The Bartender's Tale (28 page)

I couldn’t wait to tell Zoe about it.

—

“BARE NAKED?
Both of them?”

“That’s what Pop said.”

“Watching the submarine races,” Zoe whispered in her knowledgeable way. Practically breathless, we were camped beneath the vent, trying to sort through the happenings at Fort Peck and those since, and at the same time follow along with the voices rising and falling in the barroom, neither one a simple task. For the moment, the tip of her tongue showed her concentration on the mystery couple. “But if they were married, why weren’t they home in their own bedroom instead of making out in a truck?”

“That’s just it, see. Married, but not to each other.”

“Oooh. That’s different.”

So different that it kept me busy filling her in on the story as I had it from Pop. The pair in the truck both belonged to a large family working on the dam, which caused the scandal, but it was the man’s name that meant something.
“Had a customer in the old days,” the echo of my father, in a summer snow of seedfall from a giant cottonwood the day of my arrival in Gros Ventre, “Darius Duff, how’s that for a name? He was kind of a political crackpot, but he knew things. He’d start feeling his oats after enough drinks, and one time he got going on Igdrasil, the tree of existence.” I skipped the Igdrasil part to catch Zoe up on the mean little sheriff and how touchy he still was about the unsolved crime, if that’s what the drownings amounted to. “Pop thinks it was an accident. The truck getting knocked out of gear when they were, um . . .”

“Screwing,” Zoe helped out.

“Uh-huh, and it rolled down the dam into the lake, just like that.”

“Wild!”

We paused to listen tensely to the voices out front, the familiar and the new. Nothing was changing there, although at the same time everything was, and I was impelled back to the rest of the story of the Mudjacks Reunion. How Del, exhausted but triumphant, finished the last interview as people were heading for their cars, calling out good-byes and vows to do this again in five years. Meanwhile Pop and I filled trash cans with empty beer bottles—“The Shellackers in Great Falls ought to put up a plaque here, too,” he observed—and carefully stacked the empty beer cases so they wouldn’t blow away. Now that the reunion was all but over, he acted more like his usual self, going about business as if nothing else on the face of the earth mattered, but a couple of times I caught him watching me tensely to gauge my reaction to the day and its revelations. I hardly knew how to measure it myself. This father of mine had proved to be everything Del credited him with, legend and institutional memory and icebreaker. Why not say it all the way? Leadbelly of the mudjacks. Yet he also was shown to have been something like a landlord of women who went with men for money—I may have been only twelve, but I could figure out that taxi dancing might have serious implications after the music stopped—and he and the sheriff poked at each other in a kind of scary way. What was I supposed to think?

When Pop wasn’t busy glancing at me as we loaded up to leave, I eyed him, trying to decide. “Tom, you were fantastic! You too, Rusty.” Del by now was practically floating against the ceiling of the Gab Lab as he stowed the precious reels of tape, recounting to us one mudjack’s tale or another in giddy fashion. Gradually I made up my mind. When Del at last showed signs of running down, I butted in sharply.

“I have a question.”

I looked right at Pop as I said it, and my tone sent Del silent. I could see Pop, his expression frozen, bracing himself against five Ws and an H and whatever else of the alphabet of inquiry possible about his doings in his Fort Peck years. I let that hang in the air just long enough before I asked, “Why was the eagle blue?”

I realize it was an imaginary whoosh of relief from him, and for that matter from Del, who sensed that this was one of those family matters where the stakes were dangerously high, but it cleared the air, nonetheless. With a look of replenished confidence, Pop enlightened me that the blue eagle was something from the New Deal, a symbol businesses showed off to say they were complying with wage standards and other codes of the National Recovery Administration, and he’d figured it made a good name to slap onto a saloon at the grandest New Deal construction project of all. “Anything to do with Roosevelt, Fort Peckers were hog wild about”—he got talkative now that my question had proved easy as a breeze—“so they thought it was patriotic to drink in the joint. Not bad, hey?”

Head cocked, Del had been crouched in the Gab Lab, happily listening. “Great story! History making itself felt in the thirst glands,” he enthused, joking or not, I couldn’t tell. “Tom, you absolutely must let me capture that on tape when we get back.”

“We’ll see” sounded more positive than it usually did from him.

Hesitantly, Del put forth, “I, ah, hope you’re glad you came?”

Pop paused. He gave that a rueful wrinkled smile, sharing some of it to me, before answering.

“‘Glad’ maybe isn’t quite the real best word. But it’s been interesting.”

