King Leary

by Paul Quarrington

  The only applause came from the four black-robed monks who sat in the third row back, center-ice, and generally carried on like rubes on bad gin.

  I skated back to the face-off circle. Manfred was grinning at me. “What’s news, Manny?” I asked him.

  “Oh, not too much. I gave up drinking.”

  “Did you now?”

  “I had to, Percival. I was dying.”

  The ref dropped the puck, and I did the Silver Platter. This was meant to humiliate Manny, giving him the rubber and then taking it away. Mind you, the plan came a cropper. I let Manfred have the puck, and he damn well vanished with it! That did it. I charged up behind him and worked my stick in between his legs. Manny tumbled to the ice like a felled tree. I claimed the puck and turned toward enemy territory. This piece of rubber was worth a tally for damn sure, except for the fact that the referee had whistled the play dead and tagged me with a tripping penalty. I argued that as well as I could, but I didn’t have much of a case. The Patriots scored twice during that short-handed spell—Ozikean himself got one—so by the time five minutes had been played, us Americans were on the short end by a score of three to naught. The Brothers of St. Alban the Martyr were pleased with this. The rest of the Madison Square Garden was upset, chiefly with Little Leary. I determined to make it up to them.

  There was a whistle at some point, an offside, and as we reformed I noticed Manny skate out of his way to get close to the boards where the monks were sitting. Brother Isaiah talked to him, pointing out various positions on the ice. Isaiah’s pointing finger and bossed eyes were at odds, but Manfred nodded studiously as if the world were suddenly making arithmetical sense. The Patriots scored on the next play, and they scored by virtue of Manfred either being at or passing to these locations indicated by Brother Isaiah the Blind.

  At the end of the first twenty, the score was five-naught for the Paddies.

  Blue Hermann was waiting for me outside the dressing room. His head was covered by gray clouds from his cigarette. “What gives, Leary?”

  “Manny’s playing good.” Newshounds have no sense of when a fellow wants to be left alone.

  “Good?”

  “Every now and again, everything rolls right for you. Tonight is Ozikean’s night.”

  “It certainly isn’t yours.”

  “Thank you kindly, Mr. Hermann.”

  I was determined to do better the second frame, so I dogged Manny’s every step. I threw so many checks at him that my body turned purple, and the most effect I could muster was to wobble him a little, destroy his picture-perfect form. I could stop Manny, but every time I did the referee would assess my conduct as illegal. I’d want to argue. “Why sure, I know that it’s normally against the rules to give a mook the double-hander across the back of the shins, but that’s Manfred out there, and the boy is making me look like a greenhorn!”

  And between whistles, Manfred would hustle over so that he could chat with the monks. The brothers were doing all the coaching, seemed like, but Patty Boyle didn’t mind as long as the score was seven-one, which it was after two periods. And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, the lone Amerk tally was perpetrated by White Wings O’Brien. He was playing better than yours truly, and the little git was three-sheeted.

  It was a sorry atmosphere in that N.Y. Americans dressing room. Muzz Tobias just kept shaking his head. Whatever was in his ear was currently burrowing into his brain. Muzzy had practically his whole hand up his ear. “Can’t figure it,” he said, ace coach that he was.

  “It’s those priests!” Little All Bright piped up. “Those priests are helping Oz.”

  “They ain’t priests,” I told Peterson. “They’re monks.”

  Bollicky Bill Stubbs asked, “How’s come you know so much about it?”

  “Those are the fellows from the Bowmanville reformatory, and me and Manny was both there, so that’s how come I know so much, Mr. Stubbs, and by the way you are looking even more ugly today than usual.”

  “So why,” demanded White Wings, “aren’t they telling you stuff?”

  “Why?” I jumped off the bench and glared at my teammates. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because I haven’t asked them.”

  “Well, for shit’s sake,” screamed Coach Tobias, “go ask them!”

  So I hit the ice early, and I skated over to where the brothers were sitting. They seemed to be expecting me; they all started to grin as I drew near. Isaiah the Blind beamed bright as the sun. “Hello, Percival,” he said quietly, nodding in my general direction, then somehow nailing me square with his bluey walleyes.

  “Hi.”

