Buster Midnight's Cafe Read online

  That’s part of the reason Buster never had any money left over from his fighting days. But then who ever heard of a fighter that got rich doing anything but running a restaurant? Buster didn’t fight for money, anyway. He wanted to be somebody. For May Anna. And that was the way it worked out.

  We went to Billings with Buster and Toney to watch that fight, of course. It took half a day to get there, so me and Whippy Bird got permission to spend the night in a hotel, which was as exciting as seeing Buster fight. Pop said I could go if Whippy Bird did. And Mr. Bird said Whippy Bird could go if I did. May Anna’s mother didn’t care and probably didn’t even know that she was gone.

  Toney took us over in his new Studebaker President Eight, which had window shades and a backseat that held about two dozen people. He had gotten big-time in the bootlegging business in those days, making runs to Canada every week or so, and that’s why he ditched the heap for the Studebaker car—and why he had ten or twelve bottles of Canadian whiskey tucked under the seat.

  You have to realize back then, though the boys were out of high school, me and Whippy Bird and May Anna were sixteen and not as familiar with liquor as we were later on. Me and Whippy Bird especially. We were so green we still thought you got drunk mixing an aspirin with a Coke. That day we knew for sure we could get drunk drinking Canadian—and right out of the bottle since Toney didn’t pack glasses in the Studebaker President Eight.

  “Toney, don’t you have no ice?” Pink asked, leaning over the front seat. “You can’t ask these ladies to swig from the bottle.”

  Toney, without taking his eyes off the road, said, “I got ice, all right, just no glasses. If you want to hold the ice in your hand and pour this good whiskey over it, then suit yourself.”

  “Or use Whippy Bird’s shoe,” said Buster. “Her shoes are too small for a bird,” which is the truth. She is the only grown woman I ever knew who wore Thorn McAn little girls’ shoes, and that’s because she has a size three foot. Today she wears little kids’ sneakers from Sears.

  All of us were drinking except Buster because Toney wouldn’t let him. Me and Whippy Bird passed out, which wasn’t such a bad idea since that is a long, boring drive. When we woke up we were sober though it took me a little while before my mouth felt like it was part of me again.

  May Anna was better about drinking since she just sipped a little every now and then. I remember waking up while she was singing. Her voice sounded good to me, which is why I knew I was still drunk. She said the whiskey kept her warm, which was no little thing since it was winter. You never knew anything as cold as winter in Montana. The wind blows straight down from the North Pole with nothing to stop it except barbed wire fences with the gates open. (I read that in Hunter Harper’s book and thought it was catchy, which is why I’m using it. He shouldn’t complain since he got most of his stories from me and Whippy Bird.)

  In Billings we stayed at a big hotel on Broadway, which I remember almost as much as I do that fight. I’d seen fights before, but I’d never stayed in a hotel until then. The only other times I’d ever been away from home were when I stayed with Whippy Bird or May Anna or if I went to my grandmother’s house in Anaconda. In fact, the only other time I could remember being a paying guest in a hotel was when Mrs. Kovaks took us to May Anna’s birthday lunch at the Finlen in Butte.

  We had a big iron bed painted white that was swaybacked and sagged in the middle, just like home. Me and Whippy Bird and May Anna drew straws to see who had to sleep in the middle. Whippy Bird lost, but it didn’t matter because May Anna slept somewhere else. I bet you can guess where.

  When we got to Billings, Buster and Toney disappeared inside the Elks hall while we checked into the hotel and checked out the town, which was not one of your more exciting places. We were in a position to know because we were from Butte. People talk about mining towns being rough and ugly, but they’re exciting, too. Billings was dull, and we felt like hot stuff around those hay farmers and cowboys.

  The Unholy Three had grown up quite a bit by then even if we were still in high school and didn’t know much about liquor.

  May Anna’s hair wasn’t platinum blond yet, but it was getting lighter. It wasn’t that mine runoff color anymore. She’d shot up some in height, too. Willowy was what the movie magazines called it. She was willowy in Billings.

