“I noticed when we come in,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, “that all the cabins had a little carport right alongside. Dave can find us by the blue Caddy.”
“Even if he has an assistant,” Miss Tinkham said, “he will not be along for quite some time yet. If he left Buffalo early this morning, he can’t be here till Tuesday. We must not sleep too soundly.”
“Hell, I wake if I hear a fly crawlin’ up a pane o’ glass,” Mrs. Feeley said. “We just want to be sure we get in a outside room, if they’s more than one room to a cabin. What we gonna do about him an’ her? Take Uremia in with us an’ let Old-Timer bunk in the room with him?”
“Their sleeping arrangements do not concern us in the least,” Miss Tinkham said. “We can’t decide anything about Old-Timer until we see the arrangement of the cabins. What we have to do is to get them both ossified tonight and then stall for time tomorrow. We are going to have a bit of a problem on our hands meeting David alone if he arrives during the daytime.”
“Don’t nobody let slip one peep about us expectin’ Dave,” Mrs. Feeley said.
Old-Timer was sitting at the table with a large, empty beer glass in front of him. The bartender came up with four icy beers.
“You-uns feel better? I seen they was gettin’ warm, so I brought fresh.”
“A man after my own heart.” Miss Tinkham beamed. “What became of our…”
“They had me call ’em a cab an’ went off down to Hike’s Package Store after some gin.”
“Is it far?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Right fur piece. Late, too. The hack driver was drunk, but he’ll make Hike open up if he thinks he’ll get a drink out of it.”
Mrs. Feeley swallowed her beer at a gulp. “Can you show us the cabins before we eat? We could get all set before they get back.”
The bartender produced a large key ring from behind the bar and showed the ladies the cabin next the bar. It consisted of two large bedrooms with a bath between. Each room contained two small iron cots, austere but clean.
“Would you be so kind”—Miss Tinkham waved her glasses at the bartender—”as to assist us to move one of these beds into the other room? He…” She pointed to Old-Timer.
“Ain’t none of ye got ye a man? He your guard-een? Shore, I’ll help ye.” He and Old-Timer lifted one of the beds and carried it through the opening into the room that faced the entrance to the bar. “It didn’t even have to be tore down,” the bartender said. “That’ll be four dollars—dollar apiece. You gotta sign the register. What about them folks come in with ye? Kinfolks?”
“Certainly not!” Miss Tinkham shook her chains. “They will make their own arrangements.” She went over to the window facing the highway and saw that the carport that jutted out from their cabin was brightly lighted and in full view of the highway. “The lights are kept on all night, are they not?” she said.
“You-uns don’t have to be nervis. This place is all lit up like a church all night long. Why, I’ve set there and read a paper just divers and divers of times. Don’t forget to sign.”
“It’s ideal.” Miss Tinkham beamed as Old-Timer brought in the bags. “I’ll dress for dinner.” She shook out her pink lace dress and headed for the bathroom.
“Reckon that feller’d bring us some beer while we’re washin?” Mrs. Feeley said.
“Be quicker to go get it.” Mrs. Rasmussen picked up her bag. “Now what’s it I gotta put in the book: Mrs. Patrick Feeley an’ family?”
“Correct,” Miss Tinkham said. “And don’t mention the others. Let them fend for themselves. I’m sure he won’t want his name in the book.”
Clean and smiling, the ladies and Old-Timer walked into the lodge.
“Some more o’ your nice, wet beer,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“I knowed you-uns hadn’t et.” The bartender brought the beer to the table he had spread with a reasonably clean cloth. “Now what’ll it be? Pig or chicken—sandwich or piece?”
“Huh?” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Sweet or hot?” the bartender said.
“Talk English, man.” Mrs. Feeley was impatient.
“Barbecue—pig or chicken. With the hot sauce or without. Picked off or with the bones in.”
“Some o’ both—with the bones in, and you can’t make it too hot for us.” Mrs. Rasmussen started in on a basket of rolls she spied on the end of the bar. “Didn’t know it was so late, but the clock in my stomach never misses.”
“Deserted, ain’t it?” Mrs. Feeley said. “Don’t have much trade, do you?”
The bartender put down a large platter filled with smoking chunks of barbecued pork and chicken.
