The Small Blue Button with the Anchor – Part 1 by Philip Butera

Philip M. Butera grew up in Buffalo, NY, earned a BS degree from Gannon College in Erie, PA, served in the US Navy then received an MA in Psychology from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He has four books of poetry, “Mirror Images and Shards of Glass”, “Dark Images at Sea”, “I Never Finished Loving You”, and “Falls from Grace, Favor and High Places. His crime novel, ” Caught Between”, has been published, and his second novel, “Art and Mystery: The Missing Poe Manuscript” will be available in the Spring of 2022.

He sat comfortably in the child’s faded red leather chair next to the large wooden desk. He was chocolate brown, furry with a large head, shiny black disk eyes, and husky round limbs. He was good-sized, not one of those small delicate bears, but a large rough and tumble teddy bear, the kind that becomes a best friend to an only child playing in the house. His mouth was friendly, with a short red tongue hanging out. I dressed him in true sidekick fashion, a tan cowboy vest with fringe, rugged dungarees, and an official Deputy Texas Ranger badge. Sometimes he would wear my brown Kit Carson bandanna around his neck, but he preferred the red railroad handkerchief my father used to have in his pocket when he worked on the car. 

Teddy’s snout ended in a small blue button with an anchor impressed on it. The button wasn’t his natural nose. My mother selected that button from my Uncle Joey’s uniform. He was a sailor who died in the Korean War. My mother said every time I played with the bear. I’d be reminded of my uncle’s bravery.

Teddy’s natural nose disappeared one Saturday afternoon when we were scouting Indians. We were upstairs in my play area, which was the size of a good campsite; it was comfortably nestled between my parent’s bedroom and the bathroom.

Teddy and I were out on the trail, somewhere between El Paso and Tombstone. Our mission was to bring Crazy Horseback to Fort Apache. Some good men had tried and failed, Range Rider, Buffalo Bill, Cisco, and Poncho. Even Roy Rodgers couldn’t capture him. I knew the enormity of the task, but Teddy and I were committed to bringing justice to the frontier.

We broke camp at dawn and followed the trail. On the way through Laredo, we had a meeting with Hopalong Cassidy, who told us Daniel Boone had passed through town a few days before. Hoppy said that Daniel had mentioned Teddy and I was on the trail tracking renegade Indians.

We gathered supplies of gumdrops and a Baby Ruth from the General Store and faced the wilderness. We crossed the mighty Mississippi and waved to Huck Finn – we were heading for Durango when the Ringo Gang bushwhacked us. We shot it out at the OK Corral, killing a hundred bad guys, including Billy the Kid. It was a hard fight, but Teddy and I saved the territory from outlaw control. When we arrived in town, everyone was so grateful they invited us into the Silver Slipper for apple pie and chocolate cake. The dance hall girls wanted us to stay. I was asked to be the Sheriff, but I told everyone I was on a special mission directly from President Eisenhower.

We were on Pike’s Peak when Teddy spotted Crazy Horse off in the distance. I could further see that Custer and his men were fighting for their lives. All the Indians were wearing war paint and dancing. Geronimo and Sitting Bull had a pow-wow with the Indian that was on the label of the Iroquois beer my father and uncles drank. 

As we made our way down the mountain, we stopped to rendezvous with Sergeant Preston. We drank hot coffee in tin cups and talked about the gold rush. Teddy took Yukon King for a walk. Preston told me he was fixin’ to meet up with Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie at the Alamo. I shook his hand and told him we’d catch up with them on the Oregon Trail around chow time.

We had to capture the Indians quickly if we were going to make it to Texas before my father came home, and we had to break for supper. Teddy and I crept along the linoleum. We circled the desk, past the bookcase, elbowing through the brush, we passed the bathroom door and crossed under Niagara Falls. 

Like Tonto would have, Teddy went ahead and informed me that we needed to shimmy across a log to get to the other side of the stair steps. If we slipped quicksand or King Kong awaited us, this was very dangerous. We took deep breaths and moved past the old cabinet model television that didn’t have an aerial connected to it, so it never really worked, and my father said not to play with it. 

