The Bartender's Tale (29 page)

I had no way of knowing if he meant Proxy materializing like a ghost risen from the reunion as she did, or whatever transpired on some unbridled night in the Blue Eagle twenty-some years ago, or what. The best I could muster was a shaky “Yeah?”

“You’ve got every right to be upset,” he granted. “But this isn’t what it’s stacked up to be, as heaven is my witness.” That was maybe not the best choice of words from a man never known to go near a church.

Trying to look like he was concentrating only on the road, Del was listening as strenuously as I was. “The odds are still sky high any kid of hers is not mine.” Pop spoke as if it were flat fact. “Proxy and I didn’t fool around in the Eagle. Strictly business, me in back of the bar and her on the dance-floor side. All those years we kept our paws off each other.”

“Then why is she—”

“Except that one damn time.”

The hum of the tires on the road surface was the only sound for several seconds. Finally Pop hitched around in his seat toward Del. “How about you, Delano? You ever been in a squeeze like that? Where the brain shuts off and the other body part doesn’t?” I sensed this man-to-man talk was for my benefit, somehow.

“Not quite to that extent,” Del confessed.

“You’re lucky, then.” Pop shifted in his seat again, for once not lighting up a cigarette, simply gazing out at the night. “What happened between me and her came smack out of nowhere. Like I said, we’d behaved ourselves for, what, five years, working together since the dam work started up. And it wasn’t many days before I was done with Fort Peck, I’d already put money down on the Medicine Lodge. But there was one last big Saturday night in the Eagle, and after we closed the joint, Proxy wanted me to have a drink with her to celebrate what the Eagle had been for us. One led to a couple or three.” This still sounded like man talk directed at Del, but I had the very real impression of being the listener in the dark as the only parent I had ever known leaned against the bedroom doorway and told me what was most on his mind.

“We got sloppy,” he was continuing that same way. “She was drunk, she was having trouble with that husband of hers, and I guess I didn’t resist all that much. It was kind of a good-bye.” He gave that the sigh it deserved. “Some good-bye.”

Del judiciously left the question to me. “Then . . . then what?”

“We both came to our senses in a hurry, right after. Darius Duff wasn’t someone to have mad at you, if he’d ever caught on. Proxy and I didn’t go near each other again, and pretty quick the slide happened, and that was the only thing on anybody’s mind. Then I pulled out for Gros Ventre, and the rest is another story, isn’t it.” Saying that, he turned his head toward me, our eyes meeting. “What can I say? Life throws you for a loop sometimes, Rusty. Try not to get all worked up about this, okay?”

Did he think I wasn’t trying, ever since the fateful words “She’s yours”?

He went on: “Hell, maybe Proxy just has a wild hair and nothing will come of this.”

I didn’t believe that the least little bit, and I doubted that he did, either. “What if”—my voice was so thin, Del was practically leaning out of his seat to hear—“it doesn’t turn out that way?”

“Don’t get ahead of the stampede,” Pop warned crossly. His gaze moved off into the dark again. “We’ll sort this out when they show up at the joint.”

“But what about the deal with Earl?”

“Didn’t I just tell you not to—” It took some doing, but he reined himself in. “First things first, right? Earl will just have to wait his turn in the complaint line a little longer. He’s used to it.”

So many conflicting thoughts contended in me that my brain felt knotted up. As much as ever, I did not want him to give up the Medicine Lodge, and if this Francine could turn out to be really a working partner and take the strain off the bartending, wouldn’t that be the best possible thing? How much would she take over things, though? Everything? Would she live with us? Would she boss me around? What if she turned out to have a disposition like that other relative, Ronny the Phoenix menace? The doubts began to win in me. Come right down to it, I didn’t really want to be related to anyone in the world except Pop, did I. Call me spoiled, if that’s what being an only kid with free run of the back of a saloon amounted to, but I was utterly leery of my life changing that way. If I were to have a sudden sister, I would want her to be a duplicate of Zoe, smart and funny and ready to do bits and sharp of eye and keen of ear where the mystifying beings that were grown-ups were involved, and what were the chances of that?

In other words, I was irrevocably finding out for myself the drawback of the age of twelve, the awkward stage of not yet old enough to master such things but past the simple arithmetic of being just a child. The one certainty was that those two trains of thought, for and against a total newcomer in the family, put me in a real fix. Pop’s familiar commandment not to get myself in an uproar or hydrophobic or some other upset state of mind was not helping at all. Opposite as were the outcomes I could imagine ahead, either one scared me to my eyeteeth to think about, and I never did know any way to shut off thinking.

The silence that had settled on the van lasted only as long as Del judged was respectful. “Ah, excuse my asking, but why is the husband missing in this?”

