Whippy Bird told them Buster once studied to be a priest, that he went to church every day and Pig Face always gave Buster a mass before his fights. She said Pig Face and Buster were old friends, which is about the funniest thing anybody ever printed about Buster. Then she told another reporter that Buster’s father was a copper king, and he owned all the buildings uptown, which was why he was called Broadway Buster. I guess me and Whippy Bird can’t complain about reporters not getting the true facts straight.
I told them Buster’s favorite thing to do was hunt jackalope, which everybody knows is a made-up animal that’s half rabbit, half antelope. I invented jackalope hunting at Pork Chop John’s, which is where me and Whippy Bird still go when we’ve got our faces fixed for a pork chop, and nothing else will satisfy it except one loaded at Pork Chop John’s—Uptown, not on the Flats. We’ve been going to Pork Chop John’s so long, we remember when they left the bone in.
I was passing the time of day with John when a man with an ugly tie and a straw hat sat down on the stool next to me and said he was a reporter from the Herald-Tribune. He acted like hot stuff, the way your reporters do today, and he thought I should turn cartwheels just for the privilege of being at the same counter with him. He put a Camel on his lip, fired it up, and said he was looking for a real Butte native and would I answer a couple of questions. I guess he didn’t know that by then I knew the ropes.
I told him I’d answer his questions just as soon as I finished chewing on a burger made out of jackalope that Buster shot, and darn if that fool didn’t believe it. He wrote a story about Buster being a jackalope burger hunter. Me and Whippy Bird thought he’d be embarrassed when he found out he’d been suckered, but all the other reporters picked it up, so he figured he got a regular scoop, as the fellow says. After Toney read that article, he called Buster the Jackalope Burger King of America. For years, people went into Pork Chop John’s and ordered “jackalope” burgers. They got served the pork chop loaded, which is what they call it when they add mustard, pickle, and onion. Toney liked pork chop sandwiches so much he said once that being Pork Chop John would be about the best thing in the world.
Every store in Butte sold Buster Midnight ribbons and pins and other classy souvenirs. Me and Pink bought a Buster Midnight doll with little tiny boxing gloves and orange silk trunks for Moon. I still have my lime green rayon pillow with the gold fringe that says BUTTE, MONTANA, HOME OF BUSTER MIDNIGHT.
There were so many people crowded into Butte and Columbia Gardens for the training that they had to call in the state troopers to keep an eye on things. The law had its hands full stopping people from pestering Buster and arresting the pickpockets and the crooked gamblers. There were hookers, too, of course, but mostly the troopers let them alone. You could tell the hookers because they all tried to look like May Anna, with platinum hair and ankle-strap shoes. They walked up and down at the corner of Broadway and Wyoming where May Anna was discovered, just the way your Hollywood hopefuls hung out at the drugstore where Lana Turner got her break.
Toney never had such a good time in his life as he did when Buster was training. He slicked back his hair, which was parted just off center, and poured some kind of lime toilet water on himself. Toney was the first and only man I ever knew personally who wore perfume. He grew a little Ronald Colman mustache and wore pleated white pants and brown-and-white shoes, just like the Texans do now when they come to Butte in the summer. He tied a silk scarf around his neck, too. Whippy Bird said he looked like a pimp, though she never told Toney that. He thought he was the snazziest thing in the state of Montana, running around and yelling orders to people.
The only one who didn’t seem excited was Buster. If he wasn’t so big, you wouldn’t have noticed him at all dressed in his old gray sweater and the baggy brown pants he bought for high school graduation. He never dressed up unless he was around May Anna. Even when he was in the ring practicing, he wore just a ratty pair of black trunks and an undershirt. Buster laughed when little kids went up to his sparring partners and asked, “Can I have your autograph, Mr. Midnight?” Buster didn’t care that they mistook other boxers for him or about giving autographs, but I think it disappointed Toney that nobody ever asked him for one. Whippy Bird says that was the reason he carried around the tortoiseshell fountain pen with the gold nib that leaked blue ink all over his shirt.
