The Last Fair Deal Going Down. David Rhodes
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was better — more than he could have hoped it to be. Missouri was a dry state then and only beer could be purchased and consumed in a public building. John Charles was inspired. He worked hard. He was a good bartender and the customers enjoyed his manner and conversation. He bought half interest in the bar and renamed it Dirty John’s. Twice a month he drove over the state line into Iowa and bought thirty quarts of good bourbon and drove back to St. Louis. He never kept more than four or five bottles behind the counter and in the case of a raid would throw them out the window he kept open in the back, overlooking a steep hill which was used as a garbage dump by the people in the neighborhood.
Mr. Meadon, characteristically a regular, said that John Charles did a good business and was looked up to by the young boys in the area. And the only complaint he mentioned was with John C.’s “lack of discretion: There was nothing he liked better than to pull out a bottle of booze and set it on the counter in front of a new customer, and while his eyes bulged out of his head say, ‘What can I do for you?’ like it was an everyday thing to see booze for sale in public. It made the rest of us uneasy.”
John Charles carried a small nickel-plated revolver in a special pocket he had fashioned for himself from a description in one of his paperbacks about the old West — Two Gun Lust (1929, J. Fellows) — where Lance turns to face the sheriff after emptying both his Peacemakers into the sheriff’s deputies, who clutter the saloon floor below and around him, and silently takes a derringer from the pocket that kept it pressed against the small of his back, saying, “Sheriff, there ain’t no man alive can arrest me.” The sheriff answers, “You’re looking at him, Lance. Your days are through.” Lance fires the derringer from his hip and the sheriff falls dead across the doorway. “Sucker,” mumbles Lance to himself as he steps over the sheriff’s body and walks outside (page 123).1
John Charles was an exciting bartender because he was able to transpose these episodes into real events acted out by many of his friends in Texas and Wyoming. His voice was dynamic and during the climax of a story he would whip out his pistol (learned from many hours of practicing in front of the bedroom mirror at home, with the help of Hermie, who sat on the bed and commented on the dramatic impact of each draw), and from a semicrouching position deliver the end of the tale and replace the revolver in its secret pocket. In a special sling around his arm he kept what he called a “stiletto,” a knife he had paid over fifteen dollars for at a pawnshop owned by a man considering himself to be a shrewd judge of character, and when you pushed the button on its side a six-inch blade was ejected straight out the front end. He would take the knife out while no one was watching (he was never quite as good with his knife drawing) and shove it into the ribs of his victim, saying, “You’re dead, pal,” then pull the knife out in front of him and push the button, sending the blade zinging out into the open air.
For Hermie, St. Louis was not a particularly rough town. She grew tired of living in a trailer and so they moved into a large house closer to the tavern. John C. was sure it had been an old “hothouse.” Hermie also grew tired of having nothing more to order than some fifteen pieces of furniture and three meals a day, two or three of which she ate by herself; so instead of simply waiting for her child to be born she sectioned off the upstairs rooms and took in boarders.
John Charles was quick to notice the change in his house and was even pleased. He returned home earlier in the evenings and sat in his living room with his boarders and told stories of what had happened at Dirty John’s that night — the fights, the gambling, the raids, and the women. Many times he would follow an interested boarder to his room after the rest had gone to bed and stay up the entire night telling stories and drinking whiskey . . . or until Hermie came, demanding that he come to bed. But John Charles was more than this.
Alice Van Hooser had lived in St. Louis ten years and was a secretary for Eponic Business Forms, Inc. She was thirty-five, slightly heavy, with natural brown hair, a remarkable Indiana accent, and an image of herself that had become ever since high school increasingly fantastic. Together with a friend of hers of roughly the same potential, she decided to tempt the wheel of fortune and chance a beer at a bar they had heard about called Dirty John’s.
The bar was very dark when they entered and everyone had stopped talking. But as soon as they had shut the door behind them the talking resumed and several lights were turned on. They shuffled toward the bar, casually. John C. waited for them. Looking at a bottle of bourbon sitting on the bar before her, Alice ordered a beer. John Charles filled a glass from a wooden keg and sat it before her. “Say, Baby,” he whispered, “how about ditching that friend of yours and us getting together a little later on?” Alice’s girl friend, taking the hint, not from the words, which she didn’t hear, but from the tone that characterized the mumbling, immediately announced her departure, stating that she could be reached at any hour to provide a ride home. Alice took her beer to a table and sat down with it. John Charles closed the bar at ten P.M. and he and Alice listened to country Western music from the jukebox while John C. told of his experiences with the law in Texas and Arizona, where he had been a deputy sheriff, and showed her newspaper clippings of famous contemporary crimes committed by old friends.
Alice Van Hooser was a woman who had lived thirty-five reasonable years. She lived with her mother. Any advancement from this station was in some way going to be a concession, something given up momentarily before returning to normal. She gave in to being known around Dirty John’s as “Lil,” spending evenings in a motel, wearing black stockings, and sitting quietly at a back table watching John Charles behind the bar and knowing from his face that his wife would be coming in that night. To all this she gave in, but she was more than these things. She kept some to herself.
Hermie had a baby girl while John Charles took Lil with him on a “run” into Iowa to pick up another load of bourbon. She lay in the hospital as quietly as an unexploded charge of dynamite: that is, she might have thought many things but mostly she was a wife who had heard so many plans and schemes and adventures and happenings and stories and tales from her husband and about him that she failed to care whether they corresponded to things that actually had happened or if they had happened, when. Furthermore, because she never knew what was true and what wasn’t concerning the actions of her husband, she either decided that everything was unreal or that at least everything was irrelevant to her situation, which included John Charles, the man. She thought this was the way she felt. Yet she could not account for the anxiety. What she did not know was that John Charles, the man, was very much connected with those everythings that were unreal and irrelevant.
John Charles told Hermie about numerous fights he had taken part in at Dirty John’s. He recounted them in a very matter-of-fact manner though each presentation lasted over a quarter of an hour.2 Once, listening, struggling with the baby, she had said that she didn’t care. This ended the story. John C. had bolted from the room, thinking that not caring was the same as not believing, which was more important.
One night while Alice Van Hooser waited at her table for Mrs. Sledge to leave, two heavyset insurance salesmen walked into the bar. They had been drinking earlier in the evening and shouted at John C. to bring drinks. John C. brought them drinks and went back to sit next to his wife at the counter. Hermie, who didn’t like being at the bar at all, offered a statement establishing a relationship between these two men and the quality of the overall atmosphere of Dirty John’s. John Charles looked at the men for several minutes and got up from his stool to give them another drink. He secured himself a standing position between the two men. They were having difficulty standing up during those intervals when a high degree of gesticulation was necessary to the conversation. One of these physical explanations glanced off the shoulder of John Charles and he pivoted on his left foot and hit the man square on the jaw with his right hand, which mysteriously concealed a roll of nickels from the cash register. Before the other man could turn around John C. was in a low, semicrouching position with the stiletto blade extending from his left hand. “Come on, big man,” he shouted, “let’s see how tough you really are.” The man busted the top of a beer glass off on the counter and made a slow lunge at John Charles who easily stepped aside, cutting his arm as he passed. The man he had originally hit was picking himself off the floor and John C. stopped his assault with a kick to the face. His opponent with the broken glass had dropped it and was standing in the middle of the barroom, holding his bleeding arm and swaying