He snorted and tossed the last of his morsel of bread in the remnants of the soup. “Christ, all I said to her was I hoped she wasn’t having trouble with bedsores, and the next thing I knew she was shrieking at me, said I was spying on her. I said, ‘Priscilla, dear heart, I’m not spying, this is Thursday, same day as I always come by.’ Then she’s knocked that goddamned curio cabinet of hers on the floor and everything in it’s smashed to bits, and then she’s got the goddamned fireplace poker in her hand.”
“Funny how that bedsores remark didn’t restore her equanimity.”
“Well, hell, you can’t expect me to stand there and say, ‘That’s all right, sweetheart, you go ahead and lay down for any of my chums your heart desires.’ After all I’m paying the goddamned rent on the place.” He picked the sodden bread back up and lolled it around in his mouth. “I’d be satisfied if she’d just make a pretense of hiding it from me.” He pointed to the bandaged eye. “Now how do you think I explained this to Muriel when I got home?”
“I don’t know.”
“With considerable goddamned difficulty, is how. Shit, she knows I’ve got a sweetheart somewhere, but it’s a lot easier to pretend when I don’t walk in the door with my eye gouged halfway out. I’m lucky not to have lost the goddamned thing.”
“I guess you are.” Muriel was, in fact, the owner of record of my building, having inherited the entire block from her father, a failed forty-niner who had stumbled upon a vein of silver on his way back east to rejoin his wife and daughter and take a job in his cousin’s slaughterhouse in Virginia. I had never met her, as she preferred to keep the more vulgarian of Ralph’s companions at arm’s length. “How is old Muriel?” I asked, just to be polite.
“She’s out of my hair, mostly, getting ready for a big shindig downstairs that’s going to cost me a bundle. It’s for Gertrude’s engagement, did I tell you about that?”
“You didn’t. Congratulations.”
“Well, he’s a young man from Germany, and he’s after her mother’s money, but at least she’ll be out of the house. I love her dearly but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph if she ain’t every bit as homely as my own poor Muriel.”
The soup was tasty and I was hungry, but I was preoccupied with the thought that Banbury was leading up to a proposal to alter the status quo, which for the moment mostly suited me. The waiter took our soup dishes and put down plates of what looked like bœuf bourguignon, its blackish gravy still bubbling.
“Hell, I’ve just had a bellyful. That sweet thing she sits on just ain’t worth the trouble. What I’ve been wondering is,” he said with his mouth full of the first bite of beef, huffing little breaths in and out to counteract the heat, “how’d you like to take her on full-time?”
I nearly choked on my wine at the thought. “Not much,” I said.
“Half the problem’s that goddamned laudanum, if you want to know what I think. Fact is,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning forward as if afraid Priscilla would hear, “I already got another gal set up here in town and she’s not half the trouble Cilla is.” Banbury took another bite, blowing on it first.
I placed a forkful of beef into my own mouth, taking the same precaution and scalding my palate regardless. I wondered if he expected me to keep his plans from Priscilla; I wasn’t willing to take up the responsibility of paying her rent, but I thought she should have some warning before she found her means of support removed.
“What’s funny is, I used to worry about that husband she left back in Iowa. I wondered if maybe he’d track her down and burst into that bedroom sometime and perforate me.” He brought his hand up to his bandaged eye. “And then I figured it out. Hell, he’s probably been running the other direction the whole time, worried she’s coming after him.”
“What do you suppose she’ll do without your support?” I said.
“Used to be a seamstress. She could do that again. Wouldn’t be able to keep up the way she’s living now, but she wouldn’t starve. Hell, she could make a living singing.”
“Is that a joke?”
He looked puzzled. “You haven’t heard her sing and play?”
“Never. Piano’s always been shut when I’ve been there.”
He shrugged. “Well, her voice is mighty pretty.”
The food was remarkable, and once our conversation turned away from Priscilla I much enjoyed it. Dessert was a sort of bread pudding laced with rum, followed by a very special old pale. Upon finishing Banbury rose, patting his distended abdomen with fond pride. “They serve a hell of a table here,” he said.
