Anything Goes

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Yes, she’s a great one. And she came to us just a few weeks ago. Out of the blue. Wanted to audition. I wasn’t even going to do that. She sang at a funeral; we lost one of our acts, and this girl sang. And my partner got interested in her, and here’s the thing. They got married. I thought it was just because she wanted a ticket into the business, but the thing is, she loves him. She’s got that, you see. That innocent beauty.”

  “And now she’s your draw.”

  “For the moment,” August said.

  He found two more tickets and proffered them, but the bar-keep shook his head.

  “Gotta work,” he said. “We all gotta work.”

  37

  AUGUST READ the terse wire from Weill and Branch, theatrical agents. An act, The Grab Bag, would be in Pocatello December third. Good. August had not seen it but knew about it. The act was the work of Harry and Art Grabowski, acrobats, and it featured a stooge. Art would sit in the audience and insult Harry, who would begin with some indifferent acrobatic stunts, and sometimes fail to execute them properly, landing in a heap.

  That’s when Art would start yelling insults, and Harry would take offense, and Art would boil up to the stage and there would be a comic brawl. Harry would throw a haymaker, and Art would do a cartwheel or a flip-flop. The mock fight was a work of acrobatic genius, each blow resulting in a comic response. That was all good. Sixty a week, two hundred twelve to get them to Pocatello. That was painful. He was lucky to collect six hundred a night to support his entire company.

  But it was necessary to put them in the lineup. Who knew what The Genius and Ethel would do next, or whether the girl would sing, or who’d get sick. The whole tour had been like that. The Grabowskis were insurance, and could vary their routine. They could do a variety of straight acrobatic acts, some combined with music.

  This was closing night in Missoula and he was eager to put the show on the road. They’d had enough of smoky air, and were hoarse. The night was going to be hell. An eastbound express rolled through at ten thirty, and he was tempted to cut the show short and board it; but he refused. It had been his cardinal rule to give every audience its money’s worth. The next train was a milk run, stopping at every crossroads, and leaving Missoula at two in the morning. And when it got to Butte there would be another wait for a southbound Utah and Northern local to Pocatello, and the company would not get a wink of sleep.

  They would spend night hours in the Missoula station, sitting on its varnished pews, waiting. They would spend hours more in Butte, waiting in the dimly lit waiting room, waiting, waiting, wanting only the comfort of a warm bed.

  It was all because of an improvised schedule through Idaho, upsetting the careful planning that smoothed a tour. Still, these were troupers, used to it, and he was satisfied that the company would hold together and that they’d soon be in the footlights.

  But it was an oddly listless show that eve, before a house only two-thirds filled. There were two bright spots. Ginger sang eloquently, and caught the crowd once again, and The Genius and Ethel topped everything else. His two departing acts had saved the night. Then it was over. The troupers climbed into winter coats and left the darkened theater. Their bags had already been carted to the station; they had only to walk the seven blocks through the gloomy city and begin the long wait.

  By eleven they had all settled on the hard pews in a semiheated building, and began a three-hour wait, always assuming the local was on time. Wayne Windsor seemed resigned; he had done this a hundred times on the road. The Marbury Trio were restless, pacing the room, sliding outside, letting in gales of cold air, wishing the train along, peering down the empty rails, and seeing nothing. A freight at midnight stirred them all. No one was saying much. No one was reading. They had all sunk into their private worlds. Or wishing hellfire upon the new operators of the Spokane opera house. Or trying to sleep sitting up. Or wishing for a stiff drink.

  Why were they there? What bleak turn of life had brought them to this stern waiting room on a wintry night? Why were they patient? He stared about, seeing not performers but wounded people driven to the performer’s life, just as he had been from childhood onward. Most were first or second generation. Harry the Juggler was a new arrival, and wrestled with English; what had driven him to abandon a quiet life in Europe, cross the sea, and find a living in vaudeville?

