by Bill Albert
We were sitting out behind the mess tent. It was after the evening show and people were leaving the grounds, going to their regular homes in the city.
Charlie had read out the message I wrote about the letter to Frank Powell. I thought maybe Benny’s “big chance” was in there, what with all Buffalo Bill’s talk about money. If it was, Benny couldn’t find it.
“Capital money,” he said, whacking the paper with his fist. “For things like that ya need to have yerself proper capital money. Where the hell am I gonna get me that?”
“Sitting Bull knew all about the white man,” said Charlie, staring off into the gloom. “He came back . . .”
“What the hell does Sittin Bull have to do with this here?” Benny asked belligerently.
Benny tolerated Charlie Pinto Face, but he didn’t like him. Charlie knew that Benny sold liquor to the Indians. He didn’t like him either. He ignored Benny’s question.
“He came back to the reservation and told the elders that in the big cities he had seen more white men than there are grains of sand, that we could kill them and kill them until there were no more arrows and it would make no difference. ‘We must never go on the warpath again,’ he said.”
“Damn right too!” agreed Benny.
“And still they rubbed him out. The white man is never satisfied.”
Charlie patted me on the arm and walked off towards the tipis.
“Can’t see how ya got so damn friendly with that bastard,” Benny said, when Charlie was well out of hearing. “Too damn educated for a blanket-head, too big for his own stinkin moccasins. Thinks he’s better than a white man, don’t he? What he needs is takin down a peg or three.”
During my time being close to Buffalo Bill I never did manage to find out anything that was to Benny’s advantage. However, it wasn’t long before Benny found out something which was to my advantage, although he thought for sure it was to his.
21
I’d been gone from being Meyer Liebermann only about four months, but that’s a long time when you’re pushing at just short of twelve years old. I was also growing up fast and having to settle into who I was. Having a busted throat and no talk made that settling complicated, painful, wearisome, and at times damn frustrating. But slowly, day by day I was learning to get by. Sometimes I daydreamed how I’d find a special doctor and get better, but I didn’t put too much into that daydream, especially after what that famous Boston doctor said. Buffalo Bill told me more than once that that kind of dreaming was a waste of time and when I finally turned around from it not happening my life would have passed me by.
There was very little in my life right then that I wanted to pass me by, for it was a hot, ripe August full of new encounters, constant movement and every day I was close to Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and other famous and not-so-famous stars of the Wild West. That all made my Liebermann New York get smaller and smaller, like a house seen from the back of a moving train, while the winter and North Platte and the Arlenbergs were too far off to get into any kind of focus.
Sure, I was learning that Buffalo Bill was not like they wrote about him in the Dimes, but I couldn’t hold my disappointment against him. Maybe at first, but not later on. How could I? Buffalo Bill never treated me anything but one hundred percent pure white. When the others wanted to throw me out he took my part and made me his personal private letter writer. When you put that on the scales, well none of the other stuff really matters a damn. I also knew for certain that there wasn’t another kid in the whole world who wouldn’t trade places with me quicker than you could snap your fingers, except maybe for the dude clothes and the busted throat, which is only natural not to be wanting.
Then it was over. Like a trap door opening suddenly under you so you feel that cold damp air hitting your legs and sense, before you actually see, the empty space grabbing at you where a few seconds before there was a solid wood floor.
It was late in the evening, the Show had been over some time and I was coming back from running an errand for Walter, when Benny jumped out from behind a wagon, yanked on my arm and pulled me back into the shadows.
“Mouse!” he said in a out-of-breath whisper. “I wants ya to come with me Mouse! Somethin really big. Really important. Right now! This very minute!”
He was fairly twitching with excitement, breathing hard, pulling on his ear, scratching his hair like to put ridges in his scalp. I’d never seen him so agitated.
“Come on, Mouse! Come on! It’s happened. Shit yes it has and Benny December’s right on top of it. Oh, yer a beauty ya are, a real livin twenty-four-carat beauty!”
