“It was the same for me back in nineteen nineteen.”
“Aren’t you hockey legend Percy ‘King’ Leary?”
AND AREN’T YOU FUTURE HALL-OF-FAMER DUANE KILLEBREW?
“And aren’t you … future hall-of-famer … Duane Killebrew?”
Manny gets up, at least most of him does. He roams around the room, investigating its corners and contents. His passage across to the other side was a rough one, from what I understand. It was undignified.
“That’s what’s so bad about it, boy. It can steal your dignity.”
“What’s that, Kinger-Binger, an ad lib?”
“The booze, I mean.”
“I’m just having a wee nog and pomperkin. What the fuck could be more civilized?”
“He was all alone in a hotel room.”
“It’s not my fault all’s they have is shandygaff and rumbullion, so of course I get drunk. What did everyone expect?”
“All alone in a hotel room.”
“For the early part of the evening” Manny Oz says, “Hallie was with me. We had some wine and some cocaine. We talked for a while, and then we loved each other. Hallie had to go somewhere. She gave me a bottle of whiskey for a present. I wondered why she’d given me a present. Well, it was New Year’s Eve. Then I felt very far away from home. Very far away. Sol took the whiskey and I drank it all, very fast. And while my brain was still buzzing from that, I broke the bottle across the windowsill and cut myself. Here and here. Then I went to the bed and lay down. It was not a bad feeling, Percival. I felt happy just before the end.”
“You didn’t cut yourself, Manfred. You died of something called ‘alcoholic insult to the brain.’ ”
Manny shrugs. “I remember what I remember.”
Clay floats toward me. “Do you think Jubal and I would have let it be known that Manfred was a suicide?”
“You knew this?”
“Well, St. Amour implied as much to me, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You can see why I need that crucifix! You never even noticed it was gone.”
“I thought it was with my hats.”
“Hats? What hats?”
“The hats I got for scoring real, true hat tricks, which is three goals in a row in the same period.”
The Claire thing and Pennylegion are standing in front of me. The director’s thigh is taking a furious beating from the clipboard. “Fine, fine,” he says, “the old fart is visiting relatives in Flip City.”
I have to be sneaky here. “I bet you didn’t know that, did you, Mr. Pennylegion?”
“Know what, what?”
“That a true hat trick is three goals all in a row, all in the same period.”
“A piece of information that has inexplicably eluded my grasp all these years.”
“I thought maybe you could use that fact in your advert. Like this here. Friends, a true hat trick is all three goals all in a row in the same frame. And a true ginger ale is this crap here.”
Pennylegion and the Claire thing exchange trepidatious glances. Then they get excited, they start to nod rapidly and energetically. They make for the doorway. I study the dragon’s head on top of my walking stick. It bears a distinct resemblance to that loutish growtnoll Pennylegion.
Blue Hermann is awake. “You ought to get paid extra for that, Leary.”
“Blue, how did Manny Oz die?”
“You know.”
“Tell me the truth. Did Manfred break a whiskey bottle over the windowsill and cut himself on the wrists?”
Blue’s eyebrows—each comprising one or two snowy white tendrils—begin a slow climb up his forehead. “If something like that happened,” he says finally, his voice quiet and inhuman, “Jubal St. Amour would have paid a lot of money to the coroner of New York City to alter the death certificate. And if there was a newshound who knew the scoop—because, for instance, he went to the Forrest Hotel to wish Manfred a Happy New Year—then Jubal would have given him a lot of money to never say what he saw. And that newsman likely would have taken the money—because he needed it for booze, mostly—and then he might have moved away from New York. Maybe to Toronto. So he would not be at liberty to discuss what happened to Manfred Ozikean.”
“But he couldn’t have done it. Manfred was a Catholic.”
“Manny died without a God.”
“I’m glad Hallie was with him, at least for a while. She was a hell of a girl.”
Blue Hermann tilts his head, bewildered. “How do you know all this?”
Iain goes down spectacularly, almost as if he was hip-checked by the ghost of the son of a bitch Sprague Cleghorn. “Whoopsy daisy!” Iain lies there motionless for a while. “All right, all right,” he says. “I admit it. I am a drunker and a lowly, lorn shebeener.” He crawls back to his feet. “But what the hey. A little drop of usquebaugh never did no one no harm!”
