The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [153]
Looking longingly at the row of whiskey bottles with plaid pipers on them, Bill stayed resolute. "I have work to do tonight. Your glorified tap water, please."
"Turning unpredictable on me, are you." Tom Harry shook his head over serving a plain glass of beer, just as if the Medicine Lodge didn't practically run the stuff in its plumbing. Before he could step to the beer tap, a voice accented with Oslo or beyond quavered from the end of the bar:
"Mister 'tender! When you isn't busy, we gunna have some of t'ose jar weiners."
Bill's newspapering instinct of keeping track of things took a moment to put a name to the face of the latest keeper of sheep blowing six months of wages—Andy Gustafson, an old snoose chewer who herded for the Busby brothers on upper English Creek. Perched elbow to elbow with this splurger was another herder recognizable as practically a fixture in here, Canada Dan, sending down the bar an eager freeloading nod and a mostly toothless grin. Bill pursed back a smile. Some things you could count on.
"Catch the faithful, too," he capitulated, trickling more money onto the bar.
"You hear that, Gufferson, or something wrong with your ears?" Tom Harry called out, heavy with hint.
"Yah, t'anks!"
"Here's to lookin' bad and feelin' good, mister!" Canada Dan mistily chimed out.
"I should've been a milkman instead of a bartender," Tom Harry groused as he drew Bill's beer before moving on to the jar of whatever preservative the Vienna sausages swam in. "I'd only have to look at one horse's ass at a time."
Left in peace as Tom Harry marched on the other end of the bar, Bill took out his jackknife and carefully slit the bundle along one side. He turned up his nose as usual at the hefty halves of boilerplate that were the bulk of the parcel. For an honest editor, patriotism that simply bolted onto the printing press was not true news and he never used the ready-made stuff. Reaching into the middle, he slipped out the packet of TPWP handouts and skimmed, head poised at bifocals angle, until he found the words Supreme Team.
He froze at the next word that caught his eye: Jake.
In a sick trance he began to read Ben's piece. When he was finished, he sat looking past himself in the dark mirroring of the saloon front window. This was Cloyce's canasta night. Jake Eisman had been her favorite of Ben's friends from the team. He would have to tell her when she came home, it would be no mercy for her to read it first when the paper came out tomorrow. He himself had the helpless feeling of time rounding on itself and unleashing the same bad news again. As a punk kid reporter in 1917 and '18, underage for military service, he had written obituary after obituary of the same sort as the so-called war to end all wars drained a generation of lifeblood out of Montana. About like this one.
"Well?" Gruffness serving as apology, Tom Harry disturbed both past and present.
"A deep subject, Tom." Bill resorted to his beer, a very long swallow, to gain time to compose himself somewhat. "What's on your mind now?"
"Well, do you need the goddamn Packard for anything?" The bartender sounded shy and grumpy at the same time. "You look like the dog ate your supper, and so I just wondered if the car and some gas rations would help you out any." Tom Harry bunched his shoulders. "Take the wife Christmas shopping in Great Falls or some damn thing—how do I know what you're supposed to do in maddermoany, I never been in front of any preacher."
Bill Reinking dispensed some more money onto the bar and indicated another round for the hopeful denizens at the far end. "Thanks for the offer, Tom, you're a prince among publicans." Rising to go, he hefted the bundle as if it had grown heavier since he came in. "But I have business to tend to at the word shop."
19
All right, Reinking, think, damn it, think. Since you can't get your hands on the neck of that colonel or whatever other Tepee Weepy creep is screwing us over—Moxie is right about that much—you have to twist this the other direction somehow. Don't pitch a fit,