His gaze went distant as he cast a look at the dam and then at the vacant hillside, where the Blue Eagle once stood, and around at the reunion site, where he had walked like a king. I silently watched while he loosened his bow tie and folded it away, the same as I had seen him do so many times after his nights of bartending. Standing there as if catching his breath, he looked like he did after bouncing someone from the saloon, shirt crumpled and the gray in his pompadour mussed in with the black hair, brow furrowed but no wounds showing. I was the one hurting, with our life scheduled to change unimaginably as soon as we got home and the Medicine Lodge passed from our hands, and this father whom I loved, in spite of anything today’s evidence said about him, would turn into an old man waiting for the marble farm. It didn’t seem right.

After his breather, if that’s what it was, Pop snapped to. “Delano, you don’t have to kiss every tape,” he called into the van, where Del could be heard still squirreling away things, “we need to get a move on or we’ll be at the tail end of the traffic out of here.” Already, departing cars were jammed at the approach to the road up the bluff, except for one coming off the dam and heading in our direction at a surprising speed, from the looks of it someone who couldn’t wait to use the boat ramp now that the crowd was clearing away. Del hopped out, and while I made myself useful folding up chairs, he and Pop began taking down the van awning. Busy with that, they weren’t paying any attention to the rapid arrival, but, naturally curious, I watched the car zoom right past the boat ramp and keep coming in a storm of dust.

Zoe had been following my whispered telling of this, as if she didn’t dare miss a word. I stopped, seeing it all again.

“Then what?” she breathed.

“This big red Cadillac pulled up.” The voices coming through the vent rose at this point, the woman’s above the others. “And she got out.”

6

B
ACK IN BUSINESS
in the old neighborhood, Tom?” The voice was husky, the smile a bit tilted, the appearance startling, to say the least. “Mudjacks haven’t forgotten how to drink, I betcha. How was the take?”

Pop watched, wide-eyed—Del and I did, too—as this late-arriving surprise left the car to join us. The woman was, according to the saying I had never fully appreciated until then, an eyeful. In lavender slacks that had no slack between the fabric and her and a creamy blouse also snugly filled, the vision of womanhood providing us that slinky smile was not what is standardly thought of as beautiful, yet here were three males of various ages who could not stop staring at her.

As she came up to us, it became evident she was middle-aged, but unlike Pop’s version, in the middle of resisting the years. Her complexion was that mother-of-pearl kind in ads in magazines, and whatever maintenance it took to discourage wrinkles had been done. Even more striking than any of the rest of her, though, was the mane of hair so blond it approached white; “milk blond” said it about right. She resembled someone well known, although in the surprise of the moment I couldn’t quite think who, nor could Del, judging from his quizzical expression.

Pop seemed taken aback by her appearance, in both senses of the word. “It’s nothing like the old days, Proxy,” he said, not sounding like himself. “We were giving it away.”

“For free?” she laughed. “You know what I think about that.”

“Let’s not go into it.” He was awfully nervous all of a sudden, glancing back and forth from her to the two of us, his brow working. “So, what brings you to a reunion you’ve managed to miss entirely?”

More of that skewed smile. “You’re here, I’m here. Nicer without all those curious types around, don’t you think?”

Del and I standing there with our faces hanging out drew her attention, especially me. “Hey there, sunshine. Do I see a family resemblance?” she asked, as if looking for one.

Gruffly, Pop identified us to her, and her to us. “Meet Proxy Shannon. She used to”—he put it carefully—“work in the Blue Eagle.”

She shook her head as if to say,
Men
. “The old marriage certificate reads ‘Duff,’ Tom.”

“I know that. I just never liked it on you.”

That exchange electrified me. Now I knew, absolutely knew, who this was. Wife, widow, survivor, whatever the unfortunate mate should be called, of the male half of that naked couple in that truck in the river. Talk about history, here was some a good deal juicier than Del’s tape recordings. The sheriff had made it sound as if those with the cursed name of Duff would be too ashamed to show their faces around Fort Peck, yet she was certainly showing hers, bold as can be. Hungry as I always was for a story, I could hardly wait for more of this one.

Of course, Del knew none of that, and regarded the dazzling newcomer as a surprise pearl in the day’s treasure chest of mudjacks. “Shall we get out of the sun?” He gallantly took the role of host, since the tarp tent still was stretched between the van and the nearest trees. “Here, I’ll set up the chairs.” I scrambled to help.

Pop seemed less than thrilled with Del’s burst of good manners, but in no time the four of us were seated in the shade, with the water of the captured river lapping in the background, almost as if all this was intended.

“I could have sworn I heard you say you were giving away throat medicine around here,” our unexpected guest kidded Pop, if it was kidding.

Del vaulted up to fish out a beer for her from the last remnants in the tub. “It’s been such a phenomenal day, I believe I’ll have one with you, Mrs. Duff.”

“I could use one, too, Delano,” said Pop, making me wonder what gets into grown men at a time like this.

