Anything Goes

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Delilah, wait.”

  “More trouble, I suppose. I hear The Profile got beat up.”

  “You know more than I do,” August said. “But yes, he’s out for a spell.”

  “The word is, some miners didn’t like his piece about immigrants, and let him know it.”

  “He hasn’t revealed the source of his affliction, only that he’s lacking the means to talk.”

  “I heard it at breakfast. They wanted to take him into the mine, and show him where copper comes from. It doesn’t come from people with social connections and college degrees.”

  “I think he learned that last night.”

  “In spades,” she said, grinning.

  “Delilah, we’re short of acts. Mrs. McGivers’ little monkey died of pneumonia, and she’s not fit.”

  “Oh no, oh no.”

  “We’ll see. She’s a phenomenon.”

  “Tough old performer.”

  “The thing is, Delilah, can you and your gents do three different deals tonight?”

  “We’ve been working on one. This house has hardwood on the aisles. We’re thinking of a deal tapping our way through the audience, and up and down some stairs. But we’ve barely tried it.”

  “You’re on, and you’ve rescued me.”

  “We’ll work on it this morning. Which monkey, Cain?”

  “You know, I don’t remember.”

  “Poor Mrs. McGivers. She might kill husbands, but she loves monkeys.”

  “Delilah, get the word out.”

  He headed to the opera house, braving a smoke-choked morning. The north wind drove the acrid mine and mill smoke straight down the slope of the city, burning up lungs and tempers. He marveled that anyone lived to be forty in this miserable city. He wondered whether this mean city would be the ruin of his company, whose ranks were thinning by the hour.

  He found John Maguire in his office, staring at the horizon.

  “I’ve heard,” Maguire said. “Word gets around fast. You have some acts?”

  “Maybe cancel; have to make up my mind.”

  “Tonight and tomorrow?”

  Beausoleil just shook his head. Butte had defeated him.

  “The Profile sure chose the wrong place to tout his ancestry. Frankly, August, I’m surprised he got away with it as long as he did. This town’s famous for saloon fights; I mean, the Cornishmen invade an Irish saloon, and bust it up, or the Irish and Italians tangle over some alleged insult. So Windsor simply walked right into the middle of it. I know who did it, and they were kind to him. He could have been busted wide open.”

  “You have any ideas, John?”

  “Headline: Wayne Windsor not in show tonight. Turn it to good use. In this game, turn everything to good use. Fill the seats, one way or another.”

  That was it. One way or another. “Thanks, John. I’ll see,” August said.

  That was a novelty. But so was Butte. And by now, Windsor’s fate was the gossip of the whole mining town. It was a town that enjoyed rough humor. August weighed what to say, and finally decided that the gaudier the story, the better. He bundled into a thin coat—he hadn’t fathomed how early cold weather would descend here—and headed for The Inter-Mountain. He’d get it into all the afternoon rags if he could, but he might as well start with the paper The Profile visited.

  A stern gent in a sleeve garter greeted him at a counter.

  “Beausoleil here; I own the show. Have an announcement,” August said.

  “I imagine you do,” the gent said.

  “One of our acts, Wayne Windsor, won’t appear this evening or tomorrow. But the show will be better than ever.”

  “That’s what I figured,” the gent said. “Incapacitated? On both sides of the profile?”

  This gent knew a lot more than August had imagined.

  “Yes, he’s a bit out of sorts.”

  “And how did all this happen, sir?”

  “He didn’t tell me. Maybe he ran into a doorknob.”

  “I’ll quote you.”

  “That’s what I want. Tell your Butte readers that the star of the Follies ran into a doorknob and won’t appear.”

  “Beausoleil, you’re a genius,” the gent said. “Is this a scoop?”

  “No, I’m going from paper to paper, varying the story considerably. Whoever gets it out first will have all the advantage.”

  “I might improve upon the story, sir.”

  “Good. You’ll sell more papers and I’ll sell more tickets.”

  Impulsively, Beausoleil shook hands with the dour reporter. He counted it one of his best interviews ever.