I shook my head, showed him the bowl of sugar and pointed towards the Colonel’s tent.
“Never mind that now!” he said. “Can wait. Give it here.”
He snatched the bowl from me and threw it under the wagon, the white crystals spraying all over the ground. Walter was going to give me what-for and no mistake. But Benny wasn’t thinking about sugar or about Walter. He dragged me towards the mess tent, every so often stopping to dust me down or straighten my tie.
“Gotta look right, ya do Mouse. Shit yes!”
I followed Benny in through the back entrance. The big tent was empty, all the tables cleaned and set for breakfast, all except for Benny’s table, Table Number One. There were five men sitting down at one end drinking coffee and talking. Nate Salsbury and Henry Barnum, J. W. Rogers, who was the Show detective, and two men I didn’t recognize. Benny gave me a final inspection and then pushed me ahead of him towards the men. They didn’t notice us until we were standing about three foot away.
“We don’t need no more coffee, Benny,” Nate Salsbury said over his shoulder.
Then he spotted me.
“Well, I’ll be . . .” he began.
“I got him,” Benny said proudly. “Right here he is, clean as a whistle and ready to go.”
He reached over and smoothed my already-smoothed-back hair.
“Got to be him, don’t it? Fits don’t he? ‘Cept for the name, a course. I reckon gentlemen as how you all is lookin at your real live, genuine missin Meyer Liebermann and no mistake to it!”
My good friend, Benny December, was cashing me in like a two-bit pawn ticket! I had become his big chance and he had grabbed me with both hands and was holding on, just like he said he would, riding me to the end of the line.
One of the men started up from his seat. I moved to back away but Benny had his hands tight around my arms.
“Don’t, Mouse,” he said, “won’t get ya far. Yer good an’ caught. Never figured ya for a Jewboy, I surely did not figure ya for that. Just show’s how ya can’t depend on nobody, that does.”
The man came over to me. He was big and burly and smelled of sweat and hair tonic. He cupped my chin roughly in his meaty hand.
“No need to look so scared, son, only want to ask a few questions, is all. I ain’t going to do you no harm.”
I didn’t believe him. He looked exactly like someone whose job was to do just that
“Are you Meyer Liebermann, son? Meyer Liebermann from New York City?”
“Course it’s him,” Benny said indignantly. “Anybody can see that! And it were me who brought him to ya.”
“Just hold on there, son,” said the burly man and then turning to me, “Are you Meyer Liebermann?”
I shook my head vigorously. Benny had taught me that. Look small and big-eyed innocent and just keep denying everything and after a while they’ll either believe you or get fed up and let you be.
Trouble is I’m not such a little kid any more and the Irishman isn’t going to get fed up until he gets what he wants. He’s warm enough, got plenty of good food and a soft bed. It’s me who’s freezing to death here in solitary, it’s me who’s got a busted finger, it’s me who’s looking to walk up those thirteen stairs to the noose or to spend twenty years in here with the likes of Monta
na Jim Naylor. It’s me!
I shook my head again and tried to look for all the world like I’d never heard of Meyer Liebermann.
“What about that re-ward?” asked Benny anxiously. “I heard you sayin there was a big re-ward.”
“You been listening out of turn, Benny?” said Henry Barnum. “Ain’t no reward for listening out of turn. We already knew who he was anyways.”
Benny wasn’t listening to Barnum. All his attention was on the burly man.
“I got him for ya, didn’t I, Mister? Got him and brought him right to ya. I did, didn’t I? Not a scratch on him. Good as new, he is.”
After I’d lied for him to Buffalo Bill about the liquor, protected him and almost got tossed out of the Wild West for it, that was how he repaid me! He told me never to trust anybody and he was dead right about that.
“Fred,” the burly man said to his companion. “Give us that there photograph.”
He studied the photograph and studied me. I could see it was the one my mother had had in a gilt frame on the table by her bed. When I was six or seven a photographer had come to the house and made me lean against the sofa so I wouldn’t move. Now Benny was holding me so I wouldn’t move.
