Читать книгу Long Storm - Ernest Haycox - Страница 7

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MUSICK went down Yamhill to Front and paused beneath a board awning to light his cigar. The gaslights began here and marched northward, shapeless blurs behind the rain fog, scarcely touching the gloom of black shop wall and dead store window. The Willamette Theater had finished its performance, Dennison's was at this moment letting out its patrons, and hotel windows were turning back one by one. There remained only the saloons, those fifty-five warm and noisy harbors for Portland's foot-loose men. He continued north on Front toward The Shades, observing the wiry shape of little Billy Gattis dart from The Pioneer and go along the street at half a trot.

It was still the shank of the evening for the crowd in The Shades when he entered, nodded at Tom Gaween guarding the door, and found a spot at the crowded bar. The tables were in full play, and men stood around the place in close groups while white- jacketed floormen hustled for business and hallooed their orders back to the bar. Smoke hung down from the colored gas chandeliers and steam rose with its fragrance from the lunch counter. Some casually hired musician sat in a corner and plucked music out of a guitar, making little impression against the noise.

The Shades belonged to Ed Campbell, and Campbell had a reformed sport's notion of elegance and dignity; therefore all the enormous paintings scattered along the walls were masculine—a stag, a solitary Indian staring into a valley filled with emigrant wagons, a mountain sunset, and a portrait of Ed himself—done by an itinerant artist who had worked out his board and his whisky bill. "By God," Campbell had often explained, "he never drew a sober breath but he had all kinds of medals from Paris. He had to have a model for that Indian picture so I got Tom Gaween. It was all right until this artist told Tom to strip. Then we had trouble with Tom. I had to get him drunk. So they was both drunk, this artist and Tom, me proppin' up the artist and a couple of the boys holdin' up Tom. Never say an artist is delicate. This fellow was wonderful. He could outdrink any five men."

His own portrait fascinated Ed more than the others. It hung on the saloon's south wall, full length against a darkened background, the swarthy face and the black and cold close eyes standing out in a startling style; there was, too, the suggestion of smoke rising from the earth around him. It was Ed Campbell forever set down for posterity, a thing he could not get out of his mind. "Think of that. A hundred years after I'm dead I'll still be there. Wish he'd left out that smoky business, but he outtalked me. Said I ought to recognize the smoke and identify the smell. He sure was an artist."

Campbell spotted Musick and came forward, a stocky body in a fine broadcloth suit and hard white shirt. He caught the nearest barkeeper's eye. "Don't take Mr. Musick's money. Adam, you see that fellow playing at Ned Barton's table—the one with the damned fancy vest? Ever see him before?"

"No. Maybe he's off the steamer."

The indicated man—it was Floyd Ringrose—sat flushed and handsome in his chair, idly playing and idly drinking. Musick shook his head..

"You think he's a gentleman? It's the vest. If I thought he was a sharp I'd run him out. Would a gentleman wear that vest?"

Musick stood braced against the bar, smiling down at Campbell.

"A man might wear that vest, yet be capable of stealing the silver off the Pioneer's table. A gentleman for thirty years can go bad in ten minutes. Who knows? You don't know me and I don't know you. Nobody knows anybody."

"Adam," said Ed Campbell, "you talk like the artist. I understood that fellow. He was a bum and he knew it. He didn't have anything left. But you're no bum, so what's it mean when you talk like that? You're gettin' what you want."

"You getting what you want?"

"Always said I'd have a first-class saloon. I got it."

"Satisfied?"

"You mean should I want two saloons instead of one? What the hell would I do with two saloons?"

Meanwhile he had kept an eye on the trade and his roving glance now fell on a man entering the saloon. He made a slight signal to Tom Gaween who stood near the door. Gaween stepped up to the newcomer and with a smooth skill turned the man out. "The artist asked me that once. What'd he mean—and what do you mean? Well, I know. Every man wants maybe one certain thing he ain't ever going to get. The trick is not to let it break you." Then he added: "Don't forget, the drinks are on me," and walked away.

