Year’s Day, bound for London and Paris. This was a time when Father favorably regarded his son’s good looks, quick charm, and easy manners. Hobnob, those were Father’s orders. Ingratiate yourself to those grieving French widows, diamond-studded German dowagers, plump Dutch bluebloods.
Hobnob Daniel did. So what if he wound up in Paris, drinking absinthe with whores and poets at La Nouvelle-Athenes? He scratched up plenty of capital for Father’s schemes. Removed from Father’s stern ambit, he found he cared little for business, for money-grubbing. He kept his bohemian life to himself and dreamed of pictures on a strip of painted paper whirling in a Zoetrope.
Then the panic struck America in ’93. Banks failed, and capital dried up in a financial drought the like of which no one had see in a decade. Businesses collapsed. Angry gangs of unemployed men roamed towns and cities with sticks and knives and guns. Needless to say, property values plummeted, especially in the West where the economy was still so fragile.
By 1895, the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins found himself holding twelve million dollars of his own outstanding debt, debtors who could not or would not make payments, and property securing all that debt worth next to nothing.
What could he do? Father declared bankruptcy and recalled his son from Europe. How well Daniel remembered the telegram. What excitement to receive a telegram, quite the rage. Brand-new telegraph wires looped all over the streets of Paris.
DANIEL STOP WE’RE DONE STOP
COME HOME AT ONCE STOP FATHER
MOTHER NEEDS YOU STOP
Daniel hadn’t understood the full import of the message till he reluctantly returned home, dragging a bag filled with scandalously decadent paintings and four bottles of Pernod Fils. We’re done? What in hell did that mean? That Father had decided upon a new strategy? A more lucrative way to become a millionaire besides lending the money of strangers to other strangers?
No. Jonathan D. Watkins had become a failure, just as surely as the old cowboy or the porter with his gold teeth. Bankruptcy was, to Daniel, as evil as moral turpitude and as far-reaching as an extramarital indiscretion. Sins of the father? Oh, yes. Daniel was doomed.
He kneads his brow. Refreshment. Indeed, sir, refreshment is just the thing he needs.
He quickens his pace along the waterfront. Sailors stare at him, poke each other in the ribs, guffaw, or mutter half-heard obscenities. Daniel tips his bowler, keeping his spine ramrod straight. He’s got the accoutrements any gentlemen should possess when sojourning through the West--a Remington double-barreled derringer stuck in his waistband and a jumbo Congress knife with a two-inch blade. He’s strolled among dives and joints before. He can walk into any accursed place he cares to.
The sound of merriment loudens.
He spies a tiny crude building of unfinished wood with two plain windows and a strictly functional front door. A converted bunkhouse, perhaps, where oyster fishermen once slept. The odor of many a previous drunk teases his olfactory senses. Beneath the eaves, emblazoned in red letters across the weathered boards, he reads:
HEINOLD’S
FIRST AND LAST CHANCE SALOON
Daniel steps into the smoky caucus. A potbellied stove glows red-hot in one corner. An assortment of rickety chairs and tables, none of a matching set, are jammed onto the sawdusted floor, together with retired packing barrels and tumbledown stools. Men sit on these or stand at the bar, weaving on their feet. Ropes and buoys are slung on the planked walls, and brass lanterns thick with the patina of heavy salt air.
A wizened beerslinger stands behind the bar, sucking on a stogie. Deep lines crease his tanned forehead made high and wide by his receding hairline. Elephantine ears protrude from his head as if Nature had specially equipped him to better hear each customer’s request over the din of those previously served.
“Johnny, hey Johnny,” calls out one of the patrons. “Got a’ aspirin?”
“Back yerself up to the stove an’ you’ll get yerself an ass burn,” the beerslinger says.
“How much?” Daniel says.
“A nickel for the beer, a deener for the whiskey,” says the beerslinger. “an’ nothin’ for the ass burn.”
Beer is peasant’s fare, a heavy sour taste Daniel has never much cared for. But he finds this beer fruity and clean and thick with malt. The beer chases a shot of whiskey down his parched throat just fine and settles his stomach. The whiskey is smooth and mellow, and eases the ache in his head admirably.
Daniel throws coins on the bar and looks for a place to sit. A vacant stool set before a barrel looks