saying, I have sold oceans of
See
lect”—he all but buttered the word and handed it on a plate to the brewery vice president be-side him—“down through the years. Years of beers, hey?” he said, as if just noticing the rhyme. Now he squinted as he followed one thought to the next. “My, ah, establishment, the Medicine Lodge, does go way back. I’m kind of getting like that myself.” He shook his head as if thinking about the passage of time. “According to this nice piece of metal”—he tapped the plaque, making it ring—“all the days and nights behind the bar maybe do add up to something.”

There, that did it up perfectly fine, I silently congratulated him. Proudly I waited for him to say “Thanks” and sit down.

Instead he said, “It reminds me of a story.”

What? Since when? My father who would not tell the least tale about anything? The man who made an art of listening, not shooting the breeze? I wanted to disappear under the tablecloth. I just knew the banquet room would become a tomb as people grew bored. Zoe caught my stricken look.

I will say, he did the familiar man-walks-into-a-bar cadence as if it was second nature when he began: “A bartender whose time is up goes to heaven.

“Saint Peter is sitting there on a cloud with his gold-leaf book.” Pop pantomimed the celestial gatekeeper. “‘Hmm, hmm, remind me . . . what did you do in life that brings you to heaven?’ The visitor scratches his head over that, he’s a little embarrassed.” Deliberately or not, Pop acted this out sufficiently. “‘I’m a bartender,’ the visitor finally comes right out with it, ‘and I have to tell you, I’m surprised to be here.’ ‘You’re right about that,’ says Saint Peter, ‘we haven’t had one of your kind in quite some time.’”

That hit the funny bone of the brewery vice president, who started chuckling unstoppably. Encouraged, Pop squared himself up and continued, “‘Come in, come in,’ says Saint Pete. The bartender follows him through the golden gate, and there are all the angels, sitting up to a beautiful bar that’s so long it goes out of sight off into the clouds. The spittoons are made of gold, and the bar grub in jars on the back shelf”—Pop sketched this with his hands rather longingly—“is caviar and hearts of beef. Everybody is having drinks, but this being heaven, no one gets out of hand.”

A more general murmur of laughter around the room at that, with Pop wagging his head about the comparative behavior of drinkers. He resumed: “‘Come along and meet the Proprietor,’ Saint Peter says now, and leads the bartender over to where the saints are sitting in the booths. One booth is bigger and grander than all the others, and he realizes it’s the throne, and there’s God Himself sitting there, bigger than life.

“‘This is the bartender I was telling you about, Lord,’ Saint Pete says by way of introduction.

“God’s voice is the size of a thunderclap, of course. ‘Welcome,’” Pop imitated to the best of his lung capacity. He did it again. “‘Welcome. We’ve been waiting for you.’” I still rated it a miracle, but a lifetime across the bar from storytellers now paid off in his delivery of the ending: “God turns to the person sitting there in the booth at his right hand. ‘Jesus, have this fellow show you a thing or two about wine.’”

As laughter swelled, led by that of the vice president, Pop modestly said, “Thanks,” and sat down.

—

“THIS IS SO MUCH FUN.
I could spend forever with you and Rusty.”

“Don’t get too carried away, princess.” Pop himself was looking pleased with life, though, regally puffing on a cigarette as he navigated the Buick across the Missouri River bridge to the ballpark, the final installment of our honorific day. The vice president had given him a congratulatory smack on the back after his speech, if that’s what it was, at the hotel, and said he would leave word at the ticket office for us to go right on in to the company’s box and he’d meet us there. As Zoe chattered, I stayed mum, dreamily looking forward to seeing the Selectrics, those phantoms of the radio, play baseball, even the hazardous way they’d historically played it.

The instant we set foot into the grandstand I fell under the dazzling spell of the emerald-green outfield and the inset diamond of infield; I was an American male, after all. An usher materialized to escort us as if we were the most important people in the park, Zoe prancing in our lead. Watching her bound down the steps ahead of us, Pop shook his head, saying aside to me: “Isn’t she a heller. How you holding up, kiddo?”

“Hunnerd percent.”

He looked at me oddly. “Since when did you start talking like a sheepherder?”

There at the roped-off box, the vice president met us with a glad cry and we took our seats, almost in the third base coach’s back pocket, only to hop right back up as the tinny public-address system played the national anthem. Then the Selectrics bounded onto the field, and the leadoff hitter for the other team, the Fargo Fargonauts, scuffed his way into the batter’s box and it was unmistakably baseball, slower even than fishing.

Like me, Zoe had never been to a game before, and I could tell she was fiendishly finding bits to store away, such as the coach’s signs to the batters, which had him touching himself in surprising places and tugging at his earlobes and nose as if keeping track of his sensory parts. I concentrated on what was happening on the field, which was instructive in a way, some of the Great Falls fielders proving to be about as athletic as the recess bunch of us playing horse.