Quinn Riedy
For the Kaimin

Claude Alick has seen many things during his 15-year stint as a bartender downtown on Broadway. But what happened in the Golden Rose Casino during the early morning hours on Saturday was easily the most bizarre.

About 10 minutes before 2 a.m. on Saturday, the bar was packed with people, mostly University of Montana students finishing their last drinks. Suddenly, a fight broke out between a young man and UM student Joe Caldwell, who were standing at the bar.

“They were being kind of mouthy with each other,” 54-year-old Alick said. The young man knocked Caldwell’s hat off, and then fists began to fly. Every conversation in the room abruptly ended as the melee grabbed people’s attention. Most got out of the way of the brawlers instead of trying to break it up and risk a punch in the face.

Alick, however, rushed up from behind the bar and climbed between the two combatants, who wrestled each other to the floor. The three men blended into a cartoon-like tumbleweed haze of bodies that rolled back toward the entrance and around an island block of four Keno machines.

Before the skirmish lost momentum and was broken up, an additional young participant came from the rear of the bar, belligerently yelling allegiance to his “boy” — the man who started the fight — and punched Caldwell in the back several times. Then the fight was broken up, and the instigator disappeared out the door.

“Man, I’ve broken up so many fights at that goddamned place,” Alick later said. “A lot of them I wouldn’t call real fights. They police themselves pretty good. This one went down kind of funny and bad. One of ‘em decided to fight like a dog instead of a man.”

“He bit off Claude’s finger!” startled onlookers uttered. Alick stood up and walked back to the bar in an apparent state of shock, clenching his left, middle finger with his right hand. His co-worker, Suzanne Demarinis, 43, was on the phone with the police. In the four-and-a-half years she’s worked at “the Rose” with Alick, Demarinis said she, too, has witnessed many fights, but this one was “probably up there in the top four or five barroom brawls.”

According to Sgt. Garon Wade of the Missoula police, the 911 call came in at 1:52 a.m.

“An employee was trying to break up a fight — it started over an orange cap,” Wade said. Soon thereafter, as police and paramedics arrived at the Rose, Alick identified the person who bit him by first name and description but had not yet decided to press charges. According to the police report, the offender goes by the name “Camson.”

“The victim didn’t want to pursue any criminal charges,” Wade said, so police aren’t trying to find out anything further about the suspect’s identity.

“Camson spit the bit of his finger out and ran away,” said Lt. Mark Muir.

As Alick calmly recounted the events to police officers, paramedics and fire personnel observed his finger. His assailant’s teeth cleanly severed his finger at the top knuckle, ripping through the bone and leaving one of Missoula’s friendlier bartenders with a truncated digit.

Alick said when he was on the ground, he could feel someone’s teeth on his finger, but didn’t know it had been bitten off until he looked at it.

“I think the first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Damn. That son-of-a-bitch bit my finger — bit off my finger!’” Alick said.

Alick said his physical discomfort didn’t start until later, after the adrenaline wore off.

“At the moment, there, at the bar, I hardly felt anything,” Alick said.

A paramedic found the missing fingertip on the floor near the island of Keno machines where the fight ended. She wrapped the pale flesh in a couple of napkins and showed it to Alick, whose short finger looked like raw hamburger at the end and, surprisingly, bled very little.

About 15 years ago, Alick began working at a bar that was next door to where the Golden Rose is now. That bar turned into an art gallery, and about five years ago, the Golden Rose was built. Alick began working there, serving drinks to an eclectic mix of college students, middle-aged regulars and late-night oddball drifters.

Alick’s an easygoing, quick-witted Grenadan immigrant whose hearty laugh is often heard billowing through the small bar - capacity 80 - that’s connected to Hammer Jack’s. Although he’s lived in Missoula since the summer of 1977, he still ends many of his sentences in Caribbean fashion, “mon.”

After a Hammer Jack’s employee drove him to St. Patrick Hospital, Alick said doctors did not reattach his fingertip but gave him a tetanus shot and some antibiotics before sending him home at about 4:30 a.m. Unfortunately, he said, he had an 11 a.m. tee time on Saturday.

Sensing an opportunity for a perfect pun, Alick laughed and said, “That bit into my golf game! I figure, at this point, all I can do is have a good sense of humor about it. Yeah, mon.”

On Monday, Alick met with a surgeon who further cleaned his wound of bone fragments and other debris before stitching him up.

The person who bit him is banned for life from the Golden Rose. Alick said he is not sure yet if he wants to file criminal charges but added that he doesn’t think having the offender arrested would do anyone any good.

“I’ll decide that after conferring with my legal counsel,” Alick said. “(Putting him in jail is) not gonna give me my finger back.” Regarding those remarks, Demarinis said, “That’s so Claude.”

Talking about the future use of his damaged middle finger, a laughing Alick said, “For those who don’t deserve the best, they get the damaged finger!”

As one Rose regular said the evening after the scuffle, upon hearing the news while sitting at the bar, “Sounds like we got a little Mike Tyson.”

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