King Leary

by Paul Quarrington

  I watched as the Maple Leaves exchanged glances. Some of them shrugged, others merely pursed their lips and thought about it. Finally one of them—I believe it was Ed Nielson—got up his nerve and tried it. He ended up flat on his face, and there was a good deal of laughter. (Hearty laughter, too. What with Janey’s sea-cow braying, no one felt bashful about letting loose.) Someone else tried it, with no bettet a result. It wasn’t long before everyone was attempting this little stunt of Clarence’s, and there was much gaiety and falling down. Even Clay Bors Clinton gave it a whirl, still wearing his Santa Claus garb, and he did pretty good for a middle-aged fat man. I stood in the middle and watched.

  “Well, that’s my boy,” I said aloud. “He can do the St. Louis Whirlygig to boot!”

  And amidst all the chuckling and cackle, I heard one of the players say, “Not bad for a queer.”

  FORTY

  THEY HAVE HAULED ME INTO THE GREEN ROOM, laid me out on the couch, put a cold compress across my wrinkled brow. Pennylegion is currently out in the corridor shouting, “Lunch!” but he shouts it so loud and mean, the sound tearing the flesh along his throat, that no one will have any appetite left. But they clear out of the little studio. Pennylegion, the Claire thing, and Kim go off to discuss strategy. Iain is likely off in search of more booze. There’s a room full of hooch here, but you know what alkie sopheads are like, they are always wandering off to find another soggy heaven. So Iain is not around, even though I could well have been undergoing some life-threatening episode, a heart attack or brain explosion.

  So I am all alone in the Green Room. Even the spirits of Manny and Clay are taking a lunch break. Except I hear a scraping out in the hallway, the sound of slow and painful movement. There is a labored breathing, heavy as fog, and mixed into the croaking suck of the intake is a scream of air. If it is another ghostly specter, it’s the worst yet, and Manfred was gruesome beyond belief.

  It’s Blue Hermann, pulling himself into the room on his thick oaken canes. He glares at me on the couch. “Whew,” Blue sighs, fresh from Life’s Weary Wringer.

  “Hermann.” I nod. My voice is feeble, likely more so than it need be.

  Blue lurches for the bar. It takes him a few long moments to get there, and when he does Hermann goes into a bit of a feeding frenzy, sucking on a multitude of jugs, his toothless maw pumping like a pup’s on a nipple. When he is recovered sufficient he turns to me and says, “I was so scared you’d died.”

  “Yeah?” Blue Hermann ain’t such a bad sort, you know. He was a newspaperman, after all, so he can be forgiven much of his sharky rancidness.

  The Blue man pulls on his drink. “Yeah,” he nods, the melting flesh blurring on his face, “I was afraid you’d gone and died before I had a chance to beat the piss out of you.”

  “Say what?”

  “Clay made me promise I’d do it, but I have to admit, I really want to.”

  “I’d say your medication’s misfired, Hermann. Clay was my best friend.”

  “Clay was your only friend, you bastard.”

  “What about …?” I keep my counsel. “So why would Clay make you promise such a thing?”

  “That’s what he said. ‘Make him hurt.’” Blue shrugs. “So I’m gonna lay a beating on you.”

  “That’s very humorous, buck. In case you ain’t noticed, you are invalided and I executed a St. Louis Whirlygig yesterday.”

  “In case you ain’t noticed, Leary, I am armed.” Blue hefts up one of the walking sticks and waves it in the air. There is a whooosh. Point well taken. My own staff, the one with the dragon’s head, is resting over in the far corner. I start to get a bit nervous, especially since I am prone on the couch, and Hermann could make it over here with two or three well-executed lurches.

  “Hermann! Your brain is on the sizzle. Clay was my bosom companion. We were like brothers. They wrote books about us. Why would Clay make you promise to beat me up?”

  “He said, ‘Make him hurt.’ ”

  Blue lurches, and I pop off the couch. “Hold on there, Blue-boy.”

  “ ‘Make him hurt.’” Hermann takes another lurch, and this one has a bit of a side step to it, which blocks the avenue of escape I was about to pursue. He takes his third lurch and is within striking distance.

