by John Jakes
“You bet, kid. Mary was up in Detroit visiting her sister. The sequence took seven hours. Afterward I fucked that little lotus blossom up one side and down the other. She loved it, pleaded for more. She was out of her mind from opium.”
A thrilling shiver raced up Jimmy’s spine. He admired Shadow—his shrewd business sense, his cool ruthlessness. In his own sphere Shadow was a winner. Maybe not a big winner, not just yet; but he would be. The colonel soon became a model for Jimmy, who had similar ambition. He intended to be a winner by the time he was the colonel’s age. He’d never permit himself to be turned aside from that goal; never be distracted by the maunderings of priests, or the naggings of a wife, or the pleas of any brats he fathered, because he wasn’t going to father any. And if he should father one by accident he’d never stick around. Anyone who let things like the law, or scruples, get in his way was a chump.
Shadow worked under enormous pressure that he put on himself. Jimmy thought it stupid, but it was a fact. The colonel frowned a lot and never stopped to chat when he was busy, but suppertime was different. Then, when Mary served him beer or sometimes a shot of whiskey, he’d stop scowling, drop his airs, and grow talkative—as if making up for the rest of the day. One evening when Jimmy was relaxing too, and feeling curious, he asked Shadow how he’d earned the rank of colonel.
“Why, I awarded it to myself, kid. Just like I gave myself a high-class name. You don’t want to be too honest in this world, it doesn’t impress anybody.”
Jimmy was agog. “Are you saying your name ain’t Shadow?”
“I confess!” Shadow clapped his hand over his heart. “Actually it’s Sigmund Seelmeister.” He said this with great relish. As a second glass of beer arrived via Mary, he went on to explain that he didn’t come from a fine old family of Denver pioneers with Puritan origins in Maine; he’d been born on a pig farm near Evansville, Indiana. He’d run away at age eleven to get free of a stepfather who beat him all the time. “Ran away from the smell of pig manure, too. Even thinking about it still makes me puke.” Shadow said this with his shirt hanging out of his pants, one tooled boot propped on the kitchen table, and his tall glass of beer close by.
As a runaway, he’d worked where he could, mostly as a roving farmhand.
“I did it for three years. It was dull as a Presbyterian hymnal, and it broke your damn back, too. Then one Saturday night, with a week’s pay in my pocket, I bought a ticket to a traveling show in Logansport, Indiana. Professor Martin’s Minstrels. I went wild for what I saw on that stage—the music, the dancing—it was a whole new experience. I hung around the theater door afterward and hit it lucky; they needed a hired boy for scut work. That night I said goodbye to sweet corn and hay baling and chicken shit forever.
“I was a big kid. Only fourteen, but I could handle the hardest work they gave me. For six months I shifted scenery, took the wardrobe trunks to the depot, delivered them to the hotel in the next town—that kind of stuff. But I kept after Professor Martin to try me out in the show. I had a good singing voice if I do say so, and I knew how to use it; I was singing hymns in church at age four. I was limber and quick on my feet, too. Finally the troupe lost a man and the professor said yes. I played one-night stands with Martin’s Minstrels for almost six years, blacking up every night, warbling coon songs over the footlights, telling coon jokes, and dancing the Cakewalk—” His right hand was raised above his head, waving a phantom tambourine.
A curious, dreamy smile came to his craggy face. “I loved it. I loved the applause, even when it was just hicks clapping. I never got over the excitement of whipping up an audience. Listening to them stomp and cheer for a show you put on for them …”
His hand came down. “After six years, though, I knew I was going nowhere. Then I had another stroke of luck. I met Mary. I was twenty. She came to the show in some jerk town in Missouri. She had this sparkler on her hand, a wedding ring big as my thumbnail, which just whetted my appetite, don’t y’know. Of course she also whetted my appetite with her fabulous tits.”
He gulped the rest of his beer and belched. “I guessed right away that she was hot for a romp on somebody else’s sheets. I was right, she was married to this two-hundred-pound feed and seed merchant with a problem. No iron in his naval gun. She came up to me after the show and said she loved my performance. Then she said, ‘I’ll bet you give good performances wherever you are.’ She didn’t have to draw pictures. I took her back to the hotel room, screwed her for three or four hours. She made a hell of a lot of noise, enjoying herself for maybe the first time ever. It didn’t surprise me. Big men are big all over, know what I mean?”