“He met with an accident,” Pop replied reluctantly, “right before I left Fort Peck. Drowned in the river.”

—

“MAYBE SHE DID IT.”
Zoe had a ready theory when I told her about the bare-naked couple found in the truck. “Sneaked up on them and let them have it somehow.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But when I tried Pop on that, he said huh-uh there was no way she could have, she was in the Eagle with him and about a hundred other people when it happened.”

“That lets her off the hook, then.” Zoe couldn’t help sounding disappointed.

“Yeah. That one, anyway.”

—

GLANCING AT POP
as much as at the road, Del waited for more, although I could tell it would have to come from me later on. Unfazed, he pursued in another direction. “That’s an odd name, if I heard it right. Darius was a Persian king.”

Pop laughed, the reflex kind when something is more bizarre than funny. “He was a strange bird in a lot of ways. Bony kind of guy who always looked like he could use a good meal—the Duffs were all built like hungry cats.” That description cleared my mind a little. I would have been told I was jumping the gun again, but a family characteristic like that ought to settle the whose-daughter-is-she issue in a hurry, hadn’t it? Look at the Zanes, senior and junior, you could tell at first glance they were the same make of fool. And while Pop and I didn’t take after each other all that much except for build and our hair black as shoe polish, the likeness was unmistakable. Even Zoe had her mother’s eyes. Resemblance didn’t lie, right?

“Sometimes I thought Proxy married the ess of a bee”—Pop was still on Darius—“just to have somebody to fight with. He was a bright enough guy, knew his stuff about history and so on, but he’d argue politics until your ears would fall off.”

Del was quick to pick up on the implication of that. “Against Roosevelt?”

“Can you imagine?” Pop sounded as indignant, as if this had all happened yesterday. “FDR was way too tame for him. ‘Capitalism and soda water,’ he called the New Deal. All the while he’s drawing good wages on the dam like ten thousand other guys who would have been bums on the street without the government doing something. See what I mean? When it came to politics, he needed his bolts tightened.” With a shake of his head, he delivered the final verdict: “Not the best customer there ever was.”

Del absorbed all that for a few moments, then wondered, “Was Mrs. Duff—”

“Do me a real big favor and use her other name, okay?”

“Sorry. Was Proxy politically inclined then, too?”

Pop snorted. “Hardly. Her inclinations ran in other directions.” He dug for a cigarette, but halted before striking a match and turned to me. “How many is this today?”

“Four, on your second pack,” I said crossly.

“I’m surprised it’s not more.” He lit up and took a lung-filling drag. “Damn, what a day,” came the exhalation. “Anyway, that’s Proxy for you. I have to admit, she’s still a looker, isn’t she.” His tone of voice toyed with that. “Still a handful, too, when she puts her mind to something.” He leaned back reflectively, his cigarette a glowing dot in the dark of the van. “Back there in the Blue Eagle she was a catamount, for sure.”

“What’s that?” I asked immediately, with Del looking glad I had.

“Pretty much the same as a wildcat, only multiplied by about ten.” The bartender of the ages shook his head, as if still trying to believe her behavior. “There was the time she got into a big argument with another taxi dancer who’d tried to swipe a customer from her. I was busy behind the bar, I told them to knock it off and wasn’t paying any more attention. The next thing I knew, Proxy is up on the bandstand, taking a running start. She sails off there and catches the other dancer around the waist with her legs and her arms locked around the head. They hit the floor like a ton of bricks, Proxy of course on top. She was just starting to bang the other dancer’s head on the floor when I managed to pull her off.”

I listened as openmouthed as I’d been about the making of mud until it piled up into the greatest dam in the world, and the all-night hammering that laid the floor of the Blue Eagle, and other wonders emanating from the front seat. The Gab Lab certainly was living up to its name on this round trip.

Still thinking back across the years, Pop sounded more than a little rueful now. “Proxy was quite an attraction for the joint, in more ways than one. And we got along together just fine when she wasn’t trying to massacre somebody. The thing is, she was hellish good company when business got slow in the Eagle. Always had something to say, some tale to tell.”

“She sounds almost, ah, institutional in her own right,” Del ventured with a sideways glance at him.

“Yeah, well, that’s a pretty good description.” Pop in turn studied Del in the dim glow of the dashboard for a moment. “So, Delano. At least you got your Missing Voices. You’ll be pulling out now, I expect?”

“Hmm? Oh, I was going to bring that up. Actually, I’d like to stay on while I transcribe the interviews, if that would be all right. Put the Gab Lab to further use.”

