by Steve Paul
The detective saw the ring at precisely the same moment. “Why, hello,” he said. “Mrs. Price, I assume? Now where did you get that lovely piece of jewelry around your neck?”
Charlie’s wife beamed. “You know, I was just doing the laundry this morning, and earlier, Charlie had told me to dress up tonight for some big affair. And wouldn’t you know, he left this ring in his pants pocket for me to find?”
“I see,” Detective Phillips said, with exaggerated interest. “And is that a P written on that ring, in diamonds?”
Paulette smiled demurely. “Why, yes.”
“Can I have a moment in private?” The detective’s hand snaked up to grip Charlie’s arm. “If you’ll excuse us, ma’am.”
Sam emerged from where he’d been helping in the kitchen to see the detective guide Charlie through the front door. Sam’s eyes met Marcus’s, and the busboy wandered over.
“Seems like,” Sam whispered in the busboy’s ear, “Charles Sr.‘s predictions are coming to pass.”
And Marcus nodded.
THE PENDERGAST MUSKET
BY PHONG NGUYEN
West Bottoms
Jim Pendergast, 1882
After I took in all that money from the races, Papa Pendergast told me a joke I won’t soon forget.
A rich man walks into a saloon and says, “I read in the news today that Andrew Carnegie gave a hundred thousand dollars to the poor. I’ve had some good fortune in my day, and I too would like to devote my life to philanthropy. Can you tell me where I can find the poor?” So the drunkard to his right chimes up and says, “Well, sir, I’ve been laid off from my job at the factory since last Tuesday and my back hurts so bad from the fifteen years I worked there I can hardly take another job. I’m mighty hard up and I wouldn’t mind an act of grace whether it comes from the Lord or His messengers on earth.” So with a tear in his eye and a kind word, the rich man gives him a hundred dollars.
Hearing this, the drunkard to his left leans over and says, “Lord knows that no man can measure his suffering against another’s, but I can tell you that I’ve never known what it’s like to make a decent day’s wages. I was orphaned by the war and raised on a railroad car, never had a bed of my own and grew up so sickly nobody’d employ me. Last week I got my first real job, at the factory, and wouldn’t you know it but before I get my first bank note, they up and fire me last Wednesday.” With a consoling look, the rich man reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out another hundred, pressing it into the drunkard’s palm with a handshake.
Pretty soon all the drunkards are clamoring around and telling him stories, each one surpassing the last in the details of their poverty and the depth of their suffering, but pretty soon he starts to notice a recurring trend in all their stories. It appears that every one of them has been fired from a local factory last week. After giving away every hundred-dollar bill that he owns, the rich man turns red-faced with anger, imagining the soulless tycoon who bankrupted this whole town.
Turning to the bartender, the rich man says, “I have done all that I possibly can within my means, and now I will go make my fortune again, so I can do more good works for the poor. But before I go, may I ask you, who is this terrible tyrant who hires men at the factory, works them to death, then puts them out on the street when nothing is left of them but tales of woe?”
Looking blankly at the rich man, the bartender says, “Why, sir, I thought you already knew. It’s Andrew Carnegie!”
I’ve spent too much time over the years looking for a moral. Money will ruin your soul. Never trust a rich man. But I figure the keystone is this: If you get rich, resist the temptation to give to the poor, because they’ll have it all, and pretty soon you’ll be the poor.
After some years I figured out that Papa meant it as a sort of strategy, a way of living in the harsh world of business, which he knew I was fixing to enter: If you’re the richest man in the world, all you have to do is give away a little; in trying to emulate you, your competition will impoverish themselves.
But at the age of twenty-two, this is all I heard: “Be a saloon keeper, son, and you’ll learn everybody’s secrets.”
* * *
It’s six a.m., the dog’s hour, when I unlock the doors and let the first customers in. By opening time I’ve already had the night cops coming off their beat, playing one last game of rummy and shooting fistfuls of whiskey so they’ll have something to sleep off, and one salesman who sets up at the bar and keeps looking at the door after every sip, trying to muster the strength to kick back the stool and get out—an Irishman named Whelan, I let him in early because he’s more than just a regular; he’s like furniture now.
