Mrs. Roberto - Or the Widowy Worries of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  Fuzz turned up the steps to the Weary Sailor, paused only a moment to regard the ravaged piano, and swatted the door open. Things were quiet and dark within. He smelled the sweet tang of a newly broached cask of rum and the not dissimilar scent of fresh wood shavings on the floor. The shadowy crannies of the saloon were dotted with early patrons. Bing, the bartender, a small, bald fellow whose handlebar mustaches seemed wider than his shoulders, wrestled with something behind the counter; his head came up to see who had come in, and, with a cryptic nod at Fuzz, he disappeared again. Jimmy and Tony followed Fuzz to one of the unoccupied corners of the room, where they set themselves down and expected drinks without asking for them.

  Bing appeared above the counter again and came round one end of the bar to approach them.

  “You might’ve saved yourself a trip,” said Fuzz quietly, wondering why Bing had not come with the required libations.

  Bing gave another nod and this time they saw that he was indicating the other side of the room. Their eyes had grown accustomed to the dim interior, and they descried a lone figure seated beneath a lithograph of the Lady of the Camellias. Fuzz narrowed his eyes, then half rose from his seat to gain a better view. Save for the clothes, it was the image of Thaddeus Spark—the remarkable growth of beard bursting over a starched white collar and the fancy vest of a finely tailored suit. The man was short, broad-shouldered, and stocky as a bear; Fuzz could almost believe that this was the proprietor of the Faithful Mermaid, except for those fancy duds. The bearded man had a steaming mug on the table before him.

  “What’s he want?” said Jimmy Fain under his breath, and Tony let out a gasp when he caught sight of the man. They had chased the fellow through half the district, and now he was sitting at the very center of Fuzz’s turf, as cool as a parson on Sunday.

  “He’s been there for an hour,” said Bing cautiously.

  Jimmy Fain let out a low whistle.

  Fuzz settled himself back in his seat.

  “He’s alone,” said Tony.

  Fuzz cast a suspicious glance around the tavern. “Where’s his crew?” he asked Bing.

  The bartender shrugged, and, with a jerk of his head toward the front door and the ruined heap on the porch beyond, he said, “Isn’t that the fellow who pushed the cop out from under the piano?”

  Fuzz grunted for reply. “What’s he want?”

  “I don’t know, but I told him you might be none too happy to see him after last—” Bing was about to say “night” but thought better of it.

  Fuzz shot a startled glance at Bing. It should have come as no surprise to the aspiring wharf boss that rumor of last night’s Jinks had spread.

  “What’s he want, Fuzz?” asked Jimmy.

  “How do I know what he wants?” growled Fuzz. “If I knew what he wants, I’d have expected him, wouldn’t I!”

  From their expressions one might guess that the boys had trouble following this logic. Bing retreated from the compass of Fuzz’s reach.

  “Send him over,” said Fuzz, though his own nerves jumped at the order.

  Some further uncertainty visited Bing’s face, but he chose not to share it. Instead, he turned away and crossed the room, his feet shushing in the fresh wood shavings.

  “What are you going to say to him, Fuzz?” asked Jimmy Fain.

  “I’ll tell him what’s what, is what I’ll say.”

  Jimmy and Tony looked very interested to hear it. They watched as Bing conferred with the man on the other side of the room. The bearded man did not look their way (they were ready to look indifferent if he did), and he hardly deigned to notice Bing himself while the bartender spoke with him. Bing’s posture was revealing—he looked like a man who is not sure that he has been heard, then like a man who is equally unsure if he himself has heard correctly. Bing cocked an ear, but the bearded fellow had returned to his mug and his own thoughts. When the bartender returned to Fuzz and the boys, he stood a few feet away from the table and wrung a corner of his white apron in his hands.

  “He’s says he’s comfortable where he sits,” said Bing.

  “What?” snapped Fuzz.

  “He says if you’re interested in fair warning you had better come over and have a talk with him.” Bing was quick to add, “Those were his words.”

  “He did, were they!” uttered Fuzz, responding to the two sentences at once.

  Bing frowned with concentration. Jimmy and Tony were wide-eyed. “What are you going to do, Fuzz?” wondered Jimmy.

