Sometimes at night, Jackfish read books or magazines or even anarchist newspapers. Pop said there wasn’t anything Jackfish didn’t read. He caught him in the Nimble Nickel once reading the labels on tin cans.
Jackfish and Pop were good friends because they were both union men. That didn’t keep them from arguing all the time. Sometimes it was politics or prize-fighters or just about anything, sitting there on Mrs. Kovaks’s front stoop in the summer. Mrs. Kovaks lived in a fourplex, one of those places you see all over Butte, two up, two down, hooked together with a staircase shaped like a wishbone. I have a snapshot that Hunter Harper tried to swipe for that book of his of all of us lined up on the staircase.
When he sat out on the steps after shift, Jackfish would give May Anna a big graniteware bucket and a quarter and tell her to go around the corner to the saloon for a bucket of beer. May Anna greased the bucket before she left so she wouldn’t get half suds. Once me and Whippy Bird went with her, taking care to go to the back door and knock, of course, since it wasn’t right for little children to go in the front. On the way home, we all took a sip or two of that beer, and by the time we got back, it was half gone. “Holy Jesus,” Jackfish said when we handed him the bucket almost empty. “Holy, holy, holy.” That was when we became the Unholy Three.
Sometimes Jackfish and Pop drank in the Big Mug after shift. If they felt flush, they ordered a shot with a beer chaser, which is called a Shawn O’Farrell or a Shawn O, but mostly they just drank beer—and argued. The Irish and the Cornish argued all the time.
The Irish were big like Jackfish, and most of the Cornish were small, like Pop, but strong. I expect Pop could have beat up Jackfish even though Jackfish outweighed him by a hundred pounds. But they never fought. Each other, that is. The fish eaters and the Cousin Jacks beat each other up just about every day in front of the Big Mug. All it took was for somebody to call a Cousin Jack a “petticoat,” which is not a flattering term for your Cornish people, and the fight would start. Whenever anybody threatened Pop, Jackfish stood up with him, and ditto with Pop for Jackfish.
Jackfish liked to sing, too, and since we had a piano, Jackfish brought Mrs. Kovaks and May Anna to our house of an evening, and he and Pop sang harmony. Mrs. Kovaks sang, too. She had the sweetest voice. May Anna didn’t inherit it, though. She sounded like a crow, and in her musical picture, Debutantes at War, the studio had to dub May Anna’s voice for the singing parts. Jackfish sang old Irish ballads that made him so sad he cried, especially “Danny Boy.” May Anna cried, too, but that was just to please Jackfish.
Jackfish took May Anna to the St. Patrick’s Day parade. He said you couldn’t be a good father if you didn’t take your kid to a parade, though that didn’t explain why he took me and Whippy Bird, too. In Butte, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day for about a week because that’s how long it took to do all the singing and dancing and drinking. Then it took another week for everybody to sober up. The Cornish celebrated St. George’s Day, but it wasn’t as exciting as St. Pat’s because there were more Irish in Butte than anybody. On St. Patrick’s Day, everybody in Butte is Irish.
What we liked best about St. Pat’s was the parade because we wore big green bows in our hair and marched down the street with Jackfish, who was a Hibernian. Afterward, he took us to an Irish supper where they had corned beef and cabbage and soused mackerel. “Jackfish was the most soused of all the fish,” Whippy Bird told us. That’s because he drank about a hundred schooners of green beer, then washed it down with Irish coffee. You make Irish coffee with coffee and sugar and whiskey with whipped cream on top. Jackfish usually did without the coffee and sugar and whipped cream.
In the winter, me and Whippy Bird went to May Anna’s after dinner and sat at the kitchen table and played Authors or listened to Jackfish tell stories. Sometimes, he turned out the light. Then in the dark he spun spooky tales about the banshees and the Little People. The Little People are like Tommyknockers except they’re Irish, not Cornish. Me and Whippy Bird would get so scared that Jackfish had to walk us home, taking May Anna along for company. Walking down the dark streets was scary, too, because Jackfish stopped and peered around corners, looking for ghosts. If there was a storm, he disappeared in the falling snow, and we couldn’t find him. He could see us, though, and if anybody came along, like a tramp, Jackfish loomed up out of the dark, big as a horse, to protect us. Next to Buster, who was probably out there keeping watch, too, Jackfish was May Anna’s biggest protector.
