Roscoe

by William Kennedy

  “I called every brewery in four counties. Either they’re closed or they won’t handle any orders. Imagine no beer with a mob like this in the joint?”

  “I’ll call and get you a delivery,” Roscoe said.

  “You do and you drink free till Christmas.”

  “Mahoney, you know how to touch a man’s heart.”

  Glenn Miller was on the jukebox—At Last, my love has come along—and two dozen soldiers and sailors at the bar were randomly kissing and fondling young and not-so-young women. Civilian males, one flashing his Ruptured Duck, the discharge button that proved he’d also served, stood by for seconds, or thirds. Roscoe recognized a petite woman who worked in his building, who always offered up a dry little smile in the elevator; and here she stood in a prolonged, sloppy kiss, her arms and a provocative stockinged leg wrapped around a sailor.

  “This reminds me,” Roscoe said to Elisha. “Shouldn’t you call your wife?”

  “Curb your salacious tongue.”

  “I mean no insult, old man, but we mustn’t be without our women amid all this naked lust. You call Veronica, I’ll call Trish, and we’ll carry on elsewhere.”

  “No need to call Trish,” Elisha said, pointing to a wooden booth by the front door where two soldiers, their caps in a puddle of beer on the table, were muzzling Trish, taking turns kissing her. As Roscoe walked toward her table he saw both soldiers’ hands roaming inside her unbuttoned blouse.

  “Hello, honey,” Trish said, “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Both soldiers removed their hands from her chest and looked up at Roscoe. One soldier looked sixteen.

  “I’ll be right with you, Rosky,” Trish said, buttoning up.

  “Carry on, soldiers,” Roscoe said. “They’re what you were fighting for,” and he went back to Elisha at the bar.

  “Trish is a very patriotic young woman,” Elisha said.

  “If sex were bazookas,” Roscoe said, “she could’ve taken Saipan all by herself.”

  Roscoe saw Trish coming toward him, her walk a concerto of swivels and jiggles that entertained multitudes in the corridors of the Capitol, where she worked for the Democratic leader of the Assembly. She lived in an apartment on Dove Street, and Roscoe paid her rent. With her curly brown bangs still intact despite the muzzling, Trish explained everything to Roscoe.

  “Those soldiers were in the Battle of the Bulge,” she said. “Poor babies. I gave them little pecks and they got very excited. Are you angry at Trishie?”

  “Trishie, Trishie, would I get angry if my rabbit carnalized another rabbit? Fornication is God’s fault, not yours.”

  “I feel the same way,” she said.

  “I know you do, sweetness. Now, go be kind to those soldiers.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Of course. They may have battle wounds.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “Where the night wind takes me. Try not to get the clap.”

  “Bye, honey,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Goodbye forever, little ding-ding,” he said, but she didn’t hear, was already on her way back to the soldiers.

  “You really mean that goodbye forever?” Elisha asked.

  “As my sainted father used to say, Irish girls either fuck everybody or nobody. Which category do you think suits Trish?”

  Someone turned up the jukebox and a stupefyingly loud Latin tune blasted through The Tavern.

  “Let this farce end,” Elisha said. “The gin isn’t worth it.”

  “I concur,” Roscoe said, and they downed their drinks and moved toward the door.

  “I had a thought about Cutie LaRue,” Elisha said. “Why not run him as the wild-card candidate?”

  “Cutie for mayor?”

  “He’s such a clown, and he can make a speech. He’d love the attention. People would vote for him just to say they did. And he’d get the liberals and goo-goos who hate us but can’t pull that Republican lever.”

  “By God, Elisha, that’s brilliant. Cutie, the crackpot candidate!”

  “Have I helped you stop worrying?”

  “No, but now I can smile while I worry.”

  A vandal had opened a hydrant on Pearl Street near Sheridan Avenue. A roaming vendor was hawking V-J buttons, flags had blossomed in lighted store windows and dangled everywhere from light poles and roofs, the mob filling every part of the street. As Roscoe and Elisha debated their move, The Tavern’s door flew open and a conga line burst into the street, led by a sailor, with Trish holding his hips, one of her soldiers holding hers, and a dozen others snaking along behind them to the Latin music from the bar.

