J. Powers - Morte D'Urban

“I’ve had a long day, Billy.”

“We’ve all had a long day.”

“The truth is I have some office to read.”

Billy’s face softened up entirely. “Oh,” he said. “That’s different.”

PITY THE POOR resort operator! At the bottom of his efforts to get along with people there may be only the base conviction that it will profit him, but, even so, Father Urban felt sorry for Chester the next day. Billy and Paul had gone to bed the night before and left Chester waiting up for the piano. When it had come, in the wee hours, Chester and the truck driver had had to move it into the lodge. Early in the morning, Chester had had to get Billy out of his bed, and minnows for the day’s fishing out of their tank. It was Chester who made breakfast. He said Honey came down later.

The fishing that morning, as Chester said to a colleague — another guide in a passing boat — was nothing to brag about. Father Urban made the only catch, and Billy, who was after lake trout, had actually wanted him to throw it back—“a lousy two-pound walleye!” They tried Snowflake and they tried Strong. They tried trolling, fast and slow, Chester making the old outboard talk in a whisper. They tried jigging — yanking the rod up and down when reeling in the line, after a cast. They tried it shallow. They tried it deep. They tried all kinds of bait — redheads, daredevils, tezerenos, artificial mice, doctor spoons, hula dancers, and lazy ikes. Chester went ashore and caught a frog, and Billy tried that. Billy had one strike, but nothing came of it. “Probably a shoe,” he said.

“They’re in here,” Chester said, and spoke of the wind, the sun, and the moon.

“To think you get paid for this,” Billy said.

“They’re in here,” Chester said.

“Aw, shut up,” Billy said, and after that was silent.

They returned to the lodge for lunch. It was Father Urban’s feeling that he’d look better to Billy, and that Billy would look better to him, if they spent more time apart, and so as they were getting up from the table, Father Urban said he wouldn’t be going out that afternoon, if Billy didn’t mind.

“I don’t blame you,” Billy said.

Father Urban slept most of the afternoon, but he was on the dock, breviary in hand, when the boat came in. Chester was rowing. Billy appeared to be in good spirits, so Father Urban called across the water, “How was it?”

“Wonderful!” Billy called back.

Paul had driven to town for “supplies” in the morning, but in the afternoon he had taken Father Urban’s place in the bow of the boat, and he was the first one to disembark. He was all wet. Chester and Billy were somewhat wet, too, Father Urban saw, but Paul was all wet. “If I could swim, I wouldn’t care,” he said.

He told Father Urban what had happened. Billy had run the boat full speed through a place where tree stumps stuck up in the water, and he had nearly drowned Paul. Chester had rowed them home because the propeller on the outboard motor had been badly bent. Paul said, “Boss, you won’t get me in that thing again.”

“Just wonderful,” Billy said, jumping out of the boat.

“How was the fishing?” Father Urban asked.

“The what ?” Billy said.

Chester stayed in the boat, bailing it out with a rusty coffee can, which, scraping the ribbed bottom and swallowing the dirty water, made a melancholy sound. The sun was leaving for the day, and when that happened that far north in September, there wasn’t much between you and the night. The lake, a light red wine before, was now black stout, and the air was suddenly dank.

That evening Father Urban went out of his way to be nice to Chester. Two couples, thirty or so, arrived in time for supper, and were asked by Billy to join him and Father Urban in a drink later. They accepted. When the party had gathered, there was dancing to the jukebox, Billy starting it off with Honey, and the couples following. Then they all changed partners. Father Urban and Chester sat together, Father Urban telling him about the Hill.

“You and me got the same problem,” Chester said.

“How’s that?”

“The cold months. We ought to operate in Florida in the cold months — instead of closing down the way we do.”

“You may be right,” said Father Urban.

“Mother taught her all she knows about cooking,” Chester said a little later, when Honey danced by with Billy.

When Billy sat down to play, Father Urban understood why Chester had sold the old piano, and why he wasn’t happy about the new one. Chester had to get along with people.

“Hello, Aloha! How are you?” Billy sang. A line or two was as far as he got into the lyrics, and his accompaniment was like falling planks. He had a glass on the piano, and another by the fireplace, where Father Urban and Chester and the others were sitting at three tables pushed together, for it was no longer possible to dance. Paul, as he must have done on many such occasions, sat on the bench beside Billy and backed him up with noises of his own, all made with his mouth. Paul’s “Ahhhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhhh,” first heard in “Bye, Bye, Blues,” was the full band behind the maestro, and suggested that Paul, like many of his breed, could carry a tune. Paul also did something out of the side of his mouth, with his lips held loosely together, that was rather like a trombone. The sweet trumpet parts he whistled, and whistled well. Unfortunately for Paul, and others, the band featured the leader’s piano and voice. “And now, folks”—this, while chording, called out in a genial manner that took Father Urban back to the days of radio, when some of the most important men in the country were the leaders of dance bands—“let’s go for a musical stroll down Memory Lane.” Billy played and sang “Three O’clock in the Morning,” “Diane,” and “Dinner for One, Please, James.” Then came “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” made famous by little Shirley Temple, “Dardanella,” made famous by the immortal Paul Whiteman, “Nola,” made famous by Vincent Lopez, and “Got a Date with an Angel,” made famous by the late Hal Kemp. “And now, folks, a medley of tunes from Bitter Sweet .” “Show tunes,” he said to one of the women when she crossed the floor — she’d been out of the room when he’d announced the medley. “And now, folks, who’ll ever forget this one? Sing along, if you like. ‘Here I go singin’ low, dodey oh, dodey oh, bye, bye, black-bird!’” One of the men, a fat man, did sing along, but Father Urban could see that Billy didn’t like it. “Now here’s an instrumental favorite, as played by Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Band—‘Smoke Rings.’” Billy went all out on this one, shoulders rolling, feet tramping. He motioned to Paul to rise and face the audience when it was time for his trombone solo, which he did. At the conclusion of this number, the leader played several notes to indicate that the band was taking a break, and rose from the piano. Everybody applauded, including Paul, even Chester and Father Urban.

A little while later, Father Urban heard how Billy had happened to buy the building now occupied by the Clementines on the near North Side. He’d asked the previous tenant, ¡Panache Ltd!. to locate some Little Jack Little records for him, scarce items. “‘I’m not asking have you got ’em,’ I said. ‘I’m asking — can you get ’em?’ Know what the bastard said?”

“What?” said Father Urban.

“‘Wouldn’t if I could.’ So I bought the building and told him to move. I told him he could and would. He did.”

With one of the party, a Mr Inglis, Billy then fell to arguing the merits of shooting wolves from airplanes. In Father Urban’s opinion, what Billy really objected to was people having such fun in airplanes and thinking of themselves as noble conservationists. Billy had the heavy stockholder’s loyalty to the railroads. “Upsets the balance of nature,” he said to Mr Inglis. “We need the wolves. Too damn many deer anyway. Ask the farmers.”