The thing Jackfish liked best was surprises. He bought May Anna a string of pearls that she wore even after she got rich. She never wore any other pearls, even the genuine pearls some big producer gave her. She said pearls always reminded her of Jackfish. He brought both Mrs. Kovaks and May Anna Whitman’s Samplers for Valentine’s, and one day, he gave me and Whippy Bird a great big box that was all wrapped up. When we got the paper off, the box said CHOCOLATES, and we were so excited, we pried that lid off as fast as we could. Well, it wasn’t chocolates at all, it was a big spring with an ugly face on it that popped out at us like a jack-in-the-box and nearly scared us to death. Did me and Whippy Bird ever feel like a pair of damn fools when Jackfish and May Anna hooted and called, “April Fools!”
Maybe the best time May Anna and Mrs. Kovaks ever had with Jackfish was that last Christmas. Jackfish had been living there over a year, and it looked like it might take, so folks began calling May Anna’s mom Mrs. Cook. Once or twice, May Anna even called him Dad. Me and Whippy Bird told her that wasn’t right, since it went against the memory of her own father, who had been killed in the mine accident in Arizona. That was when she told us there never was a Mr. Kovaks, that her mother made it up. I felt so sorry for May Anna that every time we lit candles at BS, I prayed Jackfish would marry Mrs. Kovaks and become May Anna’s father.
Christmas was special back then, with lots of old country traditions, and we always had a good time. Us being Cornish, the Unholy Three made circles out of evergreen boughs and put candles at the bottom and hung them on the front door and in the windows. Then we made extra to carry with us when we went caroling.
Ma made her currant ring and saffron buns, which she called nubbies, beef-and-kidney pie, ginger cookies, and, of course, suet pudding, so heavy it sank right down to your toes. She got out her best silver as well as the cloam, the heavy old china her mother had brought from Cornwall and given her when she got married.
It was a tradition to invite May Anna and her mother for Christmas dinner, and after Whippy Bird finished eating at the Birds’, she came over with her family, too. Even Buster showed up. Jackfish got hold of some sweet cherry wine from Meaderville, and me and Whippy Bird and May Anna were allowed to have a drink of it. It was the strongest stuff we’d ever tasted.
Bummer Bird brought his cornet, and we all sat around the table drinking cherry wine and singing. The Cornish have the best voices in the world, and we were all Cornish except for Jackfish, who was Irish, of course, and they are the second-best singers. You can imagine we sounded good. When it got dark, we lit the candles on the evergreen circles and carried them all over the neighborhood, singing Christmas carols. Hunter Harper wrote that up in his history book, about it being a Cornish tradition in Butte. At least he got one thing right.
Late that night, Jackfish took May Anna and even Mrs. Kovaks to Christmas Eve mass at BS, but they were late, and the church was full, so they had to kneel outside in the snow. It was as cold that night as it ever gets in Butte, cold seeping up from your feet and in through your fingertips, and I expect coming in through your knees, too, if they were planted in the snow, but May Anna said she never felt it. She said she felt like the Holy Family.
That Christmas, Jackfish gave May Anna a music box. It was the prettiest little thing, all polished wood, and when you opened it, a tiny brass cylinder turned, and it played “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.” May Anna was so happy, she just played and played and played that thing, even when we were singing Christmas carols. That was the Christmas Jackfish gave
Mrs. Kovaks a dusty rose velvet dress. It was the same dress she was buried in.
That music box still works. May Anna left it to me in her will. She left Whippy Bird the pearls, which she wears a lot at the Jim Hill. I don’t know whatever happened to the Bible and the rosary. I expect they disappeared, since May Anna didn’t make any mention of them in her will. She said the music box and the pearls were special, and only me and Whippy Bird would understand. People said May Anna was hard. Or what they said was Marion Street was hard. But me and Whippy Bird knew the real May Anna Kovaks.
What broke up Jackfish with May Anna and her mom was prospecting.
Some men are prospectors through and through, and Jackfish was one of them. He worked in the copper mines in the winter only because he couldn’t pan gold through five feet of Montana snow. Working winters was the way Jackfish could build himself a stake. As soon as spring came, Jackfish went. He spent the whole summer poking holes in the mountains.