The championship fight was the most exciting day I remember in Butte, even bigger than when Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Marion Street came to town. There were flags on every street post and bunting stretched across the street and BUSTER MIDNIGHT CHAMPION signs every time you turned around. Most of the stores and restaurants had life-size pictures of Buster in his famous crouch that they hung in the windows. Some of the restaurants even named dishes for Buster, like the Buster Burger—100 percent pure beef. “Tough meat is what they mean,” Whippy Bird said.
May Anna took the train all the way to New York and had a private compartment, and when she ate in the diner people asked for her autograph, too. Though she didn’t visit the training camp, she sent Buster telegrams almost every day and even called him long-distance. She gave interviews about how she was Buster’s number-one fan and planned her filming schedule around that fight. I think she loved Buster more during that time than she ever did.
She sent Pig Face two hundred and fifty dollars to light candles for Buster, which she said ought to buy enough candles to burn down half of Butte. She didn’t believe burning candles would do Buster any good, but she wanted to rub it in to Pig Face that Buster was going to be the champion. What was more, she didn’t send the money to Father Joseph Stenner. She sent it to Father Pig Face Stenner.
Whippy Bird and Chick and little Moon came to our house to listen to the fight on the new RCA with the picture of the little dog on the side. Pink bought it especially for the occasion and chose the one with the biggest speaker so you could hear it all over the house. After a while though, we decided to go uptown to the newspaper office and listen to the fight with everybody else who gathered outside.
It was so crowded me and Whippy Bird each held one of Moon’s little hands so he wouldn’t get lost. Moon was only five years old, but being sharp like he is, he knew what was going on. He waved a little flag that had a picture of Buster on it, and kept yelling, “Bust him, Uncle Buster!” We thought that was so cute, me and Whippy Bird yelled it, too.
Chick bought us all beer and popcorn and tamales from the hot tamale man, except for Moon, who got a box of Cracker Jack, which was a disappointment to him since the prize was a bracelet made of tin. I told Moon I’d trade him the bracelet for a little toy car at the five-and-dime next time I was uptown. I wore that bracelet a few times, but the paint chipped off. Now it’s in my memory box, a souvenir of Buster’s big fight.
You’d think with all those people yelling, those hookers drunk, and those kids pushing, you wouldn’t be able to hear the fight, but the newspaper had big speakers all over the front of the building that boomed so loud you could hear them clear up to Centerville. Whippy Bird said we should have sat on the front porch and listened to the fight. I said if we were going to do that, we should stay inside and listen on the new RCA. I think Pink was disappointed that we didn’t stay home and listen, though he had just as good a time as the rest of us.
Everybody knows Buster beat Clay Tom Baker, so I’m not going to tell about it. You can look it up in the history books if you want a round-by-round account. It was a tough fight, all right. Buster developed a cauliflower ear on his right side from getting it ripped open. He got in a couple of good punches himself. Still, he didn’t have a knockout, which was what we were hoping for. Me and Whippy Bird were both making deals with God for that. Buster won by a decision, and when the radio announcer said Buster was the new champ, we all went wild. Me and Whippy Bird screamed so loud, we were hoarse the next two days.
Afterward, we went down to the Rocky Mountain Cafe to celebrate. Whippy Bird wanted to take Moon home first, but I said it was a night to r
emember. Moon always gave me the credit for letting him stay up that night. He surely paid me back for the favor, and then some.
Chick and Pink were so excited they ordered martinis for all of us then a bottle of champagne to go with our chili. I handed Moon a silver dollar and told him to put it in the slot machine for me and I’d split the winnings with him, which means I must have been drunk because I am usually very careful with my money.
We just couldn’t lose that night. First Buster won the champion-ship, then damned if Moon didn’t hit the jackpot of sixty dollars. I gave him half the winnings, and Whippy Bird told him never to play the slots again because it would be downhill from there. She gave Moon a dollar, then used the rest to start a college fund for him. The next day, just for the hell of it, Pink and I went out and bought a Plymouth station wagon with wood sides that we’d been saving for.
Me and Whippy Bird never could get over the fact we’d won so much money at the Rocky Mountain Cafe, and on that night of all nights. She always called the Buster Midnight championship fight the night Effa Commander won the jackpot.
