Anything Goes

by Richard S. Wheeler

  And then it was Ginger’s turn, and once again Mrs. Wall’s men rolled out her golden harp, and Ginger appeared, this time in a powder-blue dress that glowed in the limelight.

  “I love ballads because they tell a story,” she said. “So I’ll sing three ballads now, ballads that seem to rise right out of the longings of people who are far from home. The first is ‘Shenandoah.’ Across the wide Missouri. I guess a lot of you have left your own Shenandoah behind.”

  That surely was true. The old American ballad evoked tender thoughts. Beausoleil could see it in their faces. These were men who had come some vast distance across a virgin continent to find a new life here, in an obscure corner of the Rockies.

  She sang that and ‘Swanee River,’ and ‘Down in the Valley,’ and then ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ for an encore, and the hush that followed was more eloquent than applause. She had won hearts here.

  It had been a good afternoon, and bore the promise of a fine evening, and in spite of a small opera house, they would do better than break even.

  “My dear sir,” said Mrs. Wall. “After the evening’s show, I would like to invite your entire company to my home for a late supper, and a farewell from the grateful people of Philipsburg,” she said. “It would be our farewell.”

  “I’m sure our people will be delighted,” he said. “I’ll tell the company.”

  “It’s the house on the hill,” she said. “You can’t miss it.”

  She was right. No one in Philipsburg could possibly miss that house.

  28

  THE STEINWAY grand piano in Mrs. Wall’s music room caught Ginger’s eye. Near it stood the golden harp. Both instruments seemed out of place in Philipsburg, a raw and hastily built mining town. But there they were, in one of the few brick buildings, a fine Georgian home overlooking much of the town. She had seen only one other Steinway grand piano in the region, and that one was in her parents’ house, and she had spent hours at its keyboard. The nearest piano tuner was in Salt Lake; it was journey enough to Pocatello. Bringing a tuner here would require an arduous journey.

  The piano evoked memories, and she fled into the spacious parlor and dining area, where the entire cast and crew of the Beausoleil Brothers Follies congregated around a buffet supper, with Mrs. Wall presiding as a vivacious hostess. It was a grand farewell party, even though the company had played Philipsburg only one day. Few in the company had ever been in a home like this.

  Ginger saw no sign of Mr. Wall, and presumed he was away somewhere. The Granite Mine lay several miles distant, and by all accounts was a superb producer of silver ore. Mines rarely lasted long, and most mining towns were built with that in mind. But some sort of optimism had embraced this district, and now the Walls were living in a solid home built to last for generations.

  Mrs. Wall spotted her and bloomed before her.

  “Ah, there you are, Penelope. Come with me to the music room for a little visit.”

  Ginger’s world stopped cold.

  “Mrs. Wall, my name is Ginger. Ginger Pomerantz,” she said, the words hollow in her dry throat.

  But Mrs. Wall steered her into the quiet music room. “I think not,” she said.

  “I’m married,” Ginger said, feeling her life fall into pieces.

  “Of course you are, my dear.”

  “But I want to thank you for your interest,” Ginger said. “Your backing with the harp worked well, I think.”

  “Would you like to play the piano?” Mrs. Wall asked. “I remember when you were the child prodigy, playing in Pocatello, your hands so small they didn’t stretch across an octave. But you played marvelously. Of course you had tutors, brought from distant cities by your parents, to impart the best that the world could offer you.”

  “I am Ginger, madam, and I’m sure you are thinking of someone else.”

  “No, my dear. Your father and my husband were classmates and close friends. They still are in touch.” She walked to a bric-a-brac and plucked up a portrait in oval gray pasteboard, the gilded name ADAMS BROTHERS, POCATELLO, embossed in its base. The portrait had been taken when the young pianist was sixteen, a time when she was past girlhood and taking lessons from another set of tutors to develop her glorious voice.

  “I think it’s grand that you are engaging in show business, even if it’s not what your parents expected.”

  “I think I’m ready to go back to my hotel,” Ginger said. “I do want to thank you for the evening.”

