The Big Rock Candy Mountain (44 page)

 

By October 28 the river was filmed with brittle ice under the wagons coming down from the bench and fording below Purcell's. There were many wagons. Bo, driven to prowl the town and sit in Anderson's poolhall, saw two dozen men he did not recognize, and the street was full of strange women and children. The town wore a look of unaccustomed activity, as if for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but there was little holiday feeling. Faces were long and talk somber, and they talked of three things: the war, the price of food, and the flu.

Bo had been too busy to pay any attention to the flu, but listening to the farmers who hung around the poolhall he heard the fear in their talk. Out on the prairie, miles from town or a doctor, a man got thinking. There was never a winter that some homesteader didn't get snowed in, or break his leg or cut himself with an ax and then sit there in his shanty unable to help himself, sitting with his sheepskin on and all his blankets over that, hoarding his fuel, while his wound festered and swelled and the shack got colder, and almost every spring some such homesteader was found frozen stiff. Suppose, then, a whole family got sick with this flu, and no help around, and winter setting in solid and cold three weeks early?

It was supposing things like this that drove in the homesteaders in wagons piled with goods, to settle down on some relative or friend or in vacant rooms. Three families had gone together and cobbled up a shack, half house and half tent, in the curve of the willows east of the elevators. Even a tent in town was better, in these times, than a house out on the bitter flats.

The papers they read didn't reassure them. On both coasts the hospitals were jammed, the army camps were crowded with sick soldiers, whole inland parts of the country were virtually isolated. Because there was no safe place to run to, people stayed, but they took it easy about going outdoors, they doctored colds as if they were pneumonia, they kept their children home from school if a sniffle was heard in the primary room, they soused their handkerchiefs with the eucalyptus oil that Henderson the druggist said was a preventative. And they sat in Anderson's poolhall and talked.

Once Bo sat for a solid hour hearing how the disease turned you black as ink just before it killed you, and how people in the last stages rose from their beds and ran screaming and gibbering through the streets, foaming at the mouth and biting anyone who got in their way. Bo hawked in disgust and got up to take a drink from the waterpail in back. As he lifted the dipper he saw the yellow-green moss coating the tin bottom, and dumped the water angrily on the floor. With his fingernail he traced a skull and crossbones in the bottom of the dipper, digging the scum off clear to the stained metal, and hung the thing up again. No wonder these guys were scared of the flu. They had a right to be, with things like that left around to drink out of.

Back at the bar, sticky and smelling sweetly of strawberry pop, he drummed his fingers on the counter and looked at Ed Anderson. Ed had had an eye knocked out by an exploding pop bottle the year before, and wore a black patch. “I don't suppose you've got a bottle of beer in the joint,” Bo said.

Mopping off the counter, Ed turned to spit at a hidden spittoon. “I would if I could, boy,” he said. “You just can't get it, even if the cops would let you sell it.”

Bo drummed again, looking out the dirty windows into the street. He turned his head and inspected the half dozen men hanging around the front end, and cleaned his teeth with his tongue. Bunch of dung-footed dirt farmers. He contemplated them with contempt, wondering if it would do any good to try getting up a little stud game. But he gave it up immediately. If they were too leaded to play pool, they wouldn't play poker. They didn't even have spirit enough to crab about the prohibition law that kept them from having a schooner of beer.

“What's the matter with this town?” he said irritably. “Isn't there anybody in it with gumption enough to start a blind pig, even? What's the matter with you, Ed? You don't look like a Christer.”

“I ain't any Christer,” Ed said. “But I'm telling you, you can't get it. Where'd I buy it?”

“There must be somebody got it for sale. When I was selling beer on the road in Dakota I did my whole business with blind pigs.”

The half dozen loungers were all looking at him. “What I wish,” one said, “is that you could get a bottle of good strong liquor-sauce in this place. If that old flu lights around here I want to crawl in bed with a bottle.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Ed said. “If I had ten cases behind this bar I could sell out in three days.”