CHAPTER
11
Since both Pink and Chick worked on the Hill in an industry that was essential to the war, they figured they wouldn’t have to join up. In fact, the government sent men who refused to fight for America up to Butte to work in the mines. Pink and Chick talked for a long time about whether they ought to enlist, explaining to me and Whippy Bird it wasn’t right to leave us alone if they didn’t have to, especially with little Moon to take care of and a baby on the way. My baby. I was pregnant, and Pink wanted to be there because he was afraid I’d get sick again. I wanted him, too, though this time around I was sure I’d be all right. So far, all the signs were good.
At first, me and Whippy Bird were glad they weren’t going, but we knew they would sooner or later no matter how much they said they wouldn’t, so we talked it over on the day me and Whippy Bird took Moon up to Hennessy’s to buy him a snowsuit.
After we finished shopping, we went to the Creamery Cafe to buy Moon hot chocolate and a piece of apple pie. “Chick says he’d never join the army and leave me,” Whippy Bird said. She wiped off Moon’s hot-chocolate mustache. “Baby, you want another marshmal-low?”
“I’m not a baby,” Moon said.
“Of course you’re not,” Whippy Bird said. “Pretty soon you’re going to be the man of the family.”
I put down my fork, and me and Whippy Bird looked at each other.
“Well, he’s likely to be. They want to go, you know,” she said. “In the worst way. Both of them. It’s not the way of Butte boys to hide out from a war. I guess I’ve made up my mind they’re going to do it.”
“Has Chick told you that?” I asked her.
“No. What about Pink?”
I shook my head. “But I know Pink. He wants to go. He’s just afraid for the baby.”
“For you, you mean. He’s scared to death something will happen, and you’ll be there all by yourself.”
“Well, I won’t,” I said. “You had a baby. I can, too.”
“That is surely true,” Whippy Bird added. “Besides, you’ve got me.” She didn’t have to say that. The surest thing in the world was that I could count on her. Then Whippy Bird came up with an idea that was so obvious I don’t know why we never thought of it before. “You know, Effa Commander, we could live together. You’ve got two extra bedrooms in your house. Moon and I could move in, and we’d split the rent. That way we’d both save money and I’d be right there if you needed me.”
It was the right solution, we all agreed after we talked it over. At first, though, Pink wasn’t so sure. “If anything happened … ,” he said.
“Oh, fooey. What’s going to happen? I’ll have two people to watch out for me instead of one. Whippy Bird and Moon.”
Pink nodded. “That would relieve my mind, all right.” I knew Pink had a vision of me lying dead on the bedroom floor, so I put my head on his shoulder and told him I’d rather have him there, but his country needed him, too. I was scared to have a baby without Pink, but I couldn’t stand in the way of him fighting for our country.
Chick said, if Whippy Bird was staying with me, he could be sure she didn’t step.
“What do you mean?” Whippy Bird said right back to him. “I’ll have a livein maid to tend Moon so I can be free as a bird.”
“A dead bird, if I catch you,” Chick said, and we all laughed because Whippy Bird never loved anybody as much as she loved Chick. She was the most loyal person I ever knew. Chick knew that, too.
The boys didn’t give us time to think it over and back out. The very next day Pink and Chick joined the army. They figured if they signed up together, they might stay together so they could look out for each other. Raise hell together, you mean, Whippy Bird said. Die together, too, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Later on, of course, me and Whippy Bird talked about it. She’d thought that, too: if they didn’t enlist together, there might be a chance of at least one of them coming home.
We were too excited then to talk about anybody getting killed though I knew in my heart I was as scared for Pink going to war as I was for me having a baby without him. The boys said they’d be back in a year, when the war was over. That’s what they all said. All the men in Butte were joining up to fight the Germans and the Japs, and it got so you saw more military uniforms around town than hard hats. The depot was packed day and night with soldiers getting on trains and people saying good-bye. Every time we went out for dinner, there was somebody giving a toast to a boy who was leaving to fight for his country.