Observing a seat at Ned Barton's table to be vacant, Musick moved over and took it. He paid for a small stack, nodded at Barton and gave the other players an incurious glance. The yellow-headed stranger—Ringrose—had a pair of powerful eyes, which, touching Musick, struck hard enough to leave a bad effect. It was no doubt unintentional, but the result of the glance was to irritate him. He signaled the floorman for a drink and a sandwich and settled to a casual playing which interested him so little that he wondered why he remained.

He was tired enough to sleep the clock around, yet the odds and ends of a lot of things in his mind kept him awake and restless. He had Elijah Gorman on his mind, for one thing. The Daisy so far had not been threat enough to disturb Gorman, but it was only a question of time when Gorman, who resisted any kind of competition, would make up his mind to put the Daisy out of business; that was the constant threat hanging over the Daisy. He thought, too, of Callahan and wondered what fun the Irishman had found for himself this night. It never required much for Callahan; he got drunk and burned away whatever it was that festered within him, fell asleep, and woke happy.

He called a bet, and lost, and discovered he had gone through his stack. He shook his head at Ned Barton and sat out of the game. His own cure should lie in the Thorpe house; this night it had not. He had gone there with indifference and she had met him with plain resentment, and from that point onward they had engaged in some kind of silent struggle over a cause he didn't understand for a victory which seemed to be important. Where was the music a man ought to hear when he stood before a lovely woman?

His thoughts, so idly moving, went unaccountably backward to his earlier years and he had a sharp, fair, unexpected picture of Edith as she had been in Doane's school. One day, newly enrolled in the school, he had seen her—and the shock of that discovery returned to him and was as keen now as it had been then. Maybe that was what tied him to her, that first sight of his first girl, that image which had struck him so hard and had remained so fixed through these years. First things left the deepest mark. Even now when he looked upon the mature Edith and was puzzled and sometimes rebuffed by her calm aloofness, he remembered the warmth of her hand as a girl, her pleasant smiling, her quickness in coming to him when they walked homeward; and the image of this girl lay before him when he faced the grown-up Edith, and produced its hope that the young Edith remained in the older woman. That was his steady hope. It was the young Edith he wanted to see again; it was the young Edith he loved.

The stranger opposite him said: "Anything in the sky tonight?"

Ned Barton answered. "No sky to be seen, friend. The rain washed it away."

"No stars of any kind?" said the stranger.

"No sky, no stars," said Barton.

The stranger suddenly smashed a palm full down upon the table, creating a racket. Adam Musick found himself looking into the man's round and heated eyes. "My friend," said the man, "you have been staring at me a hell of a long while. What are your intentions?"

"Why," said Musick, "I'm thinking of something else. Looking through you, not at you."

He made it as an explanation, but the scene had attracted attention and it embarrassed him to be playing the soft part.

"Then take your damned eyes off me," said the stranger.

The rest of the players drew back, deliberately indifferent, while Musick laid both of his broad hands upon the table and sat still and counted his knuckles. It grew very hard on him, the pressure of those who waited for him to make a fight and the easy insolence on the stranger's face. But he thought to himself: To hell with it, and got up. Then he said aloud, staring down at the man: "I shall accommodate you," and walked over to the bar. He nodded at the barkeep and waited for his drink, and he realized he had made a mistake; not because of what others might be thinking of him, but because of his increasing dissatisfaction with himself. He drank his whisky and he filled the glass again and downed it. Now it was near twelve and he had four hours to sleep and wake to another day's work.

Why did men work? If for bread and butter, why should they work so hard? He looked back across a year's time and he thought about his days and could not remember one day which had been wholly free. He was a horse, plodding a trail with a wisp of straw ahead of him; and so were the other men in this saloon. They would presently go home to sleep, and would wake and work the day through, and time would run on until they were old and all the hot fancies had died out of them.