“Help yourself,” I was secretly glad to hear Pop say, “there’s plenty of room to park in the driveway behind the Packard.” He let out the same kind of big sigh as he’d done earlier. “Cripes, the Packard.”

“What about the Packard?” I probably beat Del to it by a half a second.

Pop didn’t say anything for about a minute. Then, “That’s where it happened.” His tone left no mistake what “it”
was.

“In the
car
?”

“Kiddo,” he said tiredly, “you have to realize, a sizable number of the population gets its start in a back seat, that’s just life.”

He turned around to me and I waited apprehensively for what else this endless day would bring. But he only said, “Better grab some shut-eye. We got a lot ahead of us when we get home.”

7

W
E THOUGHT SHE
looked like a beatnik, when the Cadillac pulled up to the house that Sunday and, ready or not, here Proxy and her were. That’s because we didn’t know yet what a hippie was.

There in the driveway beside her mother—at least there did not seem to be any outstanding question about that—the young woman appeared frayed and tousled, maybe from the plane flight from Nevada, maybe habitually. She was in blue jeans on their last legs and a threadbare pinkish shirt, not a blouse, and beaded moccasins, and some other kind of decorated leather thing on one wrist.

Peer at her as hard as I could through the kitchen window, with Pop’s description of Darius Duff to go by, the “hungry cat” part might have been more a matter of what she was wearing and how she wore it. This Francine person wasn’t particularly bony anyplace I could see. On the other side of the resemblance question, certainly she was better-looking than either of us, in a sulky kind of way. Mainly, if this newcomer resembled anyone within a hundred miles, disregarding the way she was dressed, it had to be Proxy. Similar, very womanly figure, but not nearly so round, so firm, so fully packed, as the male clientele of the Medicine Lodge would have said. I still was unsure what to think. Because, plain as day, any other comparison—light complexion, facial features, characteristic tilt of the head—literally paled beside the matter of hair. Hers, in a kind of shaggy cut that did not come from any beauty shop, was the identical indelible hue as mine and Pop’s where his had not silvered, as if the three of us had been dipped in black ink together.

Watching over my shoulder, Pop scrutinized the new arrival as intently as I did. “Cripes,” he said mechanically about that family hair. With that and the pearly skin, if you closed one eye and concentrated, she did look like she was out of the same hatch as us, particularly him. He startled me by rubbing his hand on the crown of my head, as if for luck. “I don’t know what we’re in for, kiddo. But let’s see how this pans out.”

Out we went, to where Proxy was fixing her face in the side mirror of the Cadillac and Francine was eyeing the old Packard and Del’s VW van curiously.

The usual breeze along English Creek rustled through Igdrasil’s leafy branches overhead, sprinkling cottonwood fluff ahead of us as we approached. The four of us variously uttered “hey” and “hi” and “hello,” and then it was up to Pop.

“I don’t know any rule book for this kind of situation,” he addressed Francine straight off, his voice tight. I had the impression he and I were being studied as fully by her as she was by us. “Proxy kept me in the dark about you.”

“Same here,” came the surprising reply. “She ought to start a mushroom farm.” Francine swept her hair away from a hazel eye, the color of her mother’s, further proof, if wanted, that these sudden arrivals into our life were two of a kind. Up close, she looked a lot like the movie actress Natalie Wood, but after a hard night. The line of her mouth was set in a pinchy way that seemed to say, the rebellious streak starts here. I began to wonder what I was in for with her for a sister, if that was going to be the case.

“Don’t pour it on, you two,” Proxy protested lightly. “I had my reasons. There wasn’t any sense in upsetting things when there was nothing to be gained by it, and now there is, all around.” She smiled sharply at Pop, as though he needed reminding why we were all standing across the alley from the Select Pleasure Establishment of the Year. “What could be better? You get a working partner, missy here learns the tricks of the trade from you, the joint gets a new lease on life—give me credit, Tom, I couldn’t deliver more if I was Santa Claus.”

Francine gave her the kind of look that came from long habit. “Mom, don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.” Depending on how you wanted to hear it, that was either teasing or sarcastic.

“Kids these days,” Proxy said imperturbably, with a glance that included me. “Right, Russ?”

Sticking close to Pop against the onset of these women, I was not actually tottering from one foot to the other, but the inside of me felt that way. Perhaps it came up through the shoe soles from the giant roots of Igdrasil, watered by the fates of past, present, and future. Which one would prevail was the decision Pop was struggling with mightily, as I could tell by the record number of wrinkles in his forehead. If he nixed this Francine—twenty-one or not, she did look a lot like a stray kid in those beat-up clothes and with that barely tamed hair—and turned her and Proxy down on the whole matter of paternity and responsibility, then that was that, the Medicine Lodge was a thing of the past for us. If he did the supposedly honorable thing and gave her a chance behind the bar, he could look ahead to endless explaining to the Two Medicine country who she was and why she was there.

