King Leary

by Paul Quarrington

Blue waves his nicotine-stained hand in the air. It’s a spotted, twisted, palsied claw, and it barely looks human. Blue waves it in the air and I know not to mention anything more about his attack. Hermann reaches for his secret stash of whiskey and takes a long pull from the flask. His wattles tremble. Usually I’ll have at him for that sort of thing, call him an alkie and whatnot, but today I just watch him out of the corner of my eye. The liquor seems to calm him somewhat. Blue lies down on his bed and folds his old hands neatly across his chest.

  “Hey, Hermann,” says I, “why do you want to come with me to Toronto anyways?”

  Blue grins. He has a nice smile, considering. You should have seen that smile when he was a young man in New York, New York. “The thing is, Leary,” Blue tells me, “Clay told me to look after you.” Hermann makes a sound like an old Buick sinking in quicksand, which is what he uses for a laugh. “He told me to look after your spiritual needs.” Blue turns away.

  “It’s King Leary Night at the Gardens. That punk Killebrew is going to be there. We’re going to do the adverts together.”

  “I want to see this new fucking Sports Hall of Infamy,” Blue suggests.

  “Surely. Go take a gander at the one-nine one-nine lumber.”

  “We could visit the graves,” he says in a near whisper.

  “There’s too many,” I tell him. “We’d have to take a two-week excursion.”

  “And we could go to a bar!” Hermann’s stony eyes acquire a sparkle.

  “I don’t think Iain’s going to let you go to a bar.”

  “Did Iain say he was coming?”

  “He’s coming.”

  “Well, if he does,” Blue tells me, “we lose him.”

  “You would, too!”

  Hermann chuckles. “I would, too.”

  After a moment I say, “Iain says there’s to be no croaking in Toronto.”

  We both nod, fair enough.

  When I got off the plane in New York, New York, the first person I saw was Blue Hermann. He was standing on the tarmac, already scribbling in his little notebook. Blue had a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth, so his eyes were all squinty as the smoke drifted into them. (Those dangling cigarettes likely account for the way Blue’s aspect is these days, like that of a wax Chinaman that’s been left out in the sun.) Blue Hermann had a green fedora cocked on his head. A card stuck out of the headband. Blue Hermann gave me a little wink.

  “Little Leary!” called out the newspaperman.

  “You got him! Also known as Loof-weeda. That’s an Indian monicker meaning ‘windsong.’ ”

  I was twenty-six years old, at the height of my career. I bounced down the airplane steps with a Dublintown swagger, swinging my dragon-head cane. I’d have whistled a tune, except that I could never get the knack of whistling. I tipped my miner’s cap to the stranger on the tarmac.

  “Hermann from the Star,” he informed me.

  “Percy from the river.”

  “Let’s clear something up.”

  “Let’s do that.”

  “You and Clay Clinton are longtime friends, no?”

  “Clay and I go back a ways.”

  “Don’t you feel this sudden trade is something of a betrayal?”

  “Clay’s got the Patriots to worry about. He got ten thousand smackers for this little puff of Irish wind, and that’s a fair bit. Anyone would have done it. Clay and I are still buddies.”

  “Do you think your play will be affected by the absence of your linemate Manny Oz?”

  “I’ll adjust.”

  “You won’t miss him?”

  “What do you mean, ‘miss him’?”

  “Is he still drinking heavily?”

  “Manny’s got the juice pretty much licked,” I lied. The juice was licking Manfred like an all-day lollipop. “How’s your wife, Chloe?”

  “She’s good, mister. Why do you ask? That ain’t exactly hockey related.”

  “Everything is hockey related. Do you agree?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “Yes or no, Little Leary.”

  “Wait up a minute, Hermann from the Star.”

  “You have a newborn baby?”

  “Clifford.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “I just got here.”

  “Is Clay Clinton married?”

  “Clay? No. He’s a confirmed bachelor.” He did get married later on, to Janey Millson, as you may know, but truth to be told, his marriage never affected his bachelor status.

  All of a sudden this Hermann from the Star reaches inside his trench coat. He removes a pewter flask, unscrews the top—grinning all the while, staring at me, I didn’t know he was seeing me all in a blue haze—and he takes a long pull. Then he shoves the thing in my face. “Care for a tug at the witch’s tit?”

