King Leary

by Paul Quarrington

  “Percival, Percival, Percival,” muttered Clinton quietly. “Do you really think I don’t know these things?”

  “I haven’t seen you in some time.”

  “You’re seeing me now.”

  I jumped off my bed. “I guess maybe I could go for some grub.”

  “I was thinking, Percival mine,” said Clinton, “of refreshments that were more liquid.” Clay grinned at Manny.

  “Oh, listen,” I said, “Manny doesn’t—”

  Manny cut me off, quick and clean. “Sure!” he shouted. “I could go for a glass of beer, maybe.”

  This was the early times with Manfred. I allowed as he probably could go for a glass of beer. We didn’t know so much about the whole deal back then, didn’t even have the word “alcoholic.” That came up in the forties while my boy Clarence was busy becoming one. In the teens and ‘twenties, someone who favored the whoozle-water was an “alcoholist,” and what Manfred was wont to do, I hate to admit, was called “Indian drinking.”

  I flipped on my cap, picked up the dragon-head swagger stick. “I’ll get a ginger ale and one of those pickled eggs.”

  “Still on the ginger ale, are we?” asked Clay, opening the door to the Windy City.

  I nodded. “Can’t quit the stuff.”

  The three of us went out into the night.

  SIXTEEN

  THE TRAIN BURNS THROUGH THE HILLS. Every so often a town gets tossed in, but they’re not towns like I remember towns. The towns I recollect had a town hall and a hotel, and houses used to huddle around for warmth. These towns are like dislocated suburbs, lost cows. The gormless Clifford lives in such a place, his tiny home looking identical to the one next door. I wonder how he can tell them apart, and then I think maybe the secret is that he can’t.

  A black man pushes a little silver cart down the aisle. The bouncing of the train makes the man lose his balance all the time, but he doesn’t seem to care. The silver wagon is covered with miniature booze bottles, as if the train were full of miniature drunks. When someone asks for something, the black man stares ahead haughtily and grabs the appropriate little bottle without looking. The man can screw off the top with one hand and toss a cube of ice into a plastic cup with the other. Meanwhile the train bounces him around.

  Blue Hermann wakes up and sees that the black man is headed our way. He gets excited, licking his lips.

  I have just beaten Iain in a game of gin. Iain is reshuffling. He catches Blue’s excitement, glances up, and sees the black man. “Ah,” says Iain, “the candyman cometh.”

  “Can I have a drinky-poo?” Blue asks. His voice sounds like someone had thrown a scoopful of dirt up from hell.

  “Drinky-poo,” I repeat with some disdain. It’s only the very serious booze hounds who use that word, “drinky-poo.”

  “Can I?”

  Iain considers it, pulling on his bottom lip.

  “Don’t let him,” I suggest. “He’s an alkie.”

  Iain ignores me.

  “Hermann might turn nasty,” I say. This is just a lie. Blue turns nice when he gets a few drinks inside him, nastiness being his normal state.

  Iain doesn’t hear this either. He has arrived at some sort of decision. “Life is short,” he says.

  “Exactly,” agrees Blue. “In my case, maybe a matter of minutes.”

  “You only live once, correct-a-mundo?” asks Iain. “Once is an awful lot,” I point out.

  “Therefore,” concludes Iain, “we should have some refreshment.”

  “Deal the duckets,” I tell him. “You owe me fifty cents already.”

  The black man has about fifteen people to work through before he gets to us, but Blue and Iain stop dead and watch him. It’s like time has frozen. I grab the deck out of Iain’s hand and start to toss them myself. The hands lie on the plastic flip-down. Slowly Iain reaches out one hand and covers his cards. His sleeve is rolled up and I can see the savage-looking bird. God made no such bird, I’m fairly certain. It looks like a goose gone berserkers.

  Finally the black man reaches us. He takes a long, slow look and starts to wheel his silver wagon away.

  “Hey!” Iain calls out. “We want drinks.”

  The black man in the white coat shrugs.

  “A double Scotch, straight up,” demands Blue Hermann. He watches the black hand work the top of the silver trolley, fingering the tiny bottles and selecting the right ones. The other hand brings over the plastic glass and the drink is made. I’ve seen Blue dribble more booze down his chin.