There were a lot of men like Jackfish who were after a find. Pop said it wasn’t getting rich so much as it was being independent. You were free out there with no shift boss to order you around. There are some men who’d rather be inside the earth instead of on top of it, Pop said, and that’s why there’ll always be underground mining. But Jackfish told him, “Being inside the earth is natural only for rats and moles and Cornish.”
That first summer with May Anna and Mrs. Kovaks, Jackfish was torn. Mrs. Kovaks was scared if he went off he’d fall down an old glory hole and never come back. “I’ll go back to the Finlen, and with you at the ‘Sweat, we’ll make more money than any old gold mine,” she said. She went back to the Finlen, too. And May Anna caught more frogs and maggots than me and Whippy Bird put together. Those two really wanted Jackfish to stay on.
In the end, what they did was compromise. Jackfish said he’d go for a couple of weeks. It would be like a vacation for all of them. Mrs. Kovaks and May Anna could have the house to themselves and play cards and not have to worry about cooking for him. He’d have a few days off by himself in the mountains to fish and look around for a gold mine. He said Mrs. Kovaks didn’t have to worry about him because he’d agreed to partner with Ernie Latina, who had a Chevrolet.
Early one morning, Jackfish and Ernie headed southeast of Butte into the Tobacco Root mountains, picked a spot, and started panning the gravel. Right off, they found a few gold flakes. Jackfish told us later he thought he was going to strike it rich for sure, but he was wrong. They must have dug up half that mountain, but all they found was a nugget the size of a pea.
That didn’t discourage them, though. Two weeks later, they still thought they had themselves a gold mine, so they headed back to Butte for dynamite and lumber for sluices. There had been a cloudburst, and Buffalo Creek was up. Ernie tried to ford it in the Chevrolet and got stuck in a pothole right in the middle.
Water kept coming up over the running board until finally the seat and the engine were drenched. The water and the mud got into their clothes and their prospecting equipment and even into the little leather bag where Jackfish kept the nugget. It washed that tiny bit of gold right out. Ernie was so mad, he swore off prospecting and said if Jackfish cleaned the mud out of the car, he could have anything he found. So as soon as they hauled the Chevrolet back to Butte, Jackfish got out the gold pan and shoveled all that muck into it, then ran the water on it and panned. Sure enough, he found that nugget. He gave it to Mrs. Kovaks, who had a little loop put on it and wore it on a chain around her neck. She left it to May Anna, who left it to me in her will, but the lawyer said he never found it. Me and Whippy Bird think he knew it was a valuable gold specimen and kept it because May Anna never would have let it go.
With Ernie bailing out like he did, it was too late for Jackfish to go prospecting on his own. Besides, Jackfish believed in omens, and said he never saw a more likely message from God that he was to stay home. May Anna was so happy she spent all her frogs’ legs money lighting candles at BS. All fall and winter and spring, they were a family again, playing jokes and singing carols at Christmas.
Jackfish was different the next summer, though. Pop said he was becoming too domesticated, that Jackfish needed to get out for the sake of his soul. I guess Jackfish thought so, too. No matter how much Mrs. Kovaks pleaded, Jackfish said he was going prospecting.
“It’s not like I’m stepping,” Jackfish told her. Pop said Jackfish liked the women, but when he lived with Mrs. Kovaks, he never stepped. That didn’t make Mrs. Kovaks feel any better though.
The day Jackfish left, Ma gave him a currant ring, and Pop gave him a bottle of real Canadian whiskey, and Mrs. Kovaks and May Anna hugged him and hugged him. Mrs. Kovaks sat on the porch with a handkerchief to her eyes while me and Whippy Bird and May Anna stood on the steps waving until Jackfish was out of sight.
We didn’t see him again or even hear about anybody running across him the whole summer. Mrs. Kovaks had gone back to the Finlen to work again. May Anna said they needed the money, but we knew her mom was lonely, too. She couldn’t sit around the house all day by herself. Then, after Jackfish had been gone three months, she started stepping. One night, she didn’t come home until almost morning. May Anna never said a word to me and Whippy Bird. But we knew. You always know about stuff like that.
Pretty soon Mrs. Kovaks was going out every night and coming home drunk. We knew May Anna was worried even though she told us her mom was only making friends. Once when me and Whippy Bird went to May Anna’s we heard them arguing.
