King Leary

by Paul Quarrington

  Well, I’m not saying the lad didn’t have an imagination.

  THIRTY

  THE FIRST TIME IT HAPPENED it made me spit orange juice all over Chloe and Clifford.

  We were sitting at the table eating breakfast. Chloe was nursing Cliffy. He was a big, gormless child, and he pulled on my wife’s teat until she was pretty near robbed of all substance. Chloe did her best to look and sound happy, but her skin was white and her hands trembled. She had a frightened little bird of a heart. Chloe was experiencing twinges in her lower back, and in a few months she would have full-blown arthritis. She’d given up calling me Pookie. She had started calling me Perce or Percy, and in time she’d be calling me Percival like she was a Sunday-school teacher. So anyway, Chloe had Clifford sucking away at her—him making horrid mulching noises—and I was reading the Ottawa Gazetteer. I took a sip of orange juice and flipped into the sports pages. The name Clay Clinton leaped off the page, and that’s when I spat orange juice at my spouse and offspring.

  The rest of the sentence read: “Appointed general manager of Pats.”

  “What is it?” asked Chloe.

  “Clay’s the new G.M.,” I answered.

  “Good,” she responded. “You can get more money.”

  I ignored that. Chloe was always after me to make more money. I was never a millionaire, but I made fairly good jack for all the ages I lived in. Say now, wasn’t the Great Depression right around the corner, and didn’t I keep Chloe and the boys in food and clothes? There was plenty of mooks back then who didn’t have two nickels to rub together.

  “Clay says,” I told Chloe, “that he’s working on a blockbuster of a trade.”

  “Good,” said Chloe. “Maybe he’ll get some quality backenders.”

  I just let her rant and rave. “Trouble is,” I said—more to myself than to her, seeing as she largely didn’t know what the Jesus she was on about—“he’s got nothing to trade.”

  That statement brought along a frosty stillness. In point of fact, Clinton had a couple of good cards in his otherwise plain hand.

  Chloe pulled the gormless baby off her tit and pressed him up against her. She gave his back a few little taps and he covered her shoulder with milky blue puke.

  The telephone started ringing. I let it go seven or eight times, and back then a single ring was a lot longer than it is nowadays!

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” asked Chloe.

  “Nobody’s got any business calling at this time in the morning.”

  “Answer it, Percy.”

  It wasn’t even Clay, which stung. It was Frankie O’Connor, Clay’s former boss, now one of his underlings. I nodded and said quite a few “uh-yeahs.” Clifford started to wail. The way Frank told it, there was so much money involved that Clinton had no real choice.

  “By the by,” I asked, even though my throat was knotted and speech was painful, “you didn’t say where I was going.”

  “Oh, right.” O’Connor came up with a lighthearted laugh, as phony as they come. “You’re going to be an American!”

  “What?! An Amerk? You can’t do that to me! They are the sorriest collection of trash ever assembled!”

  “That’s why they need you.”

  “Where the hell is Clay? Is Clinton in the same office as you are now? I got a hunch he is.”

  “What? No. No, Clay is somewhere else.”

  “I’ll tell you why you lost your job, Frank. You’re one lousy liar.”

  “Swear to God. He’s gone—”

  And then there was Clay’s sweet voice filling my ear. “Congratulations, Percival, my prince!”

  “What the Christ are you doing, Clay? You sold me down the river.”

  “At twenty-five thousand per annum, laddy-buck. Hardly slave wages.”

  “Yeah, but … Jesus, Clay. I’m the captain. Ask Pat Boyle, he’ll tell you. I’m the heart and soul of the Patriot lineup.”

  “Go to New York, my pet, and be the heart and soul of the American lineup.”

  “They’re bums! Most of them are too drunk to play. I fit in with the Paddies, Clay-boy. But—”

  “Little Leary, I have something to tell you. Papers have been signed. Money has changed hands. This discussion is not going to lead us anywhere. How’s the babe, Clifford?”

  “He’s throwing up right now, Clay. I feel like joining him.”

  “You’re going to thank me for this, Percival.”

