“Son of a bitch!” somebody yelled, and Mr. Smith was suddenly airborne as the second Adam, who hadn’t headed home yet — and who, being Mormon, was sober as a preacher — reached right over me, picked him up by the forearms, and threw him across the parlor with his arms pinwheeling like the legs of an upturned bug.
Well, some men can’t resist a slice of cake and some can’t resist tobacco and some can’t say no to a glass of whiskey. Or a cup of coffee for that matter. And then there’s some who just can’t turn down a fight.
A peculiar number of that sort of men wind up working lumber, running traplines, or panning gold. In preference to the kinds of jobs, you understand, such as come with garters to keep your sleeves out of the ink and visors to keep the light out of your eyes. Or in preference to the kinds of jobs where you have to show up punctual for a sixteen-hour shift and try to keep your fingers on your hands and not raise your voice to the overseer all day. And such as requires you to be polite to a job lot of strangers all day long. Or in preference likewise to farming, which takes a steady hand and a kind of patience with slow-growing things and cantankerous weather and slow-shifting seasons that’s in short supply in Rapid City. As you might guess by the name.
My da had that patience, and it’s why his horses was tamed more than broken. Crispin has it, to sit by the door quiet and attentive and calming and always be ready when Miss Bethel needs a hand with a customer as has overindulged in the fruit of the whiskey tree. And I see it in Bass Reeves, too. I suppose you have to have some such, to trail such men as you’ve got writs for until you find ’em, and then to stalk ’em until you get the opportunity to take ’em in safe. The Professor? He ain’t got it at all. He’ll cut a man soon as look at him, if he feels he’s being trifled with. But he’s always kind to us girls.
Women have more of that patience, as a class. That ain’t because we’re born with it, though. It’s because we’re schooled to it and taught early that if we don’t have it we won’t never win. I think Crispin was the only man in that room that night with any such patience. Because before I even collected my wits and got my feet under me, the whole room was throwing furniture and insults — with none of the usual windup.
I dragged myself up on the next stool over, wincing and shaking but determined to get off the floor before somebody up and trampled me. The Professor was standing between the mob and his piano, brandishing a pool cue. No one was spoiling to challenge him, neither. By the time I was up on the stool, Miss Bethel had grabbed her shotgun, straightened up, and shaken the shards of broken bottles and shattered looking glass off her shoulders. I heard them crunch under her boots as she stepped forward, craning her neck this way and that to get the lay of the battle.
Most of the girls was in full flight, making their escape to the corners of the room. Crispin was wading in, and so was Miss Francina. Which meant Miss Bethel couldn’t shoot into the crowd even if she wanted to. And despite their best efforts, the melee was spreading. I ducked a thrown chair, so it thudded into the front of the bar and missed me entire.
The funny thing was, they seemed to be concentrating their efforts on property damage. Smashing furniture and the like. For example, I saw one of them taking the fireplace poker to that striped divan, which seemed like an odd waste of time in a brawl.
Miss Bethel glanced dubiously upward. I wouldn’t want to shoot a second load into Madame’s ceiling in the same month, neither, but I wasn’t sure what her other options were.
Then her gaze crossed mine. She said, “Karen honey, give me your hand.”
I held it up, steadying myself on the bar with the other one. She grabbed it, and — still holding on to the shotgun southpaw — used my support to lever herself up onto the polished top of the bar.
Her little boot came down on it as if it were a dance hall stage. She shucked that shotgun with a sound that cut through the crowd like a snake’s mad rattle. And she yelled out — my hand to God—“What the Sam Hill do you all think you’re doing?!”
You’ve never seen a room that noisy get quiet that fast. The man taking the hot poker to the divan turned around; I saw coils of smoke curling up from the batting. Fire.
Nothing terrified me more, I tell you frankly. Fire in a largely wood-frame city like Rapid …
It was a horrifying idea.
Then I saw that the man with the poker was Adam. My less-sober Adam. You learn not to get attached, but … it was a hoof in the breadbasket, and no mistake.
And worse, when he brandished that poker with the smoking wool bat seared on the tip and yelled, “Peter Bantle sends his regards!”
I was so mad I hopped up onto that bar, right behind Miss Bethel, and I looked him in the eyes, and I yelled, “Adam Wainwright, what on God’s earth do you think you are doing?”
Well, he blinked. And he gave me a look I purely recognized from the inside out: confusion, and shame, and wild-eyed something-or-other. The poker sagged; he realized a second before it scorched the rug what he was about to do and jerked it up again.
All around him, other men were glancing about with dazed expressions, like they were just realizing where they were and couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten there or what they thought they were about. Beatrice darted out of the library and tossed a wool shawl over the smoldering divan. I imagined I heard the shawl emit a small sigh like a sleeping kitten as the smoke was quenched. The burning wool smelled like a festival in Hell. Crispin had one miner off the ground by his shirt collar and braces and just held him there dangling as if waiting to see if he was going to take another kick or swing.
I was minded of a mother dog scruffing a puppy, using no more force than is necessary.
The silence was thick and heavy, and it lasted until it was punctuated by Madame’s unmistakable boot on the stair.
She stopped there and surveyed the damage. I felt her eye tick across me, even though I couldn’t bear to meet it. Then she took the kind of deep breath that plumped her battleship prow up over the top of her stays, and let it out again. Say what you will about the formidable Madame Damnable, but I can see how she made her money in Anchorage. She’s got to be fifty-nine, and she’s still got a balcony you could do Shakespeare from.
“We’re fucking closed,” she said in a voice that was heavy and tired and still brooked no argument. “If you don’t work here, get the ever-loving black bastard Jesus fuck off my property.”
There followed a general exodus, and Crispin waited to bar the door behind them while Miss Francina climbed the flights to roust a few customers who might still be in upstairs rooms. Madame came the rest of the way down the stairs and then she just waited, hands folded over her cane. Pollywog fetched her a bar stool, which was like Polly, and Madame leaned back on it gratefully, easing her bad foot, and said, “Thank you, darling.”
When at last we were all assembled — all us girls, at least, and Crispin; Connie stayed back in the kitchen, and I think Priya was still out visiting her sister with Merry Lee, for which I was more grateful than I can say — Madame looked us all over, from Beatrice clutching Signor to her like a rag doll big as her chest to Miss Francina, whose face was as stubborn and stern as I have ever seen it. Then she sighed and twirled her cane. “I believe I overheard something about that no-account Peter Bantle?”
I stepped forward before Miss Francina could and shot her a look that said, plain as day, This was my doing and it’s my problem. At least, that were the message I meant to put in it. Miss Francina’s scowl in return told me it weren’t too well received.