Anything Goes

by Richard S. Wheeler

  It took an hour or so. Ginger checked out, they caught a hack to the courthouse, they completed a license, she as Ginger Jones, and they scouted up a justice of the peace who said he’d do the deed in half an hour after he was done with an assault and battery case. It was odd: instead of doubts, Charles had only delight coursing through him. There were no but, but, buts. He could not explain why a normally cautious man was stepping over a cliff believing he would land safely. He could not imagine what he would tell August, his confidant, when the deed was done. And he was curious about what Ginger thought, whether she was having a flood of doubt. How little he knew her.

  “Do you have doubts?” he asked.

  “No. The time when I had doubts was when I left my home, took a new name, and headed here. I don’t have a single doubt. There’s no turning back.”

  “Do you love me?”

  She ignored him. “Should I call you Charles or Mr. Pomerantz?”

  “Suit yourself. Shall I call you Ginger or Mrs. Pomerantz?”

  The judge invited them in, eyed them skeptically, and studied the bride. “Where’d you run away from?” he asked.

  She paled for the smallest moment. “Make me a proper woman,” she said. “And be quick about it.”

  The judge laughed. So did two smirky clerks serving as witnesses. He extracted a hidebound text and rattled it off, enjoying the embarrassment when Ginger and Charles could produce no ring, and continued on, amusement in his bearded face. An older man, a younger woman of great radiance, and some adventures ahead. They cheerfully repeated the vows. Stuck with each other for life, until one or another croaked. The judge pronounced them man and wifey, his little joke, and they shook hands with him, and Charles handed him a fiver.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll have a reception or banquet,” the judge said. “If you do, I’ll come and toast the happy couple.”

  “You’re not invited,” Ginger snapped. She hadn’t liked the ceremony, and Charles didn’t blame her. Marriage wasn’t frivolous, even if the judge treated their union as a joke.

  The judge nodded, grinned, and saw them out.

  They headed into the late afternoon, both of them in a funk. The matinee was over. Miss Markey was buried. The Butte wind whipped. And now they were strangers in paradise, scarcely knowing how to cope with their union. He took her hand, squeezed, and was rewarded with a smile, and then a flash of delight in her eyes.

  “You ready to tell the world, Mrs. Pomerantz?”

  “Call me Ginger,” she said. “I have no other name.”

  16

  THE ACT was a disaster. August Beausoleil was auditioning local performers, hoping to plug the hole in his show. But Cohan and McCarthy, from the Comique, in the nearby smelter town of Anaconda, were about to get the boot.

  This was an Irish act; the vogue in vaudeville was acts that made fun of the various peoples flooding to America. Most of these were performed by the very people who were being ridiculed. Blacks were doing blackface acts. Irish were doing drunken Irish acts. Like this one.

  Cohan did a somewhat drunken Irish clog dance, and McCarthy showed up to insult him, and soon enough there was a brawl, with the pair whaling away at each other, both of them in well-padded suits to take the whacking of canes.

  Some people apparently found this hilarious, especially the Irish audiences in Butte and Anaconda. Actually, there were some amusing moments, but the proprietor of Beausoleil Brothers Follies hoped to find something better.

  With the help of John Maguire, who owned the opera house, he was looking at local talent. He’d wired agents on both coasts and Chicago, and had not come up with anything to fill out his show bill, especially an act that would draw crowds. And Butte was a long way from anywhere.

  “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll let you know shortly.”

  “We’re filling the Comique every night,” Cohan said.

  “Comedy, that’s the trick,” said McCarthy.

  August nodded. They paused, expectantly, and then quit the stage.

  “Any more?” Beausoleil asked.

  “You could try skits,” Maguire said. “One-act comedies, ten or twelve minutes. There’s a show at Ming’s we might get down here.”

  Beausoleil had seen the ads in the Helena papers: Mr. Roland Reed, in Lend Me Your Wife. On other nights the actor starred in The Woman Hater: “Reed as the Misogynist; Reed as the Bigamist; Reed as the Lunatic,” read the ad in the Helena Independent.