  “Uh-yeah.” I cradled the earpiece and went back to the dining room table. “New York,” I told Chloe wearily. “Twenty-five thousand per.”

  She was impressed by the figure.

  “Money’s not everything,” I muttered.

  “I’ll miss you,” said Chloe. She couldn’t have held on to Frank O’Connor’s old job either.

  I went into the bedroom and started to pack.

  By the time the airplane landed in the Big Apple, I’d resigned myself to the trade. At the airport I met Blue Hermann for the first time, granted him a short interview. Then Blue hailed a taxicab, and he had it drive me to the Forrest Hotel, where I would be living. Many of the Amerks lived in this place, mostly because Jubal St. Amour owned it, and rooms were therefore dirt cheap.

  One thing you got to understand is that back then hockey players were young Canucks from small towns, if they happened to be from towns at all. Many of the lads came from farmhouses so isolated that the cows had to ask directions home. Howie Morenz, for instance, was from Swastika, Ontario. Pleasant-sounding place, eh? Bullet Joey Broun was from East Braintree, Manitoba. Jacques La Rivière was from St. Louis-de-Ha!-Ha!, which gets my vote for the all-time strangest place name, even if it is in Quebec. Anyway, the point is that the Amerks were young boys from small Canadian towns and outposts, plunked down amidst the bright lights of New York City. This is why they went how they went. Which is hog-wild.

  They all lived on the seventh floor.

  When the elevator doors opened, the first thing I saw was Voiceless Richie Reagan chasing a naked bimbo down the hallway. This bimbo had a certain heft to her, and the sight of her running naked down the hallway transfixed me for a moment or two. I stepped out of the elevator (there was a sound—maybe a champagne cork popping, more likely a gunshot) and moved down the hallway checking room numbers. I wanted number seven-oh-three. The first one I come to is seven-three-something. White Wings O’Brien was standing there in his gotchies, pissed as a newt. White Wings grabbed me, pulled me into his room, insisted that I have a drink with him. I escaped and resumed my search for 703. Farther down was an open doorway. I looked in and saw seven men crowded around a small table. Bollicky Bill Stubbs was dealing cards. The room was so thick with cigar smoke even Blue Hermann would have gagged. I recognized several of the boys from hockey games and gave them all a little nod. There was a ton of moola on the table. I moved away. At 712 a tall man wearing little round glasses came out. He held a leash attached to one of those tiny white yap poodles. The poodle took a nip at my ankles as I walked by. I peered through the doorway. There was a buxomy lady reclining on a sofa, and while she wasn’t naked, she was undressed enough that I wondered if there wasn’t some sort of female nudity code enforced by the hotel. The bespectacled man caught me looking and chuckled. By the by, that was Damon Runyon, the writer. He never did like hockey, you know, which I think was due to the razzing he received for having to walk the silly little poodle. Runyon tried to tiptoe past the room containing Bollicky Billy and the stud-poker players, but the poodle cut loose a yap. They sent up a howl. Anyway, finally the numbers on the doors descended to 703. I slipped the key into the lock and went in. My roomie, Little All Bright Peterson, was on his bed with a lady who wasn’t breaking with hotel policy. She was setting on top of him, and he was smoking a stogie and having a quaff. Little All Bright gave me a wave. “Five minutes, huh, pally?”

  I shut the door and stood in the hallway for a very long time.

  THIRTY-ONE

  BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the N. Y. Americans had a game th
at night. Most of them managed to grab an hour or two of shut-eye, and showed up no worse than half-cut. White Wings O’Brien was so advanced in his recuperation as to be hung over, and he didn’t seem to recognize me from earlier that afternoon. Mind you, not all of the Amerks were come-to-naughts and ne’er-do-wells. A couple were well-behaved laddies who showed up on time, bright-eyed and ready to play. The other men treated them like lepers.

  Muzzy Tobias came into the dressing room. Muzz was an obese man with a mole in the middle of his forehead, a big thing with hairs sprouting out of it. Every time I ever seen him, Muzzy was digging and rooting in his left ear. Usually he just used his pinky, but I saw him employ the odd tool, a pen or a pencil, a key or something. Muzz was a jolly sort of fellow, never took anything too seriously, so he was the right coach for the Amerks.

