Castle Garden

by Bill Albert

  I was learning about life on the other side and I can’t say I cared for it much at all. Was it better than being back in New York? Better than a crowded orphanage with bars on the windows in Trenton, New Jersey? I couldn’t really say for sure. Mostly I was too rotten dog-tired to think about it.

  8

  Benny December used to say that to get through life you have to find the shortest distance between two points. I managed to tell him that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line.

  “Where’d ya hear that, Mouse? Rich people is always tellin that to poor people so the poor people stays poor. A damn shell game is what that is. Shit yes! It’s only the twistin and turnin’ll get ya anywheres. Usin the angles, that’s the shortest distance. Hard to think how ya got this far, hard to think how ya’s gonna get yerself any further along, damn poor excuse that ya is. Shit yes!”

  Like Charlie Pinto Face, Benny December was a philosopher. Unlike Charlie he was not a poet, but he was the coffee boy at Table Number One and that was more important.

  “Hey, boy! What the Sam Hill you think yer doin?”

  It was our first meeting and I was trying to fill my pot from one of the gigantic coffee urns out behind the mess tent, but the other boys, all bigger and tougher, were elbowing me out of the way. Because I didn’t say anything they elbowed all the harder.

  “Injun table,” explained a big red-headed kid. “Don’t half have shit for brains, he don’t. Just like Crazy Mike.”

  “What’s yer name, boy?” asked Benny.

  Forgetting in my panic that I couldn’t speak, I gave out a high-pitched squeak. Of course, all the other boys split their sides laughing.

  “Cat got yer tongue?” howled one boy, overcome with his own cleverness.

  “Sure does,” said Benny. “Even sounds like a damn mouse, don’t he?”

  That brought on another roar of laughing as well as a frantic Mike Furlong. He came stumbling out of the mess tent.

  “Where you been, child? They’ll be goin on the warpath any minute now they don’t get their coffee!”

  I wiped my eyes with the arm of my new, stiff white jacket and shrugged helplessly, holding up the empty coffee pot. The boys giggled as Mike turned on them.

  “Ain’t Christian, it ain’t, givin this poor speechless child such a terrible bother and him just out from under the Shadow of Death. Should be ashamed of yerselves! Give that here, child.”

  He took the pot from me, filled it up and shepherded me into the tent. All the time the others were laughing, making noises and faces at us.

  “Just larkin with ya,” said Mike. “Don’t ya pay them no never mind.”

  I couldn’t not mind them as they were waiting when I went to get more coffee.

  “The Mouse’s come back!” someone shouted.

  “Give us another squeak, Mouse!”

  “Give ya a piece of cheese if’n ya do!”

  I kept my eyes down and tried to push through to the coffee urn.

  Benny blocked my way. About fifteen years old, not real big but I could tell by the way he held himself balanced on the balls of his feet with his arms hanging loose, that even if I could, I wouldn’t want to tangle with him. Pinpoint-bright blue eyes stabbed at me, dancing, waiting for me to make my move.

  I had no move to make. Fisticuffs was for the street-corner toughs, not for gentlemen. Besides I was scared worse than death. Back in New York I’d learned to defend myself with sarcasm. Like calling Hyman Budnitsky a moron. That had been one deadly defense for sure.

  “Manners, manners. Ya gotta ask nicely, Mouse. Ya ask, then ya get the coffee. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come on, Mouse. It ain’t so damn hard. ‘Please, Benny,’ that’s all.”

  I pointed to my throat. Surely he could see it was all bruised and pushed in? He bent down and looked closely at my neck.

  “Hey,” he said with exaggerated concern. “Look at this. Our mouse here’s got hisself caught in a spring trap.”

  They crowded around to get a better look.

  “Must have wanted that cheese pretty damn bad!” laughed Red.

  That started them off again, laughing and jeering.

  I thought about running inside for Mike, but didn’t. I’d have to face them alone sooner or later. What could I do? At the very second I asked myself that question my eyes were drawn to a wooden stake about the size of a baseball bat lying by the side of the tent. I leaned over and picked it up. The boys stopped laughing.