  “ ‘Make him hurt, Blue.’ That’s what Clay said. ‘Promise me. Make him hurt.’” Hermann raises his right-hand cane and takes a bead on my bald crown. “‘It’s the only way to save him.’ ”

  Well, folks, I still have some of the old Irishter quickness, because his eyes pop as I hit him in the stomach. He didn’t even see me move. I don’t hit him hard, mind you, I just apply the fist to his lower belly, where he stores the little oxygen he uses. Then I step around him neatly. “Just calm down, Hermann!” I realize he’s about to go over. I make a move toward him, even get my hand around his brittle rib cage, but he buckles and crumples and slips through my fingers. There is a sharp crack as his head meets the arm of the couch. Blue Hermann gives up his remaining air and his last two drinks. The carpet in the Green Room, formerly green, begins to turn purple in a halo around Blue’s head. I see blood trickle from his hairy ear. No scream will come. Blue Hermann is motionless. Can you imagine leaving two old farts like us on our own? Inexcusable. I stand over Blue’s body, hoping to hear a groan or a rusty wheeze. I hear nothing. It seems strange that Hermann could come so far and then give up the ghost so easy. It’s like Blue’s body eagerly tossed the old ghost heavenwards. His features are calmed by the fingers of Death. He hasn’t looked this good in years. Blue is almost handsome again. He is smiling and contented.

  I grab my dragon-head swagger stick. I flee.

  FORTY-ONE

  ALL THE CARS HAVE VANISHED except for the silver one, the car that has red-and-yellow flame licking down the length of it. The windows are tinted dark, so I can’t see inside, but I can see enough to know that it is occupied. It is a treacherous undertaking, the crossing of the parking lot. The sun and wind are staging a major coup, trying to replace the stubborn winter with fragile spring, and the ground is now half-water, half-ice, slick as bacon fat.

  I manage to achieve my destination, and I apply my whorly knuckles to the window on the passenger’s side. The blackened window rolls down, and Duane-o is grinning at me. He wears a cowboy hat and silver sunglasses that hide his eyes. “Feeling better, sir?”

  “Duane, I need your help. I got to get to this new Sports Hall of Fame.”

  “What about the commercial?”

  “We’re on the lunch break, ain’t we?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “It’s important, Duane. It’s most damn important.”

  Duane turns his head and says, “Hallie?”

  “What did you say that for, Duane-o?”

  “I was just asking Hallie if she’d mind driving us over to the Sports Hall of Fame,” Killebrew explains.

  I duck my head to look past him. It is some tall woman with more teeth than regular people. “Your name’s Hallie?” I ask her. “I knew a Hallie. Not very well, but I knew her.” I try to smile at her. I’m afraid she might be alarmed by my toothless gums (I actually have one tooth, as you know, but it is near the back), so I let the smile slip away from my crinkled puss. “What do you say, Miss Hallie? Will you drive the old King over to this Sports Hall of Fame? There’s something I got to do.”

  This girl Hallie nods. “Hop in.”

  Duane opens the door, steps out, leans his seat forward. I scuttle through to the back seat.

  I watch the melted snow move along the gutters.

  “What do you tell the tykes, Duane?”

  “Come again, King?”

  “Percy. Call me Percy. I ask, what do you tell the tykes when they come up for the old John Henry?”

  “Oh.” Duane shrugs. He’s got one arm around Hallie’s shoulders. “I tell them, you know, pay attention to their folks.”

  “Good.”

  “Get an education.”

  “That’s important.”


  “I tell them, stay away from dope.”

  “Dope? The tykes is on dope?”

  “Hey, they’re starting pretty young.”

  Hallie nods. “I did grass when I was eleven.”

  “Dope, you say? Mother of Jesus.” The sun is bullying the snow away. Over there a big shelf of the white stuff dislodges from a roof and slides earthward. It lands with a muffled sound, but I am reminded of fireworks. “Duane-o, I guess you know what it is I got to tell you,” says I.

  “What’s that, Percy?”

  “Well, son, you are the King now.”