  “You can’t fight Manfred,” said Isaiah, just like that. “He’s too strong for that now. Be as the grass in the wind, Percival.”

  “Uh-yeah.”

  “And,” Brother Isaiah went on, “you worry too much about putting the puck in the net. The vision is yet for an appointed time, at the end it shall speak and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it: because it will surely come, it will not tarry. In other words, Percival, concentrate on the game along the boards. Play hard in the center. Be as a piece of music, young Percival. There is more to a song than the last note.”

  I muttered, “He’s making me look like a goat.”

  “You’re making yourself look like a goat,” said Brother Isaiah. The other monks nodded.

  “How come he’s all of a sudden so much better than me?”

  Isaiah the Blind shook his head gently. “He’s better than you at his game, Percival. But remember: ‘Go to battle in thine own person.’ You are a breeze through the Irish hills. A little lick of dragon flame. If Manfred catches you, you’re sausage meat, but who can catch the wind?”

  I nodded. “Down by six, twenty minutes to play. Grim.”

  “Numbers are for shit,” announced Brother Isaiah with finality.

  “Why did you come tonight? Why this game?”

  The monks laughed as if I’d said something funny, or as if I myself was crack-minded and mouthing morsels of weirdness. Brother Isaiah waved at the ice, and came damn close to missing. “Play hockey, Percival. We like hockey.”

  About a minute into the final frame, I found myself with the rubber over in the corner, Amerk end of the rink. My first thought was: How in hell am I going to tally this one, and then I told myself not to worry about that. Play the game in the corners, in the shadowed caves. I cleared my mind and worked at the rubber with my blade. I noticed that Manfred was coming at me, so I braced and solidified myself, and then I realized that Manfred was simply too big and strong, that I was going to get crushed and mashed and flattened like a flapjack. So what I did was, I blew like the wind. Manny hit me and I let him. Manfred went into the boards like a freight train. I rolled off to the side, taking the puck with me. Patriots kept coming at me, so I just slipped this way and that, a shadow, a zephyr through the lowlands. Before long I was in the clear, standing before the Ottawa net. Scoring the goal was as easy as spitting.

  I looked into the stands. Brother Isaiah was nodding. I wouldn’t lay money that he was nodding at me, but he was nodding and that made me feel a lot better.

  Well sir, I scored four times in that final twenty minutes. A hat trick with a feather in it, that’s what I like to say. Some people said it was the finest display of shinny playing that they ever witnessed. Other people—all they talked about was the game played by Manny Oz. He was impressive, that’s for damn sure. All of New York City argued it the next day, which one of us had played better. As Blue Hermann put it in the headline for his column: “Who is King of the Ice?”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  IAIN IS TUGGING AT MY SHIRTSLEEVE and telling me to wake up. I wasn’t asleep. I was merely cradling my head in the crook of my arm, shielding my weary eyes from the thestral Clay Bors Clinton. Even though he hasn’t seen me since he died in ‘sixty-seven, Clay is in no hurry. He is currently taking advantage of his status as ghost. He stands on top of a chair and stares into the abyss of a fat lady’s cleavage. Then Clay’s eyes
spark, and he fulfills a lifelong ambition, strolling nonchalant and invisible into the women’s john.

  “Wake up,” says Iain. “I have decided to toss away my hook, King. I’ve decided to transmogrify radically. It’ll be disgusting to watch. I’m gonna become amorphous, undifferentiated tissue. Gruesome.” Iain takes a sip of his boilermaker and starts to cry.

  Clay follows a woman out of the head. He is rubbing his hands with glee, and as the lady turns to sit down, Clay Clinton holds out his hands like eagle talons and takes a rush at her bubbles. Clay passes right through her and vanishes again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” says Iain, kicking back his chair and standing up, “Mr. James Brown!” Iain begins to dance, his eyes closed, his neck craned back, his face set in a kind of painful ecstasy.

  I lay down my head.

  Clay Clinton has his young man’s face and his old man’s potbelly. He is wearing a three-piece. Then again, Clay would dress up fancy to do his gardening. Not that he ever did any—I suspect it would come as something of a surprise to Clinton that seeds could be planted and flowers result. All in all, Clay B. Clinton looks damn good. Death has been kind to him.

