The Bartender's Tale (4 page)

“Wow,” I let out, openmouthed, “where did you get all this?”

“All what?” Pop asked absently, shedding his suit coat but not his bow tie as he prepared to deal with the month’s bills. He followed my gaze around the menagerie of items. “The loot?” He half laughed. “It accumulates. See, customers don’t always have the ready cash when they want a couple of drinks. Or maybe need bus fare to somewhere, or are in the mood for a better pair of boots or a new hat. So,” he shrugged and lit up a cigarette, “I’ll take whatever they bring in, if it’s of any use. Maybe they get it out of hock eventually and maybe they don’t. After long enough, I sell it off, a bunch at a time.” He contemplated the motley collection again. “Some of the stuff goes way back, long before me. An old Scotchman owned the joint for a lot of years, in the early days. They say he knew every nickel about life, and he’s the one who started taking things in when cash was short. Kind of comes in handy eventually, doing it that way.” Tobacco smoke wisped over him as he stood there thinking out loud. “Gonna have to lay down the law to Earl Zane, though. He’s dumber than a frozen lizard. You got to watch out for people like that, kiddo,” he philosophized to me. “Hell, if the ess of a bee is short of money, he’s got those belt buckles he won riding at rodeos when he was a bronc punk. Hold up his pants with one hand and drink with the other—it’d be good for him.” Laughing the way he ordinarily did, quick and sharp like exclamations, he climbed the stairs to his check-writing chore.

I followed him, eager for the next sideshow attraction of the back room. The stairs to the loft were interrupted halfway up by a long, wide landing, and there Pop had his desk and a table and other office requirements, as if staying above the tide of stuff below. I thought it was a sensational perch, and I didn’t yet know the best thing about it as I gawked around from up there: a sizable air vent was cut through the wall at one end of the desk, and all of a sudden, the sound of Howie smashing ice behind the bar came through clear as anything. It took me hardly any time to figure out that when the vent’s louvered slats were open like that, a person could hear everything—and see everything, by peeking—that was happening out front in the barroom. No wonder my father had the reputation of being the lord of all he surveyed, if he could do it secretly whenever he wanted.

He dropped the stack of bills to pay and his checkbook on the desk and turned around to me. “The deal is, you’re gonna count up the booze for me, right?” His forehead furrowed. “You do know how to count, don’t you?”

Anything above ten was a challenge, but I didn’t want to appear as shaky at arithmetic as I was at fishing. “Sure! I do it all the time.”

“Okay, then, see those cases down there?” They were hard to miss, stacked halfway to the ceiling along the sidewall. “Count each kind and call it out to me. Start with the beer.”

That was the next scene for a while, me scrambling around the boxes of alcoholic beverages and out of his way while he sat there at his lofty desk tackling the financial chores. That image of him with his clattery adding machine and fountain pen and checkbook I suppose sounds as quaintly manual now as a monk with an abacus and quill and scroll, but calculators then were still the human sort cranking out sums up there on the landing and, to a lesser degree, the six-year-old one laboriously enumerating the pyramid of booze down below. Starting with the beer—the vast majority of it Great Falls Select; the beverage of the Selectrics!—I would count the cases twice to make sure I had the number right, call out the total to Pop, he would say “Got it,” and write it down somewhere and go back to his calculating, and I would move on to the next brand of intoxicant. It was educational.
Booze
was a new word to me, and toward the back of the pile, I was thrilled to find included with the bourbon and scotch and all the rest a case of Orange Crush, proof of my father’s discriminating taste. The thrill diminished somewhat when I counted the Coca-Cola, six cases, but I still ended up happy to have been entrusted with the inventory.

“All done, Pop.”

“Okay, swell job,” he responded without looking up. “Keep yourself amused awhile, I’m not done writing these damn checks yet.”

“Can I have some booze?”

“What? Hell no!” He scowled down from the landing, until he saw me disconsolately tracing a finger along the carton of orange pop. “Oh. Sure, help yourself to a crushed orangutang.” He tossed me an opener.

Bottle of sweet, sticky soda in hand, I circulated through the maze of things, eager for discoveries. One that puzzled me was tucked behind a stack of spare tires and covered with a tarpaulin, several toolboxes identically new and shiny. Still in my counting mode, I asked: “How come there’s so many of this?”

