Prairie Nocturne

by Ivan Doig

  “But he doesn’t—” She realized she had never thought any gait of Wes’s could be called that. “I’ll see that he’s asked.”

  * * *

  After the last musicale—it had been at the Dutchman’s place on the Upper West Side; the man went around sputtering like a tea kettle, but he knew how to throw a party—Monty was already fondly missing them when J.J. gave him a lift home as usual. He didn’t even much care that the weather had turned nasty. November had come to New York as if colliding with it, rain pouring down like the clouds were being punctured by the high buildings, but slick streets were nothing new to J.J. Monty sat back perfectly glad to be gliding up to Harlem on a night such as this as a passenger instead of a chauffeur.

  “Good do tonight,” J.J. was musing out loud over the working of the windshield wipers. “Nice and speckled,” his term for a mixed audience. “Your better class of ofays, but you couldn’t swing a cat in there without hitting a hushmouth poet either.” He added a short knowing laugh. “Not to mention the fine assortment of brown honeys. Wouldn’t hurt you to get yourself one of those.”

  Monty made an amused sound at the back of his throat and was about to rib back by asking him what sort of manager he was, trying to push a poor angelic recuperating singer into the clutches of wild women, when J.J.’s next words hit:

  “Because you ought to lay off the white lady.”

  Monty swung his head around the guarded way he used to when there was trouble in the vicinity of the bull chutes.

  “Goddamn it, J.J., where’s your evidence on that?”

  J.J. tapped his temple impatiently and then went back to squinting past the wipers into the torrent of taxicabs the rain had generated. “Too careful says something, too, you know.”

  “I thought you got along with her.”

  “Getting along with her isn’t the same as getting in deep with her. Montgomery, the last time I looked half an hour ago, that woman was white, white, white. Mingle with them, chin to chin, elbow to elbow, that’s fine. But draw the line where the skirt starts, okay? You got no business up there anyway. Whatever you may have heard, that pink thing of theirs doesn’t run sideways in them. At least not in the French ones, I can speak from experience. So don’t go being curious.”

  “She’s—the music—” Monty fumbled for how to say it. “We’ve gotten to be friends, her and me. Been through damn near everything together, trying to bring the songs up out of nowhere and me along with them. Godamighty, J.J. You know most all of that. I don’t see why—”

  “You are not seeing, that’s why I have to bring this up. Godamighty yourself, Montgomery. You can’t count on the rest of the world going around blind. Cecil’s noticed, too.”

  “Cecil is going to be counting his teeth in his hand if he—”

  “This isn’t about Cecil. It’s about the fact that you and her can be mental kissing cousins over the songs, if you have to, but you’re still of the colored persuasion and she’s still Miss Pond Cream. Bruise around among the ladies if you want, you’re entitled. But you’re plenty bright enough to tell black from white.” J.J. delivered the next with the finality of slamming a door: “Don’t let these lah-de-dah musicales fool you. This is still a country where they run one of us up on a rope every couple of days, and making eyes at their women is one of their favorite excuses. Didn’t that ax handle give you enough taste of that?”

  Helpless on his own part, Monty tried to defend hers. “You wouldn’t be creaming off your cut of the take, every time I sing a note, if it wasn’t for her.”

  “That’s as may be. I figure I’m doing her all the favor I can by trying to clout some sense into you.” J.J. changed lanes as deftly as a jockey. “You got to watch your step, man. You’d be better off shoveling coal to Major Williamson than to her.”

  NOW that rehearsals and musicales were at an end, meeting without drawing notice was desperately hard. They resorted to the bridle path at first light.

  “Any trouble?” Susan asked as her horse caught up to his, the countless seagulls and pigeons staking early claims to one of Central Park’s nearly countless monuments their only spectators.

  “They figured I was looking for a job as a stable hand, is all.” Monty cast an eye over her riding outfit, a purple velvet divided skirt. “Bet they didn’t ask you that, did they.”

  “Grace Vandiver loaned it to me. It makes it, but it’s snug.”