  Duane almost giggles. “Perce, things have changed in the National Hockey League. We don’t really have a—”

  “There has always been a King. It was Newsy Lalonde before me. I had to fight like hell to get it away from him. Manfred helped, for all the good it did him. And I was the King for many years. But now I am an old, old man, and undeserving, what’s more. You are maybe the best there ever was—although I would have loved to have gone toe-to-toe with you in my prime—and you are the King. That’s all there is to it.”

  Hallie says, “King Killebrew.”

  “What do I do?” asks Duane. “Just start telling people I’m the new King?”

  “You’ll be surprised. It will just happen. You’ll be walking along the street and an old fat man with a little dog will walk by, and he’ll look up and smile and say ‘Good afternoon, King.’ ”

  Duane says, “That kid down in Pittsburgh isn’t going to think much of me being King.”

  “Oh, yes indeed. That’s one of the best things about being King, they’ll come at you, come at you hard, and you’ll get pumped up and your spirit will feel like it might break your bones, it’s so big, and you’ll play with your whole heart.”

  Duane nods slowly, turns around and grins at me. “Sounds good.”

  “But now, hey, you’re still a pup. Keep eating yer veggies, and try to have a good time now and again.”

  “King—Percy—there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What’s that, son?”

  “I hate fucking veggies!”

  The sunlight is playing on the road, dancing in the melted snow. “So do I, Duane. So do I.”

  And when Clay Bors Clinton died, four thousand people came by the Toronto Gardens to look at his bloated body lying in state. I wanted to go in by myself, and the coppers held back the multitudes as I did that. His face was still rum ruddy, despite an inch of powder and cream, and Clay wore a smile like he’d pulled something over on us all. Maybe he had. And I looked down upon him and I spoke. “You bastard.” Then the tears came. They burned my eyeballs, and my efforts to contain them produced the oddest sputtering noises since Mr. Ford first made automobiles. “You bastard,” I said, “you left me all alone.” I leant forward and pressed my thin lips to his forehead.

  I heard a strange shuffling sound, and I reared up, alarmed, spun around with meanness in my heart. It was Janey Millson Clinton, all clad in black. “Hello, Little Brother,” said she. Her voice had acquired a huskiness. “Lucky Number Seven.”

  I was a mess, tears and snot and such slick on my face. I nodded and wiped at it with the back of my hand.

  Janey’s left leg was harnessed in some sort of metal brace. Jane took a step closer to the coffin, and I saw that this left foot got dragged behind. The right leg was round and thick, no difference ‘twixt calf and ankle. Janey walked with the use of a cane, and her gait caused her to buckle in the middle and hump her back. She drew nearer the coffin, her gray eyes calm on Clay’s powdered face. Janey smiled up at me. “Looks good in makeup, doesn’t he?”

  I’d managed to clean myself up, mostly. I held out a hand and Janey accepted it without thinking. When she came within a foot of Clay she let go and rested her hand on the bier. She let out a small stream of air with relief and blew a lock of gray hair from her forehead.

  “Well,” I said, twisting my little miner’s cap between my hands, “I just—”

  “I know.” Janey nodded. “Me too.”

  It looked like no blood was getting to Jane’s face, that’s how pale it was. Her lips were colored a bright red, and I was reminded of the coloring books my sons used when they were small, because in neither case was an effort made to stay between the lines. Clarence would color outside on account of his general perversity, Clifford due to his gormlessness, and I wondered about Jane Clinton until I got a whiff of her breath and realized that she was tanked. She nodded as if I’d said something. “Pissed,” Janey acknowledged. “What can I say?”

  I muttered, “It’s a hard time.”

  Jane looked back at Clay. “Bastard,” she whispered.

  “Mustn’t speak ill of the departed,” I told her.

  “It’s a compliment,” she said. “He worked damn hard at being a bastard.”

  “Sister, I must be off.”

  “Where?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Where must you be off to, Little Brother? Your whole world is gone.”

  “I got some work to do in my office. I’m working on a blockbuster trade.” I allowed as only a matter of some gravity would let me escape the enclosure. Janey saw through my little lie, was kind enough to ignore it. Her knuckles had blanched under the strain of supporting herself upright.