Cheyenne and Bat Masterson caught up to us – they had been riding hard and were traveling toward the Rio Grande. It seems that Mexican banditos coming over the border were rustling cattle. We fed our horses busted out our blankets, and sat around the fire telling stories about Grant and Lee. We made a pact that we would meet on the Barbary Coast to make our fortunes in California when the time was right.  

Teddy and I woke up early the following day, said our goodbyes, and headed west. The desert winds had picked up, and sagebrush was tumbling all around us. The sand was blowing hard, so I decided to open a desk drawer and put on my father’s aviator sunglasses to keep from going snow blind. We raised our bandannas across our faces, Jesse James style.

The Indians were dug in deep unto my parent’s bedroom. There were millions of them. Teddy and I had to do what no other heroes had done – I had to save America, Italy, and our house. I fixed my cowboy hat firmly on my head and adjusted my father’s glasses since they were wider than my face. I got a telegram from Matt Dillon wishing me good luck, and Miss Kitty was saving a drink for us. 

Teddy and I jumped up at just the right moment, six guns in hand and a rubber pirate knife between my teeth. When my stocking feet hit the blue throw rug, we went flying into my parent’s bedroom with my father’s glasses falling off and bobbling in my hand. I hit my head on the bed’s backboard. Teddy had flown across the room and crashed into the nightstand upsetting the Italian angel lamp my grandmother brought back from Sicily.

Recovering my senses, I found my gun between the pillows. I checked the chambers and scanned the room. The curtains were fluttering a bit, but luckily no Indians heard our fall from the Rocky Mountains into the Grand Canyon. I examined the glasses – my heart was beating fast – I could never explain to my father why I needed his glasses to catch Indians in his bedroom, so I put them back in the case and returned them to the desk drawer. 

Where was teddy? I called out for him. He didn’t answer. I found my hat and slapped it against my leg to knock off any dust. Teddy was lying face down between my mother’s fluffy slippers and my father’s detective books. I turned him over gently. His eyes stared straight ahead. He was in bad shape – his nose was missing. I eased my mother’s slippers under his head. I grabbed a flask of whiskey from my boot and brought it up to his red tongue. He gulped down quite a bit. I wiped his lips where he was drooling. I knew I was doing the right thing because Gary Cooper and John Wayne do the same thing for their sidekicks. 

The angel lamp had teetered on impact, turned, and knocked against the wall. The shade was lop-sided, and one of the angel’s wings had a tiny chip. I fixed everything up and placed the sliver of the wing into the nightstand drawer next to the big Bible with the picture of Jesus on the cover. 

I picked Teddy up carefully and placed him over my shoulder just like Jingles did when Wild Bill Hickok was winged in the arm. I carried teddy down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen for a couple of fig cookies with the sprinkles on top. Teddy wasn’t hungry – he was still passed out from the whole experience.

My mother was in the basement checking her new automatic washing machine. She didn’t trust it. She was frightened a hose would burst and flood the cellar. I carefully explained the circumstances about Teddy losing his nose and asked if she could fix it before the Indians headed back to the reservation. I handed Teddy to her. She smiled, kissed my cheek, and told me to get her sewing basket.

We sat on the basement steps, and I watched her select the perfect button, a small blue one with an anchor impressed on it. Delicately she sewed and hummed as the washing machine made strange noises. 

Teddy’s recovery was remarkable. Within minutes he was healthy, sober, and ready for another adventure. We stocked up on more fig cookies and headed up the stairs to my play area, aware that there was danger every step of the way – the Indians had captured the bathroom. Luckily I knew my rifle was lying on top of the cedar chest. Teddy and I nodded to each other and rushed to the toilet, guns blazing – every redskin was dead, so I put Teddy in his chair to rest. I took the cookies from my pocket, sat at the desk, and thought for a moment. Was my mission complete? I opened the desk drawer and picked up my Captain Midnight secret decoder. I sent a message to Washington, and General George Washington himself told me to stand by for orders.

 The orders came quickly. I was to catch up with Rusty, Rin Tin Tin, and Lt. Rip Masters of “B†Company. It seems like Cochise, and a thousand Indians were on the same trail as my mother’s favorite show, Wagon Train.