Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

by William Kennedy

  The Car Barns revival was followed by The Masks of Pyramis, Edward Daugherty’s one venture into symbolism. It provoked a great public yawn and slowed the renaissance. The Baron of Ten Broeck Street followed within a year, a play with the capitalist as villain and tragic figure, the protagonist patterned after Katrina Daugherty’s father, an Albany lumber baron. Reaction to the play was positive, but the renaissance might have halted there had not Melissa’s need to see herself transfigured on stage been so unyielding.

  Six more years would pass before The Flaming Corsage entered its new age. By then, three decades after its inspiration, it had become a wholly new play, its old sin now the stuff of myth, its antique realism now an exquisite parody of bitter love and foolish death. The New York production was a spectacular success. Melissa made her comeback, and Edward Daugherty strode into the dimension he had sought for a lifetime as an artist. But he strode with a partial mind. He beamed at the telling when Martin brought the news, but minutes later he had forgotten that he had ever written that play, or any other. What would please him most, he said, squirming in his leather armchair in the old house on Main Street, would be a hot cup of tea, son, with lemon if you’d be so kind, and a sugar cookie.

  The theater was already two-thirds full and more were still arriving to see the famed beauty in the infamous play about Albany. Martin positioned himself at the head of an aisle, holding his battered hat in hand, standing out of the way as the playgoers seated themselves. Joe Morrissey nodded to him, ex-assemblyman, tight as a teacup, who lived near Sacred Heart; when the pastor asked him to donate his house to the nuns, old Joe sold the place immediately and moved out of the parish. And there, moving down front, Tip Mooney, the roofer, with the adopted daughter everybody chucklingly says is his mistress. Taboo. Ooo-ooo. The zest for it. And here, as the houselights dim, stands the fellow out for redemption. I’m just as big a sinner as you, Dad. Playboy of the North End, but keeping it in the family. Here to see everybody’s favorite honeycomb, who, as Marlene, the reporter, wrote, is out to prove she can plumb the depths of the human heart with her acting, even as she keeps the human spirit all aglow with her dancing, and the human imagination fevered merely by her well-known sensual presence, etc.

  The lights went all the way down, the curtain rose and the Daugherty living room on Colonie Street was magically reconstituted from thirty years past, even to the Edison phonograph and its cylinders, the Tiffany butterfly lamp from Van Heusen Charles, the Hudson River landscape on the far wall, and all the other meticulously copied details demanded by the author; for those possessions were inseparable from the woman who sits there among them: the simulated Katrina, remarkably reincarnated by Melissa in a blondish gray wig, upswept into a perfect Katrina crown, her glasses on, her lavender shawl over her legs as she sits in the black rocker, book open in her lap, hands crossed upon it.

  “Where will you go?” she asks the young man standing by the bay window.

  And the young man, in whom Martin does not recognize anything of his disordered self of 1908, replies, “Someplace where they don’t snigger when my name is mentioned.”

  “Will you go to Paris?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

  “It must be dreary there without Baudelaire and Rimbaud.”

  “They have that tower now.”

  “Your father will want to know where you are.”

  “Perhaps I’ll go to Versailles and see where the king kept Marie Antoinette.”

  “Yes, do that. Send your father a postcard.”

  And Melissa put her book aside and stood up, sweeping her hand up behind her neck, tapping the wig, smoothing the rattled mind. The gesture was not Katrina’s but Melissa’s, which generated confusion in Martin. He felt impatient with the play, half fearful of seeing the development a few scenes hence when his father would enter with the awful dialogue of duplicity and defeat, to be met by the witty near-madness of Katrina.

  Now the dialogue of mother and son moved the play on toward that moment, but Martin closed out all the talk and watched the silent movement of Melissa, not at all like Katrina, and remembered her in her voluptuary state, drenched in sweat, oozing his semen. The Olmecs built a monument of a sacred jaguar mating with a lustful woman. A male offspring of such a mating would have been half-jaguar, half-boy, a divine creature. The boy-animal of Martin’s morning vision, perhaps? Is your mind telling you, Martin, that you’re the divine progeny of a sacred mating? But which one? Your father’s with your mother? Your father’s with Melissa? Your own with Melissa?

