Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  “Did he now? Did he now? And he didn’t hear Big Tim Riley was planning to stop by tonight? I’d have thought he might have heard about it. Wouldn’t you, Pop?”

  “Now Tim, don’t you compel me to use force …”

  “Force!” There was a thunderous guffaw, as though Riley found this immeasurably comical. “Force! Of course not, Pop. Of course not.” Then the flat slap of an open hand striking the smooth mahogany plate of the bar. “Isn’t that the crowning glory of a shame. Well, I’ll just have to go up and see young Mr. Damon for a moment. Have a few easy words with him.” The chairs jostled and scraped again.

  “Now Tim, if you go up there I’ll have to send for Charlie Bascom.”

  Tim Riley roared with laughter. “Charlie Bascom! Charlie Bascom’s over at Hart’s Island investigating the theft of a palomino mare named Marigold,” he proclaimed with gusto. “And Chief Johansen is playing poker in Sheridan Forks. Yes! You go get him, you do that thing …”

  He came around the corner into the little corridor and stood there, gazing upward, his face red under its shock of thick black hair, barbaric in the pale glow of the gas jet high on the wall. He filled up the corridor entirely. Catching sight of Sam, he grinned—a slow, delighted grin.

  “Hello, sonny.”

  “Hello, Mr. Riley,” Sam answered. His voice sounded steady. That was good. That was half the battle. He watched Riley scratch his collarbone with one enormous hand.

  “Well, sonny …” The big man was still gazing up at him, his mouth distended in soundless laughter. Then apparently he didn’t like what he saw, for his jaws came together again; his face darkened and grew solemn.

  “Look, kid. Let’s get each other straight.” He pointed. “I’m going back into that bar, and Pop there is going to pour me out a little shot or two, and then I’m coming back out here in my good time and you’re going to give me Room Seventeen. Now you got that?”

  In a level voice Sam said: “You’re not to be served in this hotel, Mr. Riley, and that’s final. I’ll have to ask you to clear out.”

  Riley’s eyes opened until they were light blue discs rimmed with porcelain. “No sniveling YMCA kid fresh out of high school is going to tell Big Tim Riley what to do in this town or any other, from here to Seattle … Come on down here!” he roared. Sam Damon sat still as death. “All right. If that’s how it is—I’ll go up there and get you.”

  He started up the stairs. There were twenty-two risers—the main floor of the hotel had been built on a grand scale—and he grew bigger with each step he took. His shirt was open at the throat and hair in a burly black mat pushed out over the blue cotton. He was immense. Sam, who had seen him perhaps ten times over the past two years, had never realized how huge he was.

  As Riley reached the top step Sam came to his feet, his hands flat on the desk top, and thrust at the big swivel chair with one foot; it glided away on its big casters and bumped softly against the wall. What was curious was that now he felt no fear. It was like the afternoon they’d been playing on the ice and Jimmy Wright had fallen through. The others had been helpless—they’d milled around or started yelling or stood gazing paralyzed at Jimmy’s stocking cap bobbing at the edge of the hole—but he had felt no hesitation at all. He’d tied two hockey sticks together and crept out there, farther and farther, crawling finally, trying to calm Jimmy who was uttering short, high screams. The ice kept cracking under him like great hollow sheets of iron. “Hang on, Jimmy!” he’d shouted. “I’m coming, Jimmy, hang on! …” And finally Jimmy had hold of the end of the sticks and had one knee up, and then he was on the ice and floundering and he’d cried, “No, Jimmy, no! Stay flat! Stay flat, now …” and bit by bit he’d dragged him back from the long, hollow, shivering groans of the ice to where the other kids were shouting and dancing up and down.

  It was like that now. In place of the earlier heart-leaping fear there was nothing but an emerald calm, cold as the river ice that February afternoon, hard at the edges and utterly clear. His senses were preternaturally, almost painfully, alive, and that was all. He noticed the way Riley’s right eyelid drooped, the scar that ran through the eyebrow above it in a staggered white crescent. Outside, the tree toads shrilled softly and the wind sighed in the elms. He was waiting, that was all. Waiting for the moment: that inner monitor he’d learned to obey would throw a series of switches and then he would move, do what was needed. He wasn’t even conscious of thinking this: it was simply there, trembling in its emerald immanence. He looked up at Riley, who towered above him—though he himself was over six feet—and waited.