“Right off the pit,” he said. “Monday nights is slow. Saturday’s our big night. Rest o’ the week just tourists off an’ on, an’ o’ course we git quite some haulers. Sauce hot enough?” He set down a bottle of Tabasco and a bowl of cole slaw. The rolls were fresh, and the barbecue dark and reeky with hickory-chip smoke.
“It’s fine,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
The screen door opened and Uremia and Dr. Freemartin came in, accompanied by the cab driver. They had laid in a goodly supply of gin, inside and out. The cab driver put his arm around Uremia when they sat in front of the bar.
“Ain’t she the cutest lil-ol’ woman?” he inquired of the room at large. “Her an’ me had us a couple lil-ol’ drinks, din’ we, honey?”
“Still eating?” Dr. Freemartin pulled up a chair. “We’ll never get to the coast at this rate.”
“Let the top o’ your head down, Buster. We got our rooms all ready an’ soon’s we get our supper finished, we’re gonna hit the sack.”
“Your patient has found some unsolicited love, Dr. Freemartin.” Miss Tinkham waved her beer glass toward Uremia. She and the cab driver were getting cozy in a booth. Dr. Freemartin climbed up on a stool at the bar and turned his back on all of them.
“Takes my appetite, he does.” Mrs. Rasmussen made a face. “Bring us another order o’ the same.”
Uremia teetered over to Miss Tinkham.
“Anybody that can make up songs can play the piano—” She took her by the arm and began dragging her from the table. “I wanna sing my song for my friend…” She fished in her pocket and brought up the crumpled wad of paper with the song lyrics on it.
“Them grimmy hands with that ol’ purple polish,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
Uremia dragged Miss Tinkham to the golden-oak upright piano in the corner. The music rack was made of stained glass in a design of water lilies and their leaves. Miss Tinkham looked at her friends and shrugged. She struck a chord on the jangling wreck and shuddered.
“Push down on the middle pedal.” The bartender came over to assist. “That there will give ye the mandoleen attachment.”
“It’s all we need at this point.” Miss Tinkham bowed graciously. “Try to keep in mind the fact that the song is sung to the tune of ‘May Man.’”
She played a series of chords, beating time for Uremia with her right hand.
“Now! ‘Each day on the hour, to restore my lagging power’…”
“‘I took hormones!’” Uremia bellowed, her hands clasped in front of her in the most approved night-club fashion. She held herself erect by spreading her feet apart and clamping her knees together in the manner of a camel asleep on its feet.
“’Till my eye…’” Miss Tinkham prompted.
“’Till my eye chanced to stray
To a looking-glass one day,
Then I made loud groans.
I’d whiskers on my face,
And my voice had dropped to bass.
Shallow-busted! Mal-adjusted!
I was losing my mind, I had pinched a girl’s behind
In the subway!”
“Look what I found!” A roaring male voice interrupted Uremia’s song. Miss Tinkham turned to wither the intruder with a glance. He was six feet four and weighed close to three hundred pounds. He wore a coonskin cap and carried a bass drum. He came in, followed by four men in va
rious stages of undress. Two of them had whiskey bottles sticking out of their pants pockets.
“Go right on with your audition, Chick! I’m Erpil Thigpen, the Spike Jones of the Ozarks. You’re in the groove.” He shoved Miss Tinkham unceremoniously oft the piano stool and began to flail the piano unmercifully. One of his tatterdemalions unearthed a clarinet and a third began to pound the drum. A wild-eyed youth ran out the door and came back tooting a tenor sax.
“Might’s well go get my woman an’ make a night of it,” a lanky scarecrow yelled. He came back holding a bull fiddle under his chin, plucking at the strings with airy gestures.
“All hell bust loose, didn’t it?” Mrs. Feeley grinned.
“Somewhere in that cacophony I hear the ghost of a melodic line that was once The Sheik.” Miss Tinkham put her hand to her head and downed her beer.
Uremia began to sing in a voice that would have done credit to a widowed tomcat. “It’s too, too macabre,” Miss Tinkham sighed.
“My cob, nothin’! Beer, bartender!” Mrs. Feeley signaled with an imperious hand.