  The corruption he felt after his time with Melissa came back now with full power: the simoniac being paid off with venereal gifts. He stayed with her three days, she securing her purchase with a lust that soared beyond his own. That body, now walking across the stage, he saw walking the length of the sitting room in The Hampton to stand naked by the window and peer through the curtains at the movement on Broadway and State Street below. He stood beside her and with a compulsion grown weary, slid his hand between her thighs as a gesture. They looked down together, connected to the traffic of other men and women in transit toward and away from their lust. He would stay in the room with her another day, until she said, Now I want a woman. And then Martin went away.

  Through the years since then he insisted he would never touch her sexually again. But perceiving now that a second infusion of pain distracts the brain and reduces the pain of the first and more grievous wound, he would, yes, make love to Melissa as soon as possible. He might ask her to wear the blond wig. That would appeal to her twist. He might even call her Katrina. She could call him Edward.

  They would pretend it was 1887 and that this was a true wedding of sacred figures. He would tell her of the Olmecs, and of the divine progeny. He would tell her his dream of the divine animal at bedside and suggest that it was perhaps himself in a new stage of being. As they made their fierce and fraudulent love, they would become jaguar and lustful partner entwined. Both would know that a new Martin Daugherty would be the offspring of this divine mating.

  The quest to love yourself is a moral quest.

  How simple this psychic game is, once you know the rules.

  All of a sudden Doc Fay was playing like a champ in Daddy Big’s round robin. Billy had been ahead sixteen points and then old Doc ran twenty-six and left Billy nothing on the table. The Doc blew his streak on the last ball of a rack. Didn’t leave himself in a position where he could sink it and also make the cue ball break the new rack. And so he called safe and sank the ball, and it was respotted at the peak of the new rack, the full rack now facing Billy.

  The Doc also left the cue ball way up the table, snug against the back cushion. Toughest possible shot for Billy. Or anybody. Billy, natch, had to call another safe shot—make contact with a ball, and make sure one ball, any ball, also touched a cushion. If he failed to do this, it would be his third scratch in a row, and he’d lose fifteen points, plus a point for the lastest scratch. Billy did have the out of breaking the rack instead of playing safe, as a way of beating the third scratch. But when he looked at the full rack he couldn’t bring himself to break it. It would seem cowardly. What’s more, it’d set Doc up for another fat run, and they’d all know Billy Phelan would never do a thing like that.

  He bent over the table and remembered bringing Danny into this pool room one afternoon. The kid stood up straight to shoot. Get your head down, put your eye at the level of the ball, Billy told him. How the hell can you see what you’re hitting when you ain’t even looking at it? Get that head down and stroke that cue, firm up your bridge, don’t let them fingers wobble. The kid leaned over and sank a few. Great kid. Stay out of pool rooms, kid, or all you’ll ever have is fun.

  Billy tapped the cue ball gently. He was thrilled at how lightly he hit it. Just right. The ball moved slowly toward the rear right corner of the pack. It touched the pack and separated two balls. No ball touched a cushion.

  Scratch.

  Scratch number three, in a row.
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  Billy loses fifteen, plus one for this scratch.

  Billy is down twenty-seven points and the Doc is hot. Billy doubts he could catch the Doc now even if he wanted to.

  Billy hits the table with his fist, hits the floor with the heel of his cue and curses that last goddamn safe shot, thrilled.

  Billy is acting. He has just begun to throw his first match.

  The lights in the pool room went out just as the Doc lined up for the next shot. I’ll get candles, said Daddy Big. Don’t nobody touch them balls. Which balls are they, Daddy? Footers asked in a falsetto. Billy remembered Footers just before the lights went out, licking a green lollipop, and Harvey Hess, his thumbs stuck in his vest, nodding his approval at the Doctor burying Billy. Daddy Big liked that development too, the string of his change apron tight on his gut, like a tick tied in the middle. Behind Billy stood Morrie Berman, who was again backing Billy. Morrie had given Billy fifty to bet on himself with the Doc, and also took all side bets on his boy. Billy heard Morrie softly muttering unhhh, eeeng, every time the Doc sank one.