  “No, thankee,” I said, adding, for the benefit of the newspaper readers, “I do not drink. I have only had one alcoholic beverage in my life, that being a single glass of champagne when the Paddies claimed the Stanley Cup six years ago.”

  “And just when,” Blue Hermann demanded, “do you think you might have another?”

  “When the New York Americans claim the goblet at the end of this season.”

  Old Blue wrote that up in his column, and for a while it became quite a joke in New York City. All kinds of restaurants put bottles of champagne on ice, attaching little signs saying how it was reserved for Percival Leary on the cup-winning night. I received many letters, especially from ladies, telling me that I was welcome to have some champagne with them when the Amerks won. Mind you, that year the New York Americans were as pitiful an organization as one could care to see, the South Grouse Louses notwithstanding, so nothing ever came of that champagne lark.

  The thing of it is, what gives me cause to wonder in these idle days, that single glass of champagne in one-nine one-nine was no big deal. I mean, it was fair bubbly, but weakly so, not like the throat-ripping gargles you could get from the good old Canada Dry. It tickled your throat like a puff of air. What the big deal on the champagne was, I never knew.

  Clay Clinton loved the stuff. If Clay was eating a peanut butter sandwich, he’d want champagne with it. One time we went into some two-bit ramshackle groghouse—Manfred used to favor such establishments, even when, as in the case I’m recollecting, he was bone dry and off the juice—and Clay shouted, “Barkeep!”

  The barkeep looked around, because he didn’t know that’s what he was.

  “A bottle of the finest bubbly!” Clay never did lose his English accent, not in all his sixty-some years.

  “Come again, mac?”

  “Bubbly. The nectar of the gods. Pop off to the cellar and see what is nicely aged.”

  Lord knows what such places have aging in the cellar, but it ain’t champagne. The bartender tilted his head like a quizzical dog.

  “Champagne!” Clinton exploded at the top of his voice. “We want champagne!”

  “Oh.” The bartender had heard of it. “Someone get married?”

  “The Man-Freddy is getting married to the lovely Jane. Isn’t that so, Manfred?”

  Manny blushed, which was right odd, given his complexion.

  The bartender looked at Manfred, recognizing him. “I thought you didn’t drink no more.”

  “Not me. But Clay likes champagne. If you don’t have any champagne, it’s all right. He’ll have some beer.”

  “I will not have beer. Beer is swill for the hoi polloi. I want champagne.”

  The bartender dried his hands on his apron, his eyes riveted on Manfred Ozikean. “I’ll see if maybe there isn’t a bottle somewhere.”

  “Thank you, buddy,” said Manny, and the barkeep glowed.

  “What’s the big deal here, Clay-boy?” I asked him. “What are we celebrating? All’s we need was whup the Wings. We been doing that all year.”

  “With the victory tonight, our lovely Ottawa Lily Pads mathematically clinched first place.” I had no way of knowing whether that was true
or not. It made scant difference to me. Numbers and mathematics got no place in the game of hockey, that’s the argument I got against that puppy Duane Killebrew. He’s out to smash all the numbers in the record book, as if numbers could defend themselves.

  “Plus,” Clay went on, “I want to toast Manny and Jane.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re getting married.”

  “We’ve known that for a couple of months now.”

  “Shut up, Leary.” The words came sharp and fast, like a bee sting. I wasn’t even sure I’d heard right, but I shut up anyway.

  Clay Clinton asked the publican for three glasses. He placed them in a row and filled them to the brim with golden bubbles. “Clay,” Manny whispered.

  “One glass won’t kill you,” Clinton said. “There’s less alcohol in that glass than there is in a spoonful of cough medicine.”

  “But I can’t,” Manfred said.

  “Hell, Clay, if it means that much to you, I’ll have a gobful.” I went to grab a glass, but Clinton lashed out with his arm and sent all three flying. They smashed into the wall, covering the place with glass.

  “Never mind,” said Clay Bors Clinton. “It was a stupid idea.”