  “Watch out, Benny!”

  “Mouse is comin up to bat!”

  Benny didn’t move, but I could see his body settle into itself. He smiled, a slight crinkle across his upper lip, like a lizard about to catch a fly.

  I hefted the stake, quickly turned it sharp end down and in the sand in front of the half-circle of boys I wrote as clear as I could, Please, Benny, can I fill my coffee pot?

  Benny’s jaw dropped. He stared at the ground as if it had opened up. A couple of the boys sniggered. The look on Benny’s face turned slowly from confusion to anger. His whole body went stiff and awkward, the fine balance lost. He took hold of the front of my jacket, lifted me a few inches off the ground and shook his fist in my face. His breath stank of stale tobacco and coffee.

  “Ya think yer pretty damn smart, huh? Shitty little kid who can’t even say nothin! Shit!”

  It was as if I’d hit him with the stake. I couldn’t think what I’d done to make him so crazy mad. I waited for the fist. It never came. Instead he shoved me hard in the chest. Although I could have kept my balance I decided that it probably wasn’t such a good idea, so I obliged Benny by falling over.

  “Some smart kid, huh!” he shouted, staring down at me. “Ain’t worth the damn trouble, for sure he ain’t! What are ya’all gawkin at? Huh? Don’t ya jerks got coffee to be servin! Go on, get!”

  It was over. Benny gave me poisoned looks for a time, but the other boys stopped picking on me. Some of them even tried to be friendly, asking me why I couldn’t speak and what I was doing living in the tipis with the Indians. Only a few of them could read more than a couple of words, so contact was limited, but I scribbled notes all the same, careful to use simple words and abandoning the copperplate for the relative safety of the chicken scratchings.

  One of the first things I learned was that in my new world too clever was too dangerous. Now I was getting a different education and I had a lot of teachers, including Benny December.

  It’s funny to think about him being a teacher, because, of course, Benny couldn’t read or write. I reckon that made him sharper and quicker on getting between those two points he was always going on about. However, it didn’t make him grateful for messages written in the dirt by snot-nosed kids. He’d have preferred it if I’d whacked him good with that stake. He told me that himself.

  We had just finished packing up for a move, the other coffee boys had rushed off to catch the end of the evening show. I was slumped on an upturned crate, dead tired and half asleep. I could hear the show going on. Gunshots, horses pounding the ground, people yelling. I had figured that once I got out of the railway carriage I would go to the show every day, maybe twice a day, but after three meals of work I was too ground down to care about anything. It was all I could do to drag myself back to the tipi. Since Sunset Buffalo Dreamer found me I had been with the Wild West about five or six weeks and hadn’t seen a single performance.

  “Hey, Mouse!” Benny called out. “Come over here.”

  If I could’ve moved I would have been back at the tipi asleep in amongst the buffalo robes.

  “Ya gone stony deaf too?”

  He walked over and stood in front of me, hands on hips. He looked angry, but that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for Benny. He stared at me for a minute or two, working something out for himself.

&n
bsp; “Readin and writin ain’t so much,” he finally blurted out. “No, ain’t so much as ya like to think. Look at ya sittin there like a damn sack of wet grits. What’s all that damned readin and writin doing for ya now? I’ll tell ya what, fuckin zero, that’s what. A big fuckin zero.”

  He held up a forefinger curled to his thumb just in case I didn’t get the full meaning. Then he hitched up his pants and spat hard in the dirt. It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone ever say “fuckin.” It sounded dangerous. When Benny finally explained what it meant I figured how it was, too.

  “Probably the worst damn coffee boy ever was. Readin and writin ain’t goin to do it for ya, Mouse. Shit no, they ain’t! Ya gotta be way smarter than all that book-sharp stuff. Eyes open, watchin. That’s what’s important. Watchin, listenin too. Sure. No one sees a coffee boy, does they? No one sees ya watchin and listenin, findin out how the swells with their fancy coats and fancy gold watch chains and all, how they put it together. And when the time comes, when that big chance comes strollin by then ya’ll be ready for it. Ready to grab hold tight and not let her go. Ride her out to the end of the damn line. Like me. Table Number One, that’s me.”