  Most had arrived in the business because it was the only door open to them. They certainly hadn’t come from bourgeois families; they were outcasts, prevented from walking through polished doors that might lead to law or medicine or political office or academic life. Some had changed their names, shedding the one that imprisoned them in favor of something bland and English. August could guess the origins of most of his troupe. He knew of only one who had arrived in his company from the upper crust, and that was Ginger.

  She sat alone, encased in a shroud that seemed to isolate her. He watched her, knowing that the trip back to Pocatello would be a trial, but also her passage to independence. He didn’t know just what awaited her there, but she had chosen to confront it, and if she won the forthcoming battle with her family, she would bloom.

  She was not inviting company, and there was something in her face that suggested a private ordeal. The rest of the troupe, sensing something, had left her to her imaginings.

  August approached gently. “Want to walk?”

  She nodded. He led her into the quiet dark. The air was harsh but not moving, and they could ease their way along the streets, which were largely devoid of paved sidewalks in the area.

  She seemed almost companionable, though she was utterly silent.

  “Going home’s going to be hard, I imagine,” he said.

  “I knew you wanted to talk about that. If I don’t find the courage, then I’ll be afraid the rest of my life.”

  “You left your family?”

  “My jailers.”

  “I have good friends in the business who escaped, like that.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure, in the East. One’s the son of a cantor in Brooklyn. His father wanted him to sing and taught him all the sacred music; he was going to have his son become a cantor, too. Except the son couldn’t stand it, and bolted. Flat ran out. He’s singing in vaudeville now. All that training, it’s making him a living.”

  “My mother wants me to be a singer, like in concert halls. First she wanted me to be a pianist, and when my hands didn’t grow enough, she wanted to stretch them every night.”

  “She has ambitions for you, Ginger.”

  “Ambitions, yes. But for her, not for me. She sees me as a vessel for her dreams.”

  “And that’s why you need to confront her now.”

  “At first I fled; I’d never look back, but when I learned we’d play in Pocatello, I suddenly had to face the music.”

  “Do you think you can? May we help?”

  “It’s something I’ve got to do, Mr. Beausoleil.”

  “Ginger, I like it. Most of us in the business are running from something. We ended up in the business because it’s the only open door. Our families fled the old country, where we were shunned or outcasts or desperately poor, or trapped in a life without hope. You fled, too, and now you’re willing to finish up, return, and face them, if that’s the word for it. You’ve got some things on your side: eighteen, employed, married.”

  “I’m christened Penelope, and you’ll hear that name if they come, and I know they will. But I’m Ginger, and I won’t let them take Ginger from me.”

  “Everyone in the company will help, if you need help.”

  She stopped walking. “I need to do it myself,” she said. “But thank you.”

  He admired that. “Ginger, there’s not a man in the company who isn’t in love with you,” he said.

  She didn’t know how to manage that, and slid into quietness.

  “Call on us if you need us,” he said. “The whole company.”

  “You don’t know my mother,” she said.

  That was
all. They strolled back to the station through lonely darkness.

  They welcomed the local when it finally chuffed in, two boxcars and an ancient coach, just in case someone wanted to travel somewhere through a long night. They boarded, put all their show baggage in the coach, and soon the engine was wailing through the blackness, with pea snow clattering against the grimy windows. The train was literally on a milk run. At Deer Lodge it stopped to load casks of raw milk, destined for a Butte creamery, along with a ton of potatoes destined for the mining town.

  Then the local cranked its way east, its weary passengers swaying through the wee hours and the very late hours of night. Butte, perpetually alive, seemed quiet at four when they wearily debarked, heaving all their show stuff to the platform because there were no teamsters or cabbies to help them.

  August eyed his company; they were shell-shocked with weariness and lost in silence. The only one who seemed impervious was The Genius, who had been working the contents of a flask through his innards. The Utah and Northern, a branch of the Union Pacific, loaded them at dawn, this time into a clean coach that was warm, and soon they were en route to Pocatello.