  THIRTEEN

  THE FIRST TIME I SAW Constance Millson, called Jane by all and sundry, she was in the company of Manfred Armstrong Ozikean. It was in the summer, the off season. I was taking a stroll around Bytown, which I did quite often, having nothing else to do. It was in those days that I perfected my swagger, the dragon-head cane flipping. The tykes would call out to me, “Hi, there, Little Leary!” this predating when I became the King of the Ice.

  “Ho, there, young pups!” I’d call back, tipping my cap. “Eat yer veggies and you’ll grow up like me.”

  The year was one-nine one-eight. The war was grinding down. The Paddies had finished in a measly fifth place, mostly, if you were to ask me, because North Innes spent too much time shaving pubics and suchlike, neglecting to keep himself in shape. Anyway, I’m strutting around the old town, cocky and all elbows, and I see this remarkable sight.

  The first thing I see is Manny, because if he was anywhere in the vicinity, he was the first thing you saw. Now, usually Manny had the look of a sheepdog, but on this day Manfred had his hair all pomaded. It likely took a gallon of slickum to do it, but he had his hair greased down. Not only that, Manfred was wearing a suit, one of those three-piece jobbies. In his right hand Manny held a hat, a felt homburg, and I suppose he was carrying it in his hand because he didn’t want to wear it on his head, thereby mussing the pomade. In his left hand Manny had yet another hand, a tiny white one. I stopped in my tracks.

  I’ve known men who didn’t find Janey attractive. Pat Boyle was like that. He’d see Manny and Jane together, shake his head, and mutter, “I don’t know what he sees in her.” I knew, and so did Clay Clinton.

  She was a small girl, but you didn’t realize that until you were standing right next to her and could get some kind of a reading off how far she came up on your chest. Even on me she only came up to about my nipples. Jane’s hair was blond, and only a touch of color kept it from being snowy white. Her eyes seemed to change all the time, going from a blue to a green. When she was angry, Jane’s eyes got gray as stones. Towards the end of her life her eyes turned gray and stayed that way.

  “Hey!” sang out Manfred, catching sight of me. He dragged the girl forward. “This is Constance, Percy.”

  “Janey” she corrected.

  “Little Leary, ma’am,” says I, taking off my cap and crumpling it between my hands. Jane caused a lot of hats to be crumpled.

  “Lucky number seven,” she pointed out.

  “Yes’m.” It was in 1912 that someone decided that hockey players should have numbers stitched to the back of their jerseys. I was number seven all my years with the Paddies, but when I went to the Amerks, White Wings O’Brien was already wearing it (he was a superstitious son of a gun!) so I went to number nine, which I allowed was almost as lucky.

  “It’s jeezly hot out,” Jane told me. “I’m sweating like a stuck Pig.”

  Such talk would scandalize the old mother, that’s for sure. The thought of Jane’s little body sweating sort of discomfited me as well.

  “What I’d really like to do,” Jane announced, “is go swimming all in the buff-bare.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. Manfred was nodding, but what the hell, the man was always nodding.

  “Now, is it true, Little Leary, Lucky Number Seven,” asked Janey Millson in earnest, “that they shaved your private parts?”

  I must have pulled quite the face. Jane took one look and started laughing.

  There never was a girl, especially not so small a one, who could laugh so loud as Jane Millson. Manfred A. Ozikean was looking mortified. “I didn’t tell her, Percy!” he lied.

  Jane was struggling to contain herself, but she couldn’t do it. “Heeeyahhh!” she started up again, and tears popped out of her eyes and stuff shot out of her nose. Jane folds in half and laughs on the intake now, mostly because she’s gonna expire if she don’t get any air. By this time we’re attracting a crowd, people figuring the poor girl is suffering from some rare and fancy medical ailment. Jane is a right mess, and only thirty, forty seconds have gone by. A policeman wanders over, wanting to know what the trouble is. Manny leads the girl away.

  I didn’t see her again until a couple of months after that, at the season’s Home Opener. I hit the ice and heard a shout. “Go, you Lucky Number Seven!”

  I had one hell of a game.

