Prairie Nocturne

by Ivan Doig

  HATED to ask you to come all the way across town, but I didn’t know how else—”

  “All that way, tsk. This is a treat. I’d have been happy just to poke my head backstage and say hello after you floor them tonight.”

  “Couldn’t let you off that easy. Get you something? Tea and honey?”

  “You. Inflict my own medicine on me, would you. But thank you, nothing. Monty, this— I have to say, I’m impressed.”

  “Not exactly Fort Skin-and-Bone, is it.” He followed her gaze around the parlor of the Broadwater Hotel, Helena’s finest, complete with posh grounds and natatorium. Now that he and she were established in the plush chairs, nicely out in the open but far enough from the lobby not to have every word overheard, he felt relieved. Even yet this was not easy to make happen right, not here, not anywhere that he knew of. From the window of his room he had watched like a hawk, if hawks are ever nervous, until she pulled into the grounds in her car, its doors and fenders still peppered with what likely was Scotch Heaven mud. Then made himself hover out of sight at the top of the stairwell while she announced her purpose to the desk clerk, to see how it went before he would need to go down and try to bluff the clerk. Damn it. All we want to do is visit with each other like human beings. They lucked out on the clerk: the man turned out to be the father of one of her pupils in years past, and Susan’s sweetly put “here for a musical consultation with your famous guest Mister Rathbun” did not stand his hair on end. Here then they sat, decorous amid the nearly smothering decor of velvet and Victoriana and tasseled rugs. Monty could tell she meant surprised along with impressed. “Year ago, they wouldn’t have let me in here,” he said what they both knew but it helped clear the parlor air by saying it. “Maybe even now, but the Major put in a word.”

  “Tell me whether I’m seeing things. A man out in the gardens looks all the world like Bailey.”

  “None other. I had him hired. There’s a bruiser or two around somewhere, too.” He rushed through that as if it was an ordinary part of business, but Susan was looking at him so pointedly that he broke off and made a small patting motion in the air. “Nothing to be excited about. The people I’m with are sort of spooked by what the clucks tried on you and me, is all. I thought they were going to back out of town when I told them about the Confederate Gulch gold and the Johnny Rebs who turned into galvanized Yankees out here as soon as they had money in their pockets. Took the pair of them around to Clore Street and that settled them down some.” His turn to put a point to her with his eyes. “Life been treating you all right, I hope?”

  “Atrociously. I haven’t been around a world-beating voice for what seems like ages. Until the one I’ll hear tonight.”

  “More what I had in mind was you being out there alone at Scotch Heaven all that while. It’s been bothering—”

  Surprised at the urgency in his voice, she cut in with what she always said when people got going on how much time she spent with herself: “Don’t fret, ‘alone’ isn’t spelled the same as ‘lonely.’ ”

  “Maybe around the edges, it’s not,” he said as if his experience did not jibe with hers.

  She made a conceding murmur and ducked onto surer ground. “At any rate, you can quit worrying—I’m going to lease out the homestead. Helena has me on her hands again, poor old town.”

  Now Monty was the surprised one. “The Major didn’t say anything to me about you giving up the place.”

  “No? Did you check the reflections in his vest buttons?” Fanning a hand and holding it with her other, Susan expertly mimicked a person playing cards close to the chest.

  He acknowledged that with a slow nod. “I’ll need to do that when he comes in from the ranch tonight, you think?”

  “Whit’s, too, while you’re at it. You knew you’re going to be honored with his presence, didn’t you?”

  “You must be kidding. He’s setting foot off the place when there’s no livestock involved?” It was on the tip of his tongue to say what next, the ghost of old Mister Warren showing up along with them tonight at the Marlow Theater and growling out I take it back, Monty, go ahead and blow your bugle, boy. But her and the Major, as close or apart as rails of a railroad track, depending on when you squinted in their direction—right now she was really up on the doings of the Williamsons, and he didn’t want to tromp flatfooted into whatever that meant. He switched back over to his original intention. “I started to say, it’s bothered the living daylights out of me that you were where the Klan hoodoos could have got at you. I know you wrote that the Williamsons made it too hot for them, but—”