  He braved the dank cold and arrived at the Miner, owned by one of the copper barons who rode herd on the town. This time, the reporter who met him was stern, gray, with wire-rimmed spectacles. He oozed skepticism.

  “So, what’s the story?” he asked.

  “Why, sir, our lead performer may not appear this eve.”

  “So why are you telling me this?”

  “So our customers will know in advance; it’s the thing to do.”

  “Why won’t he appear?”

  “He’s been injured, sir. He hasn’t told me how. But it impairs his performance. Now, of course, he may change his mind and appear; one never knows. In that case, he would bravely do his monologues even while words don’t form easily on the tongue. The audience might be treated to a performer’s courage.”

  “Word is, he got whaled in an Irish pub. Yes or no?”

  “He hasn’t told me, sir.”

  “Are you weaseling?”

  “I have heard the rumor. But he hasn’t told me. I also heard that the assault was a response to Wayne Windsor’s comments about immigrants of all descriptions.”

  “Maybe you’re square after all,” the man said. “I might run something. Maybe not. It’s not the hottest story in town.”

  “Read all about it,” yelled a newsboy on the next corner. “Actor loses his teeth.”

  That was The Anaconda Standard, published in the next town by copper king Marcus Daly, but a lively presence in Butte. It was Daly who had imported Irish by the thousands to work in his pits.

  Beausoleil laid out his two cents, and examined the sheet. Sure enough, on the front page, was the Wayne Windsor story.

  Some gentlemen who worked at the Anaconda Company’s Neversweat Mine invited the performer at the opera house, Wayne Windsor, to tour the pits with them, which the performer declined, and in the process of escaping the hospitality of these gentlemen, ran into a few knuckles.

  It was an elegant story. The Beausoleil Brothers Follies were mentioned more than once, along with the opera house. But the story’s real focus was Wayne Windsor’s observations about new immigrants, their deficiencies, and the virtues of solid, old American English-speaking stock.

  So it was all over town, both the rumors and now a story on page one. But it went on to discuss the performer himself.

  “Mr. Windsor is enamored of his countenance, according to our sources, and is known in the company as The Profile, because he turns one way and another as he addresses his audiences, so each half of the crowd may admire his noble brow and aquiline nose and jut jaw.

  “By all reports, he has a good line of repartee, mostly poking gentle fun at assorted groups. He does a whole routine based on trying to talk to various Norwegians, Swedes, Irish, Bohemians, or Italians, and this is said to amuse not only the English-speakers in the audience, but the more recent arrivals on our shores.

  “We await word as to when The Profile will be back in commission. There’s been no one quite like him in Butte.”

  August had the odd sensation that this evening’s performance would be well attended. That was the odd thing about publicity. Even the most negative would draw a crowd.

  When he reached the Butte Hotel a flimsy was awaiting him: NO TRAIN UNTIL TOMORROW GINGER READY FOR LAST BUTTE SHOW.

  Tonight, then, his beleaguered company would sing and dance themselves into exhaustion. He headed for Mrs. Mc
Givers’ room, wondering if madam would perform this cold evening.

  She opened to him, with an apparently restored Abel on her shoulder. The little criminal looked lonesome for his lost pal.

  “You have an act?”

  “You damn betcha,” she said. “We’re going to put on an act, one way or another. Work or starve, that’s my motto. We’ll crank something out. Abel, he’ll pick pockets, the organ grinder act. And I’ve got that fake monkey Ethel pulled out of a saloon. Hey, it don’t take much to keep Butte happy.”

  She was smiling broadly, but there was a sadness around her eyes.

  21

  CHARLES WAS waving a yellow paper. “Hey, sweetheart, you wanted to sing? You get to sing.”

  “What, Charles?” Ginger asked.

  “August needs you, right now. He’s got sick acts.”

  “But he said I’m not, what was it? Not a draw.”

  “You put on a show or you cancel. And if you cancel, you return the ticket sales, and you still pay the house, and you still have expenses, and people waiting for their money. So you do the show, baby.”