  “Kinger?” asks Iain.

  “You know me, boy.” My hand is a good one, full of possibilities, and I’m impatient to get down to it. “The good old stuff.”

  Iain tells the man, “He likes ginger ale.”

  A drink is set in front of me. I nod thanks, looking at my cards, plenty of royalty, jakes and ladies.

  “And for you, sir?” asks the black man.

  “Oh, yeah,” says Iain. “I’m fine. Um … yougotabeer?” It comes out like one long word.

  The black man names some brands unenthusiastically. Iain hasn’t heard of one of them. “Well,” says Iain, slapping his hands together like a Boy Scout troop leader, “I’ll try that one, then.”

  The black man has the side door open and the beer out before Iain is through speaking. Then he pushes the silver cart back down the aisle.

  Blue Hermann has his drink finished already, naturally. He’s sucking on the ice cube, trying to get out every last drop. “I thought you didn’t drink,” he says to Iain.

  “Oh,” says Iain, pouring beer into the plastic cup, “not seriously. Not like I used to. You know. A beer now and then is no big deal. Right? A little brewskie every blue moon won’t hurt me.”

  I take a look at my pop can. “Hey!” I shout. “What the hickory is this?”

  The can is the same color as the good old Canada Dry, and the picture on it is the same, namely, a little map of the country, but something isn’t right. Then I realize that my can doesn’t say Canada Dry. It says, in exactly the same kind of writing, Acadia Dry. “What goes on?” I whisper. I feel like I’m in that television show, the one my no-good son Clarence wrote an episode for, The Twilight Zone. I pour some into my plastic glass—even the fizz is not quite right. I take a sip and almost have to spit it out. The stuff has an edge like a razor blade. “I’m going to die!” I scream, maybe a touch overdramatic.

  Those two ignore me. We all have our problems. Blue’s problem is that he doesn’t have a glass of booze in his hand. Iain’s problem seems to be that he does. He stares at his brew like he can’t decide what to do with it.

  “They’re trying to poison the old King,” I inform my traveling companions.

  “Moi aussi,” Iain says. He brings the cup to his lips quickly and his Adam’s apple bobs a couple of times. “Aaah …” he sighs, wiping foam from his pale lips.

  Manfred used to make a similar grand production out of taking a single sip of ale. The gormless boy Clifford and his cronies just toss the stuff back quick and natural, as if air had turned into golden suds.

  “Veddy, veddy nize,” Iain says, savoring another mouthful. He takes a glance at the skin on the back of his hand. “So far, so good. No signs of transmogrification.”

  “Mine’s gone,” snarls the Blue-boy. He looks about ready to eat his plastic glass.

  “You want some of my ginger ale?” I offer nicely.

  “Back to the cards,” Iain says. He scoops up his hand. Iain sorts them, rearranges them, tugs at the corners for no good reason.

  I start the play, tossing a three onto the flop. Iain ups it with a cackle, dispenses a seven. Sevens are as much use to me as earrings. I take from the draw pile, a miserable four of hearts. It gets heaped on the refuse. Iain’s eyes light and he scoops the sucker. A king of spades gets thrown, and Iain is laying down his hand. “Gin, baby.”

  “No fair!” I shout. “I’ll shuffle this time.”

  Iain grins. The white farmland screams by.


  SEVENTEEN

  A BEER AND A GINGER ALE? was what Clay Clinton had to say. “How embarrassingly plebeian.”

  Manfred and I found it hard to argue the point, not knowing what the word meant. Clay had just ordered some house speciality. It was just like Clinton to know what the house speciality was, even though he’d never been in the house before. The particular house was in a huge hotel. There were chandeliers on the ceiling and oil paintings on the walls. There were men with waxed whiskers and women with bosoms making escape attempts from the bodices of frilly gowns. Clay Clinton sat in the midst of all that, waving and nodding. At first the patrons just stared at the boy quizzically, but before long they were returning his waves, and before much after that they were dropping by the table. Many people assumed that he had suffered some grievous injury during the war, a notion Clay wasn’t anxious to dispel. “I’ll heal,” he told them all, “physically.”

