Anything Goes

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Several of his auditors were listening now, following every word, plainly enjoying the exchange. She had walked into something, maybe a running joke at this saloon.

  “What have you done?” she asked.

  “Done? Done? I am recorded on the pages of history. I am the Napoleon of empire, the Hannibal of ancient times, the Julius Caesar of modern times. I will be remembered as the conqueror of Asia, the Lord High Chamberlain of India, the Christopher Columbus of all the oceans, the conquistador of Argentina, the man who raced his sled dogs to the South Pole and lived to tell about it. The British Isles are in my rear pocket.”

  “What haven’t you done?” she asked.

  “I have not yet set a record for wives,” he said. “I’ve had a few, disposed of many, but so far, I’m no match for a typical Italian.”

  “I’ll marry you if you want.”

  “Madam, you are already touched by history. My numerous biographers will remember this fateful day when you bought me a drink, thereby entering that select world of those who will be read about a thousand years from now.”

  “I gather you’re important,” she said.

  “Important! I disdain the word. That suggests merely a berth in the first rank. I leave that to the multitudes who toil and sweat. In truth, madam, I am unique. Throughout the history of the world, of all the civilizations, in the jungles and deserts, on the steppes of Asia, and in the frigates of navies, there has been none like me.”

  She took the plunge. “Would you like to tell it to the world, sir?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I’m already known from pole to pole, and clear around the equator.”

  “But not everyone’s seen you, sir. I think you should be granting audiences to those who have admired you from afar.”

  His gaze bored into her. “What’s the proposition, eh?”

  “First tell me your name, sir.”

  “If you don’t know it, you are grossly deficient.”

  “Here’s the proposition, sir. I will display you. I’m with the company at the opera house in town, and I will put you in front of large crowds, who then may catch a glimpse of your genius, and remember it the rest of their natural lives.”

  He mulled it.

  “You will be fed, clad, sheltered, and will have your choice of beverages at any time.”

  He turned to the rest. “There, you see? It took a woman to recognize the unique person before you. She wasn’t content to offer me a drink or two; she has offered me sustenance worthy of my unique calling.”

  “I’m Ethel. We’ll call the act, The Genius and Ethel. All right?”

  “Madam, I’m your liege lord,” he said.

  “Come along now. I’ll get rid of some girls and put you in the Butte Hotel, where it’s warm.”

  “Madam, genius has met its match,” he said.

  “And we’ll tour Philipburg and Missoula next.”

  “Abominable towns, but I will suffer cruelties until the whole world has gathered at my feet.”

  The observing crowd was smiling. That was the deal. He was half the act. She would need to be the debunker and skeptic, and puncture the gasbag now and then, and if it all worked, she’d have a comedy routine.

  She got him out of there, fed him some soup at an all-night café, and stowed him in her room. He was not fragrant but that could be dealt with. She moved in with the girls, who didn’t want another in their two beds, but so what?

  “I’ve got an act, The Genius and Ethel,” she said. “And don’t ask me his name.”

  Her tone was belligerent enough to quell questioning, so they grumbled instead.

  The next morning she pushed some porridge into him, found August Beausoleil, and arranged for an audition at the opera house.

  “Who’s the genius?” he asked.

  “I haven’t beaten that out of him yet.”

  Beausoleil’s smile spoke loudly.

  She insisted on some spotlights, and the olio drop, since this would make a good olio act. And she wanted the focus on The Genius.

  Beausoleil sat about four rows back, looking impatient. But Ethel was an old hand, and he’d give her careful consideration. She wished there could be a small audience, able to pick up on details, but August was as much a veteran of auditions in empty theaters as she. She settled The Genius in a wicker chair with a high back that looked vaguely like a throne.

  “All right, Genius, away we go,” she said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the greatest man who ever lived, from the beginning of time,” he said.

  “What have you got against Napoleon?”

  “Utterly incompetent. Now, if I had been in charge, Waterloo never would have happened.”

  “Have you ever served in an army?”