At this point Mary entered the kitchen and overheard. She put her hands on her hips. “Sid! Are you telling that story again?”
“Bet your life. I’ve seen tits and I’ve seen tits, but these are grand prize winners.” He grabbed them to demonstrate, then pulled her into his lap.
“You wicked devil.” They both laughed uproariously, and she gave him a long wet kiss on the mouth. Jimmy sat there agape.
“I quit the show and Mary and I knocked around on the road a few years. I sold things, we didn’t starve, but I missed something, and I didn’t know what it was till I discovered these little pictures that move.” His gaze drifted dreamily again. “Ever heard the word ‘epiphany,’ Jim? Fine English word, epiphany. I had one. Just like seeing Martin’s Minstrels in Logansport. Magical …”
“That’s enough jabber,” Mary said, bouncing off his lap. “We’ll be dead of starvation if I don’t get something on the stove.”
So Jimmy didn’t find out how Shadow had jumped to the raffish profession of the flickers. Nor did he ask later. He really didn’t care so long as he got paid.
Of girls he now had a plentiful supply. For all his pastiness and skinniness, he was excellent at maintaining appearances. Thanks to the free lessons he was a good dancer. He’d developed a pretty good line and used it to advantage. One relationship early in the year had lasted over two months, an unusual length of time for him. This was with a girl named Rosie French.
Rosie had moved up from Pullman after her pa was killed during the strike. She was an amateur whore, not allied with any house. Nor did she enjoy the protection of a cadet. It was a dangerous way to do business on the Levee, but Rosie was tough. He admired her.
She in turn admired his ambition. She had ambitions of her own, she told him. She intended to be a music hall soubrette in New York, thereby making herself available to rich men from the audience. She’d go East as soon as she had enough cash put by. Jimmy didn’t know a lot about legitimate forms of entertainment, but he had a pretty good ear for music. After listening to Rosie sing “Where Did You Get That Hat?”, he decided she didn’t have much of a chance of becoming an artistic success. She’d have to keep on performing on her back, too. At that she was accomplished.
Rosie had a temper that was almost the equal of his. After a stupid quarrel over something trivial, she ordered him out of her room. He threatened her with a beating and she countered by jerking a little silver-plated hideout pistol from under her mattress.
“Bare knuckles may work on some poor sisters, Jimmy, but they won’t work with me. Lay one hand on me and I’ll empty this in your face.”
For the first time in memory, Jimmy lowered his fists in front of an adversary. He even grinned sheepishly and tried to hug her. She wouldn’t have it. She locked him out.
Strangely, he found himself drawn back to her despite that kind of treatment. He found her room vacant. An old crone on the floor below said Rosie had left for New York. He felt bad for days. Rosie was a piece of work. He’d liked her more than he realized. He missed her.
In the spring, before he met Paul again, Jimmy joined Bathhouse John’s campaign flying squad for the first time. It was exhilarating work, and Shadow was glad to have him do it because it solidified the colonel’s relationship with the ward bosses.
Night after night before the city elections, the Bath marched thro
ugh the streets of the First Ward leading his Democratic Fife and Drum Corps. Sometimes there were five or six hundred in the torchlight parade, men and women and youngsters too. At every saloon, the Bath bought beer and put in a word for his favored candidates. His flying squad policed the route of march. Silenced any opponents foolish enough to heckle; tore off their lapel badges or campaign hatbands, and if that didn’t work, mussed them up. They ripped opposition posters from walls and telegraph poles, ran off anyone attempting to paste up new ones, and generally established the supremacy of the Bath and the Hink in the election process.
Election day activity began early. The bars opened at 5 A.M. so that the extra voters Hinky Dink brought in could be fueled to amiability by six, when the polls opened. Regrettably, at that hour the bars had to close for the day.