  “Well,” said Muzz philosophically, “it’s Montreal tonight.”

  The men groaned. The Canadiens were the class of the NHL that year, what with both Morenz and Cleghorn.

  “You all know Percy Leary,” Muzz said. “He’ll be put in with O’Brien and Clancy.”

  “Three Irishters,” I pointed out.

  “Yup,” nodded Muzzy Tobias, “except for Clancy.”

  That’s the kind of team we’re dealing with.

  After that rousing pep talk from old Muzzy, the New York Americans filed out onto the ice. We had all the pep and ginger of a funeral parade.

  Sprague Cleghorn caught sight of me and grinned. I wished I still had that huge silver crucifix that Manny had given me.

  “Lookee,” said Cleghorn. “Little Leary is an American.”

  “I’m as Irish as ever I was, Spray-goo.”

  “If you’re Irish,” asked Cleghorn, “how’s come it’s everyone else on your team that’s green?”

  Some of the boys did cast a sheen, but you can’t let anybody bad-mouth your side, even if your side are drunken yobs. So I dropped my mitts and went into a bit of the bob-and-weave. “Come on, Cleghorn,” I snarled. “Let’s see the kind of stuff you’re made of.” I tucked my shoulder and shuffled on my blades. I threw rabbit punches and roundhouses. Cleghorn stood there and watched. After a while he picked up his stick and brought it down across my head. That’s all she wrote.

  I came to early in the third period. My head hurt, or so I imagine, about the same as one of Blue Hermann’s worst hangovers, where pain compels him to actually drive his gnarly fingers deep into his eye sockets. My head was bandaged pretty good, but I still worried about blood and bits of brain leaking through the gauze.

  The club doctor was sitting on a nearby bench, smoking a cigarette.

  “How many?” I asked him.

  “Forty-odd,” he responded. “You got some on the inside, some on the out. In a few days I’ll have to open you up again.”

  “Much obliged.” They’d taken off my sweater and skates, so I set about putting them back on. “What’s the score?”

  “Four-nothing,” the doc answered. “Cleghorn’s got a pair.”

  “Cleghorn? You mean to tell me he’s still playing?”

  The doctor shrugged. “He got a five-minute penalty.”

  “Five minutes for an attempted murder?”

  The doc just shrugged again.

  I put on my sweater—it was styled after the Yankee flag, bars and stars, all red, white, and blue—and laced up my skates. I was some steamed. Five minutes for a split melon, that’s what passes for justice in this sorry world. I stormed out and took a seat at the end of the players’ bench. The other fellows were watching the game and exchanging pleasantries. It made me ill. I called over to Tobias, “You gonna put me out there, Muzz?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I feel like someone’s cracked my head open. But I also feel like I don’t want to watch these pitiful Amerks pleasure-skate with hockey players from Montreal.”

  “Well, if you want.” He whistled someone off. I hopped over the boards.

  “All right, all right,” I sang out, “make way for the Dublin hurricane!”

  Some photographer made my picture right then, and it’s in a number of books. There’s me with my head all bandaged, the wrappings stained black with life stuff. My eyes have, I’ll admit, a certain lunacy to them. The next few minutes are somewhat hazy in my memory. I certainly don’t remember any noise from the stands, any cheering or suchlike, although Blue Hermann reported in the Star the next day that the fanatics had gone berserk. When it was all over, I’d scored three goals and assisted on two more, both of those tallied by groggy White Wings O’Brien. Bollicky Billy added a lone score, and the Canadiens were stifled.

  Blue Hermann was waiting for me in the dressing room. He had his pencil out, his little notebook at the ready. “Comments?”

  “I was just playing hockey. The good old shinny, as when I was a lad.”

  “Comment on what Cleghorn did to you?”

  “Sprague was just playing hockey. Mind you, he and I got different concepts of what that entails.”

  “He hit you pretty hard.”

  “Not hard enough, sir,” I told him. (That was the headline in Blue’s column the next day—“Leary says Cleghorn didn’t hit hard enough.”)

