Chapter Seven: At the Admiral Bimbo Inn

It was mid-afternoon by the time Glenn and Mack sat at the bar of the Admiral Benbow, and Glenn ordered two whiskeys on the rocks and two bottles of beer. Mack, of course, was dismayed and not a little annoyed by the likelihood that Glenn would continue his harangue against Otis Bulfinch and his "libelous article" and the Springfield Leader and so become tedious, but it seemed as if a spigot in Glenn had been shut off. Perhaps the change of scenery elicited a change in temperament. Or perhaps the anticipation of alcohol was enough to soothe Glenn's rancor. In any event, M.S. Glenn was as calm as a gently rocking ship in a lapping harbor, and Mack forgot his apoplectic tirade at the Leader.

Mack had never been in a big city saloon before, but he concealed his inexperience behind a veneer of indifference. The bar itself was a long walnut affair with the top of the counter buffed to a high sheen; the barstools were padded and covered in deep green leather and mounted on brass pedestals. Behind the bar was a long credenza on which stood shelves of bottles gleaming in front of a mirror, and the whole array was capped by a rococo scroll of walnut. Above the scroll hung a picture of a man and woman, and the woman was naked. She was also dead. Behind the men and across the room from the bar were five empty booths. Above the middle booth hung a painting, but the colors were dark—charcoals and grays and deep purples relieved occasionally by vague shapes of pale white and yellow—and Mack couldn't make out what was being depicted.

Glenn said to the bartender, "Jimbo, we need two whiskeys on ice and two cold beers." The bartender set the drinks on the bar, and Glenn smiled at Mack in the mirror. Glenn said, "Here's to new friends!" and they clinked glasses. Mack took a sip of whiskey and almost spit it out, but he managed to swallow and even took another drink. Then he took a long pull from the beer bottle. The bite and fizz of the first taste of beer always restored Mack's good humor.

Mack looked above the scrollwork at the painting of the man and woman. They had apparently fought because she had a stab wound between her breasts, and he was holding a dripping knife. The girl's nipples and the blood from her wound were the same bright red. Mack had seen a girl's nipples only once when he had accidentally walked in on Vertrude in the bathroom, but Vertrude's nipples were more coral than crimson, and since he hadn't seen any other girls' nipples, he didn't know whether crimson nipples like those in the painting were possible. He knew his own nipples weren't crimson, and the nipples of his friends weren't either. Some of his friends' nipples were indeed redder than others; that he had observed. But it could have been that boys' nipples and girls' nipples were different.

Whatever the case, that girl has for sure got some red nipples.

He took another pull on his beer and continued to study the painting.

Who knows? he thought, nipples might be that red in other parts of the world. I guess a fellow would have to go around the world and see a lot of nipples to know for sure.

That's a damn good reason to go around the world.

M.S. noticed Mack staring at the painting and said, "That's a real piece of art, eh?"

Mack said, "I guess. I was observing the painter's technique."

Glenn guffawed. "Technique. Right." Glenn drained his whiskey glass in a single drink and said, "When I was a boy, I saw a girl bathing down in Dove Creek; she was the first girl I ever saw naked. I hid behind a tree to watch her, but she turned around and called out, 'I see you, Mikey!'

"Lordgodalmighty, if it wasn't Annie Green! We went to school together, and I always thought she was pretty. I didn't know what to say, so I just hollered out, 'Hi, Annie. How's the water?'

"She dipped down, and her hair spread out in the clear water. A fellow never forgets something like that. And when she came up, her hair was pressed flat against her cheeks and hung down to her shoulders, and she said, 'The water's fine. But it ain't proper for you to see me like this. You best go away, so I can dry off and put my clothes on.' I hollered back, 'It's okay, Annie. I'll turn around. You can come out.' All right,' she said and walked out of the creek. Thing is, I lied, and when I saw her climbing up the bank, my knees nearly buckled. She hollered, 'You said you'd turn around!' but she didn't seem angry or embarrassed. She toweled off and hung the towel on a limb and put her hands on her hips and asked, 'So? What do you think?' But I was still tongue tied, so she just laughed and slipped her dress over her head and put on her shoes. 'Good-bye, Mikey,' she said. All I could do was clear my throat.

"I was handsome back then, but now . . . well, shit."

Mack looked at their two faces side by side in the mirror. Glenn's nose was ruddy with whiskey and swollen with the memory of Annie Green's young body.

Mack thought, Shit, indeed.

