Tommy drew deep breaths and removed his hat. His hair stood on end from the lightning striking so close, skin tingling, scalp tickling. He rubbed his neck and looked back out the door. Frank was safe. He had to be.
The stench of beer and whiskey mixed with male body odor, cigars and pipe smoke. The crowd’s murmurs were punctuated by the gravelly-voiced faro dealer. “Remove your bets, place your bets, copper your bets, no more bets.”
Slap, slap. Two cards dealt followed by a pause, then the wounded roar of losers whose bets had been laid on the wrong cards. The clinking of bone and wooden checks being stacked by the dealer and the coffin keeper sliding clay beads to indicate cards dealt rose above the din.
The dealer said through teeth gripping his pipe, “Remove your bets, place your bets, copper your bets, no more bets.”
Wild. The game moved with quick pain or ecstasy.
“Wanna buck the tiger?” a voice from the bar asked. Tommy shook his head as he dripped on the pitted pine floor. He wasn’t about to gamble away what he’d just earned on a game that resulted in more pain than pleasure for most.
“Chuck-a-luck?” the barkeep said.
Tommy glanced to the far end of the space where a dealer sent an hourglass-shaped chicken wire spinner rotating, three dice inside it tossed and turned. The thunk of billiard balls drew his attention through the thick cigar and pipe smoke.
The barkeep set his revolver on the bar. “Don’t recognize you. You with that asshole purity pusher? The one trying to sneak in every other day?”
Tommy thought for a moment.
“You slow or somethin’?”
These puritans inadvertently fed the corrupt system that funneled kids through Judge Calder’s courtroom to look as though he was fulfilling his promises. “No.” Tommy smacked his hat against his leg to remove the remaining water.
“You a member? Dripping all over my floors like that?” A woman with black hair spiraling down her back moseyed toward him, lifting a glass of amber liquid.
The barkeep wiped down the wood top. “Git that boy a seat at my bar, Dotty, or show him out the door. Looks like he’s thinkin’ about becoming a member of our proud establishment.”
A flash of lightning made everyone jump. Though Tommy had no interest in joining anything, he wasn’t going back into the weather. Dotty pulled a stool out from under the bar with her foot. Tommy sat. The barkeep pressed a coin into her palm and kissed her fingers as she wrapped them around the money. She sashayed away, heading back to the door to greet some men coming in. Tommy nodded hello to the man beside him.
The man cringed. “Christ on a cross. You been rollin’ in shit, boy?”
Tommy’s nose had gotten accustomed to the stench of waste he’d been shoveling. His wet clothing must have amplified the odor. The man grabbed his arm.
“What’s yer game?”
Tommy glanced around the room as though the answer to his confusion was somewhere outside of him.
He gripped harder. “That’s it, come in here smellin’ like hell so you don’t have to pay yer fee.”
“Fee?”
“Next new guy at the bar buys the guy beside him a drink. That or get yer nose broken.”
Tommy shot a look at the bartender, who lifted his shoulders. Tommy tried to leave, but the man readjusted his hand.
“I ain’t foolin’.”
“I just—”
The man gripped harder, shutting Tommy up. He wanted to shelter until the storm passed, but the seriousness of this demand was clear, and he wasn’t in the mood to fight. He pulled some of the coins he’d just earned from his pocket and slid two bits across the bar. The barkeep poured the man a shot of whiskey and he released Tommy’s arm.
Tommy exhaled deeply and scratched the back of his neck, relieved to not have to tussle. Another man slid onto the stool next to Tommy and slapped a dollar bill onto the bar.
Tommy lifted his hand to signal the barkeep. “Water, please, kindly.”
The barkeep slid a whiskey shot in front of the new man and in front of Tommy. Tommy lifted his hand again. “No whiskey.” He wanted it all right. The scent of it thrilled him, the desire for it, knowing he shouldn’t drink it created electric tension.
No. Too many times he’d selected the booze over common sense.
Anxiety knotted in his belly, and he hoped it wouldn’t explode into full-blown panic. Maybe just a sip to relieve the yearning.
He eyed it. Silly. It’s a little glass of liquid. He reminded himself of all he’d survived. He could certainly say no to a tiny shot of whiskey. Choosing right was the mark of manhood. He thought of Mr. Zurchenko, father of a passel of kids on the prairie. He was the one man Tommy had seen as all-around perfect. Much as he loved his own father and wanted him to return, he saw his struggles, that pain infiltrated him, caused him to have to leave, to make decisions that he wouldn’t have if not in such desperate straits.
But Mr. Zurchenko never strayed, not even when sinking into despair over the death of several of his children and sorry prospects. The man barely spoke, but when he did, his words always made Tommy stop, their delivery and meaning reverberating in his chest. “Mark of a man,” Mr. Zurchenko said at dinner with all the neighbors, using his hands to clarify, “is his dorozhka. Wrong choices happen, yes. But men can step onto new paths anytime. Repeated choosing, right as can be, or wrong, is what defines a man. Dorozhka. Find the right one. Easy.” Recalling the strong foreign words, Tommy could hear the bold roll of Mr. Zurchenko’s Russian propping up his weaker English, and the feel of the man’s purpose, his mentorship came alive as though he were there. Tommy could choose well just like Mr. Zurchenko.
