Buster Midnight's Cafe Read online

  It was Miners Union Day, and a bunch of us decided to go out to Columbia Gardens. Toney had a fight there that night, and he wanted us to go and cheer for him. Even then, I think he liked Whippy Bird and wanted to impress her, though Whippy Bird says back then he was twice as old as her, and Mr. Bird would have killed him if Toney had so much as put a finger on her. Mr. Bird felt that way about every boy Whippy Bird went out with, especially her husbands. She says Toney just wanted to show off, which he surely did like to do.

  Toney’d been a fighter for a couple of years. He started punching as a union thug, beating up miners who spoke out against the union. Then he lined up a few bouts to see if he could make money at it. He wasn’t very good, but he fought dirty, hitting where he wasn’t supposed to, so he won more times than he lost.

  He had a heap and said he’d drive all of us, so we didn’t mind if we went. There was me and Whippy Bird and May Anna, Pink Varscoe and Toney and Buster. Whippy Bird says don’t forget Chick O’Reilly. I remember thinking we were snuggled in like honey in a comb, because I kept telling Pink to mind his own beeswax whenever he put his hand on my knee.

  It was a busy night. Any night in Butte used to be busy. Sometimes the sidewalks were so crowded you had to walk in the street, even at 4 A.M. But on Miners Union Day it was busiest of all because everybody in Butte went out on the town. The saloons were full and the restaurants, too. Even the hotels were packed because people came in from out of town for the parade. The reason we were glad to get a ride in Toney’s jalopy was the streetcars were so crowded, it would take forever to get to the Gardens even though they were right at the edge of Butte.

  The Gardens were one of the finest things Butte ever had. There was a roller coaster and a merry-go-round and a nice zoo with a bear pit and even peacocks that sometimes got loose and wandered uptown. I always wondered what would happen if one of those birds fell down a mine shaft. The miners were superstitious, and I bet meeting a peacock underground could make them think it was a sign from the devil that their time had come. I’m surprised nobody ever stole one of those birds and took it underground. The sound of a peacock screeching in the stopes would have sounded like a banshee for sure.

  The thing I always liked best about the Gardens was the gardens. There were always flower displays. Sometimes the gardeners spelled out COLUMBIA GARDENS in different colored flowers that they grew in their own greenhouses. It was swell, all right. There was grass and lots of trees, too, something we didn’t have in Centerville or most any other place in Butte.

  And the smells! Who could forget that about Columbia Gardens. The popcorn and the fried grease smells. In Butte it stank of the smelters and that electric smell that came from streetcars. You got the aroma of garlic and onions and Italian sausage from Meaderville or those funny pungent spice smells from the Chinese restaurants and herb shops. At Columbia Gardens, though, you smelled flowers. It was like perfume. Roses and hyacinths and pansies.

  The pansies are what I liked most about Columbia Gardens. There was maybe a whole acre in pansies. When we were little, they’d let us kids loose in there for ten minutes, and we could pick as many pansies as we wanted. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I think back to when I was a kid in the pansy garden. I think heaven is being let into that garden by yourself with as much time as you want to pick the flowers.

  We weren’t out to pick posies that night, of course, although Pink snitched a rose for me from one of the flower baskets. The night was pretty. Lots of drapey flowers like ferns hanging from the light poles, and there were Chinese lanterns strung up over the sidewalk, too. Whippy Bird says there never were Chinese lanterns at Columbia Gardens, but this is my story, and I’m telling it my way.

  We had plenty of time to walk around and go on the rides before the fight. Pink took me on the roller coaster and said he’d hold on to me if I was frightened, but I told him that was stupid. If I was scared, I wouldn’t go. If I wasn’t, I didn’t want him hanging on to me. Besides, if I wanted to fall out, there was nothing he could do to stop me. May Anna told me you were supposed to make men feel like big, strong protectors, even though you knew you didn’t need them. She could do that just fine, but I couldn’t, which is why she went out with Robert Taylor and I didn’t, I guess.

  So there we were, smelling the flowers, going on rides, and stuffing ourselves with hot dogs and cotton candy. Except for Toney. He wouldn’t eat anything before a fight for fear he would throw up in the ring, so Buster didn’t eat anything either. I guess that was moral support. You have to say for Buster and Toney, they always backed each other up.