  Now, many times people have asked me outright and point-blank, they’ll say, King, what the hell was Manny Oz anyway? Well, I never did get a handle on that. I seen his family, the whole crowded assemblage of them, and I’m still no closer to an answer. Mostly, I suppose, Manfred was an Indian. Some members of his clan were fine handsome people with coppery skin. But others were a lot darker, and his Uncle Silas looked for all the world like a Chinaman to me, and even if we riddled all that out, we’d still have to discover where in creation Manfred got that red woolly hair! Manfred was the only member of his family who had red hair, everyone else had hair as black as coal.

  And, gracious, such names! Silas, Oliphant, Whitney, Grayman—that would be Great Uncle Grayman, a shriveled-up old prune who played the accordian, a talent he more or less passed on to Manfred. Manfred could squeeze out a few tunes and when drunk would do so for hours and hours. The music always reminded me of great disasters at sea, children and women wailing as they plunged into Arctic waters.

  The females included Millicent, Ambrosia, and Conception. She was a pretty thing, that Conception, despite the fact that she had a big black mark clouding her face.

  Manfred’s father was named Hardy Ozikean. He would have been almost as big as Manny, except that he was missing both legs from just above the knees. He rode about in something that resembled a wheelbarrow. (Of course, as soon as Manfred started earning the long green, the first thing he bought was a fancy contraption for his old man.) Hardy Ozikean was extraordinarily happy for a man who lived in a wheelbarrow. His hobby was the weather, and when he cornered you, Hardy Ozikean liked to predict what was going to happen on the climate front for the next few months. He was always dead wrong, but Mr. Ozikean was a fearless and steadfast weather diviner. He’d sit in his wheelbarrow and predict sunny skies even as you stood there dripping all over him.

  Mrs. Ozikean, Pantella her name was, was a small dainty woman who as far as I can recall never said one solitary word to me. Most of the females in that family were the silent type, although if they’d wanted to say anything they would have been hard pressed. Between Hardy and his oracling, Great Uncle Grayman and his accordian, Manny’s brother Winslow (who blew the small talk issue right out of the water with his constant babbling about political issues), and the various squabblings of tykes, there wasn’t much room for talk.

  Manfred took after the ladies, that is, he didn’t say much. But he was happy wit
h his family, and I guess I understand how bad it must have been for him, later in his life, all alone in hotel rooms. He was in a hotel room when he died, a room at the Forrest Hotel in New York City. The official coroner blamed something called “alcoholic insult to the brain.” I’m not sure what that is—it’s never shown up at any chart here at the South Grouse—but I put no credence in the fanciful notion that Manny Oz died of a broken heart.

  There is one more member of Manny’s family who I should mention, Poppa Rivers. I didn’t meet this man until later on—it was he who gave me the Indian nickname Loof-weeda—and the reason I bring him up now is that I just all of a sudden realized that he is in this dream I’ve been having, the one that takes place at Manfred’s funeral. Poppa Rivers wasn’t there in true life, mind you, the funeral was held in New York, New York, but in my dream he is there, keening like an old witch. He is naked and covered with dried mud. His skin has been scratched by thorns, stung by wasps and hornets. Poppa Rivers shakes a rattle made from the skull of a small animal. Every now and again he will launch into a dance, a wild and woolly one. The drunken New York Amerks cheer him on. Hallie doffs her satin gown. Her naked body is awash in moonlight. Things get out of hand. Clay Clinton, standing beside me, laughs, savoring my discomfort.

  Poppa Rivers comes over and sticks a long finger in my puss. “Loof-weeda” he says, “you dumb fuck.”

  FOURTEEN

  TODAY’S THE DAY. We’re going to Toronto. Iain’s so het up that he’s got Mrs. Ames doing his bidding, and that old marm don’t do nothing nice for nobody.

  “Dress them, Nurse Ames!” Iain shouts. “Dress them and dress them warmly! We’ll have no chilblains on these chilluns!” While Mrs. Ames bundles us into our winter gear, Iain takes to strutting up and down the room, turning sharp and precise at each end, kind of like Napoleon. “The train,” Iain says, “leaves at precisely sixteen hundred hours. That will place us in Toronto at eighteen-oh-seven. You boys will likely want to be fed then.”

  Blue Hermann takes the opportunity to dig his fingers into Nurse Ames’s backside. He doesn’t really want to do it, but it’s required, given his reputation. “I want a steak!” Blue tells Iain.