  “I’ve a mind—” sputtered Fuzz, and he started to rise, only to sit down again. Bing and the boys were waiting to hear what he was of a mind to do, and Fuzz knew that if he hoped to maintain his reputation of cool authority—or the reputation of cool authority that he imagined he possessed—an immediate response was necessary. “What’s he drinking?” he wondered.

  Bing seemed almost ashamed to say. “Tea,” he said simply.

  Fuzz looked as if he’d been personally insulted. He sprung from his seat so suddenly that Jimmy let out a surprised gasp. Bing jumped aside as Fuzz strode past, and they watched him with the avidity of deeply committed gamblers at a horse race.

  “I’m Fuzz Hadley,” he said when he stood at the bearded man’s table.

  “I know—” came a high-pitched voice before the well-dressed fellow cleared his throat and began again in an odd tone that wasn’t exactly deep. “I know who you are,” said the man. He took a sip from the steaming mug before him, then condescended to lean back in his seat and look at Fuzz.

  Fuzz shifted his feet and gave the bearded man his best glower. After an awkward moment, he shifted his feet again and said, “You’ve got something to say to me?”

  The man at the table folded his arms complacently and, considering the man before him as a forbearing teacher might a fractious student, he said, “Something by way of a friendly warning, in fact.”

  Fuzz glanced over his shoulder, not knowing what made him angrier—the superior demeanor of the bearded gent before him or the numb-as-a-pounded-thumb expressions of Tony and Jimmy behind. “A warning, eh?” said Fuzz with impulsive fire. “Well, I’ve got a warning for you!”

  “I would stay away from Brackett Street, if I were Fuzz Hadley,” said the bearded man, unruffled by Fuzz’s sudden pique.

  Fuzz was reduced to sputtering, “You would, would you!”

  “Adam Tweed crossed the Moosepath League and paid the price.”

  Fuzz had heard the story of how Adam Tweed was run down by the law and the Moosepath League and how he’d been shot by that club’s chairman, though, of course, he did not have the slightest notion of the dire circumstances involved, nor how unwillingly Mister Walton leveled the crosshairs of a rifle upon even so great a villain. By a remarkable chain of events (and, to Mister Walton’s thinking, by the grace of God), Tweed had not been killed but was serving an extended term in the Lincoln County Jail. Tweed had been much feared along the waterfront, somewhat as a mad dog is feared, and the name of the Moosepath League, by their involvement in his capture, had become a mysterious, if daunting, byword among his former gang members.

  Fuzz flinched and said, without thinking, “How much do you want?”

  “How much do I want, Mr. Hadley?” said the man at the table.

  “What sort of piece do you think you’re going to get?” Fuzz replied, refining the thought.

  “Piece?” said the bearded man, that odd, high pitch revisiting the air. For the first time he looked uncertain as a separate light reached his otherwise bland eyes, and Fuzz could believe that the man at the table was calculating a measure of profit to be realized from this conversation. The gang boss felt less daunted in that moment, but then the bearded man shrugged and sighed and returned to his mug of tea; as quickly as it had appeared, the light of avarice was gone from his expression and he said, “Stay away from Brackett Street, Mr. Hadley.”

  Fuzz was quivering now—shaking with equal parts apprehension and resentment. “You’ve got sand, coming in here and tell
ing me what to do.”

  “Not really,” said the bearded man. “You don’t imagine, do you, that everyone, from my lawyer to the chief of police, is unaware of where I am.”

  Of course! Fuzz was thinking frantically. He and his gang helped the police nab Tweed, and just the other night, he rescued Calvin Drum from getting his cop’s head stove in! “Oh, you’re right tight with those folk, I can see,” said Fuzz, with a measure of disgust.

  “Keep clear of Brackett Street,” said the man once again. “And don’t otherwise be getting in the way of Mr. Spark’s business.”

  “Mr. Spark,” said Fuzz. “I guess he’s ‘Thaddeus’ to his relations. What are you, cousins?”