We had a big party for Pink and Chick at our house the night before they left. May Anna couldn’t come, of course, but she sent a telegram saying: WITH PINK CHICK NARMY AMERICA SAFE STOP SO IS BUTTE STOP LOVEANDKISSES MAK. Buster and Toney came, of course, and I’ve never seen four grown men so drunk in my life. It’s a wonder the boys got on the train in the morning.
Buster told me he and Toney ought to be going instead of Pink and Chick since they were single men. Later, the newspapers said Buster was a slacker. They wrote he pulled strings and got a deferment because he was the champion. Somebody in the United States Congress said there ought to be an investigation. What nobody ever knew was that Buster tried to enlist, but he was turned down for flat feet and being deaf in one ear, courtesy of Clay Tom Baker in the championship fight. He was so ashamed, he never told anybody but us.
Buster was down-at-the-mouth when Pink and Chick left. We knew he wanted to be on that train with them. He stood on the platform for a long time after the train pulled out, until Moon said, “Come on, Uncle Buster.” Then he hit big old Buster with a little tiny Buster Midnight punch.
Buster said, “Hey, bub, don’t you mess with me!” Then he bopped Moon on top of his head and picked him up and carried him to the car. Moon always did know how to cheer people up.
Nobody had the right to criticize Buster because he did everything he could for the boys in uniform. He gave exhibition matches to raise money for war relief, he taught boxing to the soldiers, and he went all over Europe to entertain the troops. Toney said some of the places Buster went were just as dangerous as the front lines. There was no doubt about it. Buster was as patriotic as Pink or Chick or me and Whippy Bird. Or Marion Street, who risked her life to entertain the troops at the battlefront.
With that easy pregnancy, I never thought anything could go wrong. I worked at Gamer’s until my legs swelled up, then I quit and laid around the house getting fat. Whippy Bird wouldn’t let me do any work. She sent me out to sit on the steps to watch Moon play while she cleaned the house. Other times I stretched out in a big chair reading magazines and listening to the radio. I could spend a whole day answering one of Pink’s letters if I wanted to. The boys wrote us every single week from Camp Carson in Colorado, where they were stationed.
Whippy Bird made over her maternity clothes for me since she could sew. She’s so short, they looked funny on me when I first tried them on
, so she let down the hems and added ruffles. She even tried fixing all the meals, though I decided there was no reason for her to take on that responsibility, too. It gave me something to occupy my mind, and that was when I developed my special interest in cooking. When Whippy Bird came home at night I surprised her with a Hoover pudding or a hard-times cake, which was a good wartime dessert because it didn’t use butter or sugar.
Whippy Bird worked as a typist at the Anaconda office while I watched Moon. I dressed him in his Hennessy’s snowsuit every day so we could go for a walk. It was white with little ears on the hood, and when he put it on he looked like a rabbit. We called him Moon Bunny when he wore it. I bought him red mittens to go with it in case Moon got lost in the snow. If we couldn’t see him in that white suit, we’d surely see those red mittens. We sent May Anna a picture of Moon in the snowsuit, and she wrote back that his new name should be Franklin Delano Rabbit. Whippy Bird always warned me to be careful when I was out with Moon. She was afraid I’d fall down on the ice and hurt the baby. “Hell, Whippy Bird. This baby is not made of glass,” I said. But maybe it was. Maybe it was.
The baby came early. We were sitting down to dinner when I told Whippy Bird it was time. There weren’t any little contractions, just pushing pains that told me we better hurry. Whippy Bird was as cool as could be. She told me to get my things while she ran Moon next door and warmed up the Jackpot. It was snowing hard, a regular Butte blizzard. Colder than hell, and snow coming down so fast you couldn’t see anything outside. But the Jackpot was as warm as toast. That car always did have a good heater. Whippy Bird looked at the storm coming down and said, “You want me to call a cab instead, Effa Commander?”
No time, I told her. So she pointed the Jackpot toward the hospital, zipped in and out of the cars, ran a red light, and got us there in fine shape. I said Whippy Bird should have signed up as an ambulance driver during the war because she always got where she was going.
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