Browning in Buckskin Read online

  'I figure the boss should be able to get his own water. If he can't, why's he the boss?'

  He laughed again, but high up in his throat this time. He pounded his chest. 'I went down the mine after my old man. Anaconda. You heard of it?'

  I nodded. You couldn't spend ten minutes in Butte without hearing of it. The richest copper mine in the world, or it was before the Depression. Glenda had read the latest copper price to me from the paper – five cents a pound. It didn't sound like much.

  'Got all sorts of shit in my lungs,' Fitzgerald went on. 'It'll kill me in the end, like it did my father and a couple of uncles and all the other poor buggers as worked there. Well, that's not your grief. I think I like you, Dick. Are you sure you won't have a drink?'

  I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

  'Butte's in the most god-awful slump you ever seen. Copper 'n sheep shit're worth about the same. But I believe things're about to get better. At least for a while. Federal government's spending money on programmes. Most of it'll be wasted of course, stick to the fingers of the desk-jockeys, but it'll be moving around some and I plan to . . . '

  'Intercept it,' I said.

  Fitzgerald took a dangerously deep pull on his cigar. That's it! 'That's it, exactly. Fly-boy stuff, ain't it? You see that great picture, Hell's Angels?'

  I shook my head. No one who'd worked on it as I had and seen the broken bodies and the mis-spent money would want to see it.

  'You should see it. Great picture! Intercept. Yeah. I'm offering you a job, Dick. Assistant manager. In charge of this 'n that. What d'you say?'

  I deliberated for a full minute. I wanted the job although I didn't want the problems that would almost certainly go with it. As I thought, images of the things I'd done over the past five years flitted through my brain like one of the montage sequences you see in the movies. I shuddered. But was Fitzgerald still testing me? I didn't know. I did something very unusual for me – I tried to locate my strongest feeling, apart from the usual one of self-preservation. The words came out automatically, 'I'd have to be in charge of Glenda, among the other things I'd be in charge of.'

  Fitzgerald got up and came around the desk. He took my hand and crushed it in a grip that had been built up by using a miner's pick. 'You've got the job, son. Welcome to the Copper Club.'

  I took to the job like a lawyer takes to politics. Meaderville wasn't the rip-roistering place it had been in the boom years, but it was still pretty wild, and the Copper Club got a lot of the action. Fortunately, the club attracted a more high-tone crowd than some of the other places. We got mine executives (the ones who'd kept their jobs); members of the families who'd got rich from the mines and stayed rich; politicians and professional men. The occasional mobster from the east taking a holiday until things cooled down showed up. Never any trouble from them. They just wanted to drink, watch the show and go home with one of the girls. I recognised a few of them – including 'Owney' Madden16 whom I'd known quite well. 'Owney' didn't let on he knew me and I did the same.

  The worst customers were the men on the federal payroll – the advisers and consultants and planners. Just as Waldo had predicted, they came through the town spending a lot of the money that was supposed to be pulling America out of the Depression, on liquor and women. I only had to pull a gun once, and that was on a drunken police chief from out of state. Waldo had wised me up to who he was, and it was more the threat I whispered in his ear after the photographer's flashbulb had gone off – catching him with his hand inside the dress of one of the bigger-built showgirls – than the gun that quietened him down.

  I got some challenges to my monopoly of Glenda from a few of the hopefuls that worked at the club, but not as many as I would have had before my five years in the gutter. That time had aged me; I had some grey in my hair and I felt stiff first thing in the morning. But, more importantly, I had acquired these furrows in my cheeks and my eyes had sunk into deep, shadowed sockets. Put that together with some scars and a watchful, suspicious attitude, and you had the very picture of a tough guy that not too many were going to mess with. I wasn't really any tougher or braver than before, but I looked it, and that was enough for most of the men sniffing around Glenda.

  But Curly Clarke, the bouncer who'd helped Glenda get me home, had seen me in rags with my lips clamped to an empty bottle, and he didn't believe I could hold on to her. Curly was like me in one respect – he could spot a bluffer. I knew it'd happen, and one night he faced me.

  'Say, Dick,' Curly said as we were closing up after a quiet night. 'How come you drink ginger ale all 'a time? Pro'bition's over.'