  We were standing around the refreshment stand, and Toney said it was about time for him to go suit up for the fight when that guy spit on his shoe. I don’t think he meant to. He took a swig of something that was wrapped in a brown paper sack. It must have been bad because he spit it out on the ground. Only it got all over Toney’s shoe. It was a nice two-toned leather slip-on with a white top, and that man left a big brown stain on it.

  That made Toney mad as hell because he spent most of his money on clothes, and he always looked spiffy. He might have thought getting spit on made him look bad in front of Whippy Bird, too. So he grabbed the guy by the tie and said, “Hey, pal, wipe the shoe.”

  If Toney had just asked the man to say he was sorry, he might have said okeydoke and done it, but nobody’s going to lean down and clean bad whiskey off your shoe, especially a drunk, dough-faced Bohunk who looks meaner than a mule.

  “Clean it yourself, you lousy petticoat,” he told Toney, though I, myself, never thought Toney looked Cornish. He was too big.

  “You want to fight, chump?” Toney asked him, putting up his dukes.

  Before any of us saw it, and especially before Toney saw it, that Bohunk hit him in the head and knocked him backward. Of course, it took more than that to hurt Toney McKnight. Still, he was sur-prised and stunned some, and him being a fighter, he was plenty mad at not having his defenses up. He hit that man’s chin with his right, then gave him a left to the stomach, and the Bohunk caved in like his brown paper bag.

  That set off the chump’s friends, and they started closing in on Toney—until a couple of cops showed up. They took one look at the man lying on the ground and asked who started the fight. The Bohunks pointed to Toney so the cops cuffed him right there.

  “Hey, I’m supposed to fight,” Toney told them.

  “You just did, bud,” the cop told him right back.

  “Not here, over at the ring, you dumb ox.”

  I always thought Toney was a goofy thinker when he was mad, and Whippy Bird says that was surely right. She says he wasn’t such a swift thinker when he wasn’t mad either, but she’s just kidding.

  “Who you calling dumb ox?” the cop asked Toney.

  Well, right there Toney could have apologized, and Buster might have ended his days as just another retired miner.

  “You, you stupid bastard,” Toney answered.

  Buster didn’t have a temper like his brother, and he tried to explain that Toney was scheduled for a boxing match, but the policeman told him to shut up. “We’re taking him in to cool off,” he said.

  By then, Toney realized what he’d done, but it was too late. The cops were dragging him away. “You fight for me,” Toney told Buster.

  Buster just stood there with his mouth open. It was like Toney had hit him, too.

  “Go on, kid,” Toney called over his shoulder. “Nobody’ll know the difference.” Which was true enough since the two of them looked pretty much alike even though Toney was older.

  “I can’t fight!” Buster called back, shaking his head.

  “You bet you can!” The cops had taken Toney half a block, one dragging him and the other pushing him along with a nightstick in the back. We were following. “Kid,” Toney pleaded, pulling up short, “I’m in real trouble if I don’t show. You gotta do this for me.”

  That’s the only reason Buster fought. He never in his life gave a thought to being a professiona
l fighter before that night. He just always assumed Toney would be the boxer in the family. Buster said he learned fighting just to protect himself, which I already said is not the case. He learned it to impress May Anna. But I think it’s true he hadn’t thought about being a professional.

  The cop kept pushing Toney along with his nightstick, and when Toney tried to stop, he gave Toney a chop in the kidneys. “Get going!” he said. That must have been why Buster agreed right there he’d fight.

  “Don’t you worry, kid,” Toney yelled. “You just get in the ring with him. It’s only four rounds. Protect your head. You can do it.”

  Buster stood there watching Toney until he disappeared in the crowd, then he turned to Pink with kind of a helpless look. “Where’s Toney’s trunks?” he asked.

  That made us all laugh because we thought Buster would say something like he couldn’t do it or he was scared or try to bluff and say he would beat the hell out of the other fighter. He didn’t do that. He was cool like he always was, in the ring or out. That was one of Buster’s strengths. In his early matches when the other fighters didn’t know him, they’d say mean things to Buster to get him flustered, like call him a petticoat. It never worked, though.