Besides, I take pride in the way my establishment welcomes every soul, provides a second home to all of the lost, and Whelan is the most lost sonuvabitch I’ve ever seen.
Right away Rob Toke comes in with an antique musket he wants to sell, to keep him in drink for another week. His short hair is brushed back, making it stick up part of the way like stepped-on grass. He’s got lady hips and a torso that can’t seem to keep any weight, a sharp nose and a way of raising his eyebrows when he talks that makes him look surprised by his own words. I’m just the opposite, I suppose: heavy around the middle, slim in the legs, and as excitable as an Indian chief.
“Ain’t she a beauty?” he says, cradling the musket like a baby. He places it down on the wood grain by the cask ale.
Leaning over it so I can smell the gunpowder, I shrug. “It’s not from the war, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Not the war between the states, my friend,” he says, running his fingers along the Dutch lock, a hundred-year-old span of iron, admirably worn. “The War of Independence. It belonged to my great-grandpa.”
Seeing as he hasn’t put a musket ball through me, I can only assume he brought it in hoping to sell it off. “Does this look like a pawnshop to you, Toke?”
“Come on, Jim,” he says. “It’s just a gift. I figure since my dad’s passed, it’s better to get rid of all the old stuff.” He fidgets, looks away from the gun, scans the room, lingering on the tap. I’ve always liked Toke, but no man ever wore his weaknesses so openly as him.
“But if you were interested, I’d take a week of drinks in trade.”
I stare at him a long time. I mean a long time. “Take your treasure and bury it, Toke. In my place, no good man ever goes thirsty.”
He brushes back his prickly hair, mutters his thanks, and waits a full forty seconds before filling his glass.
* * *
John, Michael, even Hannah, or for that matter any of my brothers or sisters, have a job waiting for them at The Climax—which I named for the horse on whom I won my fortune—if they find themselves out of work, but only Tom actually shows up every day to clean the place the way a worker is supposed to. And the boy is all of ten. Trouble is he’s starting to talk like a saloon regular, and John has reported as much to our mother.
“You teetotaling sonuvabitch,” Tom says to John that afternoon. Then he turns to me like he’s tattling to Mom. “As soon as John showed up last night he started cutting customers off at three drinks.”
John makes a production of polishing the counter, ignoring the wily runt in front of him. “This way of life—the kind of business you run—isn’t long for this world,” he says, dropping his Christian wisdom on the saloon floor like rose petals.
“Nothing is, Johnny,” I say, dropping my saloon wisdom on him like a horse pile. John has wet-looking hair that falls down on his broad forehead in pointy strands, and manly features that stand in contrast to the bruised expressions he often wears. He could have been on the rugby team at college. Tom’s hair is similarly straight, but it moves away from the front of his head like it’s afraid to get in the way of his little bulldog face.
“Close up, will you?” I say to John as Tom and I make for the door. “And keep the tap flowing until the midnight hour. We’re gonna get the hell out of the Bottoms tonight.”
* * *
>
Tom and I have always been Folly Theater faithfuls. They mean to keep a body entertained, and weekdays or weekends I’ve never had to suffer through a miserable opera or melodrama or traveling lecture. They get the best comics, jugglers, hypnotists, magicians, and quick-drawers on the circuit every time. Last week it was a plate spinner who kept up to eight pieces of fine china going at once; tonight it’s a more elevating form of relaxation: a traveling show, the wonders of the wizard of Menlo Park. Mr. Edison won’t be making an appearance himself, of course, but two of his assistants, trained in the operation of his phonographic and incandescent machines, will be.
The ushers at the Folly walk the aisles and pass around printed cards from silver trays, while wearing gloves; Tom rolls his eyes at me, and I mutter a plea to the Lord that the Folly isn’t going swanky. As it turns out, written on the cards are merely reminders not to smoke in the theater, as the equipment being used today is sensitive, and combustible. We sink in our chairs, Tom more than I, and light our pipes anyway.