  He jabbed his thumb into his chest.

  “That’s Benny December!

  “And with readin and writin? What’s that got ya? Table Number Seven. Can’t get no lower than that, Mouse. So how do ya figure it? Me and you? Table Number One and Table Number Seven. Ya ain’t gonna see nothin or hear nothin, ain’t gonna learn nothin do ya any good at Table Number Seven. Dumb Injuns! Shit no, ya ain’t.”

  At the time I couldn’t figure out exactly what he was trying to tell me. I guessed he was trying to be my friend, but I was too beat to worry. If Benny wanted to be my friend, I would let him. It turned out to be one of my best moves ever and one of my worst.

  9

  It was Benny who I needed to survive those first months traveling with the Wild West. Of course, Sunset Buffalo Dreamer and Charlie Pinto Face saved my life. They gave me a start, like my mother had at Castle Garden. I learned a lot from them too, but it was all Indian stuff, and even then it wasn’t riding or hunting or shooting or following a trail or any of the things you read about, they just told me stories about who they were. Don’t get me wrong, that was OK as far as it went, but the problem was that the stories didn’t go much farther than the tipis. The white man’s world was to be navigated through, not lived in. The Indians were living some other time and some other place. It was Benny that filled out my life with those things I had to know to get between A and B in the real world of the Wild West. He showed me the shortest distances, although some of the routes he mapped out weren’t always crystal clear and some of them I just plain didn’t like.

  “Ya don’t run too quick, ya don’t carry too much. Take her slow and steady otherwise they fix on how fast and how much and then that’s what they want all the damn time. Shit yes! Ya just watch Benny.

  “Ya ‘Yes, sir’ ‘em and ‘No, sir’ ‘em . . .” He caught himself and laughed. “Not you, Mouse. Smile and nod is what’s for you. Smile and nod. Make ‘em feel like they farts perfume and shits roses. Even with those damn nigger Jacksons ya do that. ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Jesse,’ ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Joe.’ Ya make ‘em feel real creamy smooth, then ya got ‘em by the balls and they don’t even know shit ‘bout it.”

  I wasn’t sure about all that he was telling me, but I nodded and smiled at him anyway.

  “I guess I was just born knowin how to skin it five different ways and when it sits up and whistles Dixie I got a few more ways ready to come at it.”

  He may have been born knowing some things, but he didn’t know exactly how old he was or who his mother and father were.

  “Uncle and aunt is what they told me they were. Real folks went somewheres out West for the minin and never heard from ‘em again. Stuck with me. She weren’t too bad, my aunt, but she died. Uncle, he were a damn rum bastard. Ran this piss-poor grocery store in this piss-poor excuse for a town in Kansas. Fetch and carry, that were me. Littler than you I were too. Shit yes! Sometimes he’d put his arm around me and that kinda thing, if ya know what I mean.”

  I didn’t.

  “Other times gave me whippins just for nothin. Took off when I were old enough to think on it proper. Hooked up with this teamster. That were OK at first, but then he starts in to whippin me and the other stuff too, ‘specially when he had a few drinks. Said I weren’t lookin after the horses right or how I forgot to grease the axles or whatever. Bastard! We was in Cleveland one time when I sees the Wild West unloadin from this train. All that bright color and high-dressed people and wagons and tents and, of course, Buffalo Bill. ‘That’s for me,’ I says. So I ups and skips from that damn teamster and here I is, just like that.”

  He grinned at me and pushed back the flop of white-blond hair from his forehead. That hair was why they called him December. His real name was Benjamin Shorter, but he figured it was only his uncle’s name and he didn’t want it. So be made himself into Benny December.

  Benny knew everything about the Show and the people in it. He took me to my first performance, although we only got in after it was halfway finished. We were squatted down with a few of the other coffee boys by the side where the riders came into the arena.

