A character study
“C’mon, Slim, pick up the pace,” Eliza hissed through a gritted grin. “You’re killing me here.” She leaned farther onto my piano, the full length of her torso balanced along its cedar top, and belted, “Don’t hang ‘round here… no… more!” I finished the tune with a flourish across the high keys and a single hit on the low, and Eliza struck a seductive pose, flashing a magenta garter under her layered violet skirts.
The hum and twitter of the saloon didn’t waver. One long-faced fellow sitting alone at the bar, slurping from an empty glass, paused to give a half-hearted wolf whistle, then stuck his tongue further into the glass to catch the last drops of whiskey. Eliza slid off of the piano and flicked sweat from her forehead onto the stage, already covered with a tacky film. “Bang-up job, Slim.” She stalked over to the bar, where she flopped onto a stool and whistled for a drink.
“Eliza, wait.” As I approached the counter, she turned away and shoved her bangs up from her face with one hand, making them stick out like a colt’s just-growing mane. “Eliza, hey! Listen! Just ‘cause we got a rotten crowd doesn’t mean you can be sore at me! It doesn’t! C’mon, don’t be sore. Please.” I sat beside her and tried to brush an auburn ringlet over her ear, the way I’d seen countless men do with their lady friends. In return, I got slapped so hard that I stumbled off the stool and landed on my tail.
“Back off, kid!” Eliza took a swig of whiskey and glared at me. “Don’t you touch me again!” She then stormed off to the cramped closet that was her dressing room, leaving me to pull myself up, surrounded by snickers and whistles. Each chortle and “well, how-dee!” was another twig thrown on the spreading fire behind my cheeks; these men were engineers, stoking the coals of my pride until the whole kettle boiled over. My hands contracted into tight, scrappy fists, and, as I searched my mind for the perfect comeback, my right thumb worried my garnet ring, the stone of which was turned in, just as the magician who’d gifted it to me had instructed. I may still have been waiting for his promised serendipity to arrive, but I wasn’t about to trespass on the superstition.
With a sudden slamming of the doors, a stranger walked into the saloon, and all my ideas bolted out of my head. Like the others in the room, my eyes shot to the entrance to appraise the new arrival, but instead of another swaggering cowboy with a mustache as long and pointed as a boar’s tusks, I saw a kid, wobbling like he had already had two drunkard’s worth of drinks. He was skinny—even skinnier than me—his limbs jackstraws, his head a marble balanced atop them, and he was wearing his father’s boots. When he stared back at us and gulped, it seemed he had a crabapple bobbing around inside his gullet. His big eyes, so soft and round you could call him Bessie and put him out to pasture, wavered around the room, settling on mine for a moment before moving on. We stared back.
Finally, he seemed to coax his courage out of a deep warren inside him and took a step towards the men of the saloon. His boots slid forward, off his feet, as he did so, but he quickly regained control of them. Then, he took another step, and another, and, once it became clear the Tottering Colt Show was over, most of the men turned back to nursing their drinks and ignored him. The boy made his way to the bar and pulled himself onto a barstool, quite a feat for a kid of only ten or so. From behind the counter, Virgil scrutinized him while polishing a glass, then slammed it down and asked, “What’ll ya have?” The kid blinked at him, and he stammered, trying to recall, I suppose, what he’d last seen in Pa’s glass.
“Get ‘im the good stuff, Virge.” Ike Hoover hooked his arm around the boy’s shoulders and settled himself in the next stool. “If he’s gonna be a man now, by golly, he should drink like one—ain’t that right?” Virgil shrugged and ducked below the bar. “Heya, Jackstraws,” Ike said, jostling the boy and grinning. “You wanna be a man, right?”
The kid looked up at him and, after a second’s hesitation, nodded. Ike’s grin twisted into a smirk, and, in his eyes, I saw the same look I’d seen four years before, when I’d struck it out on my own myself and came across the first of many men to offer their “help” to the clueless runaway. “You don’t want his help,” I told the kid.
Jackstraws glanced over at me, and I could see Ike’s veins bulging across his forehead. “There’s no trouble here, Slim,” he said. “So why don’t you keep your nose shoved where it belongs.”
“It already is.” I crossed my arms across my chest, my concealed thumb massaging the ring faster and faster. “Back off, Ike.”
He rose from the stool and tapped his hand to his holster. “Make me, boy.”
“Get out,” I said to the kid, and he scurried under a nearby table. I put up my fists, blew twice for luck, then laid one into Ike’s face with a crack, though from my hand or his jaw, I couldn’t tell. It was the best shot I got in, and, when Virgil finally convinced Ike to let up, I lay on the floor for a minute longer to let my insides reunite after the disintegrating blows.
“Go home, Slim.” Virgil returned to his counter, his dour expression unchanged. “Now.”
Although I felt like a watch chain—every connection loose and wobbly, any structure lost forever—I pulled myself upright and managed to stand. The kid was still under the table, watching me. “Hey, Jackstraws,” I said. He looked up, already accepting that this was to be his permanent moniker. “What’s your name?”
The boy bit his lip and looked down, then muttered, “Kurt.”
I tried to nod, but soon realized that was a painful idea. “M’name’s Tobias, Kurt. I’ve been in your boots, kid, and I won’t see you suffer like I did. It’s not much, but you’re welcome to hole up with me. Deal?”
I extended a hand down towards him to shake.