Badlands (24 page)
“Jesus,” said Du Pré, “maybe rosewood.”
“It is
pretty!”
said Madelaine.
There were two long sparkling picture windows in the front, one on each side of the double doors.
“How long them last?” said Bassman.
“Maybe tonight,” said Du Pré. “It is Friday.”
“Things drunkest out Friday night,” said Bassman.
“OK,” said Madelaine, “so they are dumb windows. It is easy. Guys get thrown through them, they put in small ones, too small to throw anybody through.”
“They are not from here,” said Bassman. He looked over at a shiny dark green SUV parked beside the mailbox at the end of the ornamental hitching rail.
“Those are cedar shakes,” said Du Pré, squinting at the roof.
“Those are in fucking Fargo first time the wind blows,” said Bassman.
“I leave you two Laurel and Hardy here,” said Madelaine. “I go in, I have a nice glass, pink wine, I say, ‘The band is out in the van, they are shooting up, will be right in.’”
Du Pré sighed.
“This thing it belongs in Bozeman maybe,” he said. Bozeman was full of buildings as pretty as the redone roadhouse.
Madelaine opened the van door.
“Wipe your feet, you go in,” she said.
“Yeah, mom!” said Bassman and Du Pré.
Madelaine stepped up on the long porch that went the entire length of the front of the building. She pulled on the front door and it swung slowly open.
“I don’t got a tie,” said Bassman.
“You are wearing shoes,” said Du Pré. “Maybe they let you come in.”
“Jesus,” said Bassman, “I liked that old place.”
Du Pré nodded.
“Well,” he said, “we go say hello. This woman, she sounds very nice on the telephone.”
They got out and they went up the front steps and they pulled open a door apiece and they went in.
The place was lovely.
Nice wooden chairs. Little tables.
No moldy moose heads.
Real paintings on the walls.
The backbar was new, and had been bought for a whole lot of money from some old saloon. There was a vast mirror in the center.
“Last maybe tonight,” said Bassman, nodding at the silvered glass. “Maybe a month even, then a stool goes through it.”
Du Pré nodded.
Madelaine was talking to a pretty young woman, blond and scrubbed, who had her hair in a thick plait down her back. The two of them were laughing.
Du Pré and Bassman walked on over.
“This is Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “that is Bassman. This is Carol Canning. She owns the place.”
“Me and Rob,” she said. “He went to get some things we thought we might need.”
Du Pré smiled and he shook her hand across the bar. He looked up and down it.
Some ashtrays, Du Pré thought, first hopeful sign I am seeing.
He rolled a smoke and he lit it and he blew out the tobacco.
Carol got an ashtray from under the bartop and she put it in front of him.
“Ditch?” she said.
“She studying on our language,” said Bassman, grinning. “Him have one, me, too.”
Carol made them quickly. One splash glop splash bourbon over ice tap water.
Du Pré nodded and he took his drink.
Carol set the other in front of Bassman.
“I love it here,” said Carol. “We wanted to move to the real West. We found this place. I worked for six months at a roadhouse, and Rob went to work for a rancher. We learned a lot.”
Du Pré nodded.
“These places are community centers,” said Carol, “more even than they are saloons.”
Bassman and Madelaine and Du Pré nodded.
“Everything we have is in this place,” said Carol. “We’re going to make a go of it.”
Bassman got up and he went out the front door.
His van’s sliding door opened and closed.
A tall young man in jeans and boots came in carrying a big box of groceries. He set them on the bartop and he came over to Du Pré and Madelaine.
“I’m Rob,” he said, “Mr. Du Pré, and …”
“Madelaine,” said Madelaine.
He shook their hands and grinned and he went back out. Carol took the box in the back.
Rob came in again, with another huge box.
“You want some help?” said Du Pré.
“Appreciate,” said Rob.
They went out together.
“I really like the people here,” said Carol. “They are so helpful and courteous. I thought we would be resented, you know, goddamned flatlanders. So before we came we both went through the EMT course and got certified and Rob is part of the volunteer fire department.”
Madelaine nodded.