  This was dizzying. These days had been dizzying. She had recklessly plunged into a universe she knew nothing about, and that included much more than a sudden marriage.

  “What do I do?”

  “You take the train back to Butte. I’ll go with you partway, but then I’ve got to go to Missoula. We’re nearly done here anyway. You go back, try out your tonsils, and knock ’em dead, twice, first and second acts.”

  “I haven’t practiced.”

  “Neither have half the acts. You put a smile on your mug, you go on out there, and you do what you can do, and maybe you’ll score, maybe not.”

  “What do you think I should sing? You know better than I ever could.”

  He eyed her cheerfully. “Here’s where you’re the boss, baby. I don’t know what’s stuffed in your head; I’ve barely heard you. We’ve got an amateur marriage. Singing, you’re the pro. So you pick the numbers, and you dish the numbers, about three each act, if August wants to stretch it out a bit. And have an encore ready.”

  “Who’ll accompany me? I often sing at a piano.”

  “Improvise, baby. If it bombs in the first act, do something else in the second.”

  “But what should I wear?”

  “Nothing.”

  She reddened. She’d been wearing a lot of nothing in the hotel room in Philipsburg. She’d gotten the whirlwind tour of marriage. She’d expected a lot of sweet nothings, a lot of whispered kisses, a lot of hand holding, and instead, she’d been carried to a mountain top and hurled into space. She hadn’t had time to figure it out. She was plunged into a river of impressions, feelings, odd loneliness, yearnings for the home she had fled, aching for whatever might come next. And her first real awareness of her lithe body.

  He’d been furiously busy. Apart from making arrangements to house and feed the company, an advance man was involved in publicity, first and foremost. Tell the world about the show. Get three-sheet playbills up on barns, ads in papers, notices in cafés; start barkeeps gossiping, start editors muttering. Hire someone to hand out flyers.

  He was off and gone all day and half the nights, so she barely knew her husband, and knew even less about the marriage she had contracted, and had spent a lot of time cloistered in the room, waiting for him. She had felt like some useless baggage, and maybe that’s all she was. But then he’d burst into their room, beaming, and the world was aglow again.

  One thing she knew: this world was nothing like the bourgeois one she had escaped. And she wasn’t sure she liked this one at all. What was the axiom? Act in haste, repent at leisure. But there was this about it: She had made good her escape. She had fled the world that was crushing her and arrived in a world rife with possibility. And somehow, she had left no trail. They wouldn’t be coming after her. She was free!

  He was eyeing her. He had been curious about her, curious about how she was taking all this. He had learned to read her, and she marveled at it. She’d barely known boys; now she had a man. A stranger. More of a stranger than the day they had met. The odd thing was, she liked this jittery life. Even when she was scared, she liked this business. She was ready to hug the world.

  “The shuttle leaves at seven; we reach the mainline at eight; Helena by nine; Butte by ten thirty. You’ll have the afternoon to work up an act. It’s the last show there. That makes it easy on you. If you flop, you won’t let anyone down. But you won’t flop. You’ve got the goods, babe.”

  Philipsburg lay at the end of a long spur off the Northern Pacific. A short smoky train carried freight, ore, passengers, and hoboes each way, each day.

  She couldn’t remember where she had put her sheet music. Or what dress to wear. Or what she should do out in front of people. She had given recitals, but this wasn’t a recital. And after the company was together and well, she’d be back with Charles, Mrs. Pomerantz, out in front of the troupe, living in hotel rooms. Well, she had bought the ticket, and now she would see where it would take her.

  She had barely gotten some sleep that wild evening when he was awakening her.

  “Up, baby. This is your big day.”

  Big day? For what? As she went through her ablutions, she understood. They all thought she had wanted to be a vaudeville star, that she was some stagestruck girl with ambitions. Well, there was that, but the thing that had driven her to this point was simply a passion to escape.