  Roscoe and Elisha pushed through the sidewalk mobs, and at State and Pearl they could see a patriotic bonfire blazing down by the Plaza. Roscoe remembered the ambivalent tensions of patriotism invading this block on the April day in 1943 when Alex went to war. Patsy had ordered up a parade with flags, bugles, drums, and an Albany Academy color guard marching the twenty-seven-year-old Mayor into a giltedged political future. Alex, off to serve his country as a buck private, marched with a platoon of other young bucks, proles mostly, none out of Albany Academy, Groton, and Yale like him, and none with the boneheaded insistence on rolling dice for his life. Roscoe, titular head of the local Draft Board, could easily have found an ailment to defer Alex, let him continue as Albany’s boyish wartime mayor. But Patsy had given Alex the word: “Son, if you don’t serve, you’re all done in politics. They’ll call you a slacker, and I won’t run you for re-election. Go down and join the navy and we’ll get you a commission.” But Alex joined the army, asked for the infantry, and got it. And Elisha and Roscoe could not change his mind.

  There he came that day, down the middle of State Street, Roscoe and Elisha right here beaming at their boy on his way to becoming food for powder—Elisha, elated by his son’s political success, and Roscoe, the exulting mentor: Wasn’t it I taught you to hold your whiskey, lad? Wasn’t it I instructed you in the survival tactics of the carouse, at which you excelled early? Come back safe and soon, and we’ll all rekindle the festive fire.

  At Lodge Street they heard the organ music, and Elisha walked toward it through the open doors of St. Peter’s. Roscoe arched an eyebrow but followed him into the old French Gothic bluestone church, an Episcopal parish well into its third century. The church was fully lit and half full of silent people staring at the altar, where seven candles burned in each of two silver candelabra, the pair a gift from Elisha’s father, Ariel Fitzgibbon. Women were weeping, some in a state of rapture. Elderly couples were holding hands, young people whispering excitedly. A soldier knelt with head down on the back of the pew. A woman in mourning entered and instantly knelt in the middle aisle.

  Pews were filling as Roscoe and Elisha stood at the back of the church, Roscoe bemused by Elisha’s odd smile. Smiling that Alex would come back alive from Europe? Whatever was inside that stately head, Roscoe could not read it clearly. Elisha was scanning the church as if he were a tourist; but he was surely summoned here by what those familiar bells meant to his encrusted Episcopal soul. One stained-glass window through which the day’s waning light was entering had been the gift, in the late 1870s, of Lyman Fitzgibbon. Designed by Burne-Jones, it bore a legend that read, “Per industria nil sine Numine”—Nothing through diligence without the Divine Will—which Roscoe translated as, “Don’t make a serious move without the political okay.”

  An organist moved through a five-noted chant and then a glissando of the first two bars of “America,” pausing on a long note, and then he began a second chant. Elisha interrupted the organist, returning to the anthem. “My country, ’tis of thee,” he sang, with might in his voice, and every head turned to see this intruder continue with “Sweet land of liberty, / Of thee I sing . . .” The organist followed Elisha, and the solemnizers of peace joined him, the familiar music and words stirring their souls as the splendid pipes of this chorister from nowhere arced into the vault of the nave; and when the verse e
nded and the silence longed to explode into applause, Elisha continued with a little-known verse: “Let music swell the breeze, / And ring from all the trees / Sweet freedom’s song . . .”

  People applauded with simple nods and uncontrollably weepy smiles, all of them climbing down from the ramparts, linked by the newness of this peace that also needed leadership, affirming that Elisha had spoken aloud the very prayer they’d all been seeking in silence, the marrow of patriotic holiness achingly evoked by this saloon tenor whom Roscoe had never before known to sing solo in church, or sing so well in any saloon anywhere.