“You could get five bucks a bottle for it, too,” Bo said.

Ed's one eye, pale, with strained red streaks in it, opened in agreement, and he jerked his head sideways to shoot at the spittoon again. “You tell ‘em,” he said. “If a guy wants something bad enough, he'll pay anything.”

Bo stood up. “Well,” he said, “if bullshitting around would get a man a drink, I'd be stiff as a plank now. Anybody want to shoot a game of pool?”

Nobody did. Dissatisfied and aimless, he got into the dogskin and wandered outside. Weddie Orullian's great wife, thick and pillowy and wide as a sidewalk, the mother of nine children and enormous now with her tenth, went up the street on the other side and waved a bulky arm, grinning and yelling at him. Bo waved back. That old squaw, common as manure, but she had fun. About the only cheerful thing in the whole damn town.

He was disgusted, vaguely grouchy, irrationally sore at the farmers who sat around Anderson's all day and couldn't think of anything to do but tell bear stories about the flu. Every one of them wanted a drink or a bottle, but would they do anything to get it? They'd sit on their behinds and cry, that was all they'd do. It was only a hundred miles to Chinook, less than that to some of the smaller Montana towns. If they wanted a drink as bad as they said, they could drive over any time, get a carload, bring it back into Canada over any of a hundred little unwatched wagon-track trails ...

In the middle of the plank sidewalk he stopped short. An incredulous laugh burst out of him. “Holy jumping Jesus!” he said softly. “I've been sitting right on top of a gold mine!”

 

Briefly, automatically, he wished for Jud. Jud was the only partner he had ever had, a guy you could depend on to come in on anything worth a gamble. But Jud was dead in Alaska, and there was nobody in town he could go to for money, nobody he wanted to cut into this proposition. The only possibility was Chapman, at the bank, and Chapman would have to be talked to like a Dutch uncle.

As he passed McKenna's store on the way to the bank another thought struck him, and he turned up the stairs to Dr. O‘Malley's office. The doctor was in, sitting on his desk. He had a young, fresh face and an easy grin, and his sleeves, even in the chilly office, were rolled up above the elbows. Bo noticed that his arms were brown and corded with muscle. The kid was more man than he looked.

“Want to ask you a question,” Bo said.

“Shoot.”

“About this flu.”

O‘Malley's eyebrows lifted. “I've been answering that one for three weeks. Stay out of drafts, avoid catching cold, don't go outside when you're overheated, don't hang around in crowds or go to the picture palace.” He grinned. “And pray,” he said.

Bo grunted. “That isn't the question. I want to know if whiskey is good for the flu.”

“Whiskey's good for almost anything,” O‘Malley said. “Except d.t.'s. Why?”

“It's a medicine, isn't it? You'd say it was good medicine for this influenza.”

O‘Malley laughed. “I guess it must be medicine. The druggist's the only person in town allowed to sell it. I've worn out a prescription pad helping him.”

“That's all I want to know. Thanks.”

The doctor's puzzled frown followed him to the door. With one hand on the knob Bo turned. “How's your own stock?”

“I haven't got any,” O‘Malley said. “I'm not in the liquor business. Sell you some nice ipecac.”

“I don't want to buy any. I'm asking you if you want to buy any.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the dogskin. 248

“They've been saying that if the flu hits here the town'll be quarantined. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And if it's quarantined there won't be any trains in or out.”

“No.”

“And if there aren't any trains there won't be any more supplies for Henderson.”

“I asked him already to lay in a lot of salts and quinine and eucalyptus oil. We'll be cut off for a while, sure.”

“But you didn't have him lay in any whiskey. Want me to bring you some?”

O‘Malley sat down on the desk and slowly rolled down his sleeves, buttoning them neatly around his wrists. “It's against the law, you know.”

“This is an emergency,” Bo said.

“If it weren‘t,” O'Malley said, “I wouldn't be talking to you. How much do you want for Irish?”

Bo guessed, guessing plenty high. “Six dollars a bottle.”