  Good fun, at least around Helena.

  The stage was empty, lit by a clear glass bulb. The matinee was over, the evening show a way off. He had put LaVerne Wildroot into the matinee against his better judgment, and the crowd was neither inattentive nor delighted. That had been plain to Ethel, and she was no longer promoting her niece. She hinted that she was putting something else together, but he discounted it. That was show business talk. Everyone was working on a new act.

  The afternoon crowd had been good enough. Not a sellout, but not bad. The aura of Mary Mabel Markey still hung over the show, and over Butte. There were seats available for the evening show, but the next shows were not selling advance seats. And without her, unlikely to sell, even in a great theater town.

  “Well, maybe I’ll go out and do a two-step,” Maguire said.

  “Knock ’em dead,” August said.

  He stared into the cavernous theater, deep in shadow, a place that could crush dreams as well as make them come true. “Any dog show around here?”

  Dogs were always welcome. Dogs jumped through hoops, caught anything thrown, did their own ballet, howled in unison, and bowed to audiences. Dogs, ponies, tigers. An animal act was a good deal.

  The stage door popped open, boiling cold air through the darkened house, and Charles Pomerantz appeared, with that mahogany-haired girl at his side, still in white, but bundled up in a blue scarf and wooly hat and gray mittens. They made their way across the bleak stage, and down to the orchestra, where August was nursing his melancholia.

  “Tell me you just hired a great act,” Charles said.

  August sighed.

  “You’ve met Ginger. She sang. She is now Ginger Pomerantz.”

  Ginger looked pretty solemn.

  “Congratulations, Charles. It’s number thirty-three, right?”

  “No, this is real. This is serious. A justice of the peace, an hour ago. You’re the first to know.”

  “Oh, number seventeen!” August said.

  “You want me to show some paper?”

  This had to be some sort of joke, so August grinned. “Well, miss, you want to audition now?”

  “No, I won’t sing for you,” she said. “Anyway, you’ve heard me.” She turned to Charles. “But this is my husband.” She caught his hand and held it.

  It was dawning on August that this was real, or at least an improvement on most of the theater jokes he was familiar with. Maybe the punch line would show up in a few days. Maybe this was one of those endless gags.

  “Ginger, is it? Forgive me. I’ve been rude. If this is your wedding day, permit me to wish you all the best.”

  Charles was enjoying it, even if Ginger was not.

  “We’ll want to celebrate,” August said. “Maybe after the show this eve?”

  “Yes,” said Maguire. “Please allow me to host a gathering. And my congratulations. This is all a surprise. But show business is nothing but surprises, right? And we’ll want to toast the happy couple. Will you be putting an act together?”

  There it was again. Not even an emergency marriage could trump the business.

  August stared at this unlikely couple, noting that they were smitten with each other, serious, and somewhat mysterious.

  “Tell me the story,” he said.

  “She propositioned and I proposed,” Charles said.

  She reddened, but said nothing.

  “It was a lost cause. Her hair’s the color of my mother’s. That lowered all my resistance, and after that, she was driving and I was along for the ride.”

/>   She eyed him nervously, and eyed August and John nervously. But she caught the crinkle of flesh around their eyes, and smiled herself.

  “And what are your plans?” John Maguire asked, closing in on the question that August had been too polite to ask.

  “She’ll travel with me, and with the show, and we’ll see,” Charles said.

  “And will there be a home somewhere, like Brooklyn?”

  “Wherever he is, that’s my home,” she said. “I’m not a performer, but I’d love to be in the company. And I’d love to be with Charles, wherever he goes.”

  Something sweet in her caught August.

  “A trouper! Well, Ginger, welcome to the Follies,” he said, and clasped her hands in his own. The glacier had melted. But he was still waiting for a punch line.

  “I don’t know who’s more surprised,” Charles said. “You, me, or her. None of this was by design, and all of it is pure good luck.”

  “I believe in omens,” Maguire said. “Who can explain these things?”

  “We’re off to Philipsburg,” Charles said. “When we can. The local train leaves at dawn, alas.”