Callahan's voice came over his shoulder, "What'd you eat that tastes so bitter?"

He turned to see Callahan laughing at him. "Emmett," he said, "at this hour you ought to be lying in the gutter or in jail."

Callahan wiggled a finger for a glass and helped himself to Musick's bottle. "This last crop of pilgrims off the Brother Jonathan are a weak lot. I tried three saloons, and no fights offered."

"Here's to fortune," said Musick, and lifted his glass.

"Not that," said Callahan. "I've seen men with fortune. They're a sad lot. If we make our million we'll be sad, too."

Musick caught the guitar player's eye beyond Callahan and ducked his head. The guitar player came over and said, "Which one, Adam?"

"The one about the boat," said Musick. "But we have got to have a tenor." He was looking at Ned Barton's table and he saw the stranger's eyes fixed on him. "Ned," he called, "come on over a minute."

Barton left his cards to make the fourth man in the huddle. The guitar player ran a thumb across a chord and listened to the voices of the three search for the pitch. He said: "You're sour, Callahan," and tried again.

"Now make it nice," said Musick.

"Here we go," said the guitar player and brushed his hand across the strings.

The bow went up, the stern went down,

The captain cried, "We're goin' to drown."

The mate said, "No, we've got to try

To drink this river wholly dry."

The captain said, "I'd rather sink,

For water's a thing I cannot drink."

So he drank his whisky and swam ashore

And the mate took water and was seen no more.

Listen, boys, to the moral we tell,

There's a lot of ways of goin' to hell.

"Beautiful," said Musick and patted both Barton and the guitar player on the back as they walked away. Callahan stared at him closely.

"You're primed," he said. "But you ain't happy yet."

"We're going to make a million and be big citizens with twenty dollar beaver hats. Then we'll be happy."

"By that time your belly will be out of order and you can't drink and you can't have fun—and you're a dead coon," said Callahan. "None of it for me. Think hard, boy. What're we drinkin' to?"

"A long life."

"Nah—after forty, all your troubles come home to stay."

"Name it yourself, then."

"A bit of sweat, a good steak, a sound sleep—and a woman."

"What woman?"

"Don't be particular, boy. One drink don't last, and neither does one woman, one meal, or one life. Take 'em as they go. That will do to drink on."

"Now I've got you pegged," said Musick. "You don't know. You're just talking."

Callahan laughed in his throat and gave Musick his sweet, homely Irish smile. "What the hell else do you think a mick would do?"

Musick had his glass of whisky lifted in his hand. "Never mind—" That was the end of it; somebody, coming into the bar, gave him a deliberate shove and threw him against Callahan. The whisky spilled from the glass and ran along his fist; he put the glass on the table, knowing even then that the push had been no accident, and he came about to find Ringrose there.

Ringrose had a flushed, good-looking face; but his eyes were the quarreling kind and his glance was a rough-and-tumble thing as it came at Musick. He had one hand idle on the bar and he stood exactly as a man would stand who expected trouble.

"You're pushing right at it," said Musick.

"I want a little room here," said Ringrose.

He should have fought this fellow back at the table, Musick thought; for the man was the sort who took softness for weakness. He was one of those who loved to harry a straggler, to make his sport out of those who gave ground. He stepped slightly away from Ringrose, creating a space for the latter; and he observed the little streaked reactions of arrogance spring up here and there on the man's florid face. Tough, he thought, but not too smart. Callahan, behind him, gave out an irritable grunt; the men around Ringrose had drawn off, and Osween, posted by the saloon's door, watched this scene with his practised eye. Musick said: "That room enough for you?"

"If I want more I'll take it," said Ringrose.

"I can see that you like to push," said Musick. Ringrose lowered his head and watched Musick from this odd angle; he was interested, he was alert, he was slightly warned. "Maybe you're dumb, but maybe you're laying it on me."