  Maybe a hundred men were standing and sitting around the table when the lights went. Billy saw Martin come in late and stand at the back of the crowd, behind the chairs Daddy Big had set up. Daddy Big lit four candles. They flickered on the cigar counter, on the edge of a pool table covered with a tarpaulin, on a shelf near the toilet. Many of the men were smoking in the half-darkness, their cigars and cigarettes glowing and fading, their faces moving in and out of shadows. Here was the obscure collective power. What’ll they do if I fink? Will I see my father? Some of the shadowy men left the room when the lights went out. Most of those with chairs stayed put, but then some of them, too, went down to the street, needing, in the absence of light, at least an open sky.

  “Tough shot you had,” Morrie said to Billy.

  “The toughest.”

  “You’ll pick up. You got what it takes.”

  “That Doctor’s hot as ten-cent pussy.”

  “You’ll take him.”

  “Sure,” said Billy.

  But he won’t, or else how can he do what he’s got to do, if he’s got to do it? Wrong-Way Corrigan starts out for California and winds up in Ireland. I guess I got lost, he says, and people say, Yeah, oh yeah, he got lost. Ain’t he some sweet son of a bitch?

  Through the front window of Louie’s, Martin saw that the lights were out on Broadway and in the station. He saluted Billy across the candlelight and went down to the street, which was dark in all directions. He walked to the corner of Columbia Street and looked up. Pearl Street was also dark, candles already dancing in two windows up the block. He walked back and into Becker’s and headed for the phone, past customers drinking by the light of the old kerosene lamp that had sat on the back bar for years, unused. Now it illuminated Red Tom’s mustache. The test of a real mustache is whether it can be seen from behind. Red Tom’s therefore is not real.

  The city desk told him that lights were out all over the city and parts of Colonie, Watervliet and Cohoes. All hospitals had been called an hour earlier and told a power failure was possible, and not to schedule any operations unless they had their own generators. Nursing homes were also alerted. But the power company said it hadn’t made the calls. Who had? Nobody knew.

  Martin went back to the bar and ordered a Grandad on ice and looked at the photo behind the bar. A new star shone on the chest of Scotty Streck, brighter than all others. In the kerosene lamplight the men in the photo moved backward in time. They were all smiling and all younger than their pictures. They were boys and young men under the shirtsleeved, summer sun. None of them was dead or would ever die.

  “Lights are out all over town,” Martin told Red Tom.

  “Is that a fact? I was listening to the radio when they went. Dewey was on, talking about Albany.”

  “Albany? What was he saying?”

  “He mentioned Patsy, and that was all I heard.”

  “Did he mention Charlie Boy?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  Martin gulped his drink and went outside. People were clustered under the canopy at the station, all cabs were gone, and a West Albany trolley was stalled between Maiden Lane and Steuben Street. Martin could see it in the headlights of cars. The night was a deep, moonless black, with only a few stars visible. It was as if rural darkness had descended upon the city. Faces were unrecognizable three feet away. Albany had never been so dark in Martin’s memory. There were gas lamps in his boyhood, then the first few electric lights, now the power poles everywhere. But tonight was the lightless time in which highwaymen had performed, the dark night of the century gone, his father’s childhood darkness on new streets cut out of the raw hills and the grassy flats. A woman with a bundle came by, half running toward Clinton Avenue, pursued by the night. Alongside Martin, a match flared and he turned to see Morrie Berman lighting a cigar.

  “What news do you hear?”

  “Only that they’re out all over town.”

  “I mean about the McCall kid. You fellows at the paper turn up any news?”

  “I heard there was another ransom note.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Signed by Charlie Boy. I didn’t see it, but from what I gather there’ll be another go-between list in the paper tonight.”

  “They didn’t like us on the first list?”

  “So it seems.”

  “You hear anything else?”