Iain searches the floor for something to blame for his tumble. Then his brain skips off in another direction. For some reason Iain starts to pretend that he’s playing the saxophone, and he blows a lot of razzes and spit through his lips.
“Calm down, boy.”
“Loof-weeda!” calls Iain. “Care for a drinky-poo?”
“I want a drinky-poo,” snarls Blue Hermann, the ancient scribe.
“What’s your pleasure? A little dram of Nelly’s Death?”
Blue lifts his palsied claw and waves it in the air. “Gimme the top shelf in a pail.”
Manny and Clay are talking over in a corner. They are sharing laughter, which surprises me. I assumed they’d not have much to say to each other. I am sitting alone, wondering what is so damn funny.
THIRTY-NINE
“NICE HAT TRICK you got last night, Duane.”
The lights are bright, blinding bright. I can’t see nothing except whiteness. It makes me very nervous. There are strange dark forms out there—Pennylegion and the Claire thing. They seem less real than even Manfred and Clay, who elected to stay in the Green Room, unimpressed by the fact that I am making a television advert.
“Thank you, King,” says Killebrew.
King is right. Lookee here. I got the old Ottawa Paddies jersey on, and it’s got the good old number seven stitched on the back. It ain’t the genuine article, though, because my jersey was cotton, and this is made out of some Space Age material. I’m baking inside of it, and my undershirt is soaked through.
“But a true hat trick is three goals in a row in the same period.” And when you get that, if you happen to be employed by the notorious gangster Jubal St. Amour, Hallie plays the piano and then strips off. She stands naked in the moonlight. “And when you get that,” I go on, “you get yourself a real top hat.” I got one behind my back, the idea being that at the end of the commercial, I’m going to place it on Duane-o’s head. They pay big bucks for this caca.
It’s Duane’s turn to do the talking, a true ginger ale is Acadia dregs. I’m glad I don’t have to say that. I still have some pride. Uh-oh, my turn. “I been drinking it all my life.” Or at least, since a party in the parish hall when I was fifteen. That was when Manny first tasted liquor, and don’t tell me that Clay Bors Clinton didn’t give it to him. I went back and got the flask so’s Clay wouldn’t be found out. Always covering up for the lad.
“King!” screams Pennylegion.
“Yo?”
“You always get stuck on this line!”
“What is it again?”
“Duane says, ‘Why do you like Acadia Dry ginger ale?’ and you say, ‘Because it’s bubbly and delicious; it feels like leprechauns are dancing in my throat.’ ”
I am pursued by ghosts and goblins. How am I supposed to remember so foolish a speech as that? I heave a sigh and tell them that I’ll try once more. When the line comes, it eludes me. I am thinking about Hallie, something that happens whenever I hear those words “hat trick.”
“Because—” I start.
“King!” screams Pennylegion.
“Because it m
akes me pissed!” Manny and Clay come bursting out of the Green Room, their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. “It makes me feel more alive! It tingles my innards and causes burps of glory!”
“King!”
“It is bubbly and delicious. It tastes like leprechauns are dancing in my throat.”
“King, you talk like Muggs fucking Mahoney! Don’t say ‘troat.’ ”
“It’s the same way I been talking all my life.”
“Take it from Duane’s line: ‘Why do you like Acadia Dry ginger ale?’ ”
Duane says his line. He’s very good at this—doesn’t even sweat. I’m more than pleased. Between you and me, he is the new King. I’m going to tell him later on. Uh-oh. I have just failed to put the hat on Duane’s head. This is, to judge from Pennylegion’s reaction, a crime ranked just below treason. The cameras roll again. I reach up and place the top hat on Kille-brew’s curly head. Then we both grin at the camera. I have been told by Kim (who finally donned a sweater, put off by my leering, my best achievement today) to keep my mouth closed when I smile. Most television viewers expect more than the one tooth. It is very hot under the lights and wearing the plastic Ottawa Paddies sweater.
Down I go, felled as by a Cleghorn two-hander.