  Glenda was behind the bar and I gave her the nod. 'I've drunk everything there is, Curly. I'm just not interested any more. Let's close up, eh?'

  'You're lyin'. You'd fall on the floor if'n you took one shot. You'd be lappin' it up from the gutter.'

  I gave him the steely grin. 'You're insulting me, Curly. I could take a shot and still whip you with one hand tied. Drop it, let's . . .'

  He'd already had a few, and the hand he placed on my chest wasn't all that steady. But the push! It felt like a steam shovel. 'You can't fight,' he sneered. 'You can't do anything.'

  I sighed and straightened the set of my tux on my shoulders. 'Don't push your luck, Curly. Waldo wouldn't like me to break any of the furniture over your thick head.'

  'You drunk fuck!'

  'Shut up, Curly! Glenda's still here.'

  'Glenda's a fuckin' whore an' you're a fuckin' pimp, limey faggot . . .'

  I took off my jacket and put on my Chicago voice. 'You wanna fight?'

  'Yeah.'

  'You wanna see me take a shot first?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Pour 'em, Glenda.'

  Glenda poured two shot glasses. I grabbed the one on the left and threw it down. Curly reached for his glass and drank half of the contents in a gulp. Then he removed his jacket. He must have outweighed me by thirty pounds, and not much of it was flab. He had the build of a professional heavyweight gone slightly to seed. I'd watched him in action, and I knew he had the moves. He rolled up his sleeves and went into a crouch.

  'I drank my shot,' I said.

  Curly reached behind him and picked up his glass. He held it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and he drank it while he flicked out a lightning fast left jab. I just managed to avoid the punch. My countering swing missed by a mile as I intended it to. I circled away with my guard up. Curly brushed aside a table setting as if it was made of papier mâché and so cleared a space about as big as a boxing ring. I was suddenly aware of the wall behind me and the tables to left and right.

  'Ready to fight, Dick?'

  'Almost.' I avoided his rush and jabbed at him, missing. A flailing right grazed my shoulder and hurt. I considered kicking him in the knee but it wouldn't have produced the right effect. I kept moving back and doing quick turns when I encountered resistance.

  'Are we dancin' or fightin'?'

  I gritted my teeth and moved closer, hoping to be able to move back quickly enough to take the sting out of his punches. I had to land at least one or two, which meant I had to take some. He jabbed. It took me in the eye and nearly tore my head off; somehow I stayed on my feet and managed to avoid the roundhouse right he threw at my ribs. The miss made him grunt and through my one good eye I saw the change come over him. His guard dropped, and I whipped in a quick left that wouldn't have knocked the candles off a birthday cake. Still, it connected with his chin, and he felt it. He swung again but his legs were rooted to the spot and he was off balance. I moved in and hit him hard and very low; his legs buckled, his chin came down, and I met it with my knee which was coming up hard and fast. His head flicked back and his eyes rolled up, white and blank, as he hit the floor.

  I won points with Glenda, who'd produced the doped drink on cue, for shrewdness, and I didn't have any more trouble with Curly.

  11

  1935 wasn't a bad year for Butte. The New Deal money was coming in and the c
opper price was at least holding. There'd been big labour troubles17 in the town in the recent past, but that all seemed to be over. You wouldn't call it prosperity exactly, but there was money around and it was getting spent. The girls in 'Venus Alley' were doing all right; the right political fixes were in and the town was running more or less smoothly. The Copper Club was doing good business and not too much of the furniture and glassware was getting smashed. Waldo Fitzgerald was happy.

  I should've been happy, too, but I wasn't. For one thing, I'd started drinking again and pretty steadily. Butte was always a great drinking town. Billy Sunday had it at the top of his list of sinful places, and I guess he was right. Prohibition barely touched Butte, because the mobsters ran the liquor in over the Canadian border while the cops and politicians held their hands out and looked the other way. I was born to be a drinker and it hasn't killed me yet. I started with a nip or two to keep the cold out, and before long I was up to half a bottle a day and sometimes more.

  'You'll go back to the gutter,' Glenda said when she found me pouring a shot just before lunch. (It was a hair-of-the-dog on a very cold morning.)

