Twenty-five

 

Gillom was outside the Orpheum at quarter to eight the following night. He’d stopped by Bisbee’s only flower and seed shop to pick up a rose. Milling in the crowd entering the theater, he kept the flower cupped behind his back, not wanting to look like some smitten country bumpkin. Gillom hadn’t attended a variety show before; his widowed mother never had the money to spend on such frivolities in El Paso.

Someone plucked the flower from his fingers. He turned to find it was her! Anel wore a more subdued dress with a higher neckline, not emphasizing her bosom. It was pale green, the color of her eyes under the boardwalk’s yellowish lamplight.

“Anel.”

“Thank you, Mister Gillom. Left your pistolas home. Good.”

“Yes. I’m off-duty.”

She let him pin the rose on her chest, fumbling so as to not prick her. She pirouetted around flirtatiously. “My dress. Flower matches.”

“We like our roses yellow in Texas.”

Gillom took Anel by the elbow and escorted her up the stairs and inside the second story. The Orpheum was shaped like a wedge, squared off to an entrance with the ticket booth inside. Across the small lobby from the ticket booth, a young ticket taker directed customers up the stairs to the third story if they’d bought seats in the small back balcony. Atop that stairwell awaited “wine girls” to usher the biggest-spending patrons into curtained boxes along both sides of the three-story concert hall.

The young bank guard towed his date across the second story’s main floor and found a couple of wooden chairs off to one side, nearer the stage. Gillom beckoned a wine girl brushing past to bring them two glasses of white wine.

In the small orchestra area to one side of the raised stage, the musicians struck up Von Suppé’s Poet and Peasant Overture, and the hubbub began to die down as the patrons found seats. Anel’s eyes widened as the heavy curtain was drawn aside to reveal all thirty performers perched around the stage on papier-mâché rocks, standing under fake trees or seated on camp stools. Even some of the Orpheum’s wine girls were onstage, dressed alike in white dresses with red stockings and a red sash across a shoulder, spinning red parasols. A blond ingénue in curls under her bonnet and a yellow dress of ruffles and petticoats strolled from the wings singing “Mother Has a Sweetheart, Daddy Is His Name.”

She waltzed off to loud applause and a few whistles from the mostly male crowd. The young thrush was followed by Frank Bryan from under his tree, a comedian known for his self-composed parodies.

A song that always gets my goat …

Though some folks think it’s fine

To get stewed and bust your throat

While singing “Auld Lang Syne.”

They wore tight pants and homemade shirts

And went to bed at nine.

And I’m damned glad I never was born

In the days of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Gillom Rogers paused, laughing with the crowd, to explain to Anel what this ditty referred to, but his young lady was distracted by a banjo player walking onstage picking a lively tune. It was Raymond Teal, the proprietor of this musical revue. This strolling musician led the orchestra and wine room girls into a hoedown dance with younger males from the regular cast. The flying petticoats, whoops from the young men, and squeals from the girls as they crossed hand-in-hand to twirl on their partners’ arms and circle and cross again in tricky combinations absolutely captivated Anel. Eyes shining, she rose from her seat to applaud the dance troop when they finally sashayed off. Gillom joined her on his feet to shout approval and get a hug from his girl.

Their rousing praise caught the attention of two men just settling into a large upper box across the hall. Luther Goose was dressed again like a prairie knight in a black suit and a bib-front cream shirt with pearl buttons. The big man ostentatiously shot his French cuffs. It was the shorter man in the nondescript gray wool suit and gray derby who pointed out the young gunsmith below to his boss.

“That him?”

Mr. Goose peered into the yellowish gloom cast by the coal oil footlamps on stage.

“That is the kid who gave me the hard time in the Red Light.”

“Out with the girl you fancied,” added his companion.

The brothel owner squinted. “Is he armed?”

“Don’t see any pistols. Could have a hideout.”

“Perhaps you should say hello, William. For me.”

“Yes, sir.” William got up from his front chair just as a wine girl arrived with their drinks. The blond pixie handed William a beer, poured champagne from an iced bottle for Mr. Goose. Luther had eyes on the distant bank guard. He swallowed a gulp, but immediately spit it on the floor.

“This is swill! Awful pear cider! Tell the bartender I want real French champagne up here. Immediately!”

“Yes, sir.” The chastened waitress followed Luther’s bodyguard out of the balcony box.