  Me and Whippy Bird weren’t so bad either. Whippy Bird was still little—she is still waiting for her growth, which is a little joke we have—but she looked perky with all those red curls. She never got the freckles your redheads usually get either. Me, I was tall, and I wore my hair in a bob, and I was skinny—but skinny was fashionable just then. Pink told me I looked like Tillie the Toiler in the funny papers, but then he always flattered me. Still, we were lookers, if I do say so myself. We surely cut a picture of fashion there in Billings among all your ordinary people. We sure knew it, too, walking around in our high-heeled slippers, chewing Wrigley’s Doublemint, and setting fire to Camel cigarettes, as May Anna liked to put it.

  Whippy Bird says shut up, Effa Commander, you’re bragging, and I surely am. She says we weren’t that cute, but I distinctly remember we were. She says May Anna looked like a goddess, and we looked like Mutt and Jeff in knee garters.

  The setup for the fight wasn’t much. Toney and the other manager put a bunch of folding chairs on the floor of a meeting room. The hall was decorated with flags and streamers left over from some dance, and there were stuffed animal heads around with the hair falling out. The ring itself was just a platform raised up about a foot or two off the floor, with ropes about as thick as clothesline. There were two little rickety stools with the paint coming off for the fighters. I remember when Buster stood up once to start a round, there was a big paint chip sticking to him that looked like a hole in his pants.

  The hall was already filling up when we got there. We were so late, the boys thought we were lost, though the truth was we’d stopped at a soda fountain. I ordered a black cow, Whippy Bird got a muddy river, and May Anna had a lime rickey. Whippy Bird says how can you remember what you ordered fifty years ago, Effa Commander. But you remember the things that are important. Besides, I have been a professional food person all my life, and my mind works that way. Then we got to flirting with the cowboys and forgot the time.

  Pink and Chick saved us places in the front row. Of course, May Anna just naturally sat in the middle.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Chick asked Whippy Bird.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she snapped. You never could fence in Whippy Bird. When I heard that song “Don’t Fence Me In,” I said they wrote that one for you, Whippy Bird.

  The boys were puffed up, acting like they were big-time Butte prize fight fans who blew in especially for the match. They talked in loud voices about this new fighter, Buster Midnight, and what a natural he was. The boys put down quite a bit on Buster, who didn’t look so good by the odds. It took me and Whippy Bird a long time to learn the big money in prize fighting wasn’t the purse but the bets. Of course, you had to bet right, which is something we never thought about. We just bet on Buster. But then that meant we always came out right.

  I gave Pink five dollars and told him to place it on Buster for me, but Pink said he’d give me a piece of his bet, if I was good to him. Pink was always saying things like that. I just told him I’d rather put out five dollars than put out for him, if you know what I mean. Whippy Bird says I put out plenty in my time when Pink and I were going around together, but that is not any of your business.

  This being the first professional fight of Buster Midnight, we all felt important. The boys had cigars that they kept chewing and lighting, and then chewing again. Me and Whippy Bird and May Anna chain-smoked the Camels, leaving little bits of red lipstick on the ends, which we thought looked swell. May Anna had learned to hold her cigarette between two fingers so that her nail polish showed, and she used her little fingernail to pick the bits of tobacco from her tiny crooked teeth.

/>   After everybody sat down and the hall filled up with a cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke as thick as the Butte sky, the referee climbed through the clothesline and called everybody’s attention. First he introduced the Billings fighter, who fought under the name the Finnish Cowboy. He was big, of course, and blond, and dopey-looking. He had a face that looked like it was made up of little blocks of stone stuck together.

  Everybody clapped and cheered The Pride of Southeast Montana, which was another thing the Finnish Cowboy was called, and people stamped their feet and whistled while that Finn ox-lumbered down the aisle and into the ring. If size could win, Buster would have been dead right there.

  Then the announcer said the second fighter was the Dynamite King of the Butte Mines—Buster Midnight. I don’t know where they got that dynamite business because Buster never set charges. He was just a mucker.