  'No chance, babe. I can handle it.'

  'Like you handled Curly.'

  I reached out for her. She let me hold her, but she didn't melt into me the way she usually did. 'I can handle it with your help, babe.'

  'Not sure I want to help a drunk.'

  'I'm not a drunk. Look around you. Is this how a drunk lives?' We'd moved from Glenda's little dump in Meaderville to a house on the south side. I was drawing good money at the club. Glenda's singing had improved, and she was getting a billing and big tips. We were doing fine, but I shouldn't have rubbed it in. It was the whisky talking. 'You were earning it the hard way when I met you.'

  'Shut up!'

  So we fought and I drank a bit more. We always made it up, and we still had some good times, especially in bed. There was something exciting about Glenda's body that still gets me hot when I think about it. So thin . . . Anyway, I went in for a spot of deception – lacing my coffee through the day and keeping a bottle in the car and generally not being an obvious lush. I was playing handball at a club where the mayor and the political ward bosses and some of the cops hung out, so I didn't develop a gut. The steam baths helped keep me thin, too, plus the fact that I'd started smoking again.

  Glenda was a great movie fan, especially musicals, which I more or less detest. But most of the picture houses in those days had double bills, so even if I had to sit through Top Hat, I could also see something with Paul Lukas or Brian Donleavy and come out happy. I had to be careful not to let slip that I'd known some of the stars. Glenda went wild over Coop in Lives of a Bengal Lancer. I could've told her a few stories about him! In the summer we spent a bit of time in the outdoors, swimming at the lake and horse-riding in the woods. With me taking a few relaxing drinks at night, of course.

  It sounds pretty good and it was, apart from the sweats and the dreams. I'd wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, from a dream that involved running across no-man's land with machine gun bullets whistling around me, or falling from the top of Doug Fairbanks' model of Nottingham castle. In one dream I was flying a Sopwith Camel and watching one wing fall off and then the other and then going into a spin . . .

  'No! No!' I screamed and sat up, shaking and twitching.

  'Dick, Dick, it's all right.' Glenda tried to ease me back to the pillow. 'My God, you're drenched. Look at the sheets. I'll have to change them.'

  I was hunched in a ball, exhausted and almost asleep again. "S nothing. Doesn't matter.'

  'That's the third one this month. They're getting worse, and you're having them more often.'

  'Bad dreams,' I mumbled.

  'I'm talking about the sweats. You've got to see a doctor.'

  'Bad dreams. Go 'sleep.'

  I thought the dreams were the cause of the trouble, and God knows I'd had enough terrible experiences to dream about. The worst ones involved falling – off horses, trains, buildings – but there were some about hiding in dark, damp places and others about starvation and thirst. All ghastly, but understandable given what I'd been through. I tried to cut down on the drinking a bit and hoped they'd go away. I refused to see a doctor; a doctor is the last person most people see before they die.

  One day Glenda came home with a box. I was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of coffee and getting set to listen to the Louis-Sharkey fight on the radio. She started to undo the wrapping paper, and I told her to be quiet because the way Louis was fighting then, if you weren't listening at the first couple of bells you were likely to miss it. Sure enough, it was over in minutes, and I went looking for Glenda. I found her in the bathroom.

  'Louis in two,'18 I said.

  'What did he weigh?'

  'I don't know, around two hundred I guess. Why?'

  'What d'you weigh, Dick?'

  I slapped my flat, well, concave belly. 'Me? Always the same. Never varies. Six foot one and a hundred and sixty-eight pounds of sinew and muscle.'

  'Step on here.'

  'What?'

  'I bought some scales. I've tried them and they're accurate. A hundred pounds, that's me. Get on.'

  I stepped on the scales and watched the needle flick around the dial. That can't be right, I thought.

  'A hundred and forty pounds of skin and bone, 'Glenda said. 'You're a sick man, Dick. You've got to see a doctor.'

  Suddenly, I felt very weak and suspected that a sweat was coming on. I staggered out to the kitchen, lit a cigarette and poured myself a big drink.

  Dr 'Spot' Barclay treated Waldo Fitzgerald for blood pressure, kidney stones, gout and a half dozen other things. Fitzgerald swore by him.

  'Why's he called "Spot"?' I asked.