  His evaluating grin said all that was necessary.

  “They’ll maybe think I’m your—what’s that the French have?”

  “Equerry,” she rolled the word. “A Two Medicine equerry, first of its kind in the world. You’re rare enough for it.”

  They rode without saying anything for a few minutes while they accustomed themselves to the feel of their rental saddles and fit of their stirrups. True daughter of her father, from the side of her eye she studied Monty’s potbellied mare and its plodding gait. Son of a cavalryman, he dolefully eyed Susan’s broadbeamed bay as it waddled along.

  “Nags,” he said it for both of them.

  “And they call these silly things spurs.”

  They cantered along as best they could make the horses move, well ahead of other horseback denizens of dawn and those were few. At that early hour, the stilled park seemed something central to not merely the metropolitan island of Manhattan but all the kingdom of autumn, the ramble of its gravely outlined barebone trees and subdued lawn greenery and quiescent waters where even the mallards still dozed a portal between the summer that had been and the winter well on its way. Let dark winter come its worst / we minor suns were here first, Susan’s memory was jogged by the rhythm of the hooves. I’m getting as bad as Angus, she told herself, and brought her thoughts back to the immediate calendar. Ten days into November now, and tomorrow one of history’s steep ones.

  “More newspaper people coming this afternoon,” Monty was saying in a fog of breath. “I feel like one of your records.” He slowed down his voice as if a mighty finger rested on it: “Leht Cahrnehgie Hawl gahthur uss toogehthur . . .”

  “It all helps.”

  “Something you better know,” his tone dropped until it was all but lost in the clop of the horses. “I’m catching hell from J.J.”

  “About us, naturally.”

  He nodded. “Funny how we can get on people’s minds in a hurry.” He started to say something more but held it as a mounted policeman on his morning round crossed the riding path ahead of them. Susan gave the officer a look of such imperturbable ladyship that he may well have figured Monty was along to help her on and off the horse. As he rode away from them, Monty retrieved what had been on his mind:

  “Susan? J.J. does have a real question there,” he was trying to put it delicately, “whether two like us belong together.”

  “I categorically—”

  “—disagree, don’t I know. But that doesn’t change—”

  “Skin and hair,” she said as if heartily tired of hearing those words, “that’s not all we’re made of—why should those rule all else of life? We are not some kind of a stain on other people’s notion of things, we amount to more than that.”

  “You’re sure as you were that first day? About us keeping on?”

  “I’m set in stone.”

  “Just checking. Wanted you to have a chance to cut me loose with no hard feelings.”

  “Put that in the poorbox,” she told him warmly. “We each have a fair idea of what we’re getting, Monty.”

  “I hope you’re right about that,” relief and rue mixed in his voice. He glanced over at her as if making sure one last time. “J.J.’s not the only one who’s ever going to have an opinion on this, you know. I’ll bet the Major wouldn’t figure this is what he bargained for, either.”

  “He’s the one who went out of his way to toss us together,” she said speculatively as if the words would stand clear in the chill air, “he must have figured he was getting something out of it. The Williamsons generally do.” She turned her head and
met his look with one that said that was as far as she should go on the topic of Wes. “We have to give this some time, Monty. Tomorrow night will carry you a long way. After that, let’s—let’s see what happens after your tour of Europe. That’s the vital thing. You should be fine over there. There won’t be any—” she gestured toward the side of her throat.

  “That’s what J.J. keeps saying,” Monty shook his head as if it was too good to entirely believe. “Of all damned things, colored performers are—how’s he put it—at a premium in those countries. Tells me they practically made Robeson the second king of England last winter, and the French upped the ante. Bricktop, Jo Baker, they’re all learning to eat snails.” He was silent for several moments, then said as if putting that away: “Doesn’t help us any here, does it.”

  They rounded a last seasonally solemn grove of trees at a bend of the path, a clear stretch ahead. Susan leaned forward in her saddle and held her horse back until his was even with hers. “Race you to the stable.”