Gillom waved to one of the wine girls coming off the stage for another round. His ladyfriend was riveted, watching a feisty brunette march about the stage to a snare drum’s beat, carrying a rifle. From backstage a stagehand pulled a barely visible black string to rip off her costume to reveal a washerwoman’s shirt and blouse. The music changed, her rifle was tossed, a broom caught, and she began performing an Irish jig. Another pull on a strip string and presto!—the pretty gal was in a short skirt and skipping a rope tossed her by the stagehand. Gillom’s and Anel’s mouths were open, having never seen anything like this transformation dance. Yet another rip of her costume and the miss was a policeman in shorts and buttoned-up tunic, singing a patriotic song. She marched off to whistling, foot-stomping applause.

“Anel! Here’s two dollars for our drinks. I’m going to the washroom.”

She nodded and smiled as Gillom pushed his way through the miners, cattlemen, and gamblers milling about the center aisle to the back of the dance hall. This variety show was continuous throughout the evening, repeated once entirely, so patrons wandered in and out through these lengthy shows.

The men’s room was in a back corner, off to one side of the raised main stage near the backstage dressing rooms so the performers could use the two large lavatories as well. Ease had mentioned one of the Orpheum’s attractions was its tiled washrooms, for even by the turn of the century, Bisbee still didn’t have much indoor plumbing in its restaurants and businesses, let alone its hillside homes. Some patrons were known to purchase an occasional ticket to a variety show just to enjoy its fancy indoor restrooms.

Gillom strolled inside to unbutton his best black wool pants to use the long urinal along one wall. Another gent was washing his hands at one of the porcelain stands across from it, but quickly left.

The restroom door opened again and William walked in. The shorter man noted the teenager buttoning up, and that he was not wearing any revolvers as he smoothed his sparse lip hair in the framed mirror above a washstand.

“Mister Goose sends his greetings.”

Gillom froze. He knew that name.

What was unusual about William were his extraordinarily long arms for an average-sized man, sort of like an ape’s. He grabbed Gillom by the belt and yanked the kid toward him, at the same time thumping him in the upper chest with the bottom of his outstretched palm. The blow knocked a surprised Gillom back on his bootheels while raising his center of gravity. The fighter released his prey suddenly with that shove, knocking Gillom to the hard wood floor with a woof!

Before the seventeen-year-old could recover his breath, William reached down to grab the top of his trousers, yanking him up with a crotch grab, while with his right hand the bodyguard flipped Gillom over so that his back was to him. The teenager struggled, but this grappling was happening so fast, and with his wind gone, he wasn’t resisting very well.

“Hey! Let me … loose! Unhand me!”

William had him upside down, arms forward, unable to reach around behind to try to grab his opponent’s legs, as the grappler began to walk him forward. Gillom was game and fit, and he suddenly jerked upward while trying to bend backward from the waist to claw the attacker’s face with his hands. Countering, William lifted the young man up with his arms clasped tight around his waist and rammed him toward the floor in a piledriver. Gillom’s hat had fallen off in the scrabble, so the top of his head hit the tiled floor with a notable thump.

Still Gillom resisted, trying to swing round and grab one of his attacker’s legs. He failed and got another head-banging. Legs wide like a sheepshearer’s, William walked the upside-down teenager over to the three flush toilets in the theater’s men’s room. Each sat in a wooden-sided stall with common walls but no doors. Near the ceiling above each porcelain bowl was an oblong porcelain compartment which stored the water. A pipe of sizeable circumference ran down the wall from the water compartment into the rear of each toilet bowl. Under the overhead compartment hung a pull chain with a white porcelain handle. Dazed by several hard bangs to his brain, Gillom groaned as he was clutched lower around his crotch, wrenched upward again, and then rammed down, his shoulders bumping into the wooden toilet seat, his head thrust through the seat’s hole into the water.

Another bathroom visitor started to walk in, took one look at the two men poised over a toilet, one with his head in the bowl and groaning, and quickly backed out.

William flushed the toilet. The cascade of water racing through the pipe and out below into a distant septic tank hissed and echoed through the tiled lavatory. Gillom reared up, both hands bracing the toilet seat, sputtering, before his captor heaved him up and dropped him down again into the toilet seat before letting him loose. Essaying a back flip, Gillom tumbled over onto his knees in front of the toilet bowl where he shook like a wet dog.

The grappler bent to be sure the bedraggled young man heard.

“Remove yerself from Mister Goose’s bisness, kid. Or yer’ll fare worse.”