Fanning a check in the air to dry the ink, Pop glanced over at what I’d found. “Never mind. Pull that tarp over those like it was.”

“But there’s”—I had to think hard to remember what the number is when you have ten and two more—“twelve?”

“The customer must have been a dozen times thirstier than usual,” he said as if that was that, and went back to what he was doing.

I kept on prowling the wonders of the back room. Propped against the wall where the rain slickers were hanging was a sizable wooden sign standing on end. Pushing aside the curtain of coats and turning my head sideways, I managed to read the big lettering: BLUE EAGLE. Between the words, in fading paint, a fierce-looking sky-colored bird swooped as though it meant business.

“Pop, how come the eagle is blue instead of eagle color?”

“Hmmh?” The adding machine was coughing out a long result, which he waited for before answering me. “That’s the name of the joint, is all.”

“I thought it was the, uh, Medical Lounge.”

“Not this one,” he replied crossly, setting me straight about the Medicine Lodge and that the other joint was somewhere he’d been way back when, long before I entered the world. “That’s another story,” he said, which told me he didn’t want to be pestered further about it. Getting up from his desk, he straightened his bow tie and shrugged into his suit coat. “Come on, let’s mail these damn bills and grab some lunch.”

—

DERBY DAY
was a repeat of the circumstances Pop had introduced me to at Rainbow Reservoir twenty-four hours before: brilliant weather, matchless scenery, and chicken guts.

What was decidedly different, though, was his method of getting us there. This time, when he gathered fishing poles and bait can and thermos and so on, he headed not toward the Hudson but to the old car parked at the far end of the driveway. Trying to get my bearings on a day that was strange enough already, I asked: “Does it run okay?”

“Hell yes.” His reply sounded a little hurt as he tumbled our gear into the back seat. “It’s in top-notch shape.”

That may not have been too far from the truth, I saw when I drew closer to the lengthy black vehicle. I learned it was a 1932 Packard, its characteristic hood nearly as long as the four-door passenger compartment, which looked like it could hold a baseball team. Up close, there was a certain old-fashioned elegance to the car, from its gleaming grille and white-sidewall tires to its outsize headlights mounted on fenders that swooped all the way back to the running board at the door frame. “How come you”—I corrected that as I circled the automotive behemoth—“we have two cars?”

“The Packard still has its uses”—he was busy unfurling something—“you’ll see. You don’t get rid of a good thing just because it’s got a little age on it, right? I’ve had it since Blue Eagle days, up at Fort Peck.” I took in this news with some confusion. My father had been at a fort? But didn’t he tell me the Blue Eagle was a joint, like the Medicine Lodge? That did not seem to go with being a soldier, nor did possessing the biggest, fanciest car I’d ever seen. He was not about to explain anything further, though, cheerfully going at the task at hand. “Here, help me with this banner.”

Accordingly, I held one end of a large oilcloth banner while he tied it across the car’s extensive trunk. Twice a year, it developed, the Packard attained this kind of starring role, this time with the banner reading: THE MEDICINE LODGE SUPPORTS THE GROS VENTRE FISHING DERBY. CATCH ’EM TO THE LIMIT! The other occasion was rodeo time, when it was prominently parked in front of the saloon, bannering the message: THE MEDICINE LODGE SUPPORTS THE GROS VENTRE RODEO. RIDE ’EM TO THE WHISTLE!

“There,” he said in satisfaction, standing back with his hands on his hips. “Ready to go. People get a kick out of seeing the old heap. Besides, it never hurts to advertise.”

So we went to the rezavoy in what Pop regarded as style, and joined what appeared to be the entire populace of the Two Medicine country at the water’s edge. Setting off where he assured me was the best spot on the lake, he was right at home in the festive throng, meeting and greeting people in wholesale numbers, looking like a million dollars in his dress hat, a pearl-gray stockman Stetson, while I felt out of place in my dumb cloth sun hat from Phoenix. Headgear was really the least of what was on my mind, though, in this looming situation of me versus what appeared to be every kid in Montana ready to compete for mysterious rainbow-hued fish.

