B0085DOTDS EBOK

by Ivan Doig

  Pop squinted as if trying to draw a bead on what to say next. I couldn’t tell if he really was tempted or simply thrown by Proxy’s latest big notion. In any case, hesitation was not a good sign in him around her.

  “I’m kind of busy with something else,” he put her off. Who knew I would ever be thankful for the fishing derby? “For now,” he went back to safer ground, “let’s just concentrate on the bartending daughter.”

  Agreeably enough, Proxy said that was fine and dandy with her, and as he went in to mind the barroom, she left Zoe and me with a grinning adios and went out to the Cadillac to wait for France. It is strange what you have to pin your hopes on in this life. I now had to wish for Marilyn Monroe to be dried out enough to need a stand-in, if she really did, because when Proxy was here instead of there, I could feel my father being lured away from me a little at a time.

  —

  BY NOW DEL was showing signs of emerging from his camper cocoon. Much to his relief, Pop’s sessions of helping with the mudjack lingo had enabled him to send off a first batch of Fort Peck tapes and transcriptions to the powers that be at the Library of Congress, and with every new day bringing no sign of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Zoe and I no longer had to dole out sympathy when we dropped by the van to see how he was doing. Our report of Proxy’s visit elicited his old bushy-tailed interest, right down to that deathless detail, that she claimed she was a stand-in for Marilyn Monroe.

  “If that’s so, Marilyn Monroe had better watch out she doesn’t end up as a stand-in for Proxy,” he said with a chuckle. Actually taking a break for a minute from the tape recorder and typewriter, he yawned and stretched in the Gab Lab chair. “By the way, how’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Niece’ playing to the audience at large?” This was different. He hadn’t brought up Francine to us before, still embarrassed over the tick on his business end, we figured.

  Zoe looked at me meaningfully, and I had to nod in surrender. After all, I’d had the privilege of dropping the news on Proxy.

  “Not bad,” she took over with that arch hint of more to come that we had picked up from The Importance of Being Earnest. “People are going to have to get used to the fact she’s changed her name, though.”

  “Say again?” Del tilted his head to employ his good ear.

  No further prompting needed, Zoe delved into Francine becoming France, with me furnishing the crucial detail she’d always thought Proxy had burdened her with a name that sounded like a constipated saint.

  “She thinks she got a bum deal on her birth certificate”—Del did a wickedly effective Groucho Marx bit with his eyebrows—“she should try being named after a president.”

  “Yeah, but,” Zoe was struck with a thought that nobody else saw coming, “that was his middle name, sitting there waiting. President Roosevelt’s, I mean. So you got off pretty easy, people usually have dumb middle names. What’s yours?”

  “Oh, nothing worth mentioning. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “That’s not fair. We’ll tell you ours, won’t we, Rusty.”

  “Sure. You first.”

  “Theodosia. It’s Greek.”

  “Thomas,” I owned up to. “Like Pop.”

  Still nothing from Del. “Listen, I have work to do and—”

  “I bet it’s something like Sylvester, isn’t it,” Zoe persisted as devilishly as only she could. “Or Algernon. Or—”

  “All right, all right.” He picked up a pencil and threw it down. We kept waiting.

  “It’s Delano.”

  As soon as the word was out of his mouth, Zoe knew something was up. I was already staring bullets at him.

  “For your edification,” he none too willingly was admitting to, “my full name is Philip Delano Robertson. My father thought if you speak it fast, it sounds kind of like . . . well, you know.”

  I did not even have to say anything, merely kept staring at him. Was any grown-up trustworthy at all?

  “I know what you’re thinking, Rusty”—and he was all too right—“but it wasn’t like that, honestly. I didn’t turn Phil into Del to win over your father, I decided to make the change when I left Washington to come out here.”