Now this is interesting. This is, I suspect, the Twilight Zone. It isn’t death, I know that much, because you don’t die from making television adverts. I just overheated and fainted, so now I’m in this Twilight Zone affair. It’s like my boy Clarence’s show on the television. My son Rance was a writer and a poet.
There he is there. He is just a little git, can’t weigh much more than one thirty-five, maybe five foot six. He’s got a face that looks like it enjoys getting punched up. Rance’s nose is so small and squashed that it’s easy to overlook. He’s got dark little eyes and he squints, suspicious about everything. But, I have to admit, Rance has a nice smile. He keeps it slid up sideways on his right cheek, and he puts a dead-end cigarette butt in it and puffs away happily.
“Clarence!” I rush toward him, stop myself short.
“Pops,” he nods. Rance reaches up and tilts the coal miner’s cap he wears, making a kind of formal salute.
“It was the gormless Cliffy left out the fire truck, Clarence.”
“Which fire truck is this, Pops?”
“The one I tripped over, thereby busting my knee. And if I hadn’t busted my knee, I probably would never have done what I done to Manny, because I would have fought him for it fair and square.”
“Fought him for what?”
“For being the King.”
Rance makes a farting sound, flips away his spent butt. “There ain’t no King, man.”
“The hell you say. Newsy Lalonde was the King, but I fought him for it and I won. And Sprague came at me, but I held him off. Eddie Shore come at me, and we battled long and hard, but I held him off. And Manny, Manny …” I stop to breathe. There is little fresh air in the Twilight Zone. “I knew Manfred wouldn’t make it, Rance. I knew what would happen.”
Clarence lights up another smoke, plays with it between his yellowed fingers. “You shouldn’t have oughta gone and done it, Daddy-o.”
“No,” I agree. “They don’t even have Manny in the new Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.”
“I dedicated ‘The Stink of Grace’ to him, you know.”
“This is how you honor your Uncle Manfred? By dedicating pornography to him?”
“Give it a rest, baby.”
“Your mother almost died of embarrassment.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Well, I did! Every morning it would be in the papers, how this poem was obscene. And it wasn’t even good old-fashioned obscene, it was—” I can feel my face redden.
“It was which?” Rance flips his eyebrows up a bit.
“It was queer stuff.”
“Oh, is that what the problem is?”
“You’re a fairy!” It is hard to breathe in the Twilight Zone. “How could you do that to me?”
“Old fart.”
“It makes me ill, my own flesh and blood.”
“Wrinkled codger.”
“Fruit.”
“Wizened molelike yob.”
“Flaming pansy-poof!”
“Gnarly maggoty man, curled up under a rock!”
“Little girly bum-boy!”
“Crinkled grub! Revolting roundworm!”
In 1954, we had a party at the Toronto Gardens for Christmas. All of the Leaves came, bringing with them their tykes and wives. It was for a pleasure skate, everyone floating across the ice, looking so much like Sunday afternoon on the Rideau. I came with my wife, Chloe, who was by this time confined to a wheelchair. God had done a number on her legs. Chloe was the provincial champion for the Girls’ Under-Eighteen Hundred-Yard Dash in 1916, but apparently such feats don’t impress the Almighty. So I wheeled Chloe about on the ice. She whistled along with the recording of organ music. My son Clifford was also there, thirty-three years old, already the owner of a big belly. He brought his wife, Janine (who spent the entire time flirting with Eddie Pierce, the equipment manager), and he brought the infant Thom, who is my grandson. Thom stayed mostly perched up on Cliffy’s shoulders. Clifford laughed a lot that day, and he had fun being with all the hockey players.
Clinton played Santa Claus. He gave all his players tickets to resorts and leisure spas for them to use over the summer. He gave me underwear, it seems like he was always giving me underwear. I don’t know why; I had enough. Clay now, Clay would lose underwear like nobody’s business. He could lose two or three pair a day, and I’m sure the globe is still littered with Clinton’s gotchies.
Janey was there. I’m sure Clay hadn’t spoken to her for months. But Jane came. Her legs were as thick as Chloe’s were thin, inordinately stout for some reason. Jane still kept herself fine, her hair was nice and all, but she really didn’t look too well. Mostly it was her eyes. They had turned a somber shade, there was no sparkle to them. They were dead eyes. Janey talked to the hockey players, laughing and such, but I knew that it was studied and practiced.