  “Think so?” His sudden grin expanded into his voice. “You know I wouldn’t have a chance against a fancypants rider like you, I’m just the eq—”

  She whipped his horse across the flank with the end of her reins, then swatted hers on its bountiful rump.

  The horses seemed to shudder into life. Grunting in alarm they bolted down the riding path, eyes wild, hooves pounding, prairie warriors clinging to their backs.

  * * *

  “It’s on me today.” Phil palmed the meal chits almost before they had settled to the table. “If you don’t look back in your checkbook, you can pretend it’s a free lunch. Cheap enough for me, too, considering you’ve roped the governor into the Observance. I kowtow to anyone who can get Ashcan Al inside a concert hall.”

  Wes grabbed up a fork in one fist and a knife in the other and sat posed like a trencherman ready to attack the feast of a lifetime, then dismissively clinked the silverware back into alignment with the crimson crest on the tablecloth. “Honesty is a costly policy,” he said with a tired smile of admission. “The ones you really ought to be tucking oysters and slaw into are my wife and the Honorable Mrs. Smith.”

  “The club isn’t ready for that,” Phil gestured idly around at the wholly masculine roomful of alumni in protectorates of three and four, “and I doubt that those particular ladies are ready for the delicatessen behind the Garrick. You have to be the stand-in. Pile on the chow, you can probably use the nourishment for your Carnegie debut. Everything down pat?”

  “I’m so rusty it’s pitiful—it’s been five years since I made a speech, can you believe? I used to reel them off almost without thinking. This one is giving me fits. I can see myself tomorrow night, I’ll end up reading it from a piece of paper like a town crier.”

  “Maybe you should have Susan Duff rehearse you for a change.”

  Wes examined his oldest friend. The start of a chill came into him at hearing Phil, cunning about women, make a point with her name on it. “You aren’t just telling me that to see if the silverware will jump again, are you.”

  “Hardly. I don’t like what the side of my eye has been seeing at our man Monty’s musicales.” Now Wes felt the frost of apprehension fill in fully within himself. “Susan is as clever as a woman can be about it,” Phil’s tone betrayed nothing and granted nothing; he could have been discussing a character turn in a script that had come in over the transom, “but she and Monty keep crossing paths a tad too often. Let’s hope they haven’t come down with a case of each other.”

  Afraid of how he would sound, Wes didn’t say anything. He sat all the way back in his chair, pinned as a butterfly, waiting for what else the suddenly prosecutorial friend across the table would come out with.

  “You’ve backed Monty enough it ought to earn you sainthood,” Phil went on making his case, “but it’s reached the point where you need to bend his ear on what goes and what doesn’t. It’s a fact of life, is all—the two of them are asking for trouble if they so much as make eyes at each other. If I’ve noticed they’re on the brink, others will.”

  Of necessity Wes found words, for what they were worth. “Phil, really. Aren’t you reading rather a lot into a couple of people simply working up music together? I know you’re a professional noticer, but in this case I think you’re jumping to conclusions.”

  “And you’re dodging them.” Phil leaned in, diagnosing as he came. “There are times when you don’t see what you don’t want to, Wes. Probably that saved your skin where the odds of getting past machine-gun nests were involved. But it can cost you everything you’ve put into Monty’s getting somewhere, if you don’t snap to.” Pup of the historic old wolves in his family, Phil Sherman knew how to nip when he had to. When he was satisfied that his words were sufficiently under Wes’s skin, he settled back again. “Don’t I wish I were misreading,” he said more leniently. “Seeing the way he lights up around her—I thought at first it was gratitude, on his part. Missy from the nice house, helping him up in the world—why wouldn’t he feel grateful? He’s feeling more than that, though, I’d bet anything. She doesn’t show any signs of allergy to his skin either, if you know what I mean. If that doesn’t bother her, why wouldn’t she set her cap for a man on his way to being famous?”

  Incalculably more irritated than he dared to show, Wes managed to say by the book: “My family knew hers. She’s from different circumstances than you and I. She doesn’t work that way.”