  “Bravura performance,” Roscoe said as they went out onto State Street.

  “Cheap chauvinism,” said Elisha. “I couldn’t help myself. It was like having holy hiccups.”

  “You underrate your achievement. My blood cells turned red, white, and blue.”

  “Don’t hold it against me. Remember that the kamikazes are still out there, and the war criminals will cut themselves in two rather than face the music.”

  “Kamikazes? War criminals?”

  “Don’t forget I said this.”

  They walked to the Albany Garage, where Roscoe housed his two-door 1941 Plymouth, and they headed for Tivoli to rendezvous with Veronica, an upgrading of life for Roscoe just to see her. But as he drove, distracted, perhaps, by the gin, or by seeing Trish as a soldier-and-sailor sandwich, or relief at being rid of her, or by going public with his plan to quit politics, he began playing eye games with moving vehicles, blanking them out with his right eye, then his left, eliminating them entirely by closing both eyes.

  “Why are you closing your eyes while you drive?” Elisha asked.

  “I’m playing Albany roulette.”

  “Let me out.”

  “You’ll be home in ten minutes.”

  “Playing games with death. You really are in trouble.”

  “I’m all right.” But he kept closing one eye, then the other.

  “This is a form of suicide,” Elisha said. “Is that your plan?”

  “No. Not my style.”

  “It’s everybody’s style at some point. And if you kill me while you’re at it, that’s murder.”

  “Not at all my style,” Roscoe said.

  “Open your eyes and listen to me. I’m the one who’s quitting, not you.”

  Roscoe braked instantly and swerved to avoid sideswiping an oncoming trolley car, then climbed a curb and struck a small tree. The impact was light, but it drove the steering wheel into the deep folds of Roscoe’s abdomen and threw Elisha into the windshield. Blood instantly gushed, and Elisha pressed his pocket handkerchief onto his forehead.

  “Let me see that,” Roscoe said, and when he saw the wound he said, “Stitches.”

  He backed the car onto the street and drove to Albany Hospital. They both could walk to the emergency room, which was accumulating assorted brawling louts and burn victims and skewed drivers like Roscoe, all celebrating peace with blood and fire and pain. As a nurse started to take Elisha off to stanch his bleeding, Roscoe asked, “What’s this quitting stuff?”

  “Believe me, it’s real,” Elisha said. “Unless you want to give Patsy a heart attack, don’t you run off just yet.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m doing a fadeaway,” Elisha said. “Time’s up.”

  “Suddenly there’s a retirement epidemic,” Roscoe said. “Do you suppose the Japs put something in our drinking water?”

  He felt new pain in his stomach, and his head ached from the resurrection of old doubt. You think you’ve done something radical and it turns out you’ve done nothing at all.

  Roscoe recognized a nun sitting in the next bay of the emergency room, Arlene Flinn from Arbor Hill, a Sister of the Sacred Heart, hundred and one pounds, tiny, dark-haired, sharp-nosed beauty in adolescence, when Roscoe had a crush on her. Those once-spunky eyes were now reshaped behind spectacles, her hair hidden under her starched wimple.

  “Arlene?” he said. “Is that you?”

  “Oh, Roscoe,” she said. “Roscoe Conway.”

  Her tone of voice suggested to Roscoe that she remembered the day he caught her in his arms and kissed her by the holy-water fountain in St. Joseph’s Church. Two days later she went off to the nunnery—the beginning of your control over women, Ros.

  “Are you ill, Arlene?” he asked her.

  “A toothache,” she said. “The pain is horrible.” She was humming something that sounded like a Benediction—hymn—“O Salutaris,” was it?

  “How’s your father?” he asked.

  “Oh dear, my father,” Arlene said. “He died six months ago.”

  “I didn’t know. I never saw it in the paper.”

  “He died in Poughkeepsie. My brother didn’t want it publicized.”

  “I knew he was down there. I’m sorry, Arlene.”

  “He hated all you politicians,” she said. “Especially Patsy McCall.”