  Meantime Manfred was trying like a son of a bitch to sip his beer. Manfred hiked the glass up slowly, placed his lips gingerly on the rim, and then whoosh, about half the ale shot into his mouth. His first beer lasted all of fourteen seconds. A waiter floated by and dropped another frosted glass in front of Manfred.

  “Oh,” said Manny, raising a hand, but Clay waved the waiter away.

  My ears were buzzing on account of the ginger ale. I was spine-tingled and goose-bumped.

  “I propose a toast!” Clay Bors Clinton raised his house speciality. “To the three of us.”

  We drank the toast, another beer down Ozikean’s gullet.

  Clay tapped his near-empty glass with his forefinger. Clinton had long, manicured nails. “Another,” he snapped, always curt with the hired help.

  “I’ll try one of those,” announced Manfred. “A house speciality.”

  “Drink while ye may,” Clay chanted, “for I fear the dries shall rule the day.”

  Manny glanced up quickly. “You think there’s gonna be prohibition, Clay?”

  “I do, I do,” answered Clinton. Then he slapped a dizzying smile on us. “And, my leaping lord, the money to be made!”

  “You should hear the old mother on that topic.” “Rabid” would be the word for the mother. She wouldn’t have nothing to do with the Anti-Saloon League, which also billed itself as the “Protestant Church in Action,” but aside from that she was doing everything she could to rid the world of the Demon Rum.

  The waiter came back with house specialities and cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “Naw,” I muttered. “There’s a game tomorrow.”

  “So?” That was Manfred. The word pounced.

  I shrugged. “Just saying.” We were playing back-to-back with the Black Hawks, Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

  “I’ll play good. Don’t you worry about that, Percival.”

  “I was just saying,” I repeated.

  “Don’t start on me, Little Leary,” muttered Ozikean.

  “Jumpin’ Jesus, Manny, I was just saying!”

  “How are the various loves of our various lives?” asked Clinton.

  That softened Manfred some, and he started to smile. “Pretty good.”

  I managed a shrug.

  Whereupon Clay launched into a long and windy tale involving his seduction at the hands of an older woman when he was stationed at the OT camp in the prairies. I suspect it was more fanciful than historical, but it got the three of us laughing and kept us engrossed for the better part of an hour. In that time, Manfred ingested four more beer and two house specialities.

  “Hey!” Manny shouted, after the story was done. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “What did you have in mind?” asked Clay, raising his glass to someone sitting across the room.

  “You know,” answered Manfred, “a tavern.”

  “Oh, Fred,” asked Clay, “how do you expect to get anywhere in the world?”

  “I don’t,” admitted Manfred Ozikean. “I’m already somewhere in the world.”

  I’ve just won a real battle. I won it when Iain tossed the queen of hearts, even though anyone with half a brain would have known I was saving the ladies. For the past few moments, Iain’s been a bit distracted. I know what he’s doing. He’s looking for the black man with the little silver trolley. Iain spots him and waggles his fingers.

  Blue Hermann is asleep, but his booze detector never rests. He opens one eye and mumbles, “Scotch. No ice,” and then returns to slumber until it’s served.

  I shuffle the duckets. It’s not my go, but Iain’s not about to do it. Iain looks at me and shakes his head. “Let’s give it a rest, my liege.”

  “You owe me money.”

  Iain goes for his pocket, but not to pay me, to pay the black man with his gleaming cart.

  Blue wakes up long enough to slurp down his whiskey.

  Iain lingers over his brew, savoring every mouthful. He lights up a smoke and begins to whistle.

  I look out the window. We’re moving through farmland. Things are darkening, the night is coming.

  In the tavern, Manfred took over saying hello to everybody.

  This was quite the place. There were men with waxed mustaches, but they’d been drinking so much that the booze had melted the wax and sprung all the hairs. And, with these women, one or two bosoms had made successful escape attempts from the bodices of frilly gowns. The walls and ceiling of the joint were covered with brickety-brack and purplish daguerreotypes of baseball players and naked ladies. There was, or so I seem to recall, a goat in the joint. It wandered around snacking on people’s trousers and shoes.