  'You'll see when you meet him. He's got these liver spots all over his hands. Real ugly. But there's a saying in Cornwall that you can't trust a handsome doctor, and "Spot" bears it out – he's the best.'

  I smoked a few cigarettes in the waiting room because I was afraid that the doctor would order me off them. I'd convinced myself that smoking was the cause of my weight loss and sweats. Barclay sniffed my breath first thing. He was only about five foot tall so he just had to leave his nose where it was.

  'How much do you smoke, Mr Browning?'

  'Ah, well, a pack a day, I guess.'

  The doctor went behind his desk and began making notes on a card. I saw the big, ugly spots that covered his hands; they looked as if they were about to jump off the skin and onto the white card. 'Pack and a half that means,' he said. 'Possibly two. Smokers're liars. Universal law.'

  I didn't say anything. Well, I could manage without tobacco if I had to.

  'Age?'

  There was no fudging that anymore, not with the face I had. 'Forty.'

  He looked at me and grunted. 'That's honest, at least. OK, Mr Browning, get your clothes off and let's have a look at you.'

  I stripped. I had a tan from the swimming and a naturally muscular build so I didn't look too bad – but I had to admit that my bones didn't usually seem so close to the surface. Probably something to do with the time I spent as a bum, I thought. Might need a special diet, maybe. Dr Barclay poked and prodded me, had me breathe in and out until I was dizzy, bent me over, straightened me up, measured me, weighed me and took spit and urine samples.

  'What's that for?' I said.

  He sat back behind his desk and made notes on the card.

  'What's wrong?'

  'Put your clothes on.'

  I got dressed and sat in a chair opposite the desk. Automatically, I fumbled in my pocket for my Camels. I got the packet out and shook a cigarette free. I was about to put it in my mouth when I encountered his level, faded blue-eyed stare. 'Don't do that,' he said, 'ever again.'

  'Shit!' I crumpled the cigarette in my fingers and threw the mess into his wastepaper bin. 'So I have to quit smoking? What else? A diet?'

  'I can tell you a few things about yourself, Mr Browning,' B
arclay said, 'and make a few guesses. You've got a naturally strong constitution. Liver's a bit spongy but not too bad considering the amount of drinking you've done. I'd say you had a mild dose of the clap once, but nothing serious.'

  'News to me,' I said.

  'Right. Well, you're something of a recuperative marvel. At a guess, I'd say your parents lived to a good age. Might even still be alive. Am I right?'

  I shrugged. 'Last I heard they were. What's wrong with me?'

  'Have you ever done any mining work?'

  'Me? Never.'

  'Surprising, but I suppose it comes from doctoring in this town so long.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'I see cases like yours every day, Mr Browning. Probably more of 'em here than anywhere else in the United States.'

  'I haven't been here a year,' I yelped.

  'Doesn't matter. Classic symptoms – weight loss, high temperature, slight palpitations with high heart rate, hand tremor, cloudy urine. You've got tuberculosis.'

  I slid to the floor in a dead faint.

  12

  I had to get out of Butte, and quick. I needed a place where I could fill my lungs with clean air a couple of thousand times a day, sleep in the open, drink buckets of clean water and have peace of mind. This was the standard treatment for TB in those days, before the drugs they've got now. Dr Barclay's bans on smoking and drinking were a bit unorthodox, but I was ready to do anything. It was a life or death matter then – the ones who had to stay in the cities and the weaklings who couldn't handle the outdoor life died. But the thought of living in the country filled me with gloom. I couldn't see how I'd have peace of mind out there with the squirrels.

  'Maybe I can fix it for you, Dick,' Waldo said. 'And maybe you won't be so down on the New Deal.'

  Waldo had come out to visit on the weekend. As everyone knows, Butte is a mile high and a mile deep. The air in the city was pretty much poisoned by the mining operations, but on the outskirts it was clear, if a bit thin. As soon as I'd got the verdict from Barclay I'd moved to a house on the edge of town, to get some rest and think things over. Glenda was talking of us going to Wyoming. Waldo and I were sitting on the porch; I was resisting the temptation to inhale his cigar smoke. 'Fix it so I can go to Wyoming? Thanks.'