  Ginger was staring at nothing, lost in her own world, but the rest brightened at the thought of a hotel room and sleep. The Grand Opera House in Pocatello would be dark that eve; the next day, the Follies would be up in lights.

  Beausoleil lost track of time, but in the middle of the next morning the train chugged into Pocatello Junction, a mountain-girt town of about fifty-five hundred. The troupe wearily collected bags, and discovered Charles Pomerantz waiting for them with two hacks and a dray to carry luggage and equipment.

  August peered about, looking for signs of trouble, and found none. The whitewashed station rested peacefully in the bright sun, indifferent to those who flowed through it day and night. He watched Ginger step onto the conductor’s stool, and then the gravel platform, peer about cautiously, discover Charles, and race to him. He greeted her with a sweeping hug that lasted a long moment, and then led her to a hack. He had business to attend to: getting the weary troupe to its hotel, along with all their baggage.

  The hack carrying Ginger was soon loaded, and Charles sent it on its way, and then the rest, until the company had been cared for.

  That left just August and Charles, partners in a precarious enterprise, standing there.

  “So far, no trouble,” Charles said. “I’ve learned a thing or two about the Joneses, her parents. They are well liked and greatly respected here. But I haven’t met them, haven’t heard a word about trouble. They may not even know their daughter’s here. But we’ll see.”

  “Ginger’s holding up. She’s not running; she wants to get it over, so she can quit running.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “New act in?”

  “Yes, at the hotel. The Grabowski boys. They seem fine, ready to go.”

  “Tickets moving?”

  “Yeah, good news, sold out tomorrow. Filling up the next nights. You want to walk? It’s a few blocks.”

  “Do me good,” August said.

  They walked through a bright and comfortable town, well set in its valleys, which branched outward into arid slopes. Maybe a good place to visit, but not a place to live if you enjoyed variety.

  “How are we in Boise?”

  “They’re pasting the bills up, they say. I think we’re set. But I’m not hearing from our bookings on the coast. And it’s been three days since I wired Seattle. The manager in Boise says he’s heard a rumor or two about buyers offering good money for houses up and down the coast, but he said it’s just talk. Things are going along.”

  Charles had booked them into the Bannock Hotel, white clapboard place next to a Mrs. Wilson’s Pancake Parlor. It would do, even if they charged two dollars, a steep price for a small room. The opera house was half a block away.

  The Grab Bag boys were waiting in the small lobby. Art looked like a muscular boxer; Harry was a slim gymnast.

  “We’re ready to roll,” Harry said. “Art’s the stooge. He’s twice my size, which works real good. Sets up the crowd. He’s gonna get up on the stage and flatten me. We’re ready for a few laughs.”

  “Can’t wait to see it,” August said. “We’ll run you twice, before and after the break. I hope you’ve got several routines.”

  “Oh, we got a bunch,” Art said. “We can knock ’em senseless. You mind paying us in advance? We’re flat.”

  “I’ll lend you two bucks,” August said.

  “We eat that in a day,” Harry said. “Acrobats chow down.”

  August sighed, and forked over two singles. “Earn it, then,” he said.

  38

  GINGER HAD been in this building before. Twice she had played her parents’ Steinway grand piano on this stage. The piano had been carried down to the opera house from her parents’ home on the heights. Three times more she had sung at this hall after her mother had switched her from piano to voice. There had been other recitals in more intimate venues, but this was the stage where her mother had presented her to the world.

  After a few desperate hours of rest at the Bannock Hotel, the weary troupe was gathering at the opera house ahead of its opening in Pocatello. They had rattled along silver rails, finally settling in their rooms around eleven for whatever rest they could extract from an early December afternoon with the low sun brightening the streets.

  It soon would be dark. The Grand Opera House loomed solidly in the dusk. In Pocatello they built things to last, in part because her father insisted on it. Pocatello Junction, as some still called it, was no fly-by-night railroad construction town, but a durable city of brick and stone with spacious houses of well-cured pine. The Union Pacific was going to put this town on the map to stay.

