The Roy Stories

by Barry Gifford

  “Bird Man,” said Jimmy Boyle.

  “Maybe so,” said the Viper.

  “You think Father Vincenzu was hiding him?” Roy asked.

  “More likely he talked Bird Man into turning himself in,” said Jimmy.

  “But why would Bird Man have been in the church in the first place?” said Roy.

  The Viper put up the collar of the army field jacket his brother had given him after he’d come back from Korea. It was several sizes too large for him.

  “What beats me,” he said, “is how Goat knew it was Bird Man.”

  Suddenly the street was dead quiet. Roy looked up again at the entrance to the church. Father Vincenzu was still standing there. As he turned to go inside, he saw the three boys and waved at them. Roy waved back, and then the Viper and Jimmy Boyle waved, too.

  Portrait of the Artist with Four Other Guys

  As soon as Jimmy Boyle got back from Ireland, he went to see his friends. Roy, the Viper, Magic Frank, and Crazy Lester were hanging out under the viaduct on the corner of Warsaw and Bohemia, near Heart-of-Jesus Park. It was a late Friday afternoon in August, and Jimmy knew he’d find them there because the league games were over by four or four thirty and the boys liked to stay around for a while afterwards to talk about what happened. Jimmy had gone to Ireland for a holiday with his mother, his grandmother and his sister. They were there for two weeks and he was happy to be back in the neighborhood.

  The Viper was the first to spot Boyle.

  “Hey, Jimmy! Did you kiss the Blarney Stone?”

  “Yeah, all of us did, even my grandmother. We had to hold her by her legs. You gotta bend over backwards to do it. My ma got pictures of me and my sister there. What’d I miss?”

  “Roy hit two homers today,” said Lester.

  “He’s always hittin’ homers,” said Magic Frank. “That ain’t news.”

  “Red Dietz got killed,” said Roy.

  “No shit,” Jimmy said. “How?”

  “You know Red Dietz,” said Roy, “the one-armed pitcher on Margaret Mary’s?”

  “Yeah. Lost his right up to the elbow when he stuck it out a window on the Illinois Central.”

  “A line drive hit him right between the eyes in a game last week,” said the Viper. “Dietz died on the mound.”

  “Who hit it?”

  “Vidinski,” said Roy, “the third baseman for Mohegan Mortuary.”

  “They picked up the tab for the funeral,” said Frank.

  “Did you guys go?” asked Jimmy.

  “Nobody liked Red Dietz,” said the Viper. “I don’t know anybody that went.”

  “My mother did,” said Lester. “She dyes Dietz’s mother’s hair.”

  “He was all pissed off all the time,” said Frank.

  “You lost an arm, you’d probably be pissed off all the time, too,” said Roy.

  “So what was the best thing about Ireland?” the Viper asked Jimmy.

  “It don’t get so hot and humid in the summer like here. There’s a river goes through Dublin that’s pretty nice. Lots of old buildings and churches, stuff like that.”

  “Do the people speak English or Irish?” asked Roy.

  “Both, I guess. Sometimes I couldn’t understand what they were sayin’ in English. You know, like Cunningham’s mother. My grandmother speaks Gaelic pretty good and my ma, too, so we didn’t have no problems.”

  “What about girls?” asked Lester.

  “Didn’t hardly see any except for my cousin, Kathleen. She’s a couple years older, fifteen. We stayed with her family. One night after she took a bath, she came out in a towel and asked me if I wanted to use her bath water while it was still warm.”

  “She’d already bathed in it?” asked Roy.

  “Yeah,” said Jimmy. “They share it ’cause there ain’t so much hot water.”

  “Too bad you couldn’ta shared it with her,” said Lester.

  “She showed me her tits,” said Jimmy.

  “Bullshit!” said Frank.

  Jimmy nodded. “She did. Nobody else was around. Opened the towel and rewrapped it standin’ in front of me. They were the two best things I seen in Ireland.”

