Devil's Garden by Ace Atkins Page B

were gas lamps and red lamps in bay windows where sad-eyed girls in saggy slips and torn stockings would press their bodies against the warped glass or crook a finger at you. The doctor ducked into another alley and curved again, but Sam did not rush, as he looked both ways, and heard the tinny piano music of a little bar called Purcell’s that advertised itself with a wooden sign that swung and creaked in the breeze off the Pacific. A fat man in a little hat banged out the keys to a song about a girl from Kansas City who wore gumdrops on her titties.
    Sam wandered in and found the bar mostly empty except for the piano player and another negro, a gigantic man with a shining bald head. The man switched a toothpick from the other side of his cheek as Sam entered and sat down.
    “Rye.”
    The gigantic negro said nothing but uncorked an unlabeled bottle and poured out a generous measure of thin-looking stuff. Despite the taste of gasoline and leather tannins, the burning sensation was quite pleasant on Sam’s stomach and deep into his lungs, spreading out a burning warmth and giving him a bit of relief. The bartender’s skin shone the color of the deepest black, the whites of his eyes the color of an egg. His hulking form cast a shadow against the brick, with twin notches above his smooth head.
    The negro was about to cork the bottle but saw the glass was empty and motioned to Sam, who nodded. He did this several times until the feeling held right and Sam waved him off.
    Soon a whore came to Sam, and he smelled her before he saw her, a scent of dried flowers and spawning fish. She wrapped an arm around Sam’s neck and whispered in his ear a price. She wore a terrible wig, almost looking as if it were made of straw, and had painted a beauty mark or what most people called a mole at the bottom of her chin. Another look at her told him she couldn’t have been more than thirteen.
    “I’ll suck it for two bits,” she said. The bar was dark and filled with red light and the smell of gasoline and urine.
    Sam shook her away. In the long mirror, he watched as Phil Haultain walked into the room and took off his hat, as if this was the kind of place that demanded hat removal. Another girl approached Phil, and Sam smiled as he watched Phil’s eyes grow big at the offer. Sam was pretty sure he read the boy’s mouth saying, “Ma’am?”
    The boy took a seat at a table near the piano player. The girl stayed and took purchase on his knee.
    Sam rested his head into his hands. It was past one o’clock in the morning and for a moment he lost his place in time. Sometimes his mind played tricks like that when he drank. He could be in Baltimore or Philly or a mining camp in Montana or on the wharves in Seattle or on his grandfather’s farm, knee-deep in tobacco, walking endless rows as a summer sun stood red and strong to the west.
    He asked for another drink, and in his mind he stood on a dock holding a shotgun in his arms as raggedy men tried to reach for him through fence posts, spitting at him and threatening to rip out his throat. The men wore torn rags, their bodies like skeletons. And then he broke away, hearing calliope music at the edge of a county fair, crushing a cigarette with the edge of his boot and staring up at the brightly lit Ferris wheel that had been boosted from back east.
    And then he was back looking at the circle of the glass in his hand.
    Sam knew he couldn’t return home by morning or else he’d risk Jose knowing he had it on him and what he was doing to his lungs and going against the cure he’d learned from her at Cushman.
    The giant black man poured another shot of rye and Sam dished out another quarter, and he sat and he waited and exchanged a quick glance with Haultain, who now had another girl on his knee, and he watched as the girls worked him and bargained. Haultain was young but good at playing the rube.
    They played around like that until two, when Rumwell came out from a back room. Even slightly