  Ginger was oddly passive. She had come to accept that she could not thwart a confrontation if her parents chose to have one. She had her majority, a wedding ring, Charles and August to shield her, not to mention a performance contract with Beausoleil Brothers Follies. Still, her parents were a looming presence, and she could hardly take a step onstage without imagining that they were watching and waiting.

  Charles had mercifully let her rest. Marriage was still a puzzle to her; she hadn’t been at it long enough to learn how to live with a man she barely knew. He, the urbane showman, seemed a lot more comfortable with it than she was.

  “This is where you’ll be the star of the show, baby,” he had said.

  The troupe soon collected there in the cold building. Theaters were never warm except when they brimmed with people. The stage was lit by one bare bulb, casting sickly light upon the gathering company. She met The Grab Bag act, thick Harry, slim Art, gymnasts with a streak of comedy.

  “Miss Ginger, all I’ve heard about you is true,” Art said, which made her curious. “Here’s my greeting card.”

  He leapt upward, did a complete back flip, landed on his feet, and bowed.

  “Do I shake your hand or your big toe?” she asked.

  “I’m your slave for life,” Art said.

  “Have you met everyone?” she asked.

  “Not if I can help it,” Harry said.

  “He’s the stooge,” Art said.

  The term was beyond her, but she would soon figure it all out. She watched the Marbury Trio, looking just as tired as they did in the morning, loosen up. And Wayne Windsor was loosening his tonsils, sipping something she decided was a private brand of tonsil tonic. But what startled her the most was The Genius, who was singing scales, do re mi fa sol la ti do …

  “Genius, why are you singing the scales?”

  “The train ride wrecked my voice.”

  “But you could just talk to Ethel.”

  “Ethel is in no mood for talk. All she wanted was her matrimonial rights. No sooner did we get off the train than she attacked me.”

  “I think I will go say hello to Harry the Juggler,” she said, escaping the hand that shot out to stay her.

  “Once a genius, always a genius, a
t all things large and small,” he said.

  Harry was unpacking his trunk, filled with lethal knives, scimitars, and cups and saucers.

  “Did you sleep, Harry?”

  “I am working on a guillotine act,” Harry said, his voice thick. “Soon I will have it. A guillotine, the blade above me, suspended by a cord. If I drop a knife on the cord, I drop my head in a basket.”

  “That would make the front pages,” she said.

  “It would be an India rubber head. I will work it like the magician who puts a girl into a box and saws the box in half.”

  ”Where would your real head be?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet, but I will. Then I will show the act to Monsieur August.”

  “I think at the end, you should stand and hold your head at arm’s length,” she said.

  “I’m perfecting it,” he said.

  She greeted the Wildroot girls, who seemed none the worse for wear. They were from an old theater family, and somehow knew how to get through exhausting times. She discovered August eyeing her, and knew he was keeping close tabs on her.

  “I will be all right,” she said. “There’s nothing they can do.”

  “But will it upset you?”

  “Maybe. But Mr. Beausoleil, I left home. I did it on my own. I made my plans, got some cash together, figured out an escape, and did it, and they never found me. That was harder than this. Now I have friends.”

  “My empty stomach is what started me,” he said. “Get into the business or steal.”

  Then she was alone. She had to see what was least wrinkled in her trunk, and put it on. She slipped down the steps into the orchestra, three hundred and fifty seats stretching back to a perimeter that defined the lobby. A balcony curved overhead, with another two hundred fifty seats. This was a fine, solid house for a small town. It had 110-volt alternating current, the latest type, and the company would not need to light foot lamps or fire up the limelight. It had a skilled bill-poster, who had pasted up the notices all over town, notices that placed Ginger in second billing, behind Wayne Windsor. One of the bills graced a cabinet at the front of the opera house, between two sets of double doors. And Charles had not neglected the press. There in The Tribune, that day, was a story, and a paragraph about her, Ginger, wife of the co-owner, Charles Pomerantz. Maybe that was a form of insurance, she thought. Charles would do what he could to keep her from being molested.