My parents must have hired detectives to track me down. Why not? I was a dangerous desperado. Hadn’t I stolen over five hundred dollars from them?
“Don’t know, lot younger then. Kinda looks like him though. It’s the nose that does it.”
“Sure,” agreed Benny eagerly. “That’s it, Mister, the nose. Ya can always tell ‘em by the nose. How did I miss somethin starin out at me like that? Just look at that big ol’ Jew nose!”
Nate Salsbury froze right up when he heard that, but he didn’t say anything, just glared across at Benny, who was too excited to notice.
The burly man squatted down so his face was almost right up against mine. He had close-together eyes, pale gray like faded-dry beach pebbles. Lilac water was what he was wearing on his slicked down hair. His linen collar was stained black along the top edge where the skin at his neck was pinched up in tight rolls.
“If you ain’t Meyer Liebermann,” he said quick like it was a trick question to catch me out, “who are you then?”
I took out my pencil stub and a piece of paper from my jacket pocket and without hesitating I wrote: Hyman Budnitsky, Henry Street Settlement House.
They want a Jew, I thought, I’ll give them one. All Jews have big noses, don’t they? Central Park West, the East Side, it doesn’t make any difference to the noses where they live.
“Hyman Budnitsky?” said the burly man unsurely, staring down at the piece of paper.
“What?” protested Benny. “He never is Hyman Budnit . . . Budnit . . . whatever. He’s playin ya all for saps is what he’s doin. Ya ain’t gonna believe that? This here is Meyer Liebermann, I tell you, from New York City!”
“That Indian said that’s where he found him,” said Barnum, “Outside the Madison Square Garden it were.”
“When did you say that was?” asked Fred.
Barnum leaned back in his chair, took a puff on his cigar.
“Let’s see. Last show the chief said. That would be the twenty-third of April right before we went over to Brooklyn.”
The burly man looked in his black leather notebook and nodded.
“Yeah, that’s right, twenty-third of April’s when they say he went missing. Course there is lots of boys run away in a big place like New York City every day. Ain’t to say for sure this is the one we’re looking for. Ain’t to say he ain’t this Hyman Budnitsky like he says.”
Benny was getting frantic, starting to hop about like a frog on a hot griddle.
“Ain’t the one! Just look at him, will ya? Does this look like a Hyman Budnitsky? Course it don’t!”
“Enough of that, Benny,” Nate Salsbury said sharply. “You get on with your work, this ain’t nothing to do with you now.”
“But I brung him to ya, Mr. Salsbury! It ain’t fair! What about the re-ward? What about that?”
“Goodbye, Benny,” he said firmly.
Benny opened his mouth to protest, but seeing Nate Salsbury’s furious look thought better of it and stepped back out of range.
I wrote another message telling them that I really was Hyman Budnitsky, that my parents were dead and that Buffalo Bill had fixed me up to live with the Arlenbergs in North Platte.
“Might be,” said Fred, who was thinner than his partner but looked just as tough. “Might be, Sonny Jim, but we got to check it out. That’s what we do.”
“Yeah. First thing tomorrow,” said the burly man, “I’ll wire the New York office and see what they say we should do. Don’t wanna bring the wrong trout all the way back there, do we Fred? Disappoint a lot of people that would.”
“You’ll have to tell Colonel Cody,” said Salsbury, “seeing as how he’s taken such a shine to the boy. He’s over at the Excelsior Hotel tonight, won’t be back before morning.”
“Ain’t nothing to do before then anyways,” the burly man replied. “And we sure don’t want to do anything to upset the Colonel. Old Man Pinkerton would have our hides for sure if we got on the wrong side of Colonel Cody. Sets a lot of store by the Colonel, does Mr. Pinkerton. I know that for a fact.”