  Dark shapes moved in behind Morrie, and Martin withheld his answer. The shapes hovered.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Martin said and he took a step toward Steuben Street. Morrie stepped along and they moved south on Broadway, candles in the Waldorf, a bunch of men on the street in front of the Monte Carlo. They stepped around the men in the light of a passing auto. Martin did not want to speak until they had turned the corner onto Steuben. They passed Hagaman’s Bakery and Joe’s Bookshop on Steuben Street, where Martin knew his father’s early novel, The Mosquito Lovers, and the volume of his collected plays were sitting in faded dust jackets in the window, and had been for months, ever since the success of The Flaming Corsage.

  “So what’s the secret?” Morrie asked.

  “No secret, but I don’t want to broadcast it. I know you’re a friend of Maloy and the news is they’re looking for him. And Curry.”

  “Why tell me? They got a lot of friends.”

  “You asked for news. They’ve both been out of town a week.”

  “So that ties them in?”

  “No, but even their families don’t know where they are.”

  “Hell, I saw Maloy two or three days ago on Broadway. They’re apt to be anywhere. Maloy’s crazy and Curry’s a moron. But they wouldn’t mix up in a thing like this, not in their own town.”

  “Nevertheless, they’re looking for them.”

  “They’ll turn up. What else do you hear?”

  “The note said they’d starve Charlie Boy till the ransom was paid.”

  “Tough stuff.”

  “Very.”

  Up toward Pearl Street, a window shattered and a burglar alarm rang and rang. Martin saw a silhouette running toward him and Morrie. The runner brushed Martin’s elbow, stepping off the curb as they touched, but Martin could not see the face.

  “Somebody did all right,” said Morrie. “Ain’t that a jewelry store there?”

  “Right,” said Martin. “Just about where Henry James’s grandmother used to live.”

  “Who?”

  “An old-timer.”

  And on the other corner, DeWitt Clinton lived. And across the street, Bret Harte was born. And up Columbia was one of Melville’s homes, and on Clinton Square another. An old man had answered when Martin knocked on the door of the Columbia Street house and said, yeauh, he seemed to remember the name Melville but that was next door and they tore that house down and built a new one. Melville, he said. I heard he moved to Troy. Don’t know what become of him after that.

  Martin and Morrie neared Pearl Street, the glimme
rings of light from the cars giving them a fragmented view of the broken window in Wilson’s Jewelry Store. When they saw the window, they crossed Pearl. Martin looked down toward State and saw a torchlight parade coming north in support of the nomination of Millard Fillmore. The John G. Myers department store collapsed into itself, killing thirteen and making men bald from flying plaster dust. Henry James, suffused in the brilliance of a sunny summer morning, walked out of his grandmother’s house, opened the front gate, and floated like a flowered balloon into ethereal regions. Martin walked in the phosphorescent footsteps of his father and his grandfather.

  “Where the hell are we walking?” Morrie asked.

  “Just around,” said Martin. “You want to go back down?”

  “I guess it’s all right.”

  They walked to Clinton Square, where two more trolleys were stalled on the bend. A siren screamed and stopped, back near Steuben and Pearl. Martin and Morrie, their eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, watched the shadowy action in front of the Palace Theater, hundreds waiting to go back inside and see the rest of Boys’ Town with Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, the miracle man. There is no such thing as a bad boy.

  “They got some kind of light in the Grand Lunch,” Morrie said. “You want some coffee?”

  “No, you go ahead. I want to watch the panic.”

  “What panic?”

  “There’s got to be panic someplace with this much darkness.”

  “Whatever you say. See you down below.”

  In the Sudetenland only last week when Hitler arrived, at nightfall there was an epidemic of suicide.

  In France in 1918, Martin had heard a man scream from the darkness beyond a farmhouse where a shell had just hit. Help me, oh God, oh heavenly God, help me, the man yelled, and then he wailed his pain. Martin nudged a corporal and they crawled toward the voice and found an American soldier pinned between two dead cows. The top cow was bloated from inhaling the explosion. Martin and the corporal could not move the bloated cow so they pulled the squeezed man by his arms, and the top half of him came away in their grip. He stopped screaming.