“A phenomenal day at Fort Peck, huh?” the glamorous betrayed widow, as she now starred in my imagination, investigated Del as he returned with the clutch of Shellacs. “That’s one for the books.” She peered around him to the equipment cubbyholed in the van. “What are you, some kind of gypsy reporter?”

“Hmm? Not quite.” He happily expounded to her about the Gab Lab and the mudjack interviews and how he couldn’t have done them without Pop as the institutional memory and what a historic day this had been for the retrieval of Missing Voices, while Pop looked more and more as if he wished Del would lose his.

During this, she raised one eyebrow and then the other, which I noticed were not perfectly blond. Finally Del slowed down enough to ask, “Is your husband, ah, available for me to interview sometime?”

“He’s out of reach,” she said, without the slightest crack in her expression. It was driven home to me how much Zoe and I had to learn about facial control if we were going to be actors. Next came a teasing little grin at Del, as if she’d caught him at something. “Del-a-no. Is that your honest handle?”

He reddened, back to college boy. “As I’ve told Tom and Rusty, my father worshipped Roosevelt.” It was his turn now, though. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mrs. Duff—”

“‘Proxy’ will do, thanks. ‘Mrs.’ is for grandmas, and I’m not there yet.”

“—that’s positively what I was curious about, the derivation of ‘Proxy,’ I mean. A great historian once said names are the signposts of the soul.”

“The hair, honey.” She tossed her head as if he might not have noticed the bleach job that stood out like a full moon. “I had to use peroxide in the old days. They’ve got better drugstore stuff now. That’s progress for you.”

Until now Pop had not been saying anything, just sitting there, nursing his beer and keeping watch on her. “If we’re through with hairdressing and the history of names, maybe you could tell us why you’re here. There’s Nevada plates on that Caddie.” He couldn’t help looking appreciatively at the big car with tailfins like a rocket ship’s. “That’s a hell of a long way to come, just to wait until everybody packs up and leaves.”

“Now, Tom, is that the best you can do for a welcome? Been a little while since we saw each other, I thought absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder.”

“How’d you know I’d even be here?”

“Had a hunch. An old-timey Fort Peck get-together wouldn’t amount to anything without Tom Harry, would it.” That came from her with an admiring smile, genuine or not, I couldn’t tell. “Institutional memory, huh? Jeez, I wish I had one of those.”

“I seem to have enough for everybody,” he said with a pointed look at Del. “Okay, let’s get to it, Proxy. You didn’t come looking me up just to stroll down Memory Lane.”

She studied her red fingernails. “I need to talk to you about a job.”

“A
job
?” Pop couldn’t help but laugh. “Excuse my saying so, but you’re slipping. Don’t you know I’m not running that kind of joint anymore, haven’t been for more than twenty years? And, besides, I’m about to—”

“Don’t get excited. Not that sort of job.” That crooked smile. “I’m danced out anyway. Reno has plenty else to offer.” My mind was practically flooded with all this. Nevada was where people went to get divorced quick, and Reno its center of that activity; Velma Simms had shed any number of spouses there. But this Cadillac-driving mystery woman from there, what possible job could she want from Pop in his respectable Gros Ventre life? Proxy Shannon in his telling, Proxy Duff in her own, this latest exchange told me she was no stranger to taxi dancing and the wilder doings in the Blue Eagle, besides being the victim of a husband who strayed to his death at the bottom of the Missouri River right out from where we were sitting. She’d had a lot busier existence than we were used to in the Medicine Lodge.

Naturally Del had his head cocked to hear every word she said—he had that look on him as if he wished his tape recorder was catching all this—and she glanced at him and then at me. “I didn’t expect to have to do this in front of an audience.” Again, I had the feeling that for some reason I was of particular concern to her. Del, though, gave a start, as if he’d been poked in the ribs. “Ah, maybe Rusty and I should go look at the scenery.”

“Sit tight,” Pop ordered. “You, too, Rusty. I’m not going to have two cases of itching curiosity to ride home with.”

“Oh-kay,” Proxy said in throaty singsong. “Then here goes.” A tiny indent of concentration—or was it calculation?—appeared in the place between her eyebrows as she peeled at the label of her Select bottle with her thumbnail before saying anything more. “I saw that newspaper piece about you and your famous joint, Tom. It set me to thinking.”

“You can give your brain a rest,” Pop duly headed her off. “I’m about to sell the Medicine Lodge. Gonna quit the business. Be a gentleman of leisure.”

“I sort of wondered if that wasn’t in the wind. ‘Sure gonna miss you when I’m gone’ is something I used to tell customers when their time was up, remember? Always good for a laugh, and they’d go away feeling better, the dumb joes.” Her slanted smile seemed to excuse the three of us from that category, whether or not we deserved it. “But from the story in the paper, it sounded like you might mean it if you don’t watch out.”