  A flash of a smile, and a surrendering gaze from the bride, and they vanished into the afternoon.

  “Who can explain it?” Maguire asked.

  It was two hours to showtime. August wasn’t hungry. He had no more auditions. He eyed his pocket watch, considered the stern weather, and decided to risk it. He bundled up, hailed a hack, asked the driver if he could reach Mountain View and return by seven, and hopped in. The horse, whipped by wind, hastened south, the enclosed coach rocking gently. Night was crawling down, and he’d return in full dark.

  The cabby knew exactly where to go. Death and Butte were familiar with each other. He pulled up at the naked grave, raw earth shoveled over Mary Mabel Markey’s tomb. The bleak twilight revealed a hastily filled grave, the clay not yet smoothed, and patches of snow dotting the yard.

  “Give me five minutes,” August said.

  “I’ll bring a lantern, sir.”

  “Thank you; I’ll be all right, and won’t be long.”

  A rim of last-light lay on the western horizon.

  The cold air off the mountains took the breath out of him. There on the grave was a wreath of pine boughs. Someone had remembered.

  “Well, Mary Mabel,” he said. “Here’s where it ended. In a town that loved you. Buried by your friends. You came out of nowhere, and touched the sky. I just wanted to say good-bye, and tell you that you’ve got a corner of my heart.”

  He had nothing to give her, and then remembered the new Indian head penny in his pocket, and this he placed at the top of her grave. Even in the near dark, it shown oddly bright, a bronze coin in a copper town.

  “Good-bye, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ve played a lot of towns together, you and I.”

  The ride back deepened his melancholia, and he knew that he must banish all that before the show. He was no good at concealing his feelings, even in tux and topper, ready to open the show. He paid the cabby extra, thanking him for braving the wind, and walked through the stage door, feeling better for having the communion he needed with his old friend and occasional nemesis.

  Butte was the coldest place he had ever been, and the opera house was slow to warm. He wondered whether people would show up this evening, braving the relentless wind and the smoke from the boiler stacks that was whipping along the streets.

  The stage felt like an icebox. He spotted The Profile hurrying his way, a grimy rag in hand.

  “The catarrh and a bad throat,” Wayne Windsor said, his voice a growl. “I should shorten the act—if you’re willing.”

  “Fever?”

  “Feels like one.”

  “Go to bed,” August said. “Whenever I push too hard, we pay for it.”

  Windsor looked shocked. “I’ll do the act. I can’t let you down.”

  “Rather have you away from the rest.”

  “Two of the Wildroot girls have it, and Harry the Juggler, he’s wiping his nose. Got a faucet running from both nostrils. Hope he doesn’t sneeze when those scimitars are flying.”

  The juggler was a silent act. August could use the silent acts to fill in. The tap dancers, too. They didn’t sing. The Marbury Trio had several routines. LaVerne Wildroot could sing, if she was up to it.

  “Which of the Wildroot Sisters? Is LaVerne sick?”

  “No, she’s good. Cookie and Marge caught it, Marge with a cough.”

  “What about Mrs. McGivers?”

  “Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a monkey night,” Wayne said. “They’re our ancestors.”

  “They can catch what we catch,” August said.

  He headed for the Green Room, hoping to find ways to put a show together. He wouldn’t cancel. Never cancel. Work it all out. He found Harry the Juggler there, and asked him to do a third, maybe a fourth act if he could. Harry listened closely; August never knew if Harry was grasping words, or just nodding. But yes, Harry would add the cup-and-saucer act. Drop one and it’d break; drop several, and there’d be a lot of ruined pottery on-stage. The deal was, break the whole lot. It was an amateur juggler act, and usually got some laughs. But pottery was costly, and that act didn’t come cheap.

  “Break it all, Harry,” August said. “We’ll buy more in the morning.”

  He corralled Ethel Wildroot next. “What’s the score?” he asked.

  “The girls are ready. LaVerne’ll sing. Cookie and Marge’ll squawk a little, but they’ll do it. They’ll do the job, and no one will guess.”

  “Twice? Second act? And LaVerne can solo?”