He walked me downstairs and out to a sidewalk teeming with ill-tempered pedestrians huddled against the cold.
“This gal I got now, she’s from the South, a real old-fashioned belle. She orders me around and makes faces and if she doesn’t get her way, I don’t get mine, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s the way they are, I understand.”
“The damnedest thing is, I like it. She hardly even makes an affectation of liking me, and yet I come back.” He coughed into his fist, trying hard to get something out of his throat. “Well, I sure wish you’d think this over. I’d hate like hell to see Priscilla thrown out onto the street.”
“You’ll keep paying the rent for a few months, won’t you? Until she can find something?”
He looked at me as if I were insane. “Christ, supporting three women in three different houses is about to put me in the goddamn alms house.” He walked away, shaking his head, and gave a little wave without looking back.
HAVING A LITTLE time to spare I walked blocks out of my way with my hands in my coat pockets, prodding with my tongue a little flap of skin that dangled, heat-shredded, from the roof of my mouth. At Nineteenth Street I turned right and headed to Market Street, thinking I might find Augie there. Since one or more of my afternoon sittings seemed likely to cancel on me I thought I might as well conduct my business with him and be done with it, but walking up the street I was importuned a dozen times without seeing any trace of him.
One of these unfortunates approached me with a smile of recognition on her face. “Well, it’s old Sean Cooney from Boston, ain’t it? It’s me, Mary Dolan, from up the street.” Her face was worn by drink and laudanum and hard luck, but there was nonetheless a sweet softness to her aspect that suggested a kindly soul; in easier circumstances and with better dentition she would have been pretty. “I always liked you better than your brother; he’s got a mean streak like your old man did.”
“I’m not him,” I said.
“The hell you ain’t. What say you and me go back there to Boston for that centennial celebration? This Denver business ain’t working so good for me as I’d imagined it would.”
“I’m not him, and the centennial was last year besides.”
“Like hell it was.”
“1776 plus one hundred equals 1876. Two years ago.”
“The hell you say.”
“It’s a fact. Don’t you remember the Fourth of July? All the fireworks and the parade?”
“Go on with you, they have those every year on the Fourth of July!”
“So they do,” I said, and resumed walking.
She followed me. “Say, Seanny. Remember that milliner’s I worked for? Mrs. So-and-So? You think she’d take me back on?”
She wasn’t going to accept the fact that I wasn’t Sean Cooney, and I hesitated to give life-altering counsel to a stranger, but clearly Denver wasn’t doing her any favors. “I’d say if you want to go back to Boston, though, you ought to give it a try.” Satisfied, she nodded and turned away from me, and I made my escape.
I NEXT MADE a detour in the direction of picturesque Hop Alley, thinking I might pick up the day’s laundry and save Mrs. Fenster a trip. I had no idea which of the dozen or more launderers was hers, however, and I walked past without stopping to check any of them. The signage on the street was in both English and Chinese, and I noted three more or less respectable-looking white ladies knock, giggling, at the door of o
ne particular business with no outward identification but a painted number 531 and a vertical quartet of Chinese characters. The man who answered maintained his poker face but let them in, glancing momentarily at me as though daring me to object. I had nothing against what they were up to, though; to my way of thinking it was on par with Priscilla’s laudanum-taking, and I reminded myself to stop at the pharmacist’s to pick up a replacement bottle for my next visit to Golden.
AUGIE DIDN’T SHOW up that afternoon, and neither did two of three scheduled sitters, and I sent the third home for lack of illumination. I used the freed-up time to go over my books and, later, to examine Augie’s samples and catalogues. I was already overstocked on most subjects: the War, Geography, the Sciences, Great Personalities, and Comic Scenes, and browsing through the catalogue I saw at first nothing listed that inspired me to add to the inventory. Then my eye stopped at a new listing:
OGDEN & GLEASON, PHOTOGRAPHERS, COTTONWOOD, KANS.
