My little house had just enough backyard for a clothesline and a garden. I had the best lettuce and spinach you ever ate. I grew peas and beets and onions, too. I planted climbing roses that grew up over the fence, and all summer, my house had the sweetest smells. Moon said one of the reasons he liked to visit me was my house always smelled good, from the flowers—or else from something in the oven. “Go on!” I said. “What you mean is have I made any cookies today?”
Two months after I moved into that house, I started on a new career. It was as though somebody, maybe Pink up there, was directing a whole new Effa Commander. Joe Bonnet offered me a job as the manager of the West Park Cafe. Now, I’d been a waitress and a cook and a hostess, but I’d never been a manager. I told Whippy Bird I was scared.
Whippy Bird looked me straight in the eye and said, “Effa Commander, there is nothing in this world you cannot do.” Well, that’s not true, but I did do a good job of managing the restaurant after all, with Whippy Bird right there to give me advice.
It was good advice, like it always is. “You have to be cheap,” she said, and we were that. Coffee for a nickel, a burger for fifteen cents, a fried ham sand for a quarter, and pie a la mode for twenty cents.
You have to be fast, too, Whippy Bird also advised me, because “when you’ve got only thirty minutes for lunch like we secretaries at the Anaconda Company, you don’t want to spend it waiting.” That’s when I came up with Jiffy Lunch Specials. We guaranteed to have them on the table in five minutes or you ate free. They were a smash hit right off the bat. People liked quick, but they liked free even better. They were happy if their lunch came right away without having to wait, but they were even happier when it didn’t, and they got a free meal.
Once a week or so, Whippy Bird took a late lunch, coming in after the rush so we could eat together. She worked because she never was much for sitting around, even now, which is why she helps out at the Jim Hill today. But the main reason she kept on working at the Anaconda Company after she got married was to take the pressure off Toney, give him time to look for a job. Finding a job wasn’t easy for Toney because he didn’t know what he wanted. Except for the navy, the only work he’d ever done was bootlegging and managing Buster. Those were out, and with his leg gone, he couldn’t work in the mines.
Whippy Bird arranged for Toney to talk to the Anaconda Company about working in the publicity department, where he was offered a job. Toney turned it down, telling Whippy Bird he could not be the voice of the Anaconda Company if it meant talking against the union during negotiations. Besides, he said, the only reason the Anaconda Company wanted to hire him was because he was Buster Midnight’s brother.
Finally, Toney leased a filling station, the Toney McKnight Texaco down on the Flats. They tore it down a few years ago for a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Toney worked hard at being a filling station man, and he did a good job. Once gasoline rationing was off, people hit the road in Chrysler Town and Country Woodies and those funny-looking Studebakers that looked the same in the front and back so you couldn’t tell if they were coming or going. They burned a lot of gasoline driving all over the state of Montana to see the mountains and read the Burma Shave signs. You’d see cars with license plates from as far away as Louisiana and West Virginia, big water bags hanging down the front and California coolers sticking out the window. People were throwing up tourist cabins for them to stay in as quick as you could say sucker.
Every day Toney wore a fresh white shirt and pants with that Texaco star on them. He said appearances were important. Whippy Bird said that was because he didn’t do the washing. Even with one leg, Toney could get out to the car and say, “Fill ‘er up?” before the driver turned off the motor. He said people liked a go-getter. When drivers saw him humping like that just to sell gas, it put them in a better mind for buying new batteries or fan belts or having the oil changed.
“Once a hustler,” Whippy Bird told him, and she was right.
Both me and Whippy Bird knew Toney’s heart wasn’t in filling your tank, though. Sometimes when we had lunch in the Park Cafe, Whippy Bird wished there was something else for Toney to do, but she didn’t know what.
Even though he was moody, which Whippy Bird blamed on him missing the limelight, Whippy Bird was as happy with Toney as she was with Chick. He was a good father to Moon and helpful to her in ways Chick never was. He advised Whippy Bird how to ask for a promotion to the accounting department at the Anaconda Company, which she received. He cooked and helped with the dishes and even put in a garden. Whippy Bird told me she hoped I’d find somebody as good as Toney.
