Most of the troupe looked ready for a drink. The Marbury Trio, Delilah and her brothers, sticking close as usual; Ethel Wildroot; the girls, Cookie and Marge; Cromwell Perkins, The Genius; the Grabowskis; Wayne Windsor; Ginger along with Charles; and even Harry the Juggler, who had changed his mind and joined the company. August wished the rest could be present at this farewell: Mary Mabel Markey, Mrs. McGivers. The musicians and hands, too. Sebring was putting a fitting ending on it, lubricating a sad moment, giving them all a memory. A small company, doubling their acts to fill the bill.
The keep eyed them all sourly; he preferred politicians.
Sebring rose, suddenly. “I must say, ladies and gents, I’m honored to be included here. All this talent. All this grief. If I’d known, earlier, what awaited you here, I could have done something. I have a few resources. At any rate, you fine people, I wish to raise a toast to the Follies, and may you all prosper.”
He lifted his sarsaparilla.
“You won’t raise a glass of spirits with us, sir?” Windsor asked.
“No, not for me, friend. I’m L.D.S.”
August didn’t have the faintest idea.
“Latter-day Saint?” asked Windsor, turning to expose his better profile.
“Why, yes, so of course I must abstain. At any rate, here’s to you all, to the Follies, to your success.”
They sipped gingerly. August was some while sorting it out. A Mormon, toasting them. Boise was an odd place.
“And here’s to our benefactor,” Charles said, raising a glass to Sebring.
“It’s not over, not by a long shot. Here’s Act Two,” Sebring said. “It’s my one and only chance. You shall all be witnesses.”
He stood, turned to LaVerne, and took her hand. “LaVerne Wildroot, my nightingale, will you marry me?”
LaVerne startled, spilled some of her bourbon, and stared.
Stanford Sebring was smiling.
The clock ticked. She eyed her mother, her sisters, the troupe at the table, the company she had kept all her life. She gazed at Sebring, in his costly suit and cravat, his alpaca coat nearby.
“Yes,” she said.
“Ah, ah, a great moment for us all,” Sebring said. He gently collected her, drew her close, and raised his glass.
There should have been congratulations, but no one in the company could manage them.
“I should add, friends, that if any single lady here wishes the security and happiness of a good marriage, I know of many fine and virtuous men who seek to start a family.”
No one spoke.
“And of course, if any gentleman wishes, we have jobs and opportunities open. Here and in Utah. Say the word, and your future will be secured. Our people know what it’s like to struggle, to be outcasts, to build our own Zion. And now we offer a helping hand.”
No one spoke for a few moments.
“Thanks, Mr. Sebring, but I’m addicted to coffee,” Windsor said. “My left side favors java; my right favors bourbon.”
With that, everything eased. They ordered another round, courtesy of Sebring, stayed way past the keep’s closing hour, and finally drifted into the streets, to the hotel. Sebring accompanied LaVerne to the hotel, where he kissed her cheek and promised to collect her in the morning.
The next hours proved to be the strangest in August’s life. He stood in the Overland lobby, watching his troupe head for their rooms that last night, wondering if he’d see them again. He didn’t. After a restless night, mostly awake, he headed for the lobby and found no one he knew. He knocked on the doors of his troupe, but no one answered. Strangers wandered through the lobby, checking in, checking out.
He looked for his company in the adjacent restaurants, and saw no one. He was alone. He didn’t know where Charles was, or Ginger. He couldn’t fathom how his colleagues could simply vanish, leaving no word, no trace of their existence in Boise, Idaho. There were no messages left at the hotel desk. He had several trunks of gear stored at the express office of the depot, and after an arduous search, he found a secondhand dealer who would buy the stuff for a few dollars. That was all he had; he had shared the last receipts with the troupe. He wandered through the stuffy Overland one last time, his raging curiosity pushing him into every corner, wanting to reconnect with his company. But the Follies were dead; his acts had vanished.
He had enough cash from the sale of trunks and costumes to take him to Butte, where he hoped Mrs. McGivers would shelter him a brief time, or where he could wait tables or serve drinks or run errands. The lamps were always lit in Butte. He carried his sole remaining satchel with him to the Union Pacific station, purchased coach fare to Butte, and boarded an eastbound back to Pocatello, and a change of trains to Butte. If Mrs. McGivers could not help him, he would have to think of something else.
Epilogue
ONLY THE Wildroot girls remained in Boise. LaVerne married Stanford Sebring that very day, and never returned to show business. Sebring graciously provided shelter and sustenance for Cookie and Marge, and introduced them to eager young men in woman-starved Idaho. Years later, long after they had started families, they enjoyed roles in Christmas pageants and reenactments of pioneer life. LaVerne named her second son August, even though Stanford was not enchanted with the name, preferring Brigham. Her cousins, Cookie and Marge, raised happy families and gradually concealed their vaudeville past and their father’s profession, but once in a while, at a graduation or school play, they would lead an audience in song.
Delilah Marbury, her husband Sam, and brother-in-law Bingo immediately wired their agent, Morrie Gill, and he booked them in the expanding Orpheum circuit and advanced them ticket money to Seattle. They caught the next train west. They had mixed success on the West Coast. Some inland towns didn’t like to see her dressed in tux and tails. Other towns thought that tap dancing was corrupt and degrading. But mostly, audiences delighted in the rat-a-tat and clatter, and enjoyed the trio. They toured the vaudeville circuits for many years, and opened the way for other tap-dancing acts, including blackface ones. For a while, blackface tap dancing was all the rage in vaudeville.