  Blue Hermann stared at me for a long moment. I didn’t know that he was seeing me all blue. The booze had already ruint his eyes, you see. “Well,” he said with a nod, “it was a good game, Little Leary. You are a tenacious bastard.”

  Outside the dressing room some urchins were waiting, wanting my John Henry. I obliged, telling them, “Eat yer veggies and don’t never smoke a cigarette.”

  Then I noticed that there was a woman standing there in the hallway, one of the smallest women I’ve ever seen. I mean, she wasn’t a midget or anything, but she was small. She wore her golden hair short on the back and sides, long in the front. On one side a hank covered most of her face. The other side glowed with a huge blue peeper, but it was an odd blue, the color of the sea. The girl was dressed in silver satin, and from underneath came the impression of nakedness. She came closer and spoke to me. She wondered, in a high-pitched voice that I’ll confess approached silliness, “Does your head hurt very much?”

  “It don’t tickle.”

  The girl reached up and touched my bandages. It happened so quickly that afterward I wasn’t sure it had taken place.

  “Do you like music?” she demanded suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, the question just sort of fell out of the branches and landed in front of me.

  “I suppose so.”

  “I adore it.” The word “adore” took several seconds to speak. “Especially the new French romantics. Debussy!” Whoever this fellow was, the girl was mad keen on him. When she said his name she swooned backwards.

  “Plays music, does he?”

  “Well, you know, he’s dead. But he wrote such exquisite music. My favorite is called ‘Afternoon at the Farm.’ ”

  “Uh-yeah.”

  The golden-haired woman said, “Let’s go get your hat.”

  “My hat?”

  “You had a hat trick, Jubal told me, so you get a hat.”

  “Where?”

  “Back at the hotel, silly billy.” The woman gave me a whack, I mean a Jesus-hard whack, balling her tiny hand into a fist and lacing into my shoulder.

  “Well, okay.”

  “I’m Hallie,” she said.

  “Percival.”

  “Percival. A very romantic name. Will you be my knight errant?” Hallie whipped on a fur coat she’d been holding. “Will you slay me a dragon, Sir Percival?” This weird blithering set her to giggling. She grabbed my hand and led me away. We walked quickly and we walked mostly in silence. I tried to make conversation—where are you from, how long have you been here?—but all I got was one- and two-word answers—Kansas, three years. Hallie pulled me through the lobby of the Forrest Hotel and into the elevator. She pressed the big 8 button and up we flew. When the doors slid open on the eighth floor, I followed Hallie into the hallway. Her room was directly a
cross.

  “I’ll just wait here for the hat, ma’am,” I said, but before I knew what was happening I was pulled through the door.

  There were two things in Hallie’s apartment. One was a piano, a scratched and chipped monster that likely was a runaway from some honky-tonk in New Orleans. The other was a bed, a much classier affair. It was one of them four-posters with a canopy. It was covered with red satin sheets. This was the biggest bed I’d ever seen, especially given Hallie’s stature. If she was having trouble sleeping at night, she could simply try another portion of the mattress to see if it had a soothing effect.

  Hallie threw her fur coat onto the bed and then rammed her fists on her hips. “Do you want to hear me play the piano?” she demanded. The light cut through her dress and silhouetted her body. It was all I could do to come up with a nod. The foot pedals had special blocks attached so that her toes could reach them. She rested her fingers on the ivories for a long moment, her eyes closed, her breathing rapid and shallow, then she started to play. It was a slow piece of music, full of notes that twisted my insides. Hallie played well, and the melody was sweet and strange. I sat down on the corner of the four-poster, affecting to be a man at his leisure, but really I didn’t know how long my legs would have held out. Hallie twisted her head upwards as she played. The moon came through the window and washed the color out of her face.

  When she was done playing, Hallie jumped down from her stool, went into a small cupboard, emerged with a top hat covering most of her face. Then the satin dress tumbled to the floor. She was naked underneath. I understood that this was the reward from Jubal St. Amour for my hat trick—this naked woman. I was a married man. Hallie’s nipples were small and hard. I was the father of a gormless baby. Hallie moved across the room, folded my head within her arms and drew it to her breast. It had been a long, hard day. I pushed her away and left the room.