“I had Pink,” I told her. “I don’t ever need anybody else.”
“That is surely true, Effa Commander,” she said. “Now that you’re a career gal, you can manage just fine on your own. But I wish you’d meet a good man just the same.” Every now and then Whippy Bird and Toney would set me up with a good man, too, and the four of us would paint the town, but I wasn’t interested in getting serious, so I never saw any of them more than once or twice. I had my job and my house. In the summer, I worked in the yard of an evening, and in the winter I read or listened to the radio. I still had the nice Emerson that Buster bought to listen to May Anna in her early years as a starlet and which he gave to Pink later on. I left Pink’s RCA with Whippy Bird because it seemed to go with that house.
And I had Butte. In those years after the war, that town was always going. It was as crowded on West Park at four in the morning after a shift change as it was at twelve o’clock noon. There were people to watch and places to go. We closed the West Park Cafe at midnight, but there were other restaurants where you could go for a bite. You’d think working in a cafe all day, I would want to go home, but I liked to go out and eat. Sometimes Joe Bonnet came in at closing time, and we went off to Meaderville for Italian. Then we fooled around with the slot machines until almost sunrise. Whippy Bird said I could do worse than Joe Bonnet. Toney said I could do better.
When I started at the West Park Cafe, I worked an early shift, getting in before we opened in the morning then staying till dinnertime. I liked working late, too. So I’d do a week early then switch off. Sometimes I left at midnight and wasn’t even tired, so I went for a walk. Of course, you can’t do that today, but back then you were as safe as if it was broad daylight.
One night I walked all the way down to the Milwaukee depot on Montana. To this day I don’t know why. My feet just took me there. I set out, and that’s where I ended up. I usually didn’t go that far, but it was a nice fall night, and it felt good to be outside in the breeze.
It was about one in the morning, and a train had just pulled in, westbound. Passengers rushed out of the depot grabbing taxis or looking for a streetcar. I liked trains, though the only time I ever went anywhere far away on a train was to visit May Anna. Trains always made me wish I was going someplace. But where would I go?
I stood there across the street from the depot watching the people inside as they went from window to window, pushing open the doors and walking out into the bright spots under the streetlights. Some of them stopped for a minute, looking up at the lights on the Hill or shifting their suitcases. Then they moved on into the shadows and disappeared. It was quiet, but I kept on watching, looking up at that big tower the Milwaukee depot had. It’s a television station now, but it was a fine depot then. It seemed like I was planted there.
He was the last one out of the station, and when I saw him I felt gladness in my heart. He came out slow and stood there like a buck sniffing the air. I never did ask him why he came in on the Milwaukee or where he came from. He just stood holding a suitcase and looking at the Hill like he was trying to convince himself he was finally home. He didn’t see me until I came right up next to him.
“Hi, Buster.”
At first Buster looked at me like he didn’t recognize me. Then he shook his head and his eyes focused and he stared at me a long time. Then he put down the suitcase and grinned. “Hi, babe.” He put his arms around
me so tight I could hardly breathe, and when he let loose and I saw his face, there were tears in his eyes. “Effa Commander, you sure look good.”
“I’m glad you’re home, Buster,” I said. “It’s about time.” He nodded, then he took my hand, and we began to walk uptown. “Don’t you want to take the streetcar?” I asked.
“I used to race delivery wagons up and down Montana Street, remember?”
It seemed like old times walking up Montana with Buster. We talked easy, not about jail or May Anna, but about things you’d say if you’d seen the other person just the day before—like what a fine night it was and the price of copper and would he like to stop and have a nice cup of coffee.
“I run the West Park Cafe now,” I said. “It’s closed, but I have a key, and I’ll fix you a pot of coffee.” I had the feeling he didn’t want to see anybody.