Harry the Juggler was booked instantly by the Orpheum circuit, but they changed his name to King of the Jugglers, and had him dress in a glittery gold costume festooned with fake rubies. He succeeded brilliantly for the next two years, but one day a train whistle caught him just as he was juggling his scimitars; he slipped—one scimitar cut his wrist to the bone, severing nerves and ending his career. He did attempt a one-handed juggling act, but it never caught on as well as the original. He ended up a celebrity bartender in San Francisco, able to do amazing things with glasses of booze.
Cromwell Perkins, The Genius, made his way back to Butte, and reverted to his former life as a barstool entertainer cadging drinks from amused customers in several saloons. The harsh winters took their toll, and he eventually vanished. Rumors abounded. Some said he was shot by an irate drinker. Others argued, in Butte parlance, that “he woke up dead” one day. He was not missed, but was the source of good Butte stories, some even true.
Ginger never looked back. She never regretted her flight from Pocatello, her escape from the clutches of her mother. She and Charles caught the next Union Pacific train eastward, riding in a Pullman Palace Car in comfort. Charles, veteran of the rails, not only had letters of credit on his personal account in New York, but also a few double eagles salted away in his effects. He found employment with the Keith empire, and later Keith-Albee, applying his endless knowledge of travel and hotels and arrangements to get acts from town to town, on time, and in comfort.
Ginger’s career took an odd twist. Ginger found regular employment at Oscar Hammerstein’s new Manhattan Opera House, at Thirty-fourth and Broadway. Her success in the Northwest was unknown to New Yorkers, and it took a year before she recouped the billing status she had known far away. She was celebrated in New York for the aura of innocence that somehow clung to her. She was well ensconced in the business, happy with her life, and close to the heart o
f the world of vaudeville, where Charles governed over hundreds of acts on the road.
August scraped together enough to get to Butte, where Mrs. McGivers immediately gave him shelter. He discovered Ethel Wildroot also there, waiting tables in exchange for shelter. August didn’t have a nickel. But in time, he scraped together enough to ride coach to New York, where he soon found work doing what he did best, introducing acts at Tony Pastor’s Rialto Opera House, which was doing vaudeville nonstop all day, every day. It wasn’t much, but it afforded him a room, and he gradually paid off his debts to Boise printers and restaurants, sending a few dollars from each paycheck.
But the failure, the collapse of his Follies, and the new, ruthless world of competing vaudeville circuits, had taken their toll on him. He was frequently ill, and developed a tumor on the stomach, and less than three years after he returned to his hometown, he lay dying in Bellevue Hospital, his life dwindling as he lay on a narrow cot in a charity ward under an army surplus blanket.
Charles and Ginger found him there, staring upward into emptiness.
“August, we just found out you’re here,” Charles said, reaching for a cold hand.
“Good of you,” August said.
“Are they treating you well?” Ginger asked.
“The one, the only Bellevue,” August whispered.
“August, thanks to you, my dreams came true. I just want you to know.”
“Same here, August. I took what you taught me and made a life,” Charles said.
For a long moment, August didn’t respond. Then, quietly, “The business. The business gives us life. It’s a refuge.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Ginger said. “But yes, it puts its arm around us; it put its arm around me, and after that…”
August smiled thinly. “Vaudeville’s like this hospital. It’s for the ones coming in or going out.”
He closed his eyes, and his visitors wondered if he had slipped away, but they stayed, and clung to his hand. The person who had transformed their lives was adrift.
Ethel Wildroot found him then, noted his closed eyes, and her face formed a question.
“Ethel, I’m glad,” August said, mysteriously fathoming her presence.
“Oh, August,” she said.
“You were my reliable,” he said. “Always ready with an act. I’m glad you came for the curtain.”
“Oh, August, oh, baby.”
The Profile showed up, too, his visage ravaged by age and spirits, but still somehow noble.
“I’m going to talk about showmen tonight,” he said. “Is there any showman in the audience I can honor this evening? Raise your hand.”
“Never made the grade, and flunked at Boise,” August mumbled.
“Never made the grade? You’re one of the great ones. You cleaned cash out of a thousand towns. You bankrupted whole cities.”
August laughed gently, and then faded into blessed memory.
About the Author
RICHARD S. WHEELER is the author of more than fifty novels of the American West. He holds six Spur Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to the literature of the West. Wheeler makes his home in Livingston, Montana, near Yellowstone National Park. You can sign up for email updates here.
BY RICHARD S. WHEELER FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
Aftershocks
Badlands
The Buffalo Commons
Cashbox
Eclipse
The Exile
The Fields of Eden
Fool’s Coach
Goldfield
Masterson
Montana Hitch
An Obituary for Major Reno
The Richest Hill on Earth
Second Lives
Sierra
Snowbound
Sun Mountain: A Comstock Memoir
Where the River Runs
SKYE’S WEST
Sun River
Bannack
The Far Tribes
Yellowstone
Bitterroot
Sun Dance
Wind River
Santa Fe
Rendezvous
Dark Passage
Going Home
Downriver
The Deliverance
The Fire Arrow
The Canyon of Bones
Virgin River
North Star
The Owl Hunt
The First Dance
SAM FLINT
Flint’s Gift
Flint’s Truth
Flint’s Honor
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
About the Author
By Richard S. Wheeler from Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ANYTHING GOES
Copyright © 2015 by Richard S. Wheeler
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Michael Koelsch
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Wheeler, Richard S.
Anything goes / Richard S. Wheeler.—First edition.
p. cm.
“A Forge Book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-7581-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-4794-1 (e-book)
I. Title.
PS3573.H4345A83 2015
813'.54—dc23
2015023344
e-ISBN 9781466847941
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First Edition: December 2015
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