Episode 24

The Majestic

That evening, Joe Wiley made his way to the Majestic. Shorty Little certainly wasn’t wrong about the place. By a sizeable margin it was the largest saloon and game house in Mercury Wells. The place certainly looked more welcoming and classier than did the Paradise or any other, similar places in town. Joe could hear the pipe organ music long before he entered. The orchestral thunder of it made a hum in the wood planks of the boardwalk. He expected Ben Temple was pleased with it.

Inside, a monumental mahogany bar ran the length of the barroom from one side to the other then back again. The customers included railroad construction workers, cowboys, townspeople, Chinese and Mexicans, drug fiends, thieves, and wantons. There was gambling, of course. Faro, roulette, dice and poker. An enormously fat woman in layers of gingham twirled a parasol where she stood and sang on a raised stage not much bigger than one of the cells back at the jail. Her accompaniment was provided by an extravagant Mason and Hamlin four octave organ in a rosewood cabinet. Those afflicted from the lingering loneliness of riding the range or leveling rail gradings could, for a small remuneration, find solace in the cribs upstairs. And, of course, one could spend money on drink.

Joe was pleased to note that the place was professionally managed. He spied four rough looking men seated on tall stools and armed with sawed-off pick handles. One had a fancy nickel-plated revolver in a holster slung under his left arm in a leather rig. One would need to take a second thought to mix with them.

Ben was seated at a corner table, his back to a wall. The perfect place for a blind man to hold court. He wasn’t alone either. A young whore was seated close to him, all smiles as Ben regaled her with some story or other. Who knew how much of it was bullshit or all too true. The man was a notorious liar. Especially to women. It was getting so the line between lie, legend and fact were all blurred in Ben’s imagination. She hung on his every word regardless. Joe pulled back one of the heavy oaken chairs and took a seat.

“Well, I see you didn’t take long settling in. And finding yourself a friend,” Joe said.

“Some of us are better at making friends. And some of us are better at making enemies,” Ben said through a grin. A cigar stuck out of one side of his mouth, a thin cheroot with a tip of gray ash. “This is Clara Belle. She is keeping me company, as we enjoy the excellent music and ambiance of this fine establishment. Clara Belle, this is Joe Wiley. My oldest acquaintance.”

Clara Belle extended a gloved hand. Joe took it and gave it a cautious near peck, not actually touching the cloth with his lips. The glove smelled of stale tobacco and rancid parfum. The whore was young but not what one would call pretty. She had the watery eyes and sallow skin of an opium user. But then, to Ben, she could appear as Helen of Troy and Cleopatra rolled into one. In his world of perpetual night he knew only the limits of his imagination.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Wiley,” Clara Belle said, her other hand to her mouth, fingers hiding teeth stained brown from smoking the black tar.

“The treat is all mine,” Joe said, his smile fixed and only going so far as the corners of his mouth. His eyes remained hooded in shadow under his hat, which he only removed indoors when in the presence of a lady. Joe felt the need for a woman as much as any man but did not share Ben’s taste for whores. He found them unappealing and sad. So many of them succumbed to consumption and worse in their pitifully brief careers. As a lawman, he’d found too many of these so-called soiled doves lying dead and discarded in alleyways and muddy streets, cast aside like a worn saddle blanket or an empty jug.

“Clara Belle can read and has generously agreed to visit me in my room to read to me of an evening,” Ben said.

“Good to hear. Takes some of the load off of me. I frankly find Charles Dickens tedious,” Joe said.

“Joseph prefers Dumas. But then he has always been an incurable romantic.” Ben smiled easy, blind eyes crinkled in amusement at his friend. The whore giggled behind splayed fingers.