  “That, Mr. Hadley,” said the man at the table, “is for Mr. Spark and myself to know and you to wonder about.” He stood, and, in the realm of physical imposition, his stocky frame made up for his lack of height. He might have been a burly quayman, or the poet’s own blacksmith, if not for his expensive attire, but the bearded man’s air of social preeminence, as much as his muscular frame, encouraged Fuzz to back off a step or two. The man tossed a coin on the table, gave a simple nod with a final “Mr. Hadley,” and walked to the door.

  Peering around the casement of one of the Weary Sailor’s front windows, Fuzz watched the figure of Mr. Thump pause in the midst of the street to consider the neighborhood. Fuzz thought the man’s gaze lingered on Winnie’s house before he put his hands in his trouser pockets and strode in an easterly direction—perhaps to his home on India Street. Peacock Hope was strolling up the sidewalk, and he stopped to lift his hat and chat with the man.

  “The idiot!” said Fuzz under his breath. He noticed then that the bearded man had no hat, and that seemed strange, but he forgot this detail when Jimmy Fain and Tony Sutter came up behind him.

  “What did he want, Fuzz?” asked Jimmy.

  “What did you say to him?” wondered Tony.

  Fuzz snorted scornfully. “I told him that he and his relatives better keep to their business over on Brackett Street and be grateful for it!”

  “Did you, Fuzz?” said Tony with a low whistle.

  The man was out of sight now, and Fuzz straightened up. He rolled his shoulders, hooked his thumbs in his pockets, and strode up to the bar. “Where’s the drink in this place?” he demanded of Bing, who was making a show of wiping down the counter.

  “On the house, Fuzz,” said Bing. He snatched a tankard from a shelf behind him and bent to the keg at the bar.

  “He’s not too smart, coming in here, was he Fuzz?” said Jimmy.

  Fuzz Hadley took the sloshing tankard from Bing and considered his own reflection therein. “Yes, he’s not too smart,” said Fuzz, “but I guess he’s lucky I’m in a charitable frame of mind.”

  39. The Sudden Command of Big Eye Pfelt

  It was odd how the Moosepath League didn’t find themselves at Bangor’s South Station. Eagleton noticed it first, and his friends stopped to see why he had fallen behind. Jasper Packet marched along, the subject of his song altered, if not his enthusiasm; unaware that his following lagged behind, he sang:

  “This is the waterfront,” said Eagleton to his friends while Jasper’s voice dwindled.

  “The waterfront?” said Ephram, and he looked about him.

  “Hmmm?” said Thump, blinking.

  “We’re on the waterfront,” Eagleton called to Jasper Packet.

  Jasper ventured upon another verse, extolling his “Darling in Dimity,” and it took a few bars and a few steps before he realized that the others had halted their progress. “You said you were hungry,” he shouted back.

  By all appearances, they were somewhere along the less reputable section of Bangor’s wharf district. There was a chill in the air; clouds nipped at the sun and a breeze came off the water. Downriver, nearer the center of commerce, ships moved upon the current, tugboats labored the Penobscott, and along the dockside landsmen plied their trades; but there was less noise and traffic where the Moosepathians stood. Gulls wheeled overhead or hopped the planks; water lapped at the pilings. The members of the club peered up and down the wharves to gain their bearings (in both the physical and metaphorical connotations of that phrase).

  “Where do you suppose the station has gone?” wondered Ephram.

  “I can smell it,” said Jasper.

  “The station?” wondered Ephram. He didn’t know if he wanted to smell a station.

  “Dinner,” said the ragged fellow, and he recommenced his journey down the length of dilapidated wharves.

  “We had really intended to dine on the train,” called Eagleton. “We are in a bit of haste, to be perfectly honest.”

  “Never does to hurry while you eat,” said Jasper.

  “I don’t suppose,” said Eagleton.

  “Haste and a meal, will make you unweel,” the fellow called back to them. “That’s what my mother always said.”

  “Oh,” said Eagleton. He wouldn’t want to contradict someone’s mother

  “I do smell something,” said Thump, but it was not evident, from his expression, whether his nose had detected something pleasant or foul.

  “We must be off, Mr. Packet,” said Eagleton when they had caught up with the man. “There is a woman who may be in peril, and we intend to go to Dresden Mills with the hope of discovering her whereabouts.”

  “A woman in peril?” said Jasper, taking several backward steps. “A wife? A sister? Who is she?”