A gentleman in a mustache and a white suit walks through the parted curtains and down the center of the stage, to faint applause, while behind him an assistant—a long-legged lady—wheels a table full of contraptions out into the middle. For her, the audience gives a more stirring welcome, with some hoots and howls thrown into the mix.
Though he looks convincingly foreign, the man’s speech betrays his Midwestern origins. Cynically, I conclude that he’s not even an inventor’s assistant from New Jersey, but a Chicagoan who purchased some sophisticated new equipment, trained himself to use it, and now travels week-long tours with his pretty young wife to satellite cities like St. Paul, Indianapolis, and Detroit, where they stay at the Savoy and the Ritz, getting royal treatment just for throwing around Edison’s name.
“Men and women of Kansas City, today you are going to see—and hear—some of the most revolutionary science that man has ever devised. So prepare yourselves for the impossible.”
First they set up the phonograph. A baritone voice bellows in operatic Italian, from the very walls it seems, followed by a procession of voices and a swelling music. I guess the Folly is going swanky after all. At first I think that they must have a chorus and band hidden beneath the stage, the way that, I’m told, magicians will hide doves and rabbits in cages underneath the planks of wood; but then he shuts off the machine, and all that’s left is the ghost of an echo.
Then, while the mustachioed gentleman is doing his demonstration of incandescence, one of the ushers takes the stage and whispers in the ear of his assistant. After the next bout of applause the mustache steps forward and says, “The proprietors of the Folly Theater have asked me to make a public announcement. During yesterday’s Wild West show, a valuable and rare Revolutionary War musket was stolen off the back of Winnifred the sharpshooter’s wagon trailer. Anyone with information leading to the return of the firearm and the arrest of the man who stole it will receive a considerable reward. Now, on with the show!”
I don’t stand up and leave the theater abruptly because to do so right after such an announcement would implicate me; but I am sorely tempted. I need to find and warn Toke, then I need to strangle the bastard for trying to unload his ill-gotten gains on me.
* * *
The next day, as we get ready to open, I gather the family together—by blood and by labor—and we sit around quiet, waiting for Winston, who used to be a roughneck with me in the ironworking days before The Climax, and who now serves as the doorkeeper. Finally Winston lumbers in and pulls back a chair. Winston’s sort is an indispensable friend when you live and work in the Bottoms. I lead off: “I have something to say. Not one of you is gonna talk to the law today or any day. Even if they’re offering a hundred dollars for information about that gun. It don’t matter. If they ask, Have you seen a man walking around with a Revolutionary War musket in his arms? you just laugh in their faces. They’ll get used to it. Understand?”
“You ain’t gonna back the bastard, are you?” Tom says. “You might as good get hauled off to jail.”
“Shut your bone box, Tom. This ain’t your fight,” I reply.
“I knew this business would bite you back,” says John automatically, and even he seems to sense that his sanctimonious posture has gone, perhaps, too far. Folks are staring at the two of us, and Winston lifts his eyebrow.
Tom starts to pipe up, but I show him a finger. “Take whatever you were about to say and pocket it, Tommy.” Then I turn to John. “You can condemn my immortal soul to your heart’s content, Johnny,” I tell him, “but say nothing to the law about the musket.”
At that, we all stand up, ready to get to work. Just then Whelan, who we hardly noticed sitting on the stool at the bar’s end, stands up, sober as a churchwoman, and says, “I seen that boy Toke with the same one.”
It’s such a shock to see him on his feet, that between registering the quick pace of his speech and taking in the size of him, we’re all of us still and silent as the shadows of houses.
“TJ, Mike, John, Gil, Winston, go do the books,” I say, and the five men—a couple of them just boys—move to the back room and give us the floor of the saloon.
Standing off with Irish, I notice for the first time that he’s a hairline above my six feet. “What’re you playing at, Whelan?”