  “Were they big?” asked the Viper.

  “Average,” said Jimmy. “There were freckles all over ’em and the nipples pointed up.”

  Clouds blocked the sun and suddenly the air felt cooler.

  “Anybody hungry?” asked Roy.

  “Let’s go to the Cottage,” said Frank, “get fries with gravy.”

  The boys began walking west on Warsaw, toward Pulaski. Roy and Jimmy Boyle trailed the others.

  “Do you think your cousin wanted to do somethin’ with you?” Roy asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “You think girls in Dublin are any different than the ones in Chicago?”

  Before Roy could offer an opinion, a police car drove up and stopped in the street next to them. There were two cops in it, one driving and one riding shotgun.

  The cop in the front passenger seat leaned out his window and said, “Any of you seen two colored boys drive by in a lime green Cadillac?”

  “I ain’t,” said Frank.

  “Me, neither,” said Lester.

  Roy and the Viper shook their heads.

  “What about you?” the cop asked Jimmy Boyle.

  “I just got back from Ireland,” he said.

  “You go blind from drinkin’ the water over there?” said the cop.

  “No,” said Jimmy.

  “They got coloreds in Ireland?” the cop asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t see any there.”

  “He seen his cousin Kathleen’s tits, though,” said Lester.

  The cop stared at Lester for a moment. Crazy Lester was grinning.

  “Are you Irish?” the cop said.

  “No,” said Lester. “I’m Lithuanian on my mother’s side and Moldavian on my dad’s.”

  “You better watch yourself,” said the cop.

  Then the police car drove away.

  The Starving Dogs of Little Croatia

  “Every man lives like hunted animal,” said Drca Kovic.

  “You make this just up?” asked Boro Catolica.

  “What is difference,” Drca said, “if it is truth?”

  The two men, both in their midthirties, were seated next to one another on stools at the bar in Dukes Up Tavern on Anna Ruttar Street drinking shots of Four Sisters backed with Old Style chasers. Brenda Lee was on the jukebox belting out “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” just as she did every December. Boro Catolica lit up a Lucky.

  “Ten years now Chicago,” he said, “and no truth more than Zagreb.”

  “At least here we drink in peace,” said Drca Kovic. “There we drink in war.”

  “Yes, but probably we end up lying still in alley with cats they are looking at us. Our eyes they are open but not being able see theirs.”

  It was seven o’clock on a Friday evening two days before Christmas. There were four inches of snow on the ground with more expected. Boro and Drca had been in Dukes Up since ten to five, thirty minutes after dark and twenty minutes following the end of their shift at Widerwille Meatpacking on Pulaski Avenue. The men worked full days Monday through Friday and half days on Saturday.

  “You notice old man Widerwille not so often check line now?” said Boro.

  “Probably too cold in freezer for him,” Drca said. “Blood is thinner.”

  The front door opened and two boys, both about eleven or twelve years old, entered the tavern, bringing with them a blast of icy air accompanied by a spray of new snow.

  Emile Wunsch, the bartender and part owner of Dukes Up, shouted, “No minors allowed! And shut that door!”

  “There’s a dead guy lyin’ out on the sidew
alk,” said the larger of the two boys.

  The smaller boy closed the door.

  “How do you know he’s dead?” said Emile Wunsch.

  “He looks like Arne Pedersen did,” said the smaller boy, “after he died from Sterno poisoning last February.”

  “His body froze overnight,” the other boy said, “on the steps of Santa Maria Addolorata.”

  Boro and Drca went out, followed by the boys. Half a minute later the four of them came back inside.

  “It’s Bad Lands Bill,” said Boro, brushing snow from his head, “the Swede was from North of Dakota.”

  “The flat-nosed guy used to work at the chicken cannery?” asked Emile.

  Drca nodded. “His skin is blue and there is no breathing.”

  “We saw his eyes were open,” said the smaller boy, “so we stopped to look at him.”