  “Ya see that, Mouse? Supposed to be General Custer, but course it ain’t. No, it’s Bert Rasmussen. Thinks he’s hot stuff, does Bert, just cause they let ‘im play-act Custer. Dumb bastard is bald as a coot too! Has to put on a blond wig like a damn girl!”

  There was a bunch of Indians, a couple wearing full war bonnets, riding around and around Bert and some other men dressed up like the U.S. cavalry. They were all shooting at each other, the Indians raising loud whoops. An American flag was stuck in the ground in the middle of it all and the Cowboy Band played a rousing march. I tried to spot Charlie Pinto Face or some of the others, but the Indians were too far away and moving too fast. After a time all the soldiers were lying on the ground and only Bert was left, standing straight and holding the flag and shooting off his revolver. A couple of Indians went flying off their horses and then Bert smacked a hand to his chest, threw back his head and collapsed in slow segments. The music stopped. When he finished dying, which took him a good while of staggering and throwing himself about east and west, north and south, he lay out full stretch, one hand still gripping onto Old Glory. The Indians stopped riding around and then a trumpeter played the last post, all sad and quavery. The crowd went dead quiet and some even stood up and took off their hats. The lights dimmed and a spot picked out Buffalo Bill on his white horse. He was surveying the scene of the battle. He swept off his Stetson and put it over his heart. “Too late!” he intoned loudly. Then the lights went out.

  “Ain’t that somethin, Mouse?”

  I gotta admit I had a brand-new lump in my throat when it was over. There was more to come. Arabs wrapped up in white sheets riding their high-strung horses, Johnny Baker doing trick rifle shots—rapid-fire clay pigeon shooting, snuffing out candles while lying on his back, and other impossible stuff. Russians riding and squat dancing, Indians racing their horses—I could see Charlie and a couple of others I recognized—cavalry from England and Germany all turned out in their high-class uniforms doing a military drill.

  “Half of ‘em ain’t Krauts or Brits,” explained Benny. “Bought the uniforms is all. Gets some of the cowboys to ride with ‘em.” He tapped the side of his head. “Smart as thunder is ol’ Buffalo Bill to save a nickel. Shit yes he is, stingy as an ol’ Jew.”

  Too much was going on for me to cogitate more than a blink about Buffalo Bill being stingy or Jewish.

  Above us in the stands people clapped and hollered fit to bust. In the entrance area men and horses were all mixed up getting ready to come into the arena or going out of it. Sawdust and horses and every once in a while the smell of roasted peanuts pushing through. It was all rushing at me so fast and full tha
t I had to keep remembering to breathe.

  It had been more than six weeks since I ran away from the house on Eighth Avenue to see the Wild West Show. I was truly part of it now. I had had my doubts about writing “dead” when the doctor asked me about my parents. More than doubts when I started running coffee for Table Number Seven. But as I sat hunkered down there in the sand at the edge of the arena watching the Show swirl past me, I knew I had done the right thing. I was exactly where I wanted to be. It beat everything else hollow.

  The Deadwood Stage pulled by a six-mule team was driven out into the middle of the arena. Big Jim Connors, the master of ceremonies, asked members of the audience to come down and take a ride.

  “Always the local bigwigs,” said Benny. “Mayors and those kind of puffed-out dudes. Gives ‘em a big thrill. Knows how to butter the bread, he does!”

  “I’ve entrusted you with valuable lives and property,” shouted Connors to the driver and shotgun guard. “Should you meet with Indians or other dangers on the road, whip her up good and save your passengers! Now get on with you!”

  Off they went trotting around the arena. Wasn’t long until the Indians came rushing after them screaming and yelling for their hair. The driver whipped the mules into a gallop, the stage bouncing and boiling dust, the guard letting fly with his shotgun at the pursuing Indians. Just when it seemed that all was lost Buffalo Bill and a dozen or so cowboys came riding in blasting away. The Indians fired back for a couple of minutes or so and then hightailed it out of there. A great shout went up from the crowd. The driver reined in the mules and Buffalo Bill got off his horse and opened the stage door. Like a gallant knight, he helped the two lady passengers down and then he gave the men a pump-handle handshake.