  “That would be an utter waste of my talents,” the Genius said.

  “What about Shakespeare, Genius?”

  “Pedestrian, madam. I could write circles around him. Hamlet’s the worst bit of stagecraft ever written.”

  “So are your plays better?”

  “Good Lord, woman, why bother? Plays are an inferior form of storytelling.”

  It went along for a while like that, and she didn’t see Beausoleil crack a smile. That wasn’t good. She put more heat on the Genius, making fun of his windy assertions, but it wasn’t softening up Beausoleil any.

  “Ethel, that’s enough,” Beausoleil said. “I’m going to say no to this, for several reasons. Thank you, sir.”

  “You mind telling me what?”

  “You have the germ of an idea, but it’s not going anywhere. It’s not building. It’s not an act, with a finish. But there’s more, I’m afraid.” He eyed The Genius. “The audience may be discomfited by you picking on this fellow. If he were an entertainer, that would be one thing, but he’s not.”

  “Well, sir, I am an entertainer, and I’m glad you’ve put your finger on it,” The Genius said. “First, let me introduce myself. I’m Cromwell Perkins. I don’t use my name much, so as not to embarrass my family. Let me explain. I grew up in comfortable circumstances in the East, and got a good education, but I was born with a fatal flaw, at least a troublesome one. I have a great aversion to honest labor, and I’ll find any wretched means to avoid toiling as a grocery clerk or a surveyor or a shoe salesman. The thought of practicing law, like my father, makes me faint. I sank deeper and deeper into want, and then figured out my salvation. I became a barstool entertainer. I am a frequent visitor to saloons of all sorts, and the places eventually gave me my living. I learned how to collect a crowd.

  “It was there, sitting on more stools, or putting a foot on more brass rails, than I can remember, that I evolved into The Genius. I learned how to startle and amuse. I learned how to shock and dismay. People bought me drinks. They fed me lunch. They gathered around. They brought others in to hear The Genius. It didn’t matter which saloon; I could wander into any, and pretty soon I collected a crowd, and sooner or later, they’d be buying me drinks, or offering me a tip. Not much of a living, I declare, but one that allows me a bunk in a basement, and a little heat in winter, and the chance to make a fool of myself day by day, to avoid honest toil.”

  He stared at Beausoleil, who stared back, and chuckled.

  “So you’re in the business after all,” he said.

  “It beats working for a living, sir.”

  “You know, this could turn into something. Not today or tomorrow, but soon, if you and Ethel turn this material into an act, something that doesn’t sputter and die every other minute. I can do this much: I’ll give you a free ride for a while, bed and board, but no pay until you’ve got an act that we can put on the boards with some confidence. And then we’ll talk pay. Does that make sense to you, Cromwell?”

  “It sounds suspiciously like toil,” The Genius said.

  “Take it. I’ll work with you daily. We’ll work up some material. We’ll make this into the best comedy on the circuits,” Ethel said.

  It was strange how it worked out. August was de
ad right. The act needed some refining. And in two minutes he had gotten the man’s name and history out of him, and put a halt to the idea that Cromwell Perkins was half mad, or delusional, or that he was being paraded in front of audiences just to make fun of him.

  “Come along, Cromwell. We’ll have a bite, and then we’re going to work, and I mean work, whether you like that idea or not.”

  “The thought makes me dizzy,” The Genius said.

  18

  MRS. MCGIVERS had two sick babies. Cain and Abel lay on her hotel bed, listless, their nostrils lined with phlegm, their long prehensile tails limp. They wore diapers. Their red-and-gold band uniforms had been brushed and set aside for the next performance. But now it seemed unlikely there would be another performance anytime soon.

  She scarcely knew what to do. She wondered who might help, or whether it was useless to consult with anyone. She already knew what the trouble was: both capuchin monkeys had pneumonia. They were tropical animals, living in lowlands mostly, moist and warm, with good air. Not like Butte, over a mile high and numbingly cold, no matter how much heat warmed the room.