  The only way anyone ever successfully baited Buster was to tease him about his girlfriend being a hooker. It always backfired since it didn’t fluster Buster; it just made him vicious. Like the time Morrie the Mauler told him, “I’m gunna finish you, then celebrate with the blondie in Venus Alley.” Buster didn’t say anything, didn’t even bother to set him up. He just took one step forward and slugged Morrie in the mouth. Morrie went down for the count. Usually, Buster was known as a gentleman. In fact, one or two writers called him the Gentleman from Butte, but he could be mean when it came to sticking up for May Anna.

  We were all excited about Buster fighting. Pink and Chick raced over to Toney’s car to get his trunks as well as his shoes, which turned out to be too small for Buster. That’s why he crow-hopped all over the ring that first time, making the sports writer who was there think this was some new kind of foot technique. But then that writer thought the fighter was Toney, not Buster. Toney fought under the name “Kid McKnight,” so nobody knew what his real name was. The two McKnights looked so much alike, nobody could have told you which one was in the ring anyway. Except us, of course.

  Nobody cared either. Toney didn’t have many followers except for Buster and Chick and Pink and a few girls you could count on hanging around him because he was such a flashy dresser. Toney was not exactly the biggest fighter in Butte. That’s why he was doing a four-round exhibition match at Columbia Gardens at the same time there was wrestling and foot races going on. You fought for “exposure,” the Gardens said, which is another way of saying the purse wouldn’t pay for more than two rounds of Shawn O’s for Buster’s gang.

  I never knew why Toney fought, whether he just liked the attention or whether he actually thought he had a chance at something. Whippy Bird said it was a way to keep out of the mines. He never liked getting his fancy clothes dirty. Everyone said he was “high-toned,” which is where he got his name, of course. May Anna said he was the toniest dresser she ever met, and she would surely know. Toney could have been a bouncer or a bartender or, in fact, the bootlegger he was. He didn’t have to be a fighter. Maybe he didn’t care about it much because he never stood in Buster’s way, never made him feel he’d taken anything away from Toney. I expect Toney knew he ended up with more glory being Buster’s brother and manager than he’d ever have got as Kid McKnight.

  Buster went off to the boys’ room to change clothes, then he came back, looking as fancy as Toney in those purple silk shorts.

  “Why, Buster, you’re elegant,” May Anna told him. It was the first time I ever heard her purr. Buster looked just like a Columbia Gardens peacock when she said that.

  Then he started shadowboxing and doing warm-ups like he’d seen Toney do, though I don’t know if it helped him. May Anna helped him, though. Just before he headed for the ring, she planted a kiss on his mouth and said, “I’m proud of you, Buster. I’ll be watching.” Old Buster, he walked down that aisle like he was already a champ.

  Chick acted like his trainer and got the water bucket and the towel and the mouth sponge, though he didn’t know any more what to do with them than the rest of us. Buster was the only one who knew fighting, and that was only because he helped Toney train and used to hang around the Centerville Gym.

  I never knew the real name of the man he fought. He was called the Butte Bomber. Buster said he was just some bum, but he looked dangerous to us. He was bigger than Buster, who was no peaweight himself, and he had a broken nose and Happy ears like cartoons you see of prize-fighters. He climbed through the ropes and sneered at Buster, then said so everybody could hear, “Where do they get these kids?”

  Like I said, Buster never got flustered, even in his very first fight. He stood there, quiet, just like a gentleman, while Chick laced up his gloves.

  May Anna was cool, too, though me and Whippy Bird were sweating buckets. She just smiled sweetly at Buster, kind of like a Madonna, with her hands folded in her lap, her head high. It was the first time I noticed May Anna had a neck like a goose. I think she’d already started practicing being an actress.

  Pink sat down next to me. He was sweating, too, with little beads of perspiration standing out on his face. It was as hot there as it ever gets in Butte, but it wasn’t only the heat that got to Pink. He found out the Butte Bomber just about killed somebody in his last fight, and Pink being the damn fool he sometimes was, he told us all about it, so we were scared for Buster. Whippy Bird said if he told that to Buster, she personally would kill him. May Anna wasn’t frightened though. “Buster will take care of Mr. Butte Bomber,” she said.