“Let’s sort this out a little more,” he backed off the tightrope of fates for the moment. “I’m not doubting you might have what it takes, understand,” he told Francine none too convincingly, “but are you sure you savvy what jumping into something like this would be like? You’d have a hell of a lot to learn. And bartending is long hours and short rest.”

Francine’s mouth twitched in a funny way. “Sounds a lot like life, generally.”

“Smile, chile,” Proxy prompted with a terse laugh. “The man needs a working partner, not a wet blanket.”

Her daughter did not actually smile, but she stopped looking like a rain cloud. “Sorry,” she mustered, facing Pop. “Only trying to be honest.” She looked up at him, a head taller than she was, and wiped the hair away from her eyes again. Up close, it was apparent she’d had her dark eyebrows shaped the way women do, perfect as a picture. At the moment she was not exactly a composed portrait, however. “Listen, I’m still getting used to not having a dead Scotchman for a father. Makes me a little messy upstairs.” She fiddled with the leather bracelet on her wrist. “I don’t even know what to call you . . . ‘Pop,’ is it?”

“Tom,” he said firmly, which for some reason I was glad to hear.

“Oh-kay,” she responded, sounding like an echo of her mother. “So, anyhow, Tom, I’ll bust my tail to learn the job.” She spoke in a rush now. “Mom says you’re the greatest at tending bar. I’d have to be a total wacko to pass up this chance, wouldn’t I.”

Well, at least that showed some spirit. Pop continued to look Francine up and down. Having conscientiously told her the drawbacks of bartending, now he had to tell her yes or no about how she stacked up for the job. I still believe he had not made up his mind until that very moment. He glanced at Proxy, standing there a little akimbo in a milk-blond way that possibly suggested the old days in the Blue Eagle. I guessed what was coming when he rubbed the top of my head again as he spoke.

“All right, we’ll give this a try.” He cut off Proxy’s flash of smile and Francine’s relieved expression. “On my terms. There’s not going to be any working partner, so don’t get big ideas, Proxy. The Medicine Lodge stays in my hands, I’m the boss, period and end of punctuation.” He looked squarely at Francine to make sure this was sinking in. “I’ll hire you, which means I can fire you, got that?”

Her mouth twitched that funny way again, but she sounded fairly reasonable in saying: “That’s jake with me.” Automatically I filed that away to share with Zoe.

“See?” Proxy winked at me, or was it meant for Pop. “It all works out for the best, just like I—”

“One more thing.” He held up his hands, as if stopping traffic. His gruff tone had Francine fooling nervously with the gizmo on her wrist again. “I’m not gonna spend my time explaining to everybody who comes in the joint that you’re some daughter of mine who just happened to show up like Jesus in the manger.” His eyes met Proxy’s, although his words were still meant for Francine. “It’s not fair to you, either. You shouldn’t have to feed people’s curiosity about something that goes back before you were born.”

Drawing a deep breath, he acknowledged the hair problem and so on. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do when customers get nosy about any resemblance. We’ll say Francine is my niece.” He appeared uncomfortable with that white lie, if that’s what color it was, but I could tell he was set in rock about this. “My sister’s kid that I’m breaking in on the job out of the goodness of my heart. People can think what they want, but that’s gonna be our story. Everybody got that?”

Wow, I couldn’t help thinking, what a bit.

Mother and daughter glanced at each other. Whatever passed between them, it was Francine who turned to Pop with the hint of a sassy grin. “If that’s the way you want to play it, Unc.”

“Tom,” he warned her.

By now Proxy was eyeing me, and I was instantly on my guard. There was something in the way she looked at me, as if I was a cause for concern. “Some little man will need to watch his mouth real careful, won’t he.”

“Rusty knows what’s involved,” Pop stoutly took up for me, squeezing my shoulder as he spoke. “He won’t give the act away. Right, kiddo?”

I swallowed. “I’ll, uh, watch my mouth.”

That satisfied Proxy only so far. Now she was frowning in the direction of Del’s van. “Then what about Carrot Top? Where is he, playing with his machinery?”

Pop indicated to English Creek, which was making that pretty sound of water dancing over rocks. “I told him to go fishing while we worked this out. Don’t worry, I’ll fill him in as soon as he gets back. Delano won’t be a problem.”

That seemed to take care of Proxy’s concerns. “Then I can make myself scarce, can’t I”—she patted the fender of the Cadillac—“and go tend to my business interests. How about if I just slip by here”—she nodded toward the house—“once in a while to kind of check on things?”