Pinkertons! I’d been right. On my trail like bloodhounds. Frank and Jesse James, the Youngers, Butch Cassidy, Big Foot McTagert, and me, Meyer “the Kid” Liebermann.
“I knew something wasn’t right with this here boy,” Barnum said. “Knew it right off, only no one listened to me. Selling liquor to poor old Billy Baker like he did. I told the Colonel, didn’t I, Nate? I told him straight out.”
“Sure, Henry, you told him.”
“Got to keep him close tonight,” Fred said to the burly man. “Don’t want him running off before we know if he’s our boy.”
“Yeah,” the other agreed, “some place that’ll hold him secure.”
“I got just the thing,” replied Barnum with a wide grin. “Just the perfect place for him.”
They locked me up in an old iron-barred wagon that they had used to exhibit wild animals. It was painted red and yellow and gold on the outside with swirls and fancy designs. barnum & bailey circus was written across both sides in high letters. It looked great from the outside. Inside was a wood floor with straw and the strong smell of cat piss. Nate Salsbury thought it wasn’t necessary to lock me up but Barnum insisted.
“Boy’ll be all right, Nate,” he said. “Nothing can happen to him. Where else you going to keep him if we don’t have to put someone on him all night? Give him his bedroll, some water and he’ll survive just fine till the morning.”
Although from here in solitary it looks pretty damn soft, from there it didn’t. It was my first taste of prison and I can’t say I cared for it.
22
I was going to miss Cody Day in Omaha. They had been planning it for weeks. Special fireworks, marching bands and new acts for the Show. People coming from all over to pay their respects—old scouts, men from his Pony Express days, the governor of Nebraska, just about anybody who was important was going to be there. Only three days away and I was going to miss the biggest celebration ever for Buffalo Bill. It wasn’t fair!
If Buffalo Bill had been there that night he wouldn’t have let them put me in the cage. But he was staying in town at the Excelsior Hotel with a lady friend.
“Colonel Cody’s a red-blooded man, Carl,” Walter explained. “Some day you’ll understand what that means.”
“Harlots!” Alfred Heimer barked. “The Colonel himself on them wastes and he money on them wastes. This is not good. Red-bloody man! Stupid Englisher cook!”
“Who you calling stupid, you bleeding jumped-up Prussian ponce?”
Heimer let fly in a whole string of shouted German, all the time his face getting redder and redder until the cook picked up a
cleaver and ran him out of the tent. When the Colonel went off the showground harmony slipped and things like that happened, like small boys being locked up in cages happened.
It was a hot sticky night but I was shaking with what had occurred and what was going to occur when the Pinkertons took me back to New York. I draped one of the blankets around me, pulled it tight and settled in a corner of the cage. Would I be put in a reform school? I had once had a prim, thin-lipped English governess who never tired of threatening me with the eternal damnation of reform school. It was a virtual hell on Earth, she said menacingly, where they sent naughty boys. If you misbehaved in reform school, she told me in a low rumbly voice, they birched you until you couldn’t sit down. They fed you on stale bread and gruel without milk or sugar and even that they gave you only twice a day. It was dark and cold in reform school and they had no time to put up with spoiled little boys who didn’t do exactly what they were told. I think I was about seven years old when I learned about reform school.
A hand shook me awake. Fred and the burly man had come to take me to reform school. I shrank back and pushed the hand away. Then I heard a voice whisper at me in Lakota. It was Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. He pulled at my arm and I followed him. The cage door was hanging open and outside were Charlie Pinto Face and Standing Wolf. We jumped down from the wagon.
I looked back at the empty circus wagon and for some reason I thought about Dan McGinty.
For they haven’t found him yet
Dressed in his best suit of clothes.
There is nothing but a bubble where McGinty ought to be.
That was me leaving the Wild West. Just a soundless bubble, floating away in the night.
Closing around with iron bars the white man kills the life spirit, signed Sunset Buffalo Dreamer after we had reached the safety of the tipis.
Thank you, father, I signed.
The old man smiled and rested his hand on the top of my head.