“If you keep acting like this, Jackfish will throw you out,” May Anna pleaded with her. Mrs. Kovaks said Jackfish couldn’t throw her out because it was her house.
“What if he doesn’t come back, then?” May Anna asked her.
“I already made up my mind he won’t. He’s dead,” Mrs. Kovaks said. “He fell off a mountain or got eaten up by bears.”
When May Anna came out to us, she was pale, dabbing at her eyes with her hanky. “He’ll come back. I know he will. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s over,” May Anna told us. May Anna stopped working on her mother. Instead, she started being as mean as she could be to Mrs. Kovaks’s boyfriends, hoping if she wasn’t nice, they’d go away. But it didn’t work. She even got Buster to threaten Bear Meat Canonia, who was keeping company with Mrs. Kovaks, and though he never came back, Mrs. Kovaks found another man to take his place. Me and Whippy Bird tried to be extra nice to May Anna because we knew she was aching inside.
It got worse and worse. In the fall, when it looked like Mrs. Kovaks was right about Jackfish being dead, Splooks Shea, a bartender from the Blue Parrot, moved in with her, and they spent most of their time together either drunk or getting there.
Jackfish came home in October. Pop saw him first and called to me and Whippy Bird to come and see. Jackfish was trotting down the middle of the street, pushing a jack as hard as he could because he was in a hurry. The jack didn’t go fast enough, so Jackfish ran ahead of it and took the stairs at Mrs. Kovaks’s two at a time. He burst into the house calling for May Anna and Mrs. Kovaks. Then he saw Splooks sitting there in his underwear and Mrs. Kovaks in her slip, both of them having a drink. We never knew what they said or if they said anything at all. It wasn’t a minute before Jackfish came right back out. Pop grabbed his arm and said something about Mrs. Kovaks being a good woman despite how it looked. “Don’t throw away your family, you damned pig-headed Irishman!” he said. But Jackfish pulled away and ran down the street.
That was when me and Whippy Bird heard May Anna. She ran out on the stairs and called out “Jaaaackfish!” in the most pitiful voice I ever heard. Even in Her Man when John Garfield ran out, she didn’t sound as mournful as she did that day on the steps of her house. She yelled only once, but you could hear it echo all over Centerville, sounding back and forth like a bell ringing. There was no other sound, just “Jackfish” echoing fainter and fainter. Jackfish never looked back.
The reason Jackfish stayed out so long was he had struck i
t rich, exactly as he planned, though May Anna didn’t care much about that. She just wanted Jackfish back. It wasn’t a big strike, but it was big enough. It would have put the three of them on Easy Street. Whippy Bird said if Jackfish had moved back in, May Anna never would have become Marion Street, so maybe it was for the best. But then again, maybe not.
Jackfish sold out for a hundred thousand dollars. He went to Europe and mailed May Anna picture postcards every month or two. He never wrote anything, never even signed his name, but May Anna knew they came from Jackfish. After he spent all his money, he came back to Butte and worked as a miner until he got his back broke in a cave-in. Then he went on the dole. May Anna was in Hollywood when Jackfish had the accident, but we wrote her right away and told her about it. She sent Jackfish money every month until he died.
Me and Whippy Bird stopped by to see him from time to time, taking him fresh currant ring, which was his favorite. He said we’d turned out to be regular Cousin Jennies, but his heart wasn’t in teasing us anymore. He came to our house only once after that. It was when Pop died, and he was laid out in the parlor. Ma told me to go to bed since a friend would sit up with Pop that night. I couldn’t sleep, and when I heard somebody talking, I crept downstairs to see who it was. “I shoulda listened to you, Tommy. I’m here to say you were right, and I was a hard-headed damn fool.” I sneaked back up to my room so Jackfish wouldn’t know I’d heard him.
Whenever we went to opening night at one of May Anna’s movies in Butte, there was Jackfish in the audience. You couldn’t miss the red hair. Once I saw him coming out of the theater with tears streaming down his face, and the picture wasn’t even sad.
CHAPTER
4
Buster McKnight turned pro the night somebody spit on Toney McKnight’s shoe. I remember it because it was also the night Pink Varscoe kissed me for the first time.
Buster Midnight's Cafe Page 4