  “Yes, of course. But first you must play me Chopin’s Polonaise,” Mrs. Wall said. “Here, I’ll collect some of your colleagues.”

  The Polonaise had been Penelope’s triumph. Mastered at age fourteen, her body still growing, her hands still maturing. A prodigy. To play it would amount to an admission, but she could think of no way to escape.

  Even as Ginger was braving herself to bolt, Mrs. Wall returned with several of the troupe, and then more, and finally August Beausoleil, who eyed her contemplatively, obviously not sure what to make of this.

  Very well, then. Ginger seated herself. She would make no apologies. She hadn’t played it or practiced on a piano for as long as these people had known her. They would understand. Still, this was something strange, some facet of Ginger they knew nothing about, and now they settled quietly, some of them with hors d’oeuvres in hand.

  She glanced at August, wishing he would intervene, send his singer home to rest, but he didn’t.

  She played, the soft introductory measures, and then the great theme, so familiar to all, played as if she had never stopped playing, her fingers dancing, the Steinway leaping to respond. She played out of desperation, not looking at anything, played in a crowded room lit by a dozen kerosene lamps that lifted heat and light and a faint odor. She played grandly, even as the troupe absorbed this surprising skill in the young wife of Charles Pomerantz.

  They didn’t applaud, but smiled when her fingers caught the last notes, and the sound lingered.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Pomerantz,” Mrs. Wall said.

  Ginger felt her body sag. The worst had passed. But who could say what might come next?

  “That was spendid, Ginger,” August said, an odd smile upon him. “I had no idea.”

  “It isn’t often that this piano is put to such good use,” their hostess said. “Mining towns—well, they come and go.” She smiled. “I’m sure you could offer us a concert, my dear.”

  “Thank you,” was all Ginger could manage.

  Was Mrs. Wall implying that all of Ginger’s training, and tutors, and practice, was being wasted? Yes, probably.

  But maybe this would be the end of it; in the morning they would all be on the shuttle to the Northern Pacific mainline, and then to Missoula. She would leave Mrs. Wall behind. But maybe not.

  Nothing more came of it. Mrs. Wall did not corral her. And her name continued to be Ginger Pomerantz. And yet the evening was wreathed with worry, and she knew it would not easily slip away; a night in her hotel bed would accomplish nothing to allay her fears.

  Later, carriages and footmen conveyed the troupe to the wooden hotel, and only then did her friends in the company pour out their admiration.

  “I had no idea,” Ethel Wildroot said. “You have kept it all a secret.”

  Ginger bobbed her head uncertainly. There were hidden shoals here. She had risked everything to escape the gilded prison her parents had built around her.

  “Thank you,” she said, and turned away. She did not welcome questions.

  August collected them all in the lobby. “Train leaves at seven forty-five. Be here at seven fifteen. Sorry to cut into your beauty sleep.”

  “Where in Missoula?” asked Windsor.

  “Bennett Opera House, second floor of the European Hotel, downtown. It seats five hundred. We’re there four nights, Saturday matinee, but tomorrow’s free.”

  “Lumberjack town, bad for business,” Ethel Wildroot said.

  “We have a good advance sale,” August said. “Prosperous town. It supplies timbers to t
he mines. Also a school. Helena got the capital, Missoula the state college.”

  “We’d better play it while we can,” Ethel said. “Students want comedy; faculty wants symphonies.”

  “You’ll be awakened at six,” he said. “Eat before you leave or wait to get to Missoula.”

  Ginger had discovered that managing a troupe took a lot of work, including herding the company to train stations on time. None of it was effortless, and often it involved smoothing ruffled feathers.

  He turned to Ginger and handed her a yellow flimsy. “From Charles,” he said.

  HEARD YOU WERE SPLENDID SEE YOU SOON, it read.

  She longed to be with him, and now there was something new about it. He was her husband, and protector if trouble followed her from Pocatello. Her mother would stop at nothing.

  August grinned. “I second that.”