This came as a shock, seeing my own former moniker and hometown in print. I was pleased nonetheless to note that young Gleason had kept the business going. The set of pictures advertised was titled “Scenes of the Former Osage Territory,” described merely as “a series of artistically conceived views of the recently tamed wilderness, incl. a two-headed goat and a white buffalo calf, and the murder cabin belonging to the notorious Benders.”
The day after Maggie and I escaped from Cottonwood I felt the first vague pangs of regret for the vanished opportunity to make a stereographic record of the Bender house and property for publication; I was thus gratified to see that young Gleason had seized it, doubly so that he’d left my name on the business, since taking it off the shingle would doubtless have pleased many in town. I marked down an order for a set.
The sun never showed itself that afternoon, and I sat in the studio and read until six. Mrs. Fenster had sent the boy out for a slab of bacon, and when he returned with it she began cooking a portion of it up with some beans. I withdrew to the studio to resume my reading, and a few minutes later I returned to the kitchen to find Lemuel still there, to the great annoyance of his aunt.
“Says he’s hungry,” she said, as if the claim were the height of absurdity.
“Didn’t you feed him at noon?”
She drew herself up to her full five feet. “You said there was to be no luncheon.”
“Better give him some bacon and beans, then.” The boy had already taken his place at table, and after serving me my portion and filling a plate for herself Mrs. Fenster dipped her ladle into the cook pot with exaggerated reluctance and loaded a plate for him.
I wasn’t overly hungry owing to the rich meal I’d taken at midday, and Mrs. Fenster ate in her usual dainty manner, but the boy fed as though he hadn’t eaten a morsel in days. When I commented benignly on the urgency of his eating he stopped, wide-eyed, for a moment.
“Didn’t mean nothing. Sorry.” He put his fork down.
“Why’d you stop? Go on, eat. Your aunt’ll fix up some more if your belly’s as empty as that.”
After a cautious moment he decided I wasn’t japing and set about eating again. I had the old woman fry a bit more bacon, and she added it with some more brown, crusty beans to his plate. He tore into that with the same breathtaking gusto as he had his first portion, and the gluttonous spectacle had begun to tickle me.
“Care for a third helping?”
He nodded warily, and she fried him still more bacon. There was another plate’s worth of beans in the pot, too, and he finished that off as well before letting loose with a belch that would have shocked a muleskinner. After shooting a worried glance at Mrs. Fenster he grinned sheepishly at my laughter, and nearly an hour after his usual departure time he went out the door for home. I sat up for a while, reading and ruminating on the world of separation between a resourceful farm boy like Horace Gleason, capable of replacing me completely at a technically demanding craft after but a few months training, and a dull city boy like poor Lemuel, incapable even of mustering the nerve to trouble his own aunt for a meal that he was due as a condition of his employment.
THE NEXT MORNING was sunny, and I busied myself on the rooftop printing what I should have done the day before. At eleven o’clock I had to go downstairs and wait for Augie Baxter myself, since Lemuel hadn’t come in that morning. Though he’d never before failed to arrive on time I was more angry than concerned, having had to perform most of the lad’s chores in addition to my own. When Augie arrived I was in an unusually foul temper; as I’d anticipated he complained bitterly at my puny order and then proceeded to criticize the one new addition to it.
“We just added them back in January. Pretty pictures, to be sure, the fellow’s got a sharp eye. There’s not much remarkable about that set, though.”
“I see there’s a view of the Bender cabin,” I said with as much casual indifference as I could manage.
“Well, a few years ago we were selling a full set of those, but they were a disappointment. Just one skeleton was all you could see, and a few pictures of buildings and a bunch of yahoos standing in front of some holes in the ground and some trees on fire. What it really needed is a view of them Benders hung from a tree, then you’d have something you could sell.”
I thought of something just then: the nude views I’d taken of Maggie, the ones I’d had to leave behind in Cottonwood. “This fellow Gleason, he doesn’t handle any views of naked ladies, does he?”