“I’m not playing at all, you old rusty guts. When you put down a month’s wages on a longshot and the horse came in first place, Jim, that was your day.” He breathes on his hands as though it’s cold in the saloon. His first day without firewater in so many years, his body doesn’t know how to make its own warmth. “Today I heard somebody’d pay a hundred dollars for a piece of information that I happen to know, so today is my day.”
“Listen good, peckerwood. You didn’t hear what you think you heard,” I say. But damned Whelan has heard me bark before.
“I’m gonna walk out of that door, and I’m gonna go to the authorities. It’s up to you whether you want to stand in my way.”
I step aside.
“Go to the police. I hope you do. They’ll come in here and say, Jim, your regular Whelan said he saw the musket offered you by a boy by the name of Toke. And I’ll say, Sir, that Whelan couldn’t see a hole in a ladder, and that’ll be the end of it.” I grab the broom, sweep the floor by the entrance, and give him a butler’s bow.
“Winston!” I call out, and the big man steps through the door frame, nearly filling it with his bulk. “Bounce him.”
Winston steps in the room, followed by Tom, and the two of them crowd Whelan out the door. By the morning street among the rushers, Winston says, “I just wish I could see the cops’ faces when the lousiest drunk in Kansas City walks into their station with his tail down and his face busted up from a bar brawl.” The glass doors swing closed, and I can see them, but barely hear them talk.
Whelan touches his cheek, as though expecting to find something there, and says, “But my face is—”
It’s just then that Winston gives him a nose-ender, laying him out on the street.
Tom walks back in the saloon and picks up the broom that I set against the jamb. Then he steps back out holding it halfway down like a baseball club.
* * *
I find Toke on the banks of the Missouri, still skulking around the Bottoms, with the stolen musket hidden in a rolled quilt. I’m just glad he didn’t wash up there like a dead fish.
“The word downtown is you stole that musket,” I say matter-of-factly.
“I left him a coin,” he responds with a laugh that he couldn’t help even if he were sober. Seeing how I’m not laughing, he straightens up good and quick. “Jimmy, you gotta understand. He just left it out there in the back alley. If I didn’t take it, someone else would’ve.”
“But you tried to shed your burden onto me,” I say.
Toke blinks maybe a hundred times.
“It’s okay, Toke. I’ve already seen one man get a hiding today. Besides, you’re a bully trap.”
He smiles l
ike a schoolboy, then corrects himself. “Whelan, was it? The man?”
“Don’t worry who. Man is a loyal creature by nature, and I’m no different. The kind I know that don’t generally follow that line are beneath being called men.”
With that we started walking the seven blocks to The Climax. We went silently, cutting through an uncontrollably red Missouri dusk. At the door, I turned to Toke and shook his hand, then lit my pipe.
“You know, Whelan said my lucky break came on the day Climax won the big race. But he’s wrong about that. Someday I’ll be called for an even higher purpose, and when I am, I’ll need a big family. Are you my family, Toke?”
He nods vigorously, his eyebrows shouting their consent.
“What are we gonna do now?” he asks.
“There ain’t but the one solution,” I say. “Gimme the musket.”
Toke doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t fret with worry over what ills might befall me for taking on his burdens.
After the boy leaves, and the windows have gone dark as scotch ale, I drag one of the barstools behind the counter, climb up so my boots pinch on the upholstery, and in the plain view of thirty men, mount the old musket above the mirror backing. As if to say, I’d do the same for any of you. As though to dare any stranger who walks through the doors of The Climax to just try and boast of their own kindnesses.
About the Contributors
Mitch Brian cocreated and wrote episodes for Batman: The Animated Series and cowrote the NBC miniseries The ‘70s. He has written screenplays for producers and directors including Chris Columbus, Oliver Stone, Geena Davis, James Ellroy, and Robert Schwentke. His plays are published by Dramatic Publishing and have been produced worldwide. He teaches screenwriting and film studies at the University of Missouri—Kansas City.