  “He wasn’t blinkin’,” said the larger boy, “his tongue’s stickin’ out and it’s blue, too.”

  The two Croatian men went back outside, picked up the body and carried it into Dukes Up, where they set it down on the floor. Boro closed the door.

  “I’ll call the precinct,” said Emile Wunsch, “tell ’em to send a wagon. You boys can stick around to tell the cops how you found him.”

  Drca and Boro went back to their stools at the bar.

  “Boys, you want Coca-Cola?” asked Boro.

  “Sure,” said the smaller one.

  “I am Drca, he is Boro.”

  “I’m Flip,” said the larger boy.

  “I’m Roy,” said the other.

  “Okay they sit at bar?” Boro asked Emile.

  Emile was still on the phone to the precinct. He hung up and motioned to Flip and Roy to go ahead. The boys climbed up on stools next to the men.

  “You think corpse we should cover?” said Drca.

  “Why to bother?” Boro said. “Wagon coming.”

  “Did Bad Lands Bill drink here?” Roy asked.

  Emile came over with Cokes for the boys.

  “Not for a while,” he said. “He got laid off a few months back. Last time I saw him was in July.”

  Flip sipped his Coke as he spun around on his stool and looked down at the body. The eyes and mouth were closed.

  “Hey,” Flip said, “weren’t his eyes and mouth open when you carried him in?”

  “Yeah,” said Roy, “his tongue was hangin’ out.”

  Everyone stared at Bad Lands Bill. His skin was not quite so blue.

  “I guess gettin’ warmed up changes the body,” said Flip. “It’s good for him to be inside.”

  “That’s what Midget Fernekes said about himself,” said Emile.

  “Who’s that?” asked Roy.

  “A bank robber grew up in Canaryville,” the bartender said. “He was the first person to blow safes usin’ nitroglycerin. Midget said he learned more about safecrackin’ in the pen than he ever could’ve on the street.”

  Drca and Boro drank in silence. Emile poured them each another shot of Four Sisters, then busied himself at the end of the bar. No other customers came in. Roy and Flip finished their Coca-Colas and sat quietly, too. For some reason it did not seem right to talk a lot with a dead man lying there.

  “The wagon oughta be here by now,” said Emile, who came around from behind the bar, walked over to the front door and looked outside through the small window.

  “It’s a full-on blizzard out there,” he said. “Maybe you kids should go on home now, before it gets any worse. Drca and Boro and I can tell the ambulance boys what happened, if they can even get here.”

  “Go,” said Boro. “Drinks on house. Yes, Emile?”

  The bartender nodded.

  “Be careful of starving dogs,” said Drca. “They are hunting in group when weather is bad.”

  “This Chicago,” said Boro, “not Zagreb. Here dogs eat better than people of half of world.”

  Roy and Flip got down from their stools and took one more look at Bad Lands Bill. His skin seemed almost normal now and there was a peaceful expression on his face. Emile opened the door a crack.

  “Quick, boys,” he said, “so the wind don’t blow the snow in.”

  After Flip turned off Anna Ruttar Street to go to his house, Roy bent his head as he trudged forward and thought about packs of hungry wild dogs roaming the streets of Croatian cities and villages attacking kids and old people unable to defend themselves, feasting on stumblebums like Bad Lands Bill, especially if they were already dead. Roy brushed snow from his face. He wondered if Midget Fernekes was really a midget or if he was called that just because he was short. Roy worried that he could end up like Bad Lands Bill or Arne Pedersen, a rummy frozen to death on a sidewalk or in an alley. This was a possibility, he knew, it could happen to any man if enough breaks went against him. Roy tried to keep the snow out of his eyes but it was coming down too fast. He felt as if he were wandering in the clouds only this wasn’t heaven. He was where the dogs could get him.