“Naw, not that I seen, anyway. I think he’s got religion. And speaking of naked ladies, you missed yourself a free roll in the hay yesternoon.” He leaned back in his armchair, looking quite pleased with himself.
After Augie left I sat alone in the gallery and imagined discreetly contacting Horace Gleason and seeing if he had those views of Maggie. If I couldn’t trust young Gleason, who’d been upstanding enough to keep my name on his business after my disgrace, whom could I trust?
My answer came quickly and harshly; I was prosperous, well-respected, and suspected of nothing, after years of fear and penury. Wagering my liberty, my neck, and my hard-won money on Gleason’s good nature was out of the question, no matter how badly I wanted those pictures back. I would continue to call them forth, imperfect, from memory, and be glad I could do that.
It was nearly noon, and I hadn’t yet read the morning newspapers, and I thought I’d seek out the News to read with my midday meal. I put on my hat and started to leave, and as I started down the steps the front door opened to reveal my young assistant standing in the center of its frame, appearing even smaller than usual. My first inclination, having spent most of the morning angry with him, was to yell, but his face was so pallid and drawn I stopped myself before a sound came out. He held the door open with his left leg instead of his hand, which dangled strangely at his side, and over his right shoulder he carried a bindle tied to the end of a stick. Without undue harshness I asked what had kept him.
“Sorry, Mister,” he said, and his voice broke on the first syllable. “I think I’ll be having to quit on account of my arm.” It broke again on “arm.”
“What’s the matter with your arm?” I asked, and I took hold of the door and motioned him inside.
“It’s pretty sore,” he said when we got to the top of the stairs. It certainly looked that way from where I stood.
“How’d that happen?”
He looked down at the parquet. “It was the smell’s what it was.”
“What smell?” I asked, exasperated at his lack of eloquence.
“The farting. My old man got tired of it after a while and he cracked me a couple good ones.”
“Jesus. Your pa did that over a little gas?”
“It was a lot of gas,” he said.
I called for Mrs. Fenster and she waddled in carrying a rag. She scowled at the sight of the boy, as though his unreliability reflected poorly on her.
“The lad’s hurt his arm,” I said.
She sniffed and threw her rag over her shoulder and roughly tugged his
sleeve upward. “You’re long past due for your bathing, young man,” she said, and if she was about to add some other insulting comment, she stopped at the sight of his arm, which displayed a nascent rainbow of skin tones from red to black, with orange predominating, the yellows and purples yet to add themselves to the ghastly palette.
“Lay that bindle down there and we’ll go see Ernie Stickhammer down the street.” I beckoned him to follow me down the stairs.
“Sawbones costs money,” Mrs. Fenster yelled from the top of the stairs, as though fearing that any moment I might come to my senses and leave her or the boy responsible for Stickhammer’s fee.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Fenster,” I called up to her. “Stickhammer’s the cheapest doctor in Colorado.”
ERNIE STICKHAMMER WAS an unmarried native of Montreal, Canada, and lived in a small room in the back of his office, which occupied three rooms six doors down the street from the gallery, up a comically narrow flight of stairs.
“You sure about seeing the doc?” the boy asked, as though I had suggested an audience with the president or the pope of Rome and not a dipsomaniac provincial sawbones. We waited in a small antechamber for him to be done with another patient, and after a few minutes Stickhammer came out in his shirtsleeves in the company of a man with a nose the size of a gherkin, the texture of a cauliflower, and the queasy purplish gray hue of an eggplant. The man left without any words exchanged between him and the doctor, who shook his head sadly after him.
“And what have we here?”
The doctor sported blond whiskers down to his chin, and his face was such a bright pink Lemuel couldn’t help staring at it as he led the boy into the consultation room and helped him up onto a table. Stickhammer’s notice had already been drawn to the boy’s mangled limb, and he knelt to examine it, gingerly pulling the worn sleeve away without causing the boy undue pain.
Hop Alley Page 5