  “I want to explain to you,” Jane said, covering a burp, “why I never chose between them.”

  I quickly turned to Clay, almost hoping that he might say something. He just grinned, enjoying my discomfort.

  “Well,” said I, licking my lips, “you did choose, didn’t you? You chose Clay.”

  “You three chose for me. You and this one sent Manny to New York. It was an evil thing to do, and there was a time when I wished you in hell, Little Brother. But really, you know, Manfred himself started back on the drink. Nobody poured the stuff down his throat. And I realized some time back that he did it for me. To choose for me. He chose aloneness, though he knew it would kill him. And left me with Clay.” Janey reached down and brushed a little forelock of snow white hair from Clay’s brow. It popped back mischievously. They say that your hair keeps growing after you’re dead. Clay’s hair behaved badly.

  “And I’m bloody pissed off that you three had the gall to choose for me,” declared Jane. “Because why couldn’t I have two loves?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You think you’re all such princely wonders, don’t you, you men? Each of you is all a woman could want. Far from it. I think that you men might be better off forming little committees, three or four of you at a time, and approaching women on that basis. Pardon me, will you take me and my mates to be your lawfully wedded husband? Then we might stand a chance at this game.”

  “Let’s go now, Janey.”

  “Between them,” Janey told me, “I was properly loved. Manfred was all fire and passion, Percy, and made me feel alive. He also got drunk and beat me. And when he wasn’t drinking there was a sadness in him that I couldn’t touch. This one here was all refined and gentlemanly and made me feel royal. But he could be cold as a dead fish, Little Brother, and you know it every bit as well as I do, and at the bottom of it he just didn’t care for other people. Except maybe for you, Little Brother. I believe Clay did care for you.

  “So between the pair of them, don’t you see, I had a fine lover. And you three had the damned nerve to choose for me.”

  “It’s the way the world rolls, Janey.”

  “Do you remember, Little Brother, once I asked you why you never fell in love with me? I know the answer to that now. It’s because you did.”

  I nodded slowly. “Come away, Little Sister. There’s people waiting to get in.”

  “Professional mourners, I hope. I don’t seem to have a tear to spend on him.”

  She took my arm and we left that place.

  FORTY-TWO

  THE LAKE IS WILD TODAY. Whitecaps rumble everywhere, kissed by light. The clouds move like bumper cars at a fairground. The Sports Hall o
f Fame looks a little silly next to all that. It was designed by an architect who liked glass and sharp angles, and the edifice itself resembles a broken ginger ale bottle. The building is squat and ugly, the most ambitious thing about it being the parking lot, acres and acres of black tarmac. There’s maybe ten cars, all parked in a clump near the front entrance. Hallie drives at these cars, her foot heavy on the pedal, steering with one long elegant finger. She slams on the brakes, whips the wheel, and we scream into the parking lot. “New Canadian Sports Hall of Fame,” she announces.

  Duane says, “Let us see what we shall see.”

  I put my gnarled hand in my pocket and feel the cool metal of the crucifix. I am a bit short of breath, because I know the place is full of hobgoblins, gremlins, and the like.

  “Man,” says Duane-o, savoring the air, “it is balmy out here.”

  Hallie even takes off her buckskin jacket, slings it over her shoulder. This lady’s got bubs, brother, but I don’t have the time to tell you about it.

  Just outside the main door is a little box, like an ice-fishing hut, wherein sits a little old witchy woman selling tickets. They cost a fin apiece, if you can believe that. Duane has to pay. I don’t got no jack.

  As we approach the front portals a Godlike voice rings out, “Welcome to the new Canadian Sports Hall of Fame!”

  “This place is wild,” chuckles Killebrew. “They got it all wired for sound.”

  The prime minister’s voice sounds, telling me what a glorious sports history Canada has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The prime minister is an Irishter, you know. The president of the U.S. of A. is an Irishter, too. And although this might be a bit unpatriotic of me, it seems odd that this is so, because for centuries we been watching how well us Irishters govern our own country (piss poorly, anyone would admit), so it strikes me as foolhardy to give these mooks free rein over other nations. If the Mexicans ever elect an Irish president we’re in heaps of trouble.