  “Scalding, was more like it.” Departures in the night. Examples made by Whit and his ax-handle crew. Sheriffs and county attorneys suddenly rigorous. Wes and the influences he could bring to bear had taken the Klan out of the prairie heartland of Montana like lice soaked out of sheets. “My neck never felt at risk, any of the school year,” she maintained. Monty watched the familiar way she arched that neck, ivory as a carved rarity, as she pronounced on that chapter of the past. “No excitement except the boys tipping over the girls’ privy, and that’s eternal. No, I’ve done my bit in memory of Angus and helped Adair close up their place, and now I’m tucked back into the house here and the Double W’s cows inhabit the North Fork.” Susan made a gesture, that was enough of that. Looking across at Monty, she sent him a mock teacherly frown intended to let him know she was inspecting his progress. He had filled out somewhat, but solidly, no jowls or paunch. His fetching blue pinstripe suit would not give any of Wes’s a run for the money—whose would?—but it had a tailor’s touches. All along the line, so far as she could see, he looked as if New York life agreed with him. Still, he was here, not there. “Somehow I didn’t expect to see you back this soon.”

  “Denver is next on the tour.” He grinned. “I convinced my manager this is practically on the way.”

  Susan’s eyebrows were up. “I must have left geography out of those lessons of yours.”

  “That’d be about the only thing. Say, you know what works slick? That music stand.” He had particularly wanted to ease her mind about the audience problem. “Can’t explain it, but I don’t get choky with the songsheets right there, even if I never need them.”

  “Told you.” Her face lit, she urged: “Now your turn. Those fancy-pantsy musicales of yours—tell all.”

  From there on their conversation kept jumping its banks. He told her about hobnobbing with the Rabiznaz, wanted to know how her own music was coming. She told him she was within shouting distance of the end of the operetta if the shout could be a better song than she had managed to come up with yet, and what were his living arrangements in Harlem like? They were back and forth at this a mile a minute until they heard a notifying cough. In the doorway of the parlor stood J.J. and Cecil, fluffy bathtowels over the arm of each.

  “This is my poor put-upon teacher I told you about,” Monty reeled off the introductions. “Wasn’t for her, the most I could look forward to would be changing sparkplugs every three months.”

  “Ah? Then the ears of the world are in your debt, Mrs. Duff,” J.J. said with something between a nod and a bow. Cecil’s wordless acknowledgment of her certifiably amounted to no more than a nod.

  “It’s Miss.”

  “Mizzz Duff, excuse me all hollow.” J.J.’s sibilant antic made Monty want to bat him one.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” J.J. swept on, “but we were just passing. We are off to the waters,” meaning the natatorium across the hotel grounds. “Cecil here needs to cook like an egg to thaw out from this Rocky Mountain air, he claims. We are told we will have a generous portion of the pool to ourselves.” J.J. smiled as if at the wonder of that. “Roped off for our very own use, I gather the procedure is. Western hospitality is really quite something.”

  “We did give the world Monty, from out here,” Susan offered as though it were a neutral observation. “We may be coasting a bit much on that.”

  “That was generous, I can’t help but admit.” J.J
. fussily checked his watch against the parlor’s grandfather clock as if two opinions were needed on the hour of day, then recited: “Keep an eye on the time, Montgomery, don’t forget to catch some rest.”

  “It’s as good as caught, J.J.”

  “Good day, Miss Duff. Been our pleasure.”

  Monty watched the pair of them go, shaking his head. “See what you and the Major got me into? They both know their stuff, but—what’re you laughing about?”

  “I just realized. Here you are in the Broadwater with a manager and an accompanist and Bailey and bruisers, all the trappings I could have dreamed of for you, and I’ve never even heard you in front of an audience.”

  “You have so. Not their fault they were pigeons. Toughest critics I’ve had yet, though.”

  Susan surprised herself as well as him by giggling. Monty chortled at the scale-like run of that, which tickled her some more, and then they were both in helpless gusts of laughter, two Two Medicine ragamuffins carried up past Fort Assinniboine’s pigeon droppings and all other mires to make their marks on life by the glorious force of music.

  Susan at last wiped her eyes. “Stop. Halt. Enough. I really should be going.”