  That night she lay abed in the room she shared with two of the Wildroot Sisters, but sleep eluded her. She dreaded what might happen soon. So willful was her mother that anything could happen, even a kidnaping. The morning arrived with a knock, and soon the troupe was settled in the sole passenger coach of the mixed freight train that would carry them to the mainline. She was soon watching the forested slopes drift by. She had never been east, to settled country, where farms surrounded towns, and forests mingled with pastures and plowed fields. This was different. She had a sudden impulse to catch the next train to New York, and try a new life once again. But the moment died. She sat passively, with the company, and transferred passively to a westbound express with plush maroon seats and a tobacco odor. She stared anxiously from the window as the train screeched to a halt at the Missoula station. She ached to see Charles.

  The line crawled slowly to the end of the car, and then the conductor was helping her down the steps, onto the stool, and then the gravel platform. And there he was, a bouquet of yellow roses in hand, his derby cocked on his head, his gaze feasting upon her. She swept toward him, and he gathered her in, and pressed her tight, and she felt the brusque warmth through his gray topcoat, and then he was placing those roses, wrapped in green tissue, in her hands, and smiling, an odd sadness in his eyes.

  “Oh, Charles…”

  “It’s himself,” he said. “I’ve been hearing about you. And now you’re going to sing for me.”

  “Private concert?” she asked.

  He liked that. He squeezed her, pulled her back, looked her over, and helped her collect her stuff. A trainman had deposited her travel bag on the platform. A small trunk would follow, delivered by expressmen.

  A hack stood ready to carry them to the Florence, near the opera house, where they had rooms on the ground floor. He waved at August.

  “I’ll see you at the hotel,” he said. “There’s things.”

  August nodded. The cryptic message eluded Ginger, but managers were like that. They always had things to resolve. The hack driver, dapper in his ankle-length black coat, steered the dray horse over to Higgins, and set a fast pace. Inside, the Wildroot girls were jammed in beside Charles and Ginger, and also Harry the Juggler, who sat impassively, studying the city.

  It seemed a harsh place. Wood smoke layered the city and there were no breezes to carry it away. But that didn’t matter. Charles, her husband of a few days, sat comfortably beside her, his quietness suggesting that there would be intimate conversation only when they were free from company. Maybe at dinner that evening. Yes, surely then. An odd anxiety wormed through her. For some couples, this would still be a honeymoon.

  The hack driver unloaded them quickly, intent on collecting more customers, and Charles escorted her inside and straight to a room she realized was his. The bags would catch up, somehow. He let her in, flipped a light switch—Missoula was electrified—and a table lamp burned inside a Tiffany shade.

  He caught her close and kissed her.

  “Long time; too long,” he said. “I tell you what. Rest a little, and I’ll be back in time for dinner. We’ll have a grand evening.”

  “You’ll be back?”

  He looked apologetic. “There’s some things to talk about with August. You know, business interferes with everything, and it’s interfering with us, with our rendezvous.” He smiled woefully. “It can’t be helped. The company, you know, is on the road, and things shift and change, and we need to adjust, or work out details.”

  He sure wasn’t telling her much. “What is it, Charles?” she asked.

  “Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about.”

  She didn’t like that much. She’d had some notion that marriage would bring them a complete sharing. But now … she didn’t know.

  “Make yourself beautiful,” he said. “And we’ll go out and have a fling.”

  “When will I see you?”

  He sighed. “Hard to say. But don’t worry; I’ll be back soon.”

  He pulled free, kissed her on the cheek, smiled, and pointed at the roses. “Put them in water,” he said. “Keep them fresh.”

  And with that, he opened the door, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind him. She peered around the comfortable room, peered at his things hanging in an armoire, peered at the bed, and then sat down on it, hardly knowing what to do, or why she was there, or who her husband was.

  29

  CHARLES POMERANTZ knocked and was let in instantly.

  “We’ve got this,” he said, placing a yellow flimsy in August’s hand. It was from the manager of the Spokane Auditorium, and it canceled the booking.

  August stared. “Why?” he asked.

  “I don’t know much. It’s been sold. New owners aren’t honoring bookings. They own the Orpheum, San Francisco.”