  The lumberjack came up to the desk; he was breathing thickly through his nose and Sam saw he was quite drunk. Drunk but fully coherent. And agile. Yes. Agile.

  Riley said: “I’m going to whale the tar out of you. And then I’m going to drag you out and leave you in the square in front of the town hall, for everybody to see. Your pants need pressing, kid … Now are you going to come out from behind that desk or am I going to walk around and haul you out?”

  I can’t hit him hard enough, Sam found himself thinking. Nobody could. There won’t be time to pick up a chair. I’ve got to knock him down those stairs. All the way down those stairs. He was conscious that his body was tensing, suspended, in wait for the moment. Riley was glaring at him, his eyes glittering with the thirst for battle. The big man shifted his weight, then his glance flicked to the side, to the open side of the desk and the stiff horsehair chair where Ted Barlow had been sitting. In the instant of that sidewise glance the monitor said now—and without thought Sam vaulted high over the desk, pivoting swiftly on his hands, and his shoes slammed full force into Riley’s jaw. He felt a shock that drove from the soles of his feet to the top of his head; then nothing at all. One instant the giant was there, in the next he was gone—in a thundering series of bumps and crashes, as if a cartload of furniture had been dumped from a barn roof. He watched Riley tumbling down—head, feet, rump, head again, arms and legs flailing—brought up at last against the front door in one terrific final crepitation, and a shiver and tinkling of glass. Then there was complete silence; and Sam Damon, standing now in front of the desk, thought: My God. I’ve killed him.

  He heard a laborious scraping and scuffling, and Tim Riley got very slowly and unsteadily to his feet, shaking his head like a dog out of water. His great shoulders hulking he shuffled forward into the light again, and Sam’s heart sank. He was all right; he was unhurt. The man was indestructible. That was all there was to it. What’ll you do now? he wondered hollowly. What now? You can’t do it twice. His eyes fell on the chair beside the desk.

  “—One punch,” Big Tim Riley breathed. Then roared at the top of his lungs: “ONE—PUNCH!—” Impetuously he started up the stairs again … but this time the inner monitor ordered nothing, nothing at all. I’ll brain him with that chair, the night clerk thought, belt him with that and then jump him, dive on him. It’s my only chance. Riley kept coming up the long flight, staggering now: blood was running down the side of his head from a cut in his scalp, the bridge of his nose was scraped raw and sweat was streaking his eyebrows and cheeks. He looked unutterably fearsome. Sam started to reach toward the chair—then stopped, carried beyond amazement as Riley’s face below him broke into a broad and merry grin. Leaning against the wall he extended one mammoth hand.

  “Kid, you’re all right. I mean it. I want to shake your hand.” He shook his head again. “No, don’t swing on me again. I mean it.” Apparently he did. While Sam watched him warily he reached the landing again, took the night clerk’s hand and pumped it up and down with ponderous solemnity. “You’re the nonpareil. The only man in the state of Nebraska that could knock Big Tim Riley down a flight of stairs with one punch.” He flipped Sam’s hand over and examined it. “Never even skinned his knuckles!” he exclaimed in beaming wonder. “Jesus, think of that! Kid, you’re all right. You’ll go far, you mark my words.” He released the younger man’s hand. “You’ll go far in this world.”

 
; “What I said goes, Mr. Riley,” Sam Damon said quietly.

  The lumberjack laughed then. “Right you are, kid. Right you are.” For another moment he stood there, still grinning uncertainly, peering into Sam’s face, as if he could actually read there a host of future triumphs emblazoned on the night clerk’s forehead in letters of burnished gold. “Well, well,” he muttered; slapping Sam on the back he started slowly down the stairs again, holding to the wall with one hand. At the little foyer he stopped and peered into the bar, where the silence had been funereal. Swaying he gazed at its occupants, unmindful of the blood now streaming into his shirt collar and lacing his nose and mouth. He grinned again, slowly, his lips curled in derision. “I believe I’ll go along home and get some rest.” Then, pointing back upstairs toward a still immobile Sam Damon: “Now listen: from now on, anybody gives this kid any trouble at all has got to reckon with Big Tim Riley. And that’s my last word for the evening …”

  He was gone. The big front door crashed shut with a final soft tinkle of glass. The silence was so vast Sam could hear the grandfather clock in the hall below stalking the solemn seconds one by one. Perspiration was sliding down his back and sides and through his scalp. Pop Ainslie’s face swung into view around the corner, and then behind and above it the faces of Hobart Marsh and George Smith and Henry Vollmer, all of them goggling up at him.