  The house speciality at this place was nickel-a-bottle hooch strained through an old sock. Manfred and Clay had about seven of those apiece, and twice as many beers for chasers. I nursed a single glass of ginger ale.

  Two women appeared, Hermione and Ginger. They were older ladies, by which I mean they were in their late twenties, and they were heavily made-up. Both had waists so tiny that even I could have wrapped both my hands all the way around them, and both of them had bubbles so large that the rest of their bodies seemed tagged on as afterthoughts.

  A little man wandered over and started yelling in my ear, addressing the Great Debate raging between the wets and the dries. He was a wet. His breath was bad, and he had a nasty habit of digging his forefinger into my ribs. Hermione and Ginger were giggling with Manfred and Clay.

  The little man started to cry in my ear.

  Manfred got raging drunk. Not mean drunk, though. Manny started laughing and pawing old Ginger right through her dress, not that she minded. Manfred and Ginger disappeared—Lord knows what diseases she might have!—and Hermione and Clay wandered off, and before I knew it I was out in the streets of Chicago. Damned if the sun wasn’t coming up, making everything a wintry silver. I wasn’t afraid to be out on the streets alone; back in those days things weren’t half as rough. Oh, you might find the odd thug, but once you’ve gone toe-to-toe with Sprague Cleghorn, thugs don’t seem like much. I understand Chicago is mean these days, a city full of bad blood. My no-good son Clarence lived there for a couple of years, writing his pornography and poetry, and he got mugged seventeen times! Once they even took a knife to his face, and he had a scar across his cheek. The scar looked like a garden slug clinging to his face.

  Clarence was arrested and put on trial for obscenity. Most terrible day of my life, almost killed his mother. And it wasn’t even good clean obscenity! That’s what cities like Chicago will do to you. Full of whores and perverts. Mind you, Herm and Ginger were whores, so that much ain’t new, and who the hell is shaking me?

  I’m alone in the Windy City, just me and the gray morning, the empty streets and milk bottles. I need my sleep, that’s for damn sure. A professional athlete needs his shut-eye. Listen to him, Blue says. Blue Hermann? Leave me alone, you bastard, I was out late last night. Sure, I’ll score the hat trick again. I don’t know about Ozikean, though. Looks like he spent the night in a suitcase. Just a bit of sleep, that’s all I need. Toronto? What is this business a
bout Toronto? We don’t play those Toronto boys until Wednesday. Don’t you read the schedule? You can pick me up and shake me all you want—it won’t change the fact. Look out the window? How can I look out the window, my peepers is shut. I’ll open them, all right, I’ll open them. Whoa. Big black city out there. Breathing smoke into the air like a dragon. I don’t know, I don’t know where I am. Keep calm, King. Slip open one eye and take a quick gander. Train station. Biggest I ever seen. Maybe I died, maybe I finally went and did it, maybe this is the train to Glory—there would have to be a Jesus-big station for the Glory-train—but I recognize that wheezy braying, that there is Blue Hermann, newspaperman, and he for damn sure ain’t bound for the Pearly Gates. There’s arms around my chest, holding me up. Lookee there. A tattoo of a bird. The bird gives me the heebie-jeebies. Iain. All right. Let me take a couple of breaths. Just a dream, that’s all.

  “Just a dream,” says I.

  EIGHTEEN

  IT WAS IN MONTREAL, March 13 of one-nine one-nine, that I made my first move to become the King of the Ice. I did that by deposing the previous King, Lalonde. He was called Newsy, although his right name was one of those French affairs with too many vowels. Lalonde looked like God wrought him out of stone—except really Lalonde looked like God had thought better of the idea halfway through and gone out to a movie. In the middle of Newsy’s face were two eyes, as black as a nun’s habit, and when Lalonde was angry—all of the time—they acquired a distinct lunatic sheen. Many a player was beaten just by a look at those eyes. Mind you, Newsy Lalonde could play. He was what you might call a talented and sound hockey player, and when you combine that with largeness and the ability to scare the holy bejesus out of people, then you got something. In 1919 he was thirty-two years old, and that’s when I went after him.

  I was Little Leary, the heart and soul of the Ottawa Paddies. I wore the letter C over my heart, captain of the shinny-playing Irishters. I had the ginger back then, brother.