Free Buster Midnight's Cafe by Sandra Dallas

it,” May Anna said. She put her little white hand over Buster’s big mitt.
    Things had got serious all of a sudden. Only a few hours before we had gone down to the Gardens to see Toney fight. Now we were hearing Buster’s decision to be a champion fighter of the world. We all felt strange and didn’t know what to say. Then the waitress brought our dinners and took our orders for a couple of bottles of wine to follow all those Shawn O’s. Today, wine’s for pansies, but during Prohibition, that Meaderville wine was stronger than whiskey, so we had a high old time. In fact, it was our first high old time, since me and Whippy Bird and May Anna were sixteen years old and still in high school. We were too young to drink that night even if drinking was legal. But who thought about that? It was Prohibition, and drinking wasn’t legal for anybody else either.
    While we were all sitting around being serious, I’ll tell you what Pink Varscoe was thinking about, and that was trying to kiss me again, but I didn’t want him to, so I said, “Pink, don’t you think you ought to propose a toast.”
    Pink raised his glass. “To the Unholy Three,” meaning me and Whippy Bird and May Anna.
    “You jackass,” I told him. “Not to us. To Buster!”
    So Pink toasted, “To the new Kid McKnight! Bottom’s up!”
    Buster shook his head. “Kid McKnight’s Toney.”
    “Take the name. It’s yours if you want it. Jack Dempsey got his name from his brother. You can get yours from me.” Buster said no, Kid McKnight was Toney’s name, and if he didn’t use it, the name should be retired. He wanted his own ring name.
    So we ate spaghetti and drank wine and got serious again, thinking up championship names. We suggested the Kid from Butte and the Centerville Kid and the Butte Killer. Chick said what about Slug ‘em McKnight. Pink thought up the Butte Buster then Buster Knockout, which we all liked. Even Buster liked that one, though after he thought it over, he decided it was too cute. He wanted something classier. We mulled over the Montana Mauler, which had a snappy ring, and Pride of the Copper Camp, and the Butte Bull. Then Chick suggested the Fighting Miner, but Buster wasn’t a miner, so that wouldn’t work.
    Buster said he’d think about all those names, but you could tell none of them was quite right as far as Buster was concerned. May Anna said they weren’t stylish enough, and Buster cared what May Anna thought.
    We sat there studying on it when all of a sudden Whippy Bird looked at the clock, jumped up, and said, “My God, it’s midnight, Buster. We have to get out of here!” None of us had been paying attention to the time. Now me and Whippy Bird were in serious trouble.
    We jumped up and started for the door, all of us except for May Anna. She just sat there with a little smile on her face, quiet as a statue. She put up her hand in the way she had that made everybody stop and pay attention to her. No matter if there were a thousand people having a Roman orgy, all May Anna had to do was put up her pale little hand and everybody stopped and listened.
    “I have it, Buster.” Her voice was quiet, but we could hear it above all the noise in the Rocky Mountain.
    “Have what, May Anna?”
    “Your name.”
    “Huh?”
    “Your new name. Courtesy of Whippy Bird,” May Anna said. Then she stood up very slowly and looked at us with her glory hole eyes and held up her glass in a toast and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new heavyweight champion of the world. Ladies and gentlemen’Mr. Buster Midnight.”

 
CHAPTER
5
    Of course, nobody but us knew about Buster Midnight for a long time. We thought he was king of the hill, but so what? Fight promoters didn’t exactly beat a path to his door, and Buster more than anybody, even Toney, knew he had a long way to go to be a major prize-fighter.
    As time passed, we got used to Buster practicing to be a boxer, taking it in stride and not paying him any mind. After all,