  We weren’t as sure as May Anna. Buster came out of his corner quiet, not looking scared, but not looking like he was out for a fight either. He never glanced at us, not once, but I was sure he knew right where May Anna was sitting. When the fight started, he danced around with the Bomber for a few minutes in those tight shoes. Meanwhile, we were hoping and praying Buster could just keep doing that for four rounds without getting killed.

  After dancing for what seemed like an hour, the Butte Bomber lashed out at Buster. Buster dodged him, and they went back to sidestepping. It didn’t start as much of a fight, them just moving around, making little swipes and dodging each other. A couple of times, the Butte Bomber connected, and once he knocked Buster down for a count of two. We were worried when that happened, but Buster hopped right up. He told us later the only reason he fell was because of those tight shoes. It was a pretty boring start, the boys said, and they knew more about it than me and Whippy Bird. It was so boring, in fact, that when the second round ended, people booed.

  I think that was what got Buster going. Up to that time, he was just trying to get along without being hurt. But the crowd booed Kid McKnight, and Buster was responsible for Kid McKnight’s honor. That meant Buster had to do something. So when the second round ended, Buster sat down on his little stool and whispered to Chick, “This is it. I’m gunna knock him out. You just watch me.” Chick told us Buster didn’t even sound excited, just said it like you’d say I’m going to go get a glass of beer and a cigarette. He meant it, though. When Buster came out for the third round, he was a fighter.

  You couldn’t tell from looking at him. He was still crow-hopping in Toney’s tight shoes and looking dumb as a Bohunk. Then the Butte Bomber took a poke at him with his right, and Buster moved in and damn near killed him. Buster countered with his left, hit with his right, then his left, and went in for the finish. He slugged the Butte Bomber with the most powerful right anybody ever saw in Columbia Gardens. The Bomber was out for five minutes. When the referee held up Buster’s hand and named him the winner, we leaped up on our chairs, yelling and hollering. May Anna was the loudest. So much for Miss Cool Movie Star. We clapped and whistled and hugged, and then Pink Varscoe kissed me. That was the sta
rt of serious things between me and Pink.

  May Anna ran over to Buster, when he was climbing through the ropes, and kissed him. Then Chick kissed Whippy Bird. There was more kissing that night than May Anna ever had in any of her movies.

  It turned out, Toney watched that fight. As we were leaving we turned around and saw him standing in the back of the room. He’d talked those cops into letting him go but not soon enough for him to fight, so when he got there, Buster was already in the ring. You’d think Toney would have been cheering, too, but he wasn’t. He was just studying his brother, quiet and collected the way Buster usually was.

  Like I say, it wasn’t much of a fight. We were cheering like crazy, but nobody else was. As far as the crowd was concerned, they were just watching a couple of dumb turnips take pokes at each other, hoping to see blood. It didn’t matter to them who won. The people there didn’t know they were in on the ground floor of boxing history. It’s funny when me and Whippy Bird remember about that night, how we never knew something of importance to the world was happening. I bet Life magazine would pay about a million dollars for a picture of May Anna giving Buster a kiss after his first fight.

  Maybe the Montana Standard sports writer knew. He gave Buster two paragraphs on the sports page the next day, saying Toney McKnight had perfected a new step that allowed him to knock out the Butte Bomber with a lightning right. He wrote that Kid McKnight was a power to watch on the Montana boxing circuit and predicted he would one day play in Salt Lake City. Maybe even Spokane.

  “So, I won,” Buster told Toney when he caught up with him. Buster still had on those little purple pants, and May Anna was hanging around his neck. Buster wasn’t so cool you couldn’t tell he was proud of what he’d done and wanted Toney to be proud of him, too.

  Toney nodded but didn’t say anything. Now, you may think Toney acted that way because he was jealous. Or you might think, like we did later, that Toney was giving a lot of thought to Buster’s future. I have to tell you both of those are true thoughts, but me and Whippy Bird decided there was something else going on in Toney McKnight’s head, too.