  There were some boos from the Billings crowd, but we cheered and hollered, and so did some other people. That’s when me and Whippy Bird realized we didn’t own Buster Midnight. That night we discovered Buster Midnight had fans. In fact, right there, with Buster running down the aisle to the ring in Toney’s old purple silk shorts, Whippy Bird turned to me and said, “Remember I told you this, Effa Commander. Buster is going to be a famous person.” I did remember because I almost never knew Whippy Bird to be wrong.

  We all yelled and made a nuisance of ourselves, but Buster and Toney weren’t paying attention. They tended to business. They never even looked at us. Even Buster never looked at May Anna. Toney whispered things to him, and Buster nodded. Then Buster did a funny thing. He stood up tall, raised his arms over his head and smiled at the crowd. Then he made a couple of little punches at people in the audience and grinned. The crowd loved it.

  “Buster learned right at the beginning that boxing is show business. That’s why he was always so popular,” May Anna said later on. “Buster McKnight was just a shy, nice guy, but Buster Midnight was a showman.” Who in the state of Montana would ever dispute a fact about show business with May Anna Kovaks-Marion Street?

  The Finnish Cowboy looked at Buster like he was a nitwit. Then he glanced over at his trainer in a way that said, “This is going to be easy.” You couldn’t blame him for underestimating Buster, who did look a little dopey himself. The Finn would find out about him soon enough.

  The bell sounded, and Buster and the cowboy came into the ring, skipping around and making little swipes at each other. For a man as big as he was, the cowboy had a funny way of fighting. He crouched over and kept his head down and his shoulders hunched up, like a turtle. Every now and then his head poked out of the shell and he punched at Buster. For a couple of rounds, though, neither one connected.

  You have to give the cowboy credit. He was a lot better than the Butte Bomber, kind of tricky, and faster than you’d think for all that size. Finns never struck me as fast dodgers, but maybe Finn cowboys are better than Finn miners. Buster sparred, trying to find a weak spot. Toney taught him to learn all about the other fighter before he tried anything, which was why Buster was a slow starter. He told Buster nobody was perfect, that if a fighter had fists like sledge hammers, he likely had a jelly belly, too. There were plenty who could dish it out but not take it—or could take it but couldn’t dish it out. Toney told him to spend the first round or two figuring out the fighter.

  The crowd didn’t figure it that way, though. They thought Buster was scared. They decided he was chicken. They also thought the fight was fixed. Or at least some of them did. We found out later that the sheriff took all the ticket receipts, saying if it was a fair fight, he’d give them back, but if it wasn’t, he’d return the money to the ticket buyers.

  Me and Whippy Bird think Toney wouldn’t blink an eye about fixing a fight for himself, but he was grooming Buster to be a champ. Letting Buster lose, especially his first fight, didn’t make sense. Besides, Buster wouldn’t ever agree to a fixed fight.

  For a while it surely did look like all Buster was doing was trying to stay on his feet for a few rounds. The Finn thought so, too. He got overconfident. He let go with his right and forgot to defend himself, and Buster let him have it in the belly with a one-two from his hard-rock fists. That took the wind out of that cowboy. He collided with the ropes. Lucky for him the bell rang.

  The Finn was plenty mad when the next round started. He charged out like a bull, which was just what Buster wanted. Angry fighters are stupid fighters, was another of Toney’s sayings. The cowboy lunged at Buster, and Buster hit him in the jaw. That’s the way it went for four or five more rounds. Buster just punished him. The cowboy landed a little blow, then Buster crashed into him with a fist. But every time Buster knocked the Finn down, the bell rang, and they had to start over at the next round.

  We saw from the little smile on his face that Buster was having a good time. Maybe he was too confident, because the cowboy hit him with a haymaker, and Buster went down for the count of six. When he got up, we heard Toney yell to him, “OK, kid, show time’s over. You ain’t setting charges. No need to tap ‘er light. Just finish off the cowboy.” Buster got up, and headed for the Finn, but the round ended, and he went over to his corner.

  Toney talked to him, but Buster wasn’t paying any attention. He looked straight at May Anna and grinned. “What’ll I do with him, honey?” Buster yelled.