“Didn’t I just say in so many words I’m selling the—”

“It sounds like a real nice joint,” she didn’t miss a beat. “Right up there with the old Eagle, I bet. You always were the best at running a barroom. Jeez, Tom, you don’t want to give up something like that. Sure, you maybe could use some time off, not work yourself half to death anymore—I feel that way myself sometimes. But you don’t have to throw the whole business away to get to that.” She paused. “I can about guess the fix you’re in. Russell here”—either I was imagining it or she had said my given name as if trying to get used to it—“has some years to go before he can help out behind the bar, doesn’t he.”

“He isn’t ever—”

“See, that’s why I came all this way to make you a proposition.” The other two of us were following this as if it were a volleyball match. Proxy gave us another sidelong look, then leaned sharply in on Pop. “What you need is a working partner. An A-1 bartender to take some of the load off.”

“Now, there’s a whale of an idea if there ever was one,” he met that with something between a laugh and a scoff. “What’s got into you? Have you forgot what a grind it is behind a bar? Slinging drinks to a full house isn’t like cozying up to some guy who’s feeling frisky, you ought to know that from those years of watching me at it.” Amused now as much as anything, he shook his head definitively. “No slap at you, understand, but you wouldn’t last one night tending bar.”

“Not me, wise guy. Her.”

Pop wrinkled his brow. “Who’s ‘her’?”

“Francine.”

“Proxy, have you slipped a cog? I don’t know any—”

“My daughter.” The smile sloped more than ever this time. “Yours, too.”

—

DUMBSTRUCK
IS A WORD
you use when you’re out of others, but it fit then. Pop stared slackly at the tinsel-haired bearer of this news. Del rubbed his good ear as if to make sure it was working right. My head swam. What was it about Fort Peck that kept a person gasping to keep up?

More to the immediate point, how could this woman have a daughter by my father if she had been married to the man in the truck in the lake—I mean, it was conceivable, so to speak, but all kinds of questions followed that one. Starting with, why had he never known about this Francine person until this very day, as I only had to look at him to know this was total news to him. His brow bunched with so many furrows it looked like it was made of wicker. My own mind swirling, I tried to think straight, arithmetic first. Anyone dating back to the Blue Eagle in the 1930s would be a grown-up by now, would need to be if she was a candidate to tend bar. The revelation, if true, that I had some sort of adult sister boggled me as much as if I’d been told Igdrasil the ancient tree was a relative.

Professional listener or not, Del was sitting there with his mouth pooched in a silent whistle of amazement. Pop was recovering enough to speak.

“This is wacky. If you’ve got a kid going back that far, sure as hell it came from Darius. He could barely keep his pants on, thinking about you, even after you were married. You and I only ever—”

“Nice try, Tom, but Francine doesn’t take after him in any way whatsoever,” Proxy brushed that aside. “Besides, him and me weren’t that friendly there toward the end, if you take my meaning. I’ve always kept it a secret from the other Duffs about her being from some other pasture. But no question, Tom, she’s yours.” She locked eyes with him. “Women know these things.” Then a different smile from her, that found time for me before returning to Pop. “Excuse me for saying she’s a chip off the old bar, but you’ll see. Wait till you meet her.”

—

THE LONG,
long drive back to Gros Ventre that night was like being in a darkened tunnel that stretched on and on. Instead of cruising home wrapped in the memory of our phenomenal day at Fort Peck, the three of us were under a far different spell, Del rabbit-eyed behind the wheel, me in a state of emotional commotion in back, Pop dourly smoking his way through one cigarette after another.

An uncertainty named Francine rode with us. When Pop demanded to see this supposed offspring with his own eyes, Proxy promised to produce her just as soon as she could catch a plane from Reno. “I figured we ought to do this sort of gradual,” she’d generously left us with, “so everybody could get used to the idea of her.” That did not show any sign of taking hold as the van monotonously traced the highway out of the deeper black with its headlights.

Ultimately Del cleared his throat a little. “Ah, Tom and Rusty, I feel like an intruder. This actually is none of my business. I mean, I can’t help but think about it, but—”

“Delano, don’t get started,” Pop begged. “You wanted to hear about life at Fort Peck, you got one more earful than you bargained for, let’s leave it at that.” I watched him hesitate a couple of times before he half turned to where I was perched behind the seats. “How you doing, kiddo? Kind of a surprise, isn’t it.” The match lighting his next cigarette showed his face, so serious and seamed. Strange how a moment’s glimpse like that can last a lifetime. “It sure as hell was to me.” He shook his head, blowing a soft stream of smoke. “Shouldn’t have happened.”