"You smart enough to know that answer?" asked Musick.

"You want a waltz," decided Ringrose. "I'll give you a waltz."

Callahan had reached the bitter end of his patience as a spectator. "By God, Adam, take him or give him to me."

"Go get your own man," said Musick. "This man thinks he can lick me. I'm going to let him try."

"Too damned much talk for a decent fight," complained Callahan.

"You Oregon jays are nothing but talk and haggling," said Ringrose. Then, still arrogant, he announced his conclusion. "I'll pound your head in and show you who's the turkey around here."

His right hand had been lying loose on the bar; it closed and swung off the bar, low-aimed at Musick's stomach. Musick knocked it aside and came in against Ringrose. He was laughing and he had no anger in him; he was pleased at the sight of the sudden rash temper on Ringrose's face and he side-stepped as Ringrose, off- balance from his missed blow, fell against him. He wrapped an arm around Ringrose's waist and, with the man thus on his hip, he bent aside and got Ringrose's feet off the floor and made a full fast turn and flung Ringrose out from him into the center of the saloon.

Ringrose never got his feet properly under him. He struck Ned Barton's poker table with the small of his back, fell onto its top, tipped it and went down with it landing on his shoulder. Musick, looking on with his continuing good humor, heard the table crash through the saloon's stillness.

Ringrose rolled like a cat, kicked at the table with both feet and was up at once. He made a complete circle before he located Musick; he stared at Musick with a face discolored and disfigured by the sudden intensity of his anger. The sight of that unrestrained emotion sobered Musick for now he knew this was to be a bad fight with no fun in it. He balanced himself on his toes and watched Ringrose come slowly at him. "I am going to cut you up, my friend," said Ringrose.

His arrogance had left him, his coolness came back. One hand rose for a guard and the other hand began to punch out, light and swift and tentative. He ducked and drew back, and moved in; he swayed his shoulders and took short side steps and his green, fixed glance came up through the slanted edge of his brows. Tom Gaween, himself a professional, called: "Watch that guinea. He's a pug."

Musick turned on his heels to match Ringrose's steady side- stepping. He received the man's searching punches on his arm, he batted them away with his palm, he let them slide along his shoulder, he began to feel their sting. Of a sudden he found himself too slow. Ringrose quickened the pace, broke through his guard and landed a hard smash on the chest. It unbalanced Musick and made him drop his guard and at once Ringrose came in and struck him twice, to the neck, to the side of the face. Musick pushed against Ringrose to smother this attack and felt Ringrose's knee slam at his crotch. Heat went through Musick as he turned and grabbed at Ringrose. He was struck again under the chin and as he wheeled slightly back, Ringrose's thumb, held like a knife, slashed him across the cheek.

He had been trying to match Ringrose's cleverness, but the try for his eyes roused him; temper tumbled through him and he ducked his head, catching a blow there, and got his hands on Ringrose and heaved the man across the floor to the saloon's wall. He laid his weight against Ringrose and beat the man on the side of the head. Anger continued to heat him; he jammed the butt of his palm into Ringrose's chin, slamming Ringrose's head into the wall; he did it repeatedly until Ringrose whirled and ducked down. Musick caught him at the neck, locked an elbow around his throat and again threw him toward the center of the saloon.

Ringrose fell, rolled and came up. He turned the wrong way and checked himself and swung around. Musick chopped him in the belly, forcing him back. Ringrose brought up his guard and began to feint out with his right hand; he tried to make a stand but could not match Musick's steady pressure. Musick tore down Ringrose's guard. He was fully aroused and he had forgotten that this fight had been meant for fun; he struck the man on the face, caught him in the kidneys, spun him half around. Ringrose righted himself and launched himself into one final violent attack, throwing aside his caution and his skill. Musick got through the man's carelessly moving arms and stunned him with a short punch to the cheek; and at that moment Ringrose dropped his hands and was a wide open target ready for the kill. Musick stepped back. He watched Ringrose's eyes a moment, and shook his head.