The barkeep glanced at the new patron who slowly turned his gaze on Tommy. Tommy realized the whiskey had been bought for him by the next new guy, as he now understood was custom.
Tommy pushed the glass toward the man who’d bought it for him. “Doesn’t sit well with me.” He rubbed his belly. It was one thing to take a swig of whiskey to calm a frantic attack, but it was another for Tommy to start flinging back drinks in a saloon. It was too good, too much fun, too much trouble.
The man smiled, his stubbly lips parting to reveal just four yellowed, dangling teeth. “Well, yer stench don’t sit well with me.” He rubbed his belly in a mocking way. “But I ain’t been impolite about it.”
The man brushed the glass back toward Tommy with the back of a dirt-encrusted hand. If Tommy hadn’t smelled so bad, he was certain this man’s odor would have overwhelmed him.
The barkeep leaned onto the bar and looked between Tommy and the new man. “Too early for carousing, boys. Let’s just keep with the mannerly fashion of Colt Churchill’s fine establishment.” He knocked on the bar. “That Mrs. Hillis, running around trying to save the sad and derelict, the purity pushers, the bad masquerading as the good? I ain’t in the mood today to have a fight and the police arrive to toss one of you into jail. And I wonder ’bout you, boy.” He glared at Tommy. “You better not be the eyes and ears of that man working to clean up the streets at the expense of good businesses like mine.”
Tommy put his hands up. “Swear on my life. I’m the last one to side with some sort of purity fella.”
The barkeep gestured toward the whiskey; the wisdom of Mr. Zurchenko dissolved while the tension from declining the drink surged. The only way he’d resolve the lure would be to take the drink. Just one. It would settle his nerves and satisfy these bar rules he’d just learned. He tossed back the shot, the hot liquid screaming down his throat. He didn’t want to tell them that his real problem was how much he liked to drink, not the opposite.
He straightened on his stool. “Maybe a water now.”
The men around Tommy laughed. “No water.”
Another man, dressed in fine wool clothing, slid behind the bar and turned a faucet, filling a glass with clear water.
Tommy pointed toward that.
“Ten-cent piece for that. Look at the clear deliciousness,” the man beside Tommy said.
Tommy groaned and reached into his pocket for the change he’d earned earlier. His fingers easily avoided his Indian Head penny, and he slapped a ten-cent piece on the bar.
All the men threw their hands up at once. “Ohhhhh, here we go.”
Tommy raised his shoulders, unsure what was happening. “What?”
“A new member, fellas.”
“Member of what?” Tommy said.
“The club.” The finely dressed man turned and opened his arms. “Churchill’s Billiards. I’m Colt Churchill.”
He’d seen Colt Churchill somewhere before. Heard his name. “Look, I can’t afford a club. I just came out of the rain and wanted a water and—”
“This ain’t no one-bit joint, my friend. This here requires two bits to join, and then when you come back to visit us, the water’s free. It’s a great deal, really.”
Tommy crossed his arms, knowing it was only a good deal if he was ducking out of storms on a regular basis.
“One-time fee. You sat here long enough that you’re obligated to pay.”
Tommy recoiled. One of the men pointed to the sign on the far left wall that stated the rules. He blew out some air.
A man slapped Tommy on the back, and the barkeep put another whiskey in front of him. “Can’t go back into the storm now anyhow. Might as well.”
Tommy nodded but didn’t drink the whiskey right off. He signed the membership book with the phony name he used when he needed it—Zachary Taylor. The men began telling tales of adventure and exploits that kept him laughing and unable to remember when exactly he took that next drink. Or the next. Were there more?
When the boozy warmth had him wishing he could take a bottle home to drink in private, he got up to leave.
He towered over most of the men, backing up, waving good-bye to his new club friends. He considered it might be nice to have a place where he could get a drink and chat. He was convinced for that moment that he could manage one whiskey and one water—no, several waters—and enjoy the chance to socialize. “Okay, okay. So if I join, I get water when I need it? I’m in.”
The men shrugged. “Well, you know. Mostly.”
He backed up further and bumped into the faro dealer, causing him to jostle the spindly game table. The checks sprayed across the board, and men started screaming, heading for Tommy. When they parted, Tommy saw him sitting at a table near the billiards.
Judge Calder. Tommy’s breath caught as his gaze connected with the judge. The man squinted and scratched his forehead, and Tommy knew Calder was sorting through his memory. Tommy had to get out of there, grateful he’d given his phony name, Zachary Taylor, to the barkeep when signing the club rolls.
A crack of thunder accompanied by a lightning strike froze all the men at once. In the space between startling noise and light, Tommy ran.
As he trotted home, the sky rumbled, rain dumped. He burst into the shed. Leaning against the wall, breathing heavy, he heard a hollow knock at the door. A cawing sound told him it was Frank. But who had knocked? He opened the door to find Frank standing on the porch alone, his feathers glistening with moisture that pearled then rolled off his wings. He had pecked at the door like a person. “That was you?” Tommy asked.
Frank took to the air. Tommy put his hands out and the bird landed in them, rubbing his black head against Tommy’s palms, emitting a sound Tommy could only describe as purring like a cat.