  “Hello, Pop,” he said.

  The little man came up two or three steps, blinking and staring as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. His bow tie and armbands were a matching blue with a fine red stripe. “How on earth …” he began and stopped, his mouth working. “How’d you ever manage it?”

  “Hit him first,” Sam answered easily. “Hit him before he hit me. That’s the object of the game, isn’t it?” Pop and the others were still gazing at him open-mouthed and idiotic, so he added: “And remember now: Mr. Riley is not to be served in this hotel in any capacity until Mr. Thornton gives express instructions to the contrary.” Still they gazed up at him speechless; Henry Vollmer’s glasses flashed in vacant discs of light. The temptation to laugh was enormous, but he beat it down. “You’d better get back to the bar, hadn’t you, Pop?”

  “Yes, of course—right you are, son.” Pop turned around like a little snow-haired tin toy, bumping into the others, and began herding them on ahead of him. Back in the bar there was a muffled exclamation and then the voices:

  “Cool as an icicle—”

  “Can you beat it!”

  “Nerves of steel, that boy …”

  “Never even got up a sweat. Can you beat it!”

  Then Pop Ainslie said loudly and reverently: “Boys, the next round is on me. Not on the Grand Western. Not on Mr. Thornton. On me.” There was low laughter and then the delicate clink of a bottle neck against glass.

  Sam Damon went around behind the desk and sat down; took his handkerchief out of a hip pocket and mopped at his face and neck. From the open windows came the abortive crow of a rooster wakened prematurely. The air was redolent with spruce and roses and new-mown hay—a summer scent as heavy as wine, and at whose center lay the curious crystal calm evoked by the encounter. He’d done it; he’d obeyed that fierce inner voice, followed its first impulse and it had been exactly and solely the right move to make. He gripped his hands together; the sense of exultancy rose still higher. Down in the switchyard behind Clausen’s he could hear the soft chafing whine of steel rolling on steel, then the bumping concatenation as the empty car was coupled; and the hiss of released steam.

  …I’ll go to Lincoln, he decided abruptly, borne on the flushed certainty of the moment. First chance I get. I’ll ask Ted for a company pass and take the train to Lincoln. And then by God we’ll see.

  Lincoln was a big city with sidewalks and colored advertisements and department stores. There was a Civil War memorial in the middle of the square with a tall young infantryman standing at parade rest; he was wearing a full mustache like Mr. Verney’s, but no beard. There was a brand-new fire engine, all bright red and gleaming nickel; and Sam Damon could see two other engines through the open doors. There were fine houses every bit as grand as the Harrodsens’, set back from the street and bordered by hedges of privet clipped in the shape of battlements or lozenges and cones, or by shiny black wrought-iron fences of spearheads and fleurs-de-lis. Lincoln had high curbs of granite. There were automobiles, many of them; they raised clouds of dust that fell on his suit like powder. If this was Lincoln, imagine what Chicago was like. Or—or New York City …

  It was very hot, and he didn’t know where to go. The streets all looked alike, and cars and wagons kept tearing by in a steady stream. He came to a big plate-glass window and wandered up to it, pretending to look at the chairs and chests of drawers inside but actually studying his own reflection. He didn’t look very prepossessing, and it bothered him. He was wearing his father’s blue serge suit. Carl Damon had been heavier and a good two inches shorter than his son, and his mother had lengthened the sleeves and cuffs and taken in the trousers; but the outfit looked bulky and loose on him, and it was no day to be wearing anything this heavy, with the temperature up in the nineties. The shirt with its detachable collar had been his father’s too, but the tie, a navy blue with maroon and scarlet stripes, was his own: Peg had given it to him that past Christmas. He pulled down on the coat at the back so the collar wouldn’t ride up so far on his neck—then bending over ran thumb and forefinger down his trousers, pinching hard at the knee to reinforce the crease. None of the passersby seemed to have noticed.