Pop chewed his lip a little before conceding that might not hurt. “But steer clear of the joint when you do. There are people around here who were at Fort Peck and would recognize you at the drop of a hat. We don’t want the sight of you to give them funny ideas, do we.”

Solo parent again for the second time in one lifetime, he turned to look speculatively at Francine, busy plucking cottonwood fluffs out of her hair and dispatching them in the breeze. “I suppose we better get at this,” he said as much to himself as to her. “Rusty can show you the house, how about. Give her the bedroom next to yours, okay?” It wasn’t, but what else could I do but nod.

Pop turned to Proxy. “Hey, before you hit the road,” he frowned, checking his watch, “come over to the joint with me. I need you to help me with the guy who thinks he’s got a deal to buy it or I’ll never hear the end of it from him. You’re going to have to be Aunt Marge, whose darling daughter needs to learn bartending if she’s ever going to amount to anything.”

“That shouldn’t strain me too much,” Proxy said with a perfectly straight face. The two of them started toward the Medicine Lodge, and the realization hit me.

“Pop, wait! I have to tell you something.”

He swung around, Proxy halting as well. “What is it, kiddo?”

My big gulp did not constitute an answer, but it told him that what I wanted to say was for his ears only. Frowning, he came back and bent down so I could whisper it.

“Zoe has to be let in on it. She’ll know something is fishy about Francine.”

“Cripes. I didn’t think about her.” He pondered for several moments before whispering back: “She’s gonna have to be your department. Hog-tie her into not telling anybody else about this, not anybody, right?”

“R-right.”

Off he went with Proxy, leaving me with Francine as she dragged out of the Cadillac’s trunk a hefty suitcase and a kit bag about the size of an extra-large purse, which from the sound of it must have had her toiletries in it. How do women find time for all the beautification involved, I wondered, although I was about to find out.

“I can take the ditty bag,” I offered, but she said never mind, she was used to being a beast of burden. While I was trying to decide if that was a joke, she tossed her head to clear the hair out of her vision and said impatiently, “Lead on, Jungle Jim.”

Ordinarily I did not have trouble making conversation, but I didn’t know how to commence in this situation, and Francine was no help until I showed her to the bedroom next to mine. Looking it over, she said, “Seen worse.” Noticing me stiffen more than I already had, she hoisted an eyebrow much in the manner of her mother. “Joke. Meant to be, anyhow.” She gave the room a flourish of her hair. “It’s nice enough. This takes some getting used to, is all.”

I was with her on that, definitely. I watched as she stashed the kit bag in the corner by the dresser and flopped her suitcase onto the bed, flipping it open to establish residency, I supposed. Female undergarments brimmed into sight before I could hastily look away. Moving restlessly to the window after that, Francine looked down at the driveway, quite a parking lot now with the Packard, the Gab Lab van, our Buick, and the Cadillac. “So, who’s Carrot Top that the old folks were talking about?”

I had to blink past that characterization of Pop and Proxy before delineating Del for her. I must have done a decent job, because she folded her arms on her chest and listened civilly enough. “Fine. Another one with Fort Peck on the brain,” she said—not a bad summary, really—when I’d finished about Del. “Must be contagious.”

Appraising me more openly than before, she tested the matter of the two of us with a little grin. “Russell, huh? Pretty distinguished. Where’d that come from?”

“I like Rusty better,” I dodged.

“Oboy, I know what you mean. What were they thinking when they fastened fancy names on us, anyway? I always think Francine sounds like some dumb perfume.” She bobbed agreement with herself. “The shorter the better, ain’t it.”

Sometimes you know when to take a shot in the dark. “Are you from Canada?”

That caught her by surprise. “All but. How’d you know? Grew up out in the sticks north of Havre—the boundary line was practically in the backyard.”

“But she . . . your mom doesn’t talk that way.”

“Nahh. She wasn’t around to pick up any lingo like that, was she. See, my father’s”—she checked herself and flashed me a quick look—“my
previous
father’s relatives raised me. Uncle Hugh and Aunt Meg. Square as cubes, but I didn’t exactly get to choose, did I. They’d been at Fort Peck, along with all the other Duffs. So they did the honors on me, while Mumsie was busy in the divorce industry and so on. Wasn’t there somebody named Reno Sweeney? Reno Proxy was more like it,” Francine laughed, if something that short and sharp was a laugh, “all the time that mother of mine put in down there in Nevada.” Boy, she could talk once she got going. “Anyhow, that’s pretty much the story of Mommy and Francie. Probably won’t make the nursery rhyme books.”