Buster never talked much, but that night I couldn’t stop him. We must have made five pots of coffee and eaten about a dozen sinkers that had been delivered for morning. He told me he’d been knocking around all over the country for two years, doing odd jobs, running that orange picker crew, loading trucks, bartending. Then he wound up in New York and thought he’d get a job as a sparring partner, maybe hit up some of the gyms that would like the idea of using a one-time champion as a has-been punching bag for the fighters coming up. He was sitting on a bench in a park in New York City thinking about this when somebody said aren’t you Buster Midnight and asked for his autograph. That made Buster ask himself what was he doing asking for a job to get punched out. “Effa Commander, I said to myself, I was the champ. I’m going out with some dignity, even if everybody in America hates me for killing a creep they called a war hero. That’s when I decided to come home.”
“I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in Butte, Montana, you’re still Buster Midnight, the champ,” I said. “Around here, people don’t talk about the murder. They just remember you were the champion. And that you’re a Butte boy.”
I talked, too, telling Buster how happy Whippy Bird and Toney were. Buster said Toney with one leg was more of a man than anybody else with two. When I said I still missed Pink, Buster put his arms around me and let me have a cry. We talked until the crew came in to open up. Jimmy Soo, the short-order cook, came up to Buster shyly and held out his hand. “Remember me, Mr. Midnight?” Buster said he surely did. Then Jimmy turned to Toady Madden, the dishwasher, and whispered, “Looky there. The champ’s home.”
“It’s what I’ve been telling you all night, Buster. You belong in Butte, Montana.”
We walked outside. It was still dark though we saw the miners hustle up and down the street, getting ready to go on shift. A few of the hookers from Venus Alley, which was still wide open, headed home while a drunk or two looked for a doorway to sleep in for a couple of hours. There were sounds of men working on the Hill, of trucks heaving and whistles blowing. You could set your Bulova by the whistles blowing shift changes on the Hill. “There’s no place like Butte,” I told Buster, and he said I surely was right.
“Toney didn’t know I was planning to come. I’ll walk you home, then I’ll check into a hotel uptown.”
“You can stay at my place. There’s no need for you to get a hotel room this late at night,” I told him.
“Effa Commander …”
“On the couch. It isn’t the best place in the world to sleep, but it’s free. We’re old friends, Buster, but I’m not giving up my bed for you.”
Whippy Bird says right here that me giving up my bed was not what Buster was thinking about. Well, I know that, but Buster was still May Anna’s man as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t going to make any mistake there. So Buster slept on the couch, and I slept in the bed. Being on the night shift, I slept late. It was almost noon when I got up, and Buster had breakfast on the table.
Toney wanted Buster to stay with them. “You can sleep with Moon,” he said.
“Yippee!” Moon yelled.
“Sure. I’ll roll over and flatten him out, and Whippy Bird will kill me with a fry pan.” So Buster got a room over a bank on Park, and he took his meals at the cafe. I think the real reason he turned down Toney was he wanted to be alone. He had to find out if he really could come back to Butte.
It was even harder for Buster to get a job than Toney, not that he didn’t have offers. He called most of them freak-show jobs. Car dealers, for instance, wanted to hire Buster to sell Kaiser-Frazers or step-down Hudsons, because they thought people would come in just to meet him. Buster said too many people already took him for a ride in his life, so he turned them down. Whippy Bird told me Buster was broke. What he hadn’t spent on having a good time when he was a champ went to the fancy lawyer May Anna’s studio got for him, which was a waste of money since he didn’t keep Buster out of jail. So he worked a day or two a week down at the Texaco with Toney to earn enough to pay his hotel and board.
Sometimes Toney took a day off to go fishing with Buster. Whippy Bird said they both needed time to adjust. I told her it wasn’t as easy for a man as old as Toney, who was more than forty, to get married for the first time and settle down with a ready-made family. But we both knew that wasn’t the problem. The two of them were restless. After spending most of their lives in the big time, they weren’t happy pumping gas. She said we had to give them time to work it out.
Meanwhile, people got used to seeing Buster in Butte. They would call, “Hey, champ!” and pretend to take a poke at him when they ran into him around town. After a while when he realized they weren’t being smart alecks, Buster liked it. He knew he was accepted back in Butte at last. “Do you notice Buster doesn’t stoop anymore?” Whippy Bird asked one day, and she was right. He stood up tall and looked people straight in the eye, just the way he did when he was a fighter.