  His father’s gold watch said 2:14. Time was sliding along, slipping away, and he hadn’t done anything yet. He stood at a street corner, befuddled by the crush of traffic. Then on the other side he saw a policeman talking to a fat man in a straw boater. He timed the gap between a Pierce Arrow touring car and a produce wagon and sprinted across. The two men turned to him as he came up.

  “Well, young fellow,” the policeman said. “Where’d you learn to run like that?”

  “Just picked it up, I guess.”

  “You want to watch out, with all this heavy traffic here.” The policeman’s eyes under the visor were the palest gray. “Where do you hail from?”

  “Walt Whitman, sir.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Well, it’s about fifteen miles from—” He saw they were having fun with him then, and broke off, grinning. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been to Lincoln.”

  “I’d never have guessed it.”

  “Can you tell me where Congressman Bullen’s office is?”

  “Sure.” The officer pointed past his shoulder. “Back where you came from. See that building there? with the bright yellow border?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s his office. Second floor. You’ll see the shingle.” The policeman’s gray eyes sparkled again. “Thinking of going into politics, are you?”

  “Oh no, sir. I’m going to get me an appointment to West Point.”

  “I see.” Both men laughed, and the policeman waved him along with a little flourish and called: “All right. Good luck to you.”

  He found the place easily. There was a sign in shiny black stone with gold letters that said MATTHEW T. BULLEN, Attorney at Law. He climbed the stairs and encountered the legend again on the frosted panel of the door. He paused a few seconds in indecision; he could hear a typewriter clacking along, then the clear high ting of the bell and the muffled slam of the carriage. Mr. Thornton said you should never barge in anywhere. If in doubt, knock, then enter. Mr. Bullen was a busy man. He waited another moment, then gave a tug to his coattail, knocked twice lightly and opened the door and went in.

  It was an office all right, but Congressman Bullen wasn’t there. There was only a desk where a girl was typing and two oak filing cabinets and a long bench where a farmer was patiently sitting, his hat in his lap and a hand on each knee. The farmer gazed at him vacantly. The girl hadn’t even looked up when he’d entered. Confused, a little irritated, he walked up t
o the desk and stood there. After a few seconds she gave a muttered exclamation and flipped up the paper-lock bar. She glanced up at him; she had a narrow face and bulging brown eyes.

  “Yes?” she said crossly.

  “I’d like to see Congressman Bullen.”

  “On what business?”

  “It’s about West Point.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  An appointment. That stopped him. He paused, said, “No—I don’t. I’m from near Kearney” (he would not make that mistake again). “I just got here a few minutes ago. On the train.”

  She threw him a glance of unbridled scorn and began to make the erasure. “Well. You’ll have to take a seat. Over there.”

  He frowned. He wanted to tell her he had to get the 3:47 back, that it was important he see Mr. Bullen as soon as possible; but he couldn’t think of any way to put it without making her really angry with him. Personal secretaries wielded a lot of power: you had to handle them with kid gloves. He’d heard drummers and businessmen at the hotel discussing the matter.

  Reluctantly he went over and sat down near the old farmer, who nodded and went on staring into space. The girl took no further notice of him. There was a door beyond her to the right, and he knew without having to think it out that Congressman Bullen was in there. Once he heard a low burst of laughter, several men together, and then a single voice, slow and declamatory, the words drowned out by the crashing of the typewriter.

  He opened his coat and lifted his arms to let some air in, and surreptitiously pulled the cloth away from his skin. There was an electric fan on a window ledge, a bright copper hoop with lots of scroll work, that turned slowly, whirring in a bass thrum, playing over the secretary’s head and ruffling her hair, and he studied it with interest; he’d never seen an electric fan before. But none of its cooling breezes reached the bench. Perspiration began to run down his forehead and neck; he forced himself to wait a full five minutes before he took out his handkerchief. Time crawled along and he sat there, miserable and impatient, a slave to its whims; it was the feeling he hated more than all others. As he was mopping his face the girl suddenly pulled the letter out of the carriage and went into the other room; Sam caught a quick little glimpse of two men’s heads bent over a square of light, and that was all. He could hear nothing that was said. In a few seconds the girl came out again, picked up some official-looking papers from her desk and left the office.