  “We offered him anything he wanted when he came out of jail. He wouldn’t talk to us.”

  “Could you blame him?”

  Roscoe chose not to answer. Arlene’s father, Artie Flinn, had been the chief plugger for the Albany baseball pool, which Patsy ran. The federal DA indicted Artie when he was caught with plugged pool sheets and heavy money, and he got six years, the scapegoat. Patsy took care of Artie’s wife and family while Artie was inside, but Artie came out Patsy’s enemy. Also, he went strange, took to jumping off tall buildings into the river, holding the pet pigeon he brought home from jail, and letting the pigeon go before he hit the water. People told him he could fly like his pigeon, but in one jump a piece of sunken metal sliced off part of his left leg. He believed the leg would grow back, and when it didn’t, he punched holes in it with an ice pick and had to be put away.

  “I see your brother Roy from time to time,” Roscoe said.

  “I don’t see him,” Arlene said. “I don’t approve of that newspaper he runs. It’s scandalous. Roscoe, where’s that dentist? I can’t stand this pain.”

  “Have a swig of this and hold it on the tooth.” He handed her his flask of compassionate gin.

  She held the gin, then swallowed it, took a second, squidged her cheek and held it, swallowed it, “Sweet Mother, Roscoe, this doesn’t help a bit,” then a third gin, and he told her to keep the flask as they took him for X-rays of his rib cage.

  “When are you going to get this holy woman a dentist?” Roscoe asked the nurse.

  “He’s on the way,” the nurse said.

  Roscoe’s X-rays were negative, and a young intern suggested an ice bag for his stomach and gave him a packet of pills for his blood pressure. “You’ll be sore, but nothing’s broken and we don’t see any bleeding.”

  Roscoe saw Veronica standing by a half-open curtain in the bay where Elisha lay on a stretcher. Her long blond hair was wrapped into a quick knot at the back of her head, she wore no makeup and was barelegged in low heels and a candy-striped summer dress. Roscoe thought she looked sublime.

  “What’s the verdict?” he asked her.

  She kissed his cheek. “They’re taking him upstairs for the stitches. How are your bruises?”

  Roscoe parted his gut. “With this padding it takes quite a whack to do me any damage.”

  “If Elisha has a concussion,” Veronica said, “they’ll keep him overnight.”

  A nurse came to wheel Elisha out.

  “Are you all right?” Elisha asked Roscoe.

  “Better than you,” Roscoe said. “Artie Flinn’s daughter, Arlene, is here with a toothache. She’s a nun.”

  “Is that Artie Flinn from the baseball pool?” Veronica asked.

  “It is.”

  “Artie was not one of our finest hours,” Elisha said. “What’s he doing?”

  “He died in Poughkeepsie six months ago,” Roscoe said.

  “Tragic,” Elisha said. “We couldn’t protect him. I never knew his daughter.”

  “I had a crush on her in school,” Ro
scoe said. “My behavior drove her into the nunnery.”

  “He’s bragging again,” Veronica said.

  “I’ll catch up with you two after your stitches,” Roscoe said.

  In the waiting room Arlene was walking in circles, waving Roscoe’s flask, still singing her hymn, very loud: “. . . Quae coeli pandis ostium; Bella premunt hostilia . . .” She was off balance from the drink, and a nurse was about to take her in hand when she whirled away and backhanded the nurse’s jaw with Roscoe’s flask. “Where are you, Jesus?” she called out. “I’m in pain. Quae coeli pandis ostium...”

  An intern moved to help the nurse subdue the wild nun, but Roscoe stepped in and said, “I’ll take care of her, Doctor. I’m her cousin, and my brother is a dentist. Tell your dentist to go to hell for his next patient.”

  “God bless you, Roscoe,” Arlene said. “The pain is awful and the gin is gone.”

  She wobbled and almost fell, Roscoe’s first gin-soaked nun. He swept her into his arms, a feather, the pain from his trauma twisting a small knife in his belly as he carried her to the parking lot.