Churning with apprehension as he assembled my pole for me, I listened distractedly to his recital of the fishing contest rules. He could bait my hook for me in preparation for the initial cast, but after that, “It’s up to you, kiddo.” He reminded me to bury the hook in the bait so it would look good to the fish. And then, when I caught a trout—a prospect I wasn’t at all sure I looked forward to—I would need to land it myself, but he could help me take the hook out of its mouth, because sometimes it got snagged so hard it had to be torn out with pliers. Fishing was more gory than I’d thought. At least there were prizes, in each age category, for catching the biggest fish and the most fish. “Two shots at packing home the money, you can’t beat that,” Pop topped off his pep talk. “Ready? Let’s go give the fish hell.”

First we had to sign up, atop the approach to the dam, where a truck was parked with a loudspeaker crowning its cab. White water was picturesquely gushing through the floodgate out in the middle of the causeway, and the sky could not have been more blue. As Pop and I approached the registration table, the announcer on the flatbed of the truck boomed out, “WELCOME TO THE ROD AND REEL EXTRAVAGANZA YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, THE SECOND ANNUAL RAINBOW FISHING DERBY!” as if just for us. The woman who took the entry money and pinned a number on my back seemed considerably less hospitable for some reason, eyeing me and then Pop, as if to make sure we matched. He didn’t seem to pay that any mind, kidding with the announcer and the Chamber of Commerce organizers of the festivity who were standing around, looking important. The civic side of my father was complicated, as it can be in a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. For example, he would not have anything to do with the Rotary Club. “Not until the esses of bees quit stealing money out of my pocket with that beer booth of theirs.” The Kiwanis and Toastmasters, younger strivers hoping for a station in life higher than a saloon, were not sure they wanted anything to do with him. Leave it to Pop, he sorted it all out without blinking: he had no argument with commerce, nor it with him, so the local Chamber received his wholehearted backing.

As now, when he steered me past the army of adults attacking trout with rod and reel to the stretch of lakeshore reserved, according to the banner flapping in the breeze, for JUNIOR ANGLERS. Boys my age or a year or so younger, and a sprinkling of girls, were being stationed far enough apart that we wouldn’t spear one another with our fishpoles during energetic casts. Pop got me settled in my spot, slipped me the bait can of chicken guts cut into gooey strips, told me again to give the fish hell, and retreated up the bank a safe distance, where other parents were clustered. My head was spinning.
Second
annual extravaganza; why wasn’t I plucked from Phoenix for this a year ago? Another nettlesome thought: If it wasn’t for the fishing derby, would I still be . . .

I did not have time to dwell on that, because the announcer’s voice was booming again. “AND NOW WE COME TO THE SPECIAL FEATURE OF THE DERBY, THE CONTEST WHERE THE KIDDIES SHOW US HOW IT’S DONE. READY, JUNIOR ANGLERS? GET SET . . . START FISHING!”

Hooks and lines swished through the air at all different altitudes, and the tips of more than a few fishing poles dunked in the lake, mine included.

A pause ensued, as those of us who had thrashed bait into the water wondered what to do next, beyond hanging on to the fishing rod with both hands, while the grown-ups shouted conflicting advice—“Try a longer cast!” “Keep your hook in the water, not in the air!” Stealing a peek over my shoulder, I saw Pop standing with his arms folded, the picture of patience, confident that the secret bait would lure fish in my direction in a frenzy. Even though my line sagged out into the lake only a little way, I decided to let it sit there. The breeze had picked up—it would have been news when the wind wasn’t blowing at Rainbow Reservoir—so I didn’t want to risk another cast; the fish could jump ashore if they wanted chicken guts badly enough, as far as I was concerned.

To my surprise, suddenly there was a sharp tug on my line. I yanked my pole up and back as hard as I could, the hook and line sailing over my head in a mighty arc. But no fish. Worse than that, I realized, no bait.

“Hot damn, they’re biting!” Pop yelled encouragement. “Don’t horse it like that, though, just pull the next one in real easy. Bait up and go get him.”

During this, the boy nearest me had actually landed a fish. “Way to go, buckshot!” His father, a chesty man with a red face broad as a fire bucket, came charging down the bank to unhook the catch and gill it onto a stringer. The trout was a good size, but I was disappointed to see it was not striped like a rainbow, merely brightly speckled on the sides. As both of us faced the challenge of baiting our hooks, I said to the chunky kid in sportsmanlike fashion, “Nice fish.”

“If you like something slimy as snot.” He made a face. “I hate fishing, I wish it had never been invented.” Narrowing his critical view of things to me, he demanded: “Who’re you, anyway?”