  “Not before I put you to work a little.” Before she could blink, he reached something out from behind his chair and rested it in his lap. “Do you mind? Wanted to show you a change in ‘Mouthful of Stars’—I think I misremembered how the holy rollers used to do the chorus of that.” As he dug out the piece of music she saw that he carried the songsheets in a leather case embossed with the initials M.R.; cowhide had a different place in his life now. “I think it should go”—at the back of his throat he deeply crooned down, then up, up, instead of up, down, up.

  Susan hesitated. Was this something he needed done, or a pat on the head for her? He had not been the butter-spreading type before, but that was before. The question lasted no time before giving way to the spell of music in his throat and his hands. “Let’s just see,” she said, a bit out of breath, and was up from her chair and confronting the upright piano, its teeth yellow with age, that claimed a corner of the parlor.

  Plinking until she found a reasonably reliable run of keys, she coaxed out an amendment to the tune, Monty at the end of the piano listening keenly. At her nod, he sang the chorus that way atop her playing. She knew she probably shouldn’t—the justifiable wrath of his manager was somewhere between there and the natatorium—but she plunged into the whole song, Monty’s voice all but taking down the walls of the parlor.

  “There, then.” Past the ache at the back of her heart for more of this, she made herself quit, saying she would fix up the follow-sheet for his accompanist if he liked. Monty dug in his shirt pocket, came up with a stub of pencil. With great care she wrote in the notes, guided by her own hum now. One last thing and then she would go. “Could I take a peek at the songsheets? It would be fun for me tonight to know the order of songs.”

  “You bet.” He gravely handed her the sheaf that represented all their work together. “That’s how I’ve got it put together for here. Oh, and over Cecil’s just about dead body, I always stick in the Medicine Line one wherever the program feels like it needs a lift.”

  “Why doesn’t he want you to use that one?”

  “Because he doesn’t like it.”

  “So then why do you use it?”

  “Because he doesn’t like it.”

  That set them off riotously again. Susan sobered an instant before he did—what am I doing, this man has a performance tonight—and resolutely stood up from the piano stool. But invoking a teacher’s privilege, she took a last memory-book look at him, storing away the prospering dark features that were as heightened and polished as his voice now. Not much more than an arm’s length away Monty was looking at her as if trying to remind himself of something. She held still, waiting for whatever it was. Finally he said: “You’re wearing your hair down. It’s nice.” Hesitantly he put out his hand for the songsheets.

  “Trying to keep up. Speaking of hair, it’s really time I get out of yours.”

  Taking the music from her, he fumbled it back into the leather case. Then gestured as though he would change things if it were in his power. “We have a rehearsal, after J.J. and Cecil finish their soak. I’d have asked you to come to that, but—”

  “Monty, I would have turned you down flat,” she said fondly, sadness in there, too. “I’d be one too many irons in the fire there. Seeing you this way meant more.”

  * * *

  All those other Saturday nights in town, and I never even made it through the door of this place. He moved back and forth in an arc across centerstage there in the afternoon-empty Marlow Theater, singing the two lines “When I was young and in my prime, I dabbed my X on the Medicine Line” over and over as he sought the spot where it felt right to stand. The massive chandelier out over the seats scintillated as if beaconing him to step this way or that. He grinned, just from general joy at treating this fancy stage like a parade ground. No way this was in the running with the Zanzibar, back then. Some of those scrapes, ow. It’s a wonder I’m here with my guts still in me. He kept an eye on J.J., audience of one, who was prowling the empty seats, nodding when the sound reached him just so, shaking his head when it was not so good. Monty wheeled, tried it from closer to the lip of the stage. Took a step the other direction, cast “When I was young . . .” into the air of the theater from there as though flyfishing into promising water. Right from the start of the rehearsal he had been feeling exceptionally fine, as loose and full of jingle as when he was a much younger man challenging the rodeo bulls. The stage manager stood off at stage left patiently plucking his sleeve garters until Monty called over, “I think I found it here.”

  The man came out and chalked an X where the toe of Monty’s shoe was indicating. “I’ll be right back with your music stand and we can see how the lighting suits you,” he told Monty and disappeared backstage.