  “Cross your heart and swear to go to heaven in a flash of—”

  “Absolutely. Look, I’m using it on the Missing Voices tapes”—he grabbed the nearest one to show us the grease-penciled label on the reel—“and the transcriptions and all else. Professionally and”—he spun his hands as if making the one catch up with the other—“personally as well, I go by Delano now. It’s a better name, it has more to it,” he said with conviction. “I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to do it. Slow learner.”

  He must have seen we needed more convincing. “Honestly, it’s an old, old tradition of new arrivals to this part of the country,” he resorted to, “and I can absolutely see why Francine, I mean France, would do it.”

  “What, call herself after someplace in Europe?”

  “No, change her name to the extent she has. Amending it, let’s say, the way I’m doing with Delano. History is full of examples,” he said, as if that was justification enough, “people did it all the time when they came west.” He hit on an inspiration. “Alan Lomax even discovered a song about it.” Clearing his throat, necessarily or not, he proceeded to twang out:

  Oh, what wuz yer name in the States?

  Wuz it Jackson or Johnson or Bates?

  Mebbe Gaitskill or Gaither or Gates?

  Oh, what wuz yer name in the States?

  We clamored for more, but he declined. “I really shouldn’t have got going on this matter of France, as she now is,” he reproved himself. “Terrible manners. I don’t know what’s getting into me. I’ve never even thanked her for pitching in at picking deadly insects off me.” Serious to the roots of his crew cut now, he looked out the van window toward the Medicine Lodge, as if setting his sights on it. “I suppose I really ought to take care of that when I get a chance.”

  Right then we should have seen what was coming, shouldn’t we.

  —

  THE VERY NEXT DAY, another wet one keeping us inside at the back-room desk, Zoe and I were settling in over the Flying Fortress that still lacked a tail, what with all else that had been taking up our time. Out front, the saloon had just opened and was still empty, with only the distant clink of glassware as France—we were calling her that with hardly a second thought now—fussed with chores behind the bar. Zoe was ritually checking the vent, which we were about to shut so we could jabber all we wanted while we worked on the bomber tail.

  “Ooh,” she whispered as I was starting to cut out the balsa wood tailfin with the X-Acto knife. “Rusty, guess who.”

  Looking much as he did when he appeared in the Medicine Lodge that first day, all legs and pockets and red head, Del was stepping up to the bar, shaking off the worst of the rain as he came.

  “Top of the afternoon,” he said lightly. “Good weather for amphibians.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it.” France came partway down the bar, wiping her hands on a fresh towel. “Two Medicine country liquid sunshine, everyone tells me this is.” She glanced up at the clock. “Looking for Tom? He’s at the Spot having lunch with his fish derby committee, so he’ll maybe be a while.”

  “No, no, I only came by to say thanks for helping out there when I had to be, ah, searched.” He twitched his shoulders self-consciously. “I hope it wasn’t too embarrassing.”

  France responded with that cunning little turn of mouth she had inherited from Proxy; it could serve as a smile or not, depending. “Angel of mercy, that’s me.” Turning more serious, she asked: “You over your bug bite?”

  “Pretty much. Still an itchy spot.” Del tried for the bright side: “At least it didn’t result in sudden death.”

  “Mm hmm. Well, that’s always good.”

  Bombe
r tailfin abandoned one more time, the two of us at the vent watched in suspense while she rubbed the bar with her towel and he stood there, gangling like a hollyhock.

  “Actually,” he came around to as if it was a big decision, “while I’m here, I think I’ll have a drink.”

  “Fine. What’ll it be?”

  “Hmm? Beer, please. Sorry, let me do it right.” Slapping the bar, Del pulled in his chin to make his voice deeper. “Herd me up a Shellac, s’il vous plaît.” Not a bad bit, Zoe and I silently agreed.

  France snickered and stepped to the Select spigot. When the glass was brimming to a nice head, she slid it to him. “Here you go, straight from the horse.”