  “That makes it worse then,” came back implacably. “A steel heiress or a countess with enough money to be naughty might get away with a fling across the color line. Not someone whose name only carries the letters it has in it.” Phil tapped the tabletop in emphasis. “Susan Duff throws everything out of kilter. I’m not poking my beezer into this for the fun of it—you of all people know me better than that. I like Monty, I’m all for him. Nothing against her, for that matter, if you like them on the tall prickly side. But I’m not entirely disinterested in how they behave with one another. The sky is the limit, for a voice like his—I can imagine him someday in the right kind of Broadway vehicle. Green Pastures of the West, why not? If the gossip columns take in after him, though, that fries that.” He raised a cautionary hand. “We don’t want to upset our main act before the Observance. But the minute that’s over, somebody had better land on Montgomery Rathbun with both feet about this.”

  “Damn it,” Wes struggled to keep his voice down, “I’m not his lord and master. Something like that ought to come from—well, from his manager.”

  “If I know J.J., he’ll weigh in strong on that, if he hasn’t already,” Phil conceded. “But a manager is just another kind of hired hand, you know about those. Monty is used to listening to you. Wait until we have tomorrow night over with, then do us all a favor and take him aside and straighten him out about white women.” He signaled as though just remembering the purpose of this noon at the club. “Ready to order?”

  * * *

  Something that outwardly resembled Wes made its way to his street address, handed over his hat to the usual serving hands inside the voluminous front door, somehow navigated stairs and hall and thick silence of office to slump into the refuge of his desk chair. This hollow version of himself echoed without stop with what he had never expected to hear. The Harvard Club conversation, to call it that, tortured all the more because its initiating voice was next to his own. Damn you, if you brought this up and are wrong, Phil, and double damn you if you are right. But here in the terrible honesty of aloneness he took over the interrogation of the creature who bore his name in all this and made correction after correction, now that it was too late. What a crude mechanism the mind is, he savagely notified himself. He hadn’t foreseen, hadn’t headed this off in time, hadn’t calculated that their courage could be greater than his. More fool yet, I hadn’t a clue I was being one, did I.

  Eventually what he had left to work with began to come to in him. Clock, social calendar, the footstep chronometry of the household, such reminding taps of
time impelled him, however reluctantly, to unmoor from the chair and go through the motions necessary. This next semblance of himself managed to put in an appearance downstairs. It roused considerably at the news that Merrinell was out for hours more, enmeshed in the fitting of the necessary new gown for the Observance gala. Then it mystified Hilfiger by discharging him for the rest of the afternoon. This was not behavior expected of the Major, and every eye of the downstairs staff watched the muted figure climb back up the stairs.

  But he was enough himself by now to go about this methodically. His bedroom the first stop, he winnowed through his closet until he found a shirt slightly yellowing with age and tux pants with a wine stain on them, the nearest thing he had to workclothes. The change of costume usefully occupied him; he decided against risking cufflinks up there and rolled back the shirtsleeves, then glanced down at his usual good shoes and shed them in exchange for his old pair of army field boots. Looking more like a propbox from Carnegie Hall than someone who was going to appear there the next night, out he went into the upper hallway and tromped on up to the mansard attic, the sight of him freezing maids in their tracks all along the way.

  Taking care in dodging under the rafters—he had been conked enough for one day—he surveyed the family flotsam stashed there. An attic was always the overhead catch-basin of life’s leavings, but he was surprised to see how things had bubbled up here strictly according to generations. Presiding over upright clothes trunks was a lineup of dressmaking forms, successively more slender than the proportions of Merrinell that were being swathed this very moment. In a gathering of their own were the girls’ jilted playthings: rocking horses; menageries of puppets; their dollhouse period. Farthest back in the eaves, galleon-like under sagging sail-riggings of cobwebs and most of a decade of dust, rested his brassbound Harvard trunk handed down from his father and in which the old man’s mementos were mixed with his. He hadn’t known what else to do with his father’s last effects.