A few minutes after six, Jimmy boarded an already crowded tallyho hired by the Bath to carry his flying squad around the district. Twenty men rode inside and on the coach, all of them partially or completely drunk. Throughout the day the coach careened from polling place to polling place, summoned by telephone or foot messenger by election judges who thought the opposition was showing too large a turnout, or voting dead names, a prerogative the Democrats jealously preserved for themselves. Usually the sight of the Bath’s tallyho swaying to a stop and spilling its crew of toughs was enough to assure an opposition retreat and a return to favorable conditions at the polling place. Sometimes the Bath himself was present, the pockets of his black overcoat bulging with coins. Dimes in the left one, quarters in the right. He handed them out to voters with disarming innocence.
Jimmy had a thoroughly fine time that day. He bashed a few heads and satisfied himself once, with a randy little whore, standing up in an alley. After dark, the outcome of the election assured, everyone got drunk again. Whores from all the Levee establishments gave away their favors. Jimmy looked up the tart he’d poked earlier. They drank and frolicked most of the night.
Yes, sir, Jimmy thought when he woke up around ten next morning, the Levee was the center of the universe. Who cared if you were sick and hung over? Who cared if the pain in your head was fierce enough to pop out your eyeballs? This was the place to be, the Levee, and those who didn’t go down the line and savor its glamour and excitement and aura of power were poor ignorant fools.
Not long after the election, in that same spring of ’95, Jimmy ran into the kraut kid at Washington Park.
What a stunner. For a few seconds he was ready to bolt. He hung on, kept his nerve, and when the kid didn’t say anything about the stolen china, actually acted friendly, Jimmy relaxed.
He was mightily puzzled, though. What was somebody who lived in a fancy house doing in a box at the racetrack? Who was the little fat man, Rooney? He asked Shadow. Turned out Rooney was a photographer, and the kraut kid was some kind of assistant.
For a few days Jimmy worried that the kraut might contact the police after all. But no detectives showed up. Lucky again. Within a week the incident was fading from memory.
After his first altercation with Lew Kress over the rooms, Jimmy never had cause to lay hands on him again. But they argued a lot. Jimmy’s habit of bragging about the possessions and accomplishments of his family irked Lew, though of course all three—possessions, accomplishments, family—didn’t exist. He just felt compelled to talk about them as if they did.
Down in the cellar, Colonel Shadow continued to slave away, putting together brass gears and belts, lenses, and scrap wood to make a rectangular cabinet on spindly tripod legs. Things still weren’t going well.
“By God I’m not going to let this whip me, I’m not going to lose out,” Shadow said one night when Mary Beezer was preparing stew in the flat for all four of them. The colonel was sitting in his undershirt under the wan electric lights, cigar dangling from his hand. His pomaded dark hair, which varied in color from week to week, hung in strands over his forehead. “The flickers, the living pictures—I don’t give a damn what you call ’em, they can make us a pile if we can show ’em in a regular theater.”
“What kind of subjects would you photograph?” Lew Kress asked. “Different from the ones in the machines?”
“Lew, are you stupid? Of course I’ll make different pictures. Our camera will go anywhere—” He chewed his cigar. “That is, if it’s light enough and I can get the God damn thing to work.”
“Are you boys hungry?” Mary placed bowls of stew on the table. The stew contained a few peas and a lot of boiled potatoes in last Sunday’s chicken gravy.
“You take this dustup down in South America,” Shadow said. “It’s a natural.”
“Britain’s dispute with Venezuela over the border of British Guiana,” Lew Kress said. Jimmy didn’t know what the hell the little show-off was talking about.
“Right!” Shadow smacked the table. Mary Beezer jumped forward with a cry, grabbing his stew bowl as it teetered on the edge. Jimmy got a nice peek at her creamy white tits. He rubbed his erection under the table while Shadow carried on.
“The limeys are talking about sending in warships. That’s a God damn violation of our sacred Monroe Doctrine. Suppose there’s real fighting. Suppose we get tough. Send in the Marines! Show the flag! Blow the fuckers up! If we could photograph that and show the pictures here—everywhere—Jesus Christ, they’d be rioting for tickets!” Again he hammered the table.
“We’ve got to be in the marketplace soon. We’ve got to have a complete camera and projection system ready by this time next year. That’s the goal, boys. That’s the ramrod up our ass. Let’s eat.”