"That's enough of this," he said.

Ringrose stood with his knees bent and his legs spread apart. He drew both hands down across his face and he closed and opened his eyes and stared at Musick. He shook his head, pulling wind into his chest rapidly. Sweat sparkled along his forehead and stains began to show on his light skin. He felt the saloon's silence and looked around at the crowd, too spent for curiosity or resentment.

"Now let's have a drink," said Musick.

Ringrose got out his handkerchief and began to pat it across his cheeks. He put away the handkerchief; he pulled his shoulders up, shrugging his coat into better shape. He lifted his hands and inspected his knuckles.

"How about that drink?" said Musick.

"You go to hell," said Ringrose.

"Both of us will, maybe," said Musick agreeably. "You crowded me and I took you up. That's settled. We'll wash it down and forget it."

"No," said Ringrose.

Musick smiled. He walked forward and laid a hand on Ringrose's shoulder. "It's not that bad—"

Ringrose knocked Musick's arm aside and turned and left the saloon.

Musick went to the bar and took himself another drink.

His head was clear and he felt loose and fine and comfortable. Nothing troubled him, nothing weighted him. Callahan came up, grinning. "Now you're happy," he said. "See what I mean? But it won't last. That fellow picked you out, Adam. It wasn't an accident."

"Why?"

"He wanted to make himself a reputation."

"Why?"

"I don't know," said Callahan.

"Well," said Musick, "he didn't make it."

"He might of done it," said Callahan. "You were slow startin'. He was a fine fighter until you hit him in the belly."

The crowd around the bar listened to him. Ben Crowley stood close at hand and took in the talk, and near by, too, was a short, broad man with a coal-black set of whiskers whose eyes seemed unusually inquisitive. Musick put down his glass and walked to the doorway with this stranger's eyes reminding him of something he could not place. When he got to the street he saw a shadow against the saloon wall near by and guessed it to be Ringrose; but he was no longer interested in Ringrose, and so he turned homeward. The rain was slackening and the wind had fallen away from the peak of its violence, but all the eaves along the street were making a great racket with their spilled water.

A light still burned in the Barnes's house; when he got inside he found Lily in the kitchen, seated at the table with her elbows on it and her chin cupped in her palms. The warmth of the room burned on his cheeks and the sight of her sent a current through him, like the smell of ammonia or the taste of ginger.

"It's fine outside," he said. "The wind blew our sins away."

"You went to Dennison's instead of paying your call."

"I paid my call. Then I went to The Shades and got in a fight. I feel fine."

"I knew you'd drink tonight," she murmured. She rose and found a cup and poured hot coffee into it, and handed it to him. "Take it back." She sat down and watched him; her spirit brushed him and her lips were soft when they thought of him. "You didn't need whisky. Isn't she better than whisky?"

"Why does a woman fight a man? A man's not a horse to be broken. Faith comes first, not argument. Maybe, after forty years of marriage the light goes out and people hate each other. But in the beginning it shouldn't be that."

"How is she to know what you are? You don't tell her anything. You don't tell anybody anything."

"People don't talk themselves into love." He made a gesture with his hand. "It comes and goes. It's a lot of things, but it's never words."

She again had her chin on her palms; she was listening to the sound of his voice, but not to his words.

"Tell that to her, not to me." She grew restless with his glance and rose and found another cup and filled it with coffee. She stood sipping at the coffee. "You're wild. I can imagine how you kiss her. It would scare anybody."

"You talking for her?" he asked.

A clear dislike sprang to her face. "She can talk for herself."

"Guess I said something wrong," he murmured. He took his bedroom lamp from the kitchen shelf and lighted it. He climbed the stairs and turned at the landing. She was at the front door, locking it. Afterwards she swung about and her glance reached him. Her face was heavy and carried an expression he had not seen before.