  In the Land of the Dead

  Roy dreamed that he was on the el on a hot, humid summer’s day. He was not wearing a shirt, only a pair of khaki pants and shoes. It was in the afternoon and he stood looking through the windows on the train doors. His friends and other passengers were behind him, he heard but did not see them. The train stopped at a station, and at the last instant Roy stepped out of the car onto the elevated platform. The doors closed behind him and the train sped away. Roy realized that he had gotten off too soon. He and his friends had been headed downtown to the Loop.

  Roy decided to walk to his house. When he got there, the three-story yellow brick building looked dirty and run-down, the lawn and bushes unkempt. He walked up to the front door and saw that it was not the door he remembered, it was badly abused and made of cheap material, the top layer peeling up from the bottom. Roy did not have a key. He stood still, sweating, wondering why he was there. Through the window in the front door he saw a woman in the hallway. She opened the door and came out of the building. She was middle-aged and, despite the heat, was wearing a blue cloth coat, a scarf around her head and glasses with black frames. The woman did not look at Roy and was unfamiliar to him. He caught the door before it closed and entered the building.

  Inside the front hallway it was dark and cool but musty. He walked up the stairs, past the first-floor landing. Sunlight streamed in through a hallway window, but it was muted and he could see dust floating in the air. When he reached the second-floor landing he saw two nuns, one very young, one an older woman. Their habits were gray or light blue, not black and white. The young nun came over to Roy and looked closely at him, studying his face. She was short and her eyes were strange, one blue, one hazel, and they were cast in different directions. She said, “Buona sera.” Roy was surprised that she greeted him in Italian, but he replied, “Buona sera,” to her. The older nun took the younger sister by an arm and steered her back toward the apartment door on the second landing. Roy did not see the older nun’s face and she did not speak to him, only to the other nun, whom she hurriedly guided into the apartment.

  Roy continued upstairs. He stood in front of the door to the third-floor apartment. The hallway was dusty and shabby, the door much like the front door to the street. He reached into his pocket and found that he had a key to this door. He inserted it in the lock and entered the apartment. There were oriental rugs on the floor, as there always had been, but the apartment was stuffy, close, as if it had not been aired out in a long time, and overcrowded with furniture. His mother wasn’t home, nobody was there. Roy decided to go to his room at the rear of the apartment to get a shirt. He walked through the rooms, particles of dust and dirt swirling in the shafts of sunlight that pierced through brown shadows. Even though he knew he was on the top floor of the building, Roy felt almost as if he were navigating his way through the entrails of a large animal.

  In the bac
k room, Roy realized his clothes were gone. He knew now that he had not lived there for a very long time. He looked out the windows of his old room at tar-covered garage roofs and back porches with wash hung out to dry on clotheslines. Roy understood that he had gotten off at the wrong stop, that this was the land of the dead, and he was not supposed to be there.

  Roy would remember this dream for the rest of his life.

  The Secret of the Universe

  When he was eleven years old, Roy began writing stories. Using a lined yellow legal pad and pencil, the first story he wrote was about two brothers who fight on opposing sides during the War Between the States. One brother lived with their father in the South, the other with their mother in the North. They meet on a battlefield and recognize one another but are forced to fire their rifles and both brothers are killed. Roy titled this story All in Vain.

  The next story Roy wrote he called The Secret of the Universe. It was about a boy who every day sees an old man, a neighbor, going into a little cottage next to his house. One afternoon, as the boy is passing by, he sees that the door to the cottage has been left open. The boy walks over to it and peers inside. Test tubes and vials of chemicals are on a work table, dozens of books are piled around and there is a large blackboard on which are chalked what appear to be mathematical equations or formulas. The old man comes up quietly behind the boy and asks him what he is looking for. The boy is surprised, a little frightened, but curious about what he has seen. He looks at the old man, who has a kind face, and asks him what he does every day in the cottage. The old man smiles and tells the boy that he is a scientist and that he is trying to discover the secret of the origin of the universe before he dies.