Occasionally Jimmy was called on to render stern service for the colonel. One summer night with the Levee afloat in rumors of yet another anti-vice crusade, he was browsing through the Police Gazette when a little man with a thatch of curly red hair mixed with gray came in furtively. The man whispered that he’d heard there was “something special” in the back room.
Jimmy noticed a bulge in the coat pocket of the man’s shiny dark suit, but he didn’t think it was a gun. More like a book. He took a chance.
“Yeah, it’s called ‘A Chinese Dream.’ Real hot stuff. Costs you three bucks. And you got to wait until those two chumps are gone.” He gestured to a pair of men cranking machines.
“I’ll wait, gladly. Many thanks, laddie.” The man had a queer accent. Scotch burr, Jimmy thought.
In a few minutes both customers left. Jimmy collected the money, handed the little man the special slug, and led him to the back. The man was sweating heavily. “Enjoy yourself,” Jimmy said, and pulled the curtain shut.
He leaned against the wall and lit a smoke. He listened to the slug rattle down the slot, heard the crank turning, the photo drum clicking …
“The Lord preserve us!”
Jimmy ripped the curtain open. The little man was holding a small black book with gilt-edged pages. He shook the book at the Luxoscope. “These pictures are filth. I was told, but I refused to believe it.”
“Who the fuck are you, some copper?”
“The Reverend Gypsy Kinross. I came to the Levee to witness its sins and abominations for myself.”
Jimmy had heard the name Gypsy Kinross. An evangelist, running some kind of Holy Roller campaign in a hall uptown.
Enraged by the man’s trickery, Jimmy swung and knocked Kinross to the floor, then kicked his legs apart and gave him one in the crotch. The evangelist cried out.
“Christ save me!”
“He better, nobody else will!”
Jimmy dragged the evangelist out the back door to the alley and proceeded to beat him.
Hands held out, pleading, Kinross tried to crawl away. Jimmy wasn’t through with him. He unbuttoned his shirt and took off his St. Christopher medal, which he wore on an extra-long, extra-strong chain. Not for any religious purpose, however. He whipped the chain over Kinross’s head and around his neck. He crossed his hands and pulled.
“You breathe one damn solitary word about this place or what you saw, I’ll track you down
and kill you, if I have to drag you from a pulpit to do it. Get me?” Kinross could only respond with gagging sounds while he plucked weakly at the chain.
“Okay, good.”
Jimmy leaned forward and spat in Kinross’s face.
Then he pushed Kinross over on his side, taking care to maintain a good hold on the chain. The links had torn Kinross’s throat and were spattered with blood. Jimmy unwound the chain, wiped it on his pants, and slipped it over his head. He went inside and slammed the door. His knuckles hurt like hell. They were bruised and bloody. But he felt like a king.
In the morning Shadow noticed his injured hands. Asked what had happened.
“A little trouble. It was nothing.”
The incident with Gypsy Kinross never reached the papers. Nor did any policeman come to inquire.
On a hot day in August, Jimmy was hanging over the cash register, licking a paper cone of shaved ice soaked with lime flavoring. Lew Kress was perched on another stool, poking with a screwdriver at a gearbox. He wore spectacles and his usual hangdog air.
Jimmy finished the shaved ice and threw the twist of paper in the general direction of a trash can. He missed it but didn’t bother to pick up the paper. It lay there leaking green ooze while he opened a long clasp knife. He began to clean his nails.
He heard a horse and wagon in the street. Looking out the door, he saw a delivery vehicle painted with the words ILLINOIS STEAM LAUNDRY COMPANY. The driver walked in, wearing just a sleeveless singlet with his pants. No wonder; the whole city was frying.
“Well good Lord, looky here.”
“How are you?” said the kraut. “Remember me?”
“Sure. Crown.” Jimmy held out his hand. “Daws.”
“Yes, I recall. From the racetrack.”
Lew waved his screwdriver limply. “Kress.”
“Hello, how are you?”
Jimmy supposed he owed the kraut something for unwittingly helping him snatch the china, and keeping still about it later. It didn’t make him like the kid’s accent any better. It was thick as a sausage.