Ace Atkins - Devil’s garden

Sam wandered in and found the bar mostly empty except for the piano player and another negro, a gigantic man with a shining bald head. The man switched a toothpick from the other side of his cheek as Sam entered and sat down.

“Rye.”

The gigantic negro said nothing but uncorked an unlabeled bottle and poured out a generous measure of thin-looking stuff. Despite the taste of gasoline and leather tannins, the burning sensation was quite pleasant on Sam’s stomach and deep into his lungs, spreading out a burning warmth and giving him a bit of relief. The bartender’s skin shone the color of the deepest black, the whites of his eyes the color of an egg. His hulking form cast a shadow against the brick, with twin notches above his smooth head.

The negro was about to cork the bottle but saw the glass was empty and motioned to Sam, who nodded. He did this several times until the feeling held right and Sam waved him off.

Soon a whore came to Sam, and he smelled her before he saw her, a scent of dried flowers and spawning fish. She wrapped an arm around Sam’s neck and whispered in his ear a price. She wore a terrible wig, almost looking as if it were made of straw, and had painted a beauty mark or what most people called a mole at the bottom of her chin. Another look at her told him she couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

“I’ll suck it for two bits,” she said. The bar was dark and filled with red light and the smell of gasoline and urine.

Sam shook her away. In the long mirror, he watched as Phil Haultain walked into the room and took off his hat, as if this was the kind of place that demanded hat removal. Another girl approached Phil, and Sam smiled as he watched Phil’s eyes grow big at the offer. Sam was pretty sure he read the boy’s mouth saying, “Ma’am?”

The boy took a seat at a table near the piano player. The girl stayed and took purchase on his knee.

Sam rested his head into his hands. It was past one o’clock in the morning and for a moment he lost his place in time. Sometimes his mind played tricks like that when he drank. He could be in Baltimore or Philly or a mining camp in Montana or on the wharves in Seattle or on his grandfather’s farm, knee-deep in tobacco, walking endless rows as a summer sun stood red and strong to the west.

He asked for another drink, and in his mind he stood on a dock holding a shotgun in his arms as raggedy men tried to reach for him through fence posts, spitting at him and threatening to rip out his throat. The men wore torn rags, their bodies like skeletons. And then he broke away, hearing calliope music at the edge of a county fair, crushing a cigarette with the edge of his boot and staring up at the brightly lit Ferris wheel that had been boosted from back east.

And then he was back looking at the circle of the glass in his hand.

Sam knew he couldn’t return home by morning or else he’d risk Jose knowing he had it on him and what he was doing to his lungs and going against the cure he’d learned from her at Cushman.

The giant black man poured another shot of rye and Sam dished out another quarter, and he sat and he waited and exchanged a quick glance with Haultain, who now had another girl on his knee, and he watched as the girls worked him and bargained. Haultain was young but good at playing the rube.

They played around like that until two, when Rumwell came out from a back room. Even slightly drunk, Sam noticed the man was still put together just so in that boiled shirt and suit and bowler hat. He walked to the bar and moved against Sam, never glancing across at him, and Sam kept his head down and his eyes down as the gigantic negro reached down into his breast and pulled out a thick wad of cash and laid it down on the bar across from Rumwell, and Rumwell, not so much as looking at the black man, counted out the money in his hand and then tucked it into a fat wallet in his breast pocket, and, carrying his brown medical bag, walked briskly out of the bar and onto the cobblestones. Sam turned but found Phil already gone. Following, he clicked open his pocket watch, knowing he had hours to kill before daylight and getting home to Jose and acting like he gave a damn if he lived or didn’t.

But he knew he probably wouldn’t reach another six months, and the filthy trade he’d been taught by Jimmy Wright might just let him give a few bucks to Jose and the child and, by the grace of God, in a few years they’d forget him like smoke in the wind. Sam had thoughts like these as he wandered in and out of the bars of the Barbary, his lungs feeling squeezed and wrung out, before collapsing into a coughing fit in the great arms of a heiferlike woman with big painted blue eyes who thought he was the most humorous man she’d ever met.

Her breasts felt like great pillows.

“SO THE GIRL CHANGED HER STORY? ” Mr. Hearst asked the next morning.

“She said that was never her story.”

“But the assistant D.A.-what’s his name, Pisser?”

“U’ren, sir.”

“So ole U-rine is saying the girl was bribed.”

“I don’t know what Mr. U’ren is saying, but it looks like the girl was coerced into giving the statement. Miss Prevon-Prevost was arrested the other night at that dry raid at the Old Poodle Dog.”

“I read the story.”

“Yes, sir.”

The reporter, whatever his name was, seemed to be having a hard time standing there with his tablet in his hand and ink on his fingers, waiting for Mr. Hearst to spell out the story for him. Or maybe it was because Hearst was wearing war paint and an actual Indian headdress that had belonged to Sitting Bull.

Hearst took off the headdress, much to the disappointment of his six-year-old twin boys, who shot another arrow from the top floor of the Hearst Building out onto Market Street.

Hearst leaned into his desk and jotted out some notes. “Randolph, Elbert: Settle.”

The boys, dressed in identical blue Eton suits with knickers, looked at each other and sat down on a short couch, arms crossed over their chests and not saying a word.

“Can we get to the girl?”

“No one can find her. U’ren and Judge Brady put her somewhere. That other showgirl, Miss Blake, has disappeared all together.”

“What about this Delmont woman?”

“She’s sticking with the story that Virginia Rappe told her that Arbuckle had crushed her.”

“Wasn’t enough to get murder with the grand jury. What’s Judge Brady saying about manslaughter?”

“He says he’s looking for a second opinion in police court.”

“Will that work?”

The reporter shrugged. “If the police judge agrees, he can still try Fatty for murder.”

“What about this other woman?”

“She’s waiting outside, sir. That’s who I wanted you to meet.”

“Would you like a turkey leg?” Hearst said, pulling a big drumstick off a china plate and holding it out to the skinny young man. The young reporter shook his head and walked from the room, returning seconds later with the homeliest woman Hearst had ever seen. She looked like Buster Brown as an old unkempt man.

“This is Nurse Cumberland.”

“Good God,” Hearst said, and looked to his sons with wide eyes. Randolph whispered to Elbert, and the boys giggled from the little couch.

Hearst said, “Settle.”

“Miss Cumberland attended Miss Rappe at the St. Francis.”

“And at Wakefield, too,” the woman said.

Hearst nodded and tried not to laugh at the woman’s haircut, recalling the lawsuit he had with the cartoonist who’d created Buster Brown and now wishing he could ring up the man. The boys continued to whisper and giggle, and Hearst lumbered out of his chair and plucked the bow and a few arrows from their hands. “Boys.”

“Miss Cumberland, tell us your story,” he said, walking to the window and taking in Market Street and the final rolling slope down to the bay.