“There’s more traffic on the road now,” said Carol. “We put in a good big truck parking lot, for the haulers.”
Rob and Du Pré came in and they went round the end of the bar with the boxes.
“I think we got everything covered,” said Carol. “Rob will tend bar tonight while I cook and we have four waitresses.”
Madelaine nodded.
“We put up posters all over,” said Carol. “Grand opening.”
Madelaine nodded.
“Which roadhouse you work at?” she said.
“Tucker’s,” said Carol, “down by Forsyth.”
Madelaine shook her head.
“Don’t know that one,” she said. “That smells good.” A waft of air had come out of the kitchen.
“It was a real education,” said Carol.
Madelaine nodded.
“Just you in the kitchen, maybe?” she said.
Carol nodded. “It’ll be hard,” she said.
“Well,” said Madelaine, “you need help I help you.”
“Thanks,” said Carol.
Bassman opened the door and he rolled in his big amplifier. He looked round for the stage, and saw it at the far side of the room. The wheels went
scritch scritch
on the puncheon floor.
Du Pré went to help him. His hat brushed a wagon wheel chandelier. He looked up at it. He shook his head.
“Little blisters be hanging from that like apes,” said Bassman, watching the wagon wheel rock gently.
Du Pré nodded.
“Maybe,” said Du Pré, “there have been lots, Mormons move here or something.”
“They don’t go to bars,” said Bassman.
Du Pré nodded.
“These are nice people,” said Bassman.
Du Pré nodded.
“We make some, that good music,” said Bassman.
“Wish Talley was here,” said Du Pré.
Somebody came in the door.
“Père Godin!” said Madelaine, running to the old scoundrel.
Some Turtle Mountain people were with him.
“Ah,” said Du Pré.
Père Godin was a very good accordion player.
“We play some for Talley, him,” said Bassman.
Du Pré nodded.
T
HE ROADHOUSE WAS FULL OF
people. They could sit and stand in comfort, but if many more came in it would start to get difficult to move.
Père Godin was riffing notes on his accordion. The old man was spry and quick, and the notes stabbed and jabbed along the melody.
Du Pré stood back, marking time, while Bassman thumped away, putting a floor under Père Godin’s runs. Du Pré stepped forward and he slid in to the melody and Père Godin stepped back.
Du Pré stood at the mike and he began to sing.
Pull that paddle long time to go
Madelaine I love her so
Pull on that rope, my Madelaine
And I come home to you …
Some older couples were two-stepping on the little dance floor.
A young boy leaped up and grabbed the wagon wheel and he hung there for a moment until his mother snapped at him to get the hell down.
Du Pré and Bassman and Père Godin played for another twenty minutes and then they took a break.
The crowd went to talking to one another. There were all sorts of people in the room, young and old, families, single people, and many children.
The four waitresses were carrying armloads of plates. People had been eating a lot of beef.
Madelaine was pulling beers and pouring shots and mixing drinks, and so was Rob. People were three deep at the bar getting booze after the music stopped.
Du Pré and Bassman and Père Godin waited until the crowd thinned, and then they went to the end of the bar. Madelaine bustled down with three ditchwater highballs and she set them down and she went back to work.
The three musicians drank.
By the time they had drained their glasses Madelaine was back with three more. She set them down and was gone again.
Carol came out of the kitchen, looking sweaty and exhausted. She drank three tall glasses of water very quickly and she went back to the kitchen.
The bar crowd had thinned out and Madelaine waved at Du Pré and she went back to the kitchen, too.
Rob finished the last pulls and he looked up and down the bar and then he came down to Du Pré and Bassman and Père Godin.
“Great music,” he said, “wonderful. Madelaine is even more wonderful. God, we’d have sunk without her.” He looked at the crowd in the room.
Du Pré laughed.
“More people than we thought would come,” said Rob.
“They like you,” said Du Pré.
A couple of young hands went out the side door. Friends followed them prepared to slap the victor on his back and carry the vanquished to his truck until he woke up.
Families with young children began to leave, hugging parents and kin, and several tables opened up. No one went to them right away, so the rush was over at last.
Madelaine came back out of the kitchen.