  Eagleton looked at Ephram, who looked at Thump, who looked at Eagleton. “Mrs. Roberto,” said Eagleton finally.

  Jasper frowned. “You had better come with me,” he said, and he continued along the wharfside. “Ho, Beau!” he declared, quite unexpectedly, and the Moosepathians realized that they were passing a ragged man who sat on an old crate and looked out at the water with an expression of deep philosophy.

  “Ho, Beau,” said this fellow without otherwise varying his study, until the three friends passed by. He nodded when Thump tipped his hat and Ephram and Eagleton tipped what would have been their hats.

  A pile of refuse atop a bit of ledge rose above the level of the wharves, and Jasper Packet led them over this till their line of sight broke the rise and a small shantytown hove into view. Ironically, they could also see, beyond and above the roofs of improvised huts and the crooked chimneys and the wraiths of smoke, a southbound locomotive pulling two passenger cars and a line of freight. Three men were running along the tracks above the hobo village. Like limpets, they caught hold of the ladders on two passing freight cars and were yanked along for the ride. The train and its freeloaders passed behind a row of wooden tenements and out of sight.

  As well as heroes, the American Civil War (like all wars, it is to be supposed) produced its share of those who wearied of one cause or another, or balked at not getting paid, or disagreed with the length of terms in the contracts they signed when they joined up. Many of these departing fellows—’deserters,” according to their armies—hardly dared return home, or perhaps they had learned to love the wanderer’s life, if not being shot at.

  When the war was over, the ranks of these wanderers were augmented by weary soldiers homeward bound, and some believe these to be the first hoboes—a prideful class of men who were not unwilling to work their way home. Some never reached their destinations. Some never stopped traveling somewhere, or anywhere. The war had revealed to them, in shared stories and personal experience, the diversity and breadth of the continent, and the railroad took them there, however unintentionally.

  By the 1890s, hoboes still classified themselves separately from bummers and tramps (an old English derivation), and many a man of the road still plied his hand at migrant farmwork in the South or the West and transient jobs in the mills and cities of the North. But whether they wanted to be or not, they were forgotten men, unknown (and largely unseen) by many who only knew the word hobo from newspaper items and idle gossip.

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump had read about hoboes in their respective news
papers; they understood there to be a small hobo enclave on the northern end of Deering Oaks in Portland; they may even have seen, a time or two, a stray, ragged character who fit the description (or their concept) of such a person; but they had never seen such a place as Bangor’s little shantytown. By 1897 hoboes recognized themselves as part of a concise society, but they were greatly infiltrated by all types of men, and all ages—bummers and road-kids, punks and bindlestiffs, gay-cats and prushuns.

  The shantytown on the sparse end of Bangor’s waterfront was a glomeracion of huts and lean-tos fashioned from rotten planks and ancient canvas sails and whatnot and populated by a tribe of ragged and largely unwashed men in various attitudes of languor and industry. Here one fellow lay with his barely shod feet near an open fire, and there another mended a pair of trousers with a needle and a wisp of thread. Somewhere, an old fiddle sawed out “Bangor Belle,” and a dog barked from across the way. The air was filled with talk and the smell of slumgullion from half a dozen pots.

  Entering the periphery of the shantytown, Jasper Packet raised a hand and shouted out, “Ho, Beaus!” and the nearby crowd answered in kind with a great “Ho, Beau!” and several other less polite usages.

  “What do you have there, Jasper?” called one fellow in an old top hat. “Is that the mayor, or the governor and his friends?”

  “I have some real gentlemen with me today, Greasy,” said Jasper. He led three uncertain Moosepathians into the midst of the little village while a crowd gathered around.

  They were a motley group and Jasper was as well decked out as any of them, that is to say, their clothes were much mended, if not in tatters, and none of them wore what could be called a matching suit. These habiliments were dulled besides by the dust of the road and the toil of field and factory. There was nothing threatening about this crowd of almost two score—there was, in fact, a certain bonhomie that accompanied the curious faces and variegated fragrances—but Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were private men and not used to this sort of interested press. One hatless fellow, with several days’ growth on his face and the stub of a cigar in his mouth, hefted a small dog on his shoulder and said, “They do look the real herb, and that’s a fact.”