  She hurried into gray woolen travel clothes, and they hastened to the small barn-red station where several other people huddled in the morning cold. The ancient coach wasn’t much warmer, but steam from the engine gradually wrought a measure of comfort.

  For a change, every train was on time. They boarded the lacquered eastbound NP express, and were soon in Helena. Charles left her there with a kiss and a squeeze, and caught a train to Missoula. She boarded another local and rattled through a mountain valley to Butte. A hack sent by Beausoleil was there to meet her and carry her and her several bags to the hotel. She had been billeted with the Wildroot girls, for lack of any other room. And no sooner had she dropped off her bags than August was at the door.

  “We’ll go to the opera house. You’ll want to work out an act,” he said.

  She realized he hadn’t welcomed her, hadn’t made small talk, hadn’t engaged in pleasantries. He had brusquely commanded her presence. Keeping a touring company afloat was serious business.

  “I don’t have my music,” she said as they walked along Broadway.

  “Sing from memory or tell me you’re not in,” he said. “And right now.”

  “Is there a pianist?”

  “We’ve got a fiddler, an accordionist or two, but not a pianist. We can’t be hauling a Steinway from stage to stage.”

  “But doesn’t the house have one?”

  “They sometimes do. John Maguire probably does.”

  “Can someone accompany me?”

  “What are you, some opera diva?”

  This was not going the way she had hoped. Charles had vanished; he always seemed to have more business than he had time. There were shadowy things in this new life she was leading.

  He pulled open the side door to the opera house, and steered her toward the stage, pulling a switch that lit a single spotlight that flooded a downstage area with white light. Then he clattered down some steps and into the cavernous darkness, filled with row upon row of empty seats, and settled in one, about five rows back. He made no effort to find a piano for her, or an accompanist, or Mr. Maguire, the boldly dressed gentleman whose place this was.

  Then Beausoleil’s voice softened. “Warm up a little, Ginger, and when you’re ready, give me music.”

  She ran a few scales, a few high C’s, and nodded.

  “Introduce yourself and your song,” he said.

  It frightened her. “I’m Ginger,” she said, tentatively.

  “No, no, tell the audience how fine they are.”

  “I’m so pleased
to see you good people this cold evening,” she said. “I’ll do a few ballads, songs that tell stories.”

  “Okay, okay, not exactly riveting,” he said. “But you’ll figure it out. If they yawn, try something else.”

  “Here’s a favorite of mine, from Old Mexico,” she said.

  Dead silence out there. At least Beausoleil wasn’t barking at her. “It’s called ‘Cielito Lindo.’”

  That was greeted with a long silence.

  She sang, her voice sailing into oblivion, swallowed up by the cavernous space in front of her. She was tense, and then relaxed a little, and caught the complex rhythm, and made it Mexican bright.

  “Give me another,” he said, afterwards.

  She did.

  “This isn’t a recital,” he said. “Sing to someone. Sing to me. Make contact with your audience.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Tonight, pick out some gent in the fifth row, and sing to him. Make him think you’re up there for his sake. Get him in your vision, and keep him there. Like he’s a lover.”

  She hadn’t the faintest idea why she should do that, but she nodded.

  “If that bothers you, pick someone else. Sing to the old gal in the third row with the hearing horn. And that brings up another thing. Your voice is weak. Make it strong. Make it bounce off the rear wall, behind me.”

  “You don’t like my voice?”

  “Sure I do. Nice for operas and recitals. This is vaudeville, show business. It’s not a voice for that. Not like Mary Mabel Markey. She could deliver, know what I mean?”

  She did, actually.

  He softened again. “Glad to have you here, Ginger. You’ll do. You’ll be fine tonight, and maybe we’ll use you some more, if the acts stay sick. I’ll borrow you from Charles for a while. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll pick up some steam. Mostly, you need to connect with people. At recitals, you just sing. Onstage here, you have a different task. You’ll seduce every male and enchant every female.”

  “But that’s—not…”

  “It’s show business, sweetheart. See you a half hour before showtime. Might have other things to tell you. Get gussied up so you look like everyone’s favorite girl.”