Fair Weather (11 page)

Lottie sighed. “The next thing Granddad’s going to claim,” she predicted, “is that he knew Colonel Cody personally.”

Aunt Euterpe moaned.

“Oh, yes,” Granddad expanded, standing now to address our general vicinity, “the noble buffalo was the
Marshall Field’s store of the great plains. The meat was food. The dressed hides was moccasins and robes. The hair was twisted into ropes. Green hides made pots for cookin’ over buffalo-chip fires. The small bones made needles, and the ribs was dog-sled runners. The hooves melted down for glue. And from the horns come spoons and various utensils. Yessir,” said Granddad to our neighbors, “the buffalo come in handy.”

The band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and we were all upstanding, then rustling our programs.

The show opened with a Grand Review of the mounted troops of the world’s great armies: the United States, France, Germany, the British Empire, and Russia. They wore the finest uniforms you ever saw, dimly seen through the dust they raised.

Then on came Miss Annie Oakley, a dead shot. She could knock anything down from a galloping horse. She even fired backward over her shoulder while looking in a hand mirror. Aunt Euterpe looked in her own lap because of the shortness of Miss Oakley’s buckskin skirt.

Yokes of oxen drew emigrant trains of covered wagons across the prairie and we were assured they were the exact wagons in actual use thirty-five years before. The air was thick now, but there was hardly time to breathe. Cowboys roped wild ponies and bucked on broncos. Mexicans demonstrated the lasso. Kaiser Wilhelm’s Postdamer Reds led a cavalry charge, and so did the Prince of
Wales’s Twelfth Lancers. Then a grand tableau of the Sioux people, in the field and out on the path. Buster was on his feet the whole time.

The crowd was noisier than the band as the excitement mounted. The last event before the intermission would feature the actual Deadwood Mail Coach. It was to be attacked by Indians and rescued by Buffalo Bill in person. There were ants in Granddad’s pants now, and Tip was up in a crouch.

To add interest, dignitaries and famous celebrities were invited to ride in the Deadwood coach as players in this drama. Out from under the bleachers rattled the stagecoach, drawn by six stampeding steeds. As it circled the track, the audience sent around a wave of ovation. Tipping their silk hats from within the coach were Mr. Altgeld, the governor of Illinois, and Carter H. Harrison, the mayor of Chicago. Aunt Euterpe stirred some at the sight of such socially prominent men.

On the coach’s second turn it was being chased by an Indian war party riding bareback on spotted ponies. Some in the audience shied at their war cries and paint. But Buster was practically standing on Granddad’s head. Though the driver cracked his whip like anything, the war party drew ever nearer, waving ornamental axes. Now the governor and mayor were hanging on inside.

With a burst of music from the Cowboy Band, Buffalo Bill himself pounded onto the field astride a burnished
mount. Behind him galloped his Rough Riders, their hat brims turned back, their bandannas back to front around their necks, their chaps fleecy.

The afternoon sun fell like a spotlight on Buffalo Bill in a hat white as swansdown. His fringed buckskin coat fit like a glove. His breeches looked painted on. His silver-toed boots were the tanned hides of animals too rare to have names. He leaned into the wind, and his waxed moustaches flowed against his face. Though he’d left his slender days behind him, he was the finest-looking man I ever saw.

He and his Rough Riders pursued the war party at a stately pace, receiving an ovation. After all, Buffalo Bill was the most famous man alive.

As they passed our way another time, the Indians’ ponies were even with the rear wheels of the Deadwood coach. Some of the party, bristling with feathers, were fixing to leap onto the coach roof. Buffalo Bill’s Rough Riders were closing from behind. It was a thrilling moment. And it was too much for Tip.

He sprang from the bleacher. There was a sudden space between Granddad and Buster. Tip soared almost over the heads of the people in front of us. He lit running. Nobody had ever seen him move this fast, not even at dinner time. He was gone like greased lightning. Now he streaked onto the field, his ears laid back, his tongue lolling out. The Indian ponies swerved as Tip shot after the coach itself.