  “Put him right here, Buster,” she screamed, pointing to her lap.

  When the next round started, Buster came out smiling, but it was his fighting smile, the one that meant the next time you take a poke at me, you damn fool, you are on your way to hell. The Finn felt pretty good about knocking Buster down before and charged again. That was all Buster needed. He started with that little smile, looked away, wound up then hit the cowboy with a punch that came all the way from the middle of his back, a punch that was as fast and as solid as a hard-rock drill. The Finn couldn’t stop it. Nobody could ever stop it. The best you could hope to do was get out of the way. That punch alone made Buster famous.

  We heard it crunch into the cowboy, heard it echo back and forth through the Elks hall, heard the Finn let out all his air as he went back through the ropes and landed with his head in May Anna’s lap. He didn’t get up for ten minutes. By then Buster had been declared the winner, Toney had picked up the receipts from the sheriff, and May Anna had dumped the cowboy on the floor.

  What people saw in Billings that night was the premiere of the strongest punch in the history of fighting in Montana. And maybe the world. Later on, when Buster was well known, every fighter in the USA tried to copy it. Radio announcers watched for the windup to predict over the airwaves that it was coming. Sports writers called it Death in Mitts and the Concrete Glove and the Widow Maker. But anybody who follows prize fighting knows that punch has just one true name. It’s still being used after all these years. Last month, in fact, Whippy Bird found an article in Time magazine about a boxing match that ended with a knockout. She cut out the story and put it on the wall at the Jim Hill and underlined one sentence with a red Flair pen: “The fighter let loose and connected with a regular old-fashioned Buster Midnight.” Me and Whippy Bird think the Buster Midnight will go down as the most famous punch in boxing history.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Lots of people ask me and Whippy Bird when May Anna turned out. They want us to give them the month and the day. The time would be good, too. But who remembers something like that? I guess they think we should have known it was a historic event. Maybe there was a light bulb over May Anna’s head like in the funny papers, and we should have jumped up and down and written, today May Anna Kovaks became a hooker.

  Well, it’s nobody’s business. Me and Whippy Bird always laugh at people, the women especially, who come into the Jim Hill and want to know everything about old-time prostitutes but would die before they’d sit down next to a live one. Some of them have, too, right there in the Jim Hill, where your retired women from Venus Alley come in for the senior citizen breakfast.

&nbs
p; We probably could come up with the day May Anna joined the line, but as for the first time she got paid, how in the hell do we know? I’ll tell you one thing, me and Whippy Bird weren’t surprised. May Anna had been leading up to it for a long time.

  Butte was wild in those days. Everybody was wild, not just May Anna and Buster. I guess me and Whippy Bird were a disappointment to our folks because we ran with a merry crowd. In fact, we were wilder than May Anna, but who’d know it to look at us now, both of us in our pants suits and members of the American Association of Retired Persons with a card that gives us a discount at the House of Sofas.

  Whippy Bird was the wildest of the Unholy Three. She says you don’t remember anything right, Effa Commander, but she was, and she’s proud of it today, aren’t you, Whippy Bird? You told me plenty about you and Chick, but I’m not going to tell because this is May Anna’s story, not yours.

  It may have been Prohibition in the USA, but you’d never know it in Butte. Butte was wide open. There were stills all over the mountains, and more money came out of those old gold mines after they’d been turned into distilleries than ever came out in good ore. Bootleggers knew what they were doing. Illegal whiskey was big business, with your better operators turning out hundreds of gallons a day.

  They hauled the liquor into Butte and sold it to the joints for anywhere from three-fifty to fifteen dollars a gallon. The saloon keepers diluted it two-to-one, water to booze, added a little coloring, and sold it by the drink. You made good money on liquor in those days what with cheap costs and no federal taxes to pay either. Mostly, it was quality stuff. You didn’t go blind on Butte hooch. In fact, after Prohibition was over, people got nostalgic for the good times when whiskey was twice as strong as the legal stuff. You could buy bootleg by the bottle, too, of course.