  Matters now had reached a pivotal point of bartending ethic, whether to withdraw to a respectful distance and let the drink be imbibed in solitary pleasure, or to stay in the immediate vicinity, doing some little thing and provide small talk and a listening ear if wanted. Pop always knew in a flash which to do. Looking less than certain, France glanced to the amen corner, where one of those mystery novels with the perpetually endangered blonde on the cover waited as usual, but then began drying the same beer glasses she’d dried five minutes before. “You’ve really been holed up working, huh? How’s it going?”

  “Phenomenal,” Del responded, dabbing away a little beer mustache. “Another week or so and I’ll have all the interview tapes transcribed and sent off. I couldn’t have done it without Tom. Fort Peck was a world all its own.”

  “I bet. I’ve heard a ton of that from Proxy.” Another dry glass received a thorough wiping. “Then what? You moving on, I guess?”

  “I’m afraid so.” He did the bit with his chin jacked down on his voice box again. “Back on the trail of the Missing Voices.” Zoe and I heard this with a pang we could feel in each other.

  “Oboy, this place could use some noise around this time of day,” France skipped past his imminent departure. “Tried to talk Tom into putting in a jukebox, but he says if people want music, they can go sing in church.” She wrinkled her nose at the Buck Fever Case painting across the room. “If I owned the joint, I’d put in a jukie right smack over there.”

  Del ventured, “And have to listen to fifty versions of ‘she done me wrong’ songs?”

  “Nahh, not just yokel vocals. I’d make sure to sneak in some Mose Allison. ‘One Room Country Shack’ and so on. You dig that kind of thing?”

  “Do I! Absolutely!” Del nearly ascended off his bar stool. “Mose Allison is a Mississippi Delta bluesman of the first order. A direct descendant of Leadbelly and Muddy Waters and Blind Lemon Jefferson and—” He rattled off names until building up to an encore of the growly blues he had performed at the reservoir that fishing day with Pop and me. “Everythin’ nailed down’s comin’ loose. Seems like livin’ ain’t no use. Sensational stuff, isn’t it? Pure lingua america.” Finally he caught himself. “Sorry. I tend to get carried away about musicology.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, giving him a strange look. “Passes the time anyway.”

  That caused him to check the clock over by the Select Pleasure Establishment plaque and conscientiously down some more of his beer. “I really should get out of your ha—your way so you can go about your business.”

  “Aw, feel free to stick around and flirt with me”—she gave him a grin so fresh it was comical—“I need the flattery and you need the practice.” Her face sobered as she saw him redden all the way to his ears. “That’s what’s called a joke, you know.”

  “Right, right. Good one.”

  France fiddled with something under the bar while Del kept rolling the beer glass back and forth between his palms. “Actually, I need to drink up and go back to transcribing.” As if it had just occurred to him—which may well have been the case—he dug deep to pay. She came, took the money, delivered the change, and began to move off down the bar. Del wrenched around on his stool in that direction.

  “Ah, France . . . I was wondering, I mean I wanted to ask. Have you had a chance to see any of the countryside around here? Glacier Park, for instance?”

  “Not hardly,” she laughed unhumorously. “Been too busy with—” She rolled her eyes to indicate the totality of the barroom.

  He managed to sound bashful and eager at the same time. “What would you think about driving up with me on Sunday? The park is only a couple of hours from here.”

  I instantly knew what was going through her mind: the house policy, no dating a customer. Yet, and I was entirely with her on this, too, Del didn’t really qualify as a customer, did he? He was . . . well, Del; practically an attachment to the household; friend of the family, inadvertently; soon to head down the road in pursuit of other Missing Voices. Obviously an exception to any rule, and in my pulling for her to say yes to him, I was not at all alone. I speak for both of us, Zoe was as eager as me to see Rosalind and Orlando, Algernon and Cecily and Jack and Gwendolen, duplicated in front of our eyes.

  France did it her own way, grinning a little slantwise as she answered: “Promise we won’t end up picking ticks off each other?”