I suppose he thought it was going to town, and he didn’t want to be left behind.

The crowd gave him a round of applause. Some of them may have thought Tip was part of the show. Coach, war party, Buffalo Bill, and his Rough Riders had thundered past us. There was nothing to see but a cloud of dust.

“Hecka-tee,” Granddad said. Buster was speechless.

It occurred to me that Tip might be gone for good. Who that would kill quicker, Granddad or Buster, I didn’t like to think. We sat there stunned. Aunt Euterpe seemed as bewildered as she often was in our company.

Then around the course they came once more, the Rough Riders dispersing the war party, who fanned out in retreat. Firing magnificent silver six-shooters at the sky, Buffalo Bill drew nigh the team and brought coach and horses to a whirlwind halt. His own mount reared beautifully.

Three heads appeared at a window of the Deadwood coach: the governor, the mayor, and Tip. Somehow they’d let him inside, so he was in at the grand finale. Again the crowd roared. Tip barked.

Granddad creaked to his feet. He parted the people ahead of us with his stick, making his way down onto the field. The band played “The Cowboy March” to signal intermission.

But all eyes were on Granddad. There was still some
glow to his ice-cream suit. His curly-brimmed Panama rode firm on his head. He waved his stick. “Come on, Tip! Leave them gentlemen be and come on down from there!”

I saw it all. I wouldn’t have blinked. Buffalo Bill turned his horse. The perfectly trained beast took a prancing step or two nearer Granddad. Buffalo Bill leaned down from the saddle.

“Si?” Buffalo Bill called out. “Well, blame my skeets if it isn’t Silas Fuller!”

Granddad threw back his head and looked at the magnificence of Colonel Cody. “Hello there, Bill,” he said. “How’s business?”

“It is you, isn’t it, Si? You old owlhoot.” Buffalo Bill sat back in his saddle and tipped up his hat.

Yes, it was. It was Silas Fuller, our granddad. Aunt Euterpe was a statue beside me. Lottie’s jaw dropped.

“How long has it been, Si?” Buffalo Bill wanted to know. Both he and Granddad were full-voiced men.

“Twenty-nine years since the Battle of Tupelo,” said Granddad, “give or take.”

“Did you ever make better than corporal?” Buffalo Bill was asking, and I nudged Aunt Euterpe.

“Was Granddad in the Civil War?” We’d seen no medals.

“He couldn’t wait to get into the fight,” she said. “He left a wife and two young daughters behind. My mother never drew an easy breath till the end of the war.”

“Afraid Granddad wouldn’t come back,” I said.

“No,” said Aunty. “Afraid he would.”

*  *  *

Down on the field Buffalo Bill was saying to Granddad, “Dog my cats, Si! I might have known you’d turn up again like a bad penny. You always were everywhere at once.”

“That’s me,” Granddad croaked, “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. Say, listen, Bill, let me collect Tip. Then I’d like you to meet my family.”

Behind her gloved hand Aunt Euterpe shrieked.

Part Two

T
hough it was intermission, few on our side of the coliseum budged from their bleachers. Their eyes were trained on the governor of the state and the mayor of the city easing themselves down from the Deadwood coach. The crowd may have wondered who the old owlhoot Colonel William F. Cody was talking to happened to be. A rumor circulated near us that Granddad was Mr. Mark Twain. Which he wouldn’t have minded.

Granddad waved us down and we had to go, though Aunt Euterpe hung back. Buster moved in a dream, drawing nearer every boy’s idol, Buffalo Bill.

“Here they are now,” said Granddad. “Bill, I’d like to make you acquainted with my daughter. Terpie, this here is Bill Cody.”

Aunty faltered on uneven ground. Colonel Cody swept off his hat in the most graceful gesture I was ever to see a man make. His hair fell to his broad buckskinned shoulders. Aunty put forth a trembling hand and the colonel took it. He bent and his moustaches grazed her gloved wrist.

