John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“Not for Judge Bean, who had the liquor concession. He sold out his stock to the sporting crowd, then issued an ordinance that not a drop could be consumed in Langtry. It was a memorable train ride.” Masterson turns and points the gun barrel at the fat man. “What’s this I hear of the ‘Otto Floto Circus’?”

The fat man shrugs, embarrassed. “One of Harry’s ideas. The newspaper would promote it.”

“And you could donate one of your old opera capes,” says Masterson, turning away, “to use as a tent.”

The fat man grips his cane with both hands. “If you weren’t armed, Mas-terson—”

“Gentlemen,” interrupts Niles. “We agreed that this would be civil. Have we settled on a referee?”

“It’s Reddy’s hall,” says Otto Floto. “He wants to run the bout.”

“No objection,” says Masterson. He sits back on the stool, looking at the pistol held in his lap. “There was a different filmist in Carson City,” he says. “This one had a special tower built by the ring, with a slot cut out for all three of his cameras, and he made sure to throw some money at both Fitz and Corbett before the battle.”

“Ensuring a prolonged contest,” ventures Niles.

“I was there,” says the fat man.

“As was I.” Masterson’s glare is like a bullet. “Earp and I providing security in case a riot ensued—”

“Like the one Earp started in San Francisco.”

Masterson idly twirls the pistol on his finger. Niles takes a few cautious steps to the side. “Photographed every bloody minute of it. Jim knocking the starch out of Fitz, but the bald-headed little bastard hanging in, and his wife there by the corner — I wouldn’t like to meet her in a prize ring, either—‘Hit him in the slats, Bob!’ she hollers. ‘Hit him in the slats!’ and out he staggers in the fourteenth and does just that, square on the mark, and Jim is done for the day.”

“The film is a sensation,” says Niles. “They set up a special projecting machine called a Veriscope, and—”

“I’ve seen it,” says the gunfighter flatly.

“And your impression?”

“Greatly inferior to my own remembered impressions of the bout,” says Masterson. “Smaller than life.”

“The man has made a fortune.”

“That I do not deny. At the presentation I attended more than half of the spectators were females, and I do not mean those of the lowest stripe. Something is afoot here that I mislike.” He stands and looks at Hod again, then at the sleeping man beyond him. “Do you know what they showed before they put the fight up on the wall? Professor Welton’s Boxing Cats! The noble art, turned into a raree show.” He turns to Floto.

“Your man,” he says, pointing to the sleeper at the bar, “Chief Rain-in-the-Face—”

“He’ll be fine for twelve if I tell him.”

Niles interrupts. “The Blonger brothers specified ten.”

“The Blongers can lick my kiester,” says Masterson. “Do you think he’d put the warpaint on?”

Otto Floto makes a face. “We tried that once. It got on the gloves, in the fighters’ eyes—”

“A headdress perhaps? When he comes in the ring—”

“I think Harry has one at the paper.”

“Little prick probably puts it on when nobody’s looking. And your boy here—”

“Brackenridge,” Hod calls out.

“A name that is neither here nor there,” says Masterson. “Something Irish—”

“I’m not Irish.”

“And Fireman Jim Flynn is a Dago, what of it?”

“He fought before under Young McGinty,” Niles blurts.

Niles promised Hod before that it wouldn’t be McGinty, just in case the warrant has traveled from Alaska, but now only puts a finger to his lips to warn him off.

“Young McGinty versus Chief—?”

“Strong Bear,” says the fat man.

“It’s a match. We advertise a prize of five hundred dollars, and out of that the fighters share—”

“Excuse me,” says Niles, holding up a hand. “If we’re talking business—”

He holds a fiver out to Hod. Masterson and Otto Floto and Niles and even the artist all stare at him as if he shouldn’t be there. Hod takes the five and steps to the back of the room.

“That’s to feed yourself,” calls Niles jovially. “Not for an excursion to Holliday Street.”

He gives the sleeping man a nudge as he passes on the way out the back door. “Lunchtime, buddy.”

They are out on 18th before Hod realizes that the man is Big Ten.

“If you don’t mind,” says the Indian, eyeing the five, “I haven’t eaten in days.”

They find a place two blocks up serving steak and eggs and settle in.

“The fat gink,” says Big Ten, “is some kind of newspaper writer who also promotes shows. I pulled his coat for a handout over by the Opera House and he pitched this boxing idea.”

“Jail in Leadville?”

“One week, they got tired of feeding me. Took me to the freight yard, told me to catch the first thing smoking.”

The Indian doesn’t look any thinner. Fighting him will be like punching a tree stump.

“You know what you’re doing in the ring?”

“Hell no.”

“What they paying you?”

Big Ten shrugs. “The fat man got me a flop for the night,” he says. “Then it’s twenty for showing up and then the sky’s the limit, he says, depending on how I handle myself. What about yours?”

“I think he owes Masterson a lot of money, so this is mostly on the cuff,” says Hod. “But if I catch him before he can reach a faro table I might see a few dollars.”

Big Ten sighs as the food arrives and they dig in.

“There was a sign over that bar,” says Big Ten. “Said it was against the law to serve an Indian — less he’s been cooked first.”

“The whole deal sounds like lots of lumps for short money.” Hod stares out the window at the characters circulating on 18th. “I’d recommend taking a powder, only these people always got an in with the law. If they catch us—”

“If you promise not to hit too hard,” says the Indian, “I promise not to fall down too quick.”

They linger over their coffee, just thinking, and are on their way back to the Windsor in a light drizzle when a tramp steps up on the sidewalk to block their way.

“You fellas spare some change?”

The man is swaying a little as he stands, skin and bones, hair wet and wild, looking slightly through rather than at them like fellas will do when they put the touch on you. Big Ten gives him a nickel and a penny.

“That’s it, buddy,” says the Indian. “Now we’re as busted as you.”

“That’s white of you,” says the tramp, who Hod recognizes from Butte, a mucker on the day gang with a Polish name longer than an ore train. The man staggers around them, almost falling off the curb.

“Always does the heart good,” says Big Ten, “to see somebody worse off than you are.”

On the next block they see the recruits.

There are three of them, two normal sized and one half-pint kid, standing at stiff attention in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Elite Saloon.

“Our sergeant said he needs to kill his thirst,” says the kid, who the others call the Runt. “Or maybe he just gone in to wound it. One way or the other, we got to stand here at attention till he comes out.”

“We’re volunteers,” says one of the normal-sized ones.

“Sure you are,” says Big Ten. “I can’t see how anybody’d pay you to stand out in the rain.”

“In the Army ,” says the Runt. “Off to battle the Spaniards.”

“You don’t say.”

The Runt closes his eyes, then opens them and begins to spout.

Oh it’s Tommy this, and it’s Tommy that

and it’s “Chuck him out, the brute!”