  “Wake up, my liege,” says Iain. “I’ve brought you a boilermaker.”

  “Take it away.”

  “Go on” urges Clay. “It beats the pants off ginger ale, Percy, my punk.”

  “I have had alcohol before. Do not forget I drank a glass of champagne in one-nine one-nine.”

  “Champagne is alcoholic?”

  “Not good enough for you, eh?” Iain has been fed through the Wringer of Life seven or eight times but is still unctuous with festive befuddlement. “I know! The King needs to have this potion tested for him. Who better than I? I’m almost completely transmogrified now, I’m not afraid of anything.” Iain drains my boilermaker. “It’s fine. Tenderbar!” shouts Iain. “Another butt of malmsey!”

  “Why did you take the crucifix, Clay?”

  “You weren’t using it. I needed it.”

  “What did you need it for?”

  “Drink your drinky-poo. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be tipsy?”

  “Why don’t you tell me? You been tipsy enough times.”

  “For me, tipsiness was characterized by falling in love with the most proximate object. Sometimes, fortunately, it was a young lady. Occasionally it was a rather attractive young lady. But often, you know, there was no lady within miles, and then I’d fall in love with all manner of strange things.”

  “I admit it,” says Iain, “I’m tipsy. Know how I know? Know how I know that I’m tipsy? Because I feel this oneness with the cosmos. Like the universe is a big toilet bowl and God has just flushed.”

  “Wake up, daddy.”

  “I am awake.” I rear my head off the table, rub my eyes. Clay Clinton has vanished. “I think I should go to bed now.”

  Blue Hermann is struggling upwards with his thick oaken canes a-wobbling. “I think I should go to the head now.” His voice alarms the patronage, and after he’s spoken all you can hear is the beep-beep of the pinball games.

  “I’ll come with you. I’m your fucking nurse! Waiter, we are shipping out, me and the noble Blue! Upon our return I want to find that table loaded with mealie beer!”

  Those two move towards the Men’s sign.

  “I was on my way to the bathroom, you know, when I slipped on that toy fire truck of Clarence’s.”

  “Yeah, but, Poppa!” That’s my gormless boy, Clifford. When Clifford gets drunk he gets confused, Right now such things as breathing and sitting are baffling the hell out of him. I brook no interruptions.

  “Duane!” I call out. Duane-o is talking to Lonny Chandrian, nice boy that he is. “Come here, Duane, and I’ll tell the tale of how my hockey-playing career was ended.”

  Cliffy says, “That’s not a good story, Poppa.”

  “I’m talking hockey player to hockey player.”

  Killebrew slides his chair down. “Tell away, Mr. King.”

  “What happened was, we had three or four days off around Christmas. So I went back to Ottawa. Christmas Day was nice, I recall. Jane and Manny came over. Clay and some redhead. Manfred made a big turkey. Hugest thing you ever saw. He made a stuffing and all sorts of veggies. Eat yer veggies, Duane, please don’t forget.”

  “Perhaps I should have married that redhead, Percy, my pet. She was very acrobatic in matters sexual, none too squeamish.”

  “Never mind about that now. After dinner, we all sat around and exchanged gifts. Manny had knit me a scarf.”

  “Do you remember what I gave you?”

  “You gave me underwear!”

  “Underwear?” asks Duane-o.

  My boy Clifford looks so confused it breaks my heart.

  “Hey!” Iain sticks his head out the bathroom door. “Call Ross McWhirter at the Guinness Book of Records! The Blue man has unleashed a mighty torrent, and there’s no end in sight!”

  Here’s that strange Claire thing smiling at me. The diamond in his tooth is almost blinding. “It’s getting late, my dearies. Claire needs sleep. And I’m not just playing trombone in the Phantom Zone, I am tired.”

  “Do you remember what I gave the boys for presents?”

  “I damn well do. Fire trucks!”

  “Poppa …”

  “Am I to take it from your tone that fire trucks are somehow inappropriate gifts for young boys?”

  “Four minutes and seventeen seconds!” Iain and Blue Hermann are back. Iain grabs the waiter by the shoulder. “Fetch me a flagon of gruit.”