Dizzy and confused after his attacker left, Gillom staggered to his feet to grab hold of a washbasin and check himself in the wall mirror behind it. He could feel several large bumps forming atop his head. Red skin at the base of his neck and around his collarbone meant he’d have bruises where he got banged into the toilet seat.

Gillom retrieved his felt Stetson from the stall and placed it gingerly atop his wet hair, which he slicked back with a hand.

Anel remained engrossed in the variety revue when he limped back to his chair. Onstage, a “bender” was contorting himself into amazing and amusing positions to a flautist’s encouragement. Gillom kept craning around, rubbing his sore neck while trying to spot the strange man who had so rudely accosted him. The teenager sucked his white wine through clenched teeth, unable to concentrate on the show, wary of another sneak attack. His gaze finally elevated to the box seats above and across the hall from their chairs. He could see figures moving between partially opened curtains, girls on men’s laps, the swells laughing and drinking. But there, in the end booth above the stage, he was. Luther Goose sat front and center as a wine girl poured him another glass of real champagne. Right behind him, drinking beer from a mug, sat the short grappler, his derby cocked over one eye. Giving his hostess a squeeze, Mr. Goose looked directly at Gillom and his girl across the hall below and smiled, raised his flute of bubbly in toast. The insult was too much to bear.

“C’mon. Let’s go.”

“What? Gillom. I like to see, very much.” Anel looked disappointed.

“Show’s almost over. We’ve both got to work tomorrow. C’mon.”

She sighed, but got up. “Hokay.”

Dancing onstage in wooden shoes, two Irish tenors, Needham and Kelly, in Prince Albert coats, pants of different colors, weather-beaten plug hats and short sidewhiskers, began one of their showstoppers.

Oh, we are two rollicking, roving Irish gentlemen,

In the Arizona mines we belong.

For a month or so we’re working out in Idaho,

For a month or so we’re strikin’ rather strong.

Oh, we helped to build the elevated railway,

On the steamboats we ran for a many a day.

And it’s devil a hair we care the kind of work we do,

If every Saturday night we get our pay. Right there!

Both lads stuck their bare hands out and clog-shoed into their chorus.

We can dig a sewer, lay a pipe or carry the hod,

In the Western states our principles are strong.

We’re the advocates of all hard-workin’ men,

And if that’s the case you cannot say we’re wrong.

Are we right?

The Irish gents waltz-clogged around the stage, repeating their rousing chorus to loud, stomping huzzahs from the hard-digging miners in the hall, as Gillom and his girl shouldered their way out through the raucous crowd in the Orpheum. Still smiling, Luther Goose waved them goodbye.

*   *   *

Anel and her beau walked across the wide brick junction of Bisbee’s two main business streets at the mouth of Brewery Gulch. It was before midnight. The streets were quieter than they would be on a weekend. Gillom walked her up the boardwalk of Brewery Gulch past the Miner’s Saloon, from which raucous laughter issued, the Wave Candy Company, and the Bisbee Ice Cream Parlor, which were both closed.

“Where do you live, exactly?”

She raised a slim arm, pointing through her lacy ruffle at sleeve’s end. “High up.”

The young man peered upward through the darkness at the bigger houses along the eastern mountainous side of Brewery Gulch, some ostentatiously ablaze with new electric lights. Other dwellings, small shacks mostly, squatted on a bench of land near the top of the ridge, maybe one room aglimmer from a coal oil lamp.

“Chihuahua Town?”

“Sí.” She lowered her eyes, embarrassed by the name always given to the jerrybuilt collection of goods boxes, tin cans, carajo poles, ocotillo ribs, and mud adobe bricks that housed most of the Mexicans in southwestern mining towns.

“Is it safe? I’ll walk you up.”

“Safe, sí. I live with … girlfriend. An otro dancer.”

“Ah.” Even on the darkened street, she could see he was crestfallen. “Like to see you again, Anel. When we have more time to get acquainted.”

She batted her eyelashes, seemingly shy for once.

“What about this Sunday afternoon? We could go on a picnic. I can rent a buggy.” He talked faster. “I could ask Ease, my friend. And he could ask a girl. Four of us. Find a pretty spot, have lunch.”

“I like that. Sí.”

“Okay! I’ll make arrangements. We’ll let you know, Saturday night, at the Red Light.”

“Sí. Thanks to you, Mister Gil-lom.” She leaned up and left him a smear of red across his cheek.

Then she was off into the moonlight, around the store’s corner to climb the first of several long sets of wooden stairs up the steep hillside toward the south-of-the-border-looking shacks near the top. A flash of white leg hose made Gillom feel a little better.