  “They grew up in the business. Speaking of that, dear boy, I could do the Dumb Dora act if I had to. That’s what the act was, before the girls took over. I’d put on a blond wig and he’d deliver the questions and I’d deliver, and the crowd got a chuckle out of it.”

  “Well, not tonight, Ethel.”

  “You could do it. Just slide me questions, like where are we, and who’s on first, and what day of the week is it?”

  “We’ll work on it. Not tonight. We’ll go with whoever’s here.”

  “Break a leg,” she said. There was something tender in her response.

  He found Mrs. McGivers in the wing, fussing with the capuchin monkeys.

  “Run long if you can. About half the acts are sick.”

  “Sweetie pie, I was just thinking Cain’s not looking so hot, but Abel’s fine. Don’t worry. We can add the organ grinder routine; the little buggers squeeze some coin out of the crowd while Joseph cranks the accordion. That can get juicy.”

  Somehow they’d put on a show. It had been the longest day in memory.

  17

  SOMEHOW OR other, the company delivered that evening. That was the thing about veteran troupers: they could fill in, make do, improvise, put on a show, get out there in the limelight and keep the songs and laughs coming.

  Ethel Wildroot watched the girls perform, not once but thrice that evening, and they managed somehow. But just barely. Truth was, she was disappointed in them. They’d grown up in the business, knew the ropes, and still didn’t quite deliver whenever something was amiss.

  It annoyed her. She’d spent years teaching, cajoling, demanding, encouraging, and the best they could do was get some pleasant applause. She wished that her late husband, rat that he was, could hammer something of the business into their heads. She would even prefer their old stand-up comedy, rat that he was, to this. At least they were an act, and it got laughs, rat that he was. It was called a Dumb Dora act, because she made sure to be the dumbest dame up there that anyone had ever seen. She was good at it. She picked up his cues, his questions, and her responses guaranteed that every male in the audience felt superior to every female ever born on this earth. Rat that he was.

  But that was long ago. If she could put a comedy routine together, it would be the reverse of the Dumb Dora act. She’d feed questions to some old goat and let him dither. She’d looked around the company some, but n
o one qualified. Even the accordionists were smart.

  The company headed for the hotel, and sleep, and maybe better health in the morning, but Ethel was ready to roam. She often stayed up late, never got sick, and sometimes had fun. Especially in Butte, with a saloon for every nationality and taste. What’s more, most of the places didn’t mind a lone woman, even if the precincts were entirely male. And it helped when she said she was from the Follies. Where else could one get a drink from barkeeps like Butt Bean or Dago Jim or Stuttering Alex or Big Jerry or Whistling Sammy?

  Butte was the best town she had ever played. It was lit up all day and all night, and there was nothing like it outside of New York. That night, half frozen, she burst into a saloon with the mysterious name of Piccadilly, which offered few clues about its clientele. It turned out to be a haven for Englishmen, especially those who wouldn’t rub shoulders with the Irish, and would cross the street before tipping a hat to the Italians.

  Decorum ruled. She feared she wouldn’t be served, but this was Butte, after all, and pretty soon a barkeep with a soiled apron supplied her with a rye and water. Well, fine. She would listen to the galoots. Maybe she would get into an argument. Maybe she would huff out, into the cold night.

  There was one particular gent who interested her. He had a kingly way about him, and for some reason people kept buying him drinks. He was carefully groomed, but shabby, the sort who had seen better days but still got into his boiled shirt and cravat, even if his attire was worn at the sleeves, even soiled. But there he was, often with a crowd about him, listening intently.

  She caught the attention of the barkeep. “Buy the gentleman a drink,” she said.

  “He’s got four ahead of you, madam.”

  “He’s good for a quart,” she said.

  The keep poured some amber fluid and set it before the gentleman, nodding in her direction.

  “This is a portentous event, and history will remember you kindly,” the man said.

  “What have I done?”

  “You have wet the whistle of a man destined to be remembered throughout the ages,” the man said. “It’s my fate to be the Shakespeare, the Newton, the da Vinci, of the ages.”