“It’s a pity,” Miss Tinkham moaned, “that Perelman isn’t here. If he could hear and see Uremia, he might be inspired to write an opera starring her in the old Agnes Ayres rôle. He might even combine it with Three Weeks and the tiger-skin rug.”
Miss Tinkham’s discourse was wasted. The din was such that she could not even hear herself think. The jam session had reached the stage of the “Tiger Rag,” with Uremia doing a series of splits at the tiger-roar motif, accompanied by tearing sounds from the bow of the bass fiddle.
“Ripping!” Miss Tinkham clapped her hands.
“How are you, my friend an’ second cousin?” The Spike Jones of the Ozarks seated himself at the table. “Bring the setups. Coke-sody? Seven-Up? Grapette? Nothing too good for my friends.” He placed an enormous paw on Mrs. Feeley’s shoulder.
She pointed to a sign over the fireplace: KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THE GUESTS.
“And outa their pockets,” she added.
The clarinet player poured rotgut whiskey into water glasses and the other members of the orchestra seized them.
“Yes, sir. My vocalist left me—shut up in the icehouse with a butcher. An’ us just startin’ on our big thirteen weeks’ tour of all the clubs between here an’ Hot Springs: Poplar Bluff, Sikeston, Dexter an’ Kennett. An’ no vocalist! What those folks gonna think of Erpil Thigpen?”
No one seemed to care.
“But I got one now!” Uremia leaned on his comfortable back. “A dilly! What’s you name, honey?”
“Uremia,” she said.
“Uhn-huh,” he shook his head. “These homy folks wouldn’t like that. From now on, or at least for the next thirteen weeks, you’re The Swamp Angel. You’ll be goin’ over big. I was wantin’ a vocalist that had class—somethin’ sophisticated. Get your things, honey, we gotta play a dance for the Junior League at the Green Top in Poplar Bluff tomorrow night.”
“My things still in the car?” Uremia said. “Gimme the key.”
“Surely you’re not serious,” Miss Tinkham said. “What about Doctor Freemartin?”
“Din’ you hear him offer me a thirteen weeks’ contract?” Uremia said. “I’m a artist; my career comes first. I’m the vi-vicious type an’ I’m gonna express my personality. I can always come out there after my contract runs out—but once in show-business, always a…”
“Ham an’ eggs, that’s what we want!” Erpil Thigpen banged the table.
“Pig or chicken,” the bartender said.
“What’s this disturbance?” Dr. Freemartin came over to the table.
“I’m going on tour with Erpil.” Uremia swayed back and forth. “Thirteen weeks—you all heard him. That’s what all the big stars get. He’s gonna glamorize me.”
Dr. Freemartin reached into his pocket, holding his blue zipper-bag carefully between his knees.
“Take your pills,” he said. “You need a sedative; you don’t even know who this clown is…”
“Clown, huh?” Erpil Thigpen swatted Dr. Freemartin one generous blow that knocked him to the floor. “There’s not many gets an opportunity like this. What you say, hon? You goin’ or stayin’?”
“I’m going. I’ll look you up when I come out to Dago…”
“San Diego!” Mrs. Feeley pushed her chair back and reached for Uremia’s hair.
“Gimme my bags. You can’t keep my bags!” Uremia screamed.
“Get ’em, Ol’-Timer,” Mrs. Feeley said. “And stand over her to see that she don’t take nothin’ else.”
“You can make a boiled dinner outa the vegetables,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“What vegetables?” Uremia said.
“You’ll see,” Mrs. Feeley said, “an’ they’ll be well done when you get ’em.”
“In all the time I’ve met you, I don’t hardly understand anything you people talk about. Honest, I don’t. Thanks for bringin’ me along. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never had a chance, so I’ll just love you an’ leave you…” Erpil Thigpen and his minions hustled her out the door after Old-Timer. Dr. Freemartin sat and glared at the retreating musicians.
“That’s gratitude for you!” he said. “But I have developed wonderful muscles for crosses.”
“Take one of your sedatives,” Miss Tinkham said. “They’ll help your self-pity.”
“Lonely Lee,” he sighed. “Three drinks and they go right back to the gutter where I found them. Since you people are determined to stay here for the night, I’ll get a room.”