  “Gruit?”

  “A mixture of ale and bog myrtle.”

  “I am telling the story of how my hockey-playing days were ended.”

  Blue Hermann is grunting, seating himself. “It happened in Ottawa, at your home.”

  “Well, I’m off home to the little lady.” Lonny Chandrian stands up. He’s got no “little lady” at home, he’s got a tractor trailer that wears a girdle. I met her at one of those Maple Leave do’s. Mrs. Chandrian is a terrifying creature.

  “Goodbye, Lonny.”

  “Good night, King.”

  “The King of All the Hockey Players!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Loof-weeda!”

  There’s an old Indian at the table next to us, sleeping with his chin sunk onto his chest. When I say my nickname, he wakes up and grins sheepishly. “Sorry about that,” he mutters, and then he falls back to slumber.

  “Miss Claire is like cataleptic. I’m talking major motor malfunctions. I must go journey to the Land of Nod.” The Claire thing stands up, the hank of hair flip-flops across his face. “King, see you on the morrow. I’ll pick you up at the hotel. Duane—”

  “I’ll just go to the studio. I can get a lift.”

  “Right. Ta-tas and bye-byes!”

  “Poppa, let’s go now.”

  “What happened was, we had three or four days off around Christmas—”

  “I remember! I gave your wife a nightgown!”

  “That’s right, a nightgown you could see right through. She might as well have been naked as in that nightgown.”

  “I beg your pardon,” says Duane Killebrew, “I don’t really understand how a nightgown figures into all this.”

  “Maybe I’ll just have a wee keltie!”

  “Never mind about the nightgown. I suppose she looked nice enough in it. She was a very pretty girl. Ill health beat the tar out of her, mind you. Towards the end she looked like the Frankenstein monster, scarred up by all the operations. But I was talking about the fire trucks.”

  “You’re still mad about that, aren’t you, Poppa?”

  “Clifford, be quiet. So Christmas Day, Chloe took the lads out for a toboggan ride, because their Uncle Manny had given them new toboggans. I was all alone in the house. I was walking to the bathroom and all of a sudden, bang, I fell on my knee and mashed it up, and my hockey-playing days was over. Mind you, I don’t blame Clarence—”

  “It w
as me.”

  Duane stands up. “I better go. I’m meeting this girl.”

  “Well, Duane-o, it’s been a real pleasure.”

  “Let’s go with him, Percival. Let’s go meet the girl.”

  “Simmer down, dead man.”

  “Did you hear me, Poppa?”

  “Cliffy, I’m saying good-bye to Mr. Killebrew.”

  “It was me that left out the fire truck. I was playing with it. Rance wouldn’t leave his toys lying around. He was too neat. I left it out.”

  “You’re saying it was you who left the truck on the floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before, Cliffy?”

  “I didn’t want you to be mad at me.”

  I am bone weary. I look at the gormless Clifford. He is big and fat. Life has slapped his mush and dealt him a few stern ones to the gobbles. His wife ran off with the equipment manager from the South Grouse Louses, they haven’t won a game in years. I heave a sigh. “From now on make sure your toys are put away.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I’VE FINALLY GOT AHOLD of this dream I’ve been having. It is a weird one, my friends. My wife, Chloe, set great store in dreams, you know. She had a book, The Dictionary of Dreams, and every morning she would look up her sleeping fancies. They always meant the same thing, death, which I could have told her.

  So the dream, this extravaganza, takes place at Manfred’s funeral. Historically, it was a dull affair, not that I demand great excitement at funerals. But in my vision hellzapoppin’. The Amerks are all there, pissed as newts. There are also some actual newts. In my dream, the joint (a church that has had no upkeep or maintenance) is rampant with lizards, snakes, and blindworms. Hallie is there in a state of undress. Her body is unnaturally white, as though there never had been contact with sunlight or the outside world. Hallie is playing music for the funereal proceedings, leaping upon the keyboard of an old pipe organ. My wife, Chloe, likewise naked, is pumping the bellows. The music sounds of thunderstorms, men lost at sea. Hallie accompanies it with a loud moaning. In this she is joined by Poppa Rivers.