  “This is the date we never had, Arlene,” he said. “I dearly love the way you turned out.”

  “Don’t you dare be nice to me, Roscoe. I don’t want it. I’m going to stay a virgin till I die.” She resumed her hymn—“. . . Bella premunt hostilia ...” —as he drove her uptown in his car with the dented bumper.

  “I’ve never known a woman like you, Arlene.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Let’s take a boat to Bermuda.”

  “I’ve still got a toothache.”

  Roscoe found Doc Reardon, who did free dental work for select Democrats, and he promptly eliminated her pain and fixed the blessed tooth. Arlene then promised Roscoe and the doc a place among the lesser angels.

  “God bless you, too, Arlene,” Roscoe said. “God bless all nuns and all women.” Then he thought of Trish and added, “Most women.”

  He drove Arlene back to the Academy of the Sacred Heart at Kenwood, hoping her time with him would incite a convent-wide scandal, then went back to the hospital to check on Elisha. But he’d been sent home, no concussion after all. It was ten-thirty, too late to visit, a missed opportunity to be with Veronica. Roscoe went back to his car in the emergency-room parking lot. Where to go now? He watched ambulances and cars come and go with the dying and the wounded from the peaceful home front. He dwelled on Artie Flinn, casualty of the political wars, a man who’d been making a fortune but ran out of luck. What other disasters will unfold for Roscoe on this night of radical developments? He could go to Trish’s apartment and retrieve his clothes out of her closet. She might be there with four sailors. Go home and get some sleep, Ros. But who can sleep on V-J night? Go find a woman, then. Shouldn’t be difficult tonight. But if you don’t score, don’t even think of buying one, they’re watching you. You should have kidnapped Arlene, your prototype of ideal beauty. You could’ve talked about the good old days of young sin. They don’t make sin like they used to. Also, your stomach is rumbling. You never finished your dinner. Forget women and celebrate the Jap surrender with a steak. Or three hamburgers. Or a hot beef sandwich at the Morris Lunch, two hot beefs with double home fries and a wedge of apple pie with a custard-pie chaser. He drove to the Miss Albany Diner on Central Avenue, open all night, found it dark. A sign in the window reported, “No Food.” The Boulevard Cafeteria, never closes, was open but no steaks, no roast beef, no ham, no hamburgers, no eggs. All they had was bread, coffee, and no cream. The whole town ate out tonight. Roscoe had two orders of buttered toast, a plate of pickle slices, black coffee, and went back to his car. The streets were busy but no more traffic jams. The frenzy wanes. Who’ll be at the bar in the Elks Club? Who cares? Roscoe did not want to talk about war or peace or politics, not even the Cutie Diversion. What do you want, Ros? How about Hattie? Yes, a very good idea. Hattie Wilson, his perennial love. He did love her, always would. He wouldn’t lay a hand on her. That’s not what Roscoe is looking for right now. What’s more, isn’t Hattie married to O.B., Roscoe’s brother? Yes, she is. Roscoe wants only straight talk, smart talk, maybe a little sweet talk with Hattie, who is wise, who is a comfort. Six husbands and still nubile. Get your mind off nubility, for chrissake. He drove to Lancaster Street east of Dove Street and parked across from Hattie’s house. All four floors were dark. She could be awake in the back of the house, probably asleep. Roscoe did not want to get her out of bed to carry on a conversation—about what? Why are you waking me up in the middle of the night, Rosky? I wish I knew, old Hat. Never mind waking up. Some other time, Hat. Roscoe drove back to the hotel and told the doorman to send his car back to the garage. He decided to go upstairs, order room service, and go to bed, but the saboteurs had preceded him. No more room service tonight. So Roscoe settled into his suite on the tenth floor, ordered ice for his ice bag from the bellman, ate a Hershey bar out of the drawer, poured himself a double gin, hold the quinine, swallowed his blood-pressure pills with the gin, toasted peace in the world and freedom from politics, then went to bed hungry.