  Cecil had been sitting in wait at the piano. Now that Monty’s voice was not claiming the theater, he noodled at the keyboard of the Steinway, apparently without satisfaction. “They call this a piano in this burg?”

  Monty and J.J. exchanged glances. They might have been concerned about Helena’s taste in pianos if they had not heard Cecil make this same complaint about Boston’s. Before J.J. could say anything, Monty observed: “Looks to me like it has all the keys, Cece.”

  “This new follow-sheet, man, I don’t see why that chorus goes—”

  “Because now it’s right,” Monty said easily.

  Frowning, Cecil tugged at the cuffs of his tux and looked to J.J. for justice.

  With a show of judiciousness the manager sized up the two of them. Poor Cecil, eagerly waiting for fame to devour him. Monty was a different breed of cat. In off these wide open spaces. Monty reminded him of the Senegalese, when they stood there blank and calm sharpening those three-sided French bayonets as the attack barrage poured down only yards away. J.J. still could not put his finger on it exactly, but there was a solo quality about Monty that ran deeper than what issued from his mouth. In all his time as a manager, he had never come across a talent who climbed so fast yet kept his head about him. And that white woman, whatever she was about, had given Monty over readymade for stage work. “They’re his songs, Cecil. Ours not to reason why if he feels better primping them.”

  “Probably be an audience like an icebox, no matter what I do,” Monty by now had reached the trouper’s point of courting good luck by invoking bad.

  “You’re sounding first-rate,” J.J. told him, more than ritually. “A little more geared up for this than you maybe need to be, though. You don’t have to bust a gusset for these people just because you’re back home. They’ll clap if you so much as step out there and clear your throat, you watch.”

  “Nothing doing,” Monty retorted firmly. “All out, tonight. Goes for you, too, Cecil. Don’t be on bad terms with that piana, hear?”

  Just then the stage manager called him for the
lighting check, and the other two retreated to backstage.

  Cecil was still steamed. “Jace?” He was the only person in the world who called J.J. that, particularly with a permanent question mark. “What gives, anyway? I was kidding around about the piano. But messing with the follow-sheet without even talking to me about it, that’s something else. He’s been acting high and mighty since we got here. I know these are his old stomping grounds, but—”

  “So let him stomp for the folks,” J.J. said tiredly. “We’ll sort all this out in Denver.”

  * * *

  The bromide for the unspeakable is, “Words fail me.” I vow they will not.

  Susan was panting markedly with the effort this took. When she caught up to realization of it, she drew a careful series of breaths to steady herself before writing the next.

  Tracing in ink what happened last night is the only way I know to tell the world ahead how one thing followed another, each piece of time a shard streaking lightninglike to the next.

  This night she had come to the diary in something like a daze of duty, the rhythm of obligation as insistent in her as the tides of her heart. Her hand was fixed to the page before she made herself pause and review everything that had danced out of place since the last time she had seated herself there. The past twenty-four hours were a jumble, at every level. She blinked hard, barely staying dry-eyed, as it registered on her that Samuel’s photograph had been toppled. Might she just now have done that herself, in her reach for ink, pen, and pages to testify on? Or—? Whether or not it was her own doing, she picked the photograph up off its face, stood it where it belonged, and again put herself for all she was worth into her pen hand.

  Mrs. Gus and I had arrived to the theater together, bookends that don’t match but surprisingly few people seem to notice. An audience huge for Helena was pouring in and the lobby was a crisscross of former pupils of mine grinning at me as if they had good sense and mothers on the warpath about my absence for the past—dear me—year and then some. I fended as well as circumstances would allow, promising probably too many of them that I now would be giving lessons again and if they dreamt of their child one day filling a theater this way, lo, that chance awaited in my music parlor. I could not account for why I was such a sudden celebrity until someone said in near-awe “You’ve met Montgomery Rathbun then, what is he like?” and that quick it dawned. Word had spread from Milly Tarrant’s father, the desk clerk, that the famous Mr. Rathbun had sought me out for advice on a point of music; the image of us meeting like heads of state of the musical world there in the parlor of the Broadwater would have bowled us over at Fort Assinniboine.