  She had asked the Butte Hotel to summon a doctor, and wondered if the man would flatly refuse to treat a pair of sick monkeys. She could only wait and see. She rarely had trouble keeping the monkeys in her hotel room. In fact, the hotels usually enjoyed the prospect of a pair of primates in diapers in a room.

  They were the only babies she had. She fed them, nurtured them, played games with them, and occasionally practiced the act with them. She had fitted them out with custom-made cymbals and a small bass drum, and had shaped them into an anarchistic band, with each song spinning off into chaos until the audience howled.

  But she had nurtured them, too, brought them fruits and various vegetables, beverages, sweets. Monkeys had a sweet tooth. And sometimes, when they were unsettled, she took one in her arms and held it close, felt its little monkey arms wrap around her neck. She was mother and counselor and teacher to Cain and Abel.

  Joseph, the accordionist who actually put the melody before audiences, had a room of his own, and lived oddly separated from the rest. And yet he was as sensitive to the monkeys, and the act, as she was. Indeed, he had been a street-corner organ grinder, and both of the monkeys had once been his wards until Mrs. McGivers bought in and reshaped the material into an act for the vaudeville stage.

  Now she sat and fretted. She was more than worried; she felt panic, which she ruthlessly suppressed.

  At the knock she leapt up, opened, and found a bearded man carrying a black Gladstone.

  “Dr. Mortimer, madam. You are ill, I take it?”

  “Ah, not me exactly, sir. There.” She pointed at the small primates on her bed.

  He stared, registering that, and smiled. “I’m afraid that’s outside of my competence, madam.”

  “I thought you’d say that. They have colds, coughs, rattling in their throats, and maybe worse. Pneumonia, I’m thinking. Any help—well, they’re my babies.”

  He peered at her, at them, at the small bed filled with two beasts with long tails.

  “All right, let’s see what I didn’t learn in medical college,” he said.

  He settled on the edge of the bed, while Cain and Abel eyed him listlessly. From his Gladstone he extracted a listening horn, and placed it on Cain’s chest, and paid close attention to what he heard. Then he placed the horn on Abel’s chest, listening closely. He dug out a tongue suppressor.

  “Will he bite?”

  “He won’t like it.”

  “I’d like a look.”

  “I’ll hold him, and hold his tongue down, and you have your look.”

  It worked pretty well. Dr. Mortimer lit an electrical torch and got a good look inside the mouth of each.

  “It’s a pulmonary disease, certainly. As for a name, that is beyond my competence. Pneumonia, bronchitis, catarrh, common cold, sore throat, cough. Not that naming it would do much good. This is not the healthiest climate for a pair of tropical animals. Your best chance is to get them lower and warmer and dryer as fast as you can.”

  “And where might that be, sir?”

  He stared into space. “Salt Lake City. I’d not trust them to survive the trip if you took them any farther than that.”

  “Any idea when they’ll get better?”

  “You’re with the vaudeville show, I believe. I can hardly hazard a guess. But diseases come and go faster in smaller animals.”

  “Are there any remedies, sir?”

  “I would hesitate to dose an animal with anything. The best I can suggest is a trip to a climate more suited for these little fellows.”

  “Are they dying?”

  “They have a lot of fluid in their lungs. Especially that one there. I can hear it.”

  “I have some cough syrup with opium.…”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t.”

  “These monkeys, I love them. They’re my act. My life depends on them.”

  The monkeys watched intently from their sickbed, somehow knowing this was all about them.

  “See if you can get some honey in them,” he said. “A little warm whiskey and honey, or tea and honey. It has mysterious powers.”

  “The whiskey or the honey?”

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  He charged her two dollars, two for the price of one, he said, and wished her success.

  She closed the hotel door, and eyed her sick babies, and felt a wave of desolation crawl through her. There wasn’t much hope. She couldn’t get them to Salt Lake City; she lacked the means to rent a Pullman compartment, and they’d die before she got there. She couldn’t leave the show. She couldn’t stay in the show. She hardly dared leave the little capuchins alone, but she had to deal with this.