“They are down to the last half of one prime ribs,” she said. “It was a pret’ good guess.”
Du Pré nodded. Nice crowd, nice place. Wonder how long them picture windows will last.
The side door opened and a sound of cheering came in.
“Punchin’ the spots off each other,” said an old rancher bellied up to the bar. “Them youngsters been at it a while now. Must be about evenly matched.”
Père Godin wandered off to charm a woman someplace.
Old bastard, him got what, sixty kids I hear? Half of Manitoba is Père Godin’s.
“I work real hard,” said Bassman, “I maybe fuck one woman for his ten.”
Du Pré laughed. Madelaine had said once Père Godin loved women and they could tell.
Old goat.
Highly successful old goat.
Père Godin was sitting with a pretty lady at a small table off in a corner. He said something and she laughed.
“Sixty-four,” said Madelaine, glancing at him.
“Ah?” said Du Pré.
“Him got sixty-three kids,” said Madelaine, “and believe me, that is one done deal over there, the table.”
Bassman and Du Pré laughed.
They wandered back up to the stage and Du Pré tuned his fiddle and he started
Baptiste’s Lament.
Black water, black forest, big canoes full of bales of pelts.
Long time gone.
Père Godin played some Cajun accordion. He had children down in Louisiana, too. His accordion and charm carried him far.
The woman he had been talking to was looking at Père Godin with adoring eyes. He looked at her while his accordion played a song of love.
Du Pré stepped in before the woman fell off her chair.
He played a very old reel, one that Du Pré’s father, Catfoot, had said went all the way back to Brittany.
Them people, Catfoot had said, they dance this there, they dance this on the decks, their little fishing boats, they dance this on the shore, Gulf of St. Lawrence, dance it on buffalo hide pegged to the ground, here. Long time gone.
The tune was so old and rare that people stopped talking so they could listen closely. It spoke to the blood.
Du Pré ended the reel with the long, lonely, wavering high F.
The crowd clapped and clapped and cheered and whistled. A man began to pass his hat around and people dropped money in it.
Bassman began to play a melody on his bass, his moment at the front of the stage. He stood lazily, loosely, while he coaxed notes from his fretless electric bass. His strong fingers pressed and pulled the strings.
There was humor and self-mockery in the music, and people grinned.
Du Pré looked at his sideman, nodding at tempo.
Du Pré was looking at Bassman when he saw Bassman’s eyes widen, and Du Pré turned and he looked at the woman stalking toward the stage.
Must be that Kim, and she had a little chrome-plated gun in her hand.
Bassman backed away.
Kim kept coming.
She fired the pistol and Bassman’s bass took a hit.
Bassman shrugged out of the strap and he dropped the bass and he made time for the side door and he dove through it just as some poor person was coming in. Bassman went right over the top of him.
Kim raced after him, her tight pants and high heels slowing her some.
When she got to the door, she fired again.
Then she went through.
It had happened fast, and people weren’t really sure that they had seen what they had seen.
Bassman’s wounded bass buzzed on the floor.
Du Pré went to the amplifier and he turned the knob. He pulled the cord that led to the bass out of its socket.
Another couple of pops outside.
Rob came running up.
“Jesus!” he said, “are you OK?”
Du Pré looked past him. Madelaine was wrestling, sort of, with Carol.
Du Pré and Rob ran back to the bar.
“Call 911!” Carol shrieked.
“Non!”
said Madelaine.
They each had hold of the telephone.
“She tried to kill him!” Carol howled.
“Non!”
said Madelaine, “leave it be. That little damn gun can’t kill no more than a gopher, can’t hit anything with it anyway.”
Carol stopped struggling.
“You’re sure,” she said.
Madelaine nodded.
“Was that his girlfriend?” said Carol.
Madelaine shrugged.
“One of them maybe,” she said.
“She was shooting at him!” said Carol.
“She hit the damn bass,” said Du Pré. “Wound it good, too.”
“You don’t think this is something I should call the sheriff about?” said Carol.
Madelaine grinned.
“True love,” she said, “sometimes it is a hard thing.”
Another couple of pops sounded outside.
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