We were at Whippy Bird’s one night, full of pot roast and vinegar pie, when we made our big decision about the future. Me and Whippy Bird figured something was going on in Toney’s head since he was so keyed up. All night he smiled to himself, and once he even whistled a little tune. We knew it wouldn’t do any good to push him, though. He’d take his own sweet time to tell us.
“I got it,” he said at last, after me and Whippy Bird had finished the dishes and taken off our aprons.
“Got what?” Whippy Bird asked.
“We are going to get rich,” Toney said, sitting back, proud of himself.
“So, we’re going to break the bank, are we?” Whippy Bird asked.
“I’m not kidding.” Toney leaned forward, looking at each one of us. “We’re going to open a restaurant. We’ll call it Buster Midnight’s Restaurant. Buster’ll be the greeter, Effa Commander can be the manager, you’ll be the bookkeeper, and I’ll be bartender.” I never saw Toney look that proud of himself since the day he told Buster he could be a famous boxer.
Whippy Bird turned around and looked at Toney with her mouth open. Then she shut it and kept quiet. We were all quiet, sitting around the table thinking it over.
“Yeah? What’ll we do for money?” Buster finally asked.
“I ain’t Toney the hustler for nothing. You let me worry about that. I know plenty of people who’ll invest in a sure thing.”
“What if it doesn’t work? We’ll all be out of a job.” I said.
“Jobs. Jobs. We can always get jobs. This is a career opportunity. Once in a lifetime. You have to take a chance in this life, Effa Commander.” Toney lit a cigarette. “We open a steakhouse uptown. Real deluxe. Get a big picture of Buster in neon lights out front and load the place down wall-to-wall with pictures of Buster as the champ. People’ll roll in off the street just to meet him. You ever see people around here look at Buster like he’s a reincarnated Butte Copper King? They’ll pay money just to shake his hand. Then they’ll come back because Effa Commander is the best cook in the world.”
“I don’t know how to run a restaurant,” Buster said.
“You don’t have to. Effa Commander does,” Toney told him. “All you have
to do is say hello to the folks and sign autographs.”
“Right, Tone. Effa Commander would like that,” Buster said sarcastically. “She’ll be cooking up a storm in the kitchen while I’m shaking hands.”
“It won’t be that easy, Buster,” I told him. “There’s all kinds of things you’ll have to do like talking people into having a drink when we don’t have a table ready for them and calming them down when their dinners don’t arrive on time.”
“Somebody’ll have to deal with drunks, too,” Whippy Bird added.
We talked about that restaurant all night, and the thing of it was, none of us could find anything really wrong with the idea except for the money. Toney said that was his department, and the money was as good as in the bank. By the time me and Buster climbed in the Jackpot to leave, we’d designed the kitchen and the bar and a nice area to wait for your table. I’d worked out a menu, which was heavy on steaks and big shrimp cocktails with hot sauce. Toney said to make sure we gave them plenty to eat since our customers would be miners, and they wouldn’t come back if we skimped.
Buster, who had been in some of the great restaurants of America, had ideas, too. First he said call it Buster Midnight’s Cafe, not Buster Midnight’s Restaurant. He said cafe was a Hollywood word that people thought was spiffy. Toney liked that because it’d be cheaper to spell out cafe in neon than restaurant. And have plenty of booths, Buster said. People in Hollywood and New York like little tables with chairs, but in Montana, we eat in booths.
Also, Buster knew just the right building on Galena Street for us, not too far from where the Jim Hill is today. If we made our sign big enough, the miners could see it from the Hill. Then Buster told us he’d be the bartender instead of the greeter. That way people would have to buy a drink to introduce themselves. People in Butte never ordered anything other than a Shawn O or a Ditch or a Sage, which is a Ditch with 7Up, and he knew how to fix those with his eyes closed. That way Toney could handle the buying and work with the suppliers; he was used to wheeling and dealing.
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