  She found August Beausoleil in his room.

  “Cain and Abel are sick; maybe pneumonia. I got a doctor, and all he could say was that it was in the lungs, and the monkeys were far from home. He thought the nearest dry and warm place was Salt Lake.”

  “No act, then?”

  “No act.”

  He seemed to sag, and then straightened. “What may we do for you?”

  “Keep us in the company for a while.”

  “Of course.”

  “The doctor said diseases come and go fast in smaller animals.”

  “Did he say whether the monkeys would recover soon?”

  “No, he said that was beyond his competence. He said I should try to get some whiskey and honey into them; it has properties.”

  “Drunken monkeys,” he said. “I’ll send someone for some honey. There’s no shortage of whiskey in Butte. Madam, I’m so sorry.”

  He hugged her. It felt comfortable, his gentlemanly hug, and reassuring. She was almost beside herself. The monkeys were all the children she would ever have, and they loomed so large in her life that she couldn’t imagine a future without them.

  In due course she mixed some steaming water, some honey, and some whiskey together, and coaxed first Abel and then Cain to swallow some, which they did listlessly, accusation in their dull eyes. She gave them as much as they would swallow, and kept trying every few moments, until they rebelled and spit out anything she coaxed into their mouths. Then she sat, the bedside vigil, even as the next performance, another matinee, cranked up.

  She couldn’t imagine how August could fill the bill with so many acts disabled—or dead. But that was the business. Limp along, improvise, and hire claques to laugh and clap.

  She clung to the room, even as the capuchins slept peacefully. Maybe it was the whiskey, she thought. Once she placed her hand on their fevered brows, but they barely stirred. She made room between them, and settled herself on the bed, her babies on either side, her rough browned hands clasping her little ones, until she dozed the afternoon away.

  She was awakened by a knock, and opened to Ethel Wildroot, and welcomed Ethel even though they’d not gotten along, and Ethel was brimming with schemes and plots.

  “T
hose poor little things,” Ethel said.

  “I’ve got them whiskeyed up,” Mrs. McGivers said.

  “That’s as good as any,” Ethel said. “We got through the show. LaVerne did it. Three solos. There’s hope for the girl in spite of bad blood on her father’s side.”

  “Someone comes through, and the show limps along,” Mrs. McGivers said.

  “You want some monkeys? We can come up with monkeys.”

  “In Butte, Montana?”

  “Don’t I look like a monkey? And I’ve a friend I can turn into one.”

  The thought of it alarmed Mrs. McGivers at first.

  “I can follow a beat; I can wail away at the cymbals when the moment comes. I can do monkey business. I can turn into an anarchist. I’m half monkey myself.”

  Mrs. McGivers stared, speechless.

  “I have a new friend, a natural-born monkey we can put on the drum. Cromwell Perkins. He’ll get the idea in no time. We can climb into some costumes, something evil, something that speaks of jungles, and we can do your monkey act without Cain and Abel.”

  “I could never leave Cain and Abel alone in the room.”

  “We could get a nanny. Cookie, my daughter, she likes monkeys. She’s a little slow. I’ll send Cookie over after the matinee, and we’ll practice for tonight between shows. Get Joseph, and I’ll get Cromwell, and we’ll see what happens.”

  And that was how it played out. About five that afternoon, Mrs. McGivers and her new monkey band assembled at the opera house, under the skeptical eye of August Beausoleil, and soon were hammering out the revised act, this time gradually sliding from disciplined calypso music into utter anarchy. And then Mrs. McGivers shouted imprecations, and the culprits returned to rhythmic calypso, only to have that born rebel, Cromwell, begin to foul up the music.

  And August Beausoleil was laughing.

  “I don’t know why I’m saying this, but I’ll put you on. Be ready fourth slot in the first act, and we’ll see.”

  Cromwell was a natural subversive. He caught the idea instantly—start with disciplined music, veer into anarchy, give it a tropical twist. Mrs. McGivers wondered about him. He almost looked like husband material to her jaded eye.