And Janey said to me, “Hello, Little Brother.”
“Sister.”
“Merry frigging Christmas.” And then she started to cry, but it was quick and hard, and she snuffled and wiped it all away with the back of her hand. “Lucky Number Seven,” she said, “let’s see that move.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Let’s be young once more. Up ahead there’s Bertie Corbeau.”
“The Little Napoleon standing behind him, guarding the net.”
“First things first, Little Brother. How do you get around Corbeau?”
“I execute the St. Louis Whirlygig, Sister, a feat of majestic grace!”
“Do it.”
“The Whirlygig?”
“Do it, Little Leary.”
“Janey, I’m fifty-four years old.”
“Little Brother, it would make me happy.”
“Well, for you.”
I gave over the handles of Chloe’s contraption to her sister. Then I did a couple of squats, trying to limber up the pins. The Maple Leaves stopped to stare, digging each other in the ribs and whispering. “I’m about to give you boys a wee lesson,” I told them. “When you got a defender up ahead—not no whussy like you fellows play, I’m talking about someone mean and nasty like Joe Hall or Billy Boy Henderson—then here’s how you get around him.” I launched myself down the ice. Santa Claus gave me a big thumbs-up as I passed. Once I crossed the blue line, I leapt skyward. The Whirlygig itself was a beauty, and I loved the feel of the cold wind as it wrapped me in its arms, but my ankle buckled on the landing. One little ankle wobble and say good night, sister. So my ankle gave, just a little bit, but by the time that worked itself up to my hip I was careening. I hit the ice—taking most of the fall with my right elbow, which caused no end of pain—and slid into the endboards. My head met the wood with quite a thud, but I got a nice hard head.
“Eeyuh!”
It sounded like there was a drunken vulture up in the light stanchions.
“Eeyuh, eeyuh, hooo!”
I could hear the spray of mucus, the popping of corset buttons.
“Hee, hee, hee, haaaaa!”
I lay on the ground and grinned, listening to the sweet sound of Janey’s laughter.
A pair of skates approached me. They were white skates, with pics on the end. What was surprising to me was that they were attached to a man’s legs. I heard a voice ask, “You all right, Pops?”
I felt giddy, maybe breathless from exertion, for sure cheered by Jane’s guffaws. (I could hear her still at it; by this time she’d be buckled over and dropping to her knees.) “What the hell you got sunglasses on for, lad? The glare off the ice hurt your eyes?”
Clarence helped me on to my feet, not that I needed much assistance. I pulled the butt out of his crooked grin. “Don’t never smoke a cigarette,” I snarled.
Rance looked foolish, that’s my estimation. He was wearing sunglasses and sporting one of those pointed beards that just cover the chin. He was wearing clothes that were too tight, all of them black as midnight.
“What were you doing, Poppa-reno?”
“Well,” I said, wiping the bits of ice from my body, “Mrs. Clinton wanted to see me do the famous St. Louis Whirlygig.”
Janey was trying to stifle her laughter in Chloe’s bony shoulder.
Clarence cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered down the ice. “Aunt Janey!”
Janey looked up, tears and God knows what running all over her face. She waved, blew my son a kiss.
“Here you go, ma’am.”
Clarence dug in his toes and started off. It didn’t take him long to get his speed up, but dammit, he was skating like a girl, pushing off the front of his foot, his hands held aloft for balance. But I’ll give the boy this much, he executed the stunt. It damn near took my breath away, that’s how surprised I was. He went up into the air, turned a neat three-sixty, landed on a pin. Even the hockey players were impressed. Some of them applauded. And Rance wasn’t through. He turned around, sailed backwards, and then he leant forward and brought one leg off the ice. Backwards on one foot! I’ll tell you a secret, I can’t do that, never could. Mind you, I can’t imagine why I’d want to. You can’t elude Sprague Cleghorn with one leg in the air and headed arseways. Still, I did try it one day when I was all alone on the ice, and I was unable to pull it off.
King Leary Page 21