  Even from the length of the barroom away, we could see Del’s ears redden again. “No buggy stuff, scout’s honor.”

  “Okay. Sunday’s it.”

  —

  ALL THAT COULD be gotten out of them afterward about the Glacier Park trip was “It went fine” from her, and “It was quite the day” from him, not exactly the dramatic dialogue Zoe and I were hungry for. Pop added a few furrows to his brow when he learned of their date, but he only said, “Opposites attract, but usually not for long.”

  And in fact, Del did not show his face in the saloon in subsequent days but hunkered in to the Gab Lab again, and France seemed the same as ever, matching wisecracks with customers when she had to and minding her own business in the form of bar chores and hard-boiled novels otherwise. Still waters run deep, though, notoriously so. It was only a few nights into that week when I stirred from sleep with the sense that something was wrong.

  Groggily I sat up and sniffed hard; one more time the house was not on fire from Pop smoking in bed, so that wasn’t it. No, what woke me, I realized, was that France had not come in yet, even though the radium green of the alarm clock showed it was considerably past closing time at the saloon. I strained to hear if she might be in the bathroom, but faucets weren’t running, the toilet wasn’t flushing, none of that.

  Now I started to be really alarmed. Had something happened to her? Just as I was about to jump out of bed and wake up Pop, I heard small noises outside. For the next minute or so I listened almost hard enough to get ear strain, but it did not really take that much. No matter how careful a person is, the side doors of a VW van opening and closing make some sound. So do creeping up the creaky back steps and easing open the kitchen door and trying to tiptoe through the house in the dark, as she more or less successfully was.

  Wait till I tell Zoe about this development, I thought excitedly as I rolled over and pretended to be asleep.

  10

  HOW MUCH DID YOU say them jellied eggs is, girlie? Price gone up again, ain’t it.”

  There was only one voice like that in the Two Medicine country, rough as barbwire and about as welcome, and I had heard its grumbles so many times, it simply made me groan to myself as I checked on the barroom out of habit, not many afternoons after Del’s excursion into the joint. Like many another of the sheepherders, Canada Dan drank for a week or so when he got started, and plainly he was launching the kind of drunken spree that Pop dealt with all the time but France had not encountered until now.

  She had been in a chipper mood since taking up with Del, but any midnight rendezvous in the van was hours and hours away yet, and in the meantime, here sat this ornery customer taking up residence in the otherwise empty saloon. It would be some while yet before any of the regulars were due in, so I entirely sympathized that sh
e had his less than welcome company to fend with by herself. Even through the vent, I could tell that when she wasn’t having to get up and draw him another beer, she just wanted to be left alone in the amen corner to keep on reading the latest from her and Pop’s shared stash of tough-guy books, Say It with Bullets.

  “Just like I already told you, twenty-five cents, cheap at half the price,” she joked, although she sounded a little strained and sulky. “Girlie” surely was nowhere on her list of preferred names, but then Canada Dan was never going to be a candidate for the diplomatic corps.

  “Two bits a cackleberry, Jesus H. Christ, what’s this world coming to?” The grizzled herder pawed around in the wages he’d spilled out onto the bar, another of his less than endearing habits when he was on a bender like this, evidently trying to decide whether he could afford to eat as well as drink.

  “What the hell,” he made up his mind, “bring on the hen fruit, one for the gullet ’n’ one for luck.” I had my back-room chores yet to do—Zoe was at hers at the cafe, before she could join me for another session on the perpetually unfinished B-17—but for whatever reason, I couldn’t tear myself away from the duo in the barroom.

  What a contrast they made, the unshaven and unsteady gray-headed customer in shabby herding clothes and the feminine young bartender in a sharp white blouse and her raven hair by some bathroom miracle attractively done in ringlets. Appearances aside, France seemed capable of holding her own with the hunched, muttering figure at the end of the bar, gamely bringing the glass crock and serving up a couple of its distasteful contents to him with plate and fork.