The Last Shootist (22 page)

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.

 

Twenty-six

 

Friday was always busy, but at least the widows and unmarried spinsters had slowed demanding the handsome young guard escort them back and forth to the town's only bank. Gillom was able to hurry a couple blocks up the hill to see Ease in the Bonanza an hour after his bank's 3:00
P.M.
closing.

Sun filtered in to the dim saloon from dirty upper glass windows as he entered one of Bisbee's biggest drinking establishments. Gillom surveyed one table of card players along the empty row of faro and roulette tables, just to make sure Luther and his minions weren't about. The day shift at the mines hadn't gotten off yet, so the vultures weren't around to loosen their pay. Gillom elbowed up to the mahogany between a couple of day drinkers for whom one drink was too many and more were never enough.

“
Compadre!
How was your date with the dancing queen?” Ease Bixler drew his pal a tall mug.

“We didn't stay the entire show. But it was a good one, singing, dancing girls and a guy who twisted himself like a hot pretzel.”

“Sounds like a wonder.” The barkeep winked. “You walk her home?”

Gillom shook his head. “No. It's a hike up to Chihuahua Town. We're gonna go on a picnic, though, Sunday. Won't be so noisy, so's we can get better acquainted. Why don't you and that big redhead from the dance hall come with us? We can hire a carriage, split the fee, have some fun?”

“Sounds gooder than gum. Let's stop over at the Red Light tonight, see if Red Jean wants to go.”

“Anel knows her, but she's got other girlfriends, too. She said she lived with one of the other dancers.”

“Well, maybe. If she's not Mexican?”

“Roommate might be, Ease. What's wrong with brown-skinned gals, if you're just playin' around?”

The young bartender paused in drawing more beers from a keg.

“I got into too many fights with Mexican kids from across the tracks in Tucson, growin' up. That's a race line we were raised not to cross.”

“Yeah, was the same with us kids in El Paso. We didn't mix much with the Mexes, went to different schools. Unless they worked for somebody we knew, maids, gardeners, tradesmen, we weren't around Mexicans much. But, I'm cuttin' my own trail now. You won't turn unfriendly due to me seein' Anel?”

Ease shook his head. “'Course not. She's a comely
chiquita
.” He grinned. “Your
niños
'll have to be raised Catholic, though.”

They dined on complimentary sausages and cheese at Lem Shattuck's St. Louis Beer Hall after Mr. Bixler got off work. Gillom stayed wary, keeping his back to walls and his eye on the front glass doors of this upper-crust saloon. Ease had many friends from his Bonanza customers who bought the boys ice-cold Anheuser-Busch beers and helped them enjoy their free meal. Gillom was reassured by his twin Remingtons, for he had resolved after last night's debasement never to appear again in public unarmed.

The Red Light had gotten a jump on the weekend. Gillom and Ease elbowed their way across the dance floor to the pumping Western music of Swart John and his four-piece band. The boys ordered more beers at the long bar. A brewery was located right in this gulch, hence its name, so the malt liquor didn't have far to travel. They sleeved foam off their lips as they watched revelers cavort around the dance hall.

“I don't see Red Jean in here. She's just a pal, but maybe someday, if I play my cards right…” Young Bixler flashed a hopeful grin.

“Thought Jean was one of 'em went upstairs?” Gillom nodded toward the stairway beside the bandstand which led to an upper floorway of small rooms where some of the girls entertained their lustier dancing partners.

Ease held up both hands. “Not with me! I
never
pay for it!”

“Me, neither,” joshed Gillom, punching his friend in the shoulder. “You get a little liquor in Jean, maybe she'll let you squeeze it outta her later.”

They laughed. The Western music strummed to a halt and Gillom saw Anel being deposited back on a bench by her partner.

“Save my beer.”

Gillom pushed through the couples changing partners.

“Gil-lom! Nice to see you,
señor
.”

“You, too, Anel. You ready to venture forth with us Sunday? Ease is looking for Red Jean right now, to ask her along on our picnic. You like her?”

“Jean,
sí
. Older
amiga
.”

The young buck smiled. “Good. If you ladies will pack some savories, Ease and I will rent the carriage, bring the drinks.”