“That is a sensible approach to the situation,” Miss Tinkham said.
“We’re comin’ in just as soon as we have our nightcap,” Mrs. Feeley said. “It’s near one o’clock now.”
Dr. Freemartin went out the door with the bartender.
“Hurry back,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Put him to bed an’ pour us some brew.”
Old-Timer came in carrying Aphrodite.
“How sweet of you,” Miss Tinkham said. “I had forgotten to bring her in for the night—we haven’t had a night’s rest in so long! This is most fortunate for us, although I am concerned over poor simple-minded Uremia. What on earth is to become of her when that awful crew sobers up or tires of her?”
“Save your pity for somethin’ worth while,” Mrs. Feeley said. “She ain’t no worse off with them fools than she’d a been with him. One less in the car, too.”
“I had no idea it was so late,” Miss Tinkham whispered. “David will not be too long now, especially if he had another driver with him.”
The bartender returned and began to draw the beer.
“Put him in the cabin right next to you-uns,” he said.
“You smell of gin,” Mrs. Feeley said. He grinned and showed her a five-dollar bill.
“What the boss don’t know won’t hurt him. I kill myself workin’ here, open all night, like this. Pickin’s mighty slim.”
“You’re gonna get your tip,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We’ll just drink this up an’ hit the hay.” She handed him a dollar bill for himself. “If you could spare us a little ice for the big beer can,” she said, “it would save us wakin’ you when we make our early start in the mornin’. You wouldn’t hardly be up an’ around then.”
“All ye want. Want it now? An’ I thank you kindly for the dollar.”
Old-Timer went out with him to load the beer can.
“I hope Doctor Freemartin went to sleep,” Miss Tinkham said. “If David should tap at our window, we don’t want him eavesdropping.”
“He couldn’t hear nothin’,” Mrs. Feeley said. “He’s in the cabin next to Ol’-Timer, an’ when he starts sawin’ wood, you’d think the rumble o’ the subway was a whisper.”
Miss Tinkham picked up Aphrodite. “We should put her in with Doctor Freemartin, sort of consolation prize.”
“Yeah. Let’s!” Miss Feeley giggled.
They tiptoed through their cabin and into Old-Timer’s room. They saw a light in Dr. Freemartin’s ro
om in the adjoining cabin and knocked on the door.
“Who is it? Who is it?” Dr. Freemartin said cautiously through the closed door.
“We got company for you!” Mrs. Feeley shouted.
He scrabbled around inside for several minutes before opening the door a crack. He looked suspiciously at the ladies.
“What do you want?”
“If you’ll ask us in, you’ll see,” Miss Tinkham said. He opened the door a little wider. “We are distressed over your loss; Aphrodite is the best we can do at the moment, but one thing you can count on is her devotion. It’s monumental.”
Dr. Freemartin gave a sickly grin and ran his hand over Aphrodite’s alabaster curves.
“Only kind of woman you can trust,” he said.
“If it’s any consolation to you,” Miss Tinkham said, “a poet once said:
Down to Gehenna, or up to the throne
He travels fastest who travels alone.”
Dr. Freemartin rubbed his bristly chin and gazed at Aphrodite.
“Yeah. You might just have something there,” he said. “I really never cared for Uremia because she doesn’t wear glasses.”
“You’re Dorothy Parker in reverse,” Miss Tinkham pointed an accusing finger at him and backed out the door.
“Be ready to leap when we shout,” Mrs. Feeley warned. He closed the door after them silently. “Goddlemighty,” she whispered, “why go to a nut-house?”
Mrs. Feeley raised up on her cot and listened intently. Someone was scratching on the screen of the window next her bed.
“Who’s out there?” she said.
“It’s me, Dave, Mrs. Feeley. I got to see you right away.”
Mrs. Feeley got up and threw her dress around her shoulders over her slip. She saw Mrs. Rasmussen and
Miss Tinkham sitting up in their beds. The lights from the driveway illuminated the room.
“Is it all right to talk here?” Dave said. “You got ’em with you?”
“C’mon in.” Mrs. Feeley unlatched the screen and Dave stepped over the sill. “Anybody with you?”
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