  “You argue with them?”

  Pomerantz shook his head. They both knew what good that would do. And a lawsuit would only throw money away and take a year to settle. “It gets worse. I picked up a little from the bill-poster there. When I tried to start him pasting up the playbills, he wired back that a combine in San Francisco was buying up houses up and down the West, a chain. It’ll be a new circuit called Orpheum.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “There’s no other houses anywhere near Spokane. None in northern Idaho. In other words, we don’t have options near there. Can’t book another house. Spokane was our bridge to the coast.”

  “We saw this back east. Combines, buying up theaters, controlling the acts, moving acts from stage to stage, new show every week, shows twice a day, nonstop. I hoped we might escape that here.”

  “There’s another option, August. We can duck south, try to book the houses at Pocatello, Boise, and maybe more towns around there. Good houses, and a good chance they’re dark. Pocatello, the Grand Opera house, town of five thousand. Boise, eight thousand, Columbia Theater. But we’d have to get down there. That means backtracking to Butte, and taking the Utah and Northern south. And booking rooms. But we could do it, and fill the two weeks before we do Seattle, Tacoma, and Puyallup. And start down the coast.”

  “Charles, are we still booked solid out there?”

  “No word otherwise.”

  “And Oregon?”

  “We’re still booked.”

  “And California?”

  “We’re in.”

  “So we have only this one hole in the schedule?”

  Charles wished he could say so, with some finality. “I don’t like this. I’d better wire. Get some confirmations.”

  “Find out fast. We may have a lot of dodging ahead.”

  Charles’ thoughts raced ahead, to ticket refunds, new tickets, reserving rooms, booking alternative houses. But they’d done all that before. And they had a five-day run in Missoula, time to squeeze it out.

  Money. They needed to fill the house every performance. They had payroll. Those brown envelopes they doled out each Saturday had to hold greenbacks. Most players got fifty a week. A three-person act like the Marburys, a hundred fifty a week. Some favorites, like Wayne Windsor, collected more. Seventy-five a week for him. M
ary Mabel Markey had gotten eighty. The billing order, who got top billing, and who was stuck at the bottom, usually set the pay. Larger companies did it differently. Their home office paid the agents, who paid the players. But August had no home office.

  The troupe was working toward San Francisco, where the show would disband. Some would be hired on the eastern swing a few weeks later, across the middle of the continent, to Chicago, the terminus as well as the starting point. The Chicago agents were booking the return east, burning up the telegraph lines. Now he would have to let the agents know about this. They got a cut of every booking. Everyone wanted a cut and usually got it.

  “All right, Charles. Wire Pocatello and Boise tonight. Book what you can. Tomorrow, tickets and rooms, if we’re going there. And wire Seattle, Tacoma, and Puyallup—confirm our bookings. And we’d better look at Portland, Salem, Eugene, and keep on going. Yuba City. Sacramento. Stockton. Oakland. Berkeley. Confirm bookings all the way. But tonight, deal with the dark two weeks.”

  It was a tall order. Shifting a schedule en route, with no time to settle the details, was rough.

  “How are we fixed?” Charles asked.

  “If we have a good draw here, we should be able to weather it.”

  “I put out extra playbills.”

  “I’ve never played a lumberjack town before. Have you?”

  “They eat a lot of pancakes; that’s all I know.”

  August smiled. “We’ll do what we always do.”

  But Charles didn’t like the weariness he saw in the manager’s eyes.

  He hiked up Higgins in a mean wind, and found the Northern Pacific station empty, save for the telegrapher in his cage behind a grille. A clear-glass lightbulb lit his wicket and the empty ticket counter. Missoula had juice. The man bolted upright with a start. He wore a white shirt with a sleeve garter, and had removed his celluloid collar.

  Pomerantz found a pencil and filled out forms. One to GrndOpHs Pocatello. Booking Dec 2–10, ASAP Beausoleil Follies Pomerantz, Florence Hotel Missoula. The next would go to Columb Theat Boise, booking December 12–16.