She swayed like a poplar, and I thought she might pass from us. The most famous of American men had just kissed her wrist in the presence of the governor of the state and the mayor of the city, with an audience of thousands behind her. “Ma’am,” Colonel Cody said, “you bring a beautiful dignity to the proceedings.”

The cat had her tongue.

“And I take it that these lovely young ladies are your daughters?”

This shook her loose. “Oh, no.” She turned a startled gaze upon us. “They’re Adelaide’s girls—my nieces.”

The colonel liked to blind me. His shirtfront was gold lace. The studs were diamonds big as filberts. When he took my hand, I turned giddy. He passed along to Lottie, who went weak in the knee but held her ground.

Now it was Buster’s turn. “Boy, tell him who you are,” said Granddad, who was forever forgetting our names.

Buster was only as high as the colonel’s belt buckle, which was encrusted with turquoises. He was apt to hang his head in new company. But he gazed up now in a somewhat sanctified way. To our astonishment he said, “LeRoy Beckett, sir. At your service.”

He
was
LeRoy Beckett, of course. But the fact that LeRoy was his real first name was his darkest secret. Now I suppose he thought Buster was a name too young and undignified.

The colonel reached into his breast pocket. “Well, LeRoy, I believe this belongs to you.”

He held out a silver dollar plugged neatly through the center. Whether Colonel Cody had himself used it for target practice or not, he didn’t say. He only pressed it into Buster’s hand. That silver dollar rode in Buster’s pocket forever after.

The governor and the mayor were in no hurry to go. True politicians, they relished the colonel’s company before this big audience of voters. “John Altgeld,” said the governor, extending a hand to Granddad.

“Si Fuller from down in Christian County,” Granddad replied. “I’ll shake your hand, though I’m a Republican from the day we put the Railsplitter into office.” Granddad reached a glad hand past him to Mayor Carter Harrison. “Mayor, I’d like to make you acquainted with my daughter Miz Fleischacker, from up on Schiller Street. Terpie, here’s His Honor.”

Aunty lurched in that way she had. But the mayor was
as smooth as his silk hat. Doffing it, he said, “Would that be August Fleischacker’s—”

“Wife,” Aunty murmured, her face coloring like sunset. “The second one. I have been in widow’s weeds until very lately. This morning, in fact.” She fell into a confused silence.

“Your late husband, ma’am, was a valued member of our business community,” said the mayor. “Before The Fire, of course.”

“So good of you to say so,” said Aunty in a voice faint and far-off.

This was our moment in the sun. I was bound and determined to remember it always, and so I have. But the Cowboy Band was playing “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage,” and the intermission was all but over.

When Colonel Cody learned that we ladies had been in bleacher seats, he said he wouldn’t stand for it. The bleachers would do for Granddad and Buster and Tip. But we were to watch the rest of the show from the colonel’s own box. Evidently it was reserved for fashionable ladies and crowned heads if they were in town.

The colonel snapped his fingers. An usher appeared out of thin air to show us the way to our box seats. The governor and mayor withdrew, in search of voters.

“Aunty,” I said as we went, “maybe now that you know the mayor—”

“No, child,” she said. “In the social world it is not the
men who matter.” But she was flushed from her moment of fame.

*  *  *

The colonel’s box offered front-row seats thrust out a little onto the field itself. It was draped in red, white, and blue bunting caught up with silver horseshoes. The usher opened a low door, and we were swept inside as the band opposite us struck up “After the Ball.”

A row of little gold chairs with plush seats filled the box. At the far end a lady sat. She had a good full figure, putting me in mind of Mama, or Lottie. Though
this
figure was encased in the finest white lace you ever saw. I cannot speak for her feet, as her skirts were long and sweeping. Her delicate white-gloved hand rested atop the knob of a closed parasol. We couldn’t see her face for her hat.

I have to go on about that hat. I never saw its equal before or since. It was of the finest straw, white. The swooping brim must have been three feet across. It dipped down over one shoulder, and the crown on it was as big as a chimney. An enormous watered-silk black bow was held in place by a diamond brooch. We stood transfixed. She turned in the gracefullest gesture toward us, and we saw her face.