“I'm used to paying around three and a half,” the doctor said.

“But you haven't been able to get any.”

The doctor stood up and reached for his coat on the hanger. “How much for a case?”

“Make it to you for sixty-five.”

O‘Malley rummaged in a drawer, came out again empty-handed, and faced Bo. “All right,” he said. “Only there's this. Are you going to Montana after it?”

“I didn't say.”

The doctor's voice sharpened. “I have to know, just the same. A lot of towns in Montana are quarantined already. I can connive to break the liquor law in an emergency, but if you're breaking quarantines to bring this whiskey in, I'm out.”

“You needn't worry,” Bo said. “The place I'm getting this isn't quarantined.”

O‘Malley held his eyes a minute. “All right,” he said shortly. “A case of Irish, Bushmill's or Jameson's.”

Bo nodded and went downstairs again, his mind jumping with figures. It was a dead immortal cinch. If he couldn't buy a case of Irish for thirty-five at the most, he'd kiss a pig. Maybe less, if he bought a lot, ten cases or so. His mind jumped again. Ten! The old Lizzie ought to carry twelve or fifteen. Maybe get a pony cask and decant it, sell plain old corn for three bucks a bottle ...

John Chapman was sitting alone in the bank, peeling an apple carefully, the unbroken spiral peel hanging like a shaving as he turned the fruit. Bo watched him till the peel fell into the waste-basket, watched him halve and then quarter the white meat, and then asked for his loan: two hundred dollars for two weeks.

Chapman deliberated. There was already a mortgage on Bo's house, and no payment on the principal for a year and a half. “What security?” he said.

“How about my team?”

Very tall and bulky, Chapman sat and spread his hands. “If you didn't meet your obligation I couldn't get two hundred for a team. I couldn't get a hundred, this time of year.”

“Listen,” Bo said. “This is no bread-and-butter loan, see? I'll have that money back to you in a week, maybe less. You can have the team, the colt, two cows, and anything else you think you want if you'll let me have two hundred right now, American money.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Chapman said.

“It's foolproof,” said Bo. “I don't even give a damn what interest you charge me, because I'll be paying this back before you know it's out of your safe.”

A half hour later he went home carrying a bag of American silver dollars and some bills, all the American money Chapman had.

He kept the bag hidden under the hall seat until after supper, when the boys were sent up to bed. Even then he did not bring it out, but sat figuring. He ought to be able to get fifty dollars a case for good liquor, and if he couldn't buy it for around twenty-five there was something wrong. He could double his money. And suppose he got a twenty-gallon keg of corn. It shouldn't cost more than five dollars a gallon that way, and he could get three dollars a quart just like spitting in a stove door. Gold mine! he said. I hope to whisk in your piskers it's a gold mine.

He lifted his eyes and looked at Elsa, her head bent over her darning. “How much money have we got?”

She smiled. “Figuring again?”

“There's nothing wrong with knowing where you stand. Have we got any left?”

“I paid McKenna and the hardware store,” she said, “and I laid out what we owe Hoffman for seed. There's not much left.”

“Well, let's count it up and see. The less there is the easier it is to count.”

While she was upstairs getting her purse he slipped into the hall, got the bag, and concealed it under his chair. Elsa came down and laid the purse on the table. “There's our worldly wealth,” she said, and laughed.

Bo opened the purse and counted out a hundred and twenty-two dollars. The hundred he smoothed out, folded, smoothed again, and laid aside. The twenty-two he put back in the purse. Elsa watched him. He could see the curiosity and the anxiety in her face.

“What would you say,” he said, “if I told you I could turn that hundred into two hundred and forty in three days?” He lifted the bills between his fingers, passed the other hand over them, waved his fingers. “Nothing up the sleeve,” he said. He opened his right hand. “Nothing in the hand. Presto, chango, pffft!” He palmed the bills and showed her his empty hands and grinned. “Three days from now I'll make it return with a hundred and forty more.”

The anxiety had not left her face. “You've got some deal on. What is it?”