Glenn said, "Anyhow, for weeks all I could think about was Annie's little puddings and her cherry pie. I kept remembering her with her hands on her hips and not a stitch of clothes on, and it nearly drove me crazy. I was in a frenzy. Then Lincoln got elected, and the country lost its mind, so I joined up with the Union and fought under Lyon at Wilson Creek. The Rebs whipped the hell out of us, but that fight gave me a hankering for gun powder and blood, and I forgot about pretty Annie by Dove Creek. A year or so later, I fought under Pope over in New Madrid, and when the Rebs surrendered, my company and I marched into the town, and well . . . ." Glenn looked up at the painting again, but his eyes seemed far away, and his mouth hung open. "I learned there's ways to take a woman nobody ever told me about. Ever since New Madrid, I pity any girl whose city falls." He finished his beer. "When the war was over, I came home and looked for Annie, but they told me she was dead from yellow fever. So, I married Edna, and we had a vigorous time at the outset. But when the babies didn't come, her affection waned. That's when I learned that a fellow is obligated to get what he wants wherever he can. That's why I started canvassing."

"Canvassing?"

"Yeah, I sold books door to door all around the Ozarks. Bibles and poetry books and these big ornate books of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Hey, Jimbo, set us up again!

"A few of those farm gals were looking for stronger entertainment than what they could get from a book but not enough of them to keep me happy. I was still a young man then, a couple years older than you. Besides, trying to sell books to people who can't read is as futile an enterprise as you can think of. So, I started peddling toys. The yokels had plenty of kids but no money to speak of, so it was damn near as futile as selling books to illiterates. To make matters worse, a woman with a lot of kids isn't too interested in entertaining salesmen, so I had to start paying for affection. A man can always get what he needs if he's willing to pay for it." Glenn sipped his whiskey and said, "Whoring is no sin, you know; it's capitalism in its purest form and as American as cherry pie. Here's to capitalism!" They clinked glasses again and drank.

The whiskey was working its magic, and Mack looked fondly at himself and then at the dark painting hanging on the wall behind them. His curiosity got the best of him, so he got up and walked over to it, and this is what he saw: Up on a craggy mountain top was a black castle with turrets silhouetted against a purple sky. Yellow light glowed from the windows, and a woman in white was leaning on the sill of one of the casements. Wispy white mists floated over the sky and obscured the face of a full moon, but Mack couldn't tell whether the wisps were ghosts or clouds. In the bottom right of the painting was a knight on a black horse wending his way up a rocky path. The moon reflected faintly on his helmet, breastplate, and greaves, but the black horse almost blended into the shadows. Then, Mack felt a hot breath on his neck and smelled something like bad cheese. It was Glenn, of course, and he was gazing over Mack's shoulder at the painting.

"You know what that fellow wants, don't you?"

"Let me guess: a slice of cherry pie."

"That's my boy!" A clap on the back followed and Glenn continued, "Now the artist would tell you he was creating a romance, that yonder knight was risking his life to free his lady love from a cruel tyrant. He would say something pretentious, like the lady is a hopeless ideal and she symbolizes redemption and who knows what else? But the truth is, McQuary, every story is only about one thing, and that's cherry pie. Every story ever told."

In a low voice and almost as if he were praying, Mack said, "That's what I want." He touched the figure of the woman in white and ran his finger down the length of her torso. Then he tapped the image with his forefinger. "And I'm going to get it."

"So said every man who ever drew breath. How do you aim to do it?"

"Not by painting pictures or writing books, that's for sure."

Mack walked back to the bar, and Glenn followed him like a shabby bear. They sat on their stools, and Mack said, "Here's to cherry pie, Mr. Glenn. And here's to all the girls with bright red nipples." They clinked and drank, and Mack asked, "Why do suppose a fellow paints pictures anyhow?"

Glenn raised his whiskey glass and said, "I'll show you why." The declining sun was throwing a shaft of sunlight through the large plate glass window, and the shaft struck the glass. Glenn said, "There is nothing quite so fresh as water trickling down the outside of a glass, is there?"

He was right. The glass glistened with dripping beads, and around the pieces of ice swirled shades of amber. In the thick concavity of the bottom of the glass, the shaft splintered into a little rainbow. The glinting beads and prismatic refraction shone like a light in the darkness, so Mack raised his glass and said, "Oh. Well, here's to artists and whiskey."

The fog in Mack's head had grown thick, and his face in the mirror seemed distant and implausible but handsome nonetheless, so he ventured, "I am a beauty of lover, lover of beauty. Furthermore, I think of love as different in degree from appreciation but not in kind." Mack wasn't sure what he said, so his mind pirouetted, and he found himself admiring his reflection again.

Then Mack turned to Glenn and said, "Hey, Mr. Glenn–do you mind if I call you Mike?"

"Call me what you will, just don't call me late for supper."

"So, Mike, I've got a plan, and I think maybe you and I can work together on it. Maybe get some cherry pie